## 1. The Target Explanandum



Our first task is a deceptively hard one: getting a basic
understanding of our *explanandum* - i.e., normativity.
What *is* normativity?


### 1.1 Concept vs. World



If we wanted to gain an understanding of *physicality*,
we'd need to first settle whether it was most important to
understand physical *concepts*, physical *properties*,
physical *facts*, or something else entirely. Similarly, one
initial issue worth settling here is whether we should be
investigating normative concepts, normative properties, normative
facts, or all of these, or, perhaps, something else entirely.



This debate could happen at a general level - whether it is more
important to understand things in general at a conceptual or a
"worldly" level. (Here, and in what follows, we use
"worldly" to refer to metaphysical matters - matters
that are in the realm of what our thoughts and concepts are
about.) But it might be that there are special considerations
regarding the normative domain that point us in one direction or
the other. Consider an illustrative case: the debate around G.E.
Moore's famous "Open Question Argument" early in the
twentieth century, at least on one interpretation of the argument (see
entry on
 moral non-naturalism, section on the open question argument).
 Moore argued, in *Principia Ethica*, that for any proposed
analysis of moral concept <*M>* in terms of natural
concept <*N>*, someone who fully grasped and understood
the relevant concepts could still grant that something is *N*
but wonder whether it is *M*. (For example, a speaker competent
with the concepts involved could sincerely wonder: "It's
painful, but is it bad?") But such questions would not be
"open" to competent speakers if *M* could be
*analyzed* in terms of *N*. So, there can be no analysis
of any moral concept in purely natural terms (Moore 1903 [1993: ch.
1]).



If successful, this argument tells us something useful about
moral - and also, by similar reasoning, normative - concepts:
that they cannot be reduced to natural ones. But it does not
automatically tell us anything about moral *metaphysics*. It is
entirely possible that while the *concept* <bad>
cannot be reduced to the *concept* <painful>, the
*property* of badness (if there is such a property) can be
reduced to the *property* of painfulness. Roughly speaking,
there can be conceptual gaps even where there are no metaphysical
gaps: water might be distinct from H2O at the conceptual
level even if water is metaphysically identical to H2O.
Some metaethical naturalists have argued for an analogous claim in the
ethical domain (see Boyd 1988).



What this case shows is that insights about normative concepts often
don't carry over to normative metaphysics, and vice versa. This
will be true about some of the questions we consider here. For
example, take the question of the relationship between the normative
and the non-normative. The case of the Open Question Argument directly
illustrates that what we say about the relationship between normative
and non-normative *facts* may be different from what we
say about the relationship between normative and non-normative
*concepts.* Similarly, when we come to discuss whether the
normative obtains independently of what anyone thinks or
feels - the question of mind-independence - the
conceptual/metaphysical distinction makes a big difference. Most
contemporary mind-dependence theorists *don't* want to
say that normative concepts are explained by mental concepts, in the
same way that (on their views) normative facts are explained by mental
facts.



It would be difficult to deny that there are normative concepts. We
have normative thoughts, such as that so-and-so was an evil person or
that such-and-such was the wrong thing to do. There are common
thoughts such as that it would be a bad idea to have yet another Dr
Pepper. And our having such thoughts reveals that we have the
normative concepts involved in them, such as the concepts
<evil>, <wrong> and <bad>. But some
philosophers deny that there are normative properties that are
referred to or represented by our normative concepts, and that there
are normative facts that are referred to or represented by our
normative thoughts. Accounts of these kinds are anti-realist in that
they hold that normativity lies in the realm of thought rather than in
the worldly realm of metaphysics. A further complication is that
anti-realist accounts of these kinds can be
*nihilistic* - taking it that, to a first approximation,
there are no normative truths - or *cognitivist and
concessive* - taking it that, again approximately, there are
normative truths but they have no metaphysical commitments - or
*non-cognitivist* - taking it that, roughly, our normative
"thoughts" are not strictly speaking representational in
the way that (other) beliefs are and that there are normative truths,
but only in a *deflationary* sense.



We don't want to take a hard stand here on whether conceptual or
worldly questions are more important: the truth is probably that both
kinds of question are important at various junctures. However, if
we are right that virtually every party to debates about normativity
would agree that there are normative concepts, the main area of debate
is going to be in metaphysics, about whether or not there are worldly
normative properties and facts. We think that philosophers'
different views about the metaphysical issues will go a long way
toward explaining their different views about other matters, such as
the nature of normative thoughts, the nature of moral motivation, and
so on. We will therefore begin with issues about normative facts and
properties.



In thinking about these issues, we will adopt a familiar
"robust" or "realist" view about the nature of
properties, concepts, truths, propositions, and facts. We take it that
*properties* are worldly characteristics of things that explain
objective worldly similarities among things. So, for example, the
property *redness* is the characteristic shared by things that
are similar in being red. We also assume that we have
*concepts* of properties, which are our way of representing
properties in thought, and we assume there are propositions, which are
the objects of belief, and which are structured entities at least
partly constituted by concepts. We take beliefs to be cognitive
states, the objects of which are propositions, which can be evaluated
as true or false. Further, we take it that, at least in the case of
synthetic truths, if a sentence or proposition is true, it is true in
virtue of the obtaining of a relevant fact or worldly state of
affairs. We take it that *facts* are worldly states of affairs.
A simple example is the instantiation of redness by a fire truck. Our
concern, then, is whether there are normative facts and
properties.



It will be useful to consider briefly why one might suppose there are
any normative facts - where a normative fact would be, again, on
our usage of the term "fact", a worldly state of affairs
involving the instantiation of a normative property, such as the fact
that torture is wrong. One reason to think that such entities exist
can be derived from reflection on our normative thought and talk. We
think, for instance, that torture is wrong just as we think that
torture is (unfortunately) widespread. We think these things are true,
and, intuitively, for a sentence or proposition to be true is for it
to be accurate to the facts. This gives us reason to think that our
thoughts about torture commit us to the existence of the normative
fact that torture is wrong just as they commit us to the existence of
the fact that torture is widespread. Moreover, our thought that
torture is wrong seems on its face to ascribe wrongness to torture,
just as our thought that torture is widespread ascribes being
widespread to torture, so these thoughts seem to commit us to the
existence of the property *wrongness*, just as they commit us
to the existence of the property *being widespread*. In short,
it seems that our normative thoughts commit us to the existence of
normative facts and properties. As we will see, however, the idea that
there is this commitment would be denied by philosophers who accept
one or another form of normative anti-realism - non-cognitivists
or expressivists, "quietists", cognitive anti-realists,
and at least some constructivists. And anti-realists of another kind,
error theorists, agree that our moral thought and talk *commit*
us to the existence of normative facts and properties, but they think
this commitment is false. They think there are no such things. We will
discuss these anti-realist positions in what follows.


### 1.2 The Fundamental Normative Property



Our decision to focus initially on metaphysical issues doesn't
get us any closer to what normativity *is*; it only tells us
where to *locate* the initial important questions about
normativity. But what would *make* a fact be a normative one?
We started with some hand-wavy platitudes about normative claims being
"action-guiding", and "attitude-guiding", and
about their giving us reasons for action, or reasons for attitudes. We
could also give lots of *examples* of normative claims, adding
that, *if they are true*, they are true in virtue of the
normative facts:


* Moral claims: It's wrong to commit adultery; Bill Gates is a
generous man; it's good to love your country.
* Epistemic claims: You should believe that there is an external
world; George has reason to distrust Benedict; no one should believe
what the sum of the evidence points decisively against.
* Aesthetic claims: *No Country for Old Men* is the best
movie ever made; contrast contributes beauty to a painting; modern art
is not good.



But while platitudes and examples can give one a general sense of the
extension of the normative, they don't tell us what normativity
*is*.



One way to answer this latter question, assuming there are normative
properties, is to figure out which normative property, if any, is
*normatively fundamental*. This is not the question about what
is metaphysically fundamental, or fundamental *simpliciter*. It
is the question of what the bottom layer of normative facts, so to
speak, looks like, and in particular what normative properties show up
there, if there is such a bottom layer. Those normative facts might be
grounded in non-normative facts of one kind or another, or maybe
they're ungrounded - we'll come to that question in
time. The question here is, what are the normative properties, if any,
that all other normative properties depend on, or are explained by?
(We are being deliberately opaque about the sense of dependence or
explanation involved, since that is a matter of some
controversy - while many nowadays want to construe it as grounding
[see, for instance, Berker 2018], others are skeptical [Wielenberg
2014: 1.5].) If we can get an answer to that question, it could tell
us about the nature of the normative.



The most popular answer to this question, in recent years, has been
that facts about *reasons* are normatively fundamental (Parfit
2011; Scanlon 2014; Dancy 2004). Facts about goodness, obligation,
virtue, etc. - all other normative facts - depend on facts
about reasons. Others think that *value* is normatively
fundamental, explaining reasons and all other normative phenomena
(Maguire 2016), while still others think that facts about
*fittingness* are normatively fundamental (Howard 2019). Some
have even suggested that "thin" normative
facts - which, roughly speaking, merely tell us normative
information - are the wrong focus, and that "thick"
normative facts - roughly, facts that tell us something normative
*and* non-normative - could be at the bottom of it all,
normatively speaking (Roberts 2017, Morton 2019). On that view, the
fact that an act is courageous is normatively more fundamental, and
perhaps also metaphysically more fundamental, than the fact that it is
good, rather than the other way around.



Each answer aims to give us insight into the nature of the normative.
It could be that normative facts are facts that either are, or depend
on, facts about reasons. Or maybe normative facts are those that are,
or depend on, facts about value. And so on. Another possibility is
that no kind of normative fact is normatively fundamental (Wodak
2020).



This methodology for determining the nature of the normative might
seem flawed. After all, our goal was to understand what makes a
fact be normative, and it might seem that we won't
achieve this goal unless we can explain what makes the
base-facts (reasons, values, etc.) be normative. "What
makes this (not normatively fundamental) fact normative?" we can
imagine someone asking. "Well", we answer, "it
ultimately depends on a fact about reasons". But then our
interlocutor might reasonably ask, "Ok, but what makes facts
about *reasons* normative?" And here we don't have
an answer: "They just are!" we would have to say.



This worry becomes deeper when we consider the possibility of reasons
that are not "robustly" normative in the philosophically
most interesting and important sense. In chess, there is a reason to
castle early. In etiquette, there is a reason, when in Rome, to do
what the Romans do. But it might seem that these reasons have no
genuine claim on our attention in the way that the moral reason to be
loyal to friends does. So it would seem that the normatively
fundamental facts about reasons, if reasons fundamentalism is indeed
on the right track, would be facts about *robustly* normative
reasons. Perhaps, then, only some reasons are normatively
fundamental - the robustly normative ones. If so, presumably the
reasons fundamentalist would want to amend their view: what makes a
fact normative is that it is, or depends on, a fact or facts about
*robustly normative* reasons. But then it seems important
for them to be able to say *what makes a reason robustly
normative* - and it would be unsatisfying for them to answer
that a robustly normative reason is one that makes its dependents
robustly normative!



There would presumably be similar worries about the other kinds of
normative fundamentalism: not only will we lack an explanation of what
makes the base-facts (reasons, values, fittingness, etc.) normative,
but in many cases, there will be (putative) base-facts that do not
seem robustly normative. That will trigger a need for a
non-question-begging explanation of the difference between robust and
non-robust (putative) base-facts, which might or might not be a
deliverable good.



We do not think such accounts of normativity are necessarily doomed,
however. The mere fact that there is no explanation for why the
base-facts are (robustly) normative is not decisive on its own.
Suppose we were to claim that a certain class of facts are
*essentially* normative, where an essentially normative fact is
(roughly) a normative fact whose normativity is essential to it. And
suppose we were to claim, further, that there is no explanation of why
an essentially normative fact is normative. (Note that this does
*not* entail that essentially normative facts have no
explanation: some naturalists might want to claim that certain kinds
of facts are essentially normative but are fully explainable in
natural terms.) Taking this route, we would then claim that all other
normative facts derive their normativity from those essentially
normative facts. But that does not seem like an objection to the
methodology; in fact, it seems to substantially advance our
understanding of normativity. By way of analogy, imagine we were
concerned to find out what makes an object *physical*. Our
answer: there are fundamental physical objects called *atoms*,
and an object is physical just when it is composed of atoms. What
makes an *atom* physical though, one might ask? It seems that
we could justifiably answer that atoms are *essentially*
physical, while all other physical objects derive their physicality
from atoms. In this case, it does not seem like we should throw out
the theory just because there is a sub-class of physical objects whose
physicalness does not get explained, since those objects are
*essentially* physical. On the contrary, we seem to have
learned something substantive about the nature of the physical.
Similarly, we should not throw out an account of normativity just
because, on that account, there is a sub-class of normative facts
whose normativity is not explained.



On the other hand, we think that reasons fundamentalists and their kin
*do* need a non-question-begging answer to the question of what
makes a reason (value, etc.) the robust kind of reason to engender
robust normativity. And while that order seems like a tall one, it
does not seem to us to be unfillable in principle.



As an aside, note also that we have construed this method for
understanding normativity in worldly, not conceptual terms. This is
certainly one way of doing it, but it is also possible to replicate
the strategy at the conceptual level. For example, one might propose a
version of reasons fundamentalism according to which the concept
<reason> is the normatively fundamental concept. Such a
view would claim that the concept <good> can be analyzed in
terms of the concept <reason>. A conceptual version of value
fundamentalism would do the opposite.



And, just as we learned with Moore, the conceptual and worldly
strategies come apart. It might be that while goodness facts depend
fully on reason facts, the concept <good> cannot be analyzed in
terms of <reason>. Or, instead, it might be that while
<good> is analyzable in terms of <reason>, goodness facts
do not depend on reason facts. This could obtain, for instance, if the
error theory is true - for in that case, while we have normative
concepts to analyze in terms of each other, there are no goodness or
reason facts (or normative facts of any kind) at all.


