NIHILISM AND ARGUMENTATION: A WEAKLY PRAGMATIC DEFENSE OF

AUTHORITATIVELY NORMATIVE REASONS

Scott Simmons

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green

State University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2020

Committee:

Michael Weber, Advisor

Verner Bingman
Graduate Faculty Representative

Christian Coons

Molly Gardner

Sara Worley
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ABSTRACT

Michael Weber, Advisor

Global normative error theorists argue that there are no authoritative normative reasons

of any kind. Thus, according to the error theory, the normative demands of law, prudence,

morality, etc. are of no greater normative significance than the most absurd standards we can

conceive of. Because the error theory is a radically revisionary view, theorists who accept it

only do so because they maintain the view is supported by the best available arguments. In

this dissertation, I argue that error theory entails that it is impossible that there are successful

arguments for anything, thus defenses of error theory are in tension with the view, itself. My

argument begins with the observation that it is natural to think a successful argument is one that

gives us an authoritative normative reason to believe its conclusion. Error theory entails that

there are no authoritative reasons to believe anything. What are arguments for error theory even

supposed to accomplish? Error theorists may respond that their arguments are solely intended

to get at the truth. I argue that this reply fails. One problem is that it cannot make sense of why in

practice even error theorists still want evidence for the premises of sound arguments. Error

theorists may try to capture the importance of evidence by appeal to our social norms or goals. I

argue that this answer is indistinguishable from the view that our social practices or goals

generate authoritative normative requirements. Thus, attempts to defend the coherence of

arguing for error theory are either unacceptably revisionary or they are inconsistent with error

theory. While this result is a problem for error theory, it seems consistent with highly relativistic

accounts of normative authority. In the future, I plan to explore whether my core arguments

can be extended to defend authoritative, universal scope normative requirements (e.g. of

prudence and morality).

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To Colin Anderson and Caroline Christoff, whose years of mentorship and friendship have
shaped my life in more ways than any of us know.
 iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to many people for their support and guidance on this dissertation.
I would like to thank my committee. Michael Weber helped me succinctly express and

clarify my ideas. Christian Coons gave me powerful objections, and pressed me to never settle for

less than my best work. Molly Gardner guided me in the development of the overall structure of

this project and its individual chapters, and provided an endless fount of emotional support. Sara

Worley gave me insightful feedback and critiques. A special thanks to Terence Cuneo. Before he

joined my committee, Terence had already paved the way for this project. If I have succeeded in

advancing this intellectual conversation, it is largely through his feedback and vision.

Innumerable thanks are also in order to my communities, especially the Bowling Green

State University Department of Philosophy. Thanks to my peers who helped me develop my

writing and ideas. A special thanks to those of you who did so as part of our graduate student

writing group: Ben Bryan, Alex Rosenberg, Jacob Sparks, Tatiana Gracyk, Marcus Schultz-

Bergin, Vassiliki Leontis, and others. Our department colloquia offered an invaluable forum for

feedback, and I thank all of you who attended one of my talks. Thanks to my senior peers for being

both important role models and friends: Mark Wells, Jacob Sparks, David Faraci, Peter Jaworski,

and others. While I thank everyone in the department for providing a fertile environment for

philosophical discussion and growth, I want to call special attention to Stephen Dundon, Mark

Herman, Colin Manning, and Will Lugar for providing such an environment at home, as my

housemates. A special thanks also to Ryan Fischbeck for years of productive (and engaging)

conversation. Thanks to Michael Bradie for his firm push for me to finish. Thanks to Margy

DeLuca for all that she has done to make sure that this project (and myself) stay on track. Thanks

to those philosophers who provided me with feedback at the 2019 session of the Rocky Mountain

Ethics Congress.
 v

My deepest gratitude to my beloved Rebecca Schleider, for the innumerable ways in which

she has shown me what a true partnership is like. Rebecca has edited my work for me, served as a

sounding board, and generally astounds me with her care and compassion.

Finally, thanks to me family—Michael, Alice and David Simmons—for making this whole

thing possible.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER ONE: A NEW DEFENSE OF THE INCOHERENCE OBJECTION TO

METANORMATIVE ERROR THEORY ............................................................................. 1

1.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Introducing the Incoherence Objection ................................................................ 7

1.3 Metanormative Error Theory ............................................................................... 10

1.3.1 The relationship between moral error theory and metanormative

error theory..................................................................................................... 28

1.4 My strategy for defending the Incoherence Objection ........................................ 30

1.4.1 Argumentation and Reasons: why argumentative success depends

on reason giving ............................................................................................. 34

1.4.1.1 Mere Persuasion & Argumentative Persuasion ..................... 37

1.4.1.2 True Persuasion & True Argumentative Persuasion .............. 38

1.4.1.3 Sound Argumentative Persuasion .......................................... 38

1.5 Soundness Suffices and the Problem of Dialectical Fallacies ............................. 43

1.5.1 Against biting the bullet on begging the question: Epistemic Agency

and Philosophical Skepticism ........................................................................ 48

1.5.2 Why biting the bullet on begging the question is inconsistent with

error theorist’s own perspective ..................................................................... 50

1.5.2.1 Defense of No Easy Defeaters ............................................... 51

1.6 Soundness Suffices and the Technology of Truth-Seeking ................................. 60

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1.7 Objection & Response: do my arguments beg the question against

Soundness Suffices?................................................................................................... 68

1.8 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 71

CHAPTER TWO: HOW SOUNDNESS SUFFICES UNDERMINES GENEALOGICAL

DEBUNKING ARGUMENTS .............................................................................................. 73

2.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 73

2.1.1 Premise 1 background: genealogical debunking arguments ................. 74

2.1.2 Premise 1 background: epistemic miracles ........................................... 78

2.1.3 Defense of P1: why genealogical debunking arguments are still of

some argumentative merit in epistemic miracle worlds ................................ 82

2.1.3.1 P1 and epistemic humility...................................................... 85

2.1.4 Premise Two: if Soundness Suffices is adequately motivated, then

given Soundness Suffices, debunking arguments are not at all successful

in actual epistemic miracle worlds ................................................................. 86

2.2 Objections & Replies ........................................................................................... 98

2.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 103

CHAPTER THREE: FORMALITY’S FINE AND THE TOO MANY NORMS

PROBLEM............................................................................................................................. 105

3.1 Formality’s Fine: another way to resist the Incoherence Objection .................... 105

3.2 Against Formality’s Fine ..................................................................................... 112

3.2.1 Formality’s Fine and the Too Many Norms Problem ........................... 114

3.2.1.1 Defense of P1 ......................................................................... 115

3.2.1.2 Defense of P2 ......................................................................... 120

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3.2.1.3 Conclusion One: The Too Many Norms Problem defended . 123

3.2.1.4 Defense of P3 ......................................................................... 124

3.2.1.4.1 First Parallel: normative privileging ....................... 126

3.2.1.4.2 Second Parallel: practicality and action guidance .. 127

3.2.1.4.3 Third Parallel: the possibilities of error and

internalizing the wrong norms ............................................... 127

3.2.1.4.4 Fourth Parallel: strikingly similar mind-

dependent accounts ................................................................ 130

3.2.1.4.5 Conclusion: R1 (Account S parallels an account

of normative authority) .......................................................... 135

3.2.1.4.6 Defense of R2 (If Account S parallels and account

of normative authority, then it probably is one.) ................... 136

3.2.1.4.7 The Authority Makes a Difference Argument

for R2 ..................................................................................... 141

3.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 147

CHAPTER FOUR: OBJECTIONS, RESPONSES & THE LIMITATIONS OF MY

ARGUMENTATIVE STRATEGY ....................................................................................... 149

WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................... 161

 1

CHAPTER ONE: A NEW DEFENSE OF THE INCOHERENCE OBJECTION TO

METANORMATIVE ERROR THEORY

1.1 Introduction

It seems obvious that there are some things we really should do and really should believe.

Given the choice between a grisly demise and hiding in a garden, I really ought to hide in the

garden. If a raving cultist objects that entering the garden would violate the all-important taboo on

touching beans, I should probably think the man needs to rethink a few things. Maybe he has some

false beliefs about gardens. Given his available evidence, some of those beliefs are probably

irrational and he should reconsider them. At the very least, he needs to rethink his priorities.

Metanormative error theory (MNE) is the radical thesis according to which the preceding

claims are all deeply mistaken, as are any other claims about what we really ought to do, believe,

intend, feel or what have you. According to the error theory, though we make many judgments

that presuppose the existence of authoritative normative requirements that generate facts about

what we really ought to, intend or believe, in fact there are no such authoritative requirements. The

cultist’s prohibition on touching beans has precisely as much normative importance as morality,

prudence and even the instrumental requirement to take the means to our own ends. Which is to

say, each of these standards has no real normative authority at all.

Obviously, most ethicists reject error theory. Yet providing what we would most want, a

sound and dialectically effective argument against the view is rather difficult, something of a

philosophical fountain of youth. Appeals to even the most deeply held and widely shared

normative beliefs beg the question against the committed error theorist. Metaethical accounts of

(e.g.) how there could be authoritatively normative facts and epistemic accounts of how normative

knowledge is possible do not go far enough. These accounts can help undermine positive
 2

arguments for error theory. But refuting the positive arguments for error theory is not quite the

same as showing the error theory is false. 1 What remains elusive is a non-question begging

argument against the error theory. In this paper, I hope to make some progress toward offering just

such an argument.

A maximally dialectically effective argument against error theory would begin from a

claim that error theorists qua error theorists accept and show that it leads to the conclusion that the

error theory is false. At the limit, this would involve revealing a contradiction within the error

theory itself. My argument is not quite that ambitious. Rather than showing that error theory is

contradictory, I aim to reveal a tension between error theory and the philosophical argumentation

that supports it.2 It seems to me this should be of only marginally less interest than a proof that

error theory entails a contradiction. Error theory entails that many of our own pre-theoretical

judgments are mistaken.3 Consequently, those of us who adhere to it do so largely because of the

conviction that we are simply following the best available arguments where they lead. It thus

cannot be irrelevant to us if the error theory cannot intelligibly be supported by arguments.

I will provide an overview of this first chapter, then situate it in the broader argument of

the dissertation. First, §1 introduces what I call the Incoherence Objection to MNE. According to

the Incoherence Objection, there is some kind of tension between MNE and the argumentation

advanced on its behalf. Different versions of the Incoherence Objection are possible, given

1
I actually think metaphysical and epistemological theories can provide less direct positive arguments against the
error theory. A lot of us now think the proper methodology for metaethics is to consider the theoretical “plausibility
points” and problems of various theories in order to arrive at a more holistic, comparative evaluation. Thus, the
existence of plausible rivals to error theory can provide a kind of abductive argument against error theory. Still, there
is something more satisfying in providing a more direct argument that is grounded in things the error theorist qua error
theorist accepts.
2
I have in mind both positive arguments for error theory and defensive arguments the help respond to objections.
3
Indeed, it plausibly entails that many of our own judgments formed even after accepting the theory are in error. Even
many moral error theorists report that they still make moral judgments. Morality is simply too deeply rooted in human
nature and our societies for us to cease making moral judgments because of an abstract theoretical commitment.
Metanormative error theory is wider in scope than moral error theory, so this problem is simply exacerbated for MNE.
 3

different accounts of exactly where the tension lies. Previous statements of the Incoherence

Objection locate the tension in the claim that MNE undermines important epistemic concepts like

justification. If true, this would entail that we cannot possibly be justified in believing the error

theory, nor know that it is true.4 I suggest that the focus on epistemic concepts like justification

has made it relatively easy to respond to these statements of the Incoherence Objection. Put simply,

it is all too plausible that there are acceptable analyses of epistemic concepts in non-normative

terms that are consistent with the error theory (e.g. justification just is the fact that a belief forming

mechanism is reliable).

With the Incoherence Objection introduced, §2 provides a deeper introduction to: the

concept of normative authority, the error theory about normative authority (MNE), and several

prominent arguments to motivate the error theory. Following this, I introduce my own statement

of the Incoherence Objection in §3. I shift focus away from epistemic concepts to the human

activity of argumentation. Roughly, argumentation is the activity of shaping our attitudes (e.g.

beliefs) by means of engaging with arguments, logically related sets of claims. Considered as

moves within argumentative activity, arguments have success conditions. By definition, a

fallacious argument fails to support its conclusion. Thus, what we count as fallacious is a good

indirect guide to what we take a successful argument to be. Give Boots and Buster all the food.

In Sections 4 and 5 I argue that non-controversial, shared assumptions about fallacies

suggest that an argument cannot be completely successful if it cannot make it rational for its

intended audience to accept its conclusion. Rationality is a normative concept, so this conclusion

blocks the claim made by some error theorist’s that their argumentative activity is intended solely

4
See (Case, 2018) (Cuneo, 2007), (Das, 2016), (Das, 2017) and (Rowland, 2012) for statements of this argumentative
strategy, which is typically called an epistemic companions in guilt argument.
 4

to get at “…the truth in metaethics” and thus that “…there is no harm in conceding that error theory

is toothless in [debates over what it is rational to believe or what there is epistemic reason to

believe].”5 Indeed, as I argue in §5.1.2, it is especially true of the logically consistent error theorist

that she cannot intelligibly understand truth to be the sole aim of her inquiry to the exclusion of

normative questions about what it is rational to believe.

In §6 I provide a second kind of defense of the claim that concern for normative questions

are an ineliminable part of argumentative activity. The argument of §6 focuses on the fact that our

argumentative practice includes standards for evaluating arguments. Because we are cognitively

limited beings, any standard we can possibly employ will sometimes lead us away from the truth.

Nonetheless, we cannot intelligibly deny that an unsound6 argument that passes our own tests for

a successful argument succeeds in some sense that we care about. On its own, this means we must

grant that soundness is not the sole argumentative virtue. Our concern really is also about what it

is rational for us to believe the truth is.

Finally, in §7, I provide several responses to the charge that my own arguments beg the

question against the error theorist who takes truth to be the sole aim of inquiry. I close by briefly

discussing another way to reconcile MNE with arguments on its behalf. Briefly, error theorists

may grant that arguments succeed partially in virtue of their making it rational to accept their

conclusion while denying that rationality so conceived is authoritatively normative. I will evaluate

this proposal in detail in the third paper, but this paper does provide a sketch of it.

5
The quote comes from (Olson, 2014). Olson provides the clearest statement in the literature of the suggestion that
error theoretic argumentation aims solely at truth, without concern for normative ideals like rational belief. See
(Cowie, 2014) and (Cowie, 2015) for a similar defense.
6
By unsound I mean generally to refer both to arguments that are literally unsound because they have a false premise,
i.e. deductively valid arguments with one or more false premises, and their non-deductive parallel, inductive arguments
with strong logical relations, but one or more false premises. The reason for this broader use of “sound” and “unsound”
is that it is a convenient and intuitive shorthand for ideas that are developed in §5. Though note in another sense this
use is narrow, as I generally do not mean to refer to arguments that are unsound because of purely logical failures.
 5

The second paper or chapter also argues for the conclusion that especially error theorists

cannot make sense of their argumentative practices without appeal to some normative concepts.

To do this, I argue that an exclusive focus on soundness as the sole criterion for argumentative

success undersells the theoretical power of debunking arguments. A debunking argument aims to

show that the causal origin of a belief or set of beliefs undermines the epistemic merits of that

belief or set of beliefs. Debunking arguments play an especially prominent role in modern defenses

of error theory. For example, error theorist often argue that the influence of evolution on our

capacities for making normative judgment gives us reason to be skeptical of our normative beliefs.

At the very least, this move helps defend the error theory from the charge that it is inconsistent

with highly plausible normative beliefs, and should be rejected for that reason.

Clearly, debunking arguments are often both plausible arguments in general, and an

important part of defending error theory. Given this, error theorists cannot intelligibly accept a

view of argumentative success that fails to respect the theoretical power of debunking arguments.

I argue that the exclusive focus on truth does precisely that, however. To do this, I first defend the

following conditional: if debunking arguments are ever successful arguments, then they are at least

somewhat successful in cases of what I call actual epistemic miracle. An actual epistemic miracle

is a case where a believer or group of believers possesses objectively reliable belief forming

mechanisms, but they possess this faculty as a matter of luck. For example, suppose humans

actually are the beneficiaries of an evolutionary “cosmic coincidence” such that we evolved in the

uniquely right way to have reliable belief forming mechanisms.

Actual epistemic miracles pose a significant problem for debunking arguments when they

are conjoined with the view that a successful argument is simply an argument that objectively gets

at the truth. I argue that, given such a focus, in actual epistemic miracle worlds, debunking
 6

arguments are unsound. This is no problem if we think debunking arguments can be a partial

success by dint of showing it is irrational to accept the debunked beliefs. But the exclusive focus

on truth entails that the debunking arguments are complete theoretical failures. Given the earlier

conditional, it follows that they are always complete theoretical failures. This is a disastrous result,

and so error theorists would be better served, again, by rejecting the exclusive focus on getting at

the truth. They should grant that arguments can only be more or less successful in virtue of showing

that it is rational or such to accept their conclusion.

Rationality, of course, is some species of normative concept. But it is not obviously an

authoritatively normative concept. The coherence of defending error theory thus depends on

whether the error theorist can coherently deny normative authority to all argumentative norms,

even the ones relative to which her own arguments succeed. The third paper argues that she cannot

coherently do this. The argument begins by calling attention to the fact that there is an arbitrarily

large number of inconsistent norms for argumentative success. Any functioning argumentative

practice must treat some of these norms are in some sense privileged over others as determinants

of the kind of argumentative successes that matters to us as argumentative agents. I argue that, on

examination, any plausible account of what this privileging is would just be an account of

normative authority. Therefore, normative authority must be invoked to make sense of

argumentative success. This result is inconsistent with error theory, of course. Therefore, arguing

for error theory is incoherent: insofar as we claim to have a successful argument for error theory,

we are logically committed to the denial of error theory.

The final, concluding chapter is the shortest. Its primary goal is to assess the prospects for

moving from the claim that arguing for error theory is incoherent to the claim that error theory is

false. I argue for a kind of limited optimism on this score. While my version of the Incoherence
 7

Objection does provide us reason to doubt the error theory, my conclusions are importantly limited

in two respects. While incoherence gives us a reason to reject error theory, it is not clear that it

provides much reason to endorse the view that normative authority is mind-independent in two

important respects. First, it is not clear that the incoherence of arguing for error theory gives us

much reason to accept the ontological thesis that authoritative normativity is a feature of the mind-

independent world. Second, it is not clear that it supports the claim that there are authoritative

norms with universal scope. A minimally concessive response to the arguments of my dissertation

may grant that some norms are authoritative, but these are the ones that an ideally instrumentally

rational version of ourselves would internalize, or something of that sort. That said, I do also

suggest several future lines of research that may defend authoritative moral reasons.7

1.2 Introducing the Incoherence Objection

Metanormative error theory strikes many as an absurd, even pernicious view. How can

anyone seriously think there is no reason to do anything? Beyond this, MNE evokes the existential

dread that plagued Camus, Sartre and many others.8 Of course, the truth is often uncomfortable.

That a view is unsettling presumably does not impinge the quality of the arguments in its favor.

But this concession about the quality of an argument invites a popular and well-grounded puzzle

for defenses of MNE. Quite simply, how can anyone coherently think there are successful

arguments for a global error theory about normative authority? It is natural to think the point of an

7
As the title suggests, I believe my argumentative strategy is weakly pragmatic. By this, I mean that most of my
arguments assess whether this or that proposed account of argumentative ends could generate an argumentative
practice that functions in a fashion that would be acceptable to us, especially those of us who are error theorists. In
contrast, little of what I do is a descriptive analysis of some kind of argumentative practice, except insofar as the
descriptions generate constraints on what an acceptable argumentative practice could be like. In calling this
methodology weakly pragmatic, I signal that I am not endorsing the stronger claims associated with classical
pragmatism, such as the claim that truth is “whatever works.” Moreover, I do not think my use of this strategy for the
purposes of responding to error theory requires a general commitment to philosophical pragmatism in any interesting
sense at all. This “role based” methodology is proposed and defended by David Chalmers in his (Chalmers, 2011).
8
See (Camus & O'Brien, 1955) and (Sartre, 2012).
 8

argument is to make it rational for us to believe its conclusion. Indeed, it is so natural to understand

a good argument as one that gives us a reason to believe its conclusion that introductory textbooks

and courses in philosophy and critical thinking often define a good argument as one that gives us

a reason to accept its conclusion.9

The presumptive case seems to favor the view that this means a good argument gives us an

authoritative normative reason to accept its conclusion. Argument evaluation is clearly normative

in at least the weak sense that it involves evaluating something (arguments) relative to various

standards. Common argumentative standards include logical validity, cogency, and clarity.

Granted, logical relations like deductive entailment may not themselves be a kind of normative

relation in any sense. But we clearly treat “being logically valid” as a standard for assessing

arguments. 10 Argumentative standards also seem importantly non-psychological; a moment’s

reflection on the concept of a fallacy reveals that a good argument is not simply one that persuades

people. Fallacies are often identified as argumentative patterns that frequently persuade despite

their failure to give a good reason to accept their conclusion. So, the kinds of reasons that

arguments are supposed to give are normative reasons, not simply motivational.11 It also seems

clear that we think some standards for argument evaluation are authoritative. It matters if MNE

provides the best explanation for some fact; it does not matter at all if it follows from inference to

the worst-explanation or any other intelligible standard we can think of for evaluating arguments.

Since we have already observed that arguments are supposed to give normative reasons, the

9
For various statements of the idea that arguments aim at rational persuasion or giving others reasons to believe their
conclusions see (Feldman, 2013), (Johnson, 2012) and (Sinnott-Armstrong, 1999), though I suspect that the idea that
arguments are supposed to provide reasons to belief their conclusion is a commonplace in contemporary philosophy.
10
Or, at least deductive validity is a standard for arguments that aspire to be deductive. We intend many of our
arguments to be inductive or abductive; these arguments are not bad despite their lack of deductive validity.
11
I recognize that “motivational” is not quite the right phrase, since frequently the relevant change would be a change
in belief. However, I am unsure of what a more apt phrase would be and trust my reader understands the point.
 9

relevant kind of significance is a kind of normative significance, i.e. it is a matter of normative

authority.

But, MNE entails that norms for rational belief formation are of no greater normative

significance than are norms for irrational belief formation. How can we reconcile this with the

preceding paragraph’s conclusion that arguments succeed in virtue of their providing authoritative

normative reasons to accept their conclusion? If we cannot, it looks like any attempt to argue for

MNE commits us to a view according to which our arguments cannot possibly succeed. In arguing

for anything at all we presuppose the existence of authoritative standards for argumentation; in

arguing for MNE in particular we deny the existence of such standards. By analogy, arguing for

MNE looks like praying that God will reveal to you the truth of atheism.12 For this reason, we

might think alongside Thomas Nagel that skepticism “that is the product of an argument cannot be

total” (Nagel, 2001, p. 19). At the very least, we must grant authority to the norms needed to make

sense of our own arguments. I shall call the kind of objection according to which MNE undermines

the giving of arguments in its defense the Incoherence Objection.

I find it helpful to present formalized arguments. So, I will close this section with a formalized

statement of the Incoherence Objection. To properly understand the argument, it is important to

12
Whether the Incoherence Objection shows MNE to be false is another question. To continue the analogy, the fact
that a person prays that God will reveal to them the truth of atheism does not show that God exists. The Incoherence
Objection seems to present a kind of transcendental argument. As standardly understood, a transcendental argument
is any argument that aims to show that X must be true because it is a precondition for Y, especially where Y is a
seemingly inescapable element of our experience or presuppositions about the world. As Barry Stroud pointed out in
his classic critique of transcendental arguments, this may only show that human agents are doomed to incoherence.
This is an important objection that is beyond the scope of this paper’s thesis that there really is something incoherent
about arguing for MNE. But I want to say two things in reply. First, most of us do have the goal of forming a coherent
view of the world. It cannot be irrelevant to us if there really is something incoherent in the attitudes of a person who
argues for MNE. Beyond this, I am sympathetic to the view that the incoherence of arguing for MNE is a data-point
in a larger argument against MNE. In particular, note that Stroud’s objection is strongest against transcendental
arguments that aim to support realism about a domain. As classically conceived, it seems like the existence or non-
existence of God is a strongly mind-independent fact. By contrast, it is far less obvious that normative authority could
not exist as a mind-dependent feature of the world.
 10

first have a thorough understanding of MNE, itself. To this end, the next section explains and

motivates MNE. Following this, the remainder of the paper begins a defense of the critical second

premise of my core argument.

Assumption: there is at least one successful argument for MNE.

P1.) Given MNE, there are no authoritative reasons for anything.

P2.) An argument cannot be successful if it cannot give anyone an authoritative
normative reason to accept its conclusion.
C1.) So, if MNE is true there are no successful arguments for its truth.

1.3 Metanormative Error Theory

It seems obvious that there are many normative requirements on our actions, intentions,

beliefs and other attitudes. For example, the law requires us to pay our taxes. Morality requires us

to respect others. Instrumental reason requires us to take the means to our end. All of these

requirements are normative in the sense that they express norms.13

It seems equally obvious that not all norms are equally important or worth following. Put

in the terms of this paper, some norms possess greater normative authority than others do. The

13
As I mean the term here, the distinguishing feature of a norm is that a norm sets a standard relative to which
something may be deficient. Think of the difference between a blueprint for a building and a map or guidebook. A
blueprint is a kind of norm, but a guidebook is not. If the construction team accidentally places a door where the
blueprint called for a window, they have made a mistake relative to the blueprint. Suppose instead that the construction
team placed the door according to the blueprint. However, there was a clogged nozzle in the guidebook printer.
Consequently, my guidebook does not show the door. The discrepancy between my guidebook and the world does not
mean the door is not where it should be. Maps and guidebooks are supposed to report the location of the world’s
contents. They are not standards for those contents in the way that a blueprint is. Norms have a domain, the set of
things they are norms for. Blueprints are norms for objects and devices. The example of Pythagoras concerns norms
for actions, i.e. what should Pythagoras do? Most of this paper concerns norms for argumentation.
Despite the framing in terms of norms, I will often talk in terms of (normative) reasons. I understand a reason to be a
kind of normative consideration. Philosophers usually talk of reasons as favoring certain courses of action, as in the
claim that Pythagoras would die if he does not enter the patch counts in favor of his fleeing through it. There are two
reasons for talking in terms of reasons. First, the concept of a normative reason is the dominant idiom for talking about
normative authority in modern philosophy. Certainly, the prominent statements of MNE that I am responding to make
central use of the concept of normative reasons. Second, reasons are granular in a way that norms, requirements,
oughts and shoulds are not. Reasons weigh against one another and can be outweighed. It is natural to talk of there
being a reason to do something that one should not do. Capturing that kind of nuanced idea with “ought” would be
strained, at best.
 11

idea of normative authority is infamously difficult to analyze, yet can readily be appreciated via

cases. So, I will lead with a case.

Consider the plight of the great mathematician Pythagoras. According to legend,

Pythagoras once found himself fleeing from a group of murderous assassins. At a critical point in

the pursuit, Pythagoras had the option of escaping into a nearby bean patch. The patch offered

concealment and Pythagoras knew it was his best chance at survival. Most of us would have

entered the patch without a moment’s hesitation. But, for Pythagoras, the patch presented a

quandary. In addition to his mathematical discoveries, Pythagoras (in)famously was the leader of

a cult. Among the more peculiar sounding practices of Pythagoras’ cult was a prohibition on

touching beans. 14 The Pythagorean prohibition on touching beans constitutes a norm. Quite

plausibly, the Pythagorean anti-bean norm was in conflict with the norm of prudence, which

requires us to promote our own welfare.15

We can imagine Pythagoras standing before the bean patch, contemplating what he should

do. Suppose he knew that fleeing was the only path to safety. But he also believed beans were

impure hell sprouts that ought to be avoided at all costs (though for reasons entirely unrelated to

personal welfare)! The perceived conflict between prudence and his prohibition forced Pythagoras

to step back and rethink his own normative commitments and beliefs: are beans really so bad that

he should let himself die to avoid their touch? In a moment such as this, Pythagoras may have

started to understand why others thought the prohibition to be silly and beneath him. On the other

hand, surely he had originally thought there was a good reason to avoid beans!

14
See (Seife, 2000)for an overview of Pythagoras’ cult. The story of Pythagoras’ plight outside the bean patch is
apocryphal and is almost certainly historically inaccurate. I also embellish the legend and Pythagoras’ rationale for
the prohibition in order to have a more powerful illustration of my point.
15
I am assuming that it would be better for Pythagoras’ personal well-being to touch some beans than to be stabbed
to death. I do not think this is a contentious claim. Surely, every prominent theory of well-being can make sense of it.
 12

To do full justice to Pythagoras’ deliberation about what he ought to do, it seems we must

introduce the idea that some norms generate more legitimate or at least stronger demands than

others do. Pythagoras was quite aware what he ought to do relative to his prohibition against

touching beans. Similarly, we can imagine him genuinely thinking his own life would be better if

he broke the prohibition. His awareness of the conflict between prudence and his bean prohibition

was the very source of his conflict. So, assimilating his puzzlement over what he ought to do to a

question like “what ought I to do relative to prudence?” would bizarrely have him deliberating

over questions he already knows the answer to. It is far more sensible to understand him as

deliberating over the relative importance of the various demands he perceives on his action.

Similarly, our own judgments about Pythagoras seem to presuppose the idea that some

normative requirements trump others. To me, it is very clear that Pythagoras ought to have entered

the patch, cultish prohibition be damned! I suspect all or almost all my readers will share this

judgment about what Pythagoras should have done. It is also clear that our judgment is about some

kind of normative weight and not a simple kind of psychological weight. We are not asking how

much importance Pythagoras placed on the bean norm. If we learn that the historical Pythagoras

stood his ground and died, we can intelligibly think he was foolish and cared too much about his

cult’s taboos. Thus, when we think Pythagoras ought to have entered the patch, we at least

implicitly judge that the cult’s prohibition does not place a very significant demand on Pythagoras

in a normative sense of significance, not a purely psychological sense. Granted, the cult’s

prohibition is normative in the sense that it has the formal feature of being a standard or

requirement (what I henceforth call “weak normativity”).16But some norms are normative in the

additional sense that their demands are more legitimate, weighty, oomphy or whatever you want

16
Or, more modestly, we judge that, at least in this case, prudence trumps the prohibition.
 13

to call it than others.17 Put in terms of the language of this paper, we judge prudence normatively

authoritative over the cult’s anti-bean prohibition.18

In lieu of a more complete analysis of authority, I will simply give it a functional definition.

Normative authority refers to that normative property putatively possessed by some things that can

be expressed as norms in the weak sense such that they normatively trump some other things that

can be expressed as norms in the weak sense. Normative trumping is a kind of normative power

that is relevant in cases of norm conflict, wherein two norms require inconsistent things. One norm

trumps another when it settles what ought to be done, believed, intended, etc. in such a conflict.

For illustration, think of how our legal systems possess norms that explicitly possess a kind of

legal normative trumping power. For example, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution

establishes that Constitutionally valid Federal laws trump state laws in a case of conflict between

the two (Clark, 2003).19

17
Modern philosophers often use “normative” simply to mean what I am calling normative authority. However, there
are other senses of “normative,” e.g. in the social sciences “normative” generally means something that is required by
social norms. My use of “authority” is intended to avoid the ambiguity in the word “normative.”
18
Though I expect this reaction to be rare, I can imagine that some of my readers are more sympathetic to Pythagoras’
respecting the bean norm. I can at least imagine ways to motivate respect for the prohibition on touching beans. Some
might defend the prohibition as an instance of self-expression or because of a commitment to a very simple sort of
subjectivism about what is good in life. Regardless of the details, I am inclined to treat judgments of this kind as
expressing the verdict that some other norm or set of norms is authoritative, e.g. that we have authoritative reason to
be ourselves.
19
It is imperative to understand that I am merely modeling normative authority on the legal trumping power of some
legal norms. It is far from obvious that legal norms are actually authoritative. For my purposes, we should understand
Constitutional validity to be a kind of weakly normative conventional property. Using this stipulative sense, we can
coherently ask why even our own Supreme Court Justices should really care about the fact that Federal law possesses
legal authority over state laws. It is coherent to think the Justices really should care primarily about promoting welfare
or the national interest and ignore strict Constitutionality whenever it conflicts with promoting these ends. By contrast,
I think the question “why should I care about authoritative norms?” is confused. Asking why an authoritative standard
should be followed amounts to saying “I agree that we should do X, but should we do X?” Absent equivocation, the
question is so palpably self-answering that it is hard to see why someone would ask it. Skepticism about why we
should abide by authoritative norms and reasons seems to me either grounded in linguistic/conceptual confusion, or
is really expression of some other form of skepticism. For example, it might be a sensible form of skepticism about
whether this or that standard is authoritative. Alternately, it may really express error theoretic skepticism about the
existence of authoritative normativity.
 14

Intuitive though the idea of normative authority may be, the concept raises a myriad of

philosophical problems. First, it is extremely difficult to provide a satisfying account of the

ontology of authoritative normativity. Second, it is hard to see how we could possess knowledge

of authoritative norms. These problems appear so daunting that some philosophers have embraced

an error theory about normative authority. The error theory has the following two components:

Conceptual Claim of MNE: we have a concept of normative authority and make

judgments that presuppose that there are some authoritative norms.

Ontological Claim of MNE: no norms possess normative authority.

Taken together, the conceptual and ontological claim entail that any judgment that

presupposes the existence of authoritative norms are mistaken; these judgments suffer from a case

of presupposition failure. 20 By analogy, think of how atheism is a kind of error theory about

judgments that presuppose the existence of God. Henceforth, I shall routinely refer to the error

theory as MNE for metanormative error theory. 21 I will now briefly expand on some of the

metaphysical and epistemological motivations for MNE.

Metaphysical arguments for error theory begin from a claim about the existential

presuppositions of judgments of normative authority. Once revealed, the second step in the

argument is to argue that the relevant presupposition does not exist. By analogy, think of the

20
Despite the framing in terms of norms, I will sometimes talk in terms of (normative) reasons. I understand a reason
to be a kind of normative consideration that bears on what people ought to do. Philosophers usually talk of reasons as
favoring certain courses of action, as in the claim that Pythagoras would die if he does not enter the patch counts in
favor of his fleeing through it. There are two reasons for talking in terms of reasons. First, the concept of a normative
reason is the dominant idiom for talking about normative authority in modern philosophy. Certainly, the prominent
statements of MNE that I am responding to make central use of the concept of normative reasons. Second, reasons are
granular in a way that norms, requirements, oughts and shoulds are not. It is natural to talk of there being a reason to
do something that one should not do; the reason in question is simply (normatively) outweighed by other
considerations. Capturing that kind of nuance with “ought” or talk of what a norm requires would be strained, if
possible at all. As for the relationship between reasons and norms, I find it helpful to think of norms as principles that
generate reasons, or reasons of a given kind. For illustration, think of the idea that moral reasons, prudential reasons
and aesthetic reasons represent distinct normative “families.” Each family might have its own general principles that
generate reasons of their kind when the relevant non-normative worldly considerations are met.
21
Metanormative because authority seems to be a kind of higher-order normative property that metaphorically ranks
normative requirements.
 15

judgment that someone is a telepath. Assuming that telepathy involves a mechanism that causes a

change in a person’s brain, the judgment that someone is a telepath has presuppositions that are

intension with modern physics. Any physical medium (e.g. a kind of wave like radio waves) that

is powerful enough to cause a change in a person’s brain at a distance should be detectable by

devices other than human brains. However, we simply have not detected such powerful emissions

going from brain to brain. Thus, telepathy probably does not exist.22

One could respond to this argument by denying the assumption that telepathy has to cause

a change in our brains in order to cause a change in our conscious experiences or mental states.

