moron

name

1. A commune in southwestern Haiti.

noun

Etymology: Coined by American legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin in late 20th c.; by surface analysis, mor(al) + -on. The obvious idea that the homonymy with the usual sense of moron was likely intentional has been supported by some of Dworkin's fellow philosophers.

1. A hypothetical particle whose existence and configuration can make a moral judgment true.

   “Encouraged by this solution to the puzzle in the case of judgments about our manifest surroundings, one might hope that a similar solution can be offered to the parallel puzzle concerning normative judgments. One example of this solution might be to affirm the existence of what Dworkin calls morons (p. 104)—special moral particles with causal powers—and then to explain why an ability to detect morons tended to promote the reproductive success of ancestors who possessed this ability. The thought is that perhaps an inability to detect these particles led to decreased reproductive success, just as an inability to detect boulders, trees, and lakes did. As his moron terminology suggests, however, Dworkin utterly rejects any solution along these lines. He thinks the idea of morons is absurd (pp. 104-5), and indeed takes the view that normative properties never play a role in our best causal explanations. Moral rightness and wrongness, goodness, normative reasons, value, and so on, in Dworkin's view, are not things with causal powers at all, and it is a misguided test for the existence of these things to ask whether or not they play a role in our best causal explanations (p. 119). As Thomas Nagel has put the point, "Mackie [has argued that] reasons play no role in causal explanations. But it begs the question to assume that this sort of explanatory necessity is the test of reality for values. The claim that certain reasons exist is a normative claim, not a claim about the best causal explanation of anything."²⁵ As we saw earlier, this rejection of the idea that reasons and values are things with causal powers is a distinguishing feature of non-naturalist versions of normative realism in general. I think there is more to be said about this second possible solution to the puzzle than Dworkin's talk of "morons" suggests. Yet in the end, I agree with Dworkin, Nagel, and other non-naturalist realists on this point. Rightness, wrongness, goodness, normative reasons, value, and so on are very different things than trees and boulders, and no plausible causal account will solve the practical/theoretical puzzle. I will not argue for this point here, however; I say more about it elsewhere.²⁶ I mention this second possible solution only to set it aside; in what follows I will assume with Dworkin and other non-naturalist realists that this second solution to the puzzle fails, allowing us to focus on Dworkin's proposed solution.”