Unfortunately, for some reason I can no longer update this post using the blogger program. Luckily, I can get around this problem by posting any modifications as PDFs. So the PDF containing my post is given here. Enjoy. [And thanks to Rayndeon for advising that I to do this.]
The abridged argument map which summarizes each section's argument is given here.
The abridged map is a bit outdated and the post is incomplete, much of it still in stream-of-consciousness form. It's also long. Very long. Treat as a working draft. I expect to be working on this for at least the rest of the year, and will incorporate further rebuttals to arguments against moral naturalism as time goes on.
When I first posted this I was, in part, trying to present the strongest version of atheistic moral realism (i.e. moral realism that did not require nor imply God's existence) I could to counter theistic claims regarding morality implying God's existence. I wanted to show proponents of these claims what a plausible meta-ethical view looked like, as opposed to the wildly implausible views they were offering. In the process, however, I argued myself out of moral nihilism and into accepting the very moral realist position I laid out! "Hooray!," I thought. "I just constructed a novel position." I should have known better; there's nothing new under the Sun. I soon realized (sometime in early to mid September 2012) that the position I defended was just one variety of Cornell realism.
This was both affirming and distressing. It was affirming because I argued for Cornell realism based mostly on arguments I constructed on my own, as opposed to just following along with another philosopher's views. I had heard of Cornell realism and read a few essays from Brink, Boyd, and Sturgeon in undergrad. But those essays never convinced me to reject moral nihilism and so I mostly forgot about them. It's nice to see things come full-circle, with me now advocating my own version of Cornell realism. Now on to why this was distressing: my view isn't completely novel. This means that somewhere in the world, Boyd, Sturgeon, and Brink are saying "U MAD BRO?" to all the atheistic moral naturalists who, like me, ended up arguing for the position that trio advocated in the late 80's and early 90's, and which they still continue to defend to this day. But that's alright. I'm not going to reject a position I agree with regardless of whether it's popular, reviled, old, or new.
So I received my copy of Brink's "Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics" in the last week of September 2012. I can already see a number of places where he and I disagree, but we'll see where things go from here.
Fascinating set of arguments. I look forward to mulling over these arguments over the next few days. You sure weren't kidding about the length!
ReplyDeleteVery nice set of arguments. I look forward to mulling them over and I particularly like your arguments against the conceptual RR argument.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, on the issue of Reformed epistemology, you might be interested in seeing Tyler Wunder's criticisms of the argument. See his dissertation here and his interview here.
Btw, you should consider bundling this and other papers into downloadable PDFs as well besides as blogposts. That would be a nice addition, considering the detail you've put into this paper.
Thanks for the paper rayndeon. After reading the introduction, I'm really excited about the part where he says he'll discuss the conceptual argument Plantinga offers against naturalist's accounting for proper functioning of a mind (or cognitive system). You probably already know my views of function and natural selection, but I'm interested to see how Wunder tackles the issue.
DeleteOn the PDF point, I probably won't do that for awhile. I want to revise these the posts to the point where I feel comfortable with all the spelling/grammar, paragraph + argument structure, and so on. Maybe after that I'll tranfer them to PDFs. Wait a sec: if I make changes to the post will the changes automatically appear in the PDF? Or do I need to make a new PDF everytime I make an edit or spelling correction?
Thanks for the advice.
Wunder offers a notion of "proper function" in naturalism in terms of the health of an organism. I'm not sure how successful that is - angstreich seemed to have reservations that "health" might also be reducible to an intentional notion. I sent you and the rest of the gang some papers on naturalism and proper function.
DeleteAlso, you'd need to make a new PDF each time or edit an existing PDF. The changes won't occur automatically - unless there is some program out there that can do that for you. The simplest PDF creator is, well, PDFCreator.
I just got to the point in Wunder's interview where he discusses Plantinga's "extended A/C model" and the "sensus divinitatis" from Calvin. I found it so ironic I burst out laughing!
DeleteIt highlights EXACTLY what I always suspected: externalistic religious epistemology boils down to making absurd claims regarding our cognitive faculties (in this case that we have a mental capacity geared toward detecting the divine) and then not backing that up with any evidence from cognitive science! It's a cop-out. If we do have a "religious capacity," then as I discussed in sections IV-D-3b-ii and IV-D-3c-iii, it's horribly unreliable and thus by Plantinga's own standards, the beliefs produced by it lack warrant.
So in the end, if one wants to be a SERIOUS externalist religious epistemologist, one needs to dive head first into the empirical data regarding religious cognition. And given most theist's hostility to the scientific examination of religion, I think we can rule out most theists as serious advocates of properly basic beliefs or externalist epistemolgy.
Externalism is only for the empirically-minded.