## 2. Are There Any Normative Facts At All? - Error Theory



Of course, one of the biggest questions about normativity is whether
there *are* any normative facts at all. Most
philosophers - all that we know of - grant that we have
normative concepts. So, as we said before, we will confine ourselves
to the worldly question here. Yet many doubt that there are any facts
of the form [*X*ing is wrong] or [*Y* is a virtue]. By
far the most prominent concern with the existence of such facts, going
back at least to J.L. Mackie, is the concern that they would be
intolerably *queer* (Mackie 1977: 33). Some, admitting such
queerness, have tried to undermine the argument from queerness to the
conclusion that there are no normative facts, while others have (in
various ways) denied that normative facts are queer in the first
place. We'll explore all this below.



Again, error theorists agree that our normative thought and talk
commit us to the existence of normative facts and properties. They are
anti-realists because they think there are not actually any normative
properties or facts. They think our commitment to the existence of
such things is a mistake.



Mackie famously argued for a form of nihilism about
*morality* - or, in contemporary terms, "moral error
theory" - in his 1977 book *Ethics: Inventing Right and
Wrong*. Mackie thought that *there are no moral
facts -* or, as it will be convenient to talk about things
here, that all moral claims are false. Mackie was not the first to
think this, or something similar - see Olson (2014: chs.
2-4) for some of the pre-Mackie history of the view. We focus on
Mackie's argument just because it has informed so much of the
last several decades of thinking about moral (and normative) error
theory.



This error theory thesis has to be massaged a little to be even
consistent. After doing some of the needed massaging, we'll
examine Mackie's argument and the debate it spawned. Many of the
arguments are on their faces specific to the moral domain, but
applicable to normativity in general on further reflection. Many of
the earlier error theorists applied their views only to the moral
(Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001), while more recently, some have argued for
an error theory about the normative in general (Streumer 2017). Since
our concern here is with the normative, we'll address that
broader domain, except where an argument only applies to the moral, or
where we are trying to be accurate to an historical argument (e.g.,
Mackie's).


### 2.1 Formulating Error Theory



Error theorists claim - roughly! - that all normative claims
are false. As we indicated above, it's hard to give an analysis,
much less necessary and sufficient conditions, for a claim's
being normative. But error theorists need to get at least a little
clearer about their target. For example, is "Either the sun is
shining or you shouldn't believe in aliens" a normative
claim? It has a normative disjunct, after all. If this disjunctive
claim is normative, then the error theorist is in trouble, since
surely it can be true by virtue of the truth of its first
(non-normative) disjunct, even if it's not the case that you
shouldn't believe in aliens. To avoid the complication
illustrated by this example, error theorists would be well-advised to
set aside disjunctive normative claims (or at least to set aside
disjunctions of a normative claim with a non-normative claim).



We'll cut to the chase here: it makes most sense for error
theorists to make their claim about some properly defined set of
*basic normative claims.* This would be, more or less, those
claims that attribute a normative property to an individual or set of
individuals (construed broadly, to include institutions, governments,
etc.). So, on the modified reading, error theorists claim that *all
basic normative claims are false.* This will presumably take care
of the broader issue, exemplified above, of logically complex claims:
if they're normative, they are not in the primary scope of error
theory.



A problem with this formulation is that some normative claims are
analytic or conceptual truths. An example might be the claim that
murder is wrong. A trivial example is the claim that wrongful killing
is wrong. To address this issue we can take the error theorist to
claim that *all basic substantive normative claims are false.*
The idea here is that analytic and conceptual normative truths are not
substantive. (But see Cuneo & Shafer-Landau 2014.)



This new formulation also entails that all (positive) *normative
principles* are false - which we think error theorists will
strongly consider a feature rather than a bug. In a world where all
claims of the form "You should believe that *P*"
are false, so will all claims of the form "If *P* has
properties *XYZ*, then agents in situation *S* should
believe that *P*" - assuming it is possible for
something *P* to be *XYZ*. (It's not totally clear
how we should understand normative principles - see Morton (2020);
Berker (2018); Rosen (2017) - but surely in a world where
it's not the case that anyone should believe anything, a
principle outlining (possible) non-normative circumstances in which
someone should believe something is false.)



But there is still a problem in this formulation. If all basic
normative claims are false, this appears to generate straightforward
contradictions. Here are two apparently basic normative claims:


1. John's action is morally wrong.
2. John's action is morally permissible.



And it would certainly seem that if the first is false, then the
second is true, and vice versa. So if being morally wrong and being
morally permissible are both normative properties, then both of these
claims are basic normative claims. It follows, therefore, on this
formulation, that error theory is not only false, but false of logical
necessity, since it entails a contradiction.



If only it were so easy to refute error theory! Error theorists
should, in the cool light of day, formulate their theory to avoid this
glaring problem. They have a few options - we'll outline
three. First, they can say that error theory is the claim that basic
normative claims are all *neither true nor false*, perhaps
because they have a presupposition failure (Joyce 2001; Perl &
Schroeder 2019; Olson 2014). This would allow them to get out of the
contradiction between
 (1)
 and
 (2):
 neither is true (or false), so neither entails the falsity (or truth)
of the other.



Second, perhaps error theory could narrow the class of basic normative
claims - the claims that it holds to be false. If a basic
normative claim is a claim that ascribes a normative property to
something, error theory should be careful as to which normative
predicates ascribe bone fide normative properties. It could then deny
that permissibility is a *bona fide* normative property: to
claim that something is permissible is really to deny that it is
morally wrong. (Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (2006: SS3.1) has
suggested a very similar move for moral error theorists.)



This would allow the error theorist to affirm the truth of (2) above,
and thus get out of the contradiction without sacrificing her
commitment to error theory. Error theory doesn't, after all,
require one to deny the truth of all normative claims! And while this
more nuanced error theory has lost a lot of the shock-value of the
original rough formulation, it still stays true to the motivating idea
that there are no instantiated normative properties, and no facts to
normatively constrain us in the world (though there are
"negative" normative facts, like the fact that this
painting is not beautiful).



Finally, the error theorist could, instead, deny that
"*X* is not permissible" entails "*X*
is wrong", or that "*X* is not wrong" entails
"*X* is permissible". Doing so would allow her to
maintain the falsity of both
 (1)
 and
 (2).
 In short, nothing is wrong and nothing is permissible. Jonas Olson
has advocated this view (Olson 2014: ch. 1; see Streumer & Wodak
2021), arguing that the connections between permissibility and
wrongness are best accounted for in terms of conversational
implicature, not conceptual entailment. This view will be attractive
for any error theorist who shares Mackie's belief that error
theory does not commit one to any (positive) first-order normative
claims at all (Mackie 1977: 15-17). It also allows the error
theorist to get out of saying that all things are permissible, which
can seem independently unpalatable. On the other hand, she will still
be committed to the claim that nothing is wrong, and it might seem
like a small difference between this and the claim that all things are
permissible. See Olson (2014: SS1.3) for a much fuller treatment
of this problem of formulation, and possible solutions.



So, the error theorist has a few options in formulating her view.
However, just for the sake of brevity - with the added bonus that
it allows us to remain neutral between the above nuanced
formulations - we'll abbreviate the error theory as the view
that all basic substantive normative claims are false.


### 2.2 The Argument from Queerness



Now that we have set aside the question of how to formulate the error
theory, we can deal with the most important recent argument for the
theory: Mackie's Argument from Queerness. We won't attempt
a full scholarly treatment of Mackie's argument here (though see
Joyce & Kirchin 2010, as well as SS3.2 of the entry on
 moral anti-realism);
 we are more interested in the broad concerns about normativity it
spawned. The general thought here is that normative facts, if they
existed, would be really *weird*. This is a thought many have
shared, perhaps inchoately. As we'll see, it is difficult to
determine how exactly to flesh out the thought. (In what follows,
we'll follow the precedent set by Mackie and use the term
"queer" for "weird".)



The basic argument runs something like this:



1.
If there were moral facts, they would be queer.
2.
There are no queer entities.
3.
Therefore, there are no moral facts.


And, on certain understandings of the queerness involved, the argument
can generalize to the normative:



1'.
If there were normative facts, they would be queer.
2.
There are no queer entities.
3'.
Therefore, there are no normative facts.


(It is possible to weaken the argument, claiming only, in place of
 (2),
 that we ought to believe there are no queer entities, or that it is
not the case that we should believe there are queer entities, or even
that there is strong *prima facie* reason against belief in
queer entities. The conclusions would then, of course, be
appropriately weakened. We will continue to consider the strong
version above, though in the course of the discussion, we touch on
weaker versions where they become salient.)



Speaking a little more precisely, if normative facts are queer, it is
because they have some property that is queer, where that they have
this property is essential to normative facts. The queerness in
question would be a property of this property of normative facts.
Hence, to support the
 first premise,
 the error theorist needs to establish:


* What property of normative facts makes them queer. That is, what
is the first-order property of normative facts that instantiates the
second-order property of being queer? This is presumably the property
of being normative, but other answers might be given as well.
* What exactly the queerness consists in. That is, what is the
nature of this second-order property that is instantiated by the
first-order property of being normative, or, perhaps, by certain other
first-order properties of normative facts?



And these issues - especially the second - need to be
addressed in a way that makes the
 second premise
 plausible. We'll consider these two issues in turn.


#### 2.2.1 What feature of normativity is queer?



The first main issue for the argument from queerness that we mentioned
above is, what it is about normative facts in virtue of which they are
(supposedly) queer. There have been a host of different answers to
this question.



Mackie himself is relatively unclear on this issue. Some take him to
be concerned primarily with the *motivational* commitments of
moral discourse - that moral discourse entails the truth of
motivational internalism, (roughly) the view that genuine moral
beliefs entail motivation to act in accordance with those beliefs (see
Joyce 2001: ch. 1). David Brink argues that Mackie is unclear between
two potentially problematic entailments of moral discourse:
motivational internalism, and reasons internalism - the view that
moral obligation entails reasons for action (Brink 1984). Jonas Olson
argues that Mackie actually argues for the queerness of *four
distinct features* of moral discourse: motivational internalism, a
*sui generis* epistemic faculty, the supervenience of the moral
on the non-moral, and finally, the irreducible normativity of moral
facts (Olson 2014: chs. 5 and 6).



Theoretically, we could mix and match any of these supposedly queer
features of normativity with any of the views about what queerness
consists in. For example, it might be that the problem is that
normative beliefs that entail motivation to act would be a fundamental
addition to our ontology; maybe the problem is that facts that entail
reasons for action are not parsimonious; maybe the supervenience of
the normative on the non-normative is not parsimonious. But as a
matter of fact, although no one is utterly clear on the question of
what queerness consists in, the literature has converged on one family
of answers to the question of what the queer feature of normativity
is.



Post-Mackie, philosophers who take up the argument from queerness
generally converge on the *categoricity* or *irreducible
normativity* of reasons as the queer commitment of
morality/normativity. Richard Garner (1990) thinks that moral facts
are queer because they entail "intrinsic imperativeness".
Joyce variously describes this feature as the
"inescapability" (2001: 31), "categoricity"
(2001: 37) "practical clout" (2006: 57-58) or
"practical oomph" (2006: 60) of moral requirements. In
early work (2011), Olson also identifies categorical reasons as the
queer commitment of morality, but in later work (2014) says that it is
morality's entailment of irreducibly normative favoring
relations that is queer.


#### 2.2.2 What does queerness consist in?



Even if there were a consensus on what feature of normative facts is
queer, there we would still be the question of what exactly the
queerness consists in. What it is about this feature that is supposed
to be objectionable? And what exactly is the objection supposed to be?
For instance, what exactly is objectionable about irreducibly
normative favoring relations? Not everything irreducible is queer,
presumably. Further, what exactly is the nature of the objection? What
is the objection being signaled by calling irreducibly normative
favoring relations queer? What exactly *is it* to be queer?
This is the second main issue for the
 first premise
 of the argument from queerness, which we identified above. The answer
is not entirely clear. Here are a few things that could be meant.



**I. A kind of fact is queer if it is non-natural.**
Perhaps an irreducibly normative favoring relation could not be a
natural relation and this is what would be queer about it. On this
view, normative facts are not continuous with the natural order, and
that in itself is what makes them objectionable. They are like facts
about ghosts, or gods, or gremlins. (Notice that this still leaves
open what it is about normative facts that makes them discontinuous
with the natural order - that is the business of the next
section.)



The problem, of course, even assuming that normative facts would be
non-natural, is that it is not clear what exactly the objection is to
the idea that there are non-natural facts. Clearly metaphysical
naturalists would reject the idea, for metaphysical naturalism is the
view that the only facts are natural ones. But we cannot simply assume
that metaphysical naturalism is true, or that it would be
objectionable to reject it. If the argument from queerness rests on
this assumption, it will only be convincing to those who already are
naturalists. For an error theorist who hopes to convince anyone
who's not a dyed-in-the-wool naturalist, this is not the right
way to run the argument from queerness.



**II. A kind of fact is queer if it would be fundamentally
different from everything else** - if it is "*sui
generis*", in the going lingo. Mackie often talks as if this
is his concern:



> 
> 
> If there were objective moral values, then they would be entities or
> qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from
> anything else in the universe. (Mackie 1977: 38)
> 
> 
> 



Well, of *course* everything is different from everything else,
so a lot must ride on that "utterly". We think one way of
reading the concern here is that queerness consists in *fundamental
difference in kind*.



On this reading, for a class of things to be queer is for their
existence to entail a new addition to the bottommost layer of reality.
(We leave this metaphor unexplored, since that would mire us in
controversy about how best to make sense of the notion of metaphysical
fundamentality.) In other words, to determine whether a class of
things is queer, we can run something like the following test: take
two worlds, *W*1 and *W*2. They
are qualitatively identical except that *W*2 has
things of kind *K*, whereas *W*1 does not.
(Or, more precisely, they are qualitatively identical except for the
existence of things of kind *K* in *W*2, and
any other differences entailed ipso facto by the existence of some
*K* things.) Question: are there more kinds of things in the
basic layer of reality in *W*2 than in
*W*1? If so, then *K* things are queer.



