In the preceding chapters, I have tried to push the following narrative: When it comes to many important discourses – at the very least moral, practical and epistemic discourses – it seems that we are restricted in terms of the viable theoretical options available. These discourses certainly are, as Cuneo puts it, “realistic on the face of it” (2007: 11–12). And furthermore, the realistic commitments of these discourses seem robust, in that a naturalistic account that satisfies all the commitments seems unlikely to be forthcoming. For these reasons, when it comes to accounting for these discourses, it appears difficult to go in a direction other than either an error theory or a (robust) realist position. Furthermore, because of the similarities between these discourses, there is pressure to provide a unified, metanormative account of them. This, in turn, means that there is pressure to move from being either a non-naturalist or an error theorist about one of these discourses, to generalize the view to all of them.
There is also an internal pressure for such generalization in the case of moral error theory (and perhaps also from within non-naturalism). This is because moral error theory, in its most common forms, generalizes to the entire irreducibly normative domain. Again, this move from a local, metaethical theory to a global metanormative view means that we will have to do a recount of plausibility points in order to determine whether metanormative error theory is equally plausible to what we found moral error theory to be in Chapter 3.
Doing a full recount is more than I have the space for here as that would involve running an argument from queerness against each of the other domains and show that it generalizes successfully. This requires, among other things, that the debunking explanation is equally applicable to these other normative domains. Although we are concerned with the same phenomenon in all domains, namely irreducibly normative favouring relations, there are differences between these domains, and that would have to be accounted for. But if we assume – though I will not argue for it – that the argument from queerness is at least equally strong in the case of the other domains we have looked at, what are the results likely to be?
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The costs of a metanormative error theory should by now be obvious: There are no irreducibly normative truths, and thus no irreducibly normative reasons for action, belief or moral behaviour. Furthermore, deliberation, in the sense sketched above, would be doomed to failure. This is quite an overturning of common sense opinion. Now, if there were other reasons for action, belief and moral behaviour which both had strong normative force and was not committed to irreducible normativity, this would arguably not be that big of a cost. The error theorist could then, like the naturalist, claim that while we might not get everything we had hoped for, we might still get all we need. The metanormative error theorist, however, provides no substitute. Of course, there are true claims about empirical hypothetical reasons, and various institutional reasons. But again, none of these reasons are claimed to have strong normative force, which has been the bread and butter of normative reasons, naturalistic or not.
The cause for this, as I have tried to show inductively in the preceding chapters, it that wherever we find strong normative force, we also find irreducible normativity. The upshot is therefore that there are no real reasons, in the sense of reasons with strong normative force according to metanormative error theory. This, on any way of counting, is an enormous cost.
As for the benefits of the view, they are, first, the ability to take our thought and talk at face value, and to provide a believable and adequate account of the commitments various discourses possesses. Additionally, the view creates no additional implausible commitments, epistemological, ontological, or otherwise. It is “the most minimal” metanormative position and, at least in terms of theoretical commitments, it is arguably the “null hypothesis against which other accounts of practical reasoning must be defended” (Millgram 2001: 3).151
As for non-naturalist realism, it stands at the opposite end of the minimal-maximal spectrum. While error theorists and non-naturalists usually agree on the commitments of normative discourses, they disagree about whether they are satisfied. The non-naturalist thinks we must mould our ontology to fit those
commitments, for instance because of their indispensability to the success of certain fundamental human practices. The costs and benefits of the non-naturalist picture are therefore the inverse of those of metanormative error theory.
In short, these views, while descriptively adequate, are both enormously costly to adopt. As for relative plausibility, this becomes harder to measure when we consider the metanormative and not only the metaethical versions of these views. I will therefore restrict myself to pointing out that these views seem fairly comparable in terms of plausibility – it is not clear that one is significantly preferable to the other, though I think the ultimate outcome will be a result of whether one places the highest credence in pre-
151 Millgram talks only about practical error theory, but the point generalizes. Defending a position on exactly where
the burden of proof is located in a metaethical or metanormative debate is controversial and not something I will dwell on here.
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theoretical opinions or in the argument from queerness. I incline towards the latter, and therefore see a metanormative error theory as marginally more plausible than metanormative non-naturalist realism.