Austin McGrath

The final paragraph of Derek Parfit’s On What Matters: Volume 2 reads: “What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history. If there are no rational beings elsewhere, it may depend on us and our successors whether it will all be worth it, because the existence of the Universe will have been on the whole good.” Why focus on rationality? I’ll sketch some reasons for and against the idea that the continued existence of rational beings likely leads to a universe that ought to be—a justified universe—and conclude the idea is plausible. I’ll also argue the reason we have to justify the universe isn’t just a reason we may have to make it better, and that a universe that ought to be requires a new kind of normative reason—an existential kind.

Some think normative properties like being good are basic: they cannot be explained in only non-normative terms. Moreover, some think these properties are instantiated—things are good. Others have argued the instantiation of basic normativity (with some plausible assumptions about grounding) implies pannormism, roughly the view that some atoms (and sub-atoms, and sub-sub…) and their behavior is also either good or bad. All the way down the levels of reality, normativity lurks. For example, if a seizure is bad, then the atomic behavior (and sub-atomic behavior, and so on) explaining it is also bad. These same philosophers believe pannormism could be taken as a reductio against basic normativity and normative realism. I’ll argue that with plausible additional premises, the argument for pannormism implies all atomic (and sub-atomic, and so on) behavior (and every atom, sub-atom, and so on) is normative. I’ll then explore whether this stronger pannormism, along with the weaker one, should be thought of as a reductio. My conclusion is that it isn’t clear what is absurd about pannormism, partly because the intuitions supporting the alleged reductio are surprisingly similar to those supporting basic normativity. This means believers in basic normativity and normative realism shouldn’t be as worried about their view implying pannormism as some suggest they should, and in fact, it might be antipannormism that’s absurd.

Identification with and alienation from an attitude appear to be necessarily related, that is, they are not independent phenomena—they exclude one another. This suggests a conceptual relation between them. A simple explanation of their incompatibility is that one is present just when and because the other is not—one is the negation of the other: An attitude is alien just when and because it's not identified-with, or the other way around. But their incompatibility needn't be explained in this way. Circles and dogs seem to exclude each other, but a circle isn't merely not a dog, rather they are merely different. Similarly, tall and short seem to exclude each other, but these are not merely negations of each other, rather they oppose each other—they are opposites. In this paper, I'll argue that, if we take a certain view of attitudes wherein the attitudes constituting identification and alienation toward the same attitude cannot be had at the same time, then the relation between alienation and identification that most plausibly secures their mutual exclusivity is that of a certain kind of opposition wherein those beings that can identify with and be alienated from attitudes have attitudes they stand in neither relation to.