Note that on this test, *K* things don't have to be queer
*in virtue of their *K*-ness* in order to be queer. It
could be that they entail the existence of some distinct kind of
thing, and that kind would constitute a fundamental addition to our
ontology. Perhaps, that is, *K* things actually don't
fall in the fundamental layer of reality, but they entail the
existence of L things, and those are both fundamental and not present
in otherwise identical worlds without *K* things.



The problem with this understanding of the queerness objection is that
it overgeneralizes. Every fundamental kind of thing turns out to be
queer! Supposing that the property of physicalness is fundamental,
then, comparing a world *W*1 without physical things
to a world *W*2 that has physical things,
*W*2 will have more kinds of thing in its basic
layer than *W*1. So, physical things are queer!
Combine this with the commitment in
 premise (2)
 that there are no queer things, and you get the result that there are
no physical objects. (Even on the weaker versions of those premises,
we get the result that we shouldn't believe in physical objects,
or that there is strong *prima facie* reason not to believe in
them.) The argument can be run on any possible fundamental kind. (See
Morton & Sampson 2014 on this point.)



And suffice it to say that the error theorist about normativity
probably doesn't want to be an error theorist about literally
any possible fundamental kind of thing. Among other reasons, assuming
that no non-fundamental kind of thing could exist without fundamental
kinds, this would entail that nothing exists. And we'd be
willing to bet that that is going to be too rich for any error
theorist's blood.



Now, perhaps there is some more local concern about normativity's
being fundamental. That is, perhaps there's something queer
about normative facts being at the bottommost level of reality that is
unique to normativity: i.e., perhaps it's queer that
*normative facts in particular* would be at the bottom layer of
reality. This would undermine the above overgeneralization objection.
Maybe, for example, it is strange that normative facts would be
fundamental because it is taken as a truism that normative facts
depend on non-normative ones. And how could they depend
(metaphysically?) on anything else if they're fundamental? But
such attempts at more local fundamentality worries would run into
their own complications - e.g., what is the relationship between
the kind of dependence involved between the normative and the
non-normative, on the one hand, and fundamentality on the other? We
won't delve any deeper into such issues here.



**III. Finally, perhaps a kind of fact is queer when a theory
that included it would not be *parsimonious*.** Olson
sometimes talks like this is what he means:



> 
> 
> [M]oral error theorists can apply Occam's razor. If our moral
> practices and beliefs can be explained without appeal to irreducibly
> normative properties and facts, a theory that dispenses with such
> properties and facts will have the advantage of being in this respect
> the more ontologically parsimonious theory. (2014: 147)
> 
> 
> 



So on this understanding of queerness, the problem is that normative
facts somehow create a less parsimonious picture of the world.



There are many ways we can think of parsimony (see Sober 2015). We
don't need to get too technical here. We think that the most
plausible view favoring parsimony would hold that, other things being
equal, a theory is objectionable insofar as it entails the existence
of more kinds of thing than a competing theory does. On this reading,
we are getting close to the suggestion that queerness is a matter of
adding a fundamental kind to our ontology, especially if parsimony
applies (or is especially strong) only at the level of
*fundamental* kinds.



At any rate, if queerness is just relative lack of parsimony, the
error theorist is opening up a can of worms. Many people are not sold
on the value of parsimony in theory selection - or are not sold on
its value outside of empirical contexts (see Huemer 2009). Those who
are sold on the value of parsimony count it as a *pro
tanto* consideration to be weighed against a host of other
factors. That means that even granting that normative facts are queer
(in the sense that postulating them is less parsimonious than not
doing so), this does not by itself establish that they do not exist,
or that we shouldn't believe in them. In other words,
interpreting the
 first premise
 of the argument from queerness in this way undermines the
 second premise,
 at least where the second premise is read strongly as the claim that
there are no queer facts. (See Morton & Sampson 2014 for a fuller
argument against queerness as lack of parsimony.)



Of course, perhaps the error theorist could reply that it's not
queerness *alone* that shows that there are no normative facts.
Perhaps, for example, this conclusion is supported by
queerness - i.e., lack of parsimony, here - together with the
fact that normative facts are not necessary as part of the explanation
of any observation. Jean Hampton (1998: 21-22) seems to think
that something like this is going on in the argument from queerness.
This would make the argument from queerness a version of
Harman's (1977) argument. As such, it would mire the error
theorist in all the issues surrounding that argument, which we will
not delve into here. (But see Sturgeon 1985 and Majors 2007 for
discussion.)


### 2.3 Other Arguments for Error Theory



The argument from queerness is not the only argument for error theory.
Here we'll just briefly outline one other - one that is more
explicitly for *normative* error theory in general. The
argument runs roughly as follows:


1. There are no necessarily coextensive but distinct
properties. (I.e, all necessarily coextensive properties are
identical.)
2. If any normative property *N* exists, then
it is necessarily coextensive with some natural property.
3. So, if any normative property *N* exists,
then it is identical to some natural property.
4. Normative properties are not identical to natural
properties.
5. Therefore, there are no normative properties.



Bart Streumer has given this argument, across a number of articles and
a book (see his 2011, 2013, and 2017).



The first phase of the argument, to
 sub-conclusion (3),
 is defended by philosophers such as Frank Jackson (1998: ch. 5) and,
in more general form, in a non-metaethical context, Jaegwon Kim
(1993).
 (1)
 is presented largely as an intuitive criterion of property identity.
Given certain assumptions,
 (2)
 can be proven just from the claim that the normative supervenes on
the natural. This is the claim that there can be no normative
difference in how things are without a natural difference in them (see
entry on
 supervenience).
 We won't walk through the proof here - though see Bader
(2017) for a very succinct summary - but consider the following
simplified version. Assume - the simplifying step - that the
normative property *wrongness* supervenes on only one natural
property: *failure to maximize utility*. Then, whenever an
action instantiates *wrongness*, it instantiates that natural
property, and vice versa - given that the relevant assumptions
obtain. And, assuming that supervenience holds with metaphysical
necessity, so will this covariation. Wrongness will be necessarily
coextensive with the property of being a failure to maximize utility,
so (given
 premise 1)
 it will be identical to that property.



Streumer defends
 (4),
 the last step to the error theoretic conclusion, the claim that
normative properties are not natural ones. Arguments for this claim
are, however, pivotal to many arguments about the nature of
normativity, and not merely to an argument for the error theory. They
are pivotal in arguments in favor of non-naturalism, the view that
normative properties exist but are not natural properties. And they
are pivotal in arguments in favor of non-cognitivist/expressivist
theories, theories that hold that normative predicates do not ascribe
or refer to normative properties at all, but have a very different
semantic role. So, since arguments against normative naturalism are of
very wide importance, we will consider them separately.


## 3. Can Normativity Be Given a Naturalistic Explanation?



We have been helping ourselves to the ideas of a *normative
property* and a *normative fact*, but we haven't yet
considered in a systematic way views about what the
*normativity* of such properties and facts might consist in. As
we explained, the queerness argument for the error theory rests on the
idea that some property of normative facts is queer, and the leading
candidate seems to be the *normativity* of the normative facts.
One way to answer the queerness argument, then, would be to provide an
explanation of what the property of being normative consists in, and a
naturalistic explanation would ideally put to rest the worry that
there is something queer about normativity. This is one reason to take
seriously the question whether normativity can be explained
naturalistically.



Non-naturalists deny that normative properties are natural ones, often
because they hold that the normativity of these properties rules out
their being natural ones. The idea here is that natural properties are
not and could not be normative. But the issue whether a normative
property could be a natural one is not the same as the issue whether
normativity can be given a naturalistic explanation. Normative
naturalists hold that normative predicates ascribe or refer to natural
properties, and some if not all normative naturalists would contend
that normative properties *are* natural ones. But this does not
commit them to the view that normativity can be explained
naturalistically. It is open to a normative naturalist to deny that
normativity can be explained at all. So the dispute between
naturalists and their opponents, including non-naturalists, cuts
across the issue raised by our question.



In this section, then, we explore whether normativity can be given a
naturalistic explanation. In the next section, we explore a variety of
putative explanations of normativity, including naturalistic ones.



We begin by clarifying our question. An explanation puts an
*explanandum* into an explanatory relation with an
*explanans*. So, first, what exactly is the explanandum in the
case of our question? Second, what kind of explanatory relation is at
issue? What relation between explanandum and naturalistic explanans
are we looking for? There are different kinds of explanation. And
third, the explanans of a naturalistic explanation would be something
naturalistic, but what would count as a *naturalistic*
explanans?



The explanandum in question is *the property of being
normative*, one might say. But we need to bring this into sharper
focus. The error theory contests the idea that there are normative
properties and normative facts. Certain other anti-realist theories
might agree with the error theory that there are not any normative
*facts* - understood as worldly states of
affairs - but, as we will see, might not deny that there are
normative *truths*. And all of these theories, as well as
realist theories, would agree that there are normative
*concepts* and normative *claims* and
*judgments*. As we said before, the main area of debate among
these theories concerns whether there are worldly normative properties
and facts. Nevertheless, our question in this section is about the
possibility of providing a naturalistic explanation of
*normativity*. Normative properties and facts (if there are
any) instantiate the property of being normative, but so do normative
concepts, normative claims, normative judgments, and normative truths
(if there are any). The explanandum of the question we are asking,
then, is this property of being normative. Is it possible to provide a
naturalistic explanation of this property?



Perhaps, however, there is more than one such property. Perhaps there
is a family of "normativity properties". For it is not
clear that normative properties, facts, truths, and claims would all
be normative in virtue of having exactly the same property. Perhaps
normative claims are normative in virtue of having the normative truth
conditions they have, whereas these truth conditions are normative in
virtue of the normativity of the properties that partly constitute
them. Perhaps, then, what normative concepts, claims, truths, facts,
and properties have in common, assuming there are such things, is not
that they all instantiate *the* property of being normative,
but rather that they instantiate *one of* the properties from
the "normativity family".



What kind of explanation is at issue? As we understand matters, we are
looking for a "constitutive explanation", an account of
the essential nature of the property (or properties) of being
normative, or a "real definition" of the property (or of
each of the properties) (Rosen 2010; also Schroeder 2005, King 1998).
A non-normative example of such an explanation would be the account of
the property of *being an acid* according to which to be an
acid is to be a proton donor. The question is whether there could be a
relevantly similar naturalistic account of the essential nature of the
property of *being normative*. Or, if there is more than one
such property, the question is whether there could be naturalistic
accounts of the essential natures of the normativity properties.



In a *naturalistic* constitutive explanation of the property
(or properties) of being normative, the explanans (for each
normativity property) would be a natural property, or perhaps a
naturalistic "condition", all the constituents of which
are natural properties. For example, if to be an acid is to be a
proton donor, then it is a necessary truth that every acid satisfies
the condition, or has the complex property, of being a proton donor.
Our question, then, is whether there could be a similar explanation of
normativity. Could there be an explanation of the normativity of
normative facts according to which, for such a fact to be normative is
for it to satisfy a condition *X*, *Y*, *Z* where
each constituent of this condition is something natural?



Unfortunately, it is tricky to specify what we mean by a
"natural" property. For our purposes in this entry, as a
first approximation, we might take natural properties to be, roughly,
those that figure in scientific theories. Examples would be the
properties that figure in biology, economics, psychology, and so on,
including the property of being an acid, the property of being
deciduous, the property of being inflationary, and so on. More
broadly, as a second approximation, we might say that a natural
property is such that any substantive knowledge we could have about
its instantiation would be empirical. This broader usage would allow
us to count the properties of being an automobile and being a lawn
chair to count as natural ones. (For discussion of the idea of a
natural property, see entries on
 moral naturalism
 and
 moral non-naturalism).



We have said that the explanandum of our question is the property of
being normative or perhaps the family of normativity properties. A
complication is that there are philosophical disagreements about the
nature of properties, or about the use of the word
"property".



As we said before, we understand properties to be worldly
characteristics that underlie objective, genuine, worldly similarities
among things. Call this the "robust" or
"realist" view of properties. On a very different
"minimalist" view, to speak of a property is simply to
talk in an abstract way about uses of predicates, such as their use in
describing things. On such a view, our taking it to be true that it
would be bad to drink more Dr. Peppers commits us to there being a
"property" that is ascribed by "bad", but this
is nothing but a commitment to (roughly) whatever is involved in the
predicative use of "bad". Similarly, on such a view, the
idea that there is a property ascribed by "normative" is
merely a commitment to (roughly) whatever is involved in the
predicative use of "normative".



The upshot is that there are both minimalist and realist views about
the nature of the explanandum of our question. On the realist view,
the challenge is to explain the nature of the property or properties
that underlie the objective similarity among normative properties, in
virtue of which they are normative, as well as the objective
similarities among normative concepts, normative facts, and normative
claims. On a minimalist view, the challenge is very different. It is,
roughly, to explain what is involved in the predicative use of
"normative". Minimalism leaves open what might be
involved. For all that it says, the predicative use of
"normative" might involve ascribing a realist property.
However, there are alternatives, which, as we will see, are taken up
by anti-realist metaethical views such as non-cognitivist
expressivism.



It is worth mentioning that there are also minimalist views about the
meanings of the words "true" and "fact", or
about how these terms are used. On one minimalist view about the
meaning of "true", for example, to say it is true that it
would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper is just a way of saying that
it would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper. And on one minimalist
view about "fact", facts are simply true propositions.
These minimalist views seem to imply that uses of "true"
and "fact", as well as uses of "property", do
not have any metaphysical implications. Most important, they do not
commit us to the existence of worldly states of affairs or worldly
properties that underwrite genuine similarities among things.



Minimalist views of these kinds are not uncommon. Minimalism figures
in the quasi-realist expressivism advocated by Simon Blackburn (2006).
Arguably Parfit's "non-metaphysical non-naturalism"
(2011: vol 2, 486) or "non-realist cognitivism" (2017: 49)
also incorporates minimalist views. So-called "quietist
realist" positions also arguably involve a kind of minimalism
(see Dworkin 1996 and 2011: part 1; Scanlon 2014).



