Post on 26-Jan-2023
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Are moral properties impossible?
Wouter F. Kalf
Forthcoming in: Philosophical Studies (Accepted: July 2014)
The final publication is available at Springer viahttp://dx.doi.org/DOI: 10.1007/s11098-014-
0376-y
Abstract Perhaps the actual world does not contain moral properties. But might moral
properties be impossible because no world, possible or actual, contains them? Two
metaethical theories can be argued to entail just that conclusion; viz., emotivism and error
theory. This paper works towards the strongest formulation of the emotivist argument for the
impossibility of moral properties, but ultimately rejects it. It then uses the reason why the
emotivist argument fails to argue that error-theoretic arguments for the impossibility of moral
properties face the same conclusion. Finally the paper argues that these arguments for the
possibility of moral properties might have consequences for our thinking about their
actuality, regardless of whether we accept emotivism or error theory.
Key Words: Moral Properties • Impossibility • Emotivism • Error Theory
1 Introduction
Metaethicists typically distinguish between antirealist and realist theories of moral properties,
where antirealist theories deny and realist theories affirm their existence. To solve their
dispute we first have to determine what the essential features of moral properties are, or
would be if there were any, and then we need to determine whether there is (or can be)
anything that has these features. One way of determining the essential features of moral
properties is to think about their instantiation conditions. These are the conditions that have to
be met by a world before we can say that a property exists in that world, and the instantiation
conditions of properties are determined by the concepts of those properties. Here is a non-
moral example. The concept VIXEN incorporates the concepts FOXHOOD and FEMALENESS.1
1 SMALL CAPS refer to concepts.
2
Therefore, the instantiation conditions of the property of being a vixen are that the world has
to contain foxes and that (at least some of) these foxes are female. Similarly, or at least so
J.L. Mackie argues, the concept MORAL VALUE incorporates the concepts OBJECTIVE
PRESCRIPTIVITY and HUMAN COHABITATION.2 Therefore, the instantiation conditions of the
property of having moral value are that the world has to contain actions or states of affairs
that have the property of being objectively prescriptive as well as the property of being
relevant to human cohabitation.
This specification of moral concepts has not gone uncontested. Philosophers have
disagreed about what we might call the nature of moral properties (are they objectively
prescriptive or are they not?) as well as their subject matter (do moral properties necessarily
concern human cohabitation or can moral properties also concern individual perfection and
the existence of unspoiled nature?). Response-dependent theories such as McDowell’s 1985
deny that moral properties are objective in Mackie’s sense of being “prior to and logically
independent of all [human] activities [such as] preferring, choosing, recommending [and]
condemning” (Mackie 1977, p. 30). Aristotelians often have different ideas about the subject
matter of morality, believing that actions and character traits can have moral properties even
when they do not affect other people (Bloomfield 2008, pp. 3-4).
This disagreement about what moral properties are like makes the debate between
moral realists and antirealists especially intricate. Whereas realists and antirealists about
vixens agree on what vixens are like and only disagree on whether the world contains any
vixens, realists and antirealists about moral properties disagree both on what moral properties
are like and on whether the world contains them. Taking this feature of the debate between
moral realists and antirealists as its point of departure, this paper focusses on antirealist
metaethicists who claim that there are no moral properties and asks the following question
2 Thus according to Mackie’s conception of moral values they are objectively prescriptive in the sense that we
should pursue them regardless of what we desire or want and regardless of whatever other normativity there is
(prescriptivity was his word for overriding normativity). Mackie writes: “[k]nowing [moral values] or ‘seeing’
them will not merely tell men what to do but will ensure that they do it, overruling any contrary inclinations”
(Mackie 1977, pp. 31-2). The fact that Mackie uses the word ‘ensure’ here suggests that ‘prescriptivity’ also
contains an element of motivational internalism, where (knowledge of) moral values has an automatic impact on
the will (normative force doesn’t have this property). In light of this some of his commentators suggest that
Mackie “seems to have confused the motivational import of [an atomic] moral belief with the normativity of a
moral fact” (Copp 2010, p. 146). For ease of exposition I leave this debate to one side and stipulate that for
Mackie, prescriptivity refers to overriding normative force. Chapter Five in Mackie’s 1977 details his reasons
for accepting the other-regarding conception of moral values where the function of morality is to enable human
cohabitation.
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about their arguments. Do they solely entail that there are no moral properties in the actual
world or do they entail that there are no moral properties in any world, possible or actual?3
Consider Mackie again. Mackie was an error theorist; viz., an antirealist who believed
that (i) our conception of moral properties was one of objectively prescriptive values that
concern human cohabitation but that (ii) there is no objective prescriptivity.4 Some
philosophers read Mackie as claiming that moral properties are ‘queer’ (strange), in which
case their non-existence is contingent and does not carry over to other worlds. After all, if
what makes a property ‘queer’ is being “unusual in an unusual way” (Garner 1990, p. 143)
then we need a comparison class of properties that determines what counts as ‘usual’. And
this comparison class varies hugely from world to world. Hence it follows that what is
unusually unusual in one world can be perfectly usual in another, depending on what the
comparison class looks like in that world. Therefore, even if we assume that we can move
from the queerness of moral properties thus understood to their contingent non-existence,
what doesn’t follow is that moral properties are absent in all worlds.5
Others however read Mackie as holding the view that
[t]he problem [with objectively prescriptive moral properties] isn’t that there aren’t any such
things as a matter of contingent fact. The problem is that we can literally make no sense of
them: There are no possible worlds in which objects have such qualities (Smith 2010, p. 121)
This interpretation of Mackie’s error theory entails that moral properties are impossible (at
least when we assume that inconceivability entails impossibility). If true, this interpretation of
error theory would have far reaching consequences. An error theory that is just contingently
true in the actual world might only temporarily have to be an inconvenient truth that we can
do something about. We could change something about the world to introduce moral
properties in it. The clearest example of this comes not from Mackie’s queerness error theory
3 I model possible worlds talk on modal realism for ease of exposition, but nothing of substance hangs on this
(others theories of modality, I suspect, could be used just as profitably for my purposes). The paper also takes
facts to register the instantiation of properties (Shafer-Landau 2003, p. 65); so moral facts, if they exist, register
the instantiation of moral properties. 4 Mackie also argued that the function of our moral language is to communicate the instantiation of moral
properties so that it follows that our moral language is ‘in error’—moral language tries to refer to things that
don’t exist. This is the main difference with emotivist or expressivist antirealist theories which also argue that
there are no moral properties but that this does not mean that moral language is in error. According to
emotivists, moral language has a non-representational function to be explored in the next section. 5 This means that Olson’s claim that “moral properties are necessarily uninstantiated; they are simply too queer
to be instantiated in any possible world” (Olson 2014, p. 12n.17) is false, as is Joyce’s 2001 error theory, which
is an earlier attempt to move from queerness to impossibility (cf. Coons 2011).
