<TITLE: Metaethics: Supervenience and Moral Realism
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: humanities
DISCIPLINE: philosophy
EVENT TYPE: post-graduate seminar presentation
FILE ID: USEMD120
NOTES: presentation interspersed with discussion

RECORDING DURATION: 123 min 26 sec

RECORDING DATE: 5.4.2005

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 11

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 6

S1: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

S2: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Danish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S3: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

S4: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

S5: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: male; AGE: 24-30

S6: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

SS: several simultaneous speakers>


<S1> (maybe if you) start or is it </S1>
<S2> is it it </S2>
<S1> is it a quarter past @already@ </S1>
<S2> it's a it's only [ten minutes past two er so perhaps it's it's a good idea to] </S2>
<S1> [yeah er er that's yeah (where m-)] maybe we er wait a couple of <S2> [yeah] </S2> [minutes] and </S1>
<P:06>
<SMALLTALK BETWEEN S1 AND S2 BEGINS>
<S2> or perhaps we can agree to the the form because er yesterday we had no break [in between so and that's a normal] </S2>
<S1> [mhm mhm yeah that's normal] that's normal but <S2> [yeah] </S2> [er] if you prefer [a break we] </S1>
<S2> [no no] i don't we <S1> [yeah] </S1> [do it] at home but er er er [er i prefer to go go ahead and then to see how long time it mhm we can talk] </S2>
<S1> [oh yeah yeah yeah mhm yeah mhm] </S1>
<S2> and also i prefer questions as we go along <S1> mhm </S1> rather than a long talk </S2>
<S1> mhm-hm </S1>
<PEOPLE ENTERING, P:22>
<S1> <FOREIGN> ehkä se ovi vois olla vähän vielä auki jos joku tulee </FOREIGN> </S1>
<P:13>
<S1> s- should we er (xx) st andrews <S2> [yes] </S2> [and] (xx) crispin wright's [(xx)] </S1>
<S2> [yes] that was er i gave a talk yesterday on on his <S1> mhm </S1> discussion of <S1> [yeah] </S1> [er] anti-realism <S1> yeah yeah </S1> but er i thought <S1> [mhm] </S1> [that was] that's something i know something about [really] </S2>
<S1> [mhm] yeah that's (you have a) PhD [in] </S1>
<S2> [yeah yeah] on <S1> [mhm] </S1> [er metaethics so i used] crispin wright's framework <S1> yeah </S1> for anti-realism [debate on on metatheme especially] </S2>
<S1> [mhm-hm yeah mhm] i know his work on on frege <S2> [yes yes] </S2> [because i have worked] but but er but i don't know som- so much on [metaethics and] </S1>
<S2> [no no no] anti-realism debates [and all this dammert er mhm] </S2>
<S1> [mhm yeah yeah yeah] i know some of that <S2> yeah </S2> but it not that's not my field [actually] </S1>
<S2> [no no] no no i understand that you're er er also a descartes scholar wasn't you </S2>
<S1> no no er <S2> [somebody did] </S2> [i'm not] i i worked on with history and philosophy of logic and the relations between analytic <S2> [yeah okay yeah yeah , yes] </S2> [(philosophy) terminology er but er] it's lilli alanen i think that (who you mean is) <S2> [okay okay so i understand] </S2> [lilli alanen was er] yeah with (xx) senior colleague er who is (xx) at uppsala <S2> okay </S2> now yeah swedish university <S2> yeah </S2> (xx) </S1>
<S2> so you must also know dammert's work on [theology (xx) philosophy on] </S2>
<S1> [yeah yeah i know his work] on on on frege and <S2> yeah </S2> (philosophy of mathematics) </S1>
<S2> i actually cover the same i mean i teach the undergraduate course on on the history of <S1> [mhm] </S1> [(xx)] on fregean numbers <S1> yeah mhm </S1> we don't have that much (xx) philosophy in our <S1> [mhm yeah] </S1> [department] (xx) too allergic to <S1> [mhm yeah] </S1> [(xx) er philosophy of language] yeah yeah but actually i'm mo- these days i'm mostly doing er political philosophy and ethics because that's what i <S1> [mhm yeah yeah] </S1> [what i] have to teach </S2>
<S1> mhm , yeah we don't have many people in that field we have er what we have is a kind of a er history of political philosophy <S2> [uh-huh yes] </S2> [history] of ethics but er er w- or i have a great number of of doctoral students but er but actually , i don't remember if any any of them works on <S2> [yeah no] </S2> [contemporary ethics] <S2> [yeah okay] </S2> [or contemporary ethical philosophy] and that's er i think it's good contribution [@@ that you make now because er you] </S1>
<S2> [yeah okay yeah yeah yeah okay yes it's something] different yes </S2>
<S1> it's different and it's good to good to know [@@] </S1>
<S2> [yeah yeah] tomorrow will be <S1> (xx) </S1> today will be quite simple but tomorrow will be more er , that would be good for especially <S1> [mhm yeah] </S1> [contemporary and] and their mhm in politics <S1> [uh yeah] </S1> [and the @@] yeah </S2>
<S1> this the uni- university is strong in social sciences </S1>
<S2> okay so maybe [there people over there] </S2>
<S1> [yeah maybe] yeah </S1>
<S2> so m- [maybe now we can] </S2>
<S1> [maybe we] can start yeah </S1>
<P:12>
<SMALLTALK BETWEEN S1 AND S2 ENDS, SEMINAR BEGINS>
<S2> would you like me to (xx) </S2>
<S1 USES POWERPOINT>
<S1> mhm it's my great pleasure to introduce er er to you er our er danish er guest er <S2> mhm-hm </S2> er and er <NAME S2> er he he comes from odense er er he's er has er taken his PhD at the university of st andrews he's written on on well on ethics and and and social political philosophy and ontolo- ontology <S2> yes @yes@ </S2> on the borderline er between what <S2> [yeah] </S2> [we] what we call theoretical and practical [philosophy] </S1>
<S2> [yes exactly] that's that's what i'm doing </S2>
<S1> er and er he's university lecturer at at odense er and and for this week we have an opportunity to have a a course and today he's er he's visiting on our seminar and and giving er the paper on supervenience and moral realism <S2> yes </S2> you are welcome </S1>
<S2> thank you very much i see i've been very well received here and i'm i'm er very happy about being here in this er i think very beautiful city it's it's i like this the nature around here is wonderful i wish i had more time to explore it it and okay but er , er a few of you were here yesterday so i will make some er part of you you were here yesterday already so i can i can make some references during the talk to what i was saying yesterday but otherwise this is supposed to be a a separate talk but also it links with the talk on thursday on on metaethics also on on the open question i've been asked i mean the three these three talks sort of work together , erm , yeah er and er maybe i should just say what my stance or my general es- er er oppos- er position is in metaethics er those of you who were here yesterday may have noticed that i have leanings towards a an anti-realist er er er position in metaethics er at least in metaethics maybe more general er and the idea that er sort of the the the basic view that i defended in my thesis was the view that says that that we have truth or minimal truth in in ethics but er but there's no further realism relevant properties of the truth er truth property in ethics yeah this will make no sense to you if you didn't hear what i said yesterday but okay erm , okay <COUGH> today today's talk is the most technical and er and er the most er uncompromisingly analytical er talk i think er also there's quite a lot of things i'm trying to say so it may be a bit confusing er er and again i don't know er exactly if any of you have er much foreknowledge of these discussions on on the topic of supervenience but many of you may have met er the topic of super- supervenience in many other contexts primarily in the philosophy of mind maybe some of you know it there er so and also er er er people working on within semantics could could discuss whether semantic properties supervene (xx) meta-properties and so on so , i hope and and i'm quite willing to take discussions that that er will take us off the main point of ethics and er er and this leads me to the last thing i want to say before i start er which is that erm , i would like to have discussion as we go along rather than me talking for a full hour then tiring everybody i mean i will if you have a question as we go along please ask them er also small questions of er of er er interpretation and so on clarification , erm , i will say that er what i'm going to say today is loosely based on a paper and in principle if some of you are interested er you can e-mail me <S1> mhm-hm </S1> i should write up my e-mail . and i will send the paper as and i i can also send the the talk <WRITING ON BLACKBOARD, P:12> okay er , also before i start i'll make a general recommendation now that i'm er ma- maybe you're not so familiar with er metaethics if some of you are interested in become interested in metaethics a very good introduction is er er the book by alexander miller an instruction to contemporary metaethics you can have a look at papers af- afterwards , er okay now i'm going to start and er . er well there there are four main parts of the paper er first of all there's a a quite a long part that could actually gen- er generate some discussion which er relates to the very definition of moral on natural supervenience supervenience and also the definition of natural er that's of course a huge topic erm i i need to say something about that before i start so that's a a quite a a a large part of the paper then i er er generally ask the question er what does the notion of superve- what consequences does the the phenoa- phenomenom phenomenon of nat- moral and natural supervenience ha- have , er , what what consequences does this phenomenon had ha- ha- ha- er have for er discussions about realism in ethics so debates between non-naturalists and naturalists and anti-realists i mean so what is the relation between supervenience and realism that's a a overall er the heading for the whole thing but they are separate issues here first of all er blackburn has once er advanced a famous argument i don't know if you are familiar with it from the phenomenon of supervenience s- against non-naturalism or old style er moral realism er the kind that moore for instant- moore for instance er defended er so er i am going to look at that argument and i am going to suggest some changes in light of what i've said in in the first part of the paper , but generally i will er argue that that er there is an argument from supervenience against non-naturalism even when you you re- the re-think the argument and but then i have two f- further <COUGH> issues er namely the question of what about more modern forms of realism moral realism what is er sometimes called non-reductive naturalism i will define it later also con- also known under the name cornell realism , er what er er , do we have an argument against cornell realists from supervenience there might be an argument er and also i want to finally er er er take take up the question whether anti-real- er whether anti-realism for instance in the form of blackburn's quasi-realism or grice minimalism er introduced yesterday does these er types of theory have problems with supervenience er or how can they deal with supervenience that's the the er it's quite a big er mouthful @i would say@ erm but mhm let's get started and and first of all we must define or give a a at least a preliminary definition of supervenience and er i tried er i tried to formulate it this way <READING ALOUD> for all subjects X and Y it cannot as a matter of conceptual truth be the case that X and Y are indiscernible with with respect to natural properties yet are discernible with respect to their moral properties </READING ALOUD> so the the i i usually illustrate this with an example from aesthetics instead imagine there are two er er paintings on the wall er two van gogh paintings but they are exactly alike i mean you study them you study the colours the shapes of the er er the drawings and and and everything you cannot make a distinction in non- non-aesthetic terms , now this the point here er er which carries all the moral is that you cannot er intelligi- intelligibly say that one painting is beautiful the other one is not if you cannot point to a difference at the subvening level at the natural level it (ne-) makes no sense to make a difference at the at the supervening level at the level of tran- er aesthetic properties or moral properties i hope you can accept that intuitively er i mean otherwise you should object already now yeah </S2>
<S3> well er what about if er if one painting is a copy of the other so , what then , er [so] </S3>
<S2> [so the] the very or so so so what what i mean to say is that the history of the painting , is part of the natural fact it is a natural fact that makes a difference <S3> yeah </S3> to the to the er yeah you would just include that that fact that it is a cop- one is a copy of the other er <S3> [well the] </S3> [(xx) in the] in the sub- subvenience [subvening (case)] </S2>
<S3> [well er] the other is made by van gogh and the other is a copy made by somebody else so this erm <S2> [okay you say] </S2> [becomes relevant] if we think that [moral] </S3>
<S2> [i think] i think that difference would not make a difference to whether it's beautiful or not <S3> yeah </S3> would we say that the fact that it's made by van gogh makes it more beautiful than the other if you can't say sa- sa- say <S3> [if it's yeah] </S3> [any oth- other like any other difference] yeah <S3> [is it if we (xx)] </S3> [you could say that (while it maybe) makes a difference] to the monetary value [of it surely but] </S2>
