Thanks for writing this, and sorry for the slow reply. I was traveling for a week and am behind on work, and I saw this while I was traveling, so I haven't been able to respond as quickly as I normally would.
As an initial remark, though: thank you! Since I started my blog I've wanted to receive critical feedback and engagement from people who disagree, without the toxicity and hostility I see in so many online debates. I see none of the latter here: it's just a critique, without any sniping commentary. My plan is to do an initial commentary on my YouTube channel then write up a response. To anticipate what I'll have to say: I don't think this critique is successful, and I look forward to offering my remarks and hopefully hearing back from you.
Clearly not, since the process of elimination eliminates the option "none of the above." As well, we have not eliminated all options, just all but non-naturalism.
One cannot eliminate all options except one of the one that remains isn't, technically speaking, an actual position. This is a critical problem for this post: I don't actually grant that "Non-naturalist moral realism is true" is even a proposition. Process of elimination can't get around questions of the intelligibility of moral realism, at least not directly. That is, showing that antirealist positions are wrong alone cannot show that realism is true because you'd still need it to be possible for realism to be true on its own terms. And I don't think that it is (at least not non-naturalism).
If we're picky enough about possible antirealist positions and restrict them in ways that require assumptions about language or a priori truths that I don't accept, then I agree: I don't endorse any of them. Hence why I am technically a quietist. But I lean into "antirealism" because I wish to emphasize the importance of rejecting all forms of moral realism.
Yeah, but each of the positions is defined in terms of the other. One says that there are mind-independent moral truths and the other says there aren’t. One says moral truths are natural and the other says they’re non-natural. So if one of these positions is meaningless then they’re all meaningless.
An antirealist can deny that something unintelligible is true because the unintelligible claim is...well, unintelligible, and thus incapable of being true or false. You could even call this, if you want to be cute, something like second-order noncognitivism: that claims that moral realism are true are, themselves, not propositions. Such a view still holds that such claims aren't true (and could even hold that they can't be true). That is something like my view. If someone wants to say that this isn't really antirealism, I don't particularly care.
I think I know what people mean when they discuss whether a sentence is truth-apt. I don’t know what it means when they say a sentence purports to be truth-apt. Maybe I am being too literal, but what is the point of the metaphor? Is the point just that people use the sentence as if it were truth-apt, whether or not it actually is?
Also the use of perception threw me off. If perceptions are generally true, I guess there is an important difference between being generally true and universally true?
'Is the point just that people use the sentence as if it were truth-apt, whether or not it actually is?'
Pretty much. Consider the Liar Paradox sentence: 'This statement is false'. A common solution is to say that it does not express a proposition, in which case it is not actually capable of being true or false. But the sentence functions grammatically as if it were truth-apt. Unlike 'I wonder if shut the door', 'I wonder if this statement is false' is at least grammatical.
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'Also the use of perception threw me off. If perceptions are generally true, I guess there is an important difference between being generally true and universally true?'
I am not sure if I am interpreting you correctly, but are you talking about this part: 'In general, if you perceive that X, then X'? I was not using 'general' in opposition to 'universal', but in opposition to 'specific'. For any X, if you perceive that X, then X; so, in the specific case of, for example, _suffering is bad_, if you perceive that suffering is bad, then suffering is bad.
I was asking if you were using “general” as a synonym of “universal.” I consider my perceptions pretty reliable, but not infallible (optical illusions come to mind). Misperceptions occur. But then the argument seems to have a problem that is too obvious. Maybe I am using “perception” differently? Is this a technical use of the term that somehow excludes sensory misperceptions?
But I can even be mistaken about the badness of something. I might change my mind about it on reflection, or after gaining more information. If “suffering is bad” is a general claim, how can it be based on perceptions, which are fallible and changeable?
I took it that perceptions guarantee the truth of what is being perceived. So 'misperceptions' such as optical illusions would not be perceptions. Note that even if we say that perceptions are infallible (insofar as they are perceptions), I could mistakenly think that I am perceiving something, so that perhaps allows for the sort of error you have in mind. If you thought that you saw a rabbit, but then realized that it was a lawn decoration and not a real rabbit, then presumably you would say that you did not in fact see a rabbit?
Anyway, perhaps you disagree and think that we can perceive something to be other than it is. I am not going to try to defend the existence of infallible perceptions here, I would want to think/learn more about the philosophy of perception before doing that.
My main point in that section was that we are justified in believing moral statements for the same sort of reasons that we are justified in believing other things.
For that purpose, the argument could perhaps be changed to say something like 'If I perceive that X, then I am justified in believing that X' or 'If it seems to me that X, then I am justified in believing that X'. The conclusion would instead be that I am justified in believing that X, rather than X, however.
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'If "suffering is bad" is a general claim, how can it be based on perceptions, which are fallible and changeable?'
I am not sure what you mean by 'based on perceptions'. It is not that [suffering is bad] is true because it is perceived, just that it cannot be perceived unless it is true.
Even if perception is fallible, we can be justified in believing necessary and general truths based on fallible sources of evidence. For example, someone might, based on the testimony of Wikipedia, believe a mathematical theorem that is necessarily true. Even though the testimony of Wikipedia is fallible, it can still justify belief, even in necessary and general truths.
Do you think that we cannot perceive that yellow is a color? That is no less general than that suffering is bad.
Even if there is some issue with perceiving general truths, I could have used something more specific as an example. For example, I could have used something like 'I perceive that I should not torture DavesNotHere'.
>So 'misperceptions' such as optical illusions would not be perceptions.
If I am not aware of the difference as I experience the perception/misperception, that is confusing. But this was what I suspected, you are using the term in a way that seems unusual to me. I think you could make the argument more precise by saying something like "in the absence of defeaters, we should believe our perceptions." Or maybe use “intuition” instead of “perception?”
>Note that even if we say that perceptions are infallible (insofar as they are perceptions), I could mistakenly think that I am perceiving something, so that perhaps allows for the sort of error you have in mind.
I agree, but that doesn't fix the problem, if there is one. I'm not sure how to criticize the logic. It is too explicit to be accused of equivocation. Maybe sort of begging the question? The way I expect that word to be used, the premise is obviously false as is.
>My main point in that section was that we are justified in believing moral statements for the same sort of reasons that we are justified in believing other things.
If you accept moral anti-realism, that conclusion would be much easier to argue for. The problem would then be to argue why we should all believe the same thing.
But for a moral realist, it seems like there is a lot of potentially stance-dependent psychology going into moral intuitions as compared to mathematical intuitions. So the argument needs to address that more directly.
>>'If "suffering is bad" is a general claim, how can it be based on perceptions, which are fallible and changeable?'
>I am not sure what you mean by 'based on perceptions'. It is not that [suffering is bad] is true because it is perceived, just that it cannot be perceived unless it is true.
Yes, I wrote sloppily. The argument is premised on the infallibility and unchangeability of perceptions. A child will perceive differently from an adult, and perhaps an old person will perceive differently from a young person, even if they are the same person viewed at separate moments. Are you sure we are discussing perception, and not judgment? The argument doesn’t work the same way for judgement. “I judge that x, so x is true” won’t fly.
>Even if perception is fallible, we can be justified in believing necessary and general truths based on fallible sources of evidence.
I agree. But then your argument needs some changes.
>Do you think that we cannot perceive that yellow is a color? That is no less general than that suffering is bad.
I don't think this is a strong analogy. Sensory perception does not happen at a conscious level, subject to conscious reflective amendment in the same way that judgements about wrongness do. I can have an emotional response to a proposition that it describes something bad, but then decide differently on reflection, or in response to an argument. Which one is the perception, the raw impulse, or the refined judgement?
>I could have used something like 'I perceive that I should not torture DavesNotHere'.
Thank you. I have a strong intuition, backed up by conscious reflection, that I should not torture you either.
However I will risk torturing you with another quibble. In the thought experiment in the relativism section of the post, it says,
"The relativist must say that if someone in that world was, for the first and only time, to say ‘You should not torture people on a whim’ (and has the same sort of meaning as I do when I say it truly), then this statement could not be true. Of course, this applies to any moral statement.
To deny this requires denying moral relativism."
I think it can be denied without denying moral relativism. It is not clear to me whether what they would say has the exact same meaning as what you would say, though I presume so.
The relativist interpretation of the sentence ‘You should not torture people on a whim’ I have in mind is that torturing people on a whim violates a universal standard of moral behavior that I am committed to. Maybe this is cheating, since what makes the sentence truth apt is not simply about whether torture is wrong, but also whether the speaker is committed to that idea. The evaluation of whether the action violates the standard or not could be purely objective, making that part of the statement merely descriptive. For it to qualify as normative requires someone to be committed to the idea that people should abide by the standard.
A single person could come to this conclusion in a world full of torture enthusiasts and truly claim that they are all wrong. This is a bit of a stretch, as it requires that anyone that talks about moral wrongness is making a more complicated statement while eliding some details, but language is often sloppy. Or another way to put it is, they all assume that “of course everyone should agree on a universal standard but I am correct and others are wrong about what that standard is.” But the only relevant truth-apt proposition they have access to is [x violates the standard that I am committed to].
This should probably be called subjectivism of some sort rather than relativism. Then the culturally dominant moral standard is the intersubjective resultant of the interactions among moral agents, just as language is the intersubjective resultant of persons trying to exchange meaning.
'I think you could make the argument more precise by saying something like "in the absence of defeaters, we should believe our perceptions." Or maybe use "intuition" instead of "perception?"'
Sure, adding 'in the absence of defeaters' could be an improvement over what I suggested in the previous comment (in case there is a need to change the original argument).
I would not want to use 'intuition' in the argument, since that is too specific. In that section I just want to rule out the claim that there are no true moral statements, so I want to assume as little as possible, including what the exact source of knowledge for the moral claims are. 'Seeming' would be fine, though.
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'Maybe sort of begging the question? The way I expect that word to be used, the premise is obviously false as is.'
I did consider that someone might say that the argument is question-begging. My reasoning was that the second premise ('Some people perceive that other things being equal, one should not cause suffering') was based on introspection. If that is the case, I do not think that it is begging the question, since the conclusion is not one of the premises, nor are any of the premises simply inferred from the conclusion.
You might dispute that I can really introspect that, though, and instead say that I am just inferring it. If that is true, then it would be question-begging.
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'If you accept moral anti-realism, that conclusion would be much easier to argue for. The problem would then be to argue why we should all believe the same thing.'
'But for a moral realist, it seems like there is a lot of potentially stance-dependent psychology going into moral intuitions as compared to mathematical intuitions. So the argument needs to address that more directly.'
The argument is not directed towards all forms of anti-realism, it is only meant to establish that there is a true moral statement, which would rule out the claim that there are no true moral statements. Since I was not trying to establish moral realism in that section, I think that your objection does not really address my reasoning there, but instead is just a general objection to moral realism.
The fact that our moral thinking is often accompanied by strong emotions might give us reason to doubt moral realism, but I think that there are even stronger reasons to doubt relativism.
Also, I think that not all moral reasoning seems to me to be that emotional. Especially if you include prudential reasoning. For example, I think that it would be irrational for me to stab myself on a whim. It is irrational in some cases to continue to do something just because of an addiction to it even though it is causing you a lot of misery. Intuitions of this sort are a lot less emotional than some others. But if there are facts about what one should do regarding oneself, presumably there are facts about what I should do regarding others as well.
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'I don't think this is a strong analogy. Sensory perception does not happen at a conscious level, subject to conscious reflective amendment in the same way that judgements about wrongness do. I can have an emotional response to a proposition that it describes something bad, but then decide differently on reflection, or in response to an argument. Which one is the perception, the raw impulse, or the refined judgement?'
I do not think that we know that yellow is a color through _sensory_ perception. We perceive it through the rational faculty.
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'A single person could come to this conclusion in a world full of torture enthusiasts and truly claim that they are all wrong. This is a bit of a stretch, as it requires that anyone that talks about moral wrongness is making a more complicated statement while eliding some details, but language is often sloppy. Or another way to put it is, they all assume that "of course everyone should agree on a universal standard but I am correct and others are wrong about what that standard is." But the only relevant truth-apt proposition they have access to is [x violates the standard that I am committed to].'
I am not sure what your objection here is.
In the thought experiment, everyone has neutral or positive stances toward torture. So it is not the case that the speaker is committed to some anti-torture standard, or thinks that there should be some anti-torture standard, or anything like that.
The thought experiment was directed not just at cultural relativism, but any sort of stance-dependent view of morality, including individual subjectivism.
Is the objection that you could say that the speaker has a neutral or positive stance towards torture, but has a negative stance towards the cultural standard regarding torture? If that is the objection, then I can just specify in the thought experiment that people's second-order and nth-order stances regarding torture are also neutral or positive.
Perhaps the terms being used are very technical (perception, stance). I appreciate your willingness to respond, but I don’t really understand the responses.
'>My reasoning was that the second premise ('Some people perceive that other things being equal, one should not cause suffering') was based on introspection. If that is the case, I do not think that it is begging the question,
That wasn’t the objection. If perception is so powerful, it can prove anything. I perceive that god exists, therefore god exists. I perceive that god doesn’t exist, therefore god does not exist. How should those arguments be criticized? I just don’t know what “perception” means, I guess.
'>> a lot of potentially stance-dependent psychology going into moral intuitions as compared to mathematical intuitions.
>The argument is […] only meant to establish that there is a true moral statement, which would rule out the claim that there are no true moral statements.
I’ve lost the context, but the objection can go wherever an analogy is made between moral perceptions and mathematical intuition. Perhaps the analogy works, but it needs more detail. I think of math as based ultimately on counting, which is pretty concrete as math goes. It forms a bridge to tangible reality. For moral facts, the connection is less clear.
>The fact that our moral thinking is often accompanied by strong emotions might give us reason to doubt moral realism, but I think that there are even stronger reasons to doubt relativism.
I am still bothered by the perceptions argument. I guess a perception is nothing like I thought they were (influenced by emotion, changeable).
> if there are facts about what one should do regarding oneself, presumably there are facts about what I should do regarding others as well.
Sure. But are they stance-independent facts? But this is the wrong part of the argument for that objection.
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>I do not think that we know that yellow is a color through _sensory_ perception. We perceive it through the rational faculty.
Should I take this literally? Is the ability to connect concepts to language an instance of perception? Or is it categorizing phenomena? Do I know that Everest is a mountain by perceiving it with the rational faculty? Maybe your audience is familiar with this use of the term, but I am not.
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'>>A single person could come to this conclusion in a world full of torture enthusiasts and truly claim that they are all wrong. This is a bit of a stretch, as it requires that anyone that talks about moral wrongness is making a more complicated statement while eliding some details, but language is often sloppy. Or another way to put it is, they all assume that "of course everyone should agree on a universal standard but I am correct and others are wrong about what that standard is." But the only relevant truth-apt proposition they have access to is [x violates the standard that I am committed to].'
>I am not sure what your objection here is.
This was a digression inspired by some thoughts. The objection is in the previous paragraph, where I give an interpretation that allows the relativists (or subjectivist) to make the statement “torture is wrong” without denying relativism.
>In the thought experiment, everyone has neutral or positive stances toward torture.
Everyone has that stance except the person making the statement, no? Why would they ever make that statement if they had a neutral or positive stance toward torture?
>So it is not the case that the speaker is committed to some anti-torture standard, or thinks that there should be some anti-torture standard, or anything like that.
This puzzles to me. I thought that the point of the thought experiment was that if one person in that world changed their mind, relativists would have to say they were wrong, since they went against popular opinion.
But maybe you mean that they all agree that torture is fine, but for some reason, maybe performing a play, one of them who is fine with torture uttered the proposition that “you shouldn’t torture people on a whim”. Is that it? And the relativist must say that it is false when it is uttered in that context. And to deny this is to deny relativism. I still don’t see the problem. Won’t the relativist just agree and say that the proposition is false when uttered by that sort of person in that context? Is that supposed to be a difficult bullet to bite, given such an extreme scenario?
>The thought experiment was directed not just at cultural relativism, but any sort of stance-dependent view of morality, including individual subjectivism.
The subjectivist would reply, yes, all moral claims include self-referential stance-dependent elements, and so persons with unusual stances could be saying something false when they say torture is wrong. They would be describing themselves as committed to avoid and condemn torture, when they are not. Moral claims, for a subjectivist, are not just about the world, but about the relationship of the speaker and the world. Imagine a strange speaker in a strange world and their moral attitudes will be strange.
What I have been calling subjectivist might be the same as what Bush calls appraiser relativism, as distinguished from agent relativism.
'That wasn't the objection. If perception is so powerful, it can prove anything. I perceive that god exists, therefore god exists. I perceive that god doesn't exist, therefore god does not exist. How should those arguments be criticized? I just don't know what "perception" means, I guess.'
I would dispute the premise that people perceive that God exists, and I would give reasons for thinking that God does not exist (and maybe give reasons for thinking that even if such a thing existed, no one would be able to perceive it). But I would not dispute that given that people perceive that God exists, it follows that God exists.
I guess the way I am using 'perception' is something along the lines of an appearance that is guaranteed to be true (I am not claiming that this is a precise definition, just something that is meant to give you an idea of what I mean). It must be that whatever brought about the appearance is connected to the truth, so if we imagine that I am high on drugs and the drug happens to cause me to have a visual appearance that just happens to exactly match reality, I would not say that that is actually a perception.
You might worry that with such a concept of a perception, it would be simply begging the question. But if the claim that I am perceiving something is justified without inferring it from the conclusion, I do not think that it is begging the question in a problematic sense.
Consider this example: All bachelors are unmarried. John is a bachelor. Therefore, John is unmarried.
Suppose your justification for the second premise is that someone claimed that John is a bachelor. Then there is no problematic question-begging going on. You do not initially assume that he is a bachelor based on already thinking that he is an unmarried man, you have independent reason for thinking that he is a bachelor.
Consider a case where upon introspection, it seems that you see a squirrel. You could then conclude that there is a squirrel. Of course, there is no need to infer from the fact that I see a squirrel that there is one, I can simply be justified in thinking that there is a squirrel because it seems that there is one.
Perhaps I should have just made use of seemings and argued that we are justified in believing the moral claims, rather than giving a deductive argument for a moral claim.
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'I've lost the context, but the objection can go wherever an analogy is made between moral perceptions and mathematical intuition. Perhaps the analogy works, but it needs more detail. I think of math as based ultimately on counting, which is pretty concrete as math goes. It forms a bridge to tangible reality. For moral facts, the connection is less clear.'
Surely mathematics cannot just be based on counting. For example, is the Pythagorean theorem based on counting?
Anyway, morality 'bridge[s] to tangible reality' a lot like mathematics on my view, I think. The fact 2+2=4 is instantiated whenever there are two things and two other things, like two apples and two apples make four apples. The fact that the surface of a sphere is equal to four times its great circle is instantiated whenever there is a spherical ball; it would be the case that if you sliced it in half, the area of the circle would be one-fourth of the area that the surface is. The fact that torture is wrong is instantiated whenever there is a moral agent. There is a certain relation between me, my faculty of volition, and something like the proposition or state of affairs of my torturing someone, namely the relation of being obligated not to choose something.
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'Should I take this literally? Is the ability to connect concepts to language an instance of perception? Or is it categorizing phenomena? Do I know that Everest is a mountain by perceiving it with the rational faculty? Maybe your audience is familiar with this use of the term, but I am not.'
I am not really sure what you mean with the question 'Is the ability to connect concepts to language an instance of perception?'.
I do not think that we merely stipulate that yellow is a color. I think that the fact is wholly independent of language, and also independent of how anyone chooses to classify yellow.
Regardless of whether anyone mentally classifies it with red, blue, green, etc., yellow still belongs to the same category. (Maybe this is an oversimplification, though. We use the term 'yellow' not just to refer to one color but a class of similar colors, and our concept is probably vague.)
Our knowledge that yellow is a color also seems independent of language. I can just imagine red, blue, yellow, etc., and just sort of group them together mentally without needing to rely on language, I think.
As for the question about Everest, this might not be the best example since 'mountain' is quite vague, I think. However, I do think that we use our rational faculty to classify things. I think that we can imagine Everest and other mountains and perceive that they have similarities.
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'Everyone has that stance except the person making the statement, no? Why would they ever make that statement if they had a neutral or positive stance toward torture?'
No, my intention was that the speaker also has the same stance. Perhaps it would have been better to have the speaker wonder aloud and say 'Is it the case that torture is wrong?'. Any sort of relativist must say that the answer to the question, assuming he means the same sort of thing that the relativist takes himself to mean, is No.
I was using 'relativism' broadly to include any sort of stance-dependent view.
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'I still don't see the problem. Won't the relativist just agree and say that the proposition is false when uttered by that sort of person in that context? Is that supposed to be a difficult bullet to bite, given such an extreme scenario?'
Maybe it would seem like less of a bullet to bite in the play example, but what about the example given above?
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'The subjectivist would reply, yes, all moral claims include self-referential stance-dependent elements, and so persons with unusual stances could be saying something false when they say torture is wrong. They would be describing themselves as committed to avoid and condemn torture, when they are not. Moral claims, for a subjectivist, are not just about the world, but about the relationship of the speaker and the world. Imagine a strange speaker in a strange world and their moral attitudes will be strange.'
The subjectivist might say that, but would it be a reasonable thing to say?
If you reflect on the thought experiment, does it really seem that the person would be saying something false, or in the case of the question, that the answer would be No?
Maybe when you (or when a subjectivist, anyway, I do not know what your position is) reflect on your own moral language and thinking, it really does seem purely subjective. In that case, there is not really more to say regarding the thought experiment. (I did give another argument against relativism which might be stronger, though.)
The subjectivist should not just assume his position when evaluating the scenario, though. That would just be begging the question. Instead, he should try to disregard whatever his current meta-ethical position is and just reflect on the thought experiment. If it seems that torture would still be wrong in the hypothetical world where everyone approved, then that would be evidence against his view.
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'What I have been calling subjectivist might be the same as what Bush calls appraiser relativism, as distinguished from agent relativism.'
The distinction that Lance Bush makes between those two, if I am not mistaken, is that under appraiser relativism, the truth of moral statements depends on the stances of the appraiser (or appraisers), but under agent relativism, the truth depends on the stances of the agent (or agents). One version of appraiser relativism could be that the rightness/wrongness is dependent on whether the appraiser approves/disapproves of the act. So in that case, I can truly say that it was wrong when Japanese soldiers mass-raped civilians, because I disapprove of it. But under a version of agent relativism that says that the rightness/wrongness is dependent on whether the agent approves/disapproves, then assuming that a soldier approved of his raping of people, I cannot truly say that it was wrong when he did it, since he himself approved of it. (There can also be cultural agent relativism or cultural appraiser relativism, or other sorts of agent or appraiser relativism.)
It's going to take me a while to write a more extensive response. While I gather my thoughts, I did have a preliminary discussion about some of my key points of departure on my YouTube channel, which you can see here:
(1) I appreciate the distinction between what may be psychologically the case and what may be philosophically the case regarding whether a person is or could be an antirealist that doesn't endorse one of the "Big Three" antirealist positions. I mashed those distinctions together (agnosticism, indeterminacy, etc.) in a way that wasn't clear, and I agree that psychological facts about what a person cant' believe are not what's philosophically at stake here.
(2) I think your characterization of the standard antirealist positions (noncognitivism, error theory, and relativism) are highly idiosyncratic and not representative of how these positions are ordinarily characterized. While you reference the possibility that your characterizations may be somewhat different, I actually think that are very different, and are different in ways that are, to borrow your phrase, philosophically relevant.
(3) Regarding (2), this is a very big issue for your critique. If my position is that the traditional three antirealist positions, insofar as I characterize them, are not exhaustive of the logical possibility space for an antirealist, then I can be correct about this regardless of whether my position falls within the scope of your own, alternative characterizations of "noncognitivism," "error theory," and "subjectivism."
In other words, say we take noncognitivism, error theory, and subjectivism, as I characterize them, and call these t_1, t_2, and t_3. My position is that there are logically possible alternatives to these (t_4, t_5, t_....n). If you offer an alternative characterization of terms like "noncognitivism" and so on, then argue that my position is included within those, this is largely irrelevant to the original point I was making. After all, how many categories there "are" is, on my view, a matter of convention: one can always stipulate that "noncognitivism" means something that includes my position.
The key problem I take with your objection is that I think you take roughly this route: that your approach rules out alternatives to just three positions by stipulative definitional fiat. One can always stipulate their way to there being only such-and-such a number of categories by simply declaring one is going to use terms to carve up the logical possibility space in terms some number of options.
In shory, I worry that your position amounts to a victory by terminolgoical gerrymandering. If I am right, such a victory is rather hollow. As I note in the video, it's entirely possible to stipulate what you mean by "moral realism" in a way where I'd agree I am a "moral realist." I'm not trying to win a merely terminological victory here but a substantive philosophical victory.
Part of the reason I object to Huemer and other's process-of-elimination approach is that the way in which they purport to refute the traditional three antirealist positions doesn't apply to my own position. And this remains true regardless of whether someone stipulates some new definition of "noncognitivism" that technically includes my position.
There is more to say here. For instance, I do not grant that non-naturalist realism is intelligible, so I don't technically think it's logically possible for non-naturalist realism to be true. I may have missed it, but I don't think your post engages with this point. This reflects yet another way in which I do not believe my position has been refuted or even fully engaged. I reference a few more concerns in the video, as well, though I do hope to eventually find some time to write a more comprehensive response (I really wish I could stop and do so, but I am swamped with work priorities at the moment).
