From Is to Ought: Another Way⁽¹⁾

by John F. Post

john.f.post@vanderbilt.edu || Home Place

DRAFT, 10/1/01 -- COMMENTS WELCOME!

[Go to individualism, below, for its role, and that of supervenience, in the is-ought problem. For Normativity and Proper Function, see §4, but §§1-3 are necessary background.]

1.

Mackie's argument from queerness against objective values has two parts. One is metaphysical, a question of what kind of entities or qualities objective values might be, and how they could possibly be part of the fabric of the world. The other is epistemological, a question of how we could ever be aware of any such prescriptivity:

When we ask the awkward question, how we can be aware of this authoritative prescriptivity . . . none of our ordinary accounts of sensory perception or introspection or the framing and confirming of explanatory hypotheses or inference or logical construction or conceptual analysis, or any combination of these, will provide a satisfactory answer; 'a special sort of intuition' is a lame answer, but it is the one to which the clear-headed objectivist is compelled to resort.⁽²⁾

The epistemological argument succeeds if the listed kinds of account all fail and there is no other way we could be aware of, or at least justifiably believe in, the would-be objective normativity. Many philosophers agree that the listed kinds all fail and there is no other way.

There is another way, or so I hope to show. The idea is to begin by provisionally adopting the working hypothesis not only that a certain philosophically important kind of non-moral normativity is a phenomenon objectively in the natural world, but that it is best approached by means of the sort of theory-construction characteristic of empirical science. Granted, Mackie may seem to have covered this way, under the heading "framing and confirming of explanatory hypotheses." Yet it is hard to tell, given how little he says about what counts as acceptable framing and confirming of explanatory hypotheses in science, especially in relation to whole theories.⁽³⁾ In any event, such theory-construction deserves to be explored more fully as a way to "be aware of" objective normativity, despite the fact that the method of theory-construction characteristic of empirical science is alien to much if not all conventional philosophical method.

Such theory-construction is especially alien when the aim is to resolve whether there is any normativity in the world independent of an agent's valuations, what the relation is between the would-be objective normativity and the world naturalistically described, and how we could ever know any of this. Many philosophers reject the very idea that the method of theory-construction characteristic of empirical science could possibly be worth exploring to any such end. Nonetheless, I hope to explain how naturalists, at least, can use the method to provide another way of knowing both that there are important kinds of objective normativity and how such normativity is determined by non-normative affairs in the world. The goal is to undermine the widespread presumption that, as Mackie puts it, "the supposedly objective values [are] based in fact upon attitudes which the person has who takes himself to be recognizing and responding to those values,"⁽⁴⁾ or that, as Searle puts it, "the only norms are in us and exist only from our point of view."⁽⁵⁾ Mackie, Searle and many others believe this not only of moral but of non-moral values and norms; there can be no objective normativity at all, and certainly none amenable to a naturalistically acceptable account.

To see better what the other way amounts to, it helps to begin with a relatively unproblematic example of the intended sort of theorizing. The idea is to review the relevant general features of the method before considering how they might be exploited to improve the naturalist's chances of getting from is to ought -- that is, getting from is to ought in the sense of showing how what is non-normatively the case in the world determines the relevant objective norms at least in certain significant cases. This review occupies the next section, which uses an example from physics. §3 then summarizes the well known obstacles to any would-be naturalistic account, and, more importantly, acknowledges that they have the effect of imposing valid, severe constraints on any adequate naturalistic account of objective normativity. §4 introduces the theory to be constructed, which is built around the defeasible working hypothesis that a philosophically important kind of objective normativity some see in biology -- the normativity involved in an adaptation's being for this or that -- amounts to a certain specific phenomenon objectively in the natural world. §5 argues that despite the severity of the adequacy constraints, the theory thus constructed satisfies them all, contrary to Mackie, Searle and others. Insofar as their arguments against any objective moral normativity have the same form and presuppositions as their arguments against objective non-moral normativity, the theory would have the effect of undermining them as well.

The final §6 begins by considering less primitive kinds of normativity in biology, including a kind involved when, under appropriate conditions, certain adaptations come to be for doing something entirely new under the sun, indeed instantaneously new. Another kind is involved when an organism conforms -- or fails to conform -- to a rule, which may also be entirely new, as opposed to merely coinciding with the rule or being disposed to coincide with it. Still another and more sophisticated kind of normativity from biology is involved when an organism is supposed to conform to an "altruistic" rule, such as Tit-for-Tat (cooperate at the first encounter, thereafter do whatever the other did at the previous encounter), or, more significantly, such as what Philip Kitcher calls "golden-rule altruism" (treat the other's well-being equal to one's own) in the case of our savannah-dwelling hominid ancestors.⁽⁶⁾ Showing how these kinds of objective normativity are not only possible but actual would undermine the pandemic irrealist presumption that the only norms are in us and exist only from our point of view.

Furthermore, Mackie and many others appear to believe that our semantics for normative claims should result in a unified treatment of them all. For the sake of argument, let us suppose they are right. Then a cognitivist semantics for such claims as that the hominid should conform to golden-rule altruism -- even though this "should" is a non-moral, biological should -- would require that the semantics of moral claims be cognitivist as well. This suggests in turn that we explore whether, in pursuit of a cognitivist account, the intended general strategy of theory-construction might be extended beyond the biological to cases in which broadly cultural conditions are mainly what determine the normativity, including the case of fully human moral normativity. The point is not that moral principles applicable to humans might be inferred from biological norms (they cannot), and not even that the objectivity of fully human moral normativity might be inferred directly from the existence of important kinds of objective normativity in the biological world (it cannot, though it could under the supposition that our semantics for normative claims should result in a unified treatment of them all). Rather, the point is to begin exploring how the intended general strategy might be made to apply directly to cases in which what determines fully human moral normativity has little to do with biology. I conclude by sketching two related ways in which this might be done, aiming to undermine still further the presumption that there can be no objective moral normativity in the world, and certainly none amenable to a naturalistically acceptable account.

2.

To see better what the intended sort of theorizing comes to, it helps to consider a concrete example. The moral of the example is not that a normative property would be a "natural kind" (it need not be), and not that it should be defined by a synthetic identity statement (it is not, in what follows). Rather, the idea is to review certain general features of the intended sort of theory-construction in a relatively unproblematic setting, as a preliminary to considering how such construction might improve the naturalist's chances of getting from is to ought (in the sense of showing how what is non-normatively the case in the world can determine the relevant objective norms at least in certain significant cases).

In this spirit, then, consider the example of "ball lightning," reported by ordinary folk since antiquity as glowing, floating balls of colored light, often accompanied by a hissing sound and distinct odor. The existence of ball lightning has been doubted, but suppose we provisionally suspend judgment and adopt the working hypothesis that ball lightning is an empirical phenomenon objectively in the natural world best approached by way of the sort of theory-construction characteristic of empirical science. This is substantially how plasma physicists, among others, have proceeded. We may characterize their strategy -- oversimplified for purposes of illustration -- as provisionally "equating" ball lightning with a high-density plasma, in the sense the two being either identical in standard conditions or perhaps in some sense only equivalent. The idea is that the resulting bridge theory would unify the phenomena, and do so with greater empirical adequacy than alternative accounts (say, in terms of a chemiluminescent process, or an air vortex containing luminous gases, or microwave radiation within a plasma shell, or an atmospheric maser; the jury is still out on which is the best account).

The point is not that ball lightning would thereby be reduced to a high-density plasma, in the sense of the two being logically identical (that is, identical in all logically possible worlds). This is the sense in which water is typically said by reductivists to have been reduced to H₂O. Rather, the theory claims only identity in a proper subset of the physically possible worlds (where a ppw is a world in which the laws of physics obtain). The proper subset consists of the ppw's in which the relevant standard conditions obtain. Given only the empirical evidence for the theory and what the theory may therefore legitimately claim, what happens in other possible worlds is a "don't-care," since it is the empirical tests of the theory (and of relevant background theories) that establish the range of conditions in which it holds, thereby circumscribing the relevant standard conditions. The theory can claim identity, but only a relatively weak contingent identity -- identity in the relevant proper subset of the ppw's.⁽⁷⁾ Many is the identity in science that breaks down when the relevant conditions are exceeded, as typically they are exceeded in the possible worlds conjured by most philosophers for the purpose, among others, of counter-exampling various philosophical claims.

This provisional assumption of weak contingent identity, if successful, would be justified by its consequences, explanatory and predictive, under the bridge theory built around the assumption -- the plasma theory of ball lightning in standard conditions. We would be warranted in claiming to have discovered that ball lightning equates with a high-density plasma in standard conditions. If ball lightning thus construed should happen not to conform to some received concept -- the folk concept or the philosophers' or for that matter earlier physicists' -- so much the worse for the received concept and any intuitions based on it (which is not to say that anything goes -- that there need be no resemblance between the received concept and the new, or that we can learn nothing useful from the received concept -- as we see below).

