Uriah Kriegel's Brentano's Philosophical System: Mind, Being, and Value is a good illustration of how fascinating a subject the history of philosophy can be. It contextualizes and scrutinizes Brentano's philosophy and explains the many ways in which it offers alternatives to currently dominant paradigms. Although the book is written in a spirit clearly sympathetic to Brentano's system, Kriegel is up front about its weakness and shortcomings. This is not to say, however, that his attempts to mend them are all satisfactory. My focus will be on the book's third part, which is about Brentano's theory of value. I shall consider three problems, the first two of which Kriegel also considers. The first is that Brentano's analysis of value in terms of fittingness gets the order of explanation backwards. In Section 3, I shall argue that Kriegel's conclusion that there is a good response available to Brentano can be bolstered if Kriegel's formulation of Brentano's “fitting attitude” account is revised. The second problem, to be discussed in Section 4, is that Brentano's account lacks the resources to accommodate betterness and worseness and degrees of value. In Section 5, finally, I consider briefly the “partiality problem” for the fitting attitude account of value, and how it applies to Brentano's version of it. First of all, I provide some necessary background concerning relevant parts of Brentano's philosophy, which I intend not to be in tension with Kriegel's interpretation. One of the pivots of Brentano's philosophical system is the idea that there are close commonalities between the good and true.11 This section draws on material in Olson (2017). For something to be good is for that thing to be such that it can be loved with a love that is correct or fitting; for a judgement to be true is for that judgement to be correct or fitting.22 Kriegel, p. 12. For one of Brentano's unequivocal statements of this view, see Brentano (1969, pp. 146–47). On the proper translation of Brentano's term “richtig,” see Kriegel (2018), p. 13. Guillaume Frechette claims to identify two notions of fittingness in Brentano: one relational and one non-relational. On the former, fittingness is a relation between an emotive attitude and an object. On the latter, fittingness is simply something that emotive attitudes can manifest in experience. See Frechette (2019). Brentano explains correctness or fittingness of emotions by analogy with correctness or fittingness of judgements. For a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with a judgement made by someone who judges with evidence (or self-evidence). Judgements based on evidence—evident judgements—are guaranteed to be correct, and they are based either on “inner perception” or on presentations of objects that are rejected apodictically.33 Brentano (1966, p. 130, 1969, pp. 19–20). An example of an evident judgement of the former kind is my judgement that I now have a visual experience of blue. It may or may not be true that my visual experience of blue corresponds to something in non-mental reality, but when I have the experience of sensing blue I can go on immediately to affirm with evidence that I am now sensing blue, the evidence being my visual experience of blue. An example of an evident judgement of the second kind is the judgement that three is equal to two plus one. Here, we consider the presentation of a combination of three with two plus one “by means of a negative copula,”44 Brentano (1969, p. 112). and we reject this combination apodictically. By reflecting on judgements like this one, Brentano says, we obtain the concept of impossibility (in this case, we reject apodictically that three is not equal to two plus one, and by reflecting on this judgement, we conclude that it is impossible that three is not equal to two plus one).55 Brentano (1969, p. 112). In other words, it is necessary that three is equal to two plus one. Judgements that are based on evidence in either of these two ways are experienced as correct (“als richtig charakterisiert”). It is important to note that this is not a matter of an experience of a high degree of conviction.66 Brentano (1969, p. 20). Many judgements are held with great conviction, although they are neither evident nor correct or fitting. How, then, can I come to recognize an experience of correctness? Brentano holds that the experience of correctness becomes manifest when I compare a judgement based on inner perception or presentation of an object that is rejected apodictically with a contrary judgement; I then see that the judgements differ in a crucial respect: the original judgement is experienced as being correct, while the contrary judgement is not.77 Brentano (1969, p. 20). See also Chisholm (1986, pp. 49–50) and Kriegel (2018, p. 141). I can also come to appreciate the experience of correctness by comparing an evident judgement with a true judgement that is not evident (e.g., the judgement that Aristotle was Alexander's teacher). When I compare the judgement that two plus one equals three to the judgement that Aristotle was Alexander's teacher, I see that the former judgement has something that the latter lacks. Once I have grasped the experiential feature of correctness through this kind of comparative maneuver, I am able to recognize it in other judgements too. At this point, one may feel that we are still in the dark about what a correct emotion is. We have been told that for a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with an evident judgement, but there seems to be no such thing as an “evident emotion,” so the analogy between correct judgement and correct emotion may seem to fail. However, Brentano insists that just as some judgements are experienced as correct, some emotions are experienced as correct or fitting. Just as correctness of judgements can become experientially manifest by comparing these judgements to conflicting judgements (i.e., judgements that are not correct), fittingness of emotions can become experientially manifest by comparing conflicting emotions. For example, when we love for its own sake an experience of pleasure or a piece of knowledge, we may compare this love with an imagined attitude of hating for its own sake that experience of pleasure or that piece of knowledge. We then see that the love has something that the hatred lacks: the love is experienced as fitting and the imagined hatred is experienced as unfitting. As Kriegel says, when a subject considers an experience of pleasure or a piece of knowledge, love is the attitude that imposes itself on the subject in response to what is being considered.88 Kriegel (2018, p. 224). A self-imposing emotive attitude is the analogue of a self-evident belief or judgement. Just like correctness of self-evident judgements, fittingness of self-imposing emotions is an experiential feature with a distinctive phenomenology, such that “we know it when we have it.” And just as in the case of judgements, we can come to know that we have it by comparing experiences of fitting emotions to experiences of emotions that are not fitting, or to emotions that are not experienced as fitting. Ultimately, then, it seems that we have to rest content with the conclusion that correctness or fittingness of judgements and emotions is not susceptible to analysis or constitutive explanation, in order to understand what correctness is, one has to experience it. We call a thing good when the love relating to it is correct [fitting]. In the broadest sense of the term, the good is that which is worthy of love, that which can be loved with a love that is correct [fitting]. (Brentano, 1969, p. 18, Brentano's emphasis) (FA)For any good g, (i) it is fitting to take a pro-attitude toward g, and (ii) g is good because (i). (p. 221, Kriegel's emphasis) According to Kriegel, possibly “the most fundamental liability” of the FA account is that it appears