The Dilemma of Moral Naturalism in Nagel's Mind and Cosmos

The Dilemma of Moral Naturalism in Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos

Elke Elisabeth Schmidt University of Siegen, Germany

Abstract. The present contribution deals with both moral naturalism in gen- eral and Nagel’s version thereof in particular. In Mind and Cosmos, Nagel offers a neo-naturalistic theory of moral values that claims the existence of irreduc- ibly objective moral values and that excludes at the same time so-called ‘meta- physical baggage’, i.e. the postulation of supposedly ‘queer’ non-natural enti- ties. It is this meta-ethical standpoint that I critically examine here. I begin by providing a rough outline of Nagel’s meta-ethical thought. The strategy in the next part of the article is the following: I explore moral naturalism (and its variants) as an attempt to somehow integrate morality into the scientific worldview. This moral naturalism, I argue, faces a dilemma: either it over- stretches the term ‘natural’, or it fails to account for a substantial element of morality, namely prescriptivity. Since Nagel does not maintain a traditional form of naturalism, but rather a non-scientific or liberal one that allows for entities and truths that cannot be explained by traditional sciences, one might hope that he is in a position to avoid this dilemma of (scientific) moral natu- ralism. However, I argue that this hope is illusive; Nagel’s liberal naturalism does not save him from the dilemma of moral naturalism. Therefore, Nagel’s moral naturalism is inconsistent.

Keywords. Metaphysics, moral naturalism, moral realism, prescriptivity, Thomas Nagel, value

I. Introduction

n his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Concep- Ition of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Thomas Nagel provides a critical examination of the explanatory monopoly commonly ascribed to the natural sciences and of the corresponding materialist philosophies. He sets out to counter what he calls the “orthodox view” (5):1 a materialist conception of the world whose parameters and sole reference points are

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 25, no. 2(2018): 203-231. © 2018 by Centre for Ethics, KU Leuven. All rights reserved. doi: 10.2143/EP.25.2.3284945 ethical perspectives – june 2018 defined and governed by the classical natural sciences of physics, chem- istry and biology. According to Nagel, reductionism, materialism, physi- calism, Darwinism, and, more generally speaking, scientific naturalism effectively amount to one and the same position and all of them are expressly rejected by him2. Nagel claims that the ‘orthodox view’ as a whole cannot satisfactorily explain fundamental aspects of the world. We need, he argues, a new conception of the “natural order” (8), which must be able to describe and explain the origin of consciousness, mind, cogni- tion, qualia, values, and reasons; Nagel also speaks of an “expanded account of the order of the world” (31). Nevertheless, Nagel does not administer a sweeping blow to naturalism as such. Rather, he undertakes to criticise specific and reductive forms of naturalism that claim to be able to reduce all entities to basic physical or material elements. Nagel’s criticisms are thus specifically directed against a ‘materialist’ or ‘scientific’ naturalism (cf. 13; 15; 22; 98; 112; 127).3 It is important to recognise this point because Nagel himself proposes a particular form of naturalism. While he does not use the term explicitly, let us call this kind of natural- ism, following recent literature, expanded or liberal naturalism. Thus, for all his criticisms of naturalism in general he wishes to develop a “naturalis- tic alternative” (12; 91) and “[…] an expanded but still naturalistic under- standing” of the world (32; italics mine). His principal critical thesis is that the basic constituents of the universe cannot be merely physical or material; in fact, what he proposes is a kind of “general monism” (56) or “panpsychism” (57) according to which “[…] all the elements of the physical world are also mental” (57). He postulates “protomental ele- ments” (87) as basic constituents of the world, so that “the physical and the mental” are understood as “ontologically inseparable” (87). This also involves what Nagel calls a “natural teleology” (91): the universe pos- sesses a tendency to produce conscious life, to bring forth mind and reason. In the context of his liberal naturalistic theory, Nagel also develops a theory of moral values, and it is mainly this theory that I would like to

— 204 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism discuss in what follows. I begin by providing a rough outline of Nagel’s meta-ethical standpoint. I then explore moral naturalism (and its variants) as it is commonly known, i.e. as an approach intent on integrating moral- ity into the scientific worldview. Moral naturalism, I argue, faces a dilemma. I will then demonstrate that Nagel’s naturalism, although it is a form of non-scientific, liberal naturalism, still suffers from this dilemma. I thus argue that Nagel’s moral naturalism is inconsistent.

II. Nagel’s Meta-Ethical Stance: A Rough Outline

In order to gain an overall perspective on the central issues I offer here a rough general analysis of Nagel’s understanding of moral values as it is developed in the final chapter of Mind and Cosmos. We can then proceed to look at matters in closer detail. Nagel begins by decisively distancing himself from subjectivist posi- tions. This allows us to provide a negative characterisation of his own position: Subjectivism (Humeanism) basically implies, according to Nagel, “[…] that evaluative and moral truth depend on our motivational dispo- sitions and responses” (98) or “on our attitudes” (99). As Nagel critically points out, subjectivism implies the complete dependence of moral values on these contingent subjective dispositions or attitudes.4 Insofar as Nagel also distances himself from non-cognitivist positions (cf. 98f), it should be undisputed that his own approach can in no way be identified with an anti-realist position, at least not in a narrow sense.5 Let us now sketch Nagel’s position in positive terms. It is clear that Nagel describes his own moral position in the language of moral realism. There is indeed such a thing as “[r]eal value – good and bad, right and wrong” (97), he claims, as well as “evaluative truth” (98). In contrast to subjectivists, Nagel claims that “[…] objectivity is not an illusion with respect to basic judgements of value” (110), that there is “objective good- ness” (111), “objective truth” (111) in the context of morality, “objective value” (111, 122), “judgement-independent value” (109), and that there

— 205 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 ethical perspectives – june 2018 are such things as “objective reasons” (122). These objective truths, values,­ and reasons do not depend, according to Nagel, on anything else; realism is thereby understood as a position which claims that “truth [...] is inde- pendent” (104) of our judgements and not dependent “on our disposi- tions” either (100). Consequently, he speaks of “[…] values and reasons, whose existence is a basic type of truth” (114) and he holds that “certain truths [...] are just true in their own light” (103), that something “can be true in itself” (102), that things can be “good and bad in themselves” (111; cf. Nagel 1986, 139; 144; 156). Thus, it seems that there is moral value out there in the world, something that we do not produce but “detect” (112). All of these formulations certainly suggest a realist posi- tion, and Nagel indeed describes himself as a “realist” (98) and his philo- sophical position as “value realism” (98, 114). So far so good. But let us take a closer look. For Nagel, values are not wholly independent of rational beings, for they clearly depend on the existence of beings with “consciousness and cognition” (97), and at least in some way on “pleasure and pain” (99). Nagel’s account of how values have come to exist in the world underscores this point: values have sup- posedly arisen with, and in dependence upon, life in all of its forms – that is to say, with bacteria, with conscious and self-conscious life. Values are therefore, according to this quasi-Aristotelian thesis, dependent in general upon the existence of “entities that have a good” (117). It is for living beings that “things can go well or badly” (117; 122), and to that extent they can be said to dispose of something like a ‘good.’ According to Nagel, it is this ‘good’ that furnishes the fundamental condition of value. As he writes: “It is clear that the existence of value and our response to it depend on consciousness and cognition, since so much of what is valu- able consists in or involves conscious experience, and the appropriate responses to what is good or bad, right and wrong, depend on the cogni- tive recognition of things that give us reasons for or against” (98f). Thus, it is not life as such that has value, but rather the good or bad experiences that beings are capable of.

