1、Morality without Foundations A Defense of Ethical Contextualism Mark Timmons New York Oxford Oxford University Press 1999 -iii- Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala
2、 Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris So Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright 1999 by Mark Timmons Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark o
3、f Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of
4、Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Timmons, Mark, 1951Morality without foundations: a defense of ethical contextualism /Mark Timmons. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511731-X (cloth) 1. Ethics. 2. Naturalism. 1. Title. BJ37.T55 1998 17042- dc21 97-26312 1 3 5 7 9
5、 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper -iv- Preface My main purpose in writing this book was to gain a better understanding of philosophical issues and questions about the status of morality. I am as much interested in questions of philosophical methodology as I am in th
6、e substantive philosophical positions that philosophers articulate and defend. I have thus tried to produce a book that is clearly written and methodologically self-conscious. I have also tried to stake out a metaethical position that is not obviously on the menu of standard metaethical options (tho
7、ugh its similarity in many respects to the views of certain other metaethical irrealists will be apparent). Since I wanted the book to be relatively short, I have zeroed in on opposing views and arguments that strike me as providing the clearest and stiffest challenges to the sort of irrealist metae
8、thical view I defend in the pages to follow. My hope is that I have managed to get to the heart of things in making a case for the sort of metaethical view that I favor. I will let the reader judge whether and to what extent I have succeeded in doing these things. In the recent years that I have bee
9、n working out the ideas contained in this book, I have benefited from comments and criticisms on part or all of this book from Robert Audi, John Bickle, William Frankena, Michael Gorr, Mitchell Haney, R. M. Hare, William Connolly, Stephan Sencerz, William Throop, and William Tolhurst. I have also be
10、nefited greatly from discussions with and written comments from my colleagues David Henderson and John Tienson. The written comments I received from Michael DePaul and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong were very useful in helping me to improve the clarity and content of this work. I owe my greatest debt to f
11、riend and colleague Terry Horgan, who not only coauthored with me a number of articles whose contents have found their way into this book but with whom I have had many useful and illuminating philosophical discussions about ideas, themes, and arguments contained in the chapters to follow. In particu
12、lar, much of chapter 4, in which I set out an irrealist moral semantics, derives from a paper, “Taking a Moral Stance“, that I coauthored with Terry and which we presented at a conference in honor of the retirement of -vii- R. M. Hare from the University of Florida ( “Hares Heritage: The Impact of R
13、. M. Hare on Contemporary Philosophy“, March 1994). I mentioned that my metaethical position bears some resemblance to the views of other irrealists. The view about moral semantics that I defend is quite similar in some respects to the views of R. M. Hare and Simon Blackburn. Terry and I worked out
14、various details of the semantic view with an eye on Hares work, particularly his 1952 book The Language of Morals. I later discovered just how similar some aspects of the view are to some of the details of Blackburns so-called quasi-realist treatment of moral discourse (which is particularly evident
15、 in his 1996 work “Securing the Nots: Moral Epistemology for the Quasi-Realist“). However, there are some important differences between the Horgan and Timmons semantic view and the views of Hare and Blackburn, some of them indicated in the text. Some of the material in various chapters is taken from
16、 the following articles: “Troubles on Moral Twin Earth: Moral Queerness Revived“ (with Terry Horgan), Synthese 92 ( 1992), pp. 221-60; “New Wave Moral Realism Meets Moral Twin Earth“ (with Terry Horgan), Journal of Philosophical Research 16 ( 1991), pp. 44765, reprinted in Rationality, Morality, and
17、 Self-Interest, J. Heil (ed.), Rowman “Troubles for New Wave Moral Semantics: The Open Question Argument Revived“ (with Terry Horgan), Philosophical Papers 21 ( 1993), pp. 15375; “Irrealism and Error in Ethics“, Philosophia 22 ( 1992), pp. 373-406; “Outline of a Contextualist Moral Epistemology“, in
18、 W. Sinnott-Armstrong and M. Timmons (eds.), Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; “Moral Justification in Context“, The Monist 76 ( 1993), pp. 360-78. I wish to thank the various editors for permission to use material from these publications. Fi
