Abstract
Some philosophers think that normative properties are identical to descriptive properties. In this paper, I argue that this entails that it is possible to say which descriptive properties normative properties are identical to. I argue that Frank Jackson’s argument to show that this is possible fails, and that the objections to this argument show that it is impossible to say which descriptive properties normative properties are identical to. I conclude that normative properties are not identical to descriptive properties. I then show that if we combine this conclusion with the conclusion of a different argument that Jackson has given to show that there are no irreducibly normative properties, it follows that there are no normative properties at all.
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Notes
Jackson (1998) only endorses (1) about moral properties, but Jackson (2000, p. 29), makes similar claims about the property of reasonableness and the property of rationality, and Jackson’s arguments for the claim that moral properties are identical to descriptive properties can be applied to all normative properties. I shall therefore take Jackson to endorse (1).
It may be objected that some predicates (such as ‘is courageous’ or ‘is just’) are both normative and descriptive. If so, we should either say that these predicates contain both a normative and a descriptive component, or that these predicates ascribe normative properties.
See, for example, Jackson (1998, p. 119).
I take the ‘could’ in the consequent of (2′) to express logical possibility: the consequent of (2′) says that there is a possible world in which we say which descriptive predicates ascribe which descriptive properties.
Jackson (1998, pp. 129–162); see especially pp. 140–143. Jackson only gives this argument for moral properties, but it can be applied to all normative properties. See also Jackson (1992, pp. 485–486; 2000, 2005, pp. 102–104; 2009, pp. 442–449), and Jackson and Pettit (1995, 1996). For discussion of the argument, see van Roojen (1996), Yablo (2000, pp. 16–19), Zangwill (2000), Schroeter and Schroeter (2009) and Horgan and Timmons (2009).
I use the term ‘object’ to cover anything that has properties. Jackson (1998) restricts this set to moral beliefs, and calls it ‘mature folk morality’. As he puts it, folk morality is “the network of moral opinions, intuitions, principles and concepts whose mastery is part and parcel of having a sense of what is right and wrong” (p. 130) and mature folk morality is “what folk morality will (would) turn into in the limit under critical reflection” (p. 139; see also p. 133). Jackson’s claims may suggest that mature folk morality is restricted to moral beliefs the possession of which is required for mastery of moral concepts, and it may be thought that N should be restricted in a similar way. I shall come back to this in Sect. 4. I assume in what follows that this definition of N leaves it open whether, if the normative beliefs that some people would have after maximum debate and reflection are inconsistent with the normative beliefs that other people would have after maximum debate and reflection, these people’s normative beliefs form a single inconsistent N or one or more different but internally consistent Ns.
In this claim, the clause ‘(∃x 1) (∃x 2) (∃x 3)… (∃x n) (Happiness has x 1, and breaking one’s promises has x 2, and people who have x 3 bring about things that have x 1 without performing actions that have x 2, and…)’ says that there is a set of properties that are related to each other the way the variables x 1, x 2,… x n are related to each other, and the clause ‘[(∃y 1) (∃y 2) (∃y 3)… (∃y n) (Happiness has y 1, and breaking one’s promises has y 2, and people who have y 3 bring about things that have y 1 without performing actions that have y 2, and…) ⊃ (x 1 = y 1 & x 2 = y 2 & x 3 = y 3 &… & x n = y n)]’ says that this is a unique set of properties.
Jackson is here applying the method for defining theoretical terms proposed by Lewis (1970), which draws on work by Ramsey and Carnap.
These claims identify each normative property with what Jackson calls its ‘realiser’ property, which is the descriptive property that plays the role that the relevant x i plays in (8). We could also identify each normative property with what Jackson calls its ‘role’ property, which is the descriptive property of playing the role that the relevant x i plays in (8). Jackson (1998, pp. 141–142), says that we should identify rightness with its realiser property. But Jackson (2000, p. 28), suggests that the predicate ‘is right’ ascribes the property of having its realiser property, which seems to be distinct from both its realiser property and its role property, and Jackson (2005, p. 104), suggests that it does not really matter which of these properties the predicate ‘is right’ ascribes. I shall ignore this in what follows, since it does not affect my arguments.
The objection from inconsistency is closely related to Horgan and Timmons’ ‘moral twin earth’ argument against various versions of reductive realism. See Horgan and Timmons (1992a, and also 1991, 1992b), and Timmons (1999, pp. 32–70). Horgan and Timmons (2009) apply this objection to Jackson’s view.
I assume throughout that the belief that X is not wrong is identical to the belief that X both lacks the normative property of being wrong and has the normative property of being not wrong, and that the normative property of being not wrong is identical to the normative property of being permissible. This enables me to say both that the belief that X is not wrong is inconsistent with the belief that X is wrong (since the latter belief ascribes the property of being wrong to X), and also that the belief that X is not wrong is itself a normative judgement (since it ascribes the normative property of being not wrong, or being permissible, to X). This does not affect my arguments, but it makes their formulation less complicated.
This may be suggested by Jackson’s remark that “what I hope and believe is the truth of the matter” is that everyone would have the same moral beliefs after maximum debate and reflection (1998, p. 137).
Jackson (1998, p. 137).
Of course, these beliefs are likely to be implicit or dispositional beliefs, which would only give rise to explicit or occurrent beliefs in certain circumstances. The same is true of many of the other beliefs I discuss here.
As Sturgeon (1994) suggests, nihilism is a more plausible response to irresolvable normative disagreement than relativism.
