An Argument for Robust Metanormative Realism
by
David Enoch
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
New York University
May, 2003
_______________________________________________
Co-Advisors: Hartry Field, Thomas Nagel and Derek Parfit
© David Enoch
All Rights Reserved, 2003
ii
To Naomi, Rakefet and Ronnie,
three generations of women in my life,
with love.
iii
Acknowledgments
My committee members – Hartry Field, Tom Nagel and Derek Parfit – have been
extremely helpful in all stages of my work on my thesis. Their encouragement,
generosity with their time, and comments on earlier drafts have been invaluable.
Almost as valuable were discussions with other professors, and even more
so with fellow students and friends, at the NYU philosophy department and
elsewhere. For such discussions and comments I want to thank Stephanie
Beardsman, Hagit Benbaji, Thérèse Björkholm, Paul Boghossian, Cian Dorr,
Ernesto Garcia, Pete Graham, Ulrike Heuer, Peter Kung, Andrei Marmor, John
Richardson, Josh Schechter, Mark Schroeder, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Crispin Wright
and Masahiro Yamada. Of these, I am especially grateful to Paul Boghossian, for
his major part in recreating the PhD program at NYU, which – for me – was the
ideal philosophical environment.
iv
Abstract
In this essay, I defend a view I call “Robust Realism” about normativity.
According to this view, there are irreducibly, perfectly objective, normative truths,
that when successful in our normative inquiries we discover rather than create or
construct.
My argument in support of Robust Realism is modeled after arguments
from explanatory indispensability common in the philosophy of science and the
philosophy of mathematics. I argue that irreducibly normative truths, though not
explanatorily indispensable, are nevertheless deliberatively indispensable, and that
this kind of indispensability is just as respectable as the more familiar explanatory
kind. Deliberative indispensability, I argue, justifies belief in normative facts, just
like the explanatory indispensability of, say, theoretical entities like electrons
justifies belief in electrons.
In the introduction I characterize the view I will be arguing for and sketch
the main argument of this essay.
In chapter 1 I draw the analogy between explanatory and deliberative
indispensability, and argue that there is no non-question-begging reason to take the
former but not the latter seriously. Here I also present the master-argument of the
thesis, and clarify the argumentative work that needs to be done by each of the
following chapters.
v
In chapter 2 I address the worries of the antirealist who is willing to reject
arguments from explanatory indispensability as well. In other words, in this
chapter I try to justify the move from indispensability (of whatever kind) to belief.
In chapter 3 I develop an account of deliberation that supports the premises
about deliberation needed for my master-argument to go through.
In chapter 4 I reject some alternative views, showing that none of them can
allow for sincere deliberation. In this chapter, in other words, I support the
indispensability premise: I argue that it really is impossible to deliberate sincerely
without believing in irreducibly normative truths.
In the conclusion I draw the threads from all previous chapters together.
Here I also address worries about the robustness of my Robust Realism and about
the intelligibility of the metanormative (or metaethical) discourse of which this
essay is a part.
vi
Table of Contents
Dedication
iii
Acknowledgments
iv
Abstract
v
Introduction: Robust Realism – The View, the Motivation, the Argument 1
(i) Normativity
2
(ii) Robust Realism
6
(iii) “Robust Realism”
13
(iv) The Argument
15
Chapter 1: The Indispensability of Irreducibly Normative Truths
25
1.1 Harman’s Challenge
27
1.2 Coping with Harman’s Challenge: Two Strategies
37
1.3 Parsimony
42
1.4 Indispensabilities
44
1.5 Metaphysical Naturalism Again
50
1.6 Instrumental and Intrinsic Indispensability
51
1.6.1 Instrumental Indispensability
53
1.6.2 Intrinsic Indispensability
57
1.7 Deliberation
60
1.8 Explanatory Role After All?
62
1.9 Scorekeeping
66
1.A Appendix: Previous Attempts at the Second Strategy
69
1.A.1 Lycan
70
1.A.2 Wiggins
71
1.A.3 McDowell
72
vii
1.A.4 Nagel
73
1.A.5 Dworkin
75
1.A.6 Platts
77
1.A.7 Korsgaard
79
1.A.8 Sayre-McCord
80
Chapter 2: How Does Indispensability Justify Belief
83
2.1 Explanatory Indispensability Again
84
2.2 Where Epistemic Justification Comes to an End
89
2.3 The Need for a Vindication
93
2.4 A Pragmatic Account of Vindication: The General Idea
96
2.5 Some Details
98
2.5.1 Non-Optional Projects
99
2.5.2 The Modalities
101
2.5.3 Extensional Adequacy
105
2.6 Deliberation (and Explanation) Again
106
2.7 A Remaining Worry about Truth and Reliability
110
2.8 Scorekeeping
114
2.A Other Ways of Rendering Unavoidability Useful
116
2.A.1 Nagel and Self-Defeat
116
2.A.2 Dretske and Ought-Implies-Can
119
2.A.3 Velleman and Constitutive Aims
121
Chapter 3: Deliberation
124
3.1 Deliberation Phenomenologically Characterized
128
3.2 The Instrumental Indispensability of Normative Truths
134
3.3 The Intrinsic Indispensability of Deliberation
141
3.4 Objections
148
3.4.1 Do We Explicitly Invoke Normative Truths
viii
149
When Deliberating?
3.4.2 Aren’t Your Desires (or Your Ends, or Your
152
Identity) Sufficient?
3.4.3 Can We Not Be “Heroic Existentialists”?
159
3.4.4 Am I Conflating “What-Shall-I-Do” with
161
“What-Should-I-Do” Questions?
3.4.5 Is Deliberation Illusory After All?
164
3.4.6 Have We Reached Bedrock?
168
3.4.7 Can’t We Deliberate in the Face of (Believed)
169
Incomparability?
3.4.8 Don’t Antirealists Deliberate?
172
3.4.9 What Would We Have Done Had We Found Out
175
that There Are No Normative Truths?
3.4.10 Does the Argument Prove Too Much? A Quick
176
Note on Freedom
3.4.11 What Exactly is Indispensable?
179
3.4.12 Does Deliberation Incur Explanatory Commitments?
182
3.4.13 Had We Not Been Deliberative, Would There Have
186
Been Normative Truths?
3.4.14 Am I Committed to Dummettean Antirealism?
3.5 Kindred Spirits
188
192
3.5.1 Action
192
3.5.2 Conversation
196
3.6 Scorekeeping
198
Chapter 4: Rejecting Alternatives
199
4.1 The Field
201
4.2 Error Theory
206
4.2.1 Error Theory, Eliminativism, Instrumentalism, and
ix
207
Revisionary Accounts
4.2.2 Against Instrumentalism
216
4.2.3 Against Eliminativism
220
4.2.4 A Way Out?
222
4.2.5 Error Theories and Softer Interpretations
225
4.3 Noncognitivism
227
4.3.1 Noncognitivism, Nonfactualism, Expressivism
228
4.3.2 Why Emotivism Will Not Do the Job
234
4.3.3 Why More Sophisticated Versions of Noncognitivism
237
Will Do No Better
4.3.4 Why Quasi-Realism Is beside the Point
4.4 Normative Naturalism
245
249
4.4.1 Normative Naturalism
250
4.4.2 Why Normative Naturalism Will Not Do
259
4.4.3 A Final Worry about Property Identity
269
4.5 Constructivism
271
4.5.1 Constructivism
273
4.5.2 Interesting Constructivism
278
4.5.3 The Constructivist Fallacy
286
4.6 Publicity
293
4.7 Softer-Interpretation Theories: A Final Thought Experiment
295
4.8 Hybrid Views
296
4.9 Other Options?
298
4.9.1 Sensibility Theories
298
4.9.2 Practical Reasoning
301
4.9.3 Internal Realism
303
4.10 Scorekeeping
304
Conclusion: How Robust is Robust Realism?
x
306
1. Robustness
307
2. Quietism
317
References
329
xi
Introduction
Robust Realism: The View, the Motivation, the Argument
In this essay I argue for a view that takes normativity seriously. This view – the
one I call “Robust Realism” – states, very roughly, that there are irreducibly
normative truths, truths about what we should do, what we should believe, how we
should reason, what we should care about. These truths, or at least some of them,
are perfectly objective, universal, absolute. They are independent of us, our desires
and our (or anyone else’s) will. These normative truths are truths that, when
successful in our normative inquiries, we discover rather than create or construct.
They are, in other words, just as respectable as empirical or mathematical truths (at
least, that is, according to scientific and mathematical realists).
The view is not new. Indeed, insofar as there is a commonsensical view of
normativity, I think this is it, despite its current less-than-orthodox status in
philosophical circles1. As far as I know, however, the argument I am about to offer
1
In their survey of metaethical views on the scene today, Darwall, Gibbard and Railton (1992) do
not even mention anything like Robust Realism. In a footnote (ibid, 40, footnote 59), they imply
that the only live issues about such a view are where it goes wrong, whether ordinary moral
discourse is committed to it, and the like. (See also ibid., 34.)
1
for this view is new; at least, it is an original attempt at making explicit and precise
an intuition the force of which realists have always felt.
In this introduction I do the following: First, in section (i), I briefly clarify
what the normativity I am a Robust Realist about is. In section (ii), I say more
about what Robust Realism comes to. Though I do not say much – for reasons that
are explained in that section, I find it useful to leave some of this discussion to the
concluding chapter – I hope I say enough to facilitate the discussion in the ensuing
chapters. Section (iii) is a terminological apology in which I explain why I found it
necessary to introduce a new term, “Robust Realism”, to the metaethical debate
that is already overflowing with “ism”s. Section (iii) can thus be safely ignored by
readers impatient with terminological discussions. In section (iv) I sketch my
argument for Robust Realism, the argument that is then developed in following
chapters. In this section I also give an outline of the rest of the essay.
(i)
Normativity
Robust Realism is a view of, or about, normativity. Before proceeding to say
something about Robust Realism, then, let me say a few words about the
normativity I am a Robust Realist about.
Normative truths (or facts, propositions, properties, claims, sentences and
the like) are, at a first approximation, those that fall on the ought side of the isought distinction, the value side of the fact-value distinction, and the analogous
side of analogous distinctions. These distinctions admit of vagueness and
2
borderline cases, and they are not, of course, uncontroversial. But the
controversies regarding them are mostly about how best to make theoretical sense
of them, not about whether they have any intuitive content. This intuitive content –
vague though it is – will suffice for now. Not much more than this first
approximation will be given here – none, I think, is needed at this stage, and if the
argument of this essay is sound, there is no reason to expect that one can be given.
Paradigmatic examples may, however, help clarify the kind of things I refer to as
normative. That we ought to give money to famine relief is a normative
proposition (and, given that it’s true, it’s also a normative truth, and a normative
fact); so are that I should go on a diet, that you have a reason to read Kant, that
pursuing graduate studies in philosophy is the thing it makes most sense for her to
do, that he is a good person, that you shouldn’t form your beliefs on the basis of
wishful thinking, that if he has inconsistent beliefs he’s irrational, that it’s
unreasonable to expect everyone to convert to your religion, that we should all
care more for our own children than for other people’s children, that it’s your duty
to obey the laws of your country, that I have a moral right to free speech, and so
on.
These examples should suffice, I think, to give an intuitive feel of the
normative realm about which I’m a Robust Realist. But many of them can be
misunderstood in a relevantly important way. As Korsgaard (1996, 42) notes,
different thinkers use different terms as their “normatively loaded words” –
roughly, those for which it is analytically true that they carry normative force.
3
Thus, a word that is understood as normatively loaded by one may be understood
differently by another. Consider, for instance, the word “good” in “She is a good
person”. One may treat this as a normative claim; but one may – treating “good” as
normatively unloaded, and, say, “reason” as normatively loaded – treat this as a
perfectly descriptive claim, one that leaves the relevant normative question – Do I
have reason to be a good person, or to be (relevantly) like her? – completely open.
So in characterizing the normative I should say – somewhat vacuously, of course –
that it is the discourse that comprises of propositions (sentences, truths, facts) of
the kind of the examples given above, when these are understood as normatively
loaded.
Before proceeding to Robust Realism, let me preempt misunderstanding by
noting three things I will not be discussing when I discuss normativity.
First, I will not be discussing ethics or morality (In this essay I use these
terms interchangeably). As the examples above show, some paradigmatic
normative propositions are naturally classified as moral, and others are not. For the
most part, I will be concerned with the more general phenomenon of normativity,
not with morality, its particular instance. When this particular instance is
nevertheless especially relevant, I note so explicitly.
Second, as I will often be using “reason” as a normatively loaded term, it is
important here that the reasons I’ll be talking about are normative, not motivating,
reasons. Normative reasons are the reasons that count in favor of whatever it is
they are reasons for. Motivating reasons are those that actually motivate the agent,
4
or bring her to action. This distinction is sometimes put in terms of the distinction
between the reason for which an agent acts (those she takes to be normative
reasons), and the reasons why she acts (motivating reasons)2. Now, whatever your
view about the relation between normativity and motivation – not a simple issue,
and one that will be discussed in several different contexts in what follows – and
even if you think there are some necessary connections between normativity and
motivation, surely you should not “support” this view by equivocating on
“reason”, thus blurring the conceptual distinction between normative and
motivating reasons. This conceptual distinction is, it seems, clearly there to be
acknowledged, whatever else one then proceeds to argue about it. And the reasons
I will be discussing in this essay are – unless otherwise noted – normative, not
motivating, ones.
Third, I will not be discussing the interesting topic of intra-normative
reductions. Some, for instance, think that all normative discourse is reducible to
talk of reasons.3 Others think that normative discourse is reducible to talk of the
good.4 Others may come up with other suggestions for such reductions, and yet
others may deny any such reduction, arguing that the normative is irreducibly
pluralistic. I will remain neutral on such proposed reductions, so long as they are
intra-normative – so long, that is, as the reducing as well as the reduced are
normative. I will be discussing normativity, as it were, from above – Robust
2
See, e.g., Dancy (2000, 117).
See, for instance, Raz (1975, chapter 1).
4
This may have been Plato’s view; and it may have been Moore’s as well.
3
5
Realism is a metanormative thesis – and will not here concern myself with the
internal structure of the normative.
(ii)
Robust Realism
Different philosophers mean different things when they use the word “realism”.
Let me start my characterization of Robust Realism with what Rosen (1994, 281)
calls “minimal realism”. Minimal realism about a discourse amounts to the
following conjunction: Sentences in that discourse are truth-apt, and some of them
are (non-trivially) true. It seems plausible to assume that – whatever exactly your
favorite way of understanding “realism” is – it is a necessary condition to qualify
as a realist to reject all versions of noncognitivism or nonfactualism about the
relevant discourse (such as Ayer’s about the moral and Gibbard’s about the
normative), and it is another such necessary condition to reject an error-theory
about it (such as Mackie’s about the moral, the Churchlands’ about the mental and
Field’s about mathematical objects). Robust Realism is committed, then, to
Rosen’s minimal realism.
As Sayre-McCord notes (1988c, e.g. at 16), however, such minimal realism
is compatible with a kind of relativism or subjectivism that Robust Realism is
clearly meant to exclude. Let us add, then, that, in addition to satisfying the
requirements of minimal realism, Robust Realism is an objectivist, or universalist,
or absolutist, view of normativity. Unfortunately, these characteristics are
themselves hard to characterize (and once properly understood, important
6
distinctions between them may emerge). The intuitive idea – for which I will settle
for now – seems to be that of observer-independence5: Whether or not a given
normative statement is true does not depend on what attitudes regarding it –
cognitive or otherwise – are entertained by those judging that it is (or is not), nor
does it depend on the attitudes in their society.
There is a complication here. The attitudes of those making the relevant
judgments may be among the normatively relevant circumstances. For instance,
when pronouncing the normative judgment “I am not irrational”, its truth may
depend on my attitudes regarding it, for inconsistency in my beliefs – the one
expressed by this very sentence included – may make this normative judgment
false. But such judgment-dependence does not threaten the objectivity or
absoluteness of the normative (in the intended sense of these words). Similarly, it
may be wrong to spit at the direction of a person in some societies but not in
others, simply because in the former, but not the latter, such an act would be
interpreted as an expression of contempt and will thus cause humiliation, and it is
(universally, objectively) wrong to express contempt and cause humiliation. Such
sensitivity to normatively relevant circumstances – circumstances which often
include people’s attitudes – again does not threaten universality or objectivity in
the sense we are after. Let me use here, then, Darwall’s (1998, 65) distinction
between the context of (the making of) the judgment and the context of the
See Svavarsdóttir (2001, 162). See also Milo’s (1995, 192) discussion of “stance-independence”
as a necessary condition for realism.
5
7
evaluated object. The latter – but not the former – is the context relevant to what
the judgment is about. Robust Realism is objectivist in that it states that the truth
of normative judgments does not depend in any way on the context of judgment. It
depends only on (normatively relevant) features of what is being evaluated (such
as, in the examples above, whether or not my beliefs are consistent and whether or
not spitting causes humiliation).
Robust Realism is, then, an objectivist, non-error-theoretical, cognitivist or
factualist position, it states that some normative judgments are objectively nonvacuously true. But Robust Realism goes further than that. It asserts that some
normative truths are irreducibly normative. Again, it is not completely clear what a
reduction is (I discuss this in more detail below, in chapter 4, section 4.4). But it
seems clear that a reduction claim includes an identity thesis (of the reduced and
the reducing) or something very close to an identity, and some asymmetrical
condition – perhaps something about the characterization of the reducing being
more basic than that of the reduced6. The details of the second conjunct need not
bother us here, for Robust Realism denies the first: Normative facts – or at least
some of them – are not, according to Robust Realism, identical with any natural
(not obviously normative) facts; normative facts are just too different from nonnormative, natural, ones.
Robust Realism is thus the thesis that there are objective irreducibly
normative truths.
6
For a discussion of what this basicness could possibly consist in, see Fine (2001).
8
Notice that Robust Realism is an existentially quantified thesis. It only
states that there are some irreducibly normative truths. It does not say, for
instance, that all (apparently) normative propositions are objective and irreducibly
normative. It will become clearer as my argument unfolds (especially in chapter 4)
that it cannot support this stronger thesis. (Furthermore, it is not clear to me that
we should want to support such a strong thesis.) If you want to be strict about
classifying facts (or whatever) as normative, you may say that any purportedly
normative fact that is not objective and irreducibly normative is not really
normative. With the terminology thus used, it is trivially true that all (really)
normative facts are objective and irreducibly normative. Robust Realism then
becomes the view that there is at least one (really) normative fact (or truth, or
whatever).
As already mentioned, I will be arguing for Robust Realism about
normativity, not about ethics or morality. Given that Robust Realism is merely an
existential thesis, it is clear, then, that it is compatible with any kind of metaethical
antirealism. Even if there are no moral facts, for instance, Robust Realism may
still be true, if there are other, non-moral, kinds of normative facts. And even if
morality is observer-relative, there may be other normative truths which are not.
But, though it is possible consistently to accept Robust Realism and metaethical
antirealism (of some kind or another), it is hard to see why one would go for such
a combination of views. The standard objections to either of these views are also
(once suitably modified) objections to the other, and it seems that having accepted
9
irreducibly normative truths, one can have little reason to deny that some of them
are moral7. Indeed, the literature often fails clearly to distinguish between the
metaethical and the more general metanormative questions, views and arguments,
and I will be regularly generalizing points made in the metaethical literature so as
to make them directly relevant to my metanormative discussion. Nevertheless,
morality may have unique features that make antirealism about it an attractive
position even accepting Robust Realism about normativity more generally. I do
not know whether this is so; whether or not it is, Robust Realism is not directly
committed to Robust Metaethical Realism.
Notice further that Robust Realism as characterized above is prima facie
neutral on the epistemology of the normative, and is thus compatible with even the
most thoroughgoing metanormative skepticism. This, I think, is as it should be: At
least since Descartes’ realist skepticism about the external world and Berkeley’s
idealist (and, we would say, antirealist) reply to this skepticism, skeptical positions
have been motivated by realist intuitions (and antirealist retorts have been
motivated by anti-skeptical convictions). It would thus be a mistake to use the term
“realism” so as to make realism incompatible with skepticism. Arguing for Robust
Realism and defeating the normative skeptic8 are thus two different, though
7
For a similar point, see Sayre-McCord (1988a, 278).
The sentence in the text may seem false because of different understandings of the terms
“normative skeptic” or “moral skeptic”. Such terms are sometimes used to depict relativists,
subjectivists, error theorists, amoralists, and perhaps others as well. I use it in the text in the more
precise epistemological sense: A normative skeptic is someone who questions our entitlement to
claim the status of knowledge or justification or warrant (or any other privileged epistemological
8
10
related, tasks: Different, because Robust Realism is compatible with skepticism;
related, because if the apparatus needed for a rejection of normative skepticism is
unavailable to the Robust Realist, and if normative skepticism is highly
implausible, this may count as a reason to reject Robust Realism after all. For now,
then, let me note the compatibility of Robust Realism and skepticism, and
postpone discussion of the epistemological problems to which Robust Realism
may give rise to another occasion.
I’ve been characterizing Robust Realism in terms of propositions,
properties, facts, truths and the like. But these too are not, of course, beyond
metaphysical controversy. Some people do not believe in facts, some do, but not in
propositions, yet others don’t believe in properties. At the end of the day, there
may be interesting relations between a metanormative view and a view of, say, the
metaphysics of properties. But I think it best not to build such relations into the
very characterization of Robust Realism. I want to remain neutral, then, on such
metaphysical issues. Let me say, then, that according to Robust Realism, and
general doubts about properties aside9, there are irreducibly normative properties;
similarly, general doubts about facts aside, there are irreducibly normative facts;
and so on. It seems to me I can afford this metaphysical nonchalance: For even a
nominalist about, say, facts, must account for our everyday use of fact-talk; by
status) for our normative beliefs. Brink (1989, 155) also notes that realism is compatible with
skepticism (thus understood).
9
I thank Cian Dorr for introducing me to such connectives. Brink (1989, 16, footnote 1) has a
similar disclaimer about facts.
11
doing that, she will have already accounted for our talk of normative facts. And
this nonchalance will allow me to speak rather loosely – sometimes about
normative facts, sometimes about normative truths, and so on. The crucial point is
that, in whatever sense there are physical facts, there are normative ones; in
whatever sense there are truths in biology, there are in normative discourse; in
whatever sense in which there are mathematical properties, there are normative
ones; and so on. When, in following chapters, I talk about ontological commitment
to facts and properties, this talk should be understood as subject to the
metaphysical nonchalance explained here: If you’d rather avoid such entities, feel
free to substitute “a commitment to a kind of truths” (or whatever) for “ontological
commitment”.
It is not as clear, however, whether I can afford a different metaphysical
nonchalance – one specifically about the status of normative facts and properties,
of reasons, values, duties, rights, and the like. Are these, according to Robust
Realism, entities in any interesting sense of this word? Are they, as is sometimes
said, part of the fabric of the universe? Is Robust Realism, in other words,
ontologically heavy?
This question merits serious – and rather long – discussion for a number of
reasons, two of which being the prominence of a somewhat surprising – and often
unsupported – negative answer among contemporary realists (whose views are
12
close in spirit to Robust Realism)10, and the feeling that it’s not entirely clear what
exactly the question comes to. I present a preliminary discussion of this question in
the Conclusion of this essay, and I hope to discuss it in more detail on another
occasion. Let me settle here for the following point: A heavy ontology is not, I
stipulate, a part of what I mean by “Robust Realism”. The possibility remains, of
course, that a commitment to Robust Realism is already a commitment to a heavy
ontology, but this would be a result that has to be argued for.
Before concluding this section, let me note that the characterization of
Robust Realism given here is importantly incomplete. One can find in the
literature, for instance, several criteria for drawing the realist-antirealist line11, and
I haven’t even mentioned them so far. And some seem to think that no such line
exists, at least not if understood as a meta-discourse line, rather than in terms of
the very discourse meta-which it is supposed to be. I have said nothing to address
worries associated with this view (often referred to as “quietism”). These are
important issues, and I address them in this essay’s Conclusion. Postponing the
discussion until that point will allow me to address these issues when already
equipped with a better understanding of Robust Realism and the argument
supporting it. This, I hope, will make the discussion easier.
So much at this stage, then, for a characterization of Robust Realism.
10
See Nagel (1986, 139; 1997, 101); Dworkin (1996); Scanlon (1998, 2-3); and Parfit
(forthcoming, chapter 6).
11
An important and influential example here is Wright (1992).
13
(iii)
“Robust Realism”
I take the term “Robust Realism” from Boghossian (1989, 547), who uses it in the
context of a discussion of meaning-skepticism to refer to a position about meaning
analogous to mine about normativity12. (Boghossian does not develop the view in
detail, and so I do not know to what extent this analogy can be pursued). In this
section I want to explain why I found it necessary to introduce (yet) another “ism”
to the metanormative and metaethical literature.
First, and uninterestingly, given the ambiguity and lack of clarity that
accompanies many of the other possibly relevant “isms” – like objectivism,
realism, absolutism and the like – I thought it a good idea to coin a term for which
I am almost completely at liberty to stipulate a reasonably precise meaning.
Second, I found all existing terms I could think of unsuitable for my
purposes. “Realism”, as already mentioned, is dangerously ambiguous, serving at
times also objectivist ethical naturalists, at times even relativists and subjectivists.
“Non-reductive Realism” won’t do, because this term too has been appropriated by
some metaphysical and ethical naturalists who use the term “reduction” in a way
that excludes the kind of (I would say) naturalist reduction they believe in. 13 “Nonnaturalist Realism” is problematic, first, because it is not clear what exactly it is
I thank Sigrún Svavarsdóttir for the suggestion to use “Robust Realism” as a name for my view
of normativity.
13
See, for instance, Sturgeon (1984, 58-9). Railton (1993, 317) mentions a neglected option in
logical space – one according to which normative facts are sui generis, but they nevertheless “pull
their weight” in scientific explanations. If such a view can be defended, it would be (as Railton
notes) a (metaphysically, methodologically) naturalist position, though a non-reductive one. Seeing
that this is not my view, this is yet another reason for me to avoid the term “non-reductive realism”.
12
14
for a realism to be naturalist, and second, because the logical relations between my
view and naturalism (of whatever sort) should not, I think, be understood as a part
of what the view is, but rather as a consequent of its nature. “Platonism” suggests
two commitments I want my view – at least at the outset – to avoid: one regarding
the historical connection to Plato’s relevant views, one regarding a heavy
ontology. Similarly, “Rational Intuitionism” suggests a historical connection with
the Rational Intuitionists in England of the 18th century, a historical commitment I
want to avoid. More importantly, “Rational Intuitionism” suggests an
epistemological characterization of the view. Perhaps – though I doubt it – Robust
Realism is committed to some kind of an intuitionist epistemology. Even if this is
so, though, this should not be read into the very characterization of the view. That
Robust Realism is committed to such an epistemology is something that should be
argued for.14
For these reasons, then, I thought it best to label my view “Robust
Realism”, and stipulate a reasonably precise meaning for this term.
(iv)
The Argument
“Rational Intuitionism” is possibly misleading for another reason: In the ethics literature, this
term is sometimes used to name a first-order, normative, or perhaps a methodological, view, one
often associated with the work of Ross on prima facie obligations. Very often (perhaps also in
Ross’s work) this term is used alternately to name the first-order position, the metaethical one, and
some combination of the two. This is how it is used, I think, in Sidgwick (1906, xviii) who
implicitly notices the ambiguity when he says that, even rejecting intuitionism (as a general
methodology) he found himself needing to accept it (as, I would say, a metaethical position) as
underlying his utilitarianism.
14
15
Often when reading a philosophical text one gets the feeling that, though the
author gives an argument for a position the truth of which she deeply cares about,
the two – the reason for believing the view supposedly supplied by the argument,
and the author’s reason for caring about the view’s being true – are largely
independent of each other. Thus, often one gets the feeling that if the author’s
argument fails, this will not shake her confidence in its conclusion; rather, she will
just go on looking for another argument for the position the truth of which she –
for largely independent reasons – cares about.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with such arguments. Some of them are
good arguments, some bad, and this – not the motivations of their authors – is
what we (should) care about. Nevertheless, there is something to be said for the
kind of transparency that results when an author presents her concerns in clear
view, and develops an argument that is more directly sensitive to them. This is
what I try to do in this essay. My argument for Robust Realism – the one shortly to
be sketched and then to be developed in later chapters – presents not only a
suggested reason to believe that Robust Realism is true, but also my reason to
believe that it is true, and my reason to care about its truth, to hope that it is true.
I have two concerns that make me want – indeed, need – Robust Realism
to hold, and lead me to believe that it does. (This may sound disturbingly close to
wishful thinking, but once suitably understood, I don’t think it is. A suitable
understanding of this need – as giving rise to an indispensability argument – is
shortly to emerge.) One of them – a broadly speaking political one, having to do
16
with the justification of coercion and the restriction of liberty – I will have to leave
for another occasion. The other concerns what happens – and what seems to me to
be the case – when I try to decide what it is that makes most sense for me to do,
when, in other words, I deliberate. Often, of course, I act without deliberation –
out of habit, for instance. But often I do deliberate, and when I do I assume, it
seems to me, that the questions I ask myself have answers, answers I try to
discover, not invent. But as at least some of the questions I ask myself when
deliberating – including the one about what it makes most sense for me to do – are
normative ones, if the questions I ask myself have answers, then there are
normative truths. So normative truths, or perhaps belief in normative truths, are
indispensable for deliberation. Furthermore, any other, non-Robust-Realist, view
of these truths seems to me to undermine their role in deliberation.
This, I think, is at least some reason to want Robust Realism to hold. But,
with some further assumptions, it is also a reason to believe that it does hold, for
indispensability should sometimes be taken – and often is taken – to justify belief.
This is the case, perhaps most clearly, with indispensability arguments in the
philosophy of mathematics, arguments that proceed from the (purported)
indispensability to science of quantifying over numbers and other mathematical
objects to (some version of) Mathematical Platonism. This is also the case in all
instances of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), which proceed, if I
understand them correctly, from the explanatory indispensability of something
being the case to a belief in it being the case. And just as in these cases
17
explanatory indispensability suffices to justify belief, so too, I argue,
indispensability to deliberation – deliberative indispensability – suffices to justify
belief. Presenting an argument from deliberative indispensability to Robust
Realism, I thus put forward an argument for my view that is directly sensitive to
my reason for caring about the view’s truth.
It is very common to find in the metaethical literature expressions of the
idea that realism of a rather robust sort is the metaethical view that is most loyal to
the phenomenology of moral thought and discourse. A similar point surely applies
to the loyalty of metanormative realism to the phenomenology of normative
thought and discourse more generally. And in a way, my argument is a
development of this common thought, for it relies – in establishing the claim of
deliberative indispensability – on the phenomenology of deliberation. But my
argument does not amount merely to a statement of confidence in what this
phenomenology seems to imply. It uses the phenomenology as a part of an
indispensability argument for Robust Realism. Even if you find traditional realist
appeals to phenomenology unsatisfying, my argument can thus still convince you,
and I think it should.
My argument can be seen as a development of another common thread in
the thought of realists (not even just about ethics or normativity): It is that the very
engagement in the relevant first-order discourse already commits you to a realist
second-order view of that discourse. According to my argument, engaging in a
privileged part of normative discourse – the first-personal part of trying to decide
18
what it makes best sense for you to do – already commits you, via an
indispensability argument, to Robust Realism about normativity. Again, though,
the route to this commitment according to my argument is not as direct as some
may have thought, as it proceeds via an indispensability argument. I do not argue
that, accepting (as I’m sure you do) that you have reason to avoid your own future
pain, you’ve already committed yourself to Robust Realism, or that the proposition
I have reason to avoid my pain entails Robust Realism. Rather, I argue that by
engaging in the activity of deliberation you commit yourself to Robust Realism15. I
discuss the notion of commitment here involved in Chapter III, in section 3.2.
The canonical version of my argument for Robust Realism – the archargument of this essay – thus runs as follows: Irreducibly normative truths are
deliberatively indispensable; therefore, there are irreducibly normative truths. Of
course, in this argument both the single premise and the move from it to the
conclusion need support, and I try to give this support in the rest of this essay.
Before outlining, though, how (and where) I do that, let me quickly note another –
very close – argument, one that for most purposes is equivalent to mine. This other
argument has two premises: Irreducibly normative truths are deliberatively
indispensable; if something is deliberatively indispensable, (we are justified in
believing that) it exists; therefore, (we are justified in believing that) there are
In this respect, my indispensability argument is closely analogous to Resnik’s (1995, 171)
pragmatic version of the indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics, because – as
he emphasizes – this version of an indispensability argument does not depend on the truth of the
relevant scientific theory, but, it seems, on the very engagement in the scientific project. See also
the discussion in Colyvan (2001, 13-16).
15
19
irreducibly normative truths. Though, as mentioned, this argument is for most
purposes equivalent to mine, it is not equivalent to mine for all purposes. For
reasons that are hinted at in Chapter II – reasons that have to do with the priority
of basic belief-forming methods over basic beliefs – I think there is something
more basic about the canonical version of my argument. We are only justified in
believing the second argument’s second premise or a suitably modified version
thereof – if indeed we are – because, I think, we are justified in following a rule of
inference that licenses arguments from deliberative indispensability. And if this is
so, we can infer directly from the first premise to the conclusion. The canonical
version of my argument makes this fact more clearly visible.
It may be helpful to give here a brief overview of the chapters of this essay.
In chapter 1 I develop the theme of the analogy between explanatory and
deliberative indispensability, indicating on the way the false – and completely
arbitrary – assumption underlying what is commonly thought of as a serious
challenge realists face. This is the challenge according to which moral (and other
normative) facts play no appropriate role in the best explanation of anything worth
explaining, and so we have no reason to believe they exist. In chapter 1 I also
present an account of indispensability, one that is employed in later chapters in
developing my indispensability argument for Robust Realism.
If all goes well, by the end of chapter 1 you should be convinced that it is
at least prima facie arbitrary to take explanatory indispensability seriously but
refuse to take (at least some) other kinds of indispensability seriously. But at this
20
point you are at liberty to reject all indispensability arguments, explanatory ones
included. You are at liberty, in other words, to reject IBE and scientific and
mathematical realism with it. Chapter 2 is an attempt to convince you that this too
is not a promising move. Chapter 2 thus puts forward a perfectly general
epistemological argument, one that is not restricted to metaethics or
metanormativity. If you are not interested in such general epistemological
concerns, or if you are but are also very confident that at least explanatory
indispensability should be taken seriously, you may want to skip chapter 2.
Given the central place of deliberation in my argument for Robust Realism,
I found it necessary to discuss deliberation in some detail. I do that in chapter 3. In
this chapter I argue that deliberation satisfies the conditions necessary for
deliberative indispensability to justify ontological commitment, thus completing
the justification – the first part of which presented in chapter 2 – of the move from
the indispensability premise to Robust Realism. Also in this chapter, I begin to
defend the indispensability premise itself, by arguing that normative truths or
something very close to them are indispensable for deliberation.
If some other – non-Robust-Realist – view of normativity can allow for
deliberation, the indispensability premise is false. This is why it is necessary – in
order to support the indispensability premise – to reject alternative metanormative
views. This is the task of chapter 4.
By the end of chapter 4, my positive argument for Robust Realism has
been fully developed. But if the defense of Robust Realism is to be complete, one
21
further task remains. Traditional objections to similar metaethical and
metanormative views must be dealt with. Regrettably, I must postpone discussion
of these objections for another occasion.
Realists are sometimes accused of writing mostly negatively – having little
to say about their realism, the normative truths they are realists about, and their
reasons for being realists, they engage primarily in rejecting objections to their
views, and in criticizing alternative views.16 And some realists warmly endorse
this characterization of their philosophizing.17 Some of this negativity remains in
my own argument as well – this is clearest in chapter 4. But, as I hope is by now
clear, my argument is a positive argument for Robust Realism, one that – if sound
– gives you strong reason to believe that Robust Realism is true. These negative
parts thus play a role in what is on the whole a positive argument for Robust
Realism. And so I hope this negativity-charge – whatever its merits in other cases
– fails to apply to my argument.
Another matter I have to postpone for another occasion has to do with the
historical influences on my argument for Robust Realism, and in particular a
discussion of Kant’s views and the relations between them and Robust Realism
and my argument for it. Though in this essay I do not discuss historical texts, and
though Robust Realism and my argument for it are inspired by historical
16
17
See Korsgaard (1996, 31) (referring to Clarke and Price).
See Nagel (1986, 143-4); Parfit (fothcoming, chapter 5). And see also Sidgwick (1906, 25).
22
philosophical figures other than Kant as well18, a number of reasons lead me to
believe that a discussion of Kant is especially relevant. Let me just briefly note
them here. First, I first came to think of the general line of my argument by
reading Kant (and on Kant). Second, and more importantly, much in my argument
still follows – or is at least inspired by – Kant. This is especially clear, I think, in
my view of deliberation and of us as essentially deliberative creatures (in chapter
3), in the rather strongly anti-Humean philosophy of action implied by these
views, and in the argument of chapter 2, which is inspired by Kant’s arguments for
the postulates of practical reason. Third, it might be interesting to discuss Kant in
some detail because, despite such important affinities between my views and his,
still he rejects Robust Realism, or so at least it seems. Indeed, the idea of
normative truths the existence of which – and, as is sometimes said, the normative
power of which, their being binding on our will – does not depend in anyway on
our will seems to be in direct conflict with the idea of Kantian autonomy,
undoubtedly so central to Kant’s practical (and perhaps also theoretical)
philosophy. This conflict – a very Kantian argument, an apparently anti-Kantian
conclusion – calls, I think, for an elaborate discussion of the relations between my
views and Kant’s. As the soundness of the main argument of this essay is
Perhaps especially worth mentioning here are the Rational Intuitionists of the 18 th century –
people like Clarke, Price, and to an extent Reid – whose views Robust Realism resembles in
important ways. But there are somewhat more surprising inspirations as well. Pufendorf, for
instance, a voluntarist and a Natural Law theorist – certainly no 17th-century Robust Realist –
emphasized that his moral entities had no causal-explanatory role, but were needed only for their
justificatory work. He thus seems to anticipate a major part of my argument for Robust Realism,
the part I call in chapter 1 the second strategy of coping with Harman’s Challenge. See Schneewind
(1998, chapters 7, 15, and 18).
18
23
independent of this discussion, though, and because of considerations of space and
time, I do not engage in this discussion here, and I hope to do it elsewhere.
As I said at the outset, Robust Metanormative Realism takes normativity seriously.
Indeed, it is taking normativity seriously that leads me to believe that Robust
Realism is true. If the argumentation in this essay is sound, it should lead you to a
similar conclusion.
24
Chapter I
The Indispensability of Irreducibly Normative Truths1
In this chapter I lay down the framework of my argument for Robust Realism – an
argument from deliberative indispensability. The argument has one premise:
Irreducibly normative truths are deliberatively indispensable. The argument then
concludes that there are irreducibly normative truths. Of course, both the premise
and the transition from it to the conclusion need defense. In this chapter I do not
defend the premise. Nor do I offer here a complete defense of the transition from
the deliberative indispensability of irreducibly normative truths to belief in their
existence. Here, rather, I partially defend a weaker claim. I argue that this
transition is justified if another kind of transition – the one underlying familiar and
relatively uncontroversial arguments from explanatory indispensability – is
justified. The opponent of Robust Realism is thus faced at the end of this chapter
with a choice of either conceding the legitimacy of the transition from the (still to
1
For comments on previous drafts and helpful discussions, I am grateful to Stephanie Beardman,
Hagit Benbaji, Thérèse Björkholm, Hartry Field, Ernesto Garcia, Pete Graham, Peter Kung, Tom
Nagel, Derek Parfit, Josh Schechter, and Mark Schroeder. Versions of this chapter were presented
at the Distinguished Graduate Student series at NYU, the colloquium series at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem Philosophy Department, and a graduate student conference at Columbia
University. I thank the participants for the helpful discussions.
25
be argued for) deliberative indispensability of irreducibly normative truths to
Robust Realism, or denying the legitimacy of other intuitively rather compelling
arguments.
It will be convenient to start the discussion with a familiar challenge to
Robust Realism (and to other forms of realism; I get back to this point below):
This is the claim, roughly, that normative facts have no role to play in the
explanation of anything worth explaining, and that we therefore have no reason to
believe they exist. The discussion of this challenge – the one I’ll label “Harman’s
Challenge” – will be primarily instrumental. My main concern here is not in
coping with it, but rather in using it in order to introduce my argument for Robust
Realism.
I present Harman’s Challenge and trim it better to fit my purposes in
discussing it in section 1.1. In section 1.2, I distinguish two broad strategies of
coping with Harman’s Challenge, and then proceed tentatively to reject one. The
rest of the chapter – and, indeed, the thesis – is an elaboration of the second
strategy, which insists on rejecting the explanatory requirement underlying
Harman’s Challenge. The second strategy may give rise to an immediate worry
regarding ontological profligacy. In sections 1.3 and 1.4 I show how profligacy
can be avoided consistently with employment of the second strategy. After briefly
discussing the relation between my way of arguing for Robust Realism and
Metaphysical Naturalism in section 1.5, I then proceed to offer an account of
indispensability in section 1.6. Such an account is needed if it is to be determined
26
whether irreducibly normative truths are indispensable for our deliberative project,
and whether, if they are, that suffices to justify belief in them. In section 1.7 I pick
up a point made in section 1.4, arguing that deliberative indispensability is at least
as respectable as explanatory indispensability, and that, consequently, the former
can justify ontological commitment if the latter can. Then, in section 1.8, I briefly
revisit the possible explanatory role of normative truths, considering ways in
which the success of the second strategy may bear on the plausibility of normative
truths playing such a role. In the concluding section (1.9) I do some score-keeping:
I clarify what I take to have been established in this chapter, and what remains to
be done if the defense of my argument for Robust Realism is to be completed.
1.1
Harman’s Challenge
Seeing a vapor trail in a cloud chamber, a physicist thinks to herself: “There goes a
proton”. That she makes the observation that she does is at least some evidence for
there having been a proton in the cloud chamber, Harman argues plausibly,
because the best explanation of her observation involves the fact that there really
was a proton in the cloud chamber at the relevant time. If the physicist’s
observation is best explained by an alternative explanation, one that does not
involve the proton in an appropriate way, her observation gives no reason to
believe that there was a proton in the cloud chamber.
Seeing a few children set a cat on fire you think to yourself “That’s
wrong”. How is the fact that you immediately make this judgment best explained?
27
Harman argues that it is best explained by psychological, sociological, historical,
cultural and other such facts about you. Whether or not what the children are doing
really is wrong is not at all relevant, Harman says, for the best explanation of your
immediate moral judgment. Seeing that the relevant observation or judgment is
best explained without assuming the existence of the relevant purported moral fact,
Harman concludes, we have no reason to believe there are such moral facts.
Realism refuted2.
What is the argument Harman puts forward? I think it is this:
1.
2.
3.
The no-explanatory-role thesis: Moral facts
do not play an appropriate role in the best
explanation of moral observations or
judgments.
The explanatory requirement: We have reason
to believe that facts of a certain kind exist only
if facts of that kind play an appropriate role in
the best explanation of the relevant kind of
observations and judgments.
Therefore, we have no reason to believe (and
are unjustified in believing) that there are any
moral facts.
For my purposes, it will be necessary to refine and generalize this argument in
several ways3.
The first way in which Harman’s Challenge should be generalized in order
to fit the purposes of my discussion of it stems from the details of the thesis I want
2
For his original statement of the problem, see Harman (1977, chapter 1). Harman does not claim
originality for the general problem his text tries to capture.
3
As mentioned, my primary interest is not in coping with Harman’s Challenge, and certainly not in
Harman-exegesis. What follows is my way of making Harman’s Challenge more precise and more
suitable for my purposes, and I have no opinion regarding Harman’s exact views about what
follows. I use the term “Harman’s Challenge” merely as a convenient label.
28
to defend. I want to defend Robust Realism about normativity, not necessarily
about ethics or morality. It is compatible with my Robust Realism, then, that there
be no moral or ethical facts, so long as there are other, non-moral, irreducibly
normative truths. If Harman’s Challenge is to pose even a prima facie threat for
my Robust Realism, then, it must be modified so as to entail the conclusion that
we have no reason to believe in any normative facts4.
Second, it must be asked what the relevant explananda ought to be, such
that failure to explain them is declared as sufficient for the conclusion of the
argument. Which possible explananda, in other words, count in shouldering the
burden of the explanatory requirement? Harman seems preoccupied with
observation. But if some of our normative beliefs do not qualify as observational,
but are nevertheless best explained by invoking normative facts, it seems in
accordance with the spirit of Harman’s explanatory requirement to conclude that
we do have reason to believe in normative facts. Furthermore, if something else –
not a belief – is best explained by invoking moral facts, that too would suffice, I
think, to give reason to believe in moral facts5. It has been suggested, for instance,
that the best explanation of some desires may invoke moral (and so, normative)
4
A generalization along these lines has been suggested by Sayre-McCord (1988a, 278; 1992, 70,
footnote 21). It is also clear that normativity – and not just morality – is at stake in Nagel’s (1986,
chapter 8) and Dworkin’s (1996) relevant discussions.
5
Interestingly, Wright (1992, 197-8) argues, in a slightly different context, that in order to settle the
realism-antirealism debate in favor of realism the explanatory requirement must be satisfied with
things other than beliefs or observations as explananda. I need not discuss the details of this
suggestion here.
29
facts6, and that the best explanation of some social changes may invoke moral (and
so, normative) facts directly, not via any of the involved persons’ moral beliefs 7. I
do not here want to commit myself to these suggestions; what is important here is
that if there is any truth to them, that would suffice to satisfy the explanatory
requirement that underlies Harman’s Challenge (or the intuition it is meant to
capture)8. It seems, then, that Harman’s Challenge is better understood as stating
that normative facts do not play a role in the best explanation of anything worth
explaining, and that we therefore have no reason to believe there are such facts9.
This too needs to be qualified. Purported normative facts undoubtedly do
have a role to play in the best explanation of some other (purported) normative
facts: The best explanation – in some sense of “explanation”, at least – of the fact
that setting the cat on fire was wrong is, roughly, that it caused tremendous pain
for no (good) reason, and that causing tremendous pain for no reason is wrong;
clearly, a normative explanation. But that doesn’t seem to give reason to believe in
normative facts. Some purported facts about, say, witches, presumably have a role
to play in the best explanation of some other purported facts about witches, but
that doesn’t give reason to believe that there are witches. So it seems the argument
should be understood, still somewhat roughly, as follows: Purported normative
6
See Lycan (1986, 89).
See Railton (1986a, 192); Brink (1989, 188-9); Sayre-McCord (1992).
8
I am not here implying that that would suffice to vindicate Robust Realism. I mention some
relevant doubts in section 1.2, below.
9
That such a generalization of the no-explanatory-role thesis is better in line with the naturalist
leanings underlying Harman’s Challenge has been widely acknowledged in the literature. See, for
instance, Sturgeon (1984, 54-5) and Brink (1989, 186-7).
7
30
facts have no role to play in the best explanation of any non-normative facts, and
we therefore have no reason to believe they exist10.
Interestingly, though, it is not easy to make the argument thus modified
explicit and precise. If, as seems appropriate, the modified first premise reads:
1*.
Normative facts do not play an appropriate role
in the best explanation of any non-normative
facts.
then how is the second premise best modified? One suggestion is as follows:
2*.
We have reason to believe that facts of a
certain kind exist only if facts of that kind play
an appropriate role in the best explanation of
some non-normative facts.
But there is something strongly ad hoc about 2*. In an argument that is supposed
to show that normative facts are not as respectable as non-normative ones,
assuming from the start that explanatory work only counts if the explanandum is
non-normative comes dangerously close to begging the question11. On the other
hand,
2**. We have reason to believe that facts of a
certain kind exist only if facts of that kind play
an appropriate role in the best explanation of
facts of some other kind.
seems both too weak and too strong: Too weak, because it would vindicate both
normative facts and witch-facts if they explained each other; too strong, because if
Brink (1989, 182-3) makes a similar point in discussing Harman’s Challenge.
Brink (1989, 182-3) notices this point. Nagel (1986, 146) seems to suggest that normative facts
explain other normative facts, and that that is enough to confer respectability on them. But Nagel’s
view is more complex than that, and I briefly discuss it in the appendix.
10
11
31
natural facts are the only facts there are, natural facts could not explain facts of
some other kind, and so on 2** we would have no reason to believe in them.12
2*** seems initially promising:
2***.We have reason to believe that facts of a
certain kind exist only if facts of that kind play
an appropriate role in the best explanation of
facts of some privileged kind.
But 2*** gains whatever plausibility it has by not saying anything regarding what
kind of fact is privileged. It is hard to see how that can be done without resorting
to question-begging again13. And even further difficulties await the supporter of
2*** (as well as the supporter of 2**) when she tries to give an account – one she
very much needs – of the individuation of kinds of fact.
The proponent of Harman’s Challenge thus faces the following task: Find a
way of restricting the set of respectable explananda such that, first, the restriction
is not ad hoc or question begging, and second, the restriction excludes any facts
that normative facts plausibly help in explaining. It is not clear to me how this task
can be successfully performed.
A further problem with stating the argument is that, once generalized to all
normative facts, and given the first premise, the second premise, however exactly
it is put, is potentially self-defeating14. For notice that the explanatory requirement
12
In other words, if you accept 2** you had better not be a Metaphysical Naturalist; for, assuming
2**, it follows from the respectability of natural facts that not all facts are natural. I thank Hagit
Benbaji for this way of putting things.
13
This problem may be exemplified by Harman himself, when – on rather extreme empiricist
grounds, it would seem – he takes the privileged kind of fact to be our observations.
14
Simon (1990, 113 (footnote 27)), Putnam (1995, 71) and McGinn (1997, 13-4) notice this point.
32
does not put forward an explanatory criterion of existence: Had it done that, it
would have been obviously indefensible, as surely there can be facts and entities of
a kind that plays no role in explaining anything worth explaining. Rather, the
explanatory requirement is a distinctly normative one, it puts forward an
explanatory criterion for what we have reason to believe or are justified in
believing15. But then, if there are no normative facts, it seems that the explanatoryrequirement-premise cannot itself be true. Now, perhaps this problem can be
avoided in some way16. All I want to note here is that it must be avoided somehow
if a coherent challenge is to be presented at all.
To be made fully precise and explicit, the explanatory requirement needs
even further work. What kind of role must normative facts play in the best
explanation of some respectable explanandum if normative facts are to be
vindicated? What, in other words, does it take for an explanatory role to be
appropriate? Must normative facts be strictly ineliminable in that explanation, or
would some other, weaker, explanatory role suffice? Would pragmatic
indispensability (as when alternative explanations are too lengthy or cumbersome)
Claims about what kinds of facts there are are plausibly classified as metaphysical. Do
metaphysical (and, for that matter, other philosophical) facts play an appropriate role in the best
explanation of any respectable explanandum (say, observations)? If not, then, as Quinn (1986, 539)
argues, the proponent of the explanatory requirement is haunted by a self-defeat problem closely
analogous to the one that haunted verificationists.
15
The following quote from a later text makes this especially clear: “So our moral beliefs do not
provide us with evidence for such an independent realm of values and obligations, and we must
choose between skepticism, noncognitivism, and relativism.” (Harman, 1984, 32-3)
16
As I am about to argue, a naturalist reduction of normative facts may be all that is required in
order to cope with (one version of) Harman’s Challenge. If this is so, then one possible way of
avoiding the self-defeat problem would be to argue for a naturalist reduction of the normative
judgment incorporated in the explanatory requirement.
33
suffice, or must it be an in-principle-indispensability17? Does only an appropriate
role in the best explanation suffice for the vindication of normative facts, or is, as
Wright (1992, 197) suggests, an appropriate role in a good enough explanation
sufficient too?
As already mentioned, my main concern here is not Harman’s Challenge
per se. I will therefore avoid further refinements of the argument and leave the
problems mentioned unsolved. Despite them it is clear, I think, that the worry
Harman’s Challenge attempts to explicate is a serious one. To see that, consider an
analogy Harman (1984, 44-7) mentions: It seems clear that if we need invoke no
God-related facts in explaining anything – if, for instance, there are no miracles,
the argument from design fails, and the best explanation of purported revelation is
in terms of only the psychology of the person God purportedly reveals herself to –
surely that should count against belief in God. Indeed, isn’t this at least partly why
those of us who are atheists are atheists? Harman’s Challenge calls upon the realist
to distinguish between normative facts and such purported God-facts18.
Despite the problems with an exact statement of Harman’s Challenge, then,
the worry that underlies it is genuine. For my purposes, an intuitive, less than fully
precise and explicit, statement of the challenge will suffice (this is especially true
of the exact details of the explanatory requirement, seeing that I am about to reject
it, whatever its precise details). Let me settle, then, for the following way of stating
I get back to this distinction, and to Field’s and Brink’s ways of putting it, later in the text.
Harman’s second example in this context is that of facts about the mind. But I find this example
very problematic, for reasons that I return to in footnote 35, below.
17
18
34
it: Normative facts do not play an appropriate role in the explanation of any
respectable explanandum. What reason do we have, then, to believe that they
exist?
It is important not to conflate this challenge with another – distinct but
related – one19. Moral and more generally normative propositions seem to quantify
over entities like values and reasons. These are supposedly abstract, causally
inefficacious entities, so we cannot causally interact with them. But then, how can
we come to know anything about them? How can we even refer to them? This is
an important challenge the realist must face. But this is a different challenge from
the one under discussion here. The question at hand is whether we have any reason
to believe that normative facts exist, not how – or even whether – we can know
anything more about them20. This difference has not always been noticed in the
literature21. Indeed, it is at times not clear whether Harman himself puts forward
one challenge or the other: recently (1998, 207-8) he has written that he had
19
Parfit distinguishes between the two challenges in his Rediscovering Reasons (forthcoming),
chapter 6.
20
There is a way of reading Harman’s Challenge as more closely related to this other worry: If the
best explanation of my normative beliefs is not in terms of their truth but rather (say) my
upbringing, then plausibly even had the normative facts been different, (so long as my upbringing
stayed reasonably similar) I would still have the normative beliefs I actually have. So my normative
beliefs do not counterfactually track the truth. And this, it may be thought, is sufficient to rule them
out as possible candidates for knowledge.
Needless to say, this argument assumes a controversial thesis about the nature of knowledge.
Furthermore, it relies on evaluations of highly problematic counterfactuals (in some cases,
counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents). Be that as it may, it is worth further discussion,
one that I have to postpone for another occasion.
21
Thomson (in Harman and Thomson, 1996, 74-78), for instance, seems to conflate the two
challenges.
35
always only been interested in the second challenge22, so what I dub “Harman’s
Challenge” may never have been truly Harman’s (not that it matters for my
purposes). Of course, the two challenges are not unrelated, and more needs to be
said on behalf of the realist regarding the second one as well. But the two
challenges are clearly distinct23, and I will not discuss the second one further in
this chapter.
Harman’s Challenge is usually presented as a challenge to metaethical – or,
more generally, metanormative – realism. But it is important to note that it puts
forward two different challenges, depending on the relevant kind of realism. For a
robust realist such as myself, the challenge seems simple: Given that irreducibly
normative facts don’t play an appropriate role in the explanation of any respectable
explanandum, what reason do we have to believe they exist? But this challenge is
one naturalist realists can easily cope with. For they think that moral and other
normative facts are reducible to, or at least identical with, or at least constituted
by, natural facts. Now these natural facts are presumably vindicated by the
explanatory role they play. And this, in turn, seems to confer respectability – by
reduction, identity, constitution, or even just entailment – on the normative facts
themselves. As Quinn (1986, 526-7) makes clear, the explanatory requirement, if it
is to be at all plausible, has to be modified so as to accommodate such
22
Harman says that in replying to Railton (1998, 177) and Sturgeon (1998, 199) who (think they)
diagnose a shift in Harman’s presentation of the problem over the years, from what I call Harman’s
Challenge to the epistemological problem discussed in the text in this paragraph.
23
For this point made in the philosophy-of-mathematics context, see Field (1989, 26).
36
respectability-by-entailment24. And, with the explanatory requirement suitably
modified, naturalist realists should have no problem coping with the challenge
Robust Realists face25. It seems to me, then, that the more serious challenge facing
naturalist realists here is very different: If normative facts just are (or are
constituted by) natural facts, why don’t they participate in the best explanation of
any respectable explanandum? If this (on naturalist assumptions, surprising) fact
cannot be satisfactorily explained, there doesn’t seem to be reason to buy into the
claim that some natural facts are identical with normative ones; it may then seem
preferable to opt for an anti-realist metanormative view. It is this challenge that the
massive literature written by naturalist realists discussing Harman’s Challenge
addresses (implicitly, at times)26. This is why such realists reject the noexplanatory-role premise, and don’t settle for relying on the (perfectly sound)
respectability-by-reduction (or by entailment) line.
Be that as it may, the challenge Robust Realism faces is clear enough. How
can it be coped with?
1.2
Coping With Harman’s Challenge: Two Strategies
24
For a similar point, see McDowell (1985, 118).
This point has been widely acknowledged (see, e.g., Quinn (1986); Brink (1989, 193)), but only
Brink (1989, 191), as far as I know, gestures at the suggestion that Harman’s Challenge is really
not even prima-facie threatening for the naturalist realist.
26
For a similar point, see Sencerz (1995, 375).
25
37
Broadly speaking, two realist strategies suggest themselves27. The realist can, first,
reject the no-explanatory-role premise. This can be done by coming up with
examples of uncontroversially respectable explananda and arguing that normative
facts have an appropriate role to play in their explanation, or by coming up with an
example of a contested explanandum, arguing that it is respectable and that
normative facts have an appropriate role to play in its explanation. Either way of
pursuing the first strategy will typically involve – and has typically involved – the
proponent of the first strategy in more general epistemological discussions about
what an explanation is and what makes one explanation better than another. Or,
and this would be the second strategy, the realist can concede, at least for the sake
of argument, the no-explanatory-role premise, but argue that we nevertheless have
reason to believe in normative facts. Doing so will involve rejecting the
explanatory requirement, the claim that we are justified in believing that facts of a
certain kind exist only if they play an appropriate role in the best explanation of
some other, undisputedly respectable, facts.
The former strategy – arguing that normative, and in particular moral, facts
do explain respectable explananda – has been far more common in the literature28.
Indeed, except for mostly unsystematic and very brief comments (discussed in the
27
Zimmerman (1984, 81-2) and Leiter (2001a, 88) draw a similar distinction between two
strategies of coping with Harman’s Challenge.
