normative properties that aren’t further explained physically
You’ve misunderstood Rawlette here. Her view—analytic hedonism—holds that normative properties are analytically reducible to pleasure and suffering. So her suggestion here is not that we need metaphysically primitive normative properties to explain the experience. Quite the opposite! It’s rather (as I understand it) that the normativity “comes along for free” (so to speak) with the familiar felt nature of the experience.
“In the end, you realize that the only way to describe the one is to say that it’s “good” or “positive”, and that you can only describe the other by saying it’s “bad” or “negative”. ”
Was this not a motivating example for her view? Or just proposed as an example where the descriptive and normative may overlap?
Does she have a specific descriptive definition of pleasure she’s working with that doesn’t directly use normative terms but from which she can derive its normative goodness? (I don’t expect a persuasive solution to the is-ought problem; at some point you need to assume a normative fact to obtain any further ones, and I think we could prove this formally.)
You’ve misunderstood Rawlette here. Her view—analytic hedonism—holds that normative properties are analytically reducible to pleasure and suffering. So her suggestion here is not that we need metaphysically primitive normative properties to explain the experience. Quite the opposite! It’s rather (as I understand it) that the normativity “comes along for free” (so to speak) with the familiar felt nature of the experience.
I’m not sure how to interpret this, then:
“In the end, you realize that the only way to describe the one is to say that it’s “good” or “positive”, and that you can only describe the other by saying it’s “bad” or “negative”. ”
Was this not a motivating example for her view? Or just proposed as an example where the descriptive and normative may overlap?
Does she have a specific descriptive definition of pleasure she’s working with that doesn’t directly use normative terms but from which she can derive its normative goodness? (I don’t expect a persuasive solution to the is-ought problem; at some point you need to assume a normative fact to obtain any further ones, and I think we could prove this formally.)