This looks tantamount to endorsing substance dualism. According to substance dualism, mental

phenomena like consciousness and mental states like beliefs are actually a wholly distinct

substance from our brains (e.g. an immaterial soul). The majority of modern philosophers and

scientists take substance dualism to be an extravagant metaphysical thesis.23 Perhaps substance

dualism would be more appealing if we had phenomena that clearly suggested the reality of

telepathy. In that case, the lack of a physical medium that could convey telepathic signals would

become evidence that the world is not purely physical. However, we have compelling explanations

for alleged psychic phenomena that do not require appeal to telepathy. 24 Therefore, on balance, it

is most likely that telepathy simply does not exist.

Common arguments for MNE structurally parallel the case against telepathy. They begin

by defending a claim about the existential presuppositions of the concept of an authoritative

normativity. Then, they note that the world as we know it does not seem to include anything quite

22
See (Taylor, 1980).
23
In their much popularized study of what philosophers believe, David Bourget and David Chalmers found that 56.5%
of philosophers identify as physicalists about the mind, with 27.1% identify their view as a kind of “non-physicalism,”
though this presumably could include property dualism, which may be seen as avoiding some of the larger objections
to substance dualism.
24
See (Taylor, 1980)
 16

like that. One inference we could make is that we need to expand our ontology. As with telepathy,

the response to this move is that we lack relevant evidence to justify a grandiose seeming expansion

of our ontology. More plausibly, authoritative norms simply do not exist. Over the next several

paragraphs, I will fill in the details in this general argumentative strategy.

Typically, metaphysical arguments for MNE begin with a defense of cognitivism about

normative authority.25 Roughly, cognitivism about a domain of thought and talk is the idea that

claims in that domain can be true or false as a function of what the world is like. Think of claims

about the furniture in my office. The claim “there is a table in Scott’s office” is true or false as a

function of the distribution of certain kinds of physical objects in my office. By contrast, questions

and brute expressions of emotion (e.g. cheering for a team) simply do not admit of truth and falsity;

they are non-cognitive.26

The disagreement between Pythagoras and the parents looks different in kind from their

simply plumping for different “teams,” as a simplistic version of non-cognitivism about authority

might have it. For one, the parents might provide reasons and arguments in favor of their view.

They might cite the health benefits of beans and ask Pythagoras to explain why he thinks there is

anything wrong with beans. Reasons, arguments and requests for support are part and parcel of

25
Common practice in metaethics has it that moral error theory is the cognitivist view that moral thought presupposes
the existence of moral properties and facts that are as real as physical facts and properties, but that no such moral
properties and facts exist. I advertise MNE as the proverbial “big brother” of moral error theory. And, in many respects,
it is. But more narrowly MNE is the big brother of the kind of moral error theory that is rooted in skepticism of
morality’s claim to normative authority. I have avoided defining MNE as a version of cognitivism because I do not
think we should define authority in terms that only a cognitivist could accept. On the face of it, normative authority is
a concept internal to normative thought and talk. In contrast, cognitivism is a thesis about how normative thought
relates to the world. Thus, there is conceptual space to believe there are authoritative norms while being a non-
cognitivist. Similarly, there is conceptual space to be a non-cognitivist about normative discourse and an error theorist
about normative authority. Obviously, a non-cognitivist defense of MNE would have to be somewhat different from
the argument I have given here.
26
Though it is important to stress that sophisticated versions of non-cognitivism about normative judgments exist that
plausibly can avoid these problems. See especially Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realist (Blackburn, 1993) and Alan
Gibbard’s norm-expressivist programs (Gibbard, 1992) (Gibbard, 2009).
 17

factual disagreements. They are rather out of place in contexts of brute desires for different

outcomes. Generally, we do not respond to cheers for the opposing team with counterarguments,

presumably because we do not actually disagree with them over some putative fact. The opposing

fans want their team to win; we want our team to win. That is not quite the same as disagreeing

over some possible fact about the world.27

If a domain is factual or cognitive, the world itself determines the truth-value of its claims.28

But this invites an important question: what part of the world could determine the truths about

normative authority? Error theorists argue that no part of the world is up to the task. On their view,

the world no more contains authoritatively normative facts, truth-makers, properties, etc. than it

contains ectoplasm or some other kind of psychic medium. Why believe the world is devoid of

authoritatively normative properties?

Typically, the first step in the error theoretic response to this question is to argue that

authority cannot be fully grounded in any “natural property.” Roughly, a natural property is one

27
Which is not to say there are never cases where we argue with fans of an opposing team. But the most obvious cases
look clearly like factual disagreements. There are clearly facts about relative basketball skill. LeBron James is clearly
a superior basketball player than I am. Arguments over whether LeBron James is a better player than Michael Jordan
look like attempts to support more interesting factual claims about relative athletic skill. Now, perhaps sometimes we
do think a given team ought to lose, even for moral reasons like some major wrong committed by their star player.
Presumably, those cases admit of an exchange of reasons and arguments no less than do other normative
disagreements. And there would still remain something like the “pure sportsmanship case,” where we think it is fine
if either team wins, but still hope our team does. That kind of case is the one which seems to get at the simple non-
cognitive idea of a cheer.
28
My use of the phrase “the world itself” should be interpreted in the broadest possible way that is compatible with
cognitivism. As this point in my explanation, the relevant part of the world could be the mental states of actual or
hypothetical persons. By comparison, the claim that John wants to dance is cognitive; if true, its true would be
grounded in worldly facts about John’s mental states. Some cognitivists are realists and think that authority is a
strongly mind-independent property, one that does not depend on the mental states of even highly idealized persons.
Most error theorists think realists are right that authority would have to be strongly mind-independent. Their
disagreement with the realist is simply over whether mind-independent authoritative norms exist.
 18

studied by the natural or social sciences.29 Mass and heat are paradigmatically natural properties.

Arguably, so are psychological properties like being a belief and economic properties like market

value. The simplest way for authority to be grounded in natural properties would be for the

property of being an authoritative norm to be identical to some obviously natural property. By

comparison, think of how on a simple view of pain, pain just is the stimulation of a certain kind of

nerve.30

Of course, everyone thinks that what we have (authoritative) reason to do depends crucially

on the distribution of natural properties in the world. For example, whether Pythagoras should flee

depends a very great deal upon natural facts about the world’s spatio-temporal distribution of

assassins. It is even likely that the basic idea of a norm, as well as facts about what a specific norm

calls for given a set of relevant empirical facts, are naturalistically respectable. Therefore, there is

nothing ontologically dubious about saying that Pythagoras’ cultish prohibition requires him to

stand his ground, even if this means death. What error theorists deny is that any norm’s being

authoritative could be a natural property. Several kinds of support for the alleged irreducibility of

normative authority to any kind of natural property are popular.

First, note that authority seems to be something “over and above” the fact that something

possesses a given natural property. To see this, consider a case of disagreement. A sadist could

agree with a moralist that Pythagoras’ standing his ground would likely lead to a painful death.

29
Precisely defining “natural” is difficult. On one gloss the natural properties are the ones that are open to study by
the natural sciences, e.g. biology, physics and chemistry. Another, more explicitly epistemic, conception has it that a
natural property is one that can be known either empirically or in virtue of its linguistic meaning. Still a third way of
defining “natural” maintains that natural properties are causally efficacious. All of these statements have problems,
but I do not think we need a very precise definition to appreciate the error theorist’s worry.
30
Of course, the metaphysical story may be more complex than this. I simply want to motivate the basic idea of
cognitivist naturalism about normativity. Some philosophers defend versions of non-reductive naturalism. Non-
reductive naturalism maintains that normative properties are natural properties, but denies that normative properties
are identical to any non-normative naturalistically specifiable properties. See (Brink, 2001), (Reader, 2000)
(Schoedinger, 2007) for relevant examples of this kind of view.
 19

However, the sadist and the moralist accept norms that give this fact opposing valences. The

sadistic ethic treats the fact that something causes pain as a distinct reason to do it. Morality treats

that very same fact—something’s causing pain—as a reason not to do it. The sadist and the

moralist agree on all of the non-controversially natural facts of the case, including what one

another’s norm system requires. Yet, they disagree about something very important: whether we

should be moralists or sadists. So, authority seems to be something beyond the non-controversially

natural facts of the case.

Of course, authority may ultimately be a natural phenomenon even if it is not obviously

natural. By analogy, the substance dualist may be right that consciousness is not obviously a purely

physical phenomenon. That hardly means that substance dualism is ultimately correct. We need

stronger arguments to establish the irreducibility of the normative to the natural. Several kinds of

support for the alleged irreducibility of the authoritative to the natural are popular. Many

philosophers have the brute intuition that authoritatively normative properties would have to be

“just too different” from natural properties to be identified with them. 31 Relatedly, William

FitzPatrick says of attempts to “any view that implies that genuine normativity can arise from mere

psychology...seems to just be turning the idea of normativity into something else, such as

motivation or instrumentality" (FitzPatrick, 2011).

The probative value of intuition in discerning a fundamental metaphysical difference

between the natural and the normative—even the authoritatively normative—is unclear. It seems

like the Just Too Different intuition purports to be a kind of direct cognitive access to a complex

metaphysical fact: the irreducibility of normative authority to some naturalistically respectable

property. Even if we leave aside the worries about how even to understand concepts like “the

31
The specific phrase “just too different” comes from David Enoch (Enoch, 2011).
 20

natural,” it seems like intuitions of this kind are of little probative value about metaphysical facts.

By comparison, consider the 18th century vitalist’s intuition that life cannot be a natural

phenomenon. Plausibly, the vitalist’s intuition is good evidence that we cannot analyze our

everyday concept LIFE in the terms used by biochemistry. But this just means the biochemist

should not claim she is providing a conceptual analysis of the folk concept of life. Rather, she is

giving an account of what the living things in our world are composed of.32

All the same, the Just Too Different intuition is a helpful stage-setter for stronger

theoretical arguments. Certainly, the most famous line of criticism of cognitivist naturalism about

normativity comes from G.E. Moore’s famous Open Question Argument. According to Moore,

any attempt to ground the normative in the natural flounders on the fact that we can always sensibly

ask whether any given natural property possesses a given normative property. For example, it

seems like we can intelligibly ask a question like this: “I know that eating this cake would cause

pleasure, but is there anything good about eating this cake?” The preceding question has a distinct

“open,” feeling to it; the question does not seem to answer itself. We can make sense of a person

who seriously wonders whether there is anything good about eating a delicious cake, or even

anything good about pleasure in general. Indeed, we can make sense of an ascetic monk who denies

the goodness of eating the cake and of pleasure itself.

By contrast, “I know that the ball is red, but what color is the ball?” is “closed,” the question

basically answers itself. If a person sincerely asked us what color a red ball is, we would conclude

they do not know the meaning of “red” or “color” or are otherwise confused. There is nothing

unique about pleasure and goodness that lets us ask coherently whether pleasure is good. It seems

32
See (Schroeder, 2005) for a response along these lines. See (Paakkunainen, 2018) for an extended discussion of
several attempts to save the Just Too Different objection to naturalism about normativity.
 21

like for any given natural property it makes sense to ask whether it is good, bad, the kind of thing

we ought to promote, etc. Moore thought this was explained by the fact that goodness (and other

normative concepts) picked out metaphysically irreducible non-natural properties (Moore &

Baldwin, 1993).

Philosophers now think Moore’s original Open Question Argument fails to refute

naturalism about normativity. The standard critique of the Open Question begins with the

observation that the argument relies on the implicit premise that normativity could only be natural

if our normative vocabulary can be completely defined using naturalistic terms.33 However, post-

Moorean developments in the philosophy of language cast serious doubt on this premise. We can

have two terms that pick out the same natural worldly property without either term being definable

in terms of the other. The go to example is the relationship between “water” and “H20.” There are

competent users of the word “water” who are entirely ignorant of modern chemistry and thus who

have no idea what H20 means or how to use it in a sentence (e.g. young children). Thus, the

everyday English word “water” does not simply mean the same thing as H20. Despite this, the

child’s “water” and the chemist’s “H20” refer to the same worldly stuff (what is called a “synthetic”

identity).

In much the same way, our normative terms and (more contentiously) concepts may be

about wholly natural worldly properties, despite a lack of synonymy with any of our natural terms

and concepts. Modern views in the philosophy of language also give us powerful tools for

explaining how two terms can co-refer without being synonymous. Causal regulation semantics,

33
Indeed, even this is probably too generous to Moore’s argument. Moore’s argument may have some force against
the view that our normative terms have completely naturalistically specifiable meanings, what is now called analytic
naturalism. However, even this is blunted by the fact that not all analytic truths are intuitively obvious. For example,
it hardly follows from the view that mathematical facts are broadly analytic that math is trivially easy, and that anyone
who utters the correct answer to a given mathematical problem can immediately see that they have done so.
 22

for example, maintains that a term refers to whatever worldly properly causally regulates a

competent speaker’s use of it. Presumably, encounters with the same worldly stuff lead the child

to use “water” and the chemist to use “H2O.” Causal regulation semantics thus explains how the

child and the chemist refer to the same stuff despite using different terms. Contact with some

natural property prompts our use of normative terms and concepts (e.g. contact with the suffering

of others partially regulates our conclusion that something is bad or should be avoided). On a

causal regulation view, it follows that our normative discourse is about those whatever natural

properties regulate our normative discourse. Thus, causal regulation semantics gives us a

potentially powerful tool for explaining how the normative could be entirely about the natural

world even if normative terms and concepts are irreducible.34 Absent a special reason to think

authority is different from other normative concepts, it seems causal regulation semantics could

help explain authority, too.

However, significant objections to cognitivist naturalism about normativity remain.

Arguably, the most famous of these objections is Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons’ Moral Twin

Earth argument, which they present as a revival of the Open Question Argument. Horgan and

Timmons ask us to consider an alternate, “Twin Earth,” version of the world where peoples’

normative thought and talk is causally regulated by properties that differ from whatever regulates

our own discourse. For example, suppose the presence of beans causally regulates the Twin

Earthers’ judgments that someone has an authoritative normative reason to flee. When the Twin

Earthers learn of Pythagoras’ plight, they nod approvingly at his reluctance to enter the bean patch.

We, of course, sigh and wonder at the folly of brilliant minds. Intuitively, we disagree with them

34
Causal regulation semantics figures heavily in the family of views called Cornell Realism, so named because its
primary advocates all attended Cornell University around the same time. See (Boyd, 1988), (Brink, 1984), (Brink,
2001) and (Sturgeon, 2006). Also, note that the causal regulation story is only the most influential version of synthetic
naturalism. Other versions of the view exist.
 23

about whether Pythagoras ought to enter the patch. Evidence of our disagreement is not limited to

our linguistic intuitions. There would predictably be differences in our behaviors that are best

explained by normative disagreement. Suppose Pythagoras opened an academy that was open to

Twin Earthers and our own students. On learning that Pythagoras teaches that beans are evil, the

Twin Earthers would become more likely to send their students to learn from Pythagoras. In

contrast, many of us would promptly disenroll our children if we learn that their teacher offers

such nonsensical lessons. Presumably, this difference in behaviors is explained by an underlying

disagreement about the normative significance of beans. Our disagreement with the Twin Earthers

as an important data-point for our normative theorizing.

However, causal regulation semantics has trouble making sense of the fact that we disagree

with the Twin Earthers. Beans play an important role in regulating the Twin Earthers’ judgments

about reasons to flee. Given this, causal regulation semantics tells us that an important part of the

subject matter of Twin Earth normative discourse is the presence of beans. 35 In contrast, the

presence of beans plays little role in our own judgments of safety. So, causal regulation semantics

entails that our judgments about reasons to flee have an importantly different subject matter from

the Twin Earthers’ own judgments about “reasons to flee.” If our normative discourse lacks a

shared subject matter, it is hard to see how we can be disagreeing with the Twin Earthers about

the normative relevance of beans. But, ex hypothesi, we do disagree with the Twin Earthers over

the normative significance of beans. Thus, causal regulation semantics provides a false account of

the content of our normative thought and talk. Timmons and Horgan suggest that the problem is

35
Of course, the Twin Earthers may also conclude there is a reason to flee for many other reasons. However, the
presence of beans still causally regulates their use of “there is a reason to flee,” so causal regulation semantics entails
that it is part of the subject matter of their normative discourse. In contrast, it is hard to imagine that the presence of
absence of beans, in and of itself, bears even partially on many of our reason judgments.
 24

not unique to causal regulation semantics, but actually plagues any cognitivist and naturalistically

acceptable account of normative discourse (Horgan & Timmons, 1992).

Despite these concerns, one or another cognitivist, naturalistic account of normative

authority may be correct. However, if authority cannot be “placed” in the natural world, we seem

left with the conclusion that normative authority can only exist if there is more to the world than

countenanced by naturalism. 36 This generates two possibilities. The first possibility is that

authoritative normative properties are real, but non-natural.37The second is that it is true that there

only could be authoritative norms if there were non-natural normative properties. However, there

are no non-natural authoritatively normative properties. This second possibility is equivalent to the

error theory.

What exactly it is for a property to be non-natural is a matter of some dispute. Commonly,

non-naturalists about normative properties take it that such properties would be sui generis,

casually inefficacious and mind-independent (or some subset of these). 38 Given the preceding

characterization of non-natural properties, it is easy to see the theoretical appeal of denying their

existence. Our ontology is certainly much simpler without adding causally inefficacious, non-

natural facts about normative authority to it. While the exact epistemic significance of parsimony

36
Another possibility is that we should revisit non-cognitivism. Perhaps our judgments of normative authority are,
despite appearances, very sophisticated non-cognitive analogs of cheering for our favored team. If non-cognitivism is
right, our judgments of normative authority simply do not presuppose the existence of authoritative properties, facts
and relations. Thus, there is no need to “place” authority itself in the world in order to avoid error theory. Important
though this point is, I am merely trying to motivate the error theory and discussed non-cognitivism earlier.
37
Another possibility is that authority is somehow supernatural. To my mind, the primary difference between non-
naturalism and supernaturalism is that the latter posits causal agents or literal realms (i.e. places with spatial
dimensions) that are analogous to the physical world but the former does not. God is the quintessential supernatural
agent. A view that grounds normative authority in God’s commandments would thus be a kind of supernaturalism
about normative authority. By contrast, non-naturalism about normative authority does not typically include the claim
that there is some kind of ghostly place where normative entities spend their time. The locus classicus for non-
naturalism is G.E. Moore’s writings on moral non-naturalism, as is the distinction between supernaturalism and non-
naturalism about normativity. Moore explicitly distanced his idea of non-naturalism from divine command theories
and the like (Moore & Baldwin, 1993).
38
Note that I am not claiming that any of these features suffices for being non-natural, even when taken together.
 25

is a matter of some dispute, there is a rough consensus that theoretical simplicity is some kind of

theoretical virtue. Presumably, some complex combination of evolutionary and sociological

mechanisms explains the psychological fact that we make judgments of normative authority. It is

not clear that these biological and cultural explanations presuppose the existence of authoritative

norms. Nor is it clear how we would have stronger explanations of any other non-normative

phenomena by appeal to authoritative norms.39 Given this, parsimony seems to militate in favor of

excising authority from our ontology.

Beyond this, non-naturalism seems to be a problematically mysterious view almost by

definition. Consider how much of the typical characterization of non-naturalism proceeds via

negativa. Non-natural properties are not capable of affecting the physical world; non-natural

properties are sui generis, i.e. totally unlike anything else. Very well. But what precisely are

authoritatively normative non-natural properties like, beyond being fundamentally different from

anything else and incapable of changing the physical world? Insofar as we are unable to provide a

positive characterization of what we are even adding to our ontology when we endorse non-

naturalism, there remains the worry that the answer is “nothing much at all.”40

39
The most prominent statement this kind of abductive argument against non-natural, irreducibly normative properties
comes from Gilbert Harman. See (Harman, 1977) and (Harman, 1986). See also (Hinckfuss, 1987). Though he is not
an error theorist, Crispin Wright emphasizes the importance of the putative fact that moral (and so presumably other
normative) phenomena only seem to explain other normative phenomena (Wright, 2009). Insofar as normative
phenomena are only need to explain other normative phenomena, it is harder to make an abductive case for their
existence.
40
However, I think it is rare to see this objection from obscurity presented as a core objection to non-naturalism in so
straightforward a way. Rather, I think most philosophers—including many self-styled non-naturalists—grant that there
is something unsatisfyingly mysterious about non-naturalism, and this counts as one abductive data-point alongside
others. Further, the objectionable obscurity charge also presents something of a problem for error theory. Error theory
about telekinesis is easy to motivate insofar as we know what a telekinetic should look like. Telekinetics are those
people in movies who wave their hand and cause people and objects to fly around the room. Armed with this
characterization, we can see that there are no such people in the world. However, if the concept of authority is
completely obscure, it is hard to be know what the ontological claim of the error theory even denies. Granted, this
may only require a distinct kind of error theory (“Whatever you said is so obscure that it is not even false, even if you
think it was!”). Yet it also invites the worry that it is simply implausible that a core part of human life is a gibberish
concept. See (Hussain, 2004) and (McPherson, 2016).
 26

On the other hand, many phenomena are mysterious yet real. It is also not entirely clear

precisely what we can expect from a successful account of any kind of phenomena at the most

metaphysically basic level.41 Finally, expanding our ontology is just the thing to do if it is the only

way to account for some phenomena. Perhaps authoritative norms do not explain non-normative

phenomena. However, it does not follow that they would explain nothing at all. Non-naturalism

would let us preserve the truth of many intuitively true claims about normative authority. It is hard

to deny the pull of the thought that Pythagoras really ought to flee the assassins. If that can only

be given the existence of mysterious non-natural facts, then so be it: let us expand our ontology to

include a few more mysteries.

Of course, this response is only as epistemically respectable as the putative normative facts

that we use to motivate it, like the claim that Pythagoras really ought to enter the bean patch. This

brings us to the epistemological line of argument in support of MNE. If our judgments of normative

authority are epistemically dubious, they cannot provide a good basis for expanding our ontology.

Thus, the metaphysical and epistemological problems plaguing authority are interrelated.

Non-naturalism seems especially poorly suited to explain why we should trust our own normative

judgments in the first place. Non-naturalism usually includes a commitment to the claim that

authoritative normative properties are causally inefficacious.42 Given this, authoritative facts could

not causally guide our normative beliefs. How then could we reliably track such facts, even if they

exist? In standard cases of sense perception, the causal powers of the facts we are trying to track

41
At the risk of overusing an overused adage, explanation must end somewhere. On most views, our explanations of
even physical phenomena will thus bottom out with a brute fact that admits of no helpful explanation beyond “that’s
just how it is.” If this is not a problem in the physical case, non-naturalist can reasonably wonder why it is a problem
if the fundamental normative entities are metaphysically brute. Given the broader nature of my project, I would add
the following addendum to this point: insofar as facts about what counts as an adequate explanation are normative
questions, it is hard to see how error theorists can coherently think their view follows from the correct, i.e.
authoritative, standards for evaluating explanations.
42
Though this is not a feature of every non-naturalist account.
 27

seem to play an important epistemic role in the justification of our beliefs. For example, suppose

I am trying to track the movements of a car in the night time. I can do so much better if the car is

painted bright yellow than matte black precisely because yellow paint reflects more light than does

black paint. Insofar as the car does not cause light to bounce of its body, it is harder to see and thus

harder to form justified beliefs about its location. By analogy, tracking causally inefficacious

properties via standard sense modalities would be like trying to keep your eyes on a car with a

cloaking device. Suggesting that we know about causally inefficacious facts about normative

authority through a distinctly non-standard sense modality seems only to compound the

mysterious. What would this sense modality be, and how did we evolve to have it?

What’s more, we have well-supported scientific theories about how cultural and

evolutionary forces can causally impact our normative beliefs. Evolution selects primarily for

whatever is fitness enhancing, even where this leads us away from true belief. Consider how our

evolved intuitive systems for statistical reasoning are infamously error prone. Given this, it seems

like evolution would predictably have left us with predispositions to form fitness enhancing

normative beliefs, even if these are totally false. Thus, we have evidence that our normative beliefs

are partially the product of forces that are insensitive to their truth. Perhaps this would not be so

bad if we had a reliable device for correcting for evolutionary biases. But we have already seen

that it is hard to see how causally inefficacious normative properties could play such a corrective

role. Consequently, non-naturalism looks poised to undermine its own primary putative evidence.

Absent this evidence, we seem left with no theoretical reason to include sui generis non-natural

authoritatively normative properties to our ontology. Thus, the error theory about normative

authority looks like a compelling analog of the error theory about telepathy.
 28

1.3.1 The relationship between moral error theory and metanormative error theory

I will close this section be discussing the relationship between MNE and the more familiar

moral error theory. Skeptics of normative authority often present their view as skepticism of

morality, where morality is especially concerned with pro-social interpersonal obligations. But to

the advocate of MNE the focus on morality will seem overly myopic. Moral skeptics often argue

in the following way. Morality aspires to be what Immanuel Kant called a categorical imperative:

a requirement on action that applies to all rational beings as such, regardless of their contingent

desires or social practices. But there are no such categorical imperatives; all authoritative

normative requirements apply to us as function of our desires or ends. Thus, morality suffers from

a case of presupposition failure while normative reasons grounded in our desires or social practices

do not.

To the defender of MNE, the preceding argument’s focus on morality will seem myopic, and

its diagnosis of the putative problem with morality under explained. To begin, the Kantian idea of

categoricity is famously ambiguous. As Philippa Foot pointed out, there seems to be a difference

between a norm’s applying universally and its having normative authority. The norms of etiquette

apply to us independently of our desires. Indeed, even the instrumental requirement applies to us

independently of our desires. It is the specific acts that are instrumentally rational to perform that

varies with our ends. In contrast, whether we are subject to evaluation as instrumentally rational

or not depends solely on our status as agents. In that regard, the instrumental requirement is no

different from the Kantian Categorical Imperative.43

43
Indeed, even what the Categorical Imperative concretely requires of us depends on contingent facts about our mental
states. Whether Billy is lying to the axe-murderer at the door depends on what he believes and, more contentiously,
on whether he intends to deceive and facts of that sort.
 29

Moreover, almost no one is an error theorist about etiquette. Presumably, this is because we all

happily agree that etiquette is fully grounded in metaphysically respectable facts about our social

norms. So, desire transcendent normative applicability is neither unique to morality nor

ontologically dubious in and of itself. If morality is uniquely suspect it must be for some other

reason.

The best alternative candidate is that moral requirements uniquely present themselves as

having a kind of mysterious, non-psychological normative oomph. Certainly, the evocative phrases

conjured up by moral error theorists to describe morality suggest this is the problem. John Mackie

spoke of immoral actions as purporting to have “not-to-bedoness” built into them. Elsewhere,

Richard Joyce speaks of morality’s “practical clout,” and “practical oomph.”

Presumably, phrases like “practical oomph” are intended to bring out the idea that morality

trumps self-interest or instrumental reason in cases of conflict. Surely, phrases like practical oomph

are not intended to report a kind of psychological power morally right action is supposed to

possess. Sophisticated moral error theorists like Joyce do not think our everyday moral concept is

such that everyone always does what really is morally right. Perhaps some of us think that

everyone acts under the “guise of the good.” But that is just the thesis that when we act we always

take ourselves to be acting rightly, not that we actually succeed.

So, the thought must be that morality trumps self-interest and instrumental reason as a

normative matter. But that means what Joyce calls “practical oomph,” and Mackie calls “to be

doneness” are what I am calling normative authority. And we have already seen that normative

authority is hardly unique to morality. Pythagoras would make a mistake if he refused to enter

the bean patch. His mistake would be valuing his cult’s prohibition over his own hedonic

welfare. He is imprudent, not immoral in the narrow sense. Even if morality trumps prudence,
 30

prudence still trumps bizarre cultish prohibitions. Therefore, we common-sensically take self-

interested prudence to possess normative authority, even if we also common-sensically think

morality possesses greater authority. If normative authority is ontologically dubious, it is dubious

because of what it is. So, the authority of prudence or of the instrumental requirement or of

anything else are just as suspect. Consequently, moral error theories that are grounded in

morality’s normative authority would be more consistent if they were global error theories about

normative authority, what I am calling metanormative error theory.44

1.4 My strategy for defending the Incoherence Objection

While the move from the narrowly moral error theory to its metaphorical big brother, MNE,

is well motivated, it also invites new theoretical problems for the error theory.45 In this section, I

defend a novel statement of the Incoherence Objection to MNE. The core, formalized argument of

this section appears below.

Assumption: there is at least one successful argument for MNE.

P1.) Given MNE, there are no authoritative reasons for anything.

P2.) An argument cannot be successful if it cannot give anyone an authoritative
normative reason to accept its conclusion.
C1.) So, if MNE is true there are no successful arguments for its truth.

Premise One is true by definition. The interesting question surrounds the truth of Premise

Two. Before presenting my defense of P2, I want to explain the background assumption that there

are some successful arguments for MNE. Begin with the idea of an argument. Arguments are

logically related sets of sentences or propositions, what logicians typically mean by “arguments.”

44
In truth, some views philosophers call “moral error theory” today are somewhat explicitly versions of MNE. Jonas
Olson’s real target in his (Olson, 2014) is the normative favoring relation and he is explicit that his skepticism extends
to “hypothetical imperatives” or “desire based reasons” that aspire to be anything more than literal statements of facts
about what promotes a given desire. So, despite the title of his book, I think Olson really advocates for MNE, not
simply an error theory about normative reasons to care for the welfare of others or such.
45
Indeed, John Mackie introduced the popular “companions in guilt” move alongside his seminal defense of moral
error theory.
 31

So understood, arguments may not necessarily have success conditions. Rather, the question of a

successful argument enters through the course of the human activity of argumentation. Roughly,

argumentation is the activity of shaping our attitudes by engaging with arguments. 46 For my

purposes in this paper, I think we can get by with an intuitive and permissive interpretation of what

it is to engage with arguments. We engage with arguments when we try to formalize inchoate ideas

into a standard logical form for arguments like Modus ponens. We engage with arguments when

we contemplate arguments with an eye to whether or not their premises are true or false. We engage

with arguments when we present those objections verbally or in print. We engage with arguments

when we have debates and discussions with other people, but also when we ponder the truth alone

in our study like Descartes.

I take it as obvious that the fundamental point of engaging with arguments is to shape our

attitudes (our own, and those of other people). By attitudes, I mean psychological states like

beliefs, acceptances, intensions and desires. 47 To shape our attitudes is to affect some kind of

change in them, or at least to show that some kind of change in our attitudes is called for. Gaining

a new intention, losing a desire and strengthening a belief are all example changes in our attitudes.

Some theorists may want to limit the scope of attitudes that argumentative activity has as its proper

object. It is also obvious that some attitudes are easier to change via argumentative activity than

others are. However, for my purposes, I do not think we need to answer the question of what

attitudes can or should be shaped by argumentative activity.

Considered as integral components in argumentation, arguments can succeed or fail. For

example, suppose during a debate over the error theory I claim that the heat of the Sun is proof

46
By arguments I here mean logically related sets of claims or propositions, what logicians mean by “argument” and
what we teach students an argument is in introductory courses on philosophy. I want to remain as neutral as possible
on further questions about the metaphysics of logic and propositions.
47
Or whatever brain states we would talk about instead if we are committed eliminative materialists.
 32

that there are authoritatively normative facts. Clearly, my argument fails to refute the error theory.

Presumably, the problem with my example argument is that there is no clear logical connection

between the heat of the Sun and the falsity of error theory. However, argumentative failure is more

general phenomenon that is not limited to failures of logic. Arguments can fail for other reasons,

e.g. because they have a false premise.

To avoid begging the question against MNE, I propose that we model argumentative

success as a kind of non-normative instrumental success.48 Assume that there are such things as

argumentative ends. Argumentative ends ground facts about argument success in the same way

that the content of a given desire partially grounds facts about what promotes it. Thus, an argument

is successful to the degree that it promotes argumentative ends. An argument is unsuccessful to

the degree that it fails to promote or (worse) positively undermines argumentative ends.49

Argumentative ends do not obviously have to be the ends of any particular person.

Institutions and social practices can have ends, too. For example, one of the goals of the FDA is to

protect American citizens from contaminated food. So, the activity of a FDA food tester succeeds

qua food tester insofar as it promotes the FDA’s mission of ensuring safe food. This is true even

48
My reader may recall that I think instrumental failures are commonsensically failures to do what we ought to relative
to some authoritative requirement to take the means to our ends (or at least the means to our worthwhile ends). And I
do think that. But we can still stipulate that we are talking of instrumental failure in a non-normative way.
49
If there is a plurality of argumentative ends then we run into the worry that some argumentative ends conflict with
others. The literature on value pluralism is rife with proposals about how to think about inconsistent ends, and I cannot
hope to resolve that debate here. So, I will say two things. First, even given inconsistent ends, there would still be
degrees of argumentative success. For illustration, suppose we had two argumentative ends: persuading actual people
of the truth and avoiding commonly recognized informal fallacies. Given a sufficiently ill informed, biased or foolish
audience, it may be impossible to satisfy both these ends. Perhaps we can only persuade Billy of the truth about climate
change by an appeal to a grossly unqualified authority, such as his cult leader. Even so, a non-fallacious argument
may persuade Sam of the truth of anthropogenic climate change.
It is also worth noting that the problem of inconsistent argumentative ends generates a way to extend the Incoherence
Objection. Suppose we claim that an argument succeeds to the degree that it promotes argumentative ends. If we
maintain that there is a plurality of argumentative ends that cannot be mutually satisfied, there may be no fact of the
matter about argumentative success unless there is a correct way to weigh-off inconsistent ends. A correct way to
weigh-off inconsistent ends would be a kind of authoritative norm. So, there can only be successful arguments if there
are authoritative norms. I hope to explore this objection in greater detail in a later paper.
 33

if an individual food tester cares only for her paycheck, and is personally indifferent to public

health. In what follows, I will remain mostly agnostic on whether argumentative ends should be

modeled as a kind of institutional or individual end. That said, the individual interpretation may

fit best with my later arguments. Largely, my point is that error theorists cannot make sense of

their own argumentative practices if they excise the concept of an authoritatively normative reason

from their lives. Some error theorists may claim to have wildly idiosyncratic ends as parts of a

revisionary project that is intended to defend their view from the Incoherence Objection (e.g. their

one and only argumentative end is true belief). My point is that there is a disconnect between these

theorists’ stated argumentative ends and the actual arguments they treat as successful or

unsuccessful.

With these remarks in place, I think it is clear that philosophical practice is a paradigm case

of argumentative activity. By extension, I take it that metaethical practice, including the

metaethical practice of committed error theorists, consists largely of argumentative activity. It is

almost as obvious that most philosophers who endorse MNE maintain that there is at least one

successful argument for the view. The most obvious empirical support for this claim comes from

the published works of academic error theorists like Jonas Olson, Bart Streumer, and Stan Husi.

While the arguments of these philosophers differ, each endorses some arguments in defense of

MNE.50

50
Or their preferred terminology for MNE. Streumer identifies his view as “an error theory about all normative
judgments,” whereby normative he means authoritatively normative in my sense. Husi identifies his view as an error
theory about authoritative normative reasons. Olson calls his view moral error theory. However, it is quite clear that
Olson thinks moral error theorists have not been critical enough of desire based reasons, and really, his target is the
normative favoring relation (e.g. the claim that something causes pleasure normatively favors doing it). In context, it
is clear that he means authoritative normative reasons; his distinction between reducible and irreducible reasons is
motivated by the idea that only an ontologically irreducible normative favoring relation could capture authority. The
error enters because he thinks there are no ontologically irreducible normative favoring relations.
 34

Beyond this, it would be psychogically odd and methodologically questionable to endorse

MNE without thinking one had a successful argument for the view. A certain kind of moral skeptic

may think she simply does not make moral judgments.51 Thus, it is no theoretical cost from her

perspective to deny the moralist’s categorical imperatives and external reasons. However,

judgments that presuppose normative authority are quite pervasive (e.g. Pythagoras’ Plight). Once

we come to see judgments of normative authority as ubiquitous elements of our lives, endorsing

an error theory about them amounts to endorsing the view that many of our own judgments are

systematically mistaken. Psychologically, it would be quite odd to insist that many of our own

judgments are in error but deny that we have a successful argument for this conclusion.52This

would be tantamount to saying “It seems to me that P. But, on the basis of nothing at all, I conclude

that not P.” Methodologically, there is also something dubious about starting from the assumption

that we are wrong about a whole category of judgments without any argument at all. Even

Descartes only championed methodological doubt, not methodological denial.53

1.4.1 Argumentation and Reasons: why argumentative success depends on reason giving

Premise two of the Incoherence Objection argument maintains that an argument cannot be

completely successful if it cannot give anyone an authoritative reason to accept its conclusion.

