Naturalizing ethics.”

Ethics in Progress, 2019

Modern ethics has to face the problem of how to accommodate the requirement for intersubjectively justified and accepted (valid) moral norms and values with the high-paced development of science and knowledge-based societies. This highly discussed opposition between what is morally eligible and what is scientifically correct may lead to stating that modern ethics is – rhetorically speaking – a dying figure. For it is impossible – after the Kantian-Copernican turn in epistemology and ethics – to defend the theological view that there exist certain universal and objective moral obligations. Yet, due to the rapid development of experimental sciences and the accomplishments of analytic philosophy, modern ethics are faced with the threat of either being reduced to a descriptive field of knowledge or becoming a shadow of its own past glory with no significance. Under these conditions, an attempt to defend ethics in its naturalistic form seems out of question. Still, the ethical naturalism may prove that – in the given state of social, scientific, and philosophical development – it is possible to successfully defend the view that ethical sentences express a certain type of proposition that may be proven true due to some objective natural features, independent of human opinions.

Metaphysics or Modernity?, 2013

Contemporary naturalism has two components. The first is ontological, and says, roughly, that all and only what the sciences say exists, really does exist. The other is methodological, and it says that only scientific explanations are legitimate explanations. Together these commitments promise a coherent picture of the world that is nicely integrated with an attractive epistemology. Despite the obvious appeal of naturalism, I would like to sound a note of caution. First, I would like to argue that naturalism's ontological commitment cannot be vindicated. Not, that is, that it is false; rather, I argue that any attempt to show that it is true presupposes that it is not. Second, I argue that methodological naturalism is false. But, again, the problem is not straightforward. I will not claim that there are gaps in the explanations offered by science, such that the scientific project would be incomplete without emendation. Instead I argue that the goodness of an explanation depends, in part, on how the event to be explained is described, and that, some events, under some descriptions, call for non-scientific explanations.

2020

Perhaps the two main contemporary formulations of ethical naturalism - Synthetic Ethical Naturalism (SEN) and Analytical Descriptivism – seem to conflict with plausible views about cases where moral debate and disagreement is possible. Both lack safeguards to avoid divergence of reference across different communities, which can scupper the prospects for genuine moral disagreement. I explore the prospects for supplementing both views with Lewis’s notion of eligibility, arguing that this can solve the problem for a modified form of analytical descriptivism, and for a modified form of SEN too (though perhaps more controversially). I close by considering the appropriateness of using the notions of eligibility and joint-carving in ethics.

Metaphilosophy, 1993

The critical focus of this paper is on a claim made explicitly by Gilbert Harman and accepted implicitly by numerous others, the claim that naturalism supports concurrent defense of scientific objectivism and moral relativism. I challenge the assumptions of Harman's 'argument from naturalism' used to support this combination of positions, utilizing. Hilary Putnam's 'companions in guilt' argument in order to counter it. The paper concludes that while domainspecific anti-realism is often warranted, Harman's own views about the objectivity of facts and the subjectivity of values are better seen as stemming from scientistic ideals of knowledge than from dictates of naturalism. Scientists qua scientists make value judgments, and setting aside scientistic assumptions and unrealizable conceptions of scientific objectivity should lead us to more symmetrical metaphilosophical conception of epistemic and ethical normativity than that which underlies Harman's account.