<S3> [(xx)] yeah yeah but erm , because erm you can think it's so it's the truth that van gogh has made er the other painting but the other is just a copy so er on the aesthetic level er they can both be beautiful but erm the other still is the true version that is made by van gogh and the other is just a copy so [on the (ethical level)] </S3>
<S2> [but but that] distinction i would say <S3> yeah </S3> is not a an aesthetic distinction <S3> no [it is (xx)] </S3> [that's a] comment about er origins <S3> [yeah] </S3> [and so] , yeah i i think [for me] </S2>
<S3> [an- a- a-] it can be al- al- also a distinction on the ethical level i think so <S2> yeah </S2> and and on on the level of er truth itself which if we think about er , well it has to be so that or er still it can be so that van gogh himself has made two , paintings [of the same] </S3>
<S2> [i think] that maybe i think maybe we we <S3> [yeah yeah] </S3> [we can take this up again] because i'm going to say a lot more about how we should define this er more precisely <S3> yeah </S3> so erm but er but my my immediate answer is that it can't make a difference if it's er erm , well i- it's not plausible er er that this fact about the particular who made it that one particular made it rather than another one particular person made it rather than another this this in itself cannot make a an a difference at the at the aesthetic level , okay and and and there's more to say about that just in in a few minutes okay so but er er er the point is that this is strong notice that the i say it's it cannot as a matter of conceptual truth be er er er , that this is a this is really a conceptual truth with we are dealing with here so the idea is that somebody who does not accept this if you object to it that you are not competent with aesthetical (moral) er that's that's the that's the claim that many people make so you're objecting is quite a pro- profound one er @uh@ (thought) <COUGH> , now er <COUGH> , yeah this intuitive definition where now i'm going to refine the definition as i go on so , er erm one problem with the the definition is that , it allows for s- er er the possibility er is there that that something has a moral property without having any natural property whatsoever that makes little sense could you have something which ha- had a moral property but no other property so perhaps the principle has to be refined in such a way that that you take into account that er er anything that has a moral property also has some natural property be- because it's always in virtue of somehow our natural properties that we have er things (as) things er natural properties that they have er er more properties they don't just come out of the blue but you might say it's also a a basic point er about supervenience and er secondly er we must make sure that the natural property we are talking about is not just a a a partial description in natural terms of the er or or a partial property or or a natural property of a thing but it's a it's a maximal natural property so it's er it's the a conjunction of all the natural properties er of the thing because of course if if one thing was missing in our in in this property i- i- if if it had some property that was not included in the the maximal natural property then that particular property could be the property that made a moral difference or er an aesthetic difference so er er in in future in the rest of this paper when i speak of a natural the supervening property supervening property er it it would be a a erm , a maximal natural er natural property the full a full er , a property that fully describes well the the the thing in natural terms you cannot add anyth- any natural further natural description to this thing . yeah so N star means a maximal property , then another thing you might say say is , that er er we should restrict this the talk of natural properties to only relevant natural properties you might say that in some situations er in many er moral contexts i mean the the colour of hair of somebody makes no more difference or er whether erm er er an atom in in in your hair is placed in one place rather than another makes no more difference so couldn't we just take away a lot of the the natural differences that we find in situations and and deem them irrelevant shouldn't we have some sort of relevance requirement for the natural properties when we define er the supervenience well yeah i would say yes to a we- ve- a weak version @of@ er er er this er relevance restriction but i would say no to a more er strong restriction and what is a the weak restriction well the point and this relates to the van gogh example er a (main) difference in particularity a (main) difference in er er er a a the er (xx) identity of the person or the time or the place , a difference like that cannot make a difference if there's no further er er differences in in the general properties , er bec- because er i mean the the again i i i'm i'm i'm appealing to your intuitions here could it make a difference er that a a a a certain say a murder happened in in in one place rather than another if there are no other ways of er distinguishing between these two s- er er murders could the the very fact that it happened in one place rather than another make a moral difference probably not or that it could the very fact that if if one person rather than another person that made the the mur- that committed the murder er could that make a moral difference if there were no other natural properties then you you should distinguish between these two erm so a mere difference in in particularity cannot make a moral difference that's the point but then you might er er suggest that well we we can we can we can limit the field more fairly and i have some examples here er you you you can er er er disregard a lot of er natural properties as as as just not important er er that might be a a possibility so that you you're restricting yourselves to a a class of relevant natural properties er i think this this is a mistake and i'll explain why er er first of all we can accept given that we accept er er er well we should accept even if we accept the the er the first restriction on particularity we should re res- er we should accept that cert- er supervenience principle like the following would be true er this is it follows some supervenience principle that principles of the following form are true what whenever well if X has a maximal natural property N then X has a a a moral property N it's the er er instances of this er principle will will be true given that er er supervenience is true because every time something has a moral property it will have a nat- a maximal natural property and any other thing that has this max- maximal natural natural property will have the same moral property that's the whole point of the of the supervenience principle erm </S2>
<S3> well er <S2> yeah </S2> again if we have the van gogh example er if er van gogh's painting er X has <S2> yeah </S2> a maximal natural property er beautifulness then er [(xx)] </S3>
<S2> [oh but beautifulness] is a is a is a is a s- supervening property </S2>
<S3> it's supervenient so it's it's a moral property M [or or] </S3>
<S2> [yeah it's a it's] like the moral property <S3> yeah </S3> no no no i'm i'm talking an analogy between two different discussions <S3> yeah </S3> discussions in aesthetics and discussion in moral philosophy because in this in both areas you have supervenience and er the the aesthetics example was just to make things clearer but i feel that it has made things @more complicated@ but erm so so the point is that that er er er er erm that the natural property couldn't be a moral property <S3> yeah </S3> we can define natural property in such a way that it couldn't be a moral property or er similarly it couldn't be an aesthetic property in the aesthetic case </S2>
<S3> so what is a natural property </S3>
<S2> yeah well i i've i have a a point later where i try to define it so yeah er but it this is it's a very big issue and and and <S3> yeah </S3> a thorny issue all the same er okay but maybe i i the point is that where we shouldn't accept the following that er er supervenience involves some sort of a clause with er to do with er relevance such that it becomes part of our conceptual knowledge of moral er er er that we have due to having moral concepts that er er something like genuine moral principles of the following kind become true if X has maximal relevant natural property then X has moral property M i mean you might think that for instance somebody like a utilitarian will say that er the only er property that is relevant in in moral cases is the property of er being the er let's say action er that er best promotes the er welfare of all involved okay <S3> yeah </S3> so something like that i mean er you might think that that's the only that's the only relevant moral property and and then you have a genuine moral principle the problem with that is that erm this would write too much into our conceptual knowledge er of of moral terms and this would er er beg the questions in many discussions that are real discussions in in metaethics because some people er some er you know maybe the the discussion between generalists and particularists in er in metaethics don't know if you if you're familiar with it but er er particularists say that you cannot have any principles of any kind cannot have moral principles er that there are no er er . general moral principles you can never say er you can never say of a a certain type of situations that they have a certain moral property you always have to look at this particular description of this er er the situation you can never generalise you can never compare between situations this is the particularist view okay so they only accept conditions of this kind they don't accept condition of conditions of this kind okay er now if you say that this is part of the the conceptual knowledge we have when we have moral concepts if this follows from supervenience then we also say that that the particularists are conceptually confused rather than just er advancing a different theory in in in er ethics and metaethics </S2>
<S3> well i i i think it becomes a problem this particularism er if you think about er a subject like myself so <S2> [yeah] </S2> [erm] er if we er take one particular case so er if we look at it from er generalist point of view <S2> yeah </S2> er then on many levels it can be a problem so er </S3>
<S2> @@ well there's certainly a big discussion between the generalists and and and i i favour generalist view i should say <S3> yeah </S3> but the point is is er is part- is particularism a a mistake for conceptual reasons does it show that these people have not even understood er er what is involved in in er er mastery of moral concepts or is it merely a a a substantial discussion in ethics and metaethics and i would say that we shouldn't have this er we shouldn't er accept the strong version , er . we shouldn't accept the strong relevance requirement for this reason because we shouldn't shut out part- er er particularists for for conceptual reasons okay this is a minor point so let's just move on , erm a big discussion within the whole debate over er supervenience and especially moral and natural supervenience is er er the question of cross wo- worlds or interworlds supervenience comes a intrawo- world er supervenience so the point is that er er er supervenience always asks you to to compare situations you saying if two situations have the same natural properties they cannot have different moral properties but what are you er what are you allowed to compare between are you only allowed to comp- compare between situations or acts er in in the actual world or can you compare across worlds can you compare er er , er with actions and things going on in hypothetical world and and that's as er er an issue er that you need to decide because er i i should say the history of this is that many er the the people started out discussing supervenience in ethics people like hare and er later blackburn er primarily maybe it's er er i think also people say that a lot of it is already implicit in in moore okay but most of these people assumed that we should only accept the weak supervenience in the sense that er we only should compare situations within w- the ac- er one world we should never go across worlds okay i think this is a mistake and most people i think now in the debate go for opt for stronger supervenience and why should we argue for stronger supervenience well yeah this er follows on the argument er about pa- particularity from before i- it can make a difference it can make a moral difference whether it's one particular rather than another that does an action or whether it happens at one time , or place er or another er but in the same way it can't matter whether it happens in one possible world or another it it's another case of er a difference between particularity erm and also er well it's a feature of er moral reasoning that we er use the hypotheticals it's it's a very common feature of er moral reasoning er that that we say things like er er what if you had been the person on the receiving end of this action what if you were the person losing out or ended up on the bottom of society or something i mean we also use hypotheticals where we put ourselves in in other er situations so and what we're doing here is i suppose erm that we are er that we are considering other possible worlds so since er er this is a further argument for accepting that supervenience goes across er worlds er and also er the whole er