What is it that we are doing when we make ethical claims and judgments, such as the claim that we morally ought to assist refugees? This dissertation introduces and defends a novel theory of ethical thought and discourse. I begin by identifying the surface features of ethical thought and discourse to be explained, including the realist and cognitivist (i.e. belief-like) appearance of ethical judgments, and the apparent close connection between making a sincere ethical judgment and being motivated to act on (...) it. I examine prominent attempts to explain these features, with a focus on recent ‘hybrid’ theories combining elements of expressivism and cognitivism. Despite their initial promise, I argue that extant hybrid theories are nevertheless committed to problematic semantic, metasemantic, or pragmatic assumptions. I then discuss what I take to be the strongest existing option, ethical neo-expressivism (Bar-On and Chrisman, 2009; Bar-On, Chrisman, and Sias, 2014), and develop it into an explicitly hybrid theory proposing that ethical judgments incorporate both motivationally-charged affective states and moral beliefs. I then supplement this account with a theory of the proper function (following Millikan, 1984) of ethical claims and judgments, arguing that they function simultaneously to track the morally salient features of social situations, and to coordinate our behavior around these features. Finally, I defend one of the cognitivist commitments of the theory – namely, that objective moral knowledge is possible – by applying recent work on the epistemology of fundamental or ‘core’ intellectual commitments (Lynch, 2012; Pritchard, 2016) to the moral realm. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument to defend the normativity of meaning, specifically the thesis that there are no meanings without norms. The argument starts from the observation inferentialists have emphasized that incompatibility relations between sentences are a necessary part of meaning as it is understood. We motivate this approach by showing that the standard normativist strategy in the literature, which is developed in terms of veridical reference that may swing free from the speaker’s understanding, violates the ought-implies-can principle, but (...) ours does not. In addition, our approach is superior because, unlike the representationalist approach, it can be extended from declarative sentences to non-representational uses of language. In this paper, however, we only formulate the argument for the base case that involves incompatibility relations between declarative sentences. The goal is not to derive norms from something that is not normative, but to explicate the distinctive type of normativity that is built into meaning as it is understood by language-users. The explication proceeds in two steps. (1) For any sentence s a speaker understands, there is an incompatible sentence s’ the speaker understands to be incompatible with s. (2) In virtue of understanding this incompatibility of meanings, she ought not to be committed to both s and s’. This prohibition is not derived from instrumental practical reason, nor is it based on representational correctness, but its source is the incompatibility of meanings. (shrink)

There are important similarities between moral thought and talk and thought and talk about gender: disagreements about gender, like disagreements about morality, seem to be intractable and to outstrip descriptive agreement; and it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be a woman in terms of particular social, biological, or other descriptive features, just as it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be good or right in terms of any set of (...) descriptive properties. These similarities give us reason to investigate the idea that, like moral thought and talk, gender thought and talk is inherently normative. This paper proposes a normative account of gender thought and talk in terms of fitting treatment. On this fitting treatment account, to judge that A is gender G is just to judge that it is fitting to treat A as a G. This account is a descriptive or hermeneutical account of our gender thought and talk rather than an ameliorative account of our gender concepts or a metaphysical account of gender properties in social metaphysics. This paper argues that other descriptive accounts of gender thought and talk face problems that the fitting treatment account overcomes. (shrink)

This paper attempts to determine what laws’ most fundamental normative property is for Plato. After examining the Hippias Major and the pseudo-Platonic Minos, I argue that in the Laws this property is correctness (orthotês) which is understood as maximizing the citizens’ happiness. I argue that laws failing to do so are defective as laws because they’re not partially grounded in the relevant ethical facts and that Plato is thus a natural law theorist. The last section provides further justification for the (...) claim that laws failing the correctness criterion are defective as laws by appealing to Plato’s understanding of practical rationality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper addresses a central positive claim in Matti Eklund’s Choosing Normative Concepts: that a certain kind of metaphysically ambitious realist about normativity – the ardent realist – is committed to the metasemantic idea that the distinctive inferential role of normative concepts suffices to fix the extension of those concepts. I argue first that commitment to this sort of inferential role metasemantic view does nothing to secure ardent realism. I then show how the ardent realist can address Eklund’s leading (...) challenge without appeal to distinctively metasemantic commitments. (shrink)

