INTRODUCTION

At the end of the last lecture I argued that normativity is a problem for human beings because of our reflective nature. Even if we are inclined to believe that an action is right and even if we are inclined to be motivated by that fact, it is always possible for us to call our beliefs and motives into question. This is why, after all, we seek a philosophical foundation for ethics in the first place: because we are afraid that the true explanation of why we have moral beliefs and motives might not be one that sustains them. Morality might not survive reflection.

The view I am going to describe in this lecture takes its starting point from that thought. It applies one of the best rules of philosophical methodology: that a clear statement of the problem is also a statement of the solution. If the problem is that morality might not survive reflection, then the solution is that it might. If we find upon reflecting on the true moral dieory that we still are inclined to endorse the claims that morality makes on us, then morality will be normative. I call this way of establishing normativity the ‘reflective endorsement’ method.