It is a consequence of this sort of theorizing that conceptual analysis is out of place, either for determining whether ball lightning is something objectively in the world and what that might be, or for determining ball lightning's relation to the world described in purely plasma-theoretic terms, or for determining how to identify the (would-be) phenomenon in the first place. So too is relying on our intuitions about our ordinary notion of ball lightning in order to determine how things must be with the target phenomenon, and how it is to be identified, hence how we are to know when it has been successfully explained rather than, say, eliminated. We are not bound by received notions of ball lightning, or by the intuitions of competent speakers of the vernacular in which the received notions are at home, or even by the intuitions of other physicists. Instead, we cast about for something physical in the world that explains ball lightning, causes it, or, perhaps best of all, is it (in standard conditions). In terms of Strawson's distinction between the descriptive and the revisionary, our approach to ball lightning is not descriptive, in the sense of conforming to an existing concept, but decidedly revisionary, in the sense of putting the concept on trial should the phenomenon appear not to conform to it.⁽⁸⁾ The aim is to shape our notion so as to fit the phenomenon, not let the notion determine either the nature of the phenomenon, or the nature of the phenomenon properly-so-called, or its nature insofar as we may meaningfully speak of it, or even how to identify the phenomenon in the first place.

Notice further that given a purely plasma-theoretic description of ball lightning, one cannot infer that it has this or that higher-level property (say, odoriferous, hissing, red). Just as, in conformity with what Mackie calls Hume's Law, one cannot infer an ought from a purely descriptive is, one cannot infer an odor or hiss or color from a description purely in the plasma-theoretic vocabulary. But to conclude from this, as many do in the case of normativity, that the theorist has not successfully connected would-be objective ball-lightning properties to high-density plasmas, would miss the point. Plasma theorists do not aim to infer the higher-level properties of ball lightning from a description purely in the plasma-theoretic vocabulary. Rather, they provisionally propose -- hypothesize, posit, try on for size -- the identity of ball-lightning properties and certain high-density plasma properties, in standard conditions, then test the proposal by exploring its fruits and failures under the containing bridge theory (which, like all "connective theories," includes relevant terms from both the lower level and the higher).

Another general feature of this sort of revisionary theory-construction is that open-question arguments (OQA's) are as beside the point as Hume's-Law objections. According to Moore's OQA, we can easily imagine ourselves both recognizing that some natural condition C obtains (say, that an act or policy x would conduce to the greatest happiness of the greatest number) and nonetheless asking meaningfully -- or, as he says, "with significance" -- whether x has normative property N (say, whether x is good). Since this is an open question, it "shows clearly that we have two different notions before our minds"; therefore, N and C cannot be identical or equivalent, or their predicates synonymous.⁽⁹⁾ But so too can we imagine ourselves both recognizing that some object x has high plasma density and nonetheless asking "with significance" whether it is ball lightning. We do indeed have two notions before our minds here: the (folk) notion of ball lightning and the notion of high plasma density. Yet to conclude from this that ball lightning and high plasma density cannot be equated would miss the point of the revisionary theorizing involved in the plasma theorist's account (not that Moore would so conclude, though he would owe us some justification for the double standard -- that such theorizing is OK for ball lightning, but not for normativity -- an issue taken up in §5.2).

Granted, Moore's version of OQA may be an argument only against what Richard Hare calls semantic or analytic naturalism; other versions attempt to do more.⁽¹⁰⁾ There is for example the new OQA advanced by Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, which is endorsed by Hare and targets the "new-wave" naturalist's assertion of synthetic identity between normative and non-normative properties.⁽¹¹⁾ But I argue in §5.2 that the intended sort of revisionary theory-construction is equally effective against new, improved OQA's. Even if a new, improved OQA were to succeed against new-wave naturalism, it would fail against the account developed here.

The aim of the intended sort of theory-construction, then, is not to analyze or capture or conform to an existing notion, nor is it to draw on some such notion in order to say how things must be in the world, or how to identify what we are looking for in the first place. Rather, the aim is to find the best account of an empirical phenomenon in the world, one which we may see but darkly or whose very existence is seriously in doubt (as until recently was true of ball lightning), revising our notion to conform to the phenomenon instead of the other way around. In this sort of enterprise our received notions do not rule, contrary not only to what is presupposed by OQA's -- both Moore's and the new, improved OQA's -- but to much conventional philosophical method. A received notion is one which has been around long enough for us to have acquired solid intuitions about its use. The new notion, almost by definition, has not. Indeed, competence in its use is one of the things the revisionary theory is meant to spell out.

Does any of this mean that the new notion need bear no resemblance to the old, that there are no received constraints whatever on usage of the same term in the new way? Not at all. Einstein's theory of relativity entails that mass is not conserved in all interactions, whereas for the philosophers of the day, and the classical physicists (and possibly the folk), it was. His theory was therefore not only highly counter-intuitive but seemingly open to the charge (made by some) that he was changing the subject, that whatever he was talking about, it simply was not mass. Yet even though for Einstein mass is not conserved in all interactions, his theory entails that mass retains enough of the features of mass classically construed to warrant the name. The unit of mass is still the kilogram, the mass of a body still determines both the action of gravity on the body and its resistance to changes in motion, mass still satisfies the principle that f = ma, and so on. These are received constraints on using the same term in the new way -- where the constraints themselves are negotiable in light of evidence and the needs of theory. We retain our competence in applying the surviving classical principles, and, by studying the new theory, we add to it a competence in applying both the principle that mass is not conserved in all interactions and any other hitherto undreamt-of principles about mass that likewise derive from the fundamentals of the new theory.

In general, for any theory, however revisionary, there needs to be some sufficiently strong (family) resemblance between the new usage and the old, if the theory is to count as a theory of a phenomenon by the same name. What counts as a sufficiently strong resemblance varies from field to field and case to case, depending on the needs and aims of theory, on received usage of the relevant terms both in and out of the theory, on various empirical facts about the targeted phenomenon, and more. We should not expect some context-independent, across-the-board criterion for sufficient-strength-of-resemblance between the old and the new.⁽¹²⁾

This strategy of theory construction, though routine in science and congenial to naturalism, is alien not only to much conventional philosophical method but even to many naturalists. Nonetheless, the strategy is so widespread and effective that it deserves a name. Call it positing the best equivalence (whether of properties or states of affairs) -- or, where the situation warrants, positing the best identity. The strategy differs significantly from so-called inference to the best explanation, since strictly speaking there is no inference, let alone a truth-indicative inference, only a trial proposal to be tested by its fruits and failures under the containing theory. Furthermore, the equivalence/identity posit need not itself be an explanation, certainly not in isolation, but only a bridge principle in a connective theory that is what does (most of) the explanatory work. In any event, this revisionary strategy of positing the best equivalence/identity -- the revisionary PBE/I strategy -- looks as though it could free the naturalistic theorist from the oppression of Hume's-Law objections and OQA's, thus improving the naturalist's chances of getting from is to ought.

3.

The trouble, of course, is that even if Hume's-Law objections and OQA's can indeed be rendered beside the point in the case of normativity -- which has still to be shown -- there remain a number of equally stubborn obstacles to any such naturalistic account of would-be objective normativity. The truly stubborn obstacles, in addition to Hume's-Law objections and OQA's, include the argument from queerness (AQ). Granted, Mackie formulates AQ as an argument against objective values, and he talks mostly of moral values at that. Thus it might appear that he does not mean AQ to apply to just any sort of would-be objective normativity, but only to would-be objective moral normativity. Yet he also says,

The claim that values are not objective is meant to include not only moral goodness . . . . It also includes non-moral values . . . . [T]here would be at least some initial implausibility in a view that gave the one a different status from the other.⁽¹³⁾

This suggests that all normative claims, not just the moral, are to be given a unified treatment, so that if AQ applies to one, it applies to them all; if one is to be given a non-cognitivist semantics, all are. Moreover, in his discussion of "functional words" like 'knife' and 'hygrometer,' where there is something the functional item A is for or is supposed or ought to do, Mackie argues as follows. We can indeed define a good A as simply "an A which is such as to be able to do that." Nonetheless, 'good' so defined, and however objective it might seem, "always imports some reference to something like interests or wants." The seemingly objective good is based upon the interests or wants of the persons who take themselves to be recognizing and responding to this goodness.⁽¹⁴⁾ Again the only norms are in us and exist only from our point of view. Evidently Mackie does mean AQ to apply to would-be objective normativity across the board, and certainly to functional items, some of which will figure prominently in the next section and beyond.

