Volume 9, Number 1
May 2015
DISCUSSION

Non-Analytical Naturalism and the Nature of Normative Thought: A Reply to Parfit

Volume 9, Number 1, May 2015, Pages 1–6
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v9i1.169
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Abstract

Metaethical non-analytical naturalism consists in the metaphysical thesis that normative properties are identical with or reducible to natural properties and the epistemological thesis that we cannot come to a complete understanding of the nature of normative properties via conceptual analysis alone. In On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues that non-analytical naturalism is either false or incoherent. In section 1, I show that his argument for this claim is unsuccessful, by showing that it rests on a tacit assumption about the nature of normative thought that non-analytical naturalists need not accept. In section 2, I show that escaping Parfit’s argument in this way is no ad hoc maneuver; as I demonstrate, the idea that non-analytical naturalists can exploit to escape Parfit’s argument is a familiar one.
Copyright © 2015 Nicholas Laskowski
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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