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but from a “convergence-based error theory”, which does not require moral facts to be
constituted by mind-external properties but instead requires the convergence of rational
minds (Lillehammer 2004, p. 98). A convergence-based success theory of morality holds that
a moral judgment is not in error so long as rational minds concur on it; unfortunately,
according to the convergence-based error theory, such rational convergence does not exist.6
Perhaps, though, we can change something about our discursive context such that it better
facilitates convergence of rational minds on moral matters and in so doing introduce moral
properties into the actual world, which is good news insofar as we believe that moral facts are
useful for us. The problem with error theories that are necessarily true is that such moves are
out of the question from the start so that we will have to learn to live with the idea that no
action or state of affairs can possibly have moral status.
So what is the true modal status of existing antirealist metaethical theories? To make
progress on this issue we should distinguish the following modal claims:
Weak: There is a possible world W in which there are moral properties
Strong: There is a possible world W’, identical to the actual world in all non-moral
respects, in which there are moral properties (taken, with adaptations, from
Brown 2013, p. 628)
An argument for the impossibility of moral properties has to show that both Weak and Strong
are false. For if either is true then moral properties are possible, although the truth of just
Weak may only ensure that moral properties are possible in a world not ‘within reach’ of the
actual world, in which case, although moral properties are possible, they still can’t be
introduced into the actual world. For example, moral properties could turn out to exist in a
possible world that facilitates rationality by means not available to us in the actual world. If
Strong is true then moral properties are necessarily within reach of the actual world (Coons
2011, pp. 87-92). After all, if a possible world that is non-morally identical to ours
instantiates moral properties and ours doesn’t then that violates the non-arbitrariness
constraint on moral properties’ instantiation conditions (or, which probably comes to the
same thing, a suitably strong or at least a global supervenience relation between moral and
non-moral properties). Roughly: it is impossible that two non-morally identical situations
6 I use the term ‘moral judgment’ to refer to mental states that can take either cognitive or non-cognitive
psychology and I use the term ‘moral statement’ to refer to moral judgments that are made publicly available by
being uttered or inscribed.
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exhibit different moral properties. Given Strong and the non-arbitrariness constraint, the
actual world contains moral properties.
Both error theoretic and emotivist antirealist theories can be argued to entail the
falsity of Weak and Strong and thus that moral properties are impossible (Brown 2013). This
paper works towards the strongest formulation of the emotivist argument for moral
properties’ impossibility but ultimately rejects it. It then uses the reason why the emotivist
argument for moral properties’ impossibility fails to argue that error-theoretic arguments for
their impossibility also fail. I discuss emotivism first because an argument for the
impossibility of moral properties based on it is more complicated than a similar argument
based on error theory. This means that a subsequent discussion of error theory most clearly
brings out why both arguments fail for the same reason. The paper also argues that my
arguments for the possibility of moral properties might have consequences for our thinking
about their actuality, regardless of whether we start with emotivism or error theory.
Before I do this however I should specify how, exactly, I think about properties in
general. The nature of properties is a hotly debated topic in contemporary theoretical
philosophy, but the question that is most important for my purposes is the following. Are
properties semantic shadows of predicates (Armstrong 1989, p. 78); i.e., necessary existences
such that there is a property that corresponds to every meaningful predicate and such that,
although properties thought of in this way may or may not be instantiated in worlds, whether
or not they are instantiated is irrelevant for the question of their existence? If the answer to
this question is yes then on most conceptions of moral properties, they exist and are therefore
possible. These are conceptions of moral properties on which moral predicates are
meaningful, as determined, at least in part, by whether the predicates are internally consistent.
Alternatively, properties can be thought of as contingent existences such that it is not the case
that there exists a property for every meaningful predicate and such that the question of
whether they are instantiated in at least one world is relevant for the question of their
existence and cannot be settled merely by considering whether moral predicates are
meaningful (non-instantiated properties do not exist on this conception of moral properties).
Throughout this paper I will, unless specified otherwise, have this second way of thinking
about properties in mind. My reason for doing this is that (nearly) all metaethicists, realists
and antirealists alike, agree that there are moral properties in the pleonastic sense. What the
issue is about is whether there are robust moral properties in the second sense I mentioned.
So that is therefore the sense of property that I will focus on in this paper.
