Can Kitcher Avoid the Naturalistic Fallacy?

Simon Derpmann, Dominik Düber, Tim Rojek, Konstantin Schnieder

1. Introduction
In his article Four Ways of ‘Biologicizing’ Ethics, Philip Kitcher puts forward a forceful criticism
against attempts to remove ethics from the hands of philosophy and to turn it over to the
natural sciences. According to Kitcher, some of these attempts “slide from uncontroversial
truisms to provocative falsehoods” (FBE, 575). Without denying that scientific knowledge – for
example, insights from sociobiology – can be of importance in answering ethical questions,
Kitcher diagnoses that some of the most prominent attempts in this field “are deeply confused
through failure to distinguish a number of quite different projects” (FBE, 575). This failure is in
part a consequence of neglecting the distinction between is and ought (FBE, 582), and of
justifying prescriptive judgments on the basis of purely descriptive premises alone. Yet, in The
Ethical Project Kitcher himself bases his account of metaethics and normative ethics on the
findings of biology and evolutionary theory. So, from looking at his own critique, it seems that
Kitcher himself has to be careful to avoid those mistakes that other attempts to naturalize
ethics supposedly encounter.

Kitcher’s development of an ethical theory in his latest book, The Ethical Project, consists of
three major parts that follow the common distinction between descriptive ethics, metaethics
and normative ethics. The first part gives a “how possibly” (EP, 12) history of the development
of ethical practices from the times of the hominid ancestors of Homo sapiens up to the present
day. Kitcher does not claim that his story is the most accurate portrayal of the factual
development of ethical practices. Instead, it has the function to “answer skeptics claiming that
‘real ethics’ requires resources naturalists cannot allow” (EP, 12). Although one could interpret
this claim as merely demanding the compatibility of naturalism and normative ethics, Kitcher’s
thesis is more ambitious. Kitcher does not merely want to claim that the empirical sciences
and philosophical ethics cover different fields of inquiry. Instead, Kitcher believes that ethics
can be done with the resources of naturalism alone. His account of the development of the
ethical project is meant to be the foundation of his ethical theory. This entails not only that
ethical theory needs to be informed by the results of the empirical sciences, which is not
necessarily excluded by nonnaturalistic theories, but that ethical theory can be developed and
justified by their means alone. In the second part, Kitcher develops his metaethics, defending
the claim that in ethics “the concept of progress […] is prior to the notion of truth” (EP, 249).
This does not commit Kitcher to a noncognitivistic account of ethics, since, for Kitcher,
progress is capable of making ethical statements true. According to Kitcher, ethical practices
and the corresponding judgments are evaluated based on their ability to fulfill a specific
1
function in the development of human societies. Kitcher defends his approach against
objections that suspect a naturalistic fallacy in this line of argument.1 The third part contains
Kitcher’s own position in normative ethics, developing his account of “dynamic
consequentialism” (EP, 288 ff.) on the basis of the insights of the first parts and applying it to
current pressing ethical problems.

Taking Kitcher’s earlier critique as a reminder, in the following we inquire whether Kitcher’s
version of naturalism – pragmatic naturalism – can avoid the problems that are typically
associated with attempts of naturalizing ethics. For this purpose, we first take a look at
Kitcher’s argument as it proceeds from his description of the “analytical history” of the ethical
project towards the normative conclusions that he draws (section 2). Our main concern about
this account is that Kitcher’s naturalism is unable to avoid the naturalistic fallacy. Accordingly,
we critically examine Kitcher’s attempt to answer Hume’s challenge, in which he tries to show
that pragmatic naturalism is not committed to a naturalistic fallacy (section 3). Subsequently,
we confront his theory with a set of objections calling into question whether the role that
Kitcher assigns to the notion of progress is plausible. Kitcher seems to make use of a purely
descriptive concept of progress that serves for the justification of ethical practices (section 4).
If our arguments are conclusive, then Kitcher’s pragmatic naturalism is either committed to a
naturalistic fallacy or to introducing ethical premises that force him to deviate from his
naturalistic self-understanding (section 5).

