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CRITICAL STUDY

FROM A POINT OF VIEW

BY A.W. MOORE

On What Matters, Volume One and Volume Two. By DEREK PARFIT. (Oxford UP, 2011.

Pp. xlviii + 540 and xiv + 825. Price £30.00.)

When a book ranges as widely as this one does — or rather, as widely as thesetwo do, together adding up to not much less than fifteen hundred pages — even areviewer with a generous word allowance has to be savagely selective. Derek Par-fit’s much-touted two-volume study of what matters has already generated consid-erable discussion. A great deal of attention has understandably been directedtowards Parfit’s defence of his core theory that ‘an act is wrong just when such actsare disallowed by some principle that is optimific, uniquely universally willable,and not reasonably rejectable,’ (Vol. One, p. 413). I shall not attempt to engagewith this theory. Nor shall I attempt to address the many exegetical issues thatarise in connection with Parfit’s contention that Kantians, contractualists, and con-sequentialists have all been playing variations on this single theme. I want to focuson some issues that arise in Volume Two about the very nature of normativity.The ignoring of everything else is serious, however unavoidable. Even so, I hopethat my focus will signal something of critical importance to the whole project.

Parfit considers various views about the nature of normativity. In particular, heconsiders a pair of views which he designates ‘analytical naturalism’ and ‘non-analytical naturalism’. Both these views accept that some normative claims aretrue. That is to say, both accept that some normative claims state facts, facts thatcan thereby be classified as normative facts. Analytical naturalism earns its title of‘naturalism’ by insisting that these claims can nevertheless be reduced to natural-istic claims. Non-analytical naturalism earns its title of ‘naturalism’ in a quite differ-ent way. It denies that these claims can be reduced to naturalistic claims, butholds that, none the less, any fact that can be stated by some normative claimcan also be stated by some non-normative naturalistic claim; or equivalently, thatany normative fact is also, in that sense, a natural fact. (This is encapsulated inthe diagram in Vol. Two, p. 263.) My principal concern is with non-analyticalnaturalism.

Patently, we cannot hope to assess non-analytical naturalism without, first,some account of what it is for a claim to be a normative or a naturalistic claim

The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 62, No. 247 April 2012ISSN 0031-8094 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2011.00029.x

© 2011 The Author The Philosophical Quarterly © 2011 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyPublished by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

and, second, some account of what it is for two claims to state the same fact. Par-fit has much to say about the first of these, rather less to say about the second.As far as the first is concerned, he gives us an initial steer by presenting a coupleof lists of words. The first list contains (among others) ‘wrong’, ‘ought’, ‘good’,and ‘excellent’; the second list contains (among others) ‘kill’, ‘square’, ‘sister’, and‘unexpected’ (Vol. Two, p. 265). A normative claim, Parfit says, is one that canbe expressed using words of the first sort, while a naturalistic claim is one thatcan be expressed using only words of the second sort. He makes the latter a littlemore precise when he goes on to cite, approvingly, a common definition of a nat-ural fact (that is, a fact that can be stated by a naturalistic claim). According tothis definition, a fact is natural ‘if facts of this kind are investigated or discussedby people who are working in any of the natural or social sciences,’ (ibid., p. 265).Later he suggests how this can be made yet more precise. I shall not pursue theseissues any further however. I am more interested in the second of the twoaccounts that is required: the account of what it is for two claims to state thesame fact.

At the beginning of §94 Parfit considers two senses in which two claims can besaid to state the same fact. In one sense, which he calls the ‘referential’ sense, twoclaims can be said to state the same fact when they ‘refer to the same things andascribe the same properties to these things,’ (Vol. Two, p. 336). In another sense,which he calls the ‘informational’ sense, two claims can be said to state the samefact when they ‘give us the same information,’ (ibid., p. 337). There is a vast andfamiliar set of philosophical problems circulating here. What Parfit has provided,in effect, are two ways of individuating facts. But they clearly stand in need ofindividuation of their own. What counts as the same property? Or the same pieceof information? Even a moderately full account of these matters would constitutea significant chapter in both the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of lan-guage, and no doubt in metaphysics too. Still, Parfit does not leave the matterthere. He gives us some examples of what he has in mind. He juxtaposes theclaim that Shakespeare was Shakespeare with the claim that Shakespeare was thewriter of Hamlet. And he says that, in the referential sense, these two claims statethe same fact, whereas, in the informational sense, they do not. Similarly in thecase of the claim that water is water and the claim that water is H2O. Theseexamples are clearly meant to put us in mind of the Fregean distinction betweenBedeutung and Sinn. And they do thereby give us a reasonably clear idea of howwe are meant to extrapolate. To be sure, they still leave countless questions unan-swered. In fact I shall later raise doubts about whether one of these two ways ofindividuating facts is ultimately even coherent. Nevertheless, they give us enoughto be going on with. Let us therefore bracket any reservations that we may haveabout what Parfit has provided and grant him, at least pro tempore, his two sensesof what it is for two claims to state the same fact.

