Normative Truths Research Articles

Know Your Rights: On Warranted Assertion and Truth

A standard objection to the suggestion that the fundamental norm of assertion is the truth norm (i.e., one must not assert p unless p) is that this norm cannot explain why warrant requires knowledge-level evidence. In a recent paper, Whiting has defended the truth-first approach to the norms of assertion by appeal to a distinction between the warrant there is to assert and the warrant one has to assert. I shall argue that this latest defensive strategy is unsuccessful.

Constructivism in Practical Philosophy

Constructivism in Practical Philosophy

The Nought Belief Paradox

A paradox is presented that the poses new problems for both the truth norm and the knowledge norm of belief.

Disagreeing about how to disagree

David Enoch’s excellent recent book, Taking Morality Seriously, provides a subtle, highly innovative, and stimulating set of arguments for ‘‘Robust Realism’’: the view that there are normative truths and facts, that such facts exist over and above any set of naturalistic facts, and that our claims about them ‘‘amount not just to an expression of any practical attitude, but to a representation of these normative truths and facts.’’ In this paper, we focus on the arguments Enoch gives to help along such a view in Chap. 2 of his book. Enoch’s arguments there are sometimes so complex and nuanced that we think the best way to convey his view is to initially present it in a very streamlined and simplified manner. Then we will introduce some of the complications that Enoch notes. After that, we will try to explain why we do not yet find Enoch’s arguments in Chap. 2 fully convincing. So, simplifying significantly, Enoch argues in Chap. 2 that it is typically normatively appropriate, when one is in a factual dispute with someone, to not compromise with that person but rather to stand one’s ground. Suppose I know the way to grandmother’s house better than you do. I am correct about how to get there and you are not, and I am also more justified in my opinion than you are. In such a case it seems that I ought not to (or am permitted not to) opt for a compromise where you decide this case and I decide the next, or where we flip a coin to decide which road we will take. But when we come to disputes concerning mere preferences, where there is no fact of the matter that we are disagreeing about, it is typically normatively

Deliberation, schmeliberation: Enoch’s indispensability argument

When you are going on holiday to the South Pole, you ought to pack your winter woollies. When you are going to see Aunt Agatha on her birthday, you might very sensibly take her some of those nice chocolates she likes. When you are visiting the lions at the safari park, it is a bad idea to get out of the car. Normative facts such as these do not strike me as very puzzling or mysterious or as offering very significant hostages to metaphysical fortune. Nothing, it might seem, could be more homely and straightforward. More extended stretches of practical reasoning appear similarly plain sailing. Tomorrow is Christmas Day and I am driving north to my family in Scotland. Because Scotland is far away I will want to stop and eat something. But because, in the UK, where I live, Christmas Day is a major holiday, nowhere will be open except a few petrol stations, and because the food you can buy in petrol stations is not very nice, it would make sense to prepare something in advance and take it with me. I have bread and there is chicken in the fridge that needs using up— it will go off before I get back. I am not a vegetarian. I like chicken. So I should make myself some chicken sandwiches. This is the sort of thing we call deliberation and of course we do it all the time. David Enoch’s Taking Morality Seriously is an admirably lucid and spirited defence of robust realism about the normative domain, the domain of reasons and values that guide and inform such thinking. The robustness distinguishes his realism from more metaphysically unassuming forms of normative realism. It holds normative truths to be irreducible to natural ones and views them as strongly mindindependent. Of course they might nonetheless be mind-dependent in the sense that

XV-The Russellian Retreat

Belief does aim at the truth. When our beliefs do not fit the facts, they cannot do what they are supposed to do, because they cannot provide us with reasons. We cannot plausibly deny that a truth norm is among the norms that govern belief. What we should not say is that the truth norm is the fundamental epistemic norm. In this paper, I shall argue that knowledge is the norm of belief and that the truth norm has a derivative status. Only a knowledge-first approach to epistemic normativity can explain why epistemic assessment has its inward-looking focus.

