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Notes
See, e.g., respectively, Fergus Kerr, “Back to Plato with Iris Murdoch,” in Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1997), 68–88; Sami Pihlstrom, Pragmatic Moral Realism: A Transcendental Defence (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005); and Maria Antonaccio, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For the purpose of this article, I follow Maria Antonaccio’s characterization of these realisms. See pages 3–4.
Vision and Choice in Morality,” in Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 94–95. All citations of Murdoch will be taken from this collection unless otherwise noted.
“The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts,” 366.
The notion of moral reality and the related notion of a “world” is ubiquitous throughout Murdoch’s corpus. See, e.g., Existentialists and Mystics, 82, 90, 96, 320, 321, 324, 326, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 338, 348, 352, 353, 360, 361, 369, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 380.
“On ‘God’ and ‘Good,’” 360–361.
Ibid., 351–352.
“On ‘God’ and ‘Good,’” 360.
(New York: Penguin, 1993), 10.
Note: I am not thereby claiming that there are no inconsistencies in Murdoch, nor maintaining that there is no evolution in her thought. I do, however, hold that the general contours of her realism remain consistent throughout her lifetime.
When I use the term “inflationary realism,” I have in mind the sort of view that maintains the following: 1) there are mind independent moral properties; 2) these properties are non-natural, which is to say, not a part of the subject matter of the natural sciences; and 3) humans are capable of detecting these properties by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition. The paradigmatic example here is G.E. Moore. For the purposes of this article, I can remain agnostic as to whether it is correct to saddle Plato with an inflated ontology. However, Murdoch’s well-known sympathies with Plato have been enough for some to classify her as a classical realist of the inflationary sort. As an interpretation of Murdoch, this is simply incorrect as the above passages suggest, and as I demonstrate below. Murdoch’s reception of Plato is much more nuanced than this interpretation recognizes. For an argument that challenges the inflationary reading of both Plato and Murdoch, see, David Robjant, “The Earthly Realism of Plato’s Metaphysics, or: What Shall We Do with Iris Murdoch?” Philosophical Investigations, 35:1, Jan. 2012, 43–67. Although I am sympathetic with Robjant’s claim that Murdoch’s is an “earthy” or “natural” realism, the precise nature of what moral reality is for Murdoch remains unclear. When Robjant stipulates that by “a ‘natural’ fact or an ‘earthy’ one, all I mean is that its reality is evident in our lives and is not a philosopher’s fantasy requiring an ‘elsewhere’” (p. 47), for the purposes of getting Murdoch’s position clearly in view, we are still left requiring some account of what it means for a “reality” to be “evident in our lives.” While this formulation of Murdoch’s realism may help us rule out the inflationary reading of Murdoch, it cannot help us issue a verdict on whether her realism is better construed, say, pragmatically or reflexively.
The view that Murdoch identifies as pragmatism and rejects should be distinguished from the more sophisticated interpretations of Murdoch as a pragmatic moral realist. Although Murdoch does not explain at length what position she has in mind when she rejects pragmatic realism, she quickly glosses it, identifying it as a philosophy of “as if” or “it works.” Admittedly, Murdoch is rather imprecise here, and it is difficult to know exactly what Murdoch has in mind. When I reject pragmatism as adequately capturing Murdoch’s view, I follow Antonaccio’s characterization of pragmatic moral realism. See pages 3–4.
That this is what Murdoch means by subjectivism cannot be established from one passage read in isolation from the rest of her corpus. My account of her realism in the next section will help clarify the various senses in which subjectivist can and cannot be applied to Murdoch, and, consequently, will help demonstrate the correctness of my formulation of what she rejects here. Further, in my response to an objection below, I distinguish between three senses of subjectivism, explicitly clarifying the kind of subjectivism Murdoch rejects and the kind she would accept. See pages 18–19.
“On ‘God’ and ‘Good,’” 351–352.
Here I am less concerned with establishing the falsity of the more sophisticated interpretations of Murdoch as a pragmatic realist, than I am in providing a sense of the textual tensions that make sense of the proliferation of views regarding Murdoch’s realism. When I claim that we should prefer an interpretation that can make sense of her rejection of pragmatism, I am here referring to pragmatism in Murdoch’s rather loose and imprecise sense. I also think, however, that Murdoch is not a pragmatist in Antonaccio’s sense, which I come to presently, but this view depends on the overall account I will give of Murdoch’s realism in the next section.
Picturing, 116.
Ibid., 119.
Ibid.
Pace expressivists such as Simon Blackburn. See, e.g., Spreading the Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
Pace error theorists such as J.L. Mackie. See, e.g., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Pelican Books, 1977).
A central test case here is the view of sensibility theorists like John McDowell, who is himself ambivalent about the label. See, e.g., Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), viii.
