Metanormative Contextualism and Normative Uncertainty

Abstract

We offer a new argument in favor of metanormative contextualism, the thesis that the semantic value of a normative 'ought' claim of the form 'S ought to Φ' depends on the value of one or more parameters whose values vary in a way that is determined by the context of utterance. The debate over this contextualist thesis has centered on cases that involve 'ought' claims made in the face of uncertainty regarding certain descriptive facts. Contextualists, relativists, and invariantists all have plausible ways of explaining these cases, and one could reasonably judge the debate between these views to be a stalemate. We argue that this stalemate can be broken by shifting focus to a case that involves normative uncertainty rather than descriptive uncertainty. While relativist and invariantist rivals of contextualism can give plausible accounts of the descriptive uncertainty cases, only contextualism can provide a plausible account of the normative uncertainty case.

Moral Disagreement and Moral Semantics

“…In the present paper, however, we will focus on predicting non‐exclusionary disagreements within a contextualist semantic/pragmatic framework (see for example Lewis , Dreier , Brogaard , Finlay , , , Björnsson & Finlay ). This framework combines insights from the formal semantics literature (Kratzer , , ) with a longstanding tradition within meta‐ethics (Harman , Dreier , Finlay ), and recent research has explored the ways in which it might help to resolve a variety of important puzzles about moral language (Björnsson & Finlay , Plunkett & Sundell , Finlay , Pittard & Worsnip ). By no means do we think that moral contextualism is the only or even best way to predict our data—indeed, we encourage authors favoring other semantic frameworks to offer alternative explanations.…”

Anti-Exceptionalism About Requirements of Epistemic Rationality

“…41 Disambiguating these, in Logic 101 we can understand you as objectively required to avoid believing contradictions, and also subjectively required to believe some contradictions. We might further flesh this out by arguing that 'rationality requires' is context-dependent -its usage requires reference to a context in order to be meaningful (Björnsson and Finlay 2010;Pittard and Worsnip 2017;Worsnip, forthcoming). 42 This avoids the inconsistency because no single sense of rationality issues inconsistent requirements.…”

Rational Moral Ignorance

“…There is some tension here. 1 Moral ignorance has been discussed by several authors, including Arpaly andSchroeder (1999, 2014), Arpaly (2002Arpaly ( , 2003Arpaly ( , 2015, Rosen (2004), Sepielli (2009Sepielli ( , 2014Sepielli ( , 2016Sepielli ( , 2018, Zimmerman (2010), Harman (2011Harman ( , 2015, Weatherson (2015, ms.), Hedden (2016), Pi ard and Worsnip (2017), Johnson King (2020, forthcoming), and Podgorski (2020). This paper's focus is narrower-epistemically rational moral ignorance.…”

“…5 For a sampling of authors who appeal to such a distinction, see Ewing (1953), Brandt (1976), Pollock (1979), Unger (1975), Wedgwood (2003), Setiya (2004), Gibbard (2005), Schroeder (2009), and Harman (2011. More recently, some, such as Pi ard and Worsnip (2017), have expressed skepticism about 'should' or 'ought' is ambiguous between (exactly) these two senses. This issue will be discussed in the next subsection.…”

“…The arguments found in this paper will apply to all varieties of case. 7 See Sepielli (2014), Pi ard and Worsnip (2017), and Kagan (2018). See also Jackson (1991), who warns of "an annoying profusion of 'oughts'" (1991, p. 471 Because these roles cannot be played by the objective 'should,' we have reason to seek an alternative, a subjective 'should,' to do this missing work.…”