Friday, January 01, 2016

The Absence of Moral Properties

Charles Pigden's main goal in his article, “Nihilism, Nietzche, and the Doppleganger Problem,” (in A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory, Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin (eds.)) was to respond to an objection to error theory.

As I understand it, the objection goes as follows:

Error theory says that all moral claims are false.

So, for example, the claim "Rape is morally prohibited" is false.

However, if "Rape is morally prohibited" is false, then "It is not the case that rape is morally prohibited" is true.

But "It is not the case that rape is morally prohibited" is also a moral statement.

Consequently, there are at least some true moral statements.

From which it follows that, "All moral statements are false" is false.

Furthermore, if at least some moral statements are true, then this represents moral realism - not anti-realism.

This is "The Doppleganger Problem". It has to do with whether the negation of a statement of type X is also a statement of type X. Is the claim that a moral statement is false itself a moral statement?

Pigden's said that the negation of some moral statements are moral statements, and that this will require that we alter moral nihilism. He suggested, "All non-negative judgments are false." Thus, nihilism would say that "Rape is morally prohibited" is false, but it would be compatible with saying, "It is not the case that rape is morally prohibited" is true.

This caused me to ask a question about the alleged properties of intrinsic prescriptivity.

Is it the case that "moral permissibility" means "lacking intrinsically prescriptivity"? Or is "moral permissibility" itself a case of "having an intrinsic property of 'ought-to-be-permittedness'?

If it is the former - which, I suspect, it is often taken to be - then moral nihilism would imply that everything is permissible and nothing is obligatory. Moral nihilism would imply that everything lacks intrinsic ought-not-to-be-doneness or intrinsic ought-to-be-doneness, which means that everything is permissible.

If it is the latter, we get a different result. In this case, "X is morally permissible" would be false in the same way that "X is morally prohibited" and "X is morally required" would be false. All three statements assign a moral property to that which they are evaluating . . . "may be doneness", "ought not to be doneness", and "ought to be doneness". In all three cases, the property they assign does not exist.

It would seem that one would have to accept the latter option to explain why "it is not the case that rape is wrong" implies "rape is permissible".

Then, we come to the question, "What do we call those things in which moral properties are lacking?"

Those would be the things where moral terms do not apply.

"The Earth orbits the sun" is one of those things that lack moral obligatoriness, moral prohibitedness, and moral permissibility. It is one of those things to which moral terms do not apply.

Moral nihilism, in this sense, would treat, "Debrah is raping Edward" the same way it treats, "The earth orbits the sun" - as something to which moral terms do not apply. "It is not the case that the earth orbiting the sun is wrong" does not become "It is permissible for the earth to orbit the sun" because this is not something to which moral terms would apply.

Which means, "It is not the case that rape is wrong" would not become "rape is permissible" since this, too, would be something to which moral terms do not apply.

I hasten to add, for me, making sense of moral prescriptivity talk is a side show. I deny that talks about prohibition and obligation assign intrinsic prescriptivity. I think that they are claims about what people generally have reason to punish/condemn or reward/praise. On this model, "Rape is wrong" means "Rape is something that people generally have reason to punish/condemn" while "It is not the case that rape is wrong" implies "It is not the case that rape is something that people generally have reason to punish/condemn."

And this is why people take the claims of moral nihilism to imply moral permissibility. To say that "Rape is wrong" is false is to say "Rape is something that people generally have reason to punish/condemn" is false. A lot of people have problems with that implication.

No comments: