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Normative principles and the nature of mind-dependence

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Abstract

One of the most fundamental debates in metaethics is whether (subsets of) the normative facts are mind-dependent. Yet some philosophers are skeptical that mind-dependence is a category that's significant in the way metaethicists have assumed it is. In this paper, I consider a puzzle that showcases this skepticism, explaining how it undermines the most natural reading of the mind-dependence claim. I then go on to show that no modification of this reading within a certain class can hope to solve the problem. I conclude by suggesting a new way that mind-dependence should be understood: mind-dependence is ultimately a matter of how normative principles are grounded. I develop this view briefly before concluding.

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Notes

  1. Plato, Euthyphro.

  2. Street (2006: sec. 10), Street (2009: 274). Street says that the reason facts “are a function of” one’s evaluative attitudes. In other places, however, she says that normative truth consists in being entailed from within the practical point of view—Street (2010: 369).

  3. Schroeder (2007).

  4. Shafer-Landau (2003: 8).

  5. McGrath (2010).

  6. Enoch (2011: 3).

  7. See, e.g., Sayre-McCord (1988), Cuneo (2007: 45), Rosati (2017), and Dunaway (2017).

  8. Rosen (1994), Rosati (2017), Dunaway (2017), Shafer-Landau (2003: 15). Enoch (2011: 3–4), Brink (1989: 15).

  9. See, e.g., Enoch (2011: 4), Dunaway (2017: 138), Berker (2014), Clarke-Doane (2012), Schafer (2014), Street (2006: 110–111).

  10. See Brink (1989: 15), Rosen (1994: 287–288), Rosati (2017: 359).

  11. For different kinds of grounding, see Fine (2012).

  12. I.e., I speak in “unionist,” not “separatist” language. See Berker (2019).

  13. Rosati (2017: 359).

  14. Street (2006, 2010) and Schafer (2014).

  15. Shafer-Landau (2003: 15).

  16. It’s possible that K will include some of the relevant happiness facts and not others. This seems unlikely, but even if we could gerrymander such a kind, it would still come out that utilitarians are clearly committed to certain moral facts are mind-dependent, but not others. And we want even these questions left genuinely open, for someone committing only to utilitarianism.

  17. Most famously, Williams (1981), though see Finlay (2009) for a different reading of Williams. See also Johnson (1999). For a related argument in favor of internalist theories of well-being, see Railton (1986) and Rosati (1996).

  18. Schroeder (2007: 1–2).

  19. Railton (1986).

  20. In what follows, I omit the “asymmetrically” qualifier for ease of exposition.

  21. Morton (2020), Rosen (2017a), Bader (2017), Maguire (2015: 194), Berker (2019). See also Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014: 401–403), though the authors speak in terms of truth-making, not grounding.

  22. Leary (2017, 2020).

  23. This assumes transitivity of partial grounding. Again, see Fine (2012), and for a critical view, Schaffer (2012). Litland (2013) defends transitivity from objections.

  24. Rosen (2017a: 163), Murphy (2011: 49).

  25. Berker (2019). See also Fogal and Risberg (2020): though they draw the same distinction, they describe it as principles being “explanatory in content” as opposed to “explanatory in role.”

  26. Berker (2018) and (2019).

  27. Versions of the following argument have been made by Morton (2020), Rosen (2017b), and Fogal and Risberg (2020).

  28. Again, see Fine (2012), though (again) irreflexivity is broadly assumed. Wilson (2014) and Correia (2014) are critical of it.

  29. Berker (2019) gives such a view, though not the formulation that follows. Fogal and Risberg (2020) criticize Berker here.

  30. A note about this formulation: it’s not \(\forall\) x(Mx → Mx grounds Gx), in order to allow that the grounds do not entail the grounded. It’s not \(\forall\) x((Gx) → Mx grounds Gx), in order to preserve multiple realizability of the grounded.