Practical Reasonableness: Some Metaethical Issues

This essay develops James Lenman’s view that ‘‘moral inquiry is politics.’’ Unlike empirical investigation, moral inquiry is not connected with a domain of facts that exist independently of the inquiry and help explain its success. It is outward looking – your thought that slavery is wrong is not a thought about you – but confident moral beliefs are not best understood as receptivity to moral aspects of the world. Rather, they come from successfully negotiating, constructing and sustaining the rules of a moral community. Lenman’s picture entails an expressivist approach to moral philosophy in contrast to moral realism, but it also exhibits cognitively ample forms of approval and disapproval that expressivists have not very fully explored. In order to frame the cognitive richness of practical deliberation, the first part of this discussion sets out important metaethical parameters. In particular it surveys differences between semantic and epistemic conceptions of truth in connection with determining and justifying reasons for belief. They suggest a case for saying that when philosophers speak of normative truth they can only demonstrate reasonableness. The second part of the discussion supports this case by displaying the advantages of focussing upon reasonableness. It supports locating a cognitivist expressivism between the extremes of normative realism and non-cognitivism where the weaknesses of standard expressivism can be avoided. The benefits include better understanding and potentially addressing many of the ethical and political issues that arise in morally engaged societies. Practical inquiry is inherently subject to disputes that go unsettled, making it dubious that ‘‘We may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our own conduct.’’ By preferring to make

Ideational change and the emergence of the international norm of truth and reconciliation commissions

What role does ideational change play in norm emergence? While there has been some attention to changes in the application of norms, most scholars refer to the ideas that are associated with a norm’s practice as being fixed. I argue that ideational change is a causal mechanism that facilitates norm emergence. In particular, I propose three types of content change that capture changes in the ideas associated with the goals expected to be attained by the application of the norm (‘logic of consequences’), with its morality (‘logic of appropriateness’), and with its relations with similar or alternative practices (‘specification’). These changes in the rational and moral reasoning and argumentation that frame the practice that is associated with an emerging norm are likely to make this practice congruent with more contexts and appealing for more states. To illustrate the content change proposition, this article traces the emergence of the international norm of truth and reconciliation commissions. In the debates that followed the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, truth and reconciliation commissions shifted from being seen as a political compromise to being regarded as a ‘holistic’ tool for social and political reconstruction and came to be associated with multiple democratizing effects. Truth and reconciliation commissions also shifted from being the ‘weaker alternative’ to trials to a practice that is morally equal and complementary to the judicial option. Taken as a whole, these changes in the expected utility, morality, and specification of truth and reconciliation commissions facilitated their emergence and consequent institutionalization as an international norm.

Queer challenges to evidence‐based practice

This paper aims to queer evidence-based practice by troubling the concepts of evidence, knowledge and mental illness. The evidence-based narrative that emerged within biomedicine has dominated health care. The biomedical notion of 'evidence' has been critiqued extensively and is seen as exclusive and limiting, and even though the social constructionist paradigm attempts to challenge the authority of biomedicine to legitimate what constitutes acceptable evidence or knowledge for those experiencing mental illness, biomedical notions of evidence appear to remain relatively intact. Queer theory offers theoretical tools to disrupt biomedical norms and challenges biomedical normativity to indicate how marginalisation occurs when normative truths about mental health classify those who differ from the norm as 'ill' or 'disordered'. Queer theory's emphasis on normativity serves the political aim to subvert marginalisation and bring about radical social and material change. Reference will be made to mental health subjects within each discourse by indicating how the body acts as a vehicle for knowing. Deleuzian notions of the rhizome are used as metaphor to suggest a relational approach to knowledge that does away with either/or positions in either biomedical, or queer knowledge to arrive at a both/and position where the biomedical, constructionist and queer are interrelated and entangled in needing the other for their own evolution. However, queer does not ask for assimilation but celebrates difference by remaining outside to disrupt that which is easily overlooked, assumed to be natural or represented as the norm. The task of queer knowledge is to do justice to the lives lived in the name of evidence-based practice and demands that we consider the relations of power where knowledge is produced. This pursuit creates different knowledge spaces where we identify new intersections that allow for socially just understandings of knowing or evidence to emerge.

I—Pascal Engel: Doxastic Correctness

Normative accounts of the correctness of belief have often been misconstrued. The norm of truth for belief is a constitutive norm which regulates our beliefs through ideals of reason. I try to show that this kind of account can meet some of the main objections which have been raised against normativism about belief: that epistemic reasons enjoy no exclusivity, that the norm of truth does not guide, and that normativism cannot account for suspension of judgement.

Belief Norms and Blindspots

AbstractI defend the thesis that beliefs are constitutively normative from two kinds of objections. After clarifying what a “blindspot” proposition is and the different types of blindspots there can be, I show that the existence of such propositions does not undermine the thesis that beliefs are essentially governed by a negative truth norm. I argue that the “normative variance” exhibited by this norm is not a defect. I also argue that if we accept a distinction between subjective and objective norms, there need be no worrying tension between doxastic norms of truth and doxastic norms of evidence. I show how a similar approach applies to the attitude of guessing. I then suggest that if we distinguish between practical and theoretical rationality, we will prefer a negative form of norm that does not positively oblige us to form beliefs. I finish by considering an alternative possible subjunctive form of norm that would also avoid problems with blindspots, but I suggest this has a nonintuitive consequence.