51
I think this attitude is more common amongst amateur metaethicists. Among professional philosophers, some moral
error theorists claim they stopped making moral judgments after endorsing the error theory. Others maintain they go
on making moral judgments despite their theoretical beliefs I take it there would still be some initial theoretical cost
from the perspective of people who originally made moral judgments but then lost them. The “no theoretical cost at
all” perspective may only be embodied by people who lack moral concepts and have concluded that whatever moralists
are talking about is bunk. Though this is speculative, I actually doubt there are—maybe even can be—people who
have the general cognitive abilities of a typical human adult but lack the concept of a normative reason. It seems that
the concept of a normative reasons is part and parcel of the ability to critically reflect on one’s choices. So, any being
that recognizably has what psychologists call executive control probably also has the concept of a normative reason.
52
Granted, some error theorists may have more of an inchoate cluster of objections to normative authority than a tidy,
formalized argument. However, especially when we concern ourselves with the actual human practice of
argumentation, unpolished objections still present arguments.
53
Especially if our aims include the avoidance of falsehoods, beginning from a place of denying the truths of a whole
domain of discourse is suspect. Such a practice risks accruing untold thousands of false beliefs.
 35

Why should we think that a completely successful argument is one that gives its audience a reason

to accept its conclusion? I argue that some of the ways in which we evaluate arguments only make

sense given the background assumption that one of our argumentative goals is to give or identify

normative reasons to hold attitudes. This argumentative strategy is abductive, so it depends on a

comparison of the ability of various possible argumentative ends to explain why this or that kind

of argument succeeds or fails. So, what could our argumentative goals be? Here are the possibilities

that seem salient:

1. Mere persuasion: persuasion by any means.

2. Argumentative persuasion: persuasion by means of arguments.
3. True persuasion: persuasion that leads to true beliefs.
4. True argumentative persuasion: causing true beliefs by means of engagement with
arguments.
5. Sound argumentative persuasion: persuasion by means of engagement with arguments
that are sound (or inductively strong).54
6. Rational Persuasion: persuasion in accord with norms for rational persuasion.
7. Authoritatively Rational Persuasion: persuasion relative to authoritative norms for
rational persuasion.

Where needed, I will explain each option in further detail when I get to it. The plan is to survey

each option with an eye to the question of whether there are elements of the critical component of

argumentative practice that it leaves out. Typically, the relevant omissions will be failures to count

certain non-controversially fallacious arguments as unsuccessful. Naturally, my ultimate

conclusion is that the full range of ways in which we evaluate arguments includes a concern for

item seven, persuasion relative to authoritative norms for rational persuasion. What’s more, I argue

that actual argumentation made in defense of MNE would, itself, make less sense given the denial

54
Option 5, sound argumentative persuasion, is the most interesting and important of the non-normative
interpretations. I call the thesis that soundness (and its non-deductive analogue) are the sole argumentative end
Soundness Suffices. Options 1-4 are included for the sake of thoroughness, and because I think reflection on them
shows how important fallacy theory is to our argumentative practice. I doubt many people are sympathetic to the view
that any of 1-4 are the sole argumentative ends. In contrast, some error theorists have endorsed the view I am calling
Soundness Suffices. Thus, the bulk of my arguments focus on it.
 36

of 7. This holds true even for revisionary views of argumentation that are intended to prune the

assumption of authoritative normativity from how we argue. Given that 7 entails the existence of

authoritative norms, it follows that arguing for MNE is incoherent.

Because I am concerned with the defense of MNE, I want to focus my exploration on the

perspective of a committed error theorist. To do this, imagine a committed error theorist—a real

person like Olson or Streumer, if you wish—challenges a philosopher who is not an error theorist

to refute their view. Perhaps they ask so bluntly as to “be shown an authoritatively normative fact,”

in much the same way that a defense attorney might demand to be shown a crucial piece of the

prosecution’s evidence.55 Surely, this is not an unrealistic question. I take it attempts to refute the

error theory are not uncommon, even if they are rarely presented as responses to a demand to be

shown an authoritative norm.

Here is the critical question going forward: just what would an adequate response to the

demand to be shown an authoritative norm or a moral fact look like? What is the error theorist

after when she asks for a refutation of her view? Notice an adequate answer to this question would

present a kind of argument: X is an authoritative norm; therefore, there is at least one authoritative

norm; therefore, MNE is false. Moreover, it is probably not enough that X just happens to be an

authoritative norm. Just saying “moral norms are authoritative, so there’s your example” is not

enough when one is addressing the committed error theorist’s question. Most actual advocates of

MNE would also want an argument for the claim that X really is an authoritative norm. After all,

55
This framing is inspired by a real event. Michael Bradie, a philosopher of science at Bowling Green State University,
once asked my peers and I to “show [him] a moral fact.” I do not think any of our answers were completely to his
satisfaction, though he surprised us all by being somewhat receptive to a friend’s neo-Aristoteleanism. Regardless of
how satisfactory our answers were, it was fairly clear what prompted the question. Dr. Bradie is skeptical of moral
facts, and it was quite clear that he expected us to be unable to satisfy his demand. Dr. Bradie’s skepticism was—I
hope!—not rooted in a low opinion of our own abilities as philosophers. Rather, I take it that his question had its
genesis in the idea that there are a host of difficult epistemological problems that confront moral facts themselves.
 37

actual error theorists are aware of the counterintuitive implications of their own view. So, they will

generally want us to convince them that X avoids whatever problems they think plague potential

counterexamples to their view.56 Thus, our answer to the question of what an adequate response to

demands to be shown authoritative norms also reveals something about the more general

argumentative goals of skeptics.

1.4.1.1 Mere Persuasion & Argumentative Persuasion

With this in mind, let us consider our options. Is mere persuasion adequate? Clearly, it is not.

Someone who asks us to convince her that there are authoritative norms is not simply requesting

that we cause her to have a new set of beliefs about normative authority by any means whatsoever.

A proffered belief pill which generated belief in normative authority would not satisfy her appetite.

Nor would a session of brainwashing and torture designed to instill belief in authoritative norms.

The problem is not simply that the belief pill is not an argument. Imagine that there were sets

of logically related sentences that had magical powers to unfailingly compel belief when heard.

Such sentences would be a sort of verbal or written argument that is equivalent to a belief pill.

Suppose the following set of sentences had the power to compel belief in normative authority: “If

David Enoch believes in authoritative norms, then there are authoritative norms. David Enoch

believes in authoritative norms. So, there are authoritative norms.” I take it that it is obvious that

the Enochian argument is not an improvement over the belief pill merely because it is a logically

valid argument. Quite simply, to be mind-controlled into belief is not what the skeptic is after when

she enters a debate. Whether mind control comes about by means of a pill, torture or a magical set

of propositions does not matter.

56
I expand on this point later as part of my defense of the claim that error theorists have trouble making sense of their
own perspective if they abandon concern for normative questions about what we ought to believe.
 38

1.4.1.2 True Persuasion & True Argumentative Persuasion

It might seem like the only problem with mind-control is that mind-control is insensitive to

the truth. A belief pill could cause belief in falsehoods as easily as truths. Perhaps we need simply

add that our argumentative end includes being persuaded of the truth. If we insist that arguments

must play some role in argumentative activity, we could maintain that our argumentative ends

include being caused to have true beliefs as the result of engagement with arguments.

I certainly do not deny that true belief is one of our argumentative goals. But the goal of true

belief does not straightforwardly make an argument good just because it has a true conclusion.

Return to the magical Enochian argument. If there really are authoritative norms, its conclusion is

true. That still does not go far enough in making the Enochian argument better considered as an

argument. As we teach in intro logic courses, there are bad arguments for true conclusions. We do

not think what makes these arguments bad is that they never cause true belief. We know that people

are often convinced of true claims by bad arguments. For example, many people treat an unusually

hot day as evidence of global warming. Professional climate scientists are more hesitant to do this.

Climate is a matter of long-term patterns, and the explanation for any given day’s weather is

enormously complex. The scientific consensus on climate change comes from long-term study of

changes in global climate patterns, not isolated observation of a single day’s affairs. Thus, an

argument that appeals to a single unseasonably warm day as evidence of climate change commits

a fallacy of weak induction. Indeed, it is scarcely better than the climate denialist’s argument that

an unseasonably cold day shows climate change is a hoax.

1.4.1.3 Sound Argumentative Persuasion

Taking stock, I think the preceding paragraphs deals with options 3 and 4. Yes, our

argumentative practices reveal a concern with truth. However, the relationship between the goal
 39

of true belief and a successful argument is not so simple that an argument succeeds merely because

accepting it happens to lead to true belief. That much is obvious given the existence of arguments

that do not support their (true) conclusion. Obviously, the way to correct this is to require an

argument to bear an intimate connection to its conclusion, i.e. an argument must also support its

conclusion for it to be successful. Even though the Enochian argument leads to true belief, it does

not really support its conclusion.

What is it for an argument to support its conclusion? One natural answer is that an argument

supports its conclusion when and because the argument shows its conclusion is objectively

probable. Objective probabilities depend solely upon how the world actually is, independently of

any of our beliefs.57 Philosophers and statisticians contrast objective probabilities with subjective

probabilities, which are generated by facts about the beliefs or partial beliefs of actual or ideal

agents. There are various ways of precisifying the idea of an objective probability beyond this.

The most familiar objectivist view of probability is frequentism. Frequentism simply identifies

probability relations with objective facts about how common such and so is in the mind-

independent world relative to some sufficiently large sample size over time (often this means given

an infinite or arbitrarily large period of time). Suppose the probability that I draw a red marble

from a bag of blue and red marbles is 1/10. On the frequentist view this probabilistic fact depends

quite directly on the objective fact that the bag is full of marbles in a 1:9 ratio. Because the marbles

are in a 1:9 ratio a sufficiently large number of draws would result in a red marble 1/10 of the time.

The paradigm case of an argument that raises the objective probability of its conclusions is a

sound deductive argument. By definition, the premises of a sound argument are all true. Also by

57
Allow whatever qualification is necessary to accommodate objective probabilities that make reference to facts about
our beliefs.
 40

definition, a sound argument is logically valid and so the conclusion must be true if the premises

are. Put into probabilities, this means the objective probability that the conclusion of a sound

argument is true is one.

It is also clear how objective probability works for inductive arguments, those that increase

the probability of the truth of their conclusion without entailing it.58 Imagine John is about to draw

a marble from the bag. We could use the fact that the probability of drawing a red marble is 1/10

as a premise in an argument with the conclusion “John will probably draw a blue marble.” The

bag really does contain marbles in a 1:9 ratio. Our premise increases the probability of its

conclusion’s truth without entailing it. Other inductive arguments do not increase the objective

probability of their conclusion. If we had said “the probability of drawing a red marble is 7/10, so

John will probably draw a red” we would be wrong. Our premise is objectively false and so the

argument fails to increase the objective probability of truth of its conclusion. Critically, on this

first way of thinking about argumentative success there are no successful arguments with

objectively improbable conclusions. Nor are there successful arguments with false premises.

The view that argumentative success is solely a matter of soundness plays a critical role in this

paper because some error theorists have endorsed it as part of a response to the Incoherence

Objection. The way the response works is quite clear. Though many arguments have the goal of

giving their audience a normative reason, this argumentative goal is irrelevant to our assessment

of arguments over MNE. Instead, argument MNE have the sole argumentative goal of getting at

the truth in metaethics. If necessary, this move can be part of a revisionary view. In light of their

58
I am here using “inductive argument” broadly to refer to all non-deductive arguments. In other contexts, it may be
helpful to distinguish more sharply between different kinds of non-deductive arguments. For example, abductive
arguments are importantly different from enumerative induction. But I do not think that distinction matters, here.
 41

error theory, the error theorist simply disavows concern for argumentative ends that smack of

normativity.

Here is an especially clear statement of this idea via a passage from Jonas Olson:  

“Error theorists are not in the business of offering arguments about what would be rational to
believe or about what there is epistemic reason to believe there is no harm in conceding that
error theory is toothless in those debates. What is important is that error-theoretical
arguments have bite in debates on where the truth lies in metaethics and metaepistemology;
these are the debates with which error theory is concerned” (Olson, 2014, p. 158). 

Olson supplements his proposal with the claim that error theoretic arguments are intended

merely to provide evidence for their conclusion. Of course, evidence is sometimes defined

precisely as that which makes belief rational and that is the kind of normatively laden conception

Olson just disavowed. To avoid this problem, Olson adopts Tom Kelly’s idea of indicator

evidence. Q is indicator evidence that P just in case P and Q are reliably co-instantiated in the

world itself.59 Indicator evidence is exemplified by the familiar expression “where there’s smoke,

there’s fire,” which highlights the common co-instantiation of smoke and fires.

Elsewhere, Chris Cowie provides a similar focus on the concept of evidence as part of his

response to the Incoherence Objection:   

“It is possible that there is no categorical normative reason to believe a theory because there are
 no categorical normative reasons. Yet the theory may still be true…This dialectical move is
only open to the error theorist however if she draws a distinction between evidential support
relations and categorically normative reasons for belief” (Cowie, 2015).

Implicitly, for “evidential support relations” to be distinct from “categorically normative

reasons for belief” it must be true that evidential relations can be understood in non-

authoritatively normative terms. Because Cowie is concerned with the truth of error theory it is

further implicit that evidential support relations bear directly on the truth of error

59
The probability can be as high as 1, allowing the view to make sense of using necessarily true propositions as
evidence.
 42

theory. Consequently, I take Cowie’s response to the Incoherence Objection to be largely identical

to Olson’s proposal that error theoretic arguments succeed precisely when and because they

provide indicator evidence for their conclusion.

Finally, consider Stan Husi’s claim that the “basic norms” which govern philosophical

discourse bear “a special regard for truth, tracing the fact that what they regulate, belief and its

management in argumentation, itself bears a constitutive relation to truth”  (Husi, 2013, p. 10).

Husi is not very precise about the exact the nature of the basic norm’s “special regard for truth.”

Certainly, we could precisify the constitutive relationship he posits between truth and the basic

norms for philosophical argumentation in the way that Olson does. Other ways of clarifying the

idea could take Husi’s proposal in an importantly different direction, however. For example,

suppose he said that the basic norms track what ideally rational versions of ourselves would take

the truth to be. That clarification would preserve a “special regard” for the truth, but not in a way

that entirely avoids talk of rationality, as Olson proposes. My suspicion is that Husi may grant that

argumentative success is success relative to some norms for rational belief formation, but think

the error theorist can coherently deny that any for rational belief formation possess any kind of

normative authority. I will engage with this interpretation of his view later. For now, we will focus

on the Olson style disavowal of rationality.

So, let us close by briefly recapitulating the basic proposal that Olson, Cowie and (possibly)

Husi suggest: at least as regards argumentation made in defense of MNE, Soundness Suffices. That

is, the sole argumentative end is truth. Thus, an argument succeeds precisely to the degree that it

increases the objective probability of its conclusion. For deductive arguments, this means a

completely successful argument just is a sound argument. 60 Non-deductive (i.e. inductive and

60
Hence the titular “Soundness Suffices.”)
 43

abductive) arguments succeed insofar as they show their conclusion is objectively probable, but

not with an objective probability of one.

The preceding view entirely forswears concern for evaluating arguments in even weakly

normative terms, e.g. whether they make belief rational given some non-authoritative standards

for rational belief formation. Argumentative success does not constitutively depend on success

relative to any kind of norm. Rather, it depends directly upon facts about objective probabilities.

Because of this latter feature, the view that Soundness Suffices can avoid awkward questions about

why it matters that MNE follows from a set of non-authoritative norms. Thus, Soundness Suffices

looks like an attractive way of defending MNE from the Incoherence Objection. Despite this

intuitive appeal, I argue in the next several sections that the view has several intractable problems,

some of which render it especially ill-suited for making sense of defenses of MNE.

1.5 Soundness Suffices and the Problem of Dialectical Fallacies

The first problem with Soundness Suffices is that it cannot explain why certain non-

controversially fallacious arguments are fallacious. I focus on the fallacy of begging the question,

but I suspect the problem is not limited to that fallacy. To begin with a common definition, I take

a fallacy to be an error in reasoning; an argument which exemplifies such an error is a fallacious

argument. We clearly regard fallacious arguments as less than fully successful; to call an argument

fallacious is to say it does not really support its conclusion in the way we think a successful

argument does.

Precisifying the definition of a fallacy beyond this is actually difficult. Argumentation theorists

disagree about what in general makes something fallacious. Some theorists define fallacyhood in
 44

(weakly?) normative terms as a violation of norms for good reasoning or of rationality. 61 And,

indeed, I think they are right to do so. However, that they are needs to be shown by argument.

Obviously, those who think that Soundness Suffices cannot accept even a weakly normative

understanding of what it is to be a fallacy. To avoid begging the question against them, let us

understand a fallacious argument as one which goes wrong relative to the goal of giving the

argument. 62 On the View that Soundness Suffices, arguments have the goal of showing their

conclusion to be objectively probable. Thus, for the theorist for whom Soundness Suffices an

argument is fallacious precisely when and because it fails to show its conclusion is objectively

probable.63 This preserves the fallacious status of all of the deductive fallacies, and probably many

of the typically recognized informal fallacies.

However, there are important fallacies which Soundness Suffices cannot explain. Most

notably, consider arguments which commit the fallacy of begging the question. In casual

conversation, the phrase “begging the question” is often used synonymously with circular

argumentation, but logicians and argumentation theorists often distinguish the two ideas.

Following such practice, an argument is logically circular precisely when its conclusion is logically

equivalent to one of its premises (e.g. “God exists, so God exists”). In contrast, an argument begs

the question when it makes use of a contentious premise without providing independent support

for said premise. Imagine an atheist who argues against Christianity thusly: Jesus was not the son

of God; therefore, Christianity is false. Though logically impeccable, this argument’s explicit

61
See (Dowden, 2010) for a clear, succinct overview of the difficulties inherent in providing an adequate and non-
controversial analysis of “fallacy.”
62
Though, ironically, my complaint against Soundness Suffices just is that it cannot explain why begging the question
against it (or any other view) would be a bad way to argue.
63
Yes, this means there is no real distinction on the view that Soundness Suffices between a fallacious and an
unsuccessful argument. Even if there are linguistic differences between the expressions, I do not think these
differences matter for my purposes. I adopted the idiom of “successful argument,” to fit with the idea of non-
normatively conceived instrumental success. And I adopted that to avoid begging the question against the view that
Soundness Suffices.
 45

premise is contentious in the context of a debate over Christianity. Christians cannot coherently

start from the claim that Jesus was not the son of God since that claim is the core Christian thesis.

A less contentious way to argue would be to identify a non-contentious historical claim and argue

that the non-existence of Jesus best explains it (or something of that sort). Not every question

begging argument is a circular argument. However, any interesting circular argument will

generally also be a question begging argument.

One final comment should be made. There may be cases where we think it is not fallacious to

beg the question. Or, at least, there are cases where we think some competing consideration

justifies begging the question, even if doing so remains unfortunate.64 Debates over fundamental

epistemological or logical claims often involve admissions that one’s own argument is question

begging.65 This means we treat the fallacy of begging the question—and probably other informal

fallacies, too—as defeasible. That an argument is question begging is a reason to be skeptical of

it. But sometimes the fact that an argument begs the question is not sufficient ground to dismiss it.

This means begging the question appears to function similarly to the idea of a prima facie or pro

tanto moral principle.66 Such moral principles present considerations that always count in a given

way, but which might be outweighed by strong enough competing considerations. So, it would be

64
The kind of “justification” at issue may vary, however. That is, some may think that question begging arguments
always fail to provide justification in some narrowly dialectical way, but can provide epistemic justification. Part of
why I moved to the broad concept “argumentation” is to remain neutral on the possibility that some arguments are
bad for entirely different reasons. My aim is primarily to show that there is some kind of fallacy or argumentative
failure at play in question begging arguments that cannot be captured by Soundness Suffices. I do argue that capturing
this sense requires appeal to normative concepts like rationality, but this still seems to leave a lot of matters unresolved.
65
David Lewis provides a memorable example in his response to the possibility of true contradictions: “'No truth does
have, and no truth could have, a true negation…That may seem dogmatic. And it is: I am affirming the very thesis
that [deniers of the law of non-contradiction] have called into question and - contrary to the rules of debate - I decline
to defend it. Further, I concede that it is indefensible against their challenge. They have called so much into question
that I have no foothold on undisputed ground. So much the worse for the demand that philosophers always must be
ready to defend their theses under the rules of debate” (Lewis, 1982, pp. 434-435), emphasis mine.
66
Some philosophers use prima facie and others use pro tanto to name this idea. See (Richardson, 2003).
 46

sufficient if Soundness Suffices can explain how begging the question could be prima facie

fallacious.67

However, Soundness Suffices does not give us the conceptual resources to explain why

begging the question as such are ever even prima facie fallacious. To avoid begging the question,

we are understanding a fallacy as an argument or argument kind which fails relative to the goal of

giving the argument. Soundness Suffices maintains that arguments should be evaluated solely in

terms of whether they increase the objective probability of their conclusion. But a question begging

argument can certainly raise the objective probability of the truth of its conclusion. Indeed, an

argument can be both sound and question begging. This point is widely acknowledged within the

field of argumentation studies. Discussions of the fallacy of begging the question often begin from

the point that circular arguments are logically valid, despite often being question begging. Because

such circular arguments are deductively valid, proponents of Soundness Suffices cannot hope to

explain the fallacy of begging the question in terms of formal inductive logics.68 It seems the only

complaint Soundness Suffices can coherently give against a question begging but deductively valid

argument is that one of its premises is false. But an argument is not question begging just for

having a false premise. So, I conclude that that Soundness Suffices does not have the conceptual

resources to explain why we should count begging the question as a fallacy.69

I suspect all of this comes as no surprise. Logic textbooks often explicate the problem with

question begging arguments in terms of their failure to give interlocutors “a reason” to believe

67
See (Lippert-Rasmussen, 2001) for a defense of the view that question begging arguments are sometimes—though
not usually—good arguments.
68
And remember that any attempt to assimilate the fallacious status of question begging to an inductive failure would
have to be done using an objectivist conception of probability. Perhaps subjective Bayesianism can explain the fallacy
of begging the question. But because Bayesianism sets a standard for rational belief it cannot be used to defend
Soundness Suffices.
69
See (Suber, 1994) for an extended discussion of what Suber calls the “logical” task which question begging
arguments can succeed at—the task of entailing their conclusion—and what Suber calls the “social” task, which they
fail at.
 47

their conclusion (Dowden, 2010). What we have seen is precisely why textbook explications of

the concept of a fallacy often appeal to the concept of a reason. Absent the concept of a reason, we

cannot adequately account for some fallacies. Moreover, the kind of reason that question begging

arguments cannot provide seems to be the kind of reason that is grounded in the coherence of our

mental states. Question begging arguments are fallacious because they typically cannot make it

rational for a skeptic to accept their conclusion. Rationality here is a matter of what it makes sense

for a person to believe given her prior beliefs or her accessible evidence. There are many true

claims that this or that person neither antecedently accepts, nor is logically committed to nor has

accessible evidence for. Arguments that make use of a premise that is not available to us in one of

these ways thus generally cannot make a change in belief rational for us. Rationality is at least a

weakly normative concept and so a concern for it cannot be part of the View that Soundness

Suffices. It is a platitude about that rational belief that it can come radically apart from true belief.

So, it is no surprise that Soundness Suffices licenses irrational inferences and argumentative

moves. In conclusion, actual human argumentative practice embody concerns that can be reduced

neither to concern for actual persuasion nor to narrow focus on true belief. Instead, we seem to be

concerned with rational belief, too.

One response may be to bite the bullet and accept that there is nothing fallacious about

begging the question as such. Some question begging arguments are also unsound and these

arguments are fallacious. They are fallacious in virtue of their being unsound, not in virtue of their

being question begging. Other question begging arguments are sound and so are non-fallacious.

Granted, Soundness Suffices cannot accommodate the claim that these arguments are nevertheless

fallacious, but so what? Soundness Suffices comes as a defense of a radically error theoretic view
 48

of normativity. Biting bullets is par for the course, as is the acceptance of considerable conceptual

revision.

1.5.1 Against biting the bullet on begging the question: Epistemic Agency and Philosophical

Skepticism

One response is to bite the bullet and accept that there is nothing fallacious about begging

the question as such. Some question begging arguments are also unsound and these arguments are

fallacious or unsuccessful or what have you. They are fallacious in virtue of their being unsound,

not in virtue of their being question begging. Other question begging arguments are sound and so

are non-fallacious. Granted, the error theorist for whom Soundness Suffices cannot accommodate

the claim that these arguments are nevertheless fallacious, but so what? Her commitment to

Soundness Suffices comes as a defense of a radically error theoretic view of normativity. Biting

bullets and conceptual revision are par for the course.

Biting the bullet and denying the begging the question is a fallacy is not an attractive option.

We need to consider what is at stake if we embraced an argumentative practice which did not count

begging the question as a distinctive kind of fallacy. I think it is obvious that our argumentative

practices would be unrecognizable if we did not consider a question begging argument to be

fallacious. Giving question begging arguments even when one is right in one’s beliefs still typically

strike us as dogmatic in an intellectually vicious way. It is hard to imagine the practice of academic

philosophers if we did not consider question begging arguments to be somehow less than fully

successful. Consider how much effort philosophers expend on responding to objections and the

focus we place on constructing arguments using premises that our critics could accept. Even more

simply, think of how frequently we criticize arguments precisely on the grounds that they beg the

question.
 49

Obviously, at times we are willing to offer dialectically ineffective arguments or to appeal to

unshared intuitions, but usually doing so comes as something of an admission that we cannot have

all that we would like out of our arguments. Quite simply, much of our philosophical practice

makes the most sense if we take its aim to be the construction of arguments which are rationally

persuasive to as many as possible. If our aim were merely to move from true claims to true

claims—without regard for the dialectical acceptability of our premises—our writing would look

rather different. But if we take Soundness Suffices seriously that is what we are to do. So, I

conclude Soundness Suffices is unacceptably revisionary on the grounds that it would require us

to become intellectually vicious by our own lights.

Granted, MNE does not give us the resources to maintain that there is anything deeply wrong

with being dogmatic in this (or any other) way. Dialectically, this does not help the defense of

Soundness Suffices. If anything, it actually reduces the number of moves that can be made in

defense of Soundness Suffices as a revisionary view. I take it that we do presently find there to be

something prima facie objectionable about giving question begging arguments. We may rightly

beg the question against (e.g.) maximally coherent conspiracy theorists or Modus ponens deniers,

but those are an odd cases. Our ideal way to resolve most actual disputes is to show our interlocutor

that her view is unacceptable even by her own lights. If there are genuine normative facts then it

is possible that we are deeply mistaken about how bad it is to give question begging arguments.

So, if we believe there are such facts we can coherently appeal to that belief as part of a defense

of a revisionary, highly dogmatic argumentative practice. Given its commitment to MNE,

Soundness Suffices cannot be defended on the grounds that we are too concerned about begging

the question. So, the fact that we now object to question begging arguments because they are

dogmatic is sufficient to show that Soundness Suffices is unacceptable in the only sense error
 50

theorists can consistently countenance if it cannot treat begging the question as a fallacy. That is,

those of us who care even a little about dogmatism simply will not—in the psychological sense—

accept that Soundness Suffices.

1.5.2 Why biting the bullet on begging the question is inconsistent with the error theorist’s own

perspective

Beyond the previous problems, I believe that denying that question begging arguments are

fallacious is an especially unattractive option for error theorists. The remainder of this section

gives the extended argument for this claim. Stated succinctly, the problem is this: error theorists

and radical philosophical skeptics more generally accept that it is epistemically possible that their

views are false. If the error theory is false there are untold billions of sound arguments against it.

This entails that by the error theorist’s own lights it is possible that she lives in a world with untold

billions of sound arguments against her view. Yet she in accepting the error theory, she is already

committed to rejecting these arguments unless they are supplemented with independent evidence

for their soundness. This commitment entails that soundness does not suffice by the error theorist’s

own lights. From the skeptic’s perspective, begging the question against her is the unhelpful

argumentative move par excellence. Thus, especially if we are error theorist we cannot abandon

concern for what it is rational for us to believe.

I argue that it is in tension with two considerably more plausible error theoretic

commitments. First, the thesis that it is epistemically possible that MNE is false. Second, the claim

that error theorist’s cannot coherently accept an easy defeater as refuting her view. An easy

defeater is a sound argument that is proffered without any independent evidence for its premises.

Over the rest of this section I explain and defend these claims, and explain why they present an

inconsistent set. The critical claims for this section appear below for easy reference.
 51

1. Soundness Suffices: a successful argument just is an argument that increases the objective
probability of the truth of its conclusion.

2. No Easy Defeaters: from the perspective of the committed error theorist, a counterexample
to her view for which we had no independent evidence is unsuccessful, even if the content
of the counterexample is true.

3. Epistemic Uncertainty: it is epistemically possible that metanormative error theory is

false.70

1.5.2.1 Defense of No Easy Defeaters

In No Easy Defeaters I appeal to the idea of the “perspective of the committed error

theorist.” This is a kind of abstract distillation of the perspective of actual flesh and blood error

theorist. A perspective is a complex of attitudes that jointly constitute how one “sees” and

approaches an issue. Perspectives include beliefs about the world with descriptive content. Beliefs

do not exhaust the concept of a perspective, however. Our perspectives also include practical

attitudes that are relevant to argumentative activity like desires and dispositions to inquire into

certain topics. For an example relevant to the present context, the perspective of many error

theorists includes the belief that evolution has primed us to have certain kinds of normative beliefs

(e.g. the belief that survival is good). However, the perspective of the error theorist is not exhausted

by her stock of beliefs. While admittedly rather vague, the fact that perspectives include behavioral

dispositions makes them a useful concept when thinking of argumentation as an intellectual

activity. Focusing solely on attitudes like belief risks obscuring the role of practical attitudes in

constituting our judgments about argumentative success (more on this in a moment).

In the simplest sense, then, the perspective of a normative skeptic is the perspective of a

person who grants that we make judgments that presuppose the existence of authoritative norms,

70
I believe my argument is general in the sense that, if successful, it shows that other radical philosophical skeptics,
for example solipsists, cannot intelligibly think soundness suffices for argumentative success, either. However,
solipsism as such is neutral on the existence of authoritative norms. So, the particular Incoherence Objection I am
discussing does not arise for solipsism.
 52

but denies that there are any authoritatively normative requirements. Of course, there are many

ways to argue for MNE, and so the actual perspectives of actual error theorists will differ in

important ways. However, there are some commitments that are logically required by the

commitment to error theory, and so some content that the perspective of logically consistent error

theorist must maintain. This bring us to the idea of the perspective of a “committed” error theorist.

A committed error theorist is a person who understands the error theory and at least its obvious

logical entailments, and maintains a sincere intellectual commitment to the error theory. Because

of her knowledge of the basic entailments of the error theory, the error theorist is also disposed to

accept a lot of the counterintuitive claims of the error theory. For example, the error theorist accepts

that there is not really any more reason for Pythagoras to enter the bean patch than to abide by his

prohibition.

Finally, the committed error theorist accepts the error theory and its entailments primarily

because she seeks the truth and takes the error theory to be the true view in metaethics. The

committed error theorist believes the error theory is the true view in metaethics on the basis of her

assessment of the arguments for and against the error theory. She believes at least one argument

for the error theory is successful and could tell us which one it is (e.g. some version of Mackie’s

argument from queerness). Similarly, she is familiar with the at least the most prominent

objections to the error theory and can articulate why she believes they fail. The committed error

theorist is not an edgy high school student who expresses support for the error theory or its

implications primarily because of a desire to be provocative or to troll.71 Put simply, the committed

71
Which is not to deny that some, maybe even most, edgy teenagers who endorse the error theory do so because they
believe it is true.
 53

error theorist is an intellectually serious scholar. Real life error theorists like Jonas Olson and Bart

Streumer are exemplars of the committed error theorist and her perspective.

No Easy Defeaters maintains that from the perspective of such a committed error theorist,

a successful counterexample to her view must be supported by independent evidence. A

counterexample is a claim that logically entails that a universally quantified claim is false.

Metanormative error theory is a universally quantified claim, since it maintains that there are no

authoritative norms. So, the claim that, in the authoritatively normative sense of ought, Pythagoras

ought to enter the bean patch is a counterexample to MNE.72 Counterexamples are not limited to

particular claims. Any general normative principles that are taken to be normatively authoritative

are also logically counterexamples to MNE. By general normative principles I mean here things

like the Utilitarian principle that we ought to maximize aggregate utility (and all variations of

Utilitarianism), the Kantian Categorical Imperative, and the instrumental requirement according

to which we ought to take the means to our end.73

Presented as an instance of Modus tollens the Pythagorean counterexample becomes:

P1.) If Pythagoras ought to enter the bean patch then metanormative error theory is false.
P2.) Pythagoras ought to enter the bean patch.
C1.) So, metanormative error theory is false.

In the preceding argument “ought” is intended in its authoritatively normative sense. Thus,

P1 is obviously true. The critical and contentious premise of the argument is P2. My readers will

probably recognize that the above argument appears to be an instance of what philosophers call a

72
Sometimes, we use “counterexample” to mean what I am considering a successful counterexample, i.e. one that has
the right logical form and also satisfies additional theoretical desiderata like being true or being based on neutral
evidence. If you prefer to talk that way, then the example with Pythagoras is at least a putative or potential
counterexample to MNE.
73
Mid-level principles could also serve as counterexamples to MNE. Mid-level principles are supposed to “bridge the
gap” between highly abstract, fundamental normative principles and particular normative claims. For example,
consider the claim that we have a defeasible duty to avoid lying. Most of us think the general requirement to avoid
lying is explained by more fundamental requirements, e.g. to avoid harming or instrumentalizing people.
 54

Moorean argument, in honor of G.E. Moore’s (in)famous response to skepticism about the external

world. A Moorean argument is one that infers the falsity of a radical philosophical thesis from a

claim that is taken to be obviously true. In Moore’s classic response to the external world skeptic,

the putative obvious truth is that Moore knows that he has hands. Thus, it follows that he knows

one thing about the physical world and skepticism is false.

