Contemporary philosophy sometimes looks comfortable and somehow all encompassing.  Or so at least some of its adherents would like us to believe. According to this view, all truths are based on or are reducible in some ways to fundamental truths about the natural world of physical objects, causes and effects. At least we understand for better or for worse how such propositions can have their truth values, how relations can be causal and how objects might bring about their effects. So the hard part in philosophy is to show just how other problematic propositions might be somehow dependent on these more basic propositions and how we might begin to link them up in a framework of some form of a materialistic or naturalistic worldview. That is the comfortable worldview, anyhow.

But all is not too well in paradise. Some critics of a naturalistic worldview are pounding the walls of received philosophical mainstream and first cracks are beginning to show. Maybe some experiences cannot be that easily accommodated to such naturalistic worldviews. At least that is the opinion of such renowned philosophers as Thomas Nagel in his recent book Mind & Cosmos. Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false (2012). And just look at how his book has been received by some adherents of materialistic philosophy. Not too favorable, to say the least!

T.M. Scanlon in his actual book Being Realistic about Reasons (2014) is just another such non-conformist. He squarely maintains “that truths about reasons are fundamental in the sense that truths about reasons are not reducible to or identifiable with non-normative truths, such as truths about the natural world of physical objects, causes and effects, …” (p. 2). That makes him a self-avowed reason fundamentalist. There are plain everyday experiences, namely that some considerations for action or other mental states act as reasons for doing these things, which seem at face value to be fundamentally normative claims which are either true or false, and which do not seem to be reducible to any non-normative truths whatsoever. For Scanlon there are thus irreducibly normative truths about reasons, and the essential element in such truths is a relation R(p, x, c, a) that holds between a fact (=p), an agent (=x) in certain circumstances (=c), and an action or attitude (=a). These views seem to be strongly supported by common sense.

His small book Being Realistic About Reasons (2014) is a qualified defense of normative cognitivism – the view that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action that can be true or false independently of persons. The book is a revised version of the John Locke lectures that he presented in Oxford in the spring of 2009. Scanlon’s views on normative claims are engaging and show signs of a truly independent thinker. He tries to carve out a theory of normative claims in the face of stiff opposition to realistic interpretations of objective norms. And in so doing he tries to marshal arguments in support of his views from whatever source he finds useful.

A caveat at this stage is in order: Nowhere in his small book does Scanlon deliver conclusive refutations of his critics’ objections. Nor should he be understood as so doing. His aim in these lectures is better described as carving out a philosophical theory of normative claims of reason which on the one hand takes seriously the objections, but which on the other hand does try to develop an unconventional account of normative claims nonetheless. That is where Scanlon’s theory becomes engaging and imaginative. His book is full of insights, of perspectives worth pursuing and engaging discussions of opposing accounts. He brilliantly adopts argumentative figures out of the philosophical toolbox (e.g. Quine’s approach on the ontological claims of statements, the method of reflective equilibrium, etc.) to buttress his views. But these do not add up to bulletproof arguments of his conclusions. But they carry far and on their way raise interesting questions and open up fresh ways of looking at challenges in normative and moral theory.   

 Being the eminent moral philosopher that he is, Scanlon knows his critics well. Besides being a reason fundamentalist in believing that normative claims are irreducible to non-normative claims, he is also a realistic cognitivist about reasons. Meaning that he holds a view “that claims about reasons for action can be correct or incorrect, but realistic also in recognizing that there may be limits to the range of cases in which such claims have determinate truth values.” (p. 2). So claims about reasons of action are either true or false, independently of our views and one can find out the truth values of such claims by adducing arguments and pursuing the paths of clear thinking – at least within some limits.

Critics of positions such as Scanlon’s in moral philosophy will almost certainly raise three familiar objections: that such normative truths would have troubling metaphysical implications in positing unfathomable objects in addition to the well understood realm of physical objects (the ontological objection), that we would have no way of knowing what they are (the epistemological objection), and that the role of reasons in motivating and explaining action could not be explained if accepting a conclusion about reasons for action were a kind of belief (the practical objection). Let us look what he has to say on these three accounts.

The ontological objection:

The ontological objections claim that a belief in irreducibly normative truths would commit us to facts or entities such as objective values and normative relations that would be metaphysically incompatible with a scientific view of the world. Marshalling Quine’s thesis that our “ontological commitments” are determined by what existential claims follow from a set of statements, Scanlon points to the fact that this way of determining the basic ontological set-up does not prejudge by itself what the “correct” ontology is. Precluding normative truths from one’s ontological set-up depends on some restrictive view that brings external considerations into play – such as that the “correct” ontology only needs to make reference to physical objects, entities and relations in space and time or that ontologies need to be as limited as possible in their ways of choosing the most basic entities.  

