Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2009 Kinds and Their Terms: On the Language and Ontology of the Normative and the Empirical Joseph C. Long Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES KINDS AND THEIR TERMS: ON THE LANGUAGE AND ONTOLOGY OF THE NORMATIVE AND THE EMPIRICAL By JOSEPH C. LONG, JR. A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2009 Copyright © 2009 Joseph C. Long, Jr. All Rights Reserved The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Joseph C. Long, Jr. defended on October 28, 2009. __________________________________ J. Piers Rawling Professor Directing __________________________________ Philip L. Bowers University Representative __________________________________ David McNaughton Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii For my wife, Katherine iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my wife, Katherine, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. Her love, support, and insight have enriched my life beyond what words can express. I am grateful to Piers Rawling, David McNaughton, and Phil Bowers for serving on my dissertation committee. I would like to thank David McNaughton also for his friendship as well as for introducing me to the Harman/Sturgeon debate, without which introduction this dissertation would not have been. I would like to thank Piers Rawling for his guidance, comments, and criticisms, which have been crucial to the development of this dissertation. I would also like to thank Michael McKenna for his friendship and for sharing with me his very useful insights regarding the profession. Finally, I would like to thank the disc golf crew–Michael Robinson, Travis Rodgers, and Justin Capes–for forcing me to enjoy my Saturday mornings. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ......................................................................................................................... v i i Abstract ........................................................................................................................... viii 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 1. Non-reductive Ethical Naturalism and the Ethical Naturalist’s Challenge ... 1 2. Chapter Summaries ........................................................................................ 4 2. NORMATIVITY AND THE EMPIRICAL CHALLENGE ..................................... 10 1. Two Objections and a Problem ...................................................................... 12 2. The Empirical Challenge ............................................................................... 21 3. How (not) to Empirically Discover Normativity ........................................... 26 4. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 33 3. THE EXTERNALIST’S PARADOX AND DILEMMA .......................................... 34 1. Descriptive and Causal Kind term Semantics ................................................ 37 2. Descriptive Semantics and Foundational Semantics ..................................... 44 3. The Externalist’s Paradox .............................................................................. 48 4. The Externalist’s Dilemma ............................................................................ 53 5. Defending the FBFI View (Sort of) ............................................................... 59 6. The Need for Unions ....................................................................................... 64 7. A Concluding Moral ...................................................................................... 76 4. A NONNATURAL DEFENSE OF MORAL TWIN EARTH .................................. 80 1. Debating Descriptive Internalism .................................................................. 84 2. Causal Externalism ........................................................................................ 90 3. Inter-world Moral Debate .............................................................................. 93 4. Merli’s Error Theory ...................................................................................... 99 5. Future Experts Objection ............................................................................... 104 6. Dilemma of the Judge .................................................................................... 107 7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 115 5. NORMATIVE FUNCTIONS AND VALUABLE SYSTEMS ................................. 116 1. Natural Kinds and Multiple Realization ........................................................ 118 2. Functions and Natural Normativity ............................................................... 127 v 3. Natural Function and Nonnatural Value ........................................................ 133 4. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 136 6. CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 138 1. Future Work ................................................................................................... 139 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 140 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ................................................................................................. 153 vi LIST OF TABLES 1.1. The Oppenheim-Putnam Hierarchy of Sciences ........................................................ 2 6.1. The Causal-Normative Hierarchy .............................................................................. 139 vii ABSTRACT At the intersection of meta-ethics and philosophy of science, Nicholas Sturgeon’s “Moral Explanation” ([1985] 1988), Richard Boyd’s “How to be a Moral Realist” (1988), and David Brink’s Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (1989) inaugurated a sustained argument for the claim that moral kinds like RIGHT ACTION and VIRTUOUS AGENT are scientifically investigable natural kinds. The corresponding position is called “non-reductive ethical naturalism,” or “NEN.” Ethical nonnaturalists, by contrast, argue that moral kinds are genuine and objective, but not natural. This dissertation is largely a challenge to non-reductive ethical naturalism from the viewpoint of ethical nonnaturalism. An introduction, four fairly independent chapters, and a conclusion comprise this dissertation. The introduction (chapter one) situates and summarizes the arguments in the four chapters that immediately follow, and the concluding chapter (chapter six) describes future work related to the arguments in this dissertation. I now turn to chapters two through five. In chapter two, I shore up what I believe are weakness in Derek Parfit’s Triviality Objection to reductive ethical naturalism and then present a challenge to the NEN theorist, which, I argue, the NEN theorist must but ultimately cannot meet. The challenge is to sketch an empirical experiment whereby we can adjudicate between competing moral hypotheses. I explain in terms of experimental design and evaluation why the challenge cannot be met. Chapters three and four focus on the semantics and reference relations of kind terms. In chapter three, I defend the Causal Externalist (CE) theory of semantics and reference against an objection distilled from two articles by Åsa Marie Wikforss. The objection is that CE implies a paradox, escape from which forces the CE theorist upon the horns of a dilemma. I show how the CE theorist can avoid the dilemma by allowing that the intensions of some artificial-kind terms (e.g., ‘jade’) are not given by descriptions associated with the terms. One consequence of this move, however, is that it casts doubt upon the coherence of the claim that moral-kind terms (e.g., ‘morally required action’) are natural-kind terms. In chapter four, I defend Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons’s Moral-Twin Earth argument from three critical responses put forward in recent paper by David Merli. NEN viii theorists claim that CE can account for the semantics and reference of moral-kind terms. As per Horgan and Timmons (H&T), however, our responses to the Moral-Twin Earth thought experiment give us reason to doubt the NEN theorists’ claim. Against H&T’s argument, however, Merli presents three independent, critical responses, and in this chapter I defend H&T’s argument in a way that is friendly to the ethical nonnaturalist. One upshot is, I contend, that the ethical nonnaturalist can and indeed should co-opt H&T’s argument for his own use. In chapter five, I return to kinds themselves, specifically those in biology. I first point out that ethical nonnaturalism appeals to a metaphysical thesis about nonnatural value, which need not be limited to the moral domain. Then, I argue that biological naturalism alone cannot give a satisfying realist account of biological kinds like HEART and NEURON. Finally, I show that by conjoining the concept of Cummins functions as recently defended by Paul Davies, a thesis about nonnatural value, and Ned