Normative Structure, Value, and Symmetry

Abstract

The article examines the challenge of naturalizing morality, focusing on explaining moral values from an expressivist perspective within a world governed by natural causality, which does not distinguish between good and evil. It addresses the problem of moral relativism, which attempts to justify the plurality of values based on subjective attitudes but fails to capture the normative dimension of morality, which requires the imposition of rules valid intersubjectively. The text also critiques the contractualist solution to moral justification for its lack of objective grounding in human nature and history. In contrast, it proposes an alternative centered on the volitional structure of normativity, where moral values emerge from the interaction of reciprocal and reflective wills. This approach offers an objective basis for values, connected to the evolutionary nature of the human species, emphasizing that symmetrical social arrangements tend to be more stable and foster cooperation. Thus, it is proposed that there is a supervenience between normative structure and value content, and that symmetry in normative relations is a natural bias for the formation and prevalence of moral values, overcoming relativism and contractualism while providing a functional and naturalistic explanation for morality.