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Doubts About Projectivism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

A. W. Price
A. W. Price
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

How, in pursuit of ontological neutrality, should one talk about values? I propose to say: there are values. Those three words do nothing to define within what kind of conception of a world values are at home.1 I take it that the ‘realist’ must have more to say about values and their world (just as a mathematical Platonist does not simply say ‘There are numbers’). I recognize that an ‘anti-realist’ may prefer to talk of value-terms (perhaps with a blind eye to values not so labelled); I ask him to wait and see whether taking the linguistic turn is the only way to put values in their place (also whether values deserve to be singled out for relegation).

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 61 , Issue 236 , April 1986 , pp. 215 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1986

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References

1 For a way of interpreting the thesis ‘Knowledge is of what is there anyway' which would make instant ‘objectivists’ of us all, cf. John, McDowell, ‘Aesthetic Value, Objectivity, and the Fabric of the World’, Pleasure, Preference and Value, Eva Schaper (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1983), 16, note 23.Google Scholar

2 It is significant that the poem is ‘Dejection: an Ode’: Coleridge's passionless response invites interpretation as essentially the residue of a once lively aesthetic feeling.

3 So I follow David Wiggins' distinction (not unproblematic) between valuations and practical judgments, cf. ‘Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life’, Proceedings of the British Academy 62 (1976), 338f.

4 On the logic of supervenience, cf. Hare, R. M., ‘Supervenience’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 58 (1984), 4–6.Google Scholar

5 Spreading the Word (Oxford University Press, 1984)–as elsewhere except when indicated, 170f.

6 Reply: Rule-Following and Moral Realism’, Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, Holtzman, S. and Leich, C. (eds) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 167.Google Scholar

7 If one excludes this, one may find oneself embarked on the Platonic ascent (cf. Symposium 210ab).

8 Montaigne, ‘On Friendship’. So I agree with Kosman, L. A., ‘Platonic Love’, Facets of Plato's Philosophy, Werkmeister, W. H. (ed.) (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), 56: ‘Valuation seems possible only under some description, and then it does not seem to be of the individual, who only accidentally enjoys that description. If then we wish love of an individual, it seems that we had best resign ourselves to dispensing with the valuation’.Google Scholar

9 On the contrary, Blackburn, has argued that they cannot be; ‘Moral Realism’, Morality and Moral Reasoning, Casey, J. (ed.) (London: Methuen, 1971), 111.Google Scholar

10 Cf. McDowell, ‘Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following’, op. cit. note 6, 142.

11 A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1888), 167.

12 ‘Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (1980), 370.

13 Cf. Colin McGinn, The Subjective View (Oxford University Press, 1983), 6.

14 I am indebted here to Strawson, P. F., ‘Perception and its Objects’, Perception and Identity, Macdonald, G. F. (ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1979), 56–59.Google Scholar

15 Here I follow Wiggins, op. cit., 349.

16 Cf. McDowell, op. cit. note 1, 12.

17 Cf. McDowell, op. cit. note 1, 3.

18 Cf. my ‘Varieties of Objectivity and Values’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 83 (1983–84), 111–113.

19 A minimal ‘objectivity’ (through denial of esse est percipi) is assigned to values alike by projectivism (cf. Blackburn, op. cit., 219, note 21), and anthropocentrism (cf. McDowell, loc. cit. note 1 above).

20 Cf. Mackie, , Ethics (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 35, 48f.Google Scholar

21 Ways of Meaning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 244.

22 Realism and Imagination in Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 47.

23 Others may prefer here to apply the distinction between Erklärung and Verstehen.

24 ’What Would be a Substantial Theory of Truth?’, Philosophical Subjects, Z. van Straaten (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1980), 208.

25 Blackburn's treatment of conditionals is flawed, I think; better, and fine for his purposes, is Hare, ‘Meaning and Speech Acts’, Practical Inferences (London: Macmillan, 1971), 86–89.

26 Wiggins alleges such irreducible interdependence as a further analogy between values and secondary properties, op. cit. note 3, 349.

27 Cf. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford University Press, 1952).

28 In Hare, Moral Thinking (Oxford University Press, 1981).

29 Cf. Price, op. cit., 111.

30 Cf. MacDowell, op. cit. note 1, 13–15, for doubts about the notion of an ‘Archimedean point’ yielding ‘a comparison … between particular representations of the world and the world itself’.

31 Op. cit., Ch. 6, §3 on convergence and divergence, and Ch. 7 in sympathy with the coherence theory.

32 I am grateful for many comments to Thomas Baldwin, Simon Blackburn, and Richard Hare.