AAP2010 Abstracts
Use the form below to search abstracts by Author, Institue or Keyword.
| Title | Dr. |
| First Name | Tristram |
| Surname | McPherson |
| Institution | UNiversity of Minnesota Dulut |
| Title of Paper | Explaining Practical Normativity |
| Select a Stream | Meta-ethics |
| Abstract | Ethical non-naturalists sometimes complain that their naturalist competitors cannot adequately explain the normativity of moral or more broadly practical norms. In this paper, I examine this complaint. I first locate the type of normativity at issue. I then argue that the non-naturalist’s central commitments in the metaphysics of the normative both undercuts the intuitive force of their explanatory complaint, and suggests a way that the naturalist might ultimately be able to meet it. First, the force of their explanatory complaint is undercut because non-naturalism is ultimately a kind of mysterian thesis about normativity. Second, the naturalist can exploit dialectical common ground: the fact that both naturalists and non-naturalists agree that a certain natural properties play a central role in explaining what we ought to do. The naturalist can thus seek to identify normative properties with these, admittedly explanatory, natural properties. I also argue that we should understand the explanatory demand on metanormative theories in comparative terms. This comparative form of the demand raises additional problems for the non-naturalist, and suggests further grounds for optimism that a naturalist realist about morality or practical normativity will ultimately be able to meet an appropriately modest form of this demand. I then note that non-naturalists are often radical pluralists or particularists about the structure of normative ethics. The truth of this sort of pluralism would serve as a significant barrier to the sort of naturalist strategy proposed here. This point suggests a perhaps surprising way in which the resolution of this central metanormative debate may rest in part on substantive normative questions. |
