Lecture 2: The Metaethical Turn. When they do this, they are doing what philosophers call normative ethics which is a first

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1 Lecture 2: The Metaethical Turn [Revised 09/07] The study of the basic nature of morality is metaethics. It is a meta or second-order study. What does this mean? When people think and talk about moral issues such as abortion or the just health care system, they are trying to figure out which actions are right and which are wrong, which policies are good and bad, which character traits are virtues and which are vices. When they do this, they are doing what philosophers call normative ethics which is a first order activity. They might be talking in rather particular terms, say, about an issue in environmental ethics. In that case, they are doing practical or applied normative ethics. Or they might be asking about the more general principles of ethics, principles that apply to many different kinds of examples, in which case they are doing general normative ethics. Metaethics arises when people stand back and ask What are we doing when we talk about this stuff? One person might respond Well, obviously, we are trying to figure out what God wants us to do. After all, isn t that what morality is? Another might respond, That s not how I think about the matter. I think morality is something we humans create for our own purposes. It has nothing to do with any God. Though their views may not be well worked out, these two people have begun to reflect on their first-order moral thinking. They have turned their attention to even more fundamental questions. They have taken the meta-turn. Metaethics is not the only meta-discipline. A great deal of philosophy is meta in this sense. For example, scientists, whether physicists, biologist, economist or psychologist, engage in a first-order activity, science. But they can also stand back and ask meta-questions like What are scientists doing when they do science? Are they (can they be) really getting at the ultimate 1

2 nature of the real world? What methods of reasoning can be employed by them, and what are the limits on what those methods can, in principle, show? Scientists themselves often ask such questions, and philosophers do as well. But rather than calling it meta-science', we call it philosophy of science'. Artists, poets, and musicians are similarly engaged in a first-order activity, the production of works of art. But one can stand back and ask meta-questions like What is art, anyway? Is it the expression of emotion as some have thought? Is it an effort to produce aesthetically pleasing forms or to get at underlying truths about the human condition? Can it be all these things? And in any event, how can a simple toilet, bought by Duchamp at a plumbing supply store, titled 'fountain', and barely modified at all, count as a work of art? Artists themselves can and do ask these meta-questions, but there is also a branch of philosophy devoted to this meta-study, the philosophy of art. Metaethics deals with a number of topic and brings ethics into contact with a number of branches of philosophy as well as areas outside of philosophy. In philosophy, the main branches taken up by metaethicists are metaphysics, philosophy of language and epistemology. Very roughly, the part of metaphysics we are concerned with is the part having to do with the possible reality of moral values. The metaethicist might ask whether there is any sense in which values have an objective existence, and if so, what the nature of their existence is and how it compares to other things that exist. Philosophy of language enters the picture because some philosophers think that moral language has its own distinctive character very different from what is often called descriptive language, and that the study of moral language tells us important things about morality. Epistemology deals with questions such as how, or whether, we can know moral truth, if it exists. 2

3 Moral Realism vs. Moral Irrealism History presents us with a fascinating, or depending on your temperament, a dizzying and dismaying array of metaethical alternatives, of different ways to understand the ultimate nature of morality. It is not my purpose to provide a comprehensive discussion of all the metaethical alternatives out there, but we will look at a number of them. In an effort to bring some order to the messy and complex world of metaethics, philosophers have tried to classify groups of metaethical theories in various ways. The sorts of classifications they have found most important often turn on their interests, and on the main interests of philosophers of the day. Those generations of philosophers who have found metaphysics most interesting have tended to focus on a distinction between objectivist and non-objectivist (or subjectivist ) metaethical views. Roughly, objectivism is the view that values exist and are real much like, though not exactly like, the way tables and chairs exist and are real, while non-objectivists deny this. Those who have found philosophy of language central, which includes many of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, have found a distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism most important. Roughly, cognitivists believe that moral statements like Eating human beings is wrong is either true or false much as Human beings need to eat protein is either true or false. Non-cognitivists think that moral statements are neither true nor false, and have another status altogether, perhaps being similar to expressions of emotion like Yuck and Yum. Both the distinction between objectivism and non-objectivism, and the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism, are alive and well today, but tend to be subsumed under, and become part of, a broader distinction between realist and irrealist views. An explanation of the distinction between realism and irrealism will get us started and will organize a great deal of our work. 3