2. Kitcher’s understanding of ‘naturalism’ and the ‘analytical history’

of ethics
Our first step is to understand Kitcher’s notion of ‘pragmatic naturalism’. In the course of our
argument, we focus on the naturalism in his ethical account. In Kitcher’s understanding,
“naturalism consists in refusing to introduce mysterious entities” (EP, 3), which Kitcher also
refers to as “spooks” (ibid.). It seems that Kitcher distinguishes natural from “supernatural”
entities through the kind of enquiry by which inquirers gain knowledge about these entities. In
Living with Darwin Kitcher uses this terminology to distinguish gods, ancestors, spirits and
forces from what he regards as the “normal things with which human beings deal” (LD, 132).
Within the context of developing a naturalistic account of ethics, however, this distinction is too

1
In contemporary philosophy there are two common understandings of what a naturalistic fallacy
consists in. One famous conception is developed in G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, in which a naturalistic fallacy
occurs in attempts to define the notion of good. (See Moore 1903: §27, §35) Bernard Williams however
describes this understanding as a “spectacular misnomer” (Williams 1985: 121), because it does not consist – as
fallacies do – in making defective inference, and it is not necessarily connected to naturalism. Kitcher uses the
term naturalistic fallacy in the second sense, in which it indicates a violation of Hume’s law. In the following, we
use naturalistic fallacy in this sense - as the mistake of building prescriptive conclusions on descriptive premises
alone.
2
broad, because Kitcher’s naturalism has more opponents than the distinction suggests.
Kitcher claims that “[a]ppeals to divine will, to a realm of values, to faculties of ethical
perception and ‘pure practical reason,’ have to go” (EP, 4). It is important to note that his
account does not only aim at refuting religious or transcendental justification in ethics. His
naturalism claims that ethical justification is won exclusively from the standpoint of the
empirical sciences, which also excludes other empirical ways of gaining ethical insights,
e.g. the experience of everyday life:

They [the naturalists] start from the inventory of the world allowed by the totality of
bodies of well-grounded knowledge (the gamut of scholarly endeavours running from
anthropology and art history to zoology), and, aware of the certain incompleteness of
the list, allow only such novel entities as can be justified through accepted methods of
rigorous inquiry. (EP, 3-4)

In order to separate acceptable from non-acceptable entities, Kitcher relies on “well-grounded

knowledge” that the sciences can offer us.2 However, his understanding of naturalism is, the
general vagueness of the term granted, unusual.3 Commonly, naturalists understand rigorous
inquiry as the project undertaken by the natural sciences. In contrast to this, Kitcher relies not
only on the natural sciences in describing the ethical project but also refers to the social
sciences and humanities. This, of course, is not problematic per se. However, we cannot see
how Kitcher is able to solve conflicts between different sciences about the status of entities
that are subject to scientific inquiry. He seems to have no clear criterion to dismiss certain
types of entities rather than others, because he does not define a clear cut that separates
well-grounded inquiry from those forms of inquiry that are not well-grounded. Thus, in the case
of disagreement between and within disciplines that supposedly fall within the sphere of well-
grounded inquiry, there seems to be no way to make a decision about diverging descriptions
of their respective object and the kinds of entities permitted. It seems unclear how a question
like the following could be decided: Are instances of intentions, arguments and justifications
that historians include in the description of historical processes described more reliably in
psychological and sociobiological terms?

Pragmatic naturalism has an obvious advantage from extending the scope of the sciences
allowed by naturalism. It enables Kitcher to avoid the reductive tendencies of the kind of

2
Kitcher’s position shows some resemblance to the scientific realism of Sellars, who famously claimed
that “in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that
it is, and of what is not that it is not” (Sellars 1997: 82).
3
For different accounts of “naturalism”, see Papineau (2009).
3
naturalism that refers only to the natural sciences or one specific discipline, e.g. physics.
Ultimately, this allows Kitcher to speak of a “cultural analogue of natural selection” (EP, 103)
instead of reducing cultural and social facts to biological and evolutionary facts, which is done
in other naturalistic accounts.4

But why then should ethicists understand the development of ethics in terms of analogues of
evolutionary theory, as Kitcher does? They could also use the standards of history or social
anthropology or maybe something different. Kitcher’s argument is that pragmatic naturalism, in
analogy to evolutionary theory, enables us to “liberate ourselves from mysteries about many of
our current practices by emulating Darwin: think of them, too, as historical products” (EP, 2).
But this particular trait of ‘evolutionary theory’ can be found in many philosophical accounts
that understand our current practices as results of historical processes. Kitcher is right in
claiming that ethical theory needs to be aware of the origin and genesis of ethical practices.
Still, this does not force ethicists to understand ethical norms solely in terms of historical
products. Thus, it is unclear why there should be a unique advantage of including this trait of
evolutionary theory instead of referring to other historically sensitive accounts.

