Mark Timmons

Troubles on moral twin earth: Moral queerness revived

J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper we revive Mackies challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relations of any kind, moral or otherwise, should be explainable rather than sui generis; (ii) that this explanatory burden can be successfully met vis-à-vis the supervenience of the mental upon the physical, and in other related cases; and (iii) that the burden cannot be met for (putative) objective moral supervenience relations.

Metaethics After Moore

Introduction 1. How should ethics relate to (the rest of ) philosophy? 2. What do reasons do? 3. Evaluations of rationality 4. Intrinsic value and reasons for action 5. Personal good 6. Moore on the right, the good, and uncertainty 7. Scanlon versus Moore on goodness 8. Opening questions, following rules 9. Was Moore a Moorean? 10. Ethics as philosophy: a defence of ethical nonnaturalism 11. The legacy of Principia 12. Cognitivist expressivism 13. Truth and the expressing in expressivism 14. Normative properties 15. Moral intuitionism meets empirical psychology 16. Ethics dehumanized

TROUBLES FOR NEW WAVE MORAL SEMANTICS: THE ‘OPEN QUESTION ARGUMENT’ REVIVED

G. E. Moore held that all forms of ethical naturalism rested on a fallacy -the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ which his open question argument was designed to expose. For a while anyway, the argument’s persuasive appeal held a good many philosophers in its sway. Its appeal was felt by W. D. Ross (1930: 7-11,92-3) and A. C. Ewing (1948: 41-2) who, like Moore, were led to espouse ethical nonnaturalism. Its appeal was also felt by A. J. Ayer (1952: 104-05) and R. M. Hare (1952: ch. 5 ) who, because they found the metaphysical and epistemological commitments of nonnaturalism unpalatable, were led to noncognitivist accounts of moral discourse.’ But as it turned out, the persuasive appeal of Moore’s argument lasted only as long as did the appeal of certain semantical views upon which ethical naturalism was presumed to rest. Once these semantical views were questioned and the philosophical soil was fertilized with more plausible views, a novel strain of ethical naturalism a kind allegedly immune to Moorean open question arguments was bound to sprout forth. One now sees this new strain of ethical naturalism everywhere, though we think it first emerged in the hearty intellectual climate of upper New York state. Our central aim in this paper is to cast doubt on the sort of new wave moral semantics that has recently been pressed into service on behalf of ethical naturalism. We argue that the currently popular version of naturalism, despite its immunity to Moore’s version of the open question argument, succumbs to a newly fashioned open question argument. Since new wave moral semantics is at the heart of the recent strain of

Copping Out on Moral Twin Earth

In Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth, David Copp explores some ways in which a defender of synthetic moral naturalism might attempt to get around our Moral Twin Earth argument. 1 Copp nicely brings out the force of our argument, not only through his exposition of it, but through his attempt to defeat it, since his efforts, we think, only help to make manifest the deep difficulties the Moral Twin Earth argument poses for the synthetic moral naturalist. Our response to Copp will be in two stages. First we will make some general observations about our argument that help one appreciate its force, and then we will turn to the details of Copps proposals.

Nondescriptivist Cognitivism: Framework for a New Metaethic

Abstract We propose a metaethical view that combines the cognitivist idea that moral judgments are genuine beliefs and moral utterances express genuine assertions with the idea that such beliefs and utterances are nondescriptive in their overall content. This sort of view has not been recognized among the standard metaethical options because it is generally assumed that all genuine beliefs and assertions must have descriptive content. We challenge this assumption and thereby open up conceptual space for a new kind of metaethical view. In developing our brand of nondescriptivist cognitivism we do the following: (1) articulate a conception of belief (and assertion) that does not require the overall declarative content of beliefs (and assertions) to be descriptive content; (2) make a case for the independent plausibility of this conception of belief and assertion; and (3) argue that our view, formulated in a way that draws upon the proposed conception of belief, has significant comparative advantages over descriptivist forms of cognitivism.

