Prinz proposes to naturalize metaethics. Metaethics is traditionally regarded as a second-order discourse about ethics. Where normative ethics asks what is good and what is bad, what we should or shouldn’t do, metaethics asks the question of what morality is itself (DeLapp 2011). Its subject is the ontology of moral properties, the semantics of moral discourse, the epistemic foundation of moral judgments and the psychology of moral opinions. These different aspects are highly interrelated—answers in one area influence questions asked in others.
There are many different ways to tackle the question of what morality itself actually is. Prinz characterizes metaethics as being concerned with the foundations of moral judgments (Prinz this collection, p. 1). This is his starting point, which shapes his decision tree. He acknowledges that one could arrange the tree in different ways, depending on which aspect one wants to pull into focus.
Prinz’s primary goal is to show that every question in the decision tree is empirically tractable (this collection, p. 1). This is his methodological naturalism (p. 2).[1] He argues that we should study the domain of metaethics empirically. He wants to test “[...] theories derived from philosophical reflection against the tribunal of empirical evidence” (Prinz this collection, p. 5).
Metaethics, according to him, is not the sole matter of armchair reflection. This seems natural when we characterize metaethics as the question of what morality itself is. But that goes against the view that metaethics—or philosophy in general—is not concerned with what actually is the case, but with what must be the case. What are the necessary conditions of morality? On this view, metaethics is concerned with statements that hold a priori. Most of the time this means deriving knowledge from reflection upon the meaning of our concepts. This method of conceptual analysis had been at the core of philosophy since the analytic turn (Prinz this collection, p. 3).
Against this turn Prinz sets the empirical turn (this collection, p. 3). He describes this development as an enrichment of the philosopher’s tool box. Where conceptual considerations help us to formulate theories and flesh out the differences between different views, empirical methods confirm the theories derived from this work. The former pose questions and formulates possible answers; the latter test those answers. Prinz emphasizes that empirical and traditional approaches are not opposed to one another (this collection, p. 5). Rather, they complement each other. They’re more like opposing points on a continuum of methods for exploring the world.
It is important to see that this view is not as conciliatory between traditional analytic philosophy and empirical philosophy as it might seem. It does not leave room for a priori armchair reflection. In fact, Prinz even regards conceptual analysis as an empirical task: “[A]rmchair conceptual analysis can be characterized as an introspective memory retrieval process. As such, it can be regarded as a form of observation” (2008, p. 191).
When Prinz speaks of “traditional methods”, he does not include conceptual analysis as an a priori enterprise. Rather, he is referring to various tools, for example formal semantics or logic, which help us articulate theories. They are tools for exploring the natural world, from which we gain knowledge only through experience. Prinz is a radical empiricist at heart.
An empirical scientist could ask: “What differentiates this from my own work?” For she, too, reflects upon different theories, how they relate to each other, formulates questions, and so on. This is an important part of scientific, empirical work. I think Prinz would agree. An important upshot of his naturalized philosophy is that there are no clear-cut borders between philosophy and psychology (Prinz 2008, pp. 204–206). They are different disciplines not because of their different subject areas or methods but for pragmatic reasons. They are different academic disciplines, shaped by sociological and historical processes. The borders between the different disciplines become blurred in the empirical turn. According to Prinz, this is a good thing.
I think this the real strength of Prinz’s approach. Arguably many disciplines are divided largely by pragmatical differences, like education and academic organization. Instead of demarcating different approaches, instead of drawing sharp lines between them, Prinz proposes that we unite them in the search for explanations of the natural world.
Prinz’s target article is a very good example of this approach. Here I want to make a few remarks in the spirit of Prinz’s own methodology. In the next section I will focus on a specific objection against Prinz’s answers to the first question in the decision tree. I think that it can clarify some consequences of his methodological naturalism for metaethics.