this sounds like you’re talking about a substantive concept of rationality
Yes indeed!
Substantive concepts of rationally always go under moral non-naturalism, I think.
I’m unclear on why you say this. It certainly depends on how exactly ‘non-naturalism’ is defined.
One contrast of the Gert-inspired view I’ve described and that of some objectivists about reasons or substantive rationality (e.g. Parfit) is that the latter tend to talk about reasons as brute normative facts. Sometimes it seems they have no story to tell about why those facts are what they are. But the view I’ve described does have a story to tell. The story is that we had a certain robust agreement in response toward harms (aversion to harms and puzzlement toward those who lack the aversion). Then, as we developed language, we developed terms to refer to the things that tend to elicit these responses.
Is that potentially the subject of the ‘natural’ sciences? It depends: it seems to be the subject not of physical sciences but of psychological and linguistic sciences. So it depends whether psychology and linguistics are ‘natural’ sciences. Does this view hold that facts about substantive rationality are not identical with or reducible to any natural properties? It depends on whether facts about death, pain, injury, and dispositions are reducible to natural properties.
It’s not clear to me that the natural/non-natural distinction applies all that cleanly to the Gert-inspired view I’ve delineated. At least not without considerably clarifying both the natural/non-natural distinction and the Gert-inspired view.
you can be a constructivist in two different ways: Primarily as an intersubjectivist metaethical position, and “secondarily” as a form of non-naturalism.
This seems like a really interesting point, but I’m still a little unclear on it.
Rambling a bit
It’s helpful to me that you’ve pointed out that my Gert-inspired view has an objectivist element at the ‘normative bedrock’ level (some form of realism about harms & rationality) and a constructivist element at the level of choosing first-order moral rules (‘what would impartial, rational people advocate in a public system?’).
A question that I find challenging is, ‘Why should I care about, or act on, what impartial, rational people would advocate in a public system?’ (Why shouldn’t I just care about harms to, say, myself and a few close friends?) Constructivist answers to that question seem inadequate to me. So it seems we are forced to choose between two unsatisfying answers. On the one hand, we might choose a minimally satisfying realism that asserts that it’s a brute fact that we should care about people and apply moral rules to them impartially; it’s a brute fact that we ‘just see’. On the other hand, we might choose a minimally satisfying anti-realism that asserts that caring about or acting on morality is not actually something we should do; the moral rules are what they are and we can choose it if our heart is in it, but there’s not much more to it than hypotheticals.
Thanks for your engaging insights!
Yes indeed!
I’m unclear on why you say this. It certainly depends on how exactly ‘non-naturalism’ is defined.
One contrast of the Gert-inspired view I’ve described and that of some objectivists about reasons or substantive rationality (e.g. Parfit) is that the latter tend to talk about reasons as brute normative facts. Sometimes it seems they have no story to tell about why those facts are what they are. But the view I’ve described does have a story to tell. The story is that we had a certain robust agreement in response toward harms (aversion to harms and puzzlement toward those who lack the aversion). Then, as we developed language, we developed terms to refer to the things that tend to elicit these responses.
Is that potentially the subject of the ‘natural’ sciences? It depends: it seems to be the subject not of physical sciences but of psychological and linguistic sciences. So it depends whether psychology and linguistics are ‘natural’ sciences. Does this view hold that facts about substantive rationality are not identical with or reducible to any natural properties? It depends on whether facts about death, pain, injury, and dispositions are reducible to natural properties.
It’s not clear to me that the natural/non-natural distinction applies all that cleanly to the Gert-inspired view I’ve delineated. At least not without considerably clarifying both the natural/non-natural distinction and the Gert-inspired view.
This seems like a really interesting point, but I’m still a little unclear on it.
Rambling a bit
It’s helpful to me that you’ve pointed out that my Gert-inspired view has an objectivist element at the ‘normative bedrock’ level (some form of realism about harms & rationality) and a constructivist element at the level of choosing first-order moral rules (‘what would impartial, rational people advocate in a public system?’).
A question that I find challenging is, ‘Why should I care about, or act on, what impartial, rational people would advocate in a public system?’ (Why shouldn’t I just care about harms to, say, myself and a few close friends?) Constructivist answers to that question seem inadequate to me. So it seems we are forced to choose between two unsatisfying answers. On the one hand, we might choose a minimally satisfying realism that asserts that it’s a brute fact that we should care about people and apply moral rules to them impartially; it’s a brute fact that we ‘just see’. On the other hand, we might choose a minimally satisfying anti-realism that asserts that caring about or acting on morality is not actually something we should do; the moral rules are what they are and we can choose it if our heart is in it, but there’s not much more to it than hypotheticals.