UNTYING A KNOT FROM THE INSIDE OUT: REFLECTIONS ON THE “PARADOX” OF SUPEREROGATION

In his seminal essay, “Saints and Heroes” (1958), J. O. Urmson argued that the then-dominant tripartite deontic scheme of classifying actions —as exclusively either obligatory, or optional in the sense of being morally indifferent, or wrong —ought to be expanded to include the category of the supererogatory.1 Colloquially, this category includes actions that are “beyond the call of duty” (beyond what is obligatory) and, hence, actions that one has no duty or obligation to perform. The title of Urmson’s essay indicates (by reference to character types) some of the main types of action —saintly and heroic —that are supposed to belong in this category. But it is a controversial category. Anti-supererogationists either deny the coherence of the concept, or, granting its coherence, argue that the corresponding category is empty. Pro-supererogationists argue that the category is not empty, and that therefore the corresponding concept is coherent, although the pro-supererogationists often disagree about the conceptual contours of the category. The apparent conceptual tension regarding supererogation, sometimes referred to as the “paradox of supererogation,” has been a main focus of philosophical discussions of the topic. Roughly speaking, the paradox is that, on the one hand, supererogatory actions are notable because they are morally good, indeed morally best, actions. But then, on the other hand, if they are morally best, why aren’t they morally required, contrary to the assumption that they are morally optional? In short, how can an action that is morally best to perform fail to be what one is morally required to do?

What does moral phenomenology tell us about moral objectivity

Moral phenomenology is concerned with the elements of ones moral experiences that are generally available to introspection. Some philosophers argue that ones moral experiences, such as experiencing oneself as being morally obligated to perform some action on some occasion, contain elements that (1) are available to introspection and (2) carry ontological objectivist purport—that is, they purport to be about objective, in the world, moral properties or relations. In our article, we examine one version of this sort of argument that we call the “argument from phenomenological introspection.” Our investigation involves, first, clarifications of the various issues that are prominent in the argument from phenomenological introspection. We then proceed to argue that the argument from phenomenological introspection fails; that although ones moral experiences may carry ontological objectivist purport, whether they do or do not carry such purport is not something available to introspection. We call this claim of ours the “neutrality thesis”—the phenomenological data regarding ones moral experiences that is available to introspection is neutral with respect to the issue of whether such experiences carry ontological objectivist purport.

Metaphysical Naturalism, Semantic Normativity, and Meta-Semantic Irrealism

Semantic discourse-discourse employing notions like meaning and truth-gives rise to questions about the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of such notions: What sort of metaphysical commitments does semantic discourse (as ordinarily used) involve? Does such discourse commit us to the existence of semantic properties and facts? If so, are there such properties and facts?

Using Experiments in Ethics – Ethical Conservatism and the Psychology of Moral Luck

Psychological evidence detailing why we believe what we believe can provide a powerful basis for challenging the warrant of those beliefs. If psychology shows that a certain common belief derives from epistemically defective processes, then this threatens to undercut the epistemic authority of the belief. The canonical case of this sort of debunking argument is Freud’s critique of religion (1927). Freud argues that religious belief is a product of wish-fulfillment, not reason; as a result, he says, we should regard our religious beliefs as unwarranted. On the heels of psychological research on philosophically charged domains, these kinds of debunking arguments have been making a comeback. Debunking arguments have been advanced in the domains of metaphysics (e.g., Scholl 2007), metaethics (e.g., Nichols 2008), consciousness (e.g., Fiala et al. 2011), and normative ethics (e.g., Greene 2008; Singer 2005). In this paper, we use the problem of moral luck as a case studying, exploring how empirical work can inform normative ethics.

Objectivity in Moral Discourse

The idea that some realm of discourse, including moral discourse, is objective is the idea that there is a single set of basic truths that the discourse purports to be about. In order to determine whether moral discourse is indeed objective, we must first clarify the very idea of objectivity under consideration and then examine the various semantic, ontological, and epistemological features of moral discourse implicated in the idea of objectivity. Two models of objectivity have been prevalent in philosophical discussions of moral objectivity – a strong ‘ontological’ model and a somewhat weaker ‘methodological’ model. Thus, meta-ethical debates about the status of moral discourse revolve around whether moral discourse satisfies the requirements of either model of objectivity.