In recent years, John McDowell has famously suggested that moral properties are importantly analogous to colors and other "secondary qualities". The general proposal is that just as color properties are dispositions to elicit visual images, so moral properties are dispositions to elicit motivational states. The appeal of this view is that it promises to capture several attractive theses about morality. Chief among these is internalism---the view that there is a metaphysically necessary connectio…
Read moreIn recent years, John McDowell has famously suggested that moral properties are importantly analogous to colors and other "secondary qualities". The general proposal is that just as color properties are dispositions to elicit visual images, so moral properties are dispositions to elicit motivational states. The appeal of this view is that it promises to capture several attractive theses about morality. Chief among these is internalism---the view that there is a metaphysically necessary connection between moral considerations and our motivations. The central tasks of my dissertation are, first, to explicate and refine the incomplete theory McDowell introduces, and second, to determine whether this account can fulfill the promise to deliver a plausible form of internalism. ;Chapter 1 explains and motivates the central issues. In chapter 2, I introduce and develop McDowell's proposal that moral properties are analogous to colors. McDowell's position, as I interpret him, is that moral properties are dispositions to elicit "besires"---states that are at once both beliefs and desires---in virtuous persons when they have, and fully appreciate, all relevant information. In chapter 3, I address a number of important objections to this view and argue that a suitably refined version of the theory can meet all of these objections. As I explain, the refined version of the theory departs in detail from McDowell's view in several important ways. ;Chapter 4 of the dissertation involves a close examination of internalism. I argue that plausible versions of internalism must be able to accommodate familiar cases of motivational failure due to amoralism, wickedness, and depression. But they must make room for these cases without losing the very feature that makes internalist views attractive to begin with: their ability to explain the special "practical" character of morality. In the fifth and final chapter of the dissertation, I argue that the account of moral properties developed and refined in chapters 2 and 3 entails plausible versions of internalism. I further argue in an appendix that this theory is more attractive than the structurally similar view recently advanced by Michael Smith