The subjectivists I speak with seem to treat the topic of morality as though we can have a reasoned discussion in the same way we might about facts of reality. I think many times the moral anti-realist doesn’t fully appreciate the problems with this view. I explain why I think the subjectivist will have trouble with the very notion of having any sort “good reason” to believe here and here.
There I argued that there are 3 general types of “good reasons” to believe something. First are theoretical reasons, second pragmatic reasons (see this blog for a philosophical explanation of the distinction) and third we would have good reason to believe something if not believing it caused a contradiction in our beliefs. In the earlier blog I merely said that it is simply too low a bar to only ask that the views not lead to logical contradiction. But I want to discuss the coherency condition more fully here.
I do concede that the constructivist can at least appeal to internal coherency as a way of preferring beliefs. Overall, I think this bar is too low but it is especially low when we understand that objective reality itself will not constrain the beliefs we do come up with. This blog will explain how the rational quality/virtue of consistency/coherency is trivially easy for the subjectivist.
Consider the fact that many people thought Hitler had many internal inconsistencies in his thought. A subjectivist might say this would prevent them from following his moral scheme. But let’s consider one such inconsistency that we often hear and see how that really would not be a problem for the subjectivist. Roughly the argument is made that Hitler was inconsistent in saying
- The proper German must be, blond haired, blue eyed, and have great genes for athleticism.
- Yet he had none of those traits
and still he thought
3.He was a proper German.
Now if these were the views he held, and for the sake of argument let’s say they were, then I would agree they are inconsistent.
So what could he do? Well he could just add to the first claim that “…. unless that person was Adolf Hitler.” There that takes care of that inconsistency! You might say well there might be another Adolf Hitler that he wanted to exclude from being a proper German. And we can just say that “…. unless that person was Adolf Hitler who was born on such and such a date and hour at such and such a place…” We could also make these exceptions for Goering and Himmler etc.
These exceptions seem dubious because they are “ad hoc.” Ad hoc additions to a theory are those that seem irregular from the overall theory but they are included for the sole purpose of saving our theory or view. Normally we frown on ad hoc explanations.
One of the reasons Kepler’s heliocentric theory of elliptical orbits was preferred over the Copernican system involving perfect circles (the Greeks like Ptolemy thought circular motion was more perfect) was because the Copernican system had epicycles. Smaller circular motions of the planets were added as well as the larger orbit. http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST101/keplers_laws.html
Epicycles are I think it is fair to say another example of ad hoc reasoning. In that I am sure Copernicus would agree he was only including the epicycles to shoe horn his theory of perfectly circular orbits into the reality he observed. That was the sole reason to posit the existence of epicycles. If the math and observation worked without epicycles then Copernicus would not have suggested them. Once Kepler showed that the math works with ellipses (no epicycles needed) people tended to prefer that system. This was all before Newton and his theories about inertia etc.
Why should we be suspicious of ad hoc reasoning? It is because as the products of the culture of Athens and Jerusalem we tend to think A) that reality/truth is not created by our beliefs about it so it is not going to be different so it suits our beliefs, and B) Copernicus was making a claim about objective reality.
Of course, if you are subjectivist you think differently. Subjectivists think the truth about morality is dependent on our view of it. So in that case A is not something we accept. To the extent you think our moral constructs are unconstrained by objective reality then you also reject B. There is no objective reality we are trying to explain. Rejecting either A or B seems to take all the sting out of the charge or ad hockery. Morality is what we make it – or so they say. So there is no reason to prefer the regularity we see in objective reality.
I mean I can’t like and dislike the taste of the same pickles at the same time in the same way, but it is just fine that it used to be those pickles tasted bad but now they are good. No explanation is necessary. My mental state makes it “good” and that can change in an arbitrary way. And once we break from objective reality and its apparent regularity, it is ridiculously easy to be consistent. It was OK for me to kill a minute ago but I wouldn’t do it now? Ok no problem, it’s just that my relevant mental state is different now. We are not saying our beliefs about morality corresponds with any objective reality – indeed we are saying no such objective reality exists for them to correspond with – so there is no reason to be against ad hoc views.
Do we see ad hockery in moral theories? Yes I gave a few examples that I think are common.
We should care about well being of all sentient creatures except when we don’t. See animal rights
In suffering being the key – except when it is not. Oral Surgeon case.
