OSO Abstracts and Keywords for Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism, by David Enoch
1.
Book Abstract
In Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and
defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view –
according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that
are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths – is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail
development of the positive motivations for the view into full-fledged arguments. And when the
book turns defensive – defending Robust Realism against traditional objections – it mobilizes the
original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections.
The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other
metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed
here – the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument
from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence) – are thus arguments for
Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.
2.
Book Keywords
Metaethics; Meta-normativity; Moral Realism; Robust Realism; Morality; Objectivity; Normativity;
Indispensability; Moral Disagreement; Moral Epistemology; Deliberation.
3.
Chapter Abstracts and Keywords
(i)
Chapter 1: The View, The Motivation, The Book
In this chapter, Robust Realism – the metanormative view defended in the book – is
characterized. The chapter then introduces the book's guiding intuition: any other
metaethical and metanormative view will fail to accommodate our taking morality
sufficiently seriously, and describes how it is fleshed out in the rest of the book. The
program for the whole book is described and motivated, and the underlying philosophical
methodology explicitly presented: No view is likely to beat its opponents by some kind of
a philosophical knockout, and so we should settle for tallying plausibility points of
competing theories. The aim of the book, then, is to show where Robust Realism earns
significant plausibility points – in better accommodating taking morality seriously – and
also that it doesn't lose too many plausibility points because of common objections to the
view.
Chapter Keywords: Methodology; Morality; Metaethics; Robust Realism.
(ii)
Chapter 2: The Argument from the Moral Implications of Objectivity (or Lack Thereof)
This chapter presents a partly normative argument for metaethical objectivity, arguing
that non-objectivist metaethical views (including expressivist ones) have highly
implausible normative implications in cases of interpersonal disagreement and conflict.
The chapter first present and defends a normative principle ("Impartiality") governing the
resolution of certain interpersonal conflicts, and then proceeds to argue that this principle
– together with a host of intuitively non-objectivist metaethical theories – entails
unacceptable normative results. An appendix discusses the issue of metaethics' normative
neutrality, suggests an interpretation of it (according to which metaethics is morally
neutral if it conservatively extends morality), and argues that the argument in the main
text shows that at least with neutrality thus understood, metaethics is not normatively
neutral.
Chapter Keywords: Objectivity; Morality; Disagreement; Conflict; Neutrality; Conservative
Extension; Impartiality; Subjectivism; Expressivism; Response-Dependence.
(iii)
Chapter 3: The Argument from the Deliberative Indispensability of Irreducibly Normative
Truths
This chapter develops a positive argument for Robust Metanormative Realism that is
modeled after indispensability arguments in the philosophy of mathematics or inferences
to the best explanation more generally. It is noted that such arguments are arguments
from explanatory indispensability, and then argued that if this indispensability suffices to
confer respectability on ontological commitments, so does indispensability for
deliberation, or deliberative indispensability. It is also emphasized that this observation is
consistent with a plausible ontological parsimony requirement. A long epistemological
detour then justifies the use of indispensability arguments in general – explanatory and
deliberative alike. A phenomenological discussion of deliberation follows, one that
supports both the claim that deliberation is the kind of project indispensability to which
can ground ontological commitment, and the claim that irreducibly normative truths are
indispensable for deliberation.
Chapter Keywords: Robust Realism; Indispensability Arguments; Inference to the Best
Explanation; Deliberation; Ontological Commitment; Parsimony.
(iv)
Chapter 4: And Now: Robust Metaethical Realism
This chapter draws together the conclusions of the previous two: Metaethical Objectivism
from Chapter 2, and Robust Metanormative Realism (from Chapter 3). It argues that
though the conjunction of the two does not entail Robust Metaethical Realism, still it
leaves any alternative view utterly unmotivated. On the way to doing this, the relation
between morality and normativity is discussed, the uniqueness of morality as involving
categorical claims is accommodated, and a very moderate version of moral rationalism is
defended.
Chapter Keywords: Moral Rationalism; Categorical Reasons; Normativity.
(v)
Chapter 5: Doing with Less
This chapter critically discusses three families of attempts to give the metaethical or
meta-normative realist pretty much all that she wants, without resorting to the
metaphysical extravagance of Robust Realism. The first is an attempt at a kind of
naturalism that accommodates (by reduction, with this word sufficiently broadly
understood) normativity. Naturalism is rejected mostly by emphasizing the thought that
normative truths and facts are just too different from natural ones to be a subset thereof.
The second family of views discussed are a host of error-theories and fictionalist views.
These are rejected mostly because they cannot accommodate the kind of objectivity
argued for in Chapter 2. Lastly, a host of quietist thoughts – according to which, roughly, a
fairly robustly realist view can be had with no heavy metaphysical commitments – are
analyzed, distinguished, and rejected.