28
And an extensive literature it is. For some of it, see: Audi (1997, chapter 5); Blackburn (1991a;
1991b); Brink (1989, 182-197); Copp (1990); Harman (1977; 1984; 1986; 1998); Harman and
Thomson (chapters 6, 9 and 10); Leiter (2001a); Lycan (1986); McDowell (1985, 117-120); Moore
(1992); Quinn (1986); Railton (1998); Sayre-McCord (1988a; 1992); Sturgeon (1984; 1986a; 1991;
1992; 1998); Wiggins (1990); Wright (1992, chapter 5); Yasenchuk (1994); Zimmerman (1984).
38
appendix), the second strategy has been completely neglected. Now, I will be
pursuing the second strategy and so my defense of Robust Realism will depend
neither on the first strategy’s success nor on its failure. Fortunately, then, there is
no need here to discuss it in detail. Nevertheless, in order better to motivate the
second strategy, it may be useful briefly to survey my reasons for not following
the first. These are, first, that I doubt whether normative facts do play an
appropriate role in the best explanation of relevantly respectable explananda;
second, that even if they do, that would not suffice as a defense of Robust
Realism; and third, that even if they don’t, that doesn’t seem to compromise their
respectability in any way. Let me elaborate on each of these reasons in turn.
Examples can easily be found where we cite what seem to be normative
facts in explanations. We may cite, for instance, Hitler’s moral depravity in
explaining his behavior, or a society’s injustice in explaining its instability29. One
tempting way of rejecting such explanations as not genuinely normative is by
arguing that such ways of speaking are elliptical for other, non-normative,
explanations, explanations in terms of normative beliefs or of (other) nonnormative facts the relevant normative facts supervene on30. Nevertheless, as has
29
The examples are both taken from Sturgeon (1984). As the discussion of the first strategy has
focused on moral, and not more generally normative, realism, the examples I discuss are all moral.
But examples of non-moral normative facts serving a purportedly explanatory role are just as easy
to come up with.
30
See, for instance, Blackburn (1991a, 13), Wright (1992, 195) and Thomson (in Harman and
Thomson, 1996, 69-94). A related way of thinking of normative explanations as less than fully
genuinely normative (one for which I am indebted to Josh Schechter), is to argue that the language
that contains such normative explanations is a conservative extension of the language without
them, in the sense developed, for instance, by Field (1980) in the context of the philosophy of
39
been widely noticed31, unless we are willing to discard all special-sciencesexplanations, we must find a way of acknowledging explanations in terms of
supervenient facts and properties as genuine, and so if purportedly normative
explanations are to be ruled out there must be a principled way of distinguishing
between them and other explanations in terms of supervening facts and properties.
The following may be a way of doing just that: As has been argued by Quinn
(1986), Sayre-McCord (1988a) and Copp (1990), purportedly moral explanations
seem to leave the normative force of morality out32. As Blackburn (1991a, 13)
writes: “I can assent to the [purportedly moral] explanation without endorsing the
verdict you pass on the feature.”33 This characteristic of purportedly moral
explanations is not shared by, say, biological explanations, and it strongly suggests
that purportedly moral, and more generally normative, explanations are best
understood as elliptical for non-moral and non-normative ones.
And there may be other reasons to suspect that it is not easy to reject the
no-explanatory-role premise. Leiter (2001a, 94) points out, for instance, that no
scientist (or, for that matter, anyone else) seems to be doing any serious
explanatory work using distinctively moral (or normative) explanations. This fact
mathematics. For my purposes, this suggestion can be treated as a variant of the one discussed in
the text.
31
By, e.g., Sayre-McCord (1988a, 274-7); Brink (1989, 193-7); Sturgeon (1991, 27-30; 1998,
throughout the paper); Railton (1998, 177-80).
32
See also the relevant discussion in Johnson (1998).
33
See also Gibbard (1992, 978).
40
seems to call for explanation, and at least one plausible explanation of it is that
there simply are no normative explanations to be found34.
Now, these considerations are certainly not conclusive, but what has been
said is enough, I think, to cast serious doubt on the prospects of rejecting the noexplanatory-role thesis.
Even if these problems with rejecting the no-explanatory-role thesis can be
solved, that would not suffice for a defense of Robust Realism. For surely such
explanations cannot give reason to believe in irreducibly normative truths.
Biological facts appear, it seems, in explanations, and perhaps this gives some
reason to believe in biological facts, but surely it gives no reason to believe in
irreducibly biological facts (at least not with reduction liberally enough
understood. I characterize reduction in section 4.4, in chapter 4). For my purposes
– defending Robust Realism – the first strategy of coping with Harman’s
Challenge is, even if successful, simply not powerful enough. This is no criticism
of this strategy, of course; it is merely an explanation of why I won’t be pursuing
it.
Most importantly perhaps, even if the first strategy fails, this seems to me
in no way to compromise the respectability of irreducibly normative facts. I have
the strong intuition that even had we known without a doubt that no normative fact
34
This is by no means the only explanation. Perhaps, for instance, scientists do not do serious work
with normative explanations simply because of some bias against normative facts. Still, I believe
Leiter’s point is suggestive – I, for one, do not expect such scientific work to emerge after biases
are removed. Do you?
41
played an appropriate role in the explanation of any respectable explanandum, we
would still have had reason to believe in normative facts35. If I am right about this
intuition, this suggests that some version of the second strategy must be successful.
Let me put the first strategy to one side, then, and focus on the second.
1.3
Parsimony
A worry immediately threatens: What underlies the explanatory requirement is,
after all, a highly plausible methodological principle of parsimony: Kinds of
entities should not be unnecessarily multiplied, redundancy should be avoided.36
And, it seems, without such a principle it is exceedingly hard – perhaps even
impossible – to justify many of our negative existential beliefs. Taking this
methodological principle as given, then, how can the explanatory requirement be
consistently rejected? Assuming that (irreducibly) normative facts play no
appropriate explanatory role, are they not redundant, and then isn’t belief in them
unwarranted?
This is why – as mentioned above in footnote 18 – I think Harman’s example of the mental is
highly problematic. I have the strong intuition that even had we known with certainty that nothing
mental is needed in order to explain any respectable explanandum, we would still have had
sufficient reason to believe that we have – at least in our own case – beliefs, desires, pains,
pleasures and so on.
36
As mentioned in the Introduction, I wish to avoid at this stage the topic of how ontologically
“heavy” my Robust Realism has to be. Talk in this section and in the sections that follow about
ontological profligacy, ontological parsimony, ontological commitment, kinds of entity, normative
facts, and so on should be understood in this light way. If you do not like this ontological parlance
here, feel free to put everything in terms of, say, “kinds of truths” instead of kinds of facts and
entities. Nothing much will then have to be changed. Notice, for instance, that the appeal of the
parsimony requirement survives such a paraphrase.
35
42
In order to allay this worry, it is necessary to distinguish two different
requirements of parsimony. First, there is the most general requirement not to
multiply ontological commitments without sufficient reason. This requirement
places the burden of argument on the party arguing for a belief in the existence of
certain disputed entities or facts. It states, roughly, that if we have no good reason
to believe in the disputed entities (for instance), then we ought not to believe that
they exist. Call this the minimal parsimony requirement.
Often, though, more is packed into the methodological principle of
parsimony than the minimal parsimony requirement. It is often assumed that the
only way of satisfying the minimal parsimony requirement is by showing that the
relevant kind of fact is explanatorily useful.37 With this assumption, the minimal
parsimony requirement becomes the explanatory requirement.
I want, then, to reject the explanatory requirement while adhering to the
minimal parsimony requirement. And, as is by now clear, the way to do this is to
reject the assumption that the minimal parsimony requirement can only be
satisfied by explanatorily indispensable facts, truths, properties and entities38. In
37
In a somewhat different context (that of characterizing the realist-antirealist debate, not that of
deciding it), Wright (1993, 73) notices this often-made assumption (explicitly referring to Harman),
and expresses his doubts about it.
38
Slors (1998, 243) makes a similar point about the mental, when he writes: “But why shouldn’t
mental regularities have some other function than a causal-explanatory one? It might just be
possible that the mental justifies its place in our ontology by other means than its causal efficacy.”
And here is Grice (1975, 31): “My taste is for keeping open house for all sorts and conditions of
entities, just so long as when they come in they help with the house-work. Provided that I can see
them at work, and provided that they are not detected in illicit logical behaviour … I do not find
them queer or mysterious at all. To fangle a new ontological Marxism, they work therefore they
exist, even though only some, perhaps those who come on the recommendation of some form of
transcendental argument, may qualify for the specially flavoured status of entia realissima. To
43
other words, I suggest we restrict, in accordance with the minimal parsimony
requirement, our ontological commitment to just those things that are
indispensable. But I suggest that we consider other – non-explanatory – kinds of
indispensability as satisfying this requirement. So the line I’m about to take does
not have the unacceptable counterintuitive result of admitting these objectionable –
and completely, not just explanatorily, redundant – things into one’s ontology.
1.4
Indispensabilities39
Why should we believe in, say, electrons? One common answer runs like this:
There are many inferences to the best explanation the conclusion of which entails
the existence of electrons; our best scientific theories quantify over electrons. We
ought to believe that these theories are at least approximately true (they are, after
all, our best theories, our best explanations of numerous phenomena), and so we
ought to believe that electrons exist. If electrons play an appropriate role in the
best explanation of respectable explananda – and it seems they do – we’re justified
in believing that electrons exist. Of course, Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE,
for short) is not uncontroversial, and much more will be said regarding it in what is
exclude honest working entities seems to me like metaphysical snobbery, a reluctance to be seen in
the company of any but the best objects.” Honest working entities are, of course, those that satisfy
the most general parsimony requirement. And I would add only that explanatory work is not the
only kind of work around the house that needs doing.
39
A terminological apology: My use of the word “indispensability” (and related words) is without
a doubt a stretch of ordinary usage. Seeing, however, that my use of these terms is not completely
discontinuous with ordinary usage, that I explicitly explain my way of using them, and that my way
of using them echoes the way they are already used in the context of indispensability arguments in
the philosophy of mathematics, I hope this stretch is not too misleading.
44
to come (mostly in chapter 2). For now, though, let us assume that IBE suffices to
justify ontological commitment.
As I understand inferences to the best explanation, they are really particular
instances of indispensability arguments40. (Whether this is so, and indeed whether
this statement is not merely vacuous, will be determined by what exactly is meant
by “indispensability”. I discuss just that in section 1.6.) Electrons are indispensable
for our best explanations; so, by IBE, electrons exist. It is important to note here,
that instances of IBE are arguments from explanatory indispensability. Electrons
are indispensable for our explanatory project, and for this reason we are justified
in believing they exist.
As has already been argued, the availability of the second strategy of
coping with Harman’s Challenge depends on there being other, non-explanatory,
kinds of indispensability that suffice to justify ontological commitment41. In
section 1.7 I suggest one such other kind, deliberative indispensability. For the
moment, though, I want to make the following preliminary point: Given some
other purportedly respectable kind of indispensability, the proponent of the
explanatory requirement (who is also a proponent of IBE) must find a non-
40
This relation between IBE and indispensability arguments has been noticed by Field (1989, 14)
and Colyvan (2001, 7-8, especially footnote 17). Interestingly, Harman (1977, 10) mentions
indispensability arguments for mathematical realism as support for his disanalogy between
mathematical and ethical facts. If I am right in what follows, these arguments in fact supply the
material for an important analogy between the two.
41
Field (1989, 14) and Collyvan (2001, 6) have noticed that there may be other kinds of
indispensability that can ground prima facie respectable indispensability arguments. Resnik (1995;
1997, chapter 3) puts forward what seems to be an argument from a different (pragmatic) kind of
indispensability, but his is still indispensability to the scientific project, broadly understood.
45
arbitrary way of distinguishing between explanatory and that other kind of
indispensability. She must show, in other words, why it is that explanatory
indispensability ought to be taken seriously, but other kinds of indispensability
ought not to be so taken42 (or perhaps that there are no other kinds of
indispensability; or perhaps that other kinds ought to be taken seriously but
nothing is (or could be) indispensable in those ways; these three ways of
shouldering the burden may be merely terminological variants, depending on what
exactly is meant by “indispensability”). In other words, she must present a reason
for taking explanatory indispensability as a sufficient reason for ontological
commitment that does not generalize to other kinds of indispensability. Now, my
way of justifying the move from indispensability to belief – presented
preliminarily in section 1.7, and then in more detail in chapter 2 – will not be of
that sort. It will apply to explanatory indispensability just in case it applies to
other, non-explanatory, kinds of indispensability, and in particular to deliberative
indispensability. This does not show, of course, that no rationale can be given for
restricting respectable status to explanatory indispensability alone. So think of my
point here as a challenge: Can you think of any reason for grounding ontological
42
Thus, I think Simon (1990, 105-6) accurately characterizes the dialectical situation when he
writes: “What one would like from the anti-realist is an argument for using explanatory necessity as
a criterion of reality which is more compelling than the absence of a better one. On the other hand,
what one would like from the realist is, if not an alternative criterion, at least some indication of
how one is to go about evaluating claims concerning the reality of different purported existents.”
My argument in this chapter and the next can be seen as an attempt to give Simon what he wants
from the realist. Later on, Simon writes (1990, 108): “And, one might ask, is not the necessity of
saving morality as compelling as explanatory necessity? Perhaps it is a necessity which itself
warrants multiplying entities.” It is not entirely clear to me what Simon has in mind, but he may
very well be anticipating here my argument from deliberative indispensability.
46
commitment in explanatory indispensability that is not really more general, a
reason for grounding ontological commitment in indispensabilities of other kinds
as well?
If there is no reason for taking explanatory indispensability seriously that is
not a reason for taking some other kinds of indispensability seriously, then the
move from the minimal parsimony requirement to the explanatory requirement is
arbitrary and therefore unjustified43. If any other kind of indispensability can be
defended, then, the second strategy of coping with Harman’s Challenge becomes
promising: All that is then left to do is to show that (irreducibly) normative truths
are indispensable in this other, non-explanatory, way.
I can, however, think of one possible way of distinguishing explanatory
indispensability from other kinds of indispensability. In the literature on the
philosophy of mathematics, it is often noted that indispensability arguments rest in
part on the assumption of the metaphysical doctrine of Naturalism44. Now, it is
notoriously difficult to state exactly what this doctrine comes to, but for my
purposes the following familiar and vague way of putting things will suffice:
According to Metaphysical Naturalism, science is the final arbiter of beliefs about
the world; all inquiry is – or at least ought to be – (continuous with) scientific
I suspect this is what McGinn has in mind when he accuses Harman’s explanatory requirement
of being arbitrary and dogmatically empiricist (1997, 13; see also at 17, 36). For a similar point, see
Putnam (1995, 70).
44
See, e.g., Resnik (1997), Colyvan (2001, chapter 1).
43
47
inquiry45. Assuming Naturalism, then, and further assuming that scientific inquiry
is essentially explanatory46, there is a reason to consider explanatory
indispensability unique in the relevant way: For if the explanatory project is the
only final arbiter of beliefs about the world, then explanatory indispensability
seems to be the only kind of indispensability that justifies ontological
commitment.
The problem with this way of defending the uniqueness of explanatory
indispensability is that in the current context it is question-begging47. Robust
Realism does not claim to be a naturalist metanormative position. Indeed, it is
explicitly non-naturalist (though I reconsider this judgment in the next section). If
Robust Realism is true Metaphysical Naturalism ought to be rejected. Obviously,
then, if Naturalism can be taken as an assumption, Robust Realism ought to be
rejected. That not only Robust Realism, but also my argument for it, can be
rejected on naturalist assumptions is of very little interest. In the absence of some
independent, non-question-begging argument for Metaphysical Naturalism (and so
against Robust Realism), I conclude, Naturalism cannot be interestingly invoked
45
The view characterized in the text is sometimes referred to as Methodological Naturalism, to be
distinguished from Metaphysical Naturalism, the view according to which (very roughly) all facts
are natural facts. In the text I ignore this distinction – as will become evident later on, my Robust
Realism is compatible with neither version of Naturalism.
46
If science has (necessarily) other purposes besides explanation, then – even assuming Naturalism
– there may be other, non-explanatory, respectable kinds of indispensability. In that case, even
Naturalism cannot bridge the gap between the minimal parsimony requirement and the explanatory
requirement.
47
There may be other problems with it too. As Rosen (1998, 401) notes, science does not claim for
itself the kind of completeness metaphysical naturalists claim on science’s behalf. The “and that’s
all there is”-clause is part not of the scientific description of the world, but of the naturalist
philosopher’s.
48
here as a way of rejecting my argument for Robust Realism by privileging
explanatory indispensability.48
This leaves one other, different, worry: If Metaphysical Naturalism is
needed in order to support indispensability arguments, then putting forward an
indispensability argument in order to support a thesis that is incompatible with
Naturalism is not a promising strategy. I won’t deal with this worry here. In the
next chapter I put forward a justification for indispensability arguments that does
not depend on Naturalism. If my argumentation there is sound, this worry can be
set aside.
In the remainder of this chapter I intend only to argue (somewhat
preliminarily) that deliberative indispensability is just as respectable in the relevant
ways as explanatory indispensability, that if explanatory indispensability justifies
ontological commitment, so does deliberative indispensability. I will not in this
chapter argue for the antecedent of this conditional, the claim that explanatory
indispensability justifies ontological commitment, and so I will not here argue for
the (unconditional) claim that indispensability – and, in particular, deliberative
indispensability – ever justifies ontological commitment. I argue for these claims
in chapter 2.
48
Justifications, we all know, come to an end somewhere. And metaphysical naturalists sometimes
sound as if they honestly believe that Naturalism is where they do. But this is highly implausible,
for Naturalism is not a commonsensical, intuitive, claim. It is a highly theory-laden abstract
philosophical position. And this makes it an implausible candidate for where justifications come to
an end. I thank Josh Schechter for discussions relevant to this note.
49
1.5
Metaphysical Naturalism Again
Before doing that, though, I want briefly to revisit the relation between Robust
Realism and Metaphysical Naturalism. Now, as already mentioned, it is not at all
clear what exactly Metaphysical Naturalism amounts to49. It is, however, often
mentioned as at least one tenet of this doctrine that all inquiry is continuous with
scientific inquiry. It then follows from what has already been said that Robust
Realism, or at least my way of arguing for it, is deeply anti-naturalist. For
arguably, the empirical sciences do not study facts that are explanatorily useless.
By arguing for the existence of explanatorily useless facts, and by basing my
argument on a method radically different from IBE, I am as far from Naturalism as
is possible. Indeed, this explains why metaethical or metanormative realists who
are also Metaphysical Naturalists typically employ the first strategy in coping with
Harman’s Challenge: Being Naturalists, they cannot consistently reject the
explanatory requirement.
This may be so: If my argument convinces you that there is no reason for
taking explanatory indispensability, but not some other kinds of indispensability,
seriously, perhaps it will thereby have convinced you that Metaphysical
49
It is sometimes thought sufficient for Metaphysical Naturalism that all facts supervene on natural
facts (that is, on the kind of facts studied by the empirical sciences). I believe the normative – and,
plausibly, everything else – supervenes on the natural. Does this make me a Naturalist? The
answer, I think, is “no”. The supervenience criterion for Naturalism is clearly too weak: In order to
qualify as a Naturalist, it is necessary to believe that all facts are natural. If I believe, say, in
scientific-inquiry-impenetrable demons, but that all demon-facts supervene on natural ones, I do
not qualify as a Naturalist. In the context of the metaethical literature, it is worth mentioning (as
Audi (1997, 114) does) that Moore, an anti-naturalist if ever there was one, accepted some kind of
a supervenience thesis (see, for instance, his “Reply to Critics” in Schilpp (1942, 588)).
50
Naturalism is false.50 But I want to note here that my argument is not all that antinaturalist. True, my inquiry is not continuous with scientific inquiry, in the sense
that it does not employ the method scientific inquiry does (roughly, IBE). But my
inquiry is not completely discontinuous with scientific inquiry. If I am right, both
the scientific method and my method are particular instances of a more general
mode of reasoning: Scientific inquiry proceeds by arguments from explanatory
indispensability; mine will proceed by an argument from some other kind of
indispensability; both are particular instances of indispensability arguments.
So, though my argument is not sufficiently continuous with scientific
methodology to merit being called naturalist, it is not completely discontinuous
with it either. And if I am right in stating that there is no non-arbitrary way of
distinguishing explanatory from other indispensabilities, my argument captures
what should have been appealing about Naturalism all along.
1.6
Instrumental and Intrinsic Indispensability
Let us take stock. In response to Harman’s Challenge, I propose to pursue the
second strategy, that of rejecting the explanatory requirement. I propose to avoid
ontological profligacy by nevertheless restricting our ontological commitment to
those entities, facts, properties, truths that are indispensable, those that our best
In the Treatise, Hume restricts – by stipulation, almost – Reason to just deductive and inductive
reasoning. IBE is one plausible account of our inductive reasoning. So my rejection of Naturalism,
my claim that there is something arbitrary about taking explanatory – but not, say, deliberative –
indispensability seriously, can be read as a rejection of Hume’s restriction of Reason as arbitrary. A
remark of Tom Nagel in a seminar helped me see things this way.
50
51
theories quantify over. But I suggest that there is more to indispensability than
explanatory indispensability, that our best theories include more than just our best
explanatory theories. In order to argue for Robust Realism, then, what needs to be
done next is to suggest another kind of indispensability, one that is respectable
enough to justify ontological commitment, and to show that irreducibly normative
facts are indispensable in that way. But in order to do that, it is necessary to
discuss in some detail what indispensability comes to.
Now, as has been noted in the philosophy-of-mathematics literature51,
where discussions of indispensability are typically located, indispensability is
always indispensability for or to a yet-to-be-specified purpose or project.
Quantifying over numbers and sets is arguably indispensable for doing physics.
Quantifying over (possibly other) abstracta is arguably indispensable for doing
metalogic52. Of course, one thing may be indispensable for one purpose or project
but not for another.
Once this is noticed, it becomes clear that in order fully to understand what
(the relevant kind of) indispensability comes to two distinct questions must be
answered. First, it must be determined what it takes, given a purpose or a project,
for something to be indispensable for it. As I will put things, the first thing that is
needed is an account of instrumental indispensability. Second, it must be
determined which purposes or projects are such that indispensability for them
51
52
See, e.g., Field (1989, 14), Colyvan (2001, 6).
See Field (1991, 1).
52
suffices to ground ontological commitment. That is, an account of intrinsic
indispensability53 is likewise needed.
(I use this terminology hoping that the analogy with intrinsic and
instrumental value will help to make it clear: Something is of intrinsic value just in
case, roughly, it is itself of value, independently of its relations with other things.
Something is of instrumental value just in case, roughly, it is instrumental to
something that is of (intrinsic or instrumental) value. And, of course, something is
of value just in case it is of either intrinsic or instrumental value (or both)54.
Analogously, in my suggested terminology, something is indispensable just in case
it is either intrinsically or instrumentally indispensable, and something is
instrumentally indispensable just in case it is indispensable for something that is
(intrinsically or instrumentally) indispensable.)
1.6.1
Instrumental Indispensability
Given a purpose (such as explaining) or a project (such as the scientific project),
what does it take for something to be indispensable for it, in the sense relevant for
ontological commitment?
Of course, being helpful is not enough. If, for instance, mathematical
objects are only used in scientific theories as a means of simplifying inferences
“Intrinsic indispensability” is – so I stipulate – just a placeholder for whatever it is that makes
projects or purposes respectable in the relevant sense. It is here, then, that the terminological
apology from note 39 above is most relevant.
54
The sentence in the text is not true as it stands, for – as Korsgaard (1983) argues – something can
be of extrinsic (and so not intrinsic) yet not instrumental value. For my purposes, though, this point
can be safely ignored.
53
53
which could be drawn without numbers as well, then, it seems, mathematical
objects are not indispensable for the scientific project in the relevant sense. What
is needed here is something like Field’s (1989, 59) distinction between being
useful in, e.g., facilitating inferences on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
being useful in being theoretically indispensable55. However exactly the latter is to
be understood (the details of Field’s way of explicating this notion need not
concern us here), it seems intuitively clear that the former cannot justify
ontological commitment, even assuming that the relevant project is intrinsically
indispensable; it is perfectly compatible, for instance, with a fictionalist attitude
towards mathematics and a nominalism about abstract objects. Mere usefulness
does not suffice for instrumental indispensability.
Nor does what I will call (merely) enabling indispensability. Presumably,
we cannot engage in the scientific project without sufficient sleep. But sleep is not
indispensable to the scientific project in the sense that suffices for the justification
of ontological commitment. Of course, if we cannot engage in the scientific project
without sufficient sleep, then that we have in fact engaged in the scientific project
is evidence that we did get sufficient sleep. But our engaging in the scientific
project – though evidence for sufficient sleep – does not commit us to any claims
about us having had sufficient sleep. The account of instrumental indispensability I
55
Brink (1989, 192) makes a similar distinction in the metaethical context between pragmatic and
in-principle indispensability. As will be made clear in chapter 2, I think Brink’s terms are
potentially misleading.
54
am after should have this result. So enabling indispensability is not what I am
after.
An initially attractive recourse is to restrict instrumental indispensability –
indispensability for a theory, for now – to just those things that are ineliminable
from the theory. However, as Colyvan (2001, 76-7) argues, this too will not do, for
the following two reasons. First, it is not entirely clear what ineliminability is.
Surely, just noting that once the disputed entities are eliminated the theory that is
left is different from the one we started with is not sufficient for ineliminability,
for this requirement is satisfied by all entities a theory invokes or talks of. Second,
it may very well be the case that no entity is strictly ineliminable for any theory,
because the theory can be reformulated and reaxiomatized such that any given
entity
is
eliminated.56
Ineliminability
as
a
criterion
for
instrumental
indispensability thus also fails.
I want to follow Colyvan in offering the following criterion for
instrumental indispensability. If a scientific theory T1 quantifies over, say,
electrons, and T2 is the theory we get after eliminating all references to electrons
from T1, and if T2 is all-things-considered at least as attractive as T1 (or is, at least,
sufficiently attractive), then it seems clear that electrons are not instrumentally
indispensable for our scientific project57. The relevant criteria of attractiveness are,
56
Colyvan (2001, 77) argues that that such a reformulation is possible (with certain qualifications)
follows from Craig’s Theorem.
57
This is a reformulation of Colyvan’s (2001, 77) criterion. The term “instrumental
indispensability”, as well as the (explicit) distinction between instrumental and intrinsic
indispensability are mine. Field nowhere puts an explicit definition or characterization of what it
55
of course, explanatory. An entity is explanatorily indispensable just in case it
cannot be eliminated from our explanations without loss of explanatory
attractiveness. Colyvan’s condition is intuitively appealing, and may be considered
simply a result of the policy of inferring only to the best explanation58.
For my purposes, of course, Colyvan’s condition is not good enough as it
stands, for I am interested in more than just explanatory indispensability, and in
more than just indispensability to a theory. Luckily, though, Colyvan’s condition –
and its appeal – generalize nicely. Something is instrumentally indispensable for a
project, I suggest, just in case it cannot be eliminated without undermining (or at
least sufficiently diminishing) whatever reason we had to engage in that project in
the first place; without, in other words, thereby defeating whatever reason we had
to find that project attractive. The intuition underlying this criterion for
instrumental indispensability is simple: The project itself is (intrinsically)
indispensable for a reason, and if the only way to engage in it in a way that doesn’t
defeat that reason involves an entity (or a fact, or a belief, or whatever), then the
takes for an entity to be indispensable to a theory, but at times he says things that suggest that he
too acknowledges something like Colyvan’s condition. Colyvan (2001, 76, footnote 16), for
instance, quotes the following sentence from Field (1980, 8): “we can give attractive
reformulations of [the theories of modern physics] in which mathematical entities play no role”
(Colyvan’s emphasis). In the metaethical context, Wiggins (1990, 84) hints at such a condition.
58
Simplicity, it is almost universally agreed, is an explanatory virtue. But then doesn’t Colyvan’s
condition commit him to taking even the kind of usefulness that is involved in facilitating
inferences as respectable instrumental indispensability, because theories with the facilitating
apparatus are simpler than those without it? No, because simplicity is only one explanatory virtue
among others. Ontological parsimony is also an explanatory virtue. The all-things-considered
explanatorily most attractive theory may very well be – and in the cases where the relevant
apparatus is only needed to facilitate inference and the like, probably is – the ontologically more
parsimonious one, even if it involves more complicated calculations (or some facilitating apparatus
we can be fictionalists about). See Colyvan (2001, 78-81).
56
respectability of the project confers respectability on that entity (or whatever).
Colyvan’s condition is a particular instance of this condition, with the relevant
project being the scientific one, and the relevant criteria of attractiveness being
explanatory.
What kind of thing can be instrumentally indispensable? Certainly, entities
can: electrons and, (even) more controversially, numbers are arguably
indispensable for our scientific project. Note, however, that with instrumental
indispensability thus understood, no restriction to entities is implied. Other things
may also be instrumentally indispensable. Examples may include properties, facts,
truths, and cognitive attitudes. Indeed, even the Quine-Putnam indispensability
argument for Mathematical Platonism is often presented as primarily an argument
for the indispensability (to science) of the belief in (or assumption of)
mathematical objects, and only derivatively for the indispensability of the
mathematical objects themselves59.
1.6.2
Intrinsic Indispensability
That something is (instrumentally) indispensable for a project surely cannot
justifiably ground ontological commitment without some restriction on the set of
acceptable projects. Believing in evil spirits, for instance, may be indispensable for
59
This is explicitly noted by Resnik (1997, throughout the paper), and Colyvan (2001, 10, footnote
18), and implicitly endorsed by Field (1989, 14), when he characterizes indispensability arguments:
“An indispensability argument is an argument that we should believe a certain claim (for instance,
a claim asserting the existence of a certain kind of entity) because doing so is indispensable for
certain purposes (which the argument then details)” (emphasis added). I return to this point in
section 3.4.11, in chapter 3.
57
the project of sorcery, but this is no reason to believe in evil spirits (if anything, it
is a reason not to engage in sorcery). And God may be indispensable for the
project of achieving eternal bliss, but this does not give reason to believe in God –
unless, that is, the project of achieving eternal bliss is of the kind that can justify
ontological commitment; unless, in other words, it is an intrinsically indispensable
project.
It has been noted in the philosophy-of-mathematics literature that some
restriction on the set of admissible purposes is needed. Nevertheless, to the best of
my knowledge no criterion for intrinsic indispensability has been suggested.
Colyvan (2001, 7), for instance, asks the right question, but fails to answer it:
Which purposes are the right sort for cogent
[indispensability] arguments?
I know of no easy answer to this question.
Nor does he suggest an answer to this question that is not easy. Now, in
discussions of the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument for Platonism
regarding mathematical objects, the neglect to offer a criterion for intrinsic
indispensability is not a serious dialectical flaw: As is often noted60, the argument
is put forward by the mathematical platonist in an attempt to convince scientific
realists. And with these as the major interlocutors, both parties to the debate are
happy to assume that, whatever the criterion for intrinsic indispensability, at least
the scientific project satisfies it, at least the scientific project is respectable enough
to justify ontological commitment. (Indeed, when both parties are also
60
See, e.g., Colyvan (2001, e.g. 25), see also note 70, below.
58
metaphysical naturalists, both are happy to assume also that the scientific project is
the only one that is intrinsically indispensable.) The parties are typically so
comfortable with such an assumption that it remains implicit61.
In our context, though, more needs to be done62. I am willing to grant that
the explanatory project is intrinsically indispensable (indeed, I argue for this claim
in chapter 2). But I am not willing to grant that it is the only intrinsically
indispensable project. And in order to establish the claim that our deliberative
project is also intrinsically indispensable, it is necessary to answer the question
Colyvan leaves unanswered. Which projects, then, are intrinsically indispensable?
Think of the explanatory project again. What is it that makes it – as we
assume, for now – intrinsically indispensable? Why is it that if it is indispensable
for our explanatory project that p we are justified in believing that p? What
distinguishes the explanatory project from, say, sorcery, such that indispensability
to science, but not to sorcery, justifies ontological commitment? Chapter 2 is in
large part dedicated to answering this question. For the moment, then, let me just
put forward in a preliminary and somewhat dogmatic way the answer I argue for
there.
61
Colyvan (2001, 7) is a welcome exception, in that he explicitly notes this assumption.
It may seem that more needs to be done also by Field, as he too discusses indispensability to
projects other than the explanatory one, namely indispensability to (modal) logic and to metalogic
(1991, 1). But, seeing that Field then proceeds to reject the indispensability premise – he argues, in
my terms, that abstracta are not instrumentally indispensable to these projects either – I think he is
best understood as merely assuming for the sake of argument that the logic and metalogic projects
(and, for that matter, the scientific-explanatory one as well) are intrinsically indispensable. If that is
so, he is under no obligation to develop a substantive criterion for intrinsic indispensability.
62
59
The explanatory project is intrinsically indispensable because it is one we
cannot fail to engage in, it is unavoidable for us; we are essentially explanatory
creatures. Of course, we can easily refrain from explaining one thing or another,
but we cannot stop explaining altogether. In an important sense, the explanatory
project is not one that, like sorcery, is optional for me: I have no option of stopping
(or not starting) to engage in it63. If God (or believing in her, or both) is
indispensable for the project of achieving eternal bliss, the rational thing to do
seems to be either to believe in her or to abandon the project of achieving eternal
bliss. But with essentially unavoidable projects like the explanatory one, there is
no real option of abandoning them. If something is indispensable for such a
project, it seems belief is the only rational way to go. And this line applies to all
and only essentially unavoidable projects.
This is, then, my (as yet largely unargued-for) suggestion for a criterion of
intrinsic indispensability: A project is intrinsically indispensable if (and only if,
quite plausibly; but my argument doesn’t rely on the following condition being
also necessary) it is essentially unavoidable. Instances of IBE are justified, then,
because they are arguments from indispensability to the explanatory project, which
is essentially unavoidable.
1.7
63
Deliberation
What exactly are the modalities involved here? I discuss this question in chapters 2 and 3.
60
But if that is right, it seems clear that our deliberative project is likewise
intrinsically indispensable. For we are also essentially deliberative creatures. We
cannot avoid asking ourselves what to do, what to believe, how to reason, what to
care about. We can, of course, stop deliberating about one thing or another. But we
cannot stop deliberating altogether. The deliberative project is not one we can opt
out of, it is not optional for us64.
If I am right, then, about what makes projects intrinsically indispensable,
the deliberative project is intrinsically indispensable. Even if I am wrong, though,
if you want to exclude deliberative indispensability as not-quite-as-respectable as
explanatory indispensability, you face the challenge of distinguishing between the
two. What reason is there, then, to take the explanatory project seriously that is not
equally a reason to take the deliberative project seriously? I cannot think of one.
And so I tentatively conclude that the deliberative project is intrinsically
indispensable if the explanatory one is, that the explanatory project is in no way
privileged compared to the deliberative one. Indeed, the deliberative project may
be privileged compared to the explanatory one. For, when trying to explain, we
necessarily deliberate; we ask ourselves which explanation is better than another,
which one is to be believed. Evaluation is thus necessarily a part of the
explanatory project. But in deliberating we do not necessarily explain (though very
often we do). Explanation is thus not necessarily a part of the deliberative project.
If this is right, it follows that there is something more basic about the deliberative
64
I discuss these matters in more detail in chapter 3.
61
compared to the explanatory project. The explanatory project presupposes the
deliberative one. And so if the explanatory project is respectable, if it is
(intrinsically or instrumentally) indispensable, so must the deliberative project
be.65
The deliberative project is, then, intrinsically indispensable (or at least – it
is intrinsically indispensable if the explanatory one is). If it is instrumentally
indispensable for the deliberative project that p, we are justified in believing that p.
At least, we are every bit as justified in so believing as we are in believing the
conclusions of inferences to the best explanation. If, then, it can be established that
irreducibly normative truths are deliberatively indispensable, we are every bit as
justified in believing in them as we are in believing in, say, electrons.66
1.8
Explanatory Role After All?
In section 1.2 I have tentatively rejected the first strategy of coping with Harman’s
Challenge, that of accepting the explanatory requirement and arguing that
normative facts satisfy it. And in the rest of the chapter I have outlined what I take
to be our reason for believing in (irreducibly) normative facts, namely, their
deliberative indispensability. Now, though, I want to reconsider the possibility that
normative facts have an explanatory role to play. This will not be a reconsideration
65
A similar point is made by Sayre-McCord (1988a, 277-281) and by Wiggins (1990, 66, footnote
5). I discuss their views in more detail in the appendix.
66
As will be made clearer in the following chapters, this is not a precise statement of the analogy.
Its precise details will be made clearer later on, especially in chapter 2.
62
of the first strategy. Rather, the discussion in this section is conducted on the
assumption that the second strategy is successful and that we therefore already
have sufficient reason to believe in normative facts, reason that does not depend on
the explanatory role they may or may not play. I want quickly to suggest three
reasons why this assumption may change the verdict regarding the explanatory
role of normative facts. On the substantive issue – whether or not normative facts
do play an appropriate role in the best explanations of respectable explananda – I
want to remain neutral. What follows are just ways in which the deliberative
indispensability of normative facts may have consequences relevant to the debate
regarding their explanatory role.
First, if it is indeed true that irreducibly normative truths are deliberatively
indispensable, this fact itself may very well call for explanation. And it may
qualify as a respectable explanandum. But then, perhaps normative facts would
have to be invoked in the best explanation of this very fact. If so, the success of the
second strategy will entail that normative truths do play an appropriate role in the
best explanation of a respectable explanandum.67
A second way in which the supposed success of the second strategy may
bear on the explanatory-role debate has to with the criteria for what makes one
explanation better than another. One of the features relevant for the evaluation of
explanations is the extent to which they are committed to kinds of entities or facts
we had no independent, prior reason for believing in. Other things equal, an
67
I thank Josh Schechter for this suggestion.
63
explanation in terms of, say, electrons would be better than one invoking some
new kind of particles, a kind we had no prior reason to believe in. This means that
one and the same explanation can be better against the background of some
(logically) prior commitments and worse against the background of others. Now
take an explanation in terms of normative facts. It will be better against
background commitments that include an independent commitment to normative
facts than against background commitments that do not include such a
commitment. My argument from deliberative indispensability, if sound, supplies
reason for belief in normative facts that does not depend on their explanatory role.
So, now that we know we have independent reason for believing in normative
facts – indeed, now that we know there are normative facts – explanations in terms
of them can be seen more favorably: Their commitment to normative facts is now
no longer an explanatory liability, no longer a commitment to a kind of entities or
facts we had no independent reason to be committed to. It thus follows that even if
normative explanations would never have been the best explanations had it not
been for the deliberative indispensability of normative facts, they may very well be
the best explanations given the deliberative indispensability of normative facts. If
so, the success of the second strategy may help to decide the issue of the
explanatory role of normative facts in favor of those arguing that normative facts
do play such a role68.
68
For the point made in this paragraph I am indebted to Peter Kung.
64
A third reason why the deliberative indispensability of normative truths
may have implications regarding their explanatory role is as follows. It may be
argued that it is a necessary condition for taking one’s deliberation seriously, and
so for deliberating sincerely, that one believe that the best explanation of one’s
behavior will be in terms of the normative reasons for which one has acted. Or
perhaps some other tight connection between deliberation and explanation can be
defended69. I don’t want to discuss the plausibility of this suggestion further here: I
begin to do so in section 3.4.12 (in chapter 3). What I want to note here is that if
this suggestion is true, then it is not only deliberatively indispensable to believe in
irreducibly normative truths; it may also be deliberatively indispensable to believe
in their explanatory role.
What is the relation between what has been suggested in the last three
paragraphs and the reasons given in section 2.1 – and other reasons to be found in
the literature – for doubting the availability of the first strategy for coping with
Harman’s Challenge? First, the major reason for believing in normative facts
remains the deliberative one. Therefore, even if – for the reasons discussed here, or
for other reasons – normative facts do play the appropriate explanatory role, this is
69
I thank Ulrike Heuer for making this point to me in a different context. Many have put forward
some claims about the necessary relation between normative reasons and the explanation of action
claims that are relevant in this context. Such claims are central, for instance, to Dancy’s theory in
Practical Reality (2000) (see mainly his so called explanatory and normative constraints) and to
Velleman’s in Practical Reflection (1989). See also Darwall (1992, 166-7). Joseph Raz (1975, 16)
seems to suggest a similar point when he writes: “Reasons can be used for guiding and evaluating
only because they can also be used in explanation…”, as does Williams in “Internal and External
Reasons” (1980, 102 and 106). It is much harder to find in the literature an argument for such
claims (Dancy, Velleman, Darwall, Raz and Williams do not, as far as I know, supply one),
perhaps because they are considered (by some) so intuitive. I’m not sure that they are, but cannot
discuss this further here.
65
compatible with the intuition mentioned in section 2.1 that our reason to believe in
normative facts does not depend on such an explanatory role. Second, some of the
reasons to doubt the explanatory role of normative facts are reasons to believe that
whenever a normative explanation is available, a non-normative one is going to be
both available and better as an explanation. What has been said in this appendix
shows, though, that the deliberative indispensability of normative truths may very
well make a difference as to whether this is so.
One kind of possible reason for doubting the explanatory role of normative
facts is, however, incompatible with the suggestions in this appendix. If normative
facts are by their very nature not suitable to play an explanatory role, then the fact
that we have independent reason to believe in them cannot change the verdict on
their explanatory role. Peacocke (unpublished), for example, argues that the modal
status of moral (and, I suspect, more generally normative) judgments makes them
unsuitable to serve in explanations. If that is indeed so, no independent reason to
believe in normative facts can support the attribution to them of an explanatory
role.
1.9
Scorekeeping
The conclusions of this chapter are very tentative: Much more needs to be done in
order to complete my defense of Robust Realism. Nevertheless, the discussion so
far should have made the framework of my argument for Robust Realism clear.
66
I want to present an indispensability argument for Robust Realism. As in
all indispensability arguments, one thing that needs to be done is to support the
indispensability premise. This would involve, in the case of my argument, showing
that irreducibly normative truths (or believing in them) indeed are instrumentally
indispensable for the deliberative project, and that that project is intrinsically
indispensable, that is, essentially unavoidable. Very little has been said in this
chapter to establish this premise. My support for it is presented in chapters 3 and 4,
where I present an account of deliberation (chapter 3) and then argue that all other
– non-robust-realist – views of normativity undermine deliberation (chapter 4).
If my defense of Robust Realism is to be complete, another task needs to
be performed: The transition from indispensability to belief has to be vindicated.
So far, it will be remembered, my presentation of deliberative indispensability and
its respectability was parasitic on the presumed respectability of explanatory
indispensability. And, though this move may be dialectically powerful, I want
eventually to discharge the assumption that (for instance, explanatory)
indispensability justifies ontological commitment by directly arguing for it. I do
that in chapter 2.
The argument in this chapter, then, helps to demarcate the tasks I try to
perform in the following chapters. And it also serves to motivate the discussion in
the rest of the thesis: It shows, I hope, why the line I take in the rest of the thesis is
one it is reasonable to try to pursue.
67
But the argument in this chapter does more than that. At the very least, it
places a serious dialectical burden on the metaphysical naturalist: She must give
reason to take explanatory but not deliberative indispensability seriously. And this
reason had better not be question-begging, one that presupposes Metaphysical
Naturalism. If that cannot be done, she must either abandon her commitment to
taking explanatory indispensability seriously, thus becoming, it seems, a scientific
antirealist; or else, she must accept deliberative (and possibly other kinds of)
indispensability as a guide for ontological commitment, in which case she may
have already abandoned her Naturalism. This result is to a large extent
independent of the argument in the rest of the thesis, and it is not without interest.
For most who reject irreducibly normative truths do not wish to reject electrons
and quarks with them70.
Harman can again serve as the typical naturalist, one who wants to
maintain the respectability of electrons but reject irreducibly normative facts. And
one way of seeing the force of what has already been established is to consider
Harman’s Challenge again. It is now clear, I hope, that unless the naturalist can
introduce a non-question-begging, non-arbitrary, distinction between explanatory
and deliberative indispensability, Harman’s Challenge is rendered powerless
70
The point in the text parallels a point widely noted with regard to indispensability arguments for
Mathematical Platonism: They place the nominalist who is a scientific realist in an awkward
position: Unless she can somehow show a relevant distinction between the role abstract objects and
concrete theoretical entities play in our best scientific theories, a distinction that will prove the
Quine-Putnam indispensability argument powerless, she is committed to the existence of the
former just in case she is committed to the latter. This, of course, is no threat for the scientific
antirealist. But it is of interest nevertheless, for most nominalists don’t want to pay the price of
scientific antirealism. They want to be both nominalists about numbers and realists about electrons.
68
independently, to a large extent, of the arguments of the other chapters in this
thesis. For unless such a distinction can be defended, the explanatory requirement
underlying Harman’s Challenge is – whatever its exact details, and in contrast with
the minimal parsimony requirement – completely unmotivated.
1.A
Appendix: Previous Attempts at the Second Strategy
As mentioned in section 1.2, the second strategy of coping with Harman’s
Challenge – that of rejecting the explanatory requirement – has not, to the best of
my knowledge, been systematically developed in the literature. But it has been
gestured at – with more or less detail and argumentation – by several writers71. To
an extent, then, the argument in this chapter – and indeed, in this thesis – is an
attempt fully to develop, explicate and defend what may already have been an
intuition or a (largely implicit) conviction of several writers. In this appendix I
survey the attempts and hints at attempts at this second strategy.
Two preliminary points: First, I do not discuss in this appendix the work of
writers (like Thomson (in Harman and Thomson, 1996), Wright (1992, chapter 5)
and Audi (1997, chapter 5)) who, though they reject the exact explanatory
requirement Harman seems to presuppose, reject it only to put forward another
largely explanatory requirement in its place. I only discuss attempts at rejecting
any explanatory requirement, whatever its exact details. Second, most of the
71
For a comment by Pufendorf that lends itself to a reading according to which Pufendorf already
anticipated the second strategy of coping with Harman’s Challenge, see the Introduction, footnote
18.
69
writers I am about to mention discuss moral, and not more generally normative,
facts and explanations. In the discussion that follows I ignore that, assuming the
points made apply to the more general case as well.
1.A.1 Lycan
Lycan (1986) explicitly adheres to (a version of) the explanatory requirement, and
his general sympathies are naturalistic. It thus comes as no surprise that his official
way of coping with Harman’s Challenge is along the first strategy, that of showing
that normative facts satisfy the explanatory requirement.
However, among the respectable explananda Lycan includes not just the
fact that we have the moral intuitions we do, but also their content (89). Now,
depending on what exactly is meant by “explaining the content of our intuitive
judgments”, Lycan may here be bypassing – not satisfying – the explanatory
requirement. For the content of our normative judgments is, of course, normative.
Lycan thus may be committing himself to normative facts being respectable
explananda. And this move is, as has been argued in section 1.1, antagonistic to
the intuitions underlying the explanatory requirement (though it is not clear how it
can be non-question-beggingly rejected).
Lycan may be even closer than that to my argument. For when discussing
the explanation of normative facts, the distinction between explanation and
justification becomes blurred. Asked to explain why setting the cat on fire was
wrong, most of us would come up with what amounts, in effect, to a justification
70
of that moral judgment. Now, if in order to satisfy Lycan’s version of the
explanatory requirement it is sufficient to show that normative facts play a role in
what is in fact the justification of normative judgments, Lycan’s version of the
explanatory requirement is broad enough to include other – not strictly explanatory
– kinds of indispensability. It is then possible that normative facts should be
admitted because of their justificatory, not their (strictly speaking) explanatory,
role. And this, of course, is the line I pursue.
1.A.2 Wiggins
Wiggins’ (1990) discussion of Harman’s Challenge focuses on what he labels
“vindicatory explanations”, and on his claims that moral beliefs, and, even more,
convergence of moral beliefs, can be given vindicatory explanations. Wiggins too,
then, pursues primarily the first strategy of coping with Harman’s Challenge.
Nowhere, as far as I know, does he explicitly reject the explanatory requirement.
And his metaethical view is certainly not Robust Realism.
But Wiggins’ adherence to the explanatory requirement, like Lycan’s, is
softened by his broad understanding of what explananda are respectable. Wiggins
emphasizes that one of the things the theorist is out to explain are the internal
points of views of thinkers. And value properties may be indispensable for those
explanations, because, it seems, they are indispensable to the internal point of
view:
71
Value properties are real, if they are, because he who
would understand norms and valuations and the
strivings and choices in which they issue, denies or
ignores values at his peril. At risk, that is, of failing
to understand fully what can be fully understood.
(85)
This passage seems to suggest (to me, at least) that normative facts are
deliberatively
indispensable,
and
furthermore
that
their
explanatory
indispensability is – to a certain extent, at least – parasitic on their deliberative
indispensability.
1.A.3 McDowell
McDowell (1985) too does not explicitly reject the explanatory requirement when
discussing Harman’s Challenge (which he attributes mostly to Mackie). But,
drawing attention to the distinctly normative nature of the beliefs and attitudes
relevant to Harman’s Challenge, he suggests that “we should be raising that
question [whether normative facts take part in explanations] about explanations of
a different kind.” (118).72
Discussing an analogy with the explanation of fear as a response to danger
he says:
But if what we are engaged in is an ‘attempt to
understand ourselves’, then merely causal
explanations of responses like fear will not be
satisfying anyway. What we want here is a style of
explanation that makes sense of what is explained
Before saying that, McDowell modifies the explanatory requirement in a way that is – though of
significant independent interest – irrelevant for my discussion here.
72
72
(in so far as sense can be made of it). This means
that a technique for giving satisfying explanations of
cases of fear … must allow for the possibility of
criticism; we make sense of fear by seeing it as a
response to objects that merit such a response …
(119)
Much like Lycan (only more explicitly), McDowell invokes here, I think, an
understanding of explanation (at least of explanation of actions and attitudes of
agents) that is already normative through and through.73 The kind of explanation
of fear that involves claims about the relevant object meriting a fearful response is
really a justification of that response. But then, despite the use of the word
“explanation”, McDowell in effect rejects the first strategy of coping with
Harman’s Challenge and the narrow explanatory requirement underlying it 74.
McDowell seems to suggest that our reason for believing in values and the like is
not the role they play in explanations (narrowly understood), but rather in
justification (which is an essential part of explanations more broadly understood).
And this, of course, is highly suggestive of the deliberative-indispensability line I
pursue.75
1.A.4 Nagel
Nagel (1986, chapter 8) discusses Harman’s Challenge attributing it to, apart from
Harman, Mackie (in discussion). Now, although he thinks that the explanatory
73
See also Hurley (1989, 96-101) for a similar point, made even more explicitly. Hurley refers to
McDowell in a similar context (1989, 285).
74
Perhaps this is why he refers to his suggestion as the “disarming of a supposed explanatory
argument for unreality…” (176). And see also McDowell (1987, 223).
75
I thank Hagit Benbaji and Josh Schechter for discussions relevant to this section.
73
requirement can be met by irreducibly normative truths (145), and although he is
suspicious regarding the compatibility of normative realism with “the hypothesis
that all our normative beliefs can be accounted for by some kind of naturalistic
psychology” (145), he is also clear about rejecting the explanatory requirement
altogether:
Mackie meant that reasons play no role in causal
explanations. But it begs the question to assume that
this sort of explanatory necessity is the test of reality
for values. The claim that certain reasons exist is a
normative claim, not a claim about the best causal
explanation of anything. To assume that only what
has to be included in the best causal theory of the
world is real is to assume that there are no
irreducibly normative truths. (144)
Now, as has been noticed by Brink (1989, 182 (footnote 2)) and Zimmerman
(1984, 82), Nagel argues for neither of the claims packed into this condensed
passage. He gives no reason to reject the explanatory requirement, nor does he
explain how doing so is compatible with an intuitive parsimony requirement76.
And he doesn’t say why accepting the explanatory requirement amounts to
begging the question against the normative realist.
Furthermore, as has already been mentioned, Nagel does not abandon the
first strategy: I have already mentioned his suspicion that realism is incompatible
76
In conversation, Nagel has expressed doubts regarding the general parsimony requirement as
well. He agrees, of course, that we shouldn’t believe in new kinds of entities with no sufficient
reason, but he thinks this is merely a particular instance of a more general truth, namely that we
shouldn’t believe anything without sufficient reason. Parsimony, he thinks, has no special status
here. For reasons I cannot detail here, I disagree. Be that as it may, perhaps his suspicion towards
the parsimony requirement explains why he doesn’t bother to show how what he says is compatible
with it.
74
with all normative beliefs being explainable by some naturalistic psychological
explanations. And at times he writes as if the explanatory requirement can be
satisfied with other normative facts playing the roles of the explananda77. So
Nagel’s strategy of coping with Harman’s Challenge is a complex one. He
certainly does not limit himself to the second strategy.
Nevertheless, Nagel’s emphasis – in this as well as other contexts – on the
need to take the first-personal perspective seriously, and allow a place for it in an
objective worldview, seems to suggest a line of argument supporting the claims in
the quoted passage. Indeed, the line of argument they suggest (to me) is the one I
pursue in this essay.
1.A.5 Dworkin
In discussing (his understanding of) Harman’s Challenge, Dworkin (1996, 119122) explicitly rejects the explanatory requirement (as well as the viability of the
first strategy of coping with Harman’s Challenge). He says:
If the “best explanation” causal test is universally
sound, therefore, no moral (or aesthetic or
mathematical or philosophical) belief is reliable. But
we can reverse that judgment: if any moral belief is
reliable, the “best explanation” test is not universally
sound. Either direction of the argument … begs the
question in the same way. (119)
And it is clear which direction Dworkin favors, when three pages later he
discusses a somewhat narrower explanatory requirement:
77
See above, footnote 11.
75
… it is only dogmatism to insist that the only
reasons that can support a moral conviction are
reasons of that [a specific explanatory] kind. (122)
Not only does Dworkin reject the explanatory requirement, he also seems to
suggest that the role normative facts play in deliberation is what gives us reason to
believe in them:
So the epistemology of any domain must be
sufficiently internal to its content to provide reasons,
viewed from the perspective of those who begin
holding convictions within it, for testing, modifying
or abandoning those convictions. (120)
In these respects, then, my view and Dworkin’s are very close.
It is important, though, to notice the following features that distinguish
Dworkin’s view from mine: First, Dworkin understands Harman’s Challenge very
differently from me. He understands it as a challenge to the reliability of our
normative beliefs. This is the different epistemological challenge, distinguished
from Harman’s Challenge in section 1.1. Furthermore, as can be seen from the first
quote above, Dworkin – much like Nagel – understands the explanatory
requirement as restricted to only causal explanations. But no such restriction need
be assumed, and in fact Harman himself would reject it, as he accepts some noncausal explanations78. But, more importantly than the differences in the
understanding of Harman’s Challenge and the explanatory requirement, Dworkin –
again, like Nagel – gives no account of an alternative way of justifying ontological
commitment, nor does he argue for the rejection of the explanatory requirement.
78
See, e.g., Harman (1970).
76
He just states his (plausible and, if I am right, true) conviction that it must be
rejected.
1.A.6 Platts
Platts (1980b) does not discuss Harman’s Challenge, and his views are in
important respects different – indeed, incompatible – with my own (more on that
shortly). But his paper is highly suggestive of the argument of this chapter, and,
indeed, of this thesis.
Now, Platts does not distinguish between normative and motivating
reasons, and so his discussion of normativity is couched in terms of desires. This is
one of the points where we differ. Nevertheless, what he says about desires is –
once translated to talk of normativity – highly relevant here. Platts wonders what
explains the motivating force of desires. For appetitive desires like the desire to eat
when one is hungry he suggests that their phenomenological feel explains their
motivating force. But this explanation does not apply to other, more reflective,
desires, desires that do not have a distinctive phenomenological feel. For these, he
argues, the only explanation of their motivating force is that we believe that the
relevant thing is independently desirable. This claim is confirmed by the
observation of the fact (explicitly taken by Platts as brute) that when we cease to
believe that something is (independently) desirable, we cease to desire it. But then,
rejecting all facts about independent desirability would lead to us not being able to
have these (reflective) desires. Platts thus concludes: “the price of abandoning
77
moral realism can be the end of desire.” (79). It is clear that Platts takes this as a
reason to be a moral realist (though nowhere does he say so in so many words).
It is not clear what exactly Platts means by “desires”. He cannot be using
this word to refer to all and only motivating states, because then his question (How
do desires have motivating force?) makes little sense. He seems to use it in a
broader sense, standing for whatever state can move a person to action. And so his
desires – certainly his reflective desires – are closely related to deliberation (more
on that in chapter 3). What Platts seems to suggest is that by abandoning moral
realism we give up on the possibility of, put Kantianly, determining our will. In
my terms, Platts seems to be presenting an argument from deliberative
indispensability to moral realism.
The similarity between Platts’ line and mine notwithstanding, some
important differences remain. One – Platts’ apparent conflation of normativity and
motivation – has already been noted. Another follows from what seems to be
Platts’ reliance on empirical psychology. His support for the claim that once we
cease to believe something independently desirable we cease to desire it is that it is
“a brute fact about human motivation and human desires” (79). My argument will
not rely on such empirical (and, for that matter, empirically questionable) claims,
and so will not be vulnerable to empirical refutation.
78
Despite these differences it is clear, I think, that Platts’ insight is – to a
large extent, at least – an anticipation of my argument79.
1.A.7 Korsgaard
In The Sources of Normativity (1996) Korsgaard not only puts forward a
constructivist account of normativity; she also explicitly criticizes realist views
such as my own (“substantive realists”, she calls us). Nevertheless, at times, at
least, she says things that sound very much like adopting the second strategy for
coping with Harman’s Challenge and rejecting the explanatory requirement it is
based on. Furthermore, Korsgaard is very clear about the need for reasons being a
deliberative need. Thus she writes:
[Giving scientific explanations for what people think
and do] is not, in the first instance, what we need
[reasons] for, but that does not show that they are
not real. We need them because our reflective nature
gives us a choice about what to do… reasons exist
because we need them, and we need them because of
the structure of reflective consciousness… (96)80
Now, Korsggard thinks this line saves some kind of (procedural, constructivist)
normative realism, but not Robust (substantive) Realism (46), for reasons that I
need not discuss here (my argument for why such a line does vindicate Robust
79
This means, of course, that Platts is prima facie vulnerable to analogous objections to the ones
my argument is prima facie vulnerable to. In particular, two objections come to mind: First, the
reason his argument gives to be a moral realist seems to be merely a pragmatic reason (Zimmerman
(1985, 95) seems to raise such an objection to Platts). Second, many antirealists seem to have
reflective desires, and it is not clear how Platts can account for that. Unfortunately, Platts doesn’t
address – or even mention – these problems. I discuss the (analogue of the) first in chapter 2 and
the (analogue of the) second in section 3.4.8 in chapter 3.
80
See also Korsgaard (1996, 45-7).