Having an etiological function to F is sufficient to have a competence to F. Having an etiological function to reliably F is sufficient to have a reliable competence, a competence to reliably F. Epistemic warrant consists in the normal functioning of the belief-forming process when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function. Epistemic warrant requires reliable competence. Warrant divides into two grades. The first consists in normal functioning, when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as (...) an etiological function, so that it reliably produces true beliefs when in normal conditions, but need not be in normal conditions. The second grade requires the first, and presence in normal conditions, so that the chance of true belief is high. Why is warrant normative? Because when reliably forming true beliefs is a function, both grades meet evaluative norms that follow from that function. The paper ends by comparing Tyler Burge’s answer to this question from "Perceptual Entitlement" and "Entitlement: The Basis of Empirical Warrant". It is argued that Burge’s answer implausibly presupposes that all belief-forming processes—not just those with forming reliably true beliefs as an etiological function—should form reliably true beliefs. (shrink)

This paper addresses a central positive claim in Matti Eklund’s Choosing Normative Concepts: that a certain kind of metaphysically ambitious realist about normativity – the ardent realist – is committed to the metasemantic idea that the distinctive inferential role of normative concepts suffices to fix the extension of those concepts. I argue first that commitment to this sort of inferential role metasemantic view does nothing to secure ardent realism. I then show how the ardent realist can address Eklund’s leading challenge (...) without appeal to distinctively metasemantic commitments. (shrink)

When someone does something for a reason, what are the reasons for which she does what she does? What is her ‘motivating reason’, as it is sometimes put? The simple answer is: it depends on what is meant by ‘motivating reason’. Non-Psychologists hold that motivating reasons are what the agent believes. I have shown that given that we understand ‘motivating reasons’ as what I term 'grounds', this is quite correct, as what we believe is what plays the role of a (...) ground. However, we have to be careful not to confuse the role of a ground and the role of an explanans. For the conflation of those two roles can occlude the truth in Non-Psychologism. What the Non-Psychologist about Grounds should say is that what plays the role of an explanans, when someone acts on a ground, is a motivation-fact. She should also say that there are two kinds of motivation-facts: those that include normative reasons and those that do not. (shrink)

Realism criticizes the idea, central to what may be called ‘the priority view’, that philosophy has the task of imposing from the outside general norms of morality or standards of reasonableness on politics understood as the domain of power. According to realism, political philosophy must reveal the specific standards internal to the political practice of handling power appropriately and as it develops in actual circumstances. Framed in those terms, the debate evokes the idea that political power itself is lacking normativity (...) until such time as norms are devised that govern its use. In contrast, this essay identifies a normative dimension internal to power. Power depends on recognition and support in the form of belief. This dependence explains how an interest in power introduces a responsiveness to normative considerations into the domain of politics. (shrink)

A successful account of the ‘normativity of law’ is meant to inter alia establish how legal requirements come to be morally binding. This question presupposes taking a stance on the metaethical debate about the nature of morality and moral bindingness between the cognitivist and non-cognitivist camps. An overwhelming majority of contemporary legal philosophers have an unspoken adherence to a cognitivist metaethic and the model of normativity of law emerging from it: the impinging model. Consequently, the problematic of the normativity of (...) law is so calibrated as to in limine rule out any putative account of the normativity of law that presupposes a non-cognitivist metaethic: the projectivist model. This paper calls for a recalibration of the problematic of the normativity of law to a metaethically aseptic viewpoint from which the projectivist model is seen as a plausible theoretical contender to the impinging model. It also sets out the philosophical underpinnings of the projectivist model and contrasts it... (shrink)