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2 The Emotivist Argument for the Impossibility of Moral Properties
Ayer writes:
If I say to someone, ‘You acted wrongly in stealing that money’ [then it] is as if I had said,
‘You stole that money’, in a peculiar tone of horror … I produce a sentence which has no
factual meaning – that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false. (Ayer 1936,
p. 107)
On Ayer’s view, a moral judgment like ‘You acted wrongly in stealing that money’ takes a
non-cognitive psychology and the corresponding moral statement ‘stealing is morally wrong’
means something like ‘boo! stealing’. Ayer makes the following (natural) transition from
moral psychology to moral semantics. Because a moral judgment is a non-cognitive attitude
(psychological claim) it is natural to think that this non-cognitive attitude gets expressed in a
moral statement (positive semantic claim). And if moral statements express non-cognitive
attitudes then it is natural to think that the moral predicates in these statements are only
syntactically predicates (negative semantic claim) (Kalderon 2008, p. 1). That is, then it is
natural to think that moral predicates’ semantic function is not to pick out a property but
rather to indicate that a certain desire-state is present. This means that the function of moral
language is only seemingly representational and non-representational in actual fact. Moral
statements seem to express distinctively moral propositions that can be used to represent
moral properties (Fregean propositions) or that are literally constituted by moral properties
(Russellian propositions). But in fact they only express propositions that have just non-moral
content (“You stole that money’) and, in addition to that, function to indicate that the speaker
is in a certain non-cognitive state.7
How do we get from here to the impossibility of moral properties? Wedgwood
suggests that
“[i]f the semantics of moral terms comes down in favor of [emotivism] … we should reject
the very idea of moral properties.” (Wedgwood 2001, p. 3)
7 A similar story, perhaps, can be told about Carnap, who writes that “a value statement is nothing else than a
command in misleading grammatical form” (1935, p. 25). The story would be that commands too do not express
distinctively moral propositions. In what follows, and for ease of exposition, I only consider Ayer’s emotivism.
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This suggestion, I think, involves two steps.8 Step 1 is that emotivist semantics entails that we
cannot refer to moral properties and step 2 is that if we cannot refer to moral properties then
we should reject the very idea of moral properties. After this a third step follows; viz., that if
we should reject the very idea of moral properties then they are impossible.
But start with step 1. We cannot refer to moral properties if emotivism is true because
if emotivism is true we cannot even begin to specify what the instantiation conditions of
moral properties are. Consider the following from Finlay:
[t]he difficult question [is] … how is the [conceptual] content of our language and thought
determined? [One idea] turns on considerations of people’s reflective understanding of their
moral thought and speech, and of what they may be conscious of when they engage in this
thought and speech. This evinces an assumption of the truth of a local form of content-
internalism: what we mean morally is fixed by something internal to our mental states,
particularly our intentions … (Finlay 2008, p. 362; also see Nichols 2004, pp. 192-3).
Suppose that local content-internalism about vixens is true. In that case, the way we think and
talk about the property of being a vixen determines that there can only be vixens when there
are female foxes. Similarly, when local moral content-internalism is true, the way we think
and talk about the property of being morally required determines that there can only be moral
requirements when there are actions or states of affairs that are objectively prescriptive and
concern human cohabitation (if, anyway, that is what our practice of thinking and talking
about morality suggests, which, as explained in the Introduction, is not clear). But for this
practice—the practice of determining the content of moral language and thought on the basis
of looking at people’s reflective understanding of their own moral thought and speech—to be
possible our language about morals has to be representational. That is, moral language has to
be the kind of language that we can use to represent facts about the world; facts about human
cohabitation, objective prescriptivity, and so forth. Vixen predicates and the concepts they
express allow us to explore the question of what in the world corresponds to the concept
VIXEN because they represent the world. It may be hard, of course, to figure out what exactly
is being represented, but at least this task isn’t made impossible by the nature of our language
about vixens form the get go. The problem with emotivism is that it entails that a similar task
of figuring out what in the world corresponds to the concept of a MORAL OBLIGATION has
been made impossible by our language about morals from the get go. After all, according to
8 What follows shouldn’t be read as a reconstruction of what emotivists actually believed about the modal status
of their antirealism but instead as an attempt to see where their arguments can take us.
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emotivism, all we are really doing when we say ‘stealing is morally wrong’ is saying
something like ‘boo! stealing’. But with ‘boo! stealing’ at our disposal we can’t even begin to
think about what the world would have to look like for there to be moral properties (should
we think about human cohabitation and objective prescriptivity, or about unspoiled nature,
desire-satisfaction, individual perfection, incompatibilist free will, socks, greenery, flying
pigs, tasty Yorkshire ales, or what?). The real meaning of ‘this is a vixen’ allows us to think
about foxes and femaleness because the semantic function of ‘this is a vixen’ is
representational. The real meaning of ‘stealing is wrong’ does not allow us to think about
anything specific at all because the semantic function of ‘stealing is wrong’ is non-
representational. From this it follows that emotivist semantics entails that we cannot refer to
moral properties, at least so long as moral content-internalism is true.9
But what if moral content-externalism is true? That is, what if the content of moral
concepts is not (solely) determined by the ideas we associate with them? To understand
content-externalism take the non-moral concept MOVES. Context-externalists about MOVES
believe that there are facts about the world that, in conjunction with our referential intentions,
determine the content of that concept. The world dictates that the predicate ‘moves’ which
expresses the concept MOVES is relational rather than monadic, contrary to what most people
think. Still, people who have the monadic predicate in mind aren’t saying something false
when they say that something moves. For the content of the concept MOVES is determined in
part by the world as what happens in the world regulates our use of the term ‘moves’ that
expresses the concept MOVES. Can this way of thinking about concepts help us figuring out
what moral properties would have to look like whilst holding constant an emotivist moral
semantics? One thought is that it might because on a content-externalist story there can be
mind-external entities—moral properties—that regulate our use of the term ‘morally wrong’
and thus determine the content of the concept that it expresses even when users of those terms
have false beliefs about them.
