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Moral Motivation and the Authority of Morality: a Defense of Naturalist Moral Realism

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Moral Motivation and the Authority of Morality: a Defense of Naturalist Moral Realism City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2014 Moral Motivation and the Authority of Morality: A Defense of Naturalist Moral Realism Lily Eva Frank Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/211 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] MORAL MOTIVATION AND THE AUTHORITY OF MORALITY: A DEFENSE OF NATURALIST MORAL REALISM by LILY EVA FRANK A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 © 2014 LILY EVA FRANK All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in the satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Jesse Prinz _______________________________________________ _________________ _______________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Iakovos Vasiliou _______________________________________________ _________________ _______________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Steven Cahn Rosamond Rhodes Stefan Baumrin Jesse Prinz Hagop Sarkissian THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract MORAL MOTIVATION AND THE AUTHORITY OF MORALITY: A DEFENSE OF NATURALIST MORAL REALISM by Lily Eva Frank Adviser: Professor Steven Cahn Moral realism has been continuously accused of positing the existence of queer properties, facts, judgments, and beliefs. One of these queer features is supposed to be the normative force of morality-that is the way in which morality guides our actions. Critics of moral realism argue that nothing else in the world has this feature. This is a reason to doubt that moral facts and properties exist at all. This objection can be interpreted in at least two ways. One way to interpret it has to do with moral motivation, this is the internalism objection. The other has to do with the authority of morality. In this essay I defend naturalist moral realism against these two objections, the internalism objection and the authority objection. I argue that the internalism objection and the authority objection are independent of each other. Whether and how morality motivates us to act does not bear on the place that morality should have in our lives and decision-making. We may have no motivation to do things that we should do, and we may be extremely motivated to do things we should not do. The conflation of these two objections is widespread in the literature and is the source of some of their apparent persuasiveness. The internalism objection is an attack on the realist commitment to cognitivism- the view that moral judgments are beliefs. The objection claims that there is a necessary, essential, or inherent connection between making a moral judgment, and iv being motivated to some extent to act on that moral judgment. This claim is internalism. But, the objection claims, beliefs, by themselves, cannot motivate an agent to act. This means that moral judgments cannot be beliefs. So cognitivism is false. The objection concludes that since moral realism is wedded to cognitivism, moral realism is also false. I respond to this objection in two ways. First, I argue against the view that moral judgments necessarily, inherently, or essentially motivate. I argue against it based in part on the phenomena of amoralism and other forms of moral indifference, including mundane, everyday cases of occasional amoralism and diversity in the level of moral motivation. The morally indifferent seem to be able to make the same moral judgments that morally deferential people do, without having any corresponding motivation to act on those judgments. Thus they present a central counter-example to the internalist’s claim that there is a necessary, essential, or inherent connection between moral judgment and motivation. I stress that moral indifference should not be understood as an exotic phenomenon found only in psychopathic serial killers or suicidally depressed. Instead, it is commonplace. Moral indifference might actually be the majority of our moral experience, rather than the exceptional case. I also argue against the internalist method of a priori conceptual analysis. At the same time, I make a case for the opposite view, externalism, which is the view that moral judgments do not necessarily or inherently motivate, nor can they motivate by themselves. Instead moral judgments are only contingently connected with motivation. The specific form of externalism that I argue for is a pluralistic externalism, which I argue can meet the objections that are usually made against externalism better than any alternative form of externalism. v The authority objection to naturalist moral realism is that morality has a certain kind of authority over us and that naturalist moral realism precludes this kind of authority. Therefore, naturalist moral