I take meta-normative beliefs to be beliefs about the properties of normative judgements or of normative properties.
Jackson agrees that offering a philosophical account of something that is incompatible with our central beliefs about his thing changes the subject (1998, pp. 30–31). But he also thinks that a philosophical account should be allowed to change the subject in a limited way (pp. 44–45), which presumably means that, though such an account must be compatible with our central beliefs about this thing, it need not be compatible with all our beliefs about this thing. However, the belief that (9) is false is clearly one of our central meta-normative beliefs.
The problem is not merely that this is an infinite series of normative beliefs. If that was the problem, reductive realists could perhaps argue that this regress is benign by comparing it to a belief-version of the truth regress (from ‘X believes that p is true’ to ‘X believes that it is true that p is true’ to ‘X believes that it is true that it is true that p is true’ and so on). Rather, the problem is the direction of determination in this infinite series of normative beliefs, which runs from the last belief to the first belief rather than the other way around.
As Jackson writes: “There is no ‘extra’ feature that the ethical terms are fastening onto” (1998, pp. 124–125; see also 2005, p. 101). Reductive realists who want to deny that their view has this implication could try to do this by endorsing different versions of (1), (3) or (4). I shall come back to this in Sect. 6.
This claim could be complicated in various ways: for example, it could include a clause to ensure that people are disposed to apply this predicate to this object because this object has this descriptive property, or because they believe that this object has this descriptive property. These complications do not matter to what follows.
As before, the problem is not merely that this is an infinite series of applications of normative predicates. If that was the problem, reductive realists could perhaps argue that this regress is benign by comparing it to the truth regress (from ‘p is true’ to ‘it is true that p is true’ to ‘it is true that it is true that p is true’ and so on). Rather, the problem is the direction of determination in this infinite series of applications of normative predicates, which runs from the last application to the first application rather than the other way around.
Like (11), this claim could be complicated in various ways, but these complications do not matter to what follows. Of course, I do not mean to endorse this account of semantic correctness.
See Jackson (1998, pp. 122–123; 2001, p. 655). The argument was inspired by a more general argument given by Jaegwon Kim (see Kim 1993, pp. 68–71, 149–155), and it is also given by Jackson and Pettit (1996, pp. 84–85). For discussion of the argument, see van Roojen (1996), Williamson (2001), Shafer-Landau (2003, pp. 89–98), Dancy (2004a), Majors (2005), Streumer (2008), Kramer (2009, pp. 207–212), Suikkanen (2010), and Brown forthcoming. My reconstruction of the argument in Streumer 2008 implausibly suggested that the number of objects, properties and actions in all possible worlds is finite. My reconstruction in what follows still suggests that these numbers are countably rather than uncountably infinite, but I take this to be merely a matter of presentation.
As before, I use the term ‘object’ to cover anything that has properties, and I here use the term ‘property’ to cover both properties and relations.
I argue that all of these objections do in fact fail in Streumer (2008).
Like (11), this claim could be complicated in various ways: for example, it could include a clause to ensure that people are disposed to apply this predicate to this object because this object has this descriptive property, or because they believe that this object has this descriptive property. These complications do not matter to what follows.
See Boyd (1988, p. 195). What Boyd actually writes is: “Roughly, and for nondegenerate cases, a term t refers to a kind (property, relation, etc.) k just in case there exist causal mechanisms whose tendency is to bring it about, over time, that what is predicated of the term t will be approximately true of k (excuse the blurring of the use—mention distinction).” He then applies this claim to moral terms.
As I said in note 14, Horgan and Timmons’ ‘moral twin earth’ argument against Boyd’s view is closely related to what I have called the objection from inconsistency. See Horgan and Timmons (1992a, and also 1991, 1992b) and Timmons (1999, pp. 32–70). I cannot do justice here to the details of Boyd’s view, or to the replies he could give to objections like this (see Boyd 1988, pp. 223–226; 1995).
See Lewis (1989, p. 77). Lewis identifies the normative judgement of valuing with the second-order attitude of desiring to desire (p. 71).
Smith (1994, p. 185) uses the term ‘feature’ rather than the term ‘property’, and adds that these wants should have ‘the appropriate content’.
Smith (1994, p. 186).
See Railton (1986).
Railton would probably reply that (23) offers a ‘reforming definition’ of rightness, which does not have to fit with all our present beliefs about rightness (see Railton 1986, pp. 204–207; 1989, pp. 157–159). Jackson similarly suggests that it is enough if the descriptive properties x 1,…, x n make (8) “near enough true”, and adds that “[w]e should not expect perfect solutions here any more than in physics where we found what the term ‘atom’ denoted by finding something that near enough satisfied atomic theory” (1998, pp. 141–142). It seems to me, however, that attempts to say which descriptive or natural property the property of rightness is identical to that face the objection from inconsistency fit so badly with our meta-normative beliefs that they cannot plausibly be put forward as reforming definitions of rightness.
There is also a third version of irrealism, according to which normative judgements are beliefs with non-descriptive content. See Horgan and Timmons (2000, 2006). I discuss both this view and several versions of non-cognitivism in Streumer Unpublished 1. I defend the error theory in Streumer Unpublished 2.
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Acknowledgements
For very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, I would like to thank Jonathan Dancy, Brian Feltham, Philip Goff, Hallvard Lillehammer, audiences in Reading and Birmingham, and two anonymous referees.
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Streumer, B. Are normative properties descriptive properties?. Philos Stud 154, 325–348 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9534-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9534-z