Arguments for naturalising morality

Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity, 2003

2009

This dissertation is a critique of synthetic ethical naturalism (SEN). SEN is a view in metaethics that comprises three key theses: first, there are moral properties and facts that are independent of the beliefs and attitudes of moral appraisers (moral realism); second, moral properties and facts are identical to (or constituted only by) natural properties and facts (ethical naturalism); and third, sentences used to assert identity or constitution relations between moral and natural properties are expressions of synthetic, a posteriori necessities. The last of these theses, which distinguishes SEN from other forms of ethical naturalism, is supported by a fourth: the semantic contents of the central moral predicates such as 'morally right' and 'morally good' are fixed in part by features external to the minds of speakers (moral semantic externalism). Chapter 1 introduces SEN and discusses the most common motivations for accepting it. The next three chapters discuss the influential "Moral Twin Earth" argument against moral semantic externalism. In Chapter 2, I defend this argument from the charge that the thought experiment upon which it depends is defective. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider two attempts to amend SEN so as to render it immune to the Moral Twin Earth argument. I show that each of these proposed amendments amounts to an abandonment of SEN. Chapter Five explores Richard Boyd's proposal that moral goodness is a "homeostatic property cluster." If true, Boyd's hypothesis could be used to support several metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic claims made on behalf of SEN. I advance three arguments against this account of moral goodness. In the sixth chapter, I argue that moral facts are not needed in the best a posteriori explanations of our moral beliefs and moral sensibility. Because of this, those who accept a metaphysical naturalism ought to deny the existence of such facts or else accept skepticism about moral knowledge. In Chapter 7, I consider a counterargument on behalf of SEN to the effect that moral facts are needed in order to explain the predictive success of our best moral theories. I show that this argument fails

Singer ed. A Companion to Ethics, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 421-431, 1991

Survey article on Naturalism dealing with Hume's NOFI (including Prior's objections), Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy and the Barren Tautology Argument. Naturalism, as I understand it, is a form of moral realism which rejects fundamental moral facts or properties. Thus it is opposed to both non-cognitivism, and and the error theory but also to non-naturalism. General conclusion: as of 1991: naturalism as a program has not been refuted though none of the extant versions look particularly promising.

2016

Human beings have asked questions about the source and nature of morality for centuries.

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.

translation of a paper published in: Etica & Politica \ Ethics & Politics, 2007

I discuss first the various meanings of naturalism in philosophy and then in ethics: that of American Naturalism, that of Dewey’s pragmatism, the sense of negation of Moore’s negation of naturalism, the neo-Aristotelian, and that of external realists. I will argue a fundamental heterogeneity of these meanings and add that the reasons for the apparent unity of a naturalist front in recent philosophical debates depend more on factors studied by the sociology of knowledge than philosophical reasons. I suggest one plausible naturalism, Aristotle’s and Dewey’s claim that moral good is not specifically moral. Finally, I add that scientific exploration programs into the biological bases of behaviour and coordination of behaviour within groups are promising but hardly ‘naturalistic’ and compatible with ethical intuitionism or Kantian ethics.

2021

Metaethics has long explored the question of how ethical thought and discourse fit into reality as a whole. The question is particularly pressing for those theorists who accept that there are ethical facts (that is, facts that make ethical statements and judgments true). Among these broadly realist theorists, reductive naturalists claim that ethical facts are of essentially the same kind as the facts of paradigmatic natural sciences like contemporary physics and biology. On the other hand, extreme non-naturalists, like G.E. Moore, claim that ethical facts are entirely primitive sui generis facts, radically different in kind from all other facts whatsoever. It is argued that these are both extreme positions, and that there should be a range of intermediate positions in between these two extremes. In fact, many pre-modern philosophers – including most ancient and medieval thinkers – adopted such an intermediate position. But the kind of intermediate position is no longer a live option for us today, since it is conflicts with what we have learnt from contemporary natural science. Nonetheless, a range of intermediate positions are possible, and it is argued that these intermediate positions are prima facie promising and deserve careful consideration from contemporary metaethicists.