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Furthermore, it is, as Nagel claims, characteristic for us human beings that we “[…] are able not only to detect but to be motivated by value” (112). For instance, if I know that someone has a headache, then I am immediately motivated to alleviate this condition (cf. 113). Since “[…] it counts in favor of doing something that it will avoid grievous harm to a sentient creature” (102), such natural facts (that someone suffers from a headache), says Nagel, “provide reasons for and against action” (102). And since Nagel holds that the recognition of certain facts leads straightforwardly to having a reason, his position is internalist with regard to reasons (and motives).6 That natural facts ‘provide’ reasons thus means that facts as “if I do x, then I will probably harm S” are relevant for deciding what to do in moral regard, and these, in turn, are connected with values.7 For Nagel, a moral fact is not a fact that stands outside the natural order of things, it is not something that presents itself in the world in addition to empirical facts, nor does it need to be traced back or reduced to other facts (cf. 102f). Rather, a moral fact is an independent fact which “is nothing but itself” (102). Thus, according to Nagel, there are moral facts that are independent of the mind or the subject at least in some sense, and these facts, he claims, cannot be accommodated within the explanatory framework of the ‘orthodox view’ – however, they are not non-natural, let alone supernatural. How then are we to characterize Nagel’s meta-ethical position? As we have already observed, it is clear that Nagel specifically wishes to be read as a moral realist. At the same time, however, moral facts are said to come into being along with conscious life. There are, Nagel claims, no moral facts that are themselves independent of all subjects in all respects. The latter would be the kind of position maintained by Platonic or the- istic ethics (insofar as we exclude traditional ‘divine command’ theories here); such positions can be described as strictly realist in character, and so this is not Nagel’s position. For Nagel, moral facts are existentially dependent upon individual living beings.8 This, however, does not itself imply an anti-realist position that regards moral facts as entirely dependent­

— 207 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 ethical perspectives – june 2018 on contingent subjective achievements or activities (interests and wishes, feelings or judgements, for example); nor does this postulate a complete subject-dependency of values in relation to a particular individual or a group of individuals. Rather, on Nagel’s account, it is quite true that morality only exists if, and only if, there are conscious or sentient living beings – but then indeed it exists in an objective sense. For we may assume that there is something like a common nature that belongs to conscious or sentient living beings, and upon which morality is based. Taking the experience of pain and pleasure as an example, Nagel’s posi- tion amounts to this: the avoidance of pain and the experience of pleasure are intrinsically good. This goodness is existentially dependent on subjects inasmuch it would not exist if these subjects did not exist. But this intrin- sic goodness is not dependent on subjects inasmuch as what subjects actually and contingently consider to be in their interest at a certain time in a certain place is irrelevant. In this sense, Nagel’s meta-ethical position can be understood as a moderate realism.9

III. The Dilemma of Moral Naturalism

The foregoing may serve as a rough initial characterisation of Nagel’s meta-ethical position. In what follows, I would like to reveal the central problem of this approach. We shall see that there are two fundamental lines of thought involved in Nagel’s theory. These lines of thought, how- ever, cannot easily be reconciled with one another. Firstly, Nagel affirms, as we already noted, the existence of ‘real’ and ‘objective value,’ of ‘objective goodness,’ and of things that are ‘good and bad in themselves’; in this connection, ‘moral reasons’ also play a central role. According to Nagel, these ‘reasons’ are not reducible to anything else – they are what they are. Therefore, Nagel must hold a position that is both non-reductive and realist. Secondly, Nagel does not understand moral facts and reasons as non- natural.10 As a non-reductive, liberal naturalist, he specifically does not

— 208 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism want to extend or multiply the range of ontological entities or postulate any non-natural or even supernatural entities in addition to those that exist in nature (103): “A reason for action is an ordinary fact [...]” (113). The vehement rejection of metaphysical (ontological) assumptions is not plausible even for a liberal naturalist; for the thesis that there are no non-natural entities is itself, in the first place, an ontological thesis. It is also a metaphysical thesis in the broadest sense in that it makes a very comprehensive claim about the world as a whole with respect to what exists and what does not. Above all, however, one should ask whether a morally realist position actually makes sense without any addi- tional metaphysical theses and without the acceptance of non-natural entities. To raise this question is nothing less than to ask the critical question of whether the conception of (realist) moral naturalism – and hence Nagel’s meta-ethical theory – can be framed as a coherent posi- tion at all.

Nagel’s Background: Moral Naturalism and its Dilemma

We all know that philosophers rarely agree on what a term means or how something should be defined – and that is, of course, also the case when it comes to naturalism. Roughly speaking, however, naturalism in ethics (or at least scientific or non-liberal naturalism, as we shall see) has typically been understood as an attempt to integrate morality into the scientific view of the world. Moral facts are thus interpreted as “[…] a species of scientific facts, discoverable in all the ordinary ways, as motivating and as normative (or not) as ordinary facts” (Shafer-Landau 2003, 56). Following Löffler and others, we can distinguish between methodological, semantic, and ontological forms of naturalism, even if these are often connected with one another (Löffler 2010, 150f; De Caro and Macarthur 2010, 5). Whereas methodological naturalism in its strongest form insists that we must restrict the methods of philosophy to those of the natural sciences or of a somewhat broader range of sciences, semantic naturalism claims that the

— 209 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 ethical perspectives – june 2018 only meaningful assertions are those that are either themselves assertions belonging to the natural sciences or those that can be wholly translated into the former. Ontological naturalism claims, negatively speaking, that “[…] certain sorts of objects do not ‘in reality’ exist” (Löffler 2010, 151), where such objects typically include God, the soul, and moral facts. What is relevant above all in the present context is ontological natu- ralism combined with methodological naturalism. The basic idea here, to repeat, is the thought that only that which is ‘natural’ – i.e. that which is ‘subject of the natural sciences’ – exists; in addition to this, there simply are no non-natural or supernatural entities. The difficulty is obvious. To begin with, there is no agreement on what counts as natural science at all. Also, the often supposed unified account of sciences turns out to be a myth when we look at the matter more deeply (Putnam 2010). Think, for instance, of quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity. Both are de facto not unified. More importantly, there is no agreement about what concept of ‘natural’ naturalism employs after all. Various possibili- ties have been offered, none of them broadly accepted: natural facts have been understood as those that are descriptive, that have causal force, that are spatiotemporal, or that are of material or physical character (Copp 2003, 183f). Also, there are epistemological accounts, recently, among others, advocated by Copp who understands natural facts as empirical facts that cannot be known a priori (Copp 2003, 185f). But again, none of these proposals is broadly accepted. However, in the context of scientific (non-liberal) naturalism, the basic idea is this: the ‘natural’ is that which falls within the realm of the natural sciences, and whatever does not fall into this realm does not exist. In a further justificatory move, we may seek a unifying factor in a scientific-methodological approach that is common to all sciences and that is supposed to define the realm of the natural. This is a further move since in addition to the classic disciplines of the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology) this approach can also accept ‘softer’ disciplines (in particular psychology and the social sciences) insofar as they follow, methodologically speaking, the classic disciplines,

