Abstract

As I UNDERSTAND NATURALISM, it is the thesis that a philosopher, engaged in explicating, analyzing, or reconstructing the world in sufficient richness to solve philosophical problems, need not appeal to concepts other than those which designate what is empirically investigable. Naturalism contrasts with views which appeal to the supernatural, with views which appeal to non-natural ethical properties, as well as with views which construe ethical language as non-descriptive or non-cognitive. Professor Walhout thinks I confuse two senses of non-naturalism, the general or metaphysical sense and the specifically ethical one.1 I agree that these are not identical, but unlike Walhout, I take them to be related in that the ethical variety is a species of the more general metaphysical position. An ethical non-naturalist is one who believes that ethical terms or propositions do not designate what is empirically investigable. G. E. Moore, who characterizes as fallacious any attempt to analyze ethical terms into terms amenable to scientific investigation, may be taken as an ethical non-naturalist, as may early positivists such as Russell and Ayer when they contend that ethical propositions are disguised exclamations or exhortations. Ross is rightly cited as an ethical non-naturalist, I believe, but Walhout's reason for so classifying him is imprecise. It is not merely one's belief in intuited, unanalyzable properties that makes one an ethical non-naturalist. After all, one may admit, for instance, without being an ethical non-naturalist that yellow is intuited and is an unanalyzable or smooth property. Rather, to be an ethical non-naturalist one must believe that there is a categorial difference between ethical and empirical terms, that the former function in a way completely different from the latter, either by designating different things altogether or by performing a different function in the language. Walhout goes on to say that there are other positions in ethical theory besides naturalism and non-naturalism. I wonder. That there are borderline cases I grant; certain contemporary ethical theories such as rule-utilitarianism seem to me to constitute impressive attempts to get the best of both theories by incorporating elements from each. Stevenson's emotive theory also shows tendencies in the

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