Abstract
According to Michael Smith, normative realists cannot explain why people act on their normative judgments as reliably as they do, so we should embrace constructivism (or perhaps constitutivism) instead. Normative realists have countered by insisting that they can establish (1) that rationality typically requires people to act on their normative judgments and (2) that people typically are rational. I acknowledge that normative realists can establish (1) but argue that (2) poses problems both for non-naturalists and for reductive naturalists. I close by suggesting that Davidson’s non-reductive (or “anomalous”) form of naturalism may give normative realists a better chance of success.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The “just too different” slogan is due to Enoch. See, e.g., his 2011, p. 4.
- 3.
- 4.
For the unfortunately named but still extraordinarily influential “argument from queerness,” see Mackie (1977, Chap. 1).
- 5.
Unless I note otherwise, I will use the term "reason" throughout this paper to refer to normative reasons, not to operative or motivating reasons.
- 6.
More could of course be said about what, exactly, distinguishes Humean accounts of deliberation from others, but this should do for our purposes here.
- 7.
- 8.
As we shall see, one important question dividing philosophers here is how the motivating states explaining people’s actions are themselves to be explained.
- 9.
Once again, while more could be said about what, exactly, distinguishes Kantian accounts of deliberation from others, this should do for our purposes here.
- 10.
Since realists, as I understand them, deny that normative truths are mere products of rational deliberation, they will count as externalists in this sense.
- 11.
- 12.
Again, McDowell (1995) makes points of this broadly realist sort very forcefully.
- 13.
Smith discusses his differences here with Williams in his 1995, Sect. 2.
- 14.
Smith does not explicitly include (2); but see below, especially note 21.
- 15.
For Smith’s own statement of this argument, see his 1994, Chap. 5.
- 16.
For further discussion of this important worry, see, e.g., Dreier (1996).
- 17.
- 18.
As we shall see, I believe people’s desires necessarily aim, as a system, to get such reasons right, but that is a different matter.
- 19.
See Smith (1994, especially Sect. 3.5) for more on his understanding of the notion of systematic justification as it relates to strength of will.
- 20.
Revisionary naturalists could also define practicality rationality in terms of reason-responsiveness. But it is not easy to think of one who clearly does.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
In fact, he acknowledges it elsewhere in the same discussion (p. 436).
- 26.
Parfit (2017, Chap. 12) provides a very powerful statement of this view.
- 27.
See Myers (2012, especially the Postscript) for further development of this point.
- 28.
This last point deserves more argument than I can give it here.
- 29.
- 30.
- 31.
For more on this argument and its place in Davidson’s philosophy, see Myers and Verheggen (2016).
- 32.
See Railton (1986) for a version of revisionary naturalism that proceeds along something like these lines.
- 33.
This is what leaves him open to objections such as the ones Hieronymi offers in her 2009.
- 34.
Scanlon discusses normative epistemology and the method of reflective equilibrium in his 2014, especially lecture 4.
- 35.
- 36.
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Myers, R.H. (2021). Davidson’s Meta-normative Naturalism and the Rationality Requirement. In: Yang, S.CM., Myers, R.H. (eds) Donald Davidson on Action, Mind and Value. Logic in Asia: Studia Logica Library. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7230-2_2
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