— 210 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism i.e. insofar as they proceed in an empirical and mathematical manner. This move is justificatory insofar as this reference to a common methodology shall provide an argument for why only the objects of the empirical-­ mathematical sciences (maybe under ‘idealised’ conditions) are recognized as real. This reflection corresponds with the assumptions of methodological naturalism, and it is usually concerned with establishing an ontological thesis: what cannot be described by means of such a method does not exist. Now within a traditional (non-liberal) naturalist framework, there are basically three possible explanatory approaches with regard to moral facts: we may eliminate these moral facts entirely (in the manner of the emotiv- ist theory, for instance); we may reduce them to one or more natural facts such as pleasure or pain; or we may understand them in their own right as irreducible yet nonetheless natural facts.11 The first approach, an eliminative account of moral facts, is clearly not of interest here since we are dealing with moral realism, and there is hardly anyone in the neighbourhood arguing that eliminativism belongs to this camp. So let us have a look at the second, reductionist approach. There are two types of reductive naturalism – one is analytic and one is non-analytic (or synthetic).12 The former holds that a moral and a given natural concept are strictly synonymous and that both can be used inter- changeably without any loss of information. Moore’s open-question argu- ment is typically invoked as an argument against these analytic forms (1903, §13). It is supposed to show that the concepts of ‘good’ and, for example, ‘desirable’ are not synonymous and hence cannot refer to iden- tical objects or properties. Of course, there have been many criticisms of Moore’s argument; in any event, there appears to be a consensus that it is ultimately not sufficient to refute the possibility of at least non-analytic moral naturalism. According to the most common objection, non-analytic moral naturalism is not refuted by Moore’s argument, since two concepts can refer to the same thing without being synonymous, even though it may not be obvious that they refer to the same thing (the H2O example

— 211 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 ethical perspectives – june 2018 has become rather familiar in this connection; see, for example, Brink 1989, 149-170, and with regard to other examples and in another context, Putnam 1981, 84f; 205-211). Still, it is possible to tackle non-analytic reductive naturalism in view of the essentially prescriptive character that many claim pertains to moral facts.13 On the assumption that ‘x is good’ does not simply mean the same as ‘x promotes pleasure’, but that it also involves a prescriptive dimension (‘promote x!’), it seems difficult to translate ‘x is good’ into natural terms even in a non-analytical sense. For even if we agree that

‘H2O’ and ‘water’ relate to the same thing in a non-analytic way, and even if we grant that both terms can be understood as natural ones, it seems rather difficult to say the same of ‘x is good’ and ‘x promotes pleasure’.

We clearly understand the sense in which H2O really is water, but we do not understand, not even on second thought, the sense in which a pre- scriptive property – an ought – is a certain natural property like ‘promotes goodness’. To quote Parfit: “We cannot describe various natural facts in non-normative terms, and then truly say that, when these facts obtain, that’s what it is for us to have some reason, or what it is for some act to be what we should or ought to do in some reason-implying sense” (2011, 309). Even if it is true that what is always pleasurable, or what promotes the long-term wellbeing of the largest possible group, is also always good, and vice versa, the property ‘promotes the well-being of the largest possible group’ does not per se yield a norm; the property in question does not already furnish me with a reason to perform the corresponding action.14 What we need then is some kind of ‘metafact’, a fact that makes the fact that some action which promotes the wellbeing of the largest possible group really is “relevant to the question what to do” (Dancy 2006, 137). Again, what we need is a fact that a certain outcome gives us a reason to act in a certain way. With Dancy, we could call only the metafact a ‘nor- mative fact’, and the descriptive fact that some actions would have a particular outcome a “fact of normative significance” (2006, 137). Again: facts of normative significance can surely be natural facts, but that is not

— 212 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism the case with normative (meta)facts or with ‘second-order facts’, as Parfit calls them (2011, 280).15 Because normative metafacts cannot be reduced to natural facts, no reductionist form of naturalism can be a form of real- ism; for any kind of realism must account for normativity (more on this below). Now let us consider the third explanatory approach to moral natural- ism on the basis of scientific naturalism. The non-reductive naturalist can argue that he or she does not have to reduce ‘good’ to ‘pleasurable’ or whatever (neither in an analytic nor in a synthetic way). The basic idea here is that “[…] natural properties ‘constitute’ or are ‘realized in’ moral ones, but are not identical with them” (Cuneo 2007, 870). Moral proper- ties are supposed to be not reducible but nevertheless natural. So the goodness, and a fortiori, the prescriptivity of pleasure could be understood as a property that supervenes upon natural properties or upon a variable cluster of natural properties. By way of comparison, Shafer-Landau speaks of a ‘property dualism’: “[m]oral properties are like geological or biologi- cal properties: natural ones themselves, dependent, ultimately, for their realization on physical properties, but not identical to physical properties” (2003, 63f). I think this is an adequate description of how (many) non- reductive moral naturalists understand themselves. However, as a self- understanding it is misleading. On pluralistic or expanded scientific natural- ism, one can argue that physicalism is wrong, because there are not only physical entities, but also geological, biological, chemical and maybe even social entities; and yet a pluralistic naturalist still can say that all these (geological etc.) entities and qualities are natural, defining ‘natural‘ in terms of scientific naturalism and hence with regard to space and time, causality, empiricity, or experience. But a pluralistic naturalist who expands her naturalism as wide as to include moral facts does not have this option, at least not prima facie; she cannot make the same expanding move. Whereas physical and, say, geological properties are prima facie in the same ontological boat, it would be begging the question simply to assume that physical and genuine moral properties are. Even if it is true that both

— 213 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 ethical perspectives – june 2018 biological and moral properties supervene on physical properties, the ontological status of biological properties is different from the ontological status of moral properties or facts; that is exactly the point of Dancy’s and Parfit’s concept of normative ‘metafacts’, to name just two recent philosophers. Whereas there is a clear understanding in what sense bio- logical properties are natural properties, there is no such understanding of moral properties (especially of prescriptivity) as natural properties. I will further strengthen this argument when I turn to the dilemma of moral naturalism. An additional note on supervenience is warranted at this juncture before we consider the dilemma of naturalism. Moral naturalists typi- cally understand moral facts (including norms) as natural inasmuch they supervene on natural facts. But supervenience is a formal ontological concept. The sole fact that a property supervenes does not tell us whether it is a natural property or not; hence a property B can super- vene on a natural fact A, but that leaves it undecided whether B itself is natural or not (Halbig 2007, 284f; 290-296).16 Hence, it might very well be that moral norms always supervene on natural entities; but this does not imply that moral properties are natural properties. Rather, if norms somehow supervene on natural facts, then these supervening entities or qualities are either natural themselves or not. Also, if natural facts have no prescriptive power, it still remains opaque where the pre- scriptive power of the supervenient facts stems from. Again, superve- nience as such is just a formal ontological relation and does not, as such, render prescriptivity.

