Ardent realism without referential normativity

Abstract

This paper addresses a central positive claim in Matti Eklund's Choosing Normative Concepts: that a certain kind of metaphysically ambitious realist about normativity -the ardent realist -is committed to the metasemantic idea that the distinctive inferential role of normative concepts suffices to fix the extension of those concepts. I argue first that commitment to this sort of inferential role metasemantic view does nothing to secure ardent realism. I then show how the ardent realist can address Eklund's leading challenge without appeal to distinctively metasemantic commitments. * I am indebted for helpful discussion of related ideas to participants and the audience at the Pacific APA symposium on Choosing Normative Concepts (where a distant ancestor of this paper was presented) to participants in my graduate seminar Normative Realism and Normative Authority, to Derek Baker, Matt Bedke, Billy Dunaway, David Plunkett, and especially to Matti himself.

Conceptual ethics, metaepistemology, and normative epistemology

“…This raises an epistemological issue: given that our existing normative concepts might be imperfect (or perhaps even seriously defective), why should we think that a conceptual ethics project will help us to identify normative 57 See (McPherson and Plunkett Forthcoming). This epistemological challenge is closely related to the metaphysical one discussed in (Eklund 2017), which we discuss in (McPherson 2020) and (Plunkett 2020).…”

How Naive Is Contentful Moral Perception?

“…One place that a related issue comes up is in debates about alternative normative concepts 35 [58]. The problem of alternative normative concepts, as I'll use it here, concerns how we are to decide, between two (or more) coherent systems of normative properties, which system(s) we should be normatively guided by 36 [58][59][60][61]. A common response to this problem is to argue that some system of normative concepts refers to the properties that are normatively authoritative, and these concepts are the properties that provide genuine authoritative normative guidance.…”

Quasi-Naturalism and the Problem of Alternative Normative Concepts

“…They will accept that there can be alternative normative concepts but will argue that the alarming symmetry between such concepts and ours can be broken in a way that does not take us into the realm of ineffability and is not deflationary. McPherson (2020), for instance, argues that some normative concepts are privileged because they refer to authoritatively normative properties, where this notion is understood in metaphysical terms. Eklund is skeptical that this kind of appeal to metaphysics can help realists avoid his dilemma and resolve the problem of alternative normative concepts, and I am inclined to agree with him, but I will not discuss this issue in the present paper.…”

“…No realist should be troubled by scenarios in which, say, etiquette concepts have the same normative role but a different reference, because such concepts are not plausibly amenable to a realist account in the first place: we should expect their reference to vary between communities, even if they have the same normative role across different contexts of use. For this reason, Eklund restricts his challenge to thin normative concepts, but the relevant divide here is arguably not between thin and thick concepts, but rather between normative concepts that are authoritatively normative and those that are not (McPherson 2020). In any case, this is how I will understand the task of a view that aims to address Eklund's challenge by defending referential normativity: to rule out the possibility of alternative authoritatively normative concepts.…”