Alternative Concepts, Ardour and Elusive Questions
Abstract: In my book Choosing Normative Concepts (OUP 2017), I presented a novel challenge concerning how to think about normativity. The issue concerned the possibility of alternative normative concepts of the thinnest kind. Even if there are objective facts about what ought to be done, what if there is an alternative concept (“ought*”) with the same normative role, such that what ought to be done is not always what ought* to be done? I argued that this has deep implications regarding normativity. For example, I argued that the challenge presented by this scenario threatens to undermine certain ideas often underlying normative realism. In this talk, I present the challenge and the reasons to think that it is serious – and then I discuss how the challenge generalizes. What analogous challenges can there be, inside and outside the realm of the normative? And what light does this shed on what the original challenge actually shows?
Matti Eklund is a Professor at Uppsala University.