Every normative claim is faced with the questions of how and why we should accept it. Jonathan Weinberg et al. think there is no good answer to these questions and call this the "normativity problem." I argue that if we try to posit that there is a problem of normativity, then logically we will fall into circularity – even if these questions of normativity do not have any answer. But there is still a problem that emerges in conflict resolution between (...) normative issues. To avoid circularity, I formulate this problem and call it the "revised problem of normativity." Next, I enumerate and assess probable responses to this revised edition of the problem. Finally, I defend "basic normative issue(s)" as the only valid solution to the revised problem as well as the possibility of a scientific surveyability of it (them). (shrink)

Recent decades are marked by the upswing of the use of the term “normativity“ not only in philosophical discussions, but increasingly also within reports of empirical scientists. This may invoke the question how far these developments overlap and in how far they go past each other. A significant overlap might lead to an interesting coalescence of the two approaches to norms, which may provide for a ”naturalization” of some philosophical speculations about normativity, putting them on a firmer foundation, while offering (...) the empirical scientists some new impulses for directing their research. In this paper I give an overview of some recent empirical results concerning human normativity and I point out a certain philosophical tradition, rooted especially in the works of Wittgenstein, Sellars and Brandom, which treats normativity so that it becomes more or less compatible with these results. (shrink)

The question ‘Why be rational?’ could be calling into question a commitment to respond to the requirements of subjective rationality, or could be calling into question a commitment to respond to objective reasons. I examine the question in this second sense, placing it in the mouth of the arationalist — an individual who has not ruled out the possibility of not acting or believing on the basis of objective reasons. In evaluating responses to the arationalist’s question, I consider the replies (...) of three philosophers, where these exemplify a shared conceptual strategy: to claim that reasons-responsiveness is self-justifying. I argue that each reply fails, and that the overall strategy is not only dialectically ineffective against the arationalist but is also ineffective even for the goal of reassuring those already committed to reasons-responsiveness. The question ‘Why be rational?’ is yet to be answered, and so a commitment to respond to objective reasons is ungrounded. (shrink)

This essay challenges widespread talk about morality's ‘normativity’. My principal target is not any specific claim or thesis in the burgeoning literature on ‘normativity’, however. Rather, I aim to discourage the use of the word among moral philosophers altogether and to reject a claim to intradisciplinary authority that is both reflected in and reinforced by the role the word has come to play in the discipline. My hope is to persuade other philosophers who, like me, persist in being interested in (...) long-standing questions about our morals to be considerably more suspicious about the word's actual value for us and to see those studying ‘normativity’ itself as having little to offer us when it comes to posing our questions about morals and debating the answers to them. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with a core commitment of logical conventionalism: that we impose a logic on ourselves by adopting general linguistic conventions governing our use of logical terms, thereby determining the meanings of the logical constants and which of our inferences are valid. Drawing on Kripke’s ‘adoption problem’, I argue that general logical principles cannot be adopted, either explicitly or implicitly. I go on to argue that the meanings of our logical terms, and the validity of our (...) inferences, cannot depend on our adoption of logico-linguistic conventions. (shrink)

Although Amy Allen’s critique of contemporary Frankfurt School critical theory has been widely discussed, her concern for an adequate conceptualization of reason’s intertwinement with power has not received the attention it deserves. The article shows that the diagnosis of a too idealistic account of reason forms the backbone of Allen’s charges against Habermas, Honneth and Forst, before it discusses her criteria for an adequate conceptualization of the intertwinement of reason and power. It demonstrates that Allen’s attempt to formulate such a (...) conceptualization falls short of two of her own criteria, namely the basic commitments of essentially impure reason and radical self-reflexivity. Taking seriously Allen’s proposal for a radical self-reflexive genealogical critique would force her to question the very terms in which she formulates her critique of critical theory, namely the search for “normative foundations,” and the article sketches a way for doing so. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Imre Lakatos’s account on the relation between the history and the philosophy of science, if properly understood and also if properly modified, can be valuable for the philosophical comprehension of the relation between the history and the philosophy of science. The paper is divided into three main parts. In the first part, I provide a charitable exegesis of the Lakatosian conception of the history of science in order to show that Lakatos’s history cannot be (...) a caricature. In the second part, I describe what I believe are the real problems of Lakatos’s account on a metaphysical and on a methodological level. In order to address these problems, I take advantage of the recent critique of the so-called “confrontation model”. Finally, in the third part, I suggest that a proper modification of Lakatos’s perspective can resolve the aforementioned problems without distorting Lakatos’s central aspiration, which is that the philosophical theories of scientific rationality can be assessed with the help of the history of science without losing their normative content. (shrink)