The question now is: in which sense does non-analytical naturalism hold thatany fact that can be stated by some normative claim can also be stated by somenaturalistic claim? There seems to be a dilemma. The sense in question cannotbe the referential sense, because that would not be enough to mark the view out

FROM A POINT OF VIEW 393

© 2011 The Author The Philosophical Quarterly © 2011 The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly

as naturalistic: even the most resolute opponent of naturalism may acquiesce inthe idea that, when facts are individuated as coarsely as this, any fact that can bestated by a normative claim can also be stated by a naturalistic claim. On theother hand, the relevant sense cannot be the informational sense either, becausethat would be in conflict with what is supposed to distinguish this kind of natural-ism from analytical naturalism: to say that some normative claim ‘gives us thesame information’ as some naturalistic claim is to say that the former can bereduced to the latter. In sum, the referential sense is too weak to do justice tonon-analytical naturalism’s claim to be regarded as a species of naturalism,the informational sense too strong to respect its claim to be regarded as non-analytical.

Parfit nowhere presents this dilemma in quite this form. But I hope that whatI have just said is a fair representation of one strain in the complex set of argu-ments that we find at the beginning of Part Six of his book, where he mounts hisopposition to various kinds of naturalism. I hope, in particular, that it captureshis opposition to non-analytical naturalism. The issue that I wish to broach nowis whether non-analytical naturalism can find some space between the horns ofthis dilemma. I believe that it can.

Consider the following.

(P) On any coherent way of individuating facts, any fact that can be stated by some

normative claim can also be stated by some naturalistic claim.

On the assumption that the informational way of individuating facts is coherent,this entails analytical naturalism. But it is open to the non-analytical naturalist todeny that assumption. (This is the doubt to which I referred earlier.) And, havingdenied it, the non-analytical naturalist can register his or her naturalism byendorsing (P). He or she can insist that, even if a particular normative claim anda particular naturalistic claim give us ‘different information’, there is no coherentsense of ‘different facts’ in which it follows that they state different facts. Thepoint is not that facts cannot coherently be individuated any more finely than inthe referential way. Clearly they can, as Parfit’s original examples help to show.The point is rather that they cannot coherently be individuated so finely that theyare able to reflect all differences of information. In particular, they cannot coher-ently be individuated finely enough to reflect the differences of informationinvolved in using normative and naturalistic vocabulary.

Why might anyone mount this sort of challenge to the coherence of the infor-mational way of individuating facts? To answer this question, let us return to thepoint at which we needed an account of what it is for a claim to be normativeand of what it is for a claim to be naturalistic. Suppose that we were in a slightlydifferent position. Suppose that some metaphysician had been talking, not about‘normative claims’ and ‘naturalistic claims’, but about ‘A-claims’ and ‘B-claims’,these being two terms of art that he had introduced. Suppose further that thismetaphysician gave us the same sort of initial steer as to what he intended bythese two terms of art as Parfit gave us. That is to say, suppose he presented uswith two lists of words and said that an A-claim was one that could be expressed

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using words of the first sort, while a B-claim was one that could be expressedusing only words of the second sort. Suppose finally that the first list containedwords like ‘past’, ‘future’, ‘now’, and ‘yesterday’, while the second list containedwords like ‘earlier’, ‘later’, ‘simultaneous’, and ‘eve’.

Assuming that this metaphysician was directing our attention towards the dis-tinction between the tensed and the tenseless, an attractive view would be that:

• some A-claims are true, that is to say some A-claims state facts;• no A-claim can be reduced to any B-claim;

and

• on any coherent way of individuating facts, any fact that can be stated bysome A-claim can also be stated by some B-claim.

This view is of a kind that is familiar in the philosophy of time. It is a version ofthe so-called B-theory. The point of the third clause, which is obviously a directequivalent of (P), is to repudiate the idea that there are ‘tensed’ facts, that is tosay facts individuated in the informational way and stated by tensed claims. TheB-theorist believes that tense is a distinctive feature of certain claims, but not ofany facts, and that nothing but confusion accrues from any attempt to cast it inthe second of these roles.

Before we return to the issue of normativity, there is an incidental ad hominempoint that is worth making. Although Parfit does not himself engage with thisdebate in the philosophy of time, there is evidence that he would be sympatheticto this version of the B-theory. Consider the two following passages for example:

What has happened is just as real as what will happen. Nor is the past less real

than the present. Though people who are dead do not exist now, that is merely

like the fact that people who live elsewhere do not exist here. And time’s passage is

an illusion (Vol. Two, p. 427).

