Getting Back to Nature

EVALUATIVE PROPERTIES ARE often thought to be problematic. E.g., they are said to be “unverifiable,” to “play no role in observation,” to be “queer,” to suffer from a “location problem,” and indeed “not [to be] in this world at all.”1 These charges differ in detail, and there are a variety of ways of responding to them.2 However, one general way of vindicating evaluative properties is to show that they are either natural properties or suitably explainable in terms of other natural properties. In this paper, I argue that such a naturalistic vindication of evaluative properties can go farther than many have thought. In section 1, I lay the groundwork for my discussion by distinguishing between thick and thin evaluative properties and by clarifying the concept of natural properties. In sections 2, 3, and 4, I defend the claim that thick evaluative properties are natural properties, while I leave a discussion of thin evaluative properties for another time.