Even if Mackie does not mean AQ to apply so broadly, AQ can easily be generalized so as to target kinds of normativity other than the moral, certainly including the kinds of non-moral normativity at issue here. According to the metaphysical part of AQ thus generalized, objective normativity would have to be a queer sort of thing, because its relation to what is clearly objectively the case would be quite mysterious. No allegedly objective normative property N of an item x is inferable from x's non-normative or natural properties, as Hume taught us. Nor can N be reduced to natural properties of x, as Moore's OQA taught us. Furthermore, talk of supervenience of N on the facts is itself in need of naturalistically acceptable explanation.⁽¹⁵⁾ Since no other relation has been spelled out that works, the allegedly objective normativity must be a queer business indeed. "How much simpler and more comprehensible the situation would be if we could replace the [normative] quality with some sort of subjective response which could be causally related to the detection of the natural features on which the supposed quality is said to be consequential."⁽¹⁶⁾ What we call objective normativity is only our subjective valuation projected onto the value-neutral real world, a process Mackie calls objectification, likening it to what Hume calls the mind's "propensity to spread itself on external objects."⁽¹⁷⁾

Clearly, AQ contains a couple of sub-arguments that rest respectively on a Hume's-Law objection and on OQA. By so much, then, would AQ be rendered beside the point by the PBE/I strategy, provided the strategy can be made to apply to objective normativity. But there would remain the challenge of explaining just what are the objective affairs in the world with which we could equate normativity by way of positing the best equivalence/identity, and how such affairs could possibly determine, or subvene, the would-be objective fact that some given specific individual has this or that specific normative quality or property. Hence an adequate naturalistic account of objective normativity, in addition to deflecting Hume's-Law objections and OQA's, must show that the rest of AQ is unsound, by explaining (a) just what the needed non-mysterious relation is (or relations are) between the would-be objective normative properties and the relevant natural affairs, and (b) why the relation holds between given specific normative properties and the relevant specific natural affairs.⁽¹⁸⁾

The foregoing three conditions -- conform to Hume's Law, escape OQA's and AQ -- amount to constraints on any adequate naturalistic theory of objective normativity. A crucial further constraint is that the matter of whether an individual x has a normative property N be determined solely by objective affairs. After all, one of naturalism's core principles is that all genuine properties whatever are thus determined. But another reason for imposing the constraint is that a property is clearly an objective one just in case it is clearly determined by objective affairs, at least according to naturalists, and the naturalistic theorist had better show that it is so determined.

Another constraint is related to the distinction -- or gap -- between what someone or something actually does or is disposed to do and what would be normatively better or worse. We see the distinction at work in our reaction to cynical remarks like "An impeachable offense is whatever the House says it is" (as then Representative Gerald Ford said with regard to Chief Justice Earl Warren). What the House ought to do cannot be equated with or reduced to what it does or is disposed to do (as recent events have reminded us). As Kripke says, "whatever in fact I (am disposed to) do, there is a unique thing that I should do."⁽¹⁹⁾ We also see the distinction at work when we speak of a defective heart, meaning a heart that does not (is not disposed to) do what it should do, or does not (is not disposed to) perform as designed -- or when we speak of a heart "which is not such as to be able to do that," as Mackie would say in this and other cases of function. Let a token heart be so diseased, damaged or deformed as to be totally indisposed to pump blood; nonetheless we regard pumping blood as what it is for, what it is supposed to do.

This gap between how a thing x actually behaves or is disposed to behave and how it ought to behave is crucial for normativity, or at least for the kinds of normativity at issue here.⁽²⁰⁾ Any adequate theory of such normativity must preserve the gap. Specifically, the theory should entail that where N is some such normative property -- a property to the effect that x ought (or ought not) do thus-and-so -- the matter of whether an individual x has N neither equates with nor is entailed by how x actually behaves in this respect, or is disposed to behave.

A further constraint is that the would-be objective normative properties play an appropriate explanatory role. Or rather this is a constraint imposed for the duration of this paper. To require that any adequate naturalistic theory conform to it may strike some as excessive. Even according to naturalism it is problematic whether to be is to be capable of figuring in a causal explanation of something else (or: "To be real is to have causal powers").⁽²¹⁾ Even for naturalists it may suffice to require only that a genuine property either play a causal-explanatory role or be causally explainable or at least determined by other natural affairs.⁽²²⁾ Call the latter kind of property -- one which is causally explainable, or at least causally determined, but not causal-explanatory -- a "spandrel property." Spandrel properties, though they themselves play no causal-explanatory role, would be "ontologically grounded," in an important sense, and their relation to the causal order would neither be mysterious nor land us in substance dualism or a dualism of matter and spooky entelechies or pulls from the future -- no more than spandrels in biology. On the other hand, many naturalists and others seem united in believing that the result would remain unacceptably epiphenomenal from the point of view of naturalism. So to placate them let us require, for the duration, that there be no spandrel properties -- that the objective normative properties targeted here do play an appropriate causal-explanatory role, so that among other things they have detectable effects. And for good measure let us require that they play a predictive role as well.

The final constraining condition -- unless others should turn up -- is related to the revisionary nature of the strategy involved in adopting the working hypothesis not only that certain kinds of normativity are phenomena objectively in the natural world, but that like other such phenomena they are best approached by way of the sort of theory-construction characteristic of empirical science. We see this condition at work perhaps most obviously in the natural sciences. Thus in physics we learn from Steven Weinberg that "Bohr . . . doubted the [Heisenberg-Pauli] theory would be the great new revolution in physics because it was not sufficiently 'crazy.'"⁽²³⁾ I call this the craziness condition, and I'm confident you'll come to agree that my theory satisfies it. The point of elevating it to the status of an adequacy constraint is to emphasize, beyond mistaking, the extent to which the strategy is revisionary and departs also in other fundamental ways from much conventional philosophical method.⁽²⁴⁾

Summing up, an adequate naturalistic theory of the targeted kinds of normativity must (i) conform to Hume's Law; (ii) escape OQA's; (iii) escape AQ by explaining (a) just what the needed non-mysterious relation is (or relations are) between the would-be objective normative properties and the relevant natural affairs, and (b) why the relation(s) hold(s) in particular between given specific normative properties and the relevant specific natural affairs; (iv) explain how the matter of whether x has a normative property N is determined solely by objective affairs; (v) preserve the gap between how x actually behaves or is disposed to behave and how it should behave; (vi) explain how N is not a mere spandrel property but plays an appropriate causal-explanatory role, and a predictive role as well; and (vii) be sufficiently crazy. These adequacy constraints, or at least the first six, constitute an all-too-familiar and hazardous minefield for the naturalist. How can the naturalist possibly negotiate the is-ought minefield?

4.

Let us begin by adopting the defeasible working hypothesis that the targeted normativity is an empirical phenomenon objectively in the natural world best approached by way of revisionary PBE/I -- the revisionary strategy of positing the best equivalence or identity. Such an approach conforms to Hume's Law, insofar as the normativity is not to be inferred from some descriptive affair, and promises to block OQA's. The problem is how to pull this off while simultaneously overcoming the equally stubborn obstacles represented by remaining constraints (iii)-(vii).

Prudence counsels starting with a relatively simple kind of normativity, leaving the hard cases for later (itself the reverse of much philosophical practice). Thus consider a kind of objective normativity some think they see in biology. According to Robert Brandon's rigorous account of adaptation, it makes sense to think of an adaptation as for something.⁽²⁵⁾ To think of an adaptation as for something is to take a kind of normative stance -- call it the what-for stance. The what-for stance is closely related to what Daniel Dennett calls the design stance,⁽²⁶⁾ and it likewise invites various teleological what-for questions, including "What is the heart for?" and "What determines that it is for this rather than that?"

Of course a given trait might not be for anything, in which case a what-for question is out of order. But as Brandon says, "Whenever we hypothesize that some trait is an adaptation, it makes sense to inquire about its function," what it's for. I would add only that an assertion of what something is for is a normative assertion -- as seems implicit in Brandon's account, and is clear in Mackie's account of functional words -- or at least gives every appearance of being normative. To say that the heart is for pumping blood is ordinarily to imply that even when a given heart cannot possibly pump blood, nonetheless pumping blood is what it is for, what it should do, what it is supposed to bring about or effect. We call a heart "defective" or "bad" when it cannot do what it is for, distinguishing between what it actually does or is disposed to do and what it should do. The notion of what an adaptation A is for is a member of a family of interrelated notions, such as the notion of what A's function is, its purpose, what it is supposed to do, what it should or ought to do (in a suitably thin sense of "ought"). In this paper I use the terms interchangeably, so that to give an account of A's being for doing or effecting E is to give an account of the rest (cf.§5.4).

