Norms are like colours: naturalism and the constitutively perspectival

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• Denis Walsh (University of Toronto)
• Thursday 11 May 2023, 15:30-17:00
• Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Jacob Stegenga.

Oughts – not just moral oughts, but biological oughts too – make a difference to the natural world. Certain events or regularities occur because they ought to; and their oughting to figures in an explanation of their occurrence. In this respect, normative properties look like natural properties. I attempt to locate norms in the nature. I draw on the recent work in perspectival pluralism to sketch an account of what natural normativity might be, and why it fails to show up in our usual scientific accounts of the world. Normative facts, I claim, are constitutively perspectival facts. The category of the constitutively perspectival should not be problematic for the naturalist. Many phenomena we accept as natural – like colours – fall into it.

This talk is part of the Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science series.

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