Sep 9, 2023·edited Sep 9, 2023Liked by Lance S. Bush
What is a concept? What does it mean to "have" a concept?
I don't think you can make sense of a dialectic where people are talking about "lacking a concept" without at least a tentative answer to these two questions. I have some idea of the sorts of answers contemporary analytic philosophy gives to these questions, but I don't actually know what sorts of answers contemporary psychology gives. Bringing a more a psychologically informed understanding of "concept" into these discussions could be a useful philosophical intervention.
The answers psychologists give would probably be unflattering to many philosophical views and threaten to actually solve the problems in question, probably in ways philosophers don't like. So they'd just ignore the psychology that did this and continue insisting what they're doing somehow isn't empirical.
This isn't going to turn you into a believer or anything, but here's a loose analogy that illustrates one way of trying to defend the notion of unanalyzable (incommunicable?) normative concepts that might be at least a little more promising than direct appeals to intuition. I think physical reality is fundamental, in the sense that it has no further explanation (either a causal explanation or some kind of ontological reduction). If I were going to defend that view, I wouldn't say I can just *see* (or intuit) that physical reality can't have an explanation. I'd compare my view to rival views that try to explain physical reality (e.g., theism) or eliminate it (e.g., idealism), and try to make an overall assessment of the various views in terms of theoretical virtues like fit with the data, simplicity, etc. If my view won that overall assessment, I'd conclude that physical reality has no further explanation.
Similarly, if I were going to defend the view that normative concepts like the concept of an external reason are fundamental (in the sense of having no analysis or other explanation that gets you outside the closed loop of purportedly fundamental normative concepts), I don't think I'd claim to intuit directly that there's no further sense to be made of that concept. Instead, I'd probably take nonnaturalist realism and compare it to rival views that either offer an analysis of the concept of an external reason (or other normative concept) or eliminate that concept, and try to make an overall assessment of the views' various strengths and weakness. If nonnaturalism came out on top in that overall assessment, I'd conclude that there's nothing more to be said about the concept of an external reason.
I'm not saying that approach would result in a convincing defense of external reasons, or that it wouldn't end up relying too heavily on intuition—my guess is that intuitions would make a lot of appearances in any defense of nonnaturalism. But it seems a little better than just claiming to intuit directly that there's nothing more to be said about the concept of an external reason.
Your post suggests that a lot of this work hasn't really been done. To give this kind of defense of external reasons, nonnaturalists would have to try to articulate rival views on which the concept of a reason is analyzable (or communicable or whatever, or just absent), and maybe people are too quick to just agree with Parfit that the concept is unanalyzable without trying to analyze it first. I'd have to do more homework in metaethics to be able to say.
This sounds like (and perhaps is) a way of presenting an abductive argument for the meaningfulness of the concepts in question. I have no problem with such an approach in principle, but I have not encountered a convincing instance of this in practice. Perhaps such an account already exists or could be developed. I'm confident it won't be and can't be, but you never know.
Awesome read. I agree with you. I was hoping someone has written a monograph or even a dissertation refuting some concepts, like external reasons, in Parfit’s non-natural realism. Seems no one has. Would be an interesting research project for someone to pursue. Something like primitives of morality (7 universal values actually) has been researched by Oliver Scott Curry and Mark Alfano. It’s actually Curry’s brainchild, morality-as-cooperation. I’ve always felt that it doesn’t quite cut it though (to create a satisfying naturalist realism), as it admits cross-cultural variation in priority in each of the 7 concepts and each concept operates or seems to operate in varied ways across cultures. That seems more like a vindication that moral facts are not stance-independent at all, ergo not out there in the world, but in the mind, as it relies on judgment which seems to differ across cultural groups. But, if I remember correctly, in one of Curry’s lectures out on YouTube, he seems to alluding to his work as a vindication of moral realism.
If I could only afford grad school, I’d try going up against Parfit as my main schtick. I’ve also actually downloaded your dissertation.
Our confusion will undoubtedly be dismissed as a result of lying, conceptual impoverishment, or some other excuse to not have to deal with the fact that there really are people who suspect that philosophers are using vacuous terms that don't mean anything.
The more of us who express our public skepticism or confusion, the more likely it will be that philosophers realize they have a serious problem here. At the very least, they've done a very bad job of explaining themselves clearly.
What is a concept? What does it mean to "have" a concept?