I realize that my definitions are quite different from the standard ones. Although I said that people might use the terms 'slightly differently', I should have just said 'differently'.
My point is not at all terminological. My interpretation of what you were saying is that the standard positions are not the only possible positions, and that this is 'philosophically significant' as I said, in the way that the standard objections fail to account for your position. What I was really disputing was the second conjunct.
I was worried that I had misinterpreted you, but based on the following part of your comment, I believe that I correctly interpreted you:
'Part of the reason I object to Huemer and other's process-of-elimination approach is that the way in which they purport to refute the traditional three antirealist positions doesn't apply to my own position. And this remains true regardless of whether someone stipulates some new definition of "noncognitivism" that technically includes my position.'
My point was to refute this part of your claim, by showing that the standard objections in fact apply to any logically possible anti-realist positions. If I am right about that, then even if you are right that the standard definitions are not exhaustive, it ends up not being philosophically significant, _in the sense_ that no one should change his philosophical position.
Suppose that there are two rival views and someone offered a devastating objection to the second one, but then you show that there is an alternative rival view that the objection does not apply to. Then anyone who was convinced by the objection and had accepted the first position because of it must now become agnostic (assuming that that was the only reason he accepted the position).
But suppose another scenario where again there are the two views and the devastating objection, and someone shows that there is a logically possible third view, but in fact the objection applies just as much to the third view as the one that the original objection applied to, and further suppose that someone shows that in fact these three positions are logically exhaustive. I suppose that it would not be fair to say that pointing out that there was a third logical possibility is completely philosophically irrelevant, but it is philosophically insignificant in the specific sense that no one should change his philosophical position.
One of my main goals was the show that even if you are right that there are other possibilities than the standard ones (I am not saying that you are wrong about that), then we are simply in the second scenario: no one should actually change his view about meta-ethics. Either the objections did not work in the first place and we should be anti-realists or agnostics, or they worked and we should still be realists (well, whether the objections work is going to depend on what your epistemic circumstances are). So my position is not at all 'a victory by [terminological] gerrymandering'. Whether I am right is a substantive philosophical question.
I probably should have been more clear about what I meant by 'philosophically significant', it was not something that I gave too much thought to when I originally wrote the article. Still, if understood in the meaning I just suggested, I stand by what I said.
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Regarding my use of modal language: First, I was referring to metaphysical possibility in the logical division. My initial motivation for using modal language was that I considered that without it, an anti-realist could believe that there are stance-independent irreducible moral facts, but people just fail to express them in the actual world. Using modality, this is ruled out.
But, looking back, I question whether using modal language was the right decision. Although I avoided the weird result mentioned above, instead it leads to the result that one can be a realist but think that no one in the actual world is making stance-independently true moral claims, and of course I want to claim that I (and others) in fact do make such claims.
That being said, it would be a rather minor change to the essay to get rid of the modal language. The way I try to establish that it is possible that there are stance-independent and irreducibe true moral statements, is simply by attempting to show that there actually are. So we could just ignore the modal language and look at sentences in the actual world.
Some of the other idiosyncrasies are important to the point I was making. But, as I said above, if I can show that the standard objections apply just as well to the logically exhaustive stipulated definitions that resemble the standard positions, then this would be sufficient for the point I was making.
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'For instance, I do not grant that non-naturalist realism is intelligible, so I don't technically think it's logically possible for non-naturalist realism to be true. I may have missed it, but I don't think your post engages with this point. This reflects yet another way in which I do not believe my position has been refuted or even fully engaged.'
I will admit that it was not clear to me what your position is (and I am still not sure). I did a little bit of searching but had trouble finding a statement on it that gave me a clear idea.
But I actually do think that I at least partly address claims of unintelligibility of the positions themselves. The most controversial (presumably) part of the logical division is the term 'moral', so I said that we can just stipulate what sort of sentences we mean by 'moral sentences' and gave some examples.
I fail to see what the issue with stipulating the sentences is here. The process of elimination, I think, must be seen as either a process for an individual to go through alone, or for someone to guide another (or others) in using the Socratic method.
Whoever is going through the process can simply consider certain sentences and words and ask the relevant questions about that subset of his discourse.
The way I was defining moral non-naturalism/non-reductionism is that (it is possible that) there are some truth-apt moral sentences which are true in a stance-independent and irreducible way.
What part of that is unintelligible? You mention in your video your theory of language and suggest that if I grant it for the sake of argument the questions somehow becomes empirical. But in the essay, I argue that introspection is sufficient, and I think that I do properly take into account your theory of language. I can ask whether I in fact am intending to ascribe a truth value to my sentence. So then we can consider truth-aptness without violating your philosophy of language principles, and also do so without needing to have an empirical study.
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You also mention in your video that your position is 'folk meta-ethical indeterminacy' (if I recall correctly). But if I fail to express a determinate meaning (or 'fail to have a determinate meaning'? maybe that is how you would prefer it to be phrased), then I must also fail to make any true moral statements (surely that would require a determinate meaning?). So such a view would be covered by the error theory section.
Or perhaps you are claiming that there is no determinate fact of the matter about what I mean, such that it is neither the case that I intend a realist interpretation, nor is it not the case that I intend a realist interpretation. Of course, such a position would require rejecting the law of the excluded middle, and therefore also the law of non-contradiction. To address that sort of objection directly, I would need to defend classical logic.
I assume that the correct interpretation of your position is the former that I suggested, not the latter, though.
>>I will admit that it was not clear to me what your position is (and I am still not sure). I did a little bit of searching but had trouble finding a statement on it that gave me a clear idea.
I mean no disrespect in saying this, but I think it’d be a good idea to know what a person’s position is before you write an article saying that their position is mistaken. If you don’t know what my position is, how do you take yourself to have presented a refutation of it?
There isn’t any official statement of my metaethical position anywhere because it’s new. I only began developing the view in earnest in the past couple years. It’s going to be a bit before I start putting out position statements, so it’s understandable if you didn’t find any clear articulation of the view. Sorry about that. I do greatly appreciate you taking the time to critique me in spite of that fact. I am a nobody in the world of metaethics, so it's really cool to see people engage with my views.
If you want to have more material to work with regarding raising objections to my views, I am very easy to contact. I’d be happy to talk about my views at length with you and we could see at that point whether you maintain the points made in this article or would revise your stance (even if it’s still one where you think I’m mistaken more or less in the same ways as in this article).
>>But I actually do think that I at least partly address claims of unintelligibility of the positions themselves. The most controversial (presumably) part of the logical division is the term 'moral', so I said that we can just stipulate what sort of sentences we mean by 'moral sentences' and gave some examples.
As far as I can tell, you didn’t address my concerns about intelligibility in the article. This comment gives me the impression that you may not know what I’m up to with the unintelligibility thesis...which would be completely understandable if so, because it's not like I have a paper called "Introducing the unintelligibility thesis" or anything like that. I'm still working on something like that. I can share a draft if you're interested.
My remarks about there not being a moral domain and concerns about there even being a category of “morality” for there to be facts about are not what my concerns with intelligibility are about. Stipulating what you mean by moral sentences isn’t going to solve my concerns about intelligibility, and in fact has pretty much nothing to do with those concerns. I usually just set concerns about the category of “morality” aside for the sake of argument.
>>I fail to see what the issue with stipulating the sentences is here.
There may or may not be issues, but they don’t have much to do with my concerns about intelligibility, so that’s largely moot with respect to the unintelligibility thesis.
>>The way I was defining moral non-naturalism/non-reductionism is that (it is possible that) there are some truth-apt moral sentences which are true in a stance-independent and irreducible way.
I think irreducibly normative moral facts are unintelligible. So saying it’s possible that there are facts of this kind is like saying it’s possible that lkj123lkjslfdkjal;kjerlkjqwr.
I wouldn’t even say that’s false, I’d say it’s not even a propositional claim. Just to be clear: my position isn’t even, technically, that non-naturalist moral realism is false. I literally don’t think it’s a position at all, if by a “position” we require that it be capable of being expressed as a proposition.
>>You mention in your video your theory of language and suggest that if I grant it for the sake of argument the questions somehow becomes empirical. But in the essay, I argue that introspection is sufficient, and I think that I do properly take into account your theory of language.
I’m not sure what you mean here. What questions become empirical?
>>You also mention in your video that your position is 'folk meta-ethical indeterminacy' (if I recall correctly). But if I fail to express a determinate meaning (or 'fail to have a determinate meaning'? maybe that is how you would prefer it to be phrased), then I must also fail to make any true moral statements (surely that would require a determinate meaning?). So such a view would be covered by the error theory section.
Maybe if you use an unconventional definition of “error theory". Standard forms of error theory hold that moral claims refer to stance-independent moral facts. Error theory also holds that all first-order moral claims are false, not simply that they’re not true. I don’t think either of these claims is true, so I’m not an error theorist.
I may be a Robertian error theorist, if you stipulate that by “error theory” you mean something other than its standard definitions. In that case, I’d simply ask what, exactly, about my position is incorrect? I’d also wonder why you’d even call my position “error
theory” if you’re going to employ a version of the position that is so unconventional.
Regarding this claim: >>“But if I fail to express a determinate meaning (or 'fail to have a determinate meaning'? maybe that is how you would prefer it to be phrased), then I must also fail to make any true moral statements (surely that would require a determinate meaning?).”
This isn’t what my position is. I don’t think that everyday moral claims have any determinate meaning at all. My position is that they don’t involve any determinate stance or commitment with respect to traditional metaethical categories. It’s not like I think people who say “murder is wrong” don’t mean anything by such remarks. They just aren’t saying anything that commits them to realism, subjectivism, or noncognitivism.
For comparison: I think people who talk about numbers mean things. When a person says “your bill will be $50,” I think this is a perfectly meaningful thing for a person to say in most contexts. But its meaning doesn’t require the speaker to take a stance (implicit or otherwise) on mathematical Platonism.
>>Or perhaps you are claiming that there is no determinate fact of the matter about what I mean, such that it is neither the case that I intend a realist interpretation, nor is it not the case that I intend a realist interpretation.
No, I’m definitely not saying that. Philosophers can and do make determinate moral claims and metaethical claims all the time. I do myself, and I assume you do. Folk metaethical determinacy is a thesis about what most nonphilosophers mean when they say things; it’s not a thesis about what people who’ve thought about these topics mean.
'I mean no disrespect in saying this, but I think it'd be a good idea to know what a person's position is before you write an article saying that their position is mistaken. If you don't know what my position is, how do you take yourself to have presented a refutation of it?'
Fair enough. But note that I never claimed to have refuted your meta-ethical theory, and I do not take myself to have presented a refutation of it.
I had two primary goals in the essay: (1) to show that for any logically possible alternative to non-reductionist realism, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it, and (2) to show that the realist has no need to engage in empirical research.
If my interpretation of your views is correct, you reject both of those claims.
My goal was not at all to insist that your view falls under one of the standard positions. It was not even a primary goal of mine to show that realism is true.
If I succeeded in showing that for any logically possible alternative to my view, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it, then assuming that your view is a logically possible alternative, it would have been indirectly addressed.
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From your other comment:
'At any rate, if one of the criticisms directed at those positions applies to my position, that's a point that could be made without insisting my position falls into one of the standard three categories, so why bother with the latter? If your point isn't a terminological one, why center the dispute on something that you appear to regard as incidental?'
Since one of my goals was to show that for any logically possible alternative view, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it, I needed to first logically divide alternative positions to show that they are the only logically possible ones. Whether those positions are the standard ones was irrelevant. If my stipulated positions are in fact the only logically possible ones, and I show that they are all covered by the standard sort of objections, that would be sufficient to prove my claim.
I was not insisting that your position falls into one of the standard three categories, just that it must fall into one of my stipulated categories. If I am right about that, and right that the standard objections cover all of the stipulated categories, then they will also cover your position, at least implicitly (assuming that my logical division was correct and that your position is a logically possible one).
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'I think irreducibly normative moral facts are unintelligible. So saying it's possible that there are facts of this kind is like saying it's possible that lkj123lkjslfdkjal;kjerlkjqwr.'
But unlike the meaningless string of characters, the terms used to describe non-naturalist realism all have meanings in other contexts.
If someone held the position of _square-circlism_ that stated that there exists shapes such that they are both squares and circles, then I would say this position is false and not that it is unintelligible in the way that your example is.
At the very least, I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of something like this: 'There is some part of my discourse in which I use moral terms and some of the discourse is true, and the meaning I intend is not covered by any other non-overlapping part of my discourse, nor is it covered by any part of Lance Bush's discourse that he does not use moral terms for'. For practical purposes, I think this comes close to non-naturalist realism. Presumably the relativist would say that I could describe the true moral statements in other terms that are not explicitly moral (and without changing the meanings). The reductionist presumably would say that I can describe the moral statements using some of my non-moral language as well. And the error theorists and non-cognitivists think that my sentences are not true in the first place.
If we could discover the truth of that claim, we would not quite arrive at non-naturalist realism, but it would be very strong evidence. It could be that there are natural facts that explain the truth but that I do not have any language to express it, but a better explanation might be non-natural facts. The position would be non-reductionist in the sense that I am unable to translate my moral language to any of my other language.
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'I'm still working on something like that. I can share a draft if you're interested.'
Sure, I would be interested in reading it.
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'I'm not sure what you mean here. What questions become empirical?'
At around 1:31:52 in the video: 'If we're treating this as short-hand for what people mean, then it becomes an open empirical question what people mean'.
I think what matters is what the person going through the process of elimination means, so I think that introspection is sufficient. Technically, introspection is usually classed as empirical, as far as I know; but I took it that you were suggesting that we needed empirical research and not just introspection.
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'Maybe if you use an unconventional definition of "error theory". Standard forms of error theory hold that moral claims refer to stance-independent moral facts. Error theory also holds that all first-order moral claims are false, not simply that they’re not true. I don't think either of these claims is true, so I'm not an error theorist.'
I am not suggesting that you are an error theorist. But if you view entails that all moral sentences are false, then it is covered by the standard sort of objection.
The standard definition of error theory is something like that moral statements are generally false, and this is because they purport to refer to stance-independent moral properties or relations that do not exist.
But the realist has no interest (generally speaking) in rejecting the second conjunct, just the first.
And in practice, the way he will try to show that it is false is simply to show that there exists true moral statements.
You might not find this a satisfying objection -- I do not expect you to. But if we can in fact discover examples of true moral statements, this would show that any view that claimed that there are no true moral statements is incorrect, not just 'error theory' as standardly defined. Now, if arguments against error theory rely on the second assumption of error theory, then that would be a problem. But just giving examples of true moral statements surely does not have that problem.
Consider this from the perspective of the realist or even a relativist: if the reason I rejected error theory was because I think that I found counter-examples to the entailment of error theory that there are no true moral statements, then pointing out alternatives to error theory that have the same exact entailment is not going to give me a reason to change my view.
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'My position is that they don't involve any determinate stance or commitment with respect to traditional metaethical categories. It's not like I think people who say "murder is wrong" don't mean anything by such remarks. They just aren't saying anything that commits them to realism, subjectivism, or noncognitivism.'
Thanks for the clarification.
But supposing that one of those people (who you think fails to have determinate commitments) is working his way through the process of elimination. It seems that you must say that it is not the case that he makes true moral statements that are true stance-independently. You are not saying that they are stance-dependent, but neither are they stance-independent? But such a position would be covered by the process of elimination outlined in my essay. If he gets to the 'error theory' section and agrees that there are true moral statements, the next section is the 'relativism' section. If you grant that he is making true moral statements, you would need to say that it is not the case that they are stance-independent (since that would require that he has a determinate metaethical commitment). But the two objections I gave to relativism would then apply to your view.
I am not trying to label your view as 'relativism' or as anything else. But if your claim entails that there are true moral statements, but that it is not the case that they are stance-independent, then such an entailment is in fact covered. The view itself might not directly be covered, but an entailment of the view is.
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'Folk metaethical determinacy is a thesis about what most nonphilosophers mean when they say things; it's not a thesis about what people who've thought about these topics mean.'
(I assume that you meant to say _indeterminacy_, rather than _determinacy_.)
Thanks for the clarification on this point.
But if that is all that you are claiming with folk metaethical indeterminacy, then it is not even a position that by itself is opposed to moral non-naturalism. It must be combined with other claims to oppose moral non-naturalism.
What is stopping someone from being an elitist moral realist? One could say that there are non-natural moral facts and philosophers express them, but lay people are incapable of expressing them. I am not sure that this even requires an idiosyncratic definition of _realism_. If it does, then I guess _realism_ was poorly defined in the first place.
>>(2) to show that the realist has no need to engage in empirical research.
If my interpretation of your views is correct, you reject both of those claims.
And add that
>>If my interpretation of your views is correct, you reject both of those claims.
This is unclear. I don’t know if I reject this or not. The realist has “no need to engage in empirical research”? No need with respect to what goal? I couldn’t say whether I reject this or not because I don’t know what you mean.
>> Whether those positions are the standard ones was irrelevant.
Again, then why do you use the standard three labels to refer to your stipulative definitions? This is a super weird thing to do if it’s not relevant.
>>If my stipulated positions are in fact the only logically possible ones, and I show that they are all covered by the standard sort of objections, that would be sufficient to prove my claim.
To prove which claim? That realism is true, or that the process of elimination approach could work to show that realism is true? Or both? Or something else?
>>I was not insisting that your position falls into one of the standard three categories, just that it must fall into one of my stipulated categories.
Okay, so which of the stipulative categories you proposed includes my position?
>> If I am right about that, and right that the standard objections cover all of the stipulated categories
What do you mean by “standard objections”? If you don’t mean what I do, then insofar as my claim was that standard objections don’t apply to my position, then you will have not, as far as I can tell, even offered a refutation of my original claim. You’ll simply have been using similar terms and phrases to be making a claim I wasn’t objecting to in the first place.
>>But unlike the meaningless string of characters, the terms used to describe non-naturalist realism all have meanings in other contexts.
…I’m not sure what point you are making here. Any string of characters can be used to convey something meaningful in some context.
>>If someone held the position of _square-circlism_ that stated that there exists shapes such that they are both squares and circles, then I would say this position is false and not that it is unintelligible in the way that your example is.
In most standard contexts in which a person said there was a “square circle,” I wouldn’t think that was unintelligible, or at least, if it were, it’s not unintelligible in the way I think non-naturalist realism is. This is because I think if someone were to claim that there was an object that was both four-sided and not-four-sided they’d be saying something logically contradictory and therefore false. Not unintelligible. If a realist invoking the notion of an irreducibly normative fact both intended for the fact in question to be stance-independent and stance-dependent, then it would be self-contradictory and therefore false just like a square circle. But I’ve never met any realist that said that this is what they meant. The question is what they do mean, and whatever it is, it’s allegedly not self-contradictory.
>>I think what matters is what the person going through the process of elimination means, so I think that introspection is sufficient. Technically, introspection is usually classed as empirical, as far as I know; but I took it that you were suggesting that we needed empirical research and not just introspection.
I’m still not understanding you. What do you think I think we need empirical evidence for? Even the quote you provide doesn’t make that clear.
>>I am not suggesting that you are an error theorist. But if you view entails that all moral sentences are false, then it is covered by the standard sort of objection.
I do not hold the view that all moral sentences are false.
>>The standard definition of error theory is something like that moral statements are generally false, and this is because they purport to refer to stance-independent moral properties or relations that do not exist.
I take error theory to be the claim that all first-order moral sentences are false, not that they’re “generally” false (that doesn’t seem sufficiently clear to me).
>>But the realist has no interest (generally speaking) in rejecting the second conjunct, just the first.
I don’t agree that they have no interest in this. If they’re wrong about the semantics their whole position fails. Why wouldn’t they be interested in this, and why would you suggest that they’re not interested in it?
>>You might not find this a satisfying objection -- I do not expect you to. But if we can in fact discover examples of true moral statements, this would show that any view that claimed that there are no true moral statements is incorrect, not just 'error theory' as standardly defined.
I take this to be trivially true. If you can show subjectivism is true, then error theory is false. I can’t think of anyone who is informed on this topic that would think otherwise.
But error theory doesn’t strike me as something that can be shown to be false via stipulation. If it was, then you could just do this: I stipulate that by a moral claim I mean “2+2=4”. The error theorist agrees this is true, so we have a true moral claim, so error theory is refuted.
>>But supposing that one of those people (who you think fails to have determinate commitments) is working his way through the process of elimination. It seems that you must say that it is not the case that he makes true moral statements that are true stance-independently.
If a person is working their way through the process of elimination then they’re not a member of the population of nonphilosophers I’m referring to, so this is not possible. There’s a reason the position is called folk metaethical indeterminacy: it’s about people who aren’t philosophers.
>>You are not saying that they are stance-dependent, but neither are they stance-independent?
That what isn’t stance-dependent or stance-independent? I’m talking about ordinary moral discourse. I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to here.
>>But such a position would be covered by the process of elimination outlined in my essay
Folk metaethical indeterminacy is an empirical thesis about human psychology. Would that be covered by the process of elimination in your essay?
>>If he gets to the 'error theory' section and agrees that there are true moral statements, the next section is the 'relativism' section.
I’m very sorry, but this really does not make sense with respect to the folk metaethical indeterminacy claim. Such a person wouldn’t be getting to error theory. The same concerns apply to the whole rest of your paragraph. It does not appear to me that you understand what the position is that you are attempting to discuss here, since most of what you say, in the context of what the position is, simply does not make sense.
>> But if your claim entails that there are true moral statements, but that it is not the case that they are stance-independent, then such an entailment is in fact covered.
Which claim? You are saying all sorts of things here that are very unclear and very hard to parse. It’s difficult to discuss things with you because almost all of what I have to say in response is a request for clarification.
>>But if that is all that you are claiming with folk metaethical indeterminacy, then it is not even a position that by itself is opposed to moral non-naturalism. It must be combined with other claims to oppose moral non-naturalism.
…That’s exactly right. Folk metaethical indeterminacy is not itself a position that is opposed to non-naturalist realism, all on its own. I don’t believe I’ve ever suggested otherwise.
>>What is stopping someone from being an elitist moral realist?
Absolutely nothing.
>One could say that there are non-natural moral facts and philosophers express them, but lay people are incapable of expressing them. I am not sure that this even requires an idiosyncratic definition of _realism_. If it does, then I guess _realism_ was poorly defined in the first place.
I agree. It doesn’t require an especially idiosyncratic definition of realism. It might involve a rejection of certain forms of cognitivism, but speaking for myself, I wouldn’t take this to be a very interesting shortcoming for standard realist positions. I think they can and would adjust accordingly in a way that I personally didn’t consider to be much of a concession (if one at all). So this really is a non-issue for me. I have on occasion cited this paper:
Kahane, G. (2013). Must metaethical realism make a semantic claim?. Journal of moral philosophy, 10(2), 148-178.
I think you may have been operating under the misapprehension that I took folk metaethical indeterminacy to be some sort of direct or serious issue for moral realism. I don’t think that.
'I think you may have been operating under the misapprehension that I took folk metaethical indeterminacy to be some sort of direct or serious issue for moral realism. I don't think that.'
Yes, it appears that I misunderstood you, so I apologize for that.
I thought that you were saying that folk metaethical indeterminacy is the anti-realist position you hold that you think is not covered by the standard objections.
So what is your anti-realist position that you do not think is covered by the standard objections? I have heard you call yourself something like an anti-realist who is a pluralist about moral semantics. Is that the position that you do not think is covered? Do you think that the standard objections against the anti-realist positions somehow implicitly assume that pluralism is wrong?
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'This seems to indicate you are offering a refutation of my position, albeit indirectly. So are you or are you not presenting a refutation of my position?'
Maybe 'refute' is too strong, but at least I would say that, from my own epistemic perspective, I have sufficient reason to reject all logically possible anti-realist positions.
I fail to see how there could be any logically possible anti-realist position that was not at least indirectly covered.
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'Could you perhaps state which of the logically possible views you take my view to be, and which of the standard sorts of objections therefore apply to it?'
Well, I got the impression from some video or videos I watched that you take a subjectivist interpretation of your own moral statements, so the objections in the 'relativism' section would apply to that. Correct me if I am wrong on this interpretation.
Depending on whose _moral sentences_ we are talking about, you might take a different position; or you might be agnostic, but that would not be a logical alternative.
But whatever position is taken other than _non-reductionist realism_ (as I defined it), there will be some objection that I gave that applies to it. But the objections really need to be considered from the perspective of the person whose _moral sentences_ are being considered.
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'It's not irrelevant to the question of whether the *standard* three positions are the only logically possible ones. This is a separate point from the point about whether objections to any of those positions apply to my position. I don't think they do apply to my position, and I don't think you've shown that they do, but I am not going to ignore this point or treat it as irrelevant.'
In the original essay, note that I say 'But we can use a process of logical division to show that these (or at least something like these) are in fact the only three logical possibilities'.
I also say 'It must be admitted that I am simply stipulating the definitions of the terms _non-cognitivism_, etc.'.
So I was not claiming to have shown that the three standard positions are the only logically possible ones, just that ones relevantly similar are (relevantly similar in the sense that the same objections apply).
But if this does not satisfy you, I will be explicit: You are probably right that the positions as standardly defined are not logically exhaustive, at the very least if they are understood to be exclusive of each other.