4 The word realist has many meanings, and moral realists do not completely agree on its meaning. One approach to realism in any realm, including the moral, is in terms of three theses which are, respectively, in the painful jargon of philosophers, semantic (having to do with truth and falsity), metaphysical (having to do with the nature of reality), and epistemological (having to do with knowledge). First, the semantic thesis embraced by realists about a realm is cognitivism. It says that statements in that realm are putative descriptions of real phenomena and can be true or false. They are true when they correctly describe this realm and false if they do not. Along with this, it is often assumed that well-formed, unambiguous statements in that realm satisfy certain basic laws of thought including (1) the principle of bivalence, according to which any proposition is either true or false, (2) the closely related principle of excluded middle that for every proposition, P, either P or not-p, and (3) the law of non-contradiction, according to which P and not-p can not both be true. Second, realists about a realm generally adopt a version of the metaphysical thesis called objectivism. It says that the realm is as it is largely independent of what we, or anyone else, think about the realm, and of any evidence we have about the realm. The realm is, as it is sometimes put, mind-independent. The proverbial tree that falls in the forest when there is no one to hear it does make a sound, just as it would if a host were there to enjoy the event. Third, an epistemological thesis is embraced by many, though not all, realists. It says that there are more or less reliable methods we can employ to improve on our understanding of the truth, though realists disagree about what those methods are and the extent to which we have discovered them. Many people are, by these criteria, realists about many things, including mathematics, science, and many ordinary, every day things. We normally assume that on scientific or mathematical matters, there is truth and falsity. That the earth is 4

5 roughly round regardless of what people believe about it. Further, there are methods to determine scientific truth and the methods we actually use are more or less reliable ways for improving scientific knowledge. Realists in morality believe, therefore, that ethics can be understood on rough analogy with science and mathematics. Moral realism is easy to misunderstand, and many who reject it do so for reasons that turn on these misunderstandings. One common misunderstanding is to think that realists are committed to the idea that we all agree about morality. But realists are not committed to that silly idea. They believe there is a moral truth, more or less like there is a scientific or mathematical truth, but they are aware that there is disagreement about what it is. Actually, in this respect, the analogy with science is firm. Most people believe there is a scientific truth about many things, but we do not assume everyone agrees on it. People at different times and in different places have had different beliefs about scientific matters. People in our own culture here and now disagree on scientific matters. Even scientists disagree among themselves. Of course, some things are more or less settled in science, but a great deal is in dispute. Realism in ethics is no more committed to universal agreement than realism in science is committed to universal agreement. A second common misunderstanding is that moral realists must believe that they themselves have the whole moral truth, and that those who disagree with them are wrong. This is not so. Moral realists are not committed to saying that they know all the moral truth or that they are infallible on moral matters. Again, the analogy with science holds. Scientists typically believe we have some of the scientific truth, but no scientist believes she as an individual, or humanity as a while, knows all the scientific truth. There are many scientific truths we have no 5

6 idea about and will not have any idea about for a long time. There are scientific beliefs we currently have that will later be proven wrong, just as accepted scientific beliefs have been shown wrong in the past. There may be scientific questions we will never answer. In the same way, moral realists can deny that they have the whole moral truth. In fact, moral realists can run the gamut. Some believe they have a large part of the moral truth while others might doubt whether they have much of it at all. They could compare modern moral thinking to science hundreds of years ago. It is even possible for realists, whether in science, mathematics or morality, to say that although there is a truth, we cannot obtain it. It is beyond human reach. This is called skepticism. Of course, most realists in ethics, as in science, believe that we know some of the truth, and that in time we will know more, but that is not a consequence of their realism per se. Given the common misapprehension that objectivists must be dogmatic, it is worth reemphasizing this last point. It is true that many moral realists are dogmatic, but this is not a consequence of moral realism itself. In fact, of all the views we will be looking at, moral realists are among the most able to honestly say that they could be mistaken about what is right and wrong. This sounds puzzling, particularly if one has recently run up against an objectivist fanatic. But on reflection it is easy to understand. For realists, there is a distinction between the way the world is and how we believe it is, between reality as it is and reality as it appears to us. Our job is to try to match our beliefs to reality. But there is no guarantee in advance that we will succeed in doing this. The skeptic might despair of ever doing it with certainty. I will mention one final place people tend to misunderstand moral realism. Realists believe that there is an objective moral order, a moral order independent of our beliefs or evidence about it. This is sometimes put: there is one moral truth. Though many moral realists 6