79
Realism is just the argument of my thesis). And it is very hard to see how what
Korsgaard says in the paragraph I just quoted about reasons existing because we
need them is consistent with her major criticism of the substantive realist, the one
she puts in the following sentence: “Having discovered that he needs an
unconditional answer, the realist straightaway concludes that he has found one.”
(33) More needs to be said, then, on Korsgaard’s views and argumentation, and I
discuss them in more detail in section 4.5, in chapter 4.
1.A.8 Sayre-McCord
In the last section of his (1988a) Sayre McCord presents – in just four pages –
what is by far the most detailed and careful attempt at the second strategy I know
of. Despite its lack of crucial details, this section clearly anticipates my line of
argument for Robust Realism.
Sayre-McCord starts by noticing that the explanatory project – indeed, the
explanatory requirement itself – is normative through and through, for it requires,
at the very least, that we evaluate explanations, and choose the best one. He notes
that there is little to recommend a view that is realist about some normative facts
but not about moral ones, and so he concludes that our engagement in the
explanatory project already commits us to evaluative, and so to moral, facts. There
is just no way of engaging in explanation without relying on normative facts.
80
Sayre-McCord goes even further than that. He argues that the respectability
of normative (and in particular moral) facts and properties does not depend on
their indispensability to the explanatory project:
The legitimacy of moral theory does not require any
special link between explanatory and moral
justification. (280)
Instead, what guarantees the respectability of moral and other normative facts are
their justificatory, not their explanatory, role:
Just as we take the explanatory role of certain
hypotheses as grounds for believing the hypotheses,
we must, I suggest, take the justificatory role of
certain evaluative principles as grounds for believing
the principles. (278)
This is, I take it, an explicit rejection of the first strategy of Harman’s Challenge, a
rejection of the explanatory requirement, and the beginning of an argument for
normative realism from a different kind of indispensability. Though SayreMcCord does not use the term “indispensability argument”, he does often say that
evaluative facts are indispensable (e.g., 279). And he suggests that we talk in this
context, instead of an inference to the best explanation, of an inference to the best
justification (ibid.).
Now, Sayre-McCord does not give some crucial details here (details which
I try to give in this chapter and in the rest of this essay): What exactly does
indispensability amount to? Why does indispensability to the explanatory and the
justificatory projects justify ontological commitment? Why is there a justification-
81
related need to invoke irreducibly81 evaluative facts and not just, say,
psychological ones about one’s brute desires or preferences? Furthermore, in some
important respects the line he seems to suggest is different from mine: For one
thing, I cannot see how anything like inference to the best justification can be
made to work82. More generally, it seems to me the justificatory work normative
facts do matters to us because of the deliberative indispensability of justification.
What is intrinsically indispensable, in other words, is the deliberative project, not
the justificatory one. The latter only matters because the former does. This is why I
think the argument for Robust Realism is better put in terms of deliberative rather
than justificatory indispensability.
Despite the lack of details and these differences, and despite SayreMcCord’s commitment to Metaphysical Naturalism, it is clear, I think, that his
suggestions anticipate – in broad outline, at least – my indispensability argument
for Robust Realism.
81
Though Sayre-McCord considers himself a Metaphysical Naturalist, he denies the reducibility of
normative facts. See his (1997). As will be made clear in chapter 4, the reduction he denies is
stricter than the reduction claim I take to be the defining feature of all normative (or ethical)
naturalist views.
82
As Tom Nagel suggested to me, Sayre-McCord’s emphasis on justification may give rise to
another worry. Namely, that the relevant justificandum is always already normative – an action, for
instance, normatively described. If this is so, then Sayre-McCord may be vulnerable here to a
worry raised earlier in the text – it may not be enough, in order to confer respectability on
normative facts, to show that they participate in (either the justification or) explanation of other
normative facts.
82
Chapter II
How Does Indispensability Justify Belief?1
Assume the soundness of (most of) the argument in the previous chapter. Assume
further the yet-to-be-argued-for (in chapters 3 and 4) indispensability premise (that
irreducibly normative truths really are indispensable for deliberation). Still one can
object to my argument for Robust Realism by rejecting the move from
indispensability to belief as unjustified, or at least as epistemically unjustified.
“Even granting you all this,” my interlocutor can say, “all you’ve shown is that, in
some sense, we need normative truths. But how is this any reason at all to believe
there are such things? Perhaps you’ve established that it would be nice if there
were normative truths, or that we deeply want them to exist. But concluding from
this to the belief in normative truths is a clear instance of wishful thinking.”2 It is
to answering this objection that this chapter is devoted.
1
Much of the discussion in this chapter follows rather closely the argumentation in Enoch and
Schechter, “How Are Basic Belief-Forming Methods Justified?” (unpublished). Obviously, then, I
am most indebted here to Josh Schechter, with whom I co-authored that paper. For comments on
previous drafts and helpful discussions, I am grateful also to Paul Boghossian, Cian Dorr, Hartry
Field, Pete Graham, Tom Nagel, Derek Parfit, John Richardson, Mark Schroeder, and Masahiro
Yamada.
2
Here is a similar accusation from Korsgaard (1996, 33): “Having discovered that he needs an
unconditional answer, the realist straightaway concludes that he has found one.” (Korsgaard
doesn’t, of course, address my argument; this sentence is taken from her criticism of realists
83
In section 2.1 I argue that proponents of arguments from explanatory
indispensability face the same initial objection. The rest of this chapter can thus be
seen as a reply to the problem they face as well. In section 2.2 I introduce the idea
of taking indispensability arguments to be basic belief-forming methods, where
epistemic justification comes to an end. This line leaves the challenge of
distinguishing between methods that we are and those we are not justified in
employing as basic. In section 2.3 I say a bit more about this remaining challenge,
and describe what it would take satisfactorily to cope with it. I then go on to
present a way of coping with the challenge – the pragmatic account of the
vindication of basic belief-forming methods. I present it first, in section 2.4, very
generally, and then, in section 2.5, in more detail. In section 2.6 I return to
arguments from deliberative indispensability, applying to them the criteria
developed in the previous sections, concluding that we are justified in relying on
them as basic belief-forming methods. After discussing a remaining worry in
section 2.7, I again do some scorekeeping (in section 2.8). In an appendix I briefly
discuss other ways of employing indispensability or unavoidability in antiskeptical discussions, in order to distinguish between them and my argument and
to explain why I find the latter more promising.
2.1
Explanatory Indispensability Again
(primarily Nagel) whose views and arguments are – though distinct from – nevertheless closely
related to mine.) And Zimmerman (1984, 95) makes a similar point in criticizing Platts.
84
In Chapter 1, I’ve emphasized the analogy between deliberative and explanatory
indispensability, and so between my argument from deliberative indispensability
and standard instances of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). It is not
surprising, then, that the proponent of IBE has to face a similar worry to the one I
will address here. For the interlocutor of the IBE-ist can say: “Even granting you
the explanatory indispensability of numbers, or electrons, or whatever, all you’ve
shown is that, in some sense, we need there to be electrons and numbers if we are
going to make sense of the world. But how is this any reason at all to believe that
there are such things? Perhaps you’ve established that it would be nice if there
were electrons, or that we deeply want them to exist (because we want the world to
make sense to us). But concluding from this to the belief in electrons is a clear
instance of wishful thinking.” Let me try and make this point more precise.
We seek understanding, we try to make the world intelligible to us, and so
we seek explanations. All we know when we know that our best explanation of
some relevantly undisputed phenomenon quantifies over electrons is that, roughly,
if the world makes sense, if it is intelligible to us, if the universe is explanationfriendly, then there are electrons. That the universe would be more intelligible,
more orderly, more explanation-friendly if there were electrons is reason to believe
in electrons only, it seems, if we are antecedently justified in believing that the
universe is at least reasonably intelligible, orderly, explanation-friendly.3
“Suppose the world isn’t unified, what then?” (Kitcher, 1989, 494-5). For a similar point, see
Railton (1989a, 228).
3
85
Otherwise, all that seems warranted is at most a hope that there are electrons,
never a belief in them.
Here is Lipton’s (1991) way of making what is essentially the same point:
Whatever makes one explanation better than another – and I’ll have nothing to say
on that here – surely the “best” in “Inference to the Best Explanation” cannot be
understood merely as picking out the explanation that is already, on independent
grounds, most likely to be true. Had it been so understood, IBE would have been
epistemically useless, directing us only to believe what we already have
independent reason to believe. So, if IBE is going to be an interesting epistemic
rule, one that makes an epistemic difference, “Inference to the Best Explanation”
cannot mean “Inference to the Likeliest Explanation”.4 And, from surveying the
literature that makes explicit use of IBE it is indeed clear, that when trying to
determine what the best explanation is, writers do not merely look to
considerations of antecedent likelihood, but also to how well competing
explanations exemplify the relevant explanatory virtues: Simplicity is, of course,
chief among these virtues, but is not the only one. Often mentioned are also
conservativeness, predictive power, ontological parsimony, unification of many
phenomena under fewer principles, avoidance of claims which are ad hoc, and so
on.5 (Again – I have no opinion as to the exact list of the explanatory virtues, and
how they interact. Nothing in what follows depends on these details.) Say that an
4
5
For a similar point, see Railton (1989a, 226-7).
For one attempt to give a systematic account – and a list – of these virtues, see Thagard (1978).
86
explanation is more lovely than another just in case it scores better on the list of
explanatory virtues (whatever exactly they are) than the other. Inference to the
Best Explanation – the rule of ampliative inference we do in fact often use – is
thus best understood as Inference to the Loveliest Explanation.6
But now why think that loveliness is any guide to truth? 7 Why assume that
the explanatory virtues of a theory are good indicators of its likelihood to be true?
Such thoughts would be warranted, of course, if we had some independent reason
to believe that the universe is simple, that it is unified in the right way, that it is
parsimonious; in short, that the universe is lovely, or explanation-friendly. But
what reason do we have to believe this?8 And if we don’t, aren’t we unjustified in
inferring to the loveliest explanation? There may perhaps be good pragmatic
reasons to prefer (e.g.) simple theories, but we should be careful not to conflate
6
Lipton (1991, chapter 4).
This question is often raised in the literature concerning IBE. Even when raised by proponents of
IBE, though, it is not as often answered. See, for instance, van Fraassen (1980, 90; 1989, 285),
Lycan (1985, 142), Lipton (1991, 122-132), Fumerton (1992, 207-209), Niinikuoto (1999, 448).
Nietzsche makes this point (or what I think is this point) especially forcefully. In The Will to
Power, he says: “That we do not make our “desiderata” judges of being!” (1967, section 709);
“But this [Descartes’ clear-and-distinct-conception as a criterion for certain truth] is a crude
confusion: like simplex sigillum veri [simplicity is the seal of truth]. How does one know that the
real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? – Could it not be otherwise? that it is the
hypothesis that gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, that is most preferred,
valued, and consequently characterized as true? – The intellect posits its freest and strongest
capacity and capability as criterion of the most valuable, consequently as true—” (ibid., section
533). And then again: “…to suppose that clarity proves anything about truth is perfect
childishness—” (ibid., section 538). And in The Gay Science: “…my eye grew ever sharper for that
most difficult and captious form of backward inference in which mistakes are made: the backward
inference from the work to the maker, from the deed to the doer, from the ideal to those who need
it, from every way of thinking and valuing to the commanding need behind it.” (1887, section 370).
8
Lipton (1991, 74) labels this “Voltaire’s Objection”.
7
87
these with epistemic reasons to believe in them.9 It is hard to see how we could
have these without first having reason to believe that the world is (reasonably)
simple.
The analogy, I hope, is clear: Without an antecedently justified belief in the
loveliness of the universe, arguments from explanatory indispensability look like
cases of wishful thinking, or at least of conflating merely pragmatic with fullblooded epistemic justification. Similarly, without an antecedently justified belief
in the deliberation-friendliness of the universe, my argument from deliberative
indispensability looks like a case of wishful thinking, or at least of conflating
merely pragmatic with full-blooded epistemic justification.10
Before proceeding to address this worry, let me briefly note one way of
“addressing” it that is not open to me. As some of the literature on indispensability
arguments in the philosophy of mathematics makes clear, the indispensability
arguments there are often grounded (sometimes explicitly, more often implicitly)
in a general naturalistic metaphysics.11 If science is, as is sometimes said, the final
arbiter in matters of truth and existence, then if numbers are indispensable for
science – if our best scientific theories quantify over them – we are justified in
“…but is simplicity not a reason to use a theory whether you believe it or not?” (van Fraassen,
1980, 22). And see also van Fraassen’s insistence on the distinction between pragmatic and
epistemic justification in (1980, chapter 4).
10
Velleman also notices this worry with regard to explanation and theoretical beliefs, and draws
the analogy with similar worries in the practical sphere (1989, Chapter 10). But the details of the
analogy he draws between the two cases, and the way he chooses to allay the worry, are
significantly different from mine.
11
See, for instance, Resnik (1997, chapter 3) and Colyvan (2001, throughout; e.g. at 25).
9
88
believing that numbers exist. From within a committed naturalistic metaphysics,
the worry addressed in this chapter doesn’t arise.
Of course, this way of dismissing the worry is not available to me, as I
reject Metaphysical Naturalism (mostly for the reasons made clear in the previous
chapter). And this is not, I think, a significant loss anyway. For this line of thought
dismisses the worry by fiat, simply by introducing Metaphysical Naturalism as an
assumption. But Metaphysical Naturalism is, as it were, further down the stream
from the worry at hand – we cannot in good conscience consider science the final
arbiter in matters of truth and existence without first vindicating its method12,
which is – by and large – that of IBE. And it is this method the worry above is
concerned with.
It’s true, then, that someone who is already committed to Metaphysical
Naturalism will no longer worry about why it is that we are justified in employing
arguments from explanatory indispensability. But this doesn’t show that
Metaphysical Naturalism solves this problem (ipso facto it doesn’t show that it is
the only thing that can solve it). Rather, Metaphysical Naturalism simply assumes
that the problem has already been solved.
2.2
Where Epistemic Justification Comes to an End
When I wonder what time it is, usually I turn to my watch. If my watch says it’s
2:24 I update my time-belief accordingly, coming to believe that it’s 2:24.
12
Here, of course, I am in shameless breach of Quine’s “no-first-philosophy” principle. So be it.
89
Deferring to the watch, in other words, is my method for forming beliefs about the
time of day. If a watch-skeptic comes along and requires some epistemic
justification for this method of mine, I am not without words: I might be able to
explain to her the watch’s mechanism and why it is that it is very likely, once set
to the right time, to keep at least reasonably accurate time thereafter; I can just
note that my watch has never failed me before and that I have no reason to believe
it will start now; and so on. If she asks about the belief-forming methods I’m using
in giving this reply – the deductive or inductive rules of inference, for instance, or
relying on my memory – and why it is that I am epistemically justified in
employing them, I may again have something to say. But sooner or later (most
often, it seems, embarrassingly sooner) justifications come to an end. Some beliefforming methods are just basic for me, they are fundamental in how I think: I don’t
employ them because I employ other methods, but rather I employ other methods
because they are licensed by these basic ones.
For inferential belief-forming methods, relying on the rule known as
Modus Ponens (From p and If p then q infer q) seems like a plausible candidate for
a belief-forming method that is basic for most of us. For non-inferential beliefforming methods, plausible candidates for basicness are relying on perception and
on memory. These and other basic belief-forming methods are where epistemic
justification comes to an end13, and if the most radical kind of skepticism is to be
13
Why say that justification comes to an end with methods, and not with some beliefs, including
perhaps beliefs about the reliability of some methods? In “How Are Basic Belief-Forming Methods
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avoided, noticing this fact should not compromise our warrant in using them. If we
are ever justified in any of our beliefs, then, there must be basic belief-forming
methods we are epistemically justified in employing even though we do not – and
perhaps cannot – possess an epistemic justification for so employing them. (One
way of making this point is to think of these basic methods as default-reasonable,
methods that are, roughly, reasonable in the absence of a case either for or against
them.14)
If total inductive skepticism is to be avoided, there had better be some rules
of ampliative inference we are justified in using. And, given the desperate
prospects of grounding such rules in purportedly more basic rules of deductive
inference, it seems clear that there is going to be some rule of ampliative inference
that is going to be basic for us. Arguably, IBE is just such a rule. We infer to the
best explanation, not because doing so is licensed by some other, more basic,
belief-forming method, but rather basically. Indeed, other rules of inductive
inference – such as some version of Enumerative Induction – can plausibly be seen
as based on, derived from, some version of IBE.15
If this is so, then IBE is one place where epistemic justification comes to
an end. And this would mean, it seems, that there is something wrong about asking
Justified?” we hint at some reasons. But for my purposes here it is not necessary to recite them. As
noted in the Introduction, I prefer the version of the argument from deliberative indispensability
that has just one premise, rather than a version of it that has an additional premise, one about the
legitimacy of a move from indispensability to belief. If you want belief in the legitimacy of such
transitions to be basic, you just have to move to the latter argument. Nothing else, it seems to me,
needs to be changed.
14
For some discussion of default-reasonableness, see Field (2000).
15
For such claims, see, for instance, Harman (1965), Lycan (1985).
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for further justification for employing IBE. The question “Why are you
epistemically justified in employing IBE?” is then – like “Why are you
epistemically justified in using Modus Ponens or relying on perception?” – one I
cannot give a non-trivial answer to without taking back my commitment to them
as basic belief-forming methods. Something, it seems, is wrong with the question,
or at least with understanding it literally16.
If IBE is a basic belief-forming method for me, and if furthermore it is one
I am justified in employing as basic, then it is not required, for me to be justified in
employing it, that I antecedently form a justified belief regarding the loveliness of
the universe17. And this is undoubtedly a piece of good news, for it is hard to see
how we could arrive at a justified belief in the world’s loveliness without being
antecedently justified in employing some method of ampliative inference. 18 (This
is, of course, an analogue of the observation that underlies Hume’s critique of
induction.19) Indeed, if I can justifiably employ IBE without being antecedently
Lycan (1985), to whose discussion I’m very much indebted in this context, therefore suggests
reading the question differently, as a request (somewhat roughly) for a pragmatic justification of
employing IBE.
17
A worry remains, one that is perhaps best put in terms of the doubtful reliability of IBE, or the
doubtful connection between epistemic justification (if IBE is indeed justified) and truth. I address
this worry in section 2.7, below.
18
Unless, that is, we are willing to follow Leibniz and argue that God, in His perfection, has
created the world which is simplest in hypotheses (1686, section 6). I assume we are not. An
analogous line may be taken by some idealists or Kantians, who may argue that it is guaranteed a
priori that the world is lovely because we confer loveliness on it. (For an example of a
contemporary view of this sort, see Kitcher, 1989, 494-500). Whatever the merits of such a line,
clearly it will not do for the purpose of arguing – partly by analogy – for Robust Realism.
19
Fumerton (1992) explicitly notices this similarity.
16
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justified in believing that the world is lovely, perhaps I can then come to have a
justified belief that the universe is lovely by employing IBE20.
My main concern here is not with IBE but rather with arguments from
deliberative indispensability. Instead of giving a full argument for the basicness of
IBE, then, let me assume it for now, and return to arguments from deliberative
indispensability.
2.3
The Need for a Vindication
In chapter 1 I’ve argued that deliberative indispensability has to be taken seriously
if explanatory indispensability does. Now we can add the assumption that IBE is a
belief-forming method we are justified in employing as basic. If the analogy is not
going to break down, then, I should now argue that we are also justified in
employing arguments from deliberative indispensability as basic belief-forming
methods. But how does one argue for such a claim? In the case of IBE – a
reasonably well-known mode of reasoning, and arguably one we all have an
intuitive feel for – there is at least some intuitive support for taking it to be a
method we are justified in employing as basic. But surely no such support exists in
the case of arguments from deliberative indispensability, the first explicit instance
of which is presumably to be found in this essay. Nevertheless, if I was right in
Here’s a sketch of such an instance of IBE: We’ve been using – when doing science, and also in
our everyday commonsensical reasoning – IBE; and we’ve been tremendously successful in our
endeavors; but, if the world is not lovely, this success of ours would be utterly mysterious. So, by
IBE, the world is lovely.
20
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chapter 1, there would be something objectionably arbitrary in taking arguments
from explanatory, but not from deliberative, indispensability as justified basic
belief-forming methods.
What is needed, it seems, is a principled way of drawing the distinction
between belief-forming methods we are justified in employing as basic, and those
we are not justified in so employing. If you like to think of some methods as
default-reasonable, what is needed is a principled way of distinguishing between
methods that are, and those that are not, default reasonable.21 And this, I think, is
something we need anyway, regardless of the main argument of this thesis. For
among the many different possible belief-forming methods (even possibly basic
ones) that could be employed some, such as Modus Ponens, IBE, and relying on
perception, we are presumably justified in employing. Others, such as Affirming
the Consequent, Counter-Induction, and Inference to the Worst Explanation we
would presumably not be justified in employing.22 It is highly implausible that the
only thing distinguishing justified from unjustified basic belief-forming methods is
their justificatory status. It seems much more plausible that there is some other,
deeper, difference in virtue of which some basic methods are, and some are not,
21
Boghossian (2000, 239) makes this point as an objection to the idea of default-reasonableness,
because he sees no way in which the proponents of default-reasonableness can cope with this
challenge.
22
Affirming the Consequent is the rule of inference that licenses the inference from q and if p then
q, to p. Counter-Induction is the rule of inference that licenses the inference to the denial of any
claim (some reasonable version of) Enumerative Induction licenses, given the same initial beliefs.
Inference to the Worst Explanation licenses inferences to the worst explanation of some initially
believed propositions.
94
justified23. And ideally, we would want this distinction to be principled, one that
we would be reasonably happy to consider the ultimate justification-relevant
distinction. Perhaps such a distinction cannot after all be found. Perhaps we would
have to settle for a “brute-list” view of justified basic belief-forming methods. But
I see no reason for giving up so soon. And if a brute-list view can be avoided, if a
principled way of drawing the relevant distinction can be found, then equipped
with it we can turn back to arguments from deliberative indispensability and see
whether relying on them as basic satisfies the criteria for justification of basic
belief-forming methods.
If such a unified account of justified basic belief-forming methods can be
found, and if, furthermore, it presents belief-forming methods we’re justified in
employing as basic in a positive light, such that we’re happy to treat the account as
zeroing in on the ultimately justificatorily-relevant features of a belief-forming
method, I will say that the account is a vindication of our basic belief-forming
methods24. It will not be, of course, an epistemic justification of the employment
of these methods – nothing will be that, for they are methods we employ as basic.
Epistemic justifications really do come to an end somewhere, and basic belief23
This is a point made by Boghossian (unpublished).
Notice that I do not here commit myself to any reductive meta-epistemological view, according to
which the property of being epistemically justified is reducible to a non-epistemic, non-normative,
property. The point in the text is meant to be read as a point about a necessary connection – perhaps
supervenience of some sort – between the property of being epistemically justified and the nonepistemic property – presumably, not an objectionably disjunctive one – in virtue of which some
methods have the property of being justified.
24
I borrow the term from Feigl (1952) who coins it in a very similar context. Nevertheless, there
are some important differences between his use of the term and mine, differences I cannot discuss
here.
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forming methods are where they come to an end. But that doesn’t mean there’s no
legitimate concern to be addressed about them. The concern is that of vindicating
them, by drawing a principled distinction between them and methods we are not
justified in employing as basic, a distinction that presents them in a positive light.
Extensional adequacy is going to be one adequacy constraint on such a
purported vindication: If relying on perception and memory, or using Modus
Ponens, are not vindicated by a suggested account, or if relying on clairvoyance or
Affirming the Consequent are, this would count strongly against the suggested
account. So we’re looking for a non-ad-hoc, not list-like, vindication of basic
belief-forming methods that is at least reasonably extensionally adequate.
In what follows, I present such a vindicating account – the one developed
in more detail in Enoch and Schechter’s “How Are Basic Belief-Forming Methods
Justified?” – proceeding then to show that according to it arguments from
deliberative indispensability are ones we are, as a matter of a basic belief-forming
method, justified in relying on.
2.4
A Pragmatic Account of Vindication – The General Idea25
The view sketched here – and developed in much more detail in “How Are Basic Belief-Forming
Methods Reliable?” – is interestingly related to, and in thinking about it I am indebted to, Carnap's
distinction between internal and external questions in his (1956); Dretske's discussion of beliefforming methods that are justified in virtue of being unavoidable in his (2000); Feigl's distinction
between validation and vindication in his (1952; 1954 and 1963); Kant’s arguments for the
postulates of practical reason (mostly, but not only, in the Second Critique and the Canon of the
First Critique); Lycan’s discussion of ultimate epistemic norms in his (1985); Nagel's emphasis of
the unavoidability of basic logical and mathematical truths as a response to skepticism in his
(1997); and Reichenbach's pragmatic justification of Enumerative Induction in his (1938 and
25
96
Here is the intuition underlying the pragmatic account: What’s common to all the
examples of basic belief-forming methods is that their possible success is our only
(relevant) hope of successfully engaging in some extremely important project.
Think again of IBE. Now, the explanatory project is one of tremendous importance
for us. We are – essentially, in some sense – explaining, understanding, creatures,
creatures that try to make sense of themselves and the world around them.
Perhaps, then, the explanatory project is even a project we cannot disengage from
(so long as we are physically able to think). But even if we can, it seems we
shouldn’t. In an important sense, the explanatory project is non-optional for us.
Now, at least given our constitution, it seems our only hope of ever succeeding in
making the world intelligible is if (some version of) IBE is reliable. So, even
independently of an antecedently justified belief in the reliability of IBE, we are
pragmatically justified in employing it. This is so simply because if not even IBE
works, all is lost.
This, then, is the idea: Given a project which is non-optional in a relevant
sense, and given a belief-forming method that we, given our constitution, have to
employ if we are to have any chance of successfully engaging in that non-optional
project, we are prima facie epistemically justified in employing it as basic.
1949). In the more specific context of indispensability arguments, the view has some affinities with
Resnik’s understanding of indispensability arguments (in the philosophy of mathematics), in his
(1995) and (1997). I cannot, of course, pursue the relations between the suggested view and all
these sources in detail here (in the appendix, though, I do discuss Nagel and Dretske).
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Notice that the suggested account, although it doesn’t epistemically justify
the use of our basic belief-forming methods, nevertheless does justify them
pragmatically. And, given the rational weight of pragmatic justification (and given
the non-optionality of the relevant project), this line of thought also justifies the
rational force of our basic belief-forming methods. So the suggested account
amounts to a vindication in the above given sense: It draws a principled distinction
between methods that we are and those that we are not justified in employing as
basic in a way that presents the former in a rationally positive light.
Note also that this (initial) pragmatic account of the justification of basic
belief-forming methods is an account of a sufficient condition for epistemic
justification. All the underlying intuition directly supports is the claim that if a
basic belief-forming method is one we cannot avoid using if we are successfully to
engage in some non-optional project, then it is justified. I suspect that the
pragmatic account of vindication yields also a necessary condition for the
justification of basic belief-forming methods. But, seeing that the underlying
intuition as stated does not (directly) support the necessity requirement, and that
the sufficiency is all that is needed for my argument for Robust Realism, I will not
pursue this point further here.
2.5
Some Details
If the pragmatic vindication above is to be more than a sketch, some details need
to be filled in. Let me fill in here just two crucial kinds of detail: an account of the
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non-optionality of projects, and a clarification of the modalities involved in the
“otherwise-all-is-lost” intuition.26
2.5.1
Non-Optional Projects
Facing a valuable project, and a method without the success of which the project is
bound to fail, how are you (pragmatically) justified in proceeding? Of course, the
answer may depend on the likelihood of the relevant method actually succeeding
and on the value of the project (and on other factors as well). If, for instance, the
only method that could possibly lead to your successfully engaging in the relevant
project is itself highly unlikely to succeed, and if the project is not of that much
value anyway, it seems the rational thing to do is to discard the project. If, on the
other hand, the method is at least somewhat likely to succeed, the project of
sufficient value, and engaging with it not too costly, then the rational thing to do is
to employ the method (and hope for the best).
What does not depend on these factors, though, seems to be this: Given
such a project and such a method, you are pragmatically justified in either
employing the method, or discarding the project. Now, the pragmatic account
invokes the non-optionality of the relevant project in order to block the second
26
Further details can be found in “How Are Basic Belief-Forming Methods Justified?”.
99
disjunct, thus leaving only the first: If discarding the project is (in some sense) not
an option, then employing the relevant method is the only rationally open option.27
With this as the role of the non-optionality condition, what is its precise
characterization? Two kinds of case come to mind in which discarding a given
project is not a rationally open option. One sufficient condition for ruling out the
option of discarding the project is if the project is one we just (at least
psychologically, but perhaps metaphysically) cannot discard. So, for instance, if
persons are essentially thinking creatures, if we cannot (with our constitution and
abilities held fixed) discard the reasoning project, then the reasoning project is a
non-optional project in the relevant sense. And if without employing Modus
Ponens we cannot succeed in this project, we are pragmatically justified in
employing MP. Essential unavoidability is thus sufficient for the non-optionality
of projects.
In “How Are Basic Belief-Forming Methods Justified?”, we go on to
discuss another way for a project to be non-optional – a project is non-optional in
the relevant sense also if it is rationally non-optional, if it is such that, though we
can discard it, we rationally ought not to. But this is not something we need to
worry about here. For – as will become clearer later on – it is the previous way of
being non-optional, or being essentially unavoidable, that will be relevant for the
Here is an argument with a similar structure, attributed to Hobbes by Darwall (1992, 162): “As
agents, unavoidably viewing the world sub specie the end of self-preservation, our conclusions
regarding how our lives are “best preserved,” give rise to dictates, to ‘ought to do’s. Of course,
could we give up this end, the most we could conclude would be that we ought either to do what is
necessary for self-preservation or renounce it as end, but the latter, Hobbes believes, is not an
option that is open to us.”
27
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justification of the move from indispensability (explanatory and deliberative alike)
to belief.
2.5.2
The Modalities
When stating the intuition underlying the pragmatic account, I said that one is
pragmatically justified in employing a method when it is the only one that has any
chance of making one’s relevant non-optional endeavor successful. But what
exactly does this “the only one that has any chance” come to?
The intuitive idea can be understood as involving two requirements: First,
employing the relevant method, it must be possible successfully to engage in the
relevant project. Second, it must be impossible successfully to engage with it
otherwise.28 If a method satisfies these two requirements – and, it seems, only if it
satisfies them – then employing it gives a chance, and the only chance, of
succeeding. But now it is evident that, for the pragmatic account to be made
explicit, we need to say what the modalities involved are.
Let’s start by saying what they cannot be. They cannot be epistemic
possibilities. This is so, first, because having epistemic possibilities and
28
This needs to be qualified so as to take into account the following possibility: Assume two
distinct methods M1 and M2 that would each allow successful engagement with the relevant project.
Now suppose that if M2 is successful, M1 is likewise guaranteed to be successful (but not the other
way around). Then, though it is not impossible successfully to engage with the relevant project
without employing M1 (one can employ M2, which may also succeed), one is still pragmatically
justified in employing M1, for it is at least guaranteed to work if anything does. Strictly speaking,
then, what is needed is not the impossibility of success without employing the relevant method, but
the impossibility of success if that method fails. (This point mirrors Reichenbach’s arguments,
which were designed to show, not that Enumerative Induction is the only predictive method that
might succeed, but rather that it succeeds if any method does. See his 1938.) For my purposes here
I think I can safely ignore this complication, and so in what follows I do.
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impossibilities in our account may render it objectionably circular 29; and second,
because an epistemic understanding of the modalities may very well render the
pragmatic account extensionally inadequate. For if, in order to be justified in
relying on (e.g.) perception, it must be epistemically possible for me successfully
to engage in the explanatory project using perception, this may very well require –
depending on the details of an account of epistemic possibility – that I have some
beliefs about the explanatory project, perception, the possibility of my success,
and the like. But surely I need have no such higher-order beliefs just in order to be
justified in my reliance on perception.
A further constraint on the relevant modalities is as follows: The
impossibility of success without employing the relevant method must be at least as
strong as psychological impossibility. If it is even psychologically possible for me
to succeed in the explanatory project without employing IBE, the otherwise-all-islost pragmatic justification of IBE cannot stand.
Other than these two constraints on the relevant modalities – they cannot
be epistemic, and the relevant impossibility must be at least psychological – it is
not entirely clear how best to characterize them. Let me nevertheless make a
It doesn’t have to render it circular. Whether it does depends on how exactly one understands
epistemic possibilities and impossibilities. I do not know, for instance, whether there is a way of
explicating epistemic modalities that does not invoke the notion of epistemic justification. Even if
the account is rendered circular, however, it is not clear it is objectionably circular. Whether such
circularity is objectionable depends on the purposes of the pragmatic account. If it is read as having
reductive inspirations the circularity should be considered objectionable, but I do not intend it to be
so read. Be that as it may, invoking epistemic possibilities and impossibilities in an account of how
basic belief-forming methods are epistemically justified does at least threaten to be objectionably
circular, and so such modalities should be avoided if possible.
29
102
concrete suggestion here, one that manages, I think, both to avoid extensional
inadequacies, and to maintain the intuitive appeal of the original account (though
at a cost of significant vagueness). I suggest, then, that both modalities be read as
qualified metaphysical modalities or, as I will say, as pragmatic possibilities and
impossibilities. Thus, I suggest that for a belief-forming method to be such that
without it all is lost, there must be a sufficiently close metaphysically possible
world in which one successfully engages in the relevant project employing the
method; and there must be no sufficiently close metaphysically possible world in
which one successfully engages in the project without employing the method.
(More on the closeness metaphor shortly.)
The qualification to sufficiently close possible worlds is needed both for
extensional adequacy and in order to maintain the initial intuitive appeal of the
pragmatic account. Consider the case of IBE and the explanatory project. It seems
fairly clear that there are some – very far, perhaps – possible worlds in which very
different belief-forming methods render our explanatory endeavor successful.
Perhaps, for instance, some version of mystical contemplation can – on a
sufficiently far possible world – make everything intelligible for us in a flash. But
we want IBE to be a method we are justified in employing as basic. So if the
pragmatic account is to be extensionally adequate, a qualification to sufficiently
close possible worlds is in order. Furthermore, the very distant possibility of
success without employing the relevant method doesn’t seem to undermine the
otherwise-all-is-lost intuition. And if, even employing the method, the possibility
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of success is extremely distant, this does seem to undermine some of the force of
the intuition that pragmatically justifies us in employing the relevant method. So
the qualification is needed also in order to preserve the pragmatic account’s
intuitive appeal.
My account here relies on the obviously metaphorical apparatus of a
“closeness” metric between worlds. And there is no denying that this apparatus
gives rise to vagueness and (other) indeterminacy. But the sufficiently-close
qualifier is meant to capture an intuitive idea: In the context of a pragmatic
justification, we are only interested in those metaphysically possible worlds that
are not so far as to be rendered pragmatically irrelevant. So, for instance, it seems
plausible in this context to consider only those possible worlds in which our
constitution is held more or less fixed: other worlds are, of course, possible, but
they do not seem to be relevant for pragmatic considerations. Furthermore, the
closeness-metric is highly context-sensitive: for our (perhaps I should say my)
purposes here, a world that is very much like ours except a different sperm cell
“won the contest” and so not I but a genetic brother of mine was born, may be
further from the actual world than a world in which I exist, but that is otherwise as
different from the actual world as is possible.30
30
I owe this example to Tom Nagel. In the text I assume (as many today do) that (genetic) origin is
essential. I have my doubts about this doctrine, but will not pursue them here.
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Nevertheless, the idea of a sufficiently close possible world is, though
vague and highly context-dependent, not without content. And it will do, I think,
for my purposes here.31
2.5.3
Extensional Adequacy
Here, then, is the more precise formulation of the pragmatic criterion for beliefforming methods we are justified in employing as basic: A thinker T is prima facie
epistemically justified in employing a belief-forming method M as basic if there is
for T a non-optional project P such that it is pragmatically possible for T to
succeed in engaging in P using M, and it is pragmatically impossible for T to
succeed in engaging in P without using M.
We are, it seems, essentially reasoning creatures. The reasoning project is
essentially unavoidable, and so non-optional, for us. And it seems that, if we
cannot even use Modus Ponens (or some other deductive rule close enough to it),
this project of ours is doomed from the start to systematic failure. There is no
pragmatically possible world in which we successfully engage in the reasoning
project but do not use Modus Ponens. On the other hand, using Modus Ponens it
does seem possible to reason at least somewhat successfully. So according to the
suggested account, we are justified in using Modus Ponens as a basic rule of
inference. Affirming the Consequent, on the other hand, is not needed for
successful engagement with the reasoning project. Nor is it necessary, it seems to
31
If you dislike the closeness metaphor, feel free to speak of pragmatically relevant worlds instead.
105
me, for successful engagement with any other non-optional project. So the
pragmatic account does not yield an unwanted result that justifies employing
Affirming the Consequent as a basic rule of inference. (If the pragmatic account
supplies also with a necessary, and not just sufficient, condition for the
justification of basic belief-forming methods, then we can conclude that using
Affirming the Consequent as basic is unjustified.)
Perhaps it is not essential to us that we try to find out what is going on in
the world outside our minds, though I doubt it. But even if this project is not
essentially unavoidable, it is certainly rationally non-optional, and so non-optional.
If we rely on perception, there is at least some chance we can succeed in this
project. If we don’t, all is lost. So according to the suggested account we are
justified in employing as basic the method of relying on perception.
I will not discuss any further examples. More can and should be said here,
of course.32 But for my purposes here what has been said seems sufficient to give a
feel for how the account would apply to natural candidates for belief-forming
methods we are justified in employing as basic. It is time, then, to return to
arguments from deliberative indispensability.
2.6
Deliberation (and Explanation) Again
32
Particularly important here is the suspicion that this pragmatic account is vulnerable to the
difficulty that devastated Reichenbach’s pragmatic justification of induction, namely, that it lacks
the resources to distinguish between infinitely many different possible deductive and inductive
rules of inference and focus just on the (intuitively) right ones. We do what we can to address this
worry (and several others as well) in “How Are Basic Belief-Forming Methods Reliable?”.
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How does the pragmatic account of the vindication of basic belief-forming
methods apply, then, to arguments from explanatory and deliberative
indispensability?
Take explanatory indispensability first. (But remember that I discuss it here
for heuristic purposes; all that is needed for my argument for Robust Realism to go
through are arguments from deliberative indispensability. So even if you have
reservations about some of the details that follow – even if, for instance, you think
that the explanatory project is not essentially unavoidable but is rather rationally
non-optional, or perhaps is not even that – this does not threaten my main
argument.33) The explanatory project, it seems plausible to suppose, is essentially
unavoidable for us. We are, so it seems, essentially explaining creatures, we
cannot avoid trying to understand the world around us. But if even our best
explanations do not succeed in describing the world at least reasonably accurately
because the world is explanation-unfriendly, our explanatory project is bound to
fail. Unless arguments from explanatory indispensability – instances of IBE – are
at least somewhat successful, then, we cannot successfully engage in the
explanatory project. If, on the other hand, they are at least reasonably successful,
we can. So we are pragmatically justified in using arguments from explanatory
indispensability and, if the pragmatic account of vindication of basic belief-
This is also why I don’t discuss some well-known critiques of IBE, such as van Fraassen’s
(1989, chapters 6-7).
33
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forming methods is true, then we are also epistemically justified in using such
arguments as a basic method.
We are also, it seems plausible to say, essentially deliberative creatures.
We cannot avoid wondering what to do, asking ourselves what it is that makes
most sense for us to do. The deliberative project is plausibly considered to be
essentially unavoidable for us (and quite possibly for all rational creatures). Now,
this claim needs support, and it will get some support in chapter 3, after an account
of deliberation is presented. For now, though, let us assume that the deliberative
project is indeed essentially unavoidable for us.34 Now, if some things – entities,
properties, kinds of fact – that are indispensable for deliberation do not exist, we
cannot successfully engage in the deliberative project. So, if arguments from
deliberative indispensability systematically fail because the universe is not
deliberation-friendly, all is lost35. If, on the other hand, arguments from
deliberative indispensability are at least reasonably successful, it does seem
possible – pragmatically possible – for us successfully to deliberate. So, given the
pragmatic vindication of basic belief-forming methods, and assuming that the
deliberative project is essentially unavoidable, we are epistemically justified in
Remember – even if the deliberative project is just rationally non-optional, this should suffice for
my argument to go through. But in chapter 3 I argue that it is essentially unavoidable.
35
Suppose we realize that there are no normative truths after all. Is really all lost? Can’t we
deliberate by pretending that there are? I return to this question in chapter 3. Let me just quickly
state here that I think we cannot. We can, of course, pretend to deliberate (and this is why
sometimes I make the deliberative-indispensability point by saying that normative truths are
necessary for sincere deliberation). But the project that is (I argue) essentially unavoidable is the
deliberative, not the pretend-deliberative, one.
34
108
employing arguments from deliberative indispensability as basic belief-forming
methods.
Think again of the objection with which I started this chapter. By showing
that something is needed for deliberation (or explanation), my interlocutor said, I
showed at most that it would be nice if it were the case, or that we are
pragmatically justified in acting as if this was the case; what I didn’t do, the
objection continued, was give any reason – any epistemic reason – to believe this
was the case. We are now finally in a position to answer this objection:
Indispensability arguments – arguments from deliberative as well as explanatory
indispensability – are basic belief-forming methods. They are (one of the places)
where epistemic justification comes to an end. So no reason needs to be given why
we should take them seriously. Being justified belief-forming methods, they give
reasons to believe their conclusion, and there is no need to give a further argument
supporting them. Still, we do need a way of drawing a principled distinction
among (possible) basic belief-forming methods, between those we are, and those
we are not, justified in employing. Only with such a distinction at hand, can we
evaluate the claim that arguments from deliberative indispensability are justified
as basic belief-forming methods. And, given the plausibility of the pragmatic
account of the vindication of basic belief-forming methods, arguments from
deliberative (and plausibly also explanatory) indispensability do enjoy this status.
In short: Relying on arguments from deliberative indispensability is a
belief-forming method we’re justified in employing as basic, and so one we do not
109
owe an epistemic justification for using; and, being a method we’re justified in
employing, it is (epistemic) reason-giving. So by presenting an argument for
Robust Realism from deliberative indispensability I will – pace my interlocutor –
have given an epistemic reason to believe Robust Realism.
2.7
A Remaining Worry about Truth and Reliability
A worry remains. For whatever exactly epistemic justification comes to, surely it
has to be at least closely related to truth and reliability. And now it may seem as if
I’ve saved the status of indispensability arguments as epistemically justified only
at the price of severing the necessary tie between epistemic justification and truth.
“You may use words as you wish,” someone may argue, “and so you can present
the pragmatic account as a stipulation for a technical term ‘epistemic justification’.
But don’t pretend this is the justification we have been concerned about all along.
For a method can satisfy the conditions of the pragmatic account without being at
all reliable, without being at all likely to yield true beliefs. Perhaps you’ve shown
that there is some sense in which we are rationally justified in relying on
indispensability arguments. But this is not a sense that entitles us to the belief that
their conclusions are true.”
There are here, really, two distinct objections. The first can be dealt with
fairly quickly: It argues that all I’ve shown, at most, is that we are pragmatically
justified in employing indispensability arguments, but that I haven’t shown that we
are epistemically justified in so doing. But this is not how the pragmatic account is
110
to be understood. True, I have emphasized the pragmatic value of employing a
method when doing so is your only chance of avoiding failure. But this story was
not meant as an (epistemic) justification of the relevant belief-forming methods,
but rather as a vindication of them, as showing that they are belief-forming
methods that do not need justification in order to be justified.
The second, related, objection is more troubling. This is an objection to the
pragmatic account as a purported vindication, and it proceeds by drawing attention
to an important feature of epistemic justification that seems inconsistent with the
pragmatic way of drawing the distinction between belief-forming methods we are
and those we are not justified in employing as basic. This is the relation –
whatever exactly its details – between epistemic justification and truth.
True, on the pragmatic account the relation between epistemic justification
and truth is not as straightforward as may be thought. Nevertheless, the pragmatic
account is consistent with the thought that, at least in reasonably fortunate
circumstances, epistemic justification and truth are reliably correlated. (And we
wouldn’t want a stronger relation anyway: Think, for instance, of your Brain-in-aVat counterpart, whose beliefs are presumably justified if yours are, but are
nevertheless radically unreliable36,37.)
36
In her or his world, at least. Depending on how you individuate belief-forming mechanisms and
on your understanding of reliability, and assuming that the methods you and your BIV-counterpart
use are at least reasonably reliable in the actual world, you may want to say that your BIVcounterpart is using reliable mechanisms alright, but she’s radically unlucky in using them (hers
are, as it were, exactly the rare circumstances in which these reliable mechanisms fail). I find it
more natural to say that her methods are unreliable, and her misfortune consists in this being so
through no (epistemic) fault of hers. But I cannot seriously discuss these matters here.
111
Let us suppose creatures whose essentially unavoidable projects are
doomed to fail, no matter how they go about engaging in them.38 Having one’s
most important essentially unavoidable projects systematically fail cannot be, it
seems plausible to speculate, conducive to survival and reproduction.39 If this is
so, we should not be surprised not to find too many such creatures around. And we
should expect the creatures we do find to have been lucky, in that their essentially
unavoidable projects are not doomed from the start to systematic failure. 40 So we
would expect such creatures to have reasonably successful methods of engaging
with these projects. Given the pragmatic value of having reasonably reliable
beliefs, we would expect their belief-forming methods to be at least reasonably
reliable. Again, this is so simply because the creatures whose basic belief-forming
methods were radically unreliable are probably no longer with us.
The same applies, it seems, to us as well. We have this (speculative)
evolutionary reason to believe that our basic belief-forming methods are at least
reasonably reliable.41 Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been doing as well as we do.
If Putnam’s semantic-externalism reply to Brain-in-a-Vat skepticism works, then the beliefs of
the Brain-in-a-Vat in Putnam’s scenario are not unreliable after all. But then we can think of some
of your other BIV-counterparts, those in scenarios to which Putnam’s reply does not apply (such as
when you’ve only recently become a BIV).
38
Perhaps this is even true of some of our own projects, such as perhaps that of self-preservation.
Derek Parfit suggested to me that Hobbes’ view is that this is a project doomed from the start to
failure that we nevertheless cannot avoid engaging in.
39
The speculative evolutionary story here is inspired by – though it is also importantly different
from – the discussions by Lycan (1985) and by Lipton (1991, 122-132).
40
Notice that I do not here assume a relativism of sorts about essentially unavoidable projects. For
all I say here, it is quite possible that some projects – again the deliberative and explanatory ones
look like the obvious candidates – are essentially unavoidable for all rational creatures.
41
An evolutionary story such as the one in the text does not support a claim about the optimality of
our belief-forming methods, but that is perfectly all right, as we don’t have any reason to think they
37
112
Notice that although relying on (speculations based on) empirical science, I
am not here making my argument – a vindication of, among other things, the very
method of empirical science – objectionably circular. For remember the dialectical
position: I have already argued for the pragmatic account of the vindication of
basic belief-forming methods. I am here facing an objection to that account, a
claim that it cannot accommodate something that needs accommodating, namely,
the relation between epistemic justification and truth. If I can show – now already
assuming the account – that the relevant data can be accommodated from within
the pragmatic account, the objection is rendered powerless. Had I relied on the
evolutionary speculations here as positive support for the pragmatic account,
circularity would have ensued. Using it as I do only as a reply to an objection that
is, as it were, further down the road from the positive argumentation supporting
the pragmatic account, no circularity threatens.42
The relation between epistemic justification and reliability gestured at
above is not, you will notice, just compatible with the pragmatic account of beliefforming methods we are justified in employing as basic; it naturally flows from it.
are optimal. As Lycan (1985, 158) puts it: “All’s for nearly the best, in this next best of all possible
worlds.”.
42
The speculative story in the text may after all be seen as lending the pragmatic account some
positive support, in the following two ways: First, had the scientific method – vindicated as it is by
the pragmatic account – yielded results that are incompatible (or even just in serious tension) with
it, there would have been something self-defeating about the pragmatic account. The speculative
reasoning in the text begins to show that such self-defeat is unlikely. Second, the reasoning in the
text relies on the scientific method, plausibly taken to be a basic belief-forming method. What else
is needed for epistemic justification of the relevant belief (here, in the correlation between
epistemic justification and truth)? Circularity would have been a problem here if the pragmatic
account had been suggested as an epistemic justification of, for instance, the scientific method.
Seeing that it is not so offered, there is no danger of circularity.
113
So it is simply not true to say that the pragmatic account severs the tie between
truth and epistemic justification.
Still, it may be thought that this relation between epistemic justification
and truth is not quite as intimate as we would expect. Perhaps, for instance, we
would expect the relation to be analytic, or a priori, or at least necessary, whereas
on the suggestion above it depends on the contingencies of natural selection. But
we already know that the relation between epistemic justification and reliability
can be held hostage to the contingent facts – the example of your epistemically
justified but radically unreliable BIV-counterpart suffices to show that. So the
pragmatic vindication of basic belief-forming methods gives just the tentative
relation we should expect between epistemic justification and truth.
2.8
Scorekeeping
Relying on indispensability arguments is thus a belief-forming method we are
justified in employing as basic. In other words, if something’s being the case is
instrumentally indispensable to an essentially unavoidable (and so intrinsically
indispensable) project, that is (epistemic) reason to believe it is the case. So what
remains to be done if my argument for Robust Realism is to be complete is to
present an account of deliberation that will show that the deliberative project is
essentially unavoidable for us, and that irreducibly normative truths are
instrumentally indispensable for it. This is the task of the two following chapters.
114
Before concluding, though, I want to mention two fallback positions.
Assuming you are not convinced by the argument in this chapter, what remains of
my argument for Robust Realism?
First, given the argument of chapter 1, you still face the choice between
accepting arguments from deliberative indispensability and rejecting even
arguments from explanatory indispensability. So even if you don’t accept the
argument in this chapter regarding how it is that indispensability arguments confer
epistemic justification on their conclusion, still you’re not at liberty to discard my
argument from deliberative indispensability unless you are either willing to discard
IBE with it43, or to defend a principled distinction between the two modes of
reasoning.
Second, even if unconvinced about the status of indispensability arguments
as conferring epistemic justification on their conclusion, you may very well be
convinced by the force of the otherwise-all-is-lost reasoning that we are at least
pragmatically justified in employing indispensability arguments. So, even if
unconvinced by my argument that we are epistemically justified in believing
Robust Realism, you may still agree that we are at least pragmatically justified in
believing, or in accepting or assuming, or in acting as if we believe, Robust
43
And notice that all instances of IBE (that are not subsumable under some other, purportedly
acceptable, rule of inference) are at stake. So if you think – following what seems to have been van
Fraassen’s view in his (1980), but no longer in his (1989) – that IBE is all well and good so long as
the conclusion is only about observables, you already accept some indispensability arguments, and
unless you’re willing to take Robust Realism on board, you have already incurred the commitment
to defend a distinction between explanatory indispensability (in the cases where IBE is legitimate)
and deliberative indispensability.
115
Realism. Now, this is much weaker than the conclusion I want. But it is not
without significance altogether.44
2.A
Other Ways of Rendering Unavoidability Useful
The unavoidability of the deliberative (and explanatory) project thus plays an
important role in my argument. In this appendix, I briefly discuss other attempts at
making epistemological use of unavoidability, distinguishing them from mine, and
explaining why I think mine is the more promising one.45
2.A.1 Nagel and Self-Defeat
In The Last Word (1997) Nagel repeatedly accuses sufficiently ambitious skeptics
of something like self-defeat. Nagel rightly notes, for instance, that in order to
launch a skeptical attack on logic, the skeptic is going to have to use some logic.
Nagel then argues that the skeptic’s dialectical position is thus rendered unstable.
Logic, and – perhaps more generally – Reason herself, are simply unavoidable;
even the skeptic, while launching her skeptical attack, still reasons. So skepticism
about logic and Reason is unstable. So our use of logic is immune to global
skeptical challenge.46
The fallback position in this paragraph is especially powerful, of course, against someone – like
Harman – who wants to give an ultimately pragmatic account of epistemic justification.
45
Lycan (1985, 146) also quickly distinguishes his view – to which mine is fairly close – from
views of the kind of the first two I discuss below (he doesn’t discuss the specific texts I do; they
were written after his 1985). Lycan does not discuss the third view I discuss below.
46
Price seems to have entertained a line of thought rather similar to Nagel’s. See the discussion in
Schneewind (1998, 383).
44
116
An analogous line can be pursued with regard to deliberation (though
nowhere, as far as I know, does Nagel pursue it; in The Last Word he targets only
global skeptics, skeptics about reason or thought in general). Even as my
interlocutor launches arguments against the deliberative project or the beliefs
engaging in it commits us to, she cannot avoid deliberating (in a somewhat
generalized, but naturally generalized, sense): She still asks herself normative
questions, questions about what theory we have most reason to believe, what view
it makes best sense to take on these things, and so on. So – so it may be argued in a
Nagelean spirit – skepticism about the prospects of successfully engaging with the
deliberative project is unstable. The deliberative project and the commitments it
comes with are immune to skeptical challenge.47
For Nagel, then, the unavoidability of certain modes of thinking makes
skepticism about them unstable. In my argument, on the other hand, unavoidability
plays a role in supporting positive arguments from indispensability (and other
basic belief-forming methods), with no need to mention possible skeptical
positions. Furthermore, for Nagel’s line to work it is necessary that the relevant
skeptical position be rendered (loosely speaking) incoherent. My use of
unavoidability commits me to no such thing.48
47
In the context of debates over IBE, Churchland (1985) makes a similar point against van
Fraassen.
48
The presentation of Nagel’s view and the discussion of the differences between our views are
based on my reading of his (1997). The differences between my view and Nagel’s actual (and
current) views on these matters are in fact – as has become clear to me in conversation – much less
significant.
117
And this, I think, is a significant advantage of my use of unavoidability
compared to Nagel’s. For it is simply not true that the skeptic’s position is
rendered unstable by the use skeptics make of methods they end up arguing
against. Skeptical arguments – some, at least, including the ones most relevant
here – are best seen, I think, as ad hominem arguments, with all of us as the
relevant homini. The skeptic is entitled to use in her argumentation all beliefforming methods I am committed to accepting as legitimate. And if, using these
methods, she can support a conclusion I am not willing to swallow – one stating,
for instance, that the very methods she used are not ones we are justified in using –
then it is I who am in trouble, not her. Think of the situation as an analogue of a
reductio ad absurdum: A good reductio argument assumes a certain claim only to
prove it false. And just like a sound (reductio) argument establishing that a certain
claim is false may suppose that claim, a sound argument concluding that a certain
method is incorrect or unjustified may employ that very method. If a beliefforming method can be turned against itself in this way, surely this is a problem
for its proponents, not its enemies. That the skeptic cannot avoid using the relevant
controversial method only shows that she is in the same epistemological boat as
the rest of us (surely, not a surprise). It doesn’t show that that method is reliable or
justified.49
Here is Nietzsche again: “The subjective compulsion not to contradict here is a biological
compulsion: the instinct for the utility of inferring as we do infer is part of us, we almost are this
instinct – But what naiveté to extract from this a proof that we are therewith in possession of a
“truth in itself”! – Not being able to contradict is proof of an incapacity, not of ‘truth.’” (1967,
section 515).
49
118
The same goes for deliberation. If the (somewhat generalized) deliberative
project can be turned against itself in a similar fashion – as would be the case if the
theory it made most sense to believe was one incompatible with the commitments
of all normative thought – this would be a problem for me, not for the deliberationskeptic. So Nagelean unavoidability cannot yield the positive results I am after.
2.A.2 Dretske and Ought-Implies-Can
Dretske (2000) argues that certain methods of forming beliefs are unavoidable. He
emphasizes that, for instance, forming beliefs in accordance with our perceptual
experiences is not something we can avoid doing. Of course, in special
circumstances – if, for instance, we believe we’re hallucinating – we may be able
to screen off the influence of perception on our beliefs. But unless the
circumstances are special, when we (apparently) perceive a computer monitor in
front of us, we cannot but “move” to the belief that there is a computer monitor in
front of us.
This is – even if true – only a psychological fact about us. To get the
normative conclusion he is after – namely, that we are justified in relying on
perception, using MP, and so on – Dretske relies (598-9) on an ought-implies-can
principle: We cannot avoid relying on perception in forming beliefs; but ought
119
implies can; so it is not the case that we (epistemically) ought to avoid relying on
perception; so relying on perception is (epistemically) permissible.50
Two differences between Dretske’s use of unavoidability and mine
immediately suggest themselves51: First, all that Dretske can account for is – as he
explicitly concedes – the permissibility of employing the relevant methods. An
ought-implies-can principle can never support a judgment of requiredness, only of
permissibility. My argument, if sound, supports a stronger conclusion: It doesn’t
just show that us Robust Realists are not blameworthy for our belief in Robust
Realism formed on the basis of an unavoidable argument from deliberative
indispensability. Rather, it aspires to show that everyone ought to believe Robust
Realism, or at least has strong reason so to believe. So this is one reason why
Dretske’s use of unavoidability won’t do for my purposes.
Second, Dretske’s argument essentially relies on a highly questionable
ought-implies-can principle. Notice that the principle he needs for his argument to
go through is something like an epistemic-ought-implies-psychological-can
principle. It is difficult to see what the justification for this principle is. I suspect
that this principle is – Dretske’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding –
A similar ought-implies-can principle is what does the underlying work in Boghossian’s
meaning-based account of the justification of Modus Ponens, or so, at least, Schechter and I argue
in “Meaning and Justification: The Case of Modus Ponens” (unpublished).
51
A third difference, one not discussed in the text, is that in Dretske’s account the unavoidability is
a part of the epistemological story regarding the justification of the relevant belief-forming
methods, whereas in my account the epistemological story comes to an end with basic beliefforming methods, and the unavoidability of certain projects comes in only as a part of the
vindication of those methods. But this difference – important though it is for general theoretical
purposes – is not as important in order to understand why it is that Dretske’s account cannot be
used for my purposes.
50
120
pragmatically motivated after all52. If so, then there is something more basic about
the pragmatic account, and the move via an ought-implies-can principle is an
unnecessary weakening of the argument.
For these reasons, then, I think that the pragmatic account presented above
puts unavoidability to better use than Dretske’s. Nevertheless, if the specific
ought-implies-can principle Dretske needs for his argument to go through can be
defended (and, as mentioned above, I doubt this is the case), then his line is an
important fallback position for me: Even if my pragmatic vindication of arguments
from deliberative indispensability does not work, still it may at least be
permissible for us to employ them and believe their conclusions.
