Christopher Jay

We don’t have to choose between fictionalism and realism. There would, perhaps, be something good about our acceptance of moral claims – our moral commitments – being nondoxastic, i.e., amounting to some form of acceptance other than belief, even though the moral claims accepted are apt to be believed (i.e. their semantic content is fully representational), and even if they are true. I present an argument to this conclusion which does not rely upon any non-realist assumptions, and which is in fact strengthened by making some realist assumptions. As well as being an independently interesting argument, then, it shows that realists might have reasons to be fictionalists too.

Realistic Fictionalism, argues for two main claims: First, that there is no conceptual or logical incoherence in the idea of a fictionalist theory of some discourse which accommodates a form of realism about that discourse (a claim which has been made in passing by various people, but which has never been adequately explored and assessed); and Second, that just such a fictionalist theory promises to be the best theory of our ordinary moral commitments, judgements and deliberation. In Part I, I explore the spirit of fictionalism and argue that thinking of fictionalism as closely tied to an analogy between its target discourse and fiction is liable to be misleading and is not mandatory. It emerges that the fictionalist’s strategy requires just a semantic thesis (representationalism)and a thesis about the sort of ‘acceptance’ appropriate for some practice involving their target discourse (nondoxasticism). I offer a theory of what‘acceptance’ is, which treats belief as a mode of acceptance and distinguishes the nondoxastic modes of acceptance from belief in a principled and independently plausible way. And I argue that the coherence of realistic fictionalism is preserved by the fact that a person (the realistic fictionalist) can perfectly coherently both believe and nondoxastically accept the same claims. In Part II, I employ the theory of acceptance developed in Part I to propose a fictionalist model of how our ordinary moral commitments often are and generally ought to be. I then give an argument to the conclusion that,in respect of the relation between moral commitment and action guiding at least, it would be better if our moral commitments were to be nondoxastic. I then argue that realistic fictionalism offers a better way of explaining why we ought to have any moral commitments at all than a non-realist fictionalist theory could.

As is already well known, subjective consequentialists face a challenge which arises from the fact that many (perhaps even most) of the consequences of an action areunforeseeable: this fact makes trouble for the assignment of expected values. Recently there has been some discussion of the role of ‘indifference’ principles in addressing this challenge. In this article, I argue that adopting a principle of indifference to unforeseeable consequences will not work – not because of familiar worries about the rationality of such indifference principles, but because subjective consequentialist theories which adopt such principles end up entailing either deontic indeterminacy or arbitrary deontic variance. This is because of another well-known fact: that possibilities do not ‘agglomerate’.

It is often thought that considerations of practicality speak in favour of accepting the principle that if there is no practical alternative to something then that thing is not unjust. I present an argument which suggests that there are in fact practical costs to accepting such a principle, so that on grounds of practicality we perhaps ought to reject it. That argument does not assume that there are any demands of justice which it is impossible to meet, but only that we are very fallible when it comes to knowing what the possibilities are. I then argue that rejecting that principle and embracing a notion of ‘impossible justice’ has positive practical benefits in respect of putting us in a position to respond appropriately to really necessary injustices if there are any.

In this paper I do three things. Firstly, I defend the view that in his most familiar arguments about morality and the theological postulates, the arguments which appeal to the epistemological doctrines of the first Critique, Kant is as much of a fictionalist as anybody not working explicitly with that conceptual apparatus could be: his notion of faith as subjectively and not objectively grounded is precisely what fictionalists are concerned with in their talk of nondoxastic attitudes. Secondly, I reconstruct a logically distinct argument to a fictionalist conclusion which I argue Kant also gives us, this time an argument to the conclusion that it is a good thing if our commitment to the existence of God is nondoxastic. And finally, I argue that this argument is of continuing interest, to Kantians and non-Kantians alike, not only because it raises interesting questions about the relation of morality to belief in God (which go in the opposite direction to most discussions, which focus on whether and to what extent belief in God can be an aid to morality), but also because this ‘Moral Hazard Argument’ seems to be available to religious realists and non-realists alike, thus suggesting that religious fictionalism is not by any means just an interesting version of religious non-realism

Many philosophers accept that ought implies can (OIC), but it is not obvious that we have a good argument for that principle. I consider one sort of argument for it, which seems to be a development of an Aristotelian idea about practical deliberation and which is endorsed by, amongst others, R. M. Hare and James Griffin. After briefly rehearsing some well-known objections to that sort of argument (which is based on the supposed pointlessness of impossible obligations), I present a further objection, based on a maximally charitable reading of the argument, and conclude that nobody ought to think that it gives them a reason to accept OIC

The ambition of ‘justifying democracy’ has more and less theoretical aspects, involving more or less emphasis on our pre-philosophical commitments. The prospects for justifying democracy without recourse to pre-philosophical commitments are not good, as we see if we are properly critical of David Estlund’s admirable recent contribution to the democracy literature. What does this mean for political philosophy? We must think hard about the role of justificatory projects with the ambition of doing without pre-philosophical commitments. Such projects are not without a role, but it is a constrained role.