For Scanlon, such ideas need not be accepted. He believes “that the way of thinking about these matters that makes most sense is a view that does not privilege science but takes as basic a range of domains, including mathematics, science, and moral and practical reasoning” (p. 19). That view holds that statements within one domain are capable of being true or false, and that the truth-values of statements about one domain are properly settled by the standards of the domain that they are about. Normative reasoning and normative standards alone, therefore, settle normative claims, including questions about the implied ontology of normative claims. There are no troubling metaphysical implications.

Are there any deeper arguments for his views? “This is a common sense idea. Even the idea that questions about a given domain should be settled by the best ways of thinking about that subject is a piece of common sense, even a triviality” (p. 23). Look no further! Obviously Scanlon’s view is more complex than that, but not much! Scanlon draws attention to the fact that some statements in one domain might conflict with statements of some other domains and that a conflict resolution strategy might lead to disregarding a domain. Take the case of a “theory” of witches and demons implying that specific incantations might “cause” better harvests, thereby getting into conflict with causal explanations of the same facts. In such cases the better-supported domain of physical objects and entities trumps witches and demons. Scanlon thereby tries to isolate the domain of the normative from objections by adherents of an ontological world-view, which only allow physical objects and facts in space and time.

But what about the idea of a theory of a domain concerned with the general idea of existence that applies to everything we are committed to quantifying over in a range of particular domains? A fully worked out theory of existence might still, at least in theory, try to build some arguments ruling out objective normative values or relations as illegitimate. Scanlon has not ruled out such possibilities, nor does he think he needs to. While not denying that we can form a coherent idea of such a super-domain, he thinks, “this perfectly general idea of existence seems empty, in contrast to the significance, and “thickness”, that ideas of existence within the particular domains I have mentioned can have” (p. 23). By a brush of a pen, whole traditions in philosophy going back at least to Aristotle trying to grapple with the meaning of “being” or “existence” and a better understanding of basic ontological structures involved in a general idea of existence are declared as empty, void and too “thin”.

Not the most convincing arguments to refute other approaches and to support one’s own position! But let me remind you of my caveat above: Scanlon does not pretend to deliver conclusive refutations in his book. He wants to develop his own position on normative truths by taking seriously objections, but formulating alternative accounts. And in that he is succeeding: his arguments and views are engaging.

The epistemological objection

If truths about reasons represent a sui generis class of facts (about when R(p, x, c, a) holds), distinct from natural facts (about physical objects, causes and effects), as his reason fundamentalist position seems to claim, it might seem puzzling how we could come to know these facts. There seems to be an epistemological objection lurking in the background.

For Scanlon, these objections are misplaced because they proceed from an erroneous assumption that all our epistemological claims require a causal connection between an epistemic subject and entities outside of us in space and time, with which we can get into contact. And not being able to connect causally to normative entities in space and time might seem to throw them in disrepute, because we cannot fathom how to get “in touch” with them in order to verify whether our claims are true or false. But as Scanlon claims, this causal theory of knowledge breaks down as soon as we want to make sense of mathematical claims, which make assumptions about numbers “outside” of space and time, supposedly. A different epistemological theory is needed even to make sense of such claims. So Scanlon sets out to find a different epistemological theory to make sense of his normative claims and finds it in the method of “reflective equilibrium” as it was originally developed by Nelson Goodman and put to work in ethics by John Rawls (in lecture 4).

In the method of reflective equilibrium one begins first by identifying a set of well-considered judgments about a subject. These are judgments that seem clearly to be correct at face value. The next step is to formulate general principles that would account for these judgments. If the attempt to come up with such general principles is not successful, which will be likely, one must decide how to respond to the divergence between these principles and the judgments – whether to give up the judgments, to modify the principles to arrive at a better fit between the principles and the judgments or to do some combinations of these. One continues in this way, working back and forth between principles and judgments, until one finds a best fit between them that accounts for the judgments about a subject. The same goes on for Scanlon in the normative domain. One starts out with prima facie correct judgments about reasons to act, tries to formulate general normative principles to account for the judgments and after a lot of clear thinking ends up with a normative theory making sense of normative claims and accounting for which normative claims are correct.