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'What do you mean by "standard objections"? If you don't mean what I do, then insofar as my claim was that standard objections don't apply to my position, then you will have not, as far as I can tell, even offered a refutation of my original claim. You’ll simply have been using similar terms and phrases to be making a claim I wasn't objecting to in the first place.'
The objections I gave were: something along the lines of the Frege-Geach problem (in the 'non-cognitivist' section); counter-examples of true moral statements, plus a subsidiary objection regarding one's perception of moral truths (in the 'error theory' section); a thought experiment where one is encouraged to imagine that everyone has a positive/neutral stance towards torture, and an argument from our ability to reason about morality as if it was stance-independent (in the 'relativism' section); and the open-question argument (in the 'reductionism' section).
Which of these objections is not a standard objection?
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'This is unclear. I don't know if I reject this or not. The realist has "no need to engage in empirical research"? No need with respect to what goal? I couldn't say whether I reject this or not because I don't know what you mean.'
I thought that your position was that the non-naturalist realist needs to look at/engage in empirical research to be justified in his belief in non-naturalist realism. If that is not what you were saying, then I guess that this is just a misunderstanding, and I apologize.
If that is not your position, though, why do you often criticize realists for not looking at/engaging in empirical research? Or would you say that you do not criticize realists for neglecting empirical research?
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'Again, then why do you use the standard three labels to refer to your stipulative definitions? This is a super weird thing to do if it's not relevant.'
Because the objections for the respective standard positions apply to the stipulated positions. The problem of embedded moral statements applies to standard non-cognitivism and to my stipulated definition equally well. And likewise for the other positions.
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'To prove which claim? That realism is true, or that the process of elimination approach could work to show that realism is true? Or both? Or something else?'
This one: 'for any logically possible alternative to non-reductionist realism, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it'.
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'...I'm not sure what point you are making here. Any string of characters can be used to convey something meaningful in some context.'
The point was that the words have the same meaning as in conventional contexts.
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'I don't agree that they have no interest in this. If they're wrong about the semantics their whole position fails. Why wouldn't they be interested in this, and why would you suggest that they're not interested in it?'
Non-naturalist realists would either agree with the error theorist about semantics, or only disagree about the uniformity (assuming that 'error theory' is being understood to entail some uniform semantics). In the former case, they would not dispute it because they agree, and in the latter, the dispute would be irrelevant to the truth of non-naturalist realism.
I suppose that a naturalist realist would disagree about semantics. So I should have been more clear there. But even if the naturalist realist disagrees about semantics, they might not care to dispute the semantics since it would be sufficient to find examples of true moral statements.
>>But note that I never claimed to have refuted your meta-ethical theory, and I do not take myself to have presented a refutation of it.
If the claim is that my theory falls into one of three categories, all of which are mistaken, then it is difficult for me to see how my theory wouldn’t be refuted by default.
You suggest precisely this below when you say “[...], then assuming that your view is a logically possible alternative, it would have been indirectly addressed.”
This seems to indicate you are offering a refutation of my position, albeit indirectly. So are you or are you not presenting a refutation of my position?
(2) My position in relation to the target
Could you perhaps state which of the logically possible views you take my view to be, and which of the standard sorts of objections therefore apply to it?
>>Whether those positions are the standard ones was irrelevant
It’s not irrelevant to the question of whether the *standard* three positions are the only logically possible ones. This is a separate point from the point about whether objections to any of those positions apply to my position. I don’t think they do apply to my position, and I don’t think you’ve shown that they do, but I am not going to ignore this point or treat it as irrelevant. The standard objections to the standard three positions don’t apply to my positions because the standard objections rely on features of those positions that aren’t a feature of my position. You say that for any of the logically possible positions “[...] there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it [...]” but now this is a very strange. What do you mean by “standard”? If you create a *new* critique that applies to a nonstandard, stipulated category, then even your use of “standard” wouldn’t be encompassed by standard (already existing) objections, i.e., the objections *I* was talking about.
In other words, I’m saying something like this:
There are three standard antirealist positions: a1, a2, and a3. There are standard objections to to these, o1, o2, and o3.
You seem to stipulate new definitions of the possibility space for antirealist positions, and for some reason adopt the exact same labels as the labels used for a1, 2, and a3, and opt for exactly three positions. new_a1, new_a2, and new_a3. You then talk about there being some “standard sort of objection” to these positions. But if these standard objections aren’t o1, o2, and o3 referenced above, then they’re not what I was talking about in saying that the standard objections don’t apply to my position. If you come up with some new objections, say, new_o1, new_o2, and new_o3, it could very well be that one of these targets my position (even if I don’t think the attempt is successful). But this will not have shown that my original claim, that o1, o2, and o3 don’t apply to my position, is false.
You seem to be doing something like this in the original article, and I find it very confusing and unnecessary. If you wanted to say that it’s possible to divide up all antirealist positions into n number of categories and then show that each is wrong by appealing to x number of objections, and that if you can do this you can show realism wins by default, you could have said that this is at least epistemically possible, and I would just…agree with you. I’m certainly not going to object that the process of elimination procedures could work in principle. For instance, if someone said that they’ll call “all the positions lance thinks aren’t included in {a1, a2, a3} will be called a4}” and then they said that “If I can refute {a1, a2, a3, a4} then realism wins” I’d just agree with them.
In short: you could have from the very outset simply said you could eliminate all the other positions besides {a1, a2, a3} via process of elimination, and that if you could do this realism would win…and I’d have simply agreed with you. You opted to graft your claims onto a host of technical terms in the existing literature, and to employ phrases I’ve used in other contexts like “standard,” in ways that differ in meaning from those terms, or from what I meant. This gives the misleading impression that you’re engaging with the terms and categories in those other contexts when, as far as I can tell, you aren’t, because you’re stipulating different meanings to the terms or using the terms in different ways than the ways they were used in those contexts. This all strikes me as very confusing and unnecessary.
A big part of my objection to Huemer and others is that my position isn’t included in their standard three positions. Maybe you’re not interested in that question, but if that’s the case, I find it incredibly strange for you to borrow the names for those three positions and then invent three different positions that go by the same name. If I said “it’s not the case that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the only three religions” it would be incredibly weird to stipulate new definitions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and then insist that all religions are one of the three by concocting definitions so inclusive that they encompass all possible religions. This would be, at best, a highly misleading way of speaking. What you do in your article doesn’t strike me as different in kind, only different in degree. Redefining terms in this way can make things very confusing very quickly. If your goal is clear communication, this is not an effective strategy.
>>I was not insisting that your position falls into one of the standard three categories, just that it must fall into one of my stipulated categories.
Okay…but immediately before this, you say, “I had two primary goals in the essay: (1) to show that for any logically possible alternative to non-reductionist realism, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it [...]”. What do you mean by “standard” here? Do you mean “standard” in the sense of the standard objections to the standard categories? In other words, by “standard sort of objection” here do you mean {o1, o2, o3} or some other objection or objections? If you mean {o1, o2, o3}, then I’d be interested in seeing how these objections apply to all logically possible antirealist positions. If you don’t mean {o1, o2, o3} then I don’t know what you mean by “standard,” and this would constitute a concession to many of the points I raise above: it would mean, among other things, that my claim that standard objections don’t apply to my position is correct, because “standard” would mean {o1, o2, o3} and you’d be conceding that the objections you think encompass all logically possible positions isn’t contained by the set {o1, o2, o3}.
There’s a lot to say here and I’ll return to the rest of it but I am puzzled by this remark and wanted to flag it. You say:
“At the very least, I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of something like this: 'There is some part of my discourse in which I use moral terms and some of the discourse is true, and the meaning I intend is not covered by any other non-overlapping part of my discourse, nor is it covered by any part of Lance Bush's discourse that he does not use moral terms for'.”
Why would I need to be committed to this? What do you mean by that? I don’t think I’m committed to any such thing, but it’s hard to tell, as I’m not quite clear on what you mean here. At first glance, I at least suspect that I don’t think this is true, and may very well not think it’s intelligible.
It also troubles me that you say that this would come close to non-naturalist realism. I’m not quite sure what that means. Does it suggest non-naturalist realism or not? What does coming close amount to?
I think that something like that can act as a practical stand-in for non-naturalist realism. I should have said 'stance-independently true', though. Once I add that, no anti-realist can agree with the statement, I think. An idiosyncratic naturalist realist could. In practice, though, my impression is that naturalist realists generally do describe what they think moral statements mean using non-moral terms. For example, they might say that 'Torture is wrong' is identical in meaning to 'Torture causes suffering'. But any naturalist realist of that sort cannot agree with the statement I gave.
I said that I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of it because other than 'moral terms', which can just be stipulated as a subset of terms/phrases I use, everything else is just the same sort of language one might use in other contexts. If you think that it is unintelligible, I would expect you to find any talk of my discourse and what I mean by it (or what I mean when I say) to be unintelligible.
It is like if I said that when I use the terms 'red' and 'yellow' I am not using them synonymously. I assume that you think that what I am saying there is intelligible. But if so, then why not think that what I am saying is intelligible if I say that when I use 'is morally wrong' I am not using it synonymously with 'causes suffering'? If the only difference is what is being quoted, then surely if one is intelligible the other also is. And then all I need to do is say the same thing but replace 'is morally wrong' and 'causes suffering' until every single moral phrase and term and every single non-moral phrase and term is covered. And once I cover the fact that they are not synonymous, next I just need to say that the statements I am saying are stance-independently true. But if you think that it is intelligible when I say that 'the Earth is round' is stance-independently true, then I do not know why you would say that it is unintelligible if I said that 'torture is wrong' is stance-independently true. The only difference is the quoted phrase. Even if 'torture is wrong' is incoherent, the claim that the sentence is true is not -- the claim is simply false.
>>I think that something like that can act as a practical stand-in for non-naturalist realism.
Okay, but what does that mean?
>>I should have said 'stance-independently true', though. Once I add that, no anti-realist can agree with the statement, I think.
Whether I’d affirm any particular claim is stance-independently true will depend on what the claim is and to a certain extent what one means by stance-independently true. Normally I wouldn’t flag the latter concern but you’re using terms in all sorts of ways that seem unconventional to me so I’m going to need to be extra cautious in whether I’d affirm or deny anything that you’ve presented. Unfortunately any agreement about anything is going to require a whole lot of clarification or disambiguation.This is at least one problem I’ll flag with you opting to use idiosyncratic stipulative definitions of standardized terms.
You can always stipulate that by “moral claim” you mean such-and-such, and by stance-independently-true you mean such-and-such, such that I’d agree that there are “truths” of the relevant kind. Does that make me a “moral realist”? Sure, if by moral realist you mean someone who affirms those sorts of claims. I am not interested in this kind of terminological gerrymandering, and I hope you aren’t either.
>> An idiosyncratic naturalist realist could. In practice, though, my impression is that naturalist realists generally do describe what they think moral statements mean using non-moral terms.
Okay, but you think that for some reason I can’t or am committed to the inability to do so?
>>I said that I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of it because other than 'moral terms', which can just be stipulated as a subset of terms/phrases I use, everything else is just the same sort of language one might use in other contexts.
Unfortunately I’m finding this all very unclear. Can you maybe rephrase? What are you saying is the case, and why?
>>If you think that it is unintelligible, I would expect you to find any talk of my discourse and what I mean by it (or what I mean when I say) to be unintelligible.
Why? I find a lot of what you say here confusing and hard to parse, so it may be that unintelligibility is leaking into your remarks, so I might think exactly that. That’s going to depend on how far I can get with asking you to clarify what you mean, and trying to understand what you’re saying. As it stands, I do, in fact, find the original article very obscure and hard to understand, and I don’t think I’d be alone in that.
>>It is like if I said that when I use the terms 'red' and 'yellow' I am not using them synonymously. I assume that you think that what I am saying there is intelligible.
Sure, and I appreciate the attempt to clarify with an example. In most typical contexts if someone said they weren’t using “red” and “yellow” synonymously I wouldn’t have an issue.
>>But if so, then why not think that what I am saying is intelligible if I say that when I use 'is morally wrong' I am not using it synonymously with 'causes suffering'?
This is where things get strange for me. Why are you asking me this? Why would I take issue with this? Merely because you’re saying that your use of term X isn’t synonymous with Y doesn’t mean that your use of term X is intelligible. I could give you a nonsense phrase and insist it isn’t synonymous with something that you wouldn’t take to be nonsense, e.g., “when I say ‘flabbleflorf’, it’s not synonymous with ‘pizza.’” This is consistent with “flabbleflorf” being unintelligible.
>>If the only difference is what is being quoted, then surely if one is intelligible the other also is.
No.
>>But if you think that it is intelligible when I say that 'the Earth is round' is stance-independently true, then I do not know why you would say that it is unintelligible if I said that 'torture is wrong' is stance-independently true.
I’d need to know what you mean specifically when you said that “torture is wrong” is stance-independently true to judge whether I thought what you were saying is intelligible or not.
>>The only difference is the quoted phrase.
I don’t agree. I regard meaning as determined holistically in its contexts of usage. Intelligibility does not in my view come as cheaply as you seem to be presenting it here.
>> Even if 'torture is wrong' is incoherent, the claim that the sentence is true is not -- the claim is simply false.
Again, not in my view. We probably have different views about meaning.
Tl;dr: You say, “My point was to refute this part of your claim, by showing that the standard objections in fact apply to any logically possible anti-realist positions.”
Okay, then how do they apply to my position, specifically? I can't seem to extract a critique of my view in particular from your article, much less can I see how objections to standard forms of antirealism apply to my own position.
(1) The claim that there are only three positions is distinct from whether objections to those positions are applicable to other positions
Whether my position is subject to standard objections to the other three is technically distinct from the question of whether there are only three logically possible positions. I maintain that it would not be appropriate to describe my position as a form of noncognitivism, error theory, or subjectivism, regardless of whether some of the objections applicable to those positions were also applicable to mine. I don’t want that point to get obscured by collapsing the two considerations on the basis of the applicability of criticisms to those being applicable to my position being what is, distinctively, “philosophically significant.”
So yes, I do think the distinction between my position and standard positions is philosophically significant, but my claim isn’t merely that “my position isn’t subject to the objections these other positions are subject to,” but that my position would be distinct for various reasons regardless of this.
At any rate, if one of the criticisms directed at those positions applies to my position, that's a point that could be made without insisting my position falls into one of the standard three categories, so why bother with the latter? If your point isn’t a terminological one, why center the dispute on something that you appear to regard as incidental?
(2) “Standard” objections don’t even address existing forms of antirealism I don’t endorse
I don't even need to articulate a wildly divergent position to point out that standard objections to the traditional three don't even apply to mainstream antirealist accounts. Standard objections to, e.g., noncognitivism are going to have serious problems with something like quasi-realism, while standard objections to relativism are going to have serious problems taking on other stance-dependent, but relation-designating accounts like ideal observer theory or Humean constructivism. Likewise, it’s not clear to me how standard objections to any of the traditional positions would apply to incoherentism, either.
(3) Where is my position in this critique?
I don’t want to say too much before I write a fuller response (though that may end up happening anyway, we’ll see). But for now, I’ll emphasize this: I didn’t see any substantive engagement with my position in your post at all. I didn’t even see a description of my position, much less any distinct set of objections to it. So I remain puzzled as to how you believe the process of elimination outlined in your article addresses my views.
In short, I not only don’t think you’ve offered a convincing rebuttal of my views: I can’t even seem to locate my views in your article, nor can I locate any distinct objections to them. As a result, I don’t think your process-of-elimination approach has managed to eliminate my position, because I don’t even see an attempt at doing so. It’s entirely possible I’ve overlooked it, though, and that it somehow became obscured in your post. Could you point to anywhere in your post that shows how my position is eliminated via the process of elimination?
> Another common sort of objection to relativism is that one can reason about morality, which would not be the case if relativism were true. <
This strikes me as wrong. We can reason using symbols without any meaning at all, let alone stance-independent truth. The whole point of systems of logic is to detach meanings from symbols and then manipulate the symbols in a way that preserves the features that we're interested in (which is not necessarily true/false).
We can, as you agree, reason about fiction. If a piece of fiction says that a character has no siblings, then that piece of fiction has said that that character has no brothers. If that same piece of fiction later says that the character does have a brother, then the fiction is inconsistent. This is a fact about that piece of fiction. And you are right to say that, technically, "fictional statements are not literally true", and so we are free to just toss up our hands.
But a lot of people don't. When they notice what looks like an inconsistency, many fans will look for a way around -- some way of squaring the two statements. Did "the fiction" actually say that the character had no siblings, or was it merely the character himself? 'Cause if it was just him, then he could have had a brother all along without having known (see /The Importance of Being Earnest/.)
> In the case of morality, though, I might reason that because a conjunction of views leads to some sort of inconsistency, then one of the views must be false. But if morality is just fictional, you could just insist that there is nothing wrong with inconsistent statements in fiction. <
But those are not the only options. You could hold that moral claims are stance-dependent, and that the stance a person takes is a fact about that person. The inconsistent claims could then require a stance that could not possibly exist -- both approving of an action entirely and disapproving of that action entirely. No person can entirely approve and disapprove of the same action, so any argument requiring a single person to hold those two attitudes simultaneously must be unsound.
There can also be weaker inconsistencies in a person's stance. A person might disapprove of self-serving biases, and yet have some. When those biases are pointed out they won't just say that there's nothing wrong with inconsistencies in morality. The self-serving bias pointed out is a threat to the person's self-approval, and so something must shift. If the moral stance wins out, the self-serving bias is dampened (hopefully extinguished). (I approve of that.) Otherwise the person will somehow excuse the bias ("it's not actually a self-serving bias because it's based on the hard cold facts that mumble mumble, so there!"). (I disapprove.)
So I don't see that you've worked thru all the logical possibilities for subjectivism/relativism, and so you haven't succeeded in eliminating this branch of the tree.
Once again, I apologize if this is something you covered and I just missed it. Still feeling slow and stupid.
‘This strikes me as wrong. We can reason using symbols without any meaning at all, let alone stance-independent truth. The whole point of systems of logic is to detach meanings from symbols and then manipulate the symbols in a way that preserves the features that we’re interested in (which is not necessarily true/false).’
When writing the essay, I actually considered an objection like this and even briefly changed the premises of the argument to say ‘correctly reason’ rather than ‘reason’. But upon further reflection, I concluded that the original version of the argument was correct.
Why? Because there are two types of reasoning: inferential and non-inferential. Consider the marginal-case argument I gave as an example: it starts with the premise ‘If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and it is wrong to torture group X, then it is wrong to torture group Y’. I think that this is the sort of thing I can discover using non-inferential reasoning. So in this case, we cannot just reason using empty symbols.
‘But those are not the only options. You could hold that moral claims are stance-dependent, and that the stance a person takes is a fact about that person. The inconsistent claims could then require a stance that could not possibly exist – both approving of an action entirely and disapproving of that action entirely. No person can entirely approve and disapprove of the same action, so any argument requiring a single person to hold those two attitudes simultaneously must be unsound.’
I am not meaning to deny that we can do any reasoning at all about morality assuming relativism – the point is that we cannot do the relevant type of reasoning. In the syllogism I gave, notice the wording: ‘If moral relativism is true, it is not the case that it is possible that there are any true moral claims about which one can reason exactly the same way as stance-independent claims’. Surely that is true (assuming that your conception of reasoning fits with the one I gave above).
I then give the example of the marginal-case reasoning and go through a subjectivist interpretation. I do not see how a relativist interpretation can work (for the reasons stated in the essay).
‘There can also be weaker inconsistencies in a person’s stance. A person might disapprove of self-serving biases, and yet have some. When those biases are pointed out they won’t just say that there’s nothing wrong with inconsistencies in morality. The self-serving bias pointed out is a threat to the person’s self-approval, and so something must shift. If the moral stance wins out, the self-serving bias is dampened (hopefully extinguished). (I approve of that.) Otherwise the person will somehow excuse the bias (“it’s not actually a self-serving bias because it’s based on the hard cold facts that mumble mumble, so there!”). (I disapprove.)’
If the relativist wants to deny that I am reasoning in the relevant way and give an alternative interpretation, then the sort of interpretation you gave is a good option. But note that this requires denying that what I introspectively seem to be doing is in fact what I am doing. Consider a case where I look out and think that I see a squirrel; I conclude that there is a squirrel. An alternative interpretation is that I am hallucinating, but the mere fact that there is an epistemically possible alternative interpretation is not a sufficient reason for me to reject my initial introspective seeming.
You bring up some good criticisms, but I still think that what I said rules out relativism from my own perspective (and likewise people in a similar epistemic situation). Of course, perhaps you will reflect on your moral thinking and conclude that it does not involve the relevant sort of reasoning, in which you should not be convinced by my argument.
Thanks for your replies. I find much to agree with, but to keep things short(ish) I'm going to concentrate on whether moral relativism/subjectivism rules out any relevant kind of reasoning.
From your other reply:
> instead of talk of being ‘true’, why cannot I just replace it with ‘non-analytically true’? <
That might work. I'd start it right at the top so that the non-cognitivist would also be free to accept analytic truths (if desired).
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In this reply you write:
> I then give the example of the marginal-case reasoning and go through a subjectivist interpretation. I do not see how a relativist interpretation can work (for the reasons stated in the essay). <
And also:
> I still think that what I said rules out relativism from my own perspective <
Errm. Still slow and stupid here, but doesn't the latter suggest that you take relativism to be false in a stance-dependent way? That is, the claim /relativism is true/ is false *relative to your stance*.
Anyway, I don't think you've done proper service to relativism/subjectivism in your essay. The stance-dependent view of moral claims is that there exist stances such that there are facts of the matter as to whether that stance "satisfies" any particular moral claim (written "S |= m", where S is the stance and m is the moral claim under consideration). Per the revision above, the view might allow some stance-independent claims ("|= m"), but only for analytic m. Importantly, "|= m" is false when m is non-analytic.
We will write "S |= (m + n)" to mean that either "S |= m" or "S |= n" is true (disjunction).
We will write "S |= (m * n)" to mean that both "S |= m" and "S |= n" are true (conjunction).
We write "S |= ~m" to indicate that "S |= m" is false (negation).
And note that there is a stronger form of negation: We will write "S |= -m" to indicate that there exists an n such that "S |= n" where "S |= m" and "S |= n" cannot simultaneously be true.
Note the difference between ~m and -m -- the former is the claim /it is not the case that S supports m/ whereas the latter is /it is the case that S supports something incompatible with m/. This corresponds to the difference between the claims /it is not the case that you should M/ and /it is the case that you should not M/.
So if we fix a particular S and choose a version of negation, we can reason using the moral claims just like they were propositions -- without holding that they are propositions on their own.
So I reject your claim that relativists cannot reason with moral claims like they can with propositional ones. They can reason about their own stance, and they can reason together with people who share their stance.
But what about people who don't share their stance? It's clear that "S |= m" and "T |= -m" are not contradictory -- they're not even contrary. It is entirely possible for one stance to approve of doing M while another disapproves of it.
Does that mean that the people holding stances S and T are not disagreeing when one makes the claim 'm' and the other claims '-m'? Does it mean they can't meaningfully argue about the status of 'm'?
It does not.
Propositional disagreement is not the only kind of disagreement. People disagree on all kinds of matters, and those disagreements can have all kinds of negative consequences for the relationship between those people. This is particularly true for moral claims, because morality is a guide to human behaviour. Our moral claims are not just stating that our particular stance takes a particular view on some question; they also state that we are ready to take action in defence of some particular way of responding to that question -- action that you might take amiss.
Moral disagreement is a serious issue, and must be dealt with seriously.
In the face of a moral disagreement, the realist must say that one view (at least) is mistaken. Either "|= m" or "|= ~m", they'll say. We need to figure out which it is.
The subjectivist, on the other hand, has more options open. While demonstrating that "S |= m" is pointless, we can try to demonstrate that "T |= m" or that the principles involved in the demonstration that "T |= ~m" can be used to show that "T |= x", where 'x' is something that the T-stancer finds objectionable. (Yes, it is possible for a person to reject a moral stance that they have previously taken.) Make the T-stancer into a T'-stancer, and repeat until their stance satisfies the desired moral claim.
The process seems very much like convincing someone that they've made an error because it proceeds in much the same way. S and T have been moral stances up till now, but they could stand for stances on any topic that support facts of the form "S |= a" -- including propositional topics. S would just be a set of beliefs expressed by one party, and T the beliefs of the other. There's no point in convincing the other that you actually believe what you're saying; your goal is to make them believe it, and you need to appeal to their beliefs in order to do so. You need to convince them that their (more firmly held) beliefs do imply your view, or to shift their beliefs from T to T' to ... accepting the view you hold.
...
One last thing. I noted at the beginning that you seem to have evinced an anti-realist view on whether moral realism was true. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. I'm not actually sure.
But consider this: there may be no fact of the matter on whether moral claims are stance-independent.
Such a view is possible for a person to take, and it doesn't slot nicely into your five-way division of the field. Sure, it falls under your "realist" category, since it holds that some moral claims *might* be true in a stance-independent way, but it really seems a stretch to call it a realist view. It doesn't commit to there being any moral claims that are true in a stance-independent way.