2.A.3 Velleman and Constitutive Aims
In a series of articles53 Velleman develops an account of reasons for action and
belief that grounds them in what he labels action’s and belief’s “constitutive
aims”. Belief, for instance, has truth as its constitutive aim: Beliefs are governed
by mechanisms aimed at the truth. A state that is not so governed, that does not
have truth as its constitutive aim, cannot qualify as a belief, however similar to
belief it may be in other respects. And similarly for action, whose constitutive aim
is self-knowledge of a very specific kind. So long as you believe, or act, Velleman
52
Dretske considers the option of going pragmatic and rejects it in a quick paragraph (2000, p.
598), because he does not think pragmatic justification can ever give rise to epistemic justification.
With “giving rise” properly understood, I, of course, differ.
53
Many of the papers collected in Velleman (2000a) are relevant here, as is the introduction to this
collection. See especially “The Possibility of Practical Reason” and “On the Aim of Belief”.
121
argues, you are necessarily guided by belief’s and action’s constitutive aims. And
this is the source of the reasons for belief and action that apply to you.54
But why, it seems reasonable to ask, should I “play the game” of belief and
action in the first place? Why not play other games, or not play any game at all?
What reason can Velleman give me to play these games, given that these games
are the source of all reasons? Nowhere that I know of does Velleman explicitly
address this question.55 But the following answer suggests itself (and indeed, it is
one Velleman himself hinted at in conversation and correspondence). The “games”
of belief and action, Velleman can argue, are ones we cannot avoid playing, they
are unavoidable for us. Opting out of them is just not an option for us. So
unavoidability again comes to the fore, and moreover in order to play a role rather
similar to the one it plays in my own argument.
Let me, then, assume for the sake of argument that the details in
Velleman’s argument can be (and perhaps already have been) filled in
successfully, and draw attention to just one important difference between
Velleman’s way here and mine56. In Velleman’s account unavoidability plays a
metaphysical role, whereas in mine its role is purely epistemological. For
I believe Gewirth’s view is rather similar to Velleman in the ways relevant here. This is perhaps
clearest in Gewirth (1993, 502-3). And Korsgaard (1999, e.g. at 15) pursues a very similar line
(though I am unsure as to how this squares with her official Constructivism discussed in secton 4.5,
in chapter 4).
55
Railton (1997, 75-79), when considering a similar line to Velleman’s, does raise this question. If
I understand him correctly, though, he eventually despairs on giving it a fully satisfactory answer
(ibid., 79).
56
For discussions relevant to the point about to be made in this paragraph I am much indebted to
Pete Graham.
54
122
Velleman hopes to ground reasons in constitutive aims of unavoidable activities,
he believes (if I understand him correctly) that reasons’ very existence depends on
these constitutive aims and on the unavoidability of the relevant activities. If we
hadn’t been unavoidably thinkers and agents, or if belief and action hadn’t had
constitutive aims, we would not have had any reasons for belief and action.
Unavoidability plays a completely different role in my account, according to
which all that depends on the unavoidability of the relevant project is our reason
to believe that there are reasons and normative truths, not their very existence. Had
the deliberative project not been unavoidable in the relevant sense, my argument
for Robust Realism would not have gone through, and so presumably we would
have had no reason to believe in irreducibly normative truths (not this reason,
anyway). But they would still have existed. Again the analogy with explanatory
indispensability is helpful: Had the explanatory project not been a non-optional
one for us, we would not, perhaps, have been justified in inferring to the best
explanation, and so we would have had no reason to believe that there are
electrons. But the electrons themselves would still have been there.57
Thus, on my account reasons and normative truths are metaphysically on
firmer grounds. And this, I submit, is a reason to prefer my account here to
Velleman’s.
57
More on this in section 3.4.13, in chapter 3.
123
Chapter III
Deliberation1
My argument for Robust Realism makes rather bold assumptions about
deliberation. In this chapter I try to support them by developing an account of
deliberation that shows them to be true.
Two things need to be true of deliberation if the argument for Robust
Realism is to go through: First, deliberation must be intrinsically indispensable for
us. If the argument of the previous chapter is sound, sufficient for establishing that
would be to show that deliberation is essentially unavoidable; that we are such that
we – at least psychologically, and possibly also metaphysically – cannot avoid
deliberation. (In chapter 2 I also briefly mentioned the possibility of a project’s
rational unavoidability – being such that, even if we can, we ought not to avoid
engaging in it – as sufficient for intrinsic indispensability. Although this could be a
relevant fall-back position for my argument – even if deliberation is not essentially
unavoidable, it may still be rationally unavoidable – I’ll put this possibility to one
side, and argue for deliberation being essentially unavoidable.) Second, irreducibly
1
For helpful conversations and comments I thank Stephanie Beardsman, Pete Graham, Tom Nagel,
Derek Parfit, Josh Schechter and Mark Schroeder.
124
normative truths must be indispensable for deliberation. The task of this chapter,
then, is to develop an account of deliberation that satisfies both these desiderata.
Unfortunately, these desiderata seem to pull in opposite directions. The
thicker one’s account of deliberation – the more one is willing to build into it as
necessary conditions – the more plausible it is that irreducibly normative truths are
indispensable for deliberation, but the less plausible it is that we are essentially
deliberative; the thinner one’s understanding of deliberation, the more plausible it
is that we’re essentially deliberative, but the less plausible it is that deliberation
requires irreducibly normative truths. In this chapter I try to steer a middle course.
I try to develop an account of deliberation that is both sufficiently thick (to require
irreducibly normative truths) and sufficiently thin (so that it is plausible that we’re
essentially deliberative).
My discussion will be phenomenological in character: Both in
characterizing deliberation and in arguing for the relevant theses of intrinsic and
instrumental indispensability, I will rely primarily on first-personal considerations,
considerations of what it is like to deliberate. It is here, then, that my argument for
Robust Realism is – as promised in the introduction – a descendant of traditional
claims that only realism (of one kind or another) is compatible with the relevant
phenomenology.
Different people mean different things by “deliberation”, and so it is
necessary to start by clarifying what I’ll mean by it. This is what I do in section
3.1. The characterization of deliberation to be presented may be treated by the
125
skeptical reader as a stipulation – regardless of how others use the term, this is
how I’ll use it throughout. It is deliberation-thus-understood that I will argue
requires irreducibly normative truths, it is deliberation-thus-understood that I will
argue we cannot avoid engaging in. Nevertheless, I think my phenomenological
characterization of deliberation bears sufficient similarity to our pretheoretical
understanding of deliberation (and to some other theoretical suggestions) so that it
need not be seen as a mere stipulation, and so that previous discussions of
deliberation are not rendered irrelevant. Having characterized deliberation, I then
move on to argue for the claims of instrumental and intrinsic indispensability in
sections 3.2 and 3.3 respectively. In section 3.4 I address several objections to my
understanding of deliberation and what follows from it, filling in along the way
some details of my understanding of deliberation. In section 3.5 I briefly mention
two other argumentative strategies that resemble mine, mostly in order to
distinguish them from mine and explain why I think the latter is the better way to
go. In the concluding section (3.6) I again do some scorekeeping, noting what has
already been done, and what remains to be done if the defense of Robust Realism
is to be completed.
Two further preliminary points: First, the phenomenological discussion
will focus on deliberation about action, on (roughly speaking) attempts to decide
what to do. I will not discuss here other possible cases of deliberation, most
notably attempts to decide (in some sense of “decide”) what to believe. This is not
because I am convinced that analogous points cannot be made regarding that case
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as well. Indeed, I tend to believe that the phenomenology of attempts to decide
what to believe is – though different from that of trying to decide what to do in
important ways – similar to it in the crucial ways for my argument to go through.
But the case of belief involves several complexities that the case of action does not
involve (like the purported implausibility of belief-voluntarism, and the possibility
of suspension of judgment), and so the discussion of deliberation about actions
promises to be simpler (for my purposes, at least). As Robust Realism is merely an
existential thesis – stating only that there are some irreducibly normative truths – I
think focusing on the case of action should not be objectionable.
Second, I want to emphasize that relatively little work needs to be done by
this chapter, and that even less work needs to be done by the arguments in sections
3.2 and 3.3. These two sections need not do more than support the claim that our
commonsensical understanding of deliberation satisfies the two desiderata
mentioned above. If they succeed in doing that, then unless there is some reason to
reject this commonsensical understanding, we should take it at face value. And it
is the task of section 3.4 to show that there is no such reason. (This, by the way,
explains the somewhat cumbersome structure of this chapter, with a rather brief
positive argument and a very large number of objections. For this structure reflects
the real nature of the argument. In the first three sections I give what seems to me
to be a straightforward understanding of what goes on when we deliberate. These
sections place the burden on those arguing against the straightforward
understanding of deliberation. Unless some objection to the straightforward
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account succeeds, then, we should take deliberation and its phenomenology at face
value.)
Even the chapter as a whole, though, need not establish that deliberation
requires irreducibly normative truths. For at the end of this chapter the possibility
remains that some other, non-robust-realist, view can somehow allow for genuine
deliberation. This possibility is not challenged until chapter 4. The current chapter
thus need only establish the qualified result: Unless some alternative view can
allow for what is needed for deliberation – normative truths, or something very
close to them – Robust Realism will have been successfully defended.
3.1
Deliberation Phenomenologically Characterized
Law school turned out not to be all you thought it would be, and you no longer
find the prospects of a career in law as exciting as you once did. For some reason
you don’t seem to be able to shake off that old romantic dream of studying
philosophy. It seems now is the time to make a decision (though, as your own
experience shows well enough, there is no guarantee that a decision now will be
the end of the matter). And so, alone, or in the company of some others you find
helpful in such circumstances, you deliberate. You try to decide whether to join a
law firm, apply to graduate school in philosophy, or perhaps do some other thing
altogether.
The decision is of some consequence, and so you resolve to put some
thought into it. You try to find answers to the questions you ask yourself: Will I be
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happy practicing law? Will I be happier doing philosophy? What are my chances
of becoming a good lawyer? A good philosopher? How much money does a
reasonably successful lawyer make, and how much less does a reasonably
successful philosopher make? If I go into philosophy, will the price I’ll pay in
economic comfort be outweighed by better intellectual fulfillment and a lifestyle
which suits me more? Does the academic lifestyle suit me more? Am I, so to
speak, more of a philosopher or more of a lawyer? As a lawyer, will I be able to
make a significant political difference? How important is the political difference I
can reasonably expect to make? How important is it to try and make any political
difference? Should I give any weight to my father’s expectations, and to the
disappointment he will feel if I fail to become a lawyer? Am I willing to put the
necessary effort into pursuing graduate studies in philosophy at this stage of my
life? How strongly do I really want to do philosophy? And so on, and so forth.
Even with answers to most – even all – of these questions, there remains the most
important question of all. “All things considered”, you ask yourself, “what makes
best sense for me to do? When all is said and done, what should I do? What shall I
do?”2
When engaging in this deliberation, when asking yourself these questions,
you assume, so it seems to me, that they have answers. These answers may be very
vague, allow for some indeterminacy, and so on. But at the very least you assume
that some possible answers to these questions are better than others. You try to
2
More on the distinction between “What should I do?” and “What shall I do?” in section 3.4.4.
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find out what the (better) answers to these questions are, and how they interact so
as to answer the arch-question, the one about what it makes best sense for you to
do. You are not trying to create these answers. Of course, in an obvious sense what
you will end up doing is up to you (or so, at least, both you and I are supposing
here). And in another – less obvious sense – perhaps the answer to some of these
questions is also up to you. Perhaps, for instance, how happy practicing law will
make you is at least partly up to you. But, when trying to make up your mind, it
doesn’t feel like just trying to make an arbitrary choice. This is just not what it is
like to deliberate. Rather, it feels like trying to make the right choice. It feels like
trying to find the best solution, or at least a good solution, or at the very least one
of the better solutions, to a problem you’re presented with. What you’re trying to
do, it seems to me, is to make the decision it makes most sense for you to make.
Making the decision is up to you. But which decision is the one it makes most
sense for you to make is not. This is something you are trying to discover, not
create.3 Or so, at the very least, it feels like when deliberating.
This, then, is the kind of process I’ll use “deliberation” to denote. It is the
process of trying to make the decision it makes most sense for one to make. And,
as the discussion above suggests, it has a distinctive phenomenological feel.
“In deliberation we are trying to arrive at conclusions that are correct in virtue of something
independent of our arriving at them.” (Nagel, 1986, 149).
3
130
It will be helpful – in clarifying how I understand deliberation, in
preempting misunderstanding, and in facilitating the discussion of later sections –
to distinguish deliberation from other, related, processes.
One has already been alluded to: It is the making of an arbitrary choice.
You’re in the supermarket, intending to get a cereal. You may have good reasons
to pick Mini-Wheats rather than Raisin Bran (you just don’t like Raisin Bran that
much), perhaps even one brand over another (the Kellogg’s one is usually fresher).
But you have no reason, it seems, to pick one package of Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats
over another, and you know you don’t. Of course, you have reason to pick one
rather than none at all. But you’ve already decided you’ll pick one rather than
none at all. All that remains to be done now is just to pick a specific package
arbitrarily. I take it to be uncontroversial that sometimes we just pick4. And it is
one lesson of the unfortunate fate of Buridan’s ass that picking arbitrarily may
often be the rational thing to do5. But it is clear, I think, that the phenomenology of
arbitrary picking is very different from that of deliberation, of trying to make the
right decision. Just compare what it is like to deliberate about whether to practice
law or to apply to graduate school in philosophy to what it is like to just pick one
For a discussion of such cases – and for references to some who question what I say in the text is
uncontroversial – see Ullmann-Margalit and Morgenbesser (1977), from which the example is
taken (though somewhat modified). They also introduce some helpful terminology: They suggest a
distinction between choosing (for reasons) and picking (arbitrarily, in the kind of case described in
the text), with “selecting” being the generic term. For similar distinctions see Darwall (1983, 69),
Kolnai (1962, 213) and Railton (1997, 64, fn 12).
5
The interesting questions regarding Buridan’s ass are, I think, not whether we can just pick (we
obviously can), and not whether cases of just picking can be beneficial (they obviously can), but
rather how it is that, rational creatures that we are, we can just pick, and how it is that just picking
can be the rational thing to do.
4
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package of Mini-Wheats over another. Granted, the difference in phenomenology
is partly due to the significance of the decision. But, as can be seen from
considering other examples, it is not due only to this factor. Even considering the
very same two possible actions, it is one thing to try to decide which it makes most
sense for one to perform, and quite another to just pick one, believing there’s
nothing to be said for one over the other. There may be interesting relations
between cases of genuine deliberation and cases of just picking, some of which I
discuss in what follows. But for now it is sufficient to note that the
phenomenology of deliberation is very different from that of just picking, and that
it is the former, not the latter, that I discuss in this chapter.
Deliberation should also be distinguished from trying to predict one’s own
behavior6. Suppose I offer you a bet when you still haven’t made up your mind
about whether to practice law or to apply to graduate school in philosophy. I am
willing to bet a dinner on you deciding to practice law (because, say, I know that
you find it exceedingly hard to disappoint your father). You need to decide
whether to accept the bet. Now, if you find winning the bet important enough, you
can assure your victory by accepting the bet and deciding to apply to graduate
school in philosophy. But the bet is not nearly as important as are all the other
considerations relevant to this major decision. So there’s no quick way of winning
the bet. You just have to decide – much as you would if I offered the bet regarding
someone else’s decision – whether it is more likely that you’ll decide to practice
6
For this distinction see also Kim (1998, 70-71) and Rawls (2000, 139-140).
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law or to apply to graduate school. There is, of course, something atypical – and
perhaps also somewhat discomforting – in asking this question about oneself. But I
see no general reason that precludes such situations. After all, my offer is still on
the table, and you have to decide whether to accept. So we can, I think, sensibly
try to predict our own behavior. And there may be interesting relations between
trying to predict one’s own behavior and trying to decide what to do7. Perhaps, for
instance, if you are reasonably convinced that I’m right, and that when all is said
and done you will indeed decide to practice law, it doesn’t make sense to continue
agonizing trying to make up your mind on the option that is already practically
inevitable. But regardless of all this, the phenomenology of deliberation is very
different from that of predicting one’s own behavior. When, in the middle of a
friendly conversation in which you seek my advice about what to do, I offer you
the bet, and when you seriously consider it, we bring about a shift in perspective,
and with it a shift in what the relevant mental process is like. And it is important
for what follows that deliberation be distinguished from this other process of
predicting one’s own behavior.
7
Such relations are central to the work of David Velleman. See his (1989). Velleman suggests a
conception of deliberation according to which what we ask ourselves is not just, and not even
mostly, what the solution to our predicament is, but also what shall our predicament be. We don’t
just face situations; we invent them (258). It may seem, then, that his understanding of deliberation
is incompatible with mine. I cannot discuss in detail Velleman’s conception of deliberation here. I
do want quickly to note, though, that it need not be incompatible with what I say in this chapter.
Deliberation as I understand it can incorporate a creative, inventive, process, so long as there are
some normative criteria that govern such creation; so long as, in other words, there are
predicaments it makes better – and worse – sense to create or invent.
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The phenomenology of deliberation is very different, then, from that of
merely picking, and from that of predicting one’s own behavior. It is worth noting,
though, how similar the phenomenology of deliberation is to that of trying to find
an answer to a straightforwardly factual question: When trying to answer a
straightforwardly factual question (like what the difference is between the average
income of a lawyer and a philosopher) you try to get things right, to come up with
the answer that is – independently of your settling on it – the right one. When
deliberating, you also try to get things right, to decide as – independently of how
you end up deciding – it makes most sense for you to decide. In both cases, the
possibility of error is crucial. If whatever you believe regarding a topic will be
right simply in virtue of you believing it, and if you know that this is so, it does not
seem as if you can genuinely wonder what the case is within that topic. Similarly,
if whatever you decide to do will be the thing it makes best sense for you to do
simply in virtue of you deciding to do it, and if you know as much, it does not
seem as if you can genuinely deliberate about whether or not to do it8 (though, as
already mentioned, you can arbitrarily pick one option).
3.2
The Instrumental Indispensability of Normative Truths
In the supermarket, you have no reason to pick one package of Mini-Wheats rather
than another. With the only relevant decision to be made being which one to pick,
there is no one option it makes most sense for you to pursue. More than that, it
8
Korsgaard (1996, e.g. 35) often emphasizes this point.
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isn’t even the case that one option is at all better than any other. And you know all
this. Now, as mentioned before, this doesn’t preclude your just picking a package
of cereal. Though, if you come to reflect on your situation, you may feel some
discomfort (and I’ll have more to say about this discomfort later on), we are not
typically – certainly not always – paralyzed in such situations. We can just pick in
the face of a known (or believed) absence of reasons. But we cannot, it seems,
deliberate in the face of a believed absence of reasons. Knowing that there is no
decision such that it makes most sense for us to make it, we cannot – not
consistently, anyway, in a perfectly commonsensical sense of “consistently” – try
to make the decision it makes most sense for us to make. Deliberation – unlike
mere picking – is an attempt to eliminate arbitrariness by discovering reasons, and
it is impossible in a believed absence of reasons to be discovered. If there are no
reasons, then, our deliberative project is doomed from the start to systematic
failure. As far as our deliberative project is concerned, all is lost.
Thus, in deliberating, you commit yourself to there being reasons relevant
to your deliberation. Now, this sense of commitment need not entail an explicit
belief (in your “belief-box”, as it were) that there are such reasons, and it certainly
doesn’t preclude an explicit belief in their non-existence. Nevertheless, in a
perfectly good sense of “commitment”, by deliberating you’ve already committed
yourself to the existence of reasons. What is this sense of “commitment”, though?9
9
I thank Stephanie Beardsman and Derek Parfit for pressing me on this issue.
135
Think about a reasoner who routinely infers to the best explanation. Now,
she may not be a very reflective reasoner, and so she may not have any beliefs
about which inductive inferences are valid and why. Or perhaps she’s been
convinced by some of the literature criticizing IBE, and she now explicitly
believes that IBE is not a good rule of inference. Nevertheless, by routinely
inferring – even non-reflectively – to the best explanation, she commits herself to
IBE being a good rule of inference. If she believes that IBE is not a good
inference-rule, she is being inconsistent (though perhaps in a somewhat
generalized sense of this term) – unless, that is, she has some story available to her
explaining how her use of IBE is compatible with her explicit rejection of it
(perhaps, for instance, by showing that IBE is, though generally fallacious,
actually harmless in a privileged class of cases, and by restricting her own use of
IBE to such cases). Similarly, I want to argue, by deliberating you commit yourself
to there being relevant reasons; if you also believe there aren’t any, you are being
inconsistent in exactly the same sense, and just as irrational, too. And notice, by
the way, that in neither case will agnosticism get you off the hook, for routinely
inferring to the best explanation is also, barring some further story, inconsistent (in
the relevant sense) with professing agnosticism about whether or not IBE is a good
inference-rule. And, I want to argue, sincerely deliberating is similarly inconsistent
with professing agnosticism about whether there is anything to be said for or
against any of the relevant alternatives.
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Notice that no such commitment is involved in cases of mere picking.
Neither by picking one package of Mini-Wheats from all the others nor by going
through some mental process beforehand, do you commit yourself to there being
any reason that makes your package more worth picking than the others (you may
commit yourself to there being reason to pick some package rather than none at
all, but this is a different matter). It is, then, a result of the nature of deliberation –
an attempt to eliminate the arbitrariness so typical in cases of mere picking – that
by deliberating, by asking yourself which choice it would make most sense for you
to make, you are committing yourself to there being, or at least to there possibly
being, reasons relevant to your choice. Suppose a friend of yours seems to undergo
a process of deliberation, but then – when asked, perhaps – says that it really
doesn’t matter one way or another, that there is absolutely nothing to be said for or
against any of his relevant alternatives, that there are no considerations counting in
favor of any of his possible decisions. You would treat him either as having
changed his mind (“Oh, he thought, until just a moment ago, that there was a point
to his deliberation, but now he understands that this is not so.”), or as being
inconsistent. You would treat him as you would someone who professes to reject
IBE and nevertheless infers to the best explanation – he has either changed his
mind about IBE (“Oh, he thought, until just a moment ago, that we should not
infer to the best explanation, but now he sees that he was wrong about that.”), or
he is being inconsistent. What explains this attitude of yours, I argue, is precisely
that both are being inconsistent. And this is also why, upon coming to believe that
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there are no relevant reasons, deliberation stops (though a decision may remain to
be made).
A similar point applies, I think, to the more complex case where
deliberation is initially possible. You are still in the process of deliberating about
whether to join a law firm or pursue graduate studies in philosophy (or maybe do
something else entirely), when suddenly you come to believe – for whatever
reason, or for no reason at all – that it just doesn’t matter. You believe either that
there is just nothing to be said for one of these options rather than the other, or –
much more plausibly – that the reasons for the different options are evenly
balanced. Now, coming to believe that still doesn’t settle the issue. You still
haven’t decided what to do. But so long as you are confident that there is nothing
you have all-things-considered reason to do, you no longer deliberate. You may, of
course, lose your confidence; you may wonder “But aren’t there some important
considerations I’ve left out?” And in cases where weighty considerations are
involved, we typically find it very hard to maintain our confidence in judgments of
no all-things-considered reasons (this is why we find it so hard simply to toss a
coin when we just don’t know what to do on an important matter, even as we feel
that tossing a coin would be the rational thing to do). But so long as you are
reasonably confident that there is no alternative you have all-things-considered
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reason to choose, you do not, it seems to me, deliberate; rather, you engage in
mere picking.10
Now, that something is a reason for you to join a law firm, a consideration
that counts in favor of so doing, is a paradigmatically normative claim, as is that
pursuing graduate studies in philosophy is the thing that makes most sense for you
to do. So, by deliberating, you commit yourself to there being relevant reasons,
and so to there being relevant normative truths (you do not, of course, commit
yourself to the reasons being the normative truths, or anything of this sort. I return
to this point shortly). Normative truths, or at least belief in them11, are thus
indispensable for deliberation12.
This may seem too quick, for at least two related reasons. First, even
accepting my interpretation of the examples, they do not show that we cannot
deliberate in the face of a believed absence of reasons. They only show that we
I return to this point – and mention a fallback position for me here – in section 3.4.7, below.
I return to the distinction between normative truths and belief in them being indispensable for
deliberation in section 3.4.11.
12
“The ordinary process of deliberation, aimed at finding out what I should do, assumes the
existence of an answer to this question.” (Nagel, 1986, 149) For similar points, see Bond (1983,
60), Darwall (1983, 224) (though Darwall doesn’t make this point regarding the deliberation of
agents in general, but rather only regarding his “ISIS”, an internally self-identified subject), Kolnai
(1962) (though Kolnai, being a skeptic of sorts regarding normative truths, draws skeptical
conclusions about deliberation as well), and Pettit and Smith (1998, e.g. 97) (who argue that
deliberation is a kind of conversation one has with oneself, and that adopting this kind of
conversational stance – to oneself as well as to others – involves assumptions, one of which is
rather close to the one in the text. I discuss their view in more detail in section 3.5.).
A word of caution: These authors talk of what they understand by “deliberation”, and – especially
given my willingness to see my characterization of deliberation as a stipulation – it is possible that
they think normative truths are indispensable for deliberation-as-they-understand-it, not for
deliberation-as-I-understand-it. Now, I only refer here to philosophers whose understanding of
deliberation is, I think, close enough to mine so as not to make the reference misleading. But still, I
acknowledge that in order to enlist these writers for my cause – even just for the part of my cause
supported in this section – further work may very well be needed.
10
11
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cannot consistently deliberate in such circumstances, as deliberation commits us to
the reasons we now assume are absent. But then normative truths haven’t been
shown to be indispensable for deliberation, but at most indispensable for consistent
deliberation. And this, it may be thought, is not sufficient for the argument for
Robust Realism to go through.
A second, related, reason to think that the deliberative indispensability of
normative truths doesn’t follow from the above considerations starts from the
observation that, in general, it may be possible to try to do something one takes to
be impossible. Can’t one show to one’s friends that – as one already knows – a
rock is too heavy to be moved by trying, and failing, to move it 13? But if it’s
possible to try to do something one takes to be impossible, it should be possible to
try to make the decision it makes most sense for one to make even while believing
that it is impossible to do so (because there is no decision that it makes most sense
for one to make). At the very least, so the argument goes, nothing has been said so
far to rule out this possibility. And this means that it hasn’t been established that
deliberation in the face of a believed absence of reasons is impossible.
Both these objections raise interesting issues I would prefer to bypass here.
And, luckily, I can afford to do just that. Recall the account of instrumental
indispensability I endorsed – following Colyvan – in chapter 1: For something to
be instrumentally indispensable for a project it is not necessary that it cannot be
eliminated from that project. Rather, it is sufficient that it cannot be eliminated
13
I owe this example to John Gibbons.
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without defeating whatever reason we had to find that project attractive in the first
place. Now, perhaps it is not literally impossible for you to deliberate whether to
join a law firm or to apply to graduate school in philosophy while believing that
you have no (all-things-considered) reason to do one rather than the other. But
believing this is so at the very least undermines whatever reason you may have had
to find deliberation here attractive. So believing, would you still have resolved to
put much thought, time and effort into the deliberative process? Should you have
so resolved? I think it reasonably clear, then, that normative truths (or belief in
them) cannot be eliminated from the deliberative process without rendering it
unattractive. And this suffices in order to conclude that normative truths are
instrumentally indispensable for deliberation.
3.3 The Intrinsic Indispensability of Deliberation
That normative truths are indispensable for deliberation is already a victory –
though perhaps a small one – for the realist (a reminder: this is not yet a victory –
not even a small one – for the robust realist, because for all that’s been thus far
said it is still possible that some other, non-robust-realist, metanormative theory
can account for normative truths, or for something that can do their work in
deliberation). For if the conclusion of the previous section is correct, the following
choice seems unavoidable: either admit some normative truths (or something
sufficiently close to them to do their work), or conclude that deliberation (as I
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characterized it) is – necessarily, it seems – illusory14. Seeing that the latter option
comes with a considerable intuitive price, the instrumental indispensability of
normative truths for deliberation already places some burden on the shoulders of
the anti-realist (though I’ll have to discuss the possibility that deliberation is
illusory in more detail in section 3.4.5 below). But what we have here can again be
seen as an instance of the tension I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter
between the two desiderata an account of deliberation must satisfy if my argument
for Robust Realism is to go through. For an antirealist can argue that the account
of deliberation presented thus far is so strong, so much has been packed into it,
that the result regarding the instrumental indispensability of normative truths is no
longer of any interest. Yes, he can argue, the process I insist on calling
“deliberation” requires normative truths, but this is not a process we ever engage
in. Certainly, it is not a process we cannot but engage in, and not one we should be
concerned about being necessarily illusory. The pressure is put, then, on the claim
that is to be supported in this section: We are essentially deliberative creatures.
Before arguing for this claim, I want to emphasize that I won’t be arguing
for much stronger – indeed, unacceptably strong – claims, namely, that whenever
we act what we do is a result of deliberation, or that we cannot avoid deliberating
in each particular moment. I take it to be clear that often we do not engage in
deliberation, and that almost as often we act without deliberating. Some things, for
instance, we just do out of habit without giving them a second thought. Some
14
For similar points see De Sousa (1974, 539) and Bond (1983, 54).
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things we may do for no reason at all, and, it seems to me, even much of what we
do for a reason we do without first going through a mental process that has the
distinctive feel of deliberation characterized above. Only a highly tendentious (and
implausible) account of action would rule out all such doings as anything but
proper actions.
My claim, then, is not that in any particular instance of action we cannot
but deliberate. Indeed, I don’t even claim that in each such instance we do in fact
deliberate. Rather, I claim that we cannot avoid deliberation altogether, that the
deliberative project is one we cannot disengage from. In support of this claim, I
can offer little more than introspection and a raw intuition (though not nothing
more; I return to this shortly): Can you stop engaging in deliberation altogether?
Can you just stop trying to make the decision it makes most sense to make? It
seems to me I cannot. Even assuming I had strong reasons to stop deliberating, and
even assuming I could, it seems to me I’d deliberate about whether or not to stop
deliberating. Not deliberating at all is just not an option for me. Is it for you? Note
that deliberation need not be about highly important matters. It is possible, I guess,
for a person never to deliberate about her career choice (because she’s always just
accepted that she’d follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor) or about
major political decisions. The deliberation I claim is unavoidable can be much
more mundane. It can involve decisions as simple as whether to spend the
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afternoon working or playing15. Is it possible for you never to engage in
deliberation even about such things?
As I said, more than just introspection (and an un-argued-for
generalization) is involved here. What is also involved is the intuition that we are
just not like that. I, for one, cannot imagine a person who never deliberates. I have
the strong intuition that this is not a possibility. Not only, mind you, that this is
psychologically impossible for us, though it is that too; but also that, at least
holding our constitution fixed, it is metaphysically necessary that we are
deliberative. To the extent that you share this intuition, you’re committed – as I am
– to the intrinsic indispensability of the deliberative project.
Given the nature (and thinness) of the support for this claim offered thus
far, it may be worth mentioning that the intuition and introspective judgment
alluded to are by no means idiosyncratic. Many authors – varying in theoretical
background as well as in metaethical or metanormative commitments – make
similar points. I refer to some of them in a footnote16.
This example is Korsgaard’s (1996, 94).
Such points are often attributed to Kant, and often made by scholars influenced by Kant and
sympathetic to his thinking. Perhaps one way of putting the point in the text somewhat Kantianly is
that, as a matter of our essence, we have a will (and not just desires). Another may be as follows:
We are essentially rational creatures. An example of a Kantian philosopher who emphasizes our
deliberative, reflective, nature – and to whom I am indebted here – is Korsgaard (1996, e.g. at 967). Another example of a philosopher obviously inspired by Kant – though not as obviously
Kantian as Korsgaard – is Velleman, who seems to endorse both the thesis of the essential
unavoidability of deliberation and that of the instrumental indispensability of normative truths (or
something very close to them) to deliberation when he writes (1989, 10): “… I locate an agent’s
autonomy in his capacity for deliberation, and deliberation essentially involves value judgments.”
But one need not be a Kantian – certainly not one who is loyal to Kant’s letter rather than merely
inspired by selections from his writings – in order to appreciate the point made in the text. For
similar points without obvious reliance on Kant, see Kim (1998, 85-6), Pettit and Smith (1993, 54;
15
16
144
Let me offer, though, something more by way of argument for the intrinsic
indispensability of deliberation. Consider again the supermarket case, and suppose
that, standing there in the cereals aisle, you become, for some reason, highly selfreflective. You are now thinking about the fact that you have no reason to choose
one Mini-Wheats rather than any other. You know, of course, that soon enough
you’re just going to pick one and that’ll be the end of it, and you may be impatient
with yourself for failing to do so right away (we are almost always, it seems,
impatient with others in such situations17). But you may very well feel some
discomfort. You may feel – as I often have in such circumstances – that the
situation is atypical in an important and somewhat unpleasant way. What, I now
want to ask, best explains this feeling of discomfort? Why is it that, facing a
situation in which mere picking is called for, we feel – when in a highly reflective
mood, at least – that the situation is unpleasantly atypical? At least one explanation
of this feeling is that we think of ourselves as essentially deliberative creatures,
and that when we reflect on a situation where we have to act without deliberation,
where we have temporarily to disengage from the deliberative project which is
very much ours, we feel discomfort. I cannot think of a better explanation, and so I
1998, in passim), Rosati (1995, 61), Kolnai (1962, 215), Bond (1983, 60), Jacobs (1989, 1-2),
Brink (1997, 266) and Railton (1992, 42-3).
17
Stephanie Beardsman drew my attention to our being less patient with others being slow about
picking than with ourselves. Perhaps this is further evidence that the situation of picking is more
problematic when viewed from the first-person perspective, because it is our conception of
ourselves that is in some tension with what in the circumstances is called for.
145
tentatively suggest this as the best explanation of the described feeling of
discomfort.18
For another phenomenon the best explanation of which may very well
support the intrinsic indispensability of deliberation, consider the type of cases
discussed by Velleman (1989) and Kim (1998):
As you are making your way down the stairway
from your study, you suddenly realize that you have
no idea why you are going downstairs. Are you
getting the day’s mail? Are you going to pick up the
evening’s paper? To take a break from your work
and listen to some music? To feed the cat? You
aren’t sure, and your steps slow down – perhaps you
will come to a complete stop. Perhaps, you will
continue to proceed downstairs, hoping that you will
remember your reason for going down. Or you see
no point in continuing your descent and decide to
return to your study. (Kim, 1998, 67)
Such cases may be interesting for a number of reasons, at least one of which
relevant here. What best explains your steps slowing down, and the distinctive
phenomenological feel that accompanies this process, I want to suggest, is that you
find it very hard to act for no (known) reason19, and that what best explains this is
18
As Derek Parfit pointed out to me, some may very well feel relieved when they find out that
mere picking rather than deliberative choice is called for. This piece of psychological data is not, I
think, incompatible with the point in the text: For isn’t this relief best seen as a result of the very
atypicality mentioned in the text? In such cases we are given the opportunity to shed, as it were, our
full responsibility as agents, and just pick. Thinking of this as a vacation of sorts is thus compatible
with – indeed, it may support – the claim that typically, when not on vacation, we are deliberative,
and that this is how we see ourselves.
19
What exactly do you find hard here – acting for no reason, or acting without knowing your
reason? Suppose you find yourself – as the protagonist in the movie Memento constantly finds
himself – doing something (not just beginning or preparing yourself to do it, as in Kim’s case, but
actually doing it) without knowing your reason for doing it. How comforting would you find the
thought – even one in the truth of which you’re absolutely confident – that you have thought these
things through, and that there is a reason, albeit one unknown to you now, for your doing it?
146
that you think of yourself as essentially deliberative, essentially responsive to
reasons in a reflective way20.
These considerations are by no means conclusive. In each kind of case
alternative explanations may be suggested, and if the argument is to survive
criticism it must be shown that the explanations I suggest above are indeed the best
ones. Nevertheless, I think what I’ve said should be at least suggestive of how
committed we typically are to our being essentially deliberative, reflectively
responsive to reasons. And, though this is still not enough to establish that we are
indeed essentially deliberative (for the relevant commitment of ours may be
ungrounded or erroneous), it nevertheless is sufficient to show the profound
intuitiveness of this claim. And this, in turn, should suffice in order to place the
burden on someone rejecting it to show why such an intuitive claim should indeed
be rejected. This, it will be remembered, is all I set out to do in this (and the
previous) section.
And note, by the way, that these inferences to the best explanation support
more than just the thesis of the intrinsic indispensability of deliberation. They
support the conjunction of this thesis with the one defended in the previous
section, namely, the thesis of the instrumental indispensability of normative truths
for deliberation. For only if we cannot deliberate in a believed absence of reasons
Velleman’s and Kim’s discussions (and perhaps also the feeling one gets from watching Memento)
seem to suggest that not very much. For myself, I am unsure about this question. Be that as it may,
in the text I only rely on the weaker claim, that thinking of yourself as acting for no reason at all is
(almost) paralyzing.
20
Kim himself seems to suggest something along these lines (1998, 69).
147
can our taking ourselves to be essentially deliberative explain the relevant unease
in the two examples described above.
3.4
Objections
Some strong reason must be given, then, if we are to accept that deliberation is less
than intrinsically indispensable, or that normative truths (or something sufficiently
close to them) are less than instrumentally indispensable for deliberation. In this
section, I try to anticipate attempts at giving such reasons. I suspect that this is not
a full list of the relevant objections. But perhaps answering these objections can
suggest how others are to be addressed.
Of the fourteen objections that I discuss in this section, the first five
attempt to uncover specific flaws in the argumentation of the previous three
sections by arguing, in effect, that I have mischaracterized the relevant
phenomenology or that I have taken it to imply things it does not imply. The next
five objections (3.4.6 – 3.4.10) are attempts to give reason to believe that
something must be wrong with the argument of the previous sections, because the
conclusions it purportedly supports and the way in which it supports them entail
unacceptable results. The last four objections (3.4.11 – 3.4.14) are more general
attempts at discrediting the argumentation or the conclusions it is meant to
support. Though distinct, the objections are not all completely independent, and
some of the discussion may therefore be somewhat repetitive.
148
I do not distinguish here between objections to the intrinsic indispensability
of deliberation and objections to the instrumental indispensability of normative
truths for it, for a reason that has already been mentioned: Depending on how
strong or how weak one’s understanding of deliberation is, one can get one of
these two theses for cheap, at the price of making the other exceedingly hard to
defend. Objections to my account of deliberation are thus best understood as
objections to the conjunction of the two theses, and in what follows this is how I
try to present them.
3.4.1
Do We Explicitly Invoke Normative Truths When Deliberating?
Recall your deliberation about whether to apply to graduate school in philosophy
or to join a law firm. The questions you were asking yourself were not – not all of
them, certainly – put in (clearly) normative terms. You were wondering, for
instance, which lifestyle suited you more, what occupation would make you
happier, which would be more intellectually fulfilling. Though you may have also
entertained distinctly normative thoughts (Is it important to make a political
difference? Are my father’s expectations a reason to join a law firm? What does it
make most sense for me to do?), this doesn’t seem to be a necessary feature of
deliberation. Surely, the phenomenological feel alluded to is there already when
you ask yourself questions of the first kind, and no argument has been given (nor
will any be given) to support the claim that when deliberating you necessarily
think to yourself, as it were, normative words. But then, so the objection goes, the
149
only questions you need to assume have answers when you deliberate are nonnormative ones, questions like which career-choice would make you happier. And
if all of this is right, then deliberation does not after all require normative truths or
belief in them.21
Notice that a person putting forward this objection need not deny the claim
that deliberation in the face of a believed absence of reasons is impossible. All that
she needs to argue is that not all reasons are normative truths. That you will find
philosophy more intellectually fulfilling than practicing law is not a normative
truth, but it is certainly a reason to apply to graduate school in philosophy rather
than join a law firm22.
The obvious thing to say here is that your reason – finding philosophy
more fulfilling than practicing law – is not a normative truth, but that it is a reason
is a normative truth23; and so, when, in deliberation, you take this to be a reason to
apply to graduate school in philosophy, you commit yourself at least to one
normative truth – namely, that this consideration is a reason, that it counts in favor
of you so doing. Suppose you take the intellectual-fulfillment-reason to be
conclusive, and you thereby end your deliberation by deciding to apply to graduate
school in philosophy (or by forming the intention to do so, or by actually applying;
for my purposes it doesn’t matter where exactly one takes deliberation to end).
21
I thank Mark Schroeder for pressing me on this point.
Dancy (1995, 6) emphasizes that not all reasons are normative truths, and gives a similar
example.
23
See, for instance, Scanlon (1998, 57).
22
150
Though you may have never thought to yourself “That doing philosophy will be
much more intellectually fulfilling is a decisive reason to apply to graduate school
in philosophy”, you nevertheless take it to be such a decisive reason. We can
support the attribution of this implicit belief or commitment to you in the same
way we support other attributions of similar attitudes: by noting that the attribution
may explain your stopping deliberating, or forming the relevant intention, or
whatever; by noting that if you then said “But I don’t take that to be a reason to do
philosophy” we would be puzzled at the unintelligible conjunction of your
behavior and proclamation; by noting that if asked at that point “Ah, so you take
that to be a reason to apply to graduate school in philosophy?” you will most likely
answer “Of course”, and it will feel like articulating a commitment you have
already made, not like the making of a new one; and so on. Even before being
prompted by such a question, then, you believe that that doing philosophy will be
more intellectually fulfilling is a reason for pursuing philosophy, it counts in favor
of so doing. And as already said, this is a normative claim. So, though your reason
need not be a normative truth, by treating it as a reason you already commit
yourself to a normative belief, namely, that the purported reason really is a reason.
Deliberating without any normative beliefs is thus still impossible.24
So, just as according to a Humean account of action and deliberation, even though desires “fuel”
deliberation, the deliberating agent need not think explicitly in terms of desire-satisfaction, so on
my account of deliberation, even though normative beliefs “fuel” deliberation, the deliberating
agent need not think explicitly in terms of such normative beliefs. I thank Stephanie Beardsman for
drawing my attention to this analogy.
24
151
It is, of course, controversial what taking something to be a reason comes
to, and my claim that it comes to a normative belief (implicit or otherwise) is not
obviously true. I support it in chapter 4 (in section 4.3), when rejecting
Noncognitivism.
3.4.2
Aren’t Your Desires (or Your Ends, or Your Identity) Sufficient?
So far, though, desires have hardly been mentioned at all. And this may seem a
severe flaw. For surely desires have a crucial role to play in the bringing about of
actions, and so also in deliberation. Furthermore, it may be thought that desires are
not merely some further factor that needs to be accounted for, but rather that once
they are, there will no longer be any need for normative truths and belief in them.
Desires, so this objection goes, guide deliberation and bring it to its conclusion.
And if desires can do this work, normative truths and belief in them are not
indispensable after all.25
It is no coincidence, of course, that desires have not so far been discussed.
The
discussion
in
this
chapter
presents
a
first-person-perspective,
phenomenological, account of deliberation, and from this perspective desires are
not as central as they purportedly are from a third-personal, explanatory,
perspective26. For all that’s been said so far, desires may very well guide
deliberation and bring it to its conclusion in one sense of “guiding” and
25
I thank Pete Graham for many helpful discussions on this and related points.
This, I take it, is at least one point Pettit and Smith (1990) are making when they “background
desires”.
26
152
“bringing”: The best explanation of why you will have deliberated as you did and
why you will have stopped deliberating when and in the way that you did may
very well invoke desires, perhaps even only desires (and some factual, nonnormative, beliefs). Nothing has been said to rule this out (though I’ll have to
return to this point in section 3.4.11). And it is certainly possible (and indeed
seems very plausible) that desires play a central role in bringing about actions that
are not preceded by deliberation (the so-called appetitive desires and some actions
they may help in causing are the examples that come to mind). Nevertheless, from
your first-person-perspective as you deliberate about what to do, desires do not
play that central a role. Your reasons – the considerations relevant to your
deliberation from your point of view while deliberating – are not that you desire
intellectual fulfillment or that you desire not to disappoint your father, but rather
that pursuing philosophy will be intellectually fulfilling, and that abandoning a
career in law will disappoint your father27. Had you been trying to predict your
behavior, perhaps desires would have been as central as the objection suggests.
But we already know that deliberation is importantly different from trying to
predict one’s own behavior. From the deliberative perspective, then – the only
Can’t desires enter the picture as part of an analysis of what it is to take something to be a
reason? Perhaps they can, though I think they do not. But anyway, even if they do, this poses no
threat to my argument in this chapter. Here I just want to argue for the instrumental indispensability
of normative judgments for deliberation and for the intrinsic indispensability of deliberation.
People who accept these claims but offer a desire-based account of accepting a normative judgment
(noncognitivists, say, or other belief-internalists) are, as far as this point is concerned, on my side.
They are on the other side regarding Robust Realism, of course, and so also regarding some parts
of my argument for it, but not the part argued for here. I argue against such views in chapter 4.
27
153
perspective directly relevant for the discussion in this chapter, and indeed for my
argument for Robust Realism – the role of desires is not all that central.
Nevertheless, it may seem like desires do have a role to play in
deliberation. It seems one can explicitly take one’s desires as reasons for action, as
when one chooses an entrée from a menu “simply because this is what I want”.
Now, such cases can be understood in more than one way – perhaps, for instance,
the reason implicitly invoked is that I would enjoy this entrée more, not that I want
it more28. But let me assume for now – with the person objecting to my argument –
that in such cases we do explicitly take our desires as reasons for action. And
perhaps at times some considerations one takes into account, considerations that
do not invoke desires explicitly, do implicitly invoke desires, perhaps desires too
common to be worth mentioning, even to oneself (like a desire for one’s own
happiness). Can the account of deliberation presented here accommodate this
(purported) role of desires?
Now, one way one could go in addressing this worry, a way with
impressive historical credentials, would be to give an account of desires that itself
necessarily involves normative commitments on the part of the desirer29. If desires
are themselves responses to reasons or to what are thought to be reasons, if we can
28
See the discussion in Scanlon (1998, 41-8) and the references in footnote 27 (on page 378).
The idea goes back, of course, to Aristotle and today is often associated with the work of
Davidson. Other contemporary writers who endorse an account of desires in this general spirit, are
Platts (1980b), Scanlon (1998, 38), Dancy (2000, e.g. at 38) and Darwall (1983, chapter 6) (though
Darwall only argues that the best way to make sense of the axioms of decision theory is to take
preferences to be (or to entail) normative judgments; Darwall does not commit himself here in so
many words to the thesis that preferences do indeed entail normative judgments).
29
154
only desire something we take to be good, or such that we have reason to have or
do, then no role desires play in deliberation can threaten the deliberative
indispensability of normative truths and belief in them. Indeed, desires can then
help secure the indispensability of normative truths for deliberation – desires are
indispensable for deliberation, normative truths or belief in them are indispensable
for desires, and so, by the transitivity of indispensability, normative truths are
indispensable for deliberation.
I shall resist the temptation to reply to the objection in this way. Though
some desires may very well be responses to reasons, and some desires may very
well be caused by normative beliefs, I find the claim that all desires necessarily
involve normative reasons or judgments highly implausible, for reasons I cannot
adequately discuss here30. I would certainly not want my argument to hinge on this
implausible claim. I therefore want to argue in a different way for the claim that
desires do not render normative truths and belief in them deliberatively
dispensable.
Frankfurt’s (1971) unwilling addict, who desires his fix, but desires not to have this desire and
(thus) doesn’t value his fix should be enough to raise suspicions regarding the purported necessary
connection between desires and evaluative judgments. And Velleman’s (1992) discussion of the
person who desires to do the bad thing precisely because it is bad should be enough to strengthen
this suspicion. For some writers arguing against the purported necessary connection between
desiring and, roughly, believing desirable, see Pettit and Smith (1993), Railton (1997, 65),
Velleman (1989, 25; and his 1992), and Bond (1983; In Bond’s classification of four kinds of
desires, it is only those of the fourth kind – reflective desires – which involve evaluative
judgments).
30
155
Now, some cases of deliberation lend themselves to a desire-based reading
less easily than others. In particular, cases of moral deliberation31, and cases of
deliberating about what desires to have, cultivate, avoid and so on, seem like
particularly hard cases for the desire-based account of deliberation. But perhaps
the desire-theorist can somehow accommodate them, and perhaps – more
importantly in our context – these particular cases of deliberation are not
essentially unavoidable in the way that the deliberative project as a whole is
(though I suspect that they are).
Luckily, I don’t have to settle these matters here, because of a point already
made in section 3.4.1: When concluding your deliberation because of a desire of
yours, you commit yourself to the normative judgment that this desire of yours (or
your having it, or something of this sort) is a relevant reason for you. Desires
cannot, then, help you avoid a commitment to normative truths. Of course, desires
may also lead to action in another, strictly causal, way, one that may bypass
deliberation altogether. But this is not the case relevant here. Here, rather, we talk
of cases where desires presumably settle deliberation (this is why they may be
thought to render normative truths deliberatively dispensable). In these cases,
though, by taking the relevant desire as reason you already commit yourself to a
normative judgment.32
31
I thank Ernesto Garcia for insisting that moral deliberation is especially problematic here for the
desire-theorist.
32
Nagel (1997), to whose discussion I am indebted here, emphasizes similar points: “And I would
contend that either the question whether one should have a certain desire or the question whether,
given that one has that desire, one should act on it, is always open to rational consideration.” (102-
156
The intuition underlying this point can be made clearer in the following
way. As creatures which act on reasons, we have the ability – one we cannot fail to
exercise, at least some of the time – to step back from the desires we find
ourselves with, gain some reflective distance from them, treat them as merely
desires we find ourselves with, and ask whether they give us reasons to perform
the relevant action. When we exercise this ability, desires can no longer bring our
deliberation to its conclusion. As the phenomenological evidence indicates rather
clearly, I think, only a normative commitment can.33
3); “Once I see myself as the subject of certain desires, as well as the occupant of an objective
situation, I still have to decide what to do, and that will include deciding what justificatory weight
to give to those desires.” (109); “It is only when, instead of being pushed along by impressions,
memories, impulses, desires, or whatever, one stops to ask “What should I do?” or “What should I
believe?” that reasoning becomes possible – and, having become possible, becomes necessary.
Having stopped the direct operation of impulse by interposing the possibility of decision, one can
get one’s beliefs and actions into motion again only by thinking about what, in light of the
circumstances, one should do.” (109) “It is not enough to find some higher order desires that one
happens to have, to settle the matter: Such desires would have to be placed among the background
conditions of decision along with everything else. Rather, even in the case of a purely selfinterested choice, one is seeking the right answer.” (110) I am not sure, but I think Scanlon’s
discussion of desires and the claim that they lack “authority” (1998, 55) is also closely related to
the point made in the text.
33
This idea is very Kantian. Interestingly, the idea may not be limited to Kant’s practical
philosophy. In the Prolegomena, when addressing the (unstated) question of why we need the
noumena in his metaphysical picture given that we know nothing about them, Kant says: “The
world of sense contains merely appearances, which are not things in themselves; but the
understanding must assume these latter ones, viz., noumena, because it knows the objects of
experience to be mere appearances.” (section 59, my italics). At the risk of taking things out of
context, I would suggest the following analogy: We need normative truths even if, viewed from a
third-person-perspective, our desires suffice in order to cause our actions and then explain them,
because, when deliberating, we know our desires are merely our desires. Be that as it may, the idea
that the ability to step back from our desires and ask ourselves whether we should act on them is
central for human agency and freedom is, though Kantian, not uniquely Kantian. Consider the
following quote from Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Book II, Chapter 21,
section 47): “… the mind having in most cases, as is evident in experience, a power to suspend the
execution and satisfaction of any of its desires, and so all, one after another, is at liberty to consider
the objects of them, examine them on all sides, and weight them with others. In this lies the liberty
man has …” For a more recent statement of similar ideas, see Bond (1983, e.g. at 54, 60) (“If
valuing is really nothing but wanting, then deliberative rationality is a delusion.” (ibid., 54)).
157
Notice that this reply generalizes nicely: Following the initial objection, the
reply was put in terms of desires and their insufficiency, but it also applies to, for
instance, an objection stated in terms of ends and instrumental reasoning.34 Can’t
facts about what will best promote my given ends do all the deliberative work,
thus rendering normative truths dispensable? No, because, first, some cases of
deliberation (most notably, again, cases that involve moral considerations and
cases in which you ask yourself what ends it makes most sense to pursue) are not
as this objection seems to suggest they are; and second, because we are not
satisfied with just taking our ends as given, we can’t avoid stepping back and
viewing them as merely our ends35. Which is why, when concluding your
deliberation because one of the options will better promote your ends (or a specific
end), you already commit yourself to a normative judgment, namely, that this is a
reason for you to choose the relevant option.
An exactly analogous point can be made (and, has, I think, been made by
Rosati (1995, 53-60)), in reply to similar suggestions put this time in terms of
taking one’s identity or self (whatever exactly these are) as given36. By bringing
your deliberation to its conclusion because of features of your practical identity,
For some of these analogous objections, the first line of reply – rejected earlier in the text – may
be more promising. Perhaps, as Korsgaard argues (1997, 250), “willing an end” necessarily
involves a normative commitment of the kind that having a desire does not. Depending on what
“willing an end” exactly comes to, this reply may be very close to the one I pursue in the text.
35
So, pace Aristotle (Eth. Nic., Book III, 1112b ), and with Kolnai (1962), deliberation is not
merely of means. Of course, whether or not there is a real disagreement here with Aristotle depends
on whether what he meant by “deliberation” (or rather by its Greek counterpart) is what I mean by
it. Kolnai’s discussion suggests that it is.
36
For related points see also Gowans (2002) and Levin (1987, 180).
34
158
you commit yourself to these features of your identity being reasons for you to act.
In deliberation, you cannot arbitrarily accept even your identity as given. Rather,
you need a normative commitment, one that may involve your identity in an
interesting sense, but that cannot be replaced by it.
Desires, then, and ends, and identities, do not render normative truths and
belief in them deliberatively dispensable.
3.4.3
Can We Not Be “Heroic Existentialists”?
Perhaps, then, when deliberating we need normative truths. But can’t we generate
these normative truths by performing what Korsgaard (1997, 251) labels a “heroic
existentialist act”, in which “one … just take[s] one’s will at a certain moment to
be normative, and commit[s] oneself forever to the end selected at that moment,
without thinking that the end is in any way good …”?
If we can, then my argument for Robust Realism fails. But the first thing to
note here is that the argument of this chapter does not. Normative truths that we
create in this way are – if there are any – still normative truths. Whether this
existentialist or constructivist37 account of the kind of normative truths
37
There is some irony here. Korsgaard, though she says she has no conclusive argument against the
heroic existentialist, ends up arguing against him. And her unwillingness to accept this view is
central, it seems to me, to much of her theory of normativity. But her own, constructivist, view
seems vulnerable to the same problem the heroic existentialist’s is. For she too seems committed to
at least one radical, heroic, and so arbitrary, choice, the choice of a practical identity in which all
reasons originate. I think this unearths a crucial inconsistency in Korsgaard’s account of
normativity. I discuss Korsgaard’s view, and constructivism more generally, in section 4.5 (in
chapter 4).
159
indispensable for deliberation is successful – and so, whether the argument for
Robust Realism ultimately fails – is something to be evaluated in the next chapter.
This is not enough, though, because the heroic existentialist act – if there
can be such acts – can be considered a counterexample to my claim about the
impossibility of deliberation in the face of a believed absence of reasons. If a
choice as dramatic as that of what ends to endorse (or what identity to have, or
what desires to have or to take as normative) for ever and ever can be made in the
face of a believed absence of reasons, surely simpler cases of deliberation in such
circumstances are possible. And if this is so, the argument for the instrumental
indispensability of normative truths is undermined.
But the heroic existentialist story, it seems to me, lacks any
phenomenological plausibility38. Imagine yourself about to make the heroic
existentialist choice of (say) what ends to pursue. At this point, so the story goes,
there are no normative truths that apply to you, and you know as much. But then
how are you supposed to make your existentialist, radical, choice? It seems the
best you can do is just pick. But, if that’s what you do, this is no counterexample
to the claim that in the believed absence of reasons deliberation is impossible, for
deliberation is distinct from mere picking. So the objection must then become the
claim that deliberation is not unavoidable, because of the possibility of heroic
existentialist cases of picking. But remember that according to this story what you
This, I take it, is one of the major theses put forward by Wiggins in his “Truth, Invention, and the
Meaning of Life” (in his 1998, 87-137).
38
160
end up merely picking are your ends which, in future deliberation, you are
supposed to take as normative, as reason-giving. Knowing that these ends were
merely picked by you, that there was not (indeed, there could not have been)
anything to be said for them, they could not have been chosen for a reason because
they are the source of all your reasons, can you seriously take them as reasongiving in future deliberation? It seems to me clear that you cannot. This is again
the point emphasized in section 3.4.2: When deliberating, we need more than
merely the desires we find ourselves with. And we need more too than the ends we
know we just happened to pick39. And if this is right, it means that mere picking
cannot do the work of deliberation, and that the intrinsic indispensability of
deliberation faces no danger here.
The answer to the question “Can we not be heroic existentialists?” is
therefore simply “No, we cannot.”.
3.4.4
Am I Conflating “What-Shall-I-Do” with “What-Should-I-Do”
Questions?
Asking oneself “What shall I do?” (in the sense of making a decision, not a
prediction) is different from asking oneself “What should I do?”. As mentioned
above, in cases of mere picking, you have to decide what to do, and so may ask
yourself “What shall I do?” even when you’re convinced that there is nothing you
39
Similar points are made by Kolnai (1962, throughout the paper), Wiggins (1998, 89) and
Korsgaard (1997, 251) (though she – for a reason not entirely clear to me – doesn’t think such
considerations rule out the heroic existentialist story).
161
should do (rather than any of the other relevant alternatives), and you know that,
and so you do not ask yourself “What should I do?”. And, as Bond (1983, 151)
emphasizes, often after settling on an answer to the question “What should I do?”
you still have to “decide what to do and do it, or do nothing at all.”. Furthermore,
again as Bond (1983, 154) notes, we often wonder about should- or oughtquestions which are not possible candidates for shall-questions, as when we
wonder about what we ought to have done in the past or about what others should
do. This is all evidence that should-questions and shall-questions are different
questions.
But then the difference between them can be used in order to mount the
following objection against my argument: Shall-questions, it may be argued, may
very well be essentially unavoidable, and so answering them an intrinsically
indispensable project. But, as cases of mere picking show, normative truths are not
instrumentally indispensable for answering shall-questions. Normative truths may,
however, be instrumentally indispensable for answering should-questions. But
should-questions are not intrinsically indispensable. There is no one project, the
objection continues, that satisfies both desiderata mentioned at the beginning of
this chapter. When talking about deliberation in terms of “trying to make the
decision it makes most sense for me to make”, the objection concludes, I was
guilty of equivocation: There is no one way of understanding deliberation that
makes both parts of the argument sound.
