Handout 3: Scepticism and Boyd’s Moral Realism
The Queerness Problem: Moral facts have a peculiar feature: Moral facts, if there are any, must be intrinsically action-guiding. But this makes them metaphysically and epistemically queer.
The Metaphysical Queerness Problem [MQP]: On our best understanding of the world, that given by the natural sciences, there are no facts which are intrinsically action-guiding. If so, then moral facts cannot be natural facts. But there are no non-natural facts [See Naturalism on Handout 1]. So, there are no moral facts.
The Epistemic Queerness Problem [EQP]: On our best understanding of how we come to know about the world, we come to know about it causally. Objects in the world affect our senses. It is in this way that we come to know about objects, events, and properties. But how does the fact that we ought to act in certain ways affect our senses? What is can affect them, but how can what ought to be affect them as well? Until we have a solution to this problem, we are not entitled to believe that we know, or are even justified in believing, any moral claim.
Boyd’s Moral Realism:
In response to the MQP, Boyd claims two things. First, he claims that moral facts are not intrinsically action-guiding. Rather, it so happens that most of us care about morality, and so are in fact motivated to do what we believe morality tells us to do. Second, he claims that denying the intrinsic action-guidingness of morality allows him to hold that moral facts are identical to natural facts.
In response to the EQP, Boyd claims that the moral observation and the methods of moral theorizing play a role analogous to the role of observation and theorizing in the natural sciences. In both cases, observation and theorizing track the truth, allowing us increasingly approximate that truth.
Sketching the Theory, Part One: Semantics
“The reference of a term is established by causal connections of the right sort between the use of the term and (instances of) its referent.” (115)
Term
Causal Connections
Ref1 Ref2 Ref3
But which are the right sorts of causal connections?
…[A] term t refers to a kind (property, relation, etc.) k just in case there exists causal mechanisms whose tendency is to bring it about, over time, that what is predicated of the term t will be approximately true of k. (116)
Thus, a term like ‘good’ will only refer to some kind k if there exist mechanisms that establish a causal connection between our use of the term ‘good’ and that kind such that, over time, our theories about the good increasing approximate the actual facts about what is good. The kind k consists in those facts.
What is it that makes all the things that are good cohere into a coherent natural kind?
Homeostatic Kinds: These are causal structures of properties F such that “either the presence of some of the properties in F tends (under appropriate conditions) to favour the presence of the others, or there are underlying mechanisms or processes which tend to maintain the properties in F, or both.” (117)
Suppose ‘good’ refers to some causal structure of properties P. What would be in P? Boyd thinks it consists in all the things that satisfy “important human needs”: love, friendship, liberty, happiness, etc. The idea then is that the presence of each of these things tends to favour the presence of the others. Thus, these things causally interrelate in ways that sustain each others presence, and so carve out a particular causal structure of properties. It turns out, then, that the term “good” picks out a basic natural pattern or structure. Morality carves nature at its joints!
This semantics is supposed to help solve the MQP by explaining how ‘good’ could refer to a natural property, the property of being what satisfies important human needs.
Sketching the Theory, Part Two: Moral Knowledge
How do our practices of moral reflection connect up with moral goodness in such a way that we can be said to increasingly approximate facts about it?
We connect up with moral goodness through observation. The fact that something satisfies our needs tends to cause us to observe it as good. The more information we get about our needs and what satisfies them, the closer the connection will be.
We get information about these things through moral reasoning. Techniques like achieving reflective equilibrium amongst our beliefs, in light of psychological and social scientific research, allow us to increasingly approximate the truth about what satisfies human needs. Since what satisfies human needs just is the Good, these techniques allow us to approximate truths about the Good.
This epistemology is supposed to help solve the EQP by allowing us to understand how we come to know about moral facts. On Boyd’s view, we come to know about moral facts in the same way we come to know about natural facts.