supervenience conditionals er might be triv- become trivialised because let's go back i mean these supervenience conditionals er might become trivial because it may be that in the actual world it's on- there's always only one thing that er satisfies or that has the maximal natural property the maximum maximal natural property is so er , so er fine fine-grainly specified er that only one thing in the actual world has this property and then of course it this becomes completely vacuous that that er there's no point in er . it becomes completely uncontroversial this principle , er the supervenience principle er so there are several reasons for for adopting a stronger version of supervenience rather than weak weak version of supervenience , so with these er qualifications are now er er approach a more er er complex er definition of er supervenience moral or natural supervenience forget about the formalisation but er it's there if you're interested in that , i'll read it er <READING ALOUD> necessarily if an object has a property F belonging to the A family </READING ALOUD> where the A family is the family of moral properties <READING ALOUD> then it also has a maximal property G star belonging to the B family </READING ALOUD> which is the family of natural properties <READING ALOUD> such that necessarily </READING ALOUD> this box is important <READING ALOUD> everything er that has the G property has the F property </READING ALOUD> erm yeah that's another way of formulating what i've already said er i said that necessarily the second box necessarily it is important because that's the point that says that you can have you you can compare across worlds , er that that's the that's what makes this a strong principle rather than a weak supervenience principle . and there's technical point here er when i'm talking about the er er notice here that that er it says that the er , then it also has er maximal property G star so it says that there exists a a a a natural property that the thing has so whenever that's something has a moral property there's also some natural property that the thing has and that's the point i i was making that er one one of the points of criticism of the first definition er , but the point is that some people er and this was first within the debate er er that jaegwon kim is famous for discussion of supervenience in er in philosophy of mind er er it could be possible to define er a a natural property er a a very strange maximal natural property i mean namely a maximal negative er er natural property or B property the one that says take all er natural properties and er er er take their complement er er i mean that their negation so to speak say that er er er you have the (quality) of being red and then you have the (quality) being not red the (quality) being not five kilos or or or you take all er er physical er properties and just er er er change them to their negation and then you make a big conjunction so we have a an an an an a maximal er er natural property but a property that we will hardly call natural , yeah so er erm . and this will be a problem the if if the the if the G property could be such a maximally natural er negative natural property er er then er we would not respect the point i said er earlier that i made earlier that whenever there's a moral property there has to be a natural property underlying it because this this er er maximally negative natural property cannot underlie it it's not really a natural property so we have to assume it's a technical point but we have to assume that a maximally negative B property is not a B property at all er , this er i i i talk a lot about these more technical issues in the er in the pa- in the paper er but really they are quite uncontroversial and and a little boring really and i think i will not go into detail but there are there's a whole discussion about how to f- properly formulate supervenience relations and what i did er on on the previous page was that i used er modal operators there's a sort of sorry i'm going the wrong way i used er necessarily modal operator necessarily twice , another op- option is to formulate su- er supervenience using quantification over possible worlds so you're saying things like er yeah for any objects X and Y for any worlds W and B if X in i- in W is B indistinguishable from Y in B then X in B W and Y in B are in A indistinguishable that's just another way of saying the same thing er just take a second to think about it then , and . yeah i i will not say more ab- about the relation between these two but there's a whole discussion of whether this is a different version er er than the one i ga- gave earlier and whether this is er important i think that you can make this er ty- type of er possible worlds version of strong supervenience er you can make it into a a version that is equivalent with erm the the er modal operator version of of of er strong supervenience <P:06> then a final technical issue . erm er if we erm accept that the modal operator version of the strong supervenience principle , then er er we have two modal operators (at the most) and we can ask the question what type of er what type of necessity is involved er what type of modality is involved and er so er and one point and this is one made by james pryor an article from 92 er one er interesting er well you cou- you cou- you can imagine that we or you can plausibly argue that we can give different interpretations to the two boxes you might say that the first box is an analytical er is is talking about analytical necessity of conceptual necessity of some kind erm because of the point i made er at the very beginning that somebody who er er everybody should accept this principle for conceptual reasons because it's er something we should accept insofar as you master er er moral concepts okay so the first box is a er is a conceptual or analytical necessity box whereas the second box arguably is a a er talks about metaphysical necessity and why is that well the erm if you accept the open question argument er henceforth known as O-Q-A erm then you cannot accept that there are analytically necessary entailments from er natural properties or the existence of of the having of natural properties to the having of moral properties there can be no necessary connection that's the the point of the open question argument but we shouldn't discuss that today because that's what i'm saving for thursday , erm <COUGH> er but given that er erm it's implausib- i- if we accept er some version of the open question argument then we will accept that there are no analytical necessities that takes us from the possession of natural properties to the possession of moral properties and therefore we should not er (fill) this into our principle so we should have a a mixed interpretation of the modal operators er in this case . okay these are as i said technical issues and now i come to the er one one issues that i er we already touched in our little discussion what is a natural property and i have some suggestions er er very general suggestions well P is a natural property if and only if first suggestion that er er it is non-moral er i think that's too inclusive because it also includes er nor- other normative er facts er like er facts about practical reasoning erm and the- therefore it becomes too broad erm another er most most er er , most , popular maybe er definition is to say that er it's er something's natural if it's (causal) if it's (causal) (xx) er and then there's a competing definition and i think this is actually taken already from from moore's old er definition when he introduced the open question argument he was trying to define moral also and he had these two competing definitions one was saying that the moral is the causal the other one said that i'm sorry the natural is the causal and the other one said that er the natural is what is detectible by by the five senses and the suggestion that that i will make and then i actually take this from alex miller is that er we might sort of er er cover our er our back or by s- by making a a (xx) definition saying that anything that is either (causal) or detectible by the five senses we regard as er er a natural , i'll try to formulate a more technical one here but it's not important so let's just move on , okay this this concludes my my in- my er initial introduction of the mo- er the notion of moral natural supervenience and my try to my attempt to to define more precisely so any questions about definition should come at this point </S2>
<S3> well i <S2> yeah </S2> think you made it clear with <S2> [okay] </S2> [the] last example so what er what this natural property means so i was a bit confused but <S2> yeah </S2> now now it comes clear to me </S3>
<S2> erm there are there are difficulties actually with this because some people like the cornell realists i'm i'm going to talk about later they say that moral properties are natural properties with er er er er irreducible causable causab- causal powers this confuses the the i mean i really it's really difficult to define natural in a way that doesn't cause a problem at a later stage <S3> yeah </S3> doesn't take questions at a later stage too but i i admit that , okay . erm yeah any other i i mean any any sort of questions er also from people who er maybe ha- i've lost er i mean have (you) any questions okay but er what i'm going to do now is that i'm going to introduce an argument no- now we know what supervenience is but blackburn has claimed that once we accept supervenience er that supervenience is a genuine phenomenon er and that it has er well he believes that it has the shape of a weak intraworld er supervenience er a bit but once we accept this we have an argument against non-naturalism or classical moral realism something like moore's position saying that saying that erm moral properties are sui generis non-natural properties so we have moral objectivity there there's a realm er special (above) nature there's a special er moral realm of of er non-natural sui generis real properties okay that's that's the idea some kind of you might compare it to dualism in in med- in er in philosophy of mind saying that there's two separate (xx) domains nature and then morality or moral facts but that's the idea the argument is an argument from supervenience against moral realists or non-naturalist [(xx)] </S2>
<S3> [can't] you somehow er make also an analogy er to plato and <S2> yeah </S2> like and his idealism erm and if you think about er neo-platonism and erm er yeah </S3>
<S2> the the it's quickly becomes a question of knowledge of what er er plato actually thought er on which i'm not er not very strong but erm but of course most people ac- actually another name for this another name for moral realism is moral platonism so many people have seen this as a a more more as reformulating the platonists view of ethics <S3> yeah </S3> but i'm not sure how this actually or whether this actually captures what plato originally thought er er i think maybe you should be cautious to er assume that er before you assume that er er what is called platonism nowadays is actually what plato @believed@ okay but but this is also an argument against platonism in modern metaethics but the argument er er proceeds from proceeds from two assumptions that we've already met we've we we assume that er weak intraworld moral natural supervenience holds , okay but also we assume and this is the point of the open question argument that there are no analytical entailments from having natural properties to having moral properties there are no er yeah there are no entailments from from nature to to erm . to morality where entailment means something that you can er er analyt- er or is is is a yeah entailment can can be interpreted in many ways but it's the idea that through conceptual reflection you can or some so- so- from some sort of er sixth sense sense you can you can you can see that there are connections erm , so you don't have to use the senses you're not using er any sort of empirical facts you you somehow through thinking er erm know that there are there er what what is being er denied here is that you can through thinking see that things that have a certain natural property must have a certain moral property that's what's being denied here , okay so erm , well given that we have weak supervenience erm there can be no possible world in which er something X has er er a maximal natural property N and a property M a nat- a moral property wh- whereas why another thing has the same maximal natural property but does not have the moral property that is what that is what weak supervenience denies okay you can't have this it bans worlds that er er er blackburn c- calls mixed possible worlds possible worlds where some things i have a an illustration here er er the second world that's being banned according to weak supervenience a world where some things have just the maximal natural property but no moral property and other things have the natural moral er natural maximal property but but also the given moral property this is not possible er but notice also er that given the the second er assumption from open question argument erm there are possible worlds in which everything that that has N star does not have M otherwise if if it was the case in all natural worlds er that's er er everything that has N star has M er then er we would have an entailment at the point so that's what what's being denied so the situation can now be summed up in this way that erm worlds of type W-1 and W-3 are possible but somehow for some strange reason there's a ban on possible worlds of type two the mixed possible worlds then the question from from er blackburn simple a simple question is what er er what makes it impossible for er something from the er er er world th- th- a thing from er world th- er three or world kind three what makes it impossible for this thing to move to a a world of er er of kind one making it into a mixed possible world and what is this (meta-) physical principle that makes this impossible that that seems incomprehensible let's just point that it it's mysterious erm it's a mysterious ban on mixed possible worlds , erm </S2>