<<OK>>, you might say, <<but that's just a psychological viewpoint. There either have to be some that are stance-independent true or none. This person is just agnostic.>>
But I don't think that's what's going on. This person is not an agnostic; they are a meta-moral-anti-realist. The claim that it must be one way or the other is a meta-moral-realist truth. They can look at your OP and say "Yeah, that's a perfectly consistent viewpoint, and I can see why a realist would like it, but it doesn't really cover all the possibilities, does it?"
I'm agnostic about whether I'm a meta-moral-anti-realist.
'Errm. Still slow and stupid here, but doesn't the latter suggest that you take relativism to be false in a stance-dependent way? That is, the claim /relativism is true/ is false *relative to your stance*.'
I was not suggesting that the truth of the matter is stance-dependent or relative, but the epistemic status is relative. The epistemic status of a proposition depends on the evidence available to the epistemic agent. If you have different introspective seemings or intuitions, you might not be justified in believing moral realism even if someone else would be.
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'But consider this: there may be no fact of the matter on whether moral claims are stance-independent.'
This requires rejecting the law of non-contradiction. Either it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences, or it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences. To deny that disjunction requires saying, by De Morgan's law, it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences, and it is not the case that it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences. And the latter double-negative turns into, by the law of double negation, _it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences_, so we have a case of (~P & P).
The references to possibility in the logical division process were all intended to be about metaphysical possibility, not epistemic possibility, to be clear.
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Now, regarding your point about being able to reason: my claim is not that relativism entails that we cannot reason about morality, but that it entails that we cannot reason about it in exactly the same way as stance-independent claims -- and that since some people can in fact reason about it in exactly the same way as stance-independent claims, that shows that relativism is false.
And I justify the claim that some people can reason about it in exactly the same way by giving an example, which, at least to me, introspectively appears to be a case of reasoning that involves supposing the things we are reasoning about to be stance-independent.
Your objection seems to depend on a narrow conception of reasoning that just involves inference.
In the marginal-cases example I gave, what seems to be happening is that I am starting from a necessary a priori moral principle and coming to a conclusion about morality.
What would a relativist interpretation need to say? First, presumably I am not relying on any necessary a priori principle, but instead just introspecting on my own preferences (well, at least assuming individual subjectivism).
Second, if you say that the conclusion will be something like 'Relative to my standards, pig torture is wrong', then this leads to some problems, I think. I do not see how reasoning about your second-order preferences can lead to such a conclusion, unless you treat morality as a fiction with rules such as that if X is incompatible with a second-order preference, X is immoral. Treating it as a fiction has the problem that the fiction can simply have inconsistencies. Besides that, making the explanation more convoluted might make it less plausible. It does not seem to me that I am relying on some complicated fiction. If you give some simple explanation such as that when I say _torture is wrong_ I am really just saying that I disapprove, then it is easier to see how I might get confused about such things; but if you instead say that there is some complicated moral fiction, then it seems less likely that I would get confused about such a thing.
Perhaps you could provide what you think is the correct interpretation of the example of moral reasoning that I gave in the essay?
Regarding the stuff about disagreement: I was careful to avoid talking about disagreement due to concern about this sort of objection (which Lance Bush uses).
OK, I did a quick review of this response in lite of your latest comments in the other part, and made some light modifications. I don't think that it obviously falls to the arguments you made there, so ... and at your invitation
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> 'But consider this: there may be no fact of the matter on whether moral claims are stance-independent.'
> This requires rejecting the law of non-contradiction. Either it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences, or it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences. To deny that disjunction requires saying .... <
Consider these "sentences":
D1. Either it is possible that hooray or it is not possible that hooray.
D2. Either it is possible that shut the door or it is not possible that shut the door.
D3. Either it is possible that chocolate is tasty or it is not possible that chocolate is tasty.
Well, D1 and D2 seem to be malformed. We can deny that they express a truth value at all, and that'd be fine. No problem with the LNC. [[NOTE: I don't think replacing "not possible" with "not the case that it is possible" makes a difference, but please let me know if you think it does.]]
D3 looks okay syntactically, but what disjunction is it proposing?
D3a) Either it is possible that everyone likes chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3b) Either it is possible that someone likes chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3c) Either it is possible that most people like chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3d) Either it is possible that everyone in my country likes chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3e) Either it is possible that I like chocolate or it is not possible ....
....
The possible worlds that satisfy one disjunct or the other are different between the different interpretations. We know that not everyone finds chocolate tasty, so the first disjunct of D3a is false. But we know that some people do find chocolate tasty, so the first disjunct of D3b is true. So is this actual world a /Chocolate is tasty/ or a /Chocolate is not tasty/ world?
The answer is either: it depends -- OR: that question doesn't make sense.
One more disjunct to consider:
D3z) Either it is possible that /Chocolate is tasty/ is a possibly-true proposition or it is not possible ....
Well, /chocolate is tasty/ isn't a proposition, but /could it be/? Is that a metaphysical possibility? That everyone who holds that /Chocolate is not tasty/ could be mistaken? (Or that the rest of us could??? Heaven forfend!)
Which side do you come down on?
Never mind. I don't actually care which side you come down on. It is a matter of absolutely no consequence.
Now replace /Chocolate is true/ with /There are some stance-independently true moral sentences/.
The meta-moral-anti-realist has the same attitude to that disjunction. That it is a matter of absolutely no consequence. Be a realist. Be a subjectivist. Be a command theorist. Whatever, dude! But whatever you choose, know that if you cross me I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. (Well, maybe not that last bit. They could be a meek meta-moral-anti-realist and if you cross them they might just whine.)
And it's not agnosticism. It is anti-realism: that there is no fact of the matter whether there are stance-independently true moral sentences.
If that's so, then the proper response to your disjunction is similar: either it depends or it makes no sense.
And you might think that the subjectivist has to take a stance on whether there might be stance-independently true moral sentences, but I'm not even sure that that's right. Consider the classic double-slit experiment. Electrons are fired at a screen containing two slits. It might well seem that one of the following MUST be true for each electron:
1. It goes thru the first slit.
2. It goes thru the second slit.
3. It goes thru both slits.
4. It goes thru neither slit.
Turns out every one of those is false, even tho' they seem to cover all logically available metaphysical possibilities.
Faced with that, it seems quite reasonable to say that there is no fact of the matter as to which slit the electron goes thru.
Maybe we are in a superposition of moral realism and moral anti-realism.
Or maybe whether or not there are stance-independently true moral sentences is a stance-dependent matter.
The meta-moral-anti-realism positions are not logically possible assuming that the logical process of division was correct. But you would be correct in thinking that they are epistemic possibilities: I cannot be sure that I did not make a mistake such as equivocation.
But note that a lot of the same sort of considerations brought against the metaethical positions can be brought against the meta-metaethical positions.
You start with two non-cognitive examples. The same sort of response could be used here as was used for the non-cognitivist. If no metaethical statements even purport to be truth-apt, then it makes no sense to say things like 'If there are stance-independently true moral statements, then there is a stance-independently true theory of normative ethics' or 'I wonder if moral realism is true'.
The next case you consider is where the statements are ambiguous. I did consider that sort of objection in the meta-ethical context in the section 'Objection: Perhaps people mean multiple things'. In the case of 'Chocolate is tasty', it seems I can disambiguate and decide upon a certain meaning. In fact, I think that I and in fact many people often do so in similar contexts. If asked if a movie is funny someone might say something like 'I find it funny, but I have an unusual sense of humor. Most people would probably not find it funny'. If we have the ability to do this sort of thing in ordinary contexts, why not here? And when doing philosophy, people are hopefully being more careful than they would be in ordinary discourse.
At the end you mention the (epistemic) possibility that meta-ethical claims themselves are stance-dependent. I suppose that the two concerns (the thought experiment and the ability to reason like it is stance-independent) I brought against relativism also apply to relativism about meta-ethics. Also, I suspect that you would agree that you and I can think about, for example, the stance-dependence or stance-independence of tastiness or funniness or whether the Earth revolves around the Sun, etc. If I am able to think about stance-independence or dependence, or whether sentences are truth-apt or true, etc. in general, then why would I be unable to do so in the case of morality?
Finally, you also bring up the double-slit experiment. I only have superficial familiarity with it, so there is not much I can say. But I do know that there is more than one interpretation of quantum mechanics, not all of them involve a contradiction.
I do not think that it would be 'reasonable to say that there is no fact of the matter as to which slit the electron goes thru'. It would be reasonable to either reject the theory entirely in favor of a different one, or modify the interpretation.
I find the law of non-contradiction to be intuitively obvious. But besides that, we perhaps need it to explain reductio ad absurdum arguments, as well as having evidence to disbelieve P whenever we have evidence for ~P. Without the law of non-contradiction, those must just be inductive. And, anyway, if you are using induction in those other cases, why not use it here to assume that there is no contradiction?
If you want to discuss the law of non-contradiction, perhaps I could write a separate essay and post it at some point? That might be better than discussing it here.
> The meta-moral-anti-realism positions are not logically possible assuming that the logical process of division was correct.<
I don't think it's ruled out by the process. Here is your division:
- Non-cognitivist => ~<>TA
- Error-theorist => <>TA & ~<>T
- Relativist => <>TA & <>T & ~<>SI
- Realist => <>TA & <>T & <>SI
And here is my suggested category:
- MMAR => <>TA & <>T & <>SI & <>~SI
Logically it's just a subset of your realists, so the division you made doesn't rule it out. (I'm not saying it can't be ruled out by other means.)
MMAR is just the set of (your) realists who don't hold to []SI -- that is, whose metaphysics includes worlds where some moral sentences are stance-independently true and others where none are.
In order to rule out MMAR you need to show that if any possible world has stance-independently true moral sentences then they all do. /As a realist/, that would mean showing that every possible world has stance-independently true moral sentences.
And recall that you previously agreed that conceptually true sentences don't count. Thus you need to show that every possible world has contingently (but stance-independently) true moral sentences.
But if each of the required moral sentences is only contingently true, then for each one there is a possible world where it is not true. Thus, logically at least, there should be a world where *every* contingent moral sentence is false -- and so a world where there are no contingently true moral sentences -- and thus having no stance-independently true sentences (of the required sort).
If so, then either MMAR is possible or realism is false.
But maybe there is some logical or metaphysical reason why not all contingent moral sentences could simultaneously be false. In other words, is error theory metaphysically impossible?
I don't think you proved that in your OP; you restricted yourself to explaining why it seems unlikely, didn't you?
Furthermore, I like Huemer's definition of error theory, in which the claims are false because they posit properties that don't exist. If every (pertinent) moral sentence is contingent, then every property they posit must also be contingent. Thus it must be possible for each property to be missing. A world where all moral properties are missing would be one where moral error theory is true.
So, is it impossible for all those properties to be missing simultaneously?
I don't see why that'd be, but maybe you can enlighten me. (Or maybe I should go reread why Huemer thinks moral error theory is wrong -- and see if he shows it to be necessarily wrong, which is what's required here.)
> Now, regarding your point about being able to reason: my claim is not that relativism entails that we cannot reason about morality, but that it entails that we cannot reason about it in exactly the same way as stance-independent claims <
I think I understood that. The bits about (m + n) and (m * n) was meant to show that we can reason about stance-dependent claims in the same way as we can about stance-independent ones. But it seems that you have something more -- ummm -- unmathematical? -- in mind.
[[Marginal case argument repeated for ease of reference:
(1) If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and it is wrong to torture group X, then it is wrong to torture group Y.
(2) There are no non-physical differences between severely mentally retarded humans and normal adult pigs.
(3) It is wrong to torture severely mentally retarded humans.
(4) Therefore, it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs.]]
> In the marginal-cases example I gave, what seems to be happening is that I am starting from a necessary a priori moral principle and coming to a conclusion about morality. <
I do not dispute that it seems that way to you. Nevertheless, your reasoning *started* there. How you came to start with that is not part of the reasoning process that you displayed. The subjectivist can start with that claim, too, and proceed *exactly the same way* as you did in your argument, and end with exactly the same conclusion -- that it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs.
Is the basis for your claim that we're not reasoning in the same way merely that we have different meta-beliefs about the claims we are reasoning over? Because I in no way see how that would follow.
> What would a relativist interpretation need to say? First, presumably [that] I am not relying on any necessary a priori principle, but instead just introspecting on my own preferences (well, at least assuming individual subjectivism). <
OK, I'm taking a priori to mean non-empirical, and I see no reason why the subjectivist could not take that claim to be non-empirical -- an intuition. Probably not /necessary/, tho.
> Second, if you say that the conclusion will be something like 'Relative to my standards, pig torture is wrong' <
Ah, no. The conclusion is /it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs/. The fact that you believe that that is some stance-independent truth is neither here nor there. That's just meta-ethics.
> unless you treat morality as a fiction with rules such as .... <
The subjectivist need not view moral claims as fictions -- any more than they consider taste claims as fictions. That's just how things taste to me ==> that's just how things react with my moral attitudes. There are facts that underlie and validate the claims (taste and moral), but the claims don't express those facts. The claims are more general (i.e. contain less information).
> Perhaps you could provide what you think is the correct interpretation of the example of moral reasoning that I gave in the essay? <
Looks like perfectly normal moral reasoning to me. The sort of thing that any realist or subjectivist would do naturally. And what would follow on afterwards likewise matches, whether realist or subjectivist: talking about the way the modern meat industry treats normal adult pigs (and cute little piggies), and trying to make people agree that /they should stop eating meat/.
Honestly, I'm not sure I should care any more whether people argue for or against realism/subjectivism. It strikes me more and more as a distinction with no difference. Tho' I do enjoy the exercise of trying to make things clear and correct, so maybe it's not the case that I should stop responding.
And yes, I do have a response to the other part of your comment. It's even longer than this one. I'll post it if you're interested, but maybe I've already taken up more than my fair share of your time.
> I do not dispute that it seems that way to you. Nevertheless, your reasoning *started* there. How you came to start with that is not part of the reasoning process that you displayed. The subjectivist can start with that claim, too, and proceed *exactly the same way* as you did in your argument, and end with exactly the same conclusion -- that it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs. <
The reasoning process that I had in mind was not just the logical inference -- it also included the justification for the premises in the argument.
Consider the first premise: 'If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and it is wrong to torture group X, then it is wrong to torture group Y'.
According to the individual subjectivist, this would mean something like 'If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and I disapprove of torturing group X, then I disapprove of torturing group Y'. The justification for this would presumably be based on induction and introspection. So then what happens when you reach the conclusion 'Therefore, it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs'? As far as I can tell, the epistemically rational thing to do would be to reject the first premise, assuming that you did not already disapprove of torturing normal adult pigs. If you believe that all swans are white based on induction and then see some black swans, the rational thing to do would be to stop believing that all swans are white, not conclude that the black swan is not a swan. The case is even worse here than in the swan case. In the swan case maybe what looked like a black swan was just a similar type of bird, so you might need to be more cautious, but in this case you presumably would be able to introspect on whether you disapprove of torturing normal adult pigs -- if you introspect and discover that you do not disapprove of it, surely you should just reject the first premise.
Someone with an account closer to fictionalism might be better off here: such a person could say something like that I am merely pretending that the first premise is a necessary truth, even though it is not. Of course, you would need to claim in that case that I am pretending without realizing it, which is a bit implausible. Further, you would have to admit that seemingly inconsistent true moral statements can exist.
> Looks like perfectly normal moral reasoning to me. The sort of thing that any realist or subjectivist would do naturally. And what would follow on afterwards likewise matches, whether realist or subjectivist: talking about the way the modern meat industry treats normal adult pigs (and cute little piggies), and trying to make people agree that /they should stop eating meat/. <
The individual subjectivist would need to say that the moral facts that I express are reducible to non-moral facts (namely, facts about my mind). So we can presumably translate the premises of the argument into something like I suggested above ('If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and I disapprove of torturing group X, then I disapprove of torturing group Y').
If you think that the subjectivist can avoid the problems I suggested in interpreting such reasoning, what would you propose? Is there a way to be justified in believing the first premise in such a way that upon reaching the conclusion the rational thing to do is not simply rejecting the first premise (assuming that you did not already agree with the conclusion)?
> The subjectivist need not view moral claims as fictions -- any more than they consider taste claims as fictions. That's just how things taste to me ==> that's just how things react with my moral attitudes. There are facts that underlie and validate the claims (taste and moral), but the claims don't express those facts. The claims are more general (i.e. contain less information). <
In the case of taste, I might use induction to conclude that something will be tasty. For example, if I generally like hot sauce and generally like the ingredients used in a particular hot sauce, then I would be justified in thinking that I will like the taste of the particular hot sauce. But what if I try it and find it disgusting? At that point, I would simply conclude that this hot sauce is not in fact tasty (relative to me), not insist that because I find hot sauces and the ingredients used in general to be tasty that this hot sauce is also in fact tasty.
> And yes, I do have a response to the other part of your comment. It's even longer than this one. I'll post it if you're interested, but maybe I've already taken up more than my fair share of your time. <
First, let me tell you that that is the kind of writing and reasoning that I aspire to. Thank you very much for taking my objections seriously enuf to prepare that response.
Here is what I concede: if "X is wrong" means only that "I disapprove of X", then the marginal case argument is not valid. If subjectivism is just that antecedent claim, then the subjectivist who uses the marginal cases argument is wrong in some important way. My analogy between moral claims and tastiness claims fails in important ways, too.
I don't concede that realism must be true, and I will be giving some more tho't to how subjectivism might answer your objections, but I think at this point I simply must admit that I have not given you a good reason to doubt your position.
> other than the kind of true moral statements that the nihilist must account for like /it is not the case that murder is immoral and it is not the case that murder is moral/, which must be true if you say that /murder is immoral/ and /murder is moral/ are false <
Does an error theorist need to say that /murder is immoral/ is false? As Huemer defines it, the error theorist holds that nothing has the properties that moral claims attribute to them, so any claim that such-and-such an actual thing has this non-actual property must be false. But conceptually /murder/ is an /immoral killing/(*). The error theorist can hold that /murder is immoral/ is a conceptual truth while simultaneously holding that nothing actual is immoral -- by holding that nothing actual is murder. Similarly a person could hold that /werewolves are monsters/ is true while denying the existence of werewolves (and possibly monsters generally).
(*) AFAIK no one says abortion or capital punishment are /morally acceptable kinds of murder/. Those who support either deny that they are murder at all.
I fear that your way of breaking up the options makes me a moral realist -- I accept the stance-independent truth of claims like /murder is wrong/ because of my conceptual analysis of the terms. But I do not accept the stance-independence of claims that attach naturalistic properties to moral ones, so I think of myself a a moral anti-realist. That makes me think that the way you break things up doesn't capture the fundamental difference between realists and (at least some) anti-realists.
Have I missed something? I admit that my brain is feeling quite fogged today (I'm getting over a bad cold or covid).
First, technically I was being careless here since the way I defined error theory, the error theorist need not say such statements are false, they could just say that it fails to express a proposition.
But, anyway, regarding your criticism: Consider an example ‘square-circles are immoral’. There are a number of ways one might try to interpret this. One is ‘necessarily, for all x, if x is a square-circle, then x is immoral’. But under this interpretation, the sentence ends up true, since there is no possible world where the antecedent is true. But it seems that there ought to be some way to say that it is either false or fails to express a proposition. Consider ‘The King of France is bald’. This sentence is surely not true, as there is no King of France; it is either false or fails to express a proposition. Perhaps the correct interpretation of sentences that purport to be ascribing properties to square-circles says that the sentences are treating the square-circles as if they were real (possible) objects (or that ‘square-circle’ is some real category, or something like that), but since they are not, none of them are true.
The moral anti-realist thinks that there is no such thing as murder: since there is no such thing as an immoral-anything, there is no such thing as an immoral-killing. So perhaps the anti-realist should treat it like the ‘King of France’ sentence.
What about the ‘werewolf’ case? Unlike in the above cases, there is another plausible interpretation: that ‘werewolves are monsters’ is like ‘Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street’. There is a sense in which the latter is true, viz., the sense in which it is treated as a statement about a fiction, since the Holmes stories do in fact state that he lives on Baker Street. I am not saying that this interpretation is correct. Perhaps the correct one is more like ‘necessarily, for all x, if x is a werewolf, then x is a monster’. Or, perhaps the statement does imply that werewolves are possible objects (or that there is some werewolf category that exists, or something). If they are, then we can correctly describe the possible objects (or category) even if there are no werewolves in the actual world.
Anyway, these are difficult questions, but my suspicion is that an error theorist cannot say that ‘Murder is wrong’ is just analytically true.
But even if you are right and the error theorist should consider it an analytic truth, I do not think that this harms the process of elimination argument much. I think that it would be sufficient to slightly alter the logicial division: instead of talk of being ‘true’, why cannot I just replace it with ‘non-analytically true’?
"For example, if you say that ‘good’ just means pleasure, then ‘Is it true that pleasure is good?’ is no more a reasonable question than ‘Is it true that the bachelor is unmarried?’. If you understand what the word ‘good’ means and it just means pleasure, then there could be no reason to ask if pleasure is good."
I'm not sure that this is true to the point. Pleasure is a natural property, the open-question posits that goodness isn't.
I am not sure if I am understanding you correctly, so I apologize if this is a misinterpretation.
It seems that you are saying that I am misunderstanding the open-question argument?
The open question argument I had in mind is the one that is based on remarks of Moore in chapter 13. Moore does not use the term ‘open question’ in that chapter, however. Besides Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also uses the term ‘open question’ when presenting the argument I had in mind: ‘Moore’s main argument against the possibility of any such definition of goodness is that when we confront a putative definition, such as that to be good is to be something which we desire to desire, we can tell that this is not a claim that is true by definition because its truth remains for us an ‘open question’ in the sense that it remains sensible to doubt it in a way which would not be possible if it were just a definition which makes explicit our understanding of the words.’ (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/)
This ‘open question’ argument does not rely on the distinction between natural and non-natural properties and it does not rely on the premise that goodness is not a natural property (although, of course, Moore denies that it is a natural property, as do I).
You understood correctly. I recall that you referenced Huemer’s “Ethical Intuitionism.” The easiest way to go about this would be for you to read the section 4.2 in chapter 4. If you don’t have it available, let me know, I’ll try to summarize my critique in a more complete way than I did in my first comment.
OK, I have now read the section you suggested. Huemer’s basic statement of the argument seems pretty similar to what I was saying: “Suppose ‘N’ is an expression containing only non-evaluative terms that denotes some property. ‘Are things that have N good?’ is an open question. What this means is that a person could coherently give either answer to the question. But ‘Are good things good?’ is not an open question; a person could not coherently give either answer to that question. Therefore, the two questions are not equivalent. Therefore, ‘good things’ is not synonymous with ‘things that have N’.” (p. 67).
The main difference is that he says that a ‘person could coherently give either answer to the question’, whereas I said that the question is pointless. Is this what you were referring to?
Other than that, my wording was a bit careless. Instead of ‘Is it true that pleasure is good?’, I probably should have said something like ‘Is it true that pleasant things are good?’.
If neither of these was your point, I still do not know what you mean. I could not find anything in the section that resembled much what you originally said.
I think your characterization of the argument is correct, all I am wondering is if the example you give in some sense contradicts the spirit of the open question argument. In premise 1 and 2 of the argument Huemer gives, are posed two sentences. "It is good to do what increases the amount of enjoyment in the world," and, "It is good to do what is good." The argument then points out that these sentences are not identical, the point of which is to counter analytic reductionism. "Pleasure" is a non-moral term; so the sentence you gave, "Is it true that pleasure is good," is an example of analytic reductionism; of which the argument you previously mentioned in your post is counter.
The assertive changing of the definition of good to be identical with pleasure is the instance of analytic reductionism. So to point that out (if you did) would be to miss the point. Hopefully that's clear, I'm not wholly educated or sufficiently read on this topic than I'd rather be, I still have yet to read "Principia Ethica" and relevant papers surrounding it, which I plan on doing; but my impression, as of yet, is that my analysis of your example is correct.
This is an improved version of the argument I was making, in the form of a syllogism:
(1) If ‘is good’ just means ‘is pleasant’, then ‘Is it true that (the) pleasure is good?’ is just as unreasonable to ask as ‘Is it true that the bachelor is unmarried?’.
(2) It is not the case that ‘Is it true that (the) pleasure is good?’ is just as unreasonable to ask as ‘Is it true that the bachelor is unmarried?’.
(3) Therefore, it is not the case that ‘is good’ just means ‘is pleasant’.
And since ‘pleasant’ can be replaced with any non-moral predicate, it is clear that ‘good’ is irreducible to a non-moral predicate.
Does this version of the argument address your concerns? If not, you will need to explain, as I still do not understand what the problem is.
This seems to the opposite of my impression initially. And in reading the original text I still get my original impression. I could just not be reading carefully enough.
Just brilliant.
+Nice to see a fellow non-naturalist.
You really know your ethics textbooks, my friend. Great article.
Thanks. But in all honesty, I have not read much about metaethics.
Thanks for writing this, and sorry for the slow reply. I was traveling for a week and am behind on work, and I saw this while I was traveling, so I haven't been able to respond as quickly as I normally would.
As an initial remark, though: thank you! Since I started my blog I've wanted to receive critical feedback and engagement from people who disagree, without the toxicity and hostility I see in so many online debates. I see none of the latter here: it's just a critique, without any sniping commentary. My plan is to do an initial commentary on my YouTube channel then write up a response. To anticipate what I'll have to say: I don't think this critique is successful, and I look forward to offering my remarks and hopefully hearing back from you.