In addition to the difference between realist and minimalist
understandings of the explanandum, there is a difference between
robust and formalist understandings. We will explain this distinction
in
 section 3.1.
 The formalist view is a kind of deflationary view about normativity.
It would sidestep our question, in effect. There is controversy about
whether there is such a thing as robust normativity, but our question
presupposes that there is such a thing and asks whether its nature can
be given a naturalistic explanation. We will therefore set aside the
formalist view after a brief discussion of it.



In
 section 3.2,
 we introduce the distinction between normative realism and normative
anti-realism. We sketch the challenge that our question poses to
normative realism, and the kinds of answers that realists might
provide. Realism is, however, compatible with fundamentally different
views about the explanation of normativity. In
 section 3.3,
 we consider the "primitivist" view that the nature of
normativity cannot be explained at all, at least not in non-normative
terms. Primitivism is characteristic of non-naturalism, but it is also
available to naturalists.



In
 section 3.4,
 we introduce a distinction between "conceptualism" and
"objectualism", two views about the kinds of things that
instantiate the property of being normative.
"Objectualist" theories hold that there are worldly
normative properties and states of affairs, whereas
"conceptualist" theories deny this and hold instead that
normativity lies exclusively, or at least fundamentally, in the realm
of thought. Conceptualism is, we think, the characteristic position of
anti-realists; at least, this is so if we set aside the error theory,
but conceptualism is also compatible with normative realism. In
 section 3.4.1
 and
 section 3.4.2,
 we look at anti-realist and realist versions of conceptualism,
respectively.



Finally, in
 section 3.5,
 we turn to objectualism, and the issue whether there might be a
successful form of reductive normative naturalism. This kind of theory
would provide an ambitious answer to our organizing question. It would
combine a realist, robust view of the property of being normative with
the objectualist view that this property is instantiated by states of
affairs and first-order ethical properties. It then contends that it
is possible to provide a naturalistic constitutive explanation of the
property (or properties) of being normative.



The question we address in this section concerns whether a
naturalistic constitutive explanation of normativity can be
provided. In this section, we address the question in abstract
terms. In the following section,
 section 4,
 we explore a variety of putative explanations of normativity,
including naturalistic ones. The best way to show that a naturalistic
explanation of normativity is possible would be to provide one.


### 3.1 Normative Formalism



The basic idea of normative formalism can perhaps be conveyed if we
mention that there at least seem to be truths about what one has most
*reason* to do in a game. We pointed this out before, in
discussing reasons fundamentalism. There also seem to be truths about
what one *ought* to do in a game. In chess, for instance, one
ought to castle early and there is reason to protect one's
queen. One might think, however, that this "ought" and
this reason have in themselves no genuine authority over a
person's decisions, not even if she is playing chess. Of course,
a person might have a prudential reason to play well, or she might
have a moral reason to do so if she promised, but chess reasons in
themselves have no authority over her. They are not
"robustly" normative in the philosophically most
interesting and important sense. Chess reasons have no genuine claim
on anyone's attention in the way that the moral reason to be
loyal to friends does. Normative formalism rejects this line of
thought. On the formalist view, the idea of normative authority, and
the idea of genuine or robustly normative reasons or
"oughts", are empty. There is nothing to normativity
beyond the fact that certain rules or norms "call for"
certain actions or decisions in certain situations in the way that the
rules of chess and considerations of strategy in chess call for
castling early.



Formalism has been defended by Evan Tiffany (2007; see also Hubin
2001), and it seems to be implicit in places where it is not
explicitly defended. It is compatible with a variety of positions,
including normative realism, as we will explain. Yet formalism is a
radical view. It seems to imply that, other things being equal, the
reason to castle early is no different with respect to its authority
over actions or decisions, and with respect to its normativity, from
the reason to be honest and truthful.



For our purposes, the important point is that formalism offers an
affirmative answer to the question we are discussing in this section,
for it explains normativity on the basis of the logic and content of
norms and rules that have currency in relevant social contexts
(Tiffany 2007; Parfit 2011, II: 308-309). H.L.A. Hart arguably
has a similar view about the normativity of law (1994: 257; see Copp
2019). If normative formalism is correct, then, there is a ready
answer to Mackie's argument from queerness. For, if formalism is
correct, normativity is no more mysterious than facts about the
rules of games or facts about social norms and social practices.



The controversial issue, however, is whether there is such a thing as
the "robust" or "authoritative" normativity
that formalism rejects. Our question presupposes that there is such a
thing, for otherwise the organizing question we are asking in this
section is neither especially interesting nor challenging. For this
reason, we set aside the formalist view in what follows.


### 3.2 Normative Realism



Normative realism sees a strict analogy between normative truths, such
as the putative truth that it would be bad to have another Dr. Pepper,
and non-normative truths, such as the fact that Dr. Pepper is sweet.
In each case, there is a declarative sentence that expresses a
proposition that can be the intensional object of a belief, and,
further, the belief, proposition, and sentence are true just when the
state of affairs they represent obtains. So, if our beliefs are
correct, there is the state of affairs or the fact that Dr. Pepper is
sweet, and there is the state of affairs or the fact that it would be
bad to have another Dr. Pepper. We believe both that Dr. Pepper is
sweet and that it would be bad to have another one. And we express
these beliefs by asserting that Dr. Pepper is sweet or that it would
be bad to have another one, respectively.



Accordingly, normative realists hold both that there are states of
affairs that are represented by, and that are the truth conditions of,
normative propositions, and that there are properties that are
referred to or ascribed by normative predicates. Mind-independent
realist theories go beyond this basic position to add that the truth
conditions of normative truths are "mind-independent" in
some important sense. (We discuss the idea of mind-independence in
 section 5
 of this entry.) So we can distinguish between the view we will call
"basic normative realism" and the view we will call
"mind-independent normative realism". Some philosophers
want to reserve the term "realism" for the
mind-independent form, and we will also tend to follow this usage
except where we want to describe a theory as an example of basic
realism.



There is also the distinction, among realist theories, between
normative naturalism and normative non-naturalism. As we said before,
normative naturalists hold that normative predicates ascribe or refer
to natural properties, and some if not all normative
naturalists hold that normative properties *are*
natural ones. We will discuss normative naturalism and non-naturalism
in what follows.



Note a couple of points. First, there is nothing in normative
realism that commits realists to holding that the normative properties
and facts are *robustly* normative rather than merely formally
normative. But we have set aside normative formalism. In what follows,
we consider attempts to account for robust normativity. Second,
as we will explain in
 section 3.4,
 normative realism is compatible with a kind of *normative
conceptualism*, and this means that realists are not committed to
holding that the wordly states of affairs that are the truth
conditions of normative propositions, and the properties
that are ascribed by normative predicates, are themselves
normative. They could hold instead, roughly, that normativity is
a feature only of normative concepts.



Anti-realist theories deny one or more of the claims that are
definitive of realism, whether of basic realism or of mind-independent
realism. There are several different kinds of normative anti-realism.
One kind is normative nihilism, or the error theory, which we have
already discussed. Non-cognitivist expressivism is another kind of
anti-realist theory. A third kind is the non-realist cognitivism that
was advocated by Derek Parfit (2011, 2017). Still another kind is a
family of "constructivist "theories, which reject the
mind-independence condition, although some of them seem committed to
the tenets of basic normative realism (Copp 2013). For examples, see
Christine Korsgaard's work (1996) and Sharon Street's
(2008, 2010). (This entry does not discuss non-realist cognitivism or
constructivism. See the entry on
 constructivism in metaethics.)
 We consider anti-realist attempts to account for robust normativity
in
 section 3.4
 as well as in some of the subsections in
 section 4.



If a theory countenances the existence of normative facts,
normative properties, normative propositions, and normative concepts,
it ideally would want to explain what the normativity of each of
these consists in. To bring the challenge into focus, consider a
normative property such as *wrongness*. Ideally, one might
think, realists would want to provide accounts on two levels. First,
they might aspire to provide an account of the essential nature of
*wrongness* itself, an account that reveals, *inter
alia*, that *wrongness* is essentially normative. Second,
realists might aspire to provide an account of the essential nature of
the second-order property of being normative that is instantiated by
*wrongness*. These accounts would be constitutive explanations,
in the sense we introduced. Our question is whether the account of the
latter, second-order property could be naturalistic.



With respect to the normative concepts - concepts such as the
concepts <wrong> or <virtue> - the explanatory
accounts we are looking for would be *conceptual* analyses, so
they presumably would be a priori. This does not mean that they would
be *obviously* true, nor even that any rational person who had
the concept would recognize a correct analysis as being correct. (For
discussion of this point, see entries
 analysis
 and
 moral non-naturalism, section on the open question argument).
 With respect to the normative properties - properties such as the
property of being wrong, or that of being a virtue - the
explanatory accounts we are looking for would be *metaphysical*
analyses, so, arguably, they would *not* be a priori (Schroeder
2005, King 1998, Rosen 2010). Since these accounts would be (putative)
accounts of the *essential* natures of the properties, they
would be necessarily true if true at all, and they would underwrite
identity claims. If it is the essential nature of something's
being an acid that it be a proton donor, then to be an acid is to be a
proton donor. If it the essential nature of wrongness is being
*A*, *B*, and *C*, then to be wrong is to be
*A*, *B*, and *C*.



One might think it is obvious that there could not be a correct
naturalistic constitutive explanation of any of the normative concepts
or properties, nor of the normativity property or properties
themselves. But before we turn to this issue, we will consider a
variety of other views, both realist and anti-realist, and discuss
their approaches to explaining normativity.


### 3.3 Primitivism: Non-Naturalism and Naturalism



One camp of realists holds that the nature of normativity
*cannot* be fully explained. There is no correct constitutive
explanation of normativity. We might express their view by saying
that, for them, normativity is *primitive*. It is
*unanalyzable*.



We distinguish primitivism about normativity as such from primitivism
about the normative properties or concepts. Primitivism about the
normative properties or concepts holds that the nature of these
properties or concepts cannot be fully explained. There is no correct
constitutive explanation of their nature. Primitivism about
normativity as such holds that the nature of normativity cannot be
fully explained.



It seems, however, that primitivism about normativity as such commits
one to primitivism about the normative properties and concepts. For it
is of the nature of the normative properties and concepts that they
are normative. So primitivism about normativity implies that any
constitutive account of the nature of a normative property or concept
would have an unanalyzable constituent, the second-order normativity
property. To illustrate, consider the view that all normative
properties can be reduced to some condition about reasons. Perhaps for
an action to be wrong is, in part, for there to be reasons against it.
But reasons are normative considerations, so the primitivist about
normativity will say that the normativity of reasons is primitive.
Generalizing, according to primitivism about normativity, any
constitutive explanation of a normative property would have the
normativity property as an unanalyzable constituent. It therefore
seems that primitivism about normativity implies or at least supports
a primitivism about the normative properties and concepts.



Primitivists typically are *non-naturalists* who hold that
normative properties belong to a metaphysically different kind than
natural properties. There is, however, room for a primitivism that is
naturalist. There might be natural properties the intrinsic nature of
which is not open to analysis or to constitutive explanation, so we
should perhaps be open to the idea that the normative properties are
among the primitive natural ones. Perhaps, too, the second-order
property of being normative is a natural one, where there is no
correct constitutive explanation of its nature. There are also
primitivist anti-realist theories, such as Parfit's cognitivist
anti-realism and constructivist theories that deploy unanalyzed
conceptions of rationality.



There is, then, a primitivism about normativity as such as well as a
primitivism about normative properties. There is also a primitivist
view about normative concepts according to which these concepts are
not analyzable. Non-naturalists typically hold that *both* the
normative concepts and the normative properties are primitive and
unanalyzable (see entry on
 moral non-naturalism).
 Further, naturalists who are primitivists about normative properties
might also be primitivists about the normative concepts. Indeed, even
naturalists who reject primitivism about normative properties might
nevertheless accept primitivism about the normative concepts, and
thereby hold that the normative concepts are unanalyzable (see Railton
2003).



It is tempting to say that a theory that provided a constitutive
explanation of the nature of normativity would clearly be preferable
to primitivism. For, we assume, the goal, in theorizing, is to explain
things. Accordingly, regardless of the subject matter, other things
being equal, a theory that says that such and such cannot be explained
is on that count alone less attractive than a theory that offers an
explanation, or that at least leaves open the possibility of an
explanation. Nevertheless, of course, in the absence of an
explanation, we need to be open to the possibility that one is not
going to be found, and even, perhaps, to the possibility that, for
some reason, no explanation could be found. There are physical
constants that are unexplained in our best physical theories, for
example. Perhaps normativity similarly is not open to explanation.


### 3.4 Normative Conceptualism



We have assumed that there are worldly states of affairs and
properties, and we take it that there are normative truths, but this
does not force us to the conclusion that there are normative states of
affairs and normative properties. Normative objectualism holds that
there are such things, but normative conceptualism holds that
normativity lies in the realm of thought rather than in the realm of
reality that we represent in our thought. Objectualism holds that
there are states of affairs and properties that instantiate the
normativity property (or one of the normativity properties), whereas
conceptualism denies this and holds that it is only concepts and
propositions that are normative. Conceptualist theories agree that
there are normative truths, but deny that any states of affairs or
properties are normative


#### 3.4.1 Anti-realist conceptualism: non-cognitivist expressivism



One example of normative conceptualism is the anti-realist view
generally called "non-cognitivist expressivism", or simply
"expressivism". This is the view that, roughly, normative
assertions express conative attitudes such as approval, disapproval,
aversion, or subscription to a norm. Such attitudes are akin to
desires rather than to cognitive states, such as beliefs, that
represent the world as being one way or another. Expressivism holds
that normative judgments are at least partly constituted by conative
attitudes taken toward things.



In the simplest cases, a normative judgment might just be an attitude.
For example, one might hold that the assertion that it would be bad to
drink Dr. Pepper expresses an aversion to drinking Dr. Pepper, and,
moreover, that this aversion just *is* the judgment that it
would be bad to drink Dr. Pepper. In more complex cases, a normative
judgment might have some non-normative content, but inasmuch as it is
normative, it would be partly constituted by an attitude. An example
of this might be the assertion that Justin was bad to drink another
Dr. Pepper.



