Ruling Passions, Chapter 3, Naturalizing Norms Simon Blackburn In the Beginning was the Deed Blackburn outlines his

s version of naturalism: The natural world is the world revealed by the senses and described by the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, and notably biology, including evolutionary theory. Such a naturalism creates a placement problem for ethical truths: The problem is one of finding room for ethics, or of placing ethics within the disenchanted, non-ethical order which we inhabit, and of which we are a part. Blackburn outlines his solution to the placement problem: there are no ethical facts as part of mind-independent reality, and therefore no problems of placement. Nonetheless, Blackburn thinks that we can make sense of ethical language and practice by abandoning a representationalist account of moral judgment and language in favour of a pragmatic account. Blackburn claims that ethics is not so much about knowing that certain things are the case, but rather knowing how to behave, knowing who to punish and reward, knowing when to act or withdraw. Blackburns strategy, then, is to make our practices, which seem to presume that moral facts are part of the fabric of reality, intelligible in light of there being no such facts. An alternative response to the possibility that there are no moral facts, would be an error theory. This would say that our practices are mistaken. Blackburns view is that our conception of our practice is mistaken if we think that it presumes ethical facts, but the practice itself is just fine. Blackburns thesis: Ethical propositions are not descriptive, they are expressive. Expressivism denies that when we assert values we talk about our own states of mind. Instead we voice our states of mind. Pragmatism: In the beginning was the deed is a Wittgenstein quote (PI 546), originally from Goethe. Blackburn links his view to pragmatism. It is only through understanding the activities associated with particular linguistic transactions that we understand the words used in conducting them. To understand ethical discourse we need to start by looking at ethical practice. Quasi-realism: The smooth clothing of statements proposed as true or denied as false disguises the living body beneath. The expressivist task is to reveal that clothing for what it isbut that is not to say that we should always try to do without it. Prelude: Norms and Functions This chapter is on interpretationism the view that we can gain an understanding of the nature of the mental by reflecting on the nature of interpretation.

Blackburn sees interpretationism as a threat because he wants to get ethics out of the world and into our minds, which he takes to be manifested in our practice. However, according to Davidson, the possession of propositional attitudes is governed by normative constraints of coherence, rationality, and consistency. If mental facts presuppose or are constituted by normative facts, then they too are ruled out by naturalism. Does this really constitute a threat to expressivism? After all, Davidsonian interpretation is supposed to be an account of propositional attitudes. An Holism: Blackburn claims the holism of the mental does not pose a threat to naturalism, only to a certain kind of reductive naturalism in which mental states are reduced on a one to one basis with natural properties. But it does not show that it is impossible to isolate the function of a particular belief or desire in the rest of a cognitive economy. And emphatically it does not show that the whole system is somehow unnatural, or magical, or resistant to natural identification. So Blackburns argument might admit a mind-brain identity thesis that reduced the mental to the brain, but not particular mental states to particular brain states. For Davidson, it is not the holism of the mental that makes naturalism problematic, but rather the constitutive ideal of rationality, and the fact that it Constitutive ideal of rationality (pervasiveness of normativity): The possession of propositional attitudes is governed by normative constraints of coherence, rationality, and consistency; in determining what attitudes an agent has, we must consider such matters as what it would be rational for her to believe, what she has good reasons to want and to do, and what beliefs she can coherently combine. Davidson thinks that this has no echo in physical theory. Blackburn calls the constitutive role that rationality plays an a priori principle of interpretation (API): It is analytic that creatures with beliefs, desires, and other states of mind behave in ways that (best) make sense (and not in ways that make no sense), given those states of mind. Blackburns claims that when we say that mental states explain behaviour in terms of what they rationally ought to do, what we actually mean is that their not doing so would surprise us in the same way that an S appearing on the screen when we pressed the F key on a computer would. An expected or intended function has gone wrong. Davidson has a different conception of rationality. Davidsons is a normative notion: As a preliminary, it is important to appreciate how much is built into the notion of rationality which the argument deploys. When we interpret a subject, we strive to make sense of her; in doing so, we are considering the question, What, rationally, should someone think and do in these circumstances? Absolutely everything that goes into answering that question is included in the idea of rationality. So, rationality includes everything relevant to saying what constitutes a good argument, a valid inference, a rational plan, or a good reason for

acting, and everything relevant to the application of those notions to the particular case. Blackburn doesnt sufficiently argue for the non-normative rational ought.