None of this is meant to prove that being for E is indeed a normative of A. What I propose instead is that we suppose for the sake of argument that it is, then see what follows. If you already believe that it is indeed normative, you can read the paper as arguing that this normativity is objectively in the world. If you believe no such thing, you can read it as arguing that because we can make good naturalistic sense of such would-be normativity along the lines of Section 5, the reasons why so many have doubted there is any such normativity in the first place are successfully undermined; hence to that extent, at least, we may trust our pre-philosophical inclination to regard being for E as a normative property of A.

Now with what objective affairs might we equate the supposed normative matter of an adaptation A's being for E? Here too Brandon is instructive. It is true, as he says, that "Adaptations in nature seem to call for teleological explanations" -- explanations of an adaptation's function, what it is for. Melanism in the peppered moth is an adaptation, and as such it calls for a teleological explanation -- that is, an explanation of what the color is for (it is for camouflage, according to the classical textbook story, though the role of cryptic coloration and selective predation in industrial melanism in the moth is significantly less than once thought, which may be why Brandon does not himself use the example). Explanations of an adaptation -- adaptation explanations -- "are teleological in the sense that they are answers to what-for questions." But not only do they tell us specifically that an adaptation A is for E (the black color is for camouflage). They explain how it came about that A is for E: A is for E because E is the effect of A's past instances (often enough) in virtue of which A was selected for.⁽²⁷⁾ Nonetheless, even though adaptation explanations are thereby teleological (in virtue of being answers to what-for questions), "they are also perfectly good causal/mechanical explanations." For according to an adaptation explanation, the "adaptation is the direct product of the process of evolution by natural selection," and this process is a causal/mechanical matter of "the ecological consequences of the adaptation, or its precursors, that explain its adaptive advantage over its alternatives."⁽²⁸⁾

The second difficulty is that individualism's starting assumption -- that a thing's genuine properties are all determined by its own base properties or those of its parts -- appears to be false even for many non-normative properties. In social science, biology, biochemistry, even physics itself, one finds non-normative properties that on the evidence are not determined by their bearers' own base properties, relational properties included, but only by these together with the base properties of other things at some distance in space and time.⁽⁶²⁾ Naturalists, at least, would be well advised to avoid supervenience/determination relations that entail individualism, such as any relation that entails WS, as does Strong Supervenience (SS: for any instantiated nonphysical property N there is an instantiated physical property P such that necessarily, whatever has P has N). Unfortunately, it appears to be "widely held that the supervenience of the moral upon the natural is (what has been called) strong supervenience."⁽⁶³⁾ If so, and given how individualist SS is, this would go some way toward explaining why what Audi calls "supervenience theories" of the moral encounter so much trouble preserving the gap between actual behavior or dispositions to behave and what would be morally better or worse.

RFOR. A is relationally for E if and only if A is directly for E and E is the doing, producing or getting something x in relation r to something else y.⁽⁷⁵⁾

The chick's imprinting mechanism is directly for getting it into the relation "imprinted on" to its mother (since this is the effect in virtue of which the mechanism was selected for). Hence by RFOR, the mechanism is r-for imprinting the chick on its mother. But the mechanism is not r-for imprinting Junior on Henna; if it were, then by RFOR it would be directly for imprinting Junior on Henna, which by DFOR would mean that imprinting on Henna is the effect of the mechanism's past instances in virtue of which it was selected for, which would be absurd. We need a further notion of how A can be for something.

Consider a situation S in which (1) A is relationally for E, where E is the doing, producing or getting something x in relation r to something else y; and (2) the environment (external or internal) supplies the specific item y such that, in S, A is for doing, producing or getting x in relation r to y. Call this specific item y*. In such a situation S, A is for producing x in relation r to y* in virtue of y*'s being the y in S such that A is for producing x in relation r to y (just as Henna is the y such that Junior's imprinting mechanism is for imprinting on y, in the situation in which Henna is Junior's mom). Thus

SFOR. A is situationally for E* in S if and only if: (a) A is relationally for E, where E is the doing, producing or getting something x in relation r to something else y, and (b) E* is the doing, producing or getting x in relation r to the specific y in S -- call it y* -- such that A is for producing x in relation r to y.

Since Junior's imprinting mechanism is r-for imprinting him on his mother y (compare (a)), and since the situation we are imagining is one in which Henna is his mother and is thereby the specific y with respect to which the mechanism is for effecting the imprinted-on-mother relation (compare (b)), it follows by SFOR that Junior's imprinting mechanism is situationally for (s-for) imprinting him on Henna.

A further illustration will prove useful, a variation on one of Millikan's. There are mechanisms in the rat that are an adaptation r-for producing an aversion to eating what smells like the stuff it ate when it got sick (or its fellows ate when they got sick or died). Now suppose the situation is one in which the stuff King Rat ate when King Rat got sick is the children's Silly Putty -- a substance nowhere encountered in the evolutionary history of rats; indeed Silly Putty is instantaneously new in rat experience. In this situation, Silly Putty is the specific stuff that King Rat's mechanisms are for producing an aversion to eating, in virtue of Silly Putty's being the specific stuff in S with respect to which they are for effecting the aversion. Thus by SFOR, King Rat's mechanisms are s-for preventing him from eating Silly Putty.

In this way an animal's mechanisms can come to have an objective normative property that is not only novel but instantaneously so; the animal can acquire a biological purpose -- a biological should or ought -- that is peculiar to it as an individual, tailored to its own peculiar circumstances or peculiar experience.⁽⁷⁶⁾ In an important sense, King Rat ought not to eat Silly Putty -- a biological "ought" meaning only that he contains mechanisms that are for getting him not to eat the stuff, or equivalently, as we shall see, for getting him to conform to the novel rule "Don't eat Silly Putty."

But does the normativity involved in being either relationally or situationally for something satisfy constraints (i)-(vii) on any adequate naturalistic theory of objective normativity? It is fairly easy to see that it does, thanks to the work of previous sections. As in the case of DFOR, both RFOR and SFOR are bridge principles introduced as part of the revisionary PBE/I strategy of positing the best equivalence/identity. Consequently, again like DFOR and in light of arguments that parallel those in §5, RFOR and SFOR satisfy constraints (i)-(v) (conform to Hume's Law, escape open-question arguments, escape arguments from queerness, explain how the matter of whether x has a specific normative property is determined solely by the relevant specific objective affairs, and preserve the gap between how something actually behaves or is disposed to behave and how it should behave).

Constraint (vi), however -- about prediction and explanatory role -- is more complicated in the case of SFOR. Here is how it goes. Among the legitimate kinds of explanation there are of why Junior imprints on Henna (when he does), one is by reference to what Junior ought to do. Junior imprints on Henna because in the circumstances, Henna is what Junior ought to imprint on (in the relevant normative sense of this biological ought). What "grounds" this explanation -- but makes it no less an explanation -- is a longer explanation in the background: Junior imprints on Henna because he ought to, in the sense that he contains an adaptive mechanism for getting juniors to imprinting on their moms, and Junior's Mom is Henna. More fully still: Junior contains an adaptation A which exists because past instances of A had the effect of imprinting past juniors on their moms; Junior is in a situation in which Mom is Henna; and A is operating as designed and in design conditions. It follows that the normative property of being s-for imprinting Junior on Henna plays a causal-explanatory role (cf. §5.6). So too, a fortiori, in the case of being r-for imprinting him on his mother in the sense defined by RFOR. And again, such explanations provide the sort of evidence needed to adjudicate between the normative framework and its rivals, such as the Divine Design framework (§5.6).

As regards predictive role, we can conditionally predict what Junior will do in the situation by treating Junior's imprinting mechanism as normatively for imprinting him on Henna,. We can predict that Junior will imprint on Henna -- assuming his imprinting mechanism is operating as designed and in design conditions, and that Henna is his Mom. So too, a fortiori, in the case of being r-for imprinting him on his mother. And once more the predictive role is one that provides evidence for the normative framework over its rival. Thus it looks as though the less primitive normativity involved in an adaptation's being either relationally or situationally for something satisfies constraints (i)-(vii).

6.2

Male hoverflies will hover for hours in one spot, darting seemingly at random after sundry objects (passing midges, tossed BB's, wind-blown bits of this and that, distant birds, male hoverflies, female hoverflies). What is this behavior for, if anything? It turns out that the males are "keeping their flight muscles warm and primed so that they are ready to dart instantly after any passing female they sight. This chasing behavior is on such a hair-trigger that all manner of inappropriate targets elicit pursuit."⁽⁷⁷⁾ Calculations show that if the male is to intercept the target, he must turn at an angle equal to the angle between the center of his retina and the image of the target, minus 1/10 the image's angular velocity, ± 180. According to Collet and Land, the hoverfly does indeed conform to this rule. Because it is a rule about how he should respond to a proximal stimulus (the moving spot on his retina), Millikan calls it "the proximal hoverfly rule"; conformity to the proximal hoverfly rule is a means of conforming to a less proximal, more distal, rule: "If you see a female, catch it."