The Dilemma

We can now turn to the dilemma of moral naturalism. At the current stage of our argumentation, our focus is moral naturalism in the frame- work of scientific, non-liberal naturalism, and the dilemma we will now scrutinize is a dilemma for this kind of naturalism. Later, however, we

— 214 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism shall see that Nagel is exposed to the same dilemma despite the fact that his framework is liberal naturalism. Recall: the task for the naturalist is to integrate prescriptivity into his concept of the natural. In short, the dilemma is this: either one understands prescriptive properties as natural properties – this would, however, result in a strong and arbitrary exten- sion of the concept of the natural17 or one concedes that moral facts (quite independently of whether they are understood as supervenient or not) actually imply no prescriptivity at all. This, I argue, is an inescapable dilemma. Let us have a closer look at the two horns of this dilemma. Regarding the first, why can prescriptive moral properties not be natural properties? Prescriptivity basically means, at least in this context, the same as normativ- ity, and normativity refers to the fact that there are actions that we are obliged to do (or to omit). If something is a prescriptive fact for us, we have a reason to do something. Here, of course, another web of problems lies before us, for we can ask what exactly a reason is, how it can, as Korsgaard puts it, ‘get a grip on me’ at all, and whether it has to be cat- egorical or not.18 In any event, I submit, in good Kantian and others tradition, that if one wants to sustain a form of moral realism, moral rea- sons have to be categorical reasons, i.e. reasons that are binding regardless of what we subjectively think, are inclined to, or desire (I will return to this in more detail later).19 So the root of the matter is the well-known normativity objection: “Moral and other evaluative facts,” to quote Dancy, “have a feature that no natural fact could have, namely, normativity” (2006, 132). Obviously, if the natural realm is the realm of descriptive facts only, there is no room for prescriptive facts, and hence the term ‘natural’ would clearly be overstretched if it were to include prescriptive facts. By the same token, alternative definitions of the natural also fail to include prescriptive facts. This becomes especially clear when we think again of those metafacts that tell us normatively that something is ‘relevant to the question what to do’ (Dancy). Again, they are clearly not descriptive, but

— 215 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 ethical perspectives – june 2018 they are also not in space and time (although single actions and facts of normative significance are, of course), they have no causal power on their own (of course persons can act because they recognize a prescriptive act, but it is persons that act)20, they have no material or physical character, and they cannot be known in a mathematical or empirical manner.21 So there is no definition of the natural that accomplishes the inclusion of prescriptive facts.22 Of course, we could change the usage of the term ‘natural’ and say that everything is natural that surrounds us in everyday life and that is not divine, magic, or suchlike. In this case, the term ‘natural’ would have no clear limits (despite not being divine);23 and yet the very idea of a definition is to delimit one thing from another. To subsume something under the term ‘natural’ that does not belong there is simply to overstretch the term. Now consider the second horn. In order to avoid the first horn, we could deny the prescriptivity of moral facts. If a given agent, for example, does not want to promote the long-term interests of as many people as possible, the descriptive fact alone (that a given action does promote the long-term interests of these people) would not yield as such any prescriptive demand on its own (although it might have normative significance). Thus, all one could impose would be hypothetical imperatives, and the unavoidably prescriptive character of moral facts would be lost. In fact, this position – i.e. an externalism with regard to reasons – is accepted by many moral naturalists. For these naturalists there are no necessary overriding moral facts in that there are no moral facts that necessarily provide overriding reasons;24 external, subjective desires like the desire to promote the wellbeing of others are always required if moral facts are to provide reasons for actions (and motives). Thus, Lenman (2006) speaks of “[…] instrumental understandings that view claims about reasons for action as claims about what would conduce to the satisfaction of an agent’s desires and preferences.” He also says: “Then taking any interest in these facts may come to look rationally optional, contingent on being creatures with the right kind of ­other-regarding desires.”25 But this view hardly

— 216 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism seems to do justice to the field of morality, understood realistically. Given the aforesaid understanding of moral realism as providing categorical reasons for actions, an externalist position is ruled out. Even talk of being a consistent person or of having second-order desires to be a rational person is of no help here. For if someone does not care about rationality or has unmoral second-order desires there is no resort for the advocate of moral demands, and to say that an agent is pathological or morally deprived is nothing more than begging the question. Moral realism requires, at least in my (and many others’) terminology, categorical reasons for which an externalist position cannot account. As Leist rightly observes: “We expect morality to tell us what we ought to do” (2000, 28). We can now see why the scientific naturalists’ move to establish a non-reductive relation between natural and moral properties must fail. Such a relation is not analogous to the relation between physical and, for instance, geological properties. While there is nothing overstretched or wrong in understanding geological properties as non-physical, but nonetheless natural properties, there is either a stretch of terminology with regard to the term ‘natural’ or a failure to account for a substantial element of morality (namely prescriptivity) when it comes to the relation between natural and moral properties; there is a dilemma.

The Dilemma in Nagel’s Theory Let us return to Nagel. So far we have discussed the moral dilemma as it is based upon scientific, non-liberal naturalism. Nagel, however, dis- tances himself from this kind of naturalism. As we have seen, he argues for expanded or liberal naturalism that allows for entities and truths which, as he sees it, cannot be integrated into the traditional scientific view of the world, such as protomental entities and moral truths. Thus, one could hope that Nagel is in a position to avoid the dilemma of (scientific) moral naturalism. I shall argue that this hope is illusive; Nagel’s liberal naturalism does not save him from the dilemma of moral naturalism.

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In order to see this, we must first work out more precisely how Nagel understands moral facts:

But value realism does not maintain that value judgements are made true or false by anything else, natural or supernatural. [paragraph] Of course natural facts are what make some value judgements true, in the sense that they are the facts that provide reasons for or against action. In that sense the fact that you will run over a dog if you don’t step on the breaks makes it the case that you should step on the breaks. But the general moral truth that licenses this interference – namely that it counts in favor of doing something that it will avoid grievous harm to a sentient creature – is not made true by any fact of any other kind. It is nothing but itself. [paragraph] [...] Realists believe that moral and other evaluative judgements can often be explained by more general or basic evaluative truths, together with the facts that bring them into play (the fact about the dog). But they do not believe that the evaluative element in such a judgement can be explained by anything else (101f).

The features of the world that confer value and provide reasons are ordinary facts about the experiences of people, their relations to one another, and the implications for people’s and other creatures’ lives of different possible courses of action. A reason for action is an ordinary fact, such as the fact that aspirin will cure your headache and its being a reason is just its counting in favor of your taking aspirin or my giving you some (113).