The merits of the Moorean strategy remains a subject of continued discussion. Critics

allege that Moorean arguments beg the question or otherwise cannot justify the acceptance of their

conclusion. Defenders retort that Moorean arguments can provide indirect evidence for their

conclusion or that philosophical reflection is simply not reliable enough at tracking the truth to

make it rational for us to abandon our strongest convictions. 74 Of course, even if the general

Moorean strategy has merits there remains the question of whether this or that Moorean argument

works. For example, Tristram McPherson defends the general value of Moorean arguments but is

skeptical of their value in responding to moral error theory. On McPherson’s view, Moorean

arguments succeed insofar as the strength of a rational epistemic agent’s conviction is indirect

evidence of how much evidence she has

Whatever the objective merits of the Moorean strategy are, I think it is clear that Moorean

argument cannot give the committed error theorist what she would consider a successful refutation

of her view unless it is supplemented with independent evidence. In the present context,

independent evidence is simply a consideration that possesses the following two features: 1.) it

provides support for P2; 2.) it is not logically equivalent to P2. Support for P2 may be interpreted

74
For a defense of the claim that Moorean arguments can succeed by providing indirect evidence for their conclusion
see (McPherson, 2008). On McPherson’s view, our confidence in a proposition is defeasible evidence that the
proposition is true. Though note that McPherson is dubious of the epistemic value of the Moorean strategy in response
to narrowly moral skepticism. It is less clear that his reasons for skepticism of moral Moorean arguments apply to the
use of Moorean arguments against MNE, which is a stronger thesis than moral error theory. For a defense of Moorean
arguments predicated on concerns about proper philosophical method see (Kelly, 2005).
 55

somewhat broadly, but in general I mean a consideration that indicates that P2 is probably true or

that it would be rational for us to accept P2. Thus, something like McPherson’s account of the

indirect evidential value of our subjective confidence in a proposition is a kind of support for

P2.75A defense of reflective equilibrium methodology and the observation that P2 coheres well

with our considered judgments could also support P2. Of course, normative error theorists have

their responses to the Moorean strategy. Support for P2 can also come from refutations of these

objections.76

What the committed, logically consistent error theorist emphatically cannot count as a

successful refutation of her view is the simple assertion of the Moorean argument. I submit that

this is true even if it just so happens that P2 is true. Stated simply, from the perspective of a logically

consistent error theorist soundness simply does not suffice for argumentative success. I submit that

the reason for this is that the committed error theorist really wants to be shown that it is rational

for her to reject her own view, that rejecting error theory makes sense given her own commitments.

Rationality and what “makes sense” are at least weakly normative notions, thus this result shows

that the error theorist’s own perspective must retain concern for at least weakly normative

concepts.

Why must the logically consistent error theorist reject the claim that a sound Moorean

argument would give her everything she wants from a refutation? By “must” I do not mean

anything normative. Rather, I mean that there is a logical tension in the view of an error theorist

75
Well, at least it is once supplemented with our confidence in the claim that Pythagoras should flee into the patch
instead of abiding by his prohibition.
76
It may be more accurate to say that error theoretic objections to the Moorean strategy constitute defeaters for
whatever support we have for P2. Responding to these objections does not, in itself, provide positive support for P2.
Rather, it shows that our support is undefeated. I do not think this complication matters for my argument. The
fundamental point is that the consistent error theorist is already inclined to reject P2. So, she wants something said in
defense of P2 if she is to think the Moorean argument is of any help to her.
 56

who holds the following attitudes: she maintains that Soundness Suffices for a successful

argument, that it is epistemically possible that error theory is false, and yet requires independent

evidence for Moorean arguments (i.e. accepts No Easy Defeaters).

The problem is as follows. Suppose that the error theorist grants that it is epistemically

possible that her view is false. A view is epistemically possible when it could be true given our

current knowledge of the world. For example, given my current knowledge of the world it is

epistemically possible that there are space aliens in the Andromeda galaxy. A galaxy is a very big

place; surely, it is possible that there are Andromedans. Our best scientific theories make it seem

likely that there are space aliens somewhere in the universe. Indeed, our current theories make it

difficult to explain why we have yet to detect signs of intelligent life (e.g. radio waves from ancient

civilizations). At the same time, space is surprisingly quiet, and I personally lack much detailed

evidence about the Andromeda galaxy. So, given my current knowledge it seems right that I do

not really know whether there are Andromedans.

Now, it is obvious that what is epistemically possible depends on our conception of

knowledge and related concepts like epistemic justification. Given the actual truth of the error

theory, there may be some conceptions of knowledge on which it is not epistemically possible that

error theory is false. All this shows is that those conceptions are simply irrelevant to our

argumentative practices. Or, at least, that these conceptions are irrelevant the debate over the error

theory and the practices we all use to conduct it.

In the sense I am concerned with, the committed error theorist is not certain of the truth of

the error theory. Certainty admits of two senses. In the first sense, certainty is a psychological state

of absolute conviction in something’s truth. In the second sense, something is certain when we
 57

possess the highest possible degree of justification for believing it (e.g. given our evidence, it is

logically impossible that we possess evidence P for R and R is false).

Clearly, actual committed error theorists seem to be much less than absolutely convinced

of the truth of their view. Actual error theorists spend a great deal of time considering

counterarguments to their view. This would be somewhat puzzling if they were absolutely certain

that their view is true, and also certain that they had overwhelming evidence for the truth of the

error theory. The writings of academic error theorist usually contain the careful qualifications of a

scholar, not bombastic pronouncements. I conclude that in the sense of epistemic possibility

relevant to our willingness to engage in debates, actual error theorists believe it is epistemically

possible that their view is false. The perspective of the committed error theorist referred in No

Easy Defeaters is not identical to the perspective of any actual person. Yet if every actual error

theorist considers it to be epistemically possible that error theory is false, it seems like the abstract

distillation of the error theoretic perspective would contain this commitment, too. Consequently,

the abstract perspective of the error theorist also contains a commitment to the claim that it is

epistemically possible that the error theory is false.

Now, if the error theory really is false the world is absolutely awash in sound arguments

against the error theory. If there are authoritative norms, there are presumably uncounted billions

upon billions of particular facts about what people ought to do, believe, intend, etc. in the

authoritatively normative sense. 77 Moorean arguments simply appeal to the most intuitively

plausible of these claims, like the claim that Pythagoras ought to enter the bean patch. But boring,

77
I am ignoring the logical possibility that there is one authoritative norm and it somehow has almost no implications.
I suppose this might be true of it turned out the single authoritative norm is hyper-indexed to some particular
circumstance. For example, suppose the only authoritative norm is “If your name is Billy on the morning of February
14, 1462 you ought in the authoritatively normative sense to buckle your belt.” Though I can entertain this possibility,
it seems too unmotivated to be worth considering. And even this norm would entail many logically distinct and sound
but also utterly uninteresting arguments against error theory.
 58

poorly evidenced and intuitively implausible facts are still facts. So, if there are boring, poorly

evidenced and intuitively implausible facts about what people authoritatively ought to do, believe,

intend, etc. these facts could equally well serve as a premise in a sound argument against the error

theory.78

Because the error theorist is not certain of her view, she is logically committed to the above

possibility that there are untold billions of sound arguments against her position. Yet, ex hypothesi

she is willing to bite the bullet on even the most counterintuitive implications of her view, e.g. that

Pythagoras has no real reason to flee for his life. Presumably, the reason she bites the bullet is that

she believes the Moorean arguments are missing something that she thinks a refutation of the error

theory requires. But what could this missing component?

I do not think the problem can merely be that the error theorist thinks the Moorean

arguments are unsound. Yes, of course she thinks they are unsound. But she acknowledges her

own epistemic fallibility and so grants that they may be sound. What seems critical is that if the

error theorist is to hold a logically consistent perspective, it seems like her attitude toward the

poorly evidenced Moorean argument is that it fails. Critically, I cannot see how anything can

change if it just happens that the poorly (independently) evidenced Moorean argument in question

is sound. The critical question seems to be this: would a logically consistent error theorist’s

perspective be any different in a world where she is presented with a Moorean argument that just

happens to be sound, yet for which we have no independent evidence? It seems like it would not

be any different. Indeed, it seems like it could only be different if the error theorist either just

happens to believe something inconsistent with her own views or possesses literal magic. To make

78
I believe the same holds true for other forms of radical philosophical skepticism, as well. For example, the
metaphysician who denies the existence of tables but grants that she might be wrong is logically committed to the
possibility that every Ikea is chockfull of defeaters for her view.
 59

this all a little more concrete, contrast the following pair of cases wherein an error theorist is

presented with a putative counterexample to her view.

(A) Silly Defeater: a committed error theorist is presented with the following putative
counterexample to her view. The core claim of the counterexample is this: John ought to
shoot himself in the foot. The precise reason John ought to shoot himself in the foot is as
follows. First, there is really only one authoritative norm: we ought to maximize the total
number of people named Albert. Metaphysically, this authoritative norm is grounded in a
sui generis non-natural, causally inefficacious worldly property. The existence of this
authoritative norm does not make any change to the physical world; the physical world is
basically it is in reality, with one important difference. That difference is this: through a
sequence of events that would make Rube Goldberg blush, John’s shooting himself in the
foot would maximize the total number of people named Albert. Perhaps his time in the
hospital would lead him to marry a woman who really loves the name Albert or such. John
has no evidence that this is true, but this does not matter because the sole authoritative
norm requires us to do the action that actually will maximize Alberts, not what we have
evidence will do so.

Sound Defeater: as Easy Defeater, however it turns out that everything said in Easy
Defeater really is true. Thus, the counterexample provides a sound argument with the
conclusion that error theory is false.

Now, can there be any difference between the committed, logically consistent error

theorist’s attitudes toward Silly Defeater and Sound Defeater? Most critically, can the committed

error theorist intelligibly think Sound Defeater succeeds by her own lights whereas Silly Defeater

does not?79 I think the answer to this question is a clear “no.” Every objection the error theorist

has against Easy Defeater—and the objections are legion!—applies equally well to Sound

Defeater. Sound Defeater adds nothing to allay concerns about metaphysical queerness. Nor does

it add anything that renders our knowledge of authoritative norms less mysterious than it in fact

79
And I mean the error theorist for whom either Silly Defeater or Sound Defeater are presented as part of the Moorean
strategy. I do not mean the error theorist who is reading this paper, a person who enjoys access to various stipulated
facts, e.g. the fact that Sound Defeater really does include a sound argument. The error theorist who is actually
presented Silly Defeater or Sound Defeater has access only to regular human cognitive abilities. She is not a person
in a story with an omniscient narrator who talks to her. So, I ask my reader to imagine herself as lacking special access
to the fact that Sound Defeater’s core claims are true. Instead, we should think in terms of how we would respond to
the content of Silly Defeater if it were presented to us. How could any of us tell the two cases apart using only the
resources internal to our own perspectives, without appearing wildly inconsistent? There does not seem to be any way
to do so.
 60

is. The single difference between the two cases is that the argument presented in Sound Defeater

is sound. Yet that difference is not accessible from the error theorist’s perspective in any special

way. She could not, using only her own stock of beliefs and regular human belief forming

mechanisms, reliably tell whether she has been given merely a Stupid Defeater or a Sound

Defeater. So, from her own perspective the two cases must be treated as on a par. Clearly, the error

theorist does not think Stupid Defeater gives her exactly what she wants from a refutation of her

view. I conclude that, from the perspective of the committed error theorist, it follows that Sound

Defeater cannot give her a fully successful refutation, either. Consequently, it follows that

soundness simply does not suffice from the perspective of the committed error theorist.

1.6 Soundness Suffices and the Technology of Truth-Seeking

In this section I develop a second argument against Soundness Suffices. We can call it the

argument from methodology. It begins with the fact that some argumentative rules constitute

methodological rules for debates and carrying out inquiry into the truth. Any argumentative rule

cognitively limited humans can follow is one that would sometimes lead us away from the truth.

Thus, any rule, method or what have you we can actually accept will sometimes lead us astray.

This generates a problem for Soundness Suffices. Because we are cognitively limited, any rule we

can follow will sometimes lead us away from the truth. What would an agent—even one who only

cares for truth—do when her best methods for evaluating arguments lead her astray? Clearly, she

would go with the output of her best methods, even in cases where they get the factually mistaken

result. The alternative of directly tracking the truth is simply a non-starter. I argue that the reason

a truth seeking agent would follow her best method even when it leads her astray is that this is the

rational thing for her to do. This entails evaluating arguments in terms of whether they make it

rational for us to believe their conclusion or not. But that means arguments can succeed in virtue
 61

of their making it rational to believe their conclusion, not just because they are sound. That

conclusion is inconsistent with Soundness Suffices’ insistence on evaluating arguments purely in

terms of their soundness. Because we have no realistic alternative to evaluating arguments in part

for their ability to rationalize our belief, Soundness Suffices is unacceptable even as a revisionary

view because we cannot possibly accept it.

To move on to the details, I will assume for the rest of this section that our only aim when

engaging in argumentation is accruing true belief.80Indeed, suppose we are so committed to truth

as the sole argumentative end that we would be disposed to bite the bullet on begging the question.

Even so, as epistemically limited beings we still only have fallible means of pursuing truth. If truth

is our sole argumentative aim, our argumentative practice and all of its attendant standards for

critiquing arguments are presumably simply tools for helping us reach the truth. Our fallibility

imposes practical limitations on what these rules can be like. Notably, the rules cannot be things

that we could only implement if we had direct, infallible access to the truth. For example, they

cannot be things like “only accept true propositions and sound arguments.” Perhaps a god would

be able to maximize her stock of true beliefs by acting on that rule. But we are not gods. To be

useful for us imperfect truth-seekers, our standards, rules and methods for evaluating arguments

must be grounded in states that are more accessible to us than truth itself usually is.

Thus, we arrive at a kind of very weak accessibility requirement for argumentative rules:

argumentative rules must appeal to states that are directly accessible to us in a way that truth

80
As William James famously noted, in reality we seem to have at least two epistemic ends: the acquisition of truth
and the avoidance of error (James, 1979). These ends can come into conflict: extreme epistemic caution may minimize
error, but at the cost of rejecting many truths. For the sake of simplicity I am avoiding the complications even a second
epistemic aim would generate. Adding a second argumentative end would only exacerbate the problem I call attention
to in this section. If we have two aims we need a sophisticated way of thinking about the trade-off between the two.
But that would mean we need a sophisticated conception of rationality to think of the trade-offs between our various
ends. Consequently the question of rationality is, once again, inescapable.
 62

usually is not. I think the argument that I develop over the next several paragraphs can rely on a

very intuitive, deliberately vague and open analysis of what accessibility is. Accessibility

requirements in epistemology have sometimes been understood as a matter of accessibility to our

consciousness.81 Visual perceptions, beliefs and other mental states are all accessible to us in this

sense. Intuitive though a mentalistic access requirement is, my argument probably does not need

us to understand accessibility as depending on our consciousness. In fact, accessibility may be a

matter of states that are thoroughly external to our mind, though perhaps still external states that

one’s our mind can perceive. However, if they are states that are external to our own mind they

must be ones that are at best imperfectly correlated with the truth.

All of this may make the access requirement seem rather too underdeveloped and vague to

be of any use. There is a powerful, empirical response to this objection: none of our actual advice

for conducting inquiry tells us to just directly know the truth, nor do our criteria for evaluating

arguments tell us to just see whether an argument is sound or not.82 Nor even do we ever give

advice to track a state we know to be perfectly correlated with the truth. We recognize that all or

almost all of our methods for discerning the truth are fallible. That is why even if accessibility is

understood as depending on access to external states, e.g. worldly correlations, they can be only

imperfectly correlated with the truth. If we could directly, perfectly reliably access the truth or

something perfectly correlated with it, we most certainly would. We cannot, so we imperfectly

81
See discussions of the strongest versions of access internalism about justification, roughly the view that epistemic
justification requires us to be able to reflectively know the basis of our knowledge. See (Alston, 1986b), (Kornblith,
2001) and (Pappas, 2005)
82
Advice here is the kind found in critical thinking courses and textbooks on developing and evaluating arguments,
including inductive empirical arguments.
 63

track it by whatever means are actually accessible to us as cognitively limited beings. 83 If we want,

we could refine the accessibility requirement using facts about what states we actually access to

track truth.

It may seem like the philosophical literature already includes readymade suggestions for

how to think about the argumentative rules Soundness Suffices generates for epistemically fallible

beings. Consider in particular W.V. O. Quine’s famous suggestion that epistemology should be

understood simply as “the technology of truth-seeking” (Quine, 1986, p. 663). On Quine’s picture,

we begin with the terminal epistemic goal of true belief. Epistemic norms are simply tools for

acquiring true belief. 84 While Quine was concerned with epistemic norms, we can easily

accommodate the suggestion to argumentative norms. As with any kind of tool, some norms are

better at their intended job than others are. Here, betterness is roughly a matter of the objective

fact that following norm A would lead to more true beliefs than following norm B.85 To illustrate,

consider two norms for acceptable evidence. One norm treats vision as more acceptable than

crystal balls; the other treats crystal balls as preferable to visual perception. Crystal balls are far

less reliable than vision. Presumably, this means a person who follows the crystal ball eschewing

norm would have more true beliefs. So, an argumentative practice concerned with getting at the

83
It is also important to understand the above accessibility requirement in its context. My access requirement is limited
to rules for argumentation, the conscious development and critique of arguments. Usually, accessibility requirements
in epistemology are used to motivate views like access internalism. According to access internalism, the kind of
justification which is relevant to whether or not we possess knowledge depends on states that are internal us, especially
where this means internal to our own mind. As noted in my discussion of Soundness Suffices, my hope is that my
arguments can remain neutral on the debate between internalists and externalists about knowledge and the kind of
justification relevant to it. I am discussing argumentation as an activity and the kind of rules that are suited to that
activity. While there is certainly a sense in which argumentation involves justifies claims using arguments, it is not
clear how that sense relates to the sense at play in discussions of knowledge.
84
See (Foley, 1994) for an extended analysis of Quine’s view that epistemology is the technology of truth-seeking.
85
I say “roughly” because there are doubtless different ways of developing the proposal that may generate distinct
argumentative rules. For example, there is a familiar distinction between internalizing a norm and simply happening
to act in accord with what a norm requires. I do not think it worthwhile to flesh out the proposal in much detail because
I ultimately reject it.
 64

truth would contain evidential rules that permit using visual sense perception but disavow the use

of crystal balls.

Quine’s proposal can be applied to more basic argumentative rules, too (e.g. inference

rules). Jonas Olson makes this point while embracing the Quinean strategy.86 As he says “…error

theorists can at most [when asked why they use certain argumentative norms and inference rules]

make the pragmatic claim that inference to the best explanation and other kinds of widely accepted

inference rules and standards of theory acceptance are better than the known alternatives at

tracking the truth” (Olson, 2014, p. 163).

It might even be thought that Quine’s proposal helps Soundness Suffices avoid its problem

with question begging arguments. Perhaps a policy of accepting arguments that beg the question

against one’s view would lead to more false beliefs.87 Cannot a proponent of Soundness Suffices

use this putative fact to explain the problem with question begging arguments? Soundness

Suffices’ core claim is that truth is the sole aim of argumentative practice. But perhaps we moved

too quickly when we said this meant Soundness Suffices treats an argument as successful merely

in virtue of that argument’s being sound. We can imagine a broader, methodological version of

Soundness Suffices. On this broader picture, while truth remains the sole ultimate aim of

argumentation, argumentative success might be a matter of strong but sometimes imperfect

86
Though Olson does not explicitly connect his strategy for defending error theory to Quine’s naturalized
epistemology, the strategy is definitely the same and so I think the characterization is fitting.
87
See for example the epistemic conception of fallacies developed and defended mostly prominently by Harvey Siegel
and John Biro. According to Siegel and Biro, the problem with question begging arguments is that they are not helpful
to “epistemically serious” persons in their quest to know the truth. And they are not helpful for that primarily because
their premises cannot be known independently of the prior truth of their conclusion. It is telling that Siegel and Biro’s
primary commitment is to the idea that “a theory of argumentation must fully engage the normativity of judgments
about arguments” (Siegel & Biro, 1997). That is, though attracted to a theory of argumentation that emphasizes
truth-conduciveness as the primary argumentative good, Siegel and Biro arrive at truth as the norm of
argumentation because it delivers the right normative verdicts about epistemic reasons for belief (Siegel &
Biro, 1997), (Biro & Siegel, 2006).
 65

correlation between argument type and soundness. So, begging the question is fallacious precisely

because of the alleged tendency for question begging arguments to be unsound arguments.

Judged on its own merits, Quine’s proposal about the technology of truth-seeking may be

quite compelling. But it is ultimately inconsistent with Soundness Suffices’ instance on truth as

the sole argumentative end. To see this, note that in our original statement Soundness Suffices was

a view about this or that token argument. Specifically, it was the view that a token argument

succeeds if and only if it is sound. In contrast, the “Quined” version of Soundness Suffices treats

an argument as successful when it is of a kind that generally tracks the truth. For example, the

Quinean view (possibly) avoids the problem of sound question begging arguments by treating

them as unsuccessful due to their being of a bad kind. Said arguments are still sound, however.

The existence of sound arguments that are of a generally unsound kind generates a tension between

Quine’s proposal and Soundness Suffices. If the sole virtue of an argument is its relationship to

truth, why should it matter whether a token sound argument is of a generally unsound type? An

argument cannot bear a more intimate relationship to the truth of its conclusion than being sound.

Consequently, it seems impossible to maintain both that the sole argumentative virtue is truth and

that there are some sound but unsuccessful arguments.

In fact, I think there is a good answer to the more general question of why it matters whether

a sound argument is of a generally unsound kind. But it is an answer that is not friendly to

Soundness Suffices. The puzzle evaporates if we think the “Quined,” methodological version of

Soundness Suffices is concerned with evaluating arguments in terms of whether or not they show

belief to be rational, not simply whether they actually are sound. Suppose it is true that question-

begging arguments tend to be false. It would be instrumentally rational for a truth-seeker who
 66

knows of this correlation to be skeptical of arguments that beg the question. 88 The “Quined,”

methodological version of Soundness Suffices takes this idea and translate it into an account of

when an argument is fallacious. On the Quined account an argument is fallacious when it is of a

type that a rational truth seeker would not accept, or at least would be skeptical of, because of its

common defects. But if we say an argument is fallacious when and because it is of a kind that it

would be irrational for a truth-seeker to accept, it is clear that there is important explanatory work

being done by the concept of rationality. And Soundness Suffices seeks to avoid treating rationality

or any other (weakly) normative ideal as even partially constitutive of argumentative success. So,

the methodological version of Soundness Suffices would not be a version of Soundness Suffices

at all! Far from rescuing Soundness Suffices, Quine’s instrumental treatment of epistemology

actually highlights the inescapability of (weakly) normative concepts as a part of argument

evaluation.

What would it take for Soundness Suffices to avoid this problem and truly excise the

concept of rationality from our argumentative practices? To appreciate the answer to this question,

let us summarize the problem. Given human fallibility, any argumentative rule we can actually

follow will sometimes lead us away from the truth. Given the same fallibility, the only realistic

thing to say about such situations is that the thing to do is to follow our best practices and come to

have false beliefs. There is a clear sense in which that is the thing to do even if true belief is our

cognitive end. But explaining that point without appeal to weakly normative concepts like

rationality seems impossible. To really adhere to Soundness Suffices’ total abandonment of

rationality as partially constitutive of argumentative success, it seems that we would have to

abandon our generally truth-tracking practices and believe the truth in cases where our practices

88
At least or especially if she believes there is a correlation between “being question begging” and “being unsound.”
 67

lead us astray. But following that advice is simply impossible. To return to the parallel with

Utilitarianism, the “rules” that are actually optimific would be identical to a statement of the token

acts that would lead to the optimal results. And, quite famously, the rule “always do the actually

optimific act” is not useful as a piece of advice because of our cognitive limitations. So, true

adherence to Soundness Suffices would require us to act on impossible advice.

Thus, the conclusion of the methodological argument is stronger than the argument from

dialectical fallacies. That first argument showed that Soundness Suffices would require us to adopt

argumentative rules that we would think are objectionably dogmatic, something that seems

especially problematic from the perspective of committed error theorists. Though perhaps rare,

some of us may be tolerant of extreme dogmatism. My hope is that I have now shown that a

complete abandonment of evaluating argumentative success in terms of rationality would require

something impossible. It would require us to directly discern the truth and abandon our general

argumentative practices in cases where they would lead to false belief. Since a practice that we

cannot possibly implement cannot be acceptable to us, if these arguments are sound they show that

Soundness Suffices is unacceptable because we cannot possibly adopt it.

Finally, note that the methodological version of Soundness Suffices may not even help

with Soundness Suffices’ tendency toward dogmatism. The correlation between unsound and

question begging arguments may be real. Even if it is, we know it would be imperfect. And so we

might readily find ourselves in situations where we think we have enough evidence to overturn

our general skepticism of question begging arguments. Suppose I believe I have a sound argument

that would beg the question against you. Because I think the argument is sound, it is hard to see

why I should not think it is a good argument to present against your view in every sense Soundness
 68

Suffices countenances. Thus, the methodological version of Soundness Suffices does not really

avoid the worry that Soundness Suffices licenses an unappealing degree of dogmatism.89

1.7 Objection & Response: do my arguments beg the question against Soundness Suffices?

I want to close this section with a significant objection to my argument. Along the way, we

will touch on the question of whether and how my argument relates to the truth of MNE. It might

be objected that my arguments face a dilemma. Either the sense of “successful argument” operative

in my arguments is normative or it is not.58 Now, I stipulated at the outset that argumentative

success is to be understood purely as the kind of instrumental success that is compatible with MNE.

But maybe a critic worries that upon closer examination that sense cannot really bear the

argumentative weight I place on it. If argumentative success would have to be understood as an

even weakly normative property for my argument to be valid, the whole framing of my arguments

becomes question begging against Soundness Suffices, if not necessarily against MNE itself.

Alternately, “successful argument” might just be a shorthand for “an argument that increases the

objective probability of its conclusion.” Such a reading would avoid begging the question against

Soundness Suffices. But it might come at the cost of undermining some of my arguments.90

Soundness Suffices itself undermines the first horn of the above dilemma. My first criticism

of Soundness Suffices was that it cannot make sense of how pointing out that an argument is

question begging constitutes an objection to that argument. So, if the above dilemma has any teeth

it has them because even a sound argument is in at least one way weaker in virtue of its being

question begging. However, if that is true then Soundness Suffices fails.

89
In fairness, I think there are cases where begging the question is non-fallacious. If that is right, it may blunt the
scope of this problem, somewhat. However, I still doubt that this point goes far enough. Seemingly, this problem
arises for any argument that I think is sound. But the set of virtuous question begging arguments is intuitively smaller
than the set of arguments any given person thinks is sound.
90
I actually am not sure about this. I think the methodological problems would remain.
 69

Maybe there is a way to avoid the above problem. The inability of Soundness Suffices to

ground the fallacious status of begging the question may seem like a problem only if we are

concerned with intellectual vice. And if we are willing to deny the existence of moral or prudential

vice in any deeply significant sense, why not deny intellectual vice, too? Perhaps I am right that it

cannot coherently be objected that my argument begs the question against Soundness Suffices.

Maybe that just shows our concept of objecting to an argument is inextricably bound up with

argumentative discourse, a kind of discourse the error theorist is trying to escape.91 All the same,

it seems like a weaker version of the complaint may still be made. My criticism of Soundness

Suffices makes much of the premium philosophers place on respecting dialectical norms. So, by

my own lights something would be lost if my argument cannot meet advocates of Soundness

Suffices on their own terms.

There is something to this objection, though note I am not precluded from meeting Soundness

Suffices on its own terms. I maintain that it is true that begging the question is a prima facie

fallacious way to argue. I have argued Soundness Suffices cannot ground the fallacious status of

begging the question. Therefore, Soundness Suffices fails because it has the false entailment that

begging the question is not fallacious. My commitment to the importance of rational

belief change as a goal of argument does not preclude me from maintaining that truth is also an

important argumentative goal.

Ultimately, this point may be used in an argument against MNE itself. If begging the question

truly is a fallacy then something presumably explains why it is. Soundness Suffices cannot do it.

91
Indeed, some defenses of error theory themselves predict we cannot avoid the air of incoherence surrounding
arguing for error theory. See Bart Streumer’s novel defense of error theory along these lines in his (Streumer, 2013)
and (Streumer, 2017). I think for Streumer’s view to work it has to at least implicitly appeal to Soundness Suffices.
That is, we would have to think it is not fully possible to believe MNE, but it is possible to have arguments that succeed
in some other sense. This other sense must be getting at the truth, since Streumer does not think his arguments succeed
by generating normative reasons for belief.
 70

If weakly normative conceptions of argument also cannot do it then we are left with only

authoritatively normative conceptions of argument. And so, we could arrive at the ultimate

conclusion that MNE is false.

Another thing to say against the accusation that my argument begs the question begins with

the ancient and oft-repeated point that every argument begs the question against someone. Rational

belief is a matter of one’s prior belief or accessible evidence. And each actual human being has

different prior beliefs and evidence. So, whether an argument is objectionably question begging

depends on the prior beliefs or evidence available to each actual (or hypothetical) person to whom

that argument is presented. Arguments are thus question begging against certain views or people

who hold them. Arguments are not question begging simpliciter. There may be a logically possible

error theorists who hold views that render my arguments question begging. It does not follow that

my arguments are question begging against any actual human beings and their views.

What’s more, have some reason to prioritize the question of rational belief as it arises with

actual humans, not maximally coherent, bullet biting human embodiments of an idea. If we are

concerned with rational belief it is almost inconceivable that we are unconcerned with what it is

rational for us to believe. Suppose we are a philosopher who is sympathetic to both MNE and the

fallacious status of begging the question. I presume this is a non-empty set, especially if beliefs

and commitments can come in degrees. If such a person grants that Soundness Suffices cannot

count begging the question as a distinct fallacy it is clear that she will have some rational pressure

to reject Soundness Suffices. That some other, more hard-core and perhaps entirely hypothetical

error theorist could rationally bite-the-bullet seems irrelevant to what is rational for her to think.

Ex hypothesi, what it is rational for us to believe is a function of our own prior beliefs, not the prior

beliefs of hypothetical persons with exaggerated versions of our commitments.

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1.8 Conclusion

I would like to close by reflecting on why it is important that our argumentative practices

preserve a sense of “successful argument” wherein an argument can succeed to some degree even

if it is unsound.92 In criticizing Soundness Suffices I have been using a methodology which is

pragmatic in spirit. The problem with Soundness Suffices is not that the properties in the world it

identifies—sound arguments, objective correlations---do not exist. Nor is the problem that

Soundness Suffices offers a poor analysis of our argumentative practices (after all, Soundness

Suffices is probably an explicitly revisionary view and so does not aim at descriptive adequacy).

Rather, the problem stems from the fact that arguments play various roles in our lives. And not

just any property is well suited to play any role. In philosophy, we regulate our beliefs via

arguments (in both the logical and the dialectical senses of “arguments”). Even defenses of

metanormative error theory proceed via arguments and ever-expanding dialectics. One role

arguments play in our practice rightly is that of tools to aid us in our pursuit of truth. Thus, it may

seem we can make sense of argumentation on behalf of MNE by focusing solely on the goal of

truth. That is the approach taken by Soundness Suffices.

However, there are additional roles that arguments play in our inquiry into the truth. The

properties offered by Soundness Suffices—truth and soundness—are poorly suited to serve

the dialectical, inferential and methodological roles that arguments play in philosophy. As the

problem with question begging arguments shows, a single-minded devotion to soundness would

push our practices in the direction of things which we would now consider intellectual vice (e.g.

“So my argument is question begging? What of it?”). In addition, methodologically, we simply

92
Which is compatible with the point made in the section on the technology of truth-seeking that the ultimate
justification of our argumentative practices is still that they are conducive to the end of true belief.
 72

must be concerned with what makes sense from our own perspective, i.e. of what it is rational to

believe (in one important sense of rationality).

The preceding considerations show that argumentative success is partially constituted by

success relative to normative ideals like rationality. However, it is yet possible that argumentative

success is a matter of success relative to norms that lack normative authority. By analogy, it may

be true that we cannot make sense of athletic success without appeal to normative considerations

in some sense. It hardly follows that the rules of football possess normative authority to any degree

whatsoever.

I argue against the Weakly Normative Response in another paper. Looking ahead, the main

problem with it is that the problem of norm conflict is real. There is real disagreement over what

standards we should use for evaluating arguments. While perhaps more limited than disagreement

over morality, disagreement over argumentative norms generates a practical problem of what

norms to use. Error theorists like Stan Husi recognize the existence of this problem, but argue that

there are ways to resolve it that are consistent with MNE.93 Contra Husi, I argue that any resolution

would actually be an account of normative authority. Such accounts may be relativistic, but

relativism about authority is not error theory about authority.

93
See his discussion of the genuine importance and inescapability of deliberative questions about what to do and what
to believe in (Husi, 2011).
 73

CHAPTER TWO: HOW SOUNDNESS SUFFICES UNDERMINES GENEALOGICAL

DEBUNKING ARGUMENTS

2.1 Introduction

Soundness Suffices maintains that an argument succeeds to the degree that it shows its

conclusion is objectively probable. For Soundness Suffices, the paradigm case of a completely

successfully argument is a sound argument (hence the name). For Soundness Suffices, arguments

which do not show their conclusion are objectively probable are failures, even if these arguments

would be counted as successful by norms of rationality or such. While this complete abandonment

of normative notions defends error theory from the charge of incoherence, I think it thereby

undersells the probative value error theorists correctly attach to their own arguments. In this paper,

I argue that Soundness Suffices undersells the plausibility of genealogical debunking arguments,

which aim to show belief that P is unjustified because said belief arose as the result of an

epistemically deficient causal mechanism.

To show the tension between Soundness Suffices and debunking arguments, I focus on

what I call epistemic miracles. In an epistemic miracle, we are reliably tracking the truth about a

domain, but basically because we got lucky. For example, suppose we are reliably tracking

authoritatively normative facts, but this is because it just so happens that human evolutionary

history uniquely favors the formation of true normative beliefs. We are, as proponents of

genealogical debunking arguments would say, the beneficiaries of a great cosmic coincidence.

Because of this cosmic coincidence, we actually have a great wealth of sound arguments with

normative conclusions. Because of Soundness Suffices’ exclusive focus on truth as the criterion

of argumentative success, these arguments succeed whereas the arguments of error theorists living

in the epistemic miracle world fail. This anti-skeptical conclusion comes too easily. Debunking
 74

arguments—in ethics and beyond—are much discussed because they are present powerful cases

for skepticism. This case may be weaker if in fact genealogical debunking arguments are unsound,

but this does not mean unsound debunking arguments completely fail to support their conclusion.

To retain this insight, error theorists cannot coherently accept Soundness Suffices. Below, I present

a two premise formalization of this argument. The rest of the paper then defends the two core

premises.

Core Argument:

P1.) If debunking arguments are ever successful arguments, then they are still somewhat successful
in actual epistemic miracle worlds.
P2.) If Soundness Suffices is adequately motivated, then given Soundness Suffices, debunking
arguments are not at all successful in actual epistemic miracle worlds.
C1.) Therefore, either Soundness Suffices is unmotivated, or debunking arguments are never
successful arguments.

According to P1, if genealogical debunking arguments are ever successful arguments, then

they are still somewhat successful in actual epistemic miracle worlds. To understand this claim,

we need to understand genealogical debunking arguments, and epistemic miracle worlds.

Consequently, I dedicate a section to explaining each. Once debunking arguments and miracle

worlds are explained, I will argue for the conditional P1. A latter section defends P2.

2.1.1 Premise 1 background: genealogical debunking arguments

Genealogical debunking arguments purport to undermine a belief by appeal to its etiology

in epistemically dubious sources. Genealogical debunking arguments play a critical role in many

defenses of error theory, but the general debunking strategy is ubiquitous in academic and non-

academic life. A lawyer who defends her client by arguing that the prosecution’s key witness

was bribed to lie offers a debunking argument to jurors who accepted the client’s guilt on the

basis of the eyewitness’ testimony.

 75

Guy Kahane provides the following helpful, generic schema for generating debunking

arguments:

“Causal Premise: S’s belief that P is explained by X.

Epistemic Premise: X is an off-track process.

Therefore, S’s belief that P is unjustified.” (Kahane, 2011)

Using the earlier lawyer example, we can plug in a token juror for S, and their belief in the

defendant’s guilt for P. Suppose this belief was explained by their accepting the eyewitness’

testimony. Presumably, basing belief on bribed, lying testimony is an “off-track” process.

Consequently, by showing that the eyewitness in question lied, the lawyer shows their belief was

the product of an off-track process, and is thereby unjustified.

