The Naturalist’s Case for Error Theory

Abstract

Abstract Moral naturalists maintain that moral properties (such as moral goodness, wrongness, evil, and praiseworthiness) can be accommodated within the scientific worldview. This chapter claims that moral naturalism is false, because moral normativity has features that the naturalistic worldview cannot deliver. It examines some kinds of normativity that pose no problem for the ontological naturalist, including hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives that are derived from human-made institutions. But these are not good contenders for providing moral normativity. Many basic moral properties are fundamentally treated as reason-supplying: when one says “Don’t do X because it’s morally wrong,” the moral wrongness of X is supposed to inherently provide a reason for refraining. No naturalistic property has this feature, however, and thus there is no place for moral wrongness in the natural world.