Do Normative Facts Need to Explain?1

Much moral skepticism stems from the charge that moral facts do not figure in causal explanations. However, philosophers committed to normative epistemological discourse (by which I mean our practice of evaluating beliefs as justified or unjustified, and so forth) are in no position to demand that normative facts serve such a role, since epistemic facts are causally impotent as well. I argue instead that pragmatic reasons can justify our continued participation in practices which, like morality and epistemology, do not serve the function of causal explanation. The term ‘epistemology’ refers to two rather different practices. Construed narrowly, it is the attempt to construct a set of formal conditions for the justification of beliefs (e.g., explanatory coherence among beliefs; proper inferential relation to foundational beliefs; proper causal genesis, à la reliabilism, etc.). Construed more broadly, it is the practice, common in every field from chemistry to philosophy, of evaluating beliefs as justified or unjustified, scientific methods as rational or irrational, etc. Philosophers such as Rorty have argued that we should quit practicing epistemology in the narrow sense, but even philosophers convinced by Rorty could agree that epistemic discourse in the broad sense is an essential aspect of every branch of knowledge. Although most philosophers are convinced of the viability of epistemology in this broad sense, many are somewhat less sanguine about the prospects for normative moral discourse. Some of this skepticism stems from an influential objection raised by Gilbert Harman in the first two chapters of his 1977 book The Nature of Morality. According to Harman, moral facts neither figure in the best causal explanation for any observations, nor are reducible to predicates which are explanatory. Harman infers from this that there are no moral facts, and that some form of moral nihilism must therefore be true. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2000) 246–272 0279–0750/00/0100–0000 © 2000 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.