Thanks. I look forward to your response.
You can’t argue for moral realism by process of elimination because the only view that survives that process is “none of the above.”
Clearly not, since the process of elimination eliminates the option "none of the above." As well, we have not eliminated all options, just all but non-naturalism.
One cannot eliminate all options except one of the one that remains isn't, technically speaking, an actual position. This is a critical problem for this post: I don't actually grant that "Non-naturalist moral realism is true" is even a proposition. Process of elimination can't get around questions of the intelligibility of moral realism, at least not directly. That is, showing that antirealist positions are wrong alone cannot show that realism is true because you'd still need it to be possible for realism to be true on its own terms. And I don't think that it is (at least not non-naturalism).
For sure, just because everyone is the room didn’t bump the table, doesn’t mean a ghost did.
If we're picky enough about possible antirealist positions and restrict them in ways that require assumptions about language or a priori truths that I don't accept, then I agree: I don't endorse any of them. Hence why I am technically a quietist. But I lean into "antirealism" because I wish to emphasize the importance of rejecting all forms of moral realism.
Yeah, but each of the positions is defined in terms of the other. One says that there are mind-independent moral truths and the other says there aren’t. One says moral truths are natural and the other says they’re non-natural. So if one of these positions is meaningless then they’re all meaningless.
An antirealist can deny that something unintelligible is true because the unintelligible claim is...well, unintelligible, and thus incapable of being true or false. You could even call this, if you want to be cute, something like second-order noncognitivism: that claims that moral realism are true are, themselves, not propositions. Such a view still holds that such claims aren't true (and could even hold that they can't be true). That is something like my view. If someone wants to say that this isn't really antirealism, I don't particularly care.
I think I know what people mean when they discuss whether a sentence is truth-apt. I don’t know what it means when they say a sentence purports to be truth-apt. Maybe I am being too literal, but what is the point of the metaphor? Is the point just that people use the sentence as if it were truth-apt, whether or not it actually is?
Also the use of perception threw me off. If perceptions are generally true, I guess there is an important difference between being generally true and universally true?
'Is the point just that people use the sentence as if it were truth-apt, whether or not it actually is?'
Pretty much. Consider the Liar Paradox sentence: 'This statement is false'. A common solution is to say that it does not express a proposition, in which case it is not actually capable of being true or false. But the sentence functions grammatically as if it were truth-apt. Unlike 'I wonder if shut the door', 'I wonder if this statement is false' is at least grammatical.
---
'Also the use of perception threw me off. If perceptions are generally true, I guess there is an important difference between being generally true and universally true?'
I am not sure if I am interpreting you correctly, but are you talking about this part: 'In general, if you perceive that X, then X'? I was not using 'general' in opposition to 'universal', but in opposition to 'specific'. For any X, if you perceive that X, then X; so, in the specific case of, for example, _suffering is bad_, if you perceive that suffering is bad, then suffering is bad.
Thanks for the clarifications.
I was asking if you were using “general” as a synonym of “universal.” I consider my perceptions pretty reliable, but not infallible (optical illusions come to mind). Misperceptions occur. But then the argument seems to have a problem that is too obvious. Maybe I am using “perception” differently? Is this a technical use of the term that somehow excludes sensory misperceptions?
But I can even be mistaken about the badness of something. I might change my mind about it on reflection, or after gaining more information. If “suffering is bad” is a general claim, how can it be based on perceptions, which are fallible and changeable?
I took it that perceptions guarantee the truth of what is being perceived. So 'misperceptions' such as optical illusions would not be perceptions. Note that even if we say that perceptions are infallible (insofar as they are perceptions), I could mistakenly think that I am perceiving something, so that perhaps allows for the sort of error you have in mind. If you thought that you saw a rabbit, but then realized that it was a lawn decoration and not a real rabbit, then presumably you would say that you did not in fact see a rabbit?
Anyway, perhaps you disagree and think that we can perceive something to be other than it is. I am not going to try to defend the existence of infallible perceptions here, I would want to think/learn more about the philosophy of perception before doing that.
My main point in that section was that we are justified in believing moral statements for the same sort of reasons that we are justified in believing other things.
For that purpose, the argument could perhaps be changed to say something like 'If I perceive that X, then I am justified in believing that X' or 'If it seems to me that X, then I am justified in believing that X'. The conclusion would instead be that I am justified in believing that X, rather than X, however.
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'If "suffering is bad" is a general claim, how can it be based on perceptions, which are fallible and changeable?'
I am not sure what you mean by 'based on perceptions'. It is not that [suffering is bad] is true because it is perceived, just that it cannot be perceived unless it is true.
Even if perception is fallible, we can be justified in believing necessary and general truths based on fallible sources of evidence. For example, someone might, based on the testimony of Wikipedia, believe a mathematical theorem that is necessarily true. Even though the testimony of Wikipedia is fallible, it can still justify belief, even in necessary and general truths.
Do you think that we cannot perceive that yellow is a color? That is no less general than that suffering is bad.
Even if there is some issue with perceiving general truths, I could have used something more specific as an example. For example, I could have used something like 'I perceive that I should not torture DavesNotHere'.
>So 'misperceptions' such as optical illusions would not be perceptions.
If I am not aware of the difference as I experience the perception/misperception, that is confusing. But this was what I suspected, you are using the term in a way that seems unusual to me. I think you could make the argument more precise by saying something like "in the absence of defeaters, we should believe our perceptions." Or maybe use “intuition” instead of “perception?”
>Note that even if we say that perceptions are infallible (insofar as they are perceptions), I could mistakenly think that I am perceiving something, so that perhaps allows for the sort of error you have in mind.
I agree, but that doesn't fix the problem, if there is one. I'm not sure how to criticize the logic. It is too explicit to be accused of equivocation. Maybe sort of begging the question? The way I expect that word to be used, the premise is obviously false as is.
>My main point in that section was that we are justified in believing moral statements for the same sort of reasons that we are justified in believing other things.
If you accept moral anti-realism, that conclusion would be much easier to argue for. The problem would then be to argue why we should all believe the same thing.
But for a moral realist, it seems like there is a lot of potentially stance-dependent psychology going into moral intuitions as compared to mathematical intuitions. So the argument needs to address that more directly.
>>'If "suffering is bad" is a general claim, how can it be based on perceptions, which are fallible and changeable?'
>I am not sure what you mean by 'based on perceptions'. It is not that [suffering is bad] is true because it is perceived, just that it cannot be perceived unless it is true.
Yes, I wrote sloppily. The argument is premised on the infallibility and unchangeability of perceptions. A child will perceive differently from an adult, and perhaps an old person will perceive differently from a young person, even if they are the same person viewed at separate moments. Are you sure we are discussing perception, and not judgment? The argument doesn’t work the same way for judgement. “I judge that x, so x is true” won’t fly.
>Even if perception is fallible, we can be justified in believing necessary and general truths based on fallible sources of evidence.
I agree. But then your argument needs some changes.
>Do you think that we cannot perceive that yellow is a color? That is no less general than that suffering is bad.
I don't think this is a strong analogy. Sensory perception does not happen at a conscious level, subject to conscious reflective amendment in the same way that judgements about wrongness do. I can have an emotional response to a proposition that it describes something bad, but then decide differently on reflection, or in response to an argument. Which one is the perception, the raw impulse, or the refined judgement?
>I could have used something like 'I perceive that I should not torture DavesNotHere'.
Thank you. I have a strong intuition, backed up by conscious reflection, that I should not torture you either.
However I will risk torturing you with another quibble. In the thought experiment in the relativism section of the post, it says,
"The relativist must say that if someone in that world was, for the first and only time, to say ‘You should not torture people on a whim’ (and has the same sort of meaning as I do when I say it truly), then this statement could not be true. Of course, this applies to any moral statement.
To deny this requires denying moral relativism."
I think it can be denied without denying moral relativism. It is not clear to me whether what they would say has the exact same meaning as what you would say, though I presume so.
The relativist interpretation of the sentence ‘You should not torture people on a whim’ I have in mind is that torturing people on a whim violates a universal standard of moral behavior that I am committed to. Maybe this is cheating, since what makes the sentence truth apt is not simply about whether torture is wrong, but also whether the speaker is committed to that idea. The evaluation of whether the action violates the standard or not could be purely objective, making that part of the statement merely descriptive. For it to qualify as normative requires someone to be committed to the idea that people should abide by the standard.
A single person could come to this conclusion in a world full of torture enthusiasts and truly claim that they are all wrong. This is a bit of a stretch, as it requires that anyone that talks about moral wrongness is making a more complicated statement while eliding some details, but language is often sloppy. Or another way to put it is, they all assume that “of course everyone should agree on a universal standard but I am correct and others are wrong about what that standard is.” But the only relevant truth-apt proposition they have access to is [x violates the standard that I am committed to].
This should probably be called subjectivism of some sort rather than relativism. Then the culturally dominant moral standard is the intersubjective resultant of the interactions among moral agents, just as language is the intersubjective resultant of persons trying to exchange meaning.
'I think you could make the argument more precise by saying something like "in the absence of defeaters, we should believe our perceptions." Or maybe use "intuition" instead of "perception?"'
Sure, adding 'in the absence of defeaters' could be an improvement over what I suggested in the previous comment (in case there is a need to change the original argument).
I would not want to use 'intuition' in the argument, since that is too specific. In that section I just want to rule out the claim that there are no true moral statements, so I want to assume as little as possible, including what the exact source of knowledge for the moral claims are. 'Seeming' would be fine, though.
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'Maybe sort of begging the question? The way I expect that word to be used, the premise is obviously false as is.'
I did consider that someone might say that the argument is question-begging. My reasoning was that the second premise ('Some people perceive that other things being equal, one should not cause suffering') was based on introspection. If that is the case, I do not think that it is begging the question, since the conclusion is not one of the premises, nor are any of the premises simply inferred from the conclusion.
You might dispute that I can really introspect that, though, and instead say that I am just inferring it. If that is true, then it would be question-begging.
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'If you accept moral anti-realism, that conclusion would be much easier to argue for. The problem would then be to argue why we should all believe the same thing.'
'But for a moral realist, it seems like there is a lot of potentially stance-dependent psychology going into moral intuitions as compared to mathematical intuitions. So the argument needs to address that more directly.'
The argument is not directed towards all forms of anti-realism, it is only meant to establish that there is a true moral statement, which would rule out the claim that there are no true moral statements. Since I was not trying to establish moral realism in that section, I think that your objection does not really address my reasoning there, but instead is just a general objection to moral realism.
The fact that our moral thinking is often accompanied by strong emotions might give us reason to doubt moral realism, but I think that there are even stronger reasons to doubt relativism.
Also, I think that not all moral reasoning seems to me to be that emotional. Especially if you include prudential reasoning. For example, I think that it would be irrational for me to stab myself on a whim. It is irrational in some cases to continue to do something just because of an addiction to it even though it is causing you a lot of misery. Intuitions of this sort are a lot less emotional than some others. But if there are facts about what one should do regarding oneself, presumably there are facts about what I should do regarding others as well.
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'I don't think this is a strong analogy. Sensory perception does not happen at a conscious level, subject to conscious reflective amendment in the same way that judgements about wrongness do. I can have an emotional response to a proposition that it describes something bad, but then decide differently on reflection, or in response to an argument. Which one is the perception, the raw impulse, or the refined judgement?'
I do not think that we know that yellow is a color through _sensory_ perception. We perceive it through the rational faculty.
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'A single person could come to this conclusion in a world full of torture enthusiasts and truly claim that they are all wrong. This is a bit of a stretch, as it requires that anyone that talks about moral wrongness is making a more complicated statement while eliding some details, but language is often sloppy. Or another way to put it is, they all assume that "of course everyone should agree on a universal standard but I am correct and others are wrong about what that standard is." But the only relevant truth-apt proposition they have access to is [x violates the standard that I am committed to].'
I am not sure what your objection here is.
In the thought experiment, everyone has neutral or positive stances toward torture. So it is not the case that the speaker is committed to some anti-torture standard, or thinks that there should be some anti-torture standard, or anything like that.
The thought experiment was directed not just at cultural relativism, but any sort of stance-dependent view of morality, including individual subjectivism.
Is the objection that you could say that the speaker has a neutral or positive stance towards torture, but has a negative stance towards the cultural standard regarding torture? If that is the objection, then I can just specify in the thought experiment that people's second-order and nth-order stances regarding torture are also neutral or positive.
If that is not the objection, then what is?
Perhaps the terms being used are very technical (perception, stance). I appreciate your willingness to respond, but I don’t really understand the responses.
'>My reasoning was that the second premise ('Some people perceive that other things being equal, one should not cause suffering') was based on introspection. If that is the case, I do not think that it is begging the question,
That wasn’t the objection. If perception is so powerful, it can prove anything. I perceive that god exists, therefore god exists. I perceive that god doesn’t exist, therefore god does not exist. How should those arguments be criticized? I just don’t know what “perception” means, I guess.
'>> a lot of potentially stance-dependent psychology going into moral intuitions as compared to mathematical intuitions.
>The argument is […] only meant to establish that there is a true moral statement, which would rule out the claim that there are no true moral statements.
I’ve lost the context, but the objection can go wherever an analogy is made between moral perceptions and mathematical intuition. Perhaps the analogy works, but it needs more detail. I think of math as based ultimately on counting, which is pretty concrete as math goes. It forms a bridge to tangible reality. For moral facts, the connection is less clear.
>The fact that our moral thinking is often accompanied by strong emotions might give us reason to doubt moral realism, but I think that there are even stronger reasons to doubt relativism.
I am still bothered by the perceptions argument. I guess a perception is nothing like I thought they were (influenced by emotion, changeable).
> if there are facts about what one should do regarding oneself, presumably there are facts about what I should do regarding others as well.
Sure. But are they stance-independent facts? But this is the wrong part of the argument for that objection.
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>I do not think that we know that yellow is a color through _sensory_ perception. We perceive it through the rational faculty.
Should I take this literally? Is the ability to connect concepts to language an instance of perception? Or is it categorizing phenomena? Do I know that Everest is a mountain by perceiving it with the rational faculty? Maybe your audience is familiar with this use of the term, but I am not.
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'>>A single person could come to this conclusion in a world full of torture enthusiasts and truly claim that they are all wrong. This is a bit of a stretch, as it requires that anyone that talks about moral wrongness is making a more complicated statement while eliding some details, but language is often sloppy. Or another way to put it is, they all assume that "of course everyone should agree on a universal standard but I am correct and others are wrong about what that standard is." But the only relevant truth-apt proposition they have access to is [x violates the standard that I am committed to].'
>I am not sure what your objection here is.
This was a digression inspired by some thoughts. The objection is in the previous paragraph, where I give an interpretation that allows the relativists (or subjectivist) to make the statement “torture is wrong” without denying relativism.
>In the thought experiment, everyone has neutral or positive stances toward torture.
Everyone has that stance except the person making the statement, no? Why would they ever make that statement if they had a neutral or positive stance toward torture?
>So it is not the case that the speaker is committed to some anti-torture standard, or thinks that there should be some anti-torture standard, or anything like that.
This puzzles to me. I thought that the point of the thought experiment was that if one person in that world changed their mind, relativists would have to say they were wrong, since they went against popular opinion.
But maybe you mean that they all agree that torture is fine, but for some reason, maybe performing a play, one of them who is fine with torture uttered the proposition that “you shouldn’t torture people on a whim”. Is that it? And the relativist must say that it is false when it is uttered in that context. And to deny this is to deny relativism. I still don’t see the problem. Won’t the relativist just agree and say that the proposition is false when uttered by that sort of person in that context? Is that supposed to be a difficult bullet to bite, given such an extreme scenario?
>The thought experiment was directed not just at cultural relativism, but any sort of stance-dependent view of morality, including individual subjectivism.
The subjectivist would reply, yes, all moral claims include self-referential stance-dependent elements, and so persons with unusual stances could be saying something false when they say torture is wrong. They would be describing themselves as committed to avoid and condemn torture, when they are not. Moral claims, for a subjectivist, are not just about the world, but about the relationship of the speaker and the world. Imagine a strange speaker in a strange world and their moral attitudes will be strange.
What I have been calling subjectivist might be the same as what Bush calls appraiser relativism, as distinguished from agent relativism.
'That wasn't the objection. If perception is so powerful, it can prove anything. I perceive that god exists, therefore god exists. I perceive that god doesn't exist, therefore god does not exist. How should those arguments be criticized? I just don't know what "perception" means, I guess.'
I would dispute the premise that people perceive that God exists, and I would give reasons for thinking that God does not exist (and maybe give reasons for thinking that even if such a thing existed, no one would be able to perceive it). But I would not dispute that given that people perceive that God exists, it follows that God exists.
I guess the way I am using 'perception' is something along the lines of an appearance that is guaranteed to be true (I am not claiming that this is a precise definition, just something that is meant to give you an idea of what I mean). It must be that whatever brought about the appearance is connected to the truth, so if we imagine that I am high on drugs and the drug happens to cause me to have a visual appearance that just happens to exactly match reality, I would not say that that is actually a perception.
You might worry that with such a concept of a perception, it would be simply begging the question. But if the claim that I am perceiving something is justified without inferring it from the conclusion, I do not think that it is begging the question in a problematic sense.
Consider this example: All bachelors are unmarried. John is a bachelor. Therefore, John is unmarried.
Suppose your justification for the second premise is that someone claimed that John is a bachelor. Then there is no problematic question-begging going on. You do not initially assume that he is a bachelor based on already thinking that he is an unmarried man, you have independent reason for thinking that he is a bachelor.
Consider a case where upon introspection, it seems that you see a squirrel. You could then conclude that there is a squirrel. Of course, there is no need to infer from the fact that I see a squirrel that there is one, I can simply be justified in thinking that there is a squirrel because it seems that there is one.
Perhaps I should have just made use of seemings and argued that we are justified in believing the moral claims, rather than giving a deductive argument for a moral claim.
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'I've lost the context, but the objection can go wherever an analogy is made between moral perceptions and mathematical intuition. Perhaps the analogy works, but it needs more detail. I think of math as based ultimately on counting, which is pretty concrete as math goes. It forms a bridge to tangible reality. For moral facts, the connection is less clear.'
Surely mathematics cannot just be based on counting. For example, is the Pythagorean theorem based on counting?
Anyway, morality 'bridge[s] to tangible reality' a lot like mathematics on my view, I think. The fact 2+2=4 is instantiated whenever there are two things and two other things, like two apples and two apples make four apples. The fact that the surface of a sphere is equal to four times its great circle is instantiated whenever there is a spherical ball; it would be the case that if you sliced it in half, the area of the circle would be one-fourth of the area that the surface is. The fact that torture is wrong is instantiated whenever there is a moral agent. There is a certain relation between me, my faculty of volition, and something like the proposition or state of affairs of my torturing someone, namely the relation of being obligated not to choose something.
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'Should I take this literally? Is the ability to connect concepts to language an instance of perception? Or is it categorizing phenomena? Do I know that Everest is a mountain by perceiving it with the rational faculty? Maybe your audience is familiar with this use of the term, but I am not.'
I am not really sure what you mean with the question 'Is the ability to connect concepts to language an instance of perception?'.
I do not think that we merely stipulate that yellow is a color. I think that the fact is wholly independent of language, and also independent of how anyone chooses to classify yellow.
Regardless of whether anyone mentally classifies it with red, blue, green, etc., yellow still belongs to the same category. (Maybe this is an oversimplification, though. We use the term 'yellow' not just to refer to one color but a class of similar colors, and our concept is probably vague.)
Our knowledge that yellow is a color also seems independent of language. I can just imagine red, blue, yellow, etc., and just sort of group them together mentally without needing to rely on language, I think.
As for the question about Everest, this might not be the best example since 'mountain' is quite vague, I think. However, I do think that we use our rational faculty to classify things. I think that we can imagine Everest and other mountains and perceive that they have similarities.
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'Everyone has that stance except the person making the statement, no? Why would they ever make that statement if they had a neutral or positive stance toward torture?'
No, my intention was that the speaker also has the same stance. Perhaps it would have been better to have the speaker wonder aloud and say 'Is it the case that torture is wrong?'. Any sort of relativist must say that the answer to the question, assuming he means the same sort of thing that the relativist takes himself to mean, is No.
I was using 'relativism' broadly to include any sort of stance-dependent view.
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'I still don't see the problem. Won't the relativist just agree and say that the proposition is false when uttered by that sort of person in that context? Is that supposed to be a difficult bullet to bite, given such an extreme scenario?'
Maybe it would seem like less of a bullet to bite in the play example, but what about the example given above?
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'The subjectivist would reply, yes, all moral claims include self-referential stance-dependent elements, and so persons with unusual stances could be saying something false when they say torture is wrong. They would be describing themselves as committed to avoid and condemn torture, when they are not. Moral claims, for a subjectivist, are not just about the world, but about the relationship of the speaker and the world. Imagine a strange speaker in a strange world and their moral attitudes will be strange.'
The subjectivist might say that, but would it be a reasonable thing to say?
If you reflect on the thought experiment, does it really seem that the person would be saying something false, or in the case of the question, that the answer would be No?
Maybe when you (or when a subjectivist, anyway, I do not know what your position is) reflect on your own moral language and thinking, it really does seem purely subjective. In that case, there is not really more to say regarding the thought experiment. (I did give another argument against relativism which might be stronger, though.)
The subjectivist should not just assume his position when evaluating the scenario, though. That would just be begging the question. Instead, he should try to disregard whatever his current meta-ethical position is and just reflect on the thought experiment. If it seems that torture would still be wrong in the hypothetical world where everyone approved, then that would be evidence against his view.
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'What I have been calling subjectivist might be the same as what Bush calls appraiser relativism, as distinguished from agent relativism.'
The distinction that Lance Bush makes between those two, if I am not mistaken, is that under appraiser relativism, the truth of moral statements depends on the stances of the appraiser (or appraisers), but under agent relativism, the truth depends on the stances of the agent (or agents). One version of appraiser relativism could be that the rightness/wrongness is dependent on whether the appraiser approves/disapproves of the act. So in that case, I can truly say that it was wrong when Japanese soldiers mass-raped civilians, because I disapprove of it. But under a version of agent relativism that says that the rightness/wrongness is dependent on whether the agent approves/disapproves, then assuming that a soldier approved of his raping of people, I cannot truly say that it was wrong when he did it, since he himself approved of it. (There can also be cultural agent relativism or cultural appraiser relativism, or other sorts of agent or appraiser relativism.)
Hi Robert,
It's going to take me a while to write a more extensive response. While I gather my thoughts, I did have a preliminary discussion about some of my key points of departure on my YouTube channel, which you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OJdsLEd3R0
Some key concerns:
(1) I appreciate the distinction between what may be psychologically the case and what may be philosophically the case regarding whether a person is or could be an antirealist that doesn't endorse one of the "Big Three" antirealist positions. I mashed those distinctions together (agnosticism, indeterminacy, etc.) in a way that wasn't clear, and I agree that psychological facts about what a person cant' believe are not what's philosophically at stake here.
(2) I think your characterization of the standard antirealist positions (noncognitivism, error theory, and relativism) are highly idiosyncratic and not representative of how these positions are ordinarily characterized. While you reference the possibility that your characterizations may be somewhat different, I actually think that are very different, and are different in ways that are, to borrow your phrase, philosophically relevant.
(3) Regarding (2), this is a very big issue for your critique. If my position is that the traditional three antirealist positions, insofar as I characterize them, are not exhaustive of the logical possibility space for an antirealist, then I can be correct about this regardless of whether my position falls within the scope of your own, alternative characterizations of "noncognitivism," "error theory," and "subjectivism."
In other words, say we take noncognitivism, error theory, and subjectivism, as I characterize them, and call these t_1, t_2, and t_3. My position is that there are logically possible alternatives to these (t_4, t_5, t_....n). If you offer an alternative characterization of terms like "noncognitivism" and so on, then argue that my position is included within those, this is largely irrelevant to the original point I was making. After all, how many categories there "are" is, on my view, a matter of convention: one can always stipulate that "noncognitivism" means something that includes my position.
The key problem I take with your objection is that I think you take roughly this route: that your approach rules out alternatives to just three positions by stipulative definitional fiat. One can always stipulate their way to there being only such-and-such a number of categories by simply declaring one is going to use terms to carve up the logical possibility space in terms some number of options.
In shory, I worry that your position amounts to a victory by terminolgoical gerrymandering. If I am right, such a victory is rather hollow. As I note in the video, it's entirely possible to stipulate what you mean by "moral realism" in a way where I'd agree I am a "moral realist." I'm not trying to win a merely terminological victory here but a substantive philosophical victory.
Part of the reason I object to Huemer and other's process-of-elimination approach is that the way in which they purport to refute the traditional three antirealist positions doesn't apply to my own position. And this remains true regardless of whether someone stipulates some new definition of "noncognitivism" that technically includes my position.
There is more to say here. For instance, I do not grant that non-naturalist realism is intelligible, so I don't technically think it's logically possible for non-naturalist realism to be true. I may have missed it, but I don't think your post engages with this point. This reflects yet another way in which I do not believe my position has been refuted or even fully engaged. I reference a few more concerns in the video, as well, though I do hope to eventually find some time to write a more comprehensive response (I really wish I could stop and do so, but I am swamped with work priorities at the moment).