to get its order of explanation backwards (p. 239); intuitively, it is fitting to take a pro-attitude toward acts of generosity because such acts are good, not the other way around. In response to the objection, Kriegel maintains that Brentano cannot back away from (ii), since the point of Brentano's FA account is that goodness is grounded in fittingness and not the other way around (p. 240). Kriegel argues that the account is in the end not as counterintuitive as it may appear. Let us start with (A). Kriegel's formulation of the FA account invites the suspicion that the account is in conflict with (A) since “because” in clause (ii) is ambiguous. On a natural reading of (ii), it is the fact that it is fitting to take a pro-attitude toward g that makes g good. To my mind, that sounds if not backwards, at least wrongheaded. The fact that it is fitting to take up a pro-attitude toward g explains that g is good, but it does not explain why g is good, or what makes g good. This suggests a second reading of (ii), according to which “because” means something like “what it is.” So, the claim that g is good because it is fitting to take up a pro-attitude toward g can be understood as the claim that what it is for g to be good is for it to be fitting to take up a pro-attitude toward g. This is not to say that the fact that it is fitting to take up a pro-attitude toward g makes g good. It is the properties that make it fitting to take up a pro-attitude toward g that make g good. The FA account should be presented as an account of what it is for something to be good, and not of what makes good things good. This accommodates the intuitive claim (A). Claim (B) can be accommodated by FA accounts that operate with a variety of pro-attitudes.99 See, for example, Ewing (1939, pp. 8–9). For example, for some g to be good might be for it to be the case that it is fitting to rejoice in g. And the fact that it is fitting to rejoice in g might make it fitting to take up some other pro-attitude toward g, such as an attitude of welcoming g, or intending to promote or bring about g. However, this kind of view is not available to Brentano since he operates with only one kind of monadic pro-attitude, namely, love. But as we shall see in the next section, Brentano's account includes a distinct dyadic kind of pro-attitude, namely, preference. Brentano could thus accommodate (B) by saying that the fact that g is good—that is, the fact that it is fitting to love g—makes it fitting to prefer g to things that are not fitting objects of love. Moreover, it might be that the intuition in (B) trades on the plausible claim that good-making properties make their bearers fitting objects of pro-attitudes. This claim is certainly compatible with Brentano's FA account. As Kriegel points out, Brentano can say that acts of generosity have certain non-evaluative properties (of promoting happiness or of prompting pleasant sentiments of approbation, say) that explain why it is fitting to take a pro-attitude toward such acts (p. 240). In my view, these considerations take the sting out of the objection that Brentano's FA account involves backwards explanation. We know that according to Brentano's theory, for a thing to be good is for it to be such that it can be loved with a love that is fitting. (Similarly, for a thing to be bad is for it to be such that it can be hated with a hatred that is fitting.) But what is it for a thing to be better than another? One suggestion is that “x is better than y” means that “it is fitting to love x more than y.” But as Moore pointed out in his review of Brentano's The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, if “good” is synonymous with “fitting to love” and if “better” means “more good,” “x is better than y” should mean “x is more fitting to love than y” (Moore, 1903). Krister Bykvist has recently developed Moore's objection and argued that if Brentano were to reject this, his view would violate the principle of compositionality (Bykvist, n.d.).1010 Bykvist (ms). However, Brentano could not accept that x's being better than y consists in x's being more fitting to love than y, since he took fittingness to be ungradable: a judgement or emotion is either fitting or not fitting (Kriegel, 2018, p. 141). Alternatively, Brentano could endorse the view that for x to be better than y is for it to be fitting to love x more than y. He would then have to deny that he is offering an account of the meaning of “good” and “better,” on pain of violating the principle of compositionality. He could propose instead a metaphysical-cum-psychological account of what it is for a thing to be good and better than another. He would not then need to worry about compositionality. But neither did Brentano accept that for x to be better than y is for it to be fitting to love x more than y. Instead, Brentano introduces preference as a third kind of emotional attitude, in addition to those of love and hate. What is it to prefer x over y? It is not to love x more intensely than y, or to hate x less intensely than y. Preferences “are emotive acts that relate and compare”; they are a third kind of emotive act that, unlike love and hate, have comparative objects.1111 Brentano (1969, p.26). Preferences are not reducible to love or hate; I may love football more intensely than I love Greek drama, but it does not follow that I also have a preference—a distinct attitude—for football over Greek drama. Like love and hate, preference can be fitting or not fitting. For a thing, x, to be better than another, y, is for x to be such that it is fitting to prefer x over y. Again, the fittingness of preference is something that can be experienced in the act of preferring, in that some acts of preference are such as to impose themselves on subjects. This account of betterness forces Brentano to deny a claim that Moore took to be obvious, namely that for x to be (intrinsically) better than another is for y to have “in a higher degree the very property which we mean by ‘good in itself.’”1212 Moore (1903, p. 120), quoted in Kriegel (2018, p. 241). I agree with Kriegel that Brentano's response to Moore could be to bite the bullet. Brentano might say that an interesting upshot of his approach that starts with fitting love, hate, and preference, and analyses goodness, badness, and betterness in terms of them, is that betterness and worseness are less intimately connected to goodness and badness than one might have otherwise thought.1313 Larry Temkin has recently argued that there is a sense of “all things considered better than”, central to practical reasoning, according to which “x is all things considered better than y” does not mean that x has greater value than y, but rather that there is more reason to prefer x to y, than to prefer y to x, from an impartial perspective (Temkin, 2012, p. 13). This bears some resemblance to Brentano's claim that for x to better than y is for it to be fitting to prefer x to y. (I am indebted to Krister Bykvist for this reference.) Still, Brentano's approach leaves some important phenomena unaccounted for. Not only do we judge some things to be better than others; we also make judgements about how much better some things are. Admittedly, such judgements are typically not very precise, but we do make them nonetheless, and we take them to be capable of being correct and incorrect, or fitting and unfitting. For example, John Stuart Mill thought that taking pleasure in reading poetry is much better than taking pleasure in playing pushpin; knowledge about the origin of the universe is plausibly much better than knowledge of the exact number of straws in one's lawn; knowing French and some Italian might be a little bit better than knowing only French; and so on. What is it, then, for a thing to be much better, or only a little bit better, than another? There is no obvious way for Brentano to account