Abstract
According to a thesis that is familiar from the Kantian tradition, moral obligations are a source of “authoritative reasons” – reasons it would be “irrational to ignore.” This thesis has been thought incompatible with moral naturalism and it has been a premise in arguments both for the moral error theory and for moral constructivism. I reject the thesis, however, and, in this paper, I contend that several arguments that have been advanced in support of it are unsuccessful. I also argue that the thesis is in fact compatible with both moral realism and moral naturalism. Moral naturalists have nothing to fear from it.
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Notes
- 1.
I use the term “moral obligation” to speak of what a person morally ought to do or is morally required to do as well as to speak of moral obligations in the strict sense.
- 2.
I assume that a “moral reason” to φ is a fact, such as the fact that it is morally obligatory to φ or forbidden not to φ. In all such cases, there will be morally relevant facts in virtue of which, say, it is obligatory to φ. For example, it might be obligatory to φ because to do otherwise would be to mislead someone. Morally relevant facts of this kind might also be called “moral reasons” to φ, but I shall not refer to them as such. For my purposes, they are “morally relevant reasons.”
- 3.
Moral realism holds that there are moral “facts,” including facts about our obligations and reasons. It holds there are such facts in whatever sense there are facts of other kinds, such as meteorological facts. See Copp (2007a).
- 4.
I simplify by assuming that there is one such system, that there are no “ties.”
- 5.
In some places, Joyce appears to say that (setting aside “motivating reasons”) there are only instrumental reasons (Joyce 2001, p. 70). In other places, he concedes that (still setting aside “motivating reasons”) there are “institutional” reasons, such as reasons of etiquette and moral reasons (Joyce 2001, pp. 39–42). He claims, however, that such reasons are not “normative” (Joyce 2001, pp. 101–102). I take the latter to be his official view. See below, Notes 14 and 15.
- 6.
In Copp (2007b), I argued that Christine Korsgaard's (1996) account of authoritative normativity is compatible with moral naturalism. In this chapter, I aim to show that any version of moral realism is compatible with the authoritative reasons proposal if it is combined with a suitable account of rationality.
- 7.
I use the term “moral property” to refer to the contribution made by a moral predicate, such as “right” and “wrong,” to the content of the beliefs we express in making moral assertions using that predicate. If we express a belief in asserting that lying is “morally wrong,” I say the predicate contributes the “property” wrongness to the content of the belief.
- 8.
I assume a metaphysically robust construal of facts as states of affairs that are “truth-makers” for true propositions. But a moral realist needs to hold only that there are moral facts in whatever sense there are facts of other kinds, such as meteorological facts.
- 9.
The proposition that nothing is wrong is non-basic. Compare Pigden, this volume, on “atomic moral judgments.”
- 10.
In at least one passage, Mackie appears to have in mind a different conception of objective values. For he concedes that if God existed and if God “fixed the true purpose of human life,” then there would be a kind of “objective ethical prescriptivity” (Mackie 1977, p. 48). It would be true that we ought to act in accord with the true purpose of human life. Because human beings are imperfect, however, Mackie notes, this fact would not motivate everyone who was aware of it, and so it would not be “intrinsically action-guiding and motivating.” It would not be an objective value in the sense that concerns me in the text. Richard Joyce reminded me of this passage.
- 11.
Even if it does not follow that there cannot be intrinsically prescriptive entities, Mackie claims we should not suppose there are. We can explain why we have beliefs that entail or presuppose that there are such things without supposing that such things exist, and we have no other need to suppose them to exist (1977, pp. 42–46). But then, in light of the “paradoxical” characteristics that normative entities would have, if they existed, he concludes that we are best to deny that there are such things (1977, p. 42).
- 12.
- 13.
I am not merely denying that it is incoherent to suppose someone might believe torture is morally wrong without being motivated accordingly. I am denying that it is incoherent to suppose that torture actually is morally wrong even though someone might believe it is wrong without being motivated accordingly.
- 14.
- 15.
Joyce appears to agree that there are institutional moral reasons although he thinks these reasons are not authoritative (Joyce 2001, p. 41). He holds, that ordinary moral discourse commits us to the thesis that moral obligations entail authoritative reasons to act accordingly. Institutional moral reasons, if there are any, would not be authoritative.
- 16.
I thank Al Casullo for helpful discussion of the complexities.
- 17.
I thank Jon Tresan for raising this worry in personal correspondence and John Skorupski and Justin D'Arms for raising it at the Dubrovnik conference.
- 18.
Michael Smith's “practicality requirement” says that an agent who believes that she is morally required to do something is motivated to do it unless she is practically irrational (Smith 1994, p. 61). The authoritative reasons proposal adds something about how such an agent will deliberate unless she is irrational.
- 19.
- 20.
See John Rawls' doctrine of the “burdens of judgment” (1993, pp. 55–57).
- 21.
I have discussed Smith's arguments more fully in Copp (1997).
- 22.
- 23.
Darwall's response to a similar objection strikes me as unconvincing (Darwall 2006a, p. 292, n. 27).
- 24.
- 25.
The underlying metaphysics can be developed in different ways. One might invoke a theory of complex propositions, for example, as is developed in King (2007).
- 26.
One might think more specifically that it needs to be backed up by a showing that facts about the optimal moral system could possibly be identical to facts that it is irrational to ignore. But recall that the society-centered theory is only being used as an example in my argument. I thank Richard Joyce for pressing me to address an objection of this kind.
- 27.
There are substantive questions in the vicinity. One such question is whether being instrumentally rational in the sense given, say, by the self-grounded standard I have proposed, entails being morally motivated. I think it plainly does not, but that is another issue.
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Acknowledgments
Versions of this chapter were presented to the philosophy department at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and to the 2008 Dubrovnik Conference in Moral Philosophy. I am grateful to the audiences on both occasions and also to Richard Joyce, Simon Kirchin, David Sobel, and Jon Tresan for helpful and challenging comments.
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Copp, D. (2010). Normativity, Deliberation, and Queerness. In: Joyce, R., Kirchin, S. (eds) A World Without Values. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 114. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3339-0_9
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