Thanks.
I realize that my definitions are quite different from the standard ones. Although I said that people might use the terms 'slightly differently', I should have just said 'differently'.
My point is not at all terminological. My interpretation of what you were saying is that the standard positions are not the only possible positions, and that this is 'philosophically significant' as I said, in the way that the standard objections fail to account for your position. What I was really disputing was the second conjunct.
I was worried that I had misinterpreted you, but based on the following part of your comment, I believe that I correctly interpreted you:
'Part of the reason I object to Huemer and other's process-of-elimination approach is that the way in which they purport to refute the traditional three antirealist positions doesn't apply to my own position. And this remains true regardless of whether someone stipulates some new definition of "noncognitivism" that technically includes my position.'
My point was to refute this part of your claim, by showing that the standard objections in fact apply to any logically possible anti-realist positions. If I am right about that, then even if you are right that the standard definitions are not exhaustive, it ends up not being philosophically significant, _in the sense_ that no one should change his philosophical position.
Suppose that there are two rival views and someone offered a devastating objection to the second one, but then you show that there is an alternative rival view that the objection does not apply to. Then anyone who was convinced by the objection and had accepted the first position because of it must now become agnostic (assuming that that was the only reason he accepted the position).
But suppose another scenario where again there are the two views and the devastating objection, and someone shows that there is a logically possible third view, but in fact the objection applies just as much to the third view as the one that the original objection applied to, and further suppose that someone shows that in fact these three positions are logically exhaustive. I suppose that it would not be fair to say that pointing out that there was a third logical possibility is completely philosophically irrelevant, but it is philosophically insignificant in the specific sense that no one should change his philosophical position.
One of my main goals was the show that even if you are right that there are other possibilities than the standard ones (I am not saying that you are wrong about that), then we are simply in the second scenario: no one should actually change his view about meta-ethics. Either the objections did not work in the first place and we should be anti-realists or agnostics, or they worked and we should still be realists (well, whether the objections work is going to depend on what your epistemic circumstances are). So my position is not at all 'a victory by [terminological] gerrymandering'. Whether I am right is a substantive philosophical question.
I probably should have been more clear about what I meant by 'philosophically significant', it was not something that I gave too much thought to when I originally wrote the article. Still, if understood in the meaning I just suggested, I stand by what I said.
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Regarding my use of modal language: First, I was referring to metaphysical possibility in the logical division. My initial motivation for using modal language was that I considered that without it, an anti-realist could believe that there are stance-independent irreducible moral facts, but people just fail to express them in the actual world. Using modality, this is ruled out.
But, looking back, I question whether using modal language was the right decision. Although I avoided the weird result mentioned above, instead it leads to the result that one can be a realist but think that no one in the actual world is making stance-independently true moral claims, and of course I want to claim that I (and others) in fact do make such claims.
That being said, it would be a rather minor change to the essay to get rid of the modal language. The way I try to establish that it is possible that there are stance-independent and irreducibe true moral statements, is simply by attempting to show that there actually are. So we could just ignore the modal language and look at sentences in the actual world.
Some of the other idiosyncrasies are important to the point I was making. But, as I said above, if I can show that the standard objections apply just as well to the logically exhaustive stipulated definitions that resemble the standard positions, then this would be sufficient for the point I was making.
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'For instance, I do not grant that non-naturalist realism is intelligible, so I don't technically think it's logically possible for non-naturalist realism to be true. I may have missed it, but I don't think your post engages with this point. This reflects yet another way in which I do not believe my position has been refuted or even fully engaged.'
I will admit that it was not clear to me what your position is (and I am still not sure). I did a little bit of searching but had trouble finding a statement on it that gave me a clear idea.
But I actually do think that I at least partly address claims of unintelligibility of the positions themselves. The most controversial (presumably) part of the logical division is the term 'moral', so I said that we can just stipulate what sort of sentences we mean by 'moral sentences' and gave some examples.
I fail to see what the issue with stipulating the sentences is here. The process of elimination, I think, must be seen as either a process for an individual to go through alone, or for someone to guide another (or others) in using the Socratic method.
Whoever is going through the process can simply consider certain sentences and words and ask the relevant questions about that subset of his discourse.
The way I was defining moral non-naturalism/non-reductionism is that (it is possible that) there are some truth-apt moral sentences which are true in a stance-independent and irreducible way.
What part of that is unintelligible? You mention in your video your theory of language and suggest that if I grant it for the sake of argument the questions somehow becomes empirical. But in the essay, I argue that introspection is sufficient, and I think that I do properly take into account your theory of language. I can ask whether I in fact am intending to ascribe a truth value to my sentence. So then we can consider truth-aptness without violating your philosophy of language principles, and also do so without needing to have an empirical study.
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You also mention in your video that your position is 'folk meta-ethical indeterminacy' (if I recall correctly). But if I fail to express a determinate meaning (or 'fail to have a determinate meaning'? maybe that is how you would prefer it to be phrased), then I must also fail to make any true moral statements (surely that would require a determinate meaning?). So such a view would be covered by the error theory section.
Or perhaps you are claiming that there is no determinate fact of the matter about what I mean, such that it is neither the case that I intend a realist interpretation, nor is it not the case that I intend a realist interpretation. Of course, such a position would require rejecting the law of the excluded middle, and therefore also the law of non-contradiction. To address that sort of objection directly, I would need to defend classical logic.
I assume that the correct interpretation of your position is the former that I suggested, not the latter, though.
>>I will admit that it was not clear to me what your position is (and I am still not sure). I did a little bit of searching but had trouble finding a statement on it that gave me a clear idea.
I mean no disrespect in saying this, but I think it’d be a good idea to know what a person’s position is before you write an article saying that their position is mistaken. If you don’t know what my position is, how do you take yourself to have presented a refutation of it?
There isn’t any official statement of my metaethical position anywhere because it’s new. I only began developing the view in earnest in the past couple years. It’s going to be a bit before I start putting out position statements, so it’s understandable if you didn’t find any clear articulation of the view. Sorry about that. I do greatly appreciate you taking the time to critique me in spite of that fact. I am a nobody in the world of metaethics, so it's really cool to see people engage with my views.
If you want to have more material to work with regarding raising objections to my views, I am very easy to contact. I’d be happy to talk about my views at length with you and we could see at that point whether you maintain the points made in this article or would revise your stance (even if it’s still one where you think I’m mistaken more or less in the same ways as in this article).
>>But I actually do think that I at least partly address claims of unintelligibility of the positions themselves. The most controversial (presumably) part of the logical division is the term 'moral', so I said that we can just stipulate what sort of sentences we mean by 'moral sentences' and gave some examples.
As far as I can tell, you didn’t address my concerns about intelligibility in the article. This comment gives me the impression that you may not know what I’m up to with the unintelligibility thesis...which would be completely understandable if so, because it's not like I have a paper called "Introducing the unintelligibility thesis" or anything like that. I'm still working on something like that. I can share a draft if you're interested.
My remarks about there not being a moral domain and concerns about there even being a category of “morality” for there to be facts about are not what my concerns with intelligibility are about. Stipulating what you mean by moral sentences isn’t going to solve my concerns about intelligibility, and in fact has pretty much nothing to do with those concerns. I usually just set concerns about the category of “morality” aside for the sake of argument.
>>I fail to see what the issue with stipulating the sentences is here.
There may or may not be issues, but they don’t have much to do with my concerns about intelligibility, so that’s largely moot with respect to the unintelligibility thesis.
>>The way I was defining moral non-naturalism/non-reductionism is that (it is possible that) there are some truth-apt moral sentences which are true in a stance-independent and irreducible way.
I think irreducibly normative moral facts are unintelligible. So saying it’s possible that there are facts of this kind is like saying it’s possible that lkj123lkjslfdkjal;kjerlkjqwr.
I wouldn’t even say that’s false, I’d say it’s not even a propositional claim. Just to be clear: my position isn’t even, technically, that non-naturalist moral realism is false. I literally don’t think it’s a position at all, if by a “position” we require that it be capable of being expressed as a proposition.
>>You mention in your video your theory of language and suggest that if I grant it for the sake of argument the questions somehow becomes empirical. But in the essay, I argue that introspection is sufficient, and I think that I do properly take into account your theory of language.
I’m not sure what you mean here. What questions become empirical?
>>You also mention in your video that your position is 'folk meta-ethical indeterminacy' (if I recall correctly). But if I fail to express a determinate meaning (or 'fail to have a determinate meaning'? maybe that is how you would prefer it to be phrased), then I must also fail to make any true moral statements (surely that would require a determinate meaning?). So such a view would be covered by the error theory section.
Maybe if you use an unconventional definition of “error theory". Standard forms of error theory hold that moral claims refer to stance-independent moral facts. Error theory also holds that all first-order moral claims are false, not simply that they’re not true. I don’t think either of these claims is true, so I’m not an error theorist.
I may be a Robertian error theorist, if you stipulate that by “error theory” you mean something other than its standard definitions. In that case, I’d simply ask what, exactly, about my position is incorrect? I’d also wonder why you’d even call my position “error
theory” if you’re going to employ a version of the position that is so unconventional.
Regarding this claim: >>“But if I fail to express a determinate meaning (or 'fail to have a determinate meaning'? maybe that is how you would prefer it to be phrased), then I must also fail to make any true moral statements (surely that would require a determinate meaning?).”
This isn’t what my position is. I don’t think that everyday moral claims have any determinate meaning at all. My position is that they don’t involve any determinate stance or commitment with respect to traditional metaethical categories. It’s not like I think people who say “murder is wrong” don’t mean anything by such remarks. They just aren’t saying anything that commits them to realism, subjectivism, or noncognitivism.
For comparison: I think people who talk about numbers mean things. When a person says “your bill will be $50,” I think this is a perfectly meaningful thing for a person to say in most contexts. But its meaning doesn’t require the speaker to take a stance (implicit or otherwise) on mathematical Platonism.
>>Or perhaps you are claiming that there is no determinate fact of the matter about what I mean, such that it is neither the case that I intend a realist interpretation, nor is it not the case that I intend a realist interpretation.
No, I’m definitely not saying that. Philosophers can and do make determinate moral claims and metaethical claims all the time. I do myself, and I assume you do. Folk metaethical determinacy is a thesis about what most nonphilosophers mean when they say things; it’s not a thesis about what people who’ve thought about these topics mean.
'I mean no disrespect in saying this, but I think it'd be a good idea to know what a person's position is before you write an article saying that their position is mistaken. If you don't know what my position is, how do you take yourself to have presented a refutation of it?'
Fair enough. But note that I never claimed to have refuted your meta-ethical theory, and I do not take myself to have presented a refutation of it.
I had two primary goals in the essay: (1) to show that for any logically possible alternative to non-reductionist realism, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it, and (2) to show that the realist has no need to engage in empirical research.
If my interpretation of your views is correct, you reject both of those claims.
My goal was not at all to insist that your view falls under one of the standard positions. It was not even a primary goal of mine to show that realism is true.
If I succeeded in showing that for any logically possible alternative to my view, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it, then assuming that your view is a logically possible alternative, it would have been indirectly addressed.
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From your other comment:
'At any rate, if one of the criticisms directed at those positions applies to my position, that's a point that could be made without insisting my position falls into one of the standard three categories, so why bother with the latter? If your point isn't a terminological one, why center the dispute on something that you appear to regard as incidental?'
Since one of my goals was to show that for any logically possible alternative view, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it, I needed to first logically divide alternative positions to show that they are the only logically possible ones. Whether those positions are the standard ones was irrelevant. If my stipulated positions are in fact the only logically possible ones, and I show that they are all covered by the standard sort of objections, that would be sufficient to prove my claim.
I was not insisting that your position falls into one of the standard three categories, just that it must fall into one of my stipulated categories. If I am right about that, and right that the standard objections cover all of the stipulated categories, then they will also cover your position, at least implicitly (assuming that my logical division was correct and that your position is a logically possible one).
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'I think irreducibly normative moral facts are unintelligible. So saying it's possible that there are facts of this kind is like saying it's possible that lkj123lkjslfdkjal;kjerlkjqwr.'
But unlike the meaningless string of characters, the terms used to describe non-naturalist realism all have meanings in other contexts.
If someone held the position of _square-circlism_ that stated that there exists shapes such that they are both squares and circles, then I would say this position is false and not that it is unintelligible in the way that your example is.
At the very least, I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of something like this: 'There is some part of my discourse in which I use moral terms and some of the discourse is true, and the meaning I intend is not covered by any other non-overlapping part of my discourse, nor is it covered by any part of Lance Bush's discourse that he does not use moral terms for'. For practical purposes, I think this comes close to non-naturalist realism. Presumably the relativist would say that I could describe the true moral statements in other terms that are not explicitly moral (and without changing the meanings). The reductionist presumably would say that I can describe the moral statements using some of my non-moral language as well. And the error theorists and non-cognitivists think that my sentences are not true in the first place.
If we could discover the truth of that claim, we would not quite arrive at non-naturalist realism, but it would be very strong evidence. It could be that there are natural facts that explain the truth but that I do not have any language to express it, but a better explanation might be non-natural facts. The position would be non-reductionist in the sense that I am unable to translate my moral language to any of my other language.
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'I'm still working on something like that. I can share a draft if you're interested.'
Sure, I would be interested in reading it.
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'I'm not sure what you mean here. What questions become empirical?'
At around 1:31:52 in the video: 'If we're treating this as short-hand for what people mean, then it becomes an open empirical question what people mean'.
I think what matters is what the person going through the process of elimination means, so I think that introspection is sufficient. Technically, introspection is usually classed as empirical, as far as I know; but I took it that you were suggesting that we needed empirical research and not just introspection.
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'Maybe if you use an unconventional definition of "error theory". Standard forms of error theory hold that moral claims refer to stance-independent moral facts. Error theory also holds that all first-order moral claims are false, not simply that they’re not true. I don't think either of these claims is true, so I'm not an error theorist.'
I am not suggesting that you are an error theorist. But if you view entails that all moral sentences are false, then it is covered by the standard sort of objection.
The standard definition of error theory is something like that moral statements are generally false, and this is because they purport to refer to stance-independent moral properties or relations that do not exist.
But the realist has no interest (generally speaking) in rejecting the second conjunct, just the first.
And in practice, the way he will try to show that it is false is simply to show that there exists true moral statements.
You might not find this a satisfying objection -- I do not expect you to. But if we can in fact discover examples of true moral statements, this would show that any view that claimed that there are no true moral statements is incorrect, not just 'error theory' as standardly defined. Now, if arguments against error theory rely on the second assumption of error theory, then that would be a problem. But just giving examples of true moral statements surely does not have that problem.
Consider this from the perspective of the realist or even a relativist: if the reason I rejected error theory was because I think that I found counter-examples to the entailment of error theory that there are no true moral statements, then pointing out alternatives to error theory that have the same exact entailment is not going to give me a reason to change my view.
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'My position is that they don't involve any determinate stance or commitment with respect to traditional metaethical categories. It's not like I think people who say "murder is wrong" don't mean anything by such remarks. They just aren't saying anything that commits them to realism, subjectivism, or noncognitivism.'
Thanks for the clarification.
But supposing that one of those people (who you think fails to have determinate commitments) is working his way through the process of elimination. It seems that you must say that it is not the case that he makes true moral statements that are true stance-independently. You are not saying that they are stance-dependent, but neither are they stance-independent? But such a position would be covered by the process of elimination outlined in my essay. If he gets to the 'error theory' section and agrees that there are true moral statements, the next section is the 'relativism' section. If you grant that he is making true moral statements, you would need to say that it is not the case that they are stance-independent (since that would require that he has a determinate metaethical commitment). But the two objections I gave to relativism would then apply to your view.
I am not trying to label your view as 'relativism' or as anything else. But if your claim entails that there are true moral statements, but that it is not the case that they are stance-independent, then such an entailment is in fact covered. The view itself might not directly be covered, but an entailment of the view is.
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'Folk metaethical determinacy is a thesis about what most nonphilosophers mean when they say things; it's not a thesis about what people who've thought about these topics mean.'
(I assume that you meant to say _indeterminacy_, rather than _determinacy_.)
Thanks for the clarification on this point.
But if that is all that you are claiming with folk metaethical indeterminacy, then it is not even a position that by itself is opposed to moral non-naturalism. It must be combined with other claims to oppose moral non-naturalism.
What is stopping someone from being an elitist moral realist? One could say that there are non-natural moral facts and philosophers express them, but lay people are incapable of expressing them. I am not sure that this even requires an idiosyncratic definition of _realism_. If it does, then I guess _realism_ was poorly defined in the first place.
Part 2 of 2:
Returning to an earlier point, you mention:
>>(2) to show that the realist has no need to engage in empirical research.
If my interpretation of your views is correct, you reject both of those claims.
And add that
>>If my interpretation of your views is correct, you reject both of those claims.
This is unclear. I don’t know if I reject this or not. The realist has “no need to engage in empirical research”? No need with respect to what goal? I couldn’t say whether I reject this or not because I don’t know what you mean.
>> Whether those positions are the standard ones was irrelevant.
Again, then why do you use the standard three labels to refer to your stipulative definitions? This is a super weird thing to do if it’s not relevant.
>>If my stipulated positions are in fact the only logically possible ones, and I show that they are all covered by the standard sort of objections, that would be sufficient to prove my claim.
To prove which claim? That realism is true, or that the process of elimination approach could work to show that realism is true? Or both? Or something else?
>>I was not insisting that your position falls into one of the standard three categories, just that it must fall into one of my stipulated categories.
Okay, so which of the stipulative categories you proposed includes my position?
>> If I am right about that, and right that the standard objections cover all of the stipulated categories
What do you mean by “standard objections”? If you don’t mean what I do, then insofar as my claim was that standard objections don’t apply to my position, then you will have not, as far as I can tell, even offered a refutation of my original claim. You’ll simply have been using similar terms and phrases to be making a claim I wasn’t objecting to in the first place.
>>But unlike the meaningless string of characters, the terms used to describe non-naturalist realism all have meanings in other contexts.
…I’m not sure what point you are making here. Any string of characters can be used to convey something meaningful in some context.
>>If someone held the position of _square-circlism_ that stated that there exists shapes such that they are both squares and circles, then I would say this position is false and not that it is unintelligible in the way that your example is.
In most standard contexts in which a person said there was a “square circle,” I wouldn’t think that was unintelligible, or at least, if it were, it’s not unintelligible in the way I think non-naturalist realism is. This is because I think if someone were to claim that there was an object that was both four-sided and not-four-sided they’d be saying something logically contradictory and therefore false. Not unintelligible. If a realist invoking the notion of an irreducibly normative fact both intended for the fact in question to be stance-independent and stance-dependent, then it would be self-contradictory and therefore false just like a square circle. But I’ve never met any realist that said that this is what they meant. The question is what they do mean, and whatever it is, it’s allegedly not self-contradictory.
>>I think what matters is what the person going through the process of elimination means, so I think that introspection is sufficient. Technically, introspection is usually classed as empirical, as far as I know; but I took it that you were suggesting that we needed empirical research and not just introspection.
I’m still not understanding you. What do you think I think we need empirical evidence for? Even the quote you provide doesn’t make that clear.
>>I am not suggesting that you are an error theorist. But if you view entails that all moral sentences are false, then it is covered by the standard sort of objection.
I do not hold the view that all moral sentences are false.
>>The standard definition of error theory is something like that moral statements are generally false, and this is because they purport to refer to stance-independent moral properties or relations that do not exist.
I take error theory to be the claim that all first-order moral sentences are false, not that they’re “generally” false (that doesn’t seem sufficiently clear to me).
>>But the realist has no interest (generally speaking) in rejecting the second conjunct, just the first.
I don’t agree that they have no interest in this. If they’re wrong about the semantics their whole position fails. Why wouldn’t they be interested in this, and why would you suggest that they’re not interested in it?
>>You might not find this a satisfying objection -- I do not expect you to. But if we can in fact discover examples of true moral statements, this would show that any view that claimed that there are no true moral statements is incorrect, not just 'error theory' as standardly defined.
I take this to be trivially true. If you can show subjectivism is true, then error theory is false. I can’t think of anyone who is informed on this topic that would think otherwise.
But error theory doesn’t strike me as something that can be shown to be false via stipulation. If it was, then you could just do this: I stipulate that by a moral claim I mean “2+2=4”. The error theorist agrees this is true, so we have a true moral claim, so error theory is refuted.
>>But supposing that one of those people (who you think fails to have determinate commitments) is working his way through the process of elimination. It seems that you must say that it is not the case that he makes true moral statements that are true stance-independently.
If a person is working their way through the process of elimination then they’re not a member of the population of nonphilosophers I’m referring to, so this is not possible. There’s a reason the position is called folk metaethical indeterminacy: it’s about people who aren’t philosophers.
>>You are not saying that they are stance-dependent, but neither are they stance-independent?
That what isn’t stance-dependent or stance-independent? I’m talking about ordinary moral discourse. I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to here.
>>But such a position would be covered by the process of elimination outlined in my essay
Folk metaethical indeterminacy is an empirical thesis about human psychology. Would that be covered by the process of elimination in your essay?
>>If he gets to the 'error theory' section and agrees that there are true moral statements, the next section is the 'relativism' section.
I’m very sorry, but this really does not make sense with respect to the folk metaethical indeterminacy claim. Such a person wouldn’t be getting to error theory. The same concerns apply to the whole rest of your paragraph. It does not appear to me that you understand what the position is that you are attempting to discuss here, since most of what you say, in the context of what the position is, simply does not make sense.
>> But if your claim entails that there are true moral statements, but that it is not the case that they are stance-independent, then such an entailment is in fact covered.
Which claim? You are saying all sorts of things here that are very unclear and very hard to parse. It’s difficult to discuss things with you because almost all of what I have to say in response is a request for clarification.
>>But if that is all that you are claiming with folk metaethical indeterminacy, then it is not even a position that by itself is opposed to moral non-naturalism. It must be combined with other claims to oppose moral non-naturalism.
…That’s exactly right. Folk metaethical indeterminacy is not itself a position that is opposed to non-naturalist realism, all on its own. I don’t believe I’ve ever suggested otherwise.
>>What is stopping someone from being an elitist moral realist?
Absolutely nothing.
>One could say that there are non-natural moral facts and philosophers express them, but lay people are incapable of expressing them. I am not sure that this even requires an idiosyncratic definition of _realism_. If it does, then I guess _realism_ was poorly defined in the first place.
I agree. It doesn’t require an especially idiosyncratic definition of realism. It might involve a rejection of certain forms of cognitivism, but speaking for myself, I wouldn’t take this to be a very interesting shortcoming for standard realist positions. I think they can and would adjust accordingly in a way that I personally didn’t consider to be much of a concession (if one at all). So this really is a non-issue for me. I have on occasion cited this paper:
Kahane, G. (2013). Must metaethical realism make a semantic claim?. Journal of moral philosophy, 10(2), 148-178.
I think you may have been operating under the misapprehension that I took folk metaethical indeterminacy to be some sort of direct or serious issue for moral realism. I don’t think that.
'I think you may have been operating under the misapprehension that I took folk metaethical indeterminacy to be some sort of direct or serious issue for moral realism. I don't think that.'
Yes, it appears that I misunderstood you, so I apologize for that.
I thought that you were saying that folk metaethical indeterminacy is the anti-realist position you hold that you think is not covered by the standard objections.
So what is your anti-realist position that you do not think is covered by the standard objections? I have heard you call yourself something like an anti-realist who is a pluralist about moral semantics. Is that the position that you do not think is covered? Do you think that the standard objections against the anti-realist positions somehow implicitly assume that pluralism is wrong?
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'This seems to indicate you are offering a refutation of my position, albeit indirectly. So are you or are you not presenting a refutation of my position?'
Maybe 'refute' is too strong, but at least I would say that, from my own epistemic perspective, I have sufficient reason to reject all logically possible anti-realist positions.
I fail to see how there could be any logically possible anti-realist position that was not at least indirectly covered.
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'Could you perhaps state which of the logically possible views you take my view to be, and which of the standard sorts of objections therefore apply to it?'
Well, I got the impression from some video or videos I watched that you take a subjectivist interpretation of your own moral statements, so the objections in the 'relativism' section would apply to that. Correct me if I am wrong on this interpretation.
Depending on whose _moral sentences_ we are talking about, you might take a different position; or you might be agnostic, but that would not be a logical alternative.
But whatever position is taken other than _non-reductionist realism_ (as I defined it), there will be some objection that I gave that applies to it. But the objections really need to be considered from the perspective of the person whose _moral sentences_ are being considered.
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'It's not irrelevant to the question of whether the *standard* three positions are the only logically possible ones. This is a separate point from the point about whether objections to any of those positions apply to my position. I don't think they do apply to my position, and I don't think you've shown that they do, but I am not going to ignore this point or treat it as irrelevant.'
In the original essay, note that I say 'But we can use a process of logical division to show that these (or at least something like these) are in fact the only three logical possibilities'.
I also say 'It must be admitted that I am simply stipulating the definitions of the terms _non-cognitivism_, etc.'.
So I was not claiming to have shown that the three standard positions are the only logically possible ones, just that ones relevantly similar are (relevantly similar in the sense that the same objections apply).
But if this does not satisfy you, I will be explicit: You are probably right that the positions as standardly defined are not logically exhaustive, at the very least if they are understood to be exclusive of each other.