  31. Armstrong (1983: ch. 6). See also Murphy (2011) and Rosen (2017b).

  32. Bennett (2011) and deRosset (2013) claim that [A grounds B] is grounded in A; Rosen (2010) and Dasgupta (2014) present a more complex view, which I don’t consider for reasons of space, but which ultimately gets Completeness Matters in the same problem.

  33. Berker (2019) also argues against the view that principles are amongst the grounds of particular normative facts. His argument is similar to mine in some respects, but note that while Berker is arguing that “Principles as Partial Grounds,” as he calls it, entails redundant grounding—something he argues is implausible—I’m arguing that it leaves no room for mind-independence. My argument is in fact compatible with there being redundant grounding in this case. We do, however, both rely on the claim that normative principles are not self-referential in the way Principles as Partial Grounds would require.

  34. This style of argument—account X of distinction P versus not-P is not a good one, since it makes P (or non-P) impossible on broad metaphysical grounds—is not uncommon. Leary (2020) employs this kind of argument against a certain understanding of the naturalism vs. non-naturalism debate.

  35. Berker (2019) endorses (2).

  36. Even “contributory” principles—think Rossian “prima facie duties”—aim to give full grounds for normative phenomena: Ross (2002) is best read as claiming that the fact that Φing would be maleficent (e.g.) is the full explanation of a reason not to Φ.

  37. For a different but related problem, see Berker (2018).

  38. Leary (2020).

  39. Some normative principles, after all, relate the normative to the normative: e.g., “We ought to maximize the good.”

  40. Berker (2019: sec. 4).

  41. Remember that I’m—plausibly, I think—assuming the grounding in each case is full. (I’m also assuming that full grounding is not redundant here, on which point see Berker (2019).

  42. Fine (2012).

  43. Not that there aren’t good arguments: we could modify one of Stephanie Leary’s arguments to work against it (Leary 2020). Leary argues that understanding the naturalism/non-naturalism in terms of whether normative facts are fully grounded in natural ones leads to a misinterpretation of Moore. Moore, after all, seems committed to both non-naturalism and the full grounding of the moral in the natural. Leary argues that we could reinterpret Moore’s claims to just be about normative grounding, but that this would be “a stretch.” Similarly, understanding mind-independence as the denial of metaphysical grounding in the mental would require the same revisionary interpretation of Moore (a textbook mind-independence theorist).

  44. For discussion of such Humean views about normative principles, see Berker (2019) and Fogal and Risberg (2020).

  45. See Fine (2012).

  46. Perhaps, one might think, the non-normative component in the grounds of the particular normative fact will be mental—in which case, the full grounds will be mental. But this will not always be the case: e.g., if well-being is (partially) objective, partially constituted by (say) physical health, and promotion of well-being contributes to an act’s goodness, the grounds of an act’s goodness will include a non-normative, non-mental component.

  47. See Schaffer (2017a) and (2017b).

  48. See Carroll (1895).

  49. Bader (2017: 108n).

  50. Bader (2017: 118).

  51. Glazier (2016) defends principles-as-governors about metaphysical laws (though in terms of explanation, not grounding). Fogal and Risberg (2020) reference principles-as-governors without endorsing it, while Berker (2019) argues against it.

  52. There are tricky questions about counterfactuals here: were A not to endorse the principle of utility, would A endorse a different principle that would result in this act of adultery being wrong? I won’t try to settle that question here. It doesn’t matter: even if the answer is "yes,” the wrongness would still be covarying with the endorsement of some principle that entails the wrongness of acts like that.

  53. Berker (2019: Sect. 8).

  54. Thanks to Gideon Rosen for bring this objection to my attention.

  55. Modulo the assumptions in fn. 41.

  56. For what it’s worth, Type of Grounding Matters offers us a way of keeping the face-value reading of the Euthyphro case while still allowing for mind-dependence. Briefly, the mind-dependence theorist can claim that while piety facts are normatively grounded in facts about respecting one’s parents, they are metaphysically grounded in the gods’ lovings.

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    Justin Morton

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Morton, J. Normative principles and the nature of mind-dependence. Philos Stud 179, 1153–1176 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01692-3

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