Thus, on Nagel’s account, what provides moral reasons for agents to carry out or refrain from an action are ‘natural facts’ in relation to the experiences of human beings or other living beings. For example, the fact that a dog might be run over or, more generally expressed, the fact that something might cause harm or suffering to a living being, provide moral reasons for actions. Now a naturalist will probably agree that a fact like running over a dog is a natural fact, and using the above mentioned terminology, we could call these facts ‘facts of normative significance’ (Dancy). Yet, as the previous quotation indicates, Nagel relies on the idea of a ‘general moral truth’. Thus, a prescriptive assertion, the ‘general moral truth’, is being

— 218 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism added to an assertion regarding natural facts in order to derive from it a concrete prescriptive assertion (for instance, that it is wrong to run over the dog). This ‘general moral truth’ consists in the thought “[…] that it counts in favor of doing something that it will avoid grievous harm to a sentient creature” (102), which is tantamount to saying that it is generally the case that one should avoid pain.26 Although Nagel does not explicitly use these terms, this ‘general moral truth’ must be understood as a normative fact, i.e. as a metafact. Nagel does not attempt to justify in a deductive sense why pain is objectively bad or pleasure is objectively good; yet these facts (or metafacts, rather) occupy a preeminent place in his theory insofar as they provide us with objective reasons for action (111f). In this regard, Nagel merely says that pleasure and pain seem to him, precisely in the manner described, to be objectively good or bad, and that this conviction of his is almost unshakeable. But how exactly are we to understand this metafact, i.e. Nagel’s ‘general moral truth?’ Recall that we can rule out the possibility that Nagel wants anything to be understood as a non-natural property or fact. If he did, he would inevitably abandon his own framework which is non- reductive and liberal but naturalistic nonetheless. We have briefly introduced this liberal framework above, but we need to take a closer look. Liberal (or broad, expansive or expanded, integrating, pluralistic, wide – there are quite a few labels) naturalism “widens the realm of the natural” (De Caro and Macarthur 2010, 76) insofar as it assumes that there is space left between scientific naturalism and non-naturalism (or supernaturalism). This space is filled by a theory that “[…] reject[s] the idea of the methodological and ontological continuity between science and philosophy” (De Caro and Macarthur 2010, 77) and which only demands that there is no contradiction between the sciences and, for instance, the realm of morals (De Caro and Macarthur 2010, 71).27 The idea is this: what cannot be explained by the sciences but also does not contradict them can still exist and be natural. “[S]ui generis norms need not be understood as supernatural, mysterious, or queer”; they are understood

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“[…] as genuine aspects of nature, on a broader conception than we are currently familiar with” (De Caro and Macarthur 2008, 14f). So liberal naturalists hold – and so does Nagel – that there are irreducible moral, but natural facts, which are different from scientific facts and which might also be known in quite a different manner.28 So the term ‘natural’ is expanded – but now the question arises: does this expanded or liberal naturalism escape the dilemma of moral naturalism? I shall argue that it does not. Nagel is subjected to the same two horns of the dilemma: he can either ascribe a prescriptive character to natural properties, but only so on pain of unduly stretching the concept of the ‘natural’ or he can concede that moral facts (such as the ‘general moral truth’) do not imply by themselves prescriptivity in which case he cannot do justice to a core element of morality. Let us have a closer look at the first horn as it emerges in Nagel’s theory. Recall his ‘panpsychism’ according to which “[…] all the elements of the physical world are also mental” (57). Nagel understands these ‘pro- tomental’ elements of the world to be irreducibly natural. He makes no mention of prescriptive entities when it comes to these basic constituents of the universe; so all basic ‘natural’ constituents of the world really are ‘protomental.’ However, if protomental properties make up the domain of the natural, why should, from a metaphysical point of view, the assumption of prescriptive properties as basic natural properties be more problematic than the assumption of protomental properties? Why is pos- tulating prescriptivity more of (bad) metaphysics than postulating proto- mentality? If one concedes, following Nagel, that rocks and plants or at least their basic constituents have (proto)mental properties, it hardly seems a big leap to adopt the thesis that at least some entities in the uni- verse exhibit prescriptive properties as well, and indeed, according to Nagel, there are moral facts that he appears to understand as irreducible. Thus, he speaks of “[…] objective mind-independent truths of different kinds: factual truths about the natural world, including scientific laws; eternal and necessary truths of logic and mathematics; and evaluative and

— 220 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism moral truths” (85). Thus, Nagel might also understand the basic con- stituents of the world as not only protomental, but also as prescriptive (and yet he does not say so).29 Although he speaks of irreducible moral truths, he does not seem to claim the existence of additional correspond- ing entities; he says that ‘value judgements are not made true or false by anything else, natural or supernatural’ and that they are ‘not made true by any fact of any other kind’. Since he speaks several times of unnecessary ‘metaphysical baggage’ this seems to be exactly Nagel’s point: a meta- physically lightweight form of realism that does not postulate special enti- ties. Therefore, Nagel says that “[moral] realism does not add anything to the catalogue of entities or properties” (103) and that there is no need for “[…] a metaphysical postulation of extra entities or properties” (105). This seems to be a move similar to a move by Parfit who also holds a non-reductive position concerning moral reasons and claims that the cor- responding truths “[…] have no ontological implications […] For such claims to be true,” he goes on, “these reason-involving properties need not exist either as natural properties in the spatio-temporal world, or in some non-spatio-temporal part of reality” (2011, 486). So for Nagel and Parfit (and others), there seems to be no need to postulate potentially queer (natural or non-natural) new entities. But as a matter of fact, Parfit does not – contrary to Nagel – conclude from this that naturalism is true. In fact, Parfit calls his position “Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalist Norma- tive Cognitivis[m]” (2011, 486; italics mine) for there are reasons, after all, which cannot be described in terms of naturalism. Both Nagel and Parfit sustain a metaphysically lightweight form of realism, but their positions are, at least terminologically, diametrically opposed – one is supposed to be naturalist realism, the other non-naturalist realism. This shows that even this form of metaphysical modesty does not solve the problem of how prescriptivity fits into the realm of the natural. Even if we agree that there is no need for (special) entities that correspond with true moral judgements (whatever that really means), reasons and moral truths remain to be integrated into the natural.30

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Alas, the crucial question remains: in what sense do all these qualities – or truths – deserve to be called ‘natural’? Great segments of tradition (think of Descartes, to name just one) have always argued that the realm of the natural or physical is separated from the realm of the mental, and so this question seems justified. Of course, one can ignore tradition and the history of concepts and point to reductionist views – but that is exactly what Nagel is arguing against. Hence, the accusation of having unjustifiably overburdened the concept of the ‘natural’ seems to stand. If physical, mental and even moral or prescriptive features and truths are all called ‘natural,’ even in a liberal sense, the term is deprived of its dis- criminating power; it is simply overstretched. There is no coherent mean- ing of ‘natural’ within liberal naturalism that would include prescriptivity. We can now turn to the second horn. If Nagel really wanted to say that moral properties, although they are real, are not intrinsically pre- scriptive at all, he would hardly be able to do justice to a central domain of morality. As we have seen, philosophers who have no problem taking an externalist position about moral facts and reasons see no difficulty at this point at all. Nevertheless, it seems to many that externalism about reasons simply misses the point of morality (i.e. the categorical character of moral reasons) and thus can hardly account for our daily moral practice (we simply do say things like ‘that is forbidden, so do not do that’); as we have seen, a sensible moral realism cannot renounce categorical normativity. Looking carefully at Mind and Cosmos, one sometimes cannot help but think that Nagel, other protestations to the contrary, does indeed wish to relinquish this categorical normativity of moral facts. As a matter of fact, he sometimes seems to claim that moral reasons are generally dependent on agents, which seems to imply that they are not prescriptive per se:

