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Moral Naturalism and the Normative Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Susan E. Babbitt
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Extract

Moral naturalism, as I use the term here, is the view that there are moral facts in the natural world – facts that are both natural and normative – and that moral claims are true or false in virtue of their corresponding or not to these natural facts. Moral naturalists argue that, since moral claims are about natural facts, we can establish the truth about moral claims through empirical investigation. Moral knowledge, on this view, is a form of empirical knowledge.

One objection to this metaethical view is that even if moral naturalists are correct in their claims about truth, they cannot answer the question of normativity. Jean Hampton, for instance, argues that it is not enough to explain the conduct's wrongness by showing it to be a property that necessarily supervenes on natural properties. For nothing in this analysis explains the relationship between these properties and us. The question is why should people care about these properties. Christine Korsgaard claims that moral realists take the normative question to be one about truth and knowledge.

Type
I. Moral Naturalism and Normativity
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 26: Moral Epistemology Naturalized , 2000 , pp. 139 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2000

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References

1 In another use of the term, moral naturalism is the view that, given a naturalistic understanding of the world, there are no moral facts and that consequently moral claims have no truth-value. Although the two views are directly opposed to each other on the cognitive status of moral claims, they both aim at understanding “moral” from a naturalistic perspective.

2 Hampton, JeanThe Authority of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Korsgaard, ChristineThe Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 30–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 I owe this example and the point to Miller, R. W.Fact and Method (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 93–4Google Scholar.

5 Kitcher, PhilipThe Advancement of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), e.g., 193.Google Scholar

6 “Universality and the Reflective Self,” in The Sources of Normativity, 200-9.

7 Herman, BarbaraThe Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 23–44Google Scholar.

8 The Unnatural Lottery: Character and Moral Luck (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), chap. 5.

9 See Kitcher, Philip “Species,” in The Units of Evolution, ed. Ereshefsky, Marc (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 317–42Google Scholar.

10 Dillon, Robin S. “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political,” Ethics 107 (1997): 226–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 For an overview of feminist positions on the self, see “Introduction,” Feminists Rethink the Self ed. Meyers, Diana (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1997), 1–11.Google Scholar Feminists have generally rejected the homo economicus view of the” free and rational chooser and actor whose desires and ranked in a coherent order.” See Calhoun, Cheshire “Standing for Something,” Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 5 (1995): 235–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for arguments against wholeness, intactness views of integrity.

12 See, e.g, Butler, JudithGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar; Lugones, Maria “On the Logic of Feminist Pluralism,” in Feminist Ethics, ed. Card, Claudia (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 35–44Google Scholar;

13 I discuss Dillon's, argument in more detail in Artless Integrity: On Moral Imagination, Agency and Stories (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), chap. 2Google Scholar.

14 Segrest, MabMy Mama's Dead Squirrel: Lesbian Essays on Southern Culture (Ithaca: Firebrand Books, 1985), 20Google Scholar.

15 Tlali, MiriamBetween Two Worlds (Muriel at Metropolitan) (White Plains, NY: Longman African Writers Series, 1987, 2d ed., 1995)Google Scholar.

16 “How to be a Moral Realist,” in Essays on Moral Realism, ed. Sayre-McCord, G. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 181–228Google Scholar.

17 Rosenberg, Alex ”A Field Guide to Recent Species of Naturalism,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47, no. 1 (1996): 1–30, n. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See, e.g., Railton, Peter “Marx and the Objectivity of Science,” PSA 2 (1984): 813–25Google Scholar, rpt. in The Philosophy of Science, ed. Boyd, R.Gaspar, P. and Trout, J.D. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 763–73Google Scholar. I have discussed this aspect of naturalistic realism in Impossible Dreams: Rationality, Integrity and Moral Imagination (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1996), chap. 6.

19 See, e.g., Boyd, R.N. “Observations, Explanatory Power and Simplicity: Toward a Non-Humean Account,” in Observation, Experiment and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science, ed. Achinstein, P. and Hannaway, O. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 47–94Google Scholar.

20 Abusing Science: Tile Case Against Creationism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), 45- 54.

21 Searle, John develops this sort of account in The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

22 In Impossible Dreams: Rationality, Integrity and Moral Imagination (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1996).

23 Velleman, J. David “The Possibility of Practical Reason,” Ethics 106 (1996): 694–726CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 The “explanatory burden” created by certain actions and commitments is explained in Artless Integrity: On Moral Imagination, Agency and Stories (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

25 Boyd, R. N. “Homeostasis, Species and Higher Taxa,” in Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Wilson, Robert A. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 141Google Scholar.

26 I have discussed the naturalistic conception of individuation and its implications for integrity in Artless Integrity: On Moral Imagination, Agency and Stories (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), chap. 3.

27 By “externalism” here I mean the view that reasons are independent of inclinations, although I recognize that more plausible versions of externalism are consistent with the contingency of reasons upon inclinations. My own view is externalist on some moral naturalist understandings of externalism but for reasons I cannot discuss here I resist this terminology.

28 Coetzee, J. M.Disgrace (London: Vintage, 1999)Google Scholar.

29 Paper given at the Annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sept. 28, 1997, 20.

30 Ibid., 21.

31 I am grateful to the editors, Richmond Campbell and Bruce Hunter, for encouraging me to write on this topic. I have particularly benefited from Rich Campbell's thoughtful, thorough and persistent comments.