Nevertheless, for the sake of argument we shall follow Kitcher’s understanding of naturalism
and take a closer look at his account of ethics, in which ‘pragmatic naturalism’ is meant to
“explain the origin, evolution, and progress of ethical practice.” (EP, 3) Despite the complexity
of Kitcher’s evolutionary explanation of ethics, we outline his analysis here only as far as it is
required for our purposes. With regard to ethics, Kitcher tells us that pragmatic naturalism,

envisages the ethical project as begun by our remote ancestors, in response to the
difficulties of their social life. They invented ethics. Successive generations have
amended the ethical legacy transmitted to them, sometimes, but by no means always,
improving it. (EP, 3)

At various stages of his inquiry Kitcher emphasizes that pragmatic naturalism understands
morality as a “social technology responding to the problem background confronting our first
human ancestors” (EP, 221). Our ancestors, Kitcher assumes, invented ethics in response to
recurrent “altruism failures” (EP, 103) permeating their group and perturbing the social
harmony of the collective. At some point in human development, individuals start to take an
interest in the interests of other individuals. In the course of time some forms of cooperation

4
It is important to note that this is something other than allowing normativity in the sciences. All the
sciences that are included in Kitcher’s gamut of scholarly endeavors only make descriptive claims.
4
turn out to be more stable and successful than others. Thus, from the beginning ethics is a
merely functional device to reduce altruism failures and social conflict.

Kitcher concedes that “[a]ltruism is not the whole story about ethics, but it is an important part
of it” (EP, 17). While in the early stages of the ethical project the ethical code aims at
satisfying only basic desires (food, shelter etc.), it later extends to an expanded repertoire of
newly generated wishes, because richer conceptions of the good life emerge(EP, 239). So,
the occurrence of a change in the problem background from which the ethical project once
originated “generat[es] new functions for ethics to serve, and hence new modes of functional
refinement” (EP, 221). Accordingly then, our present ethical code comprises normative claims
that cannot be directly derived from the original function of remedying altruism failures.
Nonetheless, even these more complex ethical practices can be explained by reference to the
history of the ethical project that follows a relatively simple functional mechanism.

Kitcher’s description of the possible development of ethical practices is not implausible. But
with regard to his overall project, the question arises whether Kitcher is able to successfully
derive normative ethical conclusions from the descriptive part of his theory. At this point, we
are not concerned with the content of the material ethical judgments that Kitcher develops in
the third part of his book. Rather, we are not convinced that he is able derive these ethical
judgments from the findings of the first part. While Kitcher’s analytic history of the ethical
project is far from simplifying the development of the ethical project by reducing its logic to
evolutionary biology, Kitcher still tells a story of the genesis of ethical practices, but does not
give an account of their vindication.5 In our understanding Kitcher is neither able to give an
external vindication of ethical practices, nor is he able to give an adequate understanding of
what vindication means within ethical practices. We believe that his account of ethics is
eventually committed to a naturalistic fallacy. This common objection against naturalistic
accounts of ethics is treated in the following.

3. Kitcher’s attempt to avoid the naturalistic fallacy

Since Kitcher’s pragmatic naturalism derives substantial ethical norms from a description of
the history of the ethical project, it has to address Hume’s challenge of mistakenly deriving
normative from descriptive claims alone. Kitcher argues that it is “not easy to state Hume’s
supposed claim about the impossibility of certain kinds of warranted inference in a form in
which it is both precise and true” (EP, 254). With regard to his own project, however, Kitcher

5
In The Naturalists Return (NR), Kitcher discusses a similar objection against early approaches to
naturalizing philosophical epistemology. Even though these arguments might bear some resemblance to the
discussion of naturalistic ethics, we do not follow them in this article.
5
understands “naturalism to be committed to the thesis that in some sense ethical conclusions
are susceptible of justification.” (EP, 256) He states that “Hume’s challenge applies to a
simple, historically prominent, way of elaborating this commitment” (EP, 256). And he sees the
necessity to show that no naturalistic fallacy is implied in his line of reasoning.

