Abstract
This paper applies the theory of teleosemantics to the issue of moral content. Two versions of teleosemantics are distinguished: input-based and output-based. It is argued that applying either to the case of moral judgements generates the conclusion that such judgements have both descriptive (belief-like) and directive (desire-like) content, intimately entwined. This conclusion directly validates neither descriptivism nor expressivism, but the application of teleosemantics to moral content does leave the descriptivist with explanatory challenges which the expressivist does not face. Since teleosemantics ties content to function, the paper also offers an account of the evolutionary function of moral judgements.
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Notes
Terminology from Millikan (1995).
This is a simplification: see Neander (2006).
Note that, although input-based and output-based teleosemanticists disagree about the precise way in which function generates representational content, they will tend to agree about the mechanisms at work in actual cases of representation. In particular, the input-based teleosemanticist will accept that which worldly feature a system has the function of indicating is determined by how the system is used by its consumers and an output-based teleosemanticist will accept that the way in which a representational system fulfils its function of successfully guiding consumer mechanisms is by indicating some worldly feature. I distinguish the views here both because it is common to do so and, more importantly, because it is not obvious that TS1 and TS2 generate the same content when applied to particular cases, such as the case of moral judgements.
Machery and Mallon (2010) elucidate arguments for thinking that the capacity to make normative judgements is an adaptation, but deny that these arguments transfer to the moral case, given a ‘thick’ understanding of moral judgements. My position is consistent with these arguments since my understanding of moral judgements is ‘thin’—that is, identical with Machery and Mallon’s understanding of normative judgements. Note also that, in any case, my arguments do not require that the function at stake is evolutionary, since the notion of ‘function’ involved in teleosemantics is liberal, applying equally well where the selection process works through mechanisms other than natural selection, such as social learning and transmission (see Macdonald and Papineau 2006: 12–16).
One may doubt that the following account of the function of morality does justice to a diverse phenomenon, in particular it seems to provide a more natural explanation of judgements of fairness and reciprocity than more self-directed judgements of courageousness and self-respect. There are two possible replies. (1) Accept the diversity and read what follows as applying only to that narrow range of moral judgements for which the evolutionary sketch offered here is plausible. This does not affect the impact of my arguments on the debate between expressivism and descriptivism, since, as usually offered, these aim to be accounts of all moral judgements. (2) Deny that the apparent diversity demonstrates a disunity of function, since it is perfectly possible that different types of judgement help towards the fulfilment of a common function through fulfilling different derived functions (in just the same way that the different members of a football team have different derived functions even though every member of the team has been selected to help win the game).
It is this step which plausibly distinguishes the co-ordinating needs of complex social animals, such as humans, from those of other animals, such as wolves, who need to co-ordinate their actions when hunting (for example).
For a formal account see Boyd and Richerson (1992).
Of course, the issue of human cloning is not an evolutionary bargaining problem, but it is an issue over which agreement has a potential to lead to mutual benefit (in terms of increased desire satisfaction) and over which disagreement has a potential to lead to mutual disadvantage.
As, of course, are systems of etiquette, such as those pertaining to the proper use of cutlery. The difference, it seems to me, is that systems of etiquette are arbitrary and open to less negotiation. We could, without criticism, quite easily have agreed to use our cutlery in a different way to the way we actually do (or are supposed to), but now that we have the system we do, that is sufficient justification to preserve it (‘that’s just the way we do things around here’).
Some might worry that the account of the function of moral judgements offered here begs the question in favour of expressivism. In particular, realist versions of descriptivism will claim that the function of moral judgements is to indicate the presence of moral properties. But insofar as this claim purports to be a scientific explanation of the moral habit, it fares badly against the account offered here. First, it is less parsimonious. Second, it provides no clear account of how this ‘tracking’ of moral properties truth might have aided reproductive success, and thus be selected for. See Street (2006: 125–34) for similar arguments against related ‘tracking’ accounts and Enoch (2010) for further discussion.
Note the similarity with Stevenson’s (1944: 26) ‘working model’ of an analysis of wrongness as ‘I disapprove of this: do so as well!’. There may seem some oddity in wanting everyone to disapprove of Φ and also everyone to disapprove of those who fail to disapprove of Φ: if the first clause is satisfied the second is redundant. But having such a state is not odd in the common case where the world is not as one desires it to be.
For the account of derived function deployed here, see Millikan (1984: 39–49).
Compare Railton’s ‘reforming definition’ of wrongness (1986: 189–190). Given footnote 11, this view is a synthesis of Stevenson and Railton.
This paragraph is a deliberate adaption of Millikan’s account of hens’ food calls, quoted above.
At this point the descriptivist might appeal to a reduction of moral properties (such as wrongness) to non-moral properties (such as being part of a pattern of action that is mutually disadvantageous) along the lines of the reduction of the property of being water to the property of being H20. But in the present context, such a move is beside the point, for even the moral reductionist accepts that murder is wrong does not mean the same as murder is part of a pattern of action that is mutually disadvantageous. More generally, a reductivist account of moral properties fails to speak to the present issue, which concerns the nature of moral representational content.
Strictly speaking, it is contentful mental states, not their contents, that stand in inferential relations. For ease of reading I here use the slightly looser way of speaking.
Note that this argument applies, however, normativity is understood. In other words, whatever the difference between normative and non-normative content, it is difficult to see how the former can be concocted from (inferential ties to) the latter. In this section I assume that normative content is content that ‘cannot be ignored’, but this is not necessary for the (admittedly presumptive) argument to go through here.
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Acknowledgments
Finanacial support for the preparation of this article was provided by an Early Career Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. Thanks also to Hallvard Lillehammer and Kim Sterelny.
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Sinclair, N. Metaethics, teleosemantics and the function of moral judgements. Biol Philos 27, 639–662 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9316-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9316-4