It is […] unclear how far the reasons generated by those [moral] values can reach – as is true even of values we recognize in forms of human life other than our own [...] But since value realism can accommodate agent-relative reasons for action, the recognition of what is objectively

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valuable in the life of one creature does not automatically settle the question of what reasons it implies for the actions of another (119f). Moral realism, says Nagel, can account for ‘agent-relative’ reasons. What does this mean in the given context? Does it help us to avoid the second horn of the dilemma? Of course, it may be that other living beings find certain things painful or pleasant that we do not. From the fact that a bee has reason to collect nectar, it does not follow that I should do the same thing. Another example: from the fact that someone has a decisive reason not to steal groceries, it does not follow that no one has decisive reason to do so, i.e. to steal groceries (imagine someone who could prevent her sister from starving to death by stealing). In this sense, reasons are, of course, agent-relative, although the existence of a particular reason does not depend upon the subject’s desires or something similar; the existence of objective reasons does not lead to the existence of universal reasons. But that seems not to be what is at stake here. On the understanding of moral realism developed above, it seems that a moral realist at least has to recognize the objective value and prescriptivity that the consumption of nectar has in relation to the bee. I should not, for instance, prevent such consumption, or at least not without a good reason. I do not have to do the same thing and therefore I do not have the same reason, but at least it follows something. Otherwise it would remain unclear in what sense something could still have ‘objective’ value or value ‘in itself.’ In defence of Nagel, we can point to the fact that he only claims that “[…] the rec- ognition of what is objectively valuable in the life of one creature does not automatically settle the question of what reasons it implies for the actions of another” (120; italics mine). This proviso (‘does not automatically set- tle’) does not exclude that some reason for me does indeed follow – even though it is not prima facie clear which reason exactly it is. All in all, Nagel appears not to deny that moral facts are prescriptive. Rather, his declared intention is to defend a moral realism in the context of which he speaks of values that are values “no matter whose they are” (1986, 156). Thus, it seems, we may rule out the possibility that Nagel

— 223 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 ethical perspectives – june 2018 falls victim to the second horn of the dilemma; moral facts are, according to Nagel, prescriptive. Unfortunately, though, there still is the first horn (overstretching the concept of the natural), and this horn Nagel does fall victim to. Liberal naturalism (even combined with metaphysical modesty) is of no help when it comes to the dilemma of moral naturalism. Incidentally, liberal naturalism – and not only Nagel’s naturalism, but liberal naturalism in general – is under attack by a further objection that is in some sense similar to, but not identical with, the argument from the dilemma. Very roughly, the objection runs as follows: either liberal naturalism turns out to be scientific naturalism insofar as moral properties are tied back to properties describable by the sciences, or it turns out to be not a form of naturalism at all since moral properties are in no way reducible.31

IV. Conclusion

Many believe that natural sciences are incapable of explaining everything, and many, following Nagel, would also like to maintain atheistic or agnos- tic views.32 Nagel’s comprehensive attempt to defend non-reductive the- ories against scientific-materialist conceptions of the world thus repre- sents an important position in contemporary philosophy. The typical naturalist may object that all she wants to do is to exclude the existence of queer entities or spooky stuff. In this manner, John Dupré (2012) has claimed in a review of Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos that “[…] whatever kinds of stuff there may turn out to be and whatever they turn out to do, they are, as long as this turning out is empirically grounded, ipso facto not spooky.” But why must everything be ‘empirically grounded,’ and why should only that which is ‘empirically grounded’ be regarded as ‘non- spooky’? Nagel has done us a great service in challenging such materialist conceptions of the universe. Yet what Nagel has presented as an alternative is not a form of non- naturalism, but a novel and altered form of (liberal) naturalism. Insofar

— 224 — Ethical Perspectives 25 (2018) 2 elke elisabeth schmidt – the dilemma of moral naturalism as Nagel sets out a liberal naturalistic ontology and also wants to sustain a form of moral realism, he is compelled to moral naturalism. Yet given our explication of moral realism, this position ends up facing a deadly dilemma: either it understands prescriptive properties (or truths) as natu- ral and thus overextends the concept of the natural; or this position denies any prescriptivity of moral facts. So the combination of moral realism and naturalist ontology fails. To conclude, let us address once more the question of why Nagel puts forward his expanded or liberal naturalism. The answer seems to be this: scientific naturalism in its narrow sense is not acceptable to Nagel because there are quite common things (consciousness, moral or aesthetic values, numbers, or qualia) that are not explicable by the classical sciences. But since the assumption of non-natural qualities appears to Nagel so dangerously near to supernatural qualities, he throws away the baby with the bathwater; it is no coincidence that many liberal naturalists more or less identify non-naturalism with supernaturalism. There is some kind of contemporary horror metaphysicae of non-natural entities simply because they are often identified or at least associated with queer supernatural entities. Putnam (2004, 59) even compares the refusal to accept a non-naturalist position with the refusal by many in the former Soviet Union to accept views that are opposed to Stalin’s opinions – both seem to be guided by some kind of fear of stigmatization. But there are, of course, forms of non- naturalism which are not theistic, magical, or something equally unattractive.33

Works Cited

Boyd, Richard N. 1988. “How to be a Moral Realist.” In Essays on Moral Realism. Edited by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, 181-228. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Brink, David O. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Copp, David. 2012. “Normativity and Reasons: Five Arguments from Parfit Against Normative Naturalism.” In Ethical Naturalism: Current Debates. Edited by Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay, 24-57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Copp, David. 2003. “Why Naturalism.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6: 179-200.