Chapter Keywords: Naturalism; Reduction; Error Theory; Fictionalism; Quietism; Scanlon.
(vi)
Chapter 6: Metaphysics
This chapter is a discussion of some distinct but related metaphysical worries about
Robust Realism. The first is the most general worry associated with Mackie's argument
from queerness. But this argument – unless it can be seen as standing for some other
worries discussed elsewhere in the book – can rather easily be dismissed. The two other
objections start from the supervenience of the normative on the non-normative. One
challenge about supervenience states that given such supervenience, and the identity of
necessarily co-extensive properties, naturalism follows. Robust Realism avoids this
objection by rejecting the identity of necessarily co-extensive properties, a rejection that
is motivated by the discussion of indispensability and parsimony in Chapter 3. The second
supervenience challenge requires an explanation for supervenience-without-reduction. A
partial explanation of this kind – one that is consistent with Robust Realism – is provided,
and the remaining bruteness and violation of Hume's Dictum is shown to be quite
acceptable.
Chapter Keywords: Queerness; Mackie; Supervenience; Frank Jackson; Simon Blackburn;
Parsimony; Reduction.
(vii)
Chapter 7: Epistemology
A common objection to realism (robust or otherwise) is that realists owe us—very roughly
speaking—an account of how it is that we can have epistemic access to the normative
truths about which they are realists. This chapter first distinguishes between many
different ways of understanding this epistemological challenge to Robust Realism, then
focusing on the strongest version of the challenge, namely, the need to explain the
correlation between our normative beliefs and the independent normative truths (or else
accept that there is no such correlation, and that skepticism about the normative is the
way to do). After the challenge is clearly stated, a way of coping it is suggested. The way
to explain the correlation is by resorting to a (godless) pre-established-harmony kind of
explanation, one that utilizes some plausible evolutionary speculations. In a final section
there is a preliminary discussion of the somewhat related problem of accommodating
semantic access.
Chapter Keywords: Moral Epistemology; Sharon Street; Paul Benacerraf; Hartry Field;
Skepticism; Epistemic Access; Semantic Access; Pre-established Harmony.
(viii)
Chapter 8: Disagreement
Moral disagreement is widely held to pose a threat for metaethical realism and
objectivity. This Chapter is an attempt at understanding how it is that moral disagreement
is supposed to present a problem for metaethical and meta-normative realism. The
chapter distinguishes between many different arguments that are not often as clearly
distinguished, and critically evaluates their force against Robust Realism. Such a critical
survey reveals that some of the arguments fail rather clearly; others supply with a
challenge to realism, but not one we have any reason to believe realism cannot address
successfully; yet others beg the question against the realist; and others raise serious
objections to realism, but ones that – when carefully stated – can be seen not to be
essentially related to moral disagreement, and are thus discussed elsewhere in this book.
Chapter Keywords: Moral Disagreement; Relativism; Relativity; Method in Moral
Philosophy; Internalism; Rationally Irresolvable Disagreement.
(ix)
Chapter 9: Motivation
Robust Realism and related views are sometimes criticized because they are committed to
a view of normative reasons that divorces them from what brings us to action, from
motivation. In order to address all versions of this worry, the chapter starts with a general
account of what it is for an agent to act for a specific reason. The account is motivated
independently of Robust Realism, and is then shown to be consistent with Robust
Realism. Then, the chapter surveys the main objections to Robust Realism having to do
with motivation: Worries emphasizing the practicality of normative judgments (but it is
not clear what the practicality requirement comes to, and plausible versions of it are
easily accommodated by Robust Realism), those having to do with why-be-moral
questions (but some of these are pseudo-questions, and those that aren't can be
satisfactorily answered consistently with Robust Realism), those having to do with
judgment-internalism (but no non-trivial version of it is true, and Robust Realism can
accommodate the relevant intuitions by endorsing contingent yet empirically robust
relations between normative judgments and motivation), and existence internalism
(which, it is argued, is intuitively implausible, and is not at all well-supported by the
arguments for it in the literature).
Chapter Keywords: Motivation; Humean Psychology; Acting for a Reason; Internalism;
Judgment-Internalism; Existence-Internalism; Bernard Williams; Christine Korsgaard.
(x)
Chapter 10: Tallying Plausibility Points
This chapter brings together the conclusions of previous ones, so as to allow the reader to
better evaluate both the advantages and the disadvantages of Robust Realism. The
chapter also includes the author's disclosure of the points in the argument in which he is
least confident.
Chapter Keywords: Robust Realism; Philosophical Methodology.