I am currently writing another paper on metasemantic challenges to normative naturalism. This paper is largely critical: I examine various non-expressivist versions of naturalism and argue that they cannot fully make good on the intelligibility of radical normative disagreement and the objectivity of normative truths. At the end of the paper, I defend again a quasi-naturalist approach to these issues.
Here is a long abstract for this paper:
Normative naturalism holds that normative properties are identical with, or reducible to, natural properties. A standard objection to naturalism is that it cannot vindicate the idea that normative terms can be used in very different ways and yet have the same reference in those different contexts of use. In response to this challenge, some defenders of naturalism (Sayre-McCord 1997, Copp 2000, Brink 2001) have proposed that questions about the reference of normative terms should be understood, at least in part, as normative questions that can be settled through normative inquiry. In this paper I argue for two main claims: (1) these proposals do not yet allow for radical disagreement on normative matters, or at least do not explain how such disagreement is possible; (2) in order to account for radical disagreement, naturalists should not only treat normative reference as a normative issue but also adopt a non-representationalist account of normative concepts, on which such concepts are individuated through their practical role.
Here are two examples that illustrate the type of challenge to naturalism on which I focus here (cfr. Hare 1952, Horgan & Timmons 1991, Eklund 2017, among others):
Moral Twin Earth Suppose that people on Earth systematically apply the term ‘wrong’ to actions that fail to maximize utility. Now imagine a planet, Moral Twin Earth, where ‘wrong’ plays the same normative role, i.e. the same role in guiding individual deliberation and interpersonal criticism, but the term is systematically applied to actions that violate Kant's categorical imperative.
Honor Code Imagine a community whose moral code is built around the preservation of personal honour and the elimination of impurity. This leads to moral judgements that radically diverge from our own judgements, but moral terms have the same normative role for this community as they do for us.
I propose that naturalists should aim to vindicate the following theses in the face of such examples:
Conceptual Elasticity Normative concepts can be used in vastly different ways by different communities.
Referential Stability Normative concepts that play the same normative role thereby have the same reference.
Objectivity Normative properties are objective, i.e. do not depend on our beliefs, attitudes, or practices.
Some versions of naturalism are particularly unlikely to accomplish this goal. For instance, Boyd's (1988) view, on which the reference of a moral term like ‘wrong’ is whatever property causally regulates its use in the right way, seems to predict that ‘wrong’ refers to different properties on Earth, Moral Twin Earth, and in Honor Code. It might be argued that Boyd's theory can avoid this verdict with respect to Moral Twin Earth cases, where the particular moral beliefs of the given communities are largely aligned: if the causal links that are relevant to moral reference are those that tend to bring about true predication, then arguably the same natural property explains the different uses of ‘wrong’ on Earth and Moral Twin Earth (Väyrynen 2018). But even so, Boyd's view still does not allow for radical normative disagreement: that is, it is unable to vindicate Conceptual Elasticity and Referential Stability in cases like Honor Code.
The same problem arises for Sayre-McCord's (1997) view, on which the reference of moral terms consists in the moral kinds that causally regulate the use of those terms, and the relevant moral kinds are to be identified through moral theory. While this view might account for sameness of reference in Moral Twin Earth-type cases, by treating questions about normative reference partly as normative questions, it too leaves little room for radical disagreement, because it still imposes a causal constraint on reference. (One option for naturalists who adopt a causal theory of reference but want to account for cases like Honor Code would be to claim that normative properties are highly disjunctive and can be realized by very different natural properties in different scenarios. For instance, moral rightness might be identified with the functional property of promoting social cohesion. But this would be in effect to sacrifice Objectivity.)
Moreover, the problem here goes beyond causal theories of reference: naturalists will be unable to fully vindicate Conceptual Elasticity, Referential Stability, and Objectivity as long as they impose a broader epistemic condition on reference, according to which one cannot use normative concepts that refer to certain properties unless one's judgments about those properties are at least somewhat reliable.
A different naturalist approach seems more promising. On Brink's (2001) view, the reference of moral terms is fixed by certain referential intentions that can be ascribed to all users of such terms, irrespective of their moral beliefs, and by substantive moral theory. (See also Copp (2000) for a similar proposal.) More specifically, according to Brink, the relevant intention is to use moral terms to pick out those properties that make actions interpersonally justifiable, but this need not be the only option for naturalists, particularly if they want to capture wildly divergent uses of moral and normative terms: for instance, other naturalists might hold that the referential intention associated with the use of ‘wrong’ is simply to pick out those properties that make actions wrong. What is clear is that, if a view of this sort is to allow for radical disagreement, these referential intentions must have irreducible normative content. (If the content of these intentions was specified in fully non-normative terms, then naturalists would again struggle to accommodate cases like Honour Code.)
The problem now is that naturalists still owe us an account of why these referential intentions have the normative contents that they do. For instance, in virtue of what do people on Earth, Moral Twin Earth, and in Honor Code have the same referential intentions when using moral terms? Therefore, even if a view like Brink's allows for radical disagreement, it still does not fully explain how such disagreement is possible, i.e. how it is that people in the relevant scenarios use the same normative concepts.
In order to fill this explanatory gap, I argue, naturalists should adopt a non-representationalist account of normative concepts, on which such concepts are individuated through their practical or normative role. I illustrate this point by showing how a view that combines naturalism and expressivism about normative discourse in a deflationary framework (cfr. Gibbard 2003) can vindicate Conceptual Elasticity, Referential Stability, and Objectivity. I call this view quasi-naturalism.
More precisely, I rely on a hybrid version of expressivism (Ridge 2007, 2014), which can provide a clear account of the metaphysical theses of naturalism: e.g., ‘Wrongness is identical with failing to maximize utility’ might express (1) an attitude of disapproval of acts that have a certain natural property, and (2) the belief that the natural property in question is identical with failing to maximize utility (cfr. Bex-Priestley, manuscript).
Expressivism easily accounts for Conceptual Elasticity: e.g., ‘wrong’ has the same normative role for us, on Moral Twin Earth, and in Honor Code, because it encodes a desire-like mental state that directly governs individual deliberation and interpersonal criticism, expressivists will argue, and all the relevant communities use the same concept of wrongness in virtue of this shared attitudinal content.
Deflationism about truth, reference, and other related notions allows quasi-naturalists to treat questions about normative reference purely as normative questions, to which normative enquiry can establish objective answers. For instance, ‘What is the reference of “wrong” for us and on Moral Twin Earth?’ will be treated as equivalent to ‘What kind of actions are wrong, for us and on Moral Twin Earth?’. By doing normative theory, we can arrive at the verdict that the same objective natural features make actions wrong everywhere, including in scenarios where people use normative concepts in very different ways from us―in other words, that ‘wrong’ has a unique objective reference.