<S3> well <S2> yeah </S2> again if we think about this table here which is a classical example in philosophy the table or a glass or something like that erm , at the same time i think this cannot be a table and a non-table or how could you jump er from a world where this is , a table to a world where this is a non-table or @@ a not-table it it becomes problem [about language] </S3>
<S2> [well i i i mean] yeah okay <S3> [at least] </S3> [but if i] i think you're raising a separate issue now i think er you're raising an issue about cross-world identity what what constitutes the identity of a thing in one world where the ide- the <S3> [yeah] </S3> [identity] of a thing in another world and of course if if you think that names er if if (a critical) view i mean that particular table could be as i understand that particular table could be , er a glass of water in another world <S3> yeah [@that's true@] </S3> [@@ because there are no] essential properties i mean , well . well well er it's too big an issue to to take on and also i don't see in your the example you give i mean er what's interesting in this discussion is the relation between different types of properties er er whereas the example you're giving only talks of one type of prop- properties <S3> yeah </S3> yeah okay <S3> yes </S3> , but so er blackburn's conclusion against er er well should say more about this er , just a minute , yeah so to conclude i i'll just read it er blackburn believes that it's <READING ALOUD> utterly mysterious why there's a ban on mixed possible worlds if </READING ALOUD> that is it's only a mystery <READING ALOUD> if one believes that there are no analytical en- entailments between the the natural and the moral domains </READING ALOUD> that is if you are a non-naturalist , so erm to to put the point more intuitively the non-naturalist somebody like moore the platonist thinks that there's a separate moral domain that there's a natural domain and there's a moral domain and they are completely separate areas of ontology but still and this is the mystery this person believes that there's some sort of necessary connection between the the a necessary connection between distinct existences and this is erm this is this is odd at least on most er i mean i think there er hume made this erm formulated this into a general ontological principle er we should have jani here today but he he's gone erm but er er the point is that er er it's if it's strange to say that he- here are two completely different domains yet there's a necessary connection between these two do- er do- domains in the way that er er the supervenience principle claims if if if it if it it is odd or at least it it seems to have it seems to call for some sort of motivation why is that this necessary connection of course you can say that it's primitive yeah but that makes you a i- it's always rather nice to have two possibly primitive connections er or primitive entities in your theory rather have a the- theory that was not er that was more economical yeah </S2>
<S3> yeah if we return back to the table <S2> mhm </S2> and er think about er von wright's er book er varieties of goodness so er er if the natural <S2> mhm-hm </S2> property er of this here is er it's a table in one world and er er it can be a good table erm so er , er , can we jump to another world where the table erm would not be good or </S3>
<S2> have have all <S3> [yeah] </S3> [the same] natural properties all all all the properties <S3> so </S3> but not be good </S2>
<S3> you can you can think er <S2> yeah </S2> about this goodness as a moral property i think </S3>
<S2> but i would <S3> [(xx)] </S3> [claim all] properties some sort of other evaluation that is sort of more instrumental (form) i would say <S3> yeah </S3> it's not a moral property it's an evaluative property anyway but er but but the point er it might be , i i i'm not famili- familiar with the particular example er in in er in von wright's book so but the point <S3> [i don't think] </S3> [might be that] even such an evaluative property supervenes on the underlying er natural properties , that that might be the point er i mean it would be very strange to say that this table in this world is good yet we move it to another world it has exactly the same properties but here it's <S3> [yeah] </S3> [not good] that's a bit strange and that's that's exactly a a a supervenience claim that somehow the the the goodness is constituted by the underlying an- natural properties and it and and you can't just there's some sort of necessary connection between the goodness property and the the the natural properties underlying it <S3> yeah yeah </S3> although er yeah i shouldn't comment to er [i'm guessing about what what some people] </S2>
<S3> [yet again if if the world] the other world would be totally tif- er different like say erm there would be giants living in this world the other world then [this table] </S3>
<S2> [ah okay] but that that's an interesting point <S3> yeah yeah </S3> the the question is erm whether you should er when you , <S3> [so it it might not be (xx)] </S3> [whether if if well if] clearly clearly clearly it's a relevant difference between the two worlds or the properties of the table really in the two worlds that in one world er er there are people such er er of our size and in the other worlds that there are giants in the other world it might be no good it might not be a good table <S3> yeah </S3> but then you might say that that the fact the very fact that there are in this other world giants rather than normal human beings is itself part of the s- er s- er subvening er natural property it's very similar to the point about van gogh if so you should you should include you should include the point about the environment the fact that there are giants rather than normal people in the environment <S3> yeah </S3> you should include that in your natural description of the thing <S3> yeah </S3> it should be a full natural description not necessarily lo- er located on the thing itself it might be sort of broader natural property included included the maximal natural property of the thing might include its relation to all the other things in that one world , so it's a these maximal natural properties are really very very @@ complicated and and er very very erm er large descriptions of er of things in natural terms . i'm (constantly) making a confusion about erm er talking about descriptions and talking about properties er , er but i i think i could i i i could formulate it more clearly er don't get confused with with these erm , okay but blackburn's point is ac- actually further so the point is that that erm er erm erm er a realist a moral realist has a problem of a non-naturalist kind has a problem with erm er , supervenience and this problem is even bigger because an an anti-realist doesn't have the this problem an anti-realist is somebody saying that there are no moral properties out there in the world some sense that really erm they er the er what we call moral properties are just projections from our er practice on the world okay and er so er er it is the fact that we at that certain rules govern the way we actually moralise sort of the way we er talk about morals that there are (prime moral) concepts if it is this fact that makes that explains that the er the regularity of the the seeming metaphysical link between the two types of properties it's not something in the world itself , okay , so the point is that that it it's simply a constrain whenever you moralise it it's part of learning how to to er use moral concepts that it's in- ini- unintelligible to make a moral distinction without making being at least able to er make er a a a a a distinction in natural terms and it's this feature of our moral er practice that is sort of er projected onto the world er , and that explains that explains why we why there seems to be a connection between moral properties and and natural properties and and this is the connection but really there are no moral properties and the the seeming connection is just a a a a reflection of our practice rather than some metaphysical point so the point is blackburn clai- blackburn says i'm an anti-realist i can explain er the supervenience phenomenon er realists cannot least of a natu- non-natu- er naturalist kind therefore my theory is better we should be anti-realists so er it's part of an argument against realists and and my er point here is er i'd like to save the argument from some objections i'd like to say that it's still a good argum- there's a good argument that er er in the (offering) here but i erm you have to rephrase it that's the point i'm making now what are the problems with blackburn's arguments well erm first of all we agreed in the beginning i hope that er moral and natural supervenience is strong and not weak and his whole argument is based on the assumption that it's weak sup- supervenience , erm , so and of course the point is if we go back to the illustration now (we see where we are we) er the point is that if you have strong supervenience then you you're obliged to compare worlds of er across worlds and then you can't have worlds of er er of the third kind are not possible given that there are there's just one world in which something that has a natural property has a moral property , okay if if you have believe in strong supervenience you have to have cross out the third world er third type of world also . mhm <P:05> (xx) <P:10> okay so that's the first one can can can we rephrase the argument that i've just given blackburn's argument using strong supervenience i believe that we can so er the second is er second point is that the argument works against a non-naturalist platonist moorean realist it doesn't necessarily work against somebody who is a naturalist but also somebody who is a realist but also naturalist somebody who says that moral properties are identical to or or in their own right natural , erm . and therefore since natural properties are real on most people's account then therefore we have realist okay so you might say that if you reduce natural properties moral properties to natural properties then you have realism by default because natural properties are real properties okay so erm er er given that there there are erm non-reductive and and also non-in- er analytical er moral realists i will explain that later like cornell realists erm , er , the argument doesn't er er target all types of realists , erm th- the point would be that that er world three the erm W-3 worlds would be conceptually possible but not metaphysically possible , so , the task is now to rephrase blackburn's argument so that both it it works with strong supervenience and against naturalists er naturalist realists erm the first one to make is that it's well-known fact that in er in the also again a technical point that once you have strong supervenience then er well strong moral and natural supervenience entails that for any moral property M there's a natural property N such that M and N are necessarily coextensive why is that this is er jaegwon kim's point , er well remember given er sup- er strong supervenience everything in any possible world that has a moral property will have some subvening maximal natural property so anything that has a moral property has a has a erm this maximal natural property , now make an infinite dis- disjunction of all these subvening maximal properties of anything in any world that has a moral property so it's erm lar- long disjunction of these natural properties that will itself be an a a very very complex possibly infinitely complex natural property but of course it must be coextensive with the moral property given interworld er supervenience or that of course maybe take some more thinking erm but okay this is er a technical point and and and i think everybody agrees on it so the point would be that erm yes erm take any moral concept there will always be a set of natural er er not concept property take any moral property erm there will always be a s- a set of natural properties such that you can er er , claim that nec- nec- necessarily er er there is a coextensiveness between this the moral property and and and er er disjunctive property made out of these natural properties . yeah okay so this is a point that erm a technical point strong supervenience entails reduction well erm it's a- at least necessary co- erm coextensiveness , but then of course there's a further question er does er necessary coextensiveness of two properties entail identity so two properties are always there together in any possible world if if if one is there the other one is there that's er necessary coextensiveness but the problem is does that make them identical necessarily that's that's erm an issue in metaphysics would you disc- erm discuss well of course there is a step i mean er you have to er @make@ er the pro- er you may have to make good the following principle if two properties are necessarily coextensive then they are identical and that er that principle is not er , well that could be challenged i i'll give you two examples to to to to consider this principle is this principle good two examples of things that er properties that are necessarily coextensive are the property of er <SIC> a beer of glass </SIC> if the glass is half empty and it's half full those properties are always there together are they distinct properties or are they not just the same property ma- many will say it's just the same property well erm at least (there in the world) they might that there are different concepts involved in describing this property thinking about this property but in the real world the the the property of being half empty and the property property of being half full is it's the same property okay another example a more tricky one is er er if you have triangles er er geometrical figures , (xx) geometrical figures being a triangular figure and being a tri- trilateral figure three sides those properties are always necessarily , er er instantiated together i mean there's nothing that is triangular which is not also trilateral and vice versa , okay but are they different properties what are you what do you in- your intuitions say about this , i mean one point would be to make one point to make would be that that we have i mean some people might not understand immediately that that this holds true , that whenever you have er er three edges or three angles you must also have three sides i mean maybe it takes a little reflection i have to explain the example er so does this mean that it's necessarily it's different properties probably not </S2>