Such rules represent biological purposes the hoverfly has. They are unexpressed purposes, indeed purposes of which the hoverfly is not and could not be aware, given his primitive nervous system. Nor could they be found by peering into his head. Instead, to say that he has such a purpose is to say that he "has within him a genetically determined mechanism of a kind that historically proliferated in part because it was responsible for producing conformity to the . . . rule, hence for getting male and female hoverflies together"⁽⁷⁸⁾ In other words, the mechanism is directly for getting him to conform to the rule, in the sense of DFOR. In order to find out what rule or rules, if any, to which something is supposed to conform, we must often take a long look back in time to see what role such conformity may have played in such adaptive success as the creature may have had. In doing so we discover "how purposes inform the rule-following behavior of the hoverfly, how norms, standards, or ideals apply to his behavior, hence how the hoverfly comes to display competences or abilities to conform to rules rather than mere dispositions to coincide with them."⁽⁷⁹⁾

As Millikan argues, we thereby have an answer to Kripke's challenge: "The fundamental problem . . . is . . . whether [the] actual dispositions are 'right' or not, is there anything that mandates what they ought to be?"⁽⁸⁰⁾ What mandates -- that is, what determines -- that the male hoverfly ought to conform to the proximal rule, as opposed to some quoverfly rule or Fodorian or disjunctive rule, are natural affairs in the selective history in virtue of which the relevant mechanism is for getting him to conform to the rule.⁽⁸¹⁾ In general, where A is an adaptation for getting an organism to behave a certain way B -- to turn at such-and-such angle, to imprint on Mom, to imprint on Henna, not to eat Silly Putty -- A is also for getting the organism to conform to the corresponding rule: "Turn at such-and-such angle," "Imprint on Mom," "don't eat Silly Putty." Formally, this comes to

RULE. Where adaptation A is for getting organism x to B, A is also for getting x to conform to rule B .

Note that RULE applies whether A is directly, relationally or situationally for getting the organism to B, as the foregoing examples illustrate, so that A can be directly, relationally or situationally for getting the organism to conform to rule B . It should also be clear that, like the kinds of normativity defined by DFOR, RFOR and SFOR, the kind of normativity defined by RULE -- the normativity involved in A's being for getting x to conform to a rule -- satisfies constraints (i)-(vii) on any would-be naturalistic theory of objective normativity, and for the same reasons. Note too that insofar as the proposition that Junior ought to imprint on Mom means simply that Junior contains mechanisms which are an adaptation for getting him to imprint Mom, it follows by RULE that the proposition entails a rule, standard or norm, namely "Imprint on Mom." In this sense the proposition is intrinsically action-guiding (as opposed to intrinsically motivating).

Now consider the guppy.⁽⁸²⁾ When a large fish nears a school of guppies, some of the guppies will approach the stranger to see whether it is a predator. If it is, the scouts can warn the school, but the probability that the scouts will be eaten is significantly higher than it would be if enough of them stick together long enough to confuse the predator by scattering. As they approach the stranger, they generally keep up the first time they swim out, but subsequently hold back if accompanied by a guppy that held back on the previous occasion. When accompanied by individuals that kept up on the previous occasion, they will themselves generally keep up on the present occasion. That is, they keep up or hold back depending on what others did on the previous occasion. If new individuals swim out, the other scouts keep up the first time, but thereafter do what the others did the time before.

The behavior of the scout guppies can be described as Tit for Tat (TFT): keep up on the first occasion, thereafter do whatever others did on the previous occasion. There appear to be guppy mechanisms responsible for, among other things, identifying other guppies, remembering what they did on the previous occasion, and getting the guppy to keep up on the first occasion while thereafter doing what others did on the previous occasion (not that the mechanisms cannot sometimes be overridden by, say, a flee-from-predator module). Furthermore, it turns out mathematically that such reciprocal altruistic behavior significantly increases each individual scout guppy's chances of survival and reproduction by contrast to always keeping up, never keeping up, keeping up every other time, and so on. The extra risk to the individual of keeping up on any given occasion is outweighed by the benefit to it of TFT behavior in the longer run. In this and many other cases, TFT is the rule of encounter conformity to which best promotes the organism's fitness; in others, other rules do better.⁽⁸³⁾

Presumably these mechanisms are an adaptation. If so, among the things they are for in certain situations is producing the appropriate Tit-for-Tat behavior. According to RULE, this is to say that they are for getting guppies to conform to the TFT rule, "Keep up on the first occasion, thereafter do what others did on the previous occasion." Even though the rule is unexpressed and unexpressible by the guppy, one of the guppy's biological purposes is to conform to the TFT rule, meaning that the guppy contains mechanisms for producing conformity to the rule. In this primitive sense of "ought," the guppy ought to conform to TFT. The proposition that it ought to do so is intrinsically action-guiding, in the sense that it entails a norm or standard, namely TFT.

The point of TFT is to overrule the individual scout's acting in its own self interest -- to overrule holding back when the others do not. Furthermore, by so holding back the scout would harm those who do not, by increasing their chances of being eaten. So in the guppy case, the point of TFT is to overrule following self-interest when following self-interest would harm others. According to many philosophers and ordinary folk alike, the point of morality is to overrule acting in one's own self-interest when doing so would harm others. Thus it looks as though there are cases in which there is something like a moral rule -- a quasi-moral rule -- to which an organism objectively ought to conform, by virtue of what certain of its adaptations are for.⁽⁸⁴⁾

The "ought" here is of course not a moral ought. It is one of the biological oughts we've been considering in connection with the various senses in which an adaptation may be for something; specifically, the relevant guppy adaptations are situationally for getting it to conform to TFT in appropriate ways in varying situations. But even though this is not a moral ought, there would be, as Mackie says, at least some initial implausibility in a view that gave moral normativity a different status from non-moral normativity. Thus Mackie and most other non-cognitivists would likely agree with Copp and most other cognitivists that

moral claims is non-cognitive, then if normative claims are to be given a unified treatment, the semantics for all normative claims must be non-cognitivist.⁽⁸⁵⁾

By the present account, the semantics of normative claims about what an adaptation is for is decidedly cognitivist. Furthermore, the cognitivism holds in the case of normative claims about adaptations situationally for getting an organism to conform to a quasi-moral rule like TFT. Under Copp's principle, then, it follows that our semantics for moral claims must be cognitivist too, on pain of disunified treatment of normativity.

That our moral semantics must also be cognitivist becomes still more plausible in the rest of this subsection and the next. Philip Kitcher advances an explanation of how human altruism might possibly have evolved under natural selection.⁽⁸⁶⁾ Suppose for the sake of argument that he is right that for our savannah-dwelling hominid ancestors, "selection will favor 'golden-rule' altruism of a discriminating kind (treat the other as oneself so long as one has no basis for thinking that the other will not do the same)," where the agent conforming to the rule is moved to action by weighing the well-being of the other equal to its own, even as it "fights desires that in the absence of effects on others, would have led unproblematically to action." Thus the agent feels the tug of selfish action, yet acts out of consideration for the other, a mark of human altruism: "unless the altruist is genuinely moved to value what is given up in performing the selfish action and genuinely wants to help the other(s), there is no altruism of the inspiring -- human -- kind."⁽⁸⁷⁾ Even though the hominid agent ends up gaining by its action -- in terms of some game-theoretic payoff in units of fitness -- this is something of which it is totally unaware, and in any case its motive for thus acting altruistically is not some such game-theoretic payoff but to treat the other's well-being equal to its own.

The rule or norm or standard to which the hominid agent ought to conform is not a hypothetical imperative but categorical, in Mackie's sense of "categorical" (which he derives from his interpretation of Kant). The imperative does not have the form, "If you desire X, you ought to do Y," where the oughtness is contingent upon on the agent's desire for X. This is especially clear when X is some game-theoretic payoff in units of fitness, of which the hominid agent has no notion and for which it has no desire. The agent is to fight desires that in the absence of effects on others would have led unproblematically to action, and this includes the desire, could the agent have it, for some game-theoretic payoff to itself in units of fitness. Instead, in the relevant situations the imperative has the form, "Treat the other as oneself," so that the agent is to be moved solely by weighing the well-being of the other equal to its own; the agent is in fact so moved when those of its mechanisms that are for motivating it to conform to golden-rule altruism are operating as designed and in an appropriate situation. Hence the rule or imperative to weigh the well-being of the other equal to its own is a categorical imperative, in that the imperative "would express a reason for acting which was unconditional," as Mackie says, "in the sense of not being contingent upon any present desire of the agent to whose satisfaction the recommended action would contribute as a means." He then adds that his "thesis that there are no objective values is specifically the denial that any such categorically imperative element is objectively valid."⁽⁸⁸⁾

If the foregoing is on the right track, there are cases in which a categorically imperative element would be objectively valid, contrary to Mackie. The hominids objectively ought to conform to an imperative that proves to be a categorical imperative in his sense, even though it is not a (fully) human moral imperative. Furthermore, it is possible to reduce the reliance on genetically determined mechanisms if the organism is able -- as evidently the hominids were -- to learn the appropriate rule-conforming competence and pass it on to others, including offspring. Also, the content of the rule to which the organism is to conform in the relevant situations -- treat the other's well-being equal to one's own -- is such that we would unhesitatingly call it a moral rule if applied to humans (which is not to say that it would therefore be the correct moral rule for us). This is true even though the organism's "obligation" to conform to the rule is not a moral obligation but biological, a matter of the organism's containing a mechanism or mechanisms -- an adaptation -- of a kind that can become situationally for motivating the organism to conform to this rule.