I argue that context-externalism doesn’t help. For content-externalist accounts of
concepts still require some input from our referential intentions (Gampel 1996). Whilst we
can allow that some of our referential intentions are not entirely correct, we can’t do without
referential intentions altogether. We cannot stipulate that it is the property of being the river
Avon that is a moral property, or being lion breath, or being the combination of my nose and
9 I present the argument on the level of moral semantics but given the emotivist’s ‘natural’ thought that moral
psychology informs moral semantics (see the opening paragraph of this section), the same argument can also be
put in psychological rather than semantic terms.
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the upper-half of the Eiffel tower. That is cheating. We need to know what makes it the case
that these properties are the moral properties, or what justifies these assertions. However,
without some imput of the way in which we talk about moral properties, there is no way of
figuring this out. So let’s look at the way in which we talk about moral properties. The
problem with the emotivist theory of how we talk about moral properties, as we saw above, is
that it doesn’t enable us to talk about moral properties at all. With ‘boo! stealing’ at our
disposal, we don’t even know where or how to start looking for moral properties. Hence
emotivist semantics entails that we also cannot refer to moral properties if moral content-
externalism is true. This establishes step 1: (regardless of whether moral content-internalism
or content-externalism is true) emotivist semantics entails that we cannot refer to moral
properties.
But if that is true then (step 2) we should reject the very idea of moral properties.
After all, emotivist semantics does not give us any grip on, or any way of thinking (and
talking) about, moral properties. There is a principled reason why we can’t be thinking (and
talking) about moral properties—all that we have is talk about matters of fact (‘You stole that
money’) and the expression of emotions—and so it simply makes no sense to say that,
nevertheless, we can have an idea of moral properties. Our moral thinking doesn’t give us
any guidance at all on what moral properties might be like, and so we cannot have or
formulate an idea about them.
Moving beyond Wedgwood’s remark we can argue that if we should reject the very
idea of moral properties then we should conclude that moral properties are impossible. That
would be step 3 in an emotivist argument for the impossibility of moral properties. For saying
that moral properties are possible even when we should reject their very idea is also cheating.
Without an idea of what moral properties would have to be like if there were any we won’t be
able to recognise whether the properties that are put forward as candidate moral properties are
indeed moral properties. Against this one could argue that God can populate some (or all)
worlds with moral properties even though we have to reject their very idea (God is
omnipotent, after all). In response, we should note that this is a bad reason for believing in
moral properties. It renders moral properties completely practically irrelevant. Even though,
by hypothesis, they exist, we have to reject their very idea, and it is completely unclear how
properties we can have no idea about can constrain our practical deliberation. This is a bad
result as the vast majority of metaethical theories entail that moral properties are practically
relevant in some sense. Non-naturalist realists accept properties into our ontology that are
relevant to our practical deliberation, usually holding that this is so without these properties
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having to connect up in any sort of way with our desires and motivations. Naturalist realists
also accept properties into our ontology that are practically relevant, although they usually
also hold that their practical relevance depends on whether they tie up in the right sort of way
with our desires and motivations. Quasi-realists consider vindicating the practical
significance of moral properties as one of their tasks in their project of earning the right to
talk about moral properties. Error theorists think that the practical significance of moral
properties is part of their problem (combined with the requirement that moral properties have
to be objective, the practical significance of moral properties renders them at least
contingently uninstantiated). Emotivists and especially their prescriptivist allies respect the
practical significance of ethics by arguing that the function of moral language is to influence
other people’s behaviour even though there are no moral properties that underpin any of these
commands, et cetera. Hence I think that it is safe to assume that some kind of practical
significance is essential to moral properties. The problem with the view that moral properties
exist even when we can have no idea about them is that this renders moral properties
practically irrelevant as it is fundamentally unclear how properties whose idea we have to
reject can constrain our practical deliberation. Hence, we should move from rejecting the
very idea of moral properties to their non-existence.10
This gets us:
Emotivist Argument for Moral Properties’ Impossibility
P1 Emotivism: moral semantics entails that we cannot refer to moral properties
P2 If (P1) then we should reject the very idea of moral properties
P3 We should reject the very idea of moral properties [From P1, P2]
P4 If (P3) then moral properties are impossible
C Moral properties are impossible [From P3, P4]11
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So this argument for moral properties’ impossibility works without us having to first specify what moral
properties would have to look like if there were any (as error-theoretic arguments for moral properties’
impossibility, such as Loeb’s argument to be discussed later, require). For this argument is that with emotivism,
we cannot specify what moral properties would be like and that it follows from this that they are impossible. On
the assumption that I’m right that we cannot specify moral properties’ instantiation conditions if emotivism is
true, this is a good-making feature of this argument. After all, had it not been possible to formulate an argument
for the impossibility of moral properties without having to first specify what moral properties would have to
look like if there were any, then one good antirealist metaethical theory—emotivism—could never be used as
the basis of an argument for moral properties’ impossibility as a matter of principle, which is unnecessarily
restrictive and prima facie implausible. Moreover, the conclusion I want to reach in this paper is that we cannot
move from emotivism to moral properties’ impossibility, so if I’m wrong that we can formulate at least an
intelligible argument for moral properties’ impossibility that takes emotivism as one of its core premises then
my conclusion still stands. Hence I proceed with this kind of argument for moral properties’ impossibility
unapologetically. 11
Cf. Brown (2013, pp. 627-8).
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Is this argument, which I will refer to as the Emotivist Argument, sound? I have already
provided arguments for the truth of P1-P4. However, there are objections to especially P1 that
have to be considered (I don’t think that P2-P4 are problematic). In what follows I first
discuss and reject what strike me as potential problems with P1. After that I argue that
although Strong is falsified by Emotivist Argument, Weak is not and hence that Emotivist
Argument does not oblige us to accept that moral properties are impossible (recall that we
can only accept this when both Weak and Strong are false).
3 Against the Emotivist Argument for the Impossibility of Moral Properties
P1 is the emotivist claim that moral semantics entails that we cannot refer to moral properties.
