Expressivism and the Reliability Challenge

Abstract

Suppose there are objective normative facts and our beliefs about these facts are by-and-large true. 1 How did this come to happen? This is the reliability challenge to normative realism. It is significantly different from other epistemological challenges in that it assumes the truth of realism, and asks realists to explain the correlation between our beliefs and the facts, rather than to argue that we are reliable. In answering this demand, realists may rely on any normative or metaphysical claims that are part of their view. 2 The dialectical force of the challenge comes precisely from this generous setup: if even after being granted their own conception of the subject-matter of normative discourse, realists are unable to provide a good explanation of our reliability, or at least to convince us that an explanation is in principle available, then they are in a problematic epistemological position. Or so the argument goes. 3 Importantly, the reliability challenge does not rely on any specific causal story meant to undermine realist commitments. This is not to say that facts about the origins of our normative beliefs may not be relevant in pressing this challenge. Evolutionary considerations, in particular, can be used to highlight one kind of explanation of our reliability that is available in other regions of thought, but not in the normative domain: namely, an evolutionary vindication of our reliability. Take the following passage from Jamie Dreier's (2012) paper on the reliability challenge: 1 I focus here on practical normativity. For brevity, I will use normative and normativity to mean practically normative and practical normativity, respectively, throughout the paper. 2 The reliability challenge differs in these respects from the evolutionary debunking arguments due to Joyce (2001, 2006) and Street (2006), which do not allow realists to take for granted the truth of our beliefs about objective normative facts. 3 Enoch (2011), Dreier (2012) and Joshua Schechter ("Does Expressivism Have an Epistemological Advantage over Realism?", unpublished manuscript) offer similar statements of the reliability challenge, inspired by Field's (1989) challenge to mathematical Platonism. How the failure to explain our reliability would undermine the realism is still a disputed question: it might provide a defeater for the justification we previously had for our realist beliefs, it might undermine the knowledge status of said beliefs, or it might just be that the absence of an explanation of our reliability is an important theoretical cost for realism. I will not attempt to settle this issue here.

When does self‐interest distort moral belief?

“…This variety of anti-realism is certainly consistent with the existence of justified true belief (Street, 2010). Moreover, while Simon Blackburn's quasi-realist theory adopts a non-realist metaphysics, it is reasonably clear that it must retain the concept of more or less justified belief, and of our tracking moral truths in some sense (Blackburn, 1991, though see;Golub, 2017).…”

Fondamentalisme ou constructivisme des raisons? Les limites du réalisme normatif de Thomas Scanlon

“…Ils peuvent, en particulier, tenir pour acquis que nos croyances sont, dans l’ensemble ( prima facie ), justifiées et vraies. Si les réalistes ne parviennent pas à fournir une explication de leur fiabilité malgré toutes ces concessions, il y a certainement quelque chose qui ne va pas, soutiennent les critiques (Golub, 2017).…”

“… 8 En fait, la nature exacte du problème qu’entraîne pour les réalistes l’absence d’une explication satisfaisante fait l’objet d’un débat : il peut s’agir, comme nous le mentionnons dans le texte, d’un problème pour la justification de nos croyances normatives, mais aussi d’une remise en cause de l’idée de selon laquelle ces croyances normatives sont des connaissances ou, de manière un peu plus vague, d’une indication que le réalisme encourt un certain coût théorique (Golub, 2017, note 3). Ces trois possibilités, bien entendu, ne sont pas incompatibles : si nos croyances ne sont pas justifiées, alors elles ne sont pas des connaissances, ce qui entraîne vraisemblablement un coût important pour le réalisme.…”

The Evolutionary Debunking of Quasi-Realism

“…Seminal waypoints in this debate are Street 2011, Gibbard 2011, and Dreier 2012. The most recent contribution (Golub 2017) argues that quasi-realism can provide some satisfying answers to the challenge, whilst recognizing that these answers are not precisely symmetric to the realist 'truth-tracking' style of answer that seems plausible for other domains. Whilst we agree with Golub that quasi-realism cannot and should not provide an answer to the reliability challenge that perfectly emulates realism, we argue that there is a previously overlooked answer to the reliability challenge that quasi-realism can provide.…”