Kahane’s schema can be further developed and refined in various ways, but there are

several features that any plausible debunking argument will share. For one, X’s causal influence

on S’s belief that P must be overwhelming, sufficient to crowd out the influence of virtuous

epistemic processes. After all, a complete causal explanation of any of our beliefs will cite some

factors that are irrelevant or even contrary to its epistemic merits (Kahane, 2011). A complete

causal explanation for, say, why I believe Guy Kahane has written about evolutionary debunking

will reference my ASUS monitor. But facts about what kind of monitor I read a paper on are

generally irrelevant to the merits of my beliefs about its authorship.

Moving on, any plausible debunking argument will claim the relevant etiology is

epistemically deficient in some respect. But there are importantly different kinds of epistemic

defects that would be debunkers have appealed to, and Kahane’s schema is neutral on how

precisely to understand an off-track process. One prominent way to develop it is in terms of

reliability, where a reliable process is one that tends to produce true beliefs more often than not in
 76

a given environment. Given this, an off-track process, would be one that tends to generate false

beliefs in the same, relevant environment (Kahane, 2011).

In the current metaethics literature, the most discussed version of the debunking argument

appeals to the influence of evolution on evaluative judgment. The evolutionary debunking

argument begins from the causal premise that human psychology has certain evolved tendencies

and biases, and that these include propensities to make certain kinds of normative judgments

instead of others. This causal claim is at least as old as Darwin, who famously opined that humans

who had evolved under the evolutionary pressures of bees would “…think it a sacred duty [for

unmarried females] to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters;

and on one would think of interfering” (Darwin, 1888).

The would-be evolutionary debunker argues that evolution’s influence on our capacities

for making normative judgments renders them off-track. After all, while evolution is in one sense

blind, what it primarily selects for—fitness—is not random. Some traits enhance fitness in a given

environment in virtue of facts about them. Our beliefs and judgments can enhance or diminish our

fitness as surely as our physical capacities; creatures that routinely form false beliefs about the

riskiness of a predator are not long for this world. But fitness enhancing beliefs need not be true.94

Some normative judgments offer obvious fitness benefit; for example, the belief that we should be

especially concerned with the care of our children. Evolution would select for tendencies to make

such fitness enhancing normative judgments, even if they are false.

This would not be so bad if fitness enhancing normative judgments also tended to be

correct. However, it is unclear whether we are entitled to believe there is what Sharon Street calls

94
Indeed, there is a plausible case for thinking some kinds of false beliefs may be systematically adaptive, such that
false beliefs of the relevant kind tend to be more fit than true beliefs. For example, a bias toward seeing one’s sexual
partner and children as “better-than-average” might be evolutionarily useful insofar as it promotes successful child
rearing (McKay & Dennett, 2009).
 77

an “adaptive link” between normative truth and fitness such that the two are reliably correlated

because true normative beliefs tend to enhance fitness (Street, 2006). The space of logically

possible normative truths seems vast; it is coherent to think our prime moral duty is to paint

ourselves blue. To defend the existence of an adaptive link between normative truth and fitness,

we would need some way to sort normative truth from falsehood, then determine whether fitness

correlates well with truth. Yet our methods for doing this seem to rely ultimately on our capacities

for normative judgment. Since the accuracy of those capacities is the very thing at issue, it is hard

to see how their vindication of an adaptive link would provide much epistemic comfort.95

Of course, even if we cannot defend the existence of an adaptive link in a non-question

begging way, one might exist. It is possible that we evolved in such a way that we just happened

to be reliably tracking normative truth. However, for humans to have evolved in just the right way

to track normative belief would thus seem to be a remarkable “cosmic coincidence,” as Matt Bedke

puts the point (Bedke, 2009) Generally, we should doubt we are the beneficiaries of such cosmic

coincidences. So, our normative biases probably are not the result of such a cosmic coincidence.

Thus, the final conclusion seems to be a rather thoroughgoing normative skepticism: our normative

beliefs are unjustified, not knowledge or are otherwise epistemically dubious.96

The conclusion of the evolutionary debunking argument depends on the details of its

development. Some error theorists have argued that debunking supports not just a skeptical denial

95
This passage’s argument comes primarily from Sharon Street’s presentation of the evolutionary debunking
argument in (Street, 2006)
96
Though note different debunkers draw different metaethical conclusions. Street argues that debunking is conditional
on realism about normativity. Bedke’s target in his paper is the even more narrow view that normative properties are
non-natural, sui generis and causally impotent. I am more concerned with the error theoretic use of debunking
arguments, as championed by philosophers like Jonas Olson (Olson, 2014) and Richard Joyce, though note Joyce’s
error theory only extends to morality (Joyce, 2007). Further, some theorists have argued that evolutionary debunking
arguments are stronger against some normative beliefs than others. The most prominent example of this strategy comes
from Peter Singer and Joshua Greene, who argue that evolution debunks deontology, but that Utilitarianism remains
largely unscathed (Greene, 2008). For a critical discussion of such “targeted debunking arguments” see (Kahane,
2011).
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of justified normative belief and knowledge, but the error theoretic denial of normative truth, itself.

For others, the debunking argument plays a more defensive role, say by undermining the epistemic

value of appeals to our deepest normative convictions. In either case, we are right to think that the

debunking argument plays a prominent, often vital role in the modern case for error theory. Given

this prominence, views of argumentation that would undermine debunking arguments stand in

tension with modern defenses of the error theory.

2.1.2 Premise 1 background: epistemic miracles

Matt Bedke’s “cosmic coincidence” framing of the debunking argument is memorable and

powerful. It is seems hard to defend the claim that humans evolved in just the right way to reliably

track normative truth, especially if such truth would be mind-independent. Yet there is nothing

incoherent about our having evolved in just the right way to be reliable normative judges. Logical

possibility allows for the existence of what we might call epistemic miracles.

As I stipulatively define the term, an epistemic miracle is a state of affairs wherein a being

or set of beings are objectively reliable at forming true beliefs about a given subject matter, but

their possession of this reliable faculty is a matter of luck. In this section, I will briefly expand on

the concept of an epistemic miracle. The next section will then show how epistemic miracles, when

conjoined with Soundness Suffices, undermine the theoretical appeal of debunking arguments.

To lead with a fictional example of an epistemic miracle, consider the plot of the movie

Back to the Future Part Two. The film’s central conflict unfolds when the villainous character of

Biff Tannen happens upon an almanac from the future. Using this future information, Biff accrues

vast wealth by placing accurate bets on sporting events. The very existence of the time-travel

technology required for this event to have happened is miraculous. And that (fictional) events

unfurled in the right way for Biff to happen upon it was also a matter of luck; Biff had not been
 79

searching for the almanac. Thus, Biff’s possession of reliable means of forming beliefs about

future sporting events is a plausible example of an epistemic miracle in my sense.

For my purposes, we can get by with a loose understanding of what constitutes an epistemic

faculty. Defined in terms of its role, an epistemic faculty is whatever processes is used by a being

to generate beliefs and other belief like states (e.g. the attitude of acceptance). Processes may or

may not be limited to internal psychological and physiological processes. Whatever internal

changes cause me to believe I am looking at a monitor as I type this paper plausibly constitute an

epistemic faculty (visual perception). But we can also treat our use of external devices, like Biff’s

consulting his almanac, as a process for forming beliefs. If one wants to insist on construing

epistemic faculties more precisely, I would simply refer them to the conceptions of our faculties

for making normative judgments at play in debunking arguments. Because I am arguing that

Soundness Suffices undermines said debunking arguments, it is ultimately their conception of

epistemic faculties that are relevant to my own arguments.

We typically think that there are explanations for how we came to have this or that

epistemic faculty. Evolutionary debunking arguments are predicated on the idea that our faculty

for forming normative judgments is explained by evolution. The details of these explanations

usually point to things like kin selection favoring altruism. 97 It is critical to understand that a

faculty can be epistemically miraculous even if the general existence of that faculty is not

miraculous. What makes an individual’s possession of an epistemic faculty miraculous is that her

possession of a reliable faculty, as opposed to an unreliable faculty is a matter of luck. Thus, while

97
Kin selection occurs when an individual organism has a trait that boosts the fitness of its genetic kin. Kin selection
can favor traits that are maladaptive to an individual organism, provided their individual fitness sacrifice redounds to
a plurality of kin. For example, a genetic disposition toward altruism may be costly to me, but if it makes my whole
community better-off, altruism could be a winning evolutionary strategy. Debunkers need not rely on a specific
evolutionary mechanism. Richard Joyce, for example, discusses kin selection, but maintains that all he needs is the
claim that evolution has biased our normative judgments by some mechanism. (Joyce, 2007)
 80

evolution may make it non-miraculous that we have a faculty for forming normative judgments at

all, the debunking argument is largely predicated on the idea that it would be a matter of luck for

us to have evolved in the right way to be tracking normative truths.

It is important to understand that the miraculous element I am interested in lies in the

explanation for why a person has a reliable faculty in the first place. This makes the epistemic

miracles I am interested in different from typical cases of epistemic luck. In familiar cases of

epistemic luck, a person forms a token true belief through an unreliable process. Guesses are

usually wrong, and so Ted’s guess is a lucky guess if he happened to be right. A person who

accepts the testimony of a known liar is lucky when it turns out the liar had a false belief about the

matter and accidentally told the truth. Historically, epistemologists have agreed that the

beneficiaries of these kinds of epistemic luck fail to possess knowledge, largely because the

faculties in question are unreliable. Of course, in one regard it is no miracle that a person who

forms a belief through a generally reliable faculty gets the right answer. Even so, it can be

miraculous that a person has such a faculty in the first place.

Now, it is possible that there are interesting variations of my argument that can be

developed by focusing on token miraculously lucky beliefs. But error theoretic debunking

arguments are usually aimed at faculties for forming beliefs, and so miraculously reliable faculties

are the right object of concern for my argument.

To close this section, I want to develop a more concrete epistemic miracle world case, one

that is especially relevant given the evolutionary debunking argument in metaethics. While I think

my arguments generalize to other epistemic miracle cases with some modification, most of them

will reference this specific case. With this in mind, here is the case:

Actual Coincidence: as a matter of fact, humans are highly reliable at forming true
judgments about authoritative normative reasons. However, the explanation for our
 81

reliability is that we got lucky. As it turns out, humans evolved under the precise conditions
that are uniquely conductive to forming reliably true normative beliefs. Had humans
evolved under even slightly different conditions, we would be much less reliable than we
in fact are. Finally, suppose that we encounter many non-human aliens with whom we have
fundamental disagreements on normative matters. Because these aliens evolved under
conditions that were nothing like the uniquely truth-conducive human evolutionary
conditions, they are all, systematically unreliable normative judges.

Variations on this case are possible, and I encourage my reader to add small variations if

they think doing so preserves the deeper points my later arguments are getting at. For example,

maybe you object to the case because you think our evolving under uniquely right conditions

means it is in the relevant sense not a matter of luck that we are reliable. In that case, modify the

case so that on your view we do possess reliable faculties for making judgments about authoritative

normative reasons, but as a matter of luck. Amendments of this kind are friendly amendments,

since I think epistemic miraclehood is what drives my later arguments, not the particulars about

evolution. Perhaps you could even stipulate that it is a brute, utterly inexplicable fact that humans

are reliable. Certainly, miracles are often thought of as events that lack for explanation, so that

could fit, if it preserves or even emphasizes the element of luck.

Other kinds of embellishments could be made. For example, it is sometimes thought that

debunking arguments are at their most forceful against realist views of normativity, ones on which

authoritatively normative reasons are mind-independent features of the world. If the case would

be rendered more miraculous by assuming realism, by all means assume we are reliably tracking

realistically construed authoritative normative reasons. I think this would preserve the primary

point of my later arguments, so it is also a friendly amendment. 98 You could even stipulate that

98
Though I do not view my larger project as a defense of realism. I argue that error theory cannot coherently be
defended, and this provides us reason to maintain that there are authoritative normative reasons. But some anti-realist
views maintain that there are authoritative normative reasons. I do not mean to argue against these views.
 82

authoritative normative reasons are sui generis, non-natural features of the world, roughly, ones

that cannot be reduced to any of the properties studied by the natural sciences.

2.1.3 Defense of P1: why genealogical debunking arguments are still of some argumentative

merit in epistemic miracle worlds

According to P1, if genealogical debunking arguments are ever successful arguments, then

they are still somewhat successful in actual epistemic miracle worlds. To begin the defense, note

that P1 does not stipulate that argumentative success depends on more than objective truth-

tracking. I am neither begging the question against Soundness Suffices, nor rendering my main

argument otiose by defending P1. Rather, the idea is that we all agree that some arguments are

more successful than others (though we may disagree about what explains this fact), and that even

error theorists would be more coherent insofar as they regarded debunking arguments as somewhat

successful in epistemic miracle worlds. There are two general kinds of reasons I give in defense

of P1: that the empirically tractable features of epistemic miracle worlds also support skepticism,

and that epistemic humility commits the error theorist (and probably others, too) to P1.

P1: the empirically tractable features of epistemic miracle worlds like Actual Coincidence also

support skepticism.

To begin, reflect briefly on the non-contentious empirically tractable differences between

a world like our own and the world of Actual Coincidence. The only such difference seems to be

that we have encountered space aliens with whom we have intractable, fundamental normative

disagreements. Evidence of such disagreement would heighten the worry that it could only be

through mere luck that humans (or any other species) are tracking the actual normative facts. But

this is a difference that should make the overall case for normative skepticism stronger, not weaker.

And, of course, if the debunking argument is in some respects more plausible in Actual
 83

Coincidence than it is in our world, it is impossible that it succeeds in our world but completely

fails in Actual Coincidence.

The first way in which the disagreement should strengthen the overall case for normative

skepticism is by bolstering the appeal of the debunking argument, itself. It could do this by

undermining the force of some responses to the debunking argument. In particular, consider David

Enoch’s contention that, far from debunking, evolution actually gives us a compelling explanation

for the reliability of our normative judgment. Enoch observes that the very evolutionary process

which debunkers appeal to would predictably favor a disposition to form normative beliefs like

“survival is good.” If in fact survival is good, then evolution itself makes it no miracle that we

have at least one true normative belief: survival is good. Normative facts explain the goodness of

survival; biology explains why we would have come to believe survival is good.99

Enoch’s strategy depends on the idea that evolution, plus the selective pressures imposed

by our environment, imposes significant constraints on the kinds of normative biases we could

have evolved with. Very plausibly, there are some such restrictions. As Enoch notes, a species

whose members evolved a disposition to judge their own survival to be a positively bad thing, one

that should be snuffed out, would not last that long. However, the exact range of possible fitness

enhancing views is unclear. Beings on other worlds would be subject to radically different selective

pressures than humans have faced. Physical constants may ensure some shared broad strokes in

the kinds of selective pressures aliens face (e.g. maybe every physically possible organism needs

to take in energy in some way). Even so, contact with aliens who have radically different

99
This argument is presented in Enoch’s Taking Morality Seriously (Enoch, 2011). Note this explanation does not
require evolution to directly “track” or “care about” facts about goodness. For Enoch, normative facts are causally
inert, non-natural properties of a kind that evolution does not track. Evolution definitely does not directly select for an
ability to track normative truth. The point, rather, is that there is a kind of “pre-established harmony” between the
kinds of traits that are fitness enhancing and normative truth. Given this harmony, we have an explanation for why
evolution favors reliable normative judgment, but can retain our standard accounts of evolution.
 84

fundamental normative beliefs provides us with empirical evidence that, at least at the level of the

whole of the universe, evolutionary pressures are not so constant as to favor convergence on a core

set of true fundamental normative beliefs. Consequently, such contact provides empirical evidence

that humans (or members of any other species) would have to have been the beneficiaries of

massive epistemic luck in order to have evolved under truth-conducive selective pressures whereas

the majority of other species did not. Absent independent evidence that humans, rather than

Klingons or some other species who disagree with us, are the beneficiaries of this luck, the

skeptical conclusion seems to return.100 Maybe someone won the normative evolutionary lottery,

but why think it is us?

Fundamental interspecies normative disagreement would also predictably generate further

sympathy for other, non-debunking skeptical arguments, e.g. arguments from disagreement.

Arguments from disagreement infer normative skepticism from fundamental normative

disagreement, itself. Disagreement with even more radically distinct—alien in the strongest

sense—cultures would provide additional empirical support for the existence of fundamental

normative disagreement. In that way, they would bolster the existing arguments from

disagreement.

Thus, the only clear, empirical differences between our world and the world of Actual

Coincidence are differences that should increase the theoretical appeal of debunking arguments

and skepticism more generally. But if debunking arguments are in some ways more plausible in

Actual Coincidence than they are in our world, it is logically impossible for them to succeed in our

100
Though, as will become important later, I do not think this argument succeeds in debunking belief if epistemic
justification merely requires us to actually be reliably tracking the truth. After all, we can be reliable even if we could
not give non-question begging evidence of this reliability to skeptics.
 85

world, but to completely fail in Actual Coincidence.101 Therefore, if debunking arguments are at

all successful in our world, they are still at least somewhat successful in epistemic miracle worlds

like Actual Coincidence, vindicating P1.

2.1.3.1 P1 and epistemic humility

There is a second, internal reason why committed error theorists would accept P1:

epistemic humility. A committed error theorist, here, is a particular kind of person. In brief, she is

the kind of theoretically serious scholar who endorses error theory because she is familiar with

prominent arguments both for and against error theory, and judges the former to be stronger. All

the same, because she knows metaethics is hard, she is open to reassessing her commitment to

error theory in light of objections. The real world enjoys the company of many such committed

error theorists, including Jonas Olson, Bart Streumer and Stan Husi.

Committed error theorists like the aforesaid scholars do not maintain that the evidence

favoring their view is so decisive as to favor absolute certainty in the truth of error theory. Decisive

evidence in metaethics is hard to come by, and the committed error theorist is cognizant of this

fact. So, she grants that there is some (epistemic) chance that there are authoritative normative

reasons, and that we know what some of them are.

Indeed, it seems that the committed error theorist will grant some positive epistemic

chance, however minute, to the possibility that she we have normative knowledge because we live

in an epistemic miracle world. 102 If she does, her arguments for error theory—including her

debunking arguments—are unsound. But it seems impossible that the actual fact that we live in an

101
Note this is consistent with their lack of soundness in Actual Coincidence meaning that, on balance, debunking
arguments are still all-things-considered less successful in Actual Coincidence than they are in our world
102
This might require certain epistemic views to be true, as well. For example, it might require actual reliability to
suffice for justification. Even so, committed error theorists presumably give a non-zero chance to that view of
epistemic justification. Moreover, later in this paper, I argue that Soundness Suffices generates views of epistemic
justification that undermine debunking arguments.
 86

epistemic miracle world would, on its own lead the error theorist to abandon her view. After all,

she would still typically want to have non-question begging reasons for her thinking her arguments

are unsound. And the mere fact that humans are epistemically lucky does not provide that. So,

what in fact the committed error theorist wants from an argument is for more than it to happen to

be unsound.

In another paper, I have argued that this line of argument leads rather directly to the

conclusion that Soundness Suffices is inconsistent with error theory. Here, I use it only to support

the weaker point that the committed error theorist would in fact think debunking arguments debunk

in Actual Coincidence, and she would still think this is explained by her following the strongest

arguments where they lead. So, by her own lights, it seems like she is committed to thinking

debunking arguments are not complete theoretical failures merely because they happen to be

unsound in Actual Coincidence.

2.1.4 Premise Two: if Soundness Suffices is adequately motivated, then given Soundness Suffices,

debunking arguments are not at all successful in actual epistemic miracle worlds

I will discuss the antecedent about whether or not Soundness Suffices is adequately

motivated later. For now, recall that Soundness Suffices is the view that an argument succeeds to

the degree that it shows its conclusion is objectively probable. In this section I argue that this view

of argumentative success supports the conclusion that debunking arguments are unsound in actual

epistemic miracle worlds like Actual Coincidence. On its own, I think this is an unwelcome result,

one that would give any of us pause at accepting truth as the sole criterion for argumentative

success. In conjunction with Premise One, it has the disastrous, completely unacceptable

implication that debunking arguments are never successful arguments.

 87

We should begin with an overview of what the defense of P2 requires, and an honest

assessment of one difficulty facing that defense. Recall that debunking arguments move from a

claim about the etiology of a given belief or set of beliefs to the conclusion that said belief or set

of beliefs are unjustified, not known to be true or are otherwise epistemically suspect. 103So, to

support P2 it must be shown that Soundness Suffices leads to the view that we do possess

justification or knowledge in epistemic miracle worlds, contra the relevant debunking argument.

Only that would we arrive at a tension between Soundness Suffices and epistemic debunking

arguments.104

It must be admitted at this juncture that Soundness Suffices is first-and-foremost a view

about the success conditions for arguments when they are used in the human activity of

argumentation. It is neither an account of epistemic justification, nor of the conditions for

knowledge. For this reason, the defense of P2 is non-trivial. If Soundness Suffices did maintain

that one is epistemically justified in believing that P just when one has a sound argument with the

conclusion P, the defense of P2 would be trivial. After all, in Actual Coincidence any true

normative belief P can be used as the ground for a trivial but sound argument with the conclusion

that P. And so it follows that people in Actual Coincidence have a lot of justified normative

103
Some debunking arguments are taken to ultimately support non-epistemic conclusions. But most of these kinds of
arguments first support an epistemic claim, then use additional premises to arrive at a non-epistemic conclusion. For
example, Sharon Street takes her evolutionary debunking argument to ultimately support the view that moral realism
is false. However, the immediate conclusion of Street’s debunking argument is just that moral realism leads to moral
skepticism. Street then takes the falsity of moral skepticism as a distinct premise which she uses to conclude that moral
realism is false (Street, 2006).

I will not discuss debunking arguments with non-epistemic conclusions for two reasons. First, many of them first
argue for an epistemic conclusion, as seen in the example of Street’s argument against realism. And what I do say on
the tension between Soundness Suffices and debunking arguments applies to these arguments at their intermediate,
narrowly epistemic conclusion. Second, the relevant error theoretic, non-epistemic debunking arguments would have
as their conclusion “error theory is true.” And error theory is very clearly false in Actual Coincidence. Not much more
needs to be said to show that Soundness Suffices entails that that debunking argument fails in Actual Coincidence.
104
Unless, of course, the debunking argument is supposed to show that someone’s argument fails qua argument. But,
at least in metaethics, most debunking arguments are aimed at epistemic justification and knowledge.
 88

beliefs. 105 Thus, the debunking argument is unsound in Actual Coincidence. Thus, given

Soundness Suffices, it would follow that debunking arguments fail in epistemic miracle worlds

like Actual Coincidence.

But things are not that simple. Because Soundness Suffices is first-and-foremost a view

about argumentative success, it must be shown by further argument that Soundness Suffices also

leads to the view that we possess epistemic justification in epistemic miracle worlds. Or, at least,

that it leads to this view given broader theoretical commitments required to defend error theory,

since error theory is the view I am ultimately assessing.

One way in which Soundness Suffices could undermine debunking arguments in epistemic

miracle worlds is if it turned out that epistemic justification consists in being justified by successful

arguments. Given the conjunction of Soundness Suffices and such a view, all one would need for

justified normative belief and normative knowledge is to have sound arguments with normative

conclusions. People in Actual Coincidence have plenty of those. They are otherwise like us, so

they engage in argumentation about normative matters. And they are reliable normative judges, so

many of their arguments on normative matters are sound. Therefore, if epistemic justification

consists in being able to justify one’s views with sound arguments, they have a lot of justified

normative belief.

105
Some statements of the debunking argument charge that we lack justified moral belief and knowledge precisely
because our normative faculties are unreliable. For a possible example, see Benjamin Fraser’s statement of the
debunking argument. Fraser concludes that “There is reason to think our moral faculty is actually unreliable, and hence
to think that its outputs—our moral beliefs—are unjustified” (Fraser, 2014, p. 472) If the ultimate conclusion of
Fraser’s debunking argument is that we lack justified moral belief, his argument is unsound in Actual Coincidence.
That said, it is possible what Fraser aims to debunk is the belief that we have justified moral belief. Hence, why he
says there is “reason” to think that we are unreliable, and that it is “….reasonable to conclude that our moral faculty
is actually unreliable” (Fraser, 2014, p. 472). I do not object to that statement of the debunking argument, since I take
it reasonableness is an at least formally normative concept of the kind that Soundness Suffices rejects. Indeed, it is
precisely because I think this kind of debunking argument is highly compelling that I object to Soundness Suffices.
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The view that epistemic justification consists in the possession of successful arguments for

one’s beliefs is not without its defenders. Lilian Bermejo-Luque, for example, identifies epistemic

justification with “…the output of good argumentation” (Bermejo-Luque, 2009, p. 300). Bermejo-

Luque’s view is a development of Stephen Toulmin’s classic work in argumentation theory. For

Toulmin and Bermejo-Luque, the concepts of knowledge and justification arise out of

interpersonal demands to defend our assertions (e.g. “how do you know that?!?”).106Given the

view that the concept of epistemic justification arises out of interpersonal demands in this way, it

is no surprise that meeting those demands suffices for having justified belief.

While I have an obvious sympathy for the view that one of our argumentative aims is

defending our claims to others, I do not want to take on board a general commitment to the

contentious claim that epistemic justification just is successful argumentative defense. Moreover,

the relevant dialectical question is whether Soundness Suffices is somehow committed to this kind

of view, and not whether in fact that is the right view of justification. And it is not clear to me that

Soundness Suffices is committed to the view that epistemic justification is justification by means

of successful arguments. Indeed, Soundness Suffices seems inconsistent with Toulmin’s claim that

argumentative success and epistemic justification jointly arise out of our practice of interpersonal

justification. Soundness Suffices eschews concerns for what it is rational to believe, and while I

believe this is to its detriment, in rejecting this it seems to reject Toulmin style interpersonal

questions about what beliefs we can justify to ourselves and others.

Instead, I think the way forward is to understand Soundness Suffices in the context of the

debate over error theory. I am, after all, concerned with the overall coherence of defending error

106
See (Bermejo-Luque, 2009, p. 299). An alternate, less general way of making sense of this element of
argumentation is by maintaining that there are distinct norms for epistemic warrant, and some of them are contextually
determined by whether or not one is making an assertion; see (Gerken, 2012)
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theory. Thus, error theory and the underlying rationale or motivation it engenders for endorsing

Soundness Suffices are also relevant to this paper, not just Soundness Suffices’ core thesis about

argumentative success.

With this in mind, the underlying rationale for error theorists to endorse Soundness Suffices

is to avoid the Incoherence Objection. While importantly different versions of the Incoherence

Objection exist, they share a common thrust: error theory is somehow in tension with philosophical

defenses offered on its behalf. While my version of the Incoherence Objection focuses on

argumentative success, antecedent statements of the problem from philosophers like Terence

Cuneo and Richard Rowland focused on epistemic concepts like epistemic justification and

knowledge. According to Cuneo and Rowland, we are epistemically justified in believing P just

when we have an (authoritative) normative reason to believe that P. It follows that we can neither

be justified in believing error theory, nor know it to be true.107The element of incoherence enters,

according to Cuneo and Rowland, since it seems obvious that error theorists take their views to be

epistemically justified.

It is telling that in response to this kind of objection, actual error theorists have frequently

responded by appeal to a kind of epistemic externalism, though one explicitly shorn of any

normative element.108 Epistemic externalism of all stripes maintains that some given epistemic

merit (e.g. justification or knowledge) obtains as a function of states that are in some sense external

to ourselves as epistemic agents. The paradigm case of externalism is process reliabilism about

107
See (Cuneo, 2007) and (Rowland, 2012).
108
I say “shorn of any normative element” because externalism as such does not forswear normative concepts, and
externalists can understand their view as offering an account of when something possesses some normative property.
For example, one could adopt a view according to which one possesses an authoritatively normative reason to believe
that P just when one’s belief that P was produced by awareness of some indicator evidence that shows P is objectively
probable. This view could be shorn of its normative element by denying that there are any such supervening normative
reasons, while retaining talk about when people are aware of indicator evidence that shows that P is objectively
probable.
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justification, according to which S’s belief that P is justified if and only if and because S formed

the belief that P on the basis of a process that tends to form true beliefs.109

Seemingly, we do not need normative concepts to explicate what it is for someone to form

a belief on the process of a locally reliable process. Thus, it comes as no surprise that error theorists

have embraced reliabilism and similar views in their replies to philosophers like Cuneo and

Rowland. Here, for example, is a representative passage from Olson:

“But [in response to Rowland’s argument that error theory denies there is epistemic
justification] one might argue that for a subject to be epistemically justified in holding some
belief, it suffices that the subject has some evidence that what she believes is true. Provided
that evidence is not an irreducibly normative notion…epistemic error theory does not imply
that no one knows anything. Alternatively, one might hold that for a subject to be
epistemically justified in holding some belief is simply for that belief to be reliably
caused…” (Olson, 2014, p. 160)

Olson endorses the view that something R is evidence that P when it is objectively

correlated with P, what Tom Kelly calls indicator evidence (Olson, 2014, p. 162). Smoke is

indicator evidence of fires in this sense, because there are strong correlations between the worldly

instantiation of fires and of smoke.110For another example, Koplik’s spots are indicator evidence

for measles for the same kind of reason.

109
Alvin Goldman gives the classic statement of process reliabilism in (Goldman, 1979). See the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on reliabilism, also authored by Goldman, for an overview of developments on the
theory (Goldman, 2009)
110
Elsewhere, Chris Cowie also relies on a distinction between evidence and (authoritative) normative reasons. That
said, Cowie does not explicitly conceive of evidence as indicator evidence. Instead, he seems to claim that it suffices
to defend the coherence of arguing for error theory that evidence does not reduce to (authoritative) normative reasons,
thus leaving the precise nature of evidential relations open. I think it is no foul on Cowie’s part to have avoided
providing a positive account of what he thinks evidence is in any particular paper. All the same, I do not think the
error theorist can rest content without offering some positive conception of evidence, at some point. A complete
worldview that contains error theory is only coherent insofar as it can make sense of all of its claims, including its
claims about evidence (e.g. the claim that the evidence favors error theory). And a purely negative conception of
evidence as not being authoritatively normative reasons simply does not have enough content to have determinate
facts about what the evidence favors. With this in mind, because Cowie claims error theory is true, not just that it is
rational to believe it is or something of that sort, indicator evidence may fit best with his overall view.
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Reliabilism and indicator evidence might well let the error theorist make sense of her

continued use of the concepts of epistemic justification and evidence. But when we conjoin

externalism about epistemic justification and knowledge with a similar externalist conception of

argumentative success—Soundness Suffices—we get P2’s claim that debunking arguments fail in

epistemic miracles like Actual Coincidence. After all, in Actual Coincidence humans have reliable

faculties for producing true normative beliefs in their native environment. Reliabilism maintains

that actual reliability is what counts for epistemic justification and knowledge, regardless of how

one came to have reliable faculties.111 Therefore, given reliabilism, they have justified, normative

beliefs and normative knowledge. Similarly, given the view that evidence is indicator evidence,

humans in Actual Coincidence have a lot of evidence for their normative beliefs. If epistemic

justification requires one to have evidence, it follows that humans in Actual Coincidence have a

lot of justified normative beliefs Thus, the debunking arguments are unsound in Actual

Coincidence. And, because Soundness Suffices counts unsound arguments as failures simpliciter,

it follows that debunking arguments are completely unsuccessful in Actual Coincidence.

One response to this is to reject reliabilism and indicator evidence while retaining

Soundness Suffices’ view that argumentative success consists solely in getting at the actual truth.

But I think this response is unmotivated given the broader theoretical terrain and the underlying

rationale for Soundness Suffices. This is true whether we construe Soundness Suffices as a

111
Somewhat infamously, reliabilism also entails that our reliable faculties for normative judgment are self-justifying
against skeptical critiques. Suppose a normative skeptic in Actual Coincidence asks for a demonstration that people
have reliable normative knowledge. In reply, a non-skeptical philosopher points to her many reliably formed normative
beliefs as evidence that her faculties are reliable. Because her faculties actually are reliable, this is an inductively
strong, cogent argument for the conclusion that her faculties are reliable. Given reliabilism, it follows that this
argument epistemically justifies the non-skeptic in rejecting skepticism. Of course, this whole argumentative strategy
is in an important regard circular. While the anti-skeptic’s argument is not logically circular because its conclusion
does not appear as one of its premises, it still relies on the very process it is trying to vindicate. This kind of circularity
is what William Alston calls epistemic circularity (Alston, 1986a), and it is a well-known feature of some forms of
epistemic externalism. For a defense of this kind of circularity in some contexts see (Alexander, 2008), (Bergmann,
2004) and (Sosa, 1999). For criticism see (Cohen, 2002) and (Fumerton, 1995).
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descriptive thesis about why we engage in argumentation (e.g. solely to get at the truth or

something else), or as a revisionary view that the error theorist adopts purely to escape tensions in

her views.

First, consider a descriptive reading of Soundness Suffices as the claim that objectively

getting at the truth is our sole, psychologically real argumentative aim. I submit that there is good

indirect evidence that truth is not our only argumentative goal, whereas there is more indirect

evidence for externalism as a descriptive view. By indirect evidence I mean evidence of evidence

or evidence of justified belief. The relevant indirect evidence comes from comparing the popularity

of Soundness Suffices to the popularity of externalism in epistemology. The state-of-play in a

discipline provides indirect evidence of the plausibility of a view insofar as scholars themselves

have formed their views on the basis of direct considerations for and against the relevant views.

While the state-of-play in philosophy provides nothing like the indirect evidence that scientific

consensus provides, it is implausible that it provides no indirect evidence at all.112

Reliabilism and other externalist views of knowledge and justification enjoy widespread

support in epistemology based on their own merits as descriptive, non-revisionary views of

justification and knowledge. Indeed, one of the few studies of the collective views of professional

philosophers suggests that externalism is the majority view in epistemology. 113 In contrast, the

dominant descriptive views of argumentative practice treat dialectical and persuasive elements of

112
After all, it is more accurate to say that philosophical consensus simply does not exist to the degree that it does in
the sciences, at least not on any other questions we regularly concern ourselves with. Though it is also fair to note this
last qualification blunts the point, since philosophers usually only concern ourselves with debating issues over which
we disagree.
113
David Bourget and David Chalmers found that 42.7% of all philosophers endorse externalism, significantly more
than the 26.4% who endorse the internalist view that epistemic justification depends solely upon states that are internal
to epistemic agents, such as whether their beliefs form a consistent set. Though it is worth noting that internalism
seems significantly more popular with specialists in epistemology, with 51.32% of epistemologists endorsing
internalism. (Bourget & Chalmers, 2014). Even so, my aim here is only to provide indirect evidence that externalism
is a plausibly view. Also note that endorsing externalism does not mean endorsing reliabilism. While reliabilism is the
typical example of an externalist view of justification, this does not mean it is now the dominant externalist view.
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argumentation as critical to argumentative practice. While there are views that emphasize the truth-

tracking element as partially constitutive of argumentative success, these views rarely maintain

that this is the sole criterion for argumentative success.114

Assuming the current literature on argumentation is on track, this suggests that Soundness

Suffices would simply fail as a descriptive account of people’s actual argumentative ends. And,

more importantly, it means that Soundness Suffices is less plausible as a descriptive thesis about

our actual argumentative ends than externalism is as a descriptive thesis about epistemic

justification and knowledge. In sum, there is little reason grounded in descriptive facts about our

epistemic and argumentative practices to accept Soundness Suffices but reject externalism about

epistemology. Even if there were adequate evidence to accept Soundness Suffices as a descriptive

thesis, there would be more evidence favoring externalism as a descriptive thesis.

