Projectivism

Projectivism in philosophy involves attributing ('projecting') qualities to an object as if those qualities actually belong to it. It is a theory for how people interact with the world, and has been applied in both ethics and general philosophy. There are several forms of projectivism.

David Hume describes projectivism:

The origins of projectivism lie with Hume. He describes the view in Treatise on Human Nature.

More recently, Simon Blackburn has been a major proponent of the view. Blackburn's projectivism is a version of meta-ethical anti-realism. Blackburn conveys anti-realism as the view that statements which express moral properties are our construction, and realism as the view that moral properties somehow exist independent of us, the moral agents. A further distinction should be made to understand Blackburn's projectivism: that between cognitivists and non-cognitivists. Cognitivists believe that moral claims are "truth-apt", that is capable of being true or false. Non-cognitivists, on the other hand, believe that moral claims are not truth-apt—not capable of being true or false.

As a non-cognitivist, the projectivist holds that ethical judgments are the product of conative, rather than cognitive psychological processes. A conative psychological process or state is something akin to a stance, attitude, or disposition. These conative psychological processes should be contrasted with cognitive ones, which are what we typically think of when we talk about human beings “using their reason” or perhaps being rational (at least in the narrow sense). As highly social creatures whose success as a species has been due for the most part to our ability to communicate and cooperate, projectivism holds that the development of a moral interest has actually been in our prudential interest.

Blackburn’s projectivism, what he calls quasi-realism, is based on the significance of the conative stances we hold. His idea is that these conative stances are the starting point for what the meta-ethical realist labels beliefs or even facts, like that you ought to feed your children, or that you have moral values—real values that exist out there in the world independent of you. Since these conative stances are essentially motivating, they can be called desires, and the realist may be tempted to see them as desires connected to true beliefs about things that exist independent of mental construction. This temptation is not in any way ridiculous because as we grow and develop, our conative stances can become quite refined into a kind of moral sensibility. So for the projectivist, meta-ethical realists confuse moral sense and sensibility, as it were. The projectivist position holds that our moral sensibility can become very sophisticated as we age and mature. As we experience compassion, we come to value compassion; or with gratitude, we come to admire being gracious, and consider gratitude a virtue. But the projectivist is not committed to saying that our response to something wrong (i.e. sense) is what determines its rightness or wrongness. The view is that the wrong-making features of actions are external, and they play a role in the development of essentially motivating moral sentiments that guide conduct.

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