Empathy is great even though it seems to add suffering – well we like it anyway!
Of course, people, especially anti-realists, can have all sorts of views on morality so it is hard to explain any case that will apply to everyone. But for me it was just a matter of really thinking through moral issues and being honest with myself about the grounds I claimed to have as a basis. I think most people try to be honest with themselves, but I don’t think people often try to think through moral issues that frequently.
In law school we study a huge number of cases involving difficult moral issues. How much the students tried to understand the reasoning as opposed to just learn the law seemed to vary. Moreover, law school and legal cases do not usually dive into the deep understanding of moral concepts but rather just tends to refer to vaguely worded values. And, of course, most people have not gone to law school or had any similar exposure to the variety of moral cases that are involved. Coming to this realization (that creating your own morality with no objective anchor is extremely arbitrary) requires both an inclination and experience that are both uncommon. So I am not surprised that many people think the amount of ad hoc reasoning might be rare.
When what we decide defines a very concept like “pickles are good” means, such and such fact about my view toward them, then we hardly need to come to any principled reasons for why pickles were “bad” before but now they are “good.” If I didn’t like pickles yesterday but do today, it’s no big deal.
I see no reason for the subjectivist to reject ad hoc explanations. But for me it made this whole exercise of supposedly “deliberating” about morality in order “decide for myself what matters” too much of a charade. I am constantly reminded of the people in allegory of the cave who keep insisting to the philosopher who saw reality that what they are doing with the shadows is important. I simply have no interest in playing. My missing out on this involves extremely low stakes.
So yes it may be correct that there is no objective moral realism. So I don’t discount that possibility. And if I live my life based on a false belief in moral realism then I agree it was in vain. But if I just missed out on this big charade, I am perfectly at peace taking that risk. In fact, I am not sure I can fully express how much at peace I am about taking that risk.
True and Reasonable 
I was going to wait to engage this post until we had completed our previous discussion, which appears to be the case, so here we go. You say “I see no reason for the subjectivist to reject ad hoc explanations”. Given the absence of an objective means for evaluating claims about moral realism, why is the realist in any different of a position? The realist’s claims just have an extra “mind-independent” qualifier attached to them. They’re in no better position to defend the claim against those who disagree.
Generally speaking objective reality works with some regularity. We can’t always identify that regularity but generally a realist would be suspicious of a moral code that seems to have special rules for particular people. It is just hard to believe objective reality works that way without some underlying basis of explanation of why its ok for them and not others.
If we are just making it up there need not be any connection with objective reality so it need not be regular or have any underlying basis for particular exceptions.
You’re presupposing that “people” are all equal. Maybe that’s true in your moral realism, but in a competing version of moral realism there may be properties, characteristics, genes, etc… which make certain individuals more or less valuable. Just as a particular collection of genes makes a person physically unique, a particular collection of genes can also uniquely define their moral worth. It’s just the nature of (this hypothetical) reality.
Any argument sort of presupposes people will accept the premises. If people don’t then you need to either argue for the premises or accept that the argument you offer will not be convincing to that particular person.
My premise is that most people would agree that the ad hoc exceptions used in the Hitler example would strike most people as unreasonable.
I then explain why – if we are not grounding our moral beliefs in objective reality – it really is not problematic to have such ad hoc explanations. The problem with ad hoc explanations only applies to claims/theories about objective reality. There is no reason we should think it would apply to theories unconnected to objective reality.
So like all arguments I am really just saying to a person who agreed the Hitler exceptions seemed unreasonable that they should either change their mind on that or consider my argument and think about why it would be unreasonable to make ad hoc exceptions if morality is not attached to objective reality.
All of my “arguments” are really just an invitation for people to think these matters through for themselves.
Do you agree that the Hitler exceptions were unreasonable? Do you agree they are unreasonable because they were ad hoc? Or do you think something else made them unreasonable? If you agree with me it was because they were ad hoc do you agree with me why we tend to reject ad hoc theories dealing with objective reality, and how that would not need to apply to theories we simply make up and are unconnected to objective reality?
Its not that I need everyone to agree with me on all or any of these questions. But I think a certain number of people will at least in part agree with me on those questions and this argument will therefore have some weight for those people. If someone disagrees with my answer to one or more of those questions then we can discuss that question further.