Of course, Soundness Suffices is much more plausible as a revisionary view of the

argumentative ends than as a descriptive, psychological view. Error theorists can coherently grant

that our current argumentative practices assess arguments as more or less successful as a function

of things other than objectively getting at the truth. Their underlying rationale for adopting

Soundness Suffices is not primarily to provide an accurate account of what other people want from

what they call “a good argument.” Rather, the committed error theorist typically endorses

Soundness Suffices because it helps her make sense of her own argumentative practice.

114
I do not know of any surveys of views in argumentation theory that parallel the Bourget and Chalmers survey.
However, quality, up to date encyclopedia entries provide another means for assessing the kinds of views that are
taken seriously in a field. Similarly for handbooks and introductory anthologies. With this in mind, the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on informal logic baldly states that “Informal logic evaluates premises [in terms
of premise acceptability instead of truth] for many reasons,” and then goes on to summarize a battery of distinct
reasons from the literature (Groarke, 1996). Elsewhere, the recent Handbook of Argumentation Theory presents itself
as providing an “…up to date survey of the various theoretical contributions to the development of argumentation
theory for all scholars interested in argumentation, informal logic and rhetoric” (Van Eemeren et al., 2019). Tellingly,
the majority of included theoretical perspectives include several kinds of theories that include dialectical, rhetorical
and communicative elements of argumentation.
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More narrowly, Soundness Suffices is motivated by the worry that alternate conceptions

of argumentation and argumentative ends either cannot make sense of critical elements of her own

argumentative practice or cannot avoid a commitment to authoritative normativity. For example,

I have argued that the only other promising strategy for error theorists to make sense of their

argumentative practice fails. On this alternate approach, which I call Formality’s Fine,

argumentative success and failure are determined by success and failure relative to non-

authoritative norms. I maintain that Formality’s Fine faces an insoluble problem. Even error

theorists think success relative to some standards is more important in some sense than success

relative to others. However, plausible attempts to explain what this normative privileging even is

collapse into one or another account of normative authority, and are thus inconsistent with error

theory.

I submit that the primary motivation for Soundness Suffices as revisionary view is the sense

that Formality’s Fine fails, either because of something like the objection I have given to it, or for

some other reason. After all, in many respects Formality’s Fine is a more appealing view than

Soundness Suffices. This is because its core move does not impose any restrictions on the content

of the non-authoritative argumentative norms that the error theorist can appeal to. This gives the

error theorist a lot of resources for capturing the different ways in which arguments can succeed

or fail. For example, Soundness Suffices struggles to account for the fact that question begging

arguments are sometimes fallacious. Formality’s Fine lets us accommodate this fact by

maintaining that question begging arguments fail to make belief change rational. While

Formality’s Fine then goes on to deny that we have any authoritative reason to care about being

rational in this way, it at least offers an account on which question begging arguments are typically

fallacious.
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More generally, for any theoretical problem in argumentation theory that could be solved

by appeal to a norm in the formal sense, Formality’s Fine lets us appeal to that norm. Norms in the

formal sense are, we might say, extremely “cheap.” Any coherent norm is a norm in the formal

sense. This means Formality’s Fine may be able to accommodate kinds of problems facing

Soundness Suffices that neither I nor anyone else have even though of. And Formality’s Fine also

licenses some more particular views that can at least get extensional agreement with Soundness

Suffices on what arguments are successful. After all, it is not unreasonable to think of Soundness

Suffices as a special case of Formality’s Fine, one that is limited to the norm “arguments succeed

to the degree that they show their conclusion is objectively probable; they fail to the degree that

they do not.”115 Obviously, such a norm would be extensionally equivalent to Soundness Suffices

in terms of what arguments it treats as successful.

Because Formality’s Fine can at least match Soundness Suffices in extensional terms, and

can in some respects do better, it seems the otherwise superior view. Absent a decisive problem

with Formality’s Fine, Soundness Suffices is unmotivated for the committed error theorist. But all

might not be equal. As I noted earlier, Formality’s Fine struggles to avoid a commitment to

authoritative normativity. A commitment of that kind is strictly inconsistent with error theory, and

so would render Formality’s Fine completely unacceptable.

115
I remain neutral on whether Soundness Suffices is a special case of applying an argumentative norm. The difference
is supposed to be that Soundness Suffices can be explicated without appeal to any normative concepts, even formal,
non-authoritative normative concepts. Soundness Suffices maintains that argumentative success just is objective
probability raising. In contrast, the proposed norm that is extensionally equivalent to Soundness Suffices does not
identify argumentative success with objective probability raising. Rather, it maintains that some formal, non-
authoritative normative property obtains as a consequence of objective probability raising. Possibly, the distinction
collapses because Soundness Suffices is still a standard for argumentative success, and it might be thought that these
concepts cannot be explicated without appeal to formal, non-authoritative concepts. I remain neutral on this issue in
part because it only hurts error theory if Soundness Suffices collapses into a special case of Formality’s Fine. If that
happened, Soundness Suffices would inherit the problems with Formality’s Fine, and there would still be the problems
inherent in rejecting other norms for argumentative success. Indeed, if anything this might highlight the problem
Formality’s Fine has in explaining why some norms are normatively privileged.
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The prime theoretical appeal of Soundness Suffices is its austere focus on truth to the

exclusion of everything else. By eschewing even formal, non-authoritatively normative concepts,

Soundness Suffices ensures the maximal conceptual distance from authoritatively normative

concepts. And this seems like an advantage in responding to the Incoherence Objection.116Indeed,

while I have little direct evidence for this, I suspect an inchoate sense that a maximally austere,

truth centered view best avoids the Incoherence Objection explains the popularity of appeals to

externalism made by various error theorists in the literature.

To be clear, I do not necessarily mean to claim that Soundness Suffices is all-things-

considered a superior option for the error theorist. The point, rather, is that Soundness Suffices

would only be preferred to Formality’s Fine if a maximally austere focus on truth-tracking is

necessary to avoid the Incoherence Objection (or some other major theoretical issue). But if the

best response to the Incoherence Objection requires a view of argumentation that is maximally

austere in its narrow commitment to objective truth-tracking, presumably the best response to the

Incoherence Objection as it arises in the context of epistemic justification also requires such a

narrow commitment to objective truth-tracking! This goes doubly given the earlier argument for

thinking that reliabilism is more plausible as a descriptive view than Soundness Suffices is. This

is because more revisionary views require stronger rationales than less revisionary views. If the

case for Soundness Suffices is strong enough for the error theorist to revise her argumentative

practice in radical ways, it must also be strong enough to make the plausibly smaller revisions

required to internalize a commitment to a maximally austere, truth-tracking view about

justification, evidence and knowledge. And those austere, truth-tracking conceptions of

116
Indeed, my primary complaints against Soundness Suffices are that it fails to do justice to common ground on
which arguments succeed and which arguments fail. I do not charge that Soundness Suffices has problems that can
only be solved by appeal to authoritative normativity, except if Soundness Suffices is a special case of Formality’s
Fine.
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justification, evidence and knowledge undermine debunking arguments in epistemic miracle world

like Soundness Suffices. Therefore, to the degree that Soundness Suffices is well-motivated, it also

undermines debunking arguments in epistemic miracle worlds like Actual Coincidence; P2 is true.

2.2 Objections & Replies

Objection: the error theorist can still debunk other peoples’ views by their own lights.

Self-defeat worries arise for many kinds of radical philosophical skepticism. For example,

the global skeptic’s absolute denial of knowledge is often charged with incoherently maintaining

that we have knowledge of the premises of the skeptical argument. A classic reply is that the

skeptic is just trying to show that our everyday conceptions of knowledge and justification lead to

skepticism. The skeptic need not endorse those conceptions, herself. Indeed, she might deny that

she knows the premises of her own arguments. All she is doing is pointing out that other people

claim to know them, and this leads to a skeptical conclusion.

In much the same way, the error theorist may respond to me by maintaining that even if

she is committed to the conjunction of Soundness Suffices and reliabilism about justification, most

of us are not. Perhaps our standards for argumentative success and justification do not undermine

debunking arguments. If they do not, the error theorist might still be able to show that our

normative beliefs are debunked by our own lights.

In response, I do not here argue that our normative beliefs are not debunked by our own

lights. That would take us too far afield, as it would require assessing debunking arguments

themselves. In this paper, my goal is to assess the coherence of Soundness Suffices with the

theoretical power of debunking arguments.

Instead, I maintain that this move will not preserve the overall coherence of an error

theoretic position. The problem is relatively simple. This objection does nothing to defend
 99

Soundness Suffices from the charge that it undermines debunking arguments. All it amounts to is

a shift in the goal of debunking arguments. Perhaps it is a legitimate shift, but since the objection

itself does nothing to protect Soundness Suffices, we can proceed in responding to it under the

assumption that Soundness Suffices does have the implications I have said it has. In effect, this

objection bites-the-bullet, then says this is not so bad, because the real point of debunking is to

debunk the anti-skeptic’s views by her own lights.

So, this objection grants that debunking arguments fail to debunk by the lights of error

theorists committed to Soundness Suffices. Which means while the error theorist who accepts

Soundness Suffices can coherently think she has debunked other peoples’ normative beliefs by

their own lights, she cannot coherently think she has debunked any of her own normative beliefs

by her own nights. Or, at least, she can no longer think this after she has made any revisions to her

argumentative practices required by Soundness Suffices as a revisionary view.

In addition to being bizarre, this generates logical tensions with her endorsement of error

theory. After all, many error theorists report that they continue to make normative judgments.117

Even those who do not presumably do not think it is epistemically impossible that they made a

mistake in rejecting their pre-error theory normative judgments. Because error theory consigns the

error theorist’s own normative judgments to error, she needs some reason to discount them in order

to maintain a consistent view. Debunking arguments play a key, defensive role in explaining why

the error theorist rejects her own normative judgments instead of rejecting her error theory. 118 By

117
Remember that I am discussing global error theory about normative authority. As I argued in my first chapter, a lot
of our judgments seem to presuppose the existence of authoritative norms. Even if there are moral error theorists who
do not make moral judgments, I highly doubt there are global error theorists about authority who do not make any
judgments that presuppose authority. In this, I am in agreement with Bart Streumer. While Streumer is a global error
theorist about normative authority, he does not think it is fully possible to cease making judgments about authority
(Streumer, 2013). That said, I do disagree with Streumer on some specific points. Notably, I lean toward the view that
we can believe the error theory.
118
For example, see Jonas Olson’s use of debunking arguments as a defensive move in this way (Olson, 2014, pp.
139-148).
 100

biting-the-bullet and rejecting debunking arguments, the error theorist loses a key explanation for

her rejection of her own normative judgments.

Objection: on balance, processes for making normative judgments are highly unreliable in Actual

Coincidence. So, P2 is false.

Another objection picks-up with a point I made earlier. Earlier, I argued that debunking

arguments are in some ways more plausible in Actual Epistemic miracle than they are in our world.

In particular, I argued that our encounters with aliens with whom we have fundamental normative

disagreements provides evidence that evolution does not place many constraints on the kinds of

evolved normative biases that are possible. If evolution produces biases, but not in a consistent

fashion, the worry that we would have to be really lucky to evolve in just the right way to be biased

in the direction of truth is reinforced.

Moreover, as I originally setup Actual Coincidence, the aliens with whom we disagree are

largely wrong about normative matters. By granting this much, I seem to have set myself up for a

novel version of the debunking argument. According to this debunking argument, the vast majority

of processes for forming normative judgment in Actual Coincidence are unreliable, once we

remember to count the aliens’ normative judgments. That follows from my own stipulation that

we meet many aliens who are systematically wrong about normative matters. Therefore,

reliabilism does not entail that humans have justified normative beliefs and normative knowledge

in Actual Coincidence. It entails quite the opposite: mechanisms for forming normative beliefs are

highly unreliable in Actual Coincidence, and so skepticism returns. Premise two of my core

argument is false.

There are a lot of things wrong with the above argument. The first problem is that it requires

us to treat the highly distinct processes by which humans, Klingons, Ewoks and what have you as
 101

all one generic process: normative judgment. 119 But there is no clear reason to accept such a

ridiculously expansive conception of “belief forming mechanism.” If anything, there are a lot of

reasons to resist this expansive conception of “belief forming mechanism” in Actual Coincidence.

First, I think intuitively, this is just obviously too loose a conception of belief forming mechanism

to be useful or to track what we usually mean by a belief forming mechanism. But, beyond this,

there are a lot of theoretical reasons to construe belief forming mechanisms more narrowly, at the

level of species typical judgments or even narrow still. Because we disagree with the aliens, we

will be very interested in what makes their mechanisms for forming normative beliefs different

from ours. That kind of theoretical enterprise presupposes that we have distinct processes from the

aliens, as otherwise there is nothing to investigate. In addition, our mechanisms can be

distinguished by their highly distinct evolutionary histories and the distinct pressures that favored

different processes. For these reasons, we have a lot of independent theoretical interest in

construing our processes for making normative judgments as distinct from the aliens. In light of

that, when asking about the reliability of our belief forming mechanisms, our natural inclination is

to read this as meaning human mechanisms. So, construed, those are reliable and so confer justified

belief. The objection fails.

Another problem is that Actual Coincidence is just one particular epistemic miracle world.

Granted, I developed it for particular reasons, and one of those was to emphasize the element of

luck. But there are other possible epistemic miracle worlds, for example ones where humans

119
This problem is related to what is called the Generality Problem for reliabilism. The Generality Problem just is the
problem of explaining what the appropriate way of distinguishing belief forming mechanisms when assessing their
reliability. For a critical overview of the problem and various attempts to deal with it see (Feldman, 1998). One
additional thing to note is that, insofar as the Generality Problem is a kind of pragmatic or practical question, i.e. a
question about what level of generality we have authoritative reason to assess relative to, error theory cannot
coherently favor one view or another. So, by the error theorist’s own lights, we could be making no mistake if the
error theorist insists on assessing reliability at the extremely course level and we do not do so.
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reliably make normative judgments, but we are alone in the universe. This would be a world where

the debunking argument does not have the additional support that it gains in Actual Coincidence.

Even so, I think it would still be a bad result for the skeptic if debunking arguments do not work

in this world. After all, this world is closer to our own world, at least in the sense that we have

never met any space aliens. And debunkers generally mean to debunk belief in our world.

Finally, I do think that there is a version of the debunking argument that can be given in

Actual Coincidence and is powerful and worth taking seriously. However, I think what accounts

for this power, and how we need to frame it, is in terms of the concept of epistemic rationality.

Even those of us who are the lucky, reliable judgment forming beneficiaries of an epistemic

miracle would often be irrational to believe in our own luck. When we encounter aliens with whom

we fundamentally disagree, the fact of this luck comes front and center and might make it rational

to doubt our own faculties for forming normative beliefs. That is the kernel of truth that leads to a

plausible debunking argument in the world of Actual Coincidence. But Soundness Suffices rejects

appeal to even formally normative conceptions of rationality, so this construal of the debunking

argument is closed to it. Thus, when I argued that being in the world of Actual Coincidence should

increase the plausibility of debunking arguments, I meant this as a kind of data-point about the

appeal of debunking arguments. It turns out it is a data-point that Soundness Suffices cannot

adequately capture, which is the whole point of this paper: Soundness Suffices cannot do justice

to debunking arguments. But other views of argumentative success, ones that allow arguments to

succeed by showing what it is rational to believe, can more fully vindicate the appeal of debunking

arguments.
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2.3 Conclusion

I have argued for two conditionals. First: if debunking arguments are ever successful, then

they are at least somewhat successful in epistemic miracle worlds, wherein we are reliably tracking

the facts about a domain, but our possession of this reliable faculty is a matter of luck. Second,

that if Soundness Suffices is adequately motivated, then given Soundness Suffices, debunking

arguments are not at all successful in actual epistemic miracle worlds. Together, these entail that

Soundess Suffices is either unmotivated and would already be rejected, say in favor of Formality’s

Fine, or that debunking arguments are never successful.

Debunking arguments play a prominent role in modern defenses of error theory, meaning

committed error theorists in particular would be inclined to reject Soundness Suffices as

unacceptable for reasons internal to their view. But, even if debunking arguments played no

significant role in defenses of the error theory, there would still be decisive cause for committed

error theorists—and basically anyone else—to reject Soundness Suffices. As shown by my original

example of the lawyer who debunks the juror’s belief in their client’s guilt, debunking arguments

are an important part of daily intellectual life. Miracle world variants of these humdrum debunking

arguments could be developed, and would generate similar reasons. Debunking arguments are far

more widely accepted and plausible than Soundness Suffices. Thus, Soundness Suffices is

thoroughly unacceptable on account of its underselling the power of debunking arguments.

I have already suggested how to avoid this problem: grant that arguments can succeed in

virtue of satisfying normatively specifiable argumentative ends, e.g. arguments can succeed

partially in virtue of their showing what it is rational to believe. In this case, debunking arguments

can show that it is rational to abandon a given belief. Critically, while rationality is a normative

concept in at least the formal sense, it may not be normatively authoritative. Thus, I have not here
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shown that arguing for error theory is incoherent. That conclusion only follows given the additional

failure of Formality’s Fine, a conclusion I have argued for elsewhere.

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CHAPTER THREE: FORMALITY’S FINE AND THE TOO MANY NORMS PROBLEM

3.1 Formality’s Fine: another way to resist the Incoherence Objection

Before getting to the arguments, let us briefly review the dialectic. Metanormative error

theory denies the existence of authoritative normativity. This means that, according to the error

theory, there are no “oomphy” normative reasons, obligations, oughts, shoulds or anything of the

sort. By definition, the error theory is radically revisionary. It condemns vast swaths of our

everyday and theoretical judgments to massive systemic error. Thus, philosophers who endorse

the error theory generally only do so because they think they have one or more successful

arguments for their view. But, it seems like an argument cannot succeed as a piece of

argumentation if it cannot give anyone a normative reason to believe its conclusion. If this natural

view about the point of arguments is right, error theorists are committed to a view according to

which their own arguments must fail to achieve their argumentative goals. Thus, there is an

inevitable incoherence surrounding the entire project of arguing in defense of MNE.

Some error theorists attempt to dispel the air of incoherence by claiming that their sole

argumentative end is something non-normatively specifiable. Given the theoretical nature of

debates in metaethics, the best specific candidate non-normatively specifiable end is the production

of true belief. Given the singular end of true belief, a successful argument just is a sound argument

(Soundness Suffices).120 However, merely saying that such and so is our end does not make it true.

We must look at our actual argumentative practices and ask ourselves whether they look like the

practices of people who care only for the truth. When we do this, I think it becomes clear that,

even for those of us who are error theorists, soundness simply does not suffice.

120
Or inductively strong with only true premises, what is sometimes called a “cogent” argument. Though cogency is
also sometimes used to stand for an argument that is also dialectically effective.
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There are at least three significant problems with the exclusive focus on truth as the end of

argumentation. First, the exclusive focus on truth ignores the concern for the dialectical elements

of argumentation that even error theorists embrace in actual practice. Second, we cannot coherently

deny that an argument that passes our best tests for soundness succeeds in some important sense,

even if it is actually unsound. Consequently, soundness itself cannot be our sole criterion for

argumentative success. This methodological problem comes to a head with the third problem I

identify for Soundness Suffices: it fails to do justice to the theoretical importance of debunking

arguments.

The preceding observations suggest that argumentative success is partially a matter of

success relative to norms, not simply a matter of getting at the truth. Question begging arguments

fail because they generally cannot make it rational for a skeptic to accept their conclusion.

Methodological rules should be respected even when they lead us astray, because an instrumentally

rational agent goes with her best available practice. Debunking arguments can make it rational

to doubt this or that belief, even if they cannot intelligibly make it rational to doubt rationality,

itself.

Even if they concede the above points, error theorists are not out of the game, yet. One

important possibility remains open. Error theorists can coherently grant that argumentative success

is success relative to non-authoritative norms for rationality and argumentative success. Error

theory does not deny that there are norms. It denies that any norms possess normative authority.

This possible lacuna gives the error theorist another way to deny the claim that an argument cannot

be successful if it cannot give anyone an authoritative normative reason to accept its conclusion

(P2 of the core Incoherence Objection argument). On this second style of reply, a successful

argument is one that succeeds relative to non-authoritative standard for argument evaluation.
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Because the reply tries to make sense of argumentative success using only the formal feature of

being a standard or norm, I term this kind of reply Formality’s Fine. In the rest of this section, I

will develop Formality’s Fine in detail. Once that is done, I turn to the task of arguing that it, too,

fails.

Formality’s Fine does not entail a commitment to any particular norms or sets of norms for

argumentation. Rather, it provides a more fundamental explanation of what argumentative success

fundamentally is. On this account, argumentative success is fully grounded in success according

to non-authoritative norms or system of norms. Conversely, argumentative failure is fully

grounded in non-authoritative norms or systems of norms. As before, by a “norm” I mean a

coherent standard, something that has the formal feature of being a standard that the things in the

norm’s domain can satisfy more or less well. Failure relative to a given norm is a familiar

phenomenon. I, and many of my readers, frequently violate the standard imposed by the

Pythagorean prohibition on touching beans. Students who reject traditional norms for formal

debate still understand that their performances can succeed relative to those traditional standards.

The claim made by Formality’s Fine, then, is that the kind of argumentative success that matters

to us when we sincerely engage in argumentative activity can be fully captured by this familiar,

non-controversial notion of success according to non-authoritative norms.121

That said, Formality’s Fine opens the door for error theorists to appeal to any number of

more specific norms when they want to talk about a particular argument’s shortcomings (or

success). Thus, it seems like many of the problems that plagued Soundness Suffices can be

121
Or, rather, that any lingering elements of argumentative success that cannot be accommodated by non-normative
accounts can be captured by appeal to non-authoritative norms. I do think true belief is one of our argumentative ends,
and that is a non-normatively specifiable end. However, I make many mentions of argumentative success in this paper,
and replacing each of these with something like “elements of argumentative success that cannot be accounted for by
non-normative accounts” would be rather cumbersome.
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avoided. For illustration, consider an argumentative end like “to persuade people of our conclusion

while respecting norms against begging the question.” Given an argumentative end like this, it

seems like the error theorist can coherently maintain that question begging arguments are

unsuccessful. It is coherent for there to be a norm according to which question begging arguments

are unsuccessful, so there is such a norm. Relative to this norm, question begging arguments are

failures. Similar moves may help the error theorist account for the importance of methodological

rules for constructing and assessing arguments.

Of course, to say that question begging arguments fail according to a norm against begging

the question may seem rather unsatisfying or trivial. Social facts may help the preceding account

seem a bit more appealing to critics of the error theory. My criticism of Soundness Suffices made

much of the fact that philosophers and academics of all stripes treat question begging arguments

as in one way worse. I think that puts the point too gently. Very plausibly, there is a kind of social

norm in academia against giving question begging arguments. Criticizing an argument because it

begs the question is widely seen as appropriate, and a sensible kind of objection to make. Persons

who give flagrantly question begging arguments, or routinely beg the question, are apt to be

thought sub-par debaters. These facts provide a natural, error theory friendly way to bolster the

rather banal observation that question begging arguments fail relative to norms against begging

the question. Because the norm against question begging enjoys the status of being a social norm

that has currency with both error theorists and their interlocutors, the reply should have a great

deal of dialectical currency.

That said, we must not forget what the error theorist cannot say. She cannot coherently say

that the fact that the norm against begging the question enjoys this social support gives anyone a

real normative reason to avoid begging the question. From the point of view of error theory, social
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norms have precisely the same amount of normative significance that the most harebrained, absurd

sounding norms we can think up have: none at all. Social acceptance and enforcement of

dialectical norms may partially explain the psychological fact that question begging arguments are

unpopular. But social pressure is still never normative force on the error theoretic view. Nor does

Formality’s Fine have the resources to sustain the claim that the failure of question begging

arguments relative to some norms is an authoritative reason not to accept their conclusion.

In the current philosophical literature, I believe that few error theorists have appealed to

Formality’s Fine in its pure form. Most replies to the Incoherence Objection emphasize ideas that

are more at home with Soundness Suffices’ exclusive focus on truth as the end of argument. The

reason is not hard to see. Truth seems like the ur-norm of inquiry, even to those of us who are not

error theorists. Moreover, true belief is probably non-normatively specifiable. So, Soundness

Suffices seems like a very natural reply to give to the Incoherence Objection. In contrast,

Formality’s Fine contains no essential commitment to truth as the end of inquiry. While I actually

think this is a strength of the view, since it better allows it to capture the dialectical elements of

argumentation, this strength may be less obvious than the appeal of Soundness Suffices.

All the same, Formality’s Fine is not without its defenders in the current literature. 122Perhaps

the clearest statement of Formality’s Fine in the current literature comes from Stan Husi’s defense

of MNE. Husi’s response to the Incoherence Objection begins by granting that error theorists

appeal to epistemic and argumentative norms. Indeed, Husi maintains that error theorists appeal to

many of the same norms that their interlocutors do. These shared norms are what Husi calls the

“basic norms” of philosophical practice. Husi maintains that these “basic norms” bear “a special

122
Though I think most error theorists who have replied to the Incoherence Objection do so while making use of a
combination of Soundness Suffices and Formality’s Fine. Olson definitely emphasizes the idea that an argument
succeeds when it shows its conclusion is objectively probable. But he also appeals to the social fact that such and so
norm (e.g. parsimony) is used by philosophers and scientists, including the ones who disagree with him.
 110

regard for truth, tracing the fact that what they regulate, belief and its management in

argumentation, itself bears a constitutive relation to truth” (Husi, 2013, p. 10). 

Husi is deliberately non-specific about what exactly he thinks the nature of this special regard

for truth is.123 If his view is that the basic norms entail that only sound arguments succeed, his

view would really be a version of Soundness Suffices.  On another reading, the basic norm specify

conditions for when it makes sense or when it is rational for someone to believe the truth is R.

Relative to some norms, it may often make sense to accept the conclusion of unsound arguments.

Thus, this second interpretation of Husi’s basic norms is distinct from Soundness Suffices.

There is some textual support for interpreting Husi’s basic norms in this second sense. Later in

his paper, Husi discusses the possibility of theoretical disagreement between people with wildly

different and inconsistent norms for discourse and inquiry. Presumably, in some of these cases one

party may embrace norms for inquiry that are less conducive to forming true belief. But Husi does

not say that in theoretical disputes the people who embrace norms that tend to promote true belief

are correct. Rather, he focuses on the idea of personal commitments to norms for settling

deliberative questions about what to do or to believe. Some of us are probably committed to norms

that are not very truth conducive. So, by appealing to personal commitment as the ultimate arbiter

of normative questions, it seems like Husi implicitly disavows Soundness Suffices.

Elsewhere, some of Jonas Olson’s earlier defenses of MNE seem to focus primarily on the fact

of a norm’s being adopted by our shared intellectual communities, a notably different idea from

Soundness Suffices. Consider his response to the charge that error theoretic arguments often appeal

to norms like Occam’s Razor, and this is inconsistent with the denial of normative authority. Olson

Non-specific because the question turns on deeper, longstanding issues in epistemology, the resolution of which
123

would be more than a little outside the scope of his immediate concerns.
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grants that the appeal to theoretical simplicity is an appeal to a norm. However, he maintains that

this concession does not undermine the intelligibility of arguing for error theory because:

“To say that a theory T offers a theoretically simpler explanation of some phenomenon
than a distinct theory T’ is not to say that the comparative simplicity of T is a categorical
reason124 to prefer T to T’. It is just to say that T is in one respect preferable to T’ according to
a standard of theory assessment commonly accepted by many philosophers, naturalists and
non-naturalists alike, and commonly adopted in many natural and social sciences, to wit, that
T is preferable to T’ if T makes fewer problematic assumptions without loss of explanatory
power.”

Notice how Olson’s defense of the appeal to theoretical simplicity does not actually presuppose

that theoretical simplicity is truth-tracking. What Olson says is that simpler theories are “in one

respect preferable,” using a norm that the error theorist denies generates “categorical” (i.e.

authoritative) normative reasons. Fundamentally, this reply has two parts. First, the fact that norms

exist in a formal sense even if they are non-authoritative. Thus, when the error theorist points to a

norm of theory choice she is not necessarily contradicting her view, since her view does not deny

that norms exist in the formal sense. Second, the reply avoids contradicting error theory because

of the denial that the norm being appealed to (here theoretical simplicity) is normatively

authoritative.

Granted, the ultimate reason why philosophers and scientists appeal to theoretical simplicity

may be their further belief that simpler theories are objectively more likely to be true. Even if they

are right about the connection between truth and simplicity, that fact would not itself be a part of

Formality’s Fine. Formality’s Fine is neither an account of what norms are truth-tracking, nor an

account of why certain norms are popular with certain groups of people. Rather, it aims to explain

the coherence of arguing for error theory. It does this by construing argumentative success as

124
In his earlier defenses of error theory, Olson tended to use the contrast between categorical reasons which are given
by “transcendent norms” and non-categorical reasons which are given by “immanent norms.” I do not think this is
anything other than a terminological difference. Consistently, his target seems to be the idea of normative authority,
a phenomenon that he thinks could only exist if there are sui generis non-natural normative properties.
 112

success relative to non-authoritative norms regardless of how broadly they are adopted, why they

are adopted, and even whether or not following them promotes true belief. In contrast, Soundness

Suffices construes argumentative success as soundness, regardless of what norms we adopt.

3.2 Against Formality’s Fine

Presently, we have it that Formality’s Fine is the view according to which argumentative

success is fully grounded in non-authoritative norms for argumentative success. Appealing though

Formality’s Fine might be given just this general statement, we must admit that it is still rather

underspecified. To wit: how precisely is argumentative success grounded in non-authoritative

argumentative norms? Does each and every conceivable norm for argumentative success ground

distinct facts about whether this or that argument succeeds? Do only the norms we care about

generate facts about argumentative success? What if we are pluralists about argumentative success,

and so an argument can succeed along one metric but fail on another? Given pluralism, would

there still be facts about an argument’s overall quality? If so, do some of the metrics count more

than others when determining the facts about the argument’s overall quality? An affirmative

answer to this question seems to presuppose higher-order norms (metanorms) for ranking

argumentative standards. Consequently, that affirmative answer opens a new set of questions about

the role played by argumentative meta-success norms.

The preceding examples are just some of the questions that seem relevant to develop a

complete account of how Formality’s Fine grounds argumentative success in non-authoritative

norms. I raise them primarily to illustrate how underspecified Formality’s Fine remains. Any one

of them might present its own difficulties, some of which may even prove to be insurmountable.

That said, many of these are problems that would arise for any attempt to explicate the concept of

argumentative success. Because my primary concern is with assessing Formality’s Fine for its
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general plausibility, I choose to focus on a kind of problem that I think naturally arises from the

denial that any argumentative norms are ever normatively authoritative, itself. The problem—

which may really be a set of problems—is basically this: how does Formality’s Fine account for

argumentative success in light of the fact that there are many distinct and inconsistent standards

for argumentative success? The answer, I believe is “very badly,” a claim I will defend at length

in the next section. Before that, some may be skeptical that there really are so many argumentative

norms, and especially norms for argumentative success. So, I will defend this claim, and the claim

that many of these norms are inconsistent.

That there are many distinct and inconsistent standards for argumentative success is fairly

easy to show. One way to see it is by reflection on the conflict between two argumentative goals

most of us have: persuasion, and true belief. It is a notorious fact about argumentation that you can

often persuade more real people through rhetorical tricks, comforting lies and sloppy but seductive

logic than through careful analysis and a sober, statistically sound assessment of where the

evidence leads. And while as academics we might be sincere in our expressed commitment to truth

as the prime end of inquiry, we are kidding ourselves if we think this means we do not care at all

for actual persuasive power. Now, this observation is framed in terms of our (psychological) ends

when we engage in argumentation. But, clearly, it can just as easily be reframed in terms of norms.

Regardless of whether I care about the persuasive power of a given argument, I can understand

and apply a norm that treats an argument as a success insofar as it is actually persuasive. The same

is true for epistemic ends, though even more easily demonstrated since we in fact often do

explicitly talk in terms of epistemic norms (e.g. appeals to parsimony).

The upshot is that an argument can succeed from the point of view of narrowly epistemic

norms (whatever those are), while being an abject failure from the point of view of norms that
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prioritize persuasive power. Therefore, there are some inconsistent norms for argumentative

success. Moreover, because most of us care about both truth and persuasion, it cannot be objected

that the possibility of inconsistent argumentative success norms exists only as an irrelevant

theoretical possibility.125

If we open the floodgates and consider the full range of coherent normative standards that

exist for assessing arguments, the existence of inconsistent normative standards becomes trivially

easy to demonstrate. Take any coherent standard by which we could assess an argument, then

invert its valence. By doing so, you have arrived at a distinct, but inconsistent norm. For example,

an evidentialist norm for argument assessment might count an argument a theoretical success to

the degree that we have evidence for its premises. Inverting this norms valence yields a kind of

counter-evidentialist norm for argument assessment: arguments are better to the degree that we

lack evidence for their premises.

The upshot of all of this is that there are many and often inconsistent norms for assessing

arguments. This is definitely true if we consider the total set of norms that exist in logical space,

but can be shown even if we limit ourselves to those norms that people actually care about. I will

now argue that the existence of such inconsistent norms for argumentative success generates an

insoluble problem for Formality’s Fine.

3.2.1 Formality’s Fine and the Too Many Norms Problem

As noted in the previous section, I maintain that Formality’s Fine has a problem accounting

for argumentative success in light of the fact that there are many inconsistent norms for

125
Though I also do not see the force of this objection, even if someone wanted to make it. Certainly, in the present
dialectical context this kind of objection seems irrelevant. Error theory, itself, is often defended by appeal to the fact
that the norms humans tend to care about are only a sub-set of the coherent normative standards that exist. Debunking
arguments, for example, gain much of their force from observation’s like Sharon Street’s that “As a purely conceptual
matter, the independent truths could be anything…” (Street, 2011). So, in the context of a debate over normative
authority, I am at least in good company in denying that outlandish possibilities are irrelevant.
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argumentative success. Below is the core, formalized argument that clarifies this problem and

develops it into an argument against Formality’s Fine. In the rest of the section, I explain and

defend its premises.

P1.) For any acceptable account of argumentative success, arguments do not succeed simply
because there is some non-authoritative standard according to which they succeed, nor do they
fail simply because there is some standard according to which they fail.
P2.) If for any acceptable account of argumentative success, arguments do not succeed simply
because there is some non-authoritative standard according to which they succeed, then for any
acceptable version of Formality’s Fine, some norms for argumentative success are in some sense
privileged over others.
C1.) So, for any acceptable version of Formality’s Fine, some norms for argumentative success
are in some sense privileged over others.
P3.) Any otherwise acceptable account of what it would be for some norms for argumentative
success to be privileged over others would probably just be an account of which norms are
authoritative for argumentative success.
C2.) So, there is probably no way to develop Formality’s Fine in an otherwise acceptable way
without invoking the concept of normative authority.
C3.) So, Formality’s Fine probably fails.

3.2.1.1 Defense of P1

The first premise of my core argument against Formality’s Fine claims that no acceptable

account of argumentative success would maintain that success just is success according to some

norm, nor is argumentative failure simply an argument’s failure according to some standard.

Premise One is equivalent to a direct rejection of one possible way of explicating Formality’s Fine

in detail. So, it needs some extended defense. On this potential way of developing Formality’s

Fine, an argument succeeds simply in virtue of the fact that there is some non-authoritative standard

according to which it succeeds. Before continuing, I want to be explicit that I do not think this

statement of Formality’s Fine is a very plausible view. Rather, I discuss it for two reasons. First,

in arguing for P1 I must reject it, so discussing it at some length comes with the territory Second,

I believe that this version of Formality’s Fine is one of those implausible views whose failure can
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teach us something, in this case it reveals a general problem facing attempts to develop Formality’s

Fine in detail (more on this later).

Now, I have said that P1 already amounts to the denial of one version of Formality’s Fine.