However, the fact that the "ought" here is not a moral ought might well limit the significance of this kind of case as a counter to Mackie. The altruism falls short of fully human moral altruism in fundamental respects. One is this. From the fact (if it is one) that our savannah-dwelling hominid ancestors had a biological obligation to conform to golden-rule altruism (in appropriate situations), we cannot infer that we humans ought to do so, at least not without helping ourselves to some rather dubious assumptions (as Kitcher emphasizes). In other words, you can't get here from there.

Nonetheless, we are entitled not only to conclude with Kitcher that "a recognizable, if rather minimal, type of human altruism" might evolve under natural selection. We may further conclude that insofar as the semantics of the normative claim that our ancestors biologically ought to have conformed to the categorical imperative involved in golden-rule altruism is cognitivist, and assuming that Mackie and others are right that a disunified treatment of the semantics of normative claims is implausible, then it is likewise implausible for the semantics of moral claims to be non-cognitivist. This would cast considerable doubt on the view that there can be no objective normativity at all in the world which is amenable to a naturalistically acceptable account, and certainly none involving conformity to a categorical imperative.

6.3

Can we go further? Specifically, can the revisionary PBE/I strategy, or what is formally the same strategy, be applied to kinds of normativity in which cultural factors are mainly what determine the normativity, including above all fully human moral normativity? Here, in thumbnail outline, are two ways this might be done (there may be others). The point is not to argue for this or that theory of morality, but to suggest ways of further undermining the pandemic irrealist presumption that there can be no objective moral normativity in the world.

The first way is to try constructing a theory of morality around a bridge principle which equates moral normativity not with biological affairs, but, perhaps, with what would contribute to the greatest happiness of the greatest number; or, instead, with what would tend to foster the mutually supporting,"homeostatically clustered" physical and psychological or social human needs together with the practices that unify them;⁽⁸⁹⁾ or with what the parties to the initial position, or perhaps some ideal rational observer, would choose by way of first principles; or with norms "justified by the fact that society needs [them] in order to facilitate cooperation, to enable us to deal with conflict in a non-destructive manner, to give us a sense of security, to enable culture and friendship to develop and flourish, and so on."⁽⁹⁰⁾ The list of possibilities could easily be expanded.

Having adopted some such bridge principle and built a suitable theory around it, the strategy would then be to show that the theory satisfies adequacy constraints (i)-(vii), by showing that (a) objections based on Hume's Law, OQA's and AQ all fail (in light of arguments that parallel those in §§5.1-5.4); (b) the moral normativity is equated with affairs of a kind, and in such a way, that the account avoids individualism, thus preserving the gap between how individuals or indeed whole societies behave or are disposed to behave and what would be morally better or worse (along the lines of §5.5); and (c) the moral properties play appropriate explanatory and predictive roles (§5.6). Provided the theory is successful at each step of the way -- admittedly a large proviso -- the theory would amount to a naturalistic account of objective moral normativity which satisfies the adequacy constraints. Among the theories that appear to satisfy them (or could be revised so as to do so) there is Copp's cognitivist theory of moral normative judgment and justification, though showing that it does would require a great deal more argument than is possible here.⁽⁹¹⁾

In this connection, it is crucial to distinguish objections to Copp's theory of morality -- or indeed any other theory of morality -- from objections to the revisionary method of positing the best equivalence/identity. Misgivings about the theory of morality would not count against the method. To slide from one to the other would be like rejecting the method on the ground that there are serious objections to the plasma theory of ball lightning. Even if the plasma theory fails, there remain other theories of ball lightning to consider, using the revisionary method of PBE/I.

The second way of applying revisionary PBE/I directly to moral normativity is closely related to the first. But it emphasizes the desideratum of a unified treatment of the semantics of normative claims, and it does so by exploiting evolutionary continuities between us and the hominids. Suppose evolution has cumulatively endowed certain of the hominids' descendants with, among other things, (i) language, consciousness and the capacity for a kind of Kantian autonomy of reason; (ii) reason in the form of cognitive mechanisms that can become situationally for (a) solving complex practical as well as theoretical problems by producing rules conformity to which would result in an optimal solution, as well as (b) weighing whether such rules and solutions are justified on the available evidence; and (iii) mechanisms that can become situationally for motivating the creature to conform to such justified rules -- indeed making them one's own -- when the rules are produced by mechanisms that underlie (i) and (ii) and are operating as designed and in design conditions. In short, suppose we are now talking about us.

We humans have often found ourselves in situations nowhere encountered in our evolutionary history, including situations in which certain of our mechanisms are normatively for solving complex practical problems by producing both novel rules and behavior in conformity to them. In some situations, the rules amount to moral rules (if only by virtue of their content, such as "Treat the other's well-being equal to one's own"), so that these mechanisms become situationally for motivating us to conform to moral rules -- rules of which we can be conscious, and about which we can decide whether they are justified, whether we ought to conform to them and/or make them our own, and why.

The latter ought is a moral ought. But instead of pursuing the futile strategy of somehow inferring it from the biological, we do better to try positing some appropriate equivalence or perhaps identity between the moral ought and something non-biological, where the latter is nonetheless appropriately related to the biological. To this end, let us suppose we are in a situation in which the problem is to find rules conformity to which would best serve our needs by enabling us to get along together in our social life -- by facilitating cooperation, helping to resolve conflict in a non-destructive manner, giving us a sense of security, allowing culture and friendship to develop and flourish, and so on. Suppose further that, faced with this problem, our underlying mechanisms come up with a set R* of rules -- a social code -- such that conformity to it would best solve the problem.

A code of this sort is substantially what Copp's theory posits as a moral code: "the moral code that would best serve the needs of a society is the code that the society would be most rational to choose, and it is the moral code justified for the society."⁽⁹²⁾ This suggests that, in the spirit of revisionary PBE/I, we posit the following bridge principle, which equates the moral not with something biological but with something broadly cultural:

MOR. A set R* of rules is the justified moral code for a society if and only if R* is the social code the society would be most rational to choose by virtue of the code's being the one that would best serve the society's needs.

This of course ignores many complications, as Copp says of his own abbreviated formulation. Much of his book is devoted to addressing them, by explaining at length such things as "society's needs," "what best serves them," "society's choosing," "most rational," "justified," and more, including, notably, why the relativization to a society's needs does not imply an unacceptable relativism. But perhaps enough has been said for it to be clear how MOR would enable a moral ought to be appropriately related to biological affaris without being inferrable from them, as follows.

Suppose we are in a situation S in which we biologically ought to conform to code R* by virtue of certain of our underlying mechanisms being situationally for both producing R* and motivating us to conform to it in the strong sense of making it our own, where they are s-for this because, in S, R* is the social code conformity to which would best solve the problem encounterd in S (the one described above -- the problem of finding rules conformity to which would best serve our society's needs by enabling us to get along together in our social life). Thus R* is the social code that best serves the society's needs. Again one cannot infer from any of this that we morally ought to conform to R*, largely because it does not follow that R* would be justified. But by adding MOR to the mix one can infer the moral ought. Since code R* -- which was produced in S by appropriate mechanisms -- is the social code that best serves the society's needs, it is the code the society would be most rational to choose. By MOR, therefore, R* is the justified moral code for the society, the code to which one morally ought to conform.⁽⁹³⁾

But would the theory we imagine thus built around the posited bridge principle MOR -- essentially Copp's theory -- satisfy adequacy constraints (i)-(vii)? That is, could naturalists use the theory to negotiate the is-ought minefield? By now it should be reasonably clear that they could. Constraint (vi), about prediction and explanatory role, would again seem to present the main difficulty. So I shall close with a word about it, leaving the others as an exercise in applying §§5.1-5.5.