It can seem meaningful to say that we are moving through time into the future, or

that nowness… is moving down the series of events from earlier to later, or that,

every day, our death is getting closer. But such remarks, though they can seem

deeply true, make no sense… Though our death is closer now than it was twenty

years ago, that is merely like the fact that New York is closer to Washington than

Boston is (Vol. Two, p.438).

Admittedly, these passages do not, strictly speaking, commit Parfit to the versionof the B-theory in question. But little more is required to secure that commitmentthan the following enticing additional thought: that a tensed claim and a tenselessclaim never give us the same information. For example, a claim to the effect thatsome football match will begin in a minute’s time gives us different informationfrom a claim to the effect that the beginning of that same football match occurs(tenselessly) a minute later than 2.59 p.m. on 6 November 1971, even if the formerclaim is made at 2.59 p.m. on 6 November 1971. And what makes this additionalthought enticing? Well, given a tensed claim and a tenseless claim, knowledge of



the one never suffices for knowledge of the other. I can know that the match willbegin in a minute’s time without knowing what the date is. I can know that thebeginning of the match occurs (tenselessly) at 3 p.m. on 6 November 1971 withoutknowing what the time is. And it seems appropriate to individuate pieces of infor-mation finely enough to ensure that, if one can know one claim but not another,then the two claims do not give us the same information. At any rate, there is atleast as much reason to accept this additional thought as there is to accept that anormative claim and a naturalistic claim never give us the same information.

But be Parfit’s own relation to the B-theory as it may, this version of thetheory, if correct, signals how, in a world whose most finely individuated factscan always be stated by tenseless claims, occupancy of a temporal point of viewallows for the possibility of using irreducibly tensed claims to state those samefacts. Why then should we not accede to the idea of a world whose most finelyindividuated facts can always be stated by naturalistic claims but in which occu-pancy of a suitable point of view allows for the possibility of using irreduciblynormative claims to state those same facts? In both cases there would be anirreducibly perspectival take on facts that were not themselves in any sense per-spectival. And would not this latter idea deserve to be called ‘non-analyticalnaturalism’?

An opponent of non-analytical naturalism might reply, ‘This is all very well.But all you have done is to indicate an abstract possibility, a position in logicalspace. You have come nowhere near a defence of non-analytical naturalism, andyou will not have come anywhere near such a thing until you have further indi-cated what the relevant point of view could be.’ This is of course correct. More-over, the best candidate for the relevant point of view would appear to besomething involving conative states, which suggests that any non-analytical natu-ralist who takes this line will sooner or later be involved in defending some varia-tion of the normative subjectivism that Parfit spends so much of his bookattacking. It looks as if the discussion has not been advanced at all.

It has not been advanced in the sense that it has not been brought any nearerto a satisfactory solution of any of the principal problems about normativity withwhich Parfit is concerned in his book. But it has been advanced in the sense thatit has been brought back from a potentially unsatisfactory solution of some ofthose problems. The analogy with tense shows, I believe, that the material in PartSix of Parfit’s book on which we have been focusing has no independent force. Anon-analytical naturalist who holds that all normativity is grounded in conativestates need have nothing to fear from the suggestion that, irrespective of what heor she takes normativity to be grounded in, it is impossible to maintain both thatall facts are in some substantive sense natural, which is what he or she needs tomaintain in order to count as a fully paid-up naturalist, and that normativity isirreducible, which is what he or she needs to maintain in order to count as a fullypaid-up non-analytical naturalist.

Furthermore, I believe that this kind of irreducibly perspectival take on factsthat are not themselves in any sense perspectival signals something that is abso-lutely fundamental to the human condition. It sets the pattern for almost all of

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our engagement with reality, if not all of it. For Parfit to deny that the irreducibil-ity of the normative is irreducibility of this sort, no matter what the relevant pointof view may be, and in particular for him to deny that this is so no matter howdeeply entrenched the relevant point of view may itself be in the human condi-tion, is for him to make it increasingly difficult for his opponents to understandwhat he means by the normative.