Specifically, P1 denies that an argument succeeds merely in virtue of the fact that there is some

standard according to which it succeeds, which seems like one way of developing Formality’s

Fine. In truth, there is an ambiguity in what P1 denies. One the first interpretation, we have two

basic concepts: argumentative success, what we might think of as success simpliciter, and success

according to such and so standard. The first view that maintains that an argument succeeds

simpliciter insofar as there is at least one non-authoritative standard according to which it succeeds.

On the second view, we do away with the primitive concept of argumentative success simpliciter,

leaving us only with the concept of success according to such and so standard. This second

interpretation is naturally seen as endorsing a kind of relativistic semantics about argumentative

success.

Of these two ways of developing Formality’s Fine, the second, relativistic account is

clearly the more plausible. The first suffers from a seemingly devastating problem. If an argument

succeeds simpliciter just when there is some standard according to which it succeeds, and fails

simpliciter when there is some standard according to which it fails, we easily arrive at

contradictions. A given argument X may succeed in virtue of the fact that Standard R vindicates

it, but fail because Standard W counts it as a failure. Presumably, argumentative success and failure

are inconsistent. So, we arrive at a contradiction wherein X possesses the inconsistent status of

both succeeding and failing.

The second version of the view avoids this problem because it rejects success simpliciter

in favor of always making success essentially indexed to this or that norm for argumentative
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success. I call this second understanding of the view Relativistic Formality’s Fine, and will discuss

it for the rest of my defense of P1. To illustrate Relativistic Formality’s Fine, consider the

following short argument: if badgers eat platypi, then Scott is a walrus potentate; badgers eat ants;

therefore, Scott is a walrus potentate. Clearly, this argument has some problems, at least according

to some metrics (e.g. logical validity, soundness). Yet, surely, there is some standard relative to

which the argument does quite fine. For example, we could assess arguments for how amusing

they are. On such a metric, the argument may do quite well. Those who know me may be a bit

amused by its conjuring to mind the picture of myself enrobed as king of the walruses (whatever

that would look like). Those who are not so amused can take comfort in some other standard.

Surely, there is some standard which assesses arguments for being serious-minded and not at all

amusing. Moreover, failure according to the one metric predicts success according to the other.

Therefore, we have a virtual guarantee that the argument is a success according to at least one

metric.

The largest problem with relativistic Formality’s Fine stems from a proper recognition of

the fact that our judgments of argumentative success are of fundamentally practical importance.

When we judge that an argument succeeds, we are disposed to make certain inferences and to

behave in certain ways. For example, if I believe I have a successful argument against error theory,

I am disposed to reduce my credence in error theory. I am also disposed to share arguments that I

believe are successful, but not ones that are believe are unsuccessful. While we also sometimes

share what we believe to be unsuccessful arguments, we do so for fundamentally different kinds

of reasons than for arguments that we think succeed. For example, many of us might share bad

arguments to teach others about various kinds of mistakes we think they should avoid making (e.g.
 118

fallacious inferences). It would be decidedly odd, maybe even inconsistent, for us to think an

argument a complete success, then to go on and talk about its many defects.126

In short, there are characteristic behaviors, attitudes and inferences we make when we

judge an argument to be successful, and a distinct set of characteristic behaviors, attitudes and

inferences we make when we judge an argument to be unsuccessful. The specific behaviors,

attitudes and dispositions need not be universal. Rather, the point is that each of us treats arguments

we judge to be successful rather differently from arguments we judge to be failures.

Because of the essentially practical nature of judgments of argumentative success, no

acceptable view of argumentative success would make the existence of a coherent standard relative

to which an argument succeeds sufficient for its success in the way that matters to us. Plausibly,

this means that argumentative success and failure must be success and failure simpliciter. If that

is right, Relativistic Formality’s Fine fails as a semantic theory. However, there is a possible

alternate lesson. As we are well aware from debates over moral relativism, relativists often insist

that in practice we rightly should still use our own standards. Thus, their semantic theory is

consistent with denying that every thing is permitted. The most common version of metaethical

moral relativism maintains that moral truth is determined by social convention. But plenty of

norms are not enshrined in conventions, so moral relativism does not entail that literally every

thing is permitted. Generalizing from this, relativists about a domain do not need to think that the

existence of a coherent standard suffices for a truth in that domain. Treating argumentative success

as success according to norms, even ones that are not somehow privileged would have three

defects: it would make argumentative success (and failure) too common, too easy and too trivial.

Notice the stress on complete. Clearly, we can coherently think that a pretty good argument could still be improved
126

upon, even if only in ways that matter in terms of rhetoric or presentation.

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Too common because we in fact think many arguments fail. However, for almost any

argument we can think of, there will be some non-authoritative, formally specifiable standard or

standards according to which that argument succeeds, and others according to which it fails. Thus,

if no argumentative standards are privileged over others, argument assessment seems to begin and

end with the claim that virtually every argument fails, and every argument succeeds. But that is

not at all what we think when we actually go to assess arguments in practice. Instead, we take

certain standards to be privileged over others, often standards that are difficult to assess a given

argument relative to (e.g. soundness).

Doing away with privileged argumentative norms also makes argument evaluation too

easy, a point that builds on the too common problem. In practice we clearly often think it is difficult

to ascertain whether this or that argument succeeds or fails. However, Relativistic Formality’s Fine

would make it trivially easy to answer questions of argumentative success: is there a standard

according to which the argument succeeds? Almost certainly “yes,” so the argument probably

succeeds.

A third and final problem with Relativistic Formality’s Fine is that it in practice it would

trivialize claims about argumentative success and failure. Insofar as actual practice is concerned,

the claim to have a successful, good, powerful, etc. argument is a rather weighty claim to make.

Suppose I walked up to give a talk and boldly announced that I had a successful refutation of error

theory. Were we to internalize Relativistic Formality’s Fine and deny that any argumentative

norms are somehow privileged, what would really be said is something like this: “I have an

argument against error theory which succeeds according to at least some metric by which we could

assess arguments.” Which, very well, perhaps I do. But so what? The natural question to ask is

which metrics for assessing arguments I have in mind when I make this claim. Moreover,
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specifying the metrics does not suffice for avoiding the problem. If I specify standards that my

audience takes to be inane or irrelevant, they will judge my confident statement to have refuted

error theory to be quite misplaced.

3.2.1.2 Defense of P2

I think the rejection of Relativistic Formality’s Fine actually has rather profound

implications for the attempt to develop a complete, plausible explication of the basic idea that

argumentative success is fully grounded in non-authoritative norms. Notably, in rejecting

Relativistic Formality’s Fine, I think the error theorist commits herself to the view that some of

the possible argumentative norms are, for want of a better term, privileged over others. I do not

know how else to put the point other than by giving examples and other evocative phrases. If we

want to try out another word, we could say that some argumentative norms matter and others do

not. Or, for still another phrase, some argumentative norms are the ones that count.

It must be understood that this concession does not (obviously) amount to the claim that

some norms are normatively authoritative over others. To see this, consider an analogy with

positive law. Positive law refers to those statutes that have been created by human legislative

actions, whatever their deeper normative significance (or lack thereof) may be. 127 Logical space

includes a staggering number of possible positive laws, and these abstract possibilities matter when

engaging in legal interpretation, the act of trying to figure out what the content of the positive law

even is. Views about the correct way to interpret what the positive law is do not commit us to the

view that the positive law so interpreted is normatively authoritative. Hence, it is coherent for

someone to have the following set of views. First, they may think the facts about positive law in

127
Even natural law theorists about jurisprudence acknowledge the existence of positive law, so conceived. For
example, natural law theorists accept that Jim Crow laws were in some sense laws, i.e. they were commandments laid
down by a legislative body. What they deny is first that this fact suffices for anyone to have a normative reason to
abide by Jim Crow laws.
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the United States are partially determined by conformity with the U.S. Constitution. Second, they

may believe that the correct interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is fixed by facts about what its

authors intended it to say (Originalism). Third, that the positive law of the United States does not

necessarily give anyone a normative reason to do anything. Indeed, this denial may go so far as to

claim that even Justices who are engaged in interpreting the Constitution may lack a normative

reason to care what the Constitution actually says.

However, what the preceding triad of views does generate is a view that privileges certain

logically possible things the positive law of the U.S. could be. To illustrate, consider two logically

possible interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. On one, the 2nd Amendment establishes an absolute

restriction on Congress passing laws that make it more difficult for American citizens to acquire

firearms. On the second, the 2nd Amendment only says that citizens should not be restricted from

their attempts to procure firearms for purpose of supporting national defense. Suppose the second

is actually what the authors of the Constitution intended.128 Our Originalist triad generates the view

that the positive law of the U.S. is such that the 2nd Amendment should be interpreted in the second

way. In this way, her Originalism clearly privileges some logically possible positive laws over

others. However, given the denial that positive law is normatively authoritative extends even to

claims about whether people actively interpreting the Constitution, it is not clear that this means

she is committed to any claims about normative authority.

128
To be clear, I do not endorse this, or any other, view about the 2 nd Amendment, or Constitutional interpretation
more generally. The point is simply to use the analogy to defend the idea that P2 does not yet amount to the claim that
any norms are authoritative. Also, notice that it may be that on closer reflection, facts about positive law do depend
on authoritative norms. I actually would not be that surprised by that. Interpretation is something people do, and so if
there are facts about how to interpret texts, it seems natural that these would be facts about how we ought, in some
sense, to interpret texts. Notice it is the error theory that would suffer if this turned out, as then it would entail that
positive law does not exist, which seems rather implausible. By own arguments would not be undermined.
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With these clarifications in place, I think P2 is rather obviously true. But I think there is

also a rather robust argument by reductio that can be given in its defense. The argument requires

two background assumptions. First, as has already been noted, there is a nigh inconceivable

number of norms for argumentative success. Second, many of these norms conflict with one

another. Now, assume for reductio that in the eyes of the committed error theorist, every possible

argumentative norm is equally legitimate in every sense that the error theorist accepts. Put

differently, on her view no norms enjoy any kind of privileged status over others. With the reductio

assumption made, let us note another fact about the position of the committed error theorist: she is

familiar with common objections to her view and maintains that they fail. However, relative to

some possible argumentative norms, the objections to error theory succeed. 129 This presents a

problem. If the committed error theorist thinks these norms are legitimate in every sense that she

countenances, it seems she must grant that the same objections also succeed, thus contradicting

her own view that the objections fail. After all, she has already granted that relative to these other

norms the objections succeed. Thus, if she is to have an objection, it must to the norms that

vindicate objections to error theory themselves. But, ex hypothesi, she thinks all norms are equally

legitimate in every sense. So, what could she think the basis of her objection even is? Assuming

there is nothing, she is stuck with the contradictory result that objections to the error theory both

succeed and fail (and that her own arguments both succeed and fail). The only plausible way out

129
I actually think this point can be made quite vividly using an example provided by Jonas Olson. Olson suggests
that there might be non-authoritative norms for being a chaplain that require chaplains to believe in God (Olson, 2014,
p. 159). Now, I do not know that real world versions of these expectations require absolute dogmatism (though maybe
in some cases they do). But it is almost certainly true that some people are subject to social norms requiring them to
believe in God. Because virtually all versions of the Christian faith are inconsistent with error theory, these same
norms would generate a (non-authoritative) requirement for these people to reject the error theory out of hand. With
this example in mind, the point is that the consistent error theorist must regard objections to the error theory that go
like this: “error theory fails because it erodes belief in the Christian faith!” as failing because the pastoral norms that
would vindicate them “do not count” for the kind of argumentation the error theorist is engaged in.
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of this seems to be to reject our reductio assumption and grant that something functions for the

error theorist as a conceptual mechanism for privileging some norms over others.

3.2.1.3 Conclusion One: The Too Many Norms Problem defended

From what has been said above, it follows that the error theorist is committed to a version

of Formality’s Fine that privileges some norms for argumentative success over others (at least in

some contexts). But what is this normative privileging, and what makes one norm privileged over

another? Going forward, these questions will serve as the primary theoretical problem facing

attempts to develop Formality’s Fine. For easy of reference, I will call this problem the Problem

of Too Many Norms, a name given in recognition of its genesis in the incredible multiplicity of

ways in which we might evaluate arguments. A solution to the Problem of Too Many Norms would

first and foremost need to explain what normative privileging is and why some norms have it.

Moreover, it would need to do this in a way that is otherwise acceptable. By otherwise acceptable,

I mean the account must avoid having unacceptable implications about argumentative success

more generally, e.g. the account must not entail that obviously fallacious arguments are completely

successful. Finally, to be consistent with error theory, the account must avoid bringing along a

commitment to normative authority as part of its theoretical package.

At this juncture, it is not obvious that this fact, on its own, suffices to show that Formality

Fine is (incoherently) committed to the existence of authoritative norms. As the analogy with

positive law shows, some kinds of normative privileging are consistent with the denial of

normative authority. In my defense of P3, I will argue that several additional facts about

argumentative success show that the analogy between Originalism and Formality’s Fine cannot be
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perfect. While the ways in which Originalism works (may)130 sustain a kind of privileging of some

(legal) norms over others that does not also implicate the concept of normative authority, the same

is not true of argumentative success.

3.2.1.4 Defense of P3

Premise 3 is likely to be the most controversial premise in my argument. According to it,

any otherwise acceptable account of what it would be for some norms for argumentative success

to be privileged over others would just be an account of which norms are authoritative for

argumentative success. Acceptability here is what it has basically always been: whether a

consistent error theorist could accept a given account of argumentative success, where this includes

internalizing it and accepting its implications. The “otherwise” qualifier appears in the premise

because a consistent error theorist cannot accept an account that make argumentative success a

matter of success according to authoritative norms. So, when I talk about an account’s being

“otherwise acceptable,” what I mean is that it is acceptable in terms of everything else that matters

of argument analysis, e.g. whether it treats generally accepted fallacies as fallacies, whether it is

consistent with the error theorist’s own judgments about which arguments succeed and which fail

and so on and so on. The idea, then, is that Formality’s Fine can only be made acceptable in general

if its account of how some norms are privileged over others includes the (unacceptable) idea that

some norms are authoritative over others. What this ultimately means there is simply no way to

develop Formality’s Fine in a way that makes it acceptable to consistent error theorists.

130
I say may because I have not thought about the issue enough to come to a view about whether Originalism can
completely avoid a commitment to normative authority. The point of the analogy is simply to try to motivate the idea
that there can be kinds of ways in which some norms are privileged over others that are distinct from the kind of
privileging that goes on when one norm is authoritative over another. If the Originalism example fails, maybe another
one would succeed. At any rate, the only weight I place on the Originalism example is as trying to make it prima facie
plausible that not all instances of normative privileging are equivalent to a norm being authoritative over another
norm.
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At the abstract level, the defense of P3 begins from C1’s recognition that there is a kind of

standing theoretical problem facing attempts to develop Formality’s Fine in detail, the Too Many

Norms Problem. The problem is this: how can the error theorist privilege certain argumentative

norms over others in such a way that she avoids a commitment to the existence of authoritative

norms? To begin the defense of the P3 claim that this cannot be done, let us call whatever account

is needed to solve the problem of Too Many Norms Account S. With this baptism in place, I

present the following formalized argument, an argument I will defend over the next several pages:

R1.) The problems facing and notable features of Account S strictly parallel the problems
facing and features of normative authority.
R2.) If the problems facing and notable features of Account S strictly parallel the problems
facing and features of normative authority, then Account S probably just is an account of
normative authority.
CR1.) Therefore, Account S probably just is an account of normative authority.131

Now, a complete defense of R1 may be impossible in practice, as it is hard to a priori rule

out the possibility that I am overlooking some critical difference between Account S and an

adequate account of normative authority. Instead, I will enumerate a number of seemingly very

important respects in which the problems facing and features of Account S strictly parallel the

problems facing and features of a successful account of normative authority. While the features I

list may not be exhaustive, it is worth noting that the list probably includes many of the real, core

issues. Moreover, as we will see, the particular core issues are the same kind of issues that arise in

accounts of authority. This is significant, because peripheral asymmetries or ones that seem

unrelated to authority might be more easily dismissed. I will then close with a general standing

131
Because Account S is shorthand for “an acceptable solution to the Too Many Norms Problem,” what CR1 really
says is “Therefore, an acceptable solution to the Too Many Norms Problem just is an account of normative authority.”
The Too Many Norms Problem is the problem of explaining why some argumentative norms are privileged over
others. Therefore, CR1 is equivalent to P3’s claim that an acceptable account of what it would be for some norms for
argumentative success to be privileged over others would just be an account of which norms are authoritative for
argumentative success.
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challenge to explain what makes the “job description,” if you will for Account S different from

normative authority in such a way that they plausibly are different concepts.

3.2.1.4.1 First Parallel: normative privileging

The first parallel between normative authority and Account S is that both concepts solve,

as it were, a structurally analogous problem: accounting for the seeming fact that some norms

are privileged over or trump others. In the case of normative authority, the problem has its

genesis in many observations about the structure of some of our everyday normative judgments.

For example, normative authority seems to be implicated in the judgment that it is better to be rude

than immoral, or the judgment that one should use scientific standards of evidence instead of

pseudoscientific ones. Ultimately, the theoretical need for Account S has its genesis in similar

observations about our judgments of arguments (the Too Many Norms problem).

Before moving on to the next data-point, I want to briefly respond to the objection that it only

seems like normative privileging (or trumping or what have you) is structural feature of normative

authority and something Formality’s Fine needs because I have set things up this way. First, in

some sense this is true. However, the brute fact that we are at this point in the argument because

of my framework for thinking about the issues is not in itself an objection. The relevant question

is whether my framework for thinking about these issues was mistaken (e.g. maybe it was a mistake

to model authority as a kind of normative trumping in the first place). To that question, I simply

deflect back to the original arguments and motives for adopting that model of authority (a model

that seems to be shared with some prominent defenses of the error theory, incidentally). Perhaps

my arguments for adopting this or that part of my framework, or my argument for C1 are unsound.

If so, it would be helpful to know what, specifically, is dubious about them.

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3.2.1.4.2 Second Parallel: practicality and action guidance

The next parallel between authority and Account S that I want to highlight is that both are

fundamentally practical or action guiding. This claim should not be misunderstood. I do not mean

that either the concept of authority or Account S would be useful for satisfying immediate practical

goals in the way that a hammer is immediately useful for someone who needs to beat down a nail.

Rather, the point is that authority and Account S play an ultimate role in our thinking about what

to do.132 Rational agents will generally try to conform their actions to the requirements of their

own judgments about authority, but also their judgments about Account S. If I know that the

Categorical Imperative is the authoritative norm for action, at least insofar as I am rational I will

try to conform my actions to the Categorical Imperative.

The same is actually true of Account S. Suppose I am a consistent error theorist and I believe

that Account S has such and so content. What this means is that by my own lights, certain norms

are privileged over others when I engage in argumentation. Thus, insofar as I remain a rational,

consistent error theorist I will try to conduct my argumentative activity so that my arguments

succeed according to the norms I believe to be Account S.133

3.2.1.4.3 Third Parallel: the possibilities of error and internalizing the wrong norms

Our third data-point begins from the fact that any plausible account of normative authority

maintains that it is possible to make two kinds of normative mistakes. First, according to any

plausible account of normative authority, it is possible to have false beliefs about which norms are

133
My reader may worry that this point begs the question against the error theorist by talking about what the error
theorist should do. That is not so. First, recall that at this juncture we are considering the views of error theorists who
are fine talking about rationality, provided it is understood that the norms of rationality lack normative authority. With
this in mind, what I mean is simply that an error theorist who is rational will have at least some tendency to modify
her own behavior in light of her judgments about Account S. This is actually a descriptive claim about what would be
required by even non-authoritative norms for rationality. So, it does not begging the question against error theory.
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authoritative. For example, a person could believe that they must not touch beans, when in fact

there is nothing wrong with bean touching, as such. Second, it is possible to internalize the wrong

norms.134 Fundamentally, a person internalizes a norm when she is disposed to respect its dictates,

and so behaves in the ways it calls for, makes the inferences it requires, has certain characteristic

feelings (e.g. guilt) when she violates it and so on. So, any plausible account of normative authority

maintains that it is possible to internalize and so act on the wrong norms. The example of

(mythical) Pythagoras works for this, too, since Pythagoras internalized the anti-bean prohibition

to the degree that it cost him his list.

What might not seem immediately obvious is that Account S must similarly maintain that it is

possible to make normative mistakes of the same kinds about norms for argumentation. But I

submit that it clearly must, and give two arguments for this. The first argument is, I think, a

deduction from data-point #1. According to data-point #1, Account S maintains that some set of

argumentative norms S are privileged over others such that they are the ones that determine

argumentative success. Moreover, to solve the Too Many Norms problem, S is not simply identical

to “the set of all possible argumentative norms” or something else that might make Account S

trivial. Rather, there are some norms in S, and other possible argumentative norms that are not in

S. Presumably, someone could believe that some set of argumentative norms other than those in S

are privileged determiners of argumentative success, and internalize them. Their beliefs are

straightforwardly mistaken, since they have false beliefs about the content of Account S.

Moreover, when they go about the world assessing arguments on the basis of their internalized

argumentative norms, they routinely make mistakes about whether this or that argument is or is

134
Some relativistic views of normative authority are both plausible and may limit the scope of this, somewhat. Such
relativistic views may prioritize our perspectives or desires or something of that sort, and this may make it very hard
to be mistaken about our must fundamental normative beliefs. However, the plausible versions of these views still
allow for mistakes about more intermediate norms.
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not successful. At least from the point of view of Account S, these internalized attitudes must be

mistakes. After all, the token judgments are straightforwardly mistaken. And the internalization is

nothing more than a set of dispositions that lead people to make mistaken judgments about

argumentative success, the topic matter of Account S.135

It might be objected that Account S is an account of argumentative failure, not an account of

what norms people are to internalize. This objection may seem especially forceful insofar as

authority governs the actions and attitudes of agents, and arguments themselves are not agents.

Therefore, it might be thought that the error theorist can remain neutral on the question of what

attitudes people are to hold, and so avoid a commitment to authoritative norms.

But this objection does not work. First, we are already well into territory where we are

concerned with what attitudes people are to hold. A large part of the appeal of Formality’s Fine

comes from its supposed ability to capture fallacies like begging the question by appeal to facts

about what it is rational for people to think. So, at this point in the dialectic, an important part of

this objection is a non-starter. We are already talking about what attitudes we ought to hold.

Granted, internalization might be thought of as a matter of character traits, whereas up until now

we have primarily been talking in terms of whether it is rational for a person to accept this or that

token argument. However, it is ad hoc to insist argumentative norms can specify whether it is

rational to accept this or that argument, but not rational to have certain general dispositions. This

is especially so since we in fact do think of some virtues as governing argumentative activity, such

as open-mindedness and charity in interpreting what one’s opponent has said.

135
This point is especially salient given the possibility that Account S could be a kind of virtue theory, one that
explains argumentative success in terms of what would be judged to be a success by a person with the right
argumentative virtuous, e.g. open-mindedness, breadth of knowledge, and so on.
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Indeed, some argumentative norms would assess arguments as more or less successful as a

function of whether they would persuade a virtuous argumentative agent. Here, a virtuous agent a

person with the right argumentative virtues, e.g. open-mindedness, breadth of knowledge, and so

on. Because norms are cheap, such virtue theoretical norms for argumentative success are in the

metaphorical hopper of competing norms that compose the Too Many Norms Problem. This

generates a problem for attempts to remain neutral on what norms to internalize. Virtue theoretic

norms collapse the question of how to assess arguments into the question of what kinds of norms

we should internalize and what kind of person we should be (as regards argumentative activity, at

least).Consequently, questions of argumentative character must be addressed by Account S, even

if the manner of address is that virtue theoretic accounts are mistaken. Therefore, I do not see

principled space to maintain that argument assessment is one thing, and what kinds of

argumentative norms to internalize is another.

3.2.1.4.4 Fourth Parallel: strikingly similar mind-dependent accounts

Until now, I have called attention to what we might think of as abstract parallels between the

normative authority and Account S. I want to shift focus from abstract observations of this kind to

make observations about the striking parallels between some of our best theories of normative

authority and the error theorist’s best candidates for Account S. The last part of this remark might

call for a little explanation. Has the literature recognized the Too Many Norms Problem as a

problem, and tried to solve it? If not, what candidates do I have in mind?

Granted, no one has called the problem by that name until now. But the problem is intuitive

and has basically made its way into the literature. Stan Husi has written most explicitly on the

issue, and frames it in terms of the question of whether the committed error theorist’s use of

argumentative norms must be objectionably arbitrary. As Husi says: “I maintained that skeptics
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are free to employ basic norms even though they reject their authoritative standing. Perhaps this

is too quick, though. A concern remains: Must the elevation of basic norms to guide philosophical

argumentation not seem arbitrary once their objective authority is renounced?”

Husi’s answer to his own question is a resounding “no.” His defense of this negative answer is

worth explaining in detail, as the general strategy he pursues is probably one of the best available

to the error theorist. The defense begins with a distinction between two ways in which the choices

we make can be arbitrary. First, when our choices are not licensed by authoritative norms. Second,

when our choices are “blindly and capriciously [made]” (Husi, 2013, p. 13). With this distinction

in mind, Husi maintains that it is only the second of these two senses that has dialectical bite

against the error theorist. So, while the error theorist must grant that her use of argumentative

norms is arbitrary in the first sense, all she needs to do to avoid an internal theoretical problem is

show that it is not arbitrary in the second.

To avoid the charge of arbitrariness in the second sense, Husi thinks it suffices “…that there is

something that renders our choices intelligible and sensible, and basic norms [for argumentation]

may satisfy that condition by being intelligible and thus non-arbitrary by our own lights” (Husi,

2013, p. 14). Later, he adds that “Basic norms are [non-arbitrary in the second sense] since we use

basic norms because they enable and facilitate something we care about, namely the discovery of

truths” (Husi, 2013).

While the framing differs slightly—I have not presented the Too Many Norms Problem in

terms of arbitrariness—I think Husi’s proposal is basically a proposal about the content of Account

S. On this account, the privileged norms are the ones that bear an appropriate connection to our

perspectives or our goals or something of that sort. This kind of move has a long pedigree in

defending error theory, and its appeal is easy to see. Since it grounds facts about what norms are
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privileged in facts about what we care about, it seems unlikely to require conceptual revisions that

we would not tolerate. And it does this in a way that seemingly does not require any ontological

or conceptual commitments that are inconsistent with the error theory.

At the same time, I worry that Husi’s account is deeply underspecified. In fact, there are a

number of distinct and sometimes inconsistent ways of developing his basic idea. For example, he

says that basic norms help us discover truth, something that we “care about.” This is ambiguous.

There are a lot of different kinds of caring states. Fleeting impulses, desires, values, preferences,

and informed preferences can all intelligibly be said to be ways of caring about something. But

they are also importantly distinct ways of caring about things. In the present context the differences

between different kinds of caring states are of the utmost importance. An account that privileges

the norms we presently in fact act on will look very different from one that privileges the norms

that best fit with our deeper desires. Still more differences would be generated if we appealed to

counterfactual facts about what norms we would care about were we (say) better informed.

My suspicion is that our deeper, reflective values are the primary ones Husi has in mind,

but why? Granted, the fact that we believe something promotes our values can render our choice

to pursue it intelligible.136 However, Husi initially explicated the problematic kind of arbitrariness

as something’s being “blindly and capriciously chosen.” Yet just because a choice does not

promote our deeper values (e.g. concern for truth), it does not follow that it was capriciously made.

If we take the long-view, it may be irrational for a person who deeply desires to live a long and

healthy life to smoke. Even so, such a smoker’s actions are at least intelligible. We understand

136
The “can” qualifier is quite important. Something can promote our values without our knowing it does so. Unknown
facts about value promotion are poor candidates for making action intelligible. Andy the anti-vaxxer might genuinely
value the truth, and would better pursue it if he internalized a norm that required respecting the mainstream scientific
literature. All the same, it would be hard to understand a self-avowed skeptic of science like Andy spontaneously
deferring to (say) the scientific consensus on the importance of the flu vaccine.
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why the smoker smokes, despite the long-term damage. Smoking promotes intelligible immediate

desires for pleasure and social acceptance, as well as the desire to avoid the horrors of going

through withdrawal.

Argumentative analogs of the smoking case are all too easy to generate. We care about the

truth, but it can be so much more immediately satisfying to deliver a punchy rhetorical flourish

than a sober, stepwise analysis. Does our punchy argument fail because it committed a hasty

generalization fallacy, or succeed because it received a lot of up-votes? Both motives render action

intelligible, so it seems like Husi would need to appeal to something more than his gloss on

arbitrariness to provide an exhaustive answer (assuming he thinks such an answer is forthcoming,

that is). Perhaps the problem can be solved, but notice it is probably not the only such problem. As

we observed earlier, our mid-level norms for assessing arguments can conflict with our ultimate

argumentative ends. Acting from internalized mid-level norms is intelligible. But so is a

commitment to thinking that those norms should be overturned if they actually do not promote our

ultimate ends. Does Husi’s account have the resources to privilege one over the other? If it does, I

worry that it can only do so by invoking normative authority in all but name (more on this in a

moment). If it does not, it seems like it does not really solve the problem of Too Many Norms. An

argument that might fail when assessed by our internalized mid-level norms, but succeed when

assessed by norms that would really promote our deeper values.

To bring this to a head, I want to make an observation about the structure of the problem

facing Husi’s account. Structurally, the problem parallels an existing and much discussed problem

facing various versions of subjectivism about normative authority! According to such views,

authoritatively normative reasons exist and are grounded in facts about the mental states of actual

or idealized agents. Unsurprisingly, subjectivists disagree about what the relevant mental states
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are. Are they our desires? Our values? The desires we would have under certain counterfactual

conditions? If so, which conditions? There are well-known trade-offs to various answers to these

questions and well-known arguments for focusing on this or that kind of mental state.137

The problem the subjectivist has in identifying this or that mental state parallels the

problem facing Husi’s account. I predict that not only the questions and general problems, but also

the answers that would be given, are parallel. For example, subjectivists, like most other normative

theorists, think that it matters that their accounts preserve our most plausible normative judgments.

So, they consider it a problem if their view entails that (e.g.) a non-suicidal person has decisive

normative reason to drink poison just because she mistakenly thinks her cup is full of water. The

easy solution for problems of this kind is to move to the view that grants our informed desires a

greater role in determining our normative reasons than our real desires, as these are often born of

ignorance. More generally, the committed error theorist who, like Husi, wants to “…secure for the

skeptic an entry and license into our argumentative practices that is not borrowed without intention

to repay,” will treat our actual practices with a bit of deference. After all, if her Account S

privileges norms enjoining us to make hasty generalizations, she simply has not earned the right

to use our argumentative practice. Instead, she will have vindicated some different practice, one

that is utterly alien to disputants on both sides of the debate over error theory. Thus, while I use

Husi’s account as an exemplar, the point being made is thoroughly general. To avoid alienating

the error theorist, herself, any successful Account S must preserve our argumentative practices.

137
Moreover, there are powerful arguments for thinking that any answer to questions of this kind invokes the kind of
ontological “queerness” that subjectivists think is characteristic of objectivist views. See (Bedke, 2010) and (Enoch,
2005). Or, rather, positive answers to such questions would require ontologically queer entities if objectivist views
would. It might be that no normative relations or properties are ontologically dubious, including the property “being
an authoritative norm,” which is the relevant one, here.
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But given parallels 1-4, this means that for any plausible Account S, there is likely to be a

structurally similar account of normative authority.

3.2.1.4.5 Conclusion: R1 (Account S parallels an account of normative authority)

No doubt, there are additional ways in which subjectivism about authority and an adequate

Account S would parallel one another, but I think the point made well enough for now. To bring

it together, focus on the third parallel and its comparison between Husi’s account and subjectivism.

The functional parallel between Husi’s account and subjectivist views of normative authority are

striking. Subjectivist accounts of normative authority aim to explain which formally specifiable

norms trump others and why. Subjectivism is especially concerned with norms for action. Husi’s

account is also supposed to explain why some norms enjoy a kind of non-arbitrary privileged

status. Husi’s account extends to the active part of argumentation, too. So, both subjectivism and

Husi’s account aim to explain why some norms for action are privileged over others. To continue

with another point, structurally, subjectivism about authority and Husi’s account provide kinds of

ultimate explanations. Subjectivism does not tell us which specific norms are privileged. Rather,

when conjoined with facts about our psychologies subjectivism generates facts about which

specific norms are authoritative for whom. Similarly, Husi’s account does not stipulate that such

and so norms are the norms for argumentation. Instead, he maintains that norms are non-arbitrarily

privileged in virtue of our caring about them, or their place in constituting our perspective. 138 For

people like him, this means the basic norms of philosophy and science, which give truth pride of

place, are non-arbitrarily privileged. For others, a different set of norms may enjoy privileged

status. Finally, subjectivism is really a family of views, the more particular versions of which

depend on which mental states are given what role in generating authoritative reasons. As I have

138
I use the disjuncts because, as noted earlier, the account is rather schematic.
 136

argued, Husi’s account is underspecified and so it, too, gives birth to a family of more particular,

often inconsistent accounts of what makes an argumentative norm non-arbitrarily privileged.

The best explanation for the above structural parallels is, I submit, that Husi’s account is

nihilistic about normative authority in name only. In truth, Husi’s suggestion is that the error

theorist can make sense of her own argumentative practice by endorsing subjectivism about

normative authority. Of course, that proposal is incoherent. Subjectivism about authority is not

error theory about authority. Husi knows this, of course. I do not claim that he de dicto defends

subjectivism about normative authority. Rather, the point is that nothing could parallel

subjectivism about authority so tightly without being, in the de re sense, subjectivism about

normative authority.

More generally, nothing could be an acceptable solution to the Too Many Norms Problem

without being an account of normative authority. An acceptable version of Formality’s Fine needs

to solve the Too Many Norms Problem. Therefore, there cannot be an acceptable version of

Formality’s Fine. Any version that is adequate in terms of solving the Too Many Norms Problem

only does so by invoking normative authority, which is inconsistent with Formality’s Fine’s core

commitment to error theory. Of course, it is not enough to stipulate that the structural parallels

between an acceptable solution to the Too Many Norms problem would just be an account of

normative authority. So, I turn now to defending this claim.

3.2.1.4.6 Defense of R2 (If Account S parallels an account of normative authority, then it

probably is one.)

So far, we have it that there are a number of parallels between normative authority and

Account S, an acceptable solution to the Too Many Norms Problem. In truth, I think the particular

parallels already lend a great deal of intuitive support for the claim that Account S just is an account
 137

of normative authority. Parallels 1-3 seem to capture the core “job description” of normative

authority. To see this, consider the following single sentence summation of what Account S must

be like given parallels 1-3. Account S is: an account of which norms are privileged over others,

such that for the important human activity of argumentation it is a mistake to appeal to one set of

formally specifiable rather than another. Perhaps that job description is not a complete analysis of

what authoritative norms for argumentation would be. But we could definitely be epistemically

justified in thinking it is, or at least justified in thinking that it gets very close to an accurate analysis

of normative authority when applied to argumentation.

Thus, my first defense of R2 comes through presenting a standing challenge. If Account S

is not an account of authoritative norms for argumentation, something must explain this; there

must be some critical difference between Account S and an account of authoritative norms for

argumentation. So, the standing challenge for error theorists who deny that Account S is an account

of normative authority is to explain what makes Account S distinct from normative authority,

despite their considerable conceptual overlap.

Notice that the missing feature would presumably also have to be something that renders

authority ontologically problematic. If the difference between Account S and authority were real,

but both authority and Account S exist, the error theory is false. So, assuming I am correct about

parallels 1-4, this additional feature must contribute importantly to making normative authority

ontologically dubious whereas Account S is not.139

To bolster the challenge, and to provide direct support for R2, I want to note several

candidate answers that will not work. First, it cannot simply be that an authoritative norm is one

139
There may be multiple ways in which the additional feature could contribute to making authority, but not Account
S, ontologically dubious. Maybe the conjunction of 1-4 and the other feature requires dubious properties. Or maybe
the additional feature would be dubious on its own.
 138

that is universal in scope. As we learned from Phillippa Foot’s example of etiquette, the universal

scope of a norm is neither ontologically dubious in and of itself, nor sufficient for the relevant

reason giving normative oomph. Second, it cannot be that normative authority is desire-

independent. As discussed earlier, subjectivism about authority is not error theory about authority.

