Metaphysical Objections to Normative Truth (Thomas Scanlon)
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- čas přidán 24. 09. 2022
- Thomas M. Scanlon gives a talk on some objections to normative truth at a conference on the nature of normativity in 2011 at the Goethe University of Frankfurt. The idea that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action, which we can discover by thinking carefully about reasons in the usual way, has been thought to be subject to three kinds of objections: metaphysical, epistemological, and motivational (practical). Metaphysical objections claim that a belief in irreducibly normative truths would commit us to facts or entities that would be metaphysically odd, incompatible, it is sometimes said, with a scientific view of the world. In this talk, Thomas Scanlon argues that the idea that there are irreducibly normative truths has no problematic metaphysical implications. Explaining why this is so requires an explanation of what "ontological commitment“ comes to. It also requires an explanation of the relation between normative facts and non-normative facts, and how normative facts can depend on ("supervene on“) non-normative facts without being reducible to them.
#Philosophy #Ethics #Ontology
Great explanations from one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary metaethics.
Here is one further observation. At two or three junctures, Scanlon suggests that the relation of covariance or supervenience is symmetrical. That is, he suggests that a supervenient phenomenon Q varies whenever and only when an underlying phenomenon R varies. In fact, however, the relation of supervenience is asymmetrical. Q varies only when R varies, but it is not the case that Q varies whenever R varies. Not every difference in R makes a difference for Q.
Because his podium is of the pink color it looks as if everything he is talking about is somehow about a box of donuts that is in front of him.
I don't agree that the falsity of "The stove is hot" is such that it renders false "The fact that the stove is hot is a reason for me not to touch the stove." (Let me henceforth designate "The stove is hot" as "X" and "The fact that the stove is hot is a reason for me not to touch the stove" as "Y.") Instead, the matter is better approached in either of two other ways -- the first of which construes Y as a verdict, and the second of which construes Y as itself a normative principle (i.e., what Scanlon calls a "pure normative claim").
First, in circumstances where X is false, Y as a verdict is on a par with "The current King of France is bald." As Strawson argued in opposition to Russell, "The current King of France is bald" is best evaluated as neither true nor false. The indeterminacy of its truth-value is due to the falsity of its key existential presupposition.
Second, Y is best analyzed as a conditional "If the stove is hot, then its being so is a reason for me not to touch the stove." (The exact formulation of the conditional could be varied. For example, it could be rendered as "If the stove is hot, then there is a reason for me not to touch the stove.") The conditional is true regardless of whether its antecedent is true or false. If the antecedent of a material conditional is false, the conditional is true. If the antecedent of this material conditional is true, the conditional is true because the fact that the stove is hot is indeed a reason for me not to touch the stove.
Thanks for posting this. At the end of the talk, around 41:00, Scanlon wants us to “face up to the fact that we’re all committed, and we all employ all the time [...] the idea that there are irreducibly normative truths” that are about what “we have reason to do.”
I don’t think that we do. I don’t think there is any such thing as an “irreducibly normative truth,” because I don’t think the concept is intelligible. I don’t use such concepts, and I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about us “having reasons,” in the way Scanlon, Parfit, and others use the term “reason.”
One problem with much of the antirealist response to moral realism has been the tacit presumption that the positions moral realists are arguing for consist of meaningful propositional claims. Antirealists will grant that moral realists are making meaningful claims, and then object that the claims have questionable metaphysical implications, or are explanatorily superfluous, and so on. But I think antirealists have granted too much to realists.
What would it even mean for there to be an irreducibly normative fact? What do Scanlon and others mean when they talk about “reasons”? Unfortunately, my position is that these claims are incommunicable not because they are primitive or unanalyzable concepts, but because they are not substantive concepts at all; their content can’t be communicated because they don’t have any content.
So you're a noncognitivist? That would have saved some time... What would be your response to the Frege Geach problem?
@@Khuno2 No, I'm not a noncognitivist.
Hey lance, you made some claims which i would have to object to.
1) by ‘unintelligible’ i assume you mean ‘not capable of being understood’. Saying the notion of ‘a reason’ is unintelligible is therefore quite the strong claim. It assumes that you will never, and that no one will ever be able to understand. These claims are very strong.