Expressivists accordingly take normative judgments to be very
different from ordinary beliefs. The belief that Dr. Pepper is sweet
is a cognitive state of mind that takes the proposition that Dr.
Pepper is sweet as its intensional object and that represents Dr.
Pepper as having the property *sweetness*. The assertion that
Dr. Pepper is sweet expresses this belief. But, in the expressivist
view, the assertion that it would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper
does not express a cognitive state of mind that takes a proposition as
its object and that represents drinking another Dr. Pepper as having a
property. It rather expresses an aversion or some similar conative
attitude.



One consideration that has motivated expressivism is the idea that
having a normative judgment entails being motivated in some
appropriate way. For example, we would expect that a person who thinks
it would be bad to have another Dr. Pepper is motivated to avoid or to
oppose having another Dr. Pepper. According to the position called
motivational judgment internalism (MJI), such motivation is entailed
by having a normative judgment. Motivation is *internal* to
normative judgment. Expressivists argue that the best explanation of
MJI is the expressivist thesis that normative judgments consist at
least in part in motivating conative attitudes of some kind, such as
aversions or attractions.



Expressivism has also been motivated by some of the considerations
that we explored in discussing arguments for the error theory. There
is the idea that normative states of affairs would be metaphysically
problematic - perhaps because, it might seem, states of affairs of
this kind would have to have an intrinsic practical force that is
unintelligible - or, it might seem, they would have to have an
unintelligible intrinsic magnetism or repulsion. If this is correct,
then, it might seem, it would be a mistake to postulate the existence
of normative states of affairs. This reasoning can be contested, as we
saw. But even if it is correct, it need not lead to an error theory.
There is the alternative of taking our normative judgments to consist
in conative attitudes, such as aversions or attractions, rather than
to be beliefs that purport to represent normative states of affairs.
Expressivism can seem in this way to make room for normative truths
without postulating the existence of normative states of affairs.



Expressivism can make room for normative truths and facts if it is
combined with minimalist views of the meanings of "true"
and "fact". The result of such a combination would allow
expressivism to make sense of the claim that it is true, and a fact,
that it would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper. For, on the
minimalist view, to claim these things would simply be a way of
claiming that it would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper.



Expressivism might also be combined with a minimalist view of the use
of the term "belief", according to which beliefs are the
psychological states, whatever their nature, that are expressed by
assertions. On this view, an expressivist could agree that we believe
it would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper. But, for the
expressivist, this "belief" or judgment is a conative
state of aversion or something like aversion. It is not the kind of
cognitive state that is expressed when we assert that Dr Pepper is
sweet. On this view, then, there are at least two radically different
kinds of belief - cognitive states that take propositions as their
objects and conative states that consist in having a conative attitude
to something. And there presumably are also mixed states.



As we mentioned, Blackburn has a view that combines expressivism with
minimalism about "true", "fact", and
"property", and his view also incorporates a minimalism
about "belief" (Blackburn 2006). He calls this position,
"quasi-realism".



An expressivist would presumably deny that there is a worldly state of
affairs of its being bad to have another Dr. Pepper. There is the
aversion to drinking another Dr. Pepper, of course. But the claim that
it would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper is not a psychological
claim. It is not a claim *about* an aversion, although it
*expresses* an aversion. That is, this aversion is not a state
of affairs that makes it true that it would be bad to drink another
Dr. Pepper. It is a psychological state that we express in saying it
would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper.



Expressivism is, then, an example of *normative conceptualism*.
Properly understood, it says, normativity is not a feature of states
of affairs in the world; it is a feature of a way or ways of thinking
of things. There are no normative states of affairs in the world.
There are only normative ways of thinking.



It is arguable that so-called quietism, as well as Parfit's
cognitivist anti-realism, are also examples of normative
conceptualism. They contend that normative thought and talk do not
commit us metaphysically to anything we wouldn't otherwise be
committed to. So, presumably, they must agree with expressivism that
normativity is not to be accounted for by anything in our metaphysics.
Perhaps, then, it is a feature of our ways of thinking of things.



Return now to the question whether normativity can be given a
naturalistic explanation. For the expressivist, this is the question
whether the normativity of normative judgments can be given a
naturalistic explanation. And their answer would presumably be
affirmative. We have just sketched the kind of explanation an
expressivist would provide. We have, and we endorse, the
"belief" we might express by saying it would be bad to
drink another Dr. Pepper. This thought consists in having an aversion
to drinking another Dr. Pepper. There is a variety of such attitudes
or "stances", to use Blackburn's term (2006), and
they are the characteristic constituents of normative thoughts. For a
thought to be normative is, roughly, for it to have some such
constituent. This is a sketch of the expressivist answer to our
question.



Note that this account of normativity explains normative thought and
talk in a way that we might also use to explain slurring thought and
talk, such as talk about "kikes", "huns",
"Yankees", and the like. One might think that this counts
against expressivism since, we take it, the emotionally-laden slurring
ways of thinking of Jews, Germans, and Americans, are not
*normative*.



There are several examples of expressivism, including Allan
Gibbard's somewhat different but complementary approaches (1990,
2003), and Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons's cognitivist
expressivism (2006). We do not explore these different theories. For
detailed discussion of expressivism, see Mark Schroeder (2010). See
also the entry on
 moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.


#### 3.4.2 Realist conceptualism



Normative realism is a kind of cognitivism. It says that just as the
assertion that Dr. Pepper is sweet expresses a belief, so the
assertion that it would be bad to drink another Dr. Pepper expresses a
belief - both express a cognitive state of mind that takes a
proposition as its object and that represents the world as being one
way or another. Quasi-realism would allow us to call conative states
of mind, such as an aversion to drinking another Dr. Pepper,
"beliefs", but it holds that beliefs of this kind are
conative states that are different in their intrinsic nature from
ordinary beliefs. Cognitivists, including normative naturalists and
non-naturalists, hold that normative judgments are ordinary beliefs,
cognitive states that represent worldly states of affairs that are
their truth conditions.



We have already seen that there is an important difference between
primitivist forms of normative realism and forms of realism that aim
to explain the intrinsic nature of the normativity properties. But
there is also an important difference between forms of normative
realism that affirm, and those that deny, that there are normative
worldly states of affairs and normative properties.



*Realist normative conceptualism* holds that normativity is a
feature of some of our ways of thinking of certain properties and
states of affairs rather than being a property of those properties and
states of affairs themselves. Hence, normativity is to be found in the
realm of thought rather than in the realm of reality that we represent
in our thought. Realist normative conceptualism is a form at least of
basic normative realism since it holds that normative judgments
represent worldly states of affairs that are their truth conditions,
and that normative concepts are concepts of worldly properties. What
it denies is that these states of affairs and properties are
themselves normative. Matti Eklund calls this view, or at least
naturalist versions of it, *presentationalism* (Eklund 2017: ch
6).



Normative conceptualism is an attractive position for normative
naturalists because it enables them to hold that the properties
referred to by the normative concepts are natural ones, but without
having to provide a naturalistic constitutive explanation of the
normativity property instantiated by these properties. It avoids this
challenging problem because it denies that the property of being
normative is instantiated by any properties and, indeed, by any states
of affairs. It holds that only normative concepts and propositions are
normative.



There is a subtly different version of naturalist normative
conceptualism. On this version, there *are* normative states of
affairs and properties, but their being normative is entirely
derivative from the normativity of the normative ways of thinking that
represent these states of affairs and properties. Their being
normative consists in their being represented by normative
propositions or concepts. Their normativity is extrinsic, rather than
intrinsic. It would seem to follow that these states of affairs and
properties could exist, or might have existed, without being
normative. The property we represent in thought as wrongness is
normative only because we think of it this way, and we might not have
thought of it in this way. This implication should be compared with
the implication, of the other version of naturalist normative
conceptualism, that there are no normative states of affairs or
properties.



Unless it embraces primitivism, normative conceptualism still needs to
explain what it is about the normative concepts in virtue of which
they are normative. But this is a challenge it shares with all other
forms of ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism, and perhaps
also with all forms of ethical anti-realism. Further, it is open to
naturalist normative conceptualism to embrace primitivism and agree
with non-naturalists that the normative concepts are not analyzable in
non-normative terms. For this thesis is not problematic to naturalism.
Naturalism is primarily a metaphysical thesis about what there is. It
is not a thesis about the analysis of our concepts or ways of
thinking.



One problem faced by realist normative conceptualism is that it
arguably is a necessary truth that the properties referred to or
represented by normative concepts are normative. For instance,
arguably, if any property is referred to or represented by our concept
<wrong> it is the property *wrongness*. And unless
it embraces error theory, normative conceptualism agrees that there is
a property that is referred to or represented by our concept
<wrong>. So it is committed to there being a property
*wrongness*. And it would seem to be a necessary truth that any
such property is normative in itself and not merely in virtue of the
fact that some normative concept of ours refers to it or represents
it. If this is right, then unless it embraces error theory, realist
normative conceptualism faces a fatal problem.


### 3.5 Normative Objectualism



Objectualist theories, unlike conceptualist ones, hold that there are
worldly states of affairs and properties that are themselves
normative. Objectualist theories take it that normativity is found in
the world, and not merely in the realm of thought about the world. It
holds that certain properties and facts instantiate a normativity
property.



As we saw, normative realism is compatible with both normative
formalism and normative conceptualism, but it is typically
objectualist. In this section, then, we return to normative realism in
its objectualist form. In
 section 3.1,
 we saw that normativity formalism provides an affirmative answer to
our guiding question, since it explains normativity by reference to
rules or norms or social practices. We set aside normativity formalism
because the controversial issue is whether a robust or authoritative
normativity can be given a constitutive naturalistic explanation. In
 section 3.2
 we discussed the explanatory challenge faced by realist theories, and
in
 section 3.3,
 we considered primitivist realist theories, which deny that any
constitutive explanation of normativity is possible.
 Section 3.4
 considered both anti-realist and realist versions of normativity
conceptualism. Non-cognitivist expressivism is a kind of normativity
conceptualism that offers a naturalistic constitutive explanation of
the normativity of normative judgments and concepts. Realist versions
of conceptualism would either be primitivist, or they would aim to
provide a constitutive explanation of the normativity of normative
judgments and concepts. In this section, we turn to objectualist forms
of ethical realism and the question whether theories of this kinds are
able to answer our guiding question.



There are both naturalist and non-naturalist forms of normativity
objectualism. Non-naturalism, however, is typically primitivist. It
gives a negative answer to our guiding question. As we saw, ethical
naturalism can also be primitivist. But if a theory is going to offer
a constitutive explanation of normativity, or constitutive accounts of
the normative properties and concepts, in each case the explanans
proposed by the theory is almost certain to be a natural property or
condition. That is, the theory is almost certain to be a kind of
*reductive normative naturalism*. Accordingly, this section
discusses theories of this kind.



There are many varieties of normative naturalism, as we have seen. All
such theories have in common the realist claim that there are worldly
states of affairs that are represented by, and that are the truth
conditions of, normative truths, and that there are properties that
are referred to and ascribed by normative predicates. Objectualist
views add that these properties and states of affairs are normative.
Naturalist views add that these states of affairs and properties are
natural ones.



*Reductive normative naturalism* claims that naturalistic
constitutive explanations of normativity and of the normative
properties and concepts are available, at least in principle. We began
 section 3
 with the question whether normativity can be given a naturalistic
constitutive explanation. Reductive normative naturalism offers an
affirmative answer. Some naturalists might merely have the
aspirational view that although an adequate reduction is not yet
available, we should expect there to be one in the offing, since the
normative states of affairs and properties are natural. But the most
interesting forms of reductive normative naturalism offer accounts of
the nature of normativity, or at least sketches of such. Theories of
this kind propose, for each normative explanandum and for the property
of normativity itself, a natural property as its explanans.



A distinction needs to be drawn between analytic and non-analytic
reductive normative naturalism. Both kinds of theory claim that
normative properties are natural ones and both offer sketches of
naturalistic constitutive explanations of these properties. Analytic
theories contend that their analyses are *conceptual* truths,
whereas non-analytic ones do not contend this.



There are many objections to normative naturalism in general and to
reductive normative naturalism in particular. In this entry, we do not
investigate these objections in detail, or arguments in favor of
naturalism. For an examination of these objections and arguments, see
entries on
 moral naturalism
 and
 moral non-naturalism.



One might think it is *obvious* that there could not be a
correct naturalistic constitutive explanation of normativity or of the
normative properties. Consider the property *wrongness*,
assuming there is such a thing. Assuming that this property is
normative, a correct constitutive explanation of the essential nature
of this property would need to identify a natural property (or
naturalistic condition) as the explanans, and this natural property
would have to be normative. According to a kind of meta-ethical
utilitarian naturalism, for example, for an action to be wrong is for
it to fail to maximize the general happiness. Since *wrongness*
is normative, this theory is correct only if the property *failing
to maximize the general happiness* is normative. But it might seem
obvious that this property is not normative, and therefore that the
utilitarian naturalist view cannot be correct. It is part of the
essential nature of *wrongness* that it is normative, but, one
might think, it obviously is not part of the *essential nature*
of the property of failing to maximize the general happiness that it
is normative. Indeed, it might seem, this property obviously is not
normative. Failing to maximize the general happiness is normatively
*relevant*, the utilitarian thinks, because an action that
fails in this way is wrong for this reason - but this is not a
matter of its nature. Or so one might think. And, generalizing, one
might think that there could not be a correct *naturalistic*
constitutive explanation of the nature of any of the normative
properties because natural properties are not normative.



For a similar reason, one might think there could not be a correct
*naturalistic* constitutive explanation of the (second-order)
property of being normative, or of any of the normativity properties.
A correct naturalistic account of the essential nature of any such
property would need to identify a natural property (or naturalistic
condition) as the explanans, where this explanans would be the
essential nature of the normative property. But if natural properties
and conditions are not normative, no such thing could be the essential
nature of the property of being normative.



