Contemporary Metaethics

An Introduction

Alexander Miller

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780745680514
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Filosofia moderna

This new edition of Alexander Miller's highly readable introduction to contemporary metaethics provides a critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century contemporary metaethics. Miller traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism. From Moore's attack on ethical naturalism, A. J. Ayer's emotivism and Simon Blackburn's quasi-realism to anti-realist and best opinion accounts of moral truth and the non-reductionist naturalism of the 'Cornell realists', this book addresses all the key theories and ideas in this field. As well as revisiting the whole terrain with revised and updated guides to further reading, Miller also introduces major new sections on the revolutionary fictionalism of Richard Joyce and the hermeneutic fictionalism of Mark Kalderon. The new edition will continue to be essential reading for students, teachers and professional philosophers with an interest in contemporary metaethics.

1

Introduction

In this chapter, I provide a brief account of the territory covered in metaethics, and of the main philosophical positions in metaethics to be covered in detail in the course of the book.

1.1 What is Metaethics?

Suppose I am debating with a friend the question whether or not we ought to give to famine relief, whether or not we are morally obliged to give to famine relief. The sorts of questions philosophers raise about this kind of debate fall roughly into two groups. First, there are first-order questions about which party in the debate, if any, is right, and why. Then, there are second-order questions about what the parties in the debate are doing when they engage in it. Roughly, the first-order questions are the province of normative ethics, and the second-order questions are the province of metaethics. As one recent writer puts it:

In metaethics, we are concerned not with questions which are the province of normative ethics like ‘Should I give to famine relief?’ or ‘Should I return the wallet I found in the street?’ but with questions about questions like these. (Smith 1994a: 2)

It is important to be clear that in normative ethics we do not just look for an answer to the question ‘Should we give to famine relief?’; we also look for some insight into why the right answer is right. It is in their answers to this latter sort of ‘why?’ question that the classic theories in normative ethics disagree. Examples of such theories include: act-utilitarianism (one ought to give to famine relief because that particular action, of those possible, contributes most to the greater happiness of the greatest number), rule-utilitarianism (one ought to give to famine relief because giving to famine relief is prescribed by a rule the general observance of which contributes most to the greater happiness of the greatest number), and Kantianism (one ought to give to famine relief because universal refusal to give to famine relief would generate some kind of inconsistency). Normative ethics thus seeks to discover the general principles underlying moral practice, and in this way potentially impacts upon practical moral problems: different general principles may yield different verdicts in particular cases. In this book we are not concerned with questions or theories in normative ethics. Rather, we are concerned with questions about the following:¹

(a) Meaning: what is the semantic function of moral discourse? Is the function of moral discourse to state facts, or does it have some other non-fact-stating role?

(b) Metaphysics: do moral facts (or properties) exist? If so, what are they like? Are they identical or reducible to natural facts (or properties) or are they irreducible and sui generis?

(c) Epistemology and justification: is there such a thing as moral knowledge? How can we know whether our moral judgements are true or false? How can we ever justify our claims to moral knowledge?

(d) Phenomenology: how are moral qualities represented in the experience of an agent making a moral judgement? Do they appear to be ‘out there’ in the world?

(e) Moral psychology: what can we say about the motivational state of someone making a moral judgement? What sort of connection is there between making a moral judgement and being motivated to act as that judgement prescribes?

(f) Objectivity: can moral judgements really be correct or incorrect? Can we work towards finding out the moral truth?

Obviously, this list is not intended to be exhaustive, and the various questions are not all independent (for example, a positive answer to (f) looks, on the face of it, to presuppose that the function of moral discourse is to state facts). But it is worth noting that the list is much wider than many philosophers forty or fifty years ago would have thought. For example, one such philosopher writes:

[Metaethics] is not about what people ought to do. It is about what they are doing when they talk about what they ought to do. (Hudson 1970: 1)

The idea that metaethics is exclusively about language was no doubt due to the once prevalent idea that philosophy as a whole has no function other than the study of ordinary language and that ‘philosophical problems’ only arise from the application of words out of the contexts in which they are ordinarily used. Fortunately, this ‘ordinary language’ conception of philosophy has long since ceased to hold sway, and the list of metaethical concerns – in metaphysics, epistemology, phenomenology, moral psychology, as well as in semantics and the theory of meaning – bears this out.

Positions in metaethics can be defined in terms of the answers they give to these sorts of question. Some examples of metaethical theories are: moral realism, non-cognitivism, error-theory, and moral anti-realism. The task of this book is to explain and evaluate these theories. In this chapter I give thumbnail sketches of the various theories and try to convey an idea of the sorts of questions they address. These preliminary sketches are then developed at more length in the remainder of the book.