There are two possibilities for proponents of naturalistic ethics to deal with Hume’s challenge:
On the one hand, they could demonstrate that there are at least some relevant exceptions to
Hume’s Law (understood as the impossibility of deriving a normative judgment from a set of
purely descriptive premises) indicating that what is referred to as Hume’s Law does not hold
universally. On the other hand, naturalists could argue that Hume’s objection does not rule out
all kinds of naturalistic ethics in the first place, if not all naturalistic ethics derive normative
conclusions solely from descriptive premises.

Kitcher makes a short remark on the first option. The attempts to refute Hume’s Law that he
mentions refer to two cases of inferences from ‘is’ to ‘ought’. On the one hand, it could be
shown that there are some inferences that include only descriptive premises but nonetheless
generate a conclusion containing normative concepts. On the other hand, it could be argued
that the common principle ‘ought implies can’ shows that there are at least negative judgments
about normative claims that follow from solely factual premises. In the following, we do not
deal with Kitcher’s discussion of these two versions of the first option. Although we are not
convinced by both arguments for the limited validity of Hume’s law, and believe that it is
generally impossible to derive normative judgments from descriptive judgments, this
disagreement is only of minor importance, because Kitcher himself believes that he can
neglect this first option and eventually follows the second option. Therefore, Kitcher’s defense
of his naturalistic account of ethics does not rely on the refutation of the universality of Hume’s
Law. In fact, he is convinced that:

It is no victory for naturalism to contend that some negative ethical statements can be
derived from factual premises, for that fails to touch the fundamental question of
whether a naturalistic approach to ethics can justify conclusions offering positive
guidance for our actions. (EP, 255)

Leaving the first option of questioning Hume’s Law or its universality aside, we are primarily
interested in whether Kitcher is successful in following the second option. While our
disagreement with regard to the relevant claims of first option does no harm to Kitcher’s
overall project, a critique of the second option poses more serious problems for pragmatic
naturalism.
6
It is obvious that Hume's Law poses a problem for those naturalistic accounts of ethics that do
not follow a purely descriptive project. If naturalism allows only factual or descriptive premises
in ethics, and if, furthermore, Hume's Law holds true, then those naturalistic positions that
arrive at normative or prescriptive conclusions must either have introduced normative claims
without notice – and thus have given up on the naturalistic project – or must have made a
formal mistake in deriving normative claims from factual premises.

In following the second option, Kitcher does not try to refute the basic claim underlying any
argument that suspects naturalistic accounts of being committed to a naturalistic fallacy. On
the contrary, he sees that Hume's concern is generally well grounded. So, he attempts to
show that Hume's objection holds “no terrors for pragmatic naturalism” (EP, 253); not because
the requirement for inferences that is addressed by Hume’s Law is flawed, but because the
objection that is expressed by Hume’s challenge does not rule out pragmatic naturalism. Thus,
Kitcher’s way of dealing with Hume’s challenge does not depend on refuting or restricting
Hume’s Law, but he attempts to meet the challenge.

Kitcher concedes that in following a naturalistic account of ethics, he needs to give an answer
to the objection that pragmatic naturalism is committed to a naturalistic fallacy. His reply to
Hume's objection refers back to his description of the ethical project. He sees that

Naturalists must elaborate an account of the justified beginning and growth of the
ethical project, showing it to be free of the sorts of inferences Hume questioned […]
(EP, 258).

