269BOOK REVIEWThe Journal of Value Inquiry 35: 269–273, 2001.

BOOK REVIEW

Mark Timmons, Morality without Foundations: A Defense of EthicalContextualism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, x + 252 pp. ISBN0-19-511731-X, US$ 49.95 (Hb).

In Morality without Foundations: a Defense of Ethical Contextualism, MarkTimmons develops a unique meta-ethical position. He develops a position thatdiffers from the usual meta-ethical options, and one that hopefully avoidscommon pitfalls. He notes that any meta-ethical position must accommodatetwo things. It must account for “deeply embedded commonsense presumptionsof moral discourse,” and must show how morality squares with “any wellsupported general assumptions, theories, and views from other areas ofdiscourse” (p. 5). Timmons claims that while it seems that moral realism caneasily accommodate objectivist presumptions of morality, irrealism can showhow it squares with the sciences. Timmons disputes this view, and defends anaturalistic version of irrealist contextualism. He says that the presumptionof moral discourse is not that it states objective moral properties and facts,but rather that it is “a guide to personal choice,” and yet “is typically used tomake genuine assertions” (p. 6). Timmons hopes to show that moral discoursehas what he calls “evaluative assertoric content,” and so can be true or false.He also claims that his view easily comports with other scientific disciplines,because there are no moral properties or facts to account for. Timmons finallyendorses a moral epistemology according to which there are groundless basicmoral beliefs.

In his first chapter, Timmons says that the early parts of the twentieth centurywere dominated by the attempt to give analytic definitions of moral terms,and that any naturalistic analysis of the properties such terms denote wasstrongly reductive. C.L. Stevenson’s work is an irrealist example of this, where“x is good” analytically means “I approve of x; do so as well.” HerbertSpencer’s work is a realist example, where “x is good” means “x is relativelyevolved human conduct” (p. 20). Timmons notes that eventually philosophersabandoned such analytic definitions, along with the description theory ofreference. Philosophers now follow W.V.O. Quine and Saul Kripke and adoptversions of semantic holism and the causal theory of reference, so that“goodness” can no longer be defined, but instead goodness is conditioned bysemantically related attitudes, and causally relevant parts of the world.Timmons is hard on most versions of analytic meta-ethics, and simply accepts

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all the recent fashions of language and mind without much argument. But suchfashions as semantic holism and the causal theory of reference are not alwaysconsistent and cannot be used to undercut analytic meta-ethics in the sameway. Timmons adheres to semantic holism and the causal theory of referencefor the sake of argument, and it follows from these views that not only are certainatomistic presumptions of analytic meta-ethics undercut, but also naturalisticaccommodation of moral properties is loosened. He notes that without suchatomism and reduction, the analysis of moral statements proceeds according tocomplex and variable principles, and naturalistic accommodation of moralproperties need only “amount to token identity” with natural items (p. 48).

In his second chapter, Timmons addresses moral realism. He notes thatmoral realists like David Brink and Richard Boyd see in semantic holism andthe causal theory of reference a justification for their views. Timmons carefullyamalgamates the views of Brink and Boyd, and says that moral realism is justthe view that “moral statements are true or false” in that they correspond toreality, and what they correspond to are “objective properties and facts” (p.72). Brink and Boyd hold that, since atomism and naturalistic reduction areundercut, they need only say how holistically related moral statements arecausally related to objective moral properties and facts on which theysupervene. But Timmons notes that Brink and Boyd make things far too easyon themselves, for they have not established that there are any objective moralproperties and facts to supervene on anything. Timmons cites J.L. Mackie whosays that if there were any such properties and facts, they would be “intrin-sically prescriptive,” and their supervenience on natural properties would bea “metaphysically mysterious relation” (p. 51). Brink and Boyd contest suchcharacterizations of objective moral properties and facts by just denying suchprescription or mystery. But Timmons notes that they cannot so easily sidestepsuch objections. He says that moral realists cannot recognize the evaluativedimension of morality and hold to the semantic holism and the causal theoryof reference that allows them to explain moral supervenience. Timmons insiststhat this means that moral realism cannot meet the requirements of a meta-ethical theory.

In refuting moral realism, Timmons completes the easy part of his thesis.In the last three chapters of the book, he addresses the ambitious task ofdefending his unique meta-ethical position. He takes the main objection tohis version of contextual moral irrealism to be that it “cannot make sense ofthe possibility of moral error” (p. 77). Marcus Singer notes that if we definemorality merely by moral opinion, reasoning, or conviction, then there is noscope for any notion of correctness or error. Timmons notes that moral irrealistsusually respond to this charge by saying that what is called moral error is reallyjust mistake in ordinary opinion, reasoning, or in basic convictions. Timmonscontests such reductionism, but insists that, since Singer assumes that moral

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error is just a deviation from an objective morality, this just begs the questionagainst any irrealist. He insists that the right answer to the problem of moralerror is not to try to explain it away by reducing it to ordinary error, but todeny the usual irrealist identification of the varied conventions of moralopinion, reasoning, or conviction with moral correctness. Timmons suggeststhat moral correctness is constituted by how “contextual semantic normscohere with the world” (p. 125). He claims that he can speak of moral truthhere, but only in a “minimal disquotational sense,” and from “within anadopted moral outlook” (p. 153). Timmons insists that even with such a notionof moral truth and with the circularity of speaking from an adopted moraloutlook, there is a real difference between various conventional moralopinions, reasons, or convictions and moral truth, and so there is a contrastbetween moral correctness and error.