162
I agree, of course, that should-questions and shall-questions are different
questions. And asking oneself the two kinds of question may have rather distinct
phenomenologies. I agree also that answering shall-questions need not involve
commitment to normative judgments. Where I disagree is regarding the claimed
dispensability of asking oneself should-questions.
The first thing to note here is that very often the relevant phenomenologies
are not all that different, sometimes not even distinct. When deliberating about
your career choice, have you been asking yourself a shall- or a should-question? It
seems
you’ve
been
asking
both,
without
distinguishing
the
two.
Phenomenologically speaking, then, the distinction is often blurred40.
This is not a superficial feature of the phenomenology. In cases of
deliberation – as opposed to cases of mere picking – the distinction between the
two kinds of question partly collapses. The two questions are still distinct, but the
way we answer the shall-question is often (partly) by answering the shouldquestion. Indeed, as rational and deliberative creatures, often we cannot answer the
shall-question except by answering the should-question41. This claim, besides
being loyal to the relevant phenomenology, is also the conclusion of a plausible
inference to the best explanation. For what best explains the seriousness with
40
Perhaps this is why shall- and should-questions are often conflated. Richardson (1994, 41)
writes, for instance: “This [the most general “ought”, the “ought” of practical reasoning] is the
“ought” sans phrase …, which is involved when one decides what one ought to do – or, more
simply, what to do.”.
41
So when Nagel (1986, 149) characterizes deliberation as “The … process … aimed at finding out
what I should do”, and when Brink (1997, 274) says “To be a rational agent is to deliberate about
what is best to do.”, perhaps they should be read not as conflating shall- and should-questions but
rather as emphasizing the role the latter typically play in answering the former.
163
which the relevant questions are addressed, the willingness to put time and effort
into answering them, the obvious attempt to get things right – what best explains
these phenomena is that when we deliberate about what to do, we often deliberate
about what we should do. And it is this kind of deliberation – the one that involves
the attempt to answer should-questions – that, as I argued in section 3.3, is
essentially unavoidable and so intrinsically indispensable.
3.4.5
Is Deliberation Illusory After All?
Perhaps one may concede that the phenomenology of deliberation suggests a
commitment to normative truths in roughly the way described in section 3.1-3.3,
but nevertheless insist that it would be too quick to conclude from that to there
being such truths. For the phenomenology of deliberation may very well deceive
us – it may simply be illusory.42
It wouldn’t do, in replying to this objection, just to note the persistence of it
seeming to us in deliberation that there are normative truths. We know from other
illusions that they can be rather strongly immune to belief and knowledge.
Consider the Mueller-Lyar illusion: Even after measuring the two line segments
and concluding that they are equally long, still, when just looking at them, the one
with the arrows pointing outwards seems longer. We know better, of course, and
so the impression doesn’t penetrate our beliefs, but nor do our beliefs penetrate the
impression – the line still seems longer. Similarly, it may be argued, even though
42
I thank Tom Nagel and Mark Schroeder for pressing me on this and related points.
164
we know (based on independent reasons, perhaps) that there are no normative
truths, still when deliberating we cannot but feel as if there are. But this is an
illusion, one we should isolate from our cognitive goings-on, in a way similar to
our treatment of the Mueller-Lyar illusion.43
Treating the phenomenological discussion above as one would an illusion
of this sort, one can then, it seems, in good conscience even engage in deliberation
while still disbelieving in normative truths, without thereby being at all
inconsistent, just as one can indulge in one’s impression that one of the two line
segments is longer than the other without taking back one’s belief that they are
equally long. This, it may now be argued, is a way of continuing to engage in
deliberation, while avoiding the commitment to normative truths.
Let me make, then, three points in reply to this objection. First, as it stands
the objection is incomplete. For in order to accept a seeming – certainly a
persistent one – as an illusion, we usually require (and justifiably so) some reason
to mistrust the relevant seeming. In the Muller-Lyar illusion, we have very strong
reason to believe that the line segments are equally long – we’ve measured them in
favorable conditions, and perhaps we even have an explanation of why it is that,
when just casually looked at, one seems longer. Without such reasons, of course,
we would be justified (if mistaken) in trusting our impression of relative length.
For another plausible example of a phenomenon of this kind, consider Sidgwick’s (1906, 28)
distinction between moral and quasi-moral sentiment, the latter being what remains after you no
longer believe a moral judgment you once held, but when you still can’t help being psychologically
influenced by your previous moral beliefs.
43
165
But if this is so, in order to have a serious objection here to my argument what we
need is more than is given by the objection as specified: What is needed is a
positive reason – one that is at least reasonably strong – to reject what, when
deliberating, seems to us to be the case. Again we are in the position I anticipated
at the beginning of this chapter: The burden is now on those rejecting my view of
deliberation to present a reason why deliberation cannot be what we feel it is. So
the objection in this section is not so much an independent objection, as it is a
promissory note, to be made good when some other objection (to my account of
deliberation, or perhaps to other parts of my argument for Robust Realism, or
perhaps even just to Robust Realism, the view itself) can be made to work. And
the discussion in the rest of this section, and indeed the rest of this essay, is meant
to suggest that this is not likely to happen.
A second, closely related, point worth making here, is this: We have come
to realize that the mere possibility of mistake doesn’t suffice to undermine
warrant. The possibility that we are deceived when we (think we) perceive
something is not sufficient to undermine the warrant such perceptual evidence
confers on our perception-based beliefs. But this applies in the case of the
phenomenological
evidence
I
cite
as
well:
The
mere
possibility
of
phenomenological illusion may undermine a claim to infallibility in such matters
(and it goes without saying that no such claim is entailed by Robust Realism or by
my argument for it), but it certainly does not suffice to undermine the warrant such
phenomenological evidence confers on our commitment to normative truths. Here
166
too, then, what is needed is not the mere suspicion that things may have gone
wrong and that the phenomenology may deceive us, but rather some reason to
believe that this is indeed so.
Third, and perhaps most importantly: Perhaps it may after all be possible to
deliberate while at the same time viewing the commitments deliberation suggests
as an illusion (or so at least let us assume for the sake of argument). Even if such
deliberation is possible, though, so deliberating will inevitably change one’s view
of one’s deliberation. No longer the search for answers to the normative questions
one asks oneself, it will become a kind of intellectual indulgence, a mere game.
Just like the casual look at the line segments of the Mueller-Lyar illusion changes
its character once we are familiar with the illusion from an honest attempt to assess
relative length to an act of intellectual (and perhaps perceptual) playfulness, so too
deliberation changes if one comes to believe that the suggestion of a commitment
to normative truths is a mere illusion. Indeed, the modified mental process is so
different from deliberation sincerely engaged in that it may not even merit being
called “deliberation”. But regardless of how it is best called, so viewing this
mental process undermines whatever reason we had to find the deliberative project
attractive in the first place. Recall now my account (following Colyvan) of
instrumental indispensability: For something to be instrumentally indispensable for
a project it is sufficient that it cannot be eliminated without defeating whatever
reason we had to find that project attractive in the first place. So, even if it is true
that people can engage in the deliberative project while avoiding a commitment to
167
normative truths (by treating deliberation as illusory), normative truths and belief
in them are still indispensable for deliberation, because without them deliberation
is – even if possible – utterly unattractive.
For these reasons, then, the possibility of treating the phenomenology of
deliberation as illusory does not, I think, pose a serious threat to my argument.
3.4.6
Have We Reached Bedrock?
Justifications, we know, come to an end somewhere. Knowing that, you may, even
while deliberating, be inspired by Wittgenstein’s (1953, section 217) comment:
If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached
bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined
to say: “This is simply what I do.”
You may be tempted, then, to take a this-is-simply-what-I-do claim to settle your
deliberation and bring it to its conclusion. And, if an obviously non-normative
claim like “This is simply what I do” (isn’t it, after all, a part of Wittgenstein’s
point that this claim is not normative?) can settle a deliberation, then normative
truths are not indispensable for deliberation after all, and so something must be
wrong with the arguments of sections 3.1 – 3.3.
Part of my answer to this worry has already been given: If you take that
this is simply what you do to settle the deliberation, you – being a rational creature
– already commit yourself to it being a reason, and so to at least one normative
truth.
168
Very often, though, you are not willing to commit yourself to this
normative judgment, you are not willing to take that this is simply what you do to
be any reason for doing it44. In the terms mentioned above, you treat this fact as
merely a fact about what you do. But then what of where justifications come to an
end? If you’re not willing to take that this is simply what you do to be a reason,
what could possibly do the work Wittgenstein thinks this fact does?
Justifications do come to an end somewhere. What the argument of this
chapter (and indeed the rest of the argument for Robust Realism) establishes,
though, is that they come to an end with normative truths. Faced with a sufficiently
persistent skeptic, you may very well reach bedrock. But then, it seems to me, you
will (and should) be inclined to say, not “This is simply what I do”, but rather
“This is simply what I should do.”.45
3.4.7
Can’t We Deliberate in the Face of (Believed) Incomparability?
Sometimes, it seems plausible to think, we have to choose between incomparable
options. We have to choose between two alternatives, that is, when it is not the
44
In fairness to Wittgenstein it should be noted that the context the quote is taken from is the
discussion of rule-following, and that the case of following a semantic or syntactical rule – the case
Wittgenstein is primarily interested in in this context – seems to be a case where we would be
perfectly happy to commit ourselves to this normative judgment: That this is simply how I (or
perhaps we) use language does seem to be a good reason to use it in this way. I do not know
whether what I say here has any interesting bearing on the rule-following problem or on what
Wittgenstein says about it. Indeed, as Cavell (1990) emphasizes, Wittgenstein only notes that he is
inclined to say “This is simply what I do” – he stops short of actually saying so. So perhaps
Wittgenstein could agree with what I say in the text. I am grateful to Tom Nagel for this reference
(also see Nagel, 1997, 48).
45
Nagel (1997, 106) makes, I think, a very similar point when he says: “Only a justification can
bring the request for justification to an end.” And earlier in the book (49), he makes an analogous
point about mathematics, explicitly referring to Wittgenstein’s remark.
169
case that the first is (all-things-considered) better than the second, nor is it the case
that the second is better than the first, nor is it the case that the two are just as good
(nor does any other positive comparative relation, if any exist, hold between
them). And rather often, it seems, we know as much. But coming to realize that
two alternatives we are considering are incomparable, it doesn’t seem like we stop
deliberating. And this shows, it seems, that we can deliberate in a believed absence
of reasons, and so that the argument of sections 3.1 – 3.3 fails. Now,
incomparability is a controversial issue, and opinions about it differ. It is not
uncontroversial even that the phenomenon exists46. But I want to note here how, if
it does, and if we nevertheless deliberate in the face of believed incomparability,
my view of deliberation can accommodate this data.47
One thing that can serve as a reply here has already been mentioned: Just
like in the case of perfectly balanced reasons, our continuing to deliberate may
betray inconsistency in our belief (we believe that there is no all-things-considered
reason, but also that there is) or our lack of confidence in the no-all-thingsconsidered-reason-judgment; so too our continuing to deliberate in the face of
believed incomparability may betray an analogous inconsistency or lack of
confidence.
I want to mention here, though, a further possible reply (one that may also
be considered a fall-back position regarding the case of perfectly balanced
46
For discussion and a survey of some of the relevant literature, see Chang (1997).
The points that follow apply also, mutatis mutandis, to deliberation in the face of (believed)
indeterminacy.
47
170
reasons). It may be argued that deliberation does not require all-things-considered
judgments or reasons, but rather that prima facie reasons suffice for deliberation.
According to this suggestion, deliberation is still thought of as an attempt to
eliminate arbitrariness, and so reasons are indeed indispensable for deliberation,
but so long as there are reasons – considerations counting for and against the
relevant alternatives – deliberation is possible, even if there is no (unique) solution
to the problem we face in deliberation. It is important to note here that this
suggestion is not committed to the possibility of a rational, justified, choice in such
cases. Whether such choice is possible is yet another controversial issue I would
prefer not to address here48. But whether or not justified choice in such
circumstances is possible, deliberation may be. More may very well be necessary
for justified choice than for deliberation.
An analogy may help to make my point clearer. Intentional action, it is
often thought, is action for reasons. When weak-willed, we intentionally act
contrary to our own judgment about reasons. Given that intentional action is action
for reasons, it is hard to see, then, how akrasia is possible. One influential account
of akrasia thus begins by noticing that action can be done for reasons, and so
intentional, even when it is not done for the (perceived) greater reason 49. Being
done for any reason at all suffices for the intentionality of the action. Regardless of
the merits of such a view of akrasia and action, I want to use it as a structural
48
49
See Chang (1997, 10-13) for discussion and some relevant references.
This, I take it, is Davidson’s (1970) view, seriously oversimplified.
171
analogue for the suggestion regarding the relation between deliberation and
reasons: According to this suggestion, deliberation requires, not all-thingsconsidered reasons, but simply reasons, just like intentional action requires
(according to this view of akrasia) not being done for the greatest reason, but just
being done for reasons50.
If so, then deliberation in the face of believed incomparability poses no
threat to the indispensability of reasons for deliberation. For even if a situation
where two incomparable values or reasons pull in opposite directions is one where
there is no all-things-considered reason either way, it is not a situation where
reasons are absent. And given their existence, that deliberation in such cases is
possible is no counterexample to reasons being instrumentally indispensable for
deliberation.
3.4.8
Don’t Antirealists Deliberate?
Not everyone is a realist about normativity. Certainly, not everyone is a robust
realist. Now, I have argued that deliberation is essentially unavoidable, and that a
commitment to normative truths is indispensable for deliberation. And eventually
(after rejecting the alternatives in chapter 4) I will have argued that irreducibly
normative truths are indispensable for deliberation. But then the existence – and
In Davidson’s philosophy of action, “reasons” are plausibly understood as motivating reasons,
whereas in this essay I talk of normative reasons being deliberatively indispensable. But this
difference – important though it is in many contexts – does not undermine, I think, the structural
analogy drawn in the text.
50
172
abundance – of people who reject Robust Realism (for now, I’ll call them
antirealists) can give rise to the following objection, best presented in the form of a
dilemma51.
Either antirealists deliberate, or they do not. If they do, then, given that
they don’t believe in normative truths, normative truths are not instrumentally
indispensable for deliberation. If they do not deliberate, then, given that they are
just as much persons or agents as the best of realists are, deliberation is not
essentially unavoidable. Either way, the objection concludes, my argument fails.
The existence of antirealists (mind you – even the possible existence of antirealists
would suffice here) shows that there is no way of giving an account of deliberation
that satisfies both desiderata guiding the discussion in this chapter.
The way out of the dilemma is to attribute to antirealists inconsistent
commitments. I take antirealists’ on their word regarding their belief that there are
no normative truths. But their deliberation commits them also to there being some
such truths. The case need not be – though it certainly can be – one in which, to
paraphrase Railton (1997, 63), antirealists “are actually kidding themselves. Their
deliberation and action reveal their nihilism to be no more than a posture.”. They
may genuinely believe their antirealism. But their deliberation (and perhaps,
though less likely, also their action) reveals not necessarily the insincerity of their
antirealism, but rather that they are also committed to there being some decision it
51
This objection and objections very close to it have been pressed upon me by Hartry Field, Derek
Parfit and Mark Schroeder.
173
makes best sense for them to make. From this realism follows. And so antirealists
are inconsistent.
Consider the analogy with explanation again. If the argumentation of the
previous chapter is sound, then by inferring to the best explanation you commit
yourself to the loveliness, or explanation-friendliness, of the universe. Of course,
some may believe that the universe is not lovely, or that even if it is we cannot
know as much. If, however, they continue to infer to the best explanation, there is
at least prima facie reason to attribute to them inconsistent commitments.
Similarly, people who accept the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument for
mathematical Platonism, believe that nominalists who nevertheless accept current
scientific theories are committed – inconsistently – both to the existence of
mathematical objects and to its denial52.
As these examples show, it is not uncommon in philosophy that one
attributes to rival theories mistaken views of what even those holding them do
(explain, deliberate, perceive, remember, and so on), nor is it uncommon,
consequently, to attribute to rival theories inconsistent commitments53. The fact
that I have to attribute such mistakes and inconsistencies to antirealists should not,
then, count strongly against Robust Realism or my argument supporting it.
52
53
See, e.g., Putnam (1971, 347).
I thank Tom Nagel for helping me see this point clearly.
174
3.4.9
What Would We Have Done Had We Found Out that There Are No
Normative Truths?
Suppose God whispered in your ear that there are no normative truths. Another
dilemma then threatens: Either you will thereby stop deliberating, or you will not.
If you do, deliberation is not essentially unavoidable. If you do not, normative
truths (or belief in them) are not indispensable for deliberation. Either way, then,
my argument fails54.
If I am right and there are (irreducibly) normative truths, we cannot come
to know or find out that there aren’t any, because “knowing” and “finding out” are
success terms that imply truth. Similarly, if God is supposed to be perfectly
reliable, the hypothetical situation in which the dilemma arises is impossible. So,
in order to avoid begging the question against me, the objection should be
rephrased. Suppose, then, that an extremely (but not necessarily perfectly) reliable
source whispered in your ear that there are no normative truths, and that you
thereby came to believe that there aren’t. The dilemma arises as before.
Questioning the possibility of the hypothesis no longer seems plausible:
Surely a reliable source may be mistaken, and surely I can come to believe that
there are no normative truths. (Though, appreciating the strength of my argument
for Robust Realism, one of the things that I may do when that source tells me there
are no normative truths is come to think she is not as reliable as I had previously
thought, or that this is one of the rare occasions on which she is wrong; in this
54
For this objection and for much helpful discussion regarding it I am indebted to Derek Parfit.
175
respect, the situation is like one in which an extremely reliable source whispers in
your ear that there is a largest prime.)
Nevertheless, there is, I think, a way out of this dilemma. Indeed, it is the
very same way taken in reply to the previous objection. For, having come to
believe that there are no normative truths, I have become an antirealist, and my
deliberation can then be accounted for as in the previous section. I can still
deliberate (indeed, I still cannot avoid deliberating), and this shows that I am still
committed to normative truths. Convinced by the reliable source, though, I also
believe that there aren’t any. And so I am guilty of inconsistent commitments.
3.4.10 Does the Argument Prove Too Much? A Quick Note on Freedom
There may be some reason for concern regarding the strength of my argument (in
this and other chapters). For it may seem to prove too much, and, if it does, this is
evidence that it is not successful after all. In particular, it may seem that my
argument – or one closely analogous to it – can be used in order to support the
claim that we are incompatibilistically free.
The argument runs as follows: It only makes sense for you to deliberate –
to try to decide as it makes most sense for you to decide – if you can (or at least
believe you can) decide as it makes sense for you to decide, and if you likewise
can make the wrong decision. Otherwise, if it is already determined that you’re
going to make the right (or wrong) decision, deliberation seems futile. So, if
deliberation is intrinsically unavoidable, and if incompatibilist freedom (or belief
176
in it) is indispensable for deliberation, this is all the justification we need for belief
in incompatibilist freedom – or so, at least, I seem to be committed to saying.
Now, the first thing I want to say regarding this worry is that it is not
completely clear to me that if my argument proves this much, it will have proved
too much. Indeed, something along these lines may be what Kant had in mind
when writing that “we act under the idea of freedom”55 and when arguing for
freedom as a postulate of practical reason56 – a line of argument that, as noted in
chapter 2, I find highly attractive, and that inspires much of my own57. More
recently, too, there has been some interest in the questions of whether determinists
can sincerely deliberate, and what follows regarding freedom if they cannot58.
Still, I do not want to commit myself here to any position regarding
freedom, and so I want to note that my argument falls short of committing me to
the soundness of an analogous argument regarding freedom. I am committed, of
course, to the following conditional: If incompatibilist freedom (or belief in it) is
indispensable
for
deliberation,
we
are
justified
in
believing
we’re
incompatibilistically free. But nothing in my argument commits me to the
antecedent of this conditional, that is, to the relevant indispensability premise. For
all I say here, it may well be that there is some other – compatibilist – way of
accounting for whatever by way of freedom, if anything, is required for
55
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (4:448).
In numerous texts, but most elaborately, perhaps, in the Second Critique (e.g. 5:132-3).
57
The position and argument Pettit and Smith (1998) put forward regarding freedom closely
resemble the Kantian argument referred to in the text. And a similar argument is suggested also by
Korsgaard (1996, 96) and Nagel (1997, 115).
58
See, for instance, Taylor (1966, chapter 12).
56
177
deliberation59. If there is such a possible account, incompatibilist freedom is not
indispensable for deliberation. And, indeed, much of the discussion of freedom
and determinism can be understood as trying to support or reject exactly this
indispensability premise.60
Leaving this example, then, and returning to the general worry about
proving too much: It seems to me that the intrinsic indispensability of a project is
not very easily established; nor is the instrumental indispensability of some thesis
to an intrinsically indispensable project. If this is right, and in the absence of other
examples, the concern about proving too much is not too worrying.
3.4.11 What Exactly is Indispensable?
My argument for the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, it may be
said, only supports – at most – another conclusion, one that does not suffice for my
arch-argument for Robust Realism. For, the objection goes, all that is
indispensable for deliberation is that I believe that there is a decision it makes most
sense for me to make (or that some possible decisions make more sense than
59
Pete Graham suggested to me a very different line. According to him, it is determinism (or
something very close to it) that may be deliberatively indispensable, because, roughly, deliberation
presupposes that one’s decision is going to have real effects in the world, and that one’s decision is
not random. As I’m not committing myself to any view regarding freedom, I am exempt, I think,
from discussing this very interesting suggestion.
60
Suppose the indispensability premise in the case of freedom can be supported, but that – as is
surely epistemically possible – we come across some overwhelmingly strong scientific evidence
that we are not after all incompatibilistically free. What then? In such an unfortunate case we
would have to conclude that deliberation is illusory after all. The mentioned scientific evidence
would be the reason we need in order to support such a judgment – the kind of reason we lack, and
perhaps cannot possibly have, in the case of the commitment to normative truths (as I argued in
section 3.4.5 above). I thank Tom Nagel for discussions of this point.
178
others); it is not indispensable for there to be such a decision. And so, all that is
indispensable is the belief in normative truths, not the normative truths themselves.
But this is not enough for my argument for Robust Realism to go through. And
note that this may be thought to distinguish my argument from arguments from
explanatory indispensability, for what is indispensable for our scientific theories is,
it may be argued, the electrons (and perhaps also numbers) themselves, not merely
the belief in them.61
I agree that it is the belief in normative truths, not the normative truths
themselves, that is directly indispensable for deliberation. But from this it does not
follow that normative truths are not indispensable. Though they are not what is
directly indispensable, they may be – and in fact, I think, they are – indirectly
indispensable for deliberation. And this indispensability suffices for my argument
to go through.62
Remember that the argument so far has been first-personal: I have left
third-personal questions of explanation behind (though I briefly return to them in
section 3.4.12), and focused on the phenomenological character of deliberation. It
is this perspective from which my indispensability argument is supposed to work.
With this in mind, the gap between the indispensability of the belief in normative
truths and the indispensability of the normative truths themselves can, I think, be
bridged. The situation is reminiscent of Moore’s Paradox: Though there is no
61
For this and related objections I am indebted to Cian Dorr, Ernesto Garcia, Josh Schechter and
Brad Skow.
62
The discussion that follows draws on Resnik (1995) and on Sayre-McCord (2001, 357).
179
incoherence in acknowledging someone else’s commitment to something being the
case while at the same time claiming that it is not the case, incoherence (of some
kind; more on this shortly) is involved in acknowledging one’s own commitment
to something being the case while at the same time denying that it is the case. The
commitment to normative truths, the belief in them, has been shown (so we at least
assume at this stage) to be indispensable to a project of yours that is essentially
unavoidable. Though your having this commitment doesn’t entail, of course, its
truth, you are nevertheless not in a position to acknowledge the commitment and
still deny its truth. Doing so would involve you in some sort of incoherence. From
your own perspective, then, once you’ve acknowledged the deliberative
indispensability of normative beliefs, you have already – on pain of incoherence –
acknowledged the deliberative indispensability of the normative truths themselves.
Now, the kind of incoherence is not strictly speaking logical. And, as the
reference to Moore’s Paradox suggests, there seems to be something pragmatic
both about the relevant kind of incoherence and, consequently, also about the
justification of the move from the indispensability of the belief to the
indispensability of the normative truths believed. But, given the discussion in
chapter 2 of the relations between pragmatic and epistemic justification in general
and as regarding indispensability arguments in particular, I take this to be
unproblematic63.
63
Resnik (1995) nowhere explicitly mentions the distinction between pragmatic and epistemic
justification, and his discussion, it seems to me, is thus somewhat confused here. Without
180
Even if my argument does support the (indirect) indispensability of the
normative truths themselves, however, it may be thought that the disanalogy with
arguments from explanatory indispensability remains. For mine at least involves
one extra step, one that may detract from its plausibility, thus making it less
plausible than paradigmatic (explanatory) indispensability arguments. It is
therefore interesting to note that arguments from explanatory indispensability may
very well be in a relevantly similar situation, and that no disanalogy need be
involved. Field (1989, 14), Resnik (1995, 172) and Colyvan (2001, 10, footnote
18), for instance, when characterizing indispensability arguments generally
(though with the mathematical case primarily in mind) make it clear – rightly, I
think – that what is directly indispensable for doing science or for explaining is the
belief in mathematical objects, the willingness to quantify over them, and so on64.
The mathematical objects themselves, or the mathematical truths purportedly
about them, are therefore, much like normative truths, only indirectly
indispensable. Now, Field does not, as far as I know, explicitly address the need to
move from the indispensability of the belief to the indispensability of what is
supplying the kind of argument I try to supply in chapter 2, he moves freely from pragmatically
justifying belief in mathematical entities (as a result of a pragmatic indispensability argument) to
taking the belief to have been epistemically justified.
64
Here, for instance, is a quote from Field (1989, 14): “An indispensability argument is an
argument that we should believe a certain claim (for instance, a claim asserting the existence of a
certain kind of entity) because doing so is indispensable for certain purposes (which the argument
then details).” (Italics added).
181
believed or of the relevant entities65, and Colyvan, who does explicitly mention the
move (2001, 10, footnote 18), nevertheless fails to justify it or to acknowledge that
it needs justification. But Resnik does address this difficulty more seriously, and
his way of justifying this move is the one on which mine is modeled.
3.4.12 Does Deliberation Incur Explanatory Commitments?
So far I have been careful not to commit myself to any relevant explanatory
claims: I repeatedly emphasized that my argument relies on the deliberative, not
explanatory, role of normative truths. And I implied, it seems, that I can remain
largely neutral on explanatory questions. But, it may now be argued, the
distinction between the deliberative and the explanatory (or between the first- and
third-personal) is not as clean-cut as I seem to have been assuming. The
deliberative role of normative truths and belief in them, so the argument may go,
presupposes or entails an explanatory role for these truths and beliefs. The
deliberative stance thus incorporates explanatory requirements, and it may be
important to spell out these commitments, not least because if my understanding of
deliberation and normativity makes them implausible, this makes it highly
suspicious.
Many share the intuition (for that is what it typically is; very rarely is an
argument offered in support of it) that the role reasons play in deliberation requires
65
This is not necessarily a flaw, as Field ends up rejecting the argument by rejecting the
indispensability premise. He can be understood as granting the legitimacy of the relevant move for
the sake of argument.
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that they play an explanatory role as well. Consider, for instance, the following
quote from Raz (1975,16): “Reasons can be used for guiding and evaluating only
because they can also be used in explanation…”. In order to make a similar point
intuitively plausible, Dancy (2000, 171) tells the following story:
If we said to the agent: ‘You can tell us as often as
you like what your reason was for doing what you
did, but we know in advance that that reason can
never be the reason why you did it’, I think he would
feel rightly insulted – and this even though we are
not disputing the truth of what he tells us.
The thought seems to be that unless the consideration you took to be reason-giving
in your deliberation (that is, your reason for doing what you did) also plays an
important role in explaining your action (and is thus the reason why you did it), the
explanation is somehow unfit for the actions of an agent. And so, if, when
deliberating, you are to take yourself and your deliberation seriously, you must
believe that the considerations you take to be reason-giving will also play a role in
explaining your action66. If this is so, then by deliberating you already incur an
explanatory commitment. And, if my account of deliberation and normativity is
roughly right, this commitment is rather problematic, one according to which
normative reasons (and maybe also normative truths, facts and properties) play a
role in explaining actions67. Regardless of just how plausible this explanatory
commitment is, however, it is an explanatory commitment the deliberating agent
66
For similar points, see Williams (1980, 102), Kim (1998, 77), and Darwall (1992, 166-7).
Dancy (2000) endorses this commitment, and draws far-reaching conclusions from it regarding
the nature of normative as well as motivating reasons. For my purposes here, this part of Dancy’s
theory can safely be ignored.
67
183
incurs, and so, the objection concludes, the deliberative is not independent of the
explanatory as I assume.
Another way of making what I think is essentially the same point is as
follows: In understanding the world we seek not just a third-personal
understanding, nor merely a first-personal one. One of the challenges we face –
according to Nagel’s The View From Nowhere (1986), a central challenge we face
– is that of achieving an integrated understanding, one with room in it for both
third- and first-personal perspectives. I have been emphasizing the first-personperspective. But in my enthusiasm I have blocked any chance of integrating it with
a plausible third-personal, explanatory, perspective.
At a first glance, it may not be clear how any of this is relevant for my
argument. For having been insulted in the way Dancy suggests in the passage
quoted above, you still have to decide what to do, and so – unless it is a case of
mere picking – you still deliberate. And it doesn’t seem that Dancy’s insult is
going to give you any reason to do one thing rather than another, or nothing at all,
or even just to stop deliberating. The explanatory insult Dancy considers and the
tension between the first- and third-personal in these circumstances are, then,
strictly speaking irrelevant for your deliberation.
But this does not render them irrelevant for my argument. If we have
reason to believe that there are necessary ties of the sort alluded to between
deliberation and explanation, we may extract from them adequacy constraints on
an account of deliberation. If the account of deliberation developed in this chapter
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undermined such connections with explanation, this may then be reason to reject
it, and my argument for Robust Realism along with it. So more needs to be said in
reply to this objection.
I want to make here, then, two related points. I have been focusing, to
repeat, on the first-personal role reasons play in deliberation. This is no
coincidence, of course – I think this is their primary role, this is what we primarily
need them for. Now, if this is so, the deliberative role of reasons may very well be
privileged in another way. For even if there are necessary connections of the
relevant kind between deliberation and explanation, it may be better to treat them
as adequacy constraints on an account of explanation rather than of deliberation.
This, then, is my first point: If deliberation has the kind of primacy I attribute to it,
it seems reasonable to start with an account of deliberation, and then – if there are
necessary connections between deliberation and explanation – tailor our account of
explanation to fit our account of deliberation, and not the other way around.68
Nevertheless, if the adequacy constraints thus arrived at for an account of
explanation had been extremely unreasonable, still my account of deliberation
would have been in danger. My second point here, then, is that these constraints
need not be unreasonable at all. Let me hint at a relevant argument that I hope to
develop in detail elsewhere. Given a sufficiently complex and plausible account of
acting for a reason, the explanatory commitments incurred in deliberation because
68
That we should constrain our explanations to allow for the first-personal is a major theme in
Nagel’s The View from Nowhere (1986). His discussion is especially close to my context here on
page 142.
185
of the supposed necessary connections between deliberative and explanatory
reasons need not be at all implausible. It is, I think, sufficient for A to have Φed
for reason R that the belief that R is indeed a reason for Φing plays an appropriate
causal role in the bringing about of A’s Φing. If this is right, then the explanatory
commitment incurred by the deliberating agent can be rather easily vindicated, and
need not involve the explanatory role of the normative truths themselves (unless,
of course, normative beliefs are best explained by normative truths; this is the first
strategy of coping with Harman’s Challenge, described and tentatively rejected in
chapter 1).
3.4.13 Had We Not Been Deliberative, Would There Have Been
Normative Truths?
The first-personal character of my argument for normative truths may give rise to
the following worry: Had our first-personal perspective been very different, had
we not been deliberative, would there have been any normative truths? If not, it
would seem to follow that the existence of normative truths is surprisingly
contingent, and – more disturbingly – contingent on the wrong thing, on our
nature. (Such dependence is going to be rejected as unacceptable in chapter 4,
because, while deliberating, we often rightly think even of our nature as merely
our nature. If my argument for Robust Realism yields a similar dependence, then,
it seems to undermine itself.)
186
Now, if the argument of section 3.3 above is right, we are (metaphysically)
necessarily deliberative. The counterfactual “Had we not been deliberative, there
would not have been any normative truths” – just like “Had we not been
deliberative, there would still be normative truths” – thus has a metaphysically
impossible antecedent69. As it is hard to make sense of such counterfactuals and to
evaluate them for truth, it is fortunate that we can state the relevant worry without
them. That we exist is, of course, perfectly contingent, so we should consider the
counterfactual “Had there been no deliberative creatures, there would be no
normative truths”. Does it follow from my argument? If so, is it objectionable?
Some (e.g. Velleman, 2000a, e.g. at 180) assume that reasons only apply to
agents, and so, it seems, that in a possible world without agents there are no
reasons. Because of the intimate connection between (normative) reasons and
normative truths, this view may seem to imply that the counterfactual above is
true. If this is so, and if my view entails the mentioned counterfactual, this is then
no objection to it. I should say, though, that I find this line intuitively problematic,
as I would like to say that some reasons – certainly some normative judgments –
apply even to creatures that cannot act for reasons. I would like, for instance, to be
able to say that the cat in front of me has a very good reason not to run into heavy
traffic, and I would like to be able to mean it literally (though I know this is a
controversial view, and I do not intend to defend it here, nor am I sure that I can). I
want to note, then, that I need not commit myself to the mentioned counterfactual.
69
Holding our constitution fixed, at least. I ignore this qualification in what follows.
187
Let me briefly repeat, then, a point made in section 2.A.3 (in chapter 2). On
my account, the dependence on our deliberative nature is epistemological, not
metaphysical. Electrons would have existed even had there been no explanatory
creatures around; it’s just that then there (presumably) would have been no
creature with reason to believe in electrons. Similarly, normative truths would
have existed even had there been no deliberative creatures; it’s just that then there
would have been no creature with reason to believe in normative truths.
3.4.14 Am I Committed to Dummettean Antirealism?
It only makes sense to deliberate, to try to make the decision it makes most sense
for one to make, if there is a decision it makes most sense for one to make.
Similarly, it seems, it only makes sense to deliberate if one can find out which
decision is the one it makes most sense for one to make. Inaccessible normative
truths are deliberatively irrelevant. If my argument, here and in chapter 2,
establishes the existence of normative truths, then, can’t a similar argument be
constructed in support of the claim that normative truths are (necessarily)
epistemically accessible? If so, I am committed to Dummettean antirealism, of
which this is the characteristic claim70.
How bad is it if this is so? Despite the terms (my “Robust Realism” and
Dummett’s “antirealism”), no inconsistency need be involved. As has often been
70
See, for instance, Dummett (1978, 146), Haldane and Wright (1993b, 4).
188
noted71, it is not at all clear that what Dummett means by “antirealism” is
incompatible with traditional realist views. Indeed, among philosophers whose
views on normativity and morality are considered paradigmatically realist, one can
find endorsements of the necessary accessibility of normative truths72. If my
argument does commit me to Dummettean antirealism, then, this is no obvious
refutation of my view.
Nevertheless, I would rather avoid such a commitment, because it seems to
me that accepting the (necessary) epistemic accessibility of normative truths
makes one vulnerable to the following – less than conclusive, but still threatening
– argument: That there can be no unknowable normative truths calls, it seems, for
explanation73, and the most straightforward explanations are all in antirealist (not
just Dummettean antirealist; really antirealist), or at least anti-robust-realist, terms.
If, for instance, normative truths are somehow invented, created, or constructed by
us, this would seem the beginning of a promising explanation of why it is that
there can be no unknowable normative truths. Similarly, if there are no normative
truths, and all we do when we utter normative judgments is express some noncognitive attitude, again it seems less surprising that there are no inaccessible
71
For this claim, as well as a critical evaluation of it, see Haldane and Wright (1993b, 5-6).
See Dancy (2000, 57-9, 65-6), Kim (1998, 78-81), Bond (1983, 65) and Nagel (1986, 139).
73
In conversation, Crispin Wright rejected this claim; indeed, he thinks that – for the most general
reasons that have to do with concept acquisition and language mastery – it is inaccessibility that
calls, when present, for explanation, not accessibility (see Wright, 1992, 151). If this is so,
Dummettean antirealism poses no threat to Robust Realism and my argument for it (not this threat,
at any rate). I cannot, of course, seriously discuss Wright’s suggestion here. By proceeding to show
in the text that I am not committed to Dummettean antirealism, I show that even if Wright is
mistaken, my argument is in the clear.
72
189
normative truths (or even inaccessible truths*, where truths* are the noncognitivistically respectable surrogates for truths). Or, if normative truths are
reducible to introspection-transparent facts about one’s motivation, it again seems
that their necessary accessibility is not too mysterious. It is hard to see, though,
how the necessary accessibility of normative truths can be explained in robust
realist terms. Perhaps there is such an explanation after all; I cannot rule out this
possibility. But I remain suspicious, and so I want to note how I can avoid the
commitment to the necessary accessibility of normative truths.
Consider the case of explanation again. Most people are Dummettean
realists about scientific facts. They think, in other words, that it is quite possible
for there to be an unknown, even unknowable, fact of the matter regarding, say,
the primitive particles of the universe. There doesn’t seem to be anything in this
belief to undermine the endeavor to come up with better and more powerful
explanations of many phenomena. For all scientists know, they may never be able
to explain a phenomenon they’re trying to explain, because the relevant explanans
may be epistemically inaccessible. But, unless they know (or are reasonably
confident) that this is so, the mere worry that it might be does not render the
scientific-explanatory project futile. Furthermore, the scientific-explanatory
project can easily survive the belief that the explanans of a specific phenomenon is
inaccessible, for there may be other phenomena the explanans of which is
accessible, and so merits being looked for.
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Analogously, then, so long as you do not know (or are reasonably
confident) that the normative truth relevant for your deliberation – that all-thingsconsidered it makes sense for you to pursue graduate studies in philosophy, say –
is inaccessible, the mere worry that it might be does not render your deliberation
futile. And, even if that normative truth is inaccessible (and so deliberatively
irrelevant), others may very well be accessible, and so the deliberative project as a
whole has not been rendered useless. I can therefore see no argument from the
deliberative indispensability of the normative to Dummettean antirealism
regarding it.
Still, while deliberating about a specific question, aren’t you at least
methodologically justified in assuming that the relevant normative truth is
accessible? It seems to me you are, and so you are justified in either believing that
it is accessible, or in abandoning the specific deliberation74. As specific cases of
deliberation are not unavoidable, again the thesis of the necessary accessibility of
normative truths doesn’t follow. Deliberation as a whole is, however, unavoidable.
And so I think you (and I) are committed to the following thesis: It is not the case
that all normative truths are epistemically inaccessible. And we may even be
committed to this thesis being true as a matter of necessity. This result falls short
of Dummettean antirealism, but it is significant nevertheless. And Robust Realism
still faces the challenge, it seems to me, of explaining how it is that, in all possible
74
Beliefs and their justification come in degrees, and the sentence in the text should be qualified
accordingly: The less you’re justified in believing that the relevant normative truth is accessible,
the less you’re justified in continuing deliberating.
191
worlds (in which there are deliberators), at least some of the normative realm is
epistemically accessible. But this explanatory challenge seems more manageable
than the one Dummettean antirealism – if true – poses.
These objections, I conclude, do not give strong enough reason to reject the
account of deliberation its phenomenology suggests.
3.5
Kindred Spirits
In this section I briefly consider two suggestions to be found in the literature,
suggestions close to mine in crucial respects. I cannot here discuss them in detail:
All I want to do is explain why it is that I find my own suggestion more promising
as (a part of) an argument for Robust Realism.
3.5.1
Action
It is a constraint on the understanding of action that it be distinct from mere bodily
movement (indeed, satisfying this constraint may be considered the central
challenge philosophers of action face)75. At least one attempt to satisfy this
constraint – one enjoying both intuitive plausibility and some historical credentials
– is by noting, very roughly, that action is not merely caused, but rather (also)
performed for reasons. Now, action is at the very least possible, and quite
75
The classic statement of the challenge this constraint poses is to be found in Wittgenstein (1953,
sec. 621): “What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my
arm?”.
192
plausibly actual too. So there are reasons for which it can be performed. And so
there are normative truths.76
Circumventing deliberation altogether, this argument nevertheless seems to
support metanormative realism (though not Robust Realism; more on this shortly).
And its premises (that action is distinct from mere bodily movement, that action is
performed for reasons, that action is at the very least possible) are intuitively very
plausible. Nevertheless, I find it less promising than my argument from
deliberative indispensability.
The first thing to note here is, of course, that the argument as presented is
incomplete. In particular, there is a need for a much fuller account of action, of
acting for a reason, of the distinction between reasons and causes, and so on. In
other words, what is needed is a philosophy of action. As it is not clear exactly
how the details of an acceptable philosophy of action would go, it is hard to assess
the sketchy argument above for its plausibility. For instance, the possibility of
mere picking suggests that we can act in the absence of (normative) reasons, and
this is a fact a fuller account of action is going to have to accommodate; it is hard
to know whether, once it does, anything like the argument from the possibility of
action can still go through. Furthermore, it is hard to see in advance how different
it is from my argument from deliberative indispensability: For it seems plausible
In thinking about this argument I benefited from Velleman’s discussion in his (2000b). For a
related argument, see Levin (1987).
76
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that an account of intentional action, action for reasons, is going to be closely
related to an account of deliberation.
Furthermore, the argument from action to metanormative realism may be
relying on an equivocation on “reasons”. For accounts of actions in terms of
reasons typically refer to motivating reasons. Now, these are all nice and well, but
if we are to argue for realism about normative truths, motivating reasons may not
suffice. That something is a motivating reason is not a normative truth. Only that
something is a normative reason is. The move from action to motivating reasons
may, then, be justified, as is the move from normative reasons to normative truths.
But we have yet to see a plausible move from motivating reasons to normative
reasons. Without such a move, the argument is simply invalid. Indeed, the
availability of what are plausibly considered cases of action not done for
normative reasons – the actions of some animals, and perhaps sub-intentional
human action – suggests that normative reasons are not indispensable for action.
These are reasons, then, to suspect that the argument from action may not
be as promising as it initially seems. I want now to suggest two reasons why it is in
fact inferior to my argument from deliberative indispensability. First, focusing on
deliberation seems phenomenologically more accurate. Phenomenologically
speaking, deliberation is, as it were, prior to action (though, as repeatedly
emphasized above, it is not temporally prior to all instances of action). For
deliberating creatures such as we, if reasons or normative truths are needed for
action, this is so only, it seems to me, because they are needed for deliberation. If
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this is so, there is some reason to prefer an argument that relies on the role of
normative truths in deliberation, which, when push comes to shove, does the real
work.
Regardless of this reason to prefer – in general – my argument to the one
from the possibility of action, I want to conclude the discussion of the argument
from action by noting why it cannot serve my purposes as well as my argument
from deliberative indispensability. For remember that, even granting me all that’s
been argued for so far, it still remains to be shown that no other, non-robust-realist,
account of normative truths (or something sufficiently close to them) can
accommodate their role in deliberation. This is what I attempt to do in chapter 4.
And if the argument from action is to support Robust Realism, it too must be
accompanied by a rejection of the alternatives. Now, I think the prospects of
showing that no non-robust-realist account of normativity can accommodate the
deliberative role of normative truths are very good. I do not see, however, how it
can be plausibly argued that no non-robust-realist account can accommodate the
role of reasons in action. And if such an argument can be constructed, I suspect it
will rely on premises regarding the relation between action and deliberation, and
the role of normative truths in deliberation, and will thus be parasitic on my
argument from deliberation. If this is so, then – regardless of its soundness as an
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argument for some weak kind of realism about reasons – the argument from action
cannot support Robust Realism77.
3.5.2
Conversation
Pettit and Smith (1998) emphasize the conversational stance. When we have a
distinct, “authorizing”, kind of conversation with someone, they argue, we make a
number of assumptions without which having the conversation doesn’t make
sense: “It only makes sense to adopt the conversational stance in relation to
someone … if three conditions are satisfied. First, there are norms relevant to the
issue of what they ought to believe. Second, they are capable of recognizing this to
be so. And third, they are capable of responding appropriately to the norms: that is,
capable of believing in the way they should.” (Pettit and Smith, 1998, 93) Of these
three conditions, it is the first that looks very much like realism about norms of
belief (Pettit and Smith then go on to argue for a similar condition regarding
desires).
Pettit and Smith do not neglect deliberation altogether. Indeed, in a number
of places (1998, e.g. at 92) they make it clear that they consider deliberation to be
a kind of conversation with oneself. I do not want to deny this relation (or one very
close to it) between conversation of this peculiar kind with others and deliberation.
Indeed, my phenomenological characterization of deliberation closely resembles
77
This is not, then, a criticism of the argument from action. Rather, it is an explanation of why I
won’t be pursuing it.
196
points often made about the phenomenology of interpersonal disagreement. There
is much, then, in Pettit’s and Smith’s argument I can agree with.78
The reason I prefer the argument from deliberative indispensability to
theirs – which can be read as an argument from conversational indispensability –
is again phenomenological. Phenomenologically speaking, it seems to me more
accurate to say that conversation (of the kind Pettit and Smith seem to have in
mind) is deliberation extended to include others, than to say that deliberation is
conversation with oneself. For the concern I start with is that of trying to decide
what to do, a decision I am uniquely positioned to make. When I choose to do so, I
can invite others to share in this deliberation. But even then, deliberation is
phenomenologically prior to conversation in this way. If this is so, a direct
argument from deliberative indispensability is to be preferred to an argument from
conversational indispensability. I am not confident, though, about this
phenomenological point, and it is not clear to me whether much is lost if I am
wrong about it.79
78
Depending, of course, on the details, details which they often fail to supply. Never, for instance,
do they precisely (and not metaphorically) characterize the conversational stance, and the particular
kind of conversation they’re interested in. Furthermore, except for one paragraph (1998, 108), they
do not address the worries I address in chapter 2, regarding the move from indispensability to belief
and the relation between pragmatic and epistemic justification. And they only discuss the
unavoidability of the conversational stance in a very preliminary way.
79
Though realists of sorts, neither Pettit nor Smith endorse Robust Realism. So there is at least
some reason to be suspicious that their argument – like the argument from action – cannot do all
the work I want done, cannot support Robust Realism. Be that as it may, even regarding
paradigmatic antirealist views of normativity Pettit and Smith remain neutral in this paper, noticing
explicitly (1998, 97) that it is yet to be shown that these antirealist views cannot allow for their
conversational stance. This is the analogous task to the one I embark on in the next chapter.
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3.6
Scorekeeping
I conclude, then, that we are essentially deliberative creatures, and that normative
truths (or something sufficiently close to them) are indispensable for deliberation.
Given the argument of chapter 1, this suffices to show that normative truths (or
something sufficiently close to them) are as respectable as, say, electrons. And
given the argument of chapter 2, this suffices to show that they are indeed
respectable.
All that remains if my argument for Robust Realism is to be completed,
then, is to reject the alternatives: If no non-Robust-Realist account can
accommodate the role of normative truths (or something sufficiently close to
them) in deliberation, Robust Realism will have been defended. It is to this task
that I now turn.
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Chapter IV
Rejecting Alternatives
Having defended in a preliminary way the analogy between explanatory and
deliberative indispensability (in chapter 1), having argued for the respectability of
the move from indispensability of either kind to belief (in chapter 2), and having
presented (in chapter 3) an account of deliberation according to which normative
truths (or something sufficiently close to them) are deliberatively indispensable, it
now remains to complete the argument by showing that no alternative – nonrobust-realist – view of normativity or normative discourse can satisfy the
deliberating agent. This is the task of this chapter.
In terms of my arch-argument – the argument from deliberative
indispensability to Robust Realism – the task of this chapter is to complete the
defense of the indispensability premise. For if a non-robust-realist view of
normativity and normative discourse can supply all that is needed for sincere
deliberation, irreducibly normative truths are after all not deliberatively
indispensable. Think again of indispensability arguments in the philosophy of
mathematics: If a non-platonist view of mathematical discourse and entities can
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supply all that is needed for scientific explanations, numbers (platonistically
understood) are after all not explanatorily indispensable and the indispensability
argument (as an argument for Platonism) collapses.
In the context of my argument for Robust Realism, rejecting alternative
metanormative views is thus not a luxury: It is not merely a further dialectical step,
enhancing the plausibility of one view by reducing that of others. Nor is it an
instance of the (purported) flaw that is typical of the writing of many realists – that
of writing mostly negatively, rejecting other views while having very little by way
of positive argument in support of their realism1. Rather, rejecting alternative
views is part of the positive argument – the argument from deliberative
indispensability – for Robust Realism.
The discussion in this chapter proceeds as follows. I begin by drawing a
preliminary chart of the metanormative waters, by doing some classificatory work
in section 4.1. Next, in sections 4.2-4.5, I discuss four metanormative views (or
rather families of views), arguing that none can allow for sincere deliberation. In
section 4.6 I discuss a general objection that may be thought to undermine the
arguments in sections 4.2-4.5. In section 4.7 I conduct a (brief) thought
experiment, one that has some force, I think, against most of the alternative
metanormative positions (all, in fact, except for error theories). I then proceed to
discuss, in section 4.8, the possibility of hybrid views, views that try to combine
the merits of several different metanormative views, arguing that they too cannot
1
See the references in the Introduction, footnotes 16 and 17.
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succeed. After showing (in section 4.9) that what may seem to be views that resist
my taxonomy are not views I need to address in detail, I then do some
scorekeeping (in 4.10).
4.1
The Field
How are we to make philosophical sense of normative discourse? The following
ways seem to exhaust logical space.
We might understand normative discourse as – semantically speaking – a
fully descriptive, (purportedly) fact-stating discourse. We might understand it, that
is, as attempting to say how things are, what reasons (for instance) we have, or
what things are of value, or what ought to be done. When engaging in normative
discourse, according to this understanding, we typically attempt to describe the
normative facts, to express our beliefs about the normative part of the world. Call
this view of normative discourse Cognitivism. But we might understand normative
discourse in a noncognitivist fashion. We might think, that is, that normative
discourse typically has a very different, non-descriptive, function. According to
Metanormative Noncognitivism, the primary function of normative discourse is
not to describe the normative facts, but rather to express approval or disapproval
(or other non-cognitive attitudes), exert conversational pressure on our audience,
and so on. Seeing that normative discourse does not attempt to describe normative
facts, sincerely engaging in normative discourse does not commit one to the
existence of such facts. Endorsing Noncognitivism is a way, then, of claiming
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exemption from the need to give a metaphysical account of the relevant (here,
normative) realm.
But cognitivists are not thus exempt, and they may proceed in any of the
following three ways: They may, first, deny that normative facts exist. If
normative discourse attempts to describe normative facts, and if there are no such
facts, then normative discourse is systematically erroneous. So one cognitivist way
to go is Error Theory. Another is a reductivist view of normativity2: Perhaps there
are normative facts, but they really are – at bottom – perfectly natural (or perhaps
super-natural) facts, facts that can be described in terms that are (apparently) nonnormative. Or, and this would be the third option here, we can accept normative
facts into our ontology as they are, sui generis, irreducibly normative facts.
We thus get the following four families of metanormative views:
Noncognitivism, Error Theory, Reductivism, and Non-reductive Realism3. This
classification, it seems, is both exclusive and exhaustive: Clearly, no
metanormative view can fall within the scope of more than one of these four
families of views (unless it is a hybrid view, dividing normative discourse into
parts, and endorsing different positions regarding different parts); and that the
classification is exhaustive can be seen by considering the following series of
questions: Is normative discourse an attempt at stating some (normative) facts? If
As will be made clearer in section 4.4, I use “reduction” and its cognates in a fairly broad sense.
The relevant classificatory issues (discussed partly here and partly in the following sections) are,
of course, perfectly general, and similar classes of views arise in very different contexts as well. In
thinking about these classificatory issues, I found Boghossian’s classificatory discussion of talk
about meanings (1989) very helpful.
2
3
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so, does it ever succeed in describing such facts? If so, are these facts basic, are
they irreducibly normative? A “no” to the first leads to Noncognitivism. A “yes”
to the first and a “no” to the second leads to Error Theory; a yes to the first two
and a “no” to the third leads to Reductivism; a “yes” to all three leads to Robust
Realism. As each of these questions admits of only two answers, the four
metanormative directions mentioned above exhaust logical space.
In the following three sections I discuss, then, the three non-robust-realist
metanormative options, arguing that none of them – in whatever version – can
satisfy our deliberative needs4. In following sections I also go into much more
detail regarding the general four positions outlined in this section, and I discuss
several examples of more specific views that fall under them. Though I will be
primarily interested in exposing the generic flaws of the three families of views
mentioned – flaws that any noncognitivist view, say, or any reductivist view, fall
victim to – it will be instructive from time to time to engage in a more detailed
discussion of a specific noncognitivist or reductivist view.
4
Thus, to an extent I follow what Firth (1952, 317) characterized as common practice some fifty
years ago: “It is now common practice, for example, for the authors of books on moral philosophy
to introduce their own theories by what purports to be a classification and review of all possible
solutions to the basic problems of analysis; and in many cases, indeed, the primary defense of the
author’s own position seems to consist in the negative argument that his own position cannot fail to
be correct because none of the others which he has mentioned is satisfactory.”
I follow the common practice in that my argument relies on rejecting what I take to be all possible
alternative views (Firth’s own view – a view he presents as escaping the classifications common in
his time – does not, of course, escape mine). But my indispensability argument for Robust Realism
is not precisely captured by Firth’s characterization, for it is not an argument from alternatives
(though rejecting the alternatives does play a crucial part in establishing the indispensability
premise).
203
Despite the argument from the paragraph before last regarding the
exhaustiveness of the classification presented, it might be tempting to view some
of the views in the literature as escaping my classification (indeed, some writers
present their views as a way out of such classifications). For the most part, I
suggest that this temptation be simply resisted. I do think, however, that at least in
one case – that of Constructivism – it may be of independent interest to see how it
fails, even if it is in fact a particular instance of one of the four options above. I
therefore discuss Constructivism in a separate section. (I very briefly discuss other
metanormative views that may seem to escape my taxonomy in section 4.9.)
Before proceeding to the discussion of the different metanormative
alternatives, though, several preliminary points are in order.
First, most of the writers whose work I shall be discussing present a
metaethical view, not a metanormative one. For my purposes, then, it will be
necessary to generalize their views and arguments. Whether or not the relevant
writer is willing to generalize her view in the manner I suggest is something I will
not discuss here.
Second, I do not pretend that the discussion in following sections
constitutes a comprehensive examination of alternative metanormative views. In
particular, I do not examine the arguments writers who hold these views put
forward in defense of their views. The discussion that follows is goal oriented: I
discuss other views only in the amount of detail that is necessary in order to
defend my argument for Robust Realism.
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Third, it is important to note that though I will be focusing on the
deliberative inadequacies of alternative views – their failure to supply something
that is deliberatively indispensable – for the purposes of my argument any
inadequacy will do. If, for instance, Noncognitivism is devastated by (a version of)
the Frege-Geach Problem, Reductivism is ruled out by whatever can be saved
from Moore’s infamous Open Question Argument, and a Metanormative Error
Theory falls prey to some principle of charity, this will suffice for my
indispensability argument for Robust Realism to go through. For if, for instance,
Noncognitivism must be rejected (for whatever reason), then the indispensability
premise can no longer be rejected by pointing to the noncognitivist understanding
of normative discourse as a non-robust-realist alternative that still allows for
deliberation. Similarly for other views, and other flaws: If a metanormative view
must be rejected for any reason, then it cannot serve to support rejection of the
indispensability premise. The reason why I nevertheless focus on the deliberative
inadequacies of alternative views is just that these failures are, in the context of an
argument from deliberative indispensability, particularly illuminating.
Fourth, the classification above and the discussion in the rest of this
chapter are conducted mostly in terms orthogonal to the division of metanormative
(or metaethical) views into realist and antirealist (or irrealist) ones. However
exactly this line is drawn, it is not a line I find theoretically useful here. I return to
a discussion of realism (in replying to a worry about the robustness of Robust
Realism) in the Conclusion. For the most part, and for a similar reason, I will also
205
ignore the distinction between objectivist and subjectivist (or, more precisely, nonor anti-objectivist5) metanormative views. My objections to Noncognitivism, for
instance, apply whether or not noncognitivist views qualify – simply in virtue of
being noncognitivist – as subjectivist metanormative views. Nevertheless, I
suspect that the issue of objectivity is very much relevant, and that it does much
philosophical work behind the scenes, motivating some metanormative views as
well as my objections to them. And at one point – in section 4.4 – my argument
does rely on an objective-subjective distinction (there characterized).
Finally, throughout the discussion of the following sections I assume, when
I consider the point of view of the deliberating agent, not only the truth of the
relevant metanormative theory (or family of theories), but also that the agent
knows that the theory is true. In other words, if the truth of a non-robust-realist
metanormative theory is compatible with sincere deliberation, but not with the
sincere deliberation of agents who know that it is true, I take it to be reason
enough to reject the theory. I thus assume some kind of a publicity requirement.
This assumption is not, of course, beyond controversy, and I defend it (in the
context of my argument), in a separate section (4.6).
4.2
Error Theory
For it is not clear that “objectivist” and “subjectivist” – as applied to metanormative or
metaethical theories – are exact opposites. See, for instance, Pettit (2001, 244).
5
206
In what follows, I first (in section 4.2.1) characterize in some detail error theories,
distinguishing between different ways in which an error theorist may proceed as
regarding the discourse she believes is infested with error. Then, in sections 4.2.2
and 4.2.3, I argue against two such ways, the two I think are the only relevantly
important options. I argue against the availability of what may be thought to be a
third option in section 4.2.4, and conclude the discussion of error theories in
section 4.2.5 with an observation about the relation between error theories and
alternative views, like the ones I proceed to discuss in later sections.
4.2.1
Error Theory, Eliminativism, Instrumentalism, and Revisionary
Accounts
An error theorist about a discourse believes that the discourse is infested with
error, and that therefore no sentence belonging to that discourse is non-trivially
true.
Believing that there exists no God (or anything possessing attributes
sufficiently closely resembling those God is traditionally thought to possess), and
believing that, say, catholic theological discourse is committed to the existence of
God, I believe that catholic theological discourse is systematically erroneous.