19、nally, I wish to thank Robert Milks, production editor at Oxford University Press, for his help in guiding this book to press. And I wish to thank Linda Sadler, production editor for the Southern Journal of Philosophy, for her generous help in preparing the manuscript for publication. -viii- Content
20、s Introduction 3 ONE Metaethics and Methodology 9 TWO New Wave Moral Realism 32 THREE The Argument from Moral Error 71 FOUR Contextual Moral Semantics 107 FIVE Moral Justification in Context 178 Appendix: Some Remarks on Metaethical Rationalism 247 References 253 Index 263 Introduction This book add
21、resses fundamental metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological questions about moral discourse and practice- so-called metaethical questions. In recent years, there has been a rebirth of interest in metaethical issues after a couple of decades of relative inactivity, and metaethical inquiry is again
22、 in full swing. If we compare recent metaethical inquiry with metaethical inquiry as it was practiced during the bygone era of analytic philosophy, we notice a change in how metaethics is conceived and practiced. From around the turn of this century, beginning with the work of G. E. Moore and into t
23、he 1950s, metaethics was primarily focused on the analysis of moral language. Metaethical inquiry during this period was preoccupied with questions about whether or not moral terms, and sentences containing such terms, could be reductively analyzed into terms and sentences of some other sort and, if
24、 so, what sort. Philosophers divided on these questions, some arguing that moral terms and sentences could not be reductively analyzed, others arguing that they could. The predictable result was an outpouring of competing metaethical views ranging from the non-naturalism of Moore, W. D. Ross, and A.
25、 C. Ewing, to the brands of non-descriptivism defended by A. J. Ayer, C. L. Stevenson, and R. M. Hare. However, despite these metaethical disagreements, the work of philosophers at this time was guided by general views about semantic analysis and about proper philosophical methodology. In short, sem
26、antic analysis was understood to involve investigation into analytic meaning connections- an investigation that was supposed to yield necessary truths about what our terms mean. Consequently, proper philosophical methodology was thought to differ markedly from the empirical methods of the sciences;
27、philosophical investigation was essentially a priori. These guiding philosophical assumptions about the proper content and methodology of philosophy put severe limits on all philosophical inquiry, including, of course, metaethical inquiry. But times have changed. By around the mid- 1950s, the variou
28、s recognized metaethical options had been more or less played out, and increasingly, philosophers began to see metaethics as -3- a rather dull and sterile exercise having little bearing on more substantive moral issues. Moreover, at the same time, philosophers were beginning to question some of the
29、deeply embedded assumptions of analytic philosophy, assumptions about semantic analysis and about proper philosophical methodology. To question the tenability of the guiding assumptions of analytic philosophy was, of course, to question the tenability of those metaethical theories resting on those a
30、ssumptions. The metaethical theories from the analytic period seemed to rest on shaky ground. Nevertheless, during this same time of philosophical uncertainty and changing climate, developments in such areas of philosophy as metaphysics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and episte
31、mology emerged. These developments helped create a new philosophical climate that allowed metaethical questions to be reexamined in a new philosophical light. Of particular importance here is the fact that constraints on proper philosophical methodology were considerably loosened, philosophical inqu
32、iry was coming to be viewed as continuous with scientific investigation, and thus projects in metaphysics, semantics, and epistemology were no longer viewed in quite so narrow a manner as was characteristic of analytic philosophy. The effects of these changes in philosophical climate are particularl
33、y evident in connection with a philosophical program associated with philosophical naturalism. To put it roughly, philosophical naturalism is the view that all that exists-including any particulars, events, facts, properties, and so on- is part of the natural, material world that science investigate
34、s. This general philosophical outlook generates a philosophical program, namely, the program of accommodating all sorts of phenomena- for example, mental phenomena, moral phenomena, aesthetic phenomena- in terms of this metaphysical stance. In the former days of analytic philosophy, this project of