for this dimension of betterness judgements. For as we already know, fittingness is not gradable, and as we also know already, preference is not reducible to loving more or hating less. Descartes observed that the act of love when it is directed upon what is really good can never be too intense. And he was obviously right. Otherwise, think of the care we should have to exercise in view of the limitations of our mental strength! Every time we wish to rejoice over something good, we would have to take an anxious survey over all the other things we know to be good in order to make sure that our joy does not exceed the proper proportions. (1969, p. 25). Kriegel notes that there is some evidence that Brentano took the difference between some better and worse things to be qualitative rather than quantitative, to the effect that talk of degrees of betterness and worseness are not meaningful; things of certain kinds are plainly better than things of certain other kinds (p. 242). Perhaps taking pleasure in reading poetry and taking pleasure in playing pushpin are instances of goods of different kinds, and perhaps all we can say about them in terms of evaluative comparison is that the former is better than the latter, but not how much better. It is less clear that knowledge of the origin of the universe and knowledge of the exact number of straws in one's lawn are instances of goods of different kinds. True, the respective topics are very different, but they are both instances of positive knowledge (i.e., knowledge about what is the case rather than mere knowledge about what is not the case). Do we not want to say that knowing the origin of the universe is quite a lot better than knowing the exact number of straws in one's lawn, and not just plainly better, that is, not better to any degree? Consider also knowing a great deal but not everything about the origin of the universe, and knowing the full story. These seem clearly to be instances of the same kind of good, and the latter seems to be a little bit better than the former. Knowing the full story of the origin of the universe seems not just to be plainly better (i.e., better to no degree) than knowing a great deal about it but not all of it, for we would then have to say that knowing the full story of the origin of the universe is just plainly better (again, better to no degree) than knowing very little about it. But plausibly the difference in betterness between knowing the full story of the origin of the universe and knowing very little about it is greater than the difference in betterness between knowing the full story of the origin of the universe and knowing a great deal about it but not all of it. It remains unclear whether and how Brentano's view can accommodate such differences in degrees of betterness. It seems equally problematic for Brentano's view to account for non-comparative degrees of goodness. Some goods, such as taking pleasure in reading poetry and knowing the origin of the universe, are plausibly considered great goods. Others, such as taking pleasure in playing pushpin and knowing the exact number of straws in one's lawn, are equally plausibly considered minor goods. But for reasons explained above, it is unclear what it is, on Brentano's account, for something to be a great good and for something to be a minor good: loving a great good is not more fitting than loving a minor good, and there is no requirement that the degree of love of a good thing correspond to its degree of goodness. I turn finally to a different problem for Brentano's FA account. To illustrate, suppose that your child and a stranger's child experience an equal amount of equally well-deserved pleasure. Suppose also that the two experiences are equally good. According to Brentano's FA account, it follows that is fitting for you to equi-prefer them. But according to a strong and widely held intuition, it is fitting for parents to prefer the pleasure of their children to the equal pleasure of strangers' children. This “partiality problem” is a well-known challenge for FA accounts but Brentano did not consider it explicitly, and neither does Kriegel.1515 However, Kriegel discusses other problems in its vicinity, such as the “wrong kind of reasons” problem (pp. 232–233). He also discusses at length the problem of distinguishing mere feelings of self-imposing fittingness from genuinely self-imposing fittingness (pp. 242–248). The partiality problem is an illustration: to most people it appears fitting to prefer one's child's pleasure to the equal, and equally good, pleasure of a stranger's child. But according to Brentano's FA account, such a preference is not fitting. This is unacceptably counterintuitive, according to some critics of FA accounts. An early discussion of the partiality problem is in Ewing (1939, pp. 19–20). For a critical survey of the problem for FA accounts and its potential solutions, see Sylvan (n.d.) forthcoming. I shall end by considering briefly three attempts at a solution. The first maintains that it is fitting for parents to be partial in their preferences vis-à-vis their children, and that this illustrates that goodness can be relative to appraisers. For example, your child's pleasure might be better than the stranger's child's equal pleasure, relative to you. However, while the view that goodness can be appraiser relative may seem attractive to some, I know of no indication that Brentano accepted it. A second response is that not all pro-attitudes need to align with fitting preferences. For example, while it is fitting for you to equi-prefer your child's pleasure and the equal pleasure of a stranger's child, it might be fitting (or at least not unfitting) for you to rejoice more in your child's pleasure. It is highly doubtful that this accommodates the strong intuition that parental partiality is legitimate, however. It remains counterintuitive enough that it is not fitting for parents to prefer their children's pleasure over the equal pleasure of strangers' children. Moreover, it is not clear whether it is psychologically possible to rejoice more in one experience of pleasure than another and still equi-prefer them, since rejoice and preference are both emotive phenomena, on Brentano's view.1616 See Sylvan forthcoming for further discussion of these issues. A third possibility is to sever the link between an attitude being fitting and its being fitting to love that attitude. For example, it might be fitting for a parent to equi-prefer his child's pleasure and the equal pleasure of a stranger's child, but it might not be fitting to love this preference, since it indicates that there is something amiss in the parent–child relation. We might take this to imply that even though a parent's impartial preference regarding his child's pleasure and the pleasure of a stranger's child is fitting, it is not one that is good and not one that he ought to have.1717 This proposal takes its cue from a tentative discussion in Ewing (1939, p. 14). I develop it in Olson (2009). In Danielsson and Olson (2007), it is developed as a solution to the “wrong kind of reason” problem. Whatever the merits of this view, it is not available to Brentano. The reason is that he took fitting attitudes to be among the items on his list of intrinsic goods (Kriegel, ch. 9). Consequently, fitting attitudes are, on Brentano's view, themselves fitting objects of love. I conclude that the partiality problem remains a difficult challenge for the FA account of goodness, including Brentano's version of it. Previous versions of this paper were presented at Filosofidagarna at Umeå University in June 2019, and at a seminar at Uppsala University in November 2019. I thank the audiences for very helpful feedback. Special thanks to Olle Risberg for written comments. A research grant from the Swedish Research Council (project id 2019–02828) is gratefully acknowledged.

