Robust ethical realism, necessary truths and the miracle of morality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2023.e85149Palavras-chave:
Normative realism, Metaphysical necessity, Supervenience, Coincidence, PersonsResumo
Non-naturalists about the normative face the problem of providing a metaphysical explanation for the supervenience of the normative on the natural. Recently, Gideon Rosen has argued that non-naturalists can side-step this problem by rejecting strong supervenience and the view that normative truths are metaphysically necessary. Rosen proposes to take normative truths to be normatively necessary, where normative necessity is different from and irreducible to metaphysical necessity. I argue that if Rosen is right, that creates a deeper problem for robust ethical realism (the view that there are mind-independent, non-natural moral facts). According to robust ethical realism, it is a normative fact that persons are an especially valuable kind of being. But if Rosen is right, that is a metaphysically contingent fact. The existence of persons is also contingent. According to robust ethical realism, then, there is a striking match between what the normative facts happen to be and the kinds of beings that happen to exist. Persons could have failed to exist and they could have failed to be valuable, but it just so happens to be a fact about the natural world that they exist and a normative fact that they have value. Given that this match is accidental, it amounts to a miraculous coincidence. To the extent that commitment to unexplained coincidences counts against a view, robust ethical realism faces a problem.
Referências
BEDKE, M. S. Intuitive Non-Naturalism Meets Cosmic Coincidence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 90, 2009. 188–209.
BLACKBURN, S. Supervenience Revisited, In: I. Hacking (ed.) Exercises in Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 47–67.
CUNEO, T. The Evolutionary Challenge to Knowing Moral Reasons. In: Star, D. (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. 2018,
CUNEO, T., & SHAFER-LANDAU, R. The moral fixed points: new directions for moral nonnaturalism. Philosophical Studies, 171(3), 399–443. 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0277-5
DREIER, J. The Supervenience Argument Against Moral Realism. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 30(3): 13–38. 1992
ENOCH, D. Taking Morality Seriously. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011
FINE, K. Essence and Modality. Philosophical Perspectives, 8: 1–16. 1994a
FINE, K. Senses of Essence. In: Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Raffman, D. and Asher, N. (eds.), Modality, Morality and Belief. Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus. Cambridge University Press. 1994b
FINE, K. The Varieties of Necessity. In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press. 2002
FITZPATRICK, W. Robust Ethical Realism, Non-Naturalism, and Normativity. In: Shafer-Landau (ed), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 3, 159–205. 2008
FITZPATRICK, W. Debunking evolutionary debunking of ethical realism. Philosophical Studies. 2014a. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0295-y
FITZPATRICK, W. Why There is No Darwinian Dilemma for Ethical Realism. In: M. Bergmann & P. Jain (eds), Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution, 2014b, 237-255.
HEATHWOOD, C. Could Morality Have a Source? Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 6(2), 2017, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v6i2.62
HUSSAIN, N. J. Z. The Ontic Cosmic Coincidence Problem for Non-Naturalism About Morality. 16. 2019, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192897466.003.0001
JACKSON, F. From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
LEARY, S. Non-naturalism and Normative Necessities. In: R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 12, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 76-105
MCPHERSON, T. Ethical Non-naturalism and the Metaphysics of Supervenience. In: R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 7, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 205–34.
PARFIT, D. On What Matters – Volume 1. New York: Oxford University Press. 2011a.
PARFIT, D. On What Matters – Volume 2. New York: Oxford University Press. 2011b.
ROSEN, G. Scanlon’s modal metaphysics. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 47(6). 2017, 856–876. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2017.1312964
ROSEN, G. Real Definition. Analytic Philosophy, 56(3). 2015, 189–209. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203101698-26
ROSEN, G. What is Normative Necessity? In: Dumitru, M. (ed), Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
SCANLON, T.M. Being Realistic about Reasons. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
SHAFER-LANDAU, R. Moral Realism: A Defense. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
SHAFER-LANDAU, R. Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism and Moral Knowledge. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. 2012. https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v7i1.68
STREET, S. A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value. Philosophical Studies, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-005-1726-6
STREET, S. Reply to Copp: Naturalism, normativity, and the varieties of realism worth worrying about. Philosophical Issues, 18. 2008, 207–228.
TOPPINEN, T. Essentially Grounded Non-Naturalism and Normative Supervenience. Topoi 37. 2018, 645–653. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-017-9456-x
WILLIAMS, B. Internal and External Reasons. In: Williams, B. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 101-113.
Downloads
Publicado
Edição
Seção
Licença
This obra is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribuição-NãoComercial-SemDerivações 4.0 Internacional