Here I want to revert once again to an ad hominem point. Parfit elsewherefamously defends a view about persons which he calls reductionism. This is theview, roughly, that a person’s existence and identity over time consist in the hold-ing of facts that can be described ‘impersonally’, that is to say without explicit ref-erence to the person and without presupposing his or her identity (Reasons andPersons, Oxford: OUP, 1984, pp. 210 ff.). His defence of this view is very powerful.But I believe that it can be supplemented in such a way as to make it a furtherinstance of the pattern that I have been describing. What I have in mind is this.We can graft on to Parfit’s reductionism the idea that the concept of a person isan irreducibly perspectival concept, itself exercisable only from a point of viewthat is deeply entrenched in the human condition. This allows for the possibilityof an alien being who does not share this point of view and who can thus neverknow how things are ‘personally’, however much it may know about how thingsare ‘impersonally’. Furthermore, the concept of a person has a crucial normativeelement to it. Part of what it is to recognise a person as such, or as the same asbefore, is to acknowledge him or her as making certain demands on one, and toacknowledge oneself as making certain demands on him or her. (Recall Locke’sfamous observation that ‘person’ is a forensic term.) It matters very muchwhether something counts as a person, or as the same person — even if, as Parfitmaintains, it matters less than we tend to think. This supplement to Parfit’sreductionism concerning persons therefore brings it very much into line with, andperhaps even turns it into an instance of, precisely the sort of non-analytical natu-ralism towards which I have been gesturing.

I have described this as an ad hominem point, though there is clearly nothinghere to embarrass Parfit. He need not have any truck with this proposed supple-ment to his reductionism. And there is nothing in the reductionism itself thatstands in any obvious tension with his opposition to naturalism concerning thenormative. Nevertheless, this supplemented reductionism does, I believe, give us afurther sense of what is involved in this structure that I have been talking about— which I have already described as absolutely fundamental to the human con-dition and by whose means I have tried to indicate an important lacuna in someof the arguments that Parfit invokes to motivate his opposition to naturalism con-cerning the normative.

Moreover, this supplemented reductionism—nay, the reductionism itself —reminds us of how easily the shoe could be on the other foot. Parfit admits thathis reductionism concerning persons is ‘very hard to believe’ (Reasons and Persons,p. 280). He could easily find himself confronted with an opponent, as indeed Iam sure he often has done, who simply finds the reductionism too hard to believeand insists, on intuitive grounds, that there are facts about a person’s existence



and identity over time that are quite independent of any facts that can bedescribed ‘impersonally’. I think Parfit would admit that he has nothing decisivewith which to win such an opponent over. But when it comes to the issuewhether there are normative facts that are quite independent of any facts thatcan be described naturalistically, Parfit is the one who adopts the non-reductivestance; it is he who criticises his opponents’ views on the grounds that those viewshave consequences that are ‘hard to believe’ (Vol. One, p. 81). And when one ofhis most notable opponents, Bernard Williams, finds mystery and obscurity inParfit’s view, Parfit’s diagnosis is that Williams has simply failed to understandthe view (Vol. Two, pp. 434–5). The symmetry is striking.

Not that there is anything here that need embarrass Parfit either. It is certainlynot inconsistent for him to adopt a reductive stance in one of these debates and anon-reductive stance in the other. In any case the symmetry is not total. Considerthe most extreme non-reductive view about persons, namely the Cartesian view.Parfit does not take even the Cartesian view to be mysterious or obscure. Hedescribes possible circumstances in which there would have been evidence for itstruth (Reasons and Persons, §82). He merely takes it to be false. He denies that anysuch circumstances obtain.

I do not claim to have forced Parfit into some sort of corner then. I claim onlythat he would do well to look upon the debate about naturalism concerningnormativity in the light of the debate about his own reductionism concerning per-sons and the debate about the B-theory concerning time. In all three cases, itseems to me, the more extravagant of the two principal available verdicts (thatthere are normative facts over and above any natural facts, that there ‘personal’facts over and above any ‘impersonal’ facts, that there are tensed facts over andabove any non-tensed facts) arises from a deeply engrained, perfectly natural, butultimately doomed tendency to mistake a distinctive feature of some take that wehave on the facts for a distinctive feature of the facts themselves.

In the final paragraph of the Preface to the second edition of Kant’s Critique ofPure Reason Kant wrote that he was about to turn 63 and expressed the hope thatothers who were sympathetic to his project would help with its completion anddissemination. Kant’s book was one of the greatest philosophical works ever writ-ten, perhaps the greatest. Nevertheless, his hope was frustrated. The book’simpact, colossal as it was, was of a different kind. The book was more significantfor the opposition that it provoked and the new lines of enquiry that it openedup than it was for any discipleship that it inspired. On page 453 of Volume Twoof On What Matters Parfit writes that he is 67 and expresses the hope that otherswho are sympathetic to his project will help with its completion and dissemina-tion. I am certain that his hope will be similarly frustrated. But his book too issure to provoke opposition and to open up lines of enquiry. I am glad to havebeen able to contribute to that process—if only by signalling what I take to be adeep error underlying the project.

St Hugh’s College Oxford

398 A.W. MOORE


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