OK. I was suggesting that moral realism is no less constrained than anti-realism due to the lack of mechanisms for adjudicating claims, but you’re not concerned with adjudication so much as with how we respond to the intuition that some claims are ad-hoc. Fair enough.
You are suggesting that the general intuition regarding ad-hocness reflects our detection that the claim deviates from the regularity of objective reality, and that – by association – an objectively real morality is subject to this same principle (despite the fact that it differs in not being an empirical percept). I’ll unpack this a little further and suggest that this intuition is based on our expectations that are formed by our experiences of the regularity of reality. Our experiences lead us to group the world into categories based on similarities, and similar things tend to behave in similar ways. So there is effectively an inductive argument against ad-hoc claims. I’m OK with this.
Even so, I think your attempt to contrast this to the anti-realist position misses the mark. Just as we can inductively infer regularity from experience of the external world, so we can inductively infer regularities in our experience of the internal world. If our moral sense exhibits regularity in its application to similar situations, then that provides the inductive basis for the intuition against ad-hoc moral claims. Why believe that the moral sense exhibits this analogous regularity? Isn’t your formulation of this argument an implicit acknowledgement that you expect our moral sense to in fact behave this way?
I going to keep pushing back on this kind of language in the hope that you’ll eventually get my point. Maybe there are some anti-realists who think that moral truths are completely dictated by some kind of purely libertarian choice, but my impression is that they are quite rare.
Travis
I think you understand the gist of my argument. Your argument that our limited free will ties the relativist to a sort of moral realism is an interesting one and one that I have only heard of from you. Have you heard this argument from anyone Else? I only ask in order to see how it is spelled out in a bit more detail. I don’t think it saves the relativist from these criticisms but I wouldn’t mind thinking it through more. It is an interesting view and it shows how often metaethics can tie in with other areas of philosophy.
What’s interesting to me is that from my perspective I don’t think that my proposed moral ontology is very unique. For example, I recently listened to the Mindscape podcast with Patricia Churchland and it seemed to me that they were both positing a moral ontology in line with what I’m offering. I never considered free will to be all that relevant to the definition of moral realism. My understanding has always been that the ‘mind’ in ‘mind-dependent’ can be a deterministic meat machine.
I think your positions – relativism and rejection of free will – at least the libertarian sort – are fairly common among atheists. But I just think the “mind independence” we are referring to in each case is different. Just like “mind independent” in the moral realism sense is not negated by a requirement of mens rea.
I think we went through this and you agreed. Are you just saying that you don’t like the way I don’t qualify how a persons moral beliefs are “unconstrained” by objective morality each time?
Your phrasing often implies that anti-realists are making conscious choices about their moral intuitions (which is pretty much a contradiction of terms), and that the morality is 100% unaffected by objective reality. For example, in the comment I was responding to you referred to it as “made up”, which reads as if there is a conscious fabrication, and then identified it as “unconnected to objective reality”, which implies a complete absence of any relation to any aspect of objective reality. As is always the case, it’s almost certain that I’m reading you differently than you are intending, but that is how it comes across to me.
Travis
I think we agreed that regardless of the inputs our beliefs that come out are either things that accord with an objective reality (like the earth orbiting the sun) or they are not (like star wars tales). So the moral realists think that moral views are the former and the moral anti-realist think moral views are like the latter.
As to the free will issue (It seems your comment is at least dabbling in similar concepts if not directly invoked) I just listened to an interesting pod cast book review where someone defends free will.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/christian-list-why-free-will-is-real-harvard-up-2019/id426208821?i=1000443321691
I wished they explored a bit more in the podcast but it was pretty interesting nonetheless.
I would actually disagree. I think that is an unhelpful dichotomy. The relationship between our beliefs and the world is not so black and white. I could have beliefs that are 99.99% true with the 0.01% being some minor discrepancy, or vice versa (setting aside the question of how to even define truth in the domain of non-empirical claims). I suppose you could apply that dichotomy to only the irreducible beliefs, but the reduction and partitioning of beliefs into irreducible, fundamental entities adds another layer of difficulty and disagreement, not to mention the contentious assumption of foundationalism that goes along with such a project.
Travis
I read your comment 2xs but I admit I may not be completely tracking what you are getting at.
You think the distinction between a statement that Luke is a Jedi being true in the sense it accords with something we make up and the earth orbits the sun according with objective reality is unhelpful?
