Abstract
This article examines the criticisms and debates about Cornell realism. While critics, like Shafer-Landau, Tropman, Oliveira and Perrine, reject the claim by Cornell realism that moral knowledge can be empirically investigated the same as natural science is, I argue that some of their arguments are not sufficient to refute Cornell realism. What is crucial in assessing Cornell realism is distinguishing normative ethics from empirical science. While ethics is normative in nature, that of empirical science is descriptive and predictive. I also show that the debate between Tropman and Long is at cross purposes in their discussion about the nature of moral knowledge. By clarifying different meanings of moral knowledge, I argue that while arguments by Cornell realism can be applied to moral psychology, the study of normative ethics through empirical investigation still faces the problem of an is-ought gap. Indeed, many of Cornell realist arguments are begging many questions. I have also examined recent debates on normativity objection by Parfit and Copp. I argue that Copp’s naturalism is very similar to Huemer’s intuitionism. Copp’s argument of non-analytical naturalism seems to support rather than refute moral intuitionism.
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Notes
This paper mainly discusses the normativity problem caused by Cornell realism. The controversies about internalism and externalism cannot be discussed here.
Tropman (2014: 188) complains that Long (2014: 179) presents her dispute with Cornell realism as a disagreement concerning the revisability of moral knowledge in light of empirical findings. Long seems to assume that a priori knowledge is empirically indefeasible. However, Tropman emphasizes that she does not have such assertion. Tropman agrees that empirical information could affect how we grasp a proposition’s truth. Tropman (2014: 189) insists that her dispute with Cornell realism is “not the empirical revisability of certain beliefs, but the suggestion that our justification or entitlement for these beliefs has an empirical source.”
No matter the verificationism by logical positivism or falsificationism by Karl Popper or the puzzle-solving criterion by Thomas Khun, they all consider science as the exploration of causality and prediction as one of the criteria for the examination of scientific theory (Hansson 2014).
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Hung, A.T.W. Controversies on Cornell Realism. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 16, 191–212 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-023-00368-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-023-00368-y