An Inquiry On Moral Normativity In A Realist Approach

How to understand moral normativity is an important topic in moral philosophy.Exploring the normativity from the aspect of reason-implying,the problem on moral normativity can be understood as the problem on whether morality itself provides practical reason necessarily,and the problem on why if morality requires someone to do something,there is a reason for him or her to do it necessarily.Humeanism,the Kantian constructivism,and normative realism are three main approaches in terms of the current solutions to the normative issues of morality.The Humeans,represented by Bernard Williams,make an effort to base the normativity on desire and to defend the morality from a proposition of human nature which based on desires and attitudes.The Kantian constructivists,represented by Christine Korsgaard,aim to base the normativity on rationality,accordingly,to explain the normativity and its nature by analyzing the constitutive features of the agent’s rational agency.The moral normativity is placed in the will of the agent who acts according to universal laws in the end.In general,both of them understand and justify moral normativity by means of the motivation of moral requirements for human action,understanding normativity as a kind of motivational necessity in a psychological sense,ultimately leading to a kind of skepticism about normativity.Thus,neither the Humean approach nor the Kantian constructivist approach can provide a plausible defense of moral normativity.To solve the problem on moral normativity,it is necessary to not only provide an account of the nature and source of normativity but also elucidate the practical significance of normative judgment and the connection between normative judgment and subsequent actions.This paper attempts to provide a meta-account of the moral normativity and its nature from a normative realism approach,thus providing a reasonable solution to the problem on moral normativity.It cannot be truth that all the normative realism approaches can give a reliable explaination for the moral normativity and the key point of this paper is trying to come up with a normative realism approach from the work of Derek Parfit and Thomas M.Scanlon.This normative realism position is a non-naturalist cognitivism essentially.It appeals to objective,irreducible normative truth,insisting that the ultimate source of the moral normativity is from the normative truth which implies reason.The irreducible normative truth faces three major challenges: ontological,epistemological,and practical.To respond to these challenges,this paper will provide a concrete elaboration and defense for the basic theoretical standpoint of normative realism,showing that the commitment to irreducible normative truth will not be a metaphysical and epistemological burden of explanation,and normative truth can solve the practical problems.First,according to the normative realism,irreducible normative truths are similar to mathematical and logical truth and they exist in a non-ontological sense.About the ontological problem of normative truths,Parfit and Scanlon have reached a agreement.They all agree that normative truths neither exist in space-time as concrete things do,nor are they non-spatio-temporal portion of reality.Thus there is no metaphysical problem of interpretation.Irreducible normative truths,to be exact,do not make any commitment to any natural or specific metaphysical entities.They only have the ontological meaning in a specific “domain” and their truth value is obtained from the intrinsic criterion of itself.Second,in terms of the cognitive style,the normative realists identify the irreducible normative truths by the approach of intuitionism.But for Parfit and Scanlon,this cognition neither relies on a special mental faculty of the sense perception,nor on some quasi-perceptual faculty,or on causal effect.Instead,we understand normative truths in something like the way we understand mathematical or logical truths.Ethical intuitive thinking is both self-evident and reflective.The method of reflective equilibrium is the right way to think about normative issues,and the formation of the credible normative judgments depends on it.Finally,rational beings can not only identify certain normative facts as their practical reason,but also respond to practical action.It is a fact that the views of normative realists can be compatible with practice.Parfit and Scanlon clarified the difference between normative issues and question of motivation,and there is no intrinsic necessary connection between normative judgments and motivation.However,they agree that as long as someone is fully practically rational,he or she will be motivated to act by normative judgments.It depends on the interpretation of an ideal rational agency on the one hand and the adequacy of reasons of the normative judgments held by the agent on the other.However,there is no inevitable rational connection between normative judgment and subsequent action.It can not defend the moral normativity by understanding of reason in a basic level.The normative realist needs to explain why a rational person always intends to do what he or she has decisive reasons to do.The fact that “enkratic requirements of rationality”is not a reason for the agent to do it.Namely,moral normativity doesn’t depend on the requirement of reason and the requirement of reason is conditional.Given this,agent can connect normative judgments and practical commitments through reasoning and reasoning is an important way in which people can both discover and respond to reasons.Therefore,it is significant to distinguish the correct reasoning from the wrong reasoning and the work of John Broome did really have a lot of good for us to clarify the conditions of the correct reasoning.In conclusion,non-metaphysical non-naturalist normative realism is the effective approach to defending the moral normativity and the ideal form of moral realism.This kind of normative realism can not only provides new ideas and perspectives for investigating the moral normativity,but also enriches and improves the current ethical theory.