But his proposed solution does not come cheap, and people have rightly objected to the theory of reflective equilibrium when it is understood as a form of epistemic coherence theory. A coherent system of beliefs does not by itself guarantee truth. Some coherent theory of witches and demons might be drawn up, which still turns out to be false nonetheless. So some form of justification for some beliefs apart from just pointing to the fact of coherence with other beliefs seems to be needed. But what kind of justifications does seem to do the job? Scanlon seems to be going for some kind of intuitive or a priori justification when he points out that “it seems that we can discover normative truths and mathematical truths simply by thinking about these subjects in the right way” (p. 70) or that a person might get at these truths if he is „in the right conditions” (p. 82-83, 85). So everything comes down to these kinds of direct or intuitive access to normative truths not covered alone by a reflective equilibrium theory. And that exposes an argumentative gap in Scanlon’s position, leaving him with unfinished business. How are normative claims justified apart from being part of a coherent web of beliefs? There seems to be a direct intuition for Scanlon, but he does not spell it out theoretically. 

The practical objection

Critics of normative realists often claim that the mere fact that some normative claim about reasons is true cannot explain how such reasons can motivate. The mere belief that some normative claim is true such as the fact that my house is on fire cannot motivate me to take precautions if I am not aware of that fact or even if I am aware of it, I have to want to go on living, for my belief that my house is on fire to move me to act. There might be other circumstances, for instance a persistent death wish, which would make me quite welcoming the fact of the fire. The upshot seems to be that motivation is a function of both my beliefs and desires and not of my beliefs alone. Apart from the cognitive states such as beliefs, there need to be motivational states such as desires to help to motivate people to rationally act on their reasons.

So how does Scanlon solve this objection of motivation? It is here, where Scanlon does make his most daring move. Scanlon dispenses with the motivational function of desires altogether. It is the cognitive states of beliefs about reasons alone that can motivate people. In fact he even says that desires on their own cannot motivate people, on the contrary they need beliefs to do so. How does Scanlon do so? By pointing to the nature of a rational person. In Scanlon’s view, a rational person is generally moved by what she takes to be sufficient or conclusive reasons for action. Even his critics would agree to that much, but they point towards non-cognitive or expressivist states such as accepting some (action-) plan about what to do and when (Allan Gibbard) or accepting a normative imperative. Barring any weakness of the will, any rational person would act accordingly on his non-cognitivist states. Scanlon on the other hand treats some consideration to act as believing that some relevant normative proposition is true. Any rational person who holds such a true belief will be disposed to act accordingly or else be regarded as irrational. That is what it is to be a rational creature!

Scanlon moreover thinks that the normative realist is in a better position to explain the authority of practical reasons. His expressivist critics seem to have trouble explaining how a person could give practical advice or justify her views to another fellow person, if his (normative) claims came down to expressing an adherence to a plan or expressing acceptance of a normative imperative. How should knowing which normative imperative I accept move someone to take my advice on board? That would be like commanding him to obey my imperatives, and the other person might be forgiven to ask: “So what?” Why should he even care about my allegiances to some of my (normative) imperatives or the prescriptions of my plan? There would still be the need to point to the fact that the person looking for the advice would have to accept that he should accept the normative norms or that the (action-) plan was the plan he had most reason to accept. For Scanlon just another way of saying that the normative claims would have to be correct – true normative claims – to move the person to take on the advice … and we are back to some form of a cognitivist position on the truth of normative claims. So Scanlon answers the practical objections by arguing that a normative fundamentalist like him can account for motivations to act as well as his expressivist opponents and that advice and justification of normative claims make better sense on the fundamentalist view than on the views of the expressivist.

The discussion of these three objections shows how Scanlon tries to grapple with the challenges. He uses and adopts arguments from different fields of philosophy to support his normative and moral theory. In doing so, Scanlon delivers new insights and develops new ways of thinking about normative claims. His book thereby introduces engaging ways of discussing normative theory that should be further developed and brought to bear on actual discussions. As such Being Realistic about Reasons shows us an independent thinker outlining his current thinking about normative claims. His book is a challenge to all non-cognitivist theories of moral thinking and proponents who try to interpret moral terms in naturalistic terms such as “water” and the likes. Hopefully it will be taken on. 

 

 

© 2015 Harry Witzthum

 

Harry Witzthum, Ph.D. did his doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield (UK). His research interests comprise the philosophy of mind and psychology, philosophy of language, and cognitive science.  He currently lives inSwitzerland.