1.2 Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism

Consider a particular moral judgement, such as the judgement that murder is wrong. What sort of psychological state does this express? Some philosophers, called cognitivists, think that a moral judgement like this expresses a belief. Beliefs can be true or false: they are truth-apt, or apt to be assessed in terms of truth and falsity. So cognitivists think that moral judgements are capable of being true or false. On the other hand, non-cognitivists think that moral judgements express non-cognitive states like emotions or desires.² Desires and emotions are not truth-apt. So moral judgements are not capable of being true or false. (Note that although it may be true that I have a desire for a pint of beer and false that I have a desire to see England win the World Cup, this does not imply that desires themselves can be true or false.) In many ways, it is the battle between cognitivism and non-cognitivism that takes centre-stage in this book: chapters 3–5 concern non-cognitivism and its problems, while cognitivism and its problems are the topic of chapter 2 and chapters 6–10.

1.3 Strong Cognitivism: Naturalism

A strong cognitivist theory is one which holds that moral judgements (a) are apt for evaluation in terms of truth and falsity, and (b) can be the upshot of cognitively accessing the facts which render them true. Strong cognitivist theories can be either naturalist or non-naturalist. According to a naturalist, a moral judgement is rendered true or false by a natural state of affairs, and it is this natural state of affairs to which a true moral judgement affords us access. But what is a natural state of affairs? In this book I will follow G. E. Moore’s characterization:

By nature then I do mean and have meant that which is the subject matter of the natural sciences, and also of psychology. (Moore 1903: 92)

A natural property is a property which figures in one of the natural sciences or in psychology: examples might include the property of being conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest number and the property of being conducive to the preservation of the human species. A natural state of affairs is simply a state of affairs that consists in the instantiation of a natural property.

Naturalist cognitivists hold that moral properties are identical to (or reducible to) natural properties. The Cornell Realists (e.g., Nicholas Sturgeon, Richard Boyd and David Brink: see Sturgeon 1988; Boyd 1988; and Brink 1989) think that moral properties are irreducible natural properties in their own right. Naturalist reductionists (e.g., Richard Brandt, Peter Railton: see Brandt 1979; Railton 1986a, b) think that moral properties are reducible to the sorts of natural properties that are the subject matter of the natural sciences and psychology. Both the Cornell Realists and the naturalist reductionists are moral realists: they think that there really are moral facts and moral properties, and that the existence of these moral facts and instantiation of these moral properties is constitutively independent of human opinion. The non-reductive naturalism of the Cornell Realists is discussed in chapter 8 and naturalist reductionism is the subject of chapter 9.

1.4 Strong Cognitivism: Non-Naturalism

Non-naturalists think that moral properties are not identical to or reducible to natural properties. They are irreducible and sui generis. We will look at two types of strong cognitivist non-naturalism: Moore’s ethical non-naturalism, as developed in his Principia Ethica (first published in 1903), according to which the property of moral goodness is non-natural, simple, and unanalysable; and the contemporary version of non-naturalism that has been developed by John McDowell and David Wiggins (roughly from the 1970s to the present day: see McDowell 1998; Wiggins 1987). Again, both types of non-naturalist are moral realists: they think that there really are moral facts and moral properties, and that the existence of these moral facts and instantiation of these moral properties is constitutively independent of human opinion.³ Moore’s non-naturalism, and his attack on naturalism, are discussed in chapters 2 and 3; the non-naturalism of McDowell is discussed in chapter 10.

1.5 Strong Cognitivism without Moral Realism: Mackie’s Error-Theory

John Mackie has argued that although moral judgements are apt to be true or false, and that moral judgements, if true, would afford us cognitive access to moral facts, moral judgements are in fact always false (Mackie 1973). This is because there simply are no moral facts or properties in the world of the sort required to render our moral judgements true: we have no plausible epistemological account of how we could access such facts and properties, and, moreover, such properties and facts would be metaphysically queer, unlike anything else in the universe as we know it. A moral property would have to be such that the mere apprehension of it by a moral agent would be sufficient to motivate that agent to act. Mackie finds this idea utterly problematic. He concludes that there are no moral properties or moral facts, so that (positive, atomic) moral judgements are uniformly false: our moral thinking involves us in a radical error. Because Mackie denies that there are moral facts or properties, he is not a moral realist, but a moral anti-realist. Mackie’s error-theory is the subject of chapter 6. In that chapter, we also look at some related fictionalist accounts of moral judgement (Joyce 2001; Kalderon 2005a).

1.6 Weak Cognitivism about Morals without Moral Realism: Response-Dependence Theories

A weak cognitivist theory is one which holds that moral judgements (a) are apt for evaluation in terms of truth and falsity, but (b) cannot be the upshot of cognitive access to moral properties and states of affairs. Weak cognitivism thus agrees with strong cognitivism in virtue of (a), but disagrees in virtue of (b). An example of a weak cognitivist theory would be a ‘response-dependence’ view which held that our best judgements about morals determine the extensions of moral predicates, rather than based upon some faculty which tracks, detects or cognitively accesses facts about the instantiation of moral properties. (The extension of a predicate is the class of things, events, or objects, to which that predicate may correctly be applied.) Moral judgements are thus capable of being true or false, even though they are not based on a faculty with a tracking, accessing or detecting role, in other words, even though true moral judgements are not the upshot of cognitive access to moral states of affairs. This view thus rejects moral realism, not by de...