7 accept that there is one moral truth, it is a potentially misleading expression. It could lead one to think that for the realist, the moral truth is simple. People often assume that moral realists hold that there are only a few basic moral principles and that they can each be stated in simple terms, for example, Do not lie, period'. Some moral realists have thought the moral truth is very simple, but they need not. Realism is no more committed to simplicity in ethics than it is in science or mathematics. The moral truth could be as complex as the scientific and mathematical truths are. In particular, moral realists can allow a great deal of what is called situationalism. This is the idea that what is right or wrong, good or bad, virtue or vice, depends heavily on the situation. People in different situations might have different rights and duties. To avoid confusion, I use the word absolutism for the view that the proper moral principles are relatively simple. Objectivists may or may not be absolutists, and absolutists may or may not be objectivists. Moral irrealism can be understood negatively as rejecting either the realist s semantic thesis or the realist's metaphysical thesis given above. First, many irrealists deny that moral statements are putative descriptions of real phenomena that can be true or false. On this view, moral judgments are no more true or false than expressions like Hurrah are true or false. Often, irrealists of this type distinguish descriptive sentences such as the book is on the table, which can be true or false, from non-descriptive sentences like Hurrah which are neither true nor false. Moral sentences, these folk say, are more like the second kind than the first, even though on the surface they look more like sentences of the first type. This view is usually called noncognitivism. Second, some irrealists allow us to speak in terms of moral truth and falsity, and hence are cognitivists, but say that this truth and falsity is somehow dependent on what we, or 7

8 someone else, thinks about morality, on our evidence for and against various moral claims, and so on. This sort of view is sometimes called constructivist'. We construct the moral realm, perhaps as we construct the law or a game, and this construction allows us to speak of truth and falsity about morality just as we can about the law or a game. Some Basic Metaethical Options With this basic distinction between realism and irrealism under our belts, I will now sketch a few of the basic metaethical options, options we will look at in more detail later. It is important to give this brief sketch before working our way into details since the discussion to date has been rather abstract and it might not be clear what metaethical realism and irrealism involve. In my explanation of these views, I will use analogies. I will say things like According to this metaethic, morality is like.... These analogies must be taken with a grain of salt. Analogies have their place, and can help clarify ideas, but they must not be pushed further than they can go. I begin with a few realist options. For the moral realists, the basic analogy is between morality and science or mathematics. For the moral realist, there are moral facts and moral truths just as there are scientific or mathematical facts and truths. i But moral realists differ significantly over the nature of these facts and truths. One of the basic forms of moral realism is objectivist intuitionism. It declares that there are moral facts, much as there are facts about the shape of the earth, but they are of a very different sort from the facts of science, though some objectivist intuitionists have thought they are not all that different from the facts of mathematics. Some speak of non-natural moral properties and facts which, though as real as anything else in the world, are quite different from the natural properties studied by science. Objectivist 8

9 intuitionists also says that we have a faculty that allows us to grasp these facts with some, though not perfect, accuracy. This faculty goes by such names as the moral sense, conscience, moral intuition, or reason. Intuitionists who are especially enamored of the analogies to science and mathematics speak of a science of ethics or compare the basic truths of ethics to mathematical axioms. Other moral realists think that there are moral facts, but that they are a subset of what might be called religious facts. One standard approach is called the divine command theory of morality. On this view, there is a God who serves as a kind of legislator. Just as a congress or parliament can pass laws, so can God, and the laws of God are the laws of morality. This view might be combined with the intuitionism mentioned in the previous paragraph: some think that the law of God is written in our hearts and hence can be known with some accuracy by conscience. Others focus on other ways to know the will of God, for example, through holy texts or the words of prophets and the divinely inspired. As an aside, though I am classifying divine command theory as a kind of moral realism, it might be thought of as a kind of irrealism. I am not talking here about the point that some do and some people do not believe in God. That has to do with whether it is a correct realist doctrine, not with whether it is realist. Rather, people who say it is a kind of irrealism mean the following. One of the defining characteristics of realism is that it makes morality mind independent. Divine command theory makes morality dependent on God and, presumably, that means on the mind of God, God s desires, wishes, and so on. Hence, it is irrealist. Others say that by mind independent, they simply mean independent of our minds, so divine command theory is realist after all. Perhaps the best thing to say is that this view has some things in common with clearly realist views, and some things in common with 9