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'What do you mean by "standard objections"? If you don't mean what I do, then insofar as my claim was that standard objections don't apply to my position, then you will have not, as far as I can tell, even offered a refutation of my original claim. You’ll simply have been using similar terms and phrases to be making a claim I wasn't objecting to in the first place.'
The objections I gave were: something along the lines of the Frege-Geach problem (in the 'non-cognitivist' section); counter-examples of true moral statements, plus a subsidiary objection regarding one's perception of moral truths (in the 'error theory' section); a thought experiment where one is encouraged to imagine that everyone has a positive/neutral stance towards torture, and an argument from our ability to reason about morality as if it was stance-independent (in the 'relativism' section); and the open-question argument (in the 'reductionism' section).
Which of these objections is not a standard objection?
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'This is unclear. I don't know if I reject this or not. The realist has "no need to engage in empirical research"? No need with respect to what goal? I couldn't say whether I reject this or not because I don't know what you mean.'
I thought that your position was that the non-naturalist realist needs to look at/engage in empirical research to be justified in his belief in non-naturalist realism. If that is not what you were saying, then I guess that this is just a misunderstanding, and I apologize.
If that is not your position, though, why do you often criticize realists for not looking at/engaging in empirical research? Or would you say that you do not criticize realists for neglecting empirical research?
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'Again, then why do you use the standard three labels to refer to your stipulative definitions? This is a super weird thing to do if it's not relevant.'
Because the objections for the respective standard positions apply to the stipulated positions. The problem of embedded moral statements applies to standard non-cognitivism and to my stipulated definition equally well. And likewise for the other positions.
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'To prove which claim? That realism is true, or that the process of elimination approach could work to show that realism is true? Or both? Or something else?'
This one: 'for any logically possible alternative to non-reductionist realism, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it'.
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'...I'm not sure what point you are making here. Any string of characters can be used to convey something meaningful in some context.'
The point was that the words have the same meaning as in conventional contexts.
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'I don't agree that they have no interest in this. If they're wrong about the semantics their whole position fails. Why wouldn't they be interested in this, and why would you suggest that they're not interested in it?'
Non-naturalist realists would either agree with the error theorist about semantics, or only disagree about the uniformity (assuming that 'error theory' is being understood to entail some uniform semantics). In the former case, they would not dispute it because they agree, and in the latter, the dispute would be irrelevant to the truth of non-naturalist realism.
I suppose that a naturalist realist would disagree about semantics. So I should have been more clear there. But even if the naturalist realist disagrees about semantics, they might not care to dispute the semantics since it would be sufficient to find examples of true moral statements.
Part 1 of 2:
(1) The target of refutation
>>But note that I never claimed to have refuted your meta-ethical theory, and I do not take myself to have presented a refutation of it.
If the claim is that my theory falls into one of three categories, all of which are mistaken, then it is difficult for me to see how my theory wouldn’t be refuted by default.
You suggest precisely this below when you say “[...], then assuming that your view is a logically possible alternative, it would have been indirectly addressed.”
This seems to indicate you are offering a refutation of my position, albeit indirectly. So are you or are you not presenting a refutation of my position?
(2) My position in relation to the target
Could you perhaps state which of the logically possible views you take my view to be, and which of the standard sorts of objections therefore apply to it?
>>Whether those positions are the standard ones was irrelevant
It’s not irrelevant to the question of whether the *standard* three positions are the only logically possible ones. This is a separate point from the point about whether objections to any of those positions apply to my position. I don’t think they do apply to my position, and I don’t think you’ve shown that they do, but I am not going to ignore this point or treat it as irrelevant. The standard objections to the standard three positions don’t apply to my positions because the standard objections rely on features of those positions that aren’t a feature of my position. You say that for any of the logically possible positions “[...] there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it [...]” but now this is a very strange. What do you mean by “standard”? If you create a *new* critique that applies to a nonstandard, stipulated category, then even your use of “standard” wouldn’t be encompassed by standard (already existing) objections, i.e., the objections *I* was talking about.
In other words, I’m saying something like this:
There are three standard antirealist positions: a1, a2, and a3. There are standard objections to to these, o1, o2, and o3.
You seem to stipulate new definitions of the possibility space for antirealist positions, and for some reason adopt the exact same labels as the labels used for a1, 2, and a3, and opt for exactly three positions. new_a1, new_a2, and new_a3. You then talk about there being some “standard sort of objection” to these positions. But if these standard objections aren’t o1, o2, and o3 referenced above, then they’re not what I was talking about in saying that the standard objections don’t apply to my position. If you come up with some new objections, say, new_o1, new_o2, and new_o3, it could very well be that one of these targets my position (even if I don’t think the attempt is successful). But this will not have shown that my original claim, that o1, o2, and o3 don’t apply to my position, is false.
You seem to be doing something like this in the original article, and I find it very confusing and unnecessary. If you wanted to say that it’s possible to divide up all antirealist positions into n number of categories and then show that each is wrong by appealing to x number of objections, and that if you can do this you can show realism wins by default, you could have said that this is at least epistemically possible, and I would just…agree with you. I’m certainly not going to object that the process of elimination procedures could work in principle. For instance, if someone said that they’ll call “all the positions lance thinks aren’t included in {a1, a2, a3} will be called a4}” and then they said that “If I can refute {a1, a2, a3, a4} then realism wins” I’d just agree with them.
In short: you could have from the very outset simply said you could eliminate all the other positions besides {a1, a2, a3} via process of elimination, and that if you could do this realism would win…and I’d have simply agreed with you. You opted to graft your claims onto a host of technical terms in the existing literature, and to employ phrases I’ve used in other contexts like “standard,” in ways that differ in meaning from those terms, or from what I meant. This gives the misleading impression that you’re engaging with the terms and categories in those other contexts when, as far as I can tell, you aren’t, because you’re stipulating different meanings to the terms or using the terms in different ways than the ways they were used in those contexts. This all strikes me as very confusing and unnecessary.
A big part of my objection to Huemer and others is that my position isn’t included in their standard three positions. Maybe you’re not interested in that question, but if that’s the case, I find it incredibly strange for you to borrow the names for those three positions and then invent three different positions that go by the same name. If I said “it’s not the case that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the only three religions” it would be incredibly weird to stipulate new definitions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and then insist that all religions are one of the three by concocting definitions so inclusive that they encompass all possible religions. This would be, at best, a highly misleading way of speaking. What you do in your article doesn’t strike me as different in kind, only different in degree. Redefining terms in this way can make things very confusing very quickly. If your goal is clear communication, this is not an effective strategy.
>>I was not insisting that your position falls into one of the standard three categories, just that it must fall into one of my stipulated categories.
Okay…but immediately before this, you say, “I had two primary goals in the essay: (1) to show that for any logically possible alternative to non-reductionist realism, there is some standard sort of objection that applies to it [...]”. What do you mean by “standard” here? Do you mean “standard” in the sense of the standard objections to the standard categories? In other words, by “standard sort of objection” here do you mean {o1, o2, o3} or some other objection or objections? If you mean {o1, o2, o3}, then I’d be interested in seeing how these objections apply to all logically possible antirealist positions. If you don’t mean {o1, o2, o3} then I don’t know what you mean by “standard,” and this would constitute a concession to many of the points I raise above: it would mean, among other things, that my claim that standard objections don’t apply to my position is correct, because “standard” would mean {o1, o2, o3} and you’d be conceding that the objections you think encompass all logically possible positions isn’t contained by the set {o1, o2, o3}.
There’s a lot to say here and I’ll return to the rest of it but I am puzzled by this remark and wanted to flag it. You say:
“At the very least, I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of something like this: 'There is some part of my discourse in which I use moral terms and some of the discourse is true, and the meaning I intend is not covered by any other non-overlapping part of my discourse, nor is it covered by any part of Lance Bush's discourse that he does not use moral terms for'.”
Why would I need to be committed to this? What do you mean by that? I don’t think I’m committed to any such thing, but it’s hard to tell, as I’m not quite clear on what you mean here. At first glance, I at least suspect that I don’t think this is true, and may very well not think it’s intelligible.
It also troubles me that you say that this would come close to non-naturalist realism. I’m not quite sure what that means. Does it suggest non-naturalist realism or not? What does coming close amount to?
I think that something like that can act as a practical stand-in for non-naturalist realism. I should have said 'stance-independently true', though. Once I add that, no anti-realist can agree with the statement, I think. An idiosyncratic naturalist realist could. In practice, though, my impression is that naturalist realists generally do describe what they think moral statements mean using non-moral terms. For example, they might say that 'Torture is wrong' is identical in meaning to 'Torture causes suffering'. But any naturalist realist of that sort cannot agree with the statement I gave.
I said that I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of it because other than 'moral terms', which can just be stipulated as a subset of terms/phrases I use, everything else is just the same sort of language one might use in other contexts. If you think that it is unintelligible, I would expect you to find any talk of my discourse and what I mean by it (or what I mean when I say) to be unintelligible.
It is like if I said that when I use the terms 'red' and 'yellow' I am not using them synonymously. I assume that you think that what I am saying there is intelligible. But if so, then why not think that what I am saying is intelligible if I say that when I use 'is morally wrong' I am not using it synonymously with 'causes suffering'? If the only difference is what is being quoted, then surely if one is intelligible the other also is. And then all I need to do is say the same thing but replace 'is morally wrong' and 'causes suffering' until every single moral phrase and term and every single non-moral phrase and term is covered. And once I cover the fact that they are not synonymous, next I just need to say that the statements I am saying are stance-independently true. But if you think that it is intelligible when I say that 'the Earth is round' is stance-independently true, then I do not know why you would say that it is unintelligible if I said that 'torture is wrong' is stance-independently true. The only difference is the quoted phrase. Even if 'torture is wrong' is incoherent, the claim that the sentence is true is not -- the claim is simply false.
>>I think that something like that can act as a practical stand-in for non-naturalist realism.
Okay, but what does that mean?
>>I should have said 'stance-independently true', though. Once I add that, no anti-realist can agree with the statement, I think.
Whether I’d affirm any particular claim is stance-independently true will depend on what the claim is and to a certain extent what one means by stance-independently true. Normally I wouldn’t flag the latter concern but you’re using terms in all sorts of ways that seem unconventional to me so I’m going to need to be extra cautious in whether I’d affirm or deny anything that you’ve presented. Unfortunately any agreement about anything is going to require a whole lot of clarification or disambiguation.This is at least one problem I’ll flag with you opting to use idiosyncratic stipulative definitions of standardized terms.
You can always stipulate that by “moral claim” you mean such-and-such, and by stance-independently-true you mean such-and-such, such that I’d agree that there are “truths” of the relevant kind. Does that make me a “moral realist”? Sure, if by moral realist you mean someone who affirms those sorts of claims. I am not interested in this kind of terminological gerrymandering, and I hope you aren’t either.
>> An idiosyncratic naturalist realist could. In practice, though, my impression is that naturalist realists generally do describe what they think moral statements mean using non-moral terms.
Okay, but you think that for some reason I can’t or am committed to the inability to do so?
>>I said that I would think that you need to be committed to the intelligibility of it because other than 'moral terms', which can just be stipulated as a subset of terms/phrases I use, everything else is just the same sort of language one might use in other contexts.
Unfortunately I’m finding this all very unclear. Can you maybe rephrase? What are you saying is the case, and why?
>>If you think that it is unintelligible, I would expect you to find any talk of my discourse and what I mean by it (or what I mean when I say) to be unintelligible.
Why? I find a lot of what you say here confusing and hard to parse, so it may be that unintelligibility is leaking into your remarks, so I might think exactly that. That’s going to depend on how far I can get with asking you to clarify what you mean, and trying to understand what you’re saying. As it stands, I do, in fact, find the original article very obscure and hard to understand, and I don’t think I’d be alone in that.
>>It is like if I said that when I use the terms 'red' and 'yellow' I am not using them synonymously. I assume that you think that what I am saying there is intelligible.
Sure, and I appreciate the attempt to clarify with an example. In most typical contexts if someone said they weren’t using “red” and “yellow” synonymously I wouldn’t have an issue.
>>But if so, then why not think that what I am saying is intelligible if I say that when I use 'is morally wrong' I am not using it synonymously with 'causes suffering'?
This is where things get strange for me. Why are you asking me this? Why would I take issue with this? Merely because you’re saying that your use of term X isn’t synonymous with Y doesn’t mean that your use of term X is intelligible. I could give you a nonsense phrase and insist it isn’t synonymous with something that you wouldn’t take to be nonsense, e.g., “when I say ‘flabbleflorf’, it’s not synonymous with ‘pizza.’” This is consistent with “flabbleflorf” being unintelligible.
>>If the only difference is what is being quoted, then surely if one is intelligible the other also is.
No.
>>But if you think that it is intelligible when I say that 'the Earth is round' is stance-independently true, then I do not know why you would say that it is unintelligible if I said that 'torture is wrong' is stance-independently true.
I’d need to know what you mean specifically when you said that “torture is wrong” is stance-independently true to judge whether I thought what you were saying is intelligible or not.
>>The only difference is the quoted phrase.
I don’t agree. I regard meaning as determined holistically in its contexts of usage. Intelligibility does not in my view come as cheaply as you seem to be presenting it here.
>> Even if 'torture is wrong' is incoherent, the claim that the sentence is true is not -- the claim is simply false.
Again, not in my view. We probably have different views about meaning.
Tl;dr: You say, “My point was to refute this part of your claim, by showing that the standard objections in fact apply to any logically possible anti-realist positions.”
Okay, then how do they apply to my position, specifically? I can't seem to extract a critique of my view in particular from your article, much less can I see how objections to standard forms of antirealism apply to my own position.
(1) The claim that there are only three positions is distinct from whether objections to those positions are applicable to other positions
Whether my position is subject to standard objections to the other three is technically distinct from the question of whether there are only three logically possible positions. I maintain that it would not be appropriate to describe my position as a form of noncognitivism, error theory, or subjectivism, regardless of whether some of the objections applicable to those positions were also applicable to mine. I don’t want that point to get obscured by collapsing the two considerations on the basis of the applicability of criticisms to those being applicable to my position being what is, distinctively, “philosophically significant.”
So yes, I do think the distinction between my position and standard positions is philosophically significant, but my claim isn’t merely that “my position isn’t subject to the objections these other positions are subject to,” but that my position would be distinct for various reasons regardless of this.
At any rate, if one of the criticisms directed at those positions applies to my position, that's a point that could be made without insisting my position falls into one of the standard three categories, so why bother with the latter? If your point isn’t a terminological one, why center the dispute on something that you appear to regard as incidental?
(2) “Standard” objections don’t even address existing forms of antirealism I don’t endorse
I don't even need to articulate a wildly divergent position to point out that standard objections to the traditional three don't even apply to mainstream antirealist accounts. Standard objections to, e.g., noncognitivism are going to have serious problems with something like quasi-realism, while standard objections to relativism are going to have serious problems taking on other stance-dependent, but relation-designating accounts like ideal observer theory or Humean constructivism. Likewise, it’s not clear to me how standard objections to any of the traditional positions would apply to incoherentism, either.
(3) Where is my position in this critique?
I don’t want to say too much before I write a fuller response (though that may end up happening anyway, we’ll see). But for now, I’ll emphasize this: I didn’t see any substantive engagement with my position in your post at all. I didn’t even see a description of my position, much less any distinct set of objections to it. So I remain puzzled as to how you believe the process of elimination outlined in your article addresses my views.
In short, I not only don’t think you’ve offered a convincing rebuttal of my views: I can’t even seem to locate my views in your article, nor can I locate any distinct objections to them. As a result, I don’t think your process-of-elimination approach has managed to eliminate my position, because I don’t even see an attempt at doing so. It’s entirely possible I’ve overlooked it, though, and that it somehow became obscured in your post. Could you point to anywhere in your post that shows how my position is eliminated via the process of elimination?
> Another common sort of objection to relativism is that one can reason about morality, which would not be the case if relativism were true. <
This strikes me as wrong. We can reason using symbols without any meaning at all, let alone stance-independent truth. The whole point of systems of logic is to detach meanings from symbols and then manipulate the symbols in a way that preserves the features that we're interested in (which is not necessarily true/false).
We can, as you agree, reason about fiction. If a piece of fiction says that a character has no siblings, then that piece of fiction has said that that character has no brothers. If that same piece of fiction later says that the character does have a brother, then the fiction is inconsistent. This is a fact about that piece of fiction. And you are right to say that, technically, "fictional statements are not literally true", and so we are free to just toss up our hands.
But a lot of people don't. When they notice what looks like an inconsistency, many fans will look for a way around -- some way of squaring the two statements. Did "the fiction" actually say that the character had no siblings, or was it merely the character himself? 'Cause if it was just him, then he could have had a brother all along without having known (see /The Importance of Being Earnest/.)
> In the case of morality, though, I might reason that because a conjunction of views leads to some sort of inconsistency, then one of the views must be false. But if morality is just fictional, you could just insist that there is nothing wrong with inconsistent statements in fiction. <
But those are not the only options. You could hold that moral claims are stance-dependent, and that the stance a person takes is a fact about that person. The inconsistent claims could then require a stance that could not possibly exist -- both approving of an action entirely and disapproving of that action entirely. No person can entirely approve and disapprove of the same action, so any argument requiring a single person to hold those two attitudes simultaneously must be unsound.
There can also be weaker inconsistencies in a person's stance. A person might disapprove of self-serving biases, and yet have some. When those biases are pointed out they won't just say that there's nothing wrong with inconsistencies in morality. The self-serving bias pointed out is a threat to the person's self-approval, and so something must shift. If the moral stance wins out, the self-serving bias is dampened (hopefully extinguished). (I approve of that.) Otherwise the person will somehow excuse the bias ("it's not actually a self-serving bias because it's based on the hard cold facts that mumble mumble, so there!"). (I disapprove.)
So I don't see that you've worked thru all the logical possibilities for subjectivism/relativism, and so you haven't succeeded in eliminating this branch of the tree.
Once again, I apologize if this is something you covered and I just missed it. Still feeling slow and stupid.
Thanks.
‘This strikes me as wrong. We can reason using symbols without any meaning at all, let alone stance-independent truth. The whole point of systems of logic is to detach meanings from symbols and then manipulate the symbols in a way that preserves the features that we’re interested in (which is not necessarily true/false).’
When writing the essay, I actually considered an objection like this and even briefly changed the premises of the argument to say ‘correctly reason’ rather than ‘reason’. But upon further reflection, I concluded that the original version of the argument was correct.
Why? Because there are two types of reasoning: inferential and non-inferential. Consider the marginal-case argument I gave as an example: it starts with the premise ‘If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and it is wrong to torture group X, then it is wrong to torture group Y’. I think that this is the sort of thing I can discover using non-inferential reasoning. So in this case, we cannot just reason using empty symbols.
‘But those are not the only options. You could hold that moral claims are stance-dependent, and that the stance a person takes is a fact about that person. The inconsistent claims could then require a stance that could not possibly exist – both approving of an action entirely and disapproving of that action entirely. No person can entirely approve and disapprove of the same action, so any argument requiring a single person to hold those two attitudes simultaneously must be unsound.’
I am not meaning to deny that we can do any reasoning at all about morality assuming relativism – the point is that we cannot do the relevant type of reasoning. In the syllogism I gave, notice the wording: ‘If moral relativism is true, it is not the case that it is possible that there are any true moral claims about which one can reason exactly the same way as stance-independent claims’. Surely that is true (assuming that your conception of reasoning fits with the one I gave above).
I then give the example of the marginal-case reasoning and go through a subjectivist interpretation. I do not see how a relativist interpretation can work (for the reasons stated in the essay).
‘There can also be weaker inconsistencies in a person’s stance. A person might disapprove of self-serving biases, and yet have some. When those biases are pointed out they won’t just say that there’s nothing wrong with inconsistencies in morality. The self-serving bias pointed out is a threat to the person’s self-approval, and so something must shift. If the moral stance wins out, the self-serving bias is dampened (hopefully extinguished). (I approve of that.) Otherwise the person will somehow excuse the bias (“it’s not actually a self-serving bias because it’s based on the hard cold facts that mumble mumble, so there!”). (I disapprove.)’
If the relativist wants to deny that I am reasoning in the relevant way and give an alternative interpretation, then the sort of interpretation you gave is a good option. But note that this requires denying that what I introspectively seem to be doing is in fact what I am doing. Consider a case where I look out and think that I see a squirrel; I conclude that there is a squirrel. An alternative interpretation is that I am hallucinating, but the mere fact that there is an epistemically possible alternative interpretation is not a sufficient reason for me to reject my initial introspective seeming.
You bring up some good criticisms, but I still think that what I said rules out relativism from my own perspective (and likewise people in a similar epistemic situation). Of course, perhaps you will reflect on your moral thinking and conclude that it does not involve the relevant sort of reasoning, in which you should not be convinced by my argument.
Thanks for your replies. I find much to agree with, but to keep things short(ish) I'm going to concentrate on whether moral relativism/subjectivism rules out any relevant kind of reasoning.
From your other reply:
> instead of talk of being ‘true’, why cannot I just replace it with ‘non-analytically true’? <
That might work. I'd start it right at the top so that the non-cognitivist would also be free to accept analytic truths (if desired).
...
In this reply you write:
> I then give the example of the marginal-case reasoning and go through a subjectivist interpretation. I do not see how a relativist interpretation can work (for the reasons stated in the essay). <
And also:
> I still think that what I said rules out relativism from my own perspective <
Errm. Still slow and stupid here, but doesn't the latter suggest that you take relativism to be false in a stance-dependent way? That is, the claim /relativism is true/ is false *relative to your stance*.
Anyway, I don't think you've done proper service to relativism/subjectivism in your essay. The stance-dependent view of moral claims is that there exist stances such that there are facts of the matter as to whether that stance "satisfies" any particular moral claim (written "S |= m", where S is the stance and m is the moral claim under consideration). Per the revision above, the view might allow some stance-independent claims ("|= m"), but only for analytic m. Importantly, "|= m" is false when m is non-analytic.
We will write "S |= (m + n)" to mean that either "S |= m" or "S |= n" is true (disjunction).
We will write "S |= (m * n)" to mean that both "S |= m" and "S |= n" are true (conjunction).
We write "S |= ~m" to indicate that "S |= m" is false (negation).
And note that there is a stronger form of negation: We will write "S |= -m" to indicate that there exists an n such that "S |= n" where "S |= m" and "S |= n" cannot simultaneously be true.
Note the difference between ~m and -m -- the former is the claim /it is not the case that S supports m/ whereas the latter is /it is the case that S supports something incompatible with m/. This corresponds to the difference between the claims /it is not the case that you should M/ and /it is the case that you should not M/.
So if we fix a particular S and choose a version of negation, we can reason using the moral claims just like they were propositions -- without holding that they are propositions on their own.
So I reject your claim that relativists cannot reason with moral claims like they can with propositional ones. They can reason about their own stance, and they can reason together with people who share their stance.
But what about people who don't share their stance? It's clear that "S |= m" and "T |= -m" are not contradictory -- they're not even contrary. It is entirely possible for one stance to approve of doing M while another disapproves of it.
Does that mean that the people holding stances S and T are not disagreeing when one makes the claim 'm' and the other claims '-m'? Does it mean they can't meaningfully argue about the status of 'm'?
It does not.
Propositional disagreement is not the only kind of disagreement. People disagree on all kinds of matters, and those disagreements can have all kinds of negative consequences for the relationship between those people. This is particularly true for moral claims, because morality is a guide to human behaviour. Our moral claims are not just stating that our particular stance takes a particular view on some question; they also state that we are ready to take action in defence of some particular way of responding to that question -- action that you might take amiss.
Moral disagreement is a serious issue, and must be dealt with seriously.
In the face of a moral disagreement, the realist must say that one view (at least) is mistaken. Either "|= m" or "|= ~m", they'll say. We need to figure out which it is.
The subjectivist, on the other hand, has more options open. While demonstrating that "S |= m" is pointless, we can try to demonstrate that "T |= m" or that the principles involved in the demonstration that "T |= ~m" can be used to show that "T |= x", where 'x' is something that the T-stancer finds objectionable. (Yes, it is possible for a person to reject a moral stance that they have previously taken.) Make the T-stancer into a T'-stancer, and repeat until their stance satisfies the desired moral claim.
The process seems very much like convincing someone that they've made an error because it proceeds in much the same way. S and T have been moral stances up till now, but they could stand for stances on any topic that support facts of the form "S |= a" -- including propositional topics. S would just be a set of beliefs expressed by one party, and T the beliefs of the other. There's no point in convincing the other that you actually believe what you're saying; your goal is to make them believe it, and you need to appeal to their beliefs in order to do so. You need to convince them that their (more firmly held) beliefs do imply your view, or to shift their beliefs from T to T' to ... accepting the view you hold.
...
One last thing. I noted at the beginning that you seem to have evinced an anti-realist view on whether moral realism was true. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. I'm not actually sure.
But consider this: there may be no fact of the matter on whether moral claims are stance-independent.
Such a view is possible for a person to take, and it doesn't slot nicely into your five-way division of the field. Sure, it falls under your "realist" category, since it holds that some moral claims *might* be true in a stance-independent way, but it really seems a stretch to call it a realist view. It doesn't commit to there being any moral claims that are true in a stance-independent way.
