Moral naturalisms

The fifth session of the EPLab Permanent Seminar will be led by Frederico Carvalho (IFILNOVA), who will talk about “Moral naturalisms”. The session will take place on 24 February at 10:30 in room A209 at NOVA FCSH (Berna Campus) and will be held in English.

Abstract

What does it mean to be a moral naturalist? In this presentation, we will be providing an overview of theories which all share the following tenet: that what we call “morality” is, in fact, a natural phenomenon. The waters are muddy on this end since, as John Dewey alerted, there are and have been numerous attributable meanings to the word “nature” – and consequently to “naturalism” itself (Dewey 1927:57). Since the goal is to discuss moral matters, we will be focusing on its metaethical use, which (arguably) initially emerged in G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903). However, it will become clear that even if we narrow down our field of enquiry to metaethics and stick with Moore’s definition of moral naturalism, we still run into a conceptual mess.

Linguistic matters aside, our aim is not to propose that some form moral naturalism is unequivocally ‘true’ or ‘the best one’, but to shed light on the many faces of moral naturalism and ultimately contest the traditional view that the naturalization of ethics implies its scientization. This, in turn, leads us to discuss the prospects and problems of a recent wave of naturalism – liberal naturalism (De Caro 2022; Fink 2022). We conclude by putting in question the practical relevance of all of our discussion.

More information on the EPLab Permanent Seminar here.