Review of Christopher B. Kulp, The Metaphysics of Morality, Part I

Table of Contents

In his book, The Metaphysics of Morality Christopher Kulp sets out to develop and defend a thoroughly worked out metaphysics of ordinary, tutored, everyday, commonsense morality that he takes to be implicit in the moral thinking of most people. Most people, he argues, believe that certain things are morally right and morally wrong for all people at all times. They believe that objective moral truths exist, that such moral truths are not made true by merely believing them so. But also, Kulp fully acknowledges that people are fallible in their judgments and can be mistaken in the things that they take to be morally right, wrong, good, evil, true, or false.[1] Nevertheless, Kulp will defend the thesis that the deep core of our everyday moral beliefs is true.

While his main goal is to develop a metaethical metaphysics, that is, a second-order account of moral metaphysics, much of his effort throughout this book is spent analyzing the character of various first-order moral propositions and drawing out the second-order metaethical implications of this analysis.[2] He argues for a Platonic moral ontology that grounds first-order moral truths, first-order moral facts, first-order moral properties. This ontological domain of sui generis moral properties exists independently of human cognition.[3] Ultimately, he develops a version of intuitionist moral realism.[4] His is a secular, that is, non-theistic, moral nonnaturalism.

In chapter 1 Kulp argues for the need to ground everyday, common sense morality in a wider and more fully developed metaphysics, and he places his view against a wide array of differing and opposing metaethical viewpoints, all of which deny moral realism in various ways. Throughout his work Kulp will contrast his realism with a critique of radical moral subjectivism, moral pragmatism, moral error theory, emotivism, prescriptivism, expressivism, and various forms of relativism.

Metaphysics of Morality

By Kulp, Christopher B.

In chapter 2 Kulp acknowledges that in ordinary, everyday moral thinking the full orbed metaphysics that he develops is not explicit in most people’s thinking, but he proceeds to examine a representative list of first-order moral propositions that express moral truths to show that ordinary moral thinking should be taken as both cognitivist and realist.[5] This, of course, has important metaphysical implications which Kulp undertakes to work out. By way of contrast, Kulp then proceeds to examine the metaphysics of moral non-cognitivism, for example, in the emotivism of A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson.[6] Similarly, he shows that the expressivism of Alan Gibbard, the prescriptivism of R.M. Hare, and the quasi-realism of Simon Blackburn all take ordinary moral discourse in a non-realist manner.[7] Although the moral error theory of J.L. Mackie takes ordinary moral discourse to be propositional, the metaphysics of error theory leaves any such discourse entirely ungrounded.[8] Finally, the various versions of relativism are critically taken to task in a very brief way by Kulp. He argues that all versions of relativism hold “that moral truth is necessarily relative to some constructed standard of judgment.”[9]

Although Kulp paints the various versions of moral relativism with a broad brush, his analysis looks to be accurate and his critical assessments on target. The same holds true for the various versions of evolutionary ethics; all such advocate a moral metaphysics that is basically non-realist.

Kulp’s initial review of the gamut of various non-realist metaethical positions in chapter 2 clears the way for him to begin seriously developing the fundamental details of the positive case for his version of intuitive non-naturalism. This he begins in chapter 3. He first focuses on the propositional character of everyday moral locutions. Morality is communicative and interpersonal and propositional. One of the most important features of such moral locutions, according to Kulp, is that they are “truth assessable.”[10] In Kulp’s understanding, propositions are to be counted as abstract entities which express the fact based content of morally declarative sentences.[11] Given this understanding, the nature of moral truth, facts, and properties takes center place in the metaphysics of Kulp’s moral realism. This is the core of his project and he begins to take up this complex set of issues up in chapter 4.

Kulp affirms the necessity of three logical laws as foundational in his discussion of propositional truth: the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity, and the law of excluded middle. These laws govern rational belief. He then develops what he describes as “alethic realism” by linking together two truth-related criteria that help in establishing that which is true. The first is a criterion developed by William Alston dubbed the “T-schema,” namely, “the proposition that p is true iff p.”[12] The second is a broader metaphysical criterion that asserts that a true proposition is made true by the way the world is. Kulp reiterates that this is a metaphysical conception of truth and not an epistemological one, he also acknowledges the lack of details as regards the thorny problem of the correspondence between a true proposition and the way the world is, but he is content that this minimalist theory of truth is adequate for his purposes. Next, the notion of truth is linked to facts; facts in turn are worked out in terms of the notion of “states of affairs.” By “states of affairs,” Kulp means “something’s being, doing, or having something.”[13] States of affairs, which constitute facts, either obtain or they do not obtain. States of affairs instance different ontic types as well, for example, physical properties, numerical properties, mental properties, relational properties, and moral properties, to name just a few.[14]