See, e.g., “Vision and Choice,” where Murdoch asserts that “moral differences are conceptual,” or “Idea of Perfection,” where she indicates, “it is perfectly obvious that goodness is connected with knowledge,” and “Sovereignty of Good,” where she, in agreement with the ordinary experience of value, highlights that the “ordinary person does not, unless corrupted by philosophy, believe that he creates values by his choices. He thinks that some things really are better than others and that he is capable of getting it wrong,” 84, 330, 380.
“The Idea of Perfection,” 330.
David McNaughton, Moral Vision: An Introduction to Ethics (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 68–71, 84–85, 94–96.
Murdoch claims, e.g., “All just vision, even in the strictest problems of the intellect, and a fortiori when suffering or wickedness have to be perceived, is a moral matter. The same virtues, in the end the same virtue (love), are required throughout, and fantasy (self) can prevent us from using a blade of grass just as it can prevent us from seeing another person.” See “On ‘God’ and ‘Good,’” 357.
Ibid., 319–320. In what immediately follows, I highlight the “personal” nature of Murdoch’s model of objectivity; however, I will later return to the significance of the idea of “progressing.” See the following section on the Ideal Observer.
Ibid., 371.
See, e.g., Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide, 250.
“The Idea of Perfection,” 332.
Compare McNaughton’s explanation of subjective properties (i.e., secondary qualities): “Unless you share human concerns and patterns of feeling it is impossible to understand what it is for an action to be cruel or compassionate.” See Moral Vision, 83.
I owe this way of formulating response-dependence to Russ Shafer-Landau and Terence Cuneo. See especially, “Constructivism” and “Sensibility Theories” in Foundations of Ethics: An Anthology (Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 79–83; 132–136. My debt can be detected throughout this section.
Even if a creature who lacked our peculiar perceptual capacities was able to discover the nature of the primary qualities that gave rise to the experience of redness in normal human beings, this creature would be no closer to understanding red. As McDowell explains, “No doubt it is true that a given thing is red in virtue of some microscopic textural property of its surface; but a predication understood only in such terms – not in terms of how the object would look – would not be an ascription of the secondary quality of redness.” See Mind, Value, and Reality, 134.
Moral Vision, 67, 83.
Ibid., 83–84.
John McDowell, “Values and Secondary Qualities,” in Mind, Value, and Reality, 134.
Ibid., 146.
“The Idea of Perfection,” 317 and 329.
Metaphysics as a Guide, 241.
Ibid., 26.
The claim that certain properties are only accessible from the human standpoint need not entail that these properties are not real or somehow less real than those properties accessible from the absolute standpoint. One can sensibly reject the claim that what is real is synonymous with what is accessible from any point of view. See, e.g., McNaughton, Moral Vision, 83–97 and McDowell, “Values and Secondary Qualities,” in Mind, Value, and Reality, 131–150.
Metaphysics as a Guide, 250.
When Murdoch rejects the adverb “accurately” as the proper way to modify M’s seeing, she is not thereby rejecting the idea that M can see D correctly, rather she is resisting the idea that seeing correctly entails adopting the impersonal absolute standpoint.
“The Idea of Perfection,” 318.
Ibid., 317.
“Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” in Foundations of Ethics: An Anthology, Shafer-Landau, Russ and Terence Cuneo (eds.) (Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 110.
“The Idea of Perfection,” 321.
“On ‘God’ and ‘Good,’” 342. I owe this way of formulating a hypothetical ideal observer to Richard Joyce. See “Moral Anti-Realism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/, accessed August 5, 2013.
Firth, “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” 110.
Ibid.
See Joyce, “Moral Anti-Realism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/, accessed August 5, 2013.
Picturing, 130.
Ibid., 119.
For a brief discussion of the difference between our approaches to Murdochican transcendence, see my response to the first objection below. For the consequences of our disagreement on the interpretation of Murdoch’s ascetic philosophy, see, Jessy E.G. Jordan, “Review: A Philosophy to Live By: Engaging Iris Murdoch by Maria Antonaccio,” The Iris Murdoch Review, Vol. 1, Number 4 (Forthcoming). For the way in which my account enables a more robust formulation of objective moral reality, see my response to the second objection below.
“Sovereignty,” 376.
Picturing, 138.
Murdoch claims, “By opening our eyes we do not necessarily see what confronts us. We are anxiety-ridden animals. Our minds are continually active, fabricating an anxious, usually self-preoccupied, often falsifying veil which partially conceals the world. See “Sovereignty,” 368–369.
I owe the formulation of these objections to an anonymous reviewer.
“Metaphysics and Ethics,” 70.
“Sovereignty,” 366.
Ibid., 372. Murdoch is directly discussing good art here; however, it is in the immediate context of her claim that art is “a place in which the nature of morality can be seen.”
Picturing, 119.
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Jordan, J.E.G. Reconsidering Iris Murdoch’s Moral Realism. J Value Inquiry 48, 371–385 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9416-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9416-2