We have been emphasizing certain evolutionary continuities between us and the hominids, as part of the second way of applying the revisionary PBE/I strategy to moral normativity. One of the advantages of doing so is precisely that it affords moral properties fairly straightforward explanatory and predictive roles. Thus suppose that a human agent Sarah subscribes to the rule "Treat the other's well-being equal to one's own" as a moral standard, meaning in part that she wants the code R* that contains it to play the role of social moral code in her society.⁽⁹⁴⁾ Suppose further that her wanting this is a matter of her relevant underlying mechanisms' being situationally both for getting her to recognize that R* is the justified moral code in the sense of MOR, and for motivating her to make it her own. (The mechanisms are s-for this because the situation is one in which the mechanisms are functioning as designed and in design conditions; the problem posed is the one above; and R* is the code conformity to which would best serve her society's needs, so that by MOR it is the justified moral code.)

In this sort of case, among the legitimate kinds of explanation of why Sarah treats the other's well-being equal to her own (when she does) is that she morally ought to do so. What "grounds" this explanation -- but again makes it no less an explanation -- is a longer explanation in the background. Sarah treats the other's well-being equal to her own because she morally ought to, in that she contains adaptations A -- certain mechanisms -- that are situationally for getting her to recognize the justified moral code of her society and motivating her to make it her own; they are operating as designed and in design conditions; and the situation is one in which the justified moral code of her society is R*, and the rule, "Treat the other's well-being equal to one's own," belongs to R*. It follows that the moral property of being what Sarah ought to do plays a causal-explanatory role (cf. §6.2). Similarly for predictive role (again drawing on §6.2): given that Sarah morally ought to treat the other's well-being equal to her own, we can predict she will do so -- assuming her relevant mechanisms are operating as designed and in design conditions, and that the situation is one in which the justified moral code of her society is R*, and the rule, "Treat the other's well-being equal to one's own," belongs to it.

Again complications remain, of course, but in weighing them we must distinguish between those that bear on Copp's theory and those that might count against the revisionary method of positing the best equivalence/identity. Even if a theory fails for reasons peculiar to itself, there remain all the other theories of morality to which we might apply the method in order to argue for the objectivity of the resulting moral normativity.

FOOTNOTES

1. For comments on ancestor drafts, I am indebted to Tom Bontly, Allen Coates, Gilbert Harman, Kenneth Taylor, Derek Turner, audiences at Duke, Virginia Polytechnic and Western Michigan universities, the North Carolina Philosophical Society, the East Carolina University Philosophy Faculty Seminar, the APA, and especially to Paul Bloomfield and to Michael Ferejohn for their detailed and persistent critiques.

2. Mackie (1977), 38-39.

3. Cf. Hampton (1995), 110ff, according to whom Mackie never explicitly defines "what is scientifically problematic about moral prescriptivity," whereas "a good look at science reveals that valuation is not something that is, or need be, excluded from our best scientific explanations, especially in fields such as biology." One consequence of my argument will be that biology relies heavily on philosophically important kinds of genuinely objective normativity.

4. Mackie (1977), 42.

5. Searle (1992), 238. The notion of a norm or standard in the present paper, which appears to be Searle's as well, is essentially the same as Allan Gibbard's (1990), 46, endorsed by Copp (1995a), 196: a norm or standard is "a possible rule or prescription, expressible by an imperative"; see also Copp (1995b), 20.

6. Kitcher (1993), 513.

7. Cf. Post (1995), 88-90.

8. Strawson (1963), xiii. I make no attempt here to defend a theory of meaning and reference that would fully support these and the many related remarks ahead, except to say that a theory like Millikan's, perhaps among others, would be more than adequate. See note 46, below. In his reply to Stalnaker (2001), Jackson (2001), 656-659, overlooks the role of empirical bridge theories in forging an a posteriori passage from one kind or level of phenomena to another and thereby making conceptual analysis unnecessary. He thinks that given an account of the nature of a gas that is complete in purely (statistical-) mechanical terms, "There is nothing else relevant to be learnt about gases" -- as if it there were nothing relevant to learn about gases (or ball lightning) from the a posteriori bridge theories that successfully connect their higher-level properties (or other target properties) with their purely physical properties, whether mechanical or plasma-theoretic. See further the next paragraph below.

9. Moore (1980), 15ff. Cf. Ball (1988).

10. Hare (1995), 340.

11. Horgan and Timmons (1992b).

12. Contrary apparently to Jackson (2001), 659, who holds that any feature that is "essential" according to the folk conception must always be retained. This would rule Einstein an eliminativist about mass, which he is not (as opposed to eliminativist about mass traditionally so-called). What Horgan and Timmons (1992a), 235, call "hybrid semantic constraints" that govern certain terms seem able, if not also designed, to accommodate the revised usage typical of revisionary theories. If their constraints prove unable do so, their account as it stands appears to provide no other way of allowing for such usage -- a measure, perhaps, of how strong is the influence on them of OQA. Cf. Horgan and Timmons (1992b), (1993), considered at length in §5.2 below.

13. Mackie (1977), 15.

14. Mackie (1977), 53-58. Goodness, moral or otherwise, is among the several kinds of normativity I make no attempt to treat in this paper. Nor do I consider whether some one kind of normativity, if any, is "ontologically prior" to the others (whatever that would mean; cf. Post (1999b), §5).

15. Thus in this respect, I adopt the interpretation of Mackie's AQ given by Horgan and Timmons (1992a), at least for the duration of the present paper.

16. Mackie (1977), 4.

17. Mackie (1977), 42. Another part of Mackie's argument -- that something's being morally good, and/or the judgment that it is, is intrinsically or necessarily motivating and therefore must be ontologically queer from the point of view of naturalism -- is irrelevant so long as we are discussing non-moral kinds of normativity; it becomes relevant only toward the end of §6. See also note 24, below.

18. Thus I take quite seriously, and address in §5.3, the challenge advanced by Horgan and Timmons (1992a) against earlier efforts to outflank AQ, namely that such efforts fail to discharge the explanatory burden expressed in (b).

19. Kripke (1982), 24.

20. I am indebted to Ümit Yalçin for getting me to see that there may be some esthetic normative properties, perhaps among others, to which this distinction does not apply. This is just one reason why I attempt no account of "the nature of normativity in general," if there is such a thing.

21. Kim (1993), 348, endorses and calls this Alexander's dictum. Drawing on Post (1991), 112-118, Post (1999a) argues that both the dictum and Kim's closely related principle of the Causal Individuation of Kinds suffer empirical counter-examples, especially from biology. Cf. Post (1995), 78-85, and Wilson (1995), 146-150, 192-196.

22. On the relations between determination and explanation, cf. Post (1999b).

23. Weinberg (1976), 13.

24. Another adequacy constraint some philosophers would impose is the motivational internalist's thesis that there is a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation. But such a constraint would be irrelevant in the case of non-moral normative judgments. Moreover, the internalist's thesis is so problematic that making it an adequacy constraint would seem premature at best. Indeed, Svavarsdóttir (1999) has undermined the constraint, I believe, by showing that internalists bear a crucial burden of argument they have not discharged.

25. Brandon (1990); all quoted Brandon passages below are from pp. 139, 165, 185-89.

26. Dennett (1995), 229, 236-238. Cf. note 69, below.

27. Cf. Sober (1993), 84: "characteristic c is an adaptation for doing task t in a population if and only if members of the population now have c because, ancestrally, there was selection for having c and c conferred a fitness advantage because it performed task t," the first instances of c being due to mutation, or perhaps genetic drift, or whatever. I am indebted to Derek Turner for recalling this passage. See also Sterelny and Griffiths (1999). None of these views, mine included, entails the contested thesis that natural selection is itself a "causal force" or "mechanism" over and above the underlying causal processes whose effects our talk of natural selection is meant to sum up.

28. More fully, an ideally complete adaptation explanation requires supplying five kinds of information: "(1) Evidence that selection has occurred, that is, that some types are better adapted than others in the relevant selective environment (and that this has resulted in differential reproduction); (2) an ecological explanation of the fact that some types are better adapted than others; (3) evidence that the traits in question are heritable; (4) information about the structures of the population from both a genetic and a selective point of view, that is, information about patterns of gene flow and patterns of selective environments; and (5) phylogenetic information concerning what has evolved from what, that is, which character states are primitive and which are derived." Cf. Dennett (1995), 238: "Adaptationist reasoning is not optional; it is the heart and soul of evolutionary biology."

29. Of course there can be more than one effect in virtue of which A was selected for, but talking as if there were just one, as I shall continue to do, simplifies the exposition, as do some other idealizations that likewise will make no substantive difference to the argument. Note too that A's past instances need not always have had effect E, or even very often, just often enough for there to have been selection for A.

30. Millikan (1993), 226. Cf. her distinction between direct and adapted proper function, in Millikan (1984), Chs. 1-2, especially pp. 40ff. For simplicity, and where no confusion looms,"A is for E" will henceforth mean that A is either directly for E or for E in some further sense; otherwise "A is d-for E" will mean that A is directly for E, and other locutions will be introduced to connote other senses in which A can be for E.