In the case of moral states of affairs, moral states of affairs strongly supervene on physical states of affairs but are not reducible to them. Moral facts are comprised of states of affairs, which are composed of moral properties that supervene upon physical states of affairs. According to Kulp, if there is no such physical state of affairs then there can be no corresponding moral state of affairs. In further fleshing out details regarding moral facts and their relation to physical states of affairs, Kulp asserts, “…no physical universe, no morality.”[15] He then briefly entertains a question that the theist regards as central, namely, the status of morality before the Big Bang and also how the moral order came into being in the first place and how this is to be taken as it relates to the Grand Story of the physical universe, human existence, and the moral domain.[16] Kulp, however, never broaches the question of God and morality in relation to these big and fundamental questions. We will have more to say on this central issue later in our review.

Chapter 5 develops the details of Kulp’s metaphysics of properties. This is a core issue in his metaphysics. He espouses a strong realist, modern Platonist account of properties. He fully acknowledges that there are difficulties faced by any theory of properties.[17] Kulp asks a straightforward question as regards Platonic, abstract entities, “Do entities of type T exist?” He argues that such entities exist given that numbers, propositions, and the like appear to exist as abstract entities. He also argues that our best account of the actual world, by way of inference to the best explanation, should include them and that Occam’s razor does not require that we reject them.[18]

However, he thinks that a Platonic realist understanding of properties as transcendent universals that are abstract entities best handles the various problems associated with the differing philosophical accounts of properties. In this view such properties can be instantiated, uninstantiated, or uninstantiable.[19] He also does not think that the problem of epistemological access, raised in the context of mathematical Platonism, presents insoluble difficulties for his view.[20] Given this account, Kulp rejects a strictly naturalistic, physicalist account of moral properties in favor of mind independent non-naturalist moral properties that supervene on physical entities in the actual world.[21]

In the sixth and final chapter, Kulp pulls together and summarizes his account of intuitional, Platonic, moral non-naturalism and briefly sets it against the various meta-ethical alternatives discussed throughout his work to conclude the book.[22]

[1] Christopher B. Kulp, Knowing Moral Truth: A Theory of Metaethics and Moral Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 112.

[2] Most of the philosophical work regarding first-order moral propositions is done in Kulp’s first book: Christopher B. Kulp, Knowing Moral Truth: A Theory of Metaethics and Moral Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017). Other relevant works are Christopher B. Kulp, “The Pre-Theoreticality of Moral Intuitions,” Synthese 191, no. 15 (2014); Christopher B. Kulp, “Moral Facts and the Centrality of Intuitions,” in The New Intuitionism, ed. Jill Graper Hernandez (New York: Continuum, 2011), 48–66; Christopher B. Kulp and Philosophy Documentation Center, “Disagreement and the Defensibility of Moral Intuitionism:,” International Philosophical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2016): 487–502.

[3] Christopher B. Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 17. All citations here are from print version of Kulp’s book. See also Kulp, Knowing Moral Truth, 17, 67.

[4] Kulp, Knowing Moral Truth, 115-116. Kulp notes that among intuitionists moral intuitions are understood in one of two ways, either doxastically, as a class of moral belief, or non-doxastically, as a disposition for moral belief. Kulp accepts both senses of moral intuition but sides with a doxastic interpretation. Moral intuition is a class of moral belief. He also notes that no contemporary intuitionist thinks that all justified moral belief and knowledge is intuitional. Ibid., 117.

[5] Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality, 26–33. This is developed more thoroughly in chapter 1 of his earlier work, Knowing Moral Truth.

[6] Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality, 34–37.

[7] Ibid., 37–42. It should be noted that Kulp discusses that Blackburn’s quasi-realism is a more difficult case since Blackburn works to fully accommodate the realist character of moral discourse. Kulp argues that Blackburn is not successful in his efforts. I agree with Kulp in his critique of Blackburn.

[8] Ibid., 42–45.

[9] Ibid., 45. Emphasis in original.

[10] Ibid., 71.

[11] Ibid., 74–75, 77.

[12] Ibid., 106.

[13] Ibid., 112–113.

[14] Ibid., 118–119.

[15] Ibid., 124. See footnote 39 on this page. Kulp takes “physical” to be entities and properties studied by the empirical sciences. Ibid., 62.

[16] Ibid. Kulp, Knowing Moral Truth, 49, note 51.

[17] Kulp, Metaphysics of Morality, 143.

[18] Ibid., 149, 156.

[19] Ibid., 146. For example, a round square is uninstantiable.