The argument for P1 was that if the function of moral language is to express non-
representational emotions (as well as distinctively non-moral propositions) then we cannot
use moral language to represent moral facts. But we have to be able to represent moral facts
in order to figure out what the referents of our moral terms, expressing the moral concepts,
are. Therefore, if emotivist semantics is true we cannot refer to moral properties.
One problem with this argument is that it ignores the possibility of thinking about the
instantiation conditions of moral properties in a second-order theoretical discourse about
morality. Perhaps talk about, rather than talk with the aid of, moral concepts reveals the
content of these concepts. In other words, only if emotivist semantics carries over to our
metaethical language does it follow that we cannot formulate the instantiation conditions of
moral properties. But we are yet to see an argument that things carry over in this way, or that
we cannot use metaethical discourse to decide on moral properties’ instantiation conditions.
There is a second problem with P1 as well. It doesn’t even sound right to say that if
emotivism is true we can’t discover the referents of our terms from a first-order moral
perspective. As quasi-realists have forced early emotivists to recognise, the syntactic surface
structure of moral language suggests that moral language is representational. Emotivists
might be right that deep down moral language isn’t want it appears to be, but why couldn’t
we use moral language for what it appears to be; viz., a tool for representing the world? All
sorts of language can be used for all sorts of purposes consistently with its literal meaning.
For instance, we can use moral language to make others feel ashamed even when the notion
of shame plays no role in our account of morality itself. So why wouldn’t we be able to use
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moral language as a tool for formulating the instantiation conditions of moral properties?
Again we are yet to see an argument here.
Emotivists wishing to argue that moral properties are impossible can avoid this
second problem by arguing that using moral language as a tool for representing the world
goes against the primary function of moral language. Depending on whatever it is that turns
out to be essential to moral language, if anything, so long as this does not contradict the
possibility of making others feel ashamed there is no problem in using moral language to
make others feel ashamed. On the emotivist theory though, the literal meaning of moral
language is non-representational and so the attempt to use moral language as a tool for
representing the world does go against what moral language really is. This is clearly not
possible and thus solves the second problem.
How about the first problem; the suggestion that emotivist semantics would have to
carry over to the meta-level for it to become impossible to formulate moral properties’
instantiation conditions? Solve this problem by claiming that a divide between first-order and
second-order moral language is untenable. Seemingly second-order claims like ‘Kicking dogs
is wrong completely independently of us’ are themselves first-order normative claims that get
their meaning through non-representational semantics (Blackburn 1984, p. 197). This is a
well-known move that quasi-realists make and I will let my emotivist borrow it (and I assume
that it works) to get the strongest possible version of the Emotivist Argument on the table.
With these amendments aboard, Emotivist Argument can now be used to falsify
Strong (viz., the claim that there is a possible world W’, identical to the actual world in all
non-moral respects, in which there are moral properties). For now moral semantics
completely bars the possibility of representing moral facts in this world and hence the
possibility of figuring out what the referents of our moral terms are. Emotivist Argument
achieves this because it denies the existence of a non-emotivist second-order theoretical
language with which we can formulate moral properties’ instantiation conditions (it solves
problem 1) and because it denies that the emotivist first-order moral language we do have can
be used for what it appears to be; viz., a tool for representing moral facts (it solves problem
2). P1 is true, and given P2-4 we can now move from P1-P4 to C, at least so long as we have
Strong in mind when we think about C’s mention of moral properties’ impossibility.
But can Emotivist Argument falsify Weak? Still focussing on P1 we can ask, What
about the thought that moral language itself might have been different? I think it might have
been, that emotivists are forced to acknowledge this, and that moral properties are therefore
possible in worlds not non-morally identical to ours. In particular, I think that a language that
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is identical in subject matter to our moral language but is representational rather than non-
representational is possible, counts as a moral language, and determines that there are moral
properties in those worlds in which moral discourse looks like that.12
From this it follows that
Weak is true and hence that moral properties are possible.
The only thing that this objection to Emotivism Argument lacks, so far as I can tell, is
an account of how we can know that the agents in a different possible world are having a
representational moral semantics, rather than a representational shmoral semantics, where a
shmoral semantics is a semantics that may look a lot like moral semantics but just isn’t quite
it. The fact that I haven’t formulated such an account so far renders my objection vulnerable
to the following objection. We can’t accept Humpty Dumpty’s Dictum that words can mean
whatever we wish for them to mean (Jackson 1998, p. 118). We can’t say that ‘is morally
right’ stands for ‘is a table’, that the representational moral semantics of agents in a different
possible world is about tables and thus that moral properties are possible because tables are
possible (and, indeed, that moral properties are actual because tables are instantiated in the
actual world).13
We need some constraints on what counts as a moral property, and, the reply
to my objection to Emotivist Argument continues, the best thing we can do to get these
constraints is to look at the way in which we presently use moral words. Unfortunately, if we
thus treat moral terms as rigid designators then given that our current moral language is non-
representational we know that there are no referents of our moral terms at all, in any possible
world. Moral properties are impossible after all; in every world. Both Strong and Weak are
false.
The way to deal with this reply is to insist that not agreeing that a representational
language with recognisable moral subject matter counts as a moral language condemns the
intuitively interesting and substantive discussion between representationalists and non-
representationalists in moral semantics—and cognitivists and non-cognitivists more
broadly—to the realm of conceptual confusion. For then representational moral semantics can
never count as moral semantics as a matter of conceptual necessity. I argue that it is better to
have an antirealist theory of morality that can only be used to argue that there are no moral
properties in the actual world as a matter of contingent fact and that saves metaethical
discussion from conceptual confusion than to have an antirealist theory of morality that can
12
This move wouldn’t be possible if moral properties are understood in the pleonastic sense according to which
they are necessary existences (Olson 2014, p. 12n.17); however, we have already rejected this way of thinking
about moral properties (see the Introduction). That this move works on the non-pleonastic way of thinking about
moral properties will be argued in the below. 13
Cf. Stevenson (1937, p. 14) on defining moral goodness as something that is “pink with yellow trimmings.”
