The Wrong Answer to an Improper Question?

References

• I am grateful to Sam Black, Josh Gert, Evan Tiffany, and Jon Tresan for helpful and challenging comments on an early draft of this paper.
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• I thank Josh Gert for helpful discussion of this example.
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• Prichard , H. A. 1949 . “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”, in ” . In Moral Obligation: Essays and Lectures 21 – 37 . Oxford : Oxford University Press . 1–17 (at 1). This essay was first published in Mind 21 (1912)
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• Ibid.
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• 1 – 2 . Ibid.
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• Ibid., 1.
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• 13 – 14 . Ibid.
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• Ibid., 16.
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• Ibid., 8.
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• 13 – 14 . Ibid.
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• Ibid., 16.
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• Ibid., 9.
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• 7 – 9 . Ibid.
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• 2 – 7 . Ibid.
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• Ibid., 1.
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• 1 – 2 . Ibid.
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• Ibid., 16.
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• Ibid., 1.
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• I thank Sam Black, Josh Gert, and Evan Tiffany for pressing me to clarify this usage.
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• There is also an explanatory use of “makes sense,” as in the claim that evolutionary biology can “make sense” of biological diversity. I will avoid this usage. All actions can perhaps be explained, at least in principle, but many actions do not make sense (in the sense of the expression that interests me) since people sometimes act without a suitable and sufficient justification.
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• 1990 . Wise Choices, Apt Feelings Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . One might of course stipulate that this is how one will use the expression “makes sense.” Obviously I have no objection to this stipulation, but I use the expression differently, as I explain in the text. Allan Gibbard uses the expression as equivalent to “rational” in one use of the latter term. See Gibbard, 37.
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• Copp . See “Normativity, Deliberation, and Queerness.”
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• Ibid.
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• Copp . “The Normativity of Self-Grounded Reason”; see also Copp, “The Ring of Gyges: Overridingness and the Unity of Reason.”
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• Both of the questions may be motivated by a desire to understand morality and moral reasons rather than by any indecision about how to act or how to live.
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• Gauthier , David . 1986 . Morals by Agreement Oxford : Oxford University Press .
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• Vallentyne , Peter , ed. 1990 . Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on Gauthier Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . I discussed Gauthier's approach in David Copp, “Contractarianism and Moral Skepticism,” in ed. 196–228, and in David Copp, Morality, Normativity, and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See Anita Superson, The Moral Skeptic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
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• Smith , Michael . 2004 . Ethics and the A Priori Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . See
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• 1997 . The Moral Problem,” Ethics , 108 : 476 – 81 . I discussed Smith's view in David Copp, “Belief, Reason, and Motivation: Michael Smith's: 33–54, and in David Copp, “Review of Michael Smith, Ethics and the A Priori: Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Meta-Ethics,” Mind 115 (2006):
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• Korsgaard , Christine . 1996 . The Sources of Normativity Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . !Onora O'Neill
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• Nida-Rumelin , Julian , ed. 1999 . Morality in a Natural World 249 – 83 . Berlin : de Gruyter . I discuss Korsgaard's argument in David Copp, “Moral Naturalism and Three Grades of Normativity,” in Copp, and in David Copp, “Korsgaard on Rationality, Identity, and the Grounds of Normativity,” in Rationality, Realism, Revision, ed. 572–81
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• Joyce , Richard . 2001 . The Myth of Morality Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .
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• Ibid., 50.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid., 51.
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• I proposed a free-standing account in Copp, “The Normativity of Self-Grounded Reason.”
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• Copp , David . 2009 . “Toward a Pluralist and Teleological Theory of Normativity,” . Philosophical Issues , 19 : 21 – 37 .
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• Scanlon , T. M. 1982 . “Contractualism and Utilitarianism,” in ” . In Utilitarianism and Beyond Edited by: Sen , Amartya and Williams , Bernard . 103 – 128 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .
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• Scanlon . “Contractualism and Utilitarianism,” 127.
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• Scanlon , T. M. 1998 . What We Owe to Each Other 1 Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press .
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• Ibid., 4.
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• Ibid., 153. Scanlon limits the scope of his account to our duties to other people (6).
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• Ibid., 5.
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• Ibid., 11.
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• It follows, that is, that any set of principles (of the right kind) that no one could reasonably reject (for the right purpose) disallows the plot. This entails, on Scanlon's account as he formulates it, that the plot is impermissible. It does not entail that there is a set of principles (of the right kind) that no one could reasonably reject (for the right purpose). For it simply means, on the standard analysis, that if there is a set of principles (of the right kind) that no one could reasonably reject (for the right purpose), that set of principles disallows the plot. This leaves open the possibility that there is no such set of principles. It leaves open the possibility that, say, Gyges could reasonably reject any set of principles that would disallow the plot. I discuss this issue in the text.
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• Scanlon . What We Owe to Each Other 213 – 14 .
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• Ibid. 5
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• Ibid., 10
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• Copp . Morality, Normativity, and Society and David Copp, Morality in a Natural World.
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• Scanlon . What We Owe to Each Other , 9 (emphasis added).
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• Copp . “Toward a Pluralist and Teleological Theory of Normativity.”
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• For more detail, see Copp, “Toward a Pluralist and Teleological Theory of Normativity.”
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• Mackie , J. L. 1977 . Morality: Inventing Right and Wrong 121 Harmondsworth , , UK : Penguin .
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• Ibid., 111.
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• For more detailed development of this idea, see Copp, “Toward a Pluralist and Teleological Theory of Normativity.”
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• Copp . “The Normativity of Self-Grounded Reason”; and Copp, “Toward a Pluralist and Teleological Theory of Normativity.”
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• 1995 . Morality in a Natural World 18 – 21 . I am here focusing on what I call the “basic” society-centered theor. See Copp, The theory I presented originally in in Morality, Normativity, and Society was not free-standing in the sense I am exploring here. I discussed the differences between the original and the basic theories in Copp, Morality in a Natural World.
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• Sinnott-Armstrong , Walter and Timmons , Mark , eds. 1996 . Morality, Normativity, and Society 198 – 200 . New York : Oxford University Press . For some amendments, see David Copp, David Copp, “Moral Knowledge in Society-Centered Moral Theory,” in Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology, ed. 257–58. See also the introduction to Copp, Morality in a Natural World.
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• Copp . Morality, Normativity, and Society 16 – 26 . Copp “Moral Knowledge in Society-Centered Moral Theory”; Copp, Morality in a Natural World
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• Morality, Normativity, and Society 110 – 12 . I mentioned a ‘functionalist’ interpretation of society-centred theory in Copp
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• Mackie . Morality: Inventing Right and Wrong 111
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• Prichard . “Does Moral Philosophy.”, 3.
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• Darwall , Stephen . 2006 . The Second Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability 15 – 17 . Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press .
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• Ibid., 17.
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• Ibid., 36.
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• Copp . Morality, Normativity, and Society 201 – 9 .
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• But see Copp, “Normativity, Deliberation, and Queerness.”
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