<S4> is this matter of intuitions (battling) or are there any <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [pri- princ-] principles about telling apart properties and their descriptions . you know </S4>
<S2> okay . okay erm no a- ask your question again 'cause i i i i </S2>
<S4> er yeah do you have any kind of principles to tell apart when we have a a property and a description of a property of course <S2> yeah </S2> <S2> [yeah yeah yeah yeah] </S2> [(right but being)] and being (xx) [is there any kind of a (xx)] </S4>
<S2> [we we we will we we yeah] , your point's yeah well yeah you might say that it's easy to make a decision about these cases clearly they have the same property but we have different ways of describing them we we use different concepts okay </S2>
<S4> yeah one can say so but [it (xx) reasons] </S4>
<S2> [but but but i think it is] but i but i think you can you can when you're doing metaphysics you could you could you could argue for one type of theory which says that theories er properties are r- related to concepts so if you if you have different concepts then you might argue that triangular and trilateral are different concepts if you have different concepts then you have different properties , that that's one theory that you might have you might define property in that way but you might also define property in the way that makes them identical but you might say [property yeah] </S2>
<S4> [yeah but my] my point is more like er er er this kind of metaphysics doesn't really seem to answer to anything anything but our intuition </S4>
<S2> intuition no but er er but that's philosophy <S4> [@@] </S4> [@@] you know and and er well moral philosophy er well it's very very interesting issue about er er actually something that i've worked a little on and and and i'm very interested in this issue of of of er are there any knock down arguments in philosophy okay can you er er i mean ultimately we end up in situations where whe- when you have a real philosophical debate that that that's really sophisticated and has gone on for a long time you end up with people saying my intuitions show this erm favour this and er other people say no my intuitions favour this other thing and you say the same in morals you have the ontologist battling a consequentialist er and and you find out in the end that well you've advanced all the possible arguments you're clear about all the empirical details still there's disagreement and the disagreement hangs on , er que- questions of intuitions and er i think that yeah well we often end up in that way in in in in philosophy yeah but of course it's an interesting issue i and well the point is that i don't think we er we have in philosophy we don't have the ability to prove things we can't usually we can't argue people up against the wall <S4> @@ </S4> we have to appeal to people's intuitions first and then er convince them well to get them to have the same intuitions as us and if we can't do that then we are quite lost we have no guarantee that we will converge on these issues , yeah , maybe that was an answer @@ well really it was more like a pointing towards the big discussion of really metaphilosophy i would say . <COUGH> . okay where are where was i now i'm a little confused erm okay so so how can we make this into an argument against er , given that we have a s- s- strong supervenience and this reduction how can we still have an argument against the er er non-naturalists well the non-naturalists er the platonists the moral realists of moorean of the moorean kind er this person will er claim two things that moral properties are sui generis they are not conceptually or metaphysically reducible to non-moral properties but there als- er they will also claim that moral properties are not causal that is the or nor detectible by the five senses that they are not natural er that's the two components of the non-naturalists' claim erm therefore of course a non-naturalist cannot accept that all moral properties are identical to some natural property . erm which is what what was the point of of er my previous er discussion so erm , the only way that the the non-naturalist can deal with strong supervenience is er er to reject the principle A that i just gave to say that necessary coextension does not entail identity , erm so er or to put it positively the non-naturalist has to claim given that he accepts strong supervenience and he should i mean that's the whole (directive) of this erm er er strong supervenience is supposed to be a conceptual truth that nobody can escape really of course you might argue against it you might your intuitions might go different ways but er given that we accept strong supervenience the only way for the non-naturalist to go is by claiming that we can have distinct but necessarily coextensive properties so we have to a- con- er discuss this can there be distinct erm , but coextensive necessarily coextensive properties well you might put the question in this way to the non-naturalist a new question not not the ban on mixed possible worlds er mixed possible worlds but a new question which is why is every moral property necessarily coextensive with a natural property what what is the explanation of this it's it's a it's an interesting fact er well it it would be not be an interesting fact if if they were identical then of course there are necessary connections it would just be different pres- descriptions of the same thing erm but er given that they are not identical why why is there a necessary connection erm , or you might put it er use a a metaphor why does it have to why does it have to why does any moral property have to have a natural twin that follows it in any possible world erm seems strange and again this is really er er another version of the old of of the the original blackburn argument why er why er postulate er that there are necessities between what what what are distinct ontological domains erm okay and er as i said er earlier the only answer seem for the non-naturalist seemed to be that well there are (intuitive) metaphysical links er so strong supervenience is just a (proved) metaphysical fact something that we have to to erm er in- introduce to our general metaphysics there are just these necessary connections between the two ontological rea- realms erm but then er there's a lot of pressure on this type of thing because always when you introduce primitives in your theory the question is er well it would always be much easier if you could er avoid having this primitive and have a more economical theory and it seems that that that there's a lot of pressure whe- when you have necessary coextensiveness there's a lot of pressure to simply say well it's the same thing it's the very same property okay so i think that that er even with strong supervenience there's an argument from from er supervenience to against the non-naturalists it has it still has strange things he can't explain er and and in that sense er er blackburn's argument can be saved , okay okay now i think er exactly only forty minute lefts forty minute lefts and and er and now i i'm going on to er er the final section of the er the the paper er really two two parts as you can see er to discuss what what are the the implications for cornell realists and and what are the implications for antirealists of of all this i've said erm but i should open for er or give a chance to er questions at this point , go on , may be difficult to jump into discussion <P:07> maybe i'll just go on and well in in a way it it doesn't matter if i i i say everything i mean i could skip a part of the (even the) discussion that's what i er . that's what i'm suggesting here but it seems that nobody's er has anything to say at this point so i'll just go on er first of all er we should quickly distinguish between different kinds of naturalism erm , well er first of all now we adopt er i er i assume now the er the claim that er moral natural properties are causal properties okay or or properties that have causal powers er so erm the the there are two ways in which moral properties might be causal one s- er suggestion is to be a reductive naturalist that is to say simply that moral properties are identical to natural properties as a matter of and then there are two possibilities here analytical truth there might be analyti- er might be er a matter of er er who might be able merely through the analysis of our concepts to show that er moral properties are identical to natural properties this has actually been tried by in in in a in a quite recent book by frank jackson called from metaphysics to ethics he's sort of re-launched the er analytical naturalism using very very complicated er mechanism from er david lewis so the then (somehow) called network analysis i don't see anybody here er lighting up so that i er somebody's not working on it this type of thing but there there's very very complicated new version of (analytical) er naturalism that may be er avoiding all the er old problems too complicated to take in here but also there's another v- er version which also i find quite prob- erm which i find quite problematic this is to say that that we discover a synthetic erm identity between natural properties and moral properties for me that just is strange because , i think identity is a matter of necessity and you cannot you cannot er merely by by sens- er er empirical er investigation discover necessity i mean well i think there are problems with this but it's a possibility so there are reductive kinds of naturalism which say that moral property's identical to some natural properties some other natural properties er well yeah but then there's this new version you might call non-reductive naturalism and this says cornell realism and this says that the er there might there may be sui generis er er moral prop- moral properties may be sui generis but they might have causal powers in their own right erm so that it it's like er people who say that biological facts or biological properties cannot be reduced to physical or chemical properties that er that if we take the the erm erm the biological predicates out of our science we will not explain science will not explain as much as it would do er as a matter of principle as it would do if if we had included biology so biology is an irreducible feature of of nature it's not it's not just er er er something that can be reduced to physics ultimately it it it is a a level in reality er er sui generis er irreducible level of reality okay the that that's the discussion within philosophy of science whether ultimately you can have unity of science everything can be er er reduced to er physics or whether you have to have these layers of of er sui generis irreducible properties and many people accept this and then the point that the the cornell realists make is that er maybe , erm maybe moral property is just one one more step in this hierarchy of prop- irreducible properties , where crucially er i mean the the the er the moral facts or moral properties cannot be removed from our best theory of experience our best er scientific theory er er er without losing explanatory power , okay </S2>
<P:05>
<S3> er <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [well] er what if you think about psychology <S2> [(xx)] </S2> [and] yeah and its irreducibility and antinaturalism from that point of view er like say nietzsche and his philosophy and what happened to him er in his , life @@ </S3>
