Moore's Attack on Ethical Naturalism
Chapter 2. Moore’s Attack on Ethical Naturalism
2.1 Moore's Strong Cognitivism and Account of 'Natural'
natural = subject of natural sciences or psychology
But what unifies ‘natural’ sciences and psychology? Some propose that by natural, Moore means causal and discernible by the senses.
(b) Was Moore a strong cognitivist?
On the one hand, it might look like Moore is a weak cognitivist, since his Intuitionism is makes him agnostic on the origin of cognition of moral judgments
On the other hand, it looks more like he is a strong cognitivist, since he thinks that moral judgments are the deliverance of some cognitive faculty, which is like sense-perception insofar as things perceived by the senses are also incapable of formal proof.
2.2 The Naturalistic Fallacy and the Classical Open-Question Argument
Moore argues against definitional naturalists. He is concerned with conceptual analyses of ‘good,’ not uses of the term ‘good.’
naturalistic fallacy: good is neither a natural property (e.g. what we desire) or a metaphysical property (e.g. approved by God). However, even if it were a natural property, one would still committee the naturalistic fallacy in attempting to define it, since it is indefinable.
2.3 Three Objections to the Classical Open-Question Argument
“The charge of committing the naturalistic fallacy can be made, if at all, only as a conclusion from the discussion and not as an instrument of deciding it.” (William Frankena, The Naturalistic Fallacy, 1938: 465)
Moore begs the question against analytical naturalism by assuming that there is an open-question about the analysis. If the analytic naturalist’s definition of ‘good’ is correct, then genuinely asking the question, “Is X Y?” does betray some conceptual confusion, though Moore would have us think otherwise. The OQA only works if we already assume or have proven that analytical naturalism is false, but that is in fact the conclusion of the OQA. Moore begs the question by presupposing the falsity of AN when he intends to prove it.
(b) The 'no interesting analyses' objection
"The OQA assumes that it is impossible for a conceptual analysis to be true but informative and interesting.” (16)
Moore’s response: Yes, that’s just the paradox of analysis. There are no interesting and informative analyses. (cf. Meno)
Response to Moore’s response: There is no paradox of analysis. We can, for example, grasp a concept without being able to produce an analysis of it. This is because we can have knowledge how to do something without having propositional knowledge about it or knowledge that.
(cf. Oakeshott — cookbook example)
(c) The 'sense-reference' objection
Can have same reference though different senses.
‘Hesperus' and ‘Phosphorus' have the same reference but different senses. We can know the sense of an expression without knowing its reference, but we can discover that the references are in fact the same. Perhaps there is an analogous case in ethics, where two words, say ‘good’ and ’’N,’ have the same reference (‘denote the same property’) though they have different senses. We can discover, though, that they have the same reference
What would this process of discovery look like, though, in the case of the ‘good’ and ’N'?
Evaluation of the Objections
(1) and (2) are incisive. (3) is not. Moore is attacking ethical naturalists that assume that the property of being good is identical with or reducible to the property of being N in virtue of some conceptual or analytic equivalence between the two terms. But two expressions are analytically equivalent if they have the same sense, not if they are discovered to have the same reference. The sense-reference theorist has already conceded that ‘good’ and ’N’ have difference senses, and thus they are not analytically equivalent.
At the same time, Obj (3) allows us to acknowledge that Moore only successfully argues against analytical or definitional naturalism. What about synthetic or metaphysical naturalism, where the question is not whether the two expressions have the same sense but rather if they have the same reference.
2.4 Can the Open-Question Argument be Salvaged?
Baldwin's 'open-question' argument
Baldwin attempts to establish a presumption against, rather than a decisive refutation of, the analytical naturalist:
If 'good' and 'N' are analytically equivalent, then ceteris paribus competent speakers should - after conceptual reflection - come to find it natural to guide their evaluative judgements by the analysis.
After conceptual reflection, the conviction that 'Is an x which is N also good?' is an open question persists among competent speakers. So after conceptual reflection they do not come to find it natural to guide their evaluative judgements by the analysis of 'good' in terms of ’N'.
We can conclude that 'good' and 'N' are not analytically equivalent, unless ceteris aren't paribus (i.e. there is some other explanation of why competent speakers do not come to find it natural to guide their evaluative judgements by the analysis).
"The argument establishes only a presumption against the analytic naturalist, because it is of course open to the naturalist to attempt to 'explain away' our persisting conviction that the question is indeed open - perhaps in terms of 'our attachment to an illusory conception of distinctive ethical meaning' (Baldwin 1990: 89).”
Cf. Soames’ ‘expanded open question argument’
. P1. If for all x, if x is D, then x is good is analytically obvious, then the question
(i) Granted that is D, is good?
is a trivial self-answering question on a par with (ii), (iii), and (iv).
(ii) Granted that is a male sibling of , is a sibling of ?
(iii) Granted that is chartreuse, is colored?
(iv) Granted that the successor of n = the successor of m, is it
the case that n = m?
In each of these cases ((ii–iv)), the proposition corresponding to the question is an obvious necessary and apriori truth; moreover, anyone who truly understands the interrogative sentence, and thereby entertains the question it expresses, must realize that the answer to it is yes—failure to know this would be evidence that one doesn’t fully understand the sentence, or grasp the question.
. P2. There is no complex, or simple natural, property P and expression D, such that D expresses P, and the interrogative sentence (i) in P1 expresses a trivial, self-answering question on a par with (ii), (iii), or (iv).
C1. Therefore, there is no analytically obvious generality, for all x, if x is D then x is good, in which D expresses either a complex property, or a simple natural property.
C2. Thus, there is no extendedly analytic sentence, for all x, if x is D then x is good, in which D expresses either a complex property, or a simple natural property.
(b) Darwall, Gibbard and Railton's 'open-question' argument
Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton offer another presumption in favor of the Open Question Argument, though they admit that there is no such thing as the ‘naturalistic fallacy.’ We can imagine otherwise competent speakers believing that something has a certain property, N, but not being motivated to act in accordance with that belief in the same way we expect them to act in accordance with a belief that something is good. This property, N, might not be action-guiding in the same way that good is action-guiding. Since there is no conceptual link between N and being action-guiding, whether N is itself good is an open-question.
This argument, like Baldwin’s more implicitly, assumes internalism.
There is a conceptual or internal link between making a moral judgement and being motivated, ceteris paribus, to act as that judgement prescribes. (Internalism)
Competent and reflective speakers of English are convinced that they are able to imagine clear-headed (and otherwise psychologically healthy) beings who judge that R (some naturalistic property) obtains but who fail to find appropriate reason or motive to act in accordance with that judgement.
If there were no conceptual link between judging that R obtains and being motivated to act accordingly, we would expect competent and reflective speakers of English to have the conviction described in (2)
Therefore, unless there is some other explanation of the conviction described in (2), we are entitled to conclude that there is no conceptual link between judging that R obtains and being motivated to act accordingly,
the judgement that R obtains isn't a moral judgement [from (1)….because moral judgments entail being motivated].
the property of being morally good is not identical or reducible to the property of being R as a matter of conceptual necessity.
Baldwin, unlike GRD, fails to offer an explanation for why competent speakers do not find it natural to guide their actions with conceptual analyses. GRD does offer an explanation: moral judgments are intrinsically motivated, the result of the conceptual analysis is not.
Moves available to naturalist:
2. Give up analytic naturalism for synthetic naturalism (the view that ‘good’ and ’N,’ although analytically inequivalent, stand for the same property, a fact which is discoverable a posteriori). That is, maintain the view that ‘good’ and ’N’ do not share the same sense but share the same reference.