Ψεῦδος en palabras en República y relato εἰκóς en Timeo

En República II y III, Platón analiza el concepto de ψεῦδος (“falsedad o mentira”) y afirma que en algunas circunstancias es conveniente la utilización de lo que denomina ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ψεῦδος. El trabajo examina los argumentos para defender la aceptabilidad de recurrir a la falsedad, señala la distinción de niveles entre una verdad fáctica y una verdad normativa y muestra semejanzas entre el ψεῦδος de República y el discurso verosímil (εἰκὸς λόγος) en el Timeo.

The No Guidance Argument

AbstractIn a recent article, I criticized Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss's so‐called “no guidance argument” against the truth norm for belief, for conflating the conditions under which that norm recommends belief with the psychological state one must be in to apply the norm. In response, Glüer and Wikforss have offered a new formulation of the no guidance argument, which makes it apparent that no such conflation is made. However, their new formulation of the argument presupposes a much too narrow understanding of what it takes for a norm to influence behaviour, and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of the truth norm. Once this is taken into account, it becomes clear that the no guidance argument fails.

Distinguishing Belief and Imagination

AbstractSome philosophers (including Urmson, Humberstone, Shah, and Velleman) hold that believing that p distinctively involves applying a norm according to which the truth of p is a criterion for the success or correctness of the attitude. On this view, imagining and assuming differ from believing in that no such norm is applied. I argue against this view with counterexamples showing that applying the norm of truth is neither necessary nor sufficient for distinguishing believing from imagining and assuming. Then I argue that the different functional properties of these mental states are enough to distinguish them, and that norm‐application doesn't help us draw the functional distinctions.

If You Cannot Help Being Committed to It, then It Exists: A Defence of Robust Normative Realism

This review article examines David Enoch’s recent book Taking Morality Seriously and focuses on ‘the deliberative indispensability of irreducibly normative truths’ which is a central argument of the book. I will show that this important and original argument as it stands fails. I will also argue that if Enoch had embraced all the consequences of his argument, then he would have opened up a more promising line of argument via which to defend the robust realism of normative truths. I will, therefore, attempt to defend a modified version of robust realism of normative truths and, in so doing, I will show how all the implications of Enoch’s insight can fully be embraced. I will finally demonstrate how this modified version illuminates some Dworkinian insights on the nature of law, but also undermines Dworkin’s theory of constructive interpretation.

Taking morality seriously: a defense of robust realism

1. The View, The Motivation, The Book 2. The Argument from the Moral Implications of Objectivity (or Lack Thereof) 3. The Argument from the Deliberative Indispensability of Irreducibly Normative Truths 4. And Now, Robust Metaethical Realism 5. Doing with Less 6. Metaphysics 7. Epistemology 8. Disagreement 9. Motivation 10. Tallying Plausibility Points Bibliography Index

The alluringness of desire

A central aspect of desire is the alluringness with which the desired object appears to the desirer. But what explains the alluringness of desire? According to the standard view, desire presents its objects with a certain allure because desire involves believing that the desired object is good. However, this cannot explain how those who lack the cognitive sophistication required for evaluative concepts can nonetheless have desires, how nihilists can continue to have desires, nor how we can desire things we believe to be evaluatively neutral or even evaluatively bad. A variation on the standard view – that desire presents its objects with a certain allure because desire involves being in a belief-like state that represents the desired object to be good – avoids these problems, but still falsely entails that desire is subject to the norm of truth. Indeed, I argue that ultimately such cognitive accounts of the alluringness of desire have seemed compelling only because of the difficulty of providing an intelligible non-cognitive alternative and I proceed to make such an alternative account of the alluringness of desire explicit in broad outline, arguing that it promises a more faithful understanding of the phenomena.

Student Learning Outcomes for Biblical Studies in the Liberal Arts

AbstractWhat is the role of biblical studies in a liberal arts curriculum? At the 2009 North American Society of Biblical Literature conference, a panel of seven Bible scholars provided brief analyses and arguments about the appropriate goals of teaching biblical studies in undergraduate contexts in this historical moment. They consider and critique the notion of specific Student Learning Outcomes or Objectives (SLOs) for courses about the Bible. In the process they address questions such as: what is the relative importance of “coverage” (biblical literacy, disciplinary knowledge and methods, and the historical creation of the biblical texts) versus modern and historical reception and uses of these texts? In their contributions, the authors analyze ways that a biblical studies course can develop the critical reading and writing skills that are the hallmark of undergraduate education. Some authors find these skills furthered by not bracketing from study the normative truth claims in the texts and instead strategically and critically encouraging the identity work and religious seeking associated with religious uses of these texts. Others call attention to the institutional and classroom power dynamics which inform and are constituted by the current student learning outcomes movement.