<S2> er , but i think er , <S3> [(xx) yeah] </S3> [again another issue i mean] the issue of whether well i think it's always wrong to interpret philosophical texts in terms of er what the psychology of the the individual that wrote it i mean er i think that's , that's often er the wrong way to approach er a text <S3> yeah </S3> but i think that's a reductionism of a of a different sort than than the one we're discussing here i would say it's also a kind of reductionism , er what you are suggesting but er . i i think it's a separate issue i i erm i'm not ready to take it up just now <S3> yeah </S3> maybe later okay er , yeah so yeah er i i've made a little er sc- schema here so that that er could s- allows to distinguish the various possibilities that i mean is it possible the the main question is is it possible to reduce ethical or moral properties to natural properties is there an identity some naturalists say yes so they have a reductive naturalism and they say some people say that you can do the reduction analytically some people say you can do it synthetically but what i'm looking at now is the other option over here er you say no there's no identity then you have cornell realism er er er what you have is er er a separate domain in reality sui generis irreducible but still with causal powers with with causal powers that are not just causal powers of the underlying subvening er properties they have causal powers in their own right like bio- biological properties might have causal powers that is not reducible to the physical causal powers okay , erm no i'm (going) the wrong way , so let me say a little more about cornell realists or non-reductive naturalists well er er the typical thing is that moral terms function like natural kind terms like water erm and you know maybe the er kripkean discussion of water and H two O and is it something that you have in your course er is this er part is it part of er the general course here to have er kripke's theories </S2>
<S1> y- yes yes [in the logic yes yeah at least yeah] </S1>
<S2> [yeah okay i will i will have (inart-) yeah yeah] so you know about this er famous or also also putnam's arguments about er yeah water and H two O actually it's putnam that is most interesting here okay erm erm , and the point here is that moral properties er supervene on because they're constituted by natural properties but there's no conceptual reduction okay there's no it cannot be done by analysis of moral concepts er we find out e- empirically that like we find out that H two O er water is H two O through empirical investigation er we we can discover through empirical investigation that moral properties are natural properties well it works erm i yeah so you can discover identities and you just can discover necessities in posteriori rather than a priori erm and and then the thi- third claim is er as i already mentioned i mean the idea is and this is a quote <READING ALOUD> moral properties figure in- (illimitably) in the best cause of explanation of experience and therefore they are real </READING ALOUD> . yeah right yeah i'll move a bit quicker now then er okay what are the problems for er cornell realism well one thing that's not a problem is the problem about er the problem for the the the no- non-natural realists naturalist realists er there's no problem of the mysterious natural twin since the moral facts are just higher-level natural facts er constituted by lower-level natural facts so in the same way i mean er er , the same way that water is constituted by er er H and and oxygen er er what is H in english H two O is er </S2>
<S5> H hydrogen </S5>
<S2> hydrogen hydrogen and oxygen okay so @@ the water is constituted by hydrogen and ox- oxygen er in the same way you might say that er moral facts are constituted by lower-level physical er biological facts er but they're not identical to the er , erm <P:08> yeah okay so there's <P:07> yeah s- well basically @i mean@ since the cornell realists erm i'm just trying to reformulate what's what's here in point one er since the re- the cornell realist does not operate with two distinct moral er er er two distinct ontological realms a moral realm and a natural realm since there is no such basic distinction in the in his on- ontology then er er then there's no problem with necessary connections between them that's just obvious okay a naturalist doesn't have problems with super- strong supervenience of this kind of and reduction er erm but i think that the one of the real problems with cornell realism is is another one namely whether the cornell realist can make good the claim that he makes that moral properties (prove) their own weight in the bex- best explanations of er of er experience i mean do we really need moral properties in order to explain what goes on in our experience and the point would be er er that er , whenever er well let's let's take an example i mean i can explain my belief i i mentioned some of this yesterday also in relation to er rights (wide) cosmological role er discussion er er i mean i can explain my belief that lying is wrong by referring to the fact that er lying is wrong okay but the point is that i can also explain my belief that lying is wrong in many other ways the way i've been brought up what what people i've talked to what i've yeah so as i i mean there are lots of other ways of of explaining why i have the beliefs that i have er and these other ways er these other natural erm natural facts would have a wider cosmological role i mean a wider causal efficacy , so it just seems er , what what do i mean by wider causal er causal efficacy for those of you who were not here yesterday i mean erm er a natu- an ethical fact can only explain facts about er people's propositional attitudes what's what er moral beliefs they have erm erm a moral fact in itself cannot explain other natural facts whereas a natural fact can typically explain other natural facts so i was saying that my belief well my belief er that there's a table in front of me can be explained by the fact er er that there's a table in front of me but the fact that there's a table in front of me can also explain why i experience pain if i bump into it er er why er i have no visual perception of what's behind the table and so on , okay so er er natural er erm natural facts typically have a a a wider cosmological role they can explain more things so it seems er and they can explain the same things as the moral facts can explain so why not just say that the moral facts have no er er er explanatory ce- efficacy itself themselves er what really has the explanatory ef- efficacy is the s- er supervening er the subvening natural facts whenever whenever there's a whenever there's a moral f- er property (instantiated) er there's always a natural property (instantiated) and why not say that it's the natural property that has the causal efficacy rather than er the moral property that has the causal efficacy </S2>
<S3> i i <S2> yeah </S2> i think it's just harder to talk that way er just <S2> yeah </S2> to use er like say H two O for water and and things like that </S3>
<S2> so but er that would only er yeah and the same with moral facts i mean the er we often just explain why why people did what they did by referring to a a a moral fact er why did he er flee the country it was an er because it was an <SIC> injust </SIC> the country was <SIC> injust </SIC> (or er) there it was a it was a morally wrong dictatorship something like <S3> yeah </S3> that er er so er but is that just a you might say that's just a matter of convenience , convenient <S3> yeah </S3> the explanation <S3> yeah </S3> is going er the the real explanation if we really were to to explain this c- carefully we would go to the the the the natural properties underlying [the moral properties] </S2>
<S3> [yeah yeah yeah] so er er with this case we could er take the <SIC> quantitive </SIC> side and the <SIC> qualitive </SIC> er or the qualitative side like erm it was er morally wrong to be a dictator but but if if you take er the quantitative side <S2> mhm-hm </S2> and er look at the <S2> the natural </S2> yeah yeah [so] </S3>
<S2> [well] it could be the f- the fact that er during this er when when you were living under this er dictat- dictator you you were starving all the time you were afraid of being er put in jail and so on <S3> yeah </S3> and and that that might be the explanation rather than <S3> yeah </S3> the moral and and that's very plausible so the whole this whole erm cornell realism idea is based on on on this the plausibility of there being er indispensable moral explanations of of things in our experience and and it doesn't seem plausible i would say so that's a separate er i- worry about cornell realism but then there's a third worry which relates directly to supervenience and that's one i will say a little more about namely erm remember that supervenience is i've argued several times or tried to convince you is a conceptual truth it's a truth about it's a truth that anyone has to accept insofar as this person is er er erm , competent with moral concepts you can object here maybe but er er given that this is the case er well anoth- we're saving this er this er this to say that er the principle is a priori and not merely a posteriori no no okay but er can can the cornell realist explain why moral natural supervenience is conceptual a priori truth rather than an a posteriori truth it seems that they cannot erm because there's nothing in his theory that might explain this erm all we have or that is the argument all we have are are are a posteriori metaphysical necessities and no a priori necessities , and so how can you explain that er that that er erm , that the , there's a conceptual truth here rather than just a an a posteriori truth erm . now i er yeah and here er again i refer to this article by james pryor 1992 which is the best discussion i i i guess of of the of the original blackburn argument er er here he er he here's a long quote from him here he tries to set things straight by showing that really there's no disanalogy between er water and and good in the way i just suggested suggested er and and i will read the quote er <READING ALOUD> here is what i think the non-reductive naturalists should say it is part of the meaning of the word good that it names a natural property just as it is part of the meaning of the word water that it names a physical kind anyone who thinks two things er er who thinks two things could be alike in their physical properties while differing in whether they are made of water reveals ignorance of the meaning of water that is that is a fact about our linguistic practices and anyone who thinks that two things could be alike in their natural properties while differing in their moral goodness reveals ignorance of the meaning of the word good that is a fact of our our linguistic practices but being made of water and being good are real properties nonetheless </READING ALOUD> , okay <P:07> yeah so so the question is whe- whether that er really answers the objection and erm , well this this is one argument (we come to) the weak and this is where where @i try to@ to make a contribution to this discussion really er what i what i would would try to say is that that the the water supervenience platitude i mean er er pryor's strategy was simply to say that well there's no disanalogy between words like water and words like good and moral good okay er and er what i want to say is that yes there are disanalogies because i think that the water supervenience platitude is not quite like the good supervenience platitude the water platitude properly properly entails that if there is a difference between X and Y with respect to whether they are made of water then there's a further physical difference between X or Y and i would say all water is a basic natural kind why do i say this well er surely er i mean in our ultimate theory of the of physical world that we would have to refer to certain kinds that are not constituted by certain ba- more basic kinds or we have an infinite regress okay so there must be some er maybe we cannot identify them or certainly we haven't identified them yet but there will be some basic er er er natural properties that are not reducible to other properties and not constituted by other properties , one further little down , okay so the point is that water could have been such as er basic natural property not constituted by other things and er an example here is the the er well tha- er thales the old greek philosopher one of the very first philosophers er and and er thought that or and many others in the in that period thought that water was a basic constitu- constituent of the world er i mean one of one of the four fire water , dearth- earth and and yeah so so on okay so er the point is that water could have been such a basic property with no underlying property and of course my my er er <P:09> yeah by contrast , er the property of being good yeah well no no no no the the other point here is that that that the fact that that water is not a basic property okay that that is an empirical discovery we make we discover that water is really constit- constituted by hydrogen and er and oxygen okay the so this is an empirical dis- discovery not a conceptual truth by contrast i think that the property of being good supervenes with conceptual necessity on na- er natural properties and there's no clause to the effect that this moral property could be a basic natural kind because moral properties could not be any basic natural kind it's always in virtue of something else something underlying that that something has a moral property so what i'm saying is that that there really is er because of this difference because of this difference in the clause that the presence or the non-presence of the clause about possibility of er of er the property being basic because of this difference there is a disanalogy between the two two cases and this can er er well this can answer pryor's er attempt to er er say that that water and and good can be treated in the same way , so i don't know if there's a good objection i mean i'd like to hear what you what your opinion is @@ if if if you have an objection erm