This paper considers and argues against old and recent readings of Hume according to which his account of moral judgement is non-cognitivist. In previous discussions of this topic, crucial metaethical distinctions-between sentimentalism and non-cognitivism and between psychological and semantic non-cognitivism-are often blurred. The paper aims to remedy this and argues that making the appropriate metaethical distinctions undermines alleged support for non-cognitivist interpretations of Hume. The paper focuses in particular on Hume's so-called 'motivation argument' and argues that it is a poor basis for non-cognitivist interpretations. While there is textual support for attributing to Hume what may be called 'modally weak' motivational internalism, there is no solid textual support for attributing to him either psychological or semantic non-cognitivism. The paper also challenges briefly some further alleged support for non-cognitivist interpretations. It concludes by offering some positive evidence against such interpretations, namely that Hume appears to hold that there are moral beliefs and moral knowledge.

Just as we can be more or less certain that there is extraterrestrial life or that Goldbach’s conjecture is correct, we can be more or less certain about normative matters, such as whether euthanasia is permissible or whether utilitarianism is true. However, accommodating the phenomenon of degrees of normative certitude is a difficult challenge for non-cognitivist and expressivist views, according to which normative judgements are desire-like attitudes rather than beliefs (Smith, in: Evaluation, Uncertainty, and Motivation. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5: 305–320, 2002). Several attempts have been made on behalf of non-cognitivism and expressivism to meet the challenge (Lenman in: Non-cognitivism and the dimensions of evaluative judgment, Brown Electronic Article Review Service, 2003; Ridge in Synthese 2003. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1884-7 ; Ridge in: Shafer-Landau (ed) Studies in metaethics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Sepielli in Philos Stud 160: 191–207, 2012; Eriksson and Francén Olinder in Aust J Philos 94: 719–735, 2016). These attempts have all been found wanting (Bykvist and Olson in Philos Q 59:202–215, 2009, Aust J Philos 95:794–799, 2017; Bykvist and Olson 2012). Michael Ridge has recently offered a quasi-realist solution, according to which expressivists can say exactly what cognitivists say about certitude, including normative certitude. In this paper, we explain the basic problem and Ridge’s quasi-realist solution. We then argue that the quasi-realist account of normative certitude faces severe difficulties that do not arise for cognitivist accounts, according to which normative judgements are beliefs.

