Are the Moral Fixed Points Conceptual Truths?

Evers, Daan; Streumer, Bart

doi:10.26556/jesp.v10i1.183

Cited by 33 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…A related line of criticism has been presented by Evers and Streumer (forthcoming). To make their argument, they present an analogy with conceptual truths about God.…”

Section: Two Previous Criticismsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Why Care About Moral Fixed Points?

Killoren¹

2016

Philosophical Books

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Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014) argue for the following thesis: that there is a range of moral propositions, the moral fixed points, which have these two distinguishing features: first, these propositions are constituted by nonnatural moral concepts, and second, these propositions are not identical with or made true exclusively by natural facts. Rather, they are true in virtue of the nature of the nonnatural moral concepts that constitute them. (403) According to Cuneo and Shafer-Landau, this thesis entails the existence of "nonnatural moral truths" and thus establishes a version of nonnaturalist moral realism, albeit one that comes with fewer metaphysical commitments than other, more robust forms of moral realism. Cuneo and Shafer-Landau are sympathetic to the robust realist thesis that there also exist "nonnatural moral properties and facts," but they claim to remain officially neutral about that thesis.The moral fixed points envisioned by Cuneo and Shafer-Landau are substantive moral propositions. For instance, one of the fixed points is the proposition that it is (pro tanto) wrong to engage in the recreational slaughter of a fellow person. According to Cuneo and Shafer-Landau, to deny this proposition is to betray some form of conceptual deficiency. If they are right, then their argument performs a neat trick: it shows that opponents of (a certain minimal version of) nonnaturalist moral realism are not only mistaken, but are deficient at the conceptual level.In this paper, I'll discuss some of the criticisms that others have given, and then I'll offer two new criticisms of Cuneo and ShaferLandau's view. My first criticism is minor: I don't think that their view counts as a genuine form of moral nonnaturalism. My second criticism is more significant: I'll argue that their view drains morality of its normative significance and therefore implies that we should not care about morality.

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“…A related line of criticism has been presented by Evers and Streumer (forthcoming). To make their argument, they present an analogy with conceptual truths about God.…”

Section: Two Previous Criticismsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Why Care About Moral Fixed Points?

Killoren¹

2016

Philosophical Books

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“…The epistemic necessity of some moral issues may plausibly be regarded as part of the realist assumptions that debunkers want to take aboard for the sake of argument, as I argue in Klenk (2018a). Of course, it is also reasonable to ask whether moral judgments are indeed epistemically necessary (see Evers and Streumer 2016). However, the demanding construal of the debunking challenge seems worth preserving, because it would offer considerable dialectical leverage, should it succeed), as I discuss in Klenk (2017b;2017a).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Debunking, Epistemic Achievement, and Undermining Defeat

Klenk

2022

American Philosophical Quarterly

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Several anti-debunkers have argued that evolutionary explanations of our moral beliefs fail to meet a necessary condition on undermining defeat called modal security. They conclude that evolution, therefore, does not debunk our moral beliefs. This article shows that modal security is false if knowledge is virtuous achievement. New information can undermine a given belief without providing reason to doubt that that belief is sensitive or safe. This leads to a novel conception of undermining defeat, and it shows that successful debunking of moral realism is possible.

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“…Killoren (2016). 22 I am developing the argument from Evers and Streumer (2016). See also Ingram (2015).…”

Section: E N D N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

A new argument for moral error theory

Cowie

2020

Nous

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Traditional arguments for moral error theory are based on identifying a problem with the metaphysics of moral properties. I provide a new argument that is based on the inconsistency of first-order moral judgments. I illustrate this using impossibility results in population axiology.Moral error theory is the view that there is a systematic problem with moral judgment such that no moral judgments are true and anyone who makes one is thereby in error. Contemporary error theories trace the 'systematic problem' to the inescapable commitment of moral judgers to the existence of something that does not exist. There are two main subspecies. 1 According to the first (e.g. Joyce, 2001) the non-existent troublemakers are categorical, normative reasons for action. According to the second (e.g. Olson, 2014;Streumer, 2017) the non-existent troublemakers are irreducibly normative relations. These arguments dominate the contemporary discussion of error theory. Structurally, they are very similar. My aim in this article is to present and defend an altogether different kind of argument for moral error theory; an argument based in the impossibility of reconciling inconsistencies among ordinary, first-order moral propositions. I refer to it as a first-order argument for error theory.This argument does not figure in the contemporary literature but does have fairly recent historical precedent. 2 Sidgwick famously identified three basic 'methods' of ethics: intuitionism, rational egoism and classical utilitarianism. Of these he regarded both rational egoism and classical utilitarianism as providing equally self-evident principles of practical reason. The result is the famous 'dualism of practical reason'. In the Concluding Chapter of the first edition of The Methods of Ethics Sidgwick describes this dualism as: "[A] contradiction so fundamental that if it cannot be overcome the whole system must fall to the ground. . . " (1874, 472) Sidgwick, of course, does not use the expression 'error theory'. Nevertheless the view expressed above could from a contemporary vantage point be read very much in that spirit. 3 Sidgwick is envisaging the whole system of practical reason "falling to the ground" and, as he later puts it, ". . . the Cosmos of Duty. . . reduced to Chaos" (Ibid., 473). The reason for this is not that moral properties (or, more broadly, principles of practical reason) are metaphysically suspect. It is rather 276

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Are the Moral Fixed Points Conceptual Truths?

Abstract: No Abstract.

Cited by 33 publications

References 7 publications

Why Care About Moral Fixed Points?

Why Care About Moral Fixed Points?

Debunking, Epistemic Achievement, and Undermining Defeat

A new argument for moral error theory

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