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Cuneo, Terence. 2012. “Moral Naturalism and Categorical Reasons.” In Ethical Natural- ism: Current Debates. Edited by Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay, 110-130. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. Cuneo, Terence. 2007. “Recent Faces of Moral Nonnaturalism.” Philosophy Compass 2/6: 850-879. Dancy, Jonathan. 2006. “Nonnaturalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Edited by David Copp, 122-145. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Caro, Mario and David Macarthur. 2010. “Science, Naturalism, and the Problem of Normativity.” In Naturalism and Normativity. Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, 1-19. New York: Columbia University Press. De Caro, Mario and David Macarthur. 2008. “Introduction: The Nature of Naturalism.” In Naturalism in Question. Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, 1-17. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. De Caro, Mario and Alberto Voltolini. 2010. “Is Liberal Naturalism Possible?” In Nat- uralism and Normativity. Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, 69-86. New York: Columbia University Press. Dupré, John. 2012. Review of Mind and Cosmos. Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Concep- tion of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel. Notre Dame Philosophical Review http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/35163-mind-and-cosmos-why-the-materialist- neo-darwinian-conception-of-nature-is-almost-certainly-false/ [accessed March 20, 2018]. Ellis, Fiona. 2014. God, Value, & Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gosepath, Stefan. 1999. “Praktische Rationalität. Eine Problemübersicht” In Motive, Gründe, Zwecke. Theorien praktischer Rationalität. Edited by Stefan Gosepath, 7-53. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer. Halbig, Christoph. 2007. Praktische Gründe und die Realität der Moral. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann. Hare, John E. 2001. God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, and Human Autonomy. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Hare, Richard M. 1972. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Clarendon. Kelly, Erin I. and Lionel K. McPherson. 2010. “The Naturalist Gap in Ethics.” In Naturalism and Normativity. Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, 193- 204. New York: Columbia University Press. Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kutschera, Franz v. 1999. Grundlagen der Ethik. Berlin: de Gruyter. Leist, Anton. 2000. Die gute Handlung. Eine Einführung in die Ethik. Berlin: Akademie. Lenman, James. 2006. “Moral Naturalism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/ [accessed March 20, 2018]. Löffler, Winfried. 2010. “Naturalismus und Anti-Naturalismus. Eine philosophische Kriteriologie.” In Natur. Ein philosophischer Grundbegriff. Edited by Hanns-Gregor Nissing, 149-165. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

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McDowell, John. 1995. “Two Sorts of Naturalism.” In Virtues and Reasons. Philippa Foot and Moral Theory. Edited by Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, Warren Quinn, 149-179. Oxford: Clarendon. McDowell, John. 1988. “Values and Secondary Qualities” In Essays on Moral Realism. Edited by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, 166-180. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Moore, George E. 1903/1986. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagel, Thomas. 2012. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nida-Rümelin, Julian. 2014. Review of Mind And Cosmos: Why the Materialist, Neo- Darwinian Conception is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel. Journal for General Philosophy of Science 45: 403-406. Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters. Volume Two. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin. 2012. “Why Darwinist Materialism is Wrong.” New Republic. https:// newrepublic.com/article/110189/why-darwinist-materialism-wrong [accessed March 20, 2018]. Plantinga, Alvin. 2011. Where the Conflict Really Lies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Putnam, Hilary. 2010. “Science and Philosophy” In Naturalism and Normativity. Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, 89-99. New York: Columbia University Press. Putnam, Hilary. 2004. Ethics Without Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Putnam, Hilary. 1981. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey. 1988. “The Many Moral Realisms.” In Essays on Moral Realism. Edited by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, 1-23. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Scanlon, Thomas M. 2016. Being Realistic about Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scanlon, Thomas M. 2010. “Metaphysics and Morals.” In Naturalism and Normativity. Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, 173-192. New York: Columbia University Press. Schaber, Peter. 1997. Moralischer Realismus. Freiburg: Karl Alber. Shafer-Landau, Russ. 2003. Moral Realism. A Defense. Oxford: Clarendon. Schmidt, Elke Elisabeth and Dieter Schönecker. 2018. “Kant’s Moral Realism regarding Dignity and Value: Some Comments on the Tugendlehre.” In Realism and Anti-Realism in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Edited by Elke Elisabeth Schmidt and Robinson dos Santos, 119-152. Berlin: de Gruyter. Sturgeon, Nicholas L. 2002. “Ethical Intuitionism and Ethical Naturalism.” In Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations. Edited by Philip Stratton-Lake, 184-211. Oxford: Clarendon.

Notes

1 Unless otherwise indicated, all page references in brackets refer to Nagel (2012). 2 This conflation of various conceptual positions is strongly criticised by Dupré (2012).

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3 It is occasionally overlooked (as in the case of Nida-Rümelin [2014, 404]) that Nagel himself formulates a naturalistic standpoint. 4 On the question of subjectivism, however, cf. also 104, where Nagel thematises a more complex form of subjectivism which he himself describes as ‘quasi-realist’ according to which (arbitrary) infanticide is wrong even if everyone would regard it as right. It is difficult to under- stand in what sense this position is subjectivist. It might be conceded that a temporary change in the consensus in relation to a specific question need not necessarily lead us to regard infanticide as morally permissible. However, if everyone actually consistently and continuously regarded infanticide as morally legitimate, it is by no means clear how the subjectivist could possibly claim that infanticide is still wrong. 5 The current debate on metaethics offers a colourful range of definitions in the context of moral realism and anti-realism and we are far from any terminological consistency. As for the diversity of terms employed and the various attempts to define and distinguish the relevant forms of moral realism and anti-realism, see, for example, Halbig (2007, 195-212); Hare (2001, 1-48); Korsgaard (1996, 28-48); Kutschera (1999, 213-245); Leist (2000, 188ff); Sayre-McCord (1988, 1-23); Schaber (1997); and Shafer-Landau (2003, 13-22). 6 Here, I follow Lenman (2006) in his definition of internalism with regard to reasons: “Internalism about reasons is the claim that there is a necessary connection between moral facts and normative reasons for action.” The externalist, by contrast, contests this idea of a necessary connection between moral facts and reasons for action. (Other authors speak here of ‘moral rationalism’ and ‘antirationalism’; cf. Halbig [2007, 23f]) Connected to this issue is the discussion about the relation of reasons and motives: The claim that there is a necessary connection between reasons and motives (what cannot motivate me, is no reason either) is named ‘internalism’; ‘exter- nalism’ is the position that a reason must not necessarily motivate me. Also relevant here are motivational internalism and externalism: The motivational internalist claims that there is a neces- sary connection between a moral judgement and a corresponding motive; the motivational exter- nalist denies this. For the distinction between different forms of internalism and externalism, cf. Halbig (2007, 18-28) and Gosepath (1999). 7 As we shall see, the crucial and problematic point is that natural facts only ‘provide’ reasons in connection with a normative metafact. 8 I adopt this formulation from Halbig (2007, 277ff). 9 Theories which can be called realist in this sense would include natural law ethics and perhaps also Kant’s ethics (according to which an absolute value attaches to human nature as something which is capable of reason and morality; see, for example, Schmidt and Schönecker [2018]). 10 See Nagel’s reference to “[…] reasons, whose existence is a basic type of truth” and his formulation that an explanation of action in terms of these reasons is “[…] a basic form of expla- nation, not reducible to something of another form, either psychological or physical” (114). Nagel’s disfavour of metaphysics is already evident in The View from Nowhere. There Nagel writes that value is “[…] not a new aspect of the external world” (1986, 139) and that the realist assumes no “[…] extra set of properties of things and events in the world” (1986, 140; cf. 144). Nagel emphasises that his moral ontology is “not a form of Platonism” (1986, 139). But Platonism is