Blackburn thinks we can reconcile API with functionalism by appealing to an isomorphism between the rational structure and the causal structure. A desire for Gin could cause S to drink poison, but not if the poison was revealed to be gin. Similarly, it makes sense for S to drink the poison in light of her belief that it is gin, but it would not be if she knew the truth. The subjects mental states form a causal structure that mirrors the structure of what it makes sense for her to do. Uncodifiability of rationality suggests that no such isomorphism exists. There will be cases in which causal maps of inputs and outputs that the functionalist plots, do not line up with the beliefs that best make sense of the subject from the point of view of rationality. The thing that rules out a functionalist account of mental states is the uncodifiablity of rationality the idea that there are no principles from which we could, given any set of cirmcumstances, deduce a full specification of what somebody rationally ought to do. Inconsistent trio: According to functionalism, the belief that P is identified by its typical causes and behavioural outputs. According to Davidsonian interpretation, a subject believes that P if ascribing just that belief is the best way of making her intelligible from the standpoint of rationality, in light of her environmental stimuli and behaviour and a theory of sense and force. According to the uncodifiability of rationality, there is no typical set of environment stimuli and behaviour in light of which ascribing P is the best way of making an agent intelligible. There will be lots of cases of correctly ascribing P with a wide range of different behaviour. Blackburn says, Uncodifiability in the rational domain is matched by causal complexity in the natural domain. However, complexity is not the same as uncodifiability. There could be physical principles or laws that allow you to predict outcomes irrespective of the degree of complexity. However, according to the uncodifiability of rationality, there is no true principle that specifies in exactly what circumstances it is rational to do X. States of Mind: Satan and Othello Blackburns claim is that ethics involves practical, motivating states of mind. The intelligibility of evil people or people who are not motivated to do what the judge to be moral threaten the expressivist view insofar as the states that expressivists believe are expressed are supposed to be intrinsically motivating. Internalists like Blackburn have to explain away those who make moral judgements, but are not motivated by them. Blackburn argues that there are cases in which moral judgements are made without motivation, but these are in some sense parasitic on cases in which motivation is present. They either need to be able to follow the community, or they need to have been able to be motivated by good in the past.

Only against either a psychological background of being largely motivated by, say, duties, or a social background of insistence upon duty as a practical constraint, does recognition that one has a duty and a lack of motivation to do it exist together. Values need not be desires, but they do motivate us. They can be attitudes or stances. To hold a value, then, is typically to have a relatively stable disposition to conduct practical life and practical discussion in a particular way: it is to be disposed or set in that way, and notably to be set against change in this respect. This way of being set is such as to align values and motivations. Why is this not mere behaviourism? The Ethical Proposition and Freges Abyss Blackburns objection to cognitivism seems to be We have no conception of a truth condition or fact of which mere apprehension by itself determines practical issues. For any fact, there is a question of what to do about it. What about Eating meat is wrong? Eating meat is wrong is true if and only if eating meat is wrong. Whatever you think of the actual truth value of the sentence, the truth conditions fairly obviously do determine the practical issues: if they hold, dont eat meat. Frege-Geach Problem: According to the expressivist, lying is wrong expresses an attitude when asserted. However, sometimes it is not directly asserted, for example: If lying is wrong, then getting your little brother to lie is wrong. It seems that no attitude is expressed in these instances. However, this implies that the following inference is invalid: If lying is wrong, then getting your little brother to lie is wrong, and lying is wrong; therefore, getting your little brother to lie is wrong. However, it patently is valid! Solution: Blackburn suggests just as factual propositions such as The weather is stormy can be used in indirect contexts indirectly, so too can attitudes. It can be avowed, or it can be put forward without avowal, as a topic for discussion. It is not obvious to me that Blackburn can help himself to the idea of a proposition, or something analogous to propositions for the attitudes in question. What would the content of whatever is put forward as a topic of discussion? It cannot be a propositional content, because that would be truth conditional. Blackburn then goes on to give a pragmatic account of logic. He appeals to isomorphism again to account for the logical role of ethical statements. We are to make sense of the logic of ethical statements not in terms of truth functions but in terms of intelligible combinations of commitments, which are isomorphic with logically consistent combinations. Blackburn cashes this out in terms of being tied to a tree: being in a state in which only some combinations of belief or attitude are correct.

According to Blackburn, being tied to a tree delivers the mighty musts of logic. When somebody represents themselves as being tied to a tree, going on to hold an incompatible attitude would result in a breakdown of understanding in just the same way as a logical contradiction would. (Blackburn ties this to interpretation). Logic is our way of keeping track of intelligible combinations of commitment. Im willing to believe that this tree business can stand in for logic indeed I think its a plausible interpretationist account of logic. What seems more controversial to me is that it helps at all with the Geachs criticism of expressivism. If ethical statements are just expressions of attitudes, then they must mean something different in indirect contexts. Apparently they are put forwards of attitudes, but what is it to put forward an attitude? I can put forward a thought for consideration, but can I put forward a Hurrah! or a Boo! for consideration? Blackburn points out that if he can deal with indirect contexts, he can construct Tarski-style Truth-Schemas for ethical sentences. By adopting a deflationist theory of truth, he has earned the right to speak of the truth of ethical statements, and by extension belief in ethical statements. Representation and Minimalism Blackburn considers the view that deflationism about truth and representation applies for more widely than ethics. Expressivism begins by proposing that moral judgements are attitudes rather than beliefs, while quasi-realism gets us the language of realism by supposedly showing that we can handle ethical statements just like any other. Blackburns minimalism essentially amounts to the idea that truth and representation are fairly empty notions. They have the relatively mundane function of allowing us to perform semantic assent, but they do not get at any word-world relation. Blackburn thinks that minimalism about truth and representation gets us the concepts for free, but only at the end. That is once we have given an independent account of ethical propositions. Blackburn suggests that the difference between realism and quasi-realism is whether or not we allow normative beliefs. Blackburn suggests that the normativity of judgement judgements require correctness conditions means that the character of truth and representation are going to be dependent on the account we give of evaluation. o For Blackburn, this presumably is going to involve how we go about evaluating judgements. This seems to be heading down the road of anti-realism about everything.