These arguments simply raise the issue whether it is correct that no
natural property is normative. A utilitarian naturalist might respond
to the above argument, for example, by claiming that the nature of the
property of failing to maximize the general happiness is such that
actions with this property are wrong, and, since *wrongness* is
essentially normative, normativity is inherent as well in the nature
of the property *failing to maximize the general
happiness*.



At the root of all of the objections to normative naturalism is
perhaps the "Just too Different" objection, the claim that
normative properties are just too different in their nature from
natural properties for them to *be* natural properties (Parfit
2011; Enoch 2011; Copp 2020a). This is an intuitive claim rather than
an argument. Derek Parfit contends, for example, that the normative
concepts rule out naturalism; that *wrongness* could no more be
identical to some natural property than heat could be identical to a
cabbage (Parfit 2011, vol. II: 325). A naturalist might respond that,
similarly, heat seems to be too different from mean molecular kinetic
energy for it to be identical to that, yet the consensus seems to be
that heat *is* identical to mean molecular kinetic energy, or
something like that. So "just too different" intuitions
are hardly decisive.



In the next section of this entry, we briefly consider several
examples of proposed constitutive explanations of normativity,
including both naturalist explanations and other kinds.


## 4. Attempts to Explain the Nature of Normativity



In order to explain what normativity consists in, philosophers have
pursued just a few basic strategies. First, it is evident that there
is a close relationship between normative beliefs and decisions or
actions, at least when a person is rational. Given this, some theories
propose a kind of constitutive relationship between normativity and
motivation, or between normativity and intentions to act, or between
normativity and agency. Second, it has seemed evident to some
philosophers that normativity must somehow have a deep psychological
ground if normative demands are not to seem alien to people. So some
theories propose that normativity is tied to the essential nature of
persons as rational, or to what is essential to agency, or at least to
the "identity" of agents, or their "practical
identity". Third, some theories look at the role of normative
beliefs in the lives of human beings, in orienting humans to what will
make for flourishing lives, or in coordinating and organizing human
beings in joint activities in their societies in ways that allow their
societies to flourish.



This entry will briefly introduce eight kinds of theory. Be aware,
that these will be merely sketches of the basic ideas. Note also that
the theories are not all intended as examples of reductive normative
naturalistic realism. In some cases, the intention is merely to
illuminate the nature of normativity without achieving a constitutive
explanation of normativity. Some of the examples are realist, but some
are anti-realist, expressivist or constructivist. And among the
realist cases are examples of both mind-independent normative realism
and of basic normative realism. We begin with a perspective on the
nature of normativity that has been taken to support non-cognitivist
expressivism, although it can also be interpreted in a way that is
friendly to realism. We then sketch two ideas that are examples of
basic-realist approaches, but that eschew mind-independence. They are
sometimes classified as "constructivist" and anti-realist.
It is not until we reach the final two cases, in
 section 4.7
 and
 section 4.8,
 that we find clear examples of naturalistic constitutive explanations
of robust normativity that are also examples of mind-independent
realism. What follows, then, are eight strategies that have been
used in attempting to explain normativity.


### 4.1 Explaining Normativity via Motivation



One familiar view is that normative thought has a special, internal,
connection to motivation. According to motivational judgment
internalism (MJI), it is a necessary truth that a person who believes
she ought to do something is motivated accordingly. Generalizing,
perhaps all normative thoughts are such that, necessarily, a person
with a normative thought is thereby motivated accordingly. This
connection to motivation arguably must be due to the content of
normative beliefs, since not all beliefs have such a close connection
to motivation. And this suggests an account of normativity. It would
say, roughly, that normative propositions are such because,
necessarily, anyone who believes such a proposition is motivated
accordingly.



A different view would invoke the neo-Humean view that no belief
(properly so called) entails or necessitates motivation; beliefs
motivate only when combined with an appropriately related desire. On
this view, if moral judgments entail motivation, then moral judgments
are not (ordinary) beliefs, properly so-called. They must instead be
at least partly constituted by conative states that do necessarily
motivate. In this way, MJI can lead to non-cognitive expressivism.



The expressivist, Allan Gibbard, has proposed, for example, that
normative states of mind are planning states, akin to intentions. To
judge that it does not make sense to have another Dr. Pepper consists
in something like planning not to have another Dr. Pepper. Gibbard has
developed a systematic and sophisticated account to put flesh on this
basic idea (Gibbard 2003).



Unfortunately, MJI is controversial and there are a variety of
counter-examples and arguments against it (Brink 1989; Copp 2007: chap
8; Svavarsdottir 1999; for relevant discussion, see entry on
 reasons for action: internal vs. external).
 Accordingly, defenders of the basic intuition have qualified and
amended MJI. Michael Smith contends, for example, that it is a
necessary truth that a person who believes she ought to do something
is motivated accordingly unless she is practically irrational (1994).
He has also proposed a naturalistic account of what it is to be
practically rational. His approach lends support to a form of
naturalistic normative realism rather than to a form of
expressivism.


### 4.2 Explaining Normativity via Desire-based reasons



A widespread view is that normative facts are analyzable in terms of
facts about reasons. So in this and the next sections, we investigate
attempts to explain the nature of normativity by explaining the nature
of reasons.



It is widely thought that a person has reason to satisfy her desires.
On this view, for instance, if I want some ice cream, I have reason to
get some. Some philosophers hold that all practical reasons are
basically of this nature. The basic idea is that practical reasons are
essentially facts about desire satisfaction, but there are different
versions of the idea. For example, some would insist that the desires
in question are not necessarily the desires that a person actually
has, but are instead ones that she would have if she were fully
informed and if she brought all relevant facts vividly to mind (Brandt
1979). See the entry on
 reasons for action: internal vs. external.



One might combine the idea that normative facts are analyzable in
terms of facts about reasons with the idea that practical reasons are
essentially facts about desire satisfaction. On this basis, one might
conclude that all normative facts are fundamentally facts about desire
satisfaction - or informed desire satisfaction, or the like. One
might then propose that the normativity of a fact consists in its
being analyzable as a fact (of some relevant kind) about desire
satisfaction. This then would point the way toward a naturalistic
constitutive explanation of normativity. This basic strategy has been
developed in detail by Mark Schroeder (2007).



Views of this kind would be classified as realist, if one had in mind
what we earlier called "basic realism", or as irrealist or
anti-realist, if one had in mind what we earlier called
"mind-independent realism". Sharon Street has a view of
this kind that she classifies as constructivist (2008, 2010).



One problem is that our second-order desires can conflict with our
first-order ones. We can desire to get rid of some of our desires, for
example, and in this case it might seem that the latter desires
don't give us reason to satisfy them. Following Harry Frankfurt,
one might argue that only desires that are endorsed by higher order
desires, or at least not undermined by them, ground reasons (Frankfurt
1971).



There are also attempts to undermine these approaches. Christine
Korsgaard has argued, for example, that one has a reason to satisfy a
desire only if the object of the desire is something that is valuable
itself, or something that will tend to promote something valuable
(Korsgaard 1996).


### 4.3 Explaining Normativity via Practical identity



It can seem that desires can be too shallow in our psychology to
ground reasons. Christine Korsgaard has suggested that normativity
might instead be grounded in our "practical
identity" - in features of ourselves that we *value*
(1996). Our practical identity is to be understood as a matter of
attitudes we take to ourselves and our lives, but it is something more
central to our sense of ourselves than mere desire. On
Korsgaard's account, a parent who values parenthood thereby has
reasons to act as parents are meant to act. Some people have practical
identities that are regrettable, of course, such as the practical
identity of a gangster. But, Korsgaard argues, a person's
practical identity grounds reasons for her only if it is compatible
with the practical identities of everyone else.



The strategy outlined in the preceding section is to take the
normativity of a fact to consist in the fact's being, or being
analyzable as, a fact about reasons. One might then take up
Korsgaard's account of reasons as facts about practical identity
and propose that the normativity of a fact consists in the
fact's being, or being analyzable as, a suitable fact about
practical identity.



This account can still seem to leave too much to a person's
contingent psychology. It would seem to imply that a rootless person
who is aimless and untethered has no reasons whatsoever since he has
no practical identity. He values nothing about his life. Yet,
plausibly, there are still things he has reason to do and not to
do.



The theory of normativity on offer here might be classified as an
example of basic realism, but it isn't an example of
mind-independent realism. It tends to be classified as a
constructivist and anti-realist (Street 2010).


### 4.4 Explaining Normativity via Essential features of agency or action



It has seemed to some philosophers that a better strategy would be to
explain normativity in terms of agency. We are agents, and cannot help
but be agents, performing actions (Korsgaard 1996).



David Velleman (2000) considers the idea that the key to
understanding normativity in action is to discover what stands to
action as truth stands to belief. It is constitutive of belief that it
aims at the truth. Truth is normative for belief. That is, roughly,
beliefs ought to be true, and a believer is subject to a requirement
to be responsive to the truth. Similarly, perhaps, it is constitutive
of action that it aims at the good. The good is normative for action.
That is, actions ought to promote the good, and a person who acts is
subject to a requirement to be responsive to the good. Velleman
argues, however, for the different idea that it is constitutive of
agency that agents have the aim of knowing what they
are doing. Self-knowledge is the constitutive aim of
action. Further, Velleman argues, this determines the criterion
of success in action, which in turn determines which
considerations count as reasons for action.



Christine Korsgaard has proposed (1996), roughly, that in order to
count as an action, something done by a person must be done for a
reason, and this means it must accord with norms that any rational
agent could accept. Given what actions are, one can act only if one
acts in accord with such norms.



These ideas could be interpreted as offering, or at least pointing in
the direction of, constitutive accounts of normativity. The basic idea
would be that it is constitutive of a fact's being normative in
relation to action or belief that the fact be appropriately related to
the essence of action or belief, respectively.



One response to proposals of these kinds is that, if agency is
understood as these philosophers suggest, then agency is optional.
That is, perhaps, a person can opt out of the aim to have
self-knowledge, or to do things that accord with norms of practical
reason, by opting to do things that do not count as actions in the
preferred sense that these proposals spell out. See David Enoch
(2006).



A different response points out that, on these accounts, the concept
of action itself turns out to be normative in a covert way, for, on
these accounts, it is of the essence of action that it aim at
self-knowledge, or that it must accord with norms of practical reason.
But the idea that an aim is non-optional is arguably
normative, as is the idea of norms of practical reason. Hence,
arguably, these accounts do not explain what normativity consists
in. They rather change the explanandum from the nature of normativity
to the nature of agency or action.


### 4.5 Explaining Normativity via "Self-legislation"



One approach, which is suggested by Kant, seeks to explain normativity
in terms of norms that one could rationally will to serve as
requirements incumbent on all agents (1785 [1981]). This can be
described as a matter of self-legislation, since each person is viewed
in effect as herself legislating these norms to serve as requirements
on all agents. On this view, as Kantians develop it, the content of
everyone's "self-legislation" must be the same,
assuming relevantly similar circumstances. For the view assumes that
there are standards of rational willing that constrain what anyone
could will to serve as requirements incumbent on all agents.



Whether such an account can succeed in providing a constitutive
explanation of normativity depends on whether the normativity of these
standards of rational willing can be given a constitutive explanation.
For these standards are viewed as normative constraints on willing,
and rationality here is taken to be normative. So if the nature of
normativity is what we are trying to explain, we haven't
succeeded if our account rests on the assumption that there are
normative constraints on willing.


### 4.6 Explaining Normativity via Categorical requirements



A similar problem arises for attempts to explain normativity in terms
of the idea of a categorical requirement of rationality. There is a
standardly accepted distinction between hypothetical requirements and
categorical ones (Kant 1785 [1981]). Hypothetical requirements
are, roughly, requirements that are grounded in, or hold in virtue of,
the contingent desires or attitudes of the agent who is so required.
An example might be the requirement to maintain your car, which
presumably presupposes that you want your car to continue running.
Categorical requirements have no such presupposition. It might seem
that any genuinely robust normative requirement would be categorical,
since all other requirements depend on, and so are hostage to, facts
about person's contingent psychology.



The challenge is to explain the nature of, and the grounding of, these
categorical requirements. If we try to explain this in terms of what
one could rationally will to serve as requirements incumbent on all
agents, or in terms of what one could rationally will everyone to do,
we run up against the same problem as afflicted the account that
invokes the idea of self-legislation, which we just discussed. A
normative naturalist might propose a naturalistic explanation of
categorical requirements but would need to take a very different
approach (see Copp 2015)


### 4.7 Explaining Normativity via Natural function



There are at least the following two "kinds of goodness"
that seem to be naturalistically unproblematic, and, generalizing,
there seem to be two kinds of naturalistic normativity. First, where
*K* is a functional kind, a good *K* is one that
performs the function well. A good toaster does well at toasting
bread. A good printer is one that prints well. And the criteria for
performing well are naturalistically specifiable in line with the
purpose of the relevant kind of thing. Second, where *K* is a
biological kind, the things needed by *K*s in order to flourish
are good for *K*s. Water and sunlight are good for oak trees,
for example. And for a *K* to flourish is for it to do well at
living the kind of life for which it is suited. It is good for a
cheetah to be able to run fast. It is good for an oak tree to produce
abundant acorns. These ideas have been used and extended by several
philosophers, including Philippa Foot (2001) and Judith Thomson (2008)
in developing theories of normativity.



Perhaps the most straightforward of these theories is Foot's
proposal that the virtues of human beings are the general
psychological properties needed by humans to thrive in living the kind
of life that we do. Just as it is good for a wolf to be able to fit
into the pack, it is good for a human to be sociable - to be
charitable, honest, trustworthy, and so on. For Foot, the virtues are
grounded in the distinctive kind of life human beings have, which is
not to say they are grounded in our species membership. Any agent that
lived this kind of life would have the same virtues, regardless of the
agent's species. So, for Foot, human goodness is merely
analogous to the good for the wolf and the cheetah. For Paul
Bloomfield, however, there is more than merely an analogy. He develops
a theory that is similar to Foot's, but one that rests on the
nature of our species and on what members of the species need in order
to achieve their natural function (2001, 2014, forthcoming).



