Revisionary dispositionalism and practical reason

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 4, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 173-190

  Lillehammer, H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Dispositionalism; Metaphysical revision; Normative realism; Normative reasons; Practical reason; Response dependence

Indexed keywords

EID: 0142050770     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009822006329     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. See e.g. Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1994), Chapter 5.
2. For the notion of response dependence, see e.g. Mark Johnston, "Objectivity Refigured," in John Haldane and Crispin Wright (eds.) Reality, Representation and Projection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 85-130.
3. For one discussion alert to this distinction, see Bruce W. Brower, "Dispositionalist Ethical Realism," Ethics 103 (1993), pp. 221-249.
4. Brower thinks common sense is either silent or undecided on the issue of response dependence. His dispositionalist account of ethical properties is therefore consistent with, although it does not entail, revisionary dispositionalism. Brower does not address the question to which the present paper is addressed, namely what explains the normative privilege of the dispositionalist's favourable circumstances. See also H. Lillehammer, "Analytical Dispositionalism and Practical Reason," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (1999), pp. 117-133.
5. See e.g. Gilbert Harman, "Moral Relativism Defended," Philosophical Review 85 (1975), pp. 3-22
6. Smith, Chapter 5, and Frank Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Chapters 5-6. Harman claims these are 'sober' logical truths. Smith and Jackson claim they are apriorianalytic truths which can be read off from the platitudes which define moral discourse.
7. See J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin, 1977), pp. 1-49. As I read Mackie, objective prescriptivity amounts to the existence of normative reasons which obtain unconditionally on the presupposition ofany substantial end (desired or not) which is to be promoted. The correctness of this reading of Mackie does not matter here.
8. This claim should not be confused with Peter Vallentyne's view in "Response- Dependence, Rigidification, and Objectivity," Erkenntnis 44 (1996), pp. 101-112, that response dependent accounts which rigidify ideal responses across agents, times and possible worlds will dispositionally pick out The sort of objective moral attribute the realist believes in", thereby failing to yield "ontological response dependence" (p. 109). On the view defended here, an account will fail to yield response dependence only if there is no non-trivial account of how responses determine the attribute in question, i.e. no account which does not presuppose the attribute in order to fix the appropriate response. On this definition, rigid response dependent accounts do not automatically qualify for realism, since rigidifying the determination relation does not automatically make that relation trivial in the required sense.
9. For a qualified defence of the evidential role of intuitions in ethics, see James Griffin, Value Judgement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), Chapter 1.
10. For a discussion of the relation between epistemic justification and reliable methods of inquiry, see Alvin Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
11. For an application of epistemological constraints to ethics, see Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
12. For a critical discussion of dispositionalism about colour, see Paul A. Boghossian and David J. Velleman, "Colour as a Secondary Quality," Mind 98 (1989), pp. 81-103
13. and Frank Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Chapter 4. Jackson goes on to offer a dispositionalist account ofethical claims in Chapters 5-6.
14. For a discussion of the relation between secondary qualities and ethical properties, see John McDowell, "Values and Secondary Qualities," in Ted Honderich (ed.), Morality and Objectivity (London: Routledge, 1985), pp. 110-129.
15. For the former, see e.g., Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101-113. For a combination of the former and the latter, see Smith, Chapter 5.
16. For the former view, see John McDowell, "Virtue and Reason," The Monist 62 (1979), pp. 331-350. For the latter view, see Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity.
17. For this claim, see Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity.
18. For a discussion of reason conferring features, see Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics (Oxford: Westview Press, 1998), pp. 17-22. Kagan calls these features normative factors.
19. I first heard this objection made by Jonathan Dancy.
20. See e.g. Smith, Chapter 5.
21. The currently best developed attempt at such vindication is the coherentist strategy of embedding beliefs in the existence of a response independent normative reality within a comprehensive coherentist epistemology. For its clearest recent formulation, see David O. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
22. See Brower, Dispositionalist Ethical Realism; John McDowell, "Virtue and Reason," The Monist 62 (1979), pp. 331-350
23. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, and Mark Johnston, "Dispositionalist Theories of Value," Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 63 (1989), pp. 139-174.
24. See e.g., McDowell, "Virtue and Reason," Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity; and Johnston, "Dispositionalist Theories of Value." See also David Wiggins, Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984);
25. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985)
26. Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Smith, The Moral Problem.
27. For someone attracted to this strategy, see David J. Velleman, Practical Reflection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
28. For this strategy, see Brink.
29. Ethical non-cognitivism might be construed as a version of this strategy. The standard non-cognitivist circumvents the problem of vindicating the metaphysical commitments of ethical discourse by denying that these commitments exist. For this view, see e.g., Simon Blackburn, Essays in Quasi-Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
30. Work for this paper has been supported by a University of London Jacobsen Research Fellowship. I am grateful to audiences at Cambridge, Edinburgh and Nottingham, and to three anonymous referees.