Under a typical naturalistic worldview, we can speak of virtually anything in our universe in mathematical or physical terms. Moral terms, however, seem to apply particularly to one extremely narrow subsection of our universe – namely, that part relevant to the lives of sentient beings. There is (presumably) nothing mathematically or physically special about humans, yet we are very morally special. Mathematics and physics, then, may be “queer,” but they are uniformly queer, whereas morality is a “queer” irregularity.

-EA

J. John:

My remarks are similar to those of Stephen Maitzen’s in his recent comment on the originating post over at my blog, but here are some brief remarks. If there are any further comments or questions, would you mind if we referred them over to my blog? If so, I would greatly appreciate it!

In any case, you wrote:
Well, what are some reasons you think that the data of our moral judgments warrant appeal to something beyond CN ontology?

The data of (e.g.) the prima facie moral wrongness of certain actions. So, for example, I hear on the news that a mother put a baby in the microwave. Reflecting on this, I find my self thinking that what the mother did was (to put it mildly) seriously morally wrong. So I take that claim to be true. Well, what entities in the ontology of CN make it true? It’s not clear how moral wrongness even could supervene on, say, quarks. So I am hard pressed to account for the data of our moral judgements on CN.

Now I suppose a die hard proponent of CN could bite the bullet and reject the data. Thus, I could say that the appearance of moral wrongness is illusory. However, our ordinary judgements are shot through with moral judgements, and so that sort of solution is pretty radical from a theory-building point of view. if so, then perhaps there is pressure to accept the data of our moral judgements, and thus expand our ontology from CN to MN. In any case, that’s the basic idea.

Toweltowel: Good points. I would only add that Wielenberg has interesting things to say in reply to Mackie’s argument from queerness in Wielenberg’s paper.

Best,
EA

As for why a conservative naturalist would accept objective moral facts in the first place, it’s because naturalist moral realists typically give some deference to common sense, placing the burden of proof on those who would deny that e.g. murder is wrong.

This is hardly my area of expertise either (and, since I’m an undergraduate, it would be presumptuous to say that *anything* is my area of expertise), so I appreciate the opportunity to bounce my thoughts off you.

I thought what we were trying to explain was our moral judgments, not moral normativity; I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “moral normativity” (the moral judgments themselves, belief in moral realism, or the actual objective moral truths). As I see it, the question is whether or not CN can account for our moral judgments. If it can, it seems to me that non-theistic moral realists would have to bite the bullet and accept some non-realist metaethics. (Of course, theists would have to drop the argument from altruism.)

If it *cannot*…well, I guess I’m not sure what sorts of emendations a non-theist would make to CN that would explain our moral judgments, mainly because I’m not sure in what way a non-theist would argue that CN is insufficient to explain our moral judgments.

The simplest and most obvious example of a potential modification to CN would be the postulation of ethical brute facts. But I don’t see how the postulation of such ethical brute facts, in and of itself, helps us explain our moral judgments. I’m open, however, to hearing other proposals, because a lot of this is new to me.

Well, what are some reasons you think that the data of our moral judgments warrant appeal to something beyond CN ontology?

Since I can’t claim ethics or meta-ethics as one of my AOSs, I’m pretty tentative about my views on these matters; nothing’s settled. So I’m more comfortable conditionalizing here: either moral normativity logically supervenes on the ontology of CN or it doesn’t. If it does, then we need not appeal to anything beyond the ontology of CN to explain moral normativity. But if it doesn’t, then there is pressure to accept either MN or LN. Either way, I guess I’m not seeing the need to appeal to the theistic hypothesis to get the explanatory work done re: moral normativity.

Cheers,
EA

Thanks for your reply.

You said: I think the structure of my argument is slightly different than the five-step structure you outlined, Ex. In particular, I never said that an atheist’s ontology was necessarily limited to conservative naturalism or strict physicalism. (I can’t imagine how I’d go about making an argument for such a necessary limitation.) Instead, I’m merely trying to figure out (as Nico said) what exactly would motivate an atheist to be a realist instead of a nihilist.

Yes, I agree that I construed the degree of commitment of my claim about Step One a bit too strongly; I’m happy to mitigate it in the way you suggest. In any case, my reply to your worry (about what would motivate the atheist to adopt such an ontology) would be the same: the data (in this case, the data of our moral judgements) motivate the atheist to adopt (what I’m calling) a Moderate or a Liberal version of naturalism over a Conservative version.

You said: you mentioned a philosophy methodology of “taking our judgements as data and then constructing theories to best account for them.” Under consideration here are our ethical judgments, or beliefs. We have strongly held beliefs about the wrongness and rightness of certain actions. Now, regarding such ethical judgments, a moral nihilist can say something like the following: “Of course we have such strongly held beliefs, but that is not at all surprising. Such beliefs ultimately boil down to evolutionary adaptations over millions of years that allowed social primates like homo sapiens to survive. There is nothing preventing us from completely explaining our ethical beliefs in terms of evolutionary psychology – why, then, posit ‘ethical brute facts’ or anything of that nature?”

Well, sure: if the data of our moral judgements doesn’t require appeal to anything beyond the ontology of Conservative Naturalism, then that is the ontology warranted by the data. But that’s a problem the atheist (I should say I’m an agnostic, btw) is happy to have, no?

Cheers,
EA