Now, that doesn’t mean that all sentences that are a part of that discourse are false:
Given that “God loves all His creatures” is a part of that discourse, arguably so is
“It’s not the case that God loves all His creatures”, but, of course, these sentences
cannot both be false. If, because there is no God, the former is false, then the latter
207
is true, only trivially so. This is why an error theorist need only believe that the
sentences of the relevant discourse are either false or trivially true.
As is clear, one’s views about reference failure are relevant here. If the best
understanding of sentences containing reference failure (like “God loves all His
creatures”) is along Strawsonian rather than Russelian lines, then error theories
may claim not that the sentences of the error-infested discourse are false (or
trivially true), but rather just that none of them is true6. For my purposes here it
will not matter what theory of reference failure (or of similar flaws) the error
theorist endorses, and so I will use a characterization of error theories that is
neutral as between different theories of reference failure: An error theory about a
discourse claims that no sentence that is a part of that discourse is non-trivially
true.
This is all that different error theorists about a given discourse need agree
on. They may disagree, in particular, about which commitment of the relevant
discourse cannot be satisfied, and indeed about what the relevant discourse is
committed to. Consider, for example, two error theories about morality. Mackie
(1977, chapter 1) believes that moral discourse is committed to metaphysically
queer objective values, things that are a part of the fabric of the universe, and that
simultaneously make actions right and make agents perform those actions
regardless of their prior motivations. He further thinks that there are no such
objective values, and that therefore moral discourse is error-infested. He is thus an
6
For a similar point see Pettit (2001, 240-1).
208
error theorist about morality. Smith (1994, 200) does not believe that moral
discourse is committed to anything like objective values as understood by Mackie.
However, he believes moral discourse is committed to the convergence of all
rational agents’ desires (1994, 164-177). Now, Smith is no error theorist, as he is
optimistic about satisfying this purported commitment of moral discourse. But we
can easily imagine (as he does: 1994, 173-4) what would be the case if no such
convergence is to be had. In such a case, an error theory about morality would
follow, but one based on considerations very different from Mackie’s.
For the purposes of my argument, I need not distinguish between the
grounds for different metanormative error theories, and so the two error theories
above can be treated together. All we need to know, then, about the metanormative
error theorist I will be concerned with is that she thinks – for whatever reason –
that normative discourse is infested with error, and so that no normative sentence
is non-trivially true.7
Though it will not be of importance in what follows what leads an error
theorist to his error theory, it will be of crucial importance how he then proceeds.
For having diagnosed a discourse as systematically erroneous, the error theorist
still has to answer the question: Should we discard the discourse, or should we
continue to engage in it? I’ll refer to an error theorist who advocates abandonment
7
Stephen Schiffer has recently (2002) put forward an antirealist metaethical theory according to
which (almost) no ethical sentence is determinately true, apparently remaining open-minded about
the possibility of some of them being true in a somewhat less respectable way. For my purposes,
Schiffer’s theory can be seen as a variation on the usual error-theoretical theme as characterized in
the text, and my arguments against metanormative error theories apply, mutatis mutandis, to the
metanormative generalization of Schiffer’s metaethics.
209
of the discourse he is an error theorist about as an eliminativist. It should be clear,
then, that Eliminativism about a discourse is in no way entailed by an error theory
about it8. Field (1980), for instance, is an error theorist about mathematics,
believing that mathematical discourse is committed to the existence of platonic
mathematical objects, and that no such objects exist. But he does not advocate the
elimination of mathematical discourse. Rather, he gives an account of how it is
that engaging in mathematical discourse is of value (to science, for instance), even
though it is error-infested. According to Field, doing mathematics (and in
particular, quantifying over mathematical objects in the course of doing empirical
science) is of tremendous instrumental value, as it facilitates and simplifies
calculations and inferences. Crucially, this instrumental value of mathematical
discourse does not depend on the non-trivial truth of any mathematical sentences:
Field argues that other properties of mathematical discourse, properties that do not
require the non-trivial truth of any of its parts (in particular, its conservativeness),
account for its usefulness in doing science. So Field is an error theorist about
mathematical discourse, but he is not an eliminativist about it. Rather, he is an
instrumentalist.
This brief discussion of Field’s Instrumentalism about mathematics can
illustrate how controversies between instrumentalists and eliminativists are to be
decided, and it should be clear that the way – like these controversies themselves –
8
This is one of the main points of Burgess (1998).
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is pragmatic in nature9. Assuming that there is no God and that therefore (western)
religious discourse is error-infested, the question of whether religious discourse is
to be discarded is a pragmatic one, about the probable consequences of engaging
in it and of failing to do so and their comparative value. If, for instance, engaging
in religious discourse is the only way to prevent people from doing morally
abhorrent things, this is some reason to continue engaging in it, its systematic error
notwithstanding. If religious discourse actually has bad effects – perhaps mostly in
terms of international politics – this is some reason to discard religious discourse
altogether.10 Whether the non-trivial truth of some sentences in the contested
discourse is indispensable for the justification of engaging in it is to be decided –
as any pragmatic issue – case by case. It seems like a reasonable requirement,
though, that error theorists who want to go instrumentalist have some story to tell
why it is useful to engage in the error-infested discourse. In other words, the
burden of proof seems to be placed on the instrumentalist’s shoulders (but nothing
in my argument against metanormative error theories will depend on this way of
placing the burden of proof).
9
Burgess (1998, 541).
There is an important difference between the case of religious discourse and that of Field’s
Instrumentalism about mathematics. The kind of Meta-religious Instrumentalism hinted at in the
text seems to presuppose that those who will continue to engage in religious discourse – or at least
most of them – will falsely believe that it is not error-infested, and in particular that God exists.
Field’s Instrumentalism about mathematics presupposes no such thing – indeed, it seems Field
himself can, consistently and in good conscience, do mathematics – and so Field’s Instrumentalism
may be said to satisfy a publicity requirement Meta-religious Instrumentalism fails. (In Burgess’s
(1998) terms, Field’s is a translational error theory, whereas the Meta-religious Instrumentalism
sketched in the text is a defense of a myth.) I discuss such a publicity requirement in section 4.6,
below.
10
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And so, we all are, it seems to me, not only error theorists about witchdiscourse, but also eliminativists about it: We think that witch-discourse is
systematically erroneous (because there are no witches, or anything possessing
attributes sufficiently closely resembling those witches are supposed to have
according to witch-discourse), and furthermore that nothing of value can be gained
(and perhaps much can be lost) by engaging in it. Similarly, Churchland (1984) is
an error theorist about folk-psychological mental-states discourse, and also an
eliminativist about it: He believes not only that there are no beliefs, desires, and so
on (or anything possessing attributes sufficiently closely resembling those these
mental states are supposed to possess according to folk psychology), but also that
talk of beliefs and desires is dangerously misleading and that it ought to be
replaced by scientifically more respectable discourse. Field has already been
mentioned as an example of an error theorist who is an instrumentalist11 (about
mathematics), and typically so are those who reject scientific realism in favor of a
more empiricist epistemology (only their Error Theory and Instrumentalism are
about scientific discourse, or perhaps just about theoretical-entities-discourse)12.
Before returning to the more specific discussion of Metanormative Error
Theory, one more point is worth making. Sometimes people offer a theory as a
11
Field is usually referred to as a fictionalist, not an instrumentalist, but for my purposes
Fictionalism can be seen as a particular kind of Instrumentalism: Understanding some
mathematical sentences as true-in-the-platonist-fiction and others as false-in-the-fiction and then
proceeding to show the usefulness of telling mathematical fiction is just one way in which one can
show that engaging in mathematical discourse is of instrumental value.
12
See, for instance, Van Fraassen (1980).
212
replacement thesis, or a revisionary account – even “a reforming definition”13 – of
a contested discourse or family of terms. The original discourse is, they either say
or assume, highly problematic, and it is very doubtful whether it can be understood
as anything but incoherent. But a reasonable and coherent account can be given of
how the relevant piece of language can be used, and perhaps also of how it ought
to be used. The theory is then not presented as an accurate descriptive account of
the relevant discourse, but rather as a suggestion for revision. Of course, the
suggestion has to resemble the original discourse, or else it is in no way a
revisionary account of that discourse. But close enough to qualify as a revisionary
account of a discourse need not be close enough to count as an adequate
descriptive account of it.
It is important to note, then, that a revisionary account is really a
conjunction of two theses. The first is a descriptive error theory: The discourse as
it stands – before the suggested revision – is, so we’re told, incoherent or at least
badly confused14. If that is so, it seems that no sentence in that discourse can be
non-trivially true. The second conjunct is not as clear: It can be seen as either an
Instrumentalism of sorts (“Let’s go on talking as we did, but let’s mean something
slightly different by our words, for doing so will prove useful.”), or – more
plausibly, I think – it is really an Eliminativism, coupled with a suggestion
regarding what to do after having eliminated the error-infested discourse (“No
The term, of course, is Brandt’s (1979). I discuss Brandt’s revisionary account – though very
briefly – below.
14
For a clear example, see Brandt (1979, e.g. at 7).
13
213
point in continuing to engage in that confused discourse; let’s keep the words but
change their meaning so that what we then say can actually be – useful or not –
non-trivially true.”). And perhaps different revisionary accounts are offered some
in the former spirit, some in the latter.
The line between revisionary and descriptive accounts may be blurred, as it
is not clear precisely how leeway the theorist has in interpreting and precisifying
his subject matter while still counting his theory as a descriptive one. And
particularly attractive revisionary accounts are represented, revisionary though
they are, as nevertheless being able to supply all we ever wanted – or all we ever
should have wanted – from the original, non-revised, discourse15. But – and this is
the point needed for what it to come – a revisionary account is never an alternative
to an error theory, nor does it escape the dichotomy (among error theories)
between Instrumentalism and Eliminativism. And the revised discourse – the one
our revisionist is not an error theorist about – still calls for a meta-theory, one that
will presumably be either reductivist, or robust realist, or perhaps nonfactualist. So
revisionary accounts – though perhaps of independent interest – are not alternative
metanormative views I have to consider and reject here.
Back to normative discourse, then. Metanormative error theorists are very
hard to come by16. The one (possible) example I know of17 is Brandt’s (1979)
15
See Johnston (1993, 110).
It is much easier to come by people who are error theorists about some part of the normative
domain, but not all of it. Some examples – those where the relevant sub-domain of normativity is
ethics – are discussed in the text below. If you endorse an error theory about a part of the normative
16
214
theory of rationality, presented under the guise of a reforming definition, and
grounded in a loss of hope regarding the prospects of an adequate and coherent
descriptive account of normative discourse. Assuming that Brandt takes rationality
to be the basic normative concept, his view can be seen as a metanormative error
theory – an error theory, that is, about the actual discourse of rationality, that
preceding the suggested revision18. But as Brandt is primarily interested in
developing his revisionary suggestion, his discussion – and justification – of the
error theory itself is rather quick19.
In the metaethical literature error theorists are easier to come by. The best
known example is, of course, John Mackie’s denial of objective values in chapter
1 of his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977)20. It is worth mentioning here
that it is not at all clear whether Mackie is an instrumentalist or a revisionary
theorist, and what the details of whatever option he takes are. The one thing that
does seem clear is that he is not an eliminativist, as he continues to do first-order,
domain but not all of it, you seem to endorse a hybrid metanormative view. I discuss such views in
section 4.8.
17
There are many cases in which an implicit error theory – even Eliminativism – may be doing
some philosophical work in the background of a more explicit theory. One way of understanding
Quine’s attempt at naturalizing epistemology, for instance, is as motivated by a general suspicion
towards normativity, and towards its manifestations in (non-naturalized) epistemology. But this is
not an example of a philosopher explicitly defending a metanormative error theory.
18
Sturgeon (1982, 391, 398-9) suggests that Brandt can be thus understood. It is not clear,
however, that this is the only way in which Brandt can be understood. Some of his criticism of
unreconstructed moral (and perhaps also more generally normative) discourse sounds less like an
accusation of systematic error and more like an accusation of too much vagueness and
indeterminacy or (relatedly) of unknowability (Brandt 1979, e.g. at 6). If these are the flaws that
ground Brandt’s despair with unreconstructed moral (and normative) discourse, he is not an error
theorist in the sense characterized above.
19
See Sturgeon (1982, 402).
20
It seems that Mandeville has anticipated much of Mackie’s error theory. For a discussion of
Mandeville’s metaethical error theory, see Schneewind (1998, 323-327).
215
normative, ethics – indeed, as is often noted, he continues to do ethics in the later
parts of the very same book. But never, as far as I am aware, does he explain how
this is compatible with the error theory advocated earlier. It seems charitable to
read him as either defending ethical discourse instrumentally, or perhaps putting
forward a revisionary suggestion of how moral language can be used in an errorfree way, then using it himself in that way. But the details of either are not to be
found in Mackie’s text.21
Regardless of its historical pedigree (or lack thereof), the error theory I
proceed to discuss (and reject) is a Metanormative Error Theory, in either an
eliminativist or an instrumentalist form. Even if Metanormative Error Theory – the
claim that no normative judgment is non-trivially true – is neither very popular nor
very attractive, it certainly is a position in logical space that needs to be ruled out
if my argument for Robust Realism is to be complete. And seeing how such an
error theory fails will be important for what is to come (as I indicate in section
4.2.5).
4.2.2
Against Instrumentalism
An instrumentalist error theorist about (all) normative discourse believes that no
normative sentences (like “Pain is bad”, “We ought never to treat others merely as
21
For an example of a metaethical error theorist (or at least someone who endorses an error theory
about an important part of ethical discourse) who is also explicit about endorsing Instrumentalism,
see Velleman (1989, chapter 10). In correspondence, Velleman has expressed doubts he now has
about the error theory he then endorsed.
216
means”, “It is always rational to maximize one’s own desire-satisfaction”,
“Correlations of two factors give reason to believe, in the presence of one, that the
other is also present”, “Organizing a demonstration is the thing to do now”, and
the like) are non-trivially true, but that we nevertheless should not discard
normative discourse. Rather, we should continue to engage in it, because doing so
has pragmatic advantages that are not eliminated just by the discourse’s systematic
error (and perhaps not even by public knowledge of this error22).
Now, the details of such an instrumentalist metanormative error theory
need to be filled in in a plausible way: How is it that engaging in normative
discourse is useful despite the error it incorporates? But we need not worry about
these details here, for they (logically) cannot be filled in.
In order to be an instrumentalist, one has to defend the usefulness, the
instrumental value, of the relevant discourse or of engaging in it. And something
can only be of instrumental value if it is instrumental to something that is of value,
and ultimately to something that is of intrinsic value. So in order to defend her
Instrumentalism, an error theorist about normativity would have to identify a
valuable thing or project, argue that it is valuable, and show that normative
discourse or engaging in it is instrumental to that thing or project. But judgments
of intrinsic value are paradigmatically normative judgments, of exactly the kind
our instrumentalist is an error theorist about. By her error theory, she is committed
to rejecting the (non-trivial) truth of any such judgments. On pain of inconsistency,
22
Again, I discuss the publicity requirement in section 4.6.
217
then, she cannot defend both an error theory about normativity in general and the
normative claim characteristic of Instrumentalism.
Notice that this problem arises for the metanormative instrumentalist
because of the wide scope of her error theory. This line of argument does not
(directly) threaten an Instrumentalism about a sub-domain of normative discourse.
In particular, it does not threaten metaethical Instrumentalism. One can be an error
theorist about morality, and yet consistently defend Instrumentalism by showing
that moral discourse serves some other, non-moral, values23. It is only when one
generalizes one’s error theory to all normative discourse that one cannot
consistently endorse Instrumentalism.
I have already mentioned that an error theorist may endorse a revisionary
account of the relevant discourse, and I have also explained why I need not
address this line in detail. But it may be useful to see why it does not in particular
help in opening up logical space for an instrumentalist position about all
normativity. Having noticed something like the inconsistency I point at above
(Burgess (1998, 541, 548)), Burgess argues (ibid., 549) that the would-beinstrumentalist can avoid it by putting forward a revisionary suggestion, and then
understanding the normative-looking judgments he commits himself to by going
instrumentalist as reformed normative judgments, judgments made in accordance
with the revisionary suggestion and so not guilty of the original error. Let us use
23
Even then, though, the suspicion remains that this instrumentalist justification of moral discourse
is, as Velleman (then an instrumentalist himself) writes (1989, 318), “a skeptical justification” at
best. But this worry is one I cannot discuss here.
218
“normativeR” to denote the revised counterpart of any normative term (oughtR for
ought, goodR for good, and so on). Then Burgess’s suggestion is, I think, as
follows: The consistent metanormative error theorist thinks that no ought-sentence
is non-trivially true, and he thinks that we oughtR not discard normative – or at
least normativeR – discourse, but continue to engage in it. (If it is normative
discourse that we oughtR to continue engaging in, then perhaps this revisionary
theorist can be classified as an instrumentalist; if it is only normative R discourse
that we oughtR to engage in, then about normative discourse he seems to be an
eliminativist. But the argument that follows need not distinguish between these
two cases.) Now, this position is indeed consistent, because the rejection of all
ought-statements is compatible with the endorsement of an oughtR-statement.
But this position, though consistent, will not save the metanormative error
theorist. For before we can join him in judging whether or not we oughtR to discard
normative discourse, he must convince us regarding the merits of his revisionary
account. He must, in other words, convert us from normative to normativeR
discourse. If we are willing to conduct the discussion in normativeR terms, his
work is already done. The real challenge he faces is exactly to get us to be so
willing. And before he has done that, he cannot settle for showing that we ought R
to continue using normative discourse, assuming that he has thereby justified his
Instrumentalism. At most, he has thereby justifiedR his Instrumentalism, and taking
219
that to settle the issue would beg the question against those not yet convinced of
the merits of the revisionary account.24
So proposing his Instrumentalism in the guise of a revisionary account will
not save the instrumentalist. And this, of course, is as it should be: If, as argued
earlier, revisionary accounts do not offer the error theorist a genuine alternative to
both Instrumentalism and Eliminativism, endorsing a revisionary account cannot
save the instrumentalist.
Instrumentalism, I conclude, is not available to the metanormative error
theorist. It seems, then, she must go eliminativist.
4.2.3
Against Eliminativism
An error theory about a discourse we pre-theoretically engage in is typically highly
counterintuitive. The main appeal of Instrumentalism is that it can serve to
alleviate the counterintuitiveness of the error theory. Consider Field’s position
again. Having defended his Instrumentalism about mathematical discourse, he is
free to appease (some of) our worries about his error theory, by noting that there is
nothing bad – and indeed much that is good – in our continuing to engage in
mathematical discourse. An eliminativist cannot in this way appease our intuitive
worries, and must therefore face the counterintuitiveness of her error theory head
on. This does not mean that Eliminativism is never justified (we are all, remember,
24
My point in this paragraph closely resembles a point Sturgeon (1982, 396-9) makes in criticizing
Brandt’s method of reforming definitions, except Sturgeon emphasizes the need to choose among
different possible reforming definitions (between normative and normative discourse).
R1
220
R2
eliminativists about witch-discourse). It just shows that it is going to take more to
rationally convince us that an error theory about a discourse we pre-theoretically
engage in is appropriate if the best version of the relevant error theory is an
eliminativist, not an instrumentalist, one. Given the result of the previous section,
this already counts against a metanormative error theory (though it is not clear
how conclusively).
A potentially more devastating worry about Metanormative Eliminativism
should be rather predictable at this point. If Eliminativism is understood as a claim
about what we ought to do (in particular, that we ought not to continue engaging in
the relevant discourse), then it too is a normative claim, and so one that cannot be
consistently endorsed by a metanormative error theorist.
But perhaps Eliminativism can be understood not so much as a normative
claim (added on top of the error theory both Instrumentalism and Eliminativism
are based on), but in some other way – perhaps, for instance, as merely an
intention not to engage in the relevant discourse in the future25, or perhaps in some
similar way. Let us assume this can be done.
It is against such an Eliminativism that the argument of the last three
chapters applies directly, and no further argumentative work needs to be done
against it at this stage. For Eliminativism thus understood is not really an
alternative account of normativity, one that allows it to supply what is
25
Assuming, of course, that intention-discourse is not (necessarily) normative. For what may seem
like another non-normative way of understanding Metanormative Eliminativism, see the next
section.
221
indispensable for deliberation, but rather a rejection of normativity altogether.
Against such Eliminativism, then, the argument of previous chapters is the only
argument that need be given: Deliberation is intrinsically indispensable because
essentially unavoidable, and normative judgments – though at this stage of the
argument, perhaps not necessarily robust-realistically understood – are
indispensable for deliberation. So metanormative Eliminativism is not a further
option to be ruled out at this dialectical stage. If the argumentation in previous
chapters is sound, Metanormative Eliminativism has already been ruled out.
And notice again, that this reason for rejecting Metanormative
Eliminativism stems from the generality of the suggested view. It cannot serve to
rule out an Eliminativism that is more limited in scope, and in particular
Metaethical Eliminativism. A more restricted Eliminativism can avoid the
deliberative-indispensability-problem by arguing that, say, moral discourse is to be
eliminated, but deliberation can still go forward on the basis of some other, nonmoral, normative judgments. It is only Global Metanormative Eliminativism that is
ruled out by the argument of previous chapters.26
4.2.4
A Way Out?
26
If, as hinted in the Introduction, it is hard to think of a reason supporting Metaethical Error
Theory that does not supply equally strong support for Metanormative Error Theory, then the
unavailability of both Metanormative Instrumentalism and Metanormative Eliminativism, and
hence of Metanormative Error Theory, should count indirectly against metaethical error theories as
well. The point in the text – and the analogous point in the previous section – is just that this
indirect way is the only way in which my arguments here bear, if they do at all, on the plausibility
of metaethical error theories.
222
It may seem, though, that claiming as I do that a metanormative error theorist –
like other error theorists – must be either an eliminativist or an instrumentalist is
already a step in the wrong direction, dangerously close to begging the question
against the metanormative error theorist. For, it may be argued, an error theorist
need not have anything interesting to say about the relevant discourse except for
pointing out the systematic error. Of course, error theorists may have many other
interesting views, about the relevant discourse as well as about other things, but
there is nothing further about the discourse they have to say in their capacity as
error theorists. In particular, they need not advocate either discarding the relevant
discourse or continuing to engage in it; they need not advocate anything. They
only have to assert that the relevant discourse is error-infested, and to argue for
this claim.
The reason why assuming otherwise may seem like begging the question
against the metanormative error theorist (especially against the eliminativist) is
that the further step – that of advocating either continued use of the discourse or
discarding it – seems to involve the error theorist in normative enterprises and get
her engaged in the very normative discourse about which she is an error theorist.
And this is the source of the troubles she faces whether she goes instrumentalist or
eliminativist, the troubles earlier sections use in order to reject error theories. But,
the objection continues, once we see that the metanormative error theorist need
have nothing further to say about normative discourse, and in particular need not
223
advocate any attitude towards it, we see that she need not engage in normative
discourse, and the arguments of the previous two sections collapse.
There is much that is true about this objection: It is the error theorist’s
involvement in the very normative discourse she is an error theorist about that gets
her in trouble, and perhaps if such involvement could be avoided then
Metanormative Error Theory would be an open option. But it cannot be avoided.
Faced with an error theory – especially a compelling one – about a discourse we
pre-theoretically engage in we cannot avoid asking ourselves how to proceed. And
this, of course, is a particular instance of the unavoidability of deliberation. This
particular case where deliberation doesn’t seem to be avoidable is especially
interesting because in it deliberative needs are incorporated into what we
intuitively take to be theoretical virtues (and vices). If a philosopher presented an
error theory about, say, folk-psychological discourse, but had nothing interesting
to say – indeed had nothing at all he could say – regarding whether or not to
discard that discourse, we would treat this fact as a theoretical flaw of his view,
and, I think, rightly so. A theory such as his fails to address all our relevant
concerns, and this counts against it. Similarly, then, for error theorists about
normative discourse. They must have something further to say because otherwise
their theory fails to address a relevant and unavoidable concern of ours; but their
error theory entails that they cannot have anything further to say, and indeed that
the relevant concern of ours cannot be addressed. And this is reason enough to
reject their error theory.
224
To conclude, then: Neither Instrumentalism nor Eliminativism is available
for the (global) metanormative error theorist, and given that she cannot avoid the
choice between them by remaining silent on the relevant issue, (global)
metanormative error theory can safely be rejected.
4.2.5
Error Theories and Softer Interpretations
As already mentioned, arguments for error theories often proceed by first
diagnosing a commitment of the relevant discourse, and then arguing that it is not
satisfied. So error theories (or the arguments for them) can be rejected in two kinds
of way: One may reject the understanding of the discourse as involving the
commitment the error theorist’s argument focuses on, or one may argue that the
commitment is in fact satisfied (or both). The latter is the stronger, realist option.
In a different context27, I label theories taking the former route “softerinterpretation theories”: They save the relevant discourse, but by weakening its
commitments. So, for instance, in the case of the philosophy of mathematics we
have (i) platonists, (ii) error theorists like Field who believe mathematical
discourse is committed to platonic objects but think these do not exist and that
mathematical discourse is thus systematically erroneous, and (iii) softerinterpretation theorists of many different kinds who believe that mathematical
discourse can be saved consistently with there not being any platonic mathematical
27
Enoch (unpublished).
225
objects, because mathematical discourse should be understood as committed to no
such things.
Analogously, we can distinguish three broad metanormative routes: First,
there is Robust Realism. Then, there is some kind28 of metanormative error theory
that agrees with Robust Realism about the commitment of normative discourse to
irreducibly normative truths but denies the existence of such truths, and so
concludes that normative discourse is systematically erroneous. And then there are
many kinds of softer-interpretation theories, theories that try to save normative
discourse by showing that it need not be committed to anything like irreducibly
normative truths. The views to be discussed in sections 4.3 through 4.5 are all such
softer-interpretation theories.29
This classificatory point is of some significance, as we are now in a
position to draw the following conclusion: If Robust Realism is a plausible
account of at least the commitments of normative discourse, then the only options
from which to choose are Robust Realism and Error Theory30. And if the argument
28
There may of course be other kinds of metanormative error theories, focusing on other purported
commitments of normative discourse.
29
Lewis’s (1989) dispositional theory of value is a relevantly interesting case, as regarding one
purported commitment of value-discourse (that values are not contingent) he settles for a
disjunction: Either value-discourse involves this commitment, in which case there are no values, or
this commitment is not an essential part of value-discourse, in which case there are values
(dispositionally understood) (ibid., 132-137). In my terms, Lewis is clear about the rejection of the
strong realist option (about values), and – not deciding whether or not value-discourse involves the
relevant commitment – settles for the disjunction of an error theory and a softer-interpretation
theory.
30
It is this point, I think, that explains why error theories are often much more plausible – and seem
more honest – than softer-interpretation theories: They at least acknowledge the commitments of
the relevant discourse. I think Nagel has in mind softer-interpretation theories when he writes
226
above is sound then of these two options only Robust Realism remains stable. So
what remains to be done in following sections is just to see whether any alternative
understanding of normative discourse is more plausible as an account of the
commitments of normative discourse, and in particular of normative discourse as
applied in deliberation. If no softer-interpretation theory passes this test, Robust
Realism is vindicated31.
4.3
Noncognitivism
In section 4.3.1 I characterize Noncognitivism in more detail than in section 4.1
above. I then focus, in section 4.3.2, on a rather crude version of Noncognitivism –
the now infamous Emotivism to be found, for instance, in Ayer’s Language, Truth
and Logic, showing why it cannot serve to block my argument for Robust
Realism. However, no contemporary philosopher, as far as I know, is a crude
emotivist, and so the point of section 4.3.2 is not so much to expose some
inadequacies in that now-deserted view, but rather to facilitate discussion of its
more sophisticated descendants. I discuss them – arguing that, as far as the
problems I discuss here are concerned, they do no better than crude Emotivism –
in section 4.3.3. In section 4.3.4 I briefly discuss Simon’s Blackburn’s QuasiRealism, which may seem to allow noncognitivists to accommodate the kind of
(1986, 89): “One may be a skeptic about x no matter how sincerely one protests that one is not
denying the existence of x but merely explaining what x really amounts to.”
31
I return to a discussion of softer-interpretation theories in general below, in section 4.7.
227
normative truths I argue are deliberatively indispensable. I argue that QuasiRealism – regardless of its other merits – cannot help noncognitivists in doing that.
It is perhaps worth emphasizing again, that the discussion that follows is
not – nor is it meant to be – a comprehensive discussion of Noncognitivism and its
shortcomings. My aim in this section is merely to reject Noncognitivism as a way
of blocking my argument for Robust Realism by showing that irreducibly
normative truths and facts are not needed for deliberation after all, because
deliberation
can
be
had
on
noncognitivist
grounding.
Objections
to
Noncognitivism from the literature are discussed in what follows only when – and
to the extent that – they are relevant for the limited scope of this project.
4.3.1
Noncognitivism, Nonfactualism, Expressivism
Noncognitivism about a discourse is characterized as, roughly, the view that
typical sentences in that discourse do not describe (accurately or inaccurately)
facts or parts of reality, because there are no such facts for the discourse to answer
to; that sentences in the relevant discourse do not (typically) express beliefs and
other belief-like, cognitive, representational, attitudes, but rather conative, desirelike attitudes; that, as expressions (rather than reports) of such attitudes, these
sentences are neither true nor false. In order to characterize Noncognitivism less
228
roughly, we need to distinguish between the semantic, psychological and
metaphysical views implied by this rough characterization32.
Take, for example, Metaethical Noncognitivism. The semantic thesis
associated with Noncognitivism holds that typical moral sentences (like “Abortion
is morally wrong” or “Abortion is morally permissible”) are neither true nor false,
that – like question-sentences, or imperatives – they are, as is sometimes said, not
in the business of being true or false, because they are not really descriptive
sentences (their surface grammar notwithstanding)33. The semantic reading of
Noncognitivism thus draws the distinction between discourses we should be
cognitivists about and those we should be noncognitivists about in terms of truthaptness. The psychological view associated with Metaethical Noncognitivism is
the thesis that moral sentences do not typically34 express beliefs or other cognitive
attitudes, but rather conative attitudes. According to this reading of metaethical
For the distinction between the semantic and psychological views I am indebted to O’LearyHawthorne and Price (1996, section 1); for discussions regarding the distinction between both and
the metaphysical thesis, I am indebted to Josh Schechter, Mark Schroeder and Crispin Wright.
33
A more local absence of truth value – as may occur in sentences suffering from reference failure
(according to at least one way of understanding such sentences) or in vague sentences in borderline
cases (according to at least some ways of understanding vagueness) – does not, of course, suffice to
justify a noncognitivist conclusion (of whatever sort) about the relevant discourse.
34
We can use any sentence in any way we choose. We can decide, for instance, to use a code so
that I can say “Abortion is wrong” in order to let you know that – express my belief that – the
police are coming. Of course, this trivial point cannot refute Metaethical Noncognitivism, nor can
similar points utilizing more systematic relations between sentences and their less-than-standard
uses. So Noncognitivism should not be understood as claiming that all utterances of moral
sentences express conative states rather than beliefs. The point has to be that the meaning of moral
sentences (or terms) is such as to allow them to express conative states (just like the meaning of the
sentence “The police are coming” makes it suitable to express the belief that the police are
coming). This way of putting things relegates to philosophers of meaning the task of distinguishing
between standard and non-standard ways of using words and sentences. The “typically” in the text
is meant to be a place-holder for whatever criterion will be delivered by the best theory of meaning.
Rosen (1998, 402, footnote 3) notices that there is some unfinished business here for the
noncognitivist.
32
229
Noncognitivism the line between a discourse best understood cognitivistically and
one best understood noncognitivistically is a psychological one: that between
(roughly) belief-like and desire-like states of mind.
These two characterizations of Noncognitivism are clearly distinct. But
given some plausible assumptions about the relation between truth-aptness and
belief-aptness, the two characterizations seem to coincide: It seems plausible to
assume that all and only truth-apt sentences typically express beliefs, and even if
there are counterexamples to this generalization, there seem to be none that are
relevant to my discussion here35. In what follows, I will assume the coincidence of
the semantic and psychological characterizations of Noncognitivism.
The metaphysical thesis often associated with Noncognitivism is
Nonfactualism: the denial of facts the relevant discourse answers to 36. Metaethical
Nonfactualism is, for instance, the denial of moral facts. Now, this metaphysical
thesis is not unrelated to the semantic and psychological ones, but it is important
not to conflate them. For one thing, one can be a psychological and semantic
noncognitivist about a discourse without being a nonfactualist about it. Consider
the following example37: It seems fairly plausible to be a noncognitivist (or to hold
35
For some relevant discussion, see Jackson, Oppy and Smith (1994).
Further dialectical steps taken by contemporary noncognitivists – mostly, endorsing a minimalist
conception of truth and facts and going quasi-realist – complicate matters here. But even if
noncognitivists can come up with clever ways to allow them to talk of (e.g.) moral facts, still they
typically deny moral facts more robustly understood, facts radically independent of us and our
responses, or perhaps facts that carry their own weight in explanation. Nonfactualism is to be
understood as denying the existence of facts robust in some such way that the relevant discourse
answers to.
37
For which I am indebted to Crispin Wright.
36
230
a closely analogous view) about sentences like: “I promise that …” or “I promise
to …”. It seems plausible, in other words, to view such sentences as not typically
serving to express beliefs and describe a part of the world, but rather to do
something very different (to make promises), and so as not strictly speaking truthapt. Such a view of first-person present-tense promising sentences, however, does
not commit one to a related Nonfactualism: We think that there are facts to which
promising discourse answers, that it is a fact, for instance, that George Bush
promised not to raise taxes. True, these promising-facts are typically describable in
non-first-personal or non-present-tense sentences, but they do depict facts of the
kind that can make “I promise not to raise taxes” true, and it would seem a mistake
to treat this sentence as just ambiguous between promise-making utterances and
description-of-promise-making utterances38.
Much more can be said here, of course, and noncognitivist-yet-factualist
views face some obvious challenges (like characterizing the facts they don’t deny
in ways other than using the very discourse they don’t think is primarily factstating39). But it should nevertheless be clear that views about the meaning and
functions of bits of language do not as such entail – all by themselves – views
about what there is, and so Noncognitivism does not entail Nonfactualism. The
38
If you are not convinced, consider the following conversation (for which I am indebted to Tom
Nagel):
A: “George promises not to raise taxes.”
B: “George, is that true?”
George: “Yes, it’s true.”
George’s utterance seems both to be a promise-making, and also to affirm the truth of A’s thirdperson statement.
39
See Pettit (2001, 283, footnote 14).
231
distinction between Nonfactualism and Noncognitivism notwithstanding, it is no
surprise that the two typically go hand in hand (at least in the metaethical context).
For given the denial of moral facts, the only metaethical options left to choose
from seem to be an error theory – according to which moral discourse is a failed
attempt to describe or represent such facts – and a view that understands moral
discourse in a completely different, noncognitivist, way. Assuming the denial of an
error theory, then, Nonfactualism entails Noncognitivism. And, though
Noncognitivism does not entail Nonfactualism, often Nonfactualism is the
canonical way of motivating a noncognitivist understanding of the relevant
discourse, and so often Noncognitivism without Nonfactualism remains an
unmotivated (if consistent) view.40
For my purposes, then, it will not be necessary to distinguish
Nonfactualism from Noncognitivism: I have already rejected Metanormative Error
Theory as unable to block my argument for Robust Realism, so the nonfactualist
option that remains has to be noncognitivist. And a noncognitivist view of
normative discourse that is not also a nonfactualist one is not a relevant alternative
to Robust Realism (and to other metanormative views), for it still owes us an
account of these normative facts, and presumably it will be along either reductivist
or robust realist lines. In what follows, then, I use the term “Noncognitivism” (the
40
It is perhaps interesting to mention here yet another characterization of (metaethical)
Noncognitivism one sometimes comes across: It is the claim that there are no moral properties. I
think this characterization can be either metaphysical or semantic, depending on one’s views about
properties (and often such a characterization trades on both the metaphysical and the semantic
claims and fails to distinguish between them).
232
more common term in the metaethical literature41) as referring to the view that
there are no normative facts, and that normative discourse is not primarily in the
fact-stating business, but rather serves to express non-cognitive attitudes.
How, then, is Metanormative Noncognitivism supposed to block my
argument for Robust Realism? The noncognitivist can happily concede that
normative thoughts and commitments are deliberatively indispensable. So long as
she can then defend a noncognitivist understanding of such thoughts and
commitments, she can block the move from this indispensability to (justified)
belief in normative truths, facts, properties and the like. Yes, the noncognitivist
can argue, we cannot sincerely deliberate without taking some things to be better
reasons than others (and so on); but such normative thoughts and commitments on
our part do not commit us to there being reasons, or reason-facts, or normative
properties, out there in the world, for normative discourse (of which these thoughts
and commitments are part) does not attempt to describe the normative part of the
world. Rather, it serves to express noncognitive attitudes. If my argument from
deliberative indispensability to Robust Realism is to be successfully defended,
then, I must show that deliberation cannot survive this way of thinking of the
normative thoughts and commitments indispensable to it.42
The term “Expressivism” is also sometimes used in the literature to depict noncognitivist views.
But I think the term is somewhat misleading, as sentences in perfectly factual discourses also serve
to express attitudes – beliefs, usually. What distinguishes noncognitivist from cognitivist discourses
is not their expressive function, nor the fact that what is being expressed are attitudes, but rather the
kind of attitude expressed, and in particular whether or not it is belief-like.
42
Or, to repeat a point made in section 4.1, it will be sufficient to show that Noncognitivism fails
for independent reasons. But I will not discuss such reasons here.
41
233
4.3.2
Why Emotivism Will Not Do the Job
So consider first a crude version of Noncognitivism, the Emotivism of Ayer (1936,
chapter 6). Now Ayer put forward a Metaethical Emotivism, but it seems clear
from his arguments and positivistic motivation that he would happily generalize it
to the metanormative theory more relevant here. According to Metanormative
Emotivism, then, there are no normative facts, and normative sentences – their
indicative mood notwithstanding – are not truth-apt at all, but are rather disguised
exhortations, expressions of approval or disapproval (of a special kind, perhaps).
Saying that you had reason to help her (as indeed you did) is, according to this
Emotivism, somewhat like saying “You helped her – Good!” and saying that it is
irrational to believe a contradiction is a bit like saying “Believing a contradiction –
Boo!”43, and similarly for all other normative judgments.
Now consider a situation in which you deliberate, asking yourself what it
makes most sense for you to do. And remember that at this stage of the argument
we already assume (what was established in chapter 3) that normative thoughts
and commitments are indispensable for deliberation. So we can safely assume that
when you try to decide what to do, you engage (though perhaps not explicitly) in
normative thought. Now suppose Emotivism is true, and that you know as much.
So you know that any normative judgment you are going to end up making is
43
Tom Nagel reminds me that booing can be a way of expressing a perfectly objective, factual
belief (his example is “Boo!” shouted at an umpire in response to a decision of hers). The booing
emotivists want for the analogy with ethics is, of course, not this kind of booing.
234
going to amount to a disguised exhortation, to a mere expression of an a-rational
attitude of approval or disapproval. You are considering, to pick up the example
from chapter 3, whether to go to graduate school in order to study philosophy or to
join a law firm, and you know that when you are finally willing to commit yourself
to something like “All things considered, joining a law firm really is the thing for
me to do” this commitment of yours is going to be equivalent to something like
“Joining a law firm – yeah!” or “Graduate school? Yuch!”. It seems clear,
however, that these are exactly not the kind of things we look for when we
deliberate.
To see that consider the following point, emphasized in chapter 3. When
deliberating, we look for the right answer, or at least one of the better answers, to
the question what should we do. And, of course, such an endeavor is ruled out by
viewing all answers as equally good, or by the (believed) absence of any relevant
criteria of correctness. If whatever decision I am going to end up endorsing is
going to be the right one simply in virtue of me endorsing it, for instance, I cannot
sincerely deliberate (though I can still waste time and energy on an agonized
picking). But assuming Emotivism, I know that my conclusion is going to be
merely the expression of an a-rational attitude, one that I just happen to find
myself with. Of course, this observation need do nothing to undermine the attitude,
but it does undermine any deliberation. For according to Emotivism, there are – ex
hypothesi – no criteria of correctness that apply to the attitudes expressed by
235
normative judgments44, and in the absence of such criteria no deliberation is
possible.
Some resemblance between the phenomenology of deliberation and that of
interpersonal disagreement has already been discussed in previous chapters. It is
worth mentioning, then, that the point made here about deliberation parallels a
well-known objection to Emotivism based on interpersonal disagreement. For if all
normative judgments are mere expressions of a-rational attitudes, then normative
disagreement is either impossible45 (if understood as disagreement in belief, or
even more broadly as disagreement regulated by some rational criteria), or – if it
exists – is at least very different from how we typically think of it, being – in
Stevenson’s (1937) terms – a disagreement in attitude. Such a view of
disagreement – including of what is going on when we present arguments and try
to convince our interlocutors (and they us) – does carnage to our view of
normative disagreement. When we engage in a normative (e.g., moral) discussion
with people with whom we differ, we typically look for exactly the kind of right
answers Emotivism says are not out there to be found, we typically think our
interlocutors are wrong, not just that they have different attitudes than we do and
that we want them to come to have more similar ones46.
44
One of the advantages of contemporary Noncognitivism over Emotivism is that the former can
deny this claim. I discuss this move in the next section.
45
This seems to have been Ayer’s original view: 1936, 107.
46
Blackburn (2001, 4) seems to make just this point when he writes “We do not just ‘prefer’ this or
that.”, but he actually denies it, as can be seen from the sentence that immediately follows: “We
prefer that our preferences are shared; we turn them into demands on each other.”
236
Perhaps we are wrong – perhaps there are no answers to the questions we
ask ourselves in deliberation and each other in interpersonal disagreement.
Perhaps, in other words, the argument in section 4.2 (and in previous chapters)
fails and an error theory is after all in order. But surely Emotivism – presented as a
purported descriptive account of normative discourse and its commitments, and
thus as an alternative to a metanormative error theory – is unacceptable.
4.3.3
Why More Sophisticated Versions of Noncognitivism Will Do No
Better
As already mentioned, no one today (I think) is a crude emotivist. And modern
descendants of this crude version of Emotivism – mostly Blackburn’s Projectivism
and Quasi-Realism47 and Gibbard’s Norm-Expressivism48, and to an extent also
Hare’s Universal Prescriptivism49 – do present significant improvements over it. I
now want to argue, though, that the improvements – important though they may be
in other contexts – will not help the noncognitivist accommodate what is
indispensable for deliberation, and that Noncognitivism can therefore not be used
to block my argument for Robust Realism.
The only possible way of deserting Emotivism while staying within a
noncognitivist framework is, it seems, to rely on a more subtle psychology.
Noncognitivism requires that the state of mind or attitude expressed by normative
47
See, for instance, many of the papers collected in his Essays in Quasi-Realism (1993a).
Systematically developed in his Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (1990).
49
See, for instance, his Moral Thinking (1981).
48
237
judgments be desire-like rather than belief-like, but it does not require that
normative judgments express attitudes as simple as those expressed by utterances
of “Boo!”. The relevant conative attitude can be fairly complex and even
structured, available or unavailable to simple introspection, it can be a function of
some sorts of other more basic attitudes interacting in different ways, different
normative judgments may involve different conative attitudes, and so on. And this
is indeed at least one central route contemporary noncognitivists have taken. So, to
take a prominent example: According to Gibbard (1992), all normative judgments
are reducible to judgments of rationality, and these are in turn understood
noncognitivistically – to call something rational is to express acceptance of a
system of norms that permits it (7). The state of mind of accepting a norm (from
which acceptance of a system of norms is constructed) is a complex dispositional
state (74-5), involving the disposition to be motivated in accordance with the
relevant normative judgment (75), the disposition to avow one’s normative
commitment in an open discussion (74), the disposition to accept higher-order
norms that require acceptance of the relevant norm (that is, the disposition to be in
the complex dispositional state – accepting a norm – also regarding this higherorder normative judgment) (101), and so on. Furthermore, the state of accepting a
system of norms is highly structured, allowing Gibbard to speak of relations of
implication and entailment among normative judgments (83-102). And, again
238
unlike “Boo!”-attitudes, the state of accepting a norm need not be easily accessible
by introspection50: You may be surprised to find out what norms you really accept.
Such
psychological
complexities
and
subtleties
make
Gibbard’s
Noncognitivism immune to some of the obvious difficulties Emotivism seems
unable to overcome. Gibbard’s Noncognitivism can accommodate – to an extent,
at least – the phenomenon of someone sincerely uttering a normative judgment
without having a clear, phenomenologically accessible, pro-attitude towards it; the
structure of normative judgments and of the mental states of accepting them allows
Gibbard to go a long way in addressing the Frege-Geach challenge, that of giving
a unified account of the content of normative judgments in assertoric and nonassertoric contexts; and the availability of higher-order norms – norms that govern
the acceptance of norms – allows Gibbard’s Noncognitivism to escape the charge
that the attitudes expressed by normative judgments are completely a-rational,
immune to normative criticism. It should be noted here, however, that these
psychological complexities also make Noncognitivism vulnerable to two common
objections I shall only mention here: The first is that the complex attitude
expressed by normative judgments cannot be identified except in just this way –
using normative vocabulary51. This was not a problem with Emotivism, where the
relevant attitudes were supposed to be phenomenologically distinct and rather
50
I do not know of a place in Wise Choices where Gibbard says so explicitly, but that this is so
clearly follows from the complex dispositional nature of the state of accepting a norm.
51
See, for instance, McDowell (1987, 219) and Rosen (1998, 389).
239
simple. But with complex theoretical constructs52 such as the state of mind of
accepting a norm, a mental state that is not necessarily accessible upon
introspection, the worry that no characterization of the attitude except in normative
terms will be adequate is a serious one. The second objection sophisticated
Noncognitivism – unlike Emotivism – is vulnerable to is that it may be so
sophisticated, that it is no longer clear that it is not merely a terminological variant
of some cognitivist views53. If accepting a norm is an attitude subject to rational
criteria of consistency, if it is logically structured, and so on, why not just
acknowledge that it is a belief (perhaps of a special sort), and cease to present
one’s view as noncognitivist?54 The sophisticated noncognitivist may have
available to her replies to these objections, and I do not pretend that they are
obviously conclusive. Nor will I be able to discuss them further here. I mention
them only in order to make the following point: The psychological subtlety
modern noncognitivists bring to their metanormative theory has – despite its
significant advantages – also some serious prima facie costs.
What effect, though, do these psychological subtleties have on the
possibility of Noncognitivism accommodating the kind of normative thought
52
See Gibbard (1992, 970-1).
See Zangwill (1990), Hill (1992), and Dreier (1999).
54
Such suspicions are strengthened by Blackburn’s Quasi-Realism which I briefly discuss in the
next section. One reason often given why a view such as Gibbard’s is still best seen as a version of
Noncognitivism is that according to it acceptance of normative judgments can motivate, but beliefs
cannot. But it is hard to see what – except for a choice of terminology – distinguishes such a
noncognitivist view from a cognitivist view that denies the Humean claim and sees normative
beliefs as motivationally efficacious. Blackburn himself (1993b, 367) makes what I think is a
similar point, and in conversation so has Gibbard. For a suggestion that Noncognitivism should be
understood simply as the claim that normative judgments can motivate, see Horwich, (1993 and
1994).
53
240
indispensable for deliberation? It may seem that there is in this respect all the
difference in the world between Emotivism and modern-day Noncognitivism. The
problem with Emotivism, remember, was that disguised exhortations and
expressions of a-rational pro-attitudes are inadequate to settle deliberation, free as
they are from any criteria of correctness. But Noncognitivism seems to avoid this
problem, by employing a number of mechanisms unavailable to Emotivism.
Perhaps the most useful of them is that of higher-order norms (Gibbard, 1990,
168-170)55. As mentioned above, the psychological complexity of Noncognitivism
allows it to utilize the useful device of higher-order norms – norms about what
norms ought to be accepted – the acceptance of which is itself the complex
conative state purportedly expressed by normative judgments. With such a device
at hand, it ceases to be true that the attitudes expressed by normative judgments
are immune to criticism. Thus, if you accept a norm n, and I accept a second-order
norm requiring that n not be accepted, I can say that you accept a norm you ought
not to accept, and noncognitivists can present an understanding of such a claim.
Importantly, it may even be the case that I accept n, but also the higher-order norm
requiring that I not accept it. In this case I can say that I accept a norm I should not
accept, and again noncognitivists can accommodate as much. Furthermore, given
that norm-acceptance need not be introspectively transparent, there may be cases
in which I sincerely wonder not just what to do, but also what norms I should (and
55
Though not as explicit about this, Blackburn too makes extensive use of this device. See, for
instance, Blackburn (1982, 175).
241
do) accept. So the attitude expressed by normative judgments can no longer be
seen to be a-rational in the way Ayer’s disguised exhortations were. They are
themselves subject to normative criteria. Furthermore, given the possibility of
mistake – that is, the possibility of accepting norms I ought not to accept 56 – the
relevant criteria of correctness do not depend on my decision at the end of any
particular instance of deliberation. So it seems that normative thought understood
along such noncognitivist lines can yield what is needed for deliberation – better
and worse answers, criteria of correctness that do not depend on the result of the
very deliberation at hand.
Let me concede a point here: Given sufficiently robust criteria of
correctness (and I return to this robustness condition shortly) that apply to relevant
noncognitive states and attitudes, I think Noncognitivism is entirely compatible
with all that is needed for deliberation. Even if, for instance, moral judgments are
(merely) expressions of conative attitudes, still their objectivity57 is not threatened
so long as there are objective criteria of correctness as to which noncognitive
attitudes are appropriate in the relevant circumstances58. But, remember, the
noncognitivist view we are interested in here is Global Metanormative
56
There is a worry here, one that I hope to pursue elsewhere: For it seems that Noncognitivism here
conflates mistake with absence of justification, or truth with justification. To the extent that we
hold this distinction dear to our heart even with regard to normative beliefs (or judgments), this
may be a serious flaw. For a hint at this objection, see Sturgeon (1986b, 129-132).
57
“Objectivity” is, of course, a dangerously ambiguous word. The sentence in the text is true, I
think, in any sense of objectivity, so long as it is objectivity in the same sense of both moral
judgments and the criteria of correctness.
58
So there is room in logical space for an often neglected view – an utterly objectivist version of
Metaethical Noncognitivism. See Butler (1988, 21), and Scanlon (1998, 59), who says there is little
difference between his (realist) view and Gibbard’s “as long as there are standards of correctness
for attitudes of the relevant sort”.
242
Noncognitivism, the view that applies to all normative judgments. So in particular,
it applies to the very purported criteria of correctness that in their turn apply to the
relevant noncognitive attitudes. And this, I think, undermines their status as
genuine criteria of correctness.
A quick way to make this point is as follows: Either our first-order
conative attitudes are sufficient to bring deliberation to its conclusion, or they are
not. If they are, there is of course no (deliberative) need for higher-order norms
and the criteria of correctness regarding lower-order norms they incorporate. If,
however, first-order norms cannot bring deliberation to its conclusion because
while deliberating we look for something more robust (or more robustly
normative), then it is hard to see how higher-order norms are going to do any
better.59
But more can be said. When deliberating, what we look for is the
elimination of arbitrariness and contingency (or at least contingency on the wrong
things). We look for reasons. As argued in section 3.4.2, even when acting on a
desire having concluded our deliberation, we commit ourselves to the normative
judgment that the desire does indeed give a reason for our acting in the relevant
way. And, as also argued in chapter 3, our deliberation doesn’t stop at the base
level. We also deliberate about which desires to cultivate, and indeed also about
what norms – lower- as well as higher-order ones – to accept. But just as we
59
This objection parallels a famous one made by Watson (1975, section 3) against Frankfurt on
higher-order desires. Zangwill (1990, 594) and Nagel (1997, 110) make similar points in this
context.
243
cannot, while deliberating, settle for a mere desire we find ourselves with but
rather we require a normative judgment (even if it is just that the desire gives a
reason to act in the relevant way), so too we cannot, when deliberating about what
norms to accept, settle for the norms (of whatever order) we merely find ourselves
with. What we are looking for are norms the status of which does not depend in
any way on arbitrary and contingent factors, like our conative makeup. So
Metanormative Noncognitivism mischaracterizes the commitments of normative
thought and discourse as applied in deliberation.
And notice that the problem thus understood applies to any version of
Noncognitivism60: So long as there are no norms the status of which is not rooted
in our perfectly contingent and arbitrary affective attitudes – so long, in other
words, as Noncognitivism is assumed to be true – there are going to be no criteria
of correctness sufficiently robust to allow for deliberation61. Metanormative
Noncognitivism precludes deliberation.62
It may be helpful here to cite from Blackburn (1988, 176) what may be
treated as a noncognitivist reply to my argument:
Does the lover escape his passion by thinking ‘Oh,
it’s only my passion, forget it’? When the world
affords occasion for grief, does it brighten when
we realize that it is we who grieve?
60
And for quite a number of cognitivist yet subjectivist views. I return to those in section 4.4.
McDowell (1987, 218) makes a similar point.
62
Metaethical Noncognitivism is often criticized for being entirely third-personal, fitting at most
the point of view of the anthropologist studying human moral behavior, not that of an agent. See,
for instance, Wiggins (1998). (See also Darwall (1995, 16) and Schneewind (1998, 361), though
they discuss some of the antecedents of modern Noncognitivism – Hume and Hutcheson). The
criticism in the text can be seen as an elaboration of this objection.
61
244
Blackburn here points at the fact that acknowledging the arbitrary and contingent
source of a strong emotion need not in any way diminish its intensity or somehow
undermine it. And this is surely true in the cases of love and grief. But the case of
normative judgments – those needed in deliberation – is very different. We are
struck by love and grief, and criteria of correctness seem completely irrelevant to
such emotions63. Love and grief do not involve a search for reasons, for the
elimination of arbitrariness. When trying to decide what it makes most sense for us
to do, on the other hand, reasons are exactly what we look for. The cases of love
and grief can therefore not be used by the noncognitivist to argue that normative
thought noncognitivistically understood suffices for deliberation.
Noncognitivism, then, cannot accommodate the normative truths and
judgments indispensable for deliberation. But perhaps it should not be understood
as trying to. Perhaps it should be understood as rejecting the view of deliberation
presented in chapter 3, and in particular in section 3.4.2, arguing that desires (or
more sophisticated desire-like attitudes) are after all sufficient to bring deliberation
to its conclusion64. I shall not here rehearse my arguments against such a view.
4.3.4
Why Quasi-Realism Is beside the Point
There is another, related, difference between Blackburn’s examples and the case of normative
judgments. We typically think of normative judgments as interpersonally valid in a way love and
grief are not. This is yet another place where there is an important analogy between deliberation
and interpersonal disagreement. But I cannot discuss this point in detail here.
64
I suspect Blackburn tends more clearly than Gibbard in this direction, as can perhaps be seen
from the passage on love and grief just quoted.
63
245
For many years now Simon Blackburn has been developing his quasi-realist
project (about ethics as about other discourses), the essence of which is supplying
with antirealist grounds that allow one to say just about everything the realist
wants to say65. The idea is simple enough – start with an antirealism of the
noncognitivist variety. Then ask what it is that we realists find troubling about
such antirealism. Compile a list of all the things we realists want to be able to say
about the relevant discourse, things we think we can only say if we are realists
about it. These would presumably include (in the moral case) things like:
Bullfighting is wrong; Bullfighting is really wrong; It’s true that bullfighting is
wrong; It’s a fact that bullfighting is wrong; Bullfighting is objectively wrong;
Bullfighting would have been wrong even had we thought it was permissible; Our
thinking so doesn’t make bullfighting wrong; Bullfighting is wrong even in
societies that accept bullfighting; We believe that bullfighting is wrong because it
is, not the other way around; I believe bullfighting is wrong, but I may be wrong
about this; and so on.66 The final, crucial, stage in the quasi-realist project is
showing that these sentences, when properly understood, are perfectly available to
the antirealist. Showing that is supposed, of course, to leave the realist rejection of
antirealism unmotivated.67
Gibbard too seems now to endorse something very much like Blackburn’s Quasi-Realism. See,
for instance, Gibbard (1999, 142, footnote 3).
66
For some of these examples, and a few others, see Blackburn (1993, 4).
67
For one of the clearer presentations of the quasi-realist project, see Blackburn (1988).
65
246
The details of the quasi-realist project – though of considerable
independent interest – are not needed here. Nor are the many problems of detail
this project still faces. What is important for my purpose here is that the project, if
successful, can be thought to challenge the argument in section 4.3.3. For if
Blackburn can entitle us – consistently with an antirealist, noncognitivist,
grounding – to say all we realists want to say, and seeing that we want to be able
to use normative judgments in deliberation, then Blackburn can entitle us –
consistently with the rejection of realism (and certainly of Robust Realism) – to
use normative judgments in deliberation68. And if that is so, then irreducibly
normative truths are after all not indispensable for deliberation.
Of course, Blackburn cannot let his quasi-realist project be too successful,
for if it is – if there really is nothing the realist wants to say that the quasi-realist
cannot say – then rather than arguing against realism Blackburn will have argued
against the distinction between realism and antirealism69. But Blackburn
repeatedly emphasizes70 that his Quasi-Realism is based on his antirealism. So we
have to see what difference remains, according to Blackburn, between the realist
and his quasi-realist. Here is Blackburn:
“… realists always find it hard to say anything with which idealists cannot arrange to agree by
giving it their own meaning.” (Nagel, 1986, 101)
69
For an especially clear presentation of this worry, see Rosen (1998, e.g. at 395). Johnston (1989,
141) seems to express a similar suspicion when he characterizes those who hold a view of colors
analogous to Blackburn’s metaethical Quasi-Realism as “delayed-reaction colour realists”.
70
As when he characterizes his view as “expressivism with quasi-realist trimmings” (1999, 213).
Nevertheless, at times he is not as clear about this, apparently willing to accept realism as
commonly characterized – see Blackburn (1991b, 42).
68
247
But sure we do have a serviceable way of
describing the [realist-antirealist] debate, at least as
far as it concerns evaluation and morals. It is about
explanation. The projectivist holds that our nature
as moralists is well explained by regarding us as
reacting to a reality which contains nothing in the
way of values, duties, rights, and so forth; a realist
thinks it is well explained only by seeing us as able
to perceive, cognize, intuit, an independent moral
reality. He holds that the moral features of things
are the parents of our sentiments, whereas the
Humean holds that they are their children.” (1981,
164-5; see also 185-6).
So the difference seems to come to a difference in explanatory priority 71. One
may, of course, question whether the explanatory claim Blackburn saddles the
realist with is really essential to realism (Rosen (1998, 396) does, and to an extent
so have I, in chapter 1). But let me grant Blackburn for the sake of argument this
characterization of what is at issue.
Notice, then, that this distinctive commitment of the quasi-realist to the
explanatory priority of our normative emotions and reactions over the normative
truths or facts is all that is needed in order to run against him the line of section
4.3.3 above. For such priority, together with the contingency and arbitrariness of
our psychology, entails that the normative truths and facts (or quasi-truths and
quasi-facts) are contingent and arbitrary in exactly the way their role in
deliberation doesn’t allow.
71
See also Blackburn (1999, 216). For a similar point made by Gibbard, in the context of replying
to the worry that his view is a mere terminological variant of some cognitivist view, see Gibbard
(1992, 971).
248
Now, Blackburn likes to emphasize that – via a careful reading of
counterfactuals and claims about dependence and contingency – his view actually
rules out contingency just as much as a fairly robust realism does 72. But, regardless
of the details here73, this just cannot be right74: If he succeeds in abolishing all
contingency, he abolishes with it what is supposed to distinguish between his view
and a fairly robust realism. And if, as seems more likely, at least one kind of
contingency – the one depicted by the parent-and-child-metaphor – remains, then
the point in the previous paragraph applies. Either way, then, Quasi-Realism is, as
far as my argument for Robust Realism is concerned, beside the point.
4.4
Normative Naturalism
Normative Naturalism is the metanormative analogue of the metaethical view (or
family of views) knows as Ethical Naturalism – the view that, roughly,
acknowledges normative (moral) facts, and holds that they are reducible to natural
facts. In section 4.4.1 I characterize Normative Naturalism more carefully, then
arguing – in section 4.4.2 – that no normative naturalist view can accommodate
deliberation. In section 4.4.3 I reject an argument purportedly showing that the
conjunction of (any kind of) metanormative realism with a very plausible claim
about the modal status of basic normative truths entails Normative Naturalism.
72
See, e.g., Blackburn (1988, 173).
For objections to his rather obviously tendentious discussion of counterfactuals, insisting on
reading them only “internally”, see, for instance, Cassam (1986) and Ramussen (1995).
74
The point that follows resembles a point made by McDowell (1985, 124, footnote 4) and
Sturgeon (1992, 114, footnote 2).
73
249
One preliminary point is in order here: I will only be discussing in this
context naturalist reductions of the normative. In so restricting the scope of my
discussion I may seem to be compromising the exhaustiveness of the taxonomy
presented in section 4.1, because of the possibility of views attempting to reduce
the normative to something other than the natural. The obvious examples of such
views are versions of the (metanormative analogue of) Divine Command Theory. I
will not discuss such views for three reasons. First, I do not view them as serious
metanormative options, and nor does the literature (or the part of it I am interested
in), perhaps partly because there is no God. Second, such views seem especially
unmotivated as an alternative to Robust Realism. In particular, the metaphysical
and epistemological qualms that make (some) people uncomfortable with Robust
Realism seem to count at least as heavily against any purported supernaturalist
reduction base for the normative. Third, and most importantly, as the reader will
notice, the problems raised below for Normative Naturalism are easily applicable,
mutatis mutandis, to Normative Supernaturalism, so that a separate discussion of
such views can, I think, safely be avoided.
4.4.1
Normative Naturalism
The defining thesis of Normative Naturalism is that normative facts (or
propositions, or properties) are reducible to natural facts (or propositions, or
properties). In order to understand Normative Naturalism better, then, we need to
look into the ideas of the natural and of reduction.
250
Now, it seems like many problems regarding the understanding of the
natural can be set aside as irrelevant here. What seems crucial is that, according to
normative naturalists, normative facts are reducible to, or identical with, nonnormative ones – (normative) facts about what you have reason to do, for instance,
are reducible to (non-normative) facts about what would satisfy your desires. But
this way of putting things, however intuitive, cannot be right: The natural facts
normative facts are purportedly reducible to are – in virtue of this very reduction –
identical to normative facts, and so are normative facts. So what must be meant by
the reducibility of the normative to the non-normative is the reducibility of the
normative to the apparently non-normative, or to the not-clearly-normative.
Similarly – if mental states are physicalistically reducible, then the relevant
physical states are mental states, and so the reduction is not of the mental to the
non-mental, but rather to the not-obviously-mental, or more simply, to the
physical. Now, because of the unclarity and imprecision of locutions such as “notobviously-normative”, it would be better if we had an independent idea of the
reduction base, something analogous to the idea we have of the physical75 when
we come to formulate physicalist reductions of the mental.
What are, then, the natural facts to which normative naturalists think the
normative is reducible? These are, roughly speaking, the facts of the kind the
75
It is, of course, anything but clear that we have such an understanding of the physical, one that is
independent of the (supposed) contrast between the physical and the mental. But for the purposes
of the analogy in the text, we can assume this problem away.
251
natural sciences deal with76. These include the facts physics deals with, but not
necessarily only them. The natural facts include also highly complex facts of the
kind the special sciences deal with, whether or not they are reducible to the
physical ones. Among these are, of course, the facts of biology, but also
psychological facts, sociological ones, and so on. This way of putting things is
vague, but it is not without content – we can easily come up with paradigmatically
natural facts, such that if normative facts are reducible to them Normative
Naturalism is clearly vindicated. These include facts about people’s desires,
people’s pleasures, economic growth, survival and productivity, and so on. In what
follows, this rough characterization of the natural will do: The major examples of
normative naturalist views are attempts to reduce the normative to such
paradigmatically natural facts, and I will argue against any view that endorses a
reduction to anything not clearly normative.
Things get trickier when we get to reduction, as many normative naturalists
(in the sense I use this term) now explicitly deny the reducibility of the normative
to the natural77. What they typically deny is, first, an analytic or a priori knowable
reduction, one that asserts an equivalence of meaning (or a relation very close to
that) between normative sentences (or predicates) and natural ones. They deny
reduction thus understood either because of general Quinean worries about
76
See, for instance, Svavarsdóttir (2001, 181).
Brink (1989) repeatedly characterizes his view a non-reductive realism. See also the
characterization of such views as non-reductive in Darwall, Gibbard and Railton (1992, 26). A
reminder: I freely generalize the views of other writers (these included), from the metaethical views
they explicitly endorse or discuss to the metanormative views directly relevant for my discussion
here.
77
252
analyticity or the a priori, or because of other general arguments (like Boyd’s
cardinality argument), or because impressed with specific problems for
analytically reducing the normative, perhaps most notably some version of the
Open Question Argument (or because of any combination of these reasons).78
Another, related, claim typically denied by normative naturalists who nevertheless
present themselves as rejecting reduction is that (what I call) the reduction base of,
say, normative properties is as “friendly” as the reduced ones. Yes, they argue,
normative facts are at bottom natural facts, but the relevant natural facts may be
messy, highly disjunctive, and so on79. Others, who go for a metaethical analogue
of functionalism in the philosophy of mind, may deny reduction meaning they
deny any necessary type-type identity thesis between normative and at least firstorder natural properties80. Yet others deny even that normative facts are identical
with natural facts, still clinging to Naturalism by arguing that normative facts are
nevertheless constituted by natural ones81.
I want to include all of these views (or rather their metanormative
analogues, for they are typically presented as metaethical theories) under the
heading of Normative Naturalism, and I want to consider a naturalist reduction its
defining thesis. So I should present a broader understanding of reduction.
The general Quinean worries are often left implicit. For a discussion of Boyd’s cardinality
argument, see Sturgeon (1984, 59-60). For the relevance of the Open Question Argument, see, for
instance, Railton (1989b, 157), Brink (2001).
79
Sturgeon (1984, 60-1).
80
See Jackson and Pettit (1995), but note that they acknowledge that their view presents a naturalist
reduction of sorts. For a brief discussion of a related view – one supposedly analogous to
Davidson’s anomalous monism in the philosophy of mind – see Scott (1980, 266).
81
See Brink (1989, chapter 6).
78
253
The intuitive idea behind reduction-claims can, I think, be put roughly as
the following conjunction: A kind of fact F1 is reducible to a kind of fact F2 just in
case F1-facts are nothing over and above F2-facts, and if there is something more
basic about their description as F2-facts compared to their description as F1-facts82.
The first conjunct is the intuitive ground for an identity thesis (except, given the
denial of identity by certain normative naturalists, it may be better to settle for the
intuitive formulation in terms of the nothing-over-and-above relation). The second
is meant to capture the anti-symmetrical character of reduction – the idea that if F1facts are reducible to F2-facts, then really, at bottom, F2 facts do the work.
An example might help, so think of chair-facts. It is very hard to come up
with a reductive definition of chair-facts in, say, physical terms, and the task does
not become much easier (though perhaps somewhat easier) if we allow
psychological facts into the reduction base. Furthermore, any plausible reduction
base is going to be highly complex and disjunctive. It seems likely that in any such
reduction base functions are going to play a crucial role. And it may be argued that
chairs are not identical with the matter that constitutes them (for, arguably, the
very same chair could have been composed of slightly different material parts83).
Nevertheless, it seems clear that chair-facts are reducible – in a perfectly
understandable sense of this term – to facts that are not clearly chair-facts, to
This characterization roughly follows Fine’s (2001). He proceeds to discuss worries about the
intelligibility and nature of the notion of basicness here involved, and consequently of that of
reduction (and of realism), but, as will become obvious, I do not need to address these worries here.
83
This is the criterion Brink uses to distinguish between identity and constitution. See Brink (1989,
157).
82
254
physical and perhaps psychological and functional facts. Chair-facts are not
plausibly considered sui generis, and there are no (special) metaphysical
mysteries, it seems, about chairs, because of the availability of such reduction. The
characterization of reduction above captures, I think, the sense in which chair-facts
are obviously reducible to physical (and psychological and functional) facts: Facts
about chairs are nothing over and above these facts, and their non-chairdescription is more basic.
Normative Naturalism, then, is the thesis that normative facts are reducible
in this sense to natural ones, that, in other words, normative facts are nothing over
and above the facts of the kind studied by the natural sciences, and that there is
something more basic about their description as natural facts, that normative facts
are at bottom natural facts and not the other way around.84 Of these two
components of the view, I will focus on the first, arguing that any view according
to which normative facts are nothing over and above natural facts cannot allow for
sincere deliberation. The second component will remain in the background, but it
will not be without significance: A view according to which, say, the reduction
goes the other way – natural facts are reducible to normative ones – will not be
ruled out by the argument that follows, because, whatever its other flaws, it does
not rule out deliberation.
84
Sturgeon (1984, 59; 1986, 117), who denies reduction in more narrow senses, concedes that his
view is reductivist in a broader sense, like the one in the text.
255
Normative naturalist views come in many forms. It may be helpful to give
here a few examples of categories of views that are naturalist in the sense
employed here (the examples are not necessarily mutually exclusive). One clear
example is that of classically reductive views, views that take a major normative
property and argue for its analytic (or at least a priori) identity with a natural
property. Bentham’s identification of rightness with the property of maximizing
the balance of pleasure over pain85 is a prominent example of this classically
reductive line. Some contemporary writers endorse such an identity (or one similar
to it), but argue that it is a posteriori, and certainly not analytic. Such views –
sometimes referred to as instances of Cornell Realism, New-Wave Moral Realism,
or Synthetic Naturalism – are also examples of Normative Naturalist views86.
Similarly, functionalist views that think of (whatever they take to be) the central or
most basic normative property as identical with the natural property – whatever it
is – that plays a certain role (specifiable, of course, in naturalistically respectable
terms) are normative naturalist views87. So are typical examples of dispositionalist
views, according to which normative properties are to be understood as roughly
analogous with secondary qualities (with those understood dispositionally), so that
the property of being, say, a value is the property of being such as to elicit in us a
certain reaction, perhaps under suitable conditions, with these conditions
85
Bentham (1789, 4 (Chapter 1, section 11)).
See, for instance, Sturgeon (1984), Lycan (1986), Railton (1986a), Boyd (1988), Brink (1989).
87
See Jackson and Pettit (1995). I should say that it is not completely clear to me that there is a real
difference – not, that is, merely a terminological one – between such Functionalism and Synthetic
Naturalism of the sort just discussed, especially given the scientific methodology typically
endorsed by holders of that latter view. See, for instance, Boyd (1988).
86
256
understood in a naturalistically respectable way (not in normative terms, that is,
and in particular not in terms of a whatever-it-takes-to-get-things-right clause)88.
Ideal Observer (or Advisor) Theories are also naturalist views because they hold
that the relevant normative properties are identical with the natural property of
being chosen (or liked, or approved of, or whatever) by an observer suitably
placed (again, assuming the ideal conditions are specified in a naturalistically
respectable way)89. Neo-Aristotelian views according to which normative facts are
to be understood primarily as complex facts about the functions of things (or
persons) and how they measure up to these functions are also typically thought of
as naturalist views, as indeed they should be so long as the relevant functions and
the measuring-up relation are understood in naturalistically respectable ways 90. All
desire-based theories of reasons, according to which facts about what reasons one
has are identical with facts about what desires or preferences one has (or would
have under some counterfactual conditions specified in a naturalistically
respectable way) are likewise instances of Normative Naturalism91, as are
88
See Lewis (1989); Brower (1993). Johnston (1989, 145) is especially clear regarding whatever-ittakes clauses. Because of Smith’s insistence that he does not offer a reduction of the normative
(see, e.g. Smith, 1997, 98), it is not clear to me whether Smith’s Dispositionalism is another
example relevant here. His analysis may remain entirely within the normative domain. Johnston’s
view (1989), though dispositionalist to an extent, is certainly not an instance of Normative
Naturalism, as he insists that the reduction base of anything normative must itself be normative
(and so his analysis employs at least one normative notion).
89
See, for instance, Firth (1952), and Railton (1986a and 1986b).
90
See, for instance, Foot (2001).
91
See Darwall’s (1983, 81) formulation (but not endorsement) of such views. See also Williams
(1980), where the relevant conditions are those of rational deliberation, with this rationality
naturalistically understood. And see Hubin (1996) for an argument claiming that hypothetical
motivation views should be discarded and replaced by actual motivations theories.
257
conventionalist or relativist views reducing normative facts to social ones 92. And,
as will be explained in section 4.5, constructivist views may be considered
naturalist too.
As is clear, then, Normative Naturalism is a family of very many different
views, and it would be impossible to do justice to them all here. In what follows I
focus on what they all have in common – the identification of normative with
some natural facts – and to a large extent ignore the differences among them. The
discussion of section 4.4.2 is therefore not meant as a comprehensive discussion of
naturalist metanormative views, but rather just as the minimum needed in order to
see why it is that reductivist views cannot block my argument for Robust Realism.
One
last
preliminary:
Normative
Naturalism
should
be
clearly
distinguished from the (obvious) claim that what is being evaluated by our
normative thoughts are natural states of affairs, actions, persons, and so on. It is, of
course, true that the things that are good are (typically, primarily, and perhaps even
only) natural things, that we have reasons to perform perfectly natural actions, and
so on. From this platitude Normative Naturalism – the identification of normative
facts and properties with natural ones – does not follow. To use Parfit’s
(forthcoming, chapter 2) terms, we must not conflate the property of being good
(or right, or reasonable, or valuable) with the natural properties that make things
92
See, e.g. Harman (1977).
258
good (or right, or whatever)93. Perhaps Naturalism is after all true, but surely its
truth cannot be established by relying on such confusion. So, for instance, one can
believe that the only thing intrinsically good is pleasure without thinking that the
property of goodness is identical with the property of being a pleasure, or that we
only have reasons to satisfy our desires but that being a reason (for one) is not
identical with anything about the satisfactions of one’s desires. (It may be thought
that there nevertheless is a route from the platitude to Normative Naturalism. I
argue against such a route in section 4.4.3.)
4.4.2
Why Normative Naturalism Will Not Do
According to Normative Naturalism, there are normative facts, and so the
normative questions we ask ourselves in deliberation have right and wrong, or at
least better and worse, answers. So it seems that my argument from deliberative
indispensability – even if successful as an argument for some kind of
metanormative realism – cannot rule out Normative Naturalism. This would mean,
of course, that as an argument for Robust Realism my argument fails – if
naturalistically reducible normative truths or facts are all that is needed for
deliberation, irreducibly normative truths are after all not deliberatively
indispensable. This is why Normative Naturalism threatens to block my argument
for Robust Realism.
Though scholars differ regarding what Moore had in mind when talking of “The Naturalistic
Fallacy”, it seems to me clear that it was exactly the conflation mentioned in the text. See Moore
(1903, 62 (section 10)).
93
259
Now, as already mentioned, naturalist metanormative views come in
different stripes, and one possible way of facing this threat is to argue against them
piecemeal. Different naturalist views face different problems and challenges, and –
as can be seen from the absence of consensus or anything resembling a consensus
even among naturalists – none of these views is clearly successful in addressing
them. So rejecting Normative Naturalism can be grounded in rejecting specific
naturalist views, and perhaps also in a kind of induction: All reductions suggested
so far have been found inadequate, and this may be taken to be at least some
reason for pessimism regarding the prospects of future reductive attempts. I,
however, will attempt a more ambitious strategy, arguing against all possible
naturalistic reductions at just one go (or perhaps, as is about to be made clear, two
goes).
Another strategy I will not pursue here starts with the observation that
naturalist views can be divided into two kinds, according to whether the reduction
claim they affirm is analytic or synthetic, or perhaps whether it is knowable a
priori or a posteriori. One can then argue that the naturalist faces insurmountable
difficulties either way. It seems to me a plausible case against Normative
Naturalism can indeed be made in this way – I very briefly mention how in a
footnote94 – but I will not pursue it here. Rather, in accordance with the strategy
94
As against Analytic Naturalism, perhaps something can be saved from the now-notorious Open
Question Argument. For one such attempt, see Gibbard (1990, 11-18), who emphasizes that there
may be deep disagreements regarding, say, what is right, that it seems wrong to attribute to the
erring party to such a disagreement a linguistic (as opposed to a normative) error, and that Analytic
Naturalism is committed to such an attribution. As against Synthetic Naturalism, a number of
260
advertised in section 4.1 above, I want to focus on the inadequacy of Normative
Naturalism from the point of view of the deliberating agent.
In particular, I think that considering Normative Naturalism from this
deliberative standpoint emphasizes a worry often raised with regard to attempts at
reducing the normative to the natural. It is the worry that no naturalist reduction
can keep the normative force of the reduced facts. Of course, it is not entirely clear
what normative force is, and it is hard to suggest an account of it that will not – in
our context – beg important questions against at least one party to the
metanormative debate. So let me present my argument against a naturalist
reduction in a different way, and let me just note here that I think of it as a way of
making (reasonably) precise the intuition that no reduction can preserve normative
force.
From the standpoint of the deliberating agent, suggested reductions can be
divided into objective and subjective ones, with these terms stipulatively defined
as follows95: A reduction is subjective if the reduction base includes an
ineliminable indexical referring to the deliberating agent or her environment; it is
objective otherwise. So, the reduction offered by Lewis’s (1989) Dispositionalism
related objections can be raised: that it entails the wrong modal status for the supervenience of the
normative on the natural (see, for instance, Johnston (1989, 153), who thinks a similar objection
threatens any psychologistic reduction of values); that it entails trans-world – and, given plausible
anthropological assumptions, even intra-world – relativism (a charge made in a series of papers by
Horgan and Timmons, e.g. Horgan and Timmons 1991 and 1992); that it relies on an analogy
between normative and scientific theoretical terms, but that the analogy fails because we have very
different referential intentions in the two cases (Gampel, 1996; see also Parfit, forthcoming, chapter
2).
95
These terms are not picked arbitrarily, of course: I believe the stipulation in the text captures at
least one common meaning of the objective-subjective distinction. The resort to stipulation is
meant just to avoid messy controversies about how this distinction is best understood.
261
– according to which something is of value if we are disposed to value it under
ideal conditions – is paradigmatically subjective, as is witnessed by the
(ineliminable) occurrence of the (plural96) first-person pronoun in it. Similarly,
Williams’s (1980) view of reasons – according to which facts about your reasons
are reducible to facts about your desires97 – is again offering a subjective
reduction, as it is your desires that play a role in the reduction base. Socialrelativist reductions are likewise subjective. Bentham’s (1789, Chapter 1)
reduction of the right to the pleasure-over-pain-balance-maximizing is, on the
other hand, completely objective, as the specification of the suggested reduction
base does not include any ineliminable reference to the deliberating agent 98. Ideal
Observer (or Ideal Advisor) Theories are presented sometimes as offering
subjective, sometimes objective reductions, depending of the details of the view99.
It is clear, I think, that the objective-subjective dichotomy among reductions (as
introduced above) is exhaustive, so that if I successfully argue against both these
options, I will have argued against Normative Naturalism.
Given Lewis’s concession that “we” in his analysis may mean “You and I, and I’m none too sure
about you” (1989, 128), it might as well have been the singular first-person pronoun, as he also
concedes.
97
Williams complicates matters – I’m not sure that helpfully – by speaking of your subjective
motivational set and not just your desires. For my purposes in the text this complication can safely
be ignored.
98
It is important not to be confused here by the fact that Bentham’s conception of the good is in
terms of subjective states (pain and pleasure). Still, according to Bentham, what it is right for you
to do does not depend on your desires or pleasures or pains, except insofar as these influence the
general balance, and so there is no ineliminable reference to you in Bentham’s reduction.
99
For a locus classicus of an objective (or, as he refers to it, an absolutist) version of an Ideal
Observer reduction, see Firth (1952). For criticisms arguing that Firth’s Ideal Observer Theory
should be revised so as to allow for subjectivity (or, as Taliaferro puts it, attempts at relativizing the
Ideal Observer Theory), see Brandt (1955), Firth (1955), and the discussion in Taliaferro (1988).
96
262
Take subjective reductions first. The problem about those should already
be clear at this point of the argument (see sections 3.4.2 and 4.3.3 above). Any
subjective (purported) reduction of the normative is asking the deliberating agent
to take something about herself – something that is completely arbitrary and
contingent100, like her desires – as given prior to deliberation, and indeed as the
source of any answer to the questions she is, in deliberating, asking herself. But it
is exactly such arbitrariness that deliberation is an attempt to eliminate. The mere
psychological fact that I desire something cannot by itself bring my deliberation to
its conclusion (without a normative commitment on my part to take my desire as a
reason), and it is hard to see how some (naturalistically respectable) idealization of
my desires can help101. So long as perfectly natural – physical, say, or
psychological – facts about me play an ineliminable role in her suggested
reduction base, the subjectivist is asking me to treat these facts as settling
deliberation. But while deliberating I treat these facts – I cannot avoid treating
them – as merely contingent, rationally arbitrary, facts about myself. And it is in
100
One may argue that all persons, or humans, or agents, necessarily have certain desires, and then
the fact that I have the relevant desire is not contingent. This, I think, is Velleman’s view
(developed in many of the papers in his 2000). But, even if such a move can eliminate contingency,
it cannot eliminate arbitrariness. Here my criticism of Velleman (in section 2.A.3, in chapter 2) is
relevant.
101
Of course, if we are allowed to rule some desires in and some out based on normative criteria –
say, discarding all irrational desires (with irrationality understood substantively) – then idealization
of that sort may help (though problems would still remain). But, of course, then we do not have at
hand a suggested reduction of the normative to the natural. For a clear statement of the claim that
one needs, in order to avoid obvious counterexamples, a normative criterion according to which
desires are sorted into those that count and those that do not, see Hampton (1992).
263
this sense of arbitrariness that it is antagonistic to deliberation102. Perhaps no such
non-arbitrary answers are to be had; perhaps, in other words, a metanormative
error theory is after all in order, and our deliberation is doomed from the start to
systematic failure. But regardless of whether or not deliberation can be successful,
it seems clear that it does – or would – take more than subjective reductions for it
to be successful. Any denial of this claim is just not loyal to the phenomenology of
deliberation.
Notice the contrast on this point between the kind of normative answers we
look for in deliberation and discourses about which a subjective reduction seems
more plausible. In the discussion of secondary qualities, one common example is
that of the nauseating – a secondary quality most of us feel comfortable
understanding dispositionally, and indeed subjectively. Now, it seems to me a
commonplace regarding the phenomenology of the nauseating that we can
appreciate fully the contingency and rational arbitrariness of our psychological and
physical responses to which the nauseating is (arguably) reducible, without such
awareness compromising in anyway the feeling that the thing in front of us is
nauseating. This is so because there is nothing in the phenomenology of the
nauseating that commits us to the necessity or rationality or reason-supported
status of the nauseating. In the case of the nauseating, rather, we are perfectly
102
The subjective facts in the suggested reduction base may not be arbitrary in other sense of this
word. There may, for instance, be good explanations for why we have them and not alternative
possible attitudes or dispositions (or whatever). But such, purely explanatory, denial of
arbitrariness will not do for deliberative purposes. I thank Tom Nagel for pressing me on a related
point.
264
happy to settle for the responses with which we just find ourselves. Perhaps –
though this is a complicated matter – color-phenomenology and the
phenomenology of the beautiful are in this respect quite like that of the nauseating.
But the phenomenology of deliberation is completely different on this point. Fully
realizing that a suggested answer to the questions I ask myself in deliberation is
contingent (on my conative makeup, say, or on our evaluative practices) and
arbitrary does undermine its ability to bring my deliberation to its conclusion.
Subjective reduction undermines deliberation.103
Now, necessity can be purchased for cheap, by toying with rigidification.
In order to block the move from a subjective reduction to objectionable
counterfactuals (had I desired to turn on any radio I come across, would I have had
reason to do so?104), an actuality-operator may be introduced to the reductive
analysis, one that rigidifies the reference to my actual (e.g.) desires105. Then
normative claims gain some kind of modal robustness. But, as is often noted in the
literature, such modal robustness is too cheap to be of value, and this rigidifying
trick is not a way of addressing the genuine concern here but rather of making it
harder to express (Lewis 1989, 132). As Darwall, Gibbard and Railton note (1992,
23), the rigidification trick perhaps guarantees (some kind of) necessity and rules
out (some kind of) relativism, but it does so “without addressing underlying
103
In the metaethical literature people often emphasize the objective purport of moral discourse.
The point made in the text here is really the metanormative analogue of this familiar point,
considered from the standpoint of the deliberating agent.
104
The example is (roughly) Quinn’s (1993, 236).
105
See Wiggins (1990, 80; 1991, e.g. 240); Johnston (1989); Brower (1993, 242).
265
worries about the possible arbitrariness of our evaluative practices, since the
feature seized upon to privilege our practices is simply that they are our
practices.”106
So much, then, for subjective reductions. But notice that objective
reductions are not vulnerable to the same objection, as they do not involve any
reference to me and my rationally-arbitrary attitudes. Aren’t objective normative
facts all that is needed for deliberation, regardless of whether or not they are
naturalistically reducible?
It is here that I have to rely on a brute intuition. When I ask myself what I
should do, it seems that just answering “Oh – Φ-ing will maximize happiness.” is a
complete non-starter, it completely fails to address the question. Of course, given
some background commitments it can be a better answer. If, for instance, I am
already a convinced utilitarian, willing to commit myself to something like “It
always makes sense to perform the action that maximizes happiness”, then “Φ-ing
will maximize happiness” seems like a reasonable answer to the question what
should I do. But such background commitments are themselves paradigmatically
106
See also Wright (1992, 113-7) and Sosa (2001, 303-4). And here is Blackburn on a similar
move: “… if a commitment is well seen as a culturally variable, brutely contingent expression of a
disposition to put pressure on ourselves and others, everyone, not merely the freshman relativist,
ought to feel uncomfortable at its also claiming a title to objective independent truth. It will not be
enough to say that we have the practice of so dignifying it. This will only appear part of the error,
or the confidence trick.” (1993b, 378) Ironically, I think Blackburn himself is guilty of a similar
flaw when he insists on reading relevant counterfactuals (like “Had I had different conative states,
different things would be of value”) only “internally” as themselves made within normative
discourse. But I cannot pursue this point here.
In a somewhat similar context Korsgaard nicely makes a similar point by analogy: “There’s an old
joke about a child who’s glad he doesn’t like spinach, since then he’d eat it, and he hates the
disgusting stuff.” (1996, 59). The child from the joke is, of course, toying with rigidification, and
the reason the joke is (mildly) amusing is exactly that such a game is so obviously childish.
266
normative. Absent such background commitments, “Φ-ing will maximize
happiness” seems just irrelevant to the question I ask myself, and so does any
other answer put in purely natural terms. Rather than answering my question, such
an answer simply changes the subject. The point I am trying to make is not that
such background commitments have to be, as it were, present before your mind’s
eye before you can see that that Φ-ing will maximize happiness is relevant to your
deliberation. Indeed, very often one forms one’s general normative commitments
as a result of noticing the normative relevance of more specific, particular
considerations. The point is, rather, that by considering that Φ-ing will maximize
happiness as relevant to the question you were asking yourself, you commit
yourself to the background (normative) commitment mentioned above.
Another way of pumping the same intuition is as follows107: One can
know, it seems, all the relevant natural facts, without yet knowing what it makes
most sense for one to do. (Or, relatedly, two can agree on all the relevant natural
facts, but differ regarding what it makes most sense to do.) And from this it
follows108 that the deliberatively-relevant normative fact is not just a natural one,
107
This way is inspired by the famous Knowledge Argument in the philosophy of mind. See
Jackson, (1982). Let me state here – without further argument – that I do not see how the moves
typically employed by physicalists to deal with the Knowledge Argument can be employed in the
context of the normative.
108
Unless, of course, there are no normative facts (and similar arguments are indeed often used to
motivate Error Theory or Noncognitivism). At this stage of the argument, however, we are free to
ignore this possibility.
267
that it is just a mistake to say that it is nothing over and above the relevant natural
one.109
Notice that this intuitive objection applies to subjective reductions as well,
but it applies more clearly, I think, to objective ones. Subjective reductions can
give answers that, though not normative, still address my concerns in some other
way by relating to my motivations. Thus, a “So what?”110 response may sound odd
to “Φ-ing is what you yourself would choose to do if you just thought about it
carefully” in a way in which it does not sound odd to “Φ-ing will maximize
happiness”. Objective reductions of the normative – while not introducing
objectionable arbitrariness – divorce normative thought and discourse from their
role in deliberation111.
This is just a point repeatedly emphasized in chapter 3 looked at from the
opposite direction. In chapter 3 I emphasized that, being essentially deliberative,
you cannot avoid committing yourself to normative truths, because when letting a
consideration bring your deliberation to its conclusion you commit yourself to the
(obviously normative) claim that it is a reason. Noting that a naturalist reduction
divorces normative thought from its role in deliberation is just a reiteration of that
109
In conversation, Tom Nagel suggested to me that this kind of knowledge argument is intuitively
stronger in the case of the mental than in the case of the normative, because we cannot imagine
someone who really knows all the natural facts about, say, the gratuitous infliction of suffering on
an innocent person and still doesn’t know – doesn’t just see – that it is wrong. I – perhaps because
less optimistic – do not share Nagel’s intuition. But even if he is right about the specific case, note
that what would be needed in order to reject the argument in the text is that something like Nagel’s
intuition would be true in all relevant cases, not just in the most extreme and obvious ones. And
this, I think, is highly implausible,
110
For discussion of “the so called ‘So What?’ argument”, see Johnston (1989, 157).
111
It is a misunderstanding of this role – thinking of it as primarily motivating rather than
normative – that explains, I think, much of the appeal of (some versions of) internalism.
268
point – deliberation requires normative commitment. And natural facts (and
beliefs) just do not suffice for that.
The intuition that no answer in terms of a naturalistic reduction succeeds in
addressing the questions we ask ourselves in deliberation may be the intuition
underlying Moore’s Open Question Argument, only highlighted from the
perspective of the deliberating agent112. And so an immediate worry is that, like
Moore’s argument, it applies (at most) to purportedly analytic reductions. But this,
I think, is not the case. What precludes naturalistic facts from playing the role in
deliberation for which normative facts are needed is not their description, but
rather their very nature. I return, then, to the brute intuition: Normative facts of the
kind needed for deliberation are too different from natural ones, too different to
just be natural ones themselves113.
4.4.3
A Final Worry about Property Identity
Normative properties are had by natural actions, character traits, objects and so on.
And I emphasized the need to distinguish between this platitude and Normative
Naturalism. But it may nevertheless be thought that there is in the vicinity an
112
Rosati (1995) also tries to save what can be saved from the Open Question Argument by
highlighting it from the perspective of deliberating agents.
113
For expressions of similar intuitions, see Donagan (1981), Johnston (1989, 157), Dancy (1996,
180-2), McGinn (1997, e.g. 11 and 25), Scanlon (1998, 57-8), and Parfit (forthcoming, chapter 2).
And perhaps Darwall, Gibbard and Railton have a similar intuition in mind when they say (1992,
30): “… despite their protestation, they [such reductive naturalists] might turn out to be error
theorists after all.” For a similar intuition in another context (that of the normativity of meaning and
suggested dispositional reductions) see Boghossian (1989, 532).
269
argument that shows that any metanormative realism is committed – given some
further plausible assumptions – to Normative Naturalism.
Assume a realist – a factualist, at least – view of the good, according to
which all and only instances of pleasure are (intrinsically) good. Being a pleasure,
according to such a view, may not be identical with being good, but is rather the
only good-making property. Now assume that basic normative truths – the
underived ones, those that are not merely the results of applying more general
norms to specific circumstances – are (metaphysically) necessary. It then follows
that, necessarily, all and only good things are pleasing. In other words, it follows
that the property of being good and the property of being a pleasure are necessarily
coextensive. But – and this is a further premise – necessarily coextensive
properties are identical. So the property of being good is after all identical with the
property of being a pleasure. A normative property is identical with a natural one.
And clearly, a similar line of argument can be run for any other substantive view
of the good, or of any other normative property.114
The premise about the necessity of basic norms is one I do not want to
reject. It is, I think, highly implausible that, say, pleasure is good as a matter of
sheer chance, and that there are counterfactual circumstances in which it ceases to
be (pro tanto, or prima facie) good (assuming, that is, it actually is intrinsically of
114
Such an argument is implicitly to be found in Jackson and Pettit (1995, 22) and more explicitly
in Jackson and Pettit (1996, 85), where they reply to a relevant worry by Van Roojen (1996)
regarding their 1995. Instead of my premise regarding the necessity of basic norms, they use one
regarding the modal status of a supervenience requirement. As far as I can see, the two can be
regarded equivalent for present purposes.
270
value). Furthermore, in the context of my argument – one that insists on
deliberation as the seeking of non-arbitrary, non-contingent answers to the
normative questions we ask ourselves – it is not a premise I can reject. The way to
go, then, is to reject the other premise, and argue that there can be distinct
properties that are nevertheless necessarily coextensive. This, I think, is not an
intuitively implausible view. But perhaps it is not even necessary to reject the
argument above. For in characterizing Normative Naturalism, remember, I
suggested to put things in the more intuitive terms of the nothing-over-and-above
relation: The normative naturalist claims that normative facts are nothing over and
above natural facts. Now, whatever your view regarding the identity of necessarily
coextensive properties, it seems clear that necessary coextension does not entail a
nothing-over-and-above judgment. Examples typically used to challenge the
identity of necessarily coextensive properties are made even more intuitively
compelling when put in this way: The property of being the number two is not
nothing over and above the property of being an even prime, and it is not the case
that the property of triangularity is nothing over and above the property of
trilaterality115.
Normative Naturalism is thus not entailed by realism and the modal status
of basic normative truths.116
Van Roojen (1996) makes a similar point – except put in terms of identity – against Jackson and
Pettit. They attempt a quick (and, I think, unsuccessful) reply at Jackson and Pettit (1996, 85).
116
I thank Cian Dorr and Josh Schechter for discussions regarding this section.
115
271
4.5
Constructivism
About to begin our weekly tennis match, we wonder who should serve first. We
decide to flip a coin, and you win. This settles our (short) deliberation, and you
serve first. We both know, of course, and have known all along, that you do not
have a prior entitlement – one that is independent of our coin-tossing procedure –
to serve first. Indeed, as we also know, there was no independent reason to let you
rather than me serve first. So there was, it seems, no normative truth applicable to
the appropriate result of the deliberation at hand. And yet we were able to bring
the deliberation to its conclusion in a reasonable way, and not, it seems, by merely
picking. This little story may be thought of as a counterexample to my insistence
that deliberation requires normative truths that are independent of the deliberation
procedure itself.
In section 4.5.1 I characterize Constructivism, the view that attempts to
generalize the intuition underlying the coin-toss case. Then, in section 4.5.2, I
restrict the scope of my discussion to what I call Interesting Constructivism, the
kind of Constructivism that can serve as an alternative to (a more substantive)
realism. It is only Interesting Constructivism that I need to rule out in order to
defend my argument for Robust Realism, and I proceed to do that in section 4.5.3.
As mentioned already in section 4.1, and as will become clearer below, it is
not clear that (Interesting) Constructivism constitutes a genuine alternative to the
metanormative views already rejected. Indeed, if the classification of views
presented in 4.1 is exhaustive (as it seems to be), Constructivism cannot be a
272
genuine alternative to all. Why discuss it, then, as if it were? First, constructivists
often write as if their view is a genuine alternative, and it may be interesting to see
whether they are right. For that, we need a better understanding of Constructivism.
Second, the most influential metanormative constructivist these days – Christine
Korsgaard – develops her view in ways rather similar to (parts of) my argument
for Robust Realism (the emphasis on us being essentially deliberative and on the
role of deliberation in setting adequacy constraints on accounts of normativity are
especially clear examples), and so I think it is of special interest here to see how
Constructivism fails. A further, related, reason has to do with Kant’s role in
inspiring constructivist metanormative theories as well as my argument for Robust
Realism. I hope to discuss this Kantian inspiration in detail on another occasion.
4.5.1
Constructivism
Constructivism (as I will be using this term117) is a thesis about the relations of
correctness-priority between substantive results and the procedures of getting to
them. In some cases – the you-cut-I-choose procedure of dividing a cake is a
standard example118 – we know in advance what a correct, or justified, result
would be (each of us getting roughly half of the cake), and a procedure is justified
because of its likelihood of achieving the independently justified result (given
117
It is sometimes used differently, even in the metaethical context. See Brink (1989).
Nevertheless, I think this is now the canonical way of understanding this term. See Darwall,
Gibbard and Railton, (1992, 13), and the references there.
118
See Rawls (1980, 523; 1993, 72).
273
some plausible background assumptions, the you-cut-I-choose procedure is more
likely than alternative procedures to yield the justified result). But, as can be seen
from the coin-toss case, this is not the only possibility. Sometimes, no result is
justified prior to the relevant procedure. It is not, prior to the coin toss, justified
that I serve first, nor is it justified that you serve first. Obviously, then, in such
cases the procedure is not justified because of its likelihood of generating the
independently justified result (for there is no such result). Rather, the procedure
itself is first justified, and when it terminates, the justified result is justified exactly
in virtue of being the result of the independently justified procedure.
Constructivism about a relevant discourse is the claim that there are no
substantive correctness criteria that apply to (or in) that discourse, and that the
only relevant correctness criteria are procedural in the way specified above. Thus,
according to Metaethical Constructivism, there are no actions we ought to perform
or to avoid performing independently of some (actual or hypothetical) procedure –
say, that of reaching consensus in an open discussion about principles of conduct;
rather, these procedures determine the moral status of actions. Metaethical
constructivists all agree on the denial of moral correctness criteria that are
independent of the relevant procedure; they differ in their characterization of the
relevant procedure, the one I’ll call the constructivist procedure. And similarly, of
course, for constructivists about other discourses.
Importantly, Constructivism is not (primarily) an epistemological thesis.
We can all agree – constructivists and non-constructivists alike – that we employ
274
epistemic procedures in trying to find out what, say, the moral facts are, and that
these procedures (perhaps partly) determine what we are justified in believing.
This commonplace does not entail Constructivism. According to Constructivism,
the constructivist procedure is not considered as a way of tracking an independent
fact, but rather as a way of creating, or constructing, it. The coin toss is not a way
of finding out in a reasonably reliable way who is entitled to serve first, but is
rather a way of creating such a fact, making it the case that one of us is so entitled.
It is easy to miss this point, because often the very same procedure is thought of as
a constructivist procedure by some, and an epistemological one by others.
Consider, for instance, the procedure of attempting to get our moral judgments to
be in reflective equilibrium. This is often thought of as a constructivist procedure,
a procedure that serves to determine the relevantly correct (true, or reasonable)
moral judgments. But it need not be so understood. It can be understood as an
epistemic procedure, a (purportedly) reasonably reliable way of tracking
independent moral facts. Constructivism is to be understood as a thesis about the
truth in the relevant domain, not about the justification of our beliefs regarding
it.119
119
Rawls is not always careful enough about this distinction. See Rawls (1980, 519). What helps to
blur it is that in the case of Constructivism regarding morality, or justice, or indeed normativity,
talk of justification is often conflated with talk of truth. In the coin-toss example, for instance, the
relevant correctness criteria are exactly those of (probably moral) justification, and so
Constructivism is a claim about the justificatory priority of the procedure over the result. But there
too Constructivism is not merely a claim about the epistemic justification of our beliefs regarding
who should serve first, but rather about what makes it the case that (say) you should serve first.
The distinction is clearer in non-moral, and indeed non-normative, contexts. In the philosophy of
mathematics, for instance, proof is considered an epistemic, tracking, procedure by realists, and a
275
Metanormative Constructivism is the view that there are no normative
truths or facts that are independent in the relevant way of some procedures, and in
particular of our procedures of getting at them. Rather, being the results of these
procedures makes the relevant normative claims true. As an example of such a
constructivist view, an example that will be important below, consider the view
characterized – and tentatively attributed to Korsgaard120 – by Gibbard (1999,
148): “According to this logically constrained reflective subjectivism [Korsgaard’s
version of Constructivism], reflectively deciding to do something makes it the
thing to do, so long as your policies for action are logically consistent.” Suitably
generalized to all normative discourse (and not just “the thing to do”) this view is a
metanormative constructivist position, with consistent reflective endorsement as
the constructivist procedure. And the reason such Metanormative Constructivism
is a threat for my argument for Robust Realism is, as already noted, that
Constructivism seems to supply the correctness criteria needed for deliberation
without relying on (prior, independent) normative truths. It is a way, it may be
thought, of acknowledging much of what I say about deliberation, and yet resisting
the move to Robust Realism.
Before proceeding to reject Metanormative Constructivism and this threat
to my argument with it, I want briefly to comment on the relations between
constructivist procedure by constructivists. These think of mathematical truth as constituted, or at
least determined, by our proofs (those we possess or perhaps those we can possess).
120
For, as Gibbard (1999, 148-9) also notes, there are in Korsgaard’s text (1996) troubling
inconsistencies, and evidence both for and against this reading. For Korsgaard’s characterization of
her view as an instance of “procedural realism” – essentially, Constructivism – see Korsgaard
(1996, 36-7).
276
constructivist views and the classification of metanormative views presented in
section 4.1.
The obvious suspicion is that Constructivism is a (perhaps especially
sophisticated or appealing) version of a naturalist reduction121. Think of
Constructivism regarding mathematics. If you think that, say, our actual proof
procedures make mathematical statements true, you seem to have reduced
mathematical truth to truths about our actual proof procedures. Or suppose you are
a constructivist about social justice, thinking there are no true principles of justice
independently of a certain (say) selection procedure, and that this selection
procedure makes the principles chosen in it just. Then, it seems, you believe that
the property of being just (as applied to principles) is reducible to that of being
chosen in a certain (actual or hypothetical) situation by certain (actual or
hypothetical) agents. So long as the canonical descriptions of the choice-situation
and of the agents making the choosing are in naturalistically respectable terms, it
seems you have committed yourself to a naturalist reduction of justice.
But perhaps your favorite constructivist procedure is one that cannot be
understood in non-normative terms. In that case, you may be presenting merely an
intra-normative reduction, reducing some normative properties and facts to other –
still clearly normative, and not natural – ones. Such a reduction may be of
considerable significance and interest, but it is not a metanormative position of the
kind I have to reject in order to defend Robust Realism and my argument for it.
121
Nagel (1996, 205) expresses this suspicion.
277
Indeed, it is the kind of Constructivism that can be happily endorsed by robust
realists122.
In classifying a constructivist position much depends, then, on the details
of the constructivist procedure it employs. But there is also a suspicion that
Constructivism can be understood as a rhetorical variant of very different views,
and that – at least in Korsgaard’s version of it – is crucially ambiguous as between
them. This allows Korsgaard, for instance, to deny any naturalist reduction (1996,
161), and yet also to come dangerously close to embracing it 123. And it allows
Smith (1999) – a dispositionalist and a normative naturalist of sorts – to
understand Korsgaard’s Constructivism as the view of a kindred naturalist spirit,
and Gibbard (1999) – an expressivist – to understand her view as a fellowexpressivist one.
Putting this suspicion to one side, it seems to me clear that Constructivism
does not threaten the exhaustiveness of the classification in section 4.1. When all
the details about the constructivist procedure are clearly in place, it seems, it will
be clear which category the relevant instance of Constructivism falls under.
Scanlon’s Metaethical Constructivism is an example of such a view, as it reduces moral
wrongness to, roughly, being forbidden by reasonably non-rejectible principles, with “reasonably”
normatively understood. And indeed, Scanlon’s metanormative view is, if not quite Robust
Realism, something very close to it. See Scanlon (1998, chapter 1). Milo’s Contractarian
Constructivism may be, like Scanlon’s, an intra-normative project, or – depending on his
understanding of the reasons to which he reduces moral wrongness – it may a reductivist, naturalist
position, and so one that is (in the terms introduced below) uninterestingly constructivist. See Milo
(1995).
123
See footnote 130, below.
122
278
4.5.2
Interesting Constructivism
I do not here need to discuss Constructivism in general, but only inasmuch as it
seems to be able to block my argument from deliberative indispensability to
Robust Realism. I will call views that satisfy this requirement versions of
Interesting Constructivism. Needless to say, I do not mean to imply that other
constructivist views are uninteresting124. It is just that they are not interesting in
the specific context of my argument for Robust Realism.
What would it take, then, for a constructivist position to be interesting in
this sense? Clearly, it must be a genuine alternative to a more substantive realism;
it cannot assume anything like it. Furthermore, it must be seen as distinct from a
more substantive realism from the point of view of the deliberating agent. To see
that, let me distinguish between Deliberative and Non-deliberative Constructivism,
the former employing a deliberative constructivist procedure, the latter a nondeliberative one. A deliberative procedure is one that includes as a part of it (some
kind of) deliberation of (some) agents. Coin-toss-procedures are, of course, nondeliberative ones, and so are (it seems) the kind of proof procedures relevant for
Mathematical Constructivism. Rawls’s original-position-procedure, on the other
hand, is a deliberative one, because it includes agents deliberating and making
choices.
124
Those constructivist theories in which the constructivist rhetoric is completely redundant, and
the constructivist procedure merely a heuristic device are, I suspect, less interesting, or at least less
interestingly constructivist. I return to the possibility of viewing the constructivist procedure as
merely a heuristic device below.
279
The crucial point I now want to make is that no instance of Nondeliberative Constructivism can be interesting. For remember that my argument
for Robust Realism is grounded in the point of view of the deliberating agent.
From this point of view, any non-deliberative constructivist procedure can be
considered as merely a way of picking out the independently right answer. It
makes no difference for me when deliberating whether you are entitled to serve
first independently of any procedure, or whether you are entitled to serve first
because you’ve already won a coin toss, or whether you are (going to be) entitled
to serve first because you will have won a coin toss. In all these cases, I can only
think of my deliberation as an epistemological, not a constructivist, procedure:
There is still a fact as to who should serve first, a fact that is independent of me
and my deliberation, one that I am trying to find out. In order to think of your
deliberation in a way that blocks my argument for Robust Realism, then, you must
think of it as a part of the relevant constructivist procedure. It thus follows that
Non-deliberative Constructivism is uninteresting. In fact, the only kind of
Constructivism that is not ruled out as uninteresting by this consideration is one
where the constructivist procedure includes my own deliberation, and indeed this
very deliberation of mine. This, then, is what it takes for a constructivist theory to
be an instance of Interesting Constructivism.125
125
But is there not an argument against Robust Realism (or my argument for it) in the vicinity
here? Aren’t uninterestingly constructivist theories proof that irreducibly normative truths are after
all not deliberatively indispensable, because deliberation can settle for the truths constructed by
non-deliberative procedures?
280
Here are two examples of interestingly constructivist theories. According
to Legal Positivism126, there are some cases – so-called hard cases – where the
court called upon to make a ruling creates the law. Prior to the court’s decision
there are no legally right and legally wrong answers in such cases, because the law
fails to determine what the right answer is. Rather, whatever ruling the court will
make, it will be legally correct because it was the result of the legally appropriate
procedure. So legal positivists are constructivists about the law in hard cases –
they think that what makes the correct result correct is that it is the result of a
correct procedure. Now, think of a judge who is a legal positivist 127, when having
to make a ruling in a hard case brought in front of her. She knows there are no
legally right (or wrong) answers to the questions she has to answer prior to her
ruling, and she knows that the relevant constructivist procedure includes her very
deliberation and decision. So she cannot think of herself and her deliberation as
discovering (or attempting to discover) a legally right answer there anyway.
Rather, she is knowingly creating the legally right answer. Legal Positivism (or
this version of it), at least when believed by a judge deliberating about a hard case,
is an Interesting Constructivism.
The answer, of course, is “no”. For such uninterestingly constructivist theories are going to be
really a paradigmatically reductivist position, and as such vulnerable to the objections in section
4.4, above.
126
In what follows I simplify slightly, and ignore the complexities and complications that serve to
fuel much of the contemporary jurisprudential discussion. These simplifications do not, I think,
prevent Legal Positivism from serving as an example of Interesting Constructivism.
127
It is sometimes noticed that typically judges are not positivists, at least if the opinions they draft
are reliable evidence of their jurisprudential views. But even if this is so, surely a positivist judge is
not an impossibility.
281
The second example has already been mentioned. It is Korsgaard’s
Metanormative Constructivism, understood according to Gibbard’s (1999, 148)
suggestion. This is, to repeat, the view according to which “reflectively deciding to
do something makes it the thing to do, so long as your policies for action are
logically consistent.” According to this view, then, there are no normative truths
(about what the thing to do is, at least) that are independent of the deliberation
process (that of consistent reflective endorsement). Rather, that process determines
which considerations are normative; “The normative word ‘reason’ refers to a kind
of reflective success.” (Korsgaard, 1996, 93) This is, of course, a constructivist
view, and an interesting one, for the constructivist procedure it employs includes
the agent’s deliberation.
I want to mention here a particularly important type of view that is perhaps
constructivist, but certainly not interestingly so. Dispositionalist views can be
presented – and some of them sometimes are – as constructivist ones: Think, for
instance, of a view according to which I have a (normative) reason to do
something just in case I would be disposed to have a motivation to do it if I had all
(relevant) facts vividly in front of my mind128. We can, if we want, think of the
procedure of gathering more information and vividly presenting it to one’s mind as
a constructivist procedure, arguing that the question what do I have reason to do is
one that has no answer prior to that procedure, and that what makes it the case that
This (sketch of a) view bears similarities to Lewis’s (1989) view of values and Williams’s
(1980) view of reasons.
128
282
I have reason to help him, say, is that being motivated to help him would be the
result of that procedure. But, even if this is enough for such views to qualify as
constructivist ones, surely they are not interestingly constructivist: The
constructivist procedure they employ is, at most, a heuristic device, a way of
making a naturalist reduction more intuitively appealing129. When deliberating
about what to do, I do not think of myself as making the answer I come up with
right, but rather as discovering the independently right answer – discovering, that
is, what I would be motivated to do when appropriately situated. Similar remarks
apply to analogous (uninterestingly) constructivist views that are put in terms of,
say, mere pickings.130 Such views may have their merits (though the objections to
Normative Naturalism from section 4.4, if successful, apply to them), but they are
certainly not interestingly constructivist.
Note that this discussion applies to necessary dispositions or desires –
should there be any – just as strongly as it does to contingent ones. So if there are
things we – perhaps as agents – are necessarily disposed to do or motivations we
are necessarily disposed to have, still a Constructivism that relies on them in the
typical dispositionalist way cannot be an interesting one, and so cannot present a
(non-reductive) alternative to Robust Realism. This is of significance, because at
129
Railton (1986b, 23-25) explicitly concedes this point regarding his own version of an Ideal
Advisor Theory. Butler (1988, 21) and Krasnoff (1999, 398) also mention the possibility of
superficially constructivist views where the constructivist procedure is really merely a heuristic
device.
130
At times Korsgaard is clear about our practical identity – the source of all our reasons, according
to Korsgaard – being utterly contingent, something we just find ourselves with (e.g. 1996, 239). To
the extent this is her considered view, the point in the text applies also to her identityConstructivism.
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times Korsgaard’s text lends itself to such a dispositionalist reading, with the
dispositions involved being necessary.131
Let me return, then, to Interesting Constructivism. The constructivist
procedure of such a Constructivism must be, I emphasized, a deliberative one. But
what is the relevant result of the procedure? In the coin-toss example, you were
entitled to serve first if a fair coin, properly tossed, landed (say) heads. The
relevant result of the procedure is landing heads. Now, different constructivist
procedures have different relevant results. Is there anything general that can be
said about the results of deliberative procedures?
I think there is. Assume an Interesting Constructivism about a discourse D.
Then the relevant result of the deliberative constructivist procedure cannot, on pain
of inconsistency or circularity, be the agent’s D-beliefs. Think of the example of
Legal Positivism and the law in hard cases. In such cases, the legally right answer
is the answer the court ends up giving, and it is the right answer exactly because
the court ended up giving it. But positivist judges cannot, in deciding (knowably)
hard cases, decide according to their beliefs about the legally right answer to the
case in front of them. Ex hypothesi, there is no such answer, and they know as
much. So positivists cannot argue that the legally right answer in hard cases is the
131
See Korsgaard (1996, 235). Korsgaard here seems to endorse a line rather similar to that
developed in some detail by Velleman (1989) and discussed above in section 2.A.3 (in chapter 2).
If this is indeed Korsgaard’s considered view, then – somewhat surprisingly, perhaps – she does
not take our deliberative, reflective nature seriously enough after all.
284
answer, whatever it is, that the judges believe is legally right132. Instead, they must
argue that the legally right answer is the one judges end up giving (without
believing it is antecedently right), or the one that is consistent with their ruling, or
perhaps the one they believe is morally appropriate, and so on. The relevant result
of the deliberative procedure cannot be their beliefs about the law, and so must be
either not a belief at all (like a ruling) or a belief about something else (like the
morally right answer).133
Returning to Korsgaard’s Metanormative (Interesting) Constructivism, I
want to note that her terms for the result of the constructivist procedure –
“reflective endorsement”, or “valuing” – are dangerously ambiguous. They could,
but need not, involve a belief that the considerations (or incentives, or desires, or
whatever) being reflectively endorsed (or valued) are indeed reasons. Such reading
would seem adequate given Korsgaard’s insistence on our reflective nature: “The
reflective mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a
reason. Otherwise, at least as long as it reflects, it cannot commit itself or go
forward.” (Korsgaard, 1996, 93) On such a reading, though, her Constructivism
would be unstable for the reason just mentioned – in the analysis of reasons our
132
Unless, of course, the judges do not themselves know that Legal Positivism is true. I return to
this (and analogous) worries in discussing publicity, in section 4.6.
133
The point in the text is closely analogous to a point often made in the context of Ideal Observer
Theories and dispositionalist ones: If you want to give an Ideal Observer account of the truth
conditions of a judgment p, it cannot involve the Ideal Observer’s belief that p (See, for instance,
Firth, 1952, 326). This is obviously so, unless – and this is an often neglected point – the Ideal
Observer is ignorant of the analysis of the judgment that p or of her status as ideal. In the related
context of dispositionalist theories of color, Boghossian and Velleman (1989) present especially
clearly the circularity worry, and argue that it is a serious one.
285
belief that something is a reason appears in the analysans. So perhaps it is more
charitable to understand her “endorsement” as not involving a normative belief,
but rather as making a choice, or being disposed to make a choice, or performing
an action, or having a desire, or a higher-order desire, or something of the sort. In
short, it may be better to understand her endorsement as a conative rather than a
cognitive state134.
4.5.3
The Constructivist Fallacy
I have already restricted the scope of constructivist views I have to reject here to
interestingly constructivist ones. Let me now restrict their scope even further. A
constructivist view about a part of normative discourse – just morality, say, or
political justice – is not one I need to reject, given the character of Robust Realism
as an existential thesis. So the view I now want to argue against is Global
Interesting Constructivism (about normativity).
This still doesn’t make Korsgaard into a noncognitivist. For that we need to disambiguate
another ambiguity in her text. When saying that some consideration is a reason, am I expressing my
reflective endorsement, or am I reporting it, saying that I reflectively endorse it? From time to time
Korsgaard says things like “The normative word ‘reason’ refers to a kind of reflective success.”
(1996, 93) and even “‘Reason’ means reflective success.” (1996, 97), and this seems to imply that
in saying that a consideration is a reason I’m saying that it is reflectively endorsed (by me, I guess),
and so that I’m reporting reflective endorsement. If so, Korsgaard’s position is a cognitivist version
of Subjectivism. Gibbard (1999) finds an expressivist reading, according to which one expresses
one’s endorsement of the consideration one says is a reason, more in line with Korsgaard’s text.
Perhaps this is the more charitable interpretation. Nowhere, as far as I know, is Korsgaard explicit
about this further ambiguity.
134
286
Against this view I want quickly to present one worry, and then to pursue
in more detail another135.
Korsgaard repeatedly emphasizes the need to defeat – even convince136 –
the skeptic, the person who sees no reason to behave morally, or perhaps who is
not motivated to act morally, or perhaps not even motivated to act as she thinks
she has reason to act137. And she emphasizes that no substantive starting point – a
moral principle taken as self-evident, for instance – can satisfy this requirement.
This is why she opts for a proceduralist, constructivist, approach. But the obvious
questions to ask then are: “… whether procedures claim any advantage, as whystoppers, over substantive principles…” (Gibbard, 1999, 142), and “Is the right
procedure, after all, just self-evident? What if I just don’t see that it is?” (Gibbard,
1999, 143).
The problem here need not be put in terms of coping with the skeptic.
Consider the coin-toss example again. True, the constructivist there can supply the
135
These are not, of course, the only possible problems for constructivist views. It is perhaps of
special interest here to note that plausible versions of Metanormative Constructivism – ones that
allow for at least some kind of objectivity – seem prima facie as vulnerable to some of the more
serious epistemological worries as Robust Realism is (Rawls (2000, 243), for instance, seems to
concede as much. See also Regan (2002, 272-3)). But I cannot pursue this point further here.