Moral nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts or moral truths. It is the ontological component of moral error theory, which is the best-known and most comprehensive metaethical theory th ...

Debunking arguments in metaethics are often presented as particularly challenging for non-naturalistic versions of moral realism. The first aim of this paper is to explore and defend a response on behalf of non-naturalism. The second aim of the paper is to argue that although non-naturalism's response is satisfactory, this does not mean that debunking arguments are metaethically uninteresting. They have a limited and indirect role to play in the exchange between non-naturalists and moral error theorists. In the end, debunking arguments can do less for sceptics and nihilists than what is commonly thought, but not nothing.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

In the first two volumes of On What Matters,1 Derek Parfit pursued a conciliatory project in normative ethics, which sought to dissolve the disagreement between the most plausible versions of Kantianism, contractualism and rule consequentialism. Parfit was less conciliatory in his meta-ethics, however. He did not shy away from declaring himself in deep disagreement with most metaethicists of the 20th century, with the exceptions of Henry Sidgwick, Thomas Nagel, Tim Scanlon and possibly only a few others. Indeed, Parfit would sometimes go as far as to say that he and some other influential metaethicists did not even speak about the same topic. The third volume of On What Matters, which sadly turned out to be Parfit’s last published book, is an extended response to the critical essays in Peter Singer’s edited collection Does Anything Really Matter?, all of which focus on metaethical theses defended in the first two volumes. In On What Matters vol. 3, Parfit embarks on a project of the conciliatory kind that he previously pursued in normative ethics. In particular, he now aspires to offer a kind of synthesis of non-reductive naturalism à la Railton, expressivism à la Gibbard, and the kind of ontologically light-weight non-naturalistic realism that he defended in the previous volumes, and which there went by the name ‘non-metaphysical cognitivism’.

