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circumstances that is how we manifest our acceptance of the relevant notion of normal conditions, and the
importance of the opinions of others about colour for how justified our colour judgements are. Likewise, it is possible
to accept modus ponens without being a logician that is, without being able to write down the relevant logical rule in
some formal system. In most people, what constitutes their acceptance of modus ponens is their readiness to infer in
accord with it.
Now, on the moral functionalist story, to believe that something is right is to believe in part that it is what we would in
ideal circumstances desire, where we can regard the rubric  would in ideal circumstances desire as covering the
possible spellings-out already mentioned perhaps what we would desire in ideal circumstances is what we would
desire when our first-order desires square with our reflective second-order desires, or when our desires square with
what we would converge on stably desiring after reflection, perhaps taking into account the desires of our community,
or something along these gestured-at lines. And what shows this is of a kind with what shows the content of the belief
that something is red, namely, the circumstances in which we form the belief in question. The fact that a belief that
something is red is in part a belief about normal circumstances is shown by the situations in which we form the belief
that something is red. Likewise, what shows that the belief that A is right is in part a belief about what would be ideally
desired, is that we form it when it is true that we would in ideal circumstances desire A.
Now this fact will typically manifest itself in our feeling to some degree the  tug of A. Think of a situation when you
do not desire a cold beer but know that you will later in the day. Perhaps you are about to mow the lawn on a hot day.
You have beforehand no
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inclination towards beer-drinking: you aren't thirsty, and it is too early in the day for alcohol to be attractive. But you
know that after mowing the lawn you will desire a cold beer, and will enjoy drinking one. Even before you have any
desire for beer, your awareness that you will later desire beer places the idea of beer in an attractive light, indeed one
that helps motivate you to mow the lawn. I think the same is true of the belief that A is right. We form the belief that
A is right when we are disposed to desire it in ideal circumstances, and this very fact typically colours our way of
thinking of A in a way that makes it attractive, that explains the prick of conscience, our sense of unease, when we fail
to do what we judge we ought to do. This does not have to be the case, of course. Expert psychologists might assure
you, and you might believe them, that despite A's not exerting the slightest pull on you at the moment, and your not
being aware that it would, nevertheless in more ideal circumstances it would. You would then take a kind of  third
person view of yourself; you believe all sorts of things about what you would desire in ideal circumstances, on the basis
of what others tell you rather than on the basis of how things present themselves to you. But these cases are the
exception. Normally, we know  from the inside that A would be desired in ideal circumstances, and when we do, A
acquires the  coloration we associate with judging that something is right, and which can, when all goes well, motivate
us towards doing it.
The content-possession strategy adds this point about coloration to the directional story the content strategy tells in
order to account for the motivational element typically associated with believing that A is right.
Postscript
When I have presented this material in the past, I have met two protests from non-cognitivists. The first protest insists
that when one judges, really judges, that A is right, one must have a current, first-order pro-attitude towards A: beliefs
about what one would desire, or about desires to desire, and all the rest of it, are, it is urged, not enough. I don't myself
take this view, but I can see how one might and I think it is an advantage of moral functionalism that it can take it on
board. Moral functionalists can view moral judgement as a species of belief in part defined by being accompanied
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by the relevant pro-attitude. In our terms, what the protesters are insisting is that it is part of current folk
morality and so central a part that it must be retained in any mature folk morality that a moral judgement is
accompanied by the relevant pro-attitude (or con-attitude if the judgement is that something is wrong, say). And we
can accommodate this view by refusing to call something a moral belief unless it is accompanied by the relevant pro-
attitude. The protesters sometimes insist that this reply is a  cheat . But how can it be a cheat if I am giving them
exactly what they insist on?
The second non-cognitivist protest points out that, on the story I have told, if X and Y agree about all the descriptive
facts and are not confused in their thinking, then they cannot disagree, in the sense of coming to judgements with
different truth-values, about the ethical facts. For, on the story I have told, ethical judgements are highly complex
descriptive judgements. But surely, runs the protest, despite full and unconfused agreement about the descriptively
given facts, X might say  A is right , and Y say  A is not right without it following that they must mean something at least
slightly different by the word  right : genuine moral disagreement is possible between two people even if they agree
about all the descriptive facts and are not confused.
My reply to this objection comes in two parts. First, I think that some of its appeal is a hangover from platonism about
value; the idea that somehow terms like  right and  good latch onto non-natural features of reality independently of
the descriptive situations in which we use the terms. Once we turn our backs on platonism and Moore, I think we have
to face the fact that what we mean by these terms is somehow or other a matter of the situations descriptively
given including, of course, the relevant facts about actual, possible, and higher-order desires in which we use them.
And so, if two people agree on the descriptively given facts, are not confused, and one uses  right to describe a given [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]