136
Korsgaard doesn’t distinguish between these two requirements, and her use of locutions such as
“addressing the skeptic” (1996, 16) seems to get her involved in a dangerous equivocation. It seems
like a reasonable requirement for a theory of normativity that it should defeat the skeptic, that is,
that it should show him to be wrong. It is clearly not a reasonable requirement that the skeptic be
necessarily converted (and, of course, Korsgaard’s own theory doesn’t pass this test either). By
conflating the two – defeating and convincing the skeptic – she can employ, in criticizing realism,
the stricter requirement with the perceived plausibility of the looser one. For her employment of the
stricter requirement against realism, see Korsgaard (1996, 34). For relevant criticism, see Gibbard
(1999, 146).
137
It is not clear which of these Korsgaard has in mind, as at different places in the text her main
worry seems to shift between these (and possibly other) options.
287
relevant criteria of correctness, accounting for it being the case that you should
serve first. But the mere availability of the coin-toss procedure does not suffice for
that, for numerous other procedures – tossing a double-headed coin, for instance –
are equally available. What is also needed is that the (fair) coin-toss is a justified or
fair procedure in the circumstances. It seems, then, that unconstructed normative
facts are after all involved in this Constructivism – namely, the fact that this
procedure rather than that one is the relevantly adequate one.
This, of course, is not a problem for locally constructivist positions. It is
perfectly possible to be a constructivist about the right to serve first, but a robust
realist (say) about the fairness of lottery procedures and the appropriateness of
using them in different circumstances. But it is hard to see how Global
Metanormative Constructivism can address this worry: At the bottom of any
constructivist procedure, it seems, lies the justification of that procedure itself, and
this justification – certainly a normative matter – is not constructed.
Perhaps the global constructivist has a reply available to her. Presumably,
it will be along coherentist lines (perhaps the normative fact that the procedure is
justified is safe because vindicated by the procedure itself, and perhaps such a
bootstrapping is consistent with Constructivism). Some Kantian constructivists
have indeed been tempted to attempt such a way138, though it is – and remains
after their work – very hard to see how anything like this line can be made to
succeed. Be that as it may, I will not discuss this worry further. Let me proceed,
138
See, for instance, O’Neill (1992).
288
then, in accordance with the promise made in section 4.1, to discuss a problem for
Constructivism that originates from deliberation and what it involves.
Here, then, is a general adequacy constraint for constructivist theories.
They – and their being publicly known – must not undermine the very procedure
they use as their constructivist procedure. Constructivist theories that undermine
their own constructivist procedure commit what I will call The Constructivist
Fallacy. I now want to argue that Global Interesting Constructivism necessarily
commits The Constructivist Fallacy.139
To see that, consider two examples, one where the fallacy is committed,
the other where it is not. Consider first a constructivist view about the right to
serve first in a tennis match, with the procedure being that of an umpire’s decision
guided only by considerations regarding who should serve first. According to this
view, what makes it the case that you get to serve first is that an umpire allowed to
consider only who has a right to serve first so decides. This kind of
Constructivism undermines the very constructivist procedure it employs, because
the umpire – knowing, as he does, that whatever he decides will be the right
decision simply in virtue of him so deciding – cannot sincerely deliberate about
who should serve first. He can still just pick one, of course, but if the right-toserve-first-Constructivism allows for a mere picking in its constructivist
139
The argument as it appears in the text that follows is, as far as I know, original. But hints at the
direction of this argument can be found in Cohen (1996, 188), Nagel (1996, 204), Gaut (1997, 163
and 178), Wiggins (1998), Cohon (2000, 69), Hill (2001, 326-8), Regan (2002), Gowans (2002),
and Velleman (forthcoming).
289
procedure, then the procedure is no longer deliberative, and the Constructivism no
longer interesting.
For a benign Interesting Constructivism, one that avoids The Constructivist
Fallacy, think again of Legal Positivism. The constructivist procedure it employs
is that of judges’ deliberation about how to decide the hard case in front of them.
But, given Legal Positivism, the relevant judge knows that there are no legal
considerations that can guide her deliberation, that there are – perhaps among a
class of legally acceptable decisions – no legally better or worse decisions, that the
law has run out on her. This being so – and her knowing as much – need not
undermine her deliberation, because there are many other considerations she can
still weigh in her deliberation. She can ask herself which decision is the morally
better one, which is right politically, which is the more efficient, which is more in
line with God’s will, which fits better the ethos of the community of which she is a
part, or whatever. Importantly, these are not considerations she is a constructivist
about. At least, she is not committed to any such Constructivism in virtue of her
jurisprudential views. So she can deliberate – she can ask herself which decision is
the one she ought to make – because there are normative considerations she can
consider which are not up to her, considerations that she discovers, not creates, and
that therefore can guide her deliberation. True, legally she cannot go wrong, but
she can make horrible moral mistakes, or make a terribly inefficient ruling, and so
on. The questions she asks herself have answers (if not legal ones), and so she can
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sincerely deliberate. Legal Positivism thus need not defeat its own constructivist
procedure. Legal Positivism does not commit The Constructivist Fallacy.
What allows Legal Positivism to avoid The Constructivist Fallacy is its
restricted scope: It is because there are still sufficiently many other, non-legal,
considerations that can guide the judges in their deliberation, considerations they
are not constructivists about, that the deliberative procedure is not undermined by
the very constructivist theory in question. But once this is noticed, it becomes clear
that a Global Interesting Constructivism cannot succeed140. If, for instance,
Korsgaard wants her theory to apply to all reasons (and often it seems she does141)
then hers is a Global Metanormative Constructivism. Now, deliberating about
whether to endorse a given consideration (or incentive, desire, urge, or even
identity) thereby making it a reason, what reasons can guide my deliberation?
None, of course, because there are no reasons prior to this very deliberation. It
does not matter whether what is supposed to be endorsed at this stage are reasons
directly, or first something like Korsgaard’s practical identity – still, nothing can
be deliberatively, reflectively, chosen. And if this is so, I cannot sincerely
deliberate, the constructivist procedure collapses, and with it the very
140
Velleman (forthcoming) notes that Global Constructivism faces a problem similar to The
Constructivist Fallacy that more local constructivist positions – such as a Metaethical
Constructivism – need not face.
141
Throughout her The Sources of Normativity (1996) it is clear she has in mind at least all
practical reasons, and she expresses hope (1996, 20-1) for a unified account of normativity. At
times (e.g. Korsgaard, 1997, 248) she seems to be drawn to a similar position regarding theoretical
reasons as well. And whether or not she is drawn to such a generalization of her view, it seems
clear her reasons purportedly supporting Constructivism apply to theoretical reasons just as they do
to practical ones.
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Constructivism it is supposed to ground142. Global Interesting Constructivism is –
given the nature of deliberation and the plausibility of the publicity requirement143
– unstable.144
Notice that the point generalizes to any Global Interesting Constructivism.
The unclarity noticed above regarding the nature of endorsement in Korsgaard’s
theory, for instance, is not relevant here. So long as the procedure supposedly
terminating in (reflective) endorsement is a deliberative one – and Korsgaard is
clear about it being so – the argument above applies.145
In a recent paper, Regan (2002) criticizes Korsgaard’s Kantianism in a related way. He too
notices that in a world devoid of “Moorean” values or reasons (that is, normative truths understood
along robustly realist lines), an agent can only pick arbitrarily and not choose for reasons (though
he does not notice the assumption of a publicity requirement), and he too takes this observation as a
starting point for a criticism of Korsgaard’s views. But, being primarily interested in the normative
question whether (only) our rational nature is of ultimate value rather than in metanormative
questions, his criticism remains in the normative level: He argues (quite convincingly, I think, and
perhaps echoing traditional worries regarding voluntarist theories of obligation) that there is
nothing to value in the capacity to just pick arbitrarily (for a rather similar point, see Hill (2001,
326-7), and for the voluntarist connection see Skorupski (1998) and Cohon (2000)). My criticism,
on the other hand, is not normative in this way. Rather, I emphasize that if Constructivism is to
block my argument for Robust Realism it must employ a deliberative procedure, and that – given
the nature of deliberation – Interesting Constructivism can thus not be global.
143
I have defended the assumptions regarding the nature of deliberation in chapter 3, and I
tentatively defend the publicity requirement below, in section 4.8. But it is perhaps of special
interest here that Korsgaard herself – and, it seems, other constructivists – are in a particularly
uncomfortable position to avoid The Constructivist Fallacy by rejecting either my account of
deliberation or the publicity requirement. Indeed, as noticed in chapter 3, my account of
deliberation is strongly influenced by Korsgaard, and she herself endorses the publicity
requirement (1996, e.g. at 17), as do Rawls (1980, 538) and Kant himself (see, for instance, Rawls
2000, 17). A Global Interesting Cosntructivism that does not seems entirely unmotivated.
144
There is much more in Korsgaard that merits discussion, including most importantly her
arguments for her constructivist view. I hope to address these in more detail elsewhere.
145
I believe, though I cannot defend this claim here, that The Constructivist Fallacy is closely
related to the well-known empty-formalism accusation against Kant (and Kantians). Briefly,
metanormative constructivist views commit The Constructivist Fallacy because they do not supply
the deliberating agent with reasons, considerations that can guide her deliberation. And this, it
seems, is the crux of the empty-formalism objection as well: There is simply not enough in, say, the
Categorical Imperative, to guide agents’ actions. Some of Velleman’s critical remarks regarding
both Kant and Korsgaard can be seen as extremely close to the empty formalism objection on one
142
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There are limits, then, as to how interesting and global a constructivist
position can be. Rawls – whose Constructivism about political justice avoids The
Constructivist Fallacy by allowing the parties in the original position to weigh
considerations of self-interest, themselves not constructed146 – seems to have
understood this well enough. Perhaps he had in mind something like The
Constructivist Fallacy when writing147: “[N]ot everything, then, is constructed; we
must have some material, as it were, from which to begin” (Rawls, 1993, 104).
4.6
Publicity
Throughout the discussion of sections 4.1-4.5 I have been assuming that
metanormative views, if true, are widely known to be true. In particular, what
defeated deliberation in the different cases was not directly the (assumed) truth of
the relevant metanormative theory, but rather the deliberating agent’s belief that it
hand, and to my Constructivist Fallacy on the other. See Velleman (1996, 175-6; online;
forthcoming).
146
It is not entirely clear to me whether Rawls’s Constructivism is interesting. In A Theory of
Justice he himself concedes that the formulation of his view in terms of a hypothetical choice
situation is dispensable and of merely expository value (Rawls, 1971, 18 and 21). It is possible,
though, that he changes his mind regarding this point in later stages of his thinking (see, for
instance, his comparison between Constructivism and Intuitionism in Rawls, 1980, 554-572).
147
Perhaps not. Perhaps what he has in mind is the problem briefly mentioned above, of the need to
have some normative claims available to one in order to justify the constructivist procedure itself
(or perhaps he thought of both problems). This understanding is suggested by the following
comments on Kant: “Is the CI-procedure [the Categorical Imperative procedure, used in order to
construct the totality of requirements of practical reason] itself constructed? No, it is not. Rather, it
is simply laid out.” (Rawls, 2000, 238) “… the form and structure of the CI-procedure mirrors our
free moral personality as both reasonable and rational[.] The idea here is that not everything can be
constructed. Every construction has a basis, certain materials, as it were, from which it begins.
While the CI-procedure is not, as noted above, constructed but laid out, it does have a basis: the
conception of free and equal persons as reasonable and rational, a conception that is mirrored in the
procedure… Thus we don’t say that the conceptions of person and society are constructed. It is
unclear what that could mean.” (Rawls, 2000, 240).
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is true. So, it may now be argued, I haven’t refuted the metanormative theories
themselves. Perhaps they are true, and their truth allows for deliberation, at the
price of the deliberating agent’s metanormative mistake (or ignorance). Suppose,
for instance, that Noncognitivism is true, and that nevertheless the argument in
section 4.3 above succeeds, so that a Noncognitivist, if consistent148, cannot
genuinely deliberate. Still, Noncognitivism can be true. What is needed to defeat
Noncognitivism in such a scenario is a further premise, one that embodies a
publicity, or transparency, requirement, according to which it cannot be the case
that a metanormative view can accommodate deliberation only by concealing itself
from deliberating agents. Perhaps deliberation is possible only because the
deliberating agents fail to appreciate the metanormative truth149.
It is not clear to me whether publicity requirements should never – in moral
philosophy in general – be compromised. Perhaps, for instance, they are especially
powerful regarding first-order, normative principles. But a “government-house
metaethics”150 may be less objectionable. There need be, for instance, nothing
manipulative about such a metanormative theory that violates publicity. Perhaps,
then, publicity is to be discarded, and my arguments in section 4.2-4.5 with it.
Fortunately, I do not have to defend a general publicity requirement here.
For remember, all I have to do in order to defend my argument for Robust Realism
148
See the discussion in section 3.4.8 above.
But see also the discussion of illusion in section 3.4.5.
150
The term is Williams’ (1973, section 7), in his discussion of Utilitarianism and its (purported)
violation of publicity.
149
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is show that no alternative metanormative view can accommodate deliberation. So,
once again, the relevant perspective is that of the deliberating agent and her
commitments. But, as argued in section 3.4.11 (in chapter 3), from that perspective
the distinction between the indispensability of the belief in normative truths and
the indispensability of the normative truths themselves collapses. I cannot, while
deliberating, say to myself “Sure, I cannot deliberate without believing in
normative truths, but for all I care there may be no normative truths”. I cannot
conceal the metanormative truth from myself while deliberating. In a manner
perhaps reminiscient of Moore’s paradox, I cannot believe that there are normative
truths without believing that there are normative truths. From the perspective of
the deliberating agent – the only perspective relevant here – a publicity failure of
the kind needed to reject the arguments in section 4.2-4.5 above is just not an
option151.
4.7
Softer-Interpretation Theories: A Final Thought Experiment
Imagine a world in which Robust Realism is true (surely, even if not actually true,
Robust Realism is possibly true), but our normative discourse proceeds pretty
much as it actually does. When deliberating about what to do, or when disagreeing
among themselves on normative matters, isn’t it clear that the inhabitants of that
David Velleman (1989, 62-4) believes we can have a belief – and a justified one – fully
knowing that it is only that very believing of ours that makes the belief true. If he is right about
that, perhaps there is a way to reject publicity from the first-personal perspective of the deliberating
agent. But he is not.
151
295
world are trying to describe the normative facts existing – ex hypothesi – in their
world? At least in their world, doesn’t the phenomenology of normative discourse
– and in particular the phenomenology of deliberation – provide conclusive
evidence against understanding (their) normative discourse in noncognitivist,
reductivist, or constructivist terms? My strong intuition is that it does.
But why should there be any difference between how we understand
normative discourse in that world and in ours? The evidence – our relevant
practices – is all the same. Of course, Error Theory is still an option – perhaps our
counterparts are lucky in a way we are not, in that normative facts are a part of the
fabric of their universe but not ours, and so their normative discourse sometimes
succeeds where ours systematically fails152. But surely, the commitments of
normative discourse on the two worlds seem indiscernible.
If this is so, softer-interpretation theories must be rejected. The only
options are Robust Realism and Error Theory153 (perhaps intuitively softened by
revisionary suggestions). If so, the details of the softer-interpretation theories and
the problems facing them are irrelevant, and the discussion in sections 4.3-4.5
redundant. If an Error Theory cannot accommodate sincere deliberation, then my
argument for Robust Realism cannot be blocked.
152
You may wonder whether this is really possible, whether, in other words, it takes more than the
relevant normative practice for some normative truths to be true. If so, you may be tempted by
Internal Realism (briefly discussed in section 4.9 below), or by Quietism (briefly discussed in the
Conclusion), or you may be wondering whether Robust Realism has any metaphysical
commitments (again, a question briefly discussed in the Conclusion). I thank Hagit Benbaji for
insisting that my little thought experiment brings out these worries.
153
See Sosa (2001, 289).
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I do not want to overstate the power of this little thought experiment. There
may be relevant problems here regarding how words in our and our counterparts’
normative discourse get their meaning and reference, and perhaps one can after all
argue that there therefore are reasons to interpret the commitments of their
discourse differently from ours.154 But I think the thought experiment does suggest
that the stakes are higher than softer-interpretation theorists typically think they
are: When push comes to shove, it’s either Robust Realism or Error Theory.
Having read section 4.2, take your pick.
4.8
Hybrid Views
The argument so far is, if successful, sufficient to show that alternative (nonrobust-realist) global metanormative views cannot accommodate deliberation and
so cannot block my argument for Robust Realism. It shows, in other words, that,
say, Noncognitivism about all parts of normative discourse, or Global
Metanormative Error Theory cannot accommodate deliberation. But one may
wonder whether hybrid views can do better. Suppose a view that is, let’s say, error
theoretical about morality, naturalistically reductivist about epistemic norms and
norms of instrumental rationality, and noncognitivist about “the thing to do”
locutions. Has anything been said to rule out hybrid views?
I suspect that even if, say, Putnam’s thoughts about the watery stuff on Twin-Earth and about
Brains in Vats are roughly right, still analogous claims do not apply here, because of the
differences between Twin Earth and Moral (or Normative) Twin Earth. See the discussion in
Horgan and Timmons (1991). If this is right, the thought experiment in the text seems vindicated.
154
297
The problem seems especially pressing seeing that it is very plausible that
normative discourse is not uniform. Even Ayer (1936, 103), for instance, conceded
that some moral (or apparently moral) statements are naturalistically reducible (to
statements about causes and effects) and so truth-apt after all. At the very least, no
reason has been given here to expect to find in normative discourse the kind of
uniformity hybrid views deny.
Nevertheless, hybrid views do not here pose a further challenge. Let us
divide hybrid views to those with a robustly realist component and those without
such component. The former do not, of course, threaten my Robust Realism – an
existential thesis, not a universal one – or my argument for it. The latter would, if
successful, threaten my argument for Robust Realism. But then the arguments of
previous sections apply to the relevant parts of normative discourse. Without a
robust realist component, hybrid views cannot accommodate deliberation (for the
reasons given in previous sections about what we now see as each component of
the relevant hybrid view). With a robust realist component, hybrid views are not a
threat. Either way, then, hybrid views do not constitute a further challenge.
4.9
Other Options?
In this section I want briefly to discuss several other metanormative (or at least
metaethical) views, showing that – appearances and rhetoric to the contrary
notwithstanding – they escape neither the taxonomy in section 4.1 nor the
objections in sections 4.2-4.5. The choice of views addressed below is
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sociologically rather than philosophically grounded – I want to show that the most
influential seemingly alternative views are not, in fact, independent options.
Needless to say, what follows is not an attempt to do justice to these (often
complex) views, but merely to show why a more serious consideration of them is
not here called for.
4.9.1
Sensibility Theories
McDowell (1981; 1985; 1987) and Wiggins (1991; 1998) develop metaethical
Sensibility Theories (so dubbed by Darwall, Gibbard and Railton (1992, 19)) that
may seem to escape the taxonomy of section 4.1155. According to their views,
moral properties are best understood as analogous to (other) secondary qualities,
with our relevant sensibilities playing a constitutive role in their identities.
Nevertheless, the view is not reductivist: both writers explicitly say that their
account is itself in normative terms – McDowell (1985, 119) speaks in terms of the
responses that a situation or fact merits, and Wiggins (1991, 229) in terms of the
appropriate sentiments – and both explicitly reject reductivist aspirations as illadvised (McDowell, 1988, 168 (footnote 6); Wiggins, 1991, 228-9). So the view,
though subjectivist in an obvious sense, is not an instance of Ethical Naturalism.
Furthermore, both writers endorse a “no-priority” view according to which it is
neither the case that our sensibilities are prior to (and determine) the moral facts,
Perhaps – though I am not sure – Johnston’s (1989) response-dependence theory is similar to
McDowell’s and Wiggins’s in the ways relevant for the discussion that follows.
155
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nor that those are prior to our sensibilities (so our sensibilities do not track an
independent moral reality). Rather, the moral facts and our moral sensibilities are,
as it were, made for each other; none can be understood without a grasp of the
other (Wiggins, 1991, 232); “…the extra [moral] features are neither parents nor
children of our sentiments, but – if we must find an apt metaphor from the field of
kinship relations – siblings[.]” (McDowell, 1987, 219).
Such metaethical views are not easily classifiable, partly because their
presentation is anything but clear: One wonders how significant and distinct a
metaethical view will emerge after the metaphors are replaced by clearer
statements of the view. Nevertheless, I do want to show that these sensibility
theories are not, for my purposes here, genuine alternative to the views already
rejected.
To see that notice, first, that it is not clear in what sense such theories are
metanormative theories. Given the normative character of the analysans, perhaps
their theories are best seen as entirely intra-normative projects. As such, they are
not competitors of Robust Realism, and so I need not reject them here156. Indeed,
they seem to accept irreducibly normative truths, and so – if it were not for their
subjectivism – would be entitled themselves to be called robust realists157.
156
I can still, of course, reject their views for intra-normative reasons, for instance by coming up
with counterexamples where a situation merits a certain response but the relevant moral judgment
is nevertheless false.
157
See Johnston (1989, 148).
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Second, regardless of their views on reductive aspirations, McDowell’s and
Wiggins’s theories are subjectivist in a sense exactly analogous to the sense
characterized in section 4.4.2 above, and so are vulnerable to the objection in that
section158. It might help to think of the points made in this and the last paragraph
as a dilemma. Whatever the details of the relevant sensibility theory and regardless
of its explicit denial of reduction, either contingent facts about me play an
ineliminable role in the analysis or they do not. If they do, the discussion in section
4.4.2 applies unproblematically. If they do not (say, because of talk of what merits
a response, and not of what my response is), then the view is clearly intranormative and so not a threat to Robust Realism.
Third – and this is a point that applies only to McDowell – he is happy to
adopt a similarly subjectivist understanding of non-normative facts as well159.
Now, this does not show, of course, that his theory – the metaethical or the more
general one – is to be rejected. But it does show that he is not a particularly
interesting antagonist in the context of my discussion. The more interesting
adversaries are those who think that there is an interesting distinction between
normative and non-normative facts, and that there is an important sense in which
the latter are more respectable than the former160 (analogously – the interesting
Perhaps Johnston (1989, 172-3) notices a similar point when joining Euthyphro’s (rather than
Socrates’) side regarding the Euthypro contrast. And perhaps his awareness of the
counterintuitiveness of this move is partly why he prefers thinking of his view as Revisionary
(rather than Descriptive) Protogoreanism. See Johnston (1993).
159
See, for instance, McDowell (1987, 222) and throughout McDowell (1981).
160
I do not mean to argue that McDowell cannot allow any distinction between normative and nonnormative facts, or between primary and secondary qualities, within his largely antirealist
158
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adversaries of a mathematical platonist putting forward an indispensability
argument are not empiricists or instrumentalists who deny even the existence of
electrons, but rather those scientific realists who distinguish between numbers and
electrons, arguing that we have reason to believe in the existence of the latter but
not the former).
So McDowell’s and Wiggins’s theories – regardless of their other
advantages and disadvantages – are not genuine competitors I need here to discuss
in more detail.
4.9.2
Practical Reasoning
There is – or has been for a while – a hope among metaethicists of avoiding
metaphysical (and perhaps also epistemological) worries while nevertheless
supplying something very much like the objectivity Robust Realism supplies by
focusing on the relations between morality and the demands of practical reason.
Darwall, Gibbard and Railton (1992, 9-12) divide such views into two traditions –
broadly Hobbesian and broadly Kantian ones, with Baier and Gauthier among the
Hobbesians and Nagel, Korsgaard, Donagan, Darwall and Gewirth among the
Kantians.
Now practical reasoning metaethical views may have significant
advantages. But they are not genuine alternatives to Robust Realism and the
philosophy. It’s just that whatever distinction he can accommodate is not of the kind that would
make him an interesting adversary in this context. I thank Hagit Benbaji for many relevant
discussions.
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metanormative views already rejected. The reason is simple – an understanding of
morality in terms of demands of practical rationality is still entirely within the
normative domain. It is not entirely within the moral domain, and so it may supply
important metaethical insights. But they supply no metanormative insight, as talk
of the demands of practical rationality is itself normative through and through.
Often, the metanormative views of practical reason theorists are revealed in their
accounts – not of morality in terms of practical reason – but of practical reason and
its demands. Some of them – typically, the Hobbesians – present a naturalist
reduction of the demands of practical reasons (in terms, say, of desire satisfaction),
others – like Nagel (in some moods, at least161) – are robust realists of sorts about
them, yet others are constructivists.
That practical reasoning approaches can be endorsed together with such
different metanormative views is further evidence that they are not really
metanormative theories at all. And so they do not present alternative views I have
to reject here in order to defend my argument for Robust Realism.
4.9.3
Internal Realism
Developed in some of the later texts of Putnam, Internal Realism is an attempt – if
I understand it correctly – to give a realist (or almost realist) understanding of a
relevant discourse, while at the same time acknowledging that its criteria of
correctness are ultimately constituted by our relevant practice, because truth (as
161
For in others he sounds more like a quietist, a point I return to in the Conclusion.
303
applied to that discourse, at least) is best understood epistemically. According to
one statement of the main idea – in the metaethical context – “we make ways of
dealing with problematic situations, and we discover which ones are better and
which worse.” (Putnam, 1995, 8).
I should say that the details of Internal Realism are not entirely clear to me.
It is, for one thing, not at all clear to me that Putnam can – as he clearly wants to –
have it both ways regarding dependence of moral (and normative) facts on our
relevant practices162. But, putting such worries to one side, I want briefly to argue
that Internal Realism is not a further problem I need to address in order to defend
my argument for Robust Realism.
Perhaps the practice-dependence aspect of Internal Realism makes it –
Putnam’s protests notwithstanding – a subjectivist view in the sense rejected in
section 4.4.2 above. If so, the argument there applies. At times, though, Putnam
sounds as if he thinks further – external – questions about our practices, questions
not themselves asked from within our practices, are unintelligible, or somehow
impossible. Internal Realism can then be seen as realist about the only real issues,
with the “Internal” serving merely as a reminder that external issues are really
pseudo-issues. If that is Putnam’s considered view, then he is a quietist in the
For an attempt to improve on Putnam’s views while preserving what can be preserved by going
dispositionalist, see Johnston (1993).
162
304
sense to be discussed in the Conclusion. Either way, then, my defense of Robust
Realism does not require here a separate discussion of Internal Realism.163
4.10
Scorekeeping
This completes, then, my argument for Metanormative Robust Realism. If the
arguments of previous chapters are sound, then the only way to avoid Robust
Realism is to present alternative metanormative accounts that can still
accommodate deliberation. And if the arguments in this long chapter are sound,
this cannot be done.
But this does not complete the project of defending Robust Realism. In
order to complete that project, I need to address directly certain traditional
objections to robust realist views. These include metaphysical worries (about
“queerness”, for instance), worries about epistemic and semantic access, worries
regarding the supervenience of the normative and how it is to be explained,
concerns regarding the relations between normativity and motivation and what
follows from them regarding the nature of normativity, and a family of problems
and arguments associated with the phenomenon of normative disagreement. Of
course, what has already been said will be relevant in addressing these objections
to Robust Realism, but if my defense of Robust Realism is to be complete, they
must be addressed head on. The need to discuss these worries regarding Robust
I addition, the point made about McDowell above – that he is not a particularly interesting
adversary in this context – applies to Putnam’s Internal Realism as well.
163
305
Realism – my argument’s conclusion – is especially pressing, given the less-thanobviously-conclusive nature of my argument, and the need to decide among
competing metanormative theories on basis of overall plausibility. I hope to
address them satisfactorily on another occasion.
It may now be asked, though, whether Robust Realism is really all that
robust. Which of the traditional features of genuinely realist theories does Robust
Realism – as supported by the argument in this essay – possess? I discuss this
question in the Conclusion.
306
Conclusion
How Robust is Robust Realism?
As can be seen, then, from a study of the phenomenology of deliberation (chapter
3), normative truths or something very close to them are deliberatively
indispensable, and no alternative, non-robust-realist, account of normative thought
and discourse can accommodate deliberation (chapter 4). But seeing that
deliberative indispensability – much like explanatory indispensability (chapter 1) –
justifies ontological and other commitment (chapter 2), this gives us reason to
believe that (general doubts about facts aside) there are irreducibly normative
facts. Furthermore, given the arbitrariness involved in any subjectivist view of
normativity, whether reductionist or not, and given that arbitrariness is exactly
what deliberation is an attempt to eliminate, normative facts of the kind
indispensable to deliberation are objective, they are not relativized to speakers and
their community (chpater 4, section 4.4.2). Robust Realism is established. Or so, at
least, I have argued.
As emphasized in the concluding section of chapter 4, work remains to be
done: It remains to defend Robust Realism against traditional objections to it. I
hope to that elsewhere. In this Conclusion, however, I want briefly to discuss two
307
related families of worries regarding Robust Realism that are not best seen, I think,
as objections to the argument itself. Rather, they are worries regarding the
intelligibility of the debate in which Robust Realism is one of the possible ways to
go and about the robustness of my Robust Realism.
1.
Robustness
Recently there has been much literature not just within, but also about the realistantirealist debate. The worry is being expressed that there is after all nothing (or at
least nothing of any consequence) in genuine dispute between realists and
antirealists regarding a discourse or a subject matter. (I return to this worry in
addressing quietism, below.) In response to this worry different people focus on
different supposed commitments of realism and of its denial, arguing that they are
what is really in dispute. Crispin Wright (1992) has suggested a pluralistic
approach, arguing that for realism to be earned the relevant discourse or subject
matter must at least show some typical characteristics of realist discourses, each
alone perhaps not necessary for realism1.
The following worry now threatens: Regardless of how exactly I officially
characterize my Robust Realism, and in particular whether this official
characterization satisfies the general requirements for a position to qualify as
realist (let alone robustly realist), perhaps my argument cannot support a result as
strong as that. Perhaps my argument supports only some rather minimal realism
1
Though he seems to think of his Cognitive Command as necessary. See Wright (1992, 222).
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about normativity – say, minimal-truth-aptness and the denial of an extreme and
global error theory – but nothing more than that? Indeed, if that is all my argument
supports, then a more radical thought is available. If all that is needed for
deliberation are normative truths rather thinly understood, perhaps I have shown
not that some robust version of metanormative realism is in order, but rather that it
just does not matter whether Robust Realism or its denial (consistent with some
fairly minimalist realism) is true.2
In reply to this worry, I want briefly to go through several (not necessarily
unrelated) purported characteristics of more than minimalist realism, and to see
which of these can be had on the basis of my argument. I will thus endorse
Wright’s pluralism, though I will not confine myself to the characteristics he
thinks relevant, nor do I want to commit myself to the claim that these are the only
characteristics relevant for the classification of a view as realist. My adoption of
Wright’s pluralism is methodological: It will allow me to further elaborate on the
strength of my argument from deliberative indispensability.
Though I think that using the name “Robust Realism” for the view
supported by my argument does in no way constitute false advertising (at least in
the metanormative or metaethical context, a point I return to below), at the end of
the day I of course do not care about the name, but rather about the view and the
argument supporting it.
2
Crispin Wright raised this worry in conversation.
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Sometimes it is thought that what is at issue between realists and
antirealists are questions of truth and factuality. And indeed, I have characterized
my Robust Realism as a claim about normative truths or normative facts arguing
that nothing weaker than normative facts or truths suffices for deliberation. But
this way of putting things does not really help: Given the availability of rather
minimal (purely or almost purely disquotational) understanding of both truth and
factuality it seems that what realists want and antirealists deny is a more robust
notion of truth or of fact. Unfortunately, it is not clear what this more robust sense
could come to, and – even more relevant here – putting the realist-antirealist
controversy in terms of (say) robust facts seems to take us back to square one, for
an account of robust truth seems just to be an understanding of realism. Indeed,
many of the marks-of-realism that I proceed to discuss are often presented as
criteria for a robust truth or factuality. Putting things in terms of (robust) truth and
factuality is thus – even if not a mistake – unhelpful.
A similar point applies to an understanding of the realism debate in terms
of objectivity. I think it is fairly clear that the two issues – that of realism and of
objectivity –
are
closely connected.
Indeed, perhaps
(unreconstructed)
philosophical discourse does not consistently distinguish between them. But
precisely for this reason, and because of the unclarity as to what objectivity could
consist in, putting things in terms of objectivity does not help. Now, at one point
(in section 4.4.2) I do use an objective-subjective distinction, but there I
stipulatively define the distinction I am using. I think the distinction there
310
introduced does capture at least one genuine concern we sometimes express by
talk of objectivity, and with objectivity understood as addressing this intuitive
concern – that of idiosyncrasy and arbitrariness – I think deliberation does require
objective normative truths. But perhaps there is more to objectivity, and it in
anyway seems unhelpful to explain the philosophical dispute about realism in
terms of another dispute – itself not better understood – regarding objectivity.
It is sometimes, though certainly not always3, thought that the debate over
realism is ontological or metaphysical in nature, that what is in dispute is whether,
say, duties or values or reasons are a part of the fabric of the universe. This too,
however, is a less than completely clear way of putting things. Is my Robust
Realism ontologically committed? It is committed to some things being reasons,
some things counting in favor of actions or beliefs, and so on – these are, roughly,
the things deliberatively indispensable; therefore, it seems, it is committed to the
existence of reasons or of the property of being a reason, and to the relation of
counting-in-favor-of. So I am committed at least to the existence of normative
properties and relations, if not objects. Does this qualify as an ontological
commitment? The issue is complex, and I hope to address it more adequately
elsewhere. I want to express here the suspicion that what is at issue is really what
has been at issue all along – an understanding of the realism debate, or something
dangerously close to it – and so putting things in ontological terms does not
3
Many paradigmatic metaethical realists deny any ontological or metaphysical commitments. See
Nagel (1986, e.g. at 139), Scanlon (1998, e.g. at 62), Parfit (forthcoming, chapter 6). These denials
are rarely supported by argument showing how metaphysical commitment is to be avoided.
311
promote our discussion. For instance, it is sometimes assumed that a commitment
to a certain kind of property is not (or not really) ontological if these properties are
not part of the causal order. I think this is a tendentious understanding of what is
involved in ontology, for we do not want to assume in advance that everything that
exists is a part of the causal order, nor do we want to restrict ontology so as not to
cover things that (for all we know) exist. Without this qualification, I have no
objection to seeing Robust Realism – and my argument for it – as ontologically
committed. If, however, causal or explanatory role is necessary for a commitment
to properties to be ontological, then the question whether Robust Realism is
ontologically committed is reduced to questions about causality and explanation. I
return to these below.
Irreducibility is sometimes thought of as a mark of the real (or the really,
ultimately real). I have argued in chapter 4 (in section 4.4) against the reducibility
of the normative to the natural. My argument does support, then, the irreducibility
of the normative.
Sometimes associated with an epistemic understanding of truth (of which
more shortly), and following Dummett’s work on realism, bivalence is often
thought of as a mark of the real4. Does deliberation require that all normative
judgments be bivalent, either true or false? The answer, I think, is “no”, for two
reasons. First, as repeatedly emphasized in this essay, deliberation does not require
a dichotomy of true and false, or correct and incorrect answers to the questions we
4
For a critical examination of bivalence as a mark of realism, see Fine (2001, 5).
312
ask ourselves. It is sufficient for deliberation that these questions have better and
worse answers. And this, it seems, is consistent with the failure of bivalence.
Second, as was emphasized in chapter 3 (for instance, in section 3.4.7),
deliberation does not require full determinacy, or full comparability. For similar
reasons, it need not require global bivalence. What is necessary for deliberation is
that the deliberative project is not doomed from the start to systematic failure, and
what this requires is, it seems, that a sufficiently substantial part of normative
discourse satisfies bivalence. Robust Realism as supported by my argument from
deliberative indispensability does not, then, entail global bivalence.
Consider now the four issues Wright himself associates with debates over
realism. One has already been discussed, if somewhat provisionally, in chapter 3
(in section 3.4.14). It is the one regarding the possible evidence transcendence of
truth in the relevant domain. As I argue there, I think evidence transcendence is,
though not immediately necessary for deliberation, nevertheless a plausible result
of my argument, as its failure would call for explanation, and no plausible
explanation in terms compatible with my Robust Realism seems in the offing. As I
also explain there, and perhaps contrary to appearances, my argument certainly
does not commit me to the denial of evidence transcendence.
Another one of Wright’s realism-related-issues was discussed at length in
chapter 1. His criterion of Wide Cosmological Role – Wright’s (improved) version
of an explanatory criterion for realism, which is satisfied only by views that
attribute to facts of the relevant subject matter an appropriate role in the best
313
explanation of respectable explananda – is very close to Harman’s Challenge
discussed in chapter 1. There I argue against an explanatory requirement
understood as a necessary condition for justified belief in a (purported) realm of
facts. In chapter 1 I also argue that our reason for believing in normative truths is
not explanatory, remaining neutral regarding whether they play any explanatory
role. The context now is, though related, different: We are now interested not in
what justifies belief in, say, normative facts, but rather in what would constitute a
(more than minimally) realist position about it. Nevertheless, my discussion in
chapter 1 applies: I am not committed to something like a Wide Cosmological
Role for the normative, nor am I committed to denying such a role. And I think
that such an explanatory criterion, as an attempt to capture something like what is
intuitively at issue between realists and antirealists, is, for the reasons discussed in
chapter 1, entirely unmotivated.
Wright also speaks of the Euthyphro contrast: Given an extensional
equivalence between the truths of the relevant discourse and the best opinion,
judgment, or (other) response relevant to that discourse, there still remains an issue
highlighted by Socrates’ challenge to Euthyphro: Are certain acts loved by the
gods because pious, or are they pious because loved by the gods? This directionof-because issue seems to capture at least one concern relevant to the realism
debate: For it seems that realists are bound to think of the facts as independent of
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the relevant responses, whereas antirealists are likely to deny that.5 Do I think,
then, that certain normative judgments are true because so judged, or that they are
held to be true because true? It is clear, I think, that the argument for Robust
Realism commits me to the rejection of the (purportedly) anti-realist way of taking
the Euthyphro contrast. A view according to which normative judgments are true
because of our beliefs or other attitudes is subjectivist in exactly the sense
characterized and rejected in section 4.4.2 (in chapter 4). So am I committed to
thinking that our best responses are best because of the truth of the normative
judgments, that, say, under ideal conditions we love (or desire, or desire to desire)
an action because it is good? I think I can avoid this commitment. If I can remain
neutral on the question of the explanatory role of normative truths, it follows that I
can remain neutral on this because-statements as well. Even if it is not the case that
(say) we believe that there is always reason to alleviate pain because there is
always reason to alleviate pain, still this does not rob us of our reason for adopting
Robust Realism6. Of course, it is hard to reach clear conclusions about these
matters without a better understanding of the “because” that does the work in the
Actually, Euthyphro’s case is a problematic example here. Divine Command Theorists –
sometimes thought of as the Judeo-Christian heirs of Euthyphro in their metaethical views – would
typically be classified, I think, as realists of a fairly robust kind, even if, perhaps with Euthyphro,
they think that certain acts are wrong because forbidden by God (and not the other way around).
That such a view can still count as realist is probably due to the fact that the relevant response is
God’s, whereas the relevant realism is, as it were, from our human, less-than-divine, point of view.
6
It may raise other worries, though, like an epistemological worry about whether our normative
beliefs track the truth, and if they do not whether we ever have normative knowledge. I hope to
address this worry – and other related epistemological worries about Robust Realism – elsewhere.
5
315
Euthyphro contrast7. So let me tentatively conclude that while my argument for
Robust Realism does support rejection of the antirealist direction of the Euthyphro
contrast, it allows me to remain neutral regarding the purportedly realist one.
Trying to precisify intuitions about the relation between objectivity and
disagreement, Wright distinguishes between discourses that do and those that do
not exert Cognitive Command:
“A discourse exerts Cognitive Command if and
only if:
It is a priori that differences of opinion formulated
within the discourse … will involve something
which may properly be regarded as a cognitive
shortcoming.” (1992, 144)8
I think I can safely avoid discussion of the details of Wright’s Cognitive
Command requirement. In our context, these may have to be revised because
Wright’s formulation is motivated by analogies with fax machines and platitudes
about representation and correspondence (1992, 91-94), and it is not clear that
these motivations apply as strongly in the case of the normative as elsewhere.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the intuitive point Wright tries to capture by his
Cognitive Command is one my Robust Realism is committed to. At one point
(1992, 146), Wright characterizes this intuitive point as follows: “the opinions
which we form [in objective matters] are in no sense optional or variable as a
function of permissible idiosyncrasy, but are commanded of us…”. And that this is
Wright (1992, 139) thinks we still lack a good understanding of this contrast: “We should expect
a multiplicity of distinction cluster around the Euthyphro contrast. Most of the work of exploring
them and rendering them serviceable for use in debates about realism and objectivity is still to be
done.”
8
The text omitted from the quote includes a few qualifications that are not relevant here.
7
316
true of normative judgments does indeed follow from my argument for Robust
Realism. What we look for in deliberation are exactly answers that are not
optional. Optional answers cannot bring deliberation to its conclusion, because we
still have to choose among them, and because we are not, when deliberating,
willing to take our psychological idiosyncrasies as merely given. Suitably
generalized, then, Cognitive Command is a requirement satisfied by my Robust
Realism and supported by my argument for it.9
To conclude: My argument supports a metanormative realism that is
probably committed to the truth-aptness, factuality and objectivity of the
normative (though it is not clear what these come to), that is probably
ontologically committed (though this too is not clearly understood), that is
committed to the irreducibility of the normative, that denies the anti-realist way to
go in the Euthyphro contrast, and that asserts something about the non-optionality
of (at least some) normative opinions. My argument does not support directly – but
perhaps it does indirectly – a commitment to normative truth being evidencetranscendent. And it does not support a commitment to the bivalence of the
normative, or to the normative having a Wide Cosmological Role.
9
As Crispin Wright himself noted in conversation, his characterization of Cognitive Command in
Truth and Objectivity is too strict. One can weaken the requirement so that it is possible to have
some permissible difference of opinion. So long as it is impossible to have too much permissible
disagreement, or disagreement about the most important things (say, some core normative issues),
the intuitive objectivity requirement Cognitive Command is meant to capture is satisfied. So, just as
Robust Realism and my argument for it can allow for some (though not global) indeterminacy, and
some (though not global) incomparability, so too it can allow for some (though not global) failure
of Cognitive Command.
317
Is this enough robustness to justify the name “Robust Realism”? This is
where the question becomes largely terminological, and so uninteresting. The
answer may differ with context. In the metanormative or metaethical context, I
think this is a rather robust kind of realism. I, in fact, do not know of a
contemporary writer endorsing a more robust realism. Be that as it may, this is the
kind of realism my argument, if successful, supports.
2.
Quietism
A number of closely related worries – not so much about realism of whatever kind,
as about the debate in which it is one of the competing views – are sometimes
grouped together under the heading “quietism”. These worries, applied to the
discussion of the normative, include doubts about the intelligibility of
metanormative discussion; claims that significant metanormative discussion is
impossible; assertions that metanormative debates – if at all intelligible – can only
be decided by engaging in first-order, normative discourse itself; claims that
apparently metanormative debate just is normative debate in disguise; the thought
that the practice of engaging in normative discourse (perhaps like other practices)
needs no justification that is external to it, and that it is anyway impossible to
supply one; and so on.
If these statements of quietist worries are less than fully clear, this is no
mere flaw of exposition on my part. Quietist worries – in the metanormative or
metaethical context as elsewhere – are rarely put clearly, and even more rarely
318
argued for10. Such worries – sometimes motivated by readings of the later
Wittgenstein – are expressed by thinkers from very different traditions, and with
very different other philosophical commitments, as different as Dworkin and
Blackburn, Nagel and Cavell, McDowell and Putnam, the Positivists and Rorty.
These philosophers differ not only in what motivates their quietist inclinations, but
also in what they think follows from quietism (Dworkin (1996), for instance,
thinks that quietist observations serve to vindicate our confidence in our own
normative beliefs and in some fairly robust version of realism; Blackburn (e.g.
1993b) thinks his quietist observations serve to strengthen the case for his
Projectivism; McDowell (1985) thinks similar points allow for a comfortable
middle ground in the realism debate, a metaphysically uncommitted, objectivist
yet non-platonist, laid-back kind of realism.). It is unclear to me whether the fact
that such a variety of philosophers – disagreeing on just about everything else –
nevertheless seem to express the very same quietist worries should count as
evidence for the seriousness of the worries, or as reason for suspicions regarding
their intelligibility or determinacy.
I cannot, of course, discuss all these related worries in detail here, much
less can I do justice to the relevant work of all these philosophers. Let me briefly
address here, then, just quietist worries that threaten – or may seem to threaten –
Robust Realism or my argument for it.
10
See Wright (1992, 205).
319
Let me start, then, with the “no-vantage-point” intuition. So long as the
relevant practice – call the one relevant here “the normative practice” – is itself
acknowledged to be contingent, or at least – even if necessary in some way –
rationally arbitrary, then I reject the thesis that it needs no justification external to
it. Indeed, a view according to which our normative practice determines the only
criteria of correctness there are is subjectivist in exactly the sense rejected in
section 4.4.2 above11. Let me remind you that the argument there was not
presented as a complete defense of objectivism. It was designed to show that a
subjectivist understanding of normative discourse is actually a misunderstanding,
that it misrepresents the commitments of normative discourse. This point is
compatible with an error theoretical rejection of objectivism. Perhaps, in other
words, we cannot get what we want. But this should not confuse us as to the
understanding of what it is that we do want12.
Perhaps, then, the stronger worry is that, though our normative practice
does require “external” justification or grounding, none is forthcoming. Perhaps, in
other words, we are trapped in our point of view, or form of life, or whatever it is
that is constituted by our practice, and perhaps this epistemic handicap of ours
For a related criticism of Dworkin’s quietism, see Raz (2001, 126).
“Philosophy cannot take refuge in reduced ambitions. It is after eternal and nonlocal truth, even
though we know that is not what we are going to get.” (Nagel, 1986, 10) Nagel himself at times
sounds like a quietist of sorts. I suspect there is a genuine tension in Nagel’s thought about these
matters. See also notes 17 and 21 below.
As already mentioned, quietist worries are often associated with Wittgenstein’s Investigations, and
in particular with the rule-following considerations (see the discussion in Wright 1992, chapter 6).
So it may be interesting to put the point in the text in terms more clearly relevant to that discussion.
If the ideas of following a rule, of a rule requiring one thing rather than another, can at best be
vindicated by something like Kripke’s (1982) “skeptical solution”, then error theory, not naturalist
reduction, has been achieved, for our rule-discourse clearly requires more than that.
11
12
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precludes us from getting the kind of justification that is nevertheless, in some
sense, required. This, it seems to me, is not so much a quietist worry as a general
skeptical one. And I do not pretend to have addressed it in this essay. To an extent,
it is the most general skeptical worry, one that is not peculiar to the normative, and
so one that I can be excused from discussing here.
Quietist worries are supposed to be distinct from epistemological skeptical
ones. Perhaps the point is not that external justification is impossible, not even that
it is unnecessary, but that this way of putting things is unintelligible. By asking for
such practice-independent justification, we are already trying, confused as we are,
to step outside ourselves, look at the universe from nowhere, view everything from
no point of view. And, as the last formulation perhaps makes clear, this very
attempt is deeply confused, perhaps even incoherent. The idea of practiceindependent justification – or any other practice-independent discussion – is
inherently confused. Applied to our context, this line of thought suggests that
meaningful metanormative discussion is unintelligible. Rather, it is a confused
attempt to discuss the normative practice from without, from no normative point of
view. And this is just as confused here as it is elsewhere.
I want to make three points in response to this line of thought. First, to the
extent that I understand the considerations that tempt philosophers in this
direction, I find them unconvincing. But I cannot hope to discuss this point
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seriously here13. Let me just note that there is nothing obvious about such claims,
that they need to be established, and that I am not sure this can be done (much less
am I sure it has already been done). Second, whatever force this quietist intuition
has, it has it only in its most global version. Surely, we can step outside local,
specific practices, and still judge them from within our most general point of view.
So local practices can be challenged externally without falling into
unintelligibility. And normative practice may be local in this way; at least, it
remains to be shown that it is not. So perhaps the metanormative debate can be
saved consistently with this most general quietism14. Third, I suspect Fine is right
when he writes: “the fact that a notion appears to make sense is strong prima facie
evidence that it does make sense.” (Fine, 2001, 13)15: Consider, for instance, the
issues associated with the realism-antirealism debate that are discussed in section 1
of this Conclusion, and indeed the arguments scattered throughout this essay. Are
they all confused pseudo-issues? Surely, they seem to make sense. And this is
strong evidence, I think, that they do make sense. At the very least – and here I
return to the first point above – some strong argument is needed if we are to be
convinced otherwise.
Nevertheless, a point I cannot resist making: Suppose it’s true that practices neither need nor
have external justifications. Doesn’t this point apply, then, to the metaphysical or philosophical
practice itself, and in particular to the practice metaethicists engage in? Wouldn’t it be an instance
of philosophical discrimination to subject the practice of metaphysicians to the very kind of
criticism one denies is either possible or, even if possible, legitimate elsewhere? For a related
objection to (general) quietism, put in terms of self-defeat, see Cassam (1986, 455).
14
Leiter (2001c, 70-71) makes this point as against Dworkin.
15
For a similar point, see Zangwill (1992, 160).
13
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Perhaps quietism is best understood, then, not as a claim about the
unintelligibility of apparently intelligible debates, but rather about the
impossibility of deciding them16. If this is a point about the impossibility of
conclusive proof, perhaps it is well-taken (though this too remains to be shown).
But in the normative case as elsewhere we have learned to settle for less. And it
seems highly implausible that these matters – now admitted to be intelligible – do
not admit even of good arguments, arguments that give at least some reason to
believe, say, Robust Realism or its denial. Again consider some of the arguments
in this essay, and some of the arguments against Robust Realism discussion of
which I postponed for another occasion, such as worries about supervenience,
reliability of normative beliefs, and normative disagreement: Do all of these
arguments fail completely, in that they do not provide even the faintest support for
their conclusion? This seems to me highly implausible, and very strong argument
is needed in order to convince us that this is indeed so.17 (Needless to say, such
argument is going to have to be much stronger than any supposed metanormative
one, or else the latter’s impotence is going to convict the former as well.)
This is what Fine (2001, 13) calls methodological quietism. And I believe Pritchard’s (1912)
worry about moral philosophy is rather similar. Perhaps this is why he is sometimes thought of as a
quietist.
17
Here is how Nagel expresses doubts about claims regarding the unintelligibility of apparently
intelligible questions: “… if a demonstration that some question is unreal leaves us still wanting to
ask it, then something is wrong with the argument, and more works needs to be done.” (Nagel,
1979, x). On the other hand, arguments like those in the text may not convince unintelligibilitythinkers, for, as David Lewis (1986, 203, footnote 5) once put it, “any competent philosopher who
does not understand something will take care not to understand anything else whereby it might be
explained.”
16
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So maybe quietism is best understood not so much as the denial of the
intelligibility of metanormative debates or as the claim that no metanormative
argument carries any force, but rather as a claim about the nature of such
arguments. Perhaps what is crucial here is that apparently metanormative
arguments are really normative themselves18. What is apparently a detached,
normatively neutral meta-discourse is thus folded back into the normative
discourse itself. And such claims are supported mostly, I think, by examples of
supposedly metanormative issues that can be shown to be normative, or at least to
have normative implications19.
It would not suffice for this kind of quietism that some apparently
metanormative arguments and issues turn out to be normative ones. Rather, it is
necessary that all so turn out. So think again of my argument from deliberative
indispensability. Is it plausibly considered a first-order normative argument? Or
think of challenges to realism, such as the claim that if our normative beliefs are to
be justified we must be able to explain their reliability, and that no explanation is
possible on realist assumptions. Is this clearly a piece normative reasoning? Are
all apparently metanormative arguments plausibly considered normative ones?
Clearly, the answer depends on how liberal one is willing to be with one’s
18
This, I think, is the intuition most strongly influencing Dworkin and Nagel (when in a quietist
mood).
19
I believe Dworkin’s (1996) discussion systematically conflates these two: He repeatedly shows
(or attempts to show) that a metaethical issue or controversy has ethical implications, and he then
takes himself to have shown that metaethics just is a part of first-order moral discourse. But this, of
course, is a mistake: Where I come from (and not only there), religious discourse has political
implications, but this doesn’t show that religion and politics are one.
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understanding of “normative”. But merely labeling apparently metanormative
issues as themselves normative is of little interest20. Nothing in the arguments
themselves – either for or against realism, robust or otherwise – seems to depend
on us using the word “metanormative” rather than “normative” to describe them.
And yet, quietists of this type take themselves to have established something of
importance when they (take themselves to) have shown that apparently
metanormative discourse is itself normative. Why?
I can think of three ways in which it might be thought to matter if
apparently metanormative arguments are really themselves normative, and I want
to briefly review them here. First, such an observation may be thought to support
doubts about the intelligibility or possibility of genuinely metanormative
discourse. If what seems to be metanormative discussion really is just normative
discussion, then, this thought goes, genuine metanormative discussion, one that is
not really normative, is not possible.
This may be so, but it is important to note that this point does not take us
beyond the merely terminological debate: For the soundness of (apparently)
metanormative arguments does not depend on their classification as normative or
as (now genuinely) metanormative. Perhaps, in other words, no genuinely
metanormative discussion is possible (if you choose to use these words in this
way), but still there are interesting arguments for and against realism (now
considered a normative, not a genuinely metanormative, position), and indeed
20
See Leiter (2001c, 72-3).
325
these are the very same arguments we thought of all along when doing metaethics
or metanormativity. But quietists surely mean to do more than recommend a
cleaner terminology. So something else – not just support for intelligibility worries
– must be thought to be at stake.
A second way in which it may seem to matter if apparently metanormative
discussion is really just part of normative reasoning is that this being so
undermines, it might be thought, certain skeptical or antirealist worries. For if
what seems to be a metanormative challenge is really itself normative, then the
skeptic herself makes normative assumptions, and is thus guilty of inconsistency.
If apparently metanormative thought is really normative thought then normative
thought is unavoidable in a way that seems to undermine any radical challenges to
it by rendering them unstable.
This line of thought is mistaken, however, for a reason discussed above in
section 2.A.1 (in chapter 2). To repeat, then: radical skeptical challenges are best
thought of as analogous to reductio arguments, employing weapons we must
concede are powerful against us. The radical skeptic is thus entitled to engage in
the very discourse she wants to attack so long as it is a discourse we want to
defend. By so doing she will have shown, if successful, that normative discourse
undermines or defeats itself. The observation that her doubts are themselves
normative, then, does nothing to defend normative discourse. If her arguments
cannot be shown to fail for reasons independent of the quietist observation, the
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quietist observation, far from dealing a devastating blow to the skeptic, marks her
unqualified victory.
The third reason why the quietist observation – that apparently
metanormative discourse is itself normative – may seem to be significant is that if
it is true, there can be no objection, it seems, to the use of first-order arguments
and intuitions in order to fight off skeptical or nihilist attacks. Suppose some
metaphysical or epistemological – apparently metaethical – considerations seem to
undermine morality altogether, supporting either a nihilist or a skeptical
conclusion. Then, it seems, all it takes to refute them is the strength of our
convictions that wanton cruelty is wrong, and that we know as much21. If
metanormative considerations were of a very different type from normative ones,
perhaps such a move would be objectionable, because of its conflation of two
distinct, perhaps even independent22, levels of discourse. But given the quietist
observations, this worry can be set aside.
I agree that metanormative discourse may have implications on normative
discourse23. And I think there can be no general objection to the use of first-order
“The situation here [in ethics] is like that in any other basic domain. First-order thoughts about
its content – thoughts expressed in the object language – rise up again as the decisive response to
all second-order thoughts about their psychological character. … That is why we can defend moral
reason only by abandoning metatheory for substantive ethics. Only the intrinsic weight of firstorder moral thinking can counter the doubts of subjectivism.” Nagel (1997, 125). For similar
points, see Dworkin (throughout his 1996 and forthcoming), and Scanlon (1998, 63-4).
22
Perhaps this is the line of thought Mackie has in mind when writing: “These first and second
order views are not merely distinct but completely independent.” (1977, 16). It is, however, unclear
whether Mackie consistently accepts this point throughout his Ethics (1977).
23
Sturgeon (1986b, 125) is careful about this point, arguing that even if metaethical theses do not
entail – all by themselves – moral consequences, they may, together with relevantly
uncontroversial moral premises, entail such consequences.
21
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arguments and intuitions in metanormative contexts. If these are metanoramtively
irrelevant, this must be shown case by case. But nothing like the quietist
observation follows. Even if normative arguments are metanormatively relevant,
this does in on way show that they are the only metanormatively relevant
arguments, or that once the normative discussion has been conducted nothing
further remains to be said.
Perhaps there is after all some significance to the classification of
apparently metanormative arguments as normative, though I cannot think of one.
Or perhaps something else can be saved from the general (and vague) quietist
intuitions, something that survives the discussion above while still constituting a
general challenge to my Robust Realism or to the metanormative debate in which
it is one of the competing views. But the suspicion now arises that quietist worries
are first and foremost expressions of impatience. In the normative context, they are
expressions of impatience with metaphysical and epistemological discussions that
are perceived as merely hindering the real, practically important, first-order
discussion. There may even be good historical reasons for such impatience24. In
the first two thirds of the twentieth century there was little philosophical interest in
substantive moral questions, because (no doubt among other explanations) moral
philosophers were busy doing metaethics, which was perceived as prior to – and
24
For a related point in the context of the pretensions for the general power of philosophy, see Fine
(2001, 2-3).
328
independent of25 – morality. Morality was perceived as either lacking intellectual
respectability, or at least as needing metaethical defense. An overreaction to such
thoughts may be what is fueling quietist intuitions in the metaethical context, at
least the quietist intuitions expressed by the friends of morality. But this is indeed
an overreaction. One need not deny the intelligibility or distinctness of
metanormativity (or metaethics) in order to acknowledge the legitimacy and
intellectual respectability – already here and now, before the metanormative
discussion has reached conclusions that enjoy unanimous support – of first-order
normative (or moral) discussion.
Be that as it may, I conclude that neither Robust Realism nor my argument
for it is threatened by (what I can make of) quietist intuitions.
25
Thus, there is a significant volume of literature on the question of the ethical neutrality of
metaethics. For a characteristic discussion, and for references to many others, see Sumner (1967).
Sumner repeatedly considers the possibility that such a neutrality thesis is analytically true of
metaethics, so that by showing that any purportedly metaethical theory has normative implications
one will have shown that metaethics is impossible. Perhaps this too is an intuition fueling some
quietists’ worries. But it should not. As the word “metaethics” is used today, nothing like the
neutrality thesis is plausibly considered analytically true, and probably not even as merely true.
329
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