Resisting Reductive Realism

Ethicists struggle to take reductive views seriously. Influential proponents of reductive views themselves admit as much. Ethicists also have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures. Understanding why ethicists resist reductive views and why ethicists have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures shores up new evidence for various theses about the distinctiveness of our use of normative concepts. This chapter builds on previous work to make a cumulative case for the view that what it is to use a normative concept is to use an unanalyzable natural-cognitive concept that is related to noncognitive elements of our psychology.

Non-Reductive Realism, Primitivism, and the Reduction Argument: Commentary on Bart Streumer, Unbelievable Errors

In Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer defends the error theory by rejecting all competitors to it. My aim here is to defend one brand of realism from Streumer’s objections: primitivim. The primitivist holds that there exist sui generis normative properties that do not supervene on any descriptive properties. It is argued that Streumer’s objections to primitivism can be met.

Willing Belief

In Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer offers resourceful arguments against each of non-reductive realism, reductive realism, and non-cognitivism, in order to motivate his version of the normative error theory, according to which normative predicates ascribe properties that do not exist. In this contribution, I argue that none of the steps of this master argument succeed, and that Streumer’s arguments leave puzzles about what it means to ascribe a property at all.

Defending the Moral/Epistemic Parity

Do irreducible moral and epistemic facts stand or fall together? In his critical engagement with Cuneo’s The Normative Web, Chris Heathwood maintains that they do not. Appealing to a version of the Open Question Argument, Heathwood argues that while reductionism in the moral domain is not feasible, it is so in the epistemic domain. Heathwood presents non-reductive realists with what appears to be a difficult choice: give up on either The Normative Web’s argument for non-reductive realism or the Open Question Argument. In this chapter, it is contended that non-reductive realists do not face this difficult choice. Central to the case is the claim that, while analyzing epistemic concepts in terms of descriptive ones has its attractions, it is considerably more challenging than Heathwood maintains. Some wider lessons are drawn by identifying the difficulties that face those who wish to defend a broadly reductive view of the epistemic domain.

Further Versions of the Reduction Argument

This chapter gives a second and third version of the reduction argument against non-reductive realism. It notes that the second version of the argument does not appeal to (S) or to any other claim about supervenience. It argues that the reduction argument also applies to normative relations, such as the relation of being a reason for and the relation of resultance. It argues that the reduction argument does not support rampant reductionism. And it offers three explanations of why non-reductive realists often remain unmoved by the argument. The chapter concludes that if there are normative properties, these properties are identical to descriptive properties.

The Reduction Argument

This chapter gives a first version of the reduction argument against non-reductive realism. It explains the criterion of property identity that this argument appeals to, and argues that this criterion is correct. The chapter then argues that non-reductive realists cannot resist the reduction argument by appealing to Leibniz’s law, by claiming that irreducibly normative properties are indispensable to deliberation, or by rejecting the claim about supervenience that the argument appeals to. The chapter ends by discussing several objections to the descriptive predicate that this version of the reduction argument makes use of. It concludes that these objections fail to undermine the argument.

Objections, Rejection, Revision

This chapter considers six objections to the error theory. It argues if we cannot believe the error theory, these objections fail. It then asks whether opponents of the error theory can resist the book’s arguments by rejecting the claims that played a central role in these arguments. It argues that our inability to believe the error theory may make this seem legitimate, but that it is actually illegitimate. The chapter also considers and rejects several challenges to the role that these claims play in the book’s arguments. It ends by arguing that if we cannot believe the error theory, non-cognitivism, reductive realism, and fictionalism cannot be defended as revisionary alternatives to the error theory.

Normative Judgements and Properties

This chapter first characterizes normative judgements, normative properties, and descriptive properties. It notes that these characterizations are compatible with different views about what makes a judgement or property normative. It then describes the four main views about normative judgements and properties: non-reductive realism, reductive realism, non-cognitivism, and the error theory. It also briefly describes some other views about these judgements and properties: cognitivist expressivism, descriptive fictionalism, constructivism, constitutivism, and quietism. The chapter then lists three claims that will play a central role in the book’s arguments, and briefly explains the role these claims will play in these arguments. It ends by suggesting different ways to read the book.