Maybe, you simply could say, instead of saying ‘not capable of being understood’, that the concept of a reason is ‘not understood by me, or several others’. This is more of an asking or stating of clarification.
2) what would it mean for there to be an ‘irreducibly normative truths’? In parfits third volume of ‘On What Matters’, he says
"We should distinguish between facts that are normative and facts that have normative importance in the sense that these facts give us reasons. Two examples would be the facts that
(J) your wine is poisoned,
and that
(K) the fact stated by (J) gives you a reason not to drink your wine.
Of these facts, (J) is natural and (K) is normative. But it is (J), the natural fact, which has normative importance, in the sense of reason-giving force. Though (K) is a normative fact, this fact has no such importance.
(K) is the second-order fact that the fact stated by (J) gives you a reason not to drink your wine. This second-order fact about this reason does not give you any further reason not to drink your wine.
3) what is ‘a reason’? It is an important question. So let me try to show you an answer.
We cannot helpfully define some other fundamental concepts such as time, space, necessary, and possible; Such concepts are often members of a small group, some of which can be defined by appealing to others. Some statements are necessarily true, for example, if it would be impossible for this statement to be false, and some act is what we ought to do if every other possible act would be wrong. But these concepts cannot be helpfully explained by using words outside such a small interdefinable group.
but we understand these concepts well enough to be able to reject most mistaken claims about the entities or properties to which these concepts refer. Though it is hard to explain what time and space are, we know that there are countless things that time and space couldn’t be. Take the claim that "time was very smooth today, and also, strangely, was a beautiful blue in color". We'd find this claim mistaken. ‘time’ is not the sort of thing that could have texture or color.
When I claim that "a fact 'counts in favour of’ or ‘giving a reason to' some agent to do or beleive", this claim is relational, and there are different parts of this relation. Since we can think about what 'a reason' is not, as we can think about what 'red', 'time', or 'possible' is not, and if we think about all the parts of the relation that are not reasons, and single out the part of the relation that is a reason, then we can far more easily think about and use the concept of a reason.
4) this is an addition to (3), and an explanation of my claim that there is a relational character of reasons. If one were able to understand the relation, and concepts involved in the relation, like ‘fact’, ‘counting’, ‘giving’, ‘agent’, the context around the concept of a reason will be illuminated.
Why am I trying to illuminate the context? Well, often, when we don’t understand what a word or sentence means, it is often when we lack a what context the concept or concepts are involved in.
Saying, “Markus was shooting a mouse in his pants”. When the context is missing, the sentence is confusing: was Markus in his pants while shooting a mouse, or was the mouse in pants, being shot at? Was Markus shooting with a gun, or with a camera?
So, what is the relation that reasons are involved in? Whether a certain fact is a reason, and what it is a reason for, depends on an agent’s circumstances. The fact that this piece of metal is sharp is a reason for me not to press my hand against it, but under different circumstances it might be a reason to press my hand against it, and under still different circumstances a reason to do something else, such as to put it into the picnic basket if I will later have reason to want to cut cheese. This suggests that 'a reason for' is a four-place relation,
R(p, x, c, a), holding between a fact p, an agent x, a set of conditions c, and an action or attitude a. This is the relation that holds just in case p is a reason for a person x in situation c to do or hold a.
We should bear in mind, however, that the items that figure in the four places of this relation are often interrelated. To begin with, what goes in a place is an action that x does, or an attitude x holds. This is, however, built into the relation R itself, so that what occupies the fourth place in the relation is an action or attitude type, specified without reference to x, and R holds just in case p is a reason for x to do an action, or hold an attitude, of this type under the relevant circumstances.
Things are more complicated with respect to p and c. A person, x, might have a reason for doing a because it is necessary to save her child’s life. It follows from the fact that a would save the life of x’s child that doing a would save someone’s life, and this fact, p’, would be a reason for another person, y, to do a. The point is just that the kind of normative claim made by a claim that R(p, x, c, a) may vary depending on the way in which p is or is not related to the agent, x.
