A Menagerie of Duties? Normative Judgments Are Not Beliefs about Non-Natural Properties

American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (3):189-201 (2014)
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Abstract

According to cognitive non-naturalism, normative judgments are standard beliefs that purport to be about non-natural properties. An influential plurality of normative theorists, including non-naturalist realists, error theorists and skeptics, share this view. But it is mistaken. For it predicts an epistemic profile for normative judgments that they do not have. In particular, they are not disposed to extinguish in light of accepted evidence that the any non-natural properties are absent, and they are not disposed to come into existence in light of accepted evidence for any non-natural property. So normative judgments might be beliefs, and there might be non-natural properties, but normative judgments are not beliefs about non-natural properties.

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Matthew Bedke
University of British Columbia

Citations of this work

XV—Normative Non-Naturalism and the Problem of Authority.Shamik Dasgupta - 2017 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 117 (3):297-319.
Why Care About Non-Natural Reasons?Richard Yetter Chappell - 2019 - American Philosophical Quarterly 56 (2):125-134.

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The moral problem.Michael R. Smith - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Truth and objectivity.Crispin Wright - 1992 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The Myth of Morality.Richard Joyce - 2001 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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