Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism Published on behalf of the American Humanist Association and The Institute for Humanist Studies Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism Editor John R. Shook, American Humanist Association Consulting Editor Anthony Pinn, Rice University, USA Editorial Board Louise Antony, University of Massachusetts, USA; Arthur Caplan, New York University, USA; Patricia Churchland, University of California, USA; Franz de Waal, Emory University, USA; Peter Derkx, University of Humanistics, Netherlands; Greg Epstein, Harvard University, USA; Owen Flanagan, Duke University, USA; James Giordano, Georgetown University, USA; Rebecca Goldstein, USA; Anthony Clifford Grayling, New College of the Humanities, United Kingdom; Susan Hansen, University of Pittsburgh, USA; Jennifer Michael Hecht, USA; Marian Hillar, Houston Humanists, USA; Sikivu Hutchinson, Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, USA; Philip Kitcher, Columbia University, USA; Stephen Law, University of London, United Kingdom; Cathy Legg, University of Waikato, New Zealand; Jonathan Moreno, University of Pennsylvania, USA; Stephen Pinker, Harvard University, USA; Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Purdue University, USA; Michael Shermer, The Skeptics Society, USA; Alistair J. Sinclair, Centre for Dualist Studies, United Kingdom; Stan van Hooft, Deakin University, Australia; Judy Walker, USA; Sharon Welch, Meadville Theological Seminary, USA Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism publishes scholarly papers concerning philosophical, historical, or interdisciplinary aspects of humanism, or that deal with the application of humanist principles to problems of everyday life. EPH encourages the exploration of aspects and applications of humanism, in the broadest sense of “philosophical” as a search for self-understanding, life wisdom, and improvement to the human condition. The topic of humanism is also understood to embrace its thoughtful manifestations across the widest breadth of cultures and historical periods, and non-western perspectives are encouraged. 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This journal participates in CrossRef, the collaborative reference linking service that turns citations into hyperlinks. © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2016 Typeset and edited by Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism (print) ISSN 1522-7340 Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism (online) ISSN 2052-8388 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Lightning Source Inc. (La Vergne, TN), and Lightning Source UK Ltd. (Milton Keynes) Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism Volume 25 Issue 1 Contents Mind-Independent Values Don’t Exist, But Moral Truth Does 5 Maarten van Doorn Understanding Kant’s Ethics: From the Antinomy of Practical Reason to a Comparison with Kierkegaard’s Spheres of Existence 25 Shai Frogel Pragmatic Social Justice: A Conceptual Framework for Practitioners 43 Eric Hogan The (Overwhelming) Improbability of Classical (and Christian) Theism 53 Raphael Lataster The Impact of Scientific Advances on Our Political, Religious and Social Views 71 Guido O. Perez Fairness, Dignity, and Beauty in Sport 97 Jay Schulkin Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 25.1 (2017) 5–24 ISSN 1522-7340 (print) ISSN 2052-8388 (online) https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.33214 Mind-Independent Values Don’t Exist, But Moral Truth Does Maarten van Doorn Radboud University [email protected] Abstract The falsity of moral claims is commonly deduced from two tenets: that they presuppose the existence of objective values and that these values don’t exist. Hence, the error theory concludes, moral claims are false. In this article, I put pressure on the image of human morality that is presupposed in moving from the non-existence of objective values to the falsity of moral claims. I argue that, while, understood in a certain way, the two premises of the error theory are correct, this does not render moral discourse false, because moral objec- tivity is disanalogous to objectivity in empirical sciences and as such need not be characterized in terms of mind-independency. Using Dewey, I illuminate the possibility of accommodating the guiding intuitions of the error theory in a first-order account of morality. Keywords John Dewey, moral abolitionism, moral fictionalism, moral error theory, moral truth, moral objectivity Introduction The moral error theorist holds that moral discourse is essentially committed to the claim that objective values exist and that this claim is false (Joyce and Kirchin 2010, xvi). A discourse being centrally committed to something means that this particular commitment is non-negotiable in the sense that denying the commitment amounts to changing the subject (the standard example being dis- course about witches: we deny that this discourse is still discourse about witches if we no longer grant witches supernatural powers; Joyce 2001, 5). Applied to morality, this means that taking the element of objectivity out of moral discourse would result in the discourse not being a moral one anymore (Joyce 2008, 52). Moral discourse, this argument supposes, is moral in virtue of the fact that statements that we label ‘moral’ rest on some kind of objective backing and are not merely a matter of personal preference. This special status of moral discourse rests on the claim to objectivity that moral statements include. © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2017, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX 6 Mind-Independent Values Don’t Exist,But Moral Truth Does Clearly, to be able to grasp the upshot of this stance, it is crucially impor- tant the we understand with what kind of notion of ‘objectivity’ it works. It seems that what John Mackie had in mind when he speaks of objective values in putting forward the error theory were mind-independent entities that are “part of the fabric of the world” (Mackie 1977, 23). He says that if there were any objective values, they would back up and validate subjective concerns and, secondly, that it would be possible to acquire subjective con- cerns merely by finding something out (Mackie 1977, 22). Regarding the first point: Mackie takes it to be the case that the non-existence of objective values disallows for the possibility of validating subjective concerns because the non-existence of objective values makes it impossible for subjective con- cerns to be true. This firm conjugation in which objective values function as the only possible truthmakers for subjective concerns supports the reading according to which Mackie understands ‘objective’ as ‘mind-independent’. The same goes for the second point, since it is unlikely that ‘finding some- thing out’ here does not refer to finding something out that is external to one- self. On these grounds, it seems justified to say