14
give one the impossibility of moral properties but has the implausible consequence that other
metaethical theories that intuitively should count as contender theories about morality turn
out to be conceptually impossible. Emotivists therefore face the following dilemma:
Dilemma
If we travel from one world to another looking for moral languages then we are looking for
sameness of meaning and not merely sameness of tokening. A world in which people utter
statements that sound like ‘stealing is wrong’ but the meaning of which is ‘there exist
socks’—as is possible—isn’t a world in which there is a moral language. But how do we
determine sameness of meaning? The emotivist has just two options. Either she insists that
sameness of meaning is determined by the non-representational, emotion-evincing function
of our actual moral language. But then, as suggested above, representational languages that
intuitively count as moral languages must be said not to be moral languages after all, and the
debate between non-cognitivists and cognitivists is purely verbal. Or emotivists can agree
(with me) that languages with a representational function count as moral languages, but then
they can no longer defend Emotivist Argument for Morality’s Impossibility.
The first horn of Dilemma, I surmise, cannot be embraced. But then emotivism cannot be
used to argue for moral properties’ impossibility.
I can think of just two ways of objecting to Dilemma. The first objection is that
emotivists should be interpreted as holding the view that it is essential to the meaning of a
moral judgment that the judgment is not representational. And if emotivism must be
interpreted in this way then Dilemma’s second horn cannot be embraced. The only option
becomes to accept its first horn, in which case moral properties are impossible. Against this
suggestion we should note that this would be a very strange view to hold for emotivists.
Emotivists need to be able to say (and have said a matter of historical fact) that this thing
called moral language in the actual world is recognisable as moral language even though it
seems representational whilst really—shock, horror!—this thing called moral language is in
fact non-representational and still recognisable as moral language. For if they can’t say this
then they will be changing the subject from talking about an apparently representational
moral semantics to a non-representational shmoral semantics in actual fact, which is clearly
at odds with what they argue. But if emotivists agree that there could be something that is
recognisable as moral language and has a representational function then Dilemma kicks in
again. And Dilemma forces emotivists to accept that Weak is true and hence that moral
properties are possible.
My arguments here (and later on as well) rely on the claim that metaethical views
should not entail that other metaethicists who hold a different view are conceptually
confused. The second objection to Dilemma is that it is not bad for a metaethical view to
15
entail this. Given the a priori way in which most metaethical debate is conducted, much of it
seems to be conceptual analysis. This seems to commit most metaethicists to holding that
their opponents are conceptually confused, which is not bad as conceptual confusions need
not be obvious. I respond by noting that this is true but also not the whole story. Metaethics
is, for a large part, conceptual analysis. But it must also be responsive to worldly facts. To
take just one example of a metaethical quandary, we need to figure out how obligations can
(normatively and perhaps also motivationally) bind people. To do this we need to be clear on
what obligations are, exactly, and as a matter of conceptual analysis, but we also need to have
knowledge of what human beings are like. If the great apes are moral agents of sorts then
understanding how obligations bind them, if they have obligations, will be different from
understanding how obligations, if we have any, bind us. And this difference does not depend
solely on the concept of an obligation but at least also in part on what apes and humans are
like as a matter of contingent empirical fact. So metaethics is responsive to empirical facts.
Let’s apply this to my Dilemma. One empirical fact that I have argued metaethics is and
ought to be responsive to is people’s conceptions of (the concept) morality. I have given an
argument for this claim. Without any input at all about how people as a matter of contingent
fact think about morality we will be completely in the dark as to what we should study as
metaethicists (geese, beer, socks, beer factories?). Interestingly, when we look at people (and
philosophers are ‘ordinary folk’, in Michael Smith’s apt phrase; Smith 1994, p.1) we find that
although their conceptions of morality overlap in important ways, they also disagree about
what morality is about. This is an empirical fact that metaethics must accommodate and
shouldn’t dismiss by saying that metaethics is all about conceptual analysis (for if it does then
it loses its grip on what morality is at least roughly about). So metaethics cannot be purely
conceptual analysis, and any argument in metaethics that entails this is implausible at least to
some extent. And my argument was comparative: it is better to have an antirealist theory of
morality that can only be used to argue that there are no moral properties in the actual world
as a matter of contingent fact and that saves metaethical discussion from conceptual
confusion than to have an antirealist theory of morality that can give one the impossibility of
moral properties but has the implausible consequence that metaethics is purely conceptual
analysis. So the second problem for my argument, which was that it implausibly entails that
metaethics can’t be just conceptual analysis, can be set aside, for it is in fact plausible for any
argument in metaethics to entail this.
Finally it should be noted that this argument for the possibility of moral properties
based on Dilemma has consequences for our thinking about their actuality. Once we agree
16
that a representational semantics with moral subject matter counts as a moral semantics then
we might introduce such a semantics into our world—and hence, perhaps, introduce moral
properties alongside this. Whether this will work depends not only on whether the moral
properties that can then be described with the use of the new moral semantics exist (Mackie-
type worries about queerness might still disqualify such properties from inclusion in our
ontology) but also on whether we can introduce the new moral semantics into the actual
world. These are difficult issues that require further research that is beyond the scope of this
paper.
4 The Error-Theoretic Argument for the Impossibility of Moral Properties
In this section I formulate the error-theoretic version of the argument for the impossibility of
moral properties. Having already rejected the attempt to move from metaphysical queerness
to impossibility (see n5 and n12 above), we no longer have to discuss Joyce (2001) and Olson
(2014). I do consider Streumer’s error theory and also the highly underappreciated but
interestingly different error theory of Stephen Schiffer.