A third, tempting response might be that the difference between Account S and normative

authority just is the ontological difference. According to the error theorist, an authoritative norm

would be sui generis and non-natural, as Mackie said “…wholly unlike anything else in our

experience” (Mackie, 1990). In contrast, the error theorist presumably specifies her Account S in

such a way that it is guaranteed to be ontologically respectable. The easiest way to do this would

be by stipulating that Account S is strictly identical to whatever natural property would work best

as a solution to the Too Many Norms Problem.140

The appeal to ontological difference is more plausible than the appeal to universal scope

or desire independence as making the difference. However, I think the reply fails for two reasons.

The first problem is that it cannot simply be assumed that normative authority would have to be

sui generis and non-natural. While some philosophers think authority could not be a natural

property, others disagree. Of course, one need not simply assume that authority would have to be

non-natural. There are positive arguments for the claim that authoritative norms would have to be

sui generis and non-natural. But the success of these arguments, themselves, is a matter of some

dispute. This is not the place to try to resolve the debate over whether authority would or would

not have to be non-natural, so I will close this first reply simply by noting that it is not an obvious

asymmetry.

140
When I say this is the easiest way to ensure ontological respectability, I mean nothing more than that the properties
so identified—if there would be any at all—would be natural properties. So, this move ensures that Account S is at
least ontologically respectable. I do not mean that this move is without its own problems.
 139

The second problem is that it is not clear that Account S really would be naturalistically

respectable! Account S is not a stand-in for any answer to the Too Many Norms Problem that we

would like to give, complete with whatever properties we would like to stipulate it has. Rather, it

is a stand-in for an answer that actually solves the Too Many Norms Problem. And we cannot

simply assume that an otherwise adequate solution to the problem could be had without invoking

non-natural concepts or properties. Non-naturalism, itself, is best motivated by appeal to the idea

that no natural property could play the various roles that authority plays. And we have already seen

that the roles Account S would have to play are basically the same roles that authority has to play.

To see this, consider the general kinds of reasons there are for thinking normative authority

would have to be non-natural. While some claim to be able to just intuit that normative authority

could not be a part of the natural world, I think the probative value of these intuitions is

suspect. 141 To my mind, the better argument for non-naturalism about authority begins by

establishing a basic a basic outline of the concept of authority. For example, one notes that

authority involves some kind of normative trumping power in cases of norm conflict. With this

description in place, one then canvasses the most plausible naturalistic accounts of authority and

notes why they fail to deliver everything needed in the conceptual job description for authority.

One then infers that the best explanation of the failure of even our best naturalistic accounts is that

authority would have to be a non-natural property.

Two things are worth noting about the preceding, abductive argument for non-naturalism

about authority. First, abductive arguments of this kind are enormously complex. To argue that

our best naturalistic accounts of authority fail, we actually have to develop some accounts,

critically engage with them, and find specific problems with them. Because of the parallels

141
For a critical discussion of whether we can or cannot intuit the non-natural native of normative authority see…
 140

between authority and Account S, it would take a structurally similar abductive argument to

determine whether or not Account S would have to appeal to non-natural properties. We have

already seen that Husi’s proposal is only the beginning of a successful defense of Formality’s Fine.

Account S would be much more complicated, e.g. because it would have to resolve questions

surrounding which mental states privilege argumentative norms and how. Until this work has been

done, we simply do not even have a fully developed candidate Account S to assess. Consequently,

it is hard to know, now, whether or not a workable Account S could be developed without appeal

to non-natural properties.

Second, notice that the difficulty we will have in “placing” authority in the world depends

crucially on the exact content of our job description for normative authority. For example, suppose

we analyze how the concept of authority works in practice and conclude that even fully-informed

agents can make mistaken normative judgments. Such a judgment makes it much harder to identify

authority with naturalistically acceptable facts about the counterfactual desires of ideally informed

agents. In contrast, if we think it possible that fully-informed agents could not make mistakes, a

naturalistic ideal observer theory seems more plausible. With this structural point in mind, we

arrive at a significant problem for the brute charge that Account S would not require the invocation

of non-natural properties. I have argued that the job description of authority and Account S are

basically the same. But in tandem with the structural point about abductive arguments for non-

naturalism, we arrive at the following conditional: if normative authority would have to be sui

generis and non-natural to satisfy its job description, then Account S would have to be sui generis

and non-natural to satisfy its job description, too.

To close this line of argument, notice that any argument against the preceding conditional

would presumably work by identifying a feature of authority that explains why it cannot be
 141

naturalized, whereas Account S can be. But unless the objection is strictly question begging, it

would proceed by identifying a feature of authority other than the brute charge that authority would

be sui generis and non-natural, whereas Account S is not. Consequently, any successful objection

to the conditional would render the objection from the non-naturalness of authority somewhat

redundant. The present question is simply whether Account S is, as I claim, really an account of

authoritative norms for argumentation by another name. So, if there were some feature of authority,

but not Account S, that makes authority immune to naturalization, that feature would suffice to

show Account S is not authority. 142

3.2.1.4.7 The Authority Makes a Difference Argument for R2

I have a final argument in support of R2. The argument begins with the claim that

eliminating normative authority from our conceptual repertoire should matter in the sense that the

practice of a person who does make judgments of authority differs substantively from the practice

of one who does not. In the present context, a substantive difference is one that involves difference

in the concepts the practices use, or their presuppositions, that generates a noticeable and

significant difference in what the two practices are like. Given ample time, a careful outside

observer will generally be able to tell whether two practices different substantively. If there are no

such substantive differences between a given pair of practices, it follows that the practices do not

differ in terms of their use of the concept of normative authority. With this account in place, I

argue that there would be no such substantive differences in practice between a person who makes

judgments involving Account S and a person who makes judgments that presuppose the existence

of authoritative norms. The best explanation for this is that Account S just is an account of

142
Though presumably not fully redundant. That normative authority cannot be naturalized is one of the primary
reasons people give for doubting its existence. So, if Account S can be naturalized, but authority cannot be, the error
theory retains much of its appeal.
 142

normative authority. Therefore, Account S probably just is an account of normative authority. I

will now develop and defend this argument in detail.

Begin with the substantive difference qualification. In the present context, a substantive

difference between two practices is one that involves a difference in the concepts the two practices

use, or the presuppositions the practices make that renders the two practices significantly and

noticeably different. I leave what makes a difference significant deliberately vague for two reasons.

First, I think my interlocutors and I are apt to agree on a large enough range of cases to render

debate productive. Second, what constitutes a significant difference may be contextual. When we

get to the discussion of excising the concept of authority from our conceptual repertoire,

That said, I find it helpful to illustrate vague concepts by way of examples and paradigm

cases. Paradigm cases of significant and non-significant difference can guide our thinking about

the issue in the present context. Thus, I will provide two pairs of examples to flesh out the concept

of a significant difference between two practices. The first example concerns two practices that

are significantly different. The second pair of practices do not differ significantly.

First: the example of significantly different practices. Consider the practice of two people,

both of whom are witch hunters. The first witch hunter conceives of witches as evil women he

believes to possess formidable magical powers given to them by Satan. The second witch hunter

is, we might say, skeptical, but sadistic. After years of hunting supposed witches without any real

demonstrations of arcane might, he has come to abandon belief in the existence of women with

magical powers. For him, a witch is simply a woman who patriarchal society judges to be out of

line. For some, this shift in belief would suffice to make for a total abandonment of the practice of

witch hunting. Unfortunately, our skeptical witch hunter is also cruel. He takes great pleasure in
 143

inflicting suffering on others, and so he is happy to continue pursuing “witches,” since doing so

gives him a socially sanctioned avenue for his sadism.

Despite the fact that both men continue the general practice of being a witch hunter, it is

clear that the skeptical hunter’s shift in how he thinks of witches would still make a significant

difference to his practice. Notably, the hunter who truly believes in the evil powers of his query is

apt to be highly cautious in pursuit. He will be sure to utter prayers of protection, lest he run afoul

of the witch’s powers. In contrast, the skeptical hunter will be no more cautious than habit and

keeping up the façade lead him to be. For him, there is no chance at all that his newest victim can

turn him into a newt, so it does not matter if from time to time he forgets to recite protective verses

against witchcraft.

Seemingly, not all conceptual differences between two practices make for a significant

difference. Examples might come from some borderline cases in our thinking about some concepts,

especially those of philosophical interest. Consider the concept LIFE. Famously, there is dispute

over whether viruses are accurately understood as living beings or not. Imagine that the medical

and classificatory practices of two doctors are perfectly equivalent, with one singular exception.

The first doctor classifies viruses as alive; the second, does not.

Now, the difference between the two doctors’ practices is noticeable in one way. The two

doctors will verbally give different answers to the question of whether viruses are alive. And the

difference may be accounted for in terms of conceptual differences between the two

practices. 143 However, verbal differences of this kind are not really significant. They are not

significant for purposes of medical practice; the two doctors can prescribe the same treatments

143
Depending on outstanding issues in philosophy of mind and cognitive science about the structure of concepts, how
to individuate concepts, the degree to which someone can have a mistaken understanding of a given concept, etc. I do
not think my argument requires resolving these many complex issues, so engaging with them at length would be rather
off-topic.
 144

regardless of their theoretical beliefs about viruses. But it may even be rather insignificant as a

matter of classification. After all, what matters in classification is plausibly parasitic on what

matters more generally. And if what matters when classifying a thing as alive is our ability to do

science, medicine or assign various legal rights, the irrelevance of whether viruses are alive to

those concerns would be inherited by the classificatory question.144

My contention, then, is that two practices that differ in terms of their containing the concept

of normative authority would be significantly different. A practice with the concept of authority

and one without it would be as sharply distinct as the practices of the two witch hunters. It would

not differ in only trivial respects, as we see in the case of the two doctors with their different views

about viruses.145 Notice that the difference is one of kind and scale, and not simply whether the

difference is noticeable. There are various kinds of non-substantive differences that are noticeable,

but do not really make a large enough difference to actual practice to be substantive differences.

To name two of these: verbal differences, and differences in beliefs about one’s practice.

144
The trickiest of these, of course, is whether the difference would make a difference to the practice of biological
science. I cannot give an extended defense of this claim, but I rather doubt it would. Whether living or not, viruses are
at least relevant enough to the study of life that microbiologists study them. Microbiologists already study non-living
things when these things are relevant to their study of life, e.g. they study chemical bonding. Consequently, biologists
would study viruses even if it turned out that viruses are definitely non-living, because viruses are important to the
study of life. It is hard to see how theories of how, for example, living organisms evolved in response to viruses would
change if viruses were recognized as being non-living. Moreover, we have made fruitful scientific study of viruses
despite the unresolved question of their status as living or non-living. That fact suggests that resolving said question
is just not that important to our ability to studying viruses.
145
Notice that the difference is one of kind and scale, and not simply whether the difference is noticeable. There are
various kinds of non-substantive differences that are noticeable, but do not really make a large enough difference to
actual practice to be substantive differences. Most prominently, this includes verbal differences, where this is a mere
difference in what linguistic symbol is used. Verbal difference is usually thought to be no real difference at all, hence
the dismissal of “disagreements” predicated on verbal difference as being pseudo or verbal disagreements. Some other
differences are noticeable and significant, but are of the wrong kind. For example, consider beliefs about one’s own
practice. Plausibly, a practice that includes error theorists who deny they use normative concepts and go on to defend
this claim is, itself, a noticeable and significant difference from a practice that does not include error theorists.
However, this difference is of the wrong kind. It is a kind of higher level reflection on a practice. It might even involve
some equivocation on “a practice.” Generally, when I speak of practices I mean ways of doing things and the concepts
that compose them. The presence of absence of scholars who reflect on the practice in a given way is not a difference
in that practice.
 145

The first and foremost reason why excising authority should make a difference in practice

follows from the concept of authority, itself. Fundamentally, the concept of an authoritatively is

the concept of something being really, truly important and determinative of what we ought to do,

think, feel, etc. 146 The evocative language used to convey the concept of authority—practical

clout, or practical oomph, or too-be-doneness—builds the idea that authority matters right into the

concept. Given this, it is hard to see how whether we do or do not use the concept of authority

could make no more of a difference than whether a doctor does or does not think a virus is properly

speaking alive when she prescribes a course of treatment.

Notice that we use a concept even when we ask a question involving it. And authority is

central to the concept of there being anything we ought to do, believe, accept, intend, etc.

Therefore, a person who has truly abandoned the concept of authority is a person who has stopped

asking what she ought to do, intend, believe, accept, etc. Or, at least, she has stopped asking these

questions in such a way that she sensitive to norm conflicts. That seems like quite the feat, though.

It might be objected that things can still matter to us, even if they do not matter in the sense

of being required by authoritative norms. Because things matter to us, we will still often agonize

over decisions and answers to questions about whether an argument is any good or not. Things

like truth and being able to justify our beliefs to others matter to us a great deal. Consequently,

when it seems like the error theorist is asking whether an argument “ought” to persuade us, she is

not really asking anything that appeals to the concept of normative authority. Really, she is merely

asking some descriptive question like whether accepting the conclusion of the argument would

promote a given desire with non-normatively specifiable content, such as the desire for the truth.

146
Que a possibly rare instance of appropriate table thumping.
 146

Any impression to the contrary is really just evidence of how much she cares about the thing in

question.147

But this response is too quick. We have to be sensitive to what is conveyed by the phrase

“matters to us,” and whether there is a non-normative interpretation of it which could make sense

of our (argumentative) practices. No doubt, if what it is for something to “matter to us” is a question

like whether it actually persuades us to believe something or moves us to action or something of

that sort, it is a descriptive affair. But that clearly descriptive interpretation of what it is for

something to “matter to us” could not preserve our actual argumentative practices, and so it cannot

be Account S.

To preserve our argumentative practices, a person who asks whether an argument is “any

good” using Account S is not simply asking whether she is persuaded by a given argument. After

all, it is a presupposition of our practices that we can be persuaded by arguments that are no

good. 148 And if argumentative success depends on our desires, it must do so in an extremely

complex way, one that allows for the possibility that we accept bad norms. But once that is granted,

it is hard to see what difference there is between Account S and an account of normative authority.

Therefore, Account S probably is an account of normative authority.

To see this, return to our data-points. A person who asks whether an argument is any good

is asking whether the argument in question is licensed by norms that trump other argumentative

norms (data-point #1). Perhaps one norm trumps another norm as a function of her desires or values

or something of that sort. Even so, for a norm to trump another norm is not simply for it to be a

147
Notice the emphasis on the “merely” qualifier. To avoid a commitment to authoritative normativity it is not enough
to think facts about argumentative success are grounded in facts about what promote our desires or similar states.
Various kinds of subjectivist views about authority would ground argumentative success in facts about what promotes
the desires of people engaged in argumentation. But those subjectivist views are not nihilistic about authority.
148
Moreover, we are not so foolish as to try to answer questions like “am I persuaded by this argument?” by means of
doing things like assessing whether the argument is logically valid.
 147

norm that we have internalized. For it is a part of our argumentative practices that we can

internalize bad argumentative norms, ones that do not really trump others. So, Account S will

preserve this fact (data-point #3). Perhaps none of this prevents a sophisticated enough account to

ground normative trumping in our desires, values or something of that sort. But such an account

would be uncannily close to a subjectivist view of normative authority (data-point #4).

I close this section by reflecting on things that matter to us, specifically, normative

authority. We also have empirical evidence that people take the existence of normative authority

to be a concern of monumental importance. Consider Camus, Dostoyevsky, and anyone else who

is gripped with dread at the prospect of world without value, purpose or meaning. “Normative

authority” is too sterile and academic a term to capture the pathos of these thinkers’ writings, but

it names the same basic kind of phenomenon. People like Dostoyevsky were not anxious about

prospect of excising the concept of normative authority from his conceptual repertoire. Rather,

they decidedly have and intend to retain the concept, but fear nothing corresponds to it. Such dread

clearly treats normative authority as something of the paramount importance, or at least of

paramount importance to us. Given this importance, it is hard to see how excising the concept

could not make much of a difference.

3.3 Conclusion

If the arguments of the preceding section are sound, they show that any otherwise

acceptable version of Formality’s Fine would just be an account of what norms are authoritative

for argumentation. Of course, the defining feature of Formality’s Fine is supposed to be that it

makes sense of our shared argumentative practice of assessing arguments as successful by appeal

to non-authoritative norms. Elsewhere, I have argued against the only other appealing option for

the error theorist to make sense of our shared argumentative practice, Soundness Suffices’
 148

exclusive focus on truth as a non-normatively specifiable end of inquiry. Thus, the error theorist

faces a dilemma: she can retain her own argumentative practice, or her commitment to error theory.

The Incoherence Objection stands.

 149

CHAPTER FOUR: OBJECTIONS, RESPONSES & THE LIMITATIONS OF MY

ARGUMENTATIVE STRATEGY

I have argued that there are three possible kinds of argumentative ends that could ground

facts about whether and to what degree an argument succeeds or fails. Of these, only two kinds

are consistent with MNE: non-normative ends and (formally) normative ends. There are many

particular non-normatively specifiable argumentative ends, but the singular end of truth best fits

with the error theorist’s project of defending error theory. Even so, this fit is quite imperfect. A

singular focus on whether an argument shows its conclusion is objectively like to be true cannot

make sense of the dialectical elements of argumentation, as evidenced by its inability to treat

arguments as sometimes less successful because they beg the question. Error theorists cannot

intelligibly deny that begging the question is ever fallacious, as this would make their own view

too easy to refute by their own lights. Moreover, none of us can coherently deny that an argument

that succeeds relative to our own argumentative norms succeed to some degree, even if said norms

are unreliable at tracking truth.

The obvious solution to the preceding problems is to grant that even an unsound argument

can be a partial success insofar as it makes it rational for its intended audience to accept its

conclusion. Rationality is an at least formally normative concept, so this solution necessarily

abandons the attempt to explicate argumentative success by exclusive appeal to non-normative

ends.149Thus, error theorists cannot coherently abandon concern for all normative questions or

149
It might be objected that the error theorist just needs to appeal to a wider range of non-normative ends than the end
of actually getting to the truth. This objection misses the deeper point. Rationality best explains some of the ways in
which even unsound arguments can still be partial argumentative successes. So, there is a positive case for admitting
some (at least formally) normative ends as determinants of argumentative success, even if none of us would ever
seriously focus on truth as the sole non-normative argumentative end.
 150

concepts, as they need to appeal to some such concepts to fully explain their own conviction that

there are successful arguments for error theory.

The Incoherence Objection is not fully vindicated by this last point, however. The critical

question is whether the error theorist can coherently deny authority to some norms for

argumentative success, even if these are just her own norms. I have argued that she cannot. There

is an arbitrarily large number of formally specifiable norms for argumentative success. A

functional argumentative practice must treat success relative to some of these norms as privileged

over success relative to others. To make sense of arguing for error theory, we would need an

account of what this normative privileging is that is consistent with the rejection of normative

authority. I argue that any account that would adequately make sense of the ways in which some

argumentative norms are privileged over others would just be an account of normative authority,

even if we deny this is what it is. Therefore, we cannot adequately make sense of argumentative

success without appeal to authoritative normativity.

To illustrate this last argument, see it in action. A naïve view maintains that this normative

privileging is a descriptive, psychological matter, one that is identical to the fact that we care about

success relative to some norms, but not relative to others. This view is naïve largely because it

presupposes a naïve view of the way in which we care about argumentative norms, and the ways

in which we treat some argumentative norms as privileged over others. For one thing, in actual

practice we are open to the possibility that our current, internalized argumentative norms and

practices for assessing arguments could be improved upon. Hence, even insofar as there are

determinate facts about what norms we “care about,” we are open to the possibility that we have

internalized the wrong norms, i.e. other norms are actually privileged over the ones we have

internalized. To accommodate this fact, when we talk about the norms we “care about” we cannot
 151

simply mean the ones we have actually internalized and actually care about as a matter of

descriptive psychology. Instead, plausible versions of this view will maintain that argumentative

success is fixed by facts about what idealized versions of ourselves would internalize, or what

norms we would internalize if we were fully rational or something of that sort. But at this point we

have a view that is basically indistinguishable from an ideal agent view of normative authority.

So, that is probably what it is.

In sum, to make adequate sense of the various ways in which we think about argumentative

success, we would have to maintain that some norms are authoritative for argumentative activity.

If all of the preceding arguments are right, it has been shown that error theory cannot coherently

be argued for. In asserting that this or that argument for error theory succeeds, the error theorist is

logically committed to authoritative norms, the very thing which error theory denies. The charge

of incoherence is vindicated.

But one has the sense that the Incoherence Objection is supposed to show that error theory,

itself, is implausible. And it might be thought that this has not been shown. I might fairly be

characterized as having given a transcendental argument. A transcendental argument is one that

aims to show that X is a precondition for Y, and because Y is the case, it must be that X is the

case, too. My arguments do seem to fit this schema. I argue that authoritative norms are a

precondition for successful arguments. And because there are some successful arguments, it

follows that there are authoritative norms. The dialectical punch against error theory is supposed

to come from the fact that error theorists seem hard pressed to deny that there are successful

arguments, since they clearly seem to think there are successful arguments for error theory.

Recognizing my argument as a transcendental argument naturally invites the objections

philosophers have given to transcendental arguments. And the most historically prominent worry
 152

about transcendental arguments is that they do not actually show anything about the mind-

independent world, itself. Rather, they show what we must think is the case about the world. The

most famous presentation of this objection comes from seminal work by Barry Stroud. Stroud

challenges the advocate of transcendental arguments to explain:

“…‘how…truths about the world which appear to say or imply nothing about human
thought or experience’ (for example, that things exist outside us in space and time, or that
there are other minds) ‘[can] be shown to be genuinely necessary conditions of such
psychological facts as that we think and experience things in certain ways, from which the
proofs begin.” (Stroud, 1994, pp. 158-159)

Absent such a bridge principle, it seems like the skeptic can explain away the force of

transcendental arguments by granting that they do show a certain kind of necessity. But, according

to the skeptic, the necessity in question is about our minds and what we must presuppose about the

world, not a feature of the world itself. Thus, perhaps I have shown that a coherent mind must take

certain norms to be normatively authoritative. I have not yet shown that there are such authoritative

norms.

The first thing to note in reply is that I have not argued that actual minds necessarily take

there to be authoritative norms. My argument’s conclusion is not psychological in the narrow sense

of being about actual people’s psychologies and what they must be like. Rather, I have argued that

the following pair of claims are inconsistent: there are fully successful arguments for error theory,

and there are no authoritative norms. Insofar as I frame my argument in psychological terms, I

frame it in terms of what a fully rational or consistent error theorist thinks. But this is because it is

a platitude about epistemic rationality that rational agents do not believe inconsistent things (or at

least that they try to avoid inconstancies). Thus, even the framing in terms of ideally rational

psychology is parasitic on the tension between the claim that there are fully successful arguments

for error theory and the claim that the error theory is true. And if I am right that there is such an
 153

inconsistency between these claims, that would be a fact about the world, not just a claim about

what even ideal people would think.

Even so, I do not want to make too much of this first response, at least not on its own. After

all, it does not yet give a reason to think the inconsistency is resolved because the error theory is

false. Maybe there are no fully successful arguments for anything. That would also resolve the

inconsistency. Somewhat perversely, it might mean that ideally coherent, rational agents

necessarily believe at least one falsehood: that there are authoritative norms. But that would still

also be in one way psychological, though about the psychology of ideally rational agents instead

of actual ones. Thus, the spirit if not the strict letter of Stroud’s objection would remain.

But I do think my argument gives us some reason to reject the error theory, though perhaps

at a cost to more ontologically ambitious conclusions that can be drawn from the Incoherence

Objection. To begin, I am going to assume with only minimal argument that the fact that a view

would make our overall worldview less coherent is a theoretical reason to reject it, one that even

error theorist recognize. While there might be interesting questions about why consistency is or

deserves to be a theoretical virtue, it is a virtue that I think all my interlocutors accept, and would

accept even if they endorsed Soundness Suffices’ exclusive focus on the truth. A basic, often

presented truth-tracking rationale for consistency is that worldviews that contain inconsistent

claims cannot be true.150 Thus, a truth-seeker who realizes they have an inconsistent set of beliefs

will reject the least plausible one that generates the inconsistency. I have argued that the denial of

authoritative normativity is inconsistent with the claim that there are fully successful arguments. I

have argued that even the committed error theorist will want to preserve debunking arguments and

Assuming away the dialetheist view that there are true contradictions, or at least assuming dialethiesm is not as
150 150

a possibility for the issue at hand.

 154

dialectical elements of argumentation for reasons that are more plausible than the error theory.151

Therefore, if I am right about the inconsistency, the error theory is less plausible than our shared

views about argumentative success, and is to be rejected.

The difficult issue is what to make of Stroud’s objection. First note that the strength of

Stroud’s objection against a given transcendental argument seems to be proportional to the degree

of mind-independent existence that argument ascribes to its subject matter. As Stroud notes, it

would be remarkable if we could only have thoughts or experiences if there are “…things that exist

outside space and time” (Stroud, 1994, p. 158), such as Platonic Forms.152 But the explanation for

why this would be remarkable is that the transcendental argument posits a kind of necessary

relation between X and Y, the thing that X is a precondition for. And it is harder to make sense of

this specific necessary dependence relations between things to the degree that they are generally

ontologically distinct and generally lack necessary relations between one another. Hence, that

Platonic Forms would be a precondition for primate brains to give rise to thoughts seems

incredible. By definition, Platonic Forms are generally ontologically independent of primate brains

and vice-versa. Given that general lack of necessary ontological dependence relations between

primate brains and Platonic Forms, it would be surprising that the former can only give rise to

thoughts given the latter.153

With this in mind, note that I have avoided making any claims about the ontology of

authoritative normativity. I have concluded that there must be authoritative norms if we are to

151
To see this, return to examples of highly plausible but mundane debunking arguments, like the lawyer who reveals
the key eyewitness to be a liar. That this lawyer’s argument can at least partially succeed at debunking belief provided
she gives good evidence is more plausible than error theory, or probably any other specific metaethical thesis.
152
Similarly even for his second example: other minds. While there is an obvious sense in which other minds cannot
be mind-independent, they certainly seem to be independent of one’s own mind.
153
Even so, perhaps such relations exist. Stroud’s critique requires a bridge principle to meet; he does not deny that
there ever are such bridge principles.
 155

make sense of a number of important respects in which arguments can be more or less successful.

But I have not argued that such authoritative norms must be grounded in (say) sui generis, non-

natural facts and properties. Nor have I denied that authority is a mind-dependent property. Indeed,

I believe my current arguments are neutral on the question of whether authoritative normativity

requires any ontological commitments at all.154 Because my arguments are neutral on ontological

questions about just “what in the world” an authoritative norm is, they can consistently be used in

defense of seemingly any metaethical view that grants that there are authoritative norms.

But my arguments can also be used to argue for authoritative normativity in a deliberately

neutral sense, which is the sense in which I mean to deploy them. This deliberately neutral sense

is precisely what it sounds like: it maintains that there are authoritative norms, but rejects a

commitment to any particular claim about their ontology. Seemingly, we argue that there are Xs

without being committed to any particular thesis about their ontology all the time. For a mundane

example, a picture of my office is a good reason to believe it contains a table. But when I proffer

this photograph as evidence of my possession of a table, I seem to do so in a sense that is neutral

on debates in mereology. Whether my room contains a metaphysically robust mid-sized object, a

table, or simply a collection of molecules arranged tablewise just does not matter for my purposes

when showing the photograph. For an example from philosophy, we routinely make arguments in

ethics that are neutral between various ultimate normative theories. In both of these cases,

154
Such views would include various kinds of non-cognitivism, according to which normative thought and talk are
not “in the business” of describing the world, and so normative thought and talk do not really have any distinct
ontological commitments of their own. While critics of non-cognitivism charge that the view denies that there are
authoritative norms, I think this should be understood as a substantive objection that must be argued for. It is not
definitional of non-cognitivism that the view rejects normative authority. Non-ontologically committed metaethical
views also include so-called quietist views, like those endorsed by Derek Parfit (Parfit, 2011) and T.M. Scanlon
(Scanlon, 2014). Parfit and Scanlon reject non-cognitivsm and claim that there are normative facts and properties, but
deny that these facts and properties exist in what Parfit calls an “ontological” sense that invites error theoretic worries.
These views are characterized as a kind of quietism because they deny that there are interesting answers to
metaphysical questions to be asked about normative facts and properties.
 156

neutrality may be defensible only because of the implicit supposition that some adequate view of

the metaphysics is accurate.155 But, even if necessary, that supposition is defensible in metaethics,

as there are many respectable views that include authoritative normativity. Given this neutrality, I

can avoid Stroud’s objection on the grounds that I am not trying to defend mind-independent

authoritatively normative entities. So, I do not need bridge principles of the kind he suggests in

order to make my argument.

It might be objected that the committed error theorist typically has her already considered

and rejected large swaths of the metaethical terrain. For her, the only satisfactory refutation of

error theory would not be neutral on the ontology of authoritative norms. It would have to do

something like show there are sui generis, non-natural authoritatively normative facts and

properties. After all, that is her view of what authoritatively normativity would have to be like.

I grant that for some committed error theorists, showing there are sui generis, non-natural

authoritatively normative facts would be the maximally satisfactory refutation of the error theory.

But it does not follow that the neutral presentation of the objection is dialectically impotent. As I

stressed before, the committed error theorist is not a zealot for error theory. She proportions her

credence in this or that metaethical thesis to her evidence. I take it that in fact there are multiple

reasonable views of the ontological commitments of (authoritatively) normative discourse.

Consequently, the committed error theorist still has some confidence in the truth of other views of

the ontological commitments of (authoritatively) normative discourse. Of course, she takes the

error theory to be the best of the lot, but this is not at all a matter of thinking the other views are

To be clear, I am not claiming that every day discourse over tables is so committed. Rather, the point is that some
155

might reasonably propose this constraint, and so I wanted to address it.

 157

not worth taking seriously. In light of recognizing this plurality of reasonable metaethical views,

the committed error theorist is open to neutral defenses of authoritative norms.

Finally, I can maintain that my arguments succeed on their own terms by showing that it is

rational to reject error theory, even if this is not the same as refuting error theory by showing it to

be false. I have argued that arguments can succeed to the degree that they make belief rational, not

just to the degree that they get at the truth. Stroud’s objection is aimed at transcendental arguments

that are supposed to show truths about the mind-independent world. However, that is not the only

kind of transcendental argument that exists. It seems often forgotten in discussions of his work that

he actually also defends transcendental arguments as effective against skepticism, even if they fail

to prove there is a mind-independent world (or whatever). In particular, he maintains that

transcendental arguments can show that certain beliefs are what he calls “invulnerable,” in the

sense that they cannot rationally be doubted.156 The element of rationality must be emphasized.

His position is not that transcendental arguments merely reveal incurable dogmatism, a mind

necessarily closed to the truth. Rather, the point is that certain forms of skepticism are irrational,

and this can be shown by transcendental arguments.

My own arguments more than complement Stroud’s own points about transcendental

arguments. While my primary target is error theory, along the way I have argued that rational belief

is of argumentative value for its own sake, not merely of instrumental toward the goal of truth.

Thus, my arguments vindicate two, mutually reinforcing claims. First, that rational belief is an

argumentative end unto itself. Second, that it is rational to reject or doubt error theory. I can appeal

to the first conclusion in defense of the theoretical significance of the second, even while granting

that I might not have shown error theory is false.

156
See (Stroud, 1994).
 158

There is, of course, an important limitation of this strategy. To the degree that one presses

my arguments into service to defend a more robust, mind-independent ontology for authoritative

normativity, they may lose much of their probative value. That said, they may not. While I have

argued for one way of avoiding Stroud’s classic objection to transcendental arguments, I have not

denied that there are other ways to respond. Perhaps additional analysis of the normative

dimensions of argumentation would favor this or that more particular, non-error theoretic view.

Perhaps this analysis would favor a more realist, mind-independent view of the ontology of

authoritative normativity. Or perhaps it would not. I remain neutral on these other questions, if

only because of the limits of space and time to do the inquiry.

To close, I must admit an additional outright limitation of the arguments of this dissertation.

Fundamentally, I have charged that error theory lacks the conceptual resources to make sense of

arguments made on its behalf. To meet this charge, the error theorist would need to provide some

conception of argumentation and argumentative ends that can avoid a commitment to authoritative

norms, while still also preserving an acceptable range of argumentative practices.

Obviously, I have argued that this cannot be done. Thereby, I have argued that

argumentative activity presupposes that some norms are authoritative, say because these norms are

authoritative for assessing arguments as more or less successful. But I have said little about what

norms these might be, or why they are authoritative. Which is not to say I have said nothing on

these topics. The overarching moral of several chapters was that argumentation presupposes that

some arguments are more or less successful as a function of their ability to make a change in

attitude rational.

What is rational for a person in this latter sense is highly contingent on their beliefs, and

maybe other idiosyncratic features of their psychology. The emphasis on rationality in this sense
 159

may support a particular view of what norms are authoritative for argumentative activity. In

particular, for us to make sense of our own argumentative practice, it might suffice that we take

the argumentative standards of our own ideally rational self to be authoritative. Thus, one

significant limitation of my arguments is that they do not obviously do much to defend

authoritative desire independent reasons.

This is an interesting result, given the history of the Incoherence Objection. Earlier

statements of the Incoherence Objection present it as a defense of moral reasons, especially where

these are a kind of authoritative, desire independent normative reasons.157Thus, in addition to being

less confident than these philosophers that the Incoherence Objection supports a mind-

independent, realist view of the ontology of authoritative norms, I am also less confident that my

arguments support their views about the scope of some of these reasons. If I am right, my defense

of the Incoherence Objection may preserve a space for a return to the narrower moral error theory

championed by John Mackie and Richard Joyce in place of the expansive metanormative error

theory defended by Jonas Olson, Bart Streumer and Stan Husi.158

That said, these closing remarks are schematic, and mostly intended to introduce future

lines of inquiry. While I suspect that a desire based view can make adequate sense of argumentative

practice, this suspicion is tentative and might be unwarranted given a deeper analysis of the issues.

Moreover, my arguments suggest at least promising development for defending authoritative

moral reasons. In particular, I have argued that question begging arguments are fallacious because

they cannot make it rational for our interlocutors to change their mind. But this is not far from

157
See(Case, 2019), (Cuneo, 2007), and (Rowland, 2012) and (Shafer-Landau, 2006).
158
Though even here, it would be a much less formidable defense of moral error theory. A lot of the motivation for
moral error theory seems to be grounded in suspicion of authority and the ontological commitments it brings along,
not the universal scope of moral norms in particular. Even granting a limited scope for the Incoherence Objection’s
success, this kind of moral error theory is unmotivated. Once we grant that there are authoritative norms, we cannot
coherently mount in principle, ontological objections to authority as such.
 160

saying that begging the question is fallacious because it fails to respect the perspective of other

people. And a failure to respect another person, even narrowly in their capacity as epistemic agents,

seems like a species of moral failure. 159 A defense of authoritative moral reasons by way of

argumentative practice may yet be in the offing.

159
Miranda Fricker coined the term epistemic injustice for kinds of injustices done to people under their guise as
epistemic agents or knowers (Fricker, 2007). The widespread endorsement of Frickers’ view that there things that are
wrong in virtue of how they treat people as epistemic agents is an additional, indirect reason to take the proposal that
begging the question may be fallacious partially because it is morally wrong seriously.
 161

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