In order to reach this goal, Kitcher shows that the agents in the history of the ethical project
generally cannot be said to commit naturalistic fallacies. He refers to cases of ethical progress
that occur in the history of the ethical project, such as the abolition of slavery and the
promotion of women’s rights (EP, §§ 24 and 25). These instances of ethical progress do not
depend solely on factual insights, but on normative judgments as well. Accordingly, Kitcher’s
pragmatic naturalism “views human beings as always having been committed to ethical
claims” (EP, 256). The protagonists of ethical movements start from shared ethical beliefs and
arrive at novel ethical conclusions. He believes that because of this, pragmatic naturalism
meets Hume’s law. Kitcher refers to the example of Mary Wollstonecraft as one protagonist of
ethical progress. In his reply to Hume’s challenge he emphasizes that:

7
 On occasion, modifications of ethical practice have been effected through inferences,
but the clearest cases from history reveal the premises as partly normative and partly
factual.

Wollstonecraft’s premises are (1) women ought to be capable of wifely and maternal
behavior (in line with the prevalent ethical code), and (2) educated women are more
likely to have these capacities. She infers that women ought to be educated (§24). Her
inferences are not touched by Hume’s challenge. (EP, 257; our emphasis)

Kitcher’s response to Hume’s challenge suggests that pragmatic naturalism can be shown not
to be affected by Hume’s Law, because no fallacious inference takes place within the
arguments of the agents in the history of the ethical project. Thus, he does not question
whether an inference from descriptive statements to a normative statement is permissible or
not. If there is no inference from an 'is' to an 'ought' within the history of the ethical project, as
Kitcher argues, pragmatic naturalism is not affected by the truth of Hume’s law, because the
corresponding challenge simply can be met by pragmatic naturalism. Based on this
observation Kitcher comes to believe that Hume’s objection holds no terrors for pragmatic
naturalism.

Kitcher reconstructs Hume's objection as demanding an answer about how the participants
within the ethical project can come to hold normative judgments even though they start from
factual beliefs. And indeed, Kitcher’s analytical history of the ethical project does not describe
its protagonists – such as the opponents of the subjection of women or the abolitionists – as
making inferences from factual premises to normative conclusions. These protagonists refer to
normative beliefs upon which they build their demands. However, the crucial point is that
unlike the pragmatic naturalist, both feminists and abolitionists start from normative premises
about what is right and wrong or good and bad. Their ethical starting point is not a description
of the evolution of ethics like the one that Kitcher presents in the first part of his book. The fact
that these protagonists of ethical progress can be described within the historical framework of
the ethical project that pragmatic naturalism develops does not make these protagonists
themselves pragmatic naturalists. Therefore, Kitcher’s observation does not protect the
pragmatic naturalist from committing a naturalistic fallacy.

Once this crucial distinction between the perspective of an observer (the pragmatic naturalist)
and the perspective of a participant (e.g. a protagonist of ethical progress like Wollstonecraft)
of the ethical project is made, Hume’s objection does hold terrors for pragmatic naturalism.
For Hume’s objection is not only directed at the inferences of the participants of the ethical
8
project –who may or may not be accused of the naturalistic fallacy – but also at philosophers
who build ethical theories. Of course, philosophers are also participants in ethical practices.
However, they cannot occupy both perspectives at once. As a pragmatic naturalist, Kitcher
may well be able to make normative judgments an object of observation, but from this
standpoint his philosophical premises render him unable to make normative judgments.

On the one hand, then, Kitcher cannot establish the normativity of naturalistic ethics by
reference to the normative judgments of the participants within the ethical project, as long as
he only occupies the observer perspective and merely describes the development of the
ethical project without affirming at least some developments as ethically good. And on the
other hand, the empirical findings gained from the observer perspective are not by themselves
sufficient to derive normative conclusions for the participants within the ethical project.
Therefore, Kitcher cannot build the normative part of his ethical theory on the descriptive part
of the theory alone. Again, Kitcher may answer that the pragmatic naturalist is himself also a
participant of the ethical project, and thus is himself committed to ethical claims. Yet, if the
pragmatic naturalist takes his own reflections on the status of ethical judgments seriously, he
is forced to understand ethical judgments in terms of their historical development alone, not in
terms of their genuine normative force. All he can say about his deepest ethical beliefs is how
humans have turned out to become the kinds of beings likely to hold these beliefs. Therefore,
the normative part of Kitcher’s ethical theory lacks justification at this point.