31. McGinn (2000), Ch. 5. Why both truth and what-for or proper-function properties are self-effacing is an interesting question, not least because it may have an interesting answer. Truth may likewise be a kind of normative what-for or proper-function property, though on a different level, such that what an indicative sentence is for, when produced in appropriate conditions by means of appropriate mechanisms, is to map onto a condition in the world and thereby be true -- contrary e.g. to Copp (1995b), 13: "To say that a [sentence] is true is not to make a normative claim about it." Cf. Millikan (1984), passim, on truth.

32. Huemer (2000), 580, according to whom (note 16, p. 595) Sayre-McCord (1988), 274, is among those who fallaciously reason this way, as when Sayre-McCord says, "Because water is H₂O, the justification for our belief in H₂O (by appeal to its explanatory potency) serves equally well as a justification of our belief in water." (Not that Sayre-McCord is necessarily guilty; the inference may be enthymematic, perhaps abbreviating something formally similar to the reasoning in my following two sentences.)

33. Searle (1995), 18. Plantinga (1993), 201-204.

34. Searle (1995), 18.

35. According to Post (1998), 233, Plantinga "badly misreads [Millikan] as attempting an analysis, then tries to counter-example accordingly." Taken literally, this of course is false, as Plantinga has stressed in correspondence. What I meant, and should have spelled out, was the misreading at a deeper level, spelled out here, of the significance of the method. I had supposed it would suffice for clarity to say in the next breath, as I did, that "the aim of her definition . . . is to be adequate to the phenomenon. Objecting to the resulting notion [of function] that it is not what the folk mean . . . would be as beside the point as objecting to Einstein's account of mass that it fails to accord with what the folk mean." Clearly it did not suffice.

36. Horgan and Timmons (1993), 188. I am indebted to Tom Bontly for stimulating me to think more deeply about Horgan and Timmons's New OQA, and to try constructing a genuine naturalistic Twin-Earth scenario for certain normative terms, below, contrary to their argument that it cannot be done. Cf. Bontly (1998). Rottschaefer (1998), 234-236, proposes an approach to OQA's that resembles the PBE/I strategy.

37. Less primitive cases, including those in which what is to be done or pursued involves conforming to a rule, are considered in §6.

38. Horgan and Timmons (1993), 188.

39. Horgan and Timmons (1993), 188.

40. Unless of course the relevant bridge principles of the plasma theory -- the principles that equate ball lightning's manifest properties with high plasma density or its effects -- were themselves part of the vernacular, by way of having long school our usage and intuitions about the relations between ball lightning and high plasma density, as our intuitions about water and H₂O have been schooled . In that case, (1) change the example to a time before the theory has yet schooled the vernacular, and (2) see below, at running a Twin-Earth objection against Einstein, on the problem of what counts as the relevant group of competent speakers, and when.

41. Horgan and Timmons (1993), 188.

42. Horgan and Timmons (1992b), 159. CSN* is the same as what they call CSN, except that 'moral' is replaced by 'normative'.

43. Horgan and Timmons (1992b), 157ff.

44. Horgan and Timmons (1992a), 250n6 to p. 224, remark that "In the case of moral supervenience, presumably the operative modality is metaphysical necessity -- truth in all possible worlds." But they appear to give no real argument for this.

45. Horgan and Timmons (1992b), 158; Boyd (1988).

46. Millikan (1984), (1993). Her account accords especially well with rejecting, as I do, (1) a priori or other epistemically privileged access either to the meaning of a term or to properties of the affair in the world it would denote; and (2) the widespread assumption that the mind's contents alone determine the criteria for a term's success or failure in referring or connoting, so that "What's inside determines how things must be outside for the reference to be successful." Millikan (forthcoming), p. . I would only emphasize what is at least implicit in her account, namely that it applies to normative terms as well.

47. Horgan and Timmons (1992b), 162, emphasis added, and with 'normative' replacing 'moral'.

48. In line with Horgan and Timmons (1992b), 164.

49. Horgan and Timmons (1992b), 165-166.

50. Cf. Post (1995), pp. 89-93 on focused determination.

51. Horgan and Timmons (1992a).

52. Searle (1995), 18.

53. Searle (1995), 16.

54. Searle (1995), 18-19.

55. Dennett (1995), 339.

56. Plantinga (1993), Ch. 11.

57. What Baker (1987) and many others call individualism amounts to non-relational individualism; what she calls non-individualism amounts to a kind of relational individualism.

58. Audi (1993), 96.

59. Kim (1993), 58, 79, 84.

60. The former is used in defining the latter (cf. §5.3). Both are defended at length in Post (1987), (1995), and (1999a). Cf. Hellman and Thompson (1975), Horgan (1982), Lewis (1983), Horgan (1984). The relations are nonreductive in the sense of not entailing that all a thing's properties are (nomologically) equivalent to certain (compounds) of its own base properties (intrinsic or relational).

61. Kripke (1982), 24, 27-32, 57.

62. Cf. Post (1995), §§2-3, which contains further references, and where the objection that there must be some (compound) physical relational property of the bearer in virtue of which the determination holds is met by showing how the alleged physical relational properties all fail to do so in representative cases; the culprit is the tendency of many philosophers to chase propertyhood up the tree of syntax, so that a property is just anything projected by the predicate-forming operators of logic and set theory. See also Clapp (2001).

63. Railton (1995), 100n18.

64. Harman (1986), 60, with 'moral' replaced by 'normative'.

65. See note 28, above, regarding Brandon's detailed account of the kinds of evidence required for an ideally complete adaptation explanation.

66. Brandon (1990); see note 25 and note 28, above.

67. Railton (1998), 177, 180, 182.

68. Harman (1998), 207-208, with 'normative' in place of 'moral'.

69. Dennett (1995), 233, 484. One can agree with Dennett on this point without accepting the instrumentalism many think he is committed to by the way he talks of "stance."

70. Cf. Thomson in Harman and Thomson (1996), Ch. 6, and Thomson (1998), 216-217. Railton (1998), 178, provides a succinct rendering of her argument, which the following summary draws on. See Thomson in Harman and Thomson (1996), 79n3, 90.

71. Railton (1998), 178, with 'moral' replaced by 'normative'.

72. Railton (1998), 179. Cf. Sturgeon (1998), 201.

73. This sense of "intrinsically action-guiding" is essentially what Copp (1995a), 199, and Svavarsdóttir (1999), 162, mean when they distinguish this or equivalent terms from "intrinsically motivating."

74. Kitcher (1993), 513.

75. That is, in relation r to some y such that y x. RFOR is stimulated by Millikan (1984), 39, on relational proper function. Her account of the various kinds of proper function or what-for-ness is more comprehensive and detailed than the present account is or needs to be, given its different aims.

76. Cf. Millikan (1993), 226.

77. Collet and Land (1978), quoted by Millikan (1993), 218, to whom I owe this example.

78. Millikan (1993), 219, and 210-239 on purposefully conforming to an unexpressed rule. All this is subject to the strict evidential requirements set forth by Brandon; cf. note 28.

79. Millikan (1993), 224.

80. Kripke (1982), 57.

81. Cf. Millikan (1993), 211-239; and Post (1991), 52-54.

82. And the stickleback, among others. Cf. Pool (1995), from which the following is drawn.

83. Cf. Axelrod and Hamilton (1981); Axelrod (1984); Axelrod and Dion (1988); and Kitcher (1993), which contains further references.

84. The present account is compatible with holding instead that the point of morality is to overrule following one's own self interest when everyone's following self-interest would harm everyone. Cf. Baier (1958), 309: "The very raison d'etre of a morality is to yield reasons which overrule the reasons of self-interest in those cases when everyone's following self-interest would be harmful to everyone."

85. Copp (1995b), 18.

86. As opposed to how actually it evolved, if it did. Kitcher (1993), note 6.

87. Kitcher (1993), 506; cf. 505, 509, 513.

88. Mackie (1977), 29; cf. 27-30.

89. Boyd (1988), §4.4

90. Copp (1995b), 6.

91. Copp (1995b). He explicitly considers OQA and AQ, though not (quite) from the point of view of revisionary PBE/I; of the remaining constraints, constraint (vi), about prediction and explanatory role, would seem to present the main difficulty. See below on how one might position his theory so as to satisfy this constraint.

92. Copp (1995b), 7.

93. Cf. Sober (1988), 96: "Perhaps the ability to reason abstractly evolved because of its individual advantageousness. But once in place, this intelligence led human beings to see that rational considerations oblige them to take the interests of others as seriously as they take their own. If something like this is right, then vernacular altruism may find its pedigree not in evolutionary altruism, but in the sophisticated thoughts and feelings that a mind produced by individual selection was first able to formulate."

94. Copp (1995b), 5, and Ch. 5.

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