I don't think you can make sense of a dialectic where people are talking about "lacking a concept" without at least a tentative answer to these two questions. I have some idea of the sorts of answers contemporary analytic philosophy gives to these questions, but I don't actually know what sorts of answers contemporary psychology gives. Bringing a more a psychologically informed understanding of "concept" into these discussions could be a useful philosophical intervention.
The answers psychologists give would probably be unflattering to many philosophical views and threaten to actually solve the problems in question, probably in ways philosophers don't like. So they'd just ignore the psychology that did this and continue insisting what they're doing somehow isn't empirical.
Fair enough, but what are your answers?
This isn't going to turn you into a believer or anything, but here's a loose analogy that illustrates one way of trying to defend the notion of unanalyzable (incommunicable?) normative concepts that might be at least a little more promising than direct appeals to intuition. I think physical reality is fundamental, in the sense that it has no further explanation (either a causal explanation or some kind of ontological reduction). If I were going to defend that view, I wouldn't say I can just *see* (or intuit) that physical reality can't have an explanation. I'd compare my view to rival views that try to explain physical reality (e.g., theism) or eliminate it (e.g., idealism), and try to make an overall assessment of the various views in terms of theoretical virtues like fit with the data, simplicity, etc. If my view won that overall assessment, I'd conclude that physical reality has no further explanation.
Similarly, if I were going to defend the view that normative concepts like the concept of an external reason are fundamental (in the sense of having no analysis or other explanation that gets you outside the closed loop of purportedly fundamental normative concepts), I don't think I'd claim to intuit directly that there's no further sense to be made of that concept. Instead, I'd probably take nonnaturalist realism and compare it to rival views that either offer an analysis of the concept of an external reason (or other normative concept) or eliminate that concept, and try to make an overall assessment of the views' various strengths and weakness. If nonnaturalism came out on top in that overall assessment, I'd conclude that there's nothing more to be said about the concept of an external reason.
I'm not saying that approach would result in a convincing defense of external reasons, or that it wouldn't end up relying too heavily on intuition—my guess is that intuitions would make a lot of appearances in any defense of nonnaturalism. But it seems a little better than just claiming to intuit directly that there's nothing more to be said about the concept of an external reason.
Your post suggests that a lot of this work hasn't really been done. To give this kind of defense of external reasons, nonnaturalists would have to try to articulate rival views on which the concept of a reason is analyzable (or communicable or whatever, or just absent), and maybe people are too quick to just agree with Parfit that the concept is unanalyzable without trying to analyze it first. I'd have to do more homework in metaethics to be able to say.
This sounds like (and perhaps is) a way of presenting an abductive argument for the meaningfulness of the concepts in question. I have no problem with such an approach in principle, but I have not encountered a convincing instance of this in practice. Perhaps such an account already exists or could be developed. I'm confident it won't be and can't be, but you never know.
Awesome read. I agree with you. I was hoping someone has written a monograph or even a dissertation refuting some concepts, like external reasons, in Parfit’s non-natural realism. Seems no one has. Would be an interesting research project for someone to pursue. Something like primitives of morality (7 universal values actually) has been researched by Oliver Scott Curry and Mark Alfano. It’s actually Curry’s brainchild, morality-as-cooperation. I’ve always felt that it doesn’t quite cut it though (to create a satisfying naturalist realism), as it admits cross-cultural variation in priority in each of the 7 concepts and each concept operates or seems to operate in varied ways across cultures. That seems more like a vindication that moral facts are not stance-independent at all, ergo not out there in the world, but in the mind, as it relies on judgment which seems to differ across cultural groups. But, if I remember correctly, in one of Curry’s lectures out on YouTube, he seems to alluding to his work as a vindication of moral realism.
If I could only afford grad school, I’d try going up against Parfit as my main schtick. I’ve also actually downloaded your dissertation.
Thanks. Curry explicitly defends realism. Someone I should talk to at some point.
*Seems no one has went up against non-natural realism for the same reasons as you, is what I meant
Great read. I share your confusion about the supposed meaning of external reasons.
Our confusion will undoubtedly be dismissed as a result of lying, conceptual impoverishment, or some other excuse to not have to deal with the fact that there really are people who suspect that philosophers are using vacuous terms that don't mean anything.
The more of us who express our public skepticism or confusion, the more likely it will be that philosophers realize they have a serious problem here. At the very least, they've done a very bad job of explaining themselves clearly.