Locating Practical Normativity by David J. Plunkett A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophy) in The University of Michigan 2010 Doctoral Committee: Professor Allan F. Gibbard, Co-Chair Professor Peter A. Railton, Co-Chair Emeritus Professor Stephen L. Darwall Assistant Professor Scott A. Hershovitz Professor Frank C. Jackson, Princeton University Professor Scott J. Shapiro, Yale University © David J. Plunkett 2010 Acknowledgments My work in this dissertation has benefited enormously from a wide range of conversations and comments. I would particularly like to thank Allan Gibbard, Peter Railton, Stephen Darwall, Frank Jackson, Scott Shapiro, Scott Hershovitz, Andy Egan, Nadeem Hussain, Sarah Buss, Tristram McPherson, David Braddon-Mitchell, Michael Smith, Sharon Street, Daniel Nolan, Tim Sundell, Kenny Easwaran, Howard Nye, John Ku, Tom Dougherty, Elisa Mai, Katia Vavoa, Daniel Stoljar, Tamar Schapiro, Alex Silk, Richard Holton, Peter Galison, Nishi Shah, Dave Chalmers, Eduardo-Garcia-Ramirez, Fritz Warfield, Ben McKean, Melissa Barry, Michael Bratman, Matt Kotzen, Chandra Sripada, Agustin Rayo, Adam Plunkett, Neil Mehta, Mark Schroeder, Sam Liao, Alejandro Perez Carballo, Christine Korsgaard, Peter Gordon, Arnold Davidson, Boris Kment, Louisa Thomas, Michelle Kosch, David Velleman, Julia Markovits, Kristie Miller, Paolo Santorio, Mike Titelbaum, Rachel Briggs, Adina Roskies, Robbie Williams, Damien Rochford, Lina Jannson, Aaron Bronfman, Sally Haslangar, Moises Vaca Paniagua, Derek Baker, Josh Foer, Alex Plakias, Ralph Wedgwood, Nic Southwood, Marie Jayasekera, Steve Campbell, David Mahfouda, Justin Reynolds, Alex Gourevitch, Brett Lockspeiser, Richard Tuck, Raymond Geuss, Taylor Carman, David Dick, Alexa Forrester, Michael Friedman, Gabriel Zamos- Regueros, Jeff Sebo, Jay Wallace, Patrick Tomlin, Laura Valentini, Jamie Tappenden, and Gordon Belot. I presented some of the material in this dissertation at talks given at the Australian National University RSSS philosophy department in July 2009, the 2009 Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, and the University of Minnesota, Duluth in November 2010. Thanks to everyone who asked questions and gave comments at those talks. I had the great fortune of writing this dissertation in many different wonderful locations. This was in large part made possible by family and friends. I would particularly like to thank Marcy Plunkett, James Plunkett, Marty Peretz, Anne Peretz, Dick Sheahan, Dottie Sheahan, Caroline Meyer, Judy Sabot, Kenny Easwaran, and Ziva Cooper. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii Abstract iv Chapter One: Can Metaethical Non-naturalism be Made Science-Friendly? 1 Chapter Two: The Metaethical Role of Evaluative Attitudes 49 Chapter Three: Ethical and Metaethical Agent-Attitude-Dependence 94 iii Abstract A central feature of ethical thought is that it appears to involve not only descriptive belief, belief about what is the case, but also normative belief about what should be done. Suppose we take this at face value and understand normative thought in ethics to consist of attitudes that, at the most basic explanatory level, are genuine beliefs. What then should we say about the basic nature of the normative properties that such beliefs are about? I argue that normative properties are complex naturalistic properties of psychology. In the first chapter, I consider the non-naturalistic realist position, according to which our world contains the instantiation of irreducibly normative, metaphysically sui generis properties. I argue that proponents of non-naturalistic realism have not successfully shown that this view is compatible with confidence in the claims and methodologies of the natural sciences. This gives us powerful (if ultimately defeasible) reason to reject this view. In the second chapter, I consider metaethical ideal attitude theory, exemplified in the work of Michael Smith, according to which normative properties about what an agent A should do concern what an ideal version of A would desire that non-ideal A do. In order a) to maintain a naturalistic account of normative properties, b) to avoid radical skepticism about ethical knowledge, and c) to explain the motivational force of normative judgment, I argue that ideal attitude theorists should hold that what it is for an agent A to be ideal is derived from A’s own evaluative attitudes. I call this a fully agent-attitude-dependent version of ideal attitude theory. In the third chapter, I consider Sharon Street’s recent arguments in favor of metaethical constructivism, according to which normative properties concern what is entailed by an agent’s practical standpoint. I argue that Street’s metaethical constructivism is best developed as a version of agent-attitude-dependent ideal attitude theory. iv Chapter One: Can Metaethical Non-naturalism be Made Science-Friendly? Introduction. Many of my ethical beliefs strike me as obviously correct. For instance, I find it obviously correct that I should not poke puppies in the eyes for fun and that I should help to save another’s life if it involves only a minimal cost to myself. Many of these beliefs are the same ones that other people find to be obviously correct as well. Yet, many people throughout history have also had ethical beliefs – i.e. beliefs about how agents should live or act – that they have taken to be obviously correct that I think are badly mistaken. These include, for instance, beliefs that I think are sexist, racist, homophobic, and/or chauvinistic. I also know that, had I been born and raised in a different social-historical context – for instance, in a religious community in 15th-century England rather than in a secular community in late 20th-century America – I would likely have had many of those same strongly held ethical beliefs that I condemn today. Moreover, I probably would have thought that some of those beliefs were obviously correct. Because of this, the sheer fact that an ethical belief now strikes me as obviously correct won’t be able to separate those cases where I think people got things wrong from my own current case – it seems reasonable to hold that, in both cases, the basic phenomenology involved will be the same. What, then, should give me confidence that I am getting things right now? One thing that we want from ethical theory is an answer to this question. Or, to put it somewhat more precisely, one thing that we want is some justification for having confidence in the subset of our ethical beliefs that we think we should be confident in – for instance, the belief that I should not poke puppies in the eyes for fun. Perhaps our hopes here will be dashed. For instance, perhaps we will discover through careful ethical reasoning that most of our current strongly held ethical beliefs are incorrect. Or, more drastically, perhaps we will discover that there are no ethical judgments that could be correct in our world – perhaps because all ethical judgments presuppose the 1 instantiation of irreducibly normative properties of a sort that simply are not instantiated in our world. Yet, insofar as we are creatures who actively engage in ethical thinking about how we should act and live – something that is in practice inescapable for creatures like us – we can’t help but to think that we are correct in some of our fundamental ethical beliefs that we inevitably must reason from in making ethical judgments, or at least to act under the hypothesis that this is so. Moreover, insofar as we try to form new ethical beliefs, we can’t help but to think that we are not hopeless in coming to form new ethical beliefs that could also be correct. Vindicating such theses is part of what will make a theory in ethics compatible with the perspective we inevitably adopt in practical reasoning. It is thus, we might say, part of what a theory in ethics must do in order for it to be practically adequate for creatures such as ourselves. At the same time, we want our overall understanding of ethics to be not only practically adequate but also theoretically adequate. We want it to be one that – in broad terms – is acceptable not only from the perspective we adopt in practical reasoning about what to do and how to live, but also from a theoretical perspective from which we consider how our ethical thought and talk fit into our broader understanding of reality. For many of us – and likely for most people reading this paper – part of this understanding involves a basic confidence in the natural sciences. At the core of this confidence is both the acceptance of certain theses about the way things are – theses that we take to be supported by the contemporary natural sciences – as well as the more basic idea that, whatever problems the natural sciences have, they nonetheless do a generally good job of studying those aspects of reality with which they are concerned. At the same time, this basic confidence in the natural sciences involves some level of confidence in the import of the central claims of the natural sciences – a confidence, we might say, that even if scientific claims could never exhaust all there is to be known about reality, they nonetheless represent a privileged place in our overall account of how things are. If a theory of ethics is going to be theoretically adequate, it must be one that respects this basic confidence in the central claims and methodologies of the natural sciences. Call this the naturalistic constraint on ethical theories. Call those ethical theories that meet the naturalistic constraint science-friendly ethical theories. The naturalistic constraint will not always have direct import for theories in ethics. Most importantly, take theories that concern substantive first-order questions about how agents should live and act. Such theories might address specific questions about how agents 2 should live and act in specific circumstances (e.g. the theory that Susie should not steal Bugsy’s motorcycle) or general questions about how agents should live and act in general (e.g.