<<OK>>, you might say, <<but that's just a psychological viewpoint. There either have to be some that are stance-independent true or none. This person is just agnostic.>>
But I don't think that's what's going on. This person is not an agnostic; they are a meta-moral-anti-realist. The claim that it must be one way or the other is a meta-moral-realist truth. They can look at your OP and say "Yeah, that's a perfectly consistent viewpoint, and I can see why a realist would like it, but it doesn't really cover all the possibilities, does it?"
I'm agnostic about whether I'm a meta-moral-anti-realist.
'Errm. Still slow and stupid here, but doesn't the latter suggest that you take relativism to be false in a stance-dependent way? That is, the claim /relativism is true/ is false *relative to your stance*.'
I was not suggesting that the truth of the matter is stance-dependent or relative, but the epistemic status is relative. The epistemic status of a proposition depends on the evidence available to the epistemic agent. If you have different introspective seemings or intuitions, you might not be justified in believing moral realism even if someone else would be.
---
'But consider this: there may be no fact of the matter on whether moral claims are stance-independent.'
This requires rejecting the law of non-contradiction. Either it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences, or it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences. To deny that disjunction requires saying, by De Morgan's law, it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences, and it is not the case that it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences. And the latter double-negative turns into, by the law of double negation, _it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences_, so we have a case of (~P & P).
The references to possibility in the logical division process were all intended to be about metaphysical possibility, not epistemic possibility, to be clear.
---
Now, regarding your point about being able to reason: my claim is not that relativism entails that we cannot reason about morality, but that it entails that we cannot reason about it in exactly the same way as stance-independent claims -- and that since some people can in fact reason about it in exactly the same way as stance-independent claims, that shows that relativism is false.
And I justify the claim that some people can reason about it in exactly the same way by giving an example, which, at least to me, introspectively appears to be a case of reasoning that involves supposing the things we are reasoning about to be stance-independent.
Your objection seems to depend on a narrow conception of reasoning that just involves inference.
In the marginal-cases example I gave, what seems to be happening is that I am starting from a necessary a priori moral principle and coming to a conclusion about morality.
What would a relativist interpretation need to say? First, presumably I am not relying on any necessary a priori principle, but instead just introspecting on my own preferences (well, at least assuming individual subjectivism).
Second, if you say that the conclusion will be something like 'Relative to my standards, pig torture is wrong', then this leads to some problems, I think. I do not see how reasoning about your second-order preferences can lead to such a conclusion, unless you treat morality as a fiction with rules such as that if X is incompatible with a second-order preference, X is immoral. Treating it as a fiction has the problem that the fiction can simply have inconsistencies. Besides that, making the explanation more convoluted might make it less plausible. It does not seem to me that I am relying on some complicated fiction. If you give some simple explanation such as that when I say _torture is wrong_ I am really just saying that I disapprove, then it is easier to see how I might get confused about such things; but if you instead say that there is some complicated moral fiction, then it seems less likely that I would get confused about such a thing.
Perhaps you could provide what you think is the correct interpretation of the example of moral reasoning that I gave in the essay?
Regarding the stuff about disagreement: I was careful to avoid talking about disagreement due to concern about this sort of objection (which Lance Bush uses).
OK, I did a quick review of this response in lite of your latest comments in the other part, and made some light modifications. I don't think that it obviously falls to the arguments you made there, so ... and at your invitation
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> 'But consider this: there may be no fact of the matter on whether moral claims are stance-independent.'
> This requires rejecting the law of non-contradiction. Either it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences, or it is not the case that it is possible that there are some stance-independently true moral sentences. To deny that disjunction requires saying .... <
Consider these "sentences":
D1. Either it is possible that hooray or it is not possible that hooray.
D2. Either it is possible that shut the door or it is not possible that shut the door.
D3. Either it is possible that chocolate is tasty or it is not possible that chocolate is tasty.
Well, D1 and D2 seem to be malformed. We can deny that they express a truth value at all, and that'd be fine. No problem with the LNC. [[NOTE: I don't think replacing "not possible" with "not the case that it is possible" makes a difference, but please let me know if you think it does.]]
D3 looks okay syntactically, but what disjunction is it proposing?
D3a) Either it is possible that everyone likes chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3b) Either it is possible that someone likes chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3c) Either it is possible that most people like chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3d) Either it is possible that everyone in my country likes chocolate or it is not possible ....
D3e) Either it is possible that I like chocolate or it is not possible ....
....
The possible worlds that satisfy one disjunct or the other are different between the different interpretations. We know that not everyone finds chocolate tasty, so the first disjunct of D3a is false. But we know that some people do find chocolate tasty, so the first disjunct of D3b is true. So is this actual world a /Chocolate is tasty/ or a /Chocolate is not tasty/ world?
The answer is either: it depends -- OR: that question doesn't make sense.
One more disjunct to consider:
D3z) Either it is possible that /Chocolate is tasty/ is a possibly-true proposition or it is not possible ....
Well, /chocolate is tasty/ isn't a proposition, but /could it be/? Is that a metaphysical possibility? That everyone who holds that /Chocolate is not tasty/ could be mistaken? (Or that the rest of us could??? Heaven forfend!)
Which side do you come down on?
Never mind. I don't actually care which side you come down on. It is a matter of absolutely no consequence.
Now replace /Chocolate is true/ with /There are some stance-independently true moral sentences/.
The meta-moral-anti-realist has the same attitude to that disjunction. That it is a matter of absolutely no consequence. Be a realist. Be a subjectivist. Be a command theorist. Whatever, dude! But whatever you choose, know that if you cross me I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. (Well, maybe not that last bit. They could be a meek meta-moral-anti-realist and if you cross them they might just whine.)
And it's not agnosticism. It is anti-realism: that there is no fact of the matter whether there are stance-independently true moral sentences.
If that's so, then the proper response to your disjunction is similar: either it depends or it makes no sense.
And you might think that the subjectivist has to take a stance on whether there might be stance-independently true moral sentences, but I'm not even sure that that's right. Consider the classic double-slit experiment. Electrons are fired at a screen containing two slits. It might well seem that one of the following MUST be true for each electron:
1. It goes thru the first slit.
2. It goes thru the second slit.
3. It goes thru both slits.
4. It goes thru neither slit.
Turns out every one of those is false, even tho' they seem to cover all logically available metaphysical possibilities.
Faced with that, it seems quite reasonable to say that there is no fact of the matter as to which slit the electron goes thru.
Maybe we are in a superposition of moral realism and moral anti-realism.
Or maybe whether or not there are stance-independently true moral sentences is a stance-dependent matter.
The meta-moral-anti-realism positions are not logically possible assuming that the logical process of division was correct. But you would be correct in thinking that they are epistemic possibilities: I cannot be sure that I did not make a mistake such as equivocation.
But note that a lot of the same sort of considerations brought against the metaethical positions can be brought against the meta-metaethical positions.
You start with two non-cognitive examples. The same sort of response could be used here as was used for the non-cognitivist. If no metaethical statements even purport to be truth-apt, then it makes no sense to say things like 'If there are stance-independently true moral statements, then there is a stance-independently true theory of normative ethics' or 'I wonder if moral realism is true'.
The next case you consider is where the statements are ambiguous. I did consider that sort of objection in the meta-ethical context in the section 'Objection: Perhaps people mean multiple things'. In the case of 'Chocolate is tasty', it seems I can disambiguate and decide upon a certain meaning. In fact, I think that I and in fact many people often do so in similar contexts. If asked if a movie is funny someone might say something like 'I find it funny, but I have an unusual sense of humor. Most people would probably not find it funny'. If we have the ability to do this sort of thing in ordinary contexts, why not here? And when doing philosophy, people are hopefully being more careful than they would be in ordinary discourse.
At the end you mention the (epistemic) possibility that meta-ethical claims themselves are stance-dependent. I suppose that the two concerns (the thought experiment and the ability to reason like it is stance-independent) I brought against relativism also apply to relativism about meta-ethics. Also, I suspect that you would agree that you and I can think about, for example, the stance-dependence or stance-independence of tastiness or funniness or whether the Earth revolves around the Sun, etc. If I am able to think about stance-independence or dependence, or whether sentences are truth-apt or true, etc. in general, then why would I be unable to do so in the case of morality?
Finally, you also bring up the double-slit experiment. I only have superficial familiarity with it, so there is not much I can say. But I do know that there is more than one interpretation of quantum mechanics, not all of them involve a contradiction.
I do not think that it would be 'reasonable to say that there is no fact of the matter as to which slit the electron goes thru'. It would be reasonable to either reject the theory entirely in favor of a different one, or modify the interpretation.
I find the law of non-contradiction to be intuitively obvious. But besides that, we perhaps need it to explain reductio ad absurdum arguments, as well as having evidence to disbelieve P whenever we have evidence for ~P. Without the law of non-contradiction, those must just be inductive. And, anyway, if you are using induction in those other cases, why not use it here to assume that there is no contradiction?
If you want to discuss the law of non-contradiction, perhaps I could write a separate essay and post it at some point? That might be better than discussing it here.
> The meta-moral-anti-realism positions are not logically possible assuming that the logical process of division was correct.<
I don't think it's ruled out by the process. Here is your division:
- Non-cognitivist => ~<>TA
- Error-theorist => <>TA & ~<>T
- Relativist => <>TA & <>T & ~<>SI
- Realist => <>TA & <>T & <>SI
And here is my suggested category:
- MMAR => <>TA & <>T & <>SI & <>~SI
Logically it's just a subset of your realists, so the division you made doesn't rule it out. (I'm not saying it can't be ruled out by other means.)
MMAR is just the set of (your) realists who don't hold to []SI -- that is, whose metaphysics includes worlds where some moral sentences are stance-independently true and others where none are.
In order to rule out MMAR you need to show that if any possible world has stance-independently true moral sentences then they all do. /As a realist/, that would mean showing that every possible world has stance-independently true moral sentences.
And recall that you previously agreed that conceptually true sentences don't count. Thus you need to show that every possible world has contingently (but stance-independently) true moral sentences.
But if each of the required moral sentences is only contingently true, then for each one there is a possible world where it is not true. Thus, logically at least, there should be a world where *every* contingent moral sentence is false -- and so a world where there are no contingently true moral sentences -- and thus having no stance-independently true sentences (of the required sort).
If so, then either MMAR is possible or realism is false.
But maybe there is some logical or metaphysical reason why not all contingent moral sentences could simultaneously be false. In other words, is error theory metaphysically impossible?
I don't think you proved that in your OP; you restricted yourself to explaining why it seems unlikely, didn't you?
Furthermore, I like Huemer's definition of error theory, in which the claims are false because they posit properties that don't exist. If every (pertinent) moral sentence is contingent, then every property they posit must also be contingent. Thus it must be possible for each property to be missing. A world where all moral properties are missing would be one where moral error theory is true.
So, is it impossible for all those properties to be missing simultaneously?
I don't see why that'd be, but maybe you can enlighten me. (Or maybe I should go reread why Huemer thinks moral error theory is wrong -- and see if he shows it to be necessarily wrong, which is what's required here.)
s/that the subjectivist has to take a stance/that the meta-moral-anti-realist has to take a stance/
> Now, regarding your point about being able to reason: my claim is not that relativism entails that we cannot reason about morality, but that it entails that we cannot reason about it in exactly the same way as stance-independent claims <
I think I understood that. The bits about (m + n) and (m * n) was meant to show that we can reason about stance-dependent claims in the same way as we can about stance-independent ones. But it seems that you have something more -- ummm -- unmathematical? -- in mind.
[[Marginal case argument repeated for ease of reference:
(1) If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and it is wrong to torture group X, then it is wrong to torture group Y.
(2) There are no non-physical differences between severely mentally retarded humans and normal adult pigs.
(3) It is wrong to torture severely mentally retarded humans.
(4) Therefore, it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs.]]
> In the marginal-cases example I gave, what seems to be happening is that I am starting from a necessary a priori moral principle and coming to a conclusion about morality. <
I do not dispute that it seems that way to you. Nevertheless, your reasoning *started* there. How you came to start with that is not part of the reasoning process that you displayed. The subjectivist can start with that claim, too, and proceed *exactly the same way* as you did in your argument, and end with exactly the same conclusion -- that it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs.
Is the basis for your claim that we're not reasoning in the same way merely that we have different meta-beliefs about the claims we are reasoning over? Because I in no way see how that would follow.
> What would a relativist interpretation need to say? First, presumably [that] I am not relying on any necessary a priori principle, but instead just introspecting on my own preferences (well, at least assuming individual subjectivism). <
OK, I'm taking a priori to mean non-empirical, and I see no reason why the subjectivist could not take that claim to be non-empirical -- an intuition. Probably not /necessary/, tho.
> Second, if you say that the conclusion will be something like 'Relative to my standards, pig torture is wrong' <
Ah, no. The conclusion is /it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs/. The fact that you believe that that is some stance-independent truth is neither here nor there. That's just meta-ethics.
> unless you treat morality as a fiction with rules such as .... <
The subjectivist need not view moral claims as fictions -- any more than they consider taste claims as fictions. That's just how things taste to me ==> that's just how things react with my moral attitudes. There are facts that underlie and validate the claims (taste and moral), but the claims don't express those facts. The claims are more general (i.e. contain less information).
> Perhaps you could provide what you think is the correct interpretation of the example of moral reasoning that I gave in the essay? <
Looks like perfectly normal moral reasoning to me. The sort of thing that any realist or subjectivist would do naturally. And what would follow on afterwards likewise matches, whether realist or subjectivist: talking about the way the modern meat industry treats normal adult pigs (and cute little piggies), and trying to make people agree that /they should stop eating meat/.
Honestly, I'm not sure I should care any more whether people argue for or against realism/subjectivism. It strikes me more and more as a distinction with no difference. Tho' I do enjoy the exercise of trying to make things clear and correct, so maybe it's not the case that I should stop responding.
And yes, I do have a response to the other part of your comment. It's even longer than this one. I'll post it if you're interested, but maybe I've already taken up more than my fair share of your time.
> I do not dispute that it seems that way to you. Nevertheless, your reasoning *started* there. How you came to start with that is not part of the reasoning process that you displayed. The subjectivist can start with that claim, too, and proceed *exactly the same way* as you did in your argument, and end with exactly the same conclusion -- that it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs. <
The reasoning process that I had in mind was not just the logical inference -- it also included the justification for the premises in the argument.
Consider the first premise: 'If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and it is wrong to torture group X, then it is wrong to torture group Y'.
According to the individual subjectivist, this would mean something like 'If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and I disapprove of torturing group X, then I disapprove of torturing group Y'. The justification for this would presumably be based on induction and introspection. So then what happens when you reach the conclusion 'Therefore, it is wrong to torture normal adult pigs'? As far as I can tell, the epistemically rational thing to do would be to reject the first premise, assuming that you did not already disapprove of torturing normal adult pigs. If you believe that all swans are white based on induction and then see some black swans, the rational thing to do would be to stop believing that all swans are white, not conclude that the black swan is not a swan. The case is even worse here than in the swan case. In the swan case maybe what looked like a black swan was just a similar type of bird, so you might need to be more cautious, but in this case you presumably would be able to introspect on whether you disapprove of torturing normal adult pigs -- if you introspect and discover that you do not disapprove of it, surely you should just reject the first premise.
Someone with an account closer to fictionalism might be better off here: such a person could say something like that I am merely pretending that the first premise is a necessary truth, even though it is not. Of course, you would need to claim in that case that I am pretending without realizing it, which is a bit implausible. Further, you would have to admit that seemingly inconsistent true moral statements can exist.
> Looks like perfectly normal moral reasoning to me. The sort of thing that any realist or subjectivist would do naturally. And what would follow on afterwards likewise matches, whether realist or subjectivist: talking about the way the modern meat industry treats normal adult pigs (and cute little piggies), and trying to make people agree that /they should stop eating meat/. <
The individual subjectivist would need to say that the moral facts that I express are reducible to non-moral facts (namely, facts about my mind). So we can presumably translate the premises of the argument into something like I suggested above ('If there are no non-physical differences between group X and Y and I disapprove of torturing group X, then I disapprove of torturing group Y').
If you think that the subjectivist can avoid the problems I suggested in interpreting such reasoning, what would you propose? Is there a way to be justified in believing the first premise in such a way that upon reaching the conclusion the rational thing to do is not simply rejecting the first premise (assuming that you did not already agree with the conclusion)?
> The subjectivist need not view moral claims as fictions -- any more than they consider taste claims as fictions. That's just how things taste to me ==> that's just how things react with my moral attitudes. There are facts that underlie and validate the claims (taste and moral), but the claims don't express those facts. The claims are more general (i.e. contain less information). <
In the case of taste, I might use induction to conclude that something will be tasty. For example, if I generally like hot sauce and generally like the ingredients used in a particular hot sauce, then I would be justified in thinking that I will like the taste of the particular hot sauce. But what if I try it and find it disgusting? At that point, I would simply conclude that this hot sauce is not in fact tasty (relative to me), not insist that because I find hot sauces and the ingredients used in general to be tasty that this hot sauce is also in fact tasty.
> And yes, I do have a response to the other part of your comment. It's even longer than this one. I'll post it if you're interested, but maybe I've already taken up more than my fair share of your time. <
Sure, I am interested in what your objection is.
First, let me tell you that that is the kind of writing and reasoning that I aspire to. Thank you very much for taking my objections seriously enuf to prepare that response.
Here is what I concede: if "X is wrong" means only that "I disapprove of X", then the marginal case argument is not valid. If subjectivism is just that antecedent claim, then the subjectivist who uses the marginal cases argument is wrong in some important way. My analogy between moral claims and tastiness claims fails in important ways, too.
I don't concede that realism must be true, and I will be giving some more tho't to how subjectivism might answer your objections, but I think at this point I simply must admit that I have not given you a good reason to doubt your position.
https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+queens+gambit+you+resign&oq=youtube+queens+gambit+you+resign&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRhA0gEJMTY5NDJqMGoxqAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9ac57666,vid:RH-67doTLU0,st:0
> other than the kind of true moral statements that the nihilist must account for like /it is not the case that murder is immoral and it is not the case that murder is moral/, which must be true if you say that /murder is immoral/ and /murder is moral/ are false <
Does an error theorist need to say that /murder is immoral/ is false? As Huemer defines it, the error theorist holds that nothing has the properties that moral claims attribute to them, so any claim that such-and-such an actual thing has this non-actual property must be false. But conceptually /murder/ is an /immoral killing/(*). The error theorist can hold that /murder is immoral/ is a conceptual truth while simultaneously holding that nothing actual is immoral -- by holding that nothing actual is murder. Similarly a person could hold that /werewolves are monsters/ is true while denying the existence of werewolves (and possibly monsters generally).
(*) AFAIK no one says abortion or capital punishment are /morally acceptable kinds of murder/. Those who support either deny that they are murder at all.
I fear that your way of breaking up the options makes me a moral realist -- I accept the stance-independent truth of claims like /murder is wrong/ because of my conceptual analysis of the terms. But I do not accept the stance-independence of claims that attach naturalistic properties to moral ones, so I think of myself a a moral anti-realist. That makes me think that the way you break things up doesn't capture the fundamental difference between realists and (at least some) anti-realists.
Have I missed something? I admit that my brain is feeling quite fogged today (I'm getting over a bad cold or covid).
Thanks. This is an interesting criticism.
First, technically I was being careless here since the way I defined error theory, the error theorist need not say such statements are false, they could just say that it fails to express a proposition.
But, anyway, regarding your criticism: Consider an example ‘square-circles are immoral’. There are a number of ways one might try to interpret this. One is ‘necessarily, for all x, if x is a square-circle, then x is immoral’. But under this interpretation, the sentence ends up true, since there is no possible world where the antecedent is true. But it seems that there ought to be some way to say that it is either false or fails to express a proposition. Consider ‘The King of France is bald’. This sentence is surely not true, as there is no King of France; it is either false or fails to express a proposition. Perhaps the correct interpretation of sentences that purport to be ascribing properties to square-circles says that the sentences are treating the square-circles as if they were real (possible) objects (or that ‘square-circle’ is some real category, or something like that), but since they are not, none of them are true.
The moral anti-realist thinks that there is no such thing as murder: since there is no such thing as an immoral-anything, there is no such thing as an immoral-killing. So perhaps the anti-realist should treat it like the ‘King of France’ sentence.
What about the ‘werewolf’ case? Unlike in the above cases, there is another plausible interpretation: that ‘werewolves are monsters’ is like ‘Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street’. There is a sense in which the latter is true, viz., the sense in which it is treated as a statement about a fiction, since the Holmes stories do in fact state that he lives on Baker Street. I am not saying that this interpretation is correct. Perhaps the correct one is more like ‘necessarily, for all x, if x is a werewolf, then x is a monster’. Or, perhaps the statement does imply that werewolves are possible objects (or that there is some werewolf category that exists, or something). If they are, then we can correctly describe the possible objects (or category) even if there are no werewolves in the actual world.
Anyway, these are difficult questions, but my suspicion is that an error theorist cannot say that ‘Murder is wrong’ is just analytically true.
But even if you are right and the error theorist should consider it an analytic truth, I do not think that this harms the process of elimination argument much. I think that it would be sufficient to slightly alter the logicial division: instead of talk of being ‘true’, why cannot I just replace it with ‘non-analytically true’?
"For example, if you say that ‘good’ just means pleasure, then ‘Is it true that pleasure is good?’ is no more a reasonable question than ‘Is it true that the bachelor is unmarried?’. If you understand what the word ‘good’ means and it just means pleasure, then there could be no reason to ask if pleasure is good."
I'm not sure that this is true to the point. Pleasure is a natural property, the open-question posits that goodness isn't.
Thanks for the comment.
I am not sure if I am understanding you correctly, so I apologize if this is a misinterpretation.
It seems that you are saying that I am misunderstanding the open-question argument?
The open question argument I had in mind is the one that is based on remarks of Moore in chapter 13. Moore does not use the term ‘open question’ in that chapter, however. Besides Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also uses the term ‘open question’ when presenting the argument I had in mind: ‘Moore’s main argument against the possibility of any such definition of goodness is that when we confront a putative definition, such as that to be good is to be something which we desire to desire, we can tell that this is not a claim that is true by definition because its truth remains for us an ‘open question’ in the sense that it remains sensible to doubt it in a way which would not be possible if it were just a definition which makes explicit our understanding of the words.’ (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/)
This ‘open question’ argument does not rely on the distinction between natural and non-natural properties and it does not rely on the premise that goodness is not a natural property (although, of course, Moore denies that it is a natural property, as do I).
You understood correctly. I recall that you referenced Huemer’s “Ethical Intuitionism.” The easiest way to go about this would be for you to read the section 4.2 in chapter 4. If you don’t have it available, let me know, I’ll try to summarize my critique in a more complete way than I did in my first comment.
OK, I have now read the section you suggested. Huemer’s basic statement of the argument seems pretty similar to what I was saying: “Suppose ‘N’ is an expression containing only non-evaluative terms that denotes some property. ‘Are things that have N good?’ is an open question. What this means is that a person could coherently give either answer to the question. But ‘Are good things good?’ is not an open question; a person could not coherently give either answer to that question. Therefore, the two questions are not equivalent. Therefore, ‘good things’ is not synonymous with ‘things that have N’.” (p. 67).
The main difference is that he says that a ‘person could coherently give either answer to the question’, whereas I said that the question is pointless. Is this what you were referring to?
Other than that, my wording was a bit careless. Instead of ‘Is it true that pleasure is good?’, I probably should have said something like ‘Is it true that pleasant things are good?’.
If neither of these was your point, I still do not know what you mean. I could not find anything in the section that resembled much what you originally said.
I think your characterization of the argument is correct, all I am wondering is if the example you give in some sense contradicts the spirit of the open question argument. In premise 1 and 2 of the argument Huemer gives, are posed two sentences. "It is good to do what increases the amount of enjoyment in the world," and, "It is good to do what is good." The argument then points out that these sentences are not identical, the point of which is to counter analytic reductionism. "Pleasure" is a non-moral term; so the sentence you gave, "Is it true that pleasure is good," is an example of analytic reductionism; of which the argument you previously mentioned in your post is counter.
The assertive changing of the definition of good to be identical with pleasure is the instance of analytic reductionism. So to point that out (if you did) would be to miss the point. Hopefully that's clear, I'm not wholly educated or sufficiently read on this topic than I'd rather be, I still have yet to read "Principia Ethica" and relevant papers surrounding it, which I plan on doing; but my impression, as of yet, is that my analysis of your example is correct.
This is an improved version of the argument I was making, in the form of a syllogism:
(1) If ‘is good’ just means ‘is pleasant’, then ‘Is it true that (the) pleasure is good?’ is just as unreasonable to ask as ‘Is it true that the bachelor is unmarried?’.
(2) It is not the case that ‘Is it true that (the) pleasure is good?’ is just as unreasonable to ask as ‘Is it true that the bachelor is unmarried?’.
(3) Therefore, it is not the case that ‘is good’ just means ‘is pleasant’.
And since ‘pleasant’ can be replaced with any non-moral predicate, it is clear that ‘good’ is irreducible to a non-moral predicate.
Does this version of the argument address your concerns? If not, you will need to explain, as I still do not understand what the problem is.
This seems to the opposite of my impression initially. And in reading the original text I still get my original impression. I could just not be reading carefully enough.
Also, since we can find instances of pleasure being bad, the sentence, "Pleasure is good," is false.