Timmons knows that developing a disquotational view of moral truth usedonly from within a moral outlook to solve the problem of moral error is notthe usual thing for any irrealist to do. But he is also trying to develop a newmeta-ethical position, and so pursues this task. Timmons considers how contextenters into his notion of moral truth. He notes that the varied contextualsemantic norms that govern moral discourse “do not yield any tight relation”between language and the world, and so moral statements do not yield anynecessary and sufficient conditions. Timmons says that this means that ‘moralstatements . . . do not have truth conditions,” but are only evaluative (p. 149).He insists that a proper understanding of moral discourse must acknowledgethis. But Timmons notes that even though such statements are evaluative, theyare still assertions that are disquotationally true or false. This is the heart ofhis view of moral truth, where moral statements have what he calls “evaluativeassertoric content.” Unfortunately, Timmons does not say what moralstatements assert. But Timmons is an irrealist, and he claims that there are noobjective moral properties and facts that correspond to his moral disquotations,and so as such “there is no moral truth” after all (p. 244). He insists that it isappropriate to call such moral disquotations either true or false when they areset within the semantic norms of a moral outlook that an agent has alreadyadopted. By this Timmons means that all moral statements can assert is thatsome part of the world should be one way or another.

In his last chapter, Timmons applies his unique brand of contextual irrealismto moral epistemology. Since he holds that there are no objective moralproperties or facts, he cannot assume that there is anything apart from moraloutlooks for agents to know. He concentrates on moral psychology and pointsout that agents adhere to basic moral beliefs that are both “obvious” and “notarbitrary” to them (p. 216). As a matter of psychological fact, he says that suchbeliefs are just prosaic generalizations about their social world. Timmons saysthat such beliefs are contextual for agents in that they are largely “constitutive

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moral outlooks,” where outlooks are conventional moral systems they areeducated into (p. 218). Moreover, the basic moral beliefs are also contextualin that they can all change across cultures, and even within cultures in specialsituations. The main claim that Timmons makes about contextual basic moralbeliefs is that they are “not positively justified at all . . . but are responsiblyheld” (p. 231). He disputes various claims that such beliefs are justified bythemselves or by other beliefs and says that as long as agents deal with all‘relevant challenges’ to the beliefs, they do all they can do to achieve epistemicresponsibility in relation to them. Timmons admits that even though such basicmoral beliefs are unjustified and responsible, they often conflict in practice.He insists that there is ‘no single algorithm’ that can instruct a moral agentwhich belief to follow. Timmons holds that this fact does not render moraljudgment irrational but that agents can be trained to do the appropriate thing.

Has Timmons managed to make his unique meta-ethical view plausible?He says irrealists should ‘at least admit the possibility’ of genuine moral error.In not admitting this, “irrealists commit a version of the naturalistic fallacy”(p. 93). If this is so, Timmons has a burden of proof to produce examples ofthis genuine error. Most irrealists claim that moral error is the product ofordinary errors, and typically provide an analysis to show that moral error isjust disguised ordinary error. But Timmons does not try to show how suchanalyses are erroneous, but only says that “it certainly appears” that there couldbe genuine moral error (p. 81). Timmons also insists that moral truth must beunderstood minimally as a matter of disquotation. He says that moralstatements are true or false, but does not offer any analysis of why this is so.Timmons says that this is not vacuous, claiming that “quite a bit of illuminationis provided by inquiring into the typical point and purpose of the discourse”(p. 149). But answering questions about the point and purpose of moralstatements does not address why they are true. His view of moral truth ismysterious, and so is his view of the evaluative assertoric content of moralstatements. Timmons denies that he is a moral relativist. He says that his viewis not relativistic, for he does not identify the contextual semantic norms ofany moral outlook and moral truth. He insists that moral semantic norms dictatewhat it is appropriate to do, but the truth of moral statements is always“categorical,” which outstrips any relativity (p. 150). Timmons then says thatdifferent cultures and odd situation adopt completely different contextual basicmoral beliefs, that these take the form of generalizations. This implies thatthese basic beliefs are also ‘categorical,’ and so only takes moral relativismto a deeper level.

There is much of philosophical merit in Morality without Foundations.Timmons offers an excellent account of meta-ethics in the twentieth century.The views of Stevenson, G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross and Hilary Putnam arecovered in some detail. Timmons addresses all the latest movements in ethics

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and manages to criticize effectively the views of Brink and Boyd. Moreover,in offering his complex history of meta-ethics, Timmons demonstrates thedifferences among positions, and this is especially valuable. It is hard to readthe book without coming away with a much better understanding of relationsamong all meta-ethical positions. Nevertheless, Timmons does not manageto make good his case for his unique brand of contextual irrealism. He hasnot managed to establish a problem of moral error. His view of moral truthremains mysterious, and despite his protestations to the contrary, his view isrelativistic.

Basil SmithCardiff University

P.O. Box 94Cardiff CF1 3XB

WalesUK

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