30 years ago, no-one in philosophy used the term "normativity". Now, it's everywhere. We investigate its nature, its sources, its psychological power.
Yet, the very idea that there is a phenomenon which deserves the singular name 'normativity' carries substantive philosophical presuppositions. It invites us to think that there is a phenomenon or property in question here, and it thus presupposes a kind of realism. Furthermore, it masks complexity, and this is very convenient for certain philosophers who are fond of the word. If there really are, as Isaiah Berlin thought, irreducibly plural sources of value, then there is no full-stop "normativity". Monism and realism about value are smuggled into philosophical ethics via this new term.
So, friends, the next time someone accuses your meta-ethical account of being unable to "account for normativity", you go right ahead and thank them for the compliment.
EDIT: Ah. I see this post has been (kindly) selected for the Philosopher's Carnival. I direct readers from that forum to my previous post about the carnival. I also offer the following clarification:
The concept "value" is ambiguous. It can be used to refer to a purported property (x has value), OR to a mental state (I value x)). Philosophers, perhaps still under the (unconscious?) sway of their analytic forefathers, often think that conceptual clarity is a good thing and conceptual ambiguity is a bad thing. This is not necessarily so, especially in the case of our most general concepts. "Normativity" is surely less ambiguous, insofar as it only refers to a property, and not to a mental state or to an activity of a person. Activites and mental states may have the property of normativity, but a property it remains.
This, I claim, is not a useful ambiguity, because it encourages us to see philosophical questions as settled before they even start. We need general concepts to be ambiguous so that we may construct answers to those very philosophical questions (i.e. the question of the nature of value) without begging any questions.
Yet, the very idea that there is a phenomenon which deserves the singular name 'normativity' carries substantive philosophical presuppositions. It invites us to think that there is a phenomenon or property in question here, and it thus presupposes a kind of realism. Furthermore, it masks complexity, and this is very convenient for certain philosophers who are fond of the word. If there really are, as Isaiah Berlin thought, irreducibly plural sources of value, then there is no full-stop "normativity". Monism and realism about value are smuggled into philosophical ethics via this new term.
So, friends, the next time someone accuses your meta-ethical account of being unable to "account for normativity", you go right ahead and thank them for the compliment.
EDIT: Ah. I see this post has been (kindly) selected for the Philosopher's Carnival. I direct readers from that forum to my previous post about the carnival. I also offer the following clarification:
The concept "value" is ambiguous. It can be used to refer to a purported property (x has value), OR to a mental state (I value x)). Philosophers, perhaps still under the (unconscious?) sway of their analytic forefathers, often think that conceptual clarity is a good thing and conceptual ambiguity is a bad thing. This is not necessarily so, especially in the case of our most general concepts. "Normativity" is surely less ambiguous, insofar as it only refers to a property, and not to a mental state or to an activity of a person. Activites and mental states may have the property of normativity, but a property it remains.
This, I claim, is not a useful ambiguity, because it encourages us to see philosophical questions as settled before they even start. We need general concepts to be ambiguous so that we may construct answers to those very philosophical questions (i.e. the question of the nature of value) without begging any questions.
2 comments:
Not sure I follow this. Why couldn't a pluralist about value just as easily be a pluralist about the sources of normativity?
Thanks for the comment, Richard. I can only note that saying pluralism about value is pluralism about values, about kinds of value. It is not pluralism about the sources of value. It is a substantive claim about what values there are.
This is very different from claiming that there are multiple "sources of normativity". For this latter idea still contains the notion that normativity is a single property, even though it allegedly has multiple 'sources'. A pluralist about value (in the Berlin sense) cannot allow for such an idea.
The difference, as I see it, is the same as the one between saying that there is one river with multiple tributaries and saying that there are many rivers.
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