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Communities of Judgment Communities of Judgment Towards a Teleosemantic Theory of Moral Thought and Discourse Karl Bergman Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Geijersalen, Thunbergsvägen 3H, Uppsala, Friday, 11 October 2019 at 13:15 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Faculty examiner: Adjunct Professor Marc Artiga (Universitat de València). Abstract Bergman, K. 2019. Communities of Judgment. Towards a Teleosemantic Theory of Moral Thought and Discourse. 207 pp. Uppsala: Department of Philosophy. ISBN 978-91-506-2786-2. This thesis offers a teleosemantic account of moral discourse and judgment. It develops a number of views about the function and content of moral judgments and the nature of moral discourse based on Ruth Millikan’s theory of intentional content and the functions of intentional attitudes. Non-cognitivists in meta-ethics have argued that moral judgments are more akin to desires and other motivational attitudes than to descriptive beliefs. I argue that teleosemantics allows us to assign descriptive content to motivational attitudes and hence that even if the non- cognitivist is correct, moral judgments can be said to describe the world. Moreover, given further teleosemantic assumptions, this conclusion has consequences that are both surprising and interesting. First of all, while moral judgments have descriptive content, moral statements do not. The purpose of moral discourse is not to convey beliefs that are true simpliciter, but to convey attitudes that are descriptively correct when tokened by the addressee. Consequently, moral discourse requires speakers to adapt to hearers in order to secure their assent and bring them into "community of judgment" with themselves. Secondly, the descriptive content of a motivational attitude is partly a matter of the subject’s own preferences and circumstances. In particular, the descriptive correctness of a moral judgment is partly a function of the degree to which it is shared with others. Since a moral judgment also motivates the subject to spread it, it has the ability to, in a certain sense, make itself true. If regular descriptive beliefs are supposed to adapt the subject to the world, a moral judgment also has the capacity to adapt the world to the subject. Keywords: Ruth Millikan, teleosemantics, biosemantics, content, descriptive content, meta- semantics, meta-ethics, cognitivism, non-cognitivism, moral objectivity, moral relativism, moral disagreement, moral psychology, evolution of morality Karl Bergman, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Metaphysics, Box 627, Uppsala University, SE-75126 Uppsala, Sweden. © Karl Bergman 2019 ISBN 978-91-506-2786-2 urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-391640 (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-391640) For my parents, Britta Wännström and Dan Bergman and my brother, Erik Bergman Acknowledgements Philosophy can be a lonesome enterprise. You sit in your office, stewing in your own thoughts, and only intermittently do you benefit from the neces- sary correctives that are others’ perceptions of your work. All the more rea- son, then, to extend gratitude to those who have supplied these correctives. I want to thank my supervisors, Sharon Rider and Andrew Reisner, for all their help, encouragement, and patience. Lars-Göran Johansson was my sec- ondary supervisor during an early phase of the work, and he is also due thanks. Gunnar Björnsson served as opponent on my final seminar. Without his comments, this text would have looked very different. I am deeply grateful for his aid. Additional valuable feedback was provided by my departmental readers, Matti Eklund and Sebastian Lutz. Marcel Quarfood was the oppo- nent at my half-time seminar, an ordeal I apologize for putting him through and thank him for enduring. I have had the fortune of working with many intelligent, insightful, and pleasant colleagues. Nils Franzén is due special thanks for having read and commented on several late drafts. He and Henrik Rydéhn have provided insight into many difficult philosophical issues over the years, and without them, I imagine I would have been even less of a philosopher. Other colleagues that deserve gratitude include, in no special order except alphabetical, Tobias Alexius, Per Algander, Johan Boberg, Björn Brun- nander, Erik Carlson, Daniel Fogal, Anna Folland, Erik Hallstensson, Elinor Hållén, Erik Jansson Boström, Magnus Jedenheim Edling, Jens Johansson, Kasper Kristensen, Guilherme Marques Pedro, Carl Montan, Olle Risberg, Simon Rosenqvist, John Shaheen, Folke Tersman, Oda Tvedt, Rebecca Wallbank, Tobias Wilsch, and probably others. Rysiek Sliwinski and Anna Gustafsson deserve special mention for their assistance with all things prac- tical and administrative. Fabian Hundertmark graciously read and commented on a draft of a chap- ter that was subsequently chopped up and cannibalized for parts. I presented chapter 3 at the eighth Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Science research workshop (PBCS8) at Complutense University of Madrid in May 2018. I thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to partici- pate, and the participants for their comments and suggestions. The last stretch of my PhD run was made possible by a generous grant from the Göransson Sandviken scholarship foundation. Without its manufac- turing industry, Sweden would grind to a halt. I want to thank my friends for the invaluable services of friendship they have rendered. Special mention is due to Nils Gasslander, who through in- numerable conversations throughout the years has influenced my under- standing of the human mind in ways I can’t begin to mention; to Jonas Bååth, who has offered valuable insights into a sociologist’s perspective on morality; and to Alexander Sohlman, who has provided philosophical as well as human companionship during my undergrad years. Finally, I want to thank my parents, Britta Wännström and Dan Bergman, for making all this possible, and my brother, Erik Bergman, for his com- mendable discharge of the not always easy task of being my brother. I dedi- cate this work to them, with immense gratitude and love. Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................... 9 The Role of Teleosemantics in the Argument .......................................... 13 Structure of the Thesis .............................................................................. 16 1. Naturalism in Meta-Semantics .................................................................. 19 1.1. Naturalistic Analysis ......................................................................... 20 1.2. Intentionality: Representation and Content ....................................... 22 1.2.1. Content and Normativity ........................................................... 26 1.3. Naturalizing Intentionality ................................................................ 29 1.4. Indicator Semantics ........................................................................... 34 1.5. Summary and Conclusion ................................................................. 40 2. Teleosemantics .......................................................................................... 41 2.1. Basics of Teleosemantics .................................................................. 42 2.2. Conceptual Thought .......................................................................... 54 2.3. Discourse ........................................................................................... 60 2.4. Compositionality ............................................................................... 65 2.5. Content Indeterminacy ...................................................................... 72 2.6. Summary and Conclusion ................................................................. 78 3. The Problem of Universal Hybridity ........................................................ 79 3.1. Directive Content .............................................................................. 81 3.2. Hybrid Representations and Universal Hybridity ............................. 84 3.3. Potential Rejoinders .......................................................................... 86 3.3.1. Desires ....................................................................................... 86 3.3.2. Beliefs ........................................................................................ 88 3.3.3. Pre-Content Type-Individuation ................................................ 89 3.4. Learning to Live with the UHT ......................................................... 90 3.5. Summary and Conclusion ................................................................. 96 4. Descriptive Content and Normative Truth ................................................ 97 4.1. Descriptive Content of Directive Attitudes ....................................... 99 4.2. Discursive Non-Descriptivism ........................................................ 110 4.2.1. Attributive Types ..................................................................... 116 4.3. Truth and Assessment ..................................................................... 118 4.4. Assessing Speakers ......................................................................... 124 4.5. Communities of Judgment............................................................... 126 4.6. Some Notes on Unasserted Contexts ............................................... 131 4.7. Indeterminacy Again ......................................................................
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