I defend the relatively orthodox view that reasons for action are premises in good practical reasoning, against recent counterexamples that suggest that, like “government house” moral justifications, some reasons are to be ignored in deliberation. I also explain, positively, what is right about the orthodoxy. Unless reasons are premises in good practical reasoning, reasons cannot be normative in the way they are usually taken to be, and relatedly, are unfit to play certain familiar theoretical and related everyday roles that give (...) many appeals to reasons their distinctive point. (shrink)

Metaethical non-naturalists maintain that normative or evaluative properties cannot be reduced to, or otherwise explained in terms of, natural properties. They thus have difficulty explaining what these irreducibly normative properties are supposed to be, other than by saying what they are not. I offer a partial, positive characterization of irreducible normativity in naturalistic terms. At a first pass, it is this: that to attribute a normative property to something is necessarily to commend or condemn that thing, due to the nature (...) of the property attributed. This theory characterizes normativity in terms of the natural phenomenon of performing certain familiar speech acts. The hypothesis does other explanatory work as well: it provides for an account of the "queerness" of normative properties, one superior to other accounts; it explains why metaethical reductionism is bound to fail, in a way friendly to non-naturalism (as opposed to non-cognitivism); and it can help deflect arguments against non-naturalism from the "essential practicality" of normativity. (shrink)

Review Essay of Stephen P. Turner, Explaining the Normative, 2010.

I consider the ‘normative relevance’ argument and the idea of grounding. I diagnose why there appears to be a tension between the conclusion that we are tempted to reach and the intuition that the normative is grounded in or by the non‐normative. Much of what I say turns on the idea of the normative itself. In short, I think that concentrating on this idea can help us see how the tension arises. My aim is to encourage people to reconceptualize the (...) debate so as to begin to offer additional insight. To that end, I spend some time contrasting normativity with evaluation, and then think how the debate may alter if we run it with the latter. I doubt that doing so will solve any problem, and I suspect that what I say will be controversial anyway. But there is some value to changing matters nonetheless. The idea that runs through this paper is that the whole issue is so complex and deep that we should not narrowly construe it with reference only to normativity. (shrink)

Consider normative properties and facts, such as facts consisting in something's being what you ought to do, or the property of being morally wrong. Normative naturalism is the view that normative properties and facts such as these exist, and that they are natural properties and facts. Some suspect, however, that normativity is incompatible with a wholly naturalistic worldview: that the normative couldn't be natural because it's somehow “just too different” from the natural. I critically examine recent forms of this “just (...) too different” objection to normative naturalism, with a view to making the debate accessible to a general philosophical audience. (shrink)

Representing a spectrum of intellectual concerns and methodological commitments in religious ethics, the contributors to this focus issue consider and assess the advantages and disadvantages of the shift in recent comparative religious ethics away from a rootedness in moral theory toward a model that privileges the ethnography of moral worlds. In their own way, all of the contributors think through and emphasize the meaning, importance, and place of normativity in recent comparative religious ethics.

Norms—that is, specifications of what we ought to do—play a critical role in the study of informal argumentation, as they do in studies of judgment, decision-making and reasoning more generally. Specifically, they guide a recurring theme: are people rational? Though rules and standards have been central to the study of reasoning, and behavior more generally, there has been little discussion within psychology about why (or indeed if) they should be considered normative despite the considerable philosophical literature that bears on this (...) topic. In the current paper, we ask what makes something a norm, with consideration both of norms in general and a specific example: norms for informal argumentation. We conclude that it is both possible and desirable to invoke norms for rational argument, and that a Bayesian approach provides solid normative principles with which to do so. (shrink)