10 clearly irrealist views. I will put that classificatory issue aside as basically boring, that being the greatest possible condemnation of any philosophical dispute. A third approach to metaethical realism is called naturalism. It encompasses a large number of views, and, in fact, some naturalistic views are better classified as irrealist. It will not be possible, in this brief introductory lecture, to get more than the basic idea behind naturalism, but the picture will be filled in in more detail later. According to the naturalist, there are moral properties, facts, and truths, but they are not supernatural or religious properties, facts, or truths, nor are they non-natural properties, facts, or truths, as other realists have said. Rather, they are a class of perfectly natural properties, facts, and truths, the sort possibly studied by science. Here is one version of naturalism that illustrates the idea. Many people think human welfare is good and that it is morally right to advance human welfare. But what, exactly, is the relation between welfare and goodness, or between advancing human welfare and rightness? Objectivist intuitionists and divine command theorists may agree that welfare is good and it is right to seek it, and they will have certain takes on what this means. For example, a divine command theorist might believe that God commands that we seek human welfare, so human welfare is good and seeking it is right. Here human welfare is something different from goodness, but is made to have the property of goodness by the will of God. Perhaps this can be understood by an analogy: a chair is different from its redness, and was made to have the property of redness by a chair maker. The naturalists I am talking about here has a different take on all this. They say that goodness is identical to human welfare (or some other natural property) and that rightness is identical to promoting welfare (or some other kind of action). Where the divine command theorist who believes welfare is good says it is made good by God s command (and otherwise 10

11 would not be good), the naturalist says that welfare is good because goodness and welfare are in fact one and the same thing simply being referred to by different names. Goodness is not related to human welfare the way redness is related to the chair. Rather they are identical the way that an object s being red is identical with its reflecting light with a wavelength of about 700 nanometers or in the same way that Buffalo Bill is identical with William Cody. As explained earlier, irrealism denies what realism assumes. I will sketch several of the leading irrealist options. The first is moral nihilism or error theory. On this view, morality is much like a fairy tale or a work of imaginative fiction except, unlike fictional works, it is supposed to be true. There is, according to the error theorist, an assumption in ordinary moral thought that we are dealing with something real, that we are trying to get at moral truth, whether or not we succeed. But, according to the nihilist, this is just not so. They reject metaphysical moral realism. There is no moral realm any more than there is a realm of ghosts, or witches the kind with supernatural powers whatever believers may think. Hence, moral thought and discussion involves a systematic error or illusion. A second approach to irrealism is noncognitivism. Non-cognitivists agree with moral nihilists that there is no moral reality and no moral truth, but they deny that there is supposed to be. The simplest form of non-cognitivism is emotivism. Emotivists say that moral judgments are expressions of emotion or attitude, much like the expression of taste with respect to foods. Early emotivists thought that a rough paraphrase for That act is right (wrong) is That act, hurrah (boo)! A more sophisticated version of non-cognitivism is universal prescriptivism. Universal prescriptivists believe that a moral judgment is more than to just an expression of an attitude. Rather, a moral judgment is a universalized prescription. By prescription I mean something like a command, say, Do (do not 11

12 do) this!. But when one makes a moral judgment, one is not merely making a particular prescription such as Joe, do this!, but rather a universalized one, something of the form Everyone, in this situation, do this! A third kind of irrealism is relativism. This is tricky since the word relativism has been used in many ways and for many views. Sometimes the word is used for just about any kind of metaethical irrealism. For example, emotivists and error theorists have been called relativists. That, however, is a bad idea since it blurs important distinctions. In its broadest sense, relativism is the view that there is a right and a wrong, but that what is right and wrong is relative in certain ways. Now, not everyone who says right and wrong is relative in some way or other is what I would call a relativist. I, like most people, think that the obligations I have to a particular child depend on, is relative to, my relation to that child. If it is your kid, my obligations are less than yours. That makes obligation in some sense relative, but is not what we should call relativism. Relativism is a far more interesting view. I will sketch one form of relativism, a version of cultural relativism. In broad outline, it says that what is right or wrong for a person is relative to that person s cultural standards. For the cultural relativist, a useful analogy is that morality is a lot like etiquette or law. It is a social creation or construction. The act of creation might be self conscious, as when a parliament passes laws, or it might happen without anyone actually planning it, as is the case with most etiquette. But however it happens, morality is a cultural creation which, like law and etiquette, varies, to some extent, from culture to culture. 12

13 Endnotes i I will skip over the possibility, familiar to philosophically informed readers, of irrealist views of science and mathematics.