Views of this kind are examples of mind-independent normative realism
and of reductive normative naturalism. They can be seen as
neo-Aristotelian, and they have been developed chiefly, although not
exclusively, in tandem with virtue theories. For discussion, see
Fitzpatrick 2014 as well as entries on
 morality and evolutionary biology 
 and
 virtue ethics.



There are things to worry about in theories of this kind. If a person
is thriving even though she does not have the psychological properties
that are *generally* needed in order to thrive, one might think
she need have no reason to change. If a person is not living in
typical conditions for a human, it is not clear that it would be good
for her to have the psychological properties that are
*generally* needed in order to thrive. This might actually be
bad for her.


### 4.8 Explaining Normativity via Practices well-suited to address problems of normative governance



People cannot thrive except with the help of others. We live in
societies, and plausibly we need to do so in order to cope with the
many problems and issues we face in meeting our needs and pursuing our
values, as well as to enhance our opportunities, and to allow us to
devote time and attention to developing our talents. This means we are
faced with a generic problem, the "problem of sociality",
which arises because there are sources of conflict and disagreement
that can interfere with our ability to live successfully in societies.
Societies do better at coping with this generic problem when their
members share a moral code that calls for them to cooperate with one
another, to avoid force and fraud, and, generally, and with
qualifications, not to interfere with one another.



To the extent that we are autonomous, in a familiar sense of that
term, we pursue what we need, and we aim to realize our values. Yet
each of us has a tendency to fail to be resolute in this pursuit, to
succumb to temptation by immediate pleasures, to fail to give enough
weight to future goods or to present risks. This is a generic problem,
the "problem of autonomy", and we do better at coping with
it if we subscribe to a standard or a norm requiring us, roughly, to
efficiently pursue what we need and value. If our psychology and our
strivings are well regulated by such a norm, we are
"rational", and we enhance our autonomy.



In both of these cases, and others, there is a generic problem that we
do better at coping with if we (or enough of us) subscribe to norms or
standards with a content well-suited to addressing the problem.
Pluralist teleology begins with this idea and uses it, first, to
develop an account of the truth conditions of normative propositions
of morality (Copp 2007, 2009), prudential rationality (Copp 2007: chap
10), and epistemology (Copp 2014), and second, to develop an account
of normativity (Copp 2015). This account says, roughly, that normative
facts of a given kind are grounded in the content of the system of
standards that would best address the corresponding problem of
normative governance. This view is another example of mind-independent
normative realism and of reductive normative naturalism.



There are things to worry about. One might worry that this approach
seems unable to make sense of the idea that, when morality and
prudential rationality come into conflict, there might be something
that one ought to do "all-things-considered" (Copp 2020c).
One might also worry that normativity is smuggled into the rankings of
norms on the basis of how well-suited they are to enabling us to cope
with a problem of normative governance. If so, the account might not
be a successful constitutive explanation of normativity. One might
also worry that the view implies that it is a contingent matter
whether certain unsettling moral claims are true (Copp 2020b).


### 4.9 Conclusion



Each of these eight strategies for explaining normativity has of
course been contested. In cases in which the explanans *uses*
normative concepts, there is the objection that the account
doesn't explain normativity as such, but only reduces
normativity to one variety of normative consideration. In cases where
the explanans *does not* use normative concepts, there is the
potential to provide an analysis of what normativity consists in.
However, of course, every putative analysis invites objections. And,
in every case where the putative analysis is substantive and
philosophically interesting, it can be denied with some
plausibility.



A familiar challenge is the "so what" challenge. So what
if this act is required by the system of norms best suited to address
the problem of sociality, what is that to me? So what if sustaining my
practical identity requires this act; what is that to me if doing this
act would involve a great sacrifice? So what if my agency in a special
privileged sense depends on my performing this act; why should I care
about being an agent in this sense?



It is no accident that this all-purpose objection bears a family
resemblance to Moore's open question argument. And the best
responses to it are similar to familiar responses to Moore. A
substantive analysis of a philosophically interesting concept would
not be informative if it were obviously correct. And nothing
guarantees that the best analysis of a philosophically interesting
concept will be obviously correct. Further, a metaphysical analysis of
what the normativity of a worldly property or state of affairs could
consist in is not likely to be *a priori*. The more informative
and interesting a putative analysis is, the less likely it is that it
will seem obviously correct, so the more it will seem open to
objection. (See entries on
 analysis
 and
 moral non-naturalism, section on the open question argument).


## 5. Is Normativity Mind-Dependent?



Many of the views just canvassed share a common theme: normativity is
explained in terms of the mental states, events, or attitudes of
individuals or collections of individuals. (We'll call these
"mental states" for short.) Many other
views - including some of those just canvassed - think that
there is some important sense in which the normative facts are
*independent* of mental states. This debate can be (and often
has been) traced back all the way to the *Euthyphro*, where
Socrates considers whether what is pious is determined by what the
gods love, or whether it's the other way around (see Berker
2018; Wright 1992). This debate has come to be known as the debate
over the *mind-dependence* of normativity. Normative realists
have generally been taken to be committed to mind-independence (see,
e.g., Shafer-Landau 2003; McGrath 2010; Enoch 2011), although we have
attempted to remain neutral on this point by distinguishing
"mind-independent realism" from "basic
realism", which is compatible with mind-dependence (see Cuneo
2007).



In this section, we'll cover arguments for and against the
mind-dependence of the normative. But before we get there, we need to
answer a framing question: what precisely are we *talking
about* when we talk about the mind-dependence of the normative?
Above we framed this as the question of whether normativity is
explained in terms of mental states. But as we'll see below,
that formulation is not entirely clear.


### 5.1 What is Mind-Dependence?



First, what is the important *scope* of mind-dependence? Is the
important question whether *some* normative facts are
mind-dependent, or whether *all* such facts are? We think it is
the latter. Mark Schroeder claims, with regard to reasons in
particular, that it is uncontroversial that *some* reasons
are explained by mental states - Ronnie has a reason to go to the
dance because he loves to dance, but Bradley has a reason to avoid the
dance because he hates dancing. What *would* be controversial
is the idea that *all* reasons are explained by mental states;
this is actually entailed by Schroeder's "Humean"
view of reasons (Schroeder 2007). We agree that the interesting
question is whether *all* normative facts are mind-dependent,
or whether, instead, *some* are mind-*in*dependent.



We also note, however, that there could be important questions about
the mind-independence of distinct normative subdomains. For example,
there are the questions whether all *moral* facts are
mind-dependent, whether all *aesthetic* facts are
mind-independent, etc.



Second, it would be good to get a clearer idea of what kind of
dependence is involved in mind-dependence. In brief, we are going to
try to be as ecumenical as possible, not tying mind-dependence to any
narrowly defined or parochial metaphysical relation. Rather,
mind-dependence concerns broad metaphysical dependence on the mental.
This is for two reasons: first, this just seems to us to be what
important debate in the vicinity is about. It's not as if
mind-dependence concerns metaphysical constitution by the mental,
rather than reduction. Certainly advocates of the view that wrongness
is *constituted* by disapproval disagree on some points with
those who think that wrongness *reduces to* disapproval. But in
general they seem to agree on an important point: that the there is
some kind of robust metaphysical dependence of wrongness on some
mental state. It is our sense that this agreed-upon claim is what is
at stake in debates about mind-dependence.



The second reason to define mind-dependence ecumenically is that this
is the best way of making sense of the extant literature. Sharon
Street's body of work is an example. She describes her position
as committing her to mind-dependence (Street 2016: 298n). But she
describes it differently in different places: she writes (2012) that
normative truth *consists in* what follows from within the
practical point of view; or (2008) that normative facts are
*constituted* by facts about the agent's judgments; she
(2016) characterizes mind-dependence views at those on which
"things [are] valuable ultimately *because* we value
them" (emphasis added). So we should understand the defining
relation of mind-dependence so that it encompasses all of these
relations. Below, we will call this generic relation
"grounding", for simplicity. This term is
imperfect - grounding has become intensely theorized and
disputed - but we use it as a stand-in for a broad kind of
metaphysical dependence.



Finally, we think that the relevant notion of mind-dependence rules
out there being mind-independent normative constraints on the kinds of
mental states that can ground normative facts. A few examples will
explain what we mean. Take the view that what we have reason to do is
grounded in what an ideally rational agent in our situation would want
to do, where rationality is an irreducibly normative property. Or take
the view that value is grounded in being the appropriate object of an
attitude such as admiration, where appropriateness is irreducibly
normative. Both views ground some significant set of normative facts
in mental facts, but they also entail that other normative facts
(facts about rationality and appropriateness, respectively) are
*not* grounded in mental states. Such views do not, on our
reckoning, count as mind-dependent, for two reasons. First, we have
established that the important question about mind-dependence is
whether *all* normative facts are mind-dependent, and these
views are views on which *some* aren't. Second, and most
important, the relevant normative facts are partly grounded in other
normative facts that are themselves *not* grounded in mental
facts: facts about rationality or appropriateness are in the grounds,
where these facts explicitly do not "ground out" in mental
facts.



This leaves us, so far, with the claim that mind-dependence views are
those that fully ground all normative facts (or some significant
subset thereof) in mental facts. Yet as we'll see, even this
formulation leaves some problems.



Many have worried that the debate over mind-dependence is not a
significant one. Gideon Rosen (1994) argued that the notion of
mind-independence does not track our intuitive notion of objectivity.
His arguments often take the form: X-facts are a paradigm example of
mind-dependent facts, but they depend on Y-facts, and Y-facts seem
perfectly real and objective even though they are obviously mind
dependent. Facts about humor, for example, may depend on what humans
find funny - but facts about what humans find funny are perfectly
objective! Other of his arguments take the form: X-facts are clearly
objective, but they depend on mental facts, and so are mind-dependent.
Facts about fox terriers, for example depend causally on the
intentions of those who bred them - but surely facts about fox
terriers are objective!



Russ Shafer-Landau points to a different kind of problem: mundane
first-order normative truths depend on mental facts. Thus, if
particular normative facts are mind-dependent just when they depend on
mental facts, and if we don't distinguish kinds of dependence,
it looks like many mundane first-order claims commit one to the
mind-dependence of the relevant particular normative fact:



> 
> 
> We obviously can't enter a moral assessment of an agent's
> motivations and intentions without recourse to what is going on in her
> mind. And the moral status of an action may depend very importantly on
> how pleased or miserable it makes others, whether it prompts feelings
> of anger or empathy, whether one who is harmed has given his consent
> to the treatment, etc. (2003: 15)
> 
> 
> 



This problem has been discussed by, for example, Enoch (2011:
2-3), Rosati (2018), and Morton (forthcoming). The problem is
that mind-dependence is not something that should be an entailment of
mundane first-order moral claims that, presumably, would be accepted
by theorists on both sides of the debate about mind-dependence.



As it stands, this problem can be solved by appeal to our earlier
clarification: the claim worth arguing about is whether *all*
normative facts (or at least all moral facts) are mind-dependent. As
long as there are some moral facts that don't depend on mental
facts, Shafer-Landau's point shouldn't worry us.



There is, however, a related, although perhaps more subtle point, that
arises for certain ethical theories. Utilitarianism, for example,
entails that all particular moral facts depend on mental facts about
happiness and unhappiness. This means that - assuming a normative
fact is mind-dependent just when it depends on mental
facts - utilitarianism is by definition a theory on which all
particular moral facts are mind-dependent. (The theory does not imply
that the fact that it itself is true is mind-dependent.) But surely it
would be a mistake to think that utilitarianism implies that all
particular moral facts are mind-dependent in the sense at issue in
meta-ethical debate about realism! And utilitarianism is not unique.
Many other moral theories hold that that which makes right actions
right (and good actions good, etc.) is purely mental. Consider a view
on which all moral evaluations depend on the intentions of the actor,
for example. So we need a solution to this puzzle - an account of
the nature of mind-dependence (in the sense relevant to the
meta-ethical debate) that doesn't commit such theories one way
or the other on whether particular moral facts are mind-dependent (in
that sense).



This is a puzzle about the very notion of mind-dependence. One
solution would be Shafer-Landau's (2003: 15): he suggests that
mind-dependence is ultimately a matter of how "the moral
standards that fix the moral facts" are "made true".
We could parlay this into a general account of the mind-dependence of
normative facts in the following way: a particular normative fact is
mind-dependent when the normative principle that governs its grounding
in the non-normative is mind-dependent. And a principle is
mind-dependent when it is grounded in mental facts. This solution
allows mundane first-order claims to make no commitment on the issue
of mind-dependence. The important question regarding the
mind-dependence of a particular normative fact will be what explains
or grounds the *connection* between, for example, causing
unhappiness and being wrong. For example, is the principle of utility
only true because I believe it or because of some other mental fact?
If so, the principle is mind-dependent, and this mind-dependence is
inherited by the fact that my act is wrong.



Another way to solve the problem would be to be pluralists about the
kinds of mind-dependence that could be relevant. Fine (2012)
suggested, in a broader context, that metaphysical grounding is
fundamentally distinct from normative grounding. So perhaps when
utilitarianism says the moral depends on the mental, it means that it
*normatively* depends on the mental, while the meta-ethical
debate about mind-dependence (about the moral) concerns the claim that
the moral *metaphysically* depends on the mental. This is a
suggestion that has not been fully explored yet (though it is
discussed in Berker (2018), Enoch (2019) and Morton
(forthcoming)).



Either proposal would solve the problem with utilitarianism. If
mind-dependence (in the sense relevant to the meta-ethical debate
about realism) is a matter of whether normative principles are
grounded in mental facts, then utilitarians are free (as far as their
utilitarianism goes) to endorse either the mind-dependence or the
mind-independence of the moral. Utilitarianism just says that the
*particular* moral facts are grounded in mental facts, but does
not commit one way or the other on the grounding of the Principle of
Utility. Similarly, if mind-dependence is a matter of
*metaphysical* (as opposed to normative) grounding of
particular facts in the mental, then utilitarianism can (and should)
be read as the claim that moral facts are *normatively*
grounded in happiness facts. Utilitarianism is silent on the further
claim that moral facts are *metaphysically* grounded in
happiness facts (or any mental facts whatsoever), which leaves it open
to the utilitarian to either affirm or deny the mind-dependence of
moral facts - i.e., to either affirm or deny mind-independent
moral realism.



