Dispositional Ethical Realism PDF

Preview

Summary

Dispositional Ethical Realism Author(s): Bruce W. Brower Source: Ethics, Vol. 103, No. 2 (Jan., 1993), pp. 221-249 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381521 Accessed: 22-04-2016 21:43 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of t...

Description

Accelerat ing t he world's research.

Dispositional Ethical Realism Bruce Brower Ethics

Cite this paper

Downloaded from Academia.edu 

Get the citation in MLA, APA, or Chicago styles

Related papers

Download a PDF Pack of t he best relat ed papers 

A Sensible Et hics: T he Analogy Bet ween Color and Value Rodney Cupp Moral Sent iment alism (St anford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Ant t i Kauppinen Essays on Expressivism: Int roduct ion Teemu Toppinen

Dispositional Ethical Realism Author(s): Bruce W. Brower Source: Ethics, Vol. 103, No. 2 (Jan., 1993), pp. 221-249 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381521 Accessed: 22-04-2016 21:43 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics

This content downloaded from 129.81.131.203 on Fri, 22 Apr 2016 21:43:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Dispositional Ethical Realism* Bruce W. Brower The empiricist tradition has left many with the impression that we have only two choices regarding ethical truth: either realism is true, in which case there are ethical facts and properties that are independent of our attitudes, or nonrealism is true, in which case what appear to be ethical facts and properties are mere "projections," or mere "expressions" of a "non-cognitive attitude." In the face of this unfortunate choice, some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British moralists, and several contemporary philosophers, provide a compromise which holds that ethical facts and properties must be understood in terms of our dispositions to respond.

The forms of dispositionalism that have been offered, however, are antireductionist versions of moral intuitionism, conceptual analyses, or revisionary definitions. I wish to argue for a different dispositional theory, which treats ethical truth as both reducible and empirically discoverable. This theory is more consistent with empiricist attacks on analyticity, linguistic intuition, and truth by definition.' I shall call the theory "dispositional ethical realism," or "DER." Section I introduces DER and briefly explains how it differs from similar views. Section II takes up objections brought against other dispositional accounts, in each case showing why there is no problem for DER. Section III argues that DER is a form of realism. The final section states considerations

in support of DER. My rationale for defending the theory against

objections before giving reasons in its favor is that DER is best clarified by considering responses to criticism.

* Support for writing this paper was partially funded by a Tulane University Senate

COR Summer Fellowship. Earlier versions of this paper were read at the 1991 Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association and at the Tulane University Philosophy

Department's Seminar on Current Research. For their very helpful comments, I would like to thank Susan Brower, Peter Vallentyne, David Zimmerman, and an anonymous referee for Ethics.

1. In other words, the older theories depend on positivist or empiricist accounts of the analytic-synthetic distinction. The theory I propose fits a more Quinean view, although it could be accepted by standard empiricists. Ethics 103 (January 1993): 221-249

C 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/93/0302-0002$01.00

This content downloaded from 129.81.131.203221 on Fri, 22 Apr 2016 21:43:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

222 Ethics January 1993 I. THE THEORY

Dispositional ethical realism is the view that ethical properties are specified by empirically discoverable, reductive accounts that treat moral properties as constitutively dependent on evaluators' responses or dispositions to respond. Any such account can be represented by a biconditional of this form: 1. X has value V if and only if evaluators would, under appropriate conditions, respond to X with reaction R.2

Dispositional ethical realism is a metaethical theory. It does not presuppose or imply a particular normative view, and it is consistent with many first-order ethical theories. Familiar theories claim that we form the appropriate moral response when (a) we are fully informed, or (b) we are in reflective equilibrium, or (c) we undergo cognitive psychotherapy, or (d) we vividly imagine a situation, or (e) we are in an ideal speech situation, unconstrained by domination.3 Most philosophers who have developed such views would not endorse DER; but their theories, with or without some modification, fit the pattern given by 1. Since DER endorses only the basic pattern, we can consider the elements of 1 quickly. First, let us allow X to be an action, person, situation, or fact. Second, for V, let us consider ethical values, such as being good or right, and not aesthetic values, epistemic values, etc.4 Third, for evaluators, let us allow all human beings or broad cultural groups. Dispositional ethical realism would be uninteresting if it permitted moral properties for each subject, that is, if it gave accounts

2. This biconditional may also be used to represent theories that do not treat moral properties as constitutively dependent on responses but that instead treat responses as tracking an independent property under specifiable conditions. See the response to Crispin Wright in Sec. II below.

3. Many of these kinds have had several representatives. The following are typical: for full information (interpreted as all relevant available information), vivid awareness, and cognitive psychotherapy, see Richard Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); for another account employing vivid imaginative awareness, see David Lewis, "Dispositional Theories of Value," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. ser., 63 (1989): 114-37; for reflective equilibrium, see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971); for ideal speech situations, see Jurgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt: Suhrk-

amp, 1981); and for the ideal spectator, see Roderick Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," in Readings in Ethical Theory, 2d ed., ed. Wilfrid Sellars and John Hospers (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970), pp. 200-221. 4. Thus, I am not concerned with Lewis's view, which is about nonethical value. See Mark Johnston, "Dispositional Theories of Value," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. ser., 63 (1989): 139-74, for an examination of why Lewis's view cannot be extended to ethical value. I take concepts referring to concrete properties, such as courage, not to be evaluative (see my "Virtue Concepts and Ethical Realism,"Journal of Philosophy 85 [1988]: 675-93), so I will consider only general ethical properties.