No Amnesty from/for the International: The Production and Promotion of TRCs as an International Norm in Sierra Leone

The literature on norms is dominated by debates over the definition of norms, discussion of the evolution of norms, norm diffusion, or norm implementation, and accounts of positive features associated with norms such as cooperation, mutual understanding. This paper argues that “the story” of international norms—or the dominant account of norms—is primarily a white, Western version that assumes that norms emerge from equal exchanges and relationship between states, denying the marked economic and political inequality between global actors and largely disregarding the intense contestations and controls associated with norms. In turn, this paper is an attempt to examine the tensions between so-called international norms and “local” norms and practices as well as the power dynamics and economic constraints that influence so-called global norms. Keeping in mind these tensions between the “story” of international norms and the practical constraints for local actors in the global south, this paper includes uses of the case study of Sierra Leone to examine what happens when “international” norms, such as those associated with transitional justice conflict with “local” norms. Specifically, the local norm of amnesty within Sierra Leone is studied in contrast to the international norm of truth and reconciliation commissions.

A Jamesian Approach to Environmental Ethics

James's moral philosophy is a valuable resource for environmental philosophy because it reveals and impugns some deep, unhelpful assumptions about the relationship between moral theory and the moral life. In particular, James's ethics demonstrates that the debates in environmental ethics are better regarded as disputes about ideals of the kind of self and world we want, rather than as disputes over abstract propositions about the intrinsic of nature.1. IntroductionAmong the classical pragmatists, William James might not seem to be best the candidate to contribute to current environmental ethics debates. Besides sporadic remarks about non-human animals and experiences of nature, he says little that would lead one to believe that he was concerned with issues like the intrinsic of nature. His writings on pragmatism espouse a human-centered account of truth according to which those beliefs that satisfy human needs or, as James puts it, agreeably lead us, count as true. And, in the Philosopher and Moral Life, he explicitly says that the essence of good is the satisfaction of demand. If one confines one's attention to the that essay, it is easy to attribute to him a kind of desire -satisfaction utilitarianism according to which the best action is the one that maximizes as many demands as possible. Among its claims, this essay defends the following two normative propositions:1) EG: The essence of good: Whatever satisfies a demand is a good.2) JONT: James's objective normative truth: We are morally obligated to satisfy as many demands as possible. Or, among our available actions, we should take the one that frustrates the fewest demands.Given these claims, it would be easy to think of James's ethics as an early version of the many preference utilitarianisms developed in the twentieth century. Such views are prominent in economic and public policy. Sagoff criticizes one such approach - contingent valuation - on the grounds that it treats moral beliefs as preferences. The idea, in brief, is that environmental managers or policy-makers should include the preferences of environmentalists into the mix of those players who might have a stake in some environmental issue such as development or pollution. One might determine what policy would satisfy the most preferences by, for example, doing surveys about what environmentalists might be willing to pay to go to a park versus what developers might pay to develop it. The error, Sagoff argues, is treating moral beliefs as preferences.1 For one thing, a belief that it is morally obligatory to preserve a bit of untouched nature is typically not a desire for anything like the welfare of the believer. Even more fundamentally, moral beliefs are not mere preferences but rather conclusions of arguments that offer more or less persuasive reasons. Thus, to treat moral convictions as mere preferences to be included with other consumer wants in a maximizing decision procedure is to make a fundamental category mistake. The very content of the moral beliefs of many environmentalists are about the objectively intrinsic of nature. This moral belief contradicts the idea that decisions about nature are simply decisions about how to satisfy the most preferences possible. James's definition of the good in terms of demand satisfaction appears vulnerable to Sagoff s criticisms. Moreover, it would seem that James's ethics is at odds with the mainstream eco -centric environmental ethical theories that would be used to defend moral beliefs about the intrinsic of nature which, according to Sagoff, are not to be treated as mere preferences or desires. Most such ecocentric ethics defends two basic claims: the of non-sentient nature and the of wholes such as ecosystems and species. James's ethics appears to reject these claims. He seems to be an individualist about the locus of moral values - it is the desires of individuals that count. And, he seems to reject the notion that non-sentient nature has intrinsic value, at least if that claim is read as value independent of conscious valuers. …