Assimilative Moral Realism and Supervenience

Dialogue ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Yasenchuk
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Important Respect ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Macrophysical Properties ◽  
David Brink ◽  
The Way

David Brink has recently argued for the “parity” of ethics and the sciences. While the parity claim alone might be metaphysically neutral, Brink favours a form of ethical naturalism on which moral properties “are” natural properties, just as non-moral macrophysical properties “are” the microphysical states that compose them. Brink supports this claim by showing that both types of properties share certain important features: specifically, that both may be (and typically are) constituted, supervening and synthetically necessitated. I shall argue that notwithstanding these common features, there remain significant modal differences in the way the two types of properties are assigned to the world. These differences represent an important respect in which moral properties are not on par with their scientific counterparts.

scholarly journals The Explanationist Argument For Moral Realism

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Explanations ◽  
Moral Properties

In this paper I argue that the explanationist argument in favour of moral realism fails. According to this argument, the ability of putative moral properties to feature in good explanations provides strong evidence for, or entails, the metaphysical claims of moral realism. Some have rejected this argument by denying that moral explanations are ever good explanations. My criticism is different. I will argue that even if we accept that moral explanations are (sometimes) good explanations the metaphysical claims of realism do not follow.According to moral realists, moral properties such as justice and goodness take their own unique place in nature's ontological roll-call. Although realists disagree about the nature of these moral properties — for example, whether they are reducible or otherwise constituted by non-moral or natural properties — they all agree that such properties are genuine constituents of the world that are sometimes instantiated by objects, events or states of affairs.

scholarly journals Blackburn’s Supervenience Argument Against Moral Realism: Revisited

Metaphysica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Harold W. Noonan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Descriptive Names

AbstractBlackburn argues against naturalistic moral realism. He argues that there is no conceptual entailment from satisfying a naturalistic predicate to satisfying a moral predicate. But the moral is conceptually supervenient on the natural. However, this conjunction of conceptual supervenience with lack of conceptual entailment is something the non-realist can explain, but the realist cannot. I argue first that Blackburn’s best formulation of his challenge is his first one. Subsequently he reformulates it as a demand for a ‘ban on mixed worlds’. Critics have directed their arguments against this formulation but they are ineffective against Blackburn’s first formulation. My second thesis is, even so formulated the realist can meet the challenge. The bare conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural can be given a realist explanation by understanding names of moral properties as descriptive names of natural properties.

scholarly journals The characteristics of the entrepreneur: the contrasts of the Cuban and Mexican case

2019 ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Teresa Cruz-Cordero ◽  
Antonieta Hernández-de Lira ◽  
Judith Esperanza Ramírez-Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impact ◽  
Management Team ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Cultural Aspect ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

The current environment requires the company to be aware of it with commitment. Correspondence must be taken into account of the way in which work is done with emphasis on skills to enhance the management team and its management actor, which is of interest in virtually all countries of the world, its economic impact and the occupation individuals are significant, the cultural aspect permeates in the practice of it, and therefore in the results it generates. The objective of the study is to spread the distinctive characteristics of the entrepreneur in two different contexts, Cuban and Mexican, influenced by the elements of cultural dynamics. The inputs of various authors were analyzed and the results are mainly based on the analysis on the basis of agreed criteria for the collection of information through the application of a survey that includes some key elements in the management. Finally, it is concluded that in both nations there are common features in the individual aspects, however, the prevailing culture is considerably unequal, and the effects on the leadership function differ.

Editor’s Introduction: The View from Erewhon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinch Hoekstra
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Language Play ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Properties

Kinch Hoekstra’s introduction to Philip Pettit’s The Birth of Ethics adumbrates the themes of the work with reference to earlier attempts to provide naturalistic accounts of or challenges to morality. For Pettit, moral properties are really in the world, and yet are the product of patterns of human interaction and conventions to promote interests; his theory is thus both a kind of moral realism and a kind of moral conventionalism. Self-interest and language play central roles in Pettit’s hypothetical account of the genealogy of ethics, and a sketch is accordingly provided of the disagreement between Pettit and Michael Tomasello, which focuses on those roles.

Meta-Ethics

2020 ◽  
pp. 264-278
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Objective Property ◽  
The Way ◽  
Moral Facts

Moore’s arguments begin a debate that revives sentimentalist and rationalist arguments. According to Moore, ‘good’ is indefinable, because there is no definition of it that mentions only ‘natural’ properties. Non-naturalist objectivists argue that we know about objective moral properties, but not in the way we know about other properties. Non-cognitivists argue that goodness is not an objective property at all; when we say that something is good, we are not stating a fact about it, but expressing an emotion, or issuing some prescription. Even if objectivism is correct about the meaning of moral judgments, we may still deny that any moral judgments are true, on the ground that we have no reason to believe that there are any moral facts of the sort that objectivists claim to describe. Further discussion of these arguments against objectivism requires closer attention to the difference between moral concepts and moral properties.