But I start with the kind of error theory that is prima facie most likely to entail the
necessary nonexistence of moral properties. It asserts that, although moral language is
representational, it supplies instantiation conditions for moral properties that are mutually
inconsistent so that no world could possibly satisfy them. We can start with the claim that
moral language is “semantically incoherent” and derive the “metaphysical implication …
that … there is nothing in particular to be realist about—no properties … count as the
referents of … moral terms” (Loeb 2008, pp. 357-58). The semantic incoherence stems from
the persistence of fundamental disagreement between cognitivists and non-cognitivists, which
is “evidence that inconsistent elements—in particular, commitments both to and against
objectivity—may be part of any accurate understanding of the central moral terms” (Loeb
2008, pp. 357-58). The metaphysical thesis that moral properties are impossible follows from
error theory for much the same reason that the impossibility of moral properties follows from
emotivism. We cannot refer to moral properties (this time not because of the non-
representational nature of moral language but due to moral language being, albeit
representational, internally inconsistent) so we should reject their very idea. And if we have
to reject their very idea then moral properties are impossible. Hence the error-theoretic
argument for the impossibility of moral properties is virtually identical to the Emotivist
17
Argument except for the fact that it states error theory rather than emotivism as the reason
why moral semantics entails that we cannot refer to moral properties:
Error-Theoretic Argument for Moral Properties’ Impossibility
P1’ Error theory: moral semantics entails that we cannot refer to moral properties
P2 If (P1’) then we should reject the very idea of moral properties
P3 We should reject the very idea of moral properties [From P1’, P2]
P4 If (P3) then moral properties are impossible
C Moral properties are impossible [From P3, P4]
I will occasionally refer to this argument as the Error-Theoretic Argument. I argue that, like
the Emotivist Argument, it fails to establish C, at least when we interpret the nature of moral
properties’ impossibility in C as referring to Weak.
Consider P1’. It is sufficiently similar to P1 for the same sort of objection as we
formulated against P1 to have force against it. So note that even when moral language in this
world is in trouble, this doesn’t mean that there is no possible world in which moral language
is representational and coherent and therefore leads the way to moral properties over there, in
which case moral properties are possible. Strong will be false if Loeb is right as moral
language is incoherent in the actual world. But Weak won’t be false because there are worlds
in which moral language is coherent.
Loeb might reply that moral semantics is necessarily incoherent (this is a structurally
similar move to that which the friend of Emotivist Argument made when she said that moral
language is necessarily non-representational). Humpty Dumpty’s dictum is false, Loeb might
reason, and so we need to ensure that the coherent language we are imagining counts as a
moral language. Unfortunately, Loeb might continue, what we should go by in that case is
how moral language works in the actual world, and in the actual world moral language is
incoherent. Moral language is necessarily coherent: every time we are in another world
asking ourselves whether this coherent language is a moral language, we need to return to
moral language in the actual world. But in the actual world moral language is incoherent.
Strong is false, and so is Weak.
Given moral language’s complexity and richness in subject matter, this move will be
difficult to defend. The concept ROUND SQUARE is probably necessarily incoherent because
taking either roundness or squareness out of it leaves a concept that is radically different
from ROUND SQUARE. By contrast, taking the incoherence out of our moral language still
18
yields a recognisable moral language, as we must admit on pain of condemning the
interesting discussions about the nature of morality to the realm of conceptual confusion.
Take Jackson’s formulation of a ‘mature’ folk morality purged of its inconsistencies (1998).
By all accounts, and even though he has omitted inconsistencies from the folk morality he
started with, his mature folk morality is still morality. Or take Railton’s (1986) account of a
revised moral discourse, which was coherent to begin with but impossible to defend for
metaphysical reasons. It still counts as an account of morality once purged of its coherent
commitment to categorical moral reasons. Neither Jackson nor Railton has changed the
subject. But if this is true then Loeb can’t respond to my objection by claiming that moral
language is necessarily incoherent. So Weak is false, and moral properties are possible.
Moreover, this way of looking at the issue suggests that we can also attack Loeb’s
claim that Strong is false. If we can, with Jackson and Railton, purge moral language of an
inconsistency and still end up with a coherent moral language then moral language doesn’t
even have to be incoherent in the actual world. We can simply take our current moral
language (which, by hypothesis, is internally inconsistent because it contains objectivist and
subjectivist elements), purge it from its inconsistency and use it to refer to moral properties.
This introduces moral properties into the actual world at least so long as the properties thus
referred to are metaphysically possible. However, figuring out whether we can implement
this change in moral language in the actual world is a task that is beyond the scope of this
paper, as is the task of establishing whether the properties that could be described with the
new semantics aren’t too queer for inclusion into our ontology. In conclusion, Loeb’s error
theory does not falsify Weak and might not be able to falsify Strong either. It cannot take us
to the impossibility of moral properties.
I continue with Streumer’s version of error theory. Streumer defends the claim that
normative judgments are beliefs that ascribe normative properties (Streumer 2013).14
He also
defends the claim that there are no moral properties (Streumer 2008, Streumer 2011).
Suppose normative properties are identical to descriptive properties (which, by definition, are
not intrinsically normative). This entails that we should be able to say which descriptive
properties normative properties are identical to. But we can never identify which normative
properties are identical to which descriptive properties as this is determined by how the folk
apply normative terms and the folk disagree about how to apply these. Thus normative
properties aren’t identical to descriptive properties. Moreover, there are no irreducibly
14
I write ‘normative’ rather than ‘moral’ judgments and properties as Streumer’s argument applies to all
normative properties, not just moral properties (this immaterial for my purposes in my paper).
19
normative properties either. This is because Jackson’s (1998) argument for that claim works
(Streumer 2011, pp. 338-9). This entails that there are no normative properties at all.