but it's a suggestion anyway , there are other er distinct er disanalogies between water and good i mean er the property of being good is intrinsically action guiding i mean if you if you believe something is good then other things being equal you will try to er bring it about rather than not er that that that is a property that er water doesn't have another disanalogy is that disputes over goodness er moral goodness of things are seemingly impossible to resolve in many cases i mean moral disputes between somebody believes in in abortion and somebody who does not or the ontologists and er consequentialists sometimes they seem like s- so basic moral disagreements that they are completely intractable (they cannot be) resolved er whereas discussions about water doesn't have this er feature so there's several other features of er er er moral predicates that are not er er er , then are not the same as er for instance water predicates , yeah it's also related to what i said yesterday about the differences between discourses of course this relates to the er er the point i was the short point i made yesterday about cognitive command those who erm who remember this the idea that in some discourses there may be disagreements that are not down to cognitive shortcomings on either part part erm maybe in some what one realism relevant feature of discourses various discourses is whether there can be there seems to be such po- er er whether such er , disagreements are possible or not . okay erm i should open for discussion here as well if er again if er now i'll make the last point which is about antirealism , erm , so the question is erm does er an moral antirealist somebody who believes that there are in in some sense there are no real er or there are no perhaps robust moral properties out there in the world er erm as compared with with for instance the existence of na- er natural robust properties erm one version of this could be blackburn's quasi-realist which is an a non-cognitivist with er er but er but with a notion of truth a non-cognitivist who earns a notion of truth and er another er kind of moral antirealist could be wright's minimalist as i defined them yesterday somebody who believes that moral truth is super (xx) erm such that er the truth property in mo- er in in er in moral contexts are have no further realism-relevant properties okay erm now what can we say about er er . yeah i'm going to er skip a part here because time is running out so er i'll i'll go er directly to the problem the way i see it er well possible problem okay so the the the the the moral antirealist will have to accept if strong supervenience strong moral and natural supervenience is a a conceptual truth then you have to accept this so you you have strong er moral and natural supervenience but then as we saw there's a er the kim argument that once you have strong supervenience you have necessary coextension of moral properties with er disjunctive er natural properties but then er given that it's very difficult to have necessary coextension without identity if any of you you move to identity between moral properties and certain disjunctive er natural properties but then if you have the er er identity with natural properties then you have moral realism because we are presumably realists about natural properties , okay is this not a worry for the antirealist i'm asking er , well first of all we must distinguish between two kinds of moral antirealism and i here use erm the distinction i i think i use the terms of of er alex miller the book i referred to in the beginning erm so you have modest antirealism er which says there's no moral truth er therefore there are no moral moral properties and no moral beliefs we're uncompromisingly non-cognitivist about this issue erm <P:06> well it's not real but what we can do is we we can earn the right to speak as if there was truth as if there was moral er beliefs er as if there were moral properties er so it it's sort of er yeah it's an it's an as if version of er antirealism that defends notion of truth but but only in a kind of er er , almost fictitious way okay the other more ambitious form of antirealism which i would say is perhaps some interpretations of blackburn's causal realism because he is erm is not always saying the same thing about these things erm but erm well this more but also er question of wright's minimalism that i described yesterday the the more ambitious antirealist says that there is moral truth there are moral er properties and beliefs but it can somehow be constructed from a projectivist basis er , er and that's for instance the idea of super (xx) as truth that i discussed yesterday also i'm i'm i'm sorry i i refer back those of you who didn't hear me yesterday will perhaps not understand a lot of what i'm @saying here@ but erm it all hangs together so erm well the point will now be that the first version of antirealism has no problem with reduction and identity has no problem with this slippery slope that i just er showed you before because he he doesn't believe that there are any properties really there are no moral properties really so then of course there can be no identity with any other properties if they're not really there i think so so he er doesn't have a problem but what about the second kind of er more ambitious antirealism and of course er this is the more plausible kind of antirealism because it can explain why we actually practice in moral discourse as if there was moral truth it is erm it does have the same problems as the er modest antirealist er with explaining the seeming er er cognitivist surface of er propositional surface of moral discourse as blackburn would put it , well how can er this ambitious antirealist who believes that there's some so- sort of moral truth therefore also moral facts and moral properties how can he avoid the conclusion that moral properties are just natural properties now i'm going to suggest that the very final thing i'm going to do today is suggest two things er give two replies the first reply is that the natural property , that strong supervenience guarantees erm er , well well to focus on the point that that that the natural property that you have identity with er is a dist- er an infinitely disjunctive property but er er er then you point out that disjunctive properties well it's controversial in general metaphysics whether there are erm disjunctive properties but well should we accept conjunctive properties and the- there are two problems first of all er one of the things we like about er er properties is that that er all the things that instantiate the same property have a unity of resemblance between them they rep- they they they they seem like each other and they er when you er when you ascribe the same properties to things you you carve the world of in the same er . er you you you carve the world of at its joints as people say or carve the beast at its joints okay so we want properties of that kind and disjunctive properties do not carve the world er at its joints , also er er er causal efficacy i mean we want er properties to have causal efficacy this one this is one of the points that david er david armstrong often makes erm causal erm properties should have causal powers but the point would be that really what is having er the causal powers are the individual properties that form the conjunction not the the conjunctive property yeah and and of course you couldn't have a double er causality he- going on here or overkill you couldn't have both the er disjunctive property causing something and the individual disjuncts er instantiations of the individual dis- disjunctive properties er because you can't have er the same er , you can't have two causes for the same thing then you have er er er over-determination and and er well this is also a big discussion and er normally you use what's called causal exclusion argument to s- to say that you since you can't have two er , two things causing the same thing er one of one of them has to go and the obvious thing to to let go of here is the idea that disjunctive properties can be causal <P:06> erm , yeah , so @and and@ the quick answer is if this disjunctive property is not a nat- it's not a causal property then it's not a natural property , okay and therefore there's no identity with natural properties and then and the the antirealist is saved and more generally we we as i mean we could have er there's a this distinction i don't know if you're familiar with it in lewis between sparse and and er er more abundant notions of properties and most people would argue that real properties are sparse in the sense that you only accept properties that as i say carve er the beast at its joints and infinitely disjunctive properties do not carve the beast at at its joints the the disjuncts are very dissimilar (xx) there's no sort of er er primitive er similarity in in among the er what is instantiated by this disjunctive property er of what instantiates er this distinctive property , erm , so erm the distinctive properties simply cannot be real properties disjunctive properties simply cannot be real properties the second reply would be er that well infinitely disjunctive properties are not properties we can have concepts for because we are er finite human human beings are finite we cannot have infinite concepts er er we couldn't be able to understand er these concepts therefore moral concepts will be indispensable in practice we couldn't do away with them er so erm , so somehow i- if if we if we perf- if we got to realism in e- in ethics by this route er erm it's difficult to see that we gain what what most people want to gain when they want realism when they argue for realism namely things like sid- decidability er that we can er if there's if if there's moral reality then the idea is erm erm we can we can er solve the issues there are facts that we can go to and resolve the issues but given that we cannot get rid of our standard moral concepts on this notion of of realism then we have no gains of on that account er <P:05> we have no er er such gains er er if if realism is understood in this way therefore it's not really an interesting form of realism that you would get it's not really what we what is meant by what is aimed at by the people who want er er to defend realism in ethics , so is this really a naturalistic er realism in first in er in final analysis okay i'm sorry this has been a very long paper @@ and er i'm i'm i'm not sure that i er was able to er , make it very interesting but er are there any comments er towards the end of the , yeah </S2>
<S1> maybe i ask for one thing <S2> [yeah] </S2> [that i] have your ontology <S2> [mhm] </S2> [here] erm er when you talk about er (xx) basically er i think er maybe i ought to have asked this earlier erm but natural properties and and moral properties er what are the the carriers do you think of are they actions or classes of actions individuals <S2> yes </S2> what is the [authority] </S1>
<S2> [i think that] well it's not possible for me to say that it could be many different things it could be <S1> it is [(xx)] </S1> [yeah i actually er you can] you can say of a person that he's <S1> yeah </S1> a good moral person <S1> yeah </S1> yeah you can say er or that he's he has er let's say dispositions that are good for their virtue that sort of you can ascribe it to to dispositions you can describe it to a person as a whole you can describe it to as a erm as er an action typically er a lot of time i think we we focus on actions er <S1> or types or [types or tokens or] </S1> [er types] , certainly tokens er and there the question whether we can do it to types is a controversial because er particularists would say that we can't <S1> [mhm yeah] </S1> [say] that we can't er er make moral principles let's say actions of this natural type has this moral property <S1> mhm </S1> so i would i would say that that's okay i i could also i would agree that we can ascribe it to s- certain very highly specified types of of er actions so perhaps er er murder of innocents unprovoked murder of innocents , children er is other things being equal morally wrong that would be a a yeah er other thing that maybe maybe you can even er ascribe moral er properties to to to er situations or statements state of affairs in the world so that er a certain or distribution of goods in a in a country could be unfair that would be erm yeah yeah so i yeah is there a problem with the <S1> no </S1> spreading out @my@ my accomplishments </S2>
<S1> no i was just er in a way @@ making this clear to myself <S2> yeah </S2> what about you talked about er moral properties and moral moral facts er <S2> [yes i would say that] </S2> [(xx) facts] i mean or maybe an example [would help here] </S1>
<S2> [yeah yeah yeah] well i i i would say that moral properties are constituents of moral facts that moral property might be er er well [erm yeah] </S2>
<S1> [na- fact] is a really non-linguistic [non- (consequential) (xx)] </S1>
<S2> [yeah yeah non-realistic yeah] it's there yeah so and also a property is non-linguistic item <S1> mhm yeah </S1> so perhaps (xx) to a concept or predicate <S1> yeah </S1> yes okay so er i would say of a that for instance er er there's a concept of being morally wrong that's a moral or or the the property of being morally wrong that's a property <S1> mhm </S1> but erm er er , er it's a fact that peter peter's action against er paul yesterday was wrong that is a fact so erm er here the property of being wrong is erm part of it's a constituent in the fact that peter's action against paul yesterday was wrong , so so well yeah exactly when i'm i'm speaking about the facts and i'm speaking about the properties i'm speaking about the extra-linguistic correlates <S1> mhm-hm </S1> of our er moral talk and really i was just using them , erm yeah i was not making any er not taking care to use them any in any er vague er er you see er careful way i was just using one or the other <P:05> yeah other questions i mean i'm , i mean anything erm i'm very interested to hear also also people who are from people @@ who are really lost on the where just think that this is , doesn't make sense i mean er </S2>