This content downloaded from 129.81.131.203 on Fri, 22 Apr 2016 21:43:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Brower Dispositional Ethical Realism 223 of properties such as being good for John. Yet an advantage for DER is

that it permits modest relativism. Dispositional ethical realism can grant that those from radically divergent ways of life, even when in the best conditions, may disagree about values. Many ethical realists

allow for such modest relativism. Nevertheless, ethical realism is always an optimistic position. It assumes that as we get to know each other

better, our differences will be less extreme than they initially appear.5 Fourth, R may be an emotion, a "pro-attitude," an act of commending,

a disposition to commend, a feeling of motivation, a taking oneself to have a reason, or even an action of the form being evaluated. Ethical realists hold that there are ethical beliefs, but to avoid circularity, R

cannot be taken as the belief that X has value V.6 Finally, let us defer discussion of "appropriate conditions," since it is here where much of the battle between DER and others is fought.

A traditional view would treat biconditionals of form 1 as conceptual

analyses. According to DER, however, accounts of pattern 1 are empirically discoverable. General moral principles, and also particular moral judgments, play an important epistemic role, but they do not play that role on the basis of conceptual insight into the realm of meanings. The insight is rather into the nature of our dispositions to respond to morally evaluable situations. To be sure, as Gilbert Harman has stressed, we do not typically gain that insight by testing our theory

against the world in the way that a physicist would.7 Our primary mode of determining that an action or agent has a moral property is not to examine whether our best explanations of human actions require

5. For another view that makes clear the requirement of optimism, see Richard Boyd, "How to Be a Moral Realist," in Essays on Moral Realism, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-

McCord (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 181-228. In this paper, I

do not claim to deal with the problem of relativism. My main goal is to develop a position that contrasts with other forms of realism and antirealism, whether or not they are relativistic. For a clear discussion of these issues, along with an interesting argument for combining realism with relativism, see Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, in "Being a Realist

about Relativism (in Ethics)," Philosophical Studies 61 (1991): 155-77. Realism combined with relativism is also accepted by Johnston; by John McDowell, in "Aesthetic Value, Objectivity, and the Fabric of the World," in Pleasure, Preference and Value, ed. Eva

Schaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1- 15; and, on one interpretation, by David Wiggins, in Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

6. See Firth, p. 207. This crucial constraint is violated by Johnston and by Crispin Wright in "Moral Values, Projection and Secondary Qualities," Proceedings of the Aristotelian

Society, suppl. ser., 62 (1988): 1-26. Wiggins accepts another form of circularity (see esp. "A Sensible Subjectivism," in Needs, Values, Truth, pp. 185-214). For discussion of analogous circularity regarding secondary quality analyses, and a devastating account of the problems it creates, see Paul Boghossian and J. David Velleman, "Color as a

Secondary Quality," Mind 92 (1989): 530-47. 7. See Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1977), pp. 3-10, and "Moral Explanations of Natural Facts-Can Moral Claims Be Tested against Moral Reality?" Southern Journal of Philosophy 24, suppl. (1986): 57-67.

This content downloaded from 129.81.131.203 on Fri, 22 Apr 2016 21:43:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

224 Ethics January 1993

reference to that property.8 We more often engage in thought experiments in order to determine what is right or wrong. Nevertheless, the fact that we sometimes engage in thought ex-

periments does not show or imply that we are not engaged in empirical moral inquiry, especially since, if DER is correct, what we are investigating is our own dispositions to respond. Our best guide to how we will respond is often to imagine a situation and then to examine how we respond to what we have imagined. (I say more about this in answering the first objection below.) Another way to bring out the empirical nature of moral inquiry,

as construed by DER, is to consider the possibility that we share a moral response that is not determined by the concepts involved. We might all have in common a certain response to a parent who beats a child for the failure to do a minor chore. There is no need to argue

that the wrongness of such punishment is a conceptual truth; it is better construed as the result of our having a common sensibility. The discovery that we share that sensibility, along with the discovery of exactly what judgments that sensibility delivers, should both be regarded

as empirical. How does DER differ from other forms of dispositionalism, which are often presented by construing moral properties as analogous to secondary qualities? Dispositional ethical realism differs from the non-

cognitivist secondary quality model of Hume in that it takes moral claims to have truth-values.9 It differs from John Mackie's "error theory,"

which holds that all moral claims are false because they treat projected properties as objective categorical imperatives'10 It differs from revisionary proposals for new definitions or "explications," such as Richard Brandt's, in that it claims to produce accounts that are the result of empirical investigation into existing dispositional properties." It differs from other "realist" views, such as those of John McDowell, David Wiggins, or Mark Johnston, in that these accounts either (1) treat

evaluative responses as noninferential judgments that form the basis for an intuitionist epistemology or (2) provide explicitly nonreductive

8. This line has been stressed by Nicholas Sturgeon; see his "Moral Explanations," in Morality, Reason and Truth, ed. David Copp and David Zimmerman (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), and "Harman on Moral Explanations of Natural Facts," Southern Journal of Philosophy 24, suppl. (1986): 69-78. 9. See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 468-69. I take it that I can still get away with holding that Hume endorsed noncognitivism, where this is understood as the view that ethical expressions are neither true nor false.

