On the explanatory power of some metaethical views

Abstract

Is goodness a natural property of objects? A nonnatural property? Strictly speaking, not a property at all? In the 'golden age' of metaethics, these questions were almost invariably addressed as questions about the meaning of "good"; about the sort of vocabulary one would need to define it; about whether its meaning had to be explained in terms of special 'nondescriptive' uses of language. But whatever the merits of this approach may have been, it cannot be said that it has produced much in the way of original work lately. In the last decade or so, while interest in normative ethics has peaked, metaethics has become almost a dead subject. Hence the need, I believe, for new approaches. I f golden age metaethicists may be described as having executed a "linguistic turn", the turn to be taken here is a frankly ontological one. I want to view naturalism and its rivals as stating explanatory ontological hypotheses respecting the nature of goodness. An ontological conception, like any other theory, may be judged by its explanatory power in this case, by its capacity to explain (to yield as logical consequences of its basic postulates) those structural features of goodness we take to be sufficiently deep rooted to serve as appropriate tests for a theory of this sort. Obviously, the more deeply entrenched the features we select, the better. the test for a theory the less likely that an explanatory failure can simply be ignored. The goal, then, is simply to see which conception of goodness better explains what a theory of goodness ought to explain. The conclusion will be that there is no serious contest here: the view that goodness is a natural property far exceeds its rivals in explanatory power. One particular type of naturalist view (a dispositional view) is to be preferred on these grounds, I go on to show, over all contenders naturalist or not.