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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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