No Authority Problem for Normative Non-Naturalism
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No Authority Problem for Normative Non‑Naturalism Paul Nedelisky1 Accepted: 11 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Normative non-naturalism is the view that normativity, broadly considered, “has its source in irreducible, non-natural matters of fact.”1 That is, normativity (1) flows ultimately from features of the world in virtue of their being good or bad, right or wrong, rational or not, (2) where these features are non-natural, i.e., cannot even in principle be accounted for by a scientific picture of the world, and (3) these features are sui generis or cannot be reduced to phenomena outside the realm of good, bad, right, wrong, etc. This view has been defended by G. E. Moore, Graham Oddie, Derek Parfit, Ralph Wedgwood, William FitzPatrick, and David Enoch, among others.2 One long-standing objection to normative non-naturalism is that it makes it mysterious or even inexplicable why anyone should care about these irreducible, non-natural features. As some have put it, even if we were to learn that there were such features, “Why should I do anything about these newly-revealed objects? Some things, I have now learnt, are right and others wrong; but why should I do what is right and eschew what is wrong?”3 This objection has commonly been construed as a concern about whether there could be the right kind of internal connection between normative judgment and motivation for action.4 However, there is another way to construe the objection that 1 Shamik Dasgupta, "Normative Non-Naturalism and the Problem of Authority," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 117, No. 3, (2017), p. 297. 2 See G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press: 1903); Graham Oddie, Value, Reality, and Desire, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Derek Parfit, "Normativity" in Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 1, pp. 325–80, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006); Ralph Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); William J. FitzPatrick, "Robust Ethical Realism, Non-Naturalism, and Normativity" in Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 3, pp. 159–205, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), and "Skepticism about Naturalizing Normativity: In Defense of Ethical Nonnaturalism," Res Philosophica, Vol. 91, No. 4, (2014); and David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 3 P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics, (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), p. 41. 4 See Parfit, op. cit., Jamie Dreier, "Can Reasons Fundamentalism Answer the Normative Question?" in Gunnar Bjornsson, Caj Strandberg, Ragnar Francen Olinder, John Eriksson, Fredrik Bjorklund (eds.), Motivational Internalism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 167–81; T. M. Scanlon, Being Realistic about Reasons, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Enoch, op. cit..
* Paul Nedelisky [email protected] 1
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Watson Manor, 3 University Circle, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
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