Against the Fundamentality of Fit

Abstract

Abstract This chapter gives three arguments against the view, defended in the last century by A. C. Ewing and more recently by several philosophers, that ‘fitting’ is the fundamental ethical concept, underlying both evaluative concepts like ‘good’ and deontic ones like ‘ought’. The first argument says evaluative and deontic concepts differ too much, and in too important ways, for a common grounding in ‘fitting’ to be possible. The second examines the relation between the concept of fittingness and the non-ethical properties that make something fitting; it argues that in neither the deontic nor the evaluative context is this relation consistent with fittingness being fundamental. The third argument says that no gradable concept like ‘fitting’ (or ‘normative reason’ or ‘ought other things equal’) can be the basic deontic concept; that must be the entirely non-gradable ‘ought (simply or period)’. The chapter develops its arguments with frequent references to earlier discussions of these issues by Sidgwick, Prichard, Moore, Ross, Broad, and Ewing.