Naturalizing the normative.

Abstract

The normative dimension of language and thought has been cited recently in arguments against naturalist reductions of the intentional--of meaning, belief, and desire. These arguments have been met with much scepticism, primarily because their proponents say little about the kind of 'normativity' on which they depend. There is, however, a rich tradition in ethics of thinking about the nature of the normative, and why it might pose a problem for naturalist reduction. In this dissertation, I bring the discussions in language and ethics together, arguing that doing so lends clarity and plausibility to the objections to naturalist reduction in both fields. In Part I, I draw from ethics to characterize normativity, and to explain how it provides a barrier to naturalistic reduction. In doing so, I respond to two common criticisms of irreducibility arguments in ethics: that they only show the irreducibility of our concepts of the ethical, not of ethical properties; and that they depend on outdated views of conceptual analysis. I argue that both objections misfire, though for interesting reasons, and that the anti-reduction argument succeeds. In Part II I use the characterization of normativity to shed light on recent arguments against reducing the intentional. I examine two prominent authors who have advanced such arguments, Saul Kripke and Donald Davidson. In addition to fleshing out and defending each of their arguments, I develop a general challenge to any reductive approach. The proposal is that intentional items have an essential capacity to define a context of reasons, something to which no naturalist reduction can do justice. In Part III I consider a new trend toward non-reductive forms of naturalism. I argue that most current non-reductive accounts also fail to accommodate the requisite normativity. But if the non-reductive, naturalist approach is developed in a certain direction, one which depends on the idea of response-dependency, it can capture just the kind of normativity that is needed. In closing, I briefly defend such an approach to both intentionality and value.