Moral Naturalism and the Normative Question

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 139-173
Author(s):  
Susan E. Babbitt
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Normative Question ◽  
Moral Naturalism ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Normative Question

Moral naturalism, as I use the term here, is the view that there are moral facts in the natural world – facts that are both natural and normative – and that moral claims are true or false in virtue of their corresponding or not to these natural facts. Moral naturalists argue that, since moral claims are about natural facts, we can establish the truth about moral claims through empirical investigation. Moral knowledge, on this view, is a form of empirical knowledge.One objection to this metaethical view is that even if moral naturalists are correct in their claims about truth, they cannot answer the question of normativity. Jean Hampton, for instance, argues that it is not enough to explain the conduct's wrongness by showing it to be a property that necessarily supervenes on natural properties. For nothing in this analysis explains the relationship between these properties and us. The question is why should people care about these properties. Christine Korsgaard claims that moral realists take the normative question to be one about truth and knowledge.

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.

A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.

Spaces of Consumption in American Literary Realism

2019 ◽  
pp. 391-410
Author(s):  
Gary Totten
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Strategies

This chapter discusses how consumer culture affects the depiction and meaning of the natural world in the work of American realist writers. These writers illuminate the relationship between natural environments and the social expectations of consumer culture and reveal how such expectations transform natural space into what Henri Lefebvre terms “social space” implicated in the processes and power dynamics of production and consumption. The representation of nature as social space in realist works demonstrates the range of consequences such space holds for characters. Such space can both empower and oppress individuals, and rejecting or embracing it can deepen moral resolve, prompt a crisis of self, or result in one’s death. Characters’ attempts to escape social space and consumer culture also provide readers with new strategies for coping with their effects.

Hidden Places: Hyper-realism in Björk’s Vespertine and Dancer in the Dark

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL M. GRIMLEY
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
Theoretical Context ◽  
Lars Von Trier ◽  
The Relationship

Björk’s collaboration with the director Lars von Trier on the film Dancer in the Dark was marked by well-publicized personal and aesthetic differences. Their work nevertheless shares an intense preoccupation with the nature and quality of sound. Björk’s soundtrack systematically explores the boundaries between music and noise, and the title of von Trier’s film itself presupposes a heightened attention to aural detail. This paper proposes a theoretical context for understanding Björk’s music in the light of her work with von Trier. Whereas Björk’s soundtrack responds to the visual and narrative stimuli of von Trier’s film, the use of sound in her album Vespertine thematicizes more familiar Björk subjects: the relationship between music, landscape and the natural world, and Björk’s own (constructed) sense of Nordic musical identity. By placing Vespertine alongside Björk’s music for Dancer in the Dark, the sense of ‘hyperreality’ that defines both also emerges as a primary characteristic of her work.

A Reading of Westcott's Gospel of Creation: An Early Venture into Ecological Theology?

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
Duncan Reid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ecological Theology ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

AbstractIn response to the contemporary ecological movement, ecological perspectives have become a significant theme in the theology of creation. This paper asks whether antecedents to this growing significance might predate the concerns of our times and be discernible within the diverse interests of nineteenth-century Anglican thinking. The means used here to examine this possibility is a close reading of B. F. Westcott's ‘Gospel of Creation’. This will be contextualized in two directions: first with reference to the understanding of the natural world in nineteenth-century English popular thought, and secondly with reference to the approach taken to the doctrine of creation by three late twentieth-century Anglican writers, two concerned with the relationship between science and theology in general, and a third concerned more specifically with ecology.

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