This chapter focuses exclusively on normative reasons. Normative reasons count in favor of actions and attitudes like beliefs, desires, feelings, and emotions. Section 11.2 explores the common ground concerning the metaphysics of reasons. We shall see that the really controversial metaphysical issues in metanormative theorizing about reasons arise with respect to the metaphysics of the reason relation. The two subsequent sections therefore go beyond the common ground and consider competing accounts of the reason relation. Robust and quietist versions of non-naturalism are considered in section 11.3 and naturalism is considered in section 11.4. Section 11.5 summarizes and gives a brief comparative assessment of the accounts considered.

Many moral error theorists hold that moral facts are irreducibly normative. They also hold that irreducible normativity is metaphysically queer and conclude that there are no irreducibly normative reasons and consequently no moral facts. A popular response to moral error theory utilizes the so-called ‘companions in guilt’ strategy and argues that if moral reasons are irreducibly normative, then epistemic reasons are too. This is the Parity Premise, on the basis of which critics of moral error theory draw the Parity Conclusion that if there are no irreducibly normative reasons, there are no moral reasons and no epistemic reasons. From the Parity Conclusion and Epistemic Realism (the view that there are epistemic reasons), it follows that it is false that there are no irreducibly normative reasons. In this chapter, it is argued that the Parity Premise and the Parity Conclusion can both plausibly be rejected.

Accommodating degrees of moral certitude is a serious problem for non-cognitivism about ethics. In particular, non-cognitivism has trouble accommodating fundamental moral certitude. John Eriksson and Ragnar Francen Olinder [2016] have recently proposed a solution. In fact, Eriksson and Francen Olinder offer two different proposalsone classification' account and one projectivist' account. We argue that the classification account faces the same problem as previous accounts do, while the projectivist account has unacceptable implications. Non-cognitivists will have to look elsewhere for a plausible solution to the problem of accommodating fundamental moral certitude.

Error theories have been proposed and defended in several different areas of philosophy. In addition to ethics, there are error theories about numbers, color, free will, and personal identity. Moral error theories differ in scope. Theories at one end of the spectrum take normative judgments in general—of which moral judgments are a subclass—to be uniformly false, whereas theories at the other end of the spectrum take only a subclass of moral judgments—example those concerning duty and obligation, but not those concerning virtue and vice—to be uniformly false. Moral error theorists typically join forces with non-naturalist realists, against naturalism and non-cognitivism. Facts that are normative in the reason-implying sense are irreducibly normative, and they are very different. Many non-naturalist realists and error theorists maintain that it is impossible to give a plausible naturalistic account of moral facts, precisely because they are irreducibly normative; moral naturalism therefore falls prey to the "normativity objection".

Just as we can be more or less certain about empirical matters, we can be more or less certain about normative matters. Recently, it has been argued that this is a challenge for noncognitivism about normativity. Michael Smith presented the challenge in a 2002 paper and James Lenman (2003) and Michael Ridge (2003, 2007) responded independently. Andrew Sepielli (forthcoming) has now joined the rescue operation. His basic idea is that noncognitivists should employ the notion of being for (Schroeder 2008) to account for normative certitude. We shall argue that the being for account of normative certitude is vulnerable to many problems shared by other noncognitivist theories. Furthermore, we shall argue that Sepielli’s account has its own problems: His favored normalization procedure for degrees of being for has highly problematic implications.

This paper explores Franz Brentano's metaethics by comparing it to Thomas Reid's. Brentano and Reid share a commitment to moral realism and they are both aptly classified as intuitionists concerning moral knowledge and the nature of moral judgment. However, their respective versions of intuitionism are importantly different, in ways that reflect more general differences between their respective epistemological views. Sections III and IV of the paper focus more exclusively on Brentano's metaethics and some of its unorthodox features. These features tie in with notorious difficulties for moral realism concerning the nature of moral truth and the relation between moral judgment and motivation to act.

lectures on practical philosophy from 1876 -94 (Brentano 1952 /1973b