Moral Naturalism and Nonnaturalism

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Crisp
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moral Naturalism ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Natural Will ◽  
Naturalistic Account

Understood broadly, the debate between naturalists and nonnaturalists in ethics concerns the question of how morality, and in particular moral value, is related to the natural world. In contemporary philosophy, this is usually seen as primarily a metaphysical issue, though in the past the term “nonnaturalism” was sometimes applied to intuitionist positions in epistemology. Moral naturalists can be divided into two categories, realist and nonrealist. Realist naturalists believe that moral properties are a subset of natural properties, or are in some sense identical with or constituted by such properties. Nonrealist naturalists believe that although we can speak of moral properties, those properties are not themselves real in the way that natural properties are: their attribution may be the result of, say, our expressing certain attitudes we have, rather than our detecting certain properties “out there” in the world. This nonrealist view can still be described as a form of moral naturalism, since it seeks a naturalistic account of morality. However the metaphysical debate is understood, some account of what it is for a property to be natural will be required. This debate continues, but one position, influenced by G. E. Moore, identifies the natural properties in some way with those properties that feature in scientific explanations, or that are in some sense reducible to or constructible from such properties. That of course raises the question of what counts as a science. The term “naturalism” is also often used to refer to theories, usually neo-Aristotelian, according to which value is bound up with human nature.

Realism, Naturalism, and Moral Semantics

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
David O. Brink
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Direct Reference ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Open Question Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Open Question

The prospects for moral realism and ethical naturalism have been important parts of recent debates within metaethics. As a first approximation,moral realismis the claim that there are facts or truths about moral matters that are objective in the sense that they obtain independently of the moral beliefs or attitudes of appraisers.Ethical naturalismis the claim that moral properties of people, actions, and institutions are natural, rather than occult or supernatural, features of the world. Though these metaethical debates remain unsettled, several people, myself included, have tried to defend the plausibility of both moral realism and ethical naturalism. I, among others, have appealed to recent work in the philosophy of language—in particular, to so-called theories of “direct reference” —to defend ethical naturalism against a variety of semantic worries, including G. E. Moore's “open question argument.” In response to these arguments, critics have expressed doubts about the compatibility of moral realism and direct reference. In this essay, I explain these doubts, and then sketch the beginnings of an answer—but understanding both the doubts and my answer requires some intellectual background.

Moral Facts and Best Explanations

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Explanatory Relevance ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Explanations ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Gilbert Harman ◽  
Moral Facts

Do moral properties figure in the best explanatory account of the world? According to a popular realist argument, if they do, then they earn their ontological rights, for only properties that figure in the best explanation of experience arerealproperties. Although this realist strategy has been widely influential—not just in metaethics, but also in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science—no one has actually made the case that moral realism requires: namely, that moral facts really will figure in the best explanatory picture of the world. This issue may have been neglected in part because the influential dialectic on moral explanations between philosophers Gilbert Harman and Nicholas Sturgeon has focused debate on whether moral facts figure inrelevantexplanations. Yet as others have noted, explanatory relevance isirrelevantwhen it comes to realism: after all, according to the popular realist argument, it is inference to the best explanation of experience that is supposed to confer ontological rights. I propose to ask, then, the relevant question about moral explanations: should we think that moral properties will figure in the best explanatory account of the world?

Telling Tales about the King

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-94
Author(s):  
Christopher de Lisle
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
General Truth ◽  
The Way

Α‎necdotes about Agathokles in our literary sources were told because they were thought to illuminate his character or a general truth about the world and indicate how he was fitted into the broader dialogue on autocracy and power. There is a clash between the characterization of Agathokles as an effective military leader and as a monstrous tyrant, resulting from the nature of the lost historical narratives and from the way Agathokles was used by subsequent interlocutors: his successors in Sicily, the Romans, and authors looking for exempla. Many of the anecdotes are shared with mythical figures, mainland Greek and Sicilian tyrants, Hellenistic kings, and non-Greek rulers. The distinction between different types of autocrat was less important in ancient Greek and Latin discourse than their common features.

Four Epistemological Challenges to Ethical Naturalism: Naturalized Epistemology and the First-Person Perspective

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 30-74
Author(s):  
David Copp
Keyword(s):  
A Posteriori ◽  
Natural Property ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Psychological Property ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Moral Properties

Ethical naturalism is the doctrine that moral properties, such as moral goodness, justice, rightness, wrongness, and the like, are among the “natural” properties that things can have. It is the doctrine that moral properties are “natural” and that morality is in this sense an aspect of “nature.” Accordingly, it is a view about the semantics and metaphysics of moral discourse. For example, a utilitarian naturalist might propose that wrongness is the property an action could have of being such as to undermine overall happiness, where happiness is taken to be a psychological property. Unfortunately, it is unclear what the naturalist means by a “natural” property. For my purposes in this paper, I shall assume that natural properties are such that our knowledge of them is fundamentally empirical, grounded in observation. More precisely, a property is “natural” just in case any synthetic proposition about its instantiation can be known only a posteriori, or with the aid of experience.

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