4. Ethical Progress
So far, we have argued that Kitcher’s reference to the ethical beliefs of participants of ethical
practices does not suffice to meet Hume’s Law or avoid the corresponding objection, because
it fails to distinguish two different perspectives. A close analysis of Kitcher's answer to Hume’s
challenge suggests, however, that he may be able to avoid this problem. Kitcher sees that the
pragmatic naturalist not only has to show that changes within the ethical project are not
necessarily based on naturalistic fallacies, but that the protagonists of progress within the
ethical project are justified from a naturalist perspective. When it comes to the evaluation of
changes occurring within the history of the ethical project, Kitcher rejects a “mere change
view” (EP, §22) and hence provides a criterion for the evaluation of historical developments:
progress. In this part of our examination, we take a closer look at the role that is assigned to
this concept. We are not concerned with Kitcher’s specific definition of progress, but with its
status as a justifying principle within normative ethics.

Kitcher’s criterion for the justification of judgments that are made within the ethical project is
based on the fundamental function of ethics, which serves as the central principle in Kitcher's
9
story of the ethical project. He says that “[p]ragmatic naturalism understands notions of ethical
truth and justification in terms of the fundamental notion of progress, conceived as functional
fulfillment and refinement” (EP, 262). In this sense, progress does not only explain why ethical
practices are the way they are, but progress also justifies why they should be the way they are
and how participants ought to carry on with the ethical project. While he wants to avoid
suspicious metaphysical claims6– the introduction of ‘spooks’ – Kitcher does not abandon the
claim that there are substantial guidelines for ethical deliberation, and that pragmatic
naturalism can provide us with such guidelines. He introduces the notion of ethical progress
against those views that understand the development of ethics merely in terms of causal
changes7.

Ethical progress consists in functional refinement, first aimed at solving the original
problems more thoroughly, more reliably, and with less costly efforts […]. In the course
of progress […] the problem background itself changes, generating new functions for
ethics to serve, and hence new modes of functional refinement. (EP, 221)

Kitcher seems to introduce an ethical notion of functional fulfillment as a response to Hume’s

challenge. If the pragmatic naturalist affirms a concept that justifies ethical judgments, the
validity of Hume’s Law does not restrict him to making only descriptive claims about ethics, but
enables him to make use of normative judgments as well:

The key to this response is quite simple. Once ethics is viewed as a social technology,
directed at particular functions, recognizable facts about how those functions can
better be served can be adduced in inferences justifying ethical novelties. The mystery
that worried Hume disappears. (EP, 262)

However, there is a gap in Kitcher’s argument. Introducing the concept of progress enables
him only to say that given that the justified purpose of ethics is to promote functional fulfillment
and refinement, those changes that are productive of these aims are justified as well. Of
course, once the notion of functional fulfillment is introduced as a justifying, i.e. as a normative
principle, ethical proposals can be justified on the basis of this normative principle and there is
no instance of the naturalistic fallacy. But this is not Hume’s challenge. Hume's challenge is
concerned with how the naturalist comes to understand functional fulfillment as ethically
demanded in the first place, when everything naturalism claims to say about ethical practices

6
In Living with Darwin (LD) Kitcher argues not only against philosophical accounts presupposing pure
practical reason or a realm of values, but also theological accounts, such as creationist theories.
7
Kitcher emphasizes the problems of a ‘mere-change-view’ in §22.
10
relates solely to their genesis and persistence. The naturalistic fallacy occurs in telling the
history of the ethical project as one that is not only best explained by reference to functional
fulfillment, which guides the ethical project and can be described in purely factual terms. It
occurs in making functional fulfillment understood in purely factual terms a criterion that
justifies ethical practices.

