On one way of talking about a traditional metaethical topic, realists accept that some items appear on the list of what exists in the moral or more broadly normative domain of inquiry. They then divide over whether those items are like what science and experience suggest that all other items on the list of what exists across all domains are like – naturalistic and secular. Reductive naturalists answer this further question affirmatively. Why don’t nonnaturalists? I explore the answer that it’s (...) because normative entities are “just too different” in the sense that they are countably different things. However, I argue that this answer rests on the subtle presupposition that the normative domain doesn’t also contain uncountable entities of the sort that analytic metaphysicians call “stuff”. Taking intuitions of difference seriously points the way to a novel form of metaethical reductive naturalism. The key is to identify the stuff that matters. (shrink)

The past few decades have witnessed an extraordinary revival of interest in metanormative non-naturalism. Despite this interest, it is still unclear how to understand the distinctive metaphysical commitments of this view. We illustrate the relevant difficulties by examining what is arguably the most prominent class of contemporary attempts to formulate non-naturalism’s metaphysical commitments. This class of proposals, exemplified in work by Gideon Rosen and Stephanie Leary, characterizes the distinctive metaphysical commitments of non-naturalism in terms of metaphysical grounding and essence. We (...) argue that these proposals overgeneralize: they either misclassify intuitively naturalistic hypotheses about the metaphysics of normativity as “non-naturalist”, or misclassify hypotheses in other areas of metaphysics. We argue that this problem stems from features of grounding itself. We suggest a more promising alternative for formulating non-naturalism, which revolves around the notion of objective similarity between classes of properties. We conclude by drawing some general lessons for inquiry about the metaphysics of normativity, and about metaphysics in general. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize the most prevalent positive argument for ethical nonnaturalism, the argument from ethical phenomenology. According to it, nonnatural entities are part of the best explanation of the phenomenology of ethical deliberation; therefore, nonnaturalism is true. -/- The argument from ethical phenomenology blinds out the external, empirically informed perspective on ethical deliberation. I argue that this is unwarranted for general methodological reasons: When starting to investigate any mental process — such as ethical deliberation — it is reasonable (...) to take into account, and try to reconcile, both the internal and the external perspective on the process. This renders the argument from ethical phenomenology methodologically flawed. The problem could be avoided if we already knew, somehow, that external evidence is irrelevant for the nature of ethical entities. Many nonnaturalists believe in this irrelevance because they take ethics to be "autonomous", "just too different", or the like. But the autonomy of ethics must itself be justified in a way that does not solely rely on internal insights — or else we are going in circles. I conclude that solely phenomenology-based arguments for nonnaturalism fail for methodological reasons. Consequently, nonnaturalists need to change their strategies and actively embrace the external perspective. (shrink)

Normative naturalism is primarily a metaphysical doctrine: there are normative facts and properties, and these fall into the class of natural facts and properties. Many objections to naturalism rely on additional assumptions about language or thought, but often without adequate consideration of just how normative properties would have to figure in our thought and talk if naturalism were true. In the first part of the paper, I explain why naturalists needn’t think that normative properties can be represented or ascribed in (...) wholly non-normative terms. If so, certain prominent objections to normative naturalism fail. In the second part, I consider the objection that normative properties are “just too different” from (other) natural properties to themselves be natural properties. I argue that naturalists have no distinctive trouble making sense of thought and talk involving forms of “genuine” or “authoritative” normativity which can drive a non-question-begging form of the objection. (shrink)

Here, I consider Derek Parfit’s Normativity Objection to naturalist realism, according to which normative-natural property or fact reductions are “conceptually excluded”. While a lot of philosophers inclined toward non-naturalism share this view or something close to it, plenty of philosophers remain unconvinced, and the literature offers little guidance to the perplexed. I suggest a way to improve the argument – indeed, I think it is the best and perhaps only plausible way to make good on the claim of conceptual exclusion. (...) But the improved argument relies on the highly controversial claim that normative cognition is transparentin the following sense: normative concepts reveal the nature of the properties they aim to ascribe. This nature, the argument continues, is inconsistent with naturalist strictures. (shrink)