realism must be false. The authority of morality can be understood in a variety of ways. For example, the importance that moral demands have in directing our lives or the way in which moral reasons seem to override other reasons for action. The authority of morality is supposed to be a problem for naturalist moral realism because the realist identifies moral facts and properties with complex natural facts and properties. The authority objection asks: why should any set of natural facts or properties have authority over our behavior? In other words, the naturalist moral realist seems to lack a convincing response to this kind of moral skeptic. One particularly influential form of this argument is found in the work of Christine Korsgaard, who argues that as a metaphysical position, moral realism is ill equipped to account for the normativity of morality. The other is found in Derek Parfit, who argues that naturalist forms of realism cannot explain normativity. I respond to the authority objection by defending a limited account of authority. Second, I argue that once properly understood, the authority of morality is no more a problem for naturalist moral realism as a metaethical theory than any other meta-ethical theory. Every metaethical position is faced with the difficult task of explaining this aspect of normativity and we have no reason to think this is a special problem for realism. Finally, I put forward a defensible version of naturalist moral realism, spelling out the commitment to objectivity and to naturalism. vi Acknowledgments I thank my adviser Steven Cahn, whose guidance, wisdom, and sense of tranquility were exactly what I needed during this stage of graduate school. I thank my committee members Stefan Baumrin and Rosamond Rhodes. I am indebted to Stefan, whose incisive questions and acerbic wit truly made this a better project. I thank Rosamond, who has been my mentor throughout graduate school. In many ways, she has shown me how to be a philosopher. I also thank my readers Jesse Prinz and Hagop Sarkissian for their thoughtful engagement with my project. I thank my sister Petra for cheering me on and being proud of me. I am grateful to my partner Michal for the countless hours he spent with me discussing metaethics, challenging my arguments, and forcing me to explain myself. He is my favorite person to talk philosophy with. His confidence in me and love during graduate school have meant the world to me. I am deeply grateful to my Mom and Dad for encouraging me to pursue graduate school in philosophy. I thank them for raising me in a house bursting with books, ideas, and lively discussions. I thank them for the way they fostered my intellectual curiosity. Their unconditional love made this achievement possible. For my beloved parents Richard and Bonnie Frank. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: The Queerness of (Naturalist) Moral Realism 12 1. Naturalist Moral Realism 12 1.1 Why Moral Realism? 16 2. Objections to Moral Realism 19 2.1 Queerness Objections to Moral Realism 22 2.2 Epistemological Queerness 25 2.3 Metaphysical Queerness: Supervenience 27 2.4 Metaphysical Queerness: Causal Efficacy and Explanatory Power 28 2.5 Metaphysical Queerness: The Normativity of Moral Facts 33 3. The Internalism Objection 37 4. The Authority Objection 42 5. Hume’s Law and Deriving ‘Ought from Is’ 45 6. The Naturalistic Fallacy 51 7. Moral Disagreement and Relativism 60 8. Conclusions 67 CHAPTER 2: The Internalism Objection 70 1. Varieties of Internalism 72 2. The Case for Internalism 77 2.1 Phenomenology Argument for Internalism and Response 78 2.2 Oddness Argument for Internalism and Responses 82 2.3 The Connection Argument and Responses 87 2.3.1 There is No Reliable Connection 92 2.3.2 Alternatives to De dicto Desires 95 viii 2.3.3 Defending De dicto Desires and Embracing Moral Fetishism 104 3. Two Kinds of Externalism 110 3.1 Desiderata for Externalism 115 3.2 Pluralistic Externalism 117 4. Conclusion 122 CHAPTER 3: Moral Indifference and Amoralism 123 1. A Brief Taxonomy of Moral Indifference 126 1.1 Amoralism 126 1.2 The Occasional Amoralist 128 1.3 Diversity in Moral Motivation 131 1.4 Depression and Listlessness 135 2. Internalist Responses to Indifference 137 2.1 Restricting the Scope of Internalism 140 2.2 Amoralists do not make moral judgments 143 2.2.1 Smith’s Response to Amoralism 150 2.2.2 Prinz’s Amoralist 153 2.3 The Impossibility of Community Amoralism 156 2.4 The Amoralist Is Motivated 160 3. Pluralistic Externalism and Moral Indifference 162 3.1 An Objection to Modal Intuitions and a Response 163 CHAPTER 4: The Authority and Normativity Objections 165 1. The Authority Objection 165 1.1 What has Authority? 168 1.2 What is Authority: Inescapability, Overidingness, or Just Normativity? 169 1.2.1 Inescapability 170 1.2.2 Overridingness 172 1.2.3 Normativity 175 ix 1.3 Distinguishing Authority from Motivation 177 2.
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