Ground, Essence, and the Metaphysics of Metanormative Non-Naturalism

Introduction

• The paper discusses the challenges of defining the metaphysical commitments of non-naturalistic metanormative realism.

• Interest in metanormative non-naturalism has resurfaced, necessitating clearer definitions of its commitments.

• Prominent contemporary proposals focus on metaphysical grounding and essence but face criticism for overgeneralizing.

Non-Naturalism Defined

• Non-naturalism is characterized by the belief in non-natural normative facts known through a priori reasoning.

• Historical perspective shows a shift from skepticism to serious consideration of non-naturalism. G.E. Moore was a key figure in originally advocating this viewpoint.

Challenges for Non-Naturalism

• Non-naturalists argue there are radical differences between normative and natural properties but often affirm supervenience and grounding relationships that suggest otherwise.

• This tension highlights the need for improved characterizations of non-naturalist metaphysics.

Grounding and Essence in Non-Naturalism

Grounding Proposals

• Grounding: metaphysical determination relationships; represents how facts relate particularly where non-normative facts ground normative ones.

• Current formulations often misclassify naturalistic hypotheses as non-naturalistic.

Essence Definitions

• Essence relates to the identity of a property; proposals rely on the essence to distinguish natural from non-natural properties.

• Essentialist formulations face similar overgeneralization concerns; they also misclassify properties that should be considered natural.

Critiques of Formulations

Overgeneralizations

• Recent approaches by philosophers like Rosen, Leary, and Berker utilize grounding and essence but misclassify intuitive hypotheses about normativity.

• Examples highlight how non-naturalistic claims include misclassifications, especially regarding properties like badness being identical to fundamental natural properties (e.g., Painfulness).

Need for a New Framework

• A new framework focusing on objective similarity rather than supervenience or grounding is suggested.

• Objective dissimilarity better aligns with the core intuitions motivating non-naturalism.

• This perspective allows for distinguishing between classes of properties more accurately.

• Similarity Non-naturalism: posits normative properties as a sui generis class based on objective similarities.

Conclusions

• The authors argue that reliance on grounding and essence for formulating non-naturalism fails to adequately define its scope—often leading to misclassifications.

• Emergentist Non-naturalism: combines similarity non-naturalism with the idea that normative facts could fully ground in non-normative facts, suggesting a nuanced understanding of normative properties.

• Emphasizes further inquiry into relationships between normative and natural domains, aiming to clarify the metaphysical landscape surrounding non-naturalism.