35、naturalistic accommodation was severely constrained by the generally accepted views about proper content and methodology of philosophy. So, for instance, in order to naturalistically accommodate moral properties and facts, it was believed that one must be able to provide analytic definitions of key
36、moral terms and expressions- a project that seemed to most philosophers quite implausible. We now find ourselves in what may fairly be called a post-analytic era in which, as I have said, constraints on proper content and methodology have been considerably loosened. Narrowly conceived reductive prog
37、rams have given way to programs with relaxed, more reasonable standards of naturalistic accommodation. So, for example, it is no longer believed that naturalistic accommodation of moral phenomena requires reductive analytic definitions of moral terms and expressions; the road to naturalistic accommo
38、dation is not so hard. In these kinder, gentler philosophical times, we find the emergence of new metaethical theories and, in particular, metaethical theories that tackle the project of naturalistically accommodating moral phenomena freed from older, implausibly narrow constraints on carrying out t
39、his project. This book, which takes seriously the project of naturalistically accommodating moral discourse and practice, is meant to contribute usefully to the current philosophical dialogue over the nature and status of morality in these post-analytic times. In Morality without Foundations, my cen
40、tral aim is to articulate and defend a metaethical theory that I will call ethical contextualism. My work engages the -4- recent metaethical debate between moral realists on the one hand, who defend the idea that morality is objective (in a fairly strong sense of that term), and moral irrealists on
41、the other who argue that morality is not objective, at least not in the way the realist thinks. I side with the irrealists. To give the reader an idea of what is contained in the chapters to follow, here is a brief overview, chapter by chapter. First, in chapter 1, I explain the methodological assum
42、ptions that constrain metaethical theorizing. Put most generally, metaethical inquiry is engaged in the dual project of accommodating both the deeply embedded commonsense presumptions of moral discourse and practice, as well as any well-supported general assumptions, theories, and views from other a
43、reas of inquiry. Given the plausibility of a naturalistic worldview, I construe the project of accommodation as being constrained by the general metaphysical and epistemological commitments of naturalism. So my investigation of metaethical questions is guided by the project of naturalistically accom
44、modating moral discourse and practice. Second, having placed my methodological cards on the table, I focus on a recent version of moral realism engaged in the project of naturalistic accommodation, namely, the version defended by, for example, David Brink, Richard Boyd, and Nicholas Sturgeon. These
45、philosophers have ably marshaled various resources mined from recent work in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, in the articulation and defense of a new strain of moral realism that is apparently immune from problems besetting older, more traditional versions
46、of this view. This “new wave“ version of moral realism is arguably the most plausible current version of moral realism. However, despite the ingenuity of its advocates in defending this view, new wave moral realism has an Achilles heel. I argue that (1) in order to fully discharge its accommodation
47、obligations, and thus avoid J. L. Mackie-style queerness objections, these realists seemingly must rely on the sort of causal moral semantics that we find in Boyd, but that (2) causal moral semantics is implausible. Finally, if moral realism is rejected, what are the prospects for defending a plausi
48、ble version of moral irrealism? Realists have convincingly argued that standard versions of moral irrealism that would attempt to reduce moral and evaluative notions to non-moral and non-evaluative notions cannot accommodate some of the most deeply embedded commonsense presumptions of moral discours
49、e and practice. The most powerful such criticism (I contend) is the argument from moral error, according to which irrealism is not able to accommodate the presumption that error in moral judgment is always, in principle, possible. In chapter 3, I argue that standard, reductive versions of moral irrealism cannot fully answer this objection, and so the irrealist should explore the possibility of developing a non-reductive version of her view. The rest of the book is an elaboration and defense of irrealism that avoids the reductive pretensions of more traditional irrealist vie