The puzzles around mind-dependence remain not fully explored, and it
seems to us that more work is needed here. Nevertheless, we will press
on now to consider arguments for and against the mind-dependence of
the normative (or in some cases, the moral in particular). For
simplicity, however, we will continue to talk about mind-dependence as
concerning whether normative facts are grounded in mental facts. We
will not attempt to cash this out in terms of either or both of the
above more nuanced accounts.


### 5.2 Arguments for Mind-Dependence



We will cover four main arguments for the mind-dependence of (some
significant subdomain of) the normative. The first is an
epistemological argument. The general form of that argument is as
follows:


1. If normative facts were mind-independent, then we
would not have substantive normative knowledge.
2. But we do have substantive normative
knowledge.
3. Therefore, normative facts are mind-dependent.



The "substantive" qualifier is here because, even
according to those who embrace
 premise (1),
 we could have knowledge of "non-substantive" claims such
as "Either Bob's act was wrong or it wasn't".
Defining substantiveness more precisely is hard, but we could focus on
the important case of (knowledge of) atomic normative truths.



Premise (2)
 of the argument is taken as given by those who advance this argument,
but of course some would deny it.
 Premise (1)
 might seem strange, since we have substantive knowledge of many kinds
of facts that surely are mind-independent, such as facts about the
stars. But (1) is intended as a claim specifically about knowledge of
normative facts. The claim is that there is something about the
normative such that we could not have knowledge of facts of
*this* kind if they were mind-independent. The claim has been
supported in a variety of ways. Some have followed Benacerraf and
Field's formulation of a problem for mathematical Platonism
(Benacerraf 1973 and Field 1989). Enoch (2011: ch. 7) and Setiya
(2012: ch. 2) both take this to be a main epistemological worry for
realism. The argument is roughly that if normative facts were
mind-independent, there would be no explanation of the reliability of
our substantive normative beliefs - which would undermine our
substantive normative knowledge. Some think that there could be no
such explanation because normative facts do not (and cannot) cause
anything. It is controversial, however, whether normative facts ever
have causal impact on anything. (See sec 3.2 of entry on
 moral skepticism
 and the extensive literature on moral explanations, including Harman
1977 and Sturgeon 1985.)



Of far more popularity recently are evolutionary debunking arguments
(or "EDAs"), which aim to establish (1) by way of
genealogical arguments. (However, see White (2010) for discussion of
non-evolutionary genealogical arguments.) The basic form of an EDA is
as follows:


1. If normative facts were mind-independent and evolution
had influenced our normative faculties in such-and-such a way, then we
would not have substantive normative knowledge.
2. Evolution has influenced our normative faculties in
such-and-such a way.
3. Therefore, if normative facts were mind-independent,
then we would not have substantive normative knowledge.



Sharon Street (2006), Richard Joyce (2006: ch. 6), and Allan Gibbard
(2003: ch. 13) all present early versions of this argument, though it
has spawned an extensive literature. The argument is typically aimed
at moral realism, but it is clear that mind-independence is the tenet
of realism that is supposed to be causing the problem. (This is
explicit in various places, e.g., Street 2006: 110). However, it could
certainly be argued that it is not mind-independence in general that
causes the problem, but non-naturalistic views in particular (see the
debate between Street 2008 and Copp 2008). We'll put that debate
aside for now and present the argument according to most of its
proponents' view of it - that it targets mind-independence
in general.



Different kinds of support have been offered for the first premise of
the EDA - it could be that mind-independence and evolutionary
influence would mean it would be a huge *coincidence* if our
normative beliefs were true, and that fact undermines our normative
knowledge. (Street 2006; see also Bedke 2014, though Bedke's
objection is against non-naturalism in particular). Or perhaps
evolution would mean that beliefs about mind-independent normative
facts would be *insensitive*: we would have those beliefs
regardless of whether they were true. Shafer-Landau (2012) presents a
good overview of different arguments here.



A third argument for mind-dependence relies on claims about the nature
of reasons. Bernard Williams (1979) famously argued that in order to
have a normative reason to act, I must have some motive that will be
furthered by my so acting. This has been called "reasons
internalism". Humean theories of reasons claim that in order to
have a reason to act, I must have some desire that is furthered by so
acting. Such claims are mere necessitation claims, but could be
leveraged as an argument for mind-dependence. For, one might claim,
the fact that having a relevant desire is a necessary condition of
having a reason could be easily explained on the basis that
reasons - or the relevant domain of normative facts - are
*grounded in* or *explained by* the relevant motives or
desires, as in Schroeder (2007). (Of course, this superficial reading
would have to be more nuanced based on our reading of the nature of
the mind-dependence debate.) Mind-independence theories of reasons, it
could be argued, have a harder time explaining reasons internalism, or
Humean theories of reasons.



Finally, some have argued against the mind-independence of the moral
by appeal to fundamental moral disagreements. These are moral
disagreements that would survive some set of idealizing conditions
like full non-normative information and full rationality. Mackie
(1977) himself thought that moral disagreement undermined the
"objectivity" of morality - which, for our purposes,
can be equated with mind-independence - but because Mackie thought
moral talk was committed to objectivity, he concluded that there are
no moral facts. Michael Smith (1994: 6) argues that if moral facts are
objective, then moral opinions should converge under ideal conditions:
thus fundamental moral disagreement would undermine objectivity.



Mind-independence theorists could accept this and argue that
fundamental moral disagreement is not actual or possible (depending on
whether the objection is about actual or merely possible fundamental
disagreement). Alternatively, mind-independence theorists could deny
that fundamental moral disagreement undermines mind-independence
(Shafer-Landau 2003: ch 9; McGrath 2010). They could point out that
there is fundamental disagreement in other domains, such as physics or
history, yet we do not take this to undermine objectivity-claims in
those domains. But some, such as Richard Rowland (2017), argue that
moral disagreement is relevantly different from disagreement in other
domains.


### 5.3 Arguments for Mind-Independence



We will consider two main arguments for the mind-independence of the
normative. First is a recent argument by David Enoch for the
mind-independence of morality (2011: ch. 2). Enoch argues that when we
are in certain kinds of interpersonal conflict with someone else, to
the extent that that conflict is due to preferences, or attitudes, or
desires (etc.), we should not stand our ground but should stand back
from our own position and seek some sort of impartial, egalitarian
solution to the conflict. For example, if two friends want to do
something fun, and one wants to go to the movies while the other wants
to play video games, neither should insist on their position over the
other's without budging. (Maybe they should flip a coin.) Enoch
calls this constraint "Impartiality".



Yet, Enoch argues, this entails that on many mind-dependence theories,
we should find a way of compromising in the same way, when we have a
moral disagreement. This is easiest to see on the view that our moral
judgments simply report mental states, which Enoch calls
"Caricatured Subjectivism". On Caricatured Subjectivism,
our moral disagreements *just are* disagreements about mental
states, and so should be governed by Impartiality. Enoch argues that
the same result follows on any theory that grounds moral truth in
mental states: on such views, we ought to find some way of
compromising when we have a moral disagreement.



This, Enoch argues, is a morally odious entailment: in many moral
disagreements, it is not only permissible but *required* that
we stand our ground. Imagine - to use Enoch's
case - disagreeing with someone about whether a dog's pain
counts, morally speaking. And imagine you then have to decide on a
particular case, for example, on whether to cause a dog serious pain,
about which you also disagree. Should you split the difference and
cause just a small amount of pain, or flip a coin, or pursue some
other compromise? No, Enoch argues: you should stand your ground. In
this way, moral disagreements are analogous to (non-moral) factual
disagreements and unlike conflicts of conative attitudes.



Enoch's argument has its limitations, as he admits. His argument
assumes that, on a given mind-dependence view, when two agents
disagree morally, their disagreement reduces to or is relevantly
analogous to a disagreement of conative attitudes. But if you have a
view on which all moral agents necessarily share certain attitudes,
thus entailing that certain moral truths are necessary, then all or at
least many moral disagreements will not be relevantly analogous to a
disagreement of conative attitudes. Hence mind-dependence views of
these kinds avoid Enoch's objection since his argument does not
show that disagreements, as understood by such theories, are governed
by Impartiality. (Similarly, cultural relativism, "no
priority" views, and any view which gives an irreducibly
normative constraint on which mental states can ground moral facts,
also avoid Enoch's objection, according to Enoch.)



Enoch's argument also has the limitation that it only applies to
morality, rather than mind-dependence views of normativity in general.
This limitation appears on the face of the argument, since it relies
on the premise that it is *morally* objectionable not to stand
our ground in some *moral* disagreements. It does not seem
equally objectionable in any sense to compromise in cases of
epistemic, or aesthetic, or prudential disagreements (though maybe the
case could be made in some or all of these domains).



A second argument, or class of arguments, depends on what Sharon
Street (2009) calls *ideally coherent eccentrics (ICEs)*:
characters who have some intuitively bad motive (or desire, or belief,
etc.) that survives some idealization process. What process is
relevant will depend on the particular mind-dependence view under
consideration, but the idea is that some ICEs will survive any
plausible idealization process. Generally, we can say that they have
some objectionable mental state that coheres both with their other
relevant mental states, and with the non-normative facts. The outcome,
in abstract terms, is that for any given view of normativity
*V* on which normative fact *N* for agent *A* is
fully grounded in mental fact *M*, there is some ICE for whom
*M* obtains, and thus *N* obtains for that ICE on
*V*, but it is intuitively clear that *N* does
*not* obtain for that ICE. So we should reject *V*.



The strategy can be illustrated by a concrete example. Allan Gibbard
talks about the infamously cruel Roman emperor Caligula, and imagines
that he wants to torture for fun while harboring no conflicting
attitudes (1990: 145). The argument is, then, that Caligula plainly
would be wrong to torture just for fun despite the fact that his
desire to torture for fun is coherent with his other attitudes and
resistant to change under any idealization process. So the wrongness
of his torturing for fun is not grounded in his actual attitudes nor
is it grounded in the attitudes of his that would survive some
idealization process.



The argument from ICEs has some shortcomings. First, it seems only to
strike against theories according to which specific moral facts
concerning specific agents are grounded in the attitudes or idealized
attitudes of those agents. Second, recall that, for reasons we
explained before, we take the debate about mind-dependence to concern
whether normative *principles* are fully metaphysically
grounded in mental facts. The example of Caligula, and similar
examples found in Parfit (2011: ch 2, sec 11), Williams (1989 [1995:
39]) and Hume (1739-40: Book 2, Part 3), are not on point, for
they all concern an agent with a specific mental profile and a
specific moral claim involving that agent. The interesting question is
whether we can use the basic idea of ICEs to develop analogous
objections to views that fully ground normative principles in mental
facts.



Mind-dependence theories differ from one another in various ways. Yet
the ICE strategy can perhaps be modified in ways that would allow it
to strike against a wider variety of mind-dependence theories, and
perhaps against all such theories. For example, ICE strategy is on its
face not aimed at views like cultural relativism, which would
nevertheless still count as a mind-dependence view on our definition.
But we can easily conceive of ICE-analogues at the cultural level:
assume the relevant relativistic view is that moral facts for
*A* are grounded what *A*'s culture believes. We
can imagine *A*'s culture believing, without internal
inconsistency, that genocide is morally commendable - but it
clearly is not. Again, the ideally coherent Caligula wants to torture
for fun and has no conflicting desires. This will entail that he has a
decisive reason to torture for fun on the view that decisive reasons
are grounded in desires (at least when those desires don't
conflict with any others). Or take the view that *believing one has
a reason to *X** engenders a reason for one to *X*.
We can then imagine that Caligula believes he has a reason to torture
for fun. Combining this particular mind-dependence view with the
modified Caligula example entails that Caligula has a reason to
torture for fun. Nothing seems to suggest that any particular
mind-dependence view is going to escape criticism. And,
mind-independence proponents will argue, the only way we can account
for the facts that Caligula is wrong to torture for fun and lacks a
decisive reason to torture for fun is by allowing that some normative
facts are fully mind-independent.



It is open to any given mind-dependence theory to argue that it does
*not* have the morally objectionable entailment suggested in
the ICE argument. Perhaps the theory could argue that it's
impossible for the relevant mental state not to be in conflict with
other relevant mental states, or the non-normative facts - maybe,
that is, it is impossible for the *ideally coherent* eccentric
in question to exist. On the other hand, mind-dependence theorists
could argue, as Sharon Street (2009) does, that the ICE could exist,
and that the relevant normative entailments do obtain - but that
they are not problematic. That is, for instance, perhaps the ideal
Caligula really does have a reason to torture for fun



Mind-dependence theorists could try to take the edge off these
entailments. Taking the case of reasons as an example, they could
argue, as Williams (1989 [1995: 39]) suggested, that even though, on
Williams's theory, a cruel husband might have no reason to be
nicer to his wife, we can still say that he is "ungrateful,
inconsiderate, hard, sexist, nasty, selfish, brutal, and many other
disadvantageous things". Of course, this strategy depends on
each of those properties *not* entailing that someone with that
property has a reason to try to avoid it. This is tenuous at best: it
seems doubtful at the very least to say that we have no reason to
avoid being ungrateful or sexist, etc.



The mind-dependence theorist can also consistently say that, even if
the ICE lacks the reasons in question, we can nevertheless force him
into therapy, or help his wife leave him, or try to have him arrested
(Manne 2014). These actions don't require that the cruel husband
have any reasons whatsoever, but depend only on what the sympathetic
onlooker or the wife has reason to do. But some will still find this
unsatisfying: the *husband* shouldn't be acting the way
he is. And, of course, here the mind-independence theorist is happy to
advertise the benefit she can offer: the husband has a reason to treat
his wife better no matter what's going on in his head (or his
heart).