The status of the concept of progress within an account of normative ethics could be
understood in three different ways. (1) Firstly, progress could be used as an ethical concept
justifying particular ‘functions’ as ethically worthwhile and designate others as ethically
worthless or condemnable. As shown above, we think that in this case Kitcher would leave a
naturalist account, since he would not only understand functional fulfillment as a descriptive
constituent of a descriptive concept of progress (if this is possible at all) but designate a
certain notion of progress as justifying ethical practices and thus introduce an ethical premise
that is not won from the empirical sciences. (2) Secondly, progress could be defended as a
‘descriptive-evaluative’ concept, i.e. a concept which cannot be used without simultaneously
praising the progressive and condemning the regressive. But since Kitcher himself denies that
there are such hybrid – or thick – concepts “involving a factual and an ethical component” (EP,
193), he cannot take this path. In his usage “a concept with any ethical component is ethical”
(ibid.), and therefore would be a case of an ethical concept and leave the naturalist
framework. (3) Finally, progress could be understood to be a purely descriptive concept, which
nonetheless defines what is ethically good. This seems to be the option that Kitcher defends.
Yet, even recognizing some ethical code or proposal as more progressive, one is ultimately
left with an open question:’ This amendment is progressive, but is it good?’8 So if
progressiveness is really a purely descriptive property of an ethical code, then Kitcher is
unable to use it as a concept carrying any normative force in ethical guidance. Ultimately, as
we have argued, ethical questions cannot be answered solely by appeal to history, if the
naturalistic fallacy is to be avoided.9

5. Conclusion

8
This argument is usually attributed to Moore (See Moore 1903: §27). Moore remarks, “the naturalistic
fallacy [...] consists in identifying the simple notion which we mean by ‘good’ with some other notion” (Moore
1903: §35). Without necessarily committing ourselves to Moore’s ontology of values, we can reasonably ask
whether Kitcher has reduced the notion of ‘goodness’ adequately in identifying it with his notion of progress (or
non-altruism failures). Even though Kitcher suggests in note 21 on page 272 that Moore’s argument is more
complex, he acknowledges that the general objection poses a problem for at least some reductive accounts.
9
Of course, this does not make historical or empirical claims dispensable. Understanding and satisfying
concrete ethical demands may depend on empirical and historical investigations as they are provided by the
social and life sciences.
11
The arguments made in this article show that Kitcher’s project is either threatened by
inconsistency or by carrying open burdens of proof. This, again, leaves him two options. On
the one hand, Kitcher could confine himself to merely offering a plausible story of the evolution
of ethical practices that is not meant to provide readers with any normative guidance. The
Ethical Project would then neither be inconsistent nor incomplete. But if, on the other hand,
Kitcher wants to offer a genuinely ethical account, i.e. an account of normative ethics, it would
have to be based on resources, the inclusion of which exceeds the core concepts deployed in
the description of the history of the ethical project. As our arguments show, instances of
deducing an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ are invalid, and Kitcher has not found a successful way to
avoid committing this fallacy. In Reichenbach’s terms, one could say that the context of
discovery of ethical norms has to be separated from the context of justification of those norms.

Concluding, we think that Kitcher cannot merge the descriptive and the normative aspects of
practical philosophy into one theoretical framework that is based on the historical development
of ethics alone. His theory, then, runs the risk of separating into two distinct projects, which
are not completely independent, but which clearly deal with different questions and rely on
different kinds of conceptual resources. Even though it might be an ‘uncontroversial truism’
that philosophical ethics needs to be empirically informed and therefore relies on the findings
of empirical sciences, it still remains true that inquiring and describing our ethical project does
not by itself offer normative guidance. So, if Kitcher wants to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, he
has to either drop the normative claims in his theory or base them on genuinely ethical
premises that give us reason to accept them.

12
7. Sources:

KITCHER, Philip (1992): The Naturalists Return.In: The Philosophical Review 101, 1, p. 53-114
KITCHER, Philip ([1994], 32006): Four Ways of “Biologicizing” Ethics. In: Eliott Sober (ed.)
Conceptual issues in Evolutionary Biology. The MIT Press, Cambridge,Massachusetts, p.
575-586
KITCHER, Philip (2007): Living with Darwin. Oxford University Press, Oxford
KITCHER, Philip (2011): The Ethical Project. Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts
MOORE, George Edward (1903): Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press
PAPINEAU, David (2009): Naturalism. In: Edward N. Zalta (ed.): The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/naturalism/>
SELLARS, Wilfrid (1997): Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts
WILLIAMS, Bernard (1985): Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Harvard University Press.
Cambridge, Massachusetts

13