No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
What Is a Theory of Normative Concepts For?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2019
Abstract
This paper compares and contrasts two recent approaches to the theory of normative concepts with each other and with more traditional theories in metaethics, in order to highlight several different projects one could be engaged in when developing a theory of normative concepts. The two accounts derive from Millgram, The Great Endarkenment (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Chrisman The Meaning of ‘Ought’ (Oxford University Press, 2016). These accounts share in rejecting traditional attempts to explain what ‘ought’ is about or expresses. Instead these accounts treat ‘ought’ as a quantificational word. However, the nature and range of the quantification are importantly different in the two accounts, which impacts on the ways in which the accounts integrate with the various projects one could be engaged in when developing a theory of normative concepts.
- Type
- Papers
- Information
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 86: Expressivisms, Knowledge and Truth , October 2019 , pp. 63 - 85
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2019
References
1 Millgram, Elijah, The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
2 Chrisman, Matthew, The Meaning of ‘Ought’: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics (New York: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar.
3 Our focus is ought and not good, which has been the more traditional focus in metaethics. This may make it less surprising that we reject attempts to explain what normative terms are about or what noncognitive state they express, since after all ‘ought’ is a modal auxiliary verb rather than a predicable adjective. However, it raises the question: Is good also a normative concept; and, if so, how do Millgram and my respective treatments of ought extend to it? I don't know what Millgram thinks, but my view is that it is quasi-definitional of ‘normative concept’ that it is ‘fraught with ought’ and so either good is not fraught with ought and so not a normative concept or its normativity can be captured in its being fraught with ought. I tend to think ‘good’ is usually used in a way that is merely evaluative and not normative, and a kind of contextualised relativism to a standard for evaluating is one attractive theoretical option. But I'm setting all of that off stage here in order to focus on two similar but contrasting accounts of ought, and to highlight broader meta-philosophical questions about the project of developing a theory of normative concepts.
4 Op. cit. 128.
5 Ibid. 131.
6 Ibid. 132.
7 Ibid. 142–43.
8 Ibid.
9 In the book, I provisionally propose an explanation of the relative weakness of ‘ought’ compared to ‘must’. I won't attempt to explain this here. There are other attempts in the semantics and metaethics literature; most of these are consistent with the idea that ‘ought’ is some kind of necessity modal universally quantifying over some range of possibilia.
10 Here's where it might seem important that I've focussed on ‘ought’ rather than ‘good’. If we're understanding normative concepts as those which are ‘fraught with ought’, I think that's a fair starting point for developing a theory of normative concepts. But I acknowledge that it does raise questions about evaluative concepts and their similarities and differences with normative concepts. See fn. 3 above and sec. 7.3.3 of Chrisman op. cit.
11 See Chrisman op. cit. sec. 5.3-4.
12 There are several connected metasemantic projects. The project I am mainly interested focuses on a question of grounding: what is it in virtue of which a particular piece of language would have the semantic content that our semantic theory predicts it to have. But that can be cast as an account of what we are up to in developing theories that predict semantic contents, and it is connected to the philological-cum-genealogical project of accounting for how various pieces of language came to have the meanings that they have and the cognitive-functionalist project of explaining what various words and the concepts they express do for us in our speaking and thinking.
13 Millgram op. cit. 139.
14 Ibid. 141.