Xavier Morales Zayas (St. John's College): 'Morality without Normativity'
Abstract: A common assumption in metaethics, shared by both realists and error theorists alike, is that any account of moral practices requires a metaphysically heavyweight notion of normativity. Without a commitment to an authoritatively normative part of reality, morality could have no action-guiding grip on us. I claim that this assumption is wrong: moral practices are not essentially committed to authoritative normativity in any way. I will not argue for that claim in this talk, however. My goal, rather, is to show how a minimally realist account can capture a lot of the data we would want any descriptive account of moral practice to explain, without needing to invoke any kind of metaphysically controversial normativity. An upshot of the view is that it opens up conceptual space between descriptive and normative theories in metaethics, which means that we can make sense of moral practice and vindicate many attractive anti-realist views in metaethics without taking a stand on thornier issues surrounding the status and nature of normativity.
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Ockham Society Convenors: Jack Tristani, Yuxin Tang and Meredith Ross-James | Ockham Society Webpage
