Terence Cuneo - Speech and Morality: On the Metaethical Implications of Speaking

TERENCE CUNEO

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Terence Cuneo 2014

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A prominent philosopher once expressed to me his view that philosophers should, every five years or so, distance themselves from their area of specialty to develop a new one. The idea behind this approach, apparently, is that it protects philosophers work from becoming stale. Were it followed, there would be much less temptation to repeat oneself or to get stuck in a theoretical rut. In the ideal case, we philosophers would have new things to say about fresh topics.

For all I know, this might be excellent advice. But I have failed egregiously to follow it. Whether that is because I am a creature of habit or because of the magnetism of the ideas about which I find myself thinking, I cannot tell. However that may be, this book is not an attempt to say new things about fresh topics.

But it is an attempt to say some new things about a familiar topic. For my project in this book is to offer an unfamiliar argument for a familiar position, namely, moral realism. When I say that moral realism is a familiar position, I mean two things. Moral realism is, in the first place, long familiar to the philosophical tradition (although, of course, it has not always had a name or been called moral realism). It is also a position with which I am well familiar, having developed an argument for it in a previous book. In the Introduction, I lay out my reasons for thinking that it is worth developing another argument for moral realism. Here I would like to emphasize that while this book and its predecessor develop different arguments for moral realism, they are animated by a common conviction. Both books press the case that morality is ubiquitous, showing up in and having implications for areas that many philosophers have not supposed it would.

The main idea I develop in this book is that one such area is speech. Speech, I maintain, is a thoroughly normative phenomenon: one performs speech acts such as asserting, promising, and commanding, I claim, by altering ones normative position with regard to ones audience, acquiring rights, responsibilities, and obligations of various sorts. Reflection reveals, I further claim, that some of these rights, responsibilities, and obligations, are moral. Indeed, I argue, they are as moral realists say. Although I have relatively few Kantian tendencies, the main argument I develop could be described as being transcendental, as it implies that a necessary condition for the possibility of speech is that there be moral facts of certain kinds.

I do not believe that this argument itself vindicates moral realism in the sense that one cannot reasonably reject one or more of its premises. It is better viewed as part of a larger, overarching case to be made in realisms favor. On this occasion I have not attempted to lay out this more general case, choosing instead to focus on one argument that, in my judgment, presents both an interesting case for realism and a challenge to rival antirealist positions. In most instances, I should note, I do not find these rival antirealist positions to be obviously false, especially in their most nuanced and sophisticated forms. But I do find most of them unsatisfactoryand some of them deeply unsatisfactoryin important respects. Part of my aim here is to try to highlight some of the respects in which these views are unsatisfactory. I am especially inclined to put pressure on a line of thought that I encounter rather frequently, which is that the rejection of moral facts is relatively innocuous, as it would not have widespread theoretical or practical implications. I believe that this line of thought is mistaken. In my judgment, if there were no moral facts then we would not be able to speak.

I remain fully aware, of course, that moral realism is a deeply contested position that many excellent philosophers reject. I call attention to this fact not because it distinguishes realism from other philosophical positions; most other substantive philosophical views are also hotly debated and rejected by some excellent philosophers. Rather, what distinguishes realism from most of these other views is that, unlike advocates of these other contested philosophical positions, realists ordinarily believe that it matters a great deal whether their view is true. It is important, realists hold, that our ethical choices and appraisals can be mistaken or improved because they fail to answer to moral standards not of our own devising. And it is important that our ethical disputes can be decided by not the exercise of power or whim but by the apprehension of how things are morally. If realists are right about this, then the awareness of moral reality should make a difference to how we live and view our lives and evaluate the lives of others. At any rate, it is in this regard that many realists believe that their view is different from other highly controversial philosophical positions, such as four-dimensionalism or presentism, which bear only a very indirect relation to how we should view and live our lives and evaluate the lives of others.

Although realists ordinarily believe this, they do not have the luxury of recommending their position on prudential grounds, citing the ways in which its acceptance will bring meaning or fulfillment to ones life. Nor can they plausibly suggest that there is a set of ascetic disciplines or experiments in living that will place one in a better position to see its truth, as the ancient Stoics believed about their views. The best that can be done is to develop a wide-ranging and fairly abstract case in its favor. My project in this book is to contribute to such a case.