<S1> i have <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [one one more] terminological thing you you used the concept of property here <S2> yeah </S2> talked about moral properties and moral erm and natural properties <S2> yeah </S2> so you included relations in you said <S2> oh </S2> something about when when @@ <S2> yeah </S2> <NAME S3> asked about the the table example and the <S2> yeah </S2> because er it was the erm well table is table is er table is good <S2> yeah </S2> it se- serves in the function <S2> yes </S2> that er that it <S2> [yes yeah yeah] </S2> [@@ supposed to have] in a way and then you referred to to relations natural relations there , so er do you er do you would you use the term the word property <S2> [yeah] </S2> [do you] mean to cover relations </S1>
<S2> yeah yes i would say i <S1> [(xx)] </S1> [(xx)] yes yeah okay yes exactly er that relations i mean i mean er er properties and relation are belonging to the same erm ontological general er area or cat- category of course because they can what is a feature of both relations and properties are that they can be instantiated in different things <S1> mhm </S1> er i mean the same property can be instantiated in different things that's a table and that's a table but the same relation can also be instantiated in different places in the world for instance being the father of can hold between different pairs of individuals so of course i mean properties er yeah yes okay erm when i talk about the supervenience basis and talk about the natural properties that should involve relations and that was why what was the example yeah the the the stuff about giants and er <S1> yeah </S1> er people of normal size okay er er er the fact the the the relational fact that er er one table is in a world with giants and other table is er in a world without giants er that is part that can be part of the natu- what i call the natural properties so you're right i include when i talk about natural properties also relations </S2>
<S1> so it's the (xx) <S2> yeah </S2> er it's erm if we describe the the object or the the table <S2> yes </S2> so it it the description in a way covers all those its relations to </S1>
<S2> yeah yeah in principle yes because those relations might be morally er and in in many cases i mean relations are morally relevant erm , well i i was going to say properties but they are morally relevant erm features of of reality yeah <P:05> i mean , of course er erm i in fact i'm i'm i'm er er i'm interested to hear if any of you have have have have have er thought about about the (dealt) question in metaethics it's whether you should be a realist or you should be an antirealist do you agree do you believe that there's truth in ethics or not and er er and truth and ethic are there moral facts or not and are they just natural facts or are they of a special kind i mean these these are the basic issues in metaethics and i have i've i've gained very little er er impression from you whether whether you tend towards being er realist or antirealist or naturalist or non-naturalist of of course maybe this is something that that er you you generally don't <S3> well </S3> discuss so much here @@ [(xx)] </S2>
<S3> [i'd like to be] a realist but i've had some trouble with this </S3>
<S2> okay and then what kind of realism i mean a naturalist realism or non-naturalist realism , @@ </S2>
<S3> naturalist </S3>
<S2> naturalist yeah i suppose that's yeah that's that may be one of the most popular views i i'm not sure that antirealism is the most popular view the the view i'm defending in this is probably quite controversial yes </S2>
<S6> i have one question about this <S2> yeah </S2> about how you dis- dist- distinction between these terms good and water <S2> mhm </S2> this and have you made it this i get the idea that your point is that somehow good the word the term <S2> [yeah] </S2> [good] cannot function as some kind of basic or fundament er exponent <S2> yeah </S2> for their view at all <S2> [no] </S2> [it it] needs something more like erm maybe some other natural properties <S2> [yeah underlying properties virtue of which it has a property] </S2> [or something like that so so] is this (xx) talking about this realism antirealism terms now <S2> [yeah yeah yeah] </S2> [i can say that] er you agree that okay you go you go find like like say in in in the area of physics you can be a realist in that sense you think okay you say that you can (xx) find some kind of er agreement about what is the fundamental level <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [(xx)] in that sense but you can never do that in in er area of <S2> oh </S2> ethics or that kind of (judgmentary) area <S2> oh </S2> or </S6>
<S2> i think there are two sep- separate points here but my point was that could we imagined that there were , moral properties that things could just have moral properties without having any other properties i mean that that's very basic point without having any other natural properties that constitute could could an action be wrong could an action be wrong erm without it being wrong due to its being a murder of an innocent or due to its being a lie er something like that er er i mean c- could could could could er it it seems to be unintelligible that something just is just is just morally right i've no reason i can give no argument er and it's just morally right whereas you can say of something in in er er er well i imagine this and you can say of some basic physical property of a thing maybe the basic properties of the emen- elementary particles that this has no further deeper explanation i i mean er that's always any theory we advance would end up with er er with having er a basic level and er (i pursue) also the the ideal theory we we perhaps never will get that there will be a basic level er so we can have basic levels when when we're talking about er er physical con- erm properties that can be a basic level but it doesn't make sense it seems to me in in the in the moral case </S2>
<S6> is it this this not a fundamental difference </S6>
<S2> yeah yeah and and and and er and er that's what what i needed er whereas pryor was trying to say that really , good functions in exactly the same way as as er water so we can just make an analogy it's just part of it's just er another part of nature okay i think that there's a difference here also a a difference that makes a difference in in er in the debate over realism and antirealism and and that's of course the ultimate point of this and also i mean this always relates to some sort of wittgensteinian idea that i mean different areas of discourse should not give the same treatment you should you should you should worry about different erm you should look at the different discourses and see what their specific point is rather than trying to subsume them all under one particular er point of view okay so everything becomes na- natural my point everything everything subsumed to the natural way of looking at things rather i would say that no we have different discourses er and and they have different features and perhaps features we could explore using this er wright framework that i ga- yesterday i gave but but er we shouldn't lose this lose sight of the difference whereas these naturalists say that yeah well it's all the same @@ that's a very primitive way of of of putting my (word) er very general way of putting yeah </S2>
<S5> if we still have time </S5>
<S2> well we don't have but er [but i i for me we can certainly yeah yeah] </S2>
<S1> [we can we can take a question yeah @@] </S1>
<SS> [@@] </SS>
<S5> oh okay so i erm my question concerns your erm discussion of non-reductive naturalism and er there er you drew an an- an analogy with erm reducing er higher-level so-called higher-level theories <S2> [yeah] </S2> [for example] biology to lower-level ones <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [for example] physics and erm do you see that there are only two possibilities of such non-reductive naturalism , first possibility reducing reducing in a strong sense of reduction the higher-level theories to the lower-level ones reduction perhaps in the sense that er reductive verificationists reduce er sentences to some er some theoretical <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [sentences to] sentences about sense data <S2> yeah [yeah] </S2> [or something] and the second one grant a fully independent or you use the word indispensable role to the <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [different] level theories because i would say that i know at least one philosopher <S2> uh-huh </S2> who is erm er not as regards morals but erm , but other- otherwise who is a non-reductive naturalist but does not erm but is not in favour of neither of these <S2> who is he </S2> quine <S2> yeah okay [well] </S2> [because] erm quine quine's whole philosophy of language and epistemology erm is based on erm it has basic assumptions that erm deny this erm first option the strict reduction of the higher-level theories to the lower-level ones but on the other hand he does not either grant a fully independent or indispensable role to the different levels of theorising <S2> but </S2> so do you see there are only [these two possibilities] </S5>
<S2> [uh-huh , but er what] is what is quine actually is he is he not (an eliminativist) about the higher-level properties is he not saying that there are no real moral properties no real semantic properties that <S5> [well] </S5> [they're not] they're not real <S5> [what is] </S5> [really] what what we have is is erm nature of what what we can er get at with our senses and then we have these other ways of talking that we shouldn't really take seriously and that's so that's not er </S2>
<S5> but he is he does not say that <S2> yeah </S2> that that that that kind of talk can be reduced to the [lower levels] </S5>
<S2> [no no] no in in fact what he's saying is that since they cannot be reduced then they're not worth anything he's assuming that the only er the only type of propert- the only type of er talk that makes sense is talk about erm sense data ultimately or could be reduced to talk about sense data and since all these er normative concepts we have or moral concepts normative concepts er like er er meaning about meaning about necessity and so on these types of concepts cannot be reduced to talk about the er er sense data then they don't make sense at all <S5> [yes] </S5> [that] that that that's how i understand the argument from (tudor) and all this </S2>
<S5> okay well erm my purpose was not not er to bring discussion of <S2> [no no sorry what was it] </S2> [quine in the picture here] so so my my question was was ju- was only that er do you see that there are only these two possibilities reduce the higher-level theories to the lower-level ones by some strict a priori <S2> [yeah that's right yeah] </S2> [conceptual relations] or grant a fully independent or indispens- indispensable position to the erm different level theories because the one erm actually the first option erm presupposes a very strong view of linguistic meaning and the second one well i'm not sure what i should make of it but <S2> the cornell realists </S2> yeah that erm there is that the different levels of description are somehow independent that they are not reducible but they are <S2> yeah </S2> but then they have then they have like a fully independent [status so] <S2> [yeah yeah] yeah </S2> do you do you think that there are only these two possibilities </S5>
<S2> well erm i was thinking of er well maybe i could erm avail myself of the er try to erm give an overview of the whole er possibili- set of possibilities here and i think well you're saying one possibility is definitely cornell realism another possibility is erm er , <S3 EXITS> well the analytical kind where where it's a priori that's what i've i've er simplified by (for example) here well i say that there's also another kind here well then one answer to your question is that there's a third way here although i find it very un- un- un- implausible <S5> yes </S5> but erm but erm of course once well well then there are no further ones well erm there's <SIC> illuminisist </SIC> -nist view which i think is quine's view there's that the the the the the upper properties the higher-level properties are just not really there </S2>
<S5> no quine is not an an <S2> [okay okay] </S2> [eliminativist] in no i i i must disagree <S2> [okay okay] </S2> [with you but but] i don't want to bring this into our discussion [of (xx)] </S5>
<S2> [no well] we have all next week to to finish [this discussion] </S2>
<S5> [yes of course] yeah but er but erm you answered my question <S2> yeah </S2> here <S2> yeah </S2> because i just kind of like overlooked the er <S2> yeah </S2> synthetic <S2> yeah yeah the (possibility there) </S2> synthetic part there er i'm sorry it was my bad @@ </S5>
<S2> well time has passed <S1> mhm okay </S1> yeah </S2>
<S1> well thank you </S1>
<APPLAUSE>
<S2> i hope you , you gained something from it </S2>
