A methodologically naturalist defense of ethical non-naturalism

Abstract

ion Dennett has famously—or perhaps more accurately, infamously—defended a heuristic account of intentionality: the Intentional stance. The Intentional stance is exceedingly hard to characterize, attempting to occupy an uncomfortable middle ground between realism and anti-realism regarding intentionality. Nonetheless, Dennett’s thought on the subject is instructive. Again, I quote him at length: Consider the case of a chess-playing computer, and the different strategies or stances one might adopt as its opponent in trying to predict its moves. There are three difference stances of interest to us. First there is the design stance. If one knows exactly how the computer is designed... one can predict its designed response to any move one makes by following the computation instructions of the program. One’s prediction will come true provided only that the computer performs as designed—that is, without breakdown... [O]ne can make design-stance predictions of the computer’s response at several different levels of abstraction, depending on whether one’s design treats as smallest functional elements strategy-generators and consequence-testers, multipliers and dividers, or transistors and switches...