A final thing that should be noted is the factive character of most statements about reasons: p is not a reason for someone in c to do a unless p obtains and the person in question is actually in circumstances c. As will become clear below, this is important in understanding the relation between normative and non-normative claims.
think about when your awareness of some fact shifts or replaces a belief, or desire, or intention. How is this the case? we, as agents, would seem to be responding to these facts we are aware of. but what are we aware of about responses that makes the responses the way they are? my answer is that the fact gives us that reason, or favours those beliefs or desires, or intention. I'd be interested in what you believe our responsiveness to facts consists in. i'm also curious if this context helped you understand what the primitive concepts of a reason are.
@@lanceindependent I don't understand your position, but am somehow glad that it isn't that...gads! All that for such an anticlimactic conclusion (I still love Blackburn!)! I mean, let's say that we (moral realists, of which I am in the most anti-theistic extremity) could define a moral truth, would it matter to you and your position? Or would such a definition automatically amount to Pegasus? If so, what could a moral realist say to you that would convince you that moral claims can have truth values?
@@lanceindependent
So you think that there are no irreducible normative truths and deny that the concept is even coherent, but then deny being a noncognitivist?!
Well that makes no sense whatsoever lol!
Seems to me, at least his example of an obviously true pure normative truth is missing a fifth term in the relation- covering the preference of the person doing the action.
Suppose we are both for some reason kinky sorts, who enjoy mild pain in our hands. We are taking it in turns to use the stove to get our kicks, when suddenly in the middle of your turn you withdraw and elbow me in the face, breaking my nose.
I don’t think it’s obvious that you had a reason to do that. I think you are morally culpable for breaking my nose on Scanlon’s account.
With ears like that he could rent himself out as a cargo plane.
Quietism is cringe.
Quietism is based when you live in a world of idiots
What’s that?
The lecture seem so deep and sophesticated. But it's not. It's just justification or rationalization for his opinión. Opinión, as Plato told us, is a the lowest form of knoweldge. What's the comparision between shadow and the object it project??
How so? He trying to explain various thoughts he has. I’ve had these thoughts: what kinds of things or relations are involved in different matters in relation to justification, or reasonableness, or plausibility, or favoring.
He’s trying to figure out the concepts involved with justification, reasonableness, plausibility, and favoring. He says, along with these concepts, moral concepts and claims entails claims about reasons. Thus, the fundamental concept involved in the thoughts he’s thinking about is the concept of ‘a reason’.
Throughout these lectures, and in his books and essays, he’s trying to examine the metaphysics and epistemology. He is trying to explain different features of reasons, like the motivational mental states involved with reasons, or the strength or weight of reasons.
He came to the view, by examination, that there are true and false claims about what reasons we do or don’t have, and their strength.
Here’s the important part: for his views, he gave arguments. But, for your view expressed in this comment you made, you made no arguments. I even, in my comment here, made arguments against your view. Now, tell me, he has the lowest form of knowledge here? It’s not scanlon or i, because we both made arguments. I’ll leave you with that question.
@@Alex.G.Harper
What's bothering is that @3:56 he says he doesn't believe in existence of reality, i guess what he means is that a metaphysical reality, out there doesn't exist. In his words, "he doesn't believe" in such kind of Realism. After that, he is trying to justify his opinión. But the world of forms in as much as hard to prove them emprically, they do exist in the mind of God. The faith in God is not due to subjective desire to belive but it's objective Realism. You asked for counter-arguments, all i can say is that for his post-modern arguments, I give you the big guns i.e. sound philosophical tradition which goes back to Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquino---a very solid metaphysical foundation.
@@Alex.G.Harper Precisely. He presented his arguments, and in doing so opened his beliefs up to scrutiny and counterargument. It's an invitation to philosophical debate. Regardless of whether I agree with his thesis or not he has I think done that. As far as I know Plato and Aristotle engaged in a similar practice.
Waves, morals, souls have never yet existed. “The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy “, Mark McCutcheon as to ‘waves.’ Max Stirner/ Landstreicher “creative nothing “ for the end of the other fantasies: “The Unique and Its Property.” 178 years later even a Raymond Tallis has added zilch to Stirner. Philosophy never had a valid purpose.
Would you recommend reading that book(the final theory)?
@@lokeshparihar7672 Am unaware of any more interesting and important work.