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not the only form of strict moral realism which Nagel opposes. He also rejects, as we already pointed out, theistic positions or the kind of intuitionist positions associated with thinkers like G. E. Moore. 11 For a threefold categorisation of naturalism, see also Halbig (2007, 284f) and Shafer- Landau (2003, 66f). 12 Cf. Copp (2012, 30); Dancy (2006, 127). 13 I will use the terms ‘normativity’ and ‘prescriptivity’ basically interchangeably. Note, however, that there can be slight changes in meaning depending on the context. 14 Although R.M. Hare himself is a non-cognitivist with regard to morality, this criticism can be understood in terms of his position insofar as Hare pointed out that there can be no room for prescriptive claims if moral properties are identical with natural facts (cf. 1972, 79-93). 15 Scanlon (2016, 37) talks about ‘mixed’ and ‘pure normative claims’. 16 Since supervenience originally only requires that a change in the supervenient properties is only possible if there is also a change in the subvenient properties, and since it is also not ruled out that there can be no change in the subvenient properties without change in the supervenient properties, the identity of supervenient and subvenient properties is not excluded. In those cases of identity the naturalness of supervenient properties would, of course, be implied by the natural- ness of subvenient properties. However, in the given meta-ethical context, supervenience is under- stood such that changes in the subvenient properties do not imply changes in the supervenient properties. This unsymmetrical understanding rules out identity and is the standard as well as the only relevant understanding in the given context. 17 Cf. Halbig (2007, 280); Schaber (1997, 103ff). 18 One of the problems here is the distinction between acknowledging a reason (“when you view certain considerations as counting in favour of something”) and accepting a reason (“when you view it as bearing directly on your practical deliberation and decision making”; cf. Kelly and McPherson [2010, 195]). As for our discussion of Nagel, this distinction is not important. 19 I am certainly aware of the fact that some philosophers will not agree with my definition of realism requiring categorical reasons. For a definition of moral realism including only cognitiv- ism and a rejection of error-theory, cf. Sayre-McCord (1988, 5). Of course, my understanding of realism does not necessarily lead to a deontological position. 20 Parfit (2011, 306) rejects the idea of defining ‘natural’ by ‘playing a causal role in the world’ since this criterion would either include too much (God) or exclude too much (natural things which play no causal role). 21 There is, of course, the claim that what is ‘good,’ if it is understood as bound up with the wellbeing of human beings, is in fact measurable in empirical terms (cf. Boyd 1988, 206-209); but it still remains unclear, as we pointed out, how the prescriptive dimension itself can possibly be grasped in terms of natural sciences. 22 To be sure, there are ongoing debates on each of these proposed definitions of ‘natural’’ For lack of space, I cannot deal with these proposals here in any detail. 23 Note, perhaps not surprisingly, that recently even forms of theistic theories have been proposed that take themselves as naturalistic; Ellis (2014, 2), for instance, speaks, of ‘theistic naturalism’.

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24 Naturalists sometimes claim that morality indeed obligates us categorically. However, they also say that this does not imply that we have categorical moral reasons (cf. Cuneo 2012, 112). I cannot deal with this here, but I submit that this position is not convincing. Very briefly, using an often discussed example, it is obviously wrong to assume that the Nazis had no reason to refrain from their antisemitism unless they had a desire (or whatever) to do so. 25 Cf. also Schaber (1997, 234; cf. 94-98, 100ff). 26 Cf. “[P]ain is really bad, and not just something we hate, […] pleasure is really good, and not just something we like” (110). 27 Note, however, that from a theistic point of view such as Plantinga’s (2011), it can be argued that there is no contradiction between theistic belief and the sciences but only between such beliefs and naturalism. 28 For a position combining (metaphysical) naturalism with intuitionism, cf. Sturgeon (2002). Note at this point, that liberal naturalism in this sense is often hard to distinguish from non-reductive, but in some sense scientific forms of naturalisms; some forms of non-reductive naturalism might be in fact liberal, and some may not. 29 We can easily think of other possible candidates for the domain of the natural: aesthetic properties, logical and mathematical properties, etc. 30 Putnam and Scanlon seem to make the same move as Parfit, Nagel, and others in sus- taining a metaphysical lightweight form of realism. Putnam (2004, 17ff) distances himself both from ‘inflationary’ (Platonism) and ‘deflationary’ ontology (reductionism and eliminationism), and “[…] gives up the idea that every truth can be classified as either a conceptual truth or a description of fact” (2004, 61). It is not, he claims, the case “[…] that each and every instance of objectivity must be supported by objects” (2004, 51). Scanlon argues that moral judgements are judgements about irreducibly normative truths regarding reasons for actions (cf. 2010, 176; 2016, 2). He claims that moral judgements do not require the assumption of “a distinct realm of objects” (2016, 19), of “any special entities” (2016, 30), or of any additional “natural or special metaphysical reality” (2016, 53). However, his position differs from Parfit’s insofar as Scanlon holds that “[…] genuine ontological questions are all domain-specific” (2016, 24). “The normative domain,” he says, “is not a distinct realm of objects” (2016, 19) and there are “[…] no bases for standards of existence beyond those of these particular domains” (2016, 24). According to McDowell’s understanding of moral qualities as secondary qualities, something is morally good insofar as it deserves a reac- tion of moral approval. “Values,” he says, “are not brutely there – not there independently of our sensibility – any more than colours are; though, as with colours, this does not stop us supposing that they are there independently of any particular apparent experience of them” (1988, 177f). Given this and his understanding of second nature in general, McDowell also holds a form of liberal naturalism. “Nature,” he says, “on this richer conception, is to some extent autonomous with respect to nature on the natural-scientific conception. Correctness in judgements about its layout is not constituted by the availability of a grounding for them in facts of first nature” (1995, 174f). This is certainly an interesting approach, but of no help in the given context. First, it is doubtful whether this really is a realist approach. For according to the standard objection, of course, there are really no colours (or, by analogy, values) beyond our subjectivity; there is something in nature that causes colours in relation to us and this relation might very well be

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‘independently of any particular apparent experience of them’, but still things in nature themselves are not coloured. Second, if McDowell’s approach is realistic, and if it is really to explain the existence of categorical (or silencing) reasons, it remains, on the arguments given above, unclear, why such an approach should be labelled as a naturalist one. (For a detailed critique of McDow- ell’s approach, cf. Halbig [2007, 258-276]). 31 Parfit describes the second part of this argument like this: “And when these people [liberal naturalists] claim that such facts are irreducibly normative, they mean that these facts are in a separate, distinctive category, which cannot be restated in non-normative terms. Since Wide [liberal] Naturalists would accept this claim, their views do not seriously conflict with Non-­ Naturalist Cognitivism” (2011, 307). For a rebuttal of this argument against liberal naturalism, cf. De Caro and Voltolini (2010). This rebuttal, I submit, is not convincing, but I cannot deal with it here. 32 Plantinga (2012) is right to say that Mind and Cosmos presupposes a non-theistic explan- atory approach which is not explicitly justified. However, this does not imply that there is (for Nagel) no such justification in this regard. Nagel’s approach at least offers an attractive starting point for anyone who does not wish to be forced into the Procrustean bed of theism on the one hand or reductive naturalism on the other. 33 I am very grateful to Dieter Schönecker for fruitful discussions about this paper and naturalism in general. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful and inspiring comments as well as Christian Prust and Steffi Schadow.

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