10. See John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin, 1977), pp. 15-49. 1 1. See Brandt, esp. pp. 1-23.

This content downloaded from 129.81.131.203 on Fri, 22 Apr 2016 21:43:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Brower Dispositional Ethical Realism 225 "'analyses."'2 McDowell, for instance, holds that moral properties are not those which are actually given a particular response but are, rather, those which merit a particular response; yet he admits that the notion of meriting is itself a part of moral discourse, and he expresses no desire for further reduction. Wiggins, in a similar vein, writes of what makes a sentiment of approbation "appropriate." Johnston also gives an nonreductive account and supplies, as we shall see, what he believes is an argument against reduction. II. OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES

I will discuss what I take to be the three most powerful objections to the reductive dispositionalist enterprise.13 First objection. -This objection is from Crispin Wright, who bases

it on a discussion of "appropriate conditions" clauses for secondary quality analyses. A dispositional theory of secondary qualities holds that

2. x is red if and only if normal human beings would, under perceptually normal conditions, form the belief that x is red.'4 Although primary qualities are not usually treated in a dispositional fashion, we may give similar conditionals for them, such as: 3. x is square if and only if normal human beings would, under perceptually normal conditions, form the belief that x is square.

For primary qualities, Wright holds, we also have nondispositional analyses, which Wright calls "canonical biconditionals." For square, the canonical biconditional is

3b. x is square if and only if: if the four sides and four interior angles of x were to be correctly measured, and no change were to take place in the shape or size of x during the process, then

12. SeeJohnston; Wiggins, "A Sensible Subjectivism"; andJohn McDowell, "Values and Secondary Qualities," in Morality and Objectivity, ed. Ted Honderich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 110-29. 13. There are now many objections to secondary quality versions of moral realism. For some of the most important, see Simon Blackburn, "Errors and the Phenomenology of Value," in Honderich, ed., pp. 1-22; and Colin McGinn, The Subjective View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 145-55. Wright defends the secondary quality view against many of these attacks, though, as we are about to see, he goes on to reject the model.

14. See Wright, pp. 14-15. Several qualifications are needed, including that the human beings are attentive to what they observe and are free of doubts about their normality. Such qualifications, which we can ignore here, are necessitated by the fact that Wright concentrates on dispositions to believe rather than dispositions to have sensory experience. I have shortened Wright's biconditionals in order to get to the core of his argument.

This content downloaded from 129.81.131.203 on Fri, 22 Apr 2016 21:43:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

226 Ethics January 1993

the sides would be determined to be approximately equal in length, and the angles would be determined to be approximately right angles.'5

Wright holds that secondary quality analyses are a priori.'6 He claims that "normal" in such analyses means "statistically usual." He holds, on the other hand, that appropriate conditions for dispositional accounts of primary qualities are settled by whether proposed conditions yield correct responses to members of an extension that is already determined. Since discovering such appropriate conditions is an empirical matter, dispositional accounts for primary qualities are a posteriori. They state how predetermined extensions can be "tracked." Wright claims, for instance, that we know prior to giving 3 that verification of an object as square demands viewing it from various angles. Using this knowledge, we specify that the appropriate conditions require the object to be stable in shape during observation. For secondary qualities, let us call responses and appropriate conditions clauses "extension-determining." For primary qualities, let us call responses and appropriate conditions clauses "extension-determined." Wright claims that for moral properties, the appropriate conditions clauses seem extension-determined. His example would be something like this:

4. Action x is morally correct if and only if for any S: if S scrutinizes the context and consequences of x, and embraces all morally relevant considerations; and if S is a morally suitable subject,

then S will judge that x is morally correct. 7

Wright's concern is not that 4 is circular but that, no matter how we refine 4, our account of appropriate conditions will be guided by a prior determination of the extension of moral predicates. For instance, when specifying who is morally suitable, we will be guided by prior beliefs about the judgments a morally suitable subject makes. Thus, we can eliminate the term "morally suitable," but our view of appropriate

15. Wright, p. 19. Wright does not claim that the extension of "square" must be determined via 5, but this is consistent with his view. Note that instead of a biconditional such as "x is square if and only if x has four equal sides and four equal interior angles," Wright's canonical biconditional specifies procedures for verifying that an object is

square. His general verificationist antirealism, which he defends elsewhere, pu...