123. David Copp | Moral Naturalism

Can ethics be fully naturalistic while still explaining why moral reasons genuinely have authority over us?My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.1. GuestDavid Copp is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, and his work has focused on moral and political philosophy.Check out his new book, "Ethical Naturalism and the Problem of Normativity"!https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ethical-naturalism-and-the-problem-of-normativity-9780197601587https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPGFFK2W2. Book SummaryDavid Copp frames the book around what he takes to be metaethics’ central puzzle: the ‘problem of normativity’. He wants a theory-neutral grip on what needs explaining when we say that reasons, oughts, and values are ‘normative’, and he treats this as a problem not just for ethical realism in general, but especially for ‘ethical naturalism’. The worry is straightforward: if normative facts are what would make basic moral claims true, it’s hard to see how such facts could fit into a world that we learn about through experience and science—since it doesn’t look like experience (ordinary or scientific) can simply reveal that (say) torture is wrong or compassion is a virtue.To make the dispute precise, Copp develops an ‘empirical criterion’ of the natural: roughly, a property counts as natural only if no synthetic truth about its instantiation is ‘strongly a priori’—so, for the naturalist, substantive basic ethical truths (if any) must be empirically defeasible. He then maps the space of ethical naturalisms: non-reductive views (often cast in terms of grounding/supervenience) versus reductive views, and within reductionism, ‘analytic’ versus ‘non-analytic’ versions—where he explicitly favors the non-analytic, metaphysical-analysis approach. Along the way he argues that to take the normativity problem seriously, it’s not enough to say ethical facts are natural (or grounded in natural facts); we need some reductive story of what ‘robust normativity’ itself consists in.The second half of the book tests concrete proposals: he reviews several substantive naturalist options (including Cornell-style views, the Canberra Plan, neo-Humean and neo-Aristotelian approaches, and his ‘Pluralist-Teleology’) and then answers major objections (the ‘is/ought gap’, Parfit-style challenges, and the “just too different” intuition). A recurring verdict is that non-reductive naturalisms like Cornell Realism may be compatible with naturalism, but they don’t by themselves deliver a philosophically satisfying account of robust normativity, because they don’t provide the needed reductive explanation of what normativity is. Copp presents ‘Pluralist-Teleology’ as the most promising route: very roughly, basic ethical truths are grounded in facts about which systems of standards would best help humans solve different ‘problems of normative governance’—with morality tied in particular to the ‘problem of sociality’ and an ‘ideal moral code’ understood in those terms.3. Interview Chapters00:00 - Introduction01:39 - Overview of book05:59 - The problem of normativity12:59 - Normativity19:17 - Formal vs. robust normativity22:53 - Robust normavity30:41 - Authoritativeness35:35 - Categorizing theories41:18 - Empirical research50:39 - Normative conceptualism54:05 - Analytic naturalism1:09:32 - Plausible normative theories1:15:10 - Parity thesis1:18:50 - Nominalism1:24:14 - Metaphysical naturalism1:28:51 - Non-naturalist realism1:33:00 - Non-primitivist non-naturalism1:37:37 - Error theory1:41:13 - Non-cognitivism1:46:37 - Disunified moral semantics1:50:12 - Natural properties1:54:26 - Metaphysical characterization1:56:24 - Counterexamples?2:01:10 - Nature of normative properties2:05:54 - What are these properties?2:07:55 - Relation between natural properties and ethical properties2:13:47 - Supervenience2:21:48 - Frank Jackson’s direct argument2:27:55 - Subjectivist neo-Humeanism2:34:39 - Is it realist?2:38:37 - Neo-Aristotelian naturalism2:43:37 - Potential objections2:49:03 - Pluralist teleology2:53:05 - Desire-dependent again?2:59:11 - Is-ought gap3:04:34 - Bilgrami’s pincer argument3:16:51 - “Just too different” objection3:23:03 - Upshots3:26:21 - Value of philosophy3:29:03 - Conclusion This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fric.substack.com/subscribe