How about Weak and Strong? Strong is falsified: travel to any world non-morally
identical to the actual world and one will find the folk disagreeing about the instantiation
conditions of moral properties to such an extent that we must say that moral language does
not allow us to refer to moral properties, which means that we must reject the very idea of
moral properties, and hence that moral properties are impossible. But Weak will not be
falsified as we can imagine a world in which the folk do agree about how to apply normative
terms. Brown notes that on Streumer’s view this sort of agreement is not sufficient as “future
members of the linguistic community might grow up to disagree with their parents on how to
apply normative terms, and thus the normative beliefs of the parents and children would form
an inconsistent set” (2013, p. 630; also see Streumer 2011). And Brown’s thought is that in
that case Weak is false.
But this can’t be right. There might indeed very well be a community in which
children grow up to disagree with their parents, but there will also be a community, in yet a
different possible world, in which this will never happen. In such a community moral
language gives us determinate instantiation conditions for moral properties. Weak is not false.
Moreover, it looks as though this result might carry over to the actual world (we might devise
our moral communities in such a way that they no longer experience inter-generational
disagreement about the correct application of moral terms). From this it would follow that
Strong too can’t be said to be false either and hence that Streumer’s error theory is false
(although, again, a determinate verdict on this must await further research that is not the topic
of this paper).
I close with Schiffer, who argues that moral properties exist albeit just in the sense of
being mere shadows of predicates. The idea is that every meaningful predicate F has a
nominalization, ‘the property of being F’, which cannot fail to refer. The property of being F
is a pleonastic gift of the predicate F, but this does not entail that moral properties are also
instantiated in any particular world, although they might. So can moral properties be
instantiated? They can’t. For moral properties don’t have any instantiation conditions at all
(Schiffer 1990, pp. 603-4, pp. 606-7; also see Schiffer 2003, Chapter 6). The claim that moral
properties don’t have instantiation conditions is a consequence of Schiffer’s use theory of
sameness of meaning. One might think that two predicates have the same meaning if and only
if the property that gives the meaning to the predicates can be identified first and if and only
if both predicates are relevantly semantically related to that property. Contrastingly,
20
Schiffer’s use theory states that sameness of meaning can be established by showing relevant
sameness of use, where this is specifiable without a prior investigation into whether an
expression is related in the right sort of way to a property. Unfortunately, given the
persistence and omnipresence of ‘faultless’ moral disagreement—disagreement that obtains
in the absence of false non-moral beliefs and the like—we can’t establish relevant sameness
of use. We simply don’t have sufficiently similar shared referential intentions for our moral
terms and hence the concepts that these terms express (so although interestingly different
from Streumer’s error theory in many respects, this claim is a precursor of Streumer’s claim
that the folk can’t be said to agree to a sufficient extent on the application of moral terms
expressing moral concepts). So there is no moral proposition that is relevantly determinately
true. Hence error theory is true.
How does this relate to Weak and Strong? Strong is falsified—travel to any world
non-morally identical to the actual world and one will again encounter people who have
referential intentions for moral terms that are so different that determinate instantiation
conditions for moral properties cannot be formulated on their basis. But Weak will not be
falsified as we can imagine a world in which people do have sufficiently similar referential
intentions. To this Schiffer might object that moral language is necessarily such that it cannot
supply determinate instantiation conditions for moral properties. This move is similar to the
move I suggested on behalf of Loeb above, which was that moral language necessarily
supplies incoherent instantiation conditions for moral properties rather than being unable to
supply determinate instantiation conditions at all. The similarity of these objections suggests
that my reply to Loeb will carry over to Schiffer. My reply to Loeb was that the
omnipresence of theories that we intuitively regard as moral theories even though they are
underpinned by different conceptions of morality casts doubt on the view that moral language
is necessarily incoherent. Indeed, denying that these theories are theories of morality
condemns the discussion between their various adherents to the realm of conceptual
confusion. The analogous reply to Schiffer’s suggestion is that we must acknowledge that
there are slightly different conceptions of moral language that also count as moral languages
(on pain of condemning the discussion between Schiffer’s account and these accounts to the
realm of conceptual confusion) and that it follows from this that moral language is possible,
at least in those world not non-morally identical to the present world. It is more plausible to
formulate error theory as a contingent thesis than to accept it as a necessary thesis that has
this consequence. Furthermore we might again be able to argue that Strong is false too as a
revision of the workings of our actual moral language may be able to give us determinate
21
instantiation conditions for moral properties in the actual world. In that case Schiffer’s error
theory is neither necessarily nor contingently true. However, an investigation into the
tenability of this move as well researching the potential queerness of the properties that could
be referred to with the new moral semantics are tasks that lie beyond the scope of this paper.
On the assumption that this discussion is representative for error theory as such, error
theory, like emotivism, cannot be used to argue for the impossibility of moral properties.
5 Conclusion
Neither emotivism nor error theory entails that moral properties are impossible. Although it
might be true that moral properties are not instantiated in the actual world as matter of
contingent fact, we can always find possible worlds that are non-morally different from the
actual world in the right sorts of ways so that they contain moral properties. Moreover, the
arguments for the possibility of moral properties we get might have consequences for moral
properties’ actuality, although further research is necessary to establish whether we can
introduce the required changes in moral language in the actual world and whether the moral
properties we get are metaphysically respectable.
Acknowledgements Thanks to Pekka Väyrynen, Andrew McGonigal, Gerald Lang, John Divers,
Michael Bench-Capon, my audience at the Postgraduate Session 2013 (87th Joint Session of the
Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association) and especially an anonymous reviewer for
Philosophical Studies for helpful comments on various drafts of this paper. Financial support is
acknowledged from the Royal Institute of Philosophy (Jacobsen Fellowship, 2012-2013).
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