Certainly our beliefs can be true or false and we all almost certainly have some false beliefs. Just because we may not always know the truth does not mean the truth is not black and white. (quantumn mechanics aside) People didn’t know what caused the tides. Galileo thought the earth’t motion caused the tides. And others in his time had some difficulty knowing if he was correct. Kepler correctly tied the tides to the moon but there certainly was some disagreement at the time. But the truth was always there. Our failure to know or have evidence of objective reality does not mean objective reality is somehow blurred. (Again Schrodinger’s cat aside)
And I am using the traditional correspondence view of truth, as the coherence view of truth is too weak.
So yes some of my beliefs may accord with reality some almost certainly do not. But that does not mean understanding the difference between things we make up and things that are part of objective reality is unhelpful.
This distinction is helpful for all manner of propositional beliefs not just irreducible beliefs. Again the certainty that we know something doesn’t make objective reality more the case. We don’t say the earth really only “sort of” orbited the sun before we had better reasons to believe it orbited the sun. In reality the earth was orbiting the sun the whole time.
Joe,
I agree that making distinctions between true and false beliefs (regardless of one’s preferred theory of truth) can be helpful for navigating objective reality, but that’s not the claim that I was responding to. You said that our beliefs either accord with an objective reality or they don’t. I think you know that I lean toward pragmatic theories of truth, so that we probably wouldn’t agree on what “accords with” ultimately means. And “objective reality” isn’t easy to pin down either – do only fundamental things (e.g., particles and fields) exist, or do higher level things possess an irreducible essence? Are shared constructions like nations and economies excluded from objective reality even though they are a undeniable part of our experience? Then there’s the question of how we divide and assess beliefs – if I espouse a belief for which you say 99% of the content is true but 1% is false, do we label that as a false belief entirely? If we instead deconstruct beliefs to distinguish between true and false components then that project ultimately leads us to adopt foundationalism to arrive at the irreducibly true and false beliefs – but what about coherentism? I was saying that it is unhelpful to gloss over all of these considerations in the context of a philosophical discussion.
I understand that these considerations are effectively hidden when we all readily agree (as with planetary orbits and Star Wars). And I understand the value of using clear-cut cases to highlight a distinction, but I think this can also misrepresent the situation by acting as if there isn’t any ambiguity. It’s like drawing a line in the middle of the visible light spectrum and calling everything below it “red” and everything above it “violet”. Yes, we can clearly see the difference between the red and violet, and there’s some sense in which that is helpful, but can you really tell me where “red” and “violet” start and end?
Travis thank you for your comment. I appreciate your taking the time to engage on this topic and spell out your concerns. I have not responded as quickly because I wanted to think about some of what you said before I offered my thoughts. Of course, you ask many difficult questions that I do not pretend to have all “the answers” to but I also am not sure how some of the issues effect our discussion.
Just to sort of backtrack to give some context to the issue. I defined “make believe” this way:
“something is “make believe” when it is the product of our minds that is not dictated or constrained by objective reality.”
You offered an interesting objection based on a sort of material determinism. The objection more or less said nothing would be “make believe” because our mind is completely constrained by material causes which are objective. Or to the extent they are not so constrained then everything would be make believe.
So I responded to that by agreeing there may be some ambiguity in my definition but we can never the less draw a distinction between a product of our mind like the ideas in a science book and a product of our mind like the ideas in star wars. Regardless of what causes us to write either, we recognize that the science book is at least intended to be bound by reality in an additional way that the star wars book is not. In our conscious experience of creating something like star wars, we are not trying to report objective reality. At least “our experience” of writing star wars involves doing something that we experience as being unconstrained by objective facts about the world. Where as, our experience in producing ideas for a science book is that we are constrained by objective reality.
By facts in objective reality. I mean we may acknowledge that reality is not exactly as we perceive it but we think that when we teach scientific ideas we are at least talking about something that is constrained by objective reality in certain ways.
Anti-realists about morality reject that any such objective moral reality exists. So to the extent they say something is “morally wrong” they clearly are not constrained by any objective moral reality. And in that sense it seems to me they are doing the same thing as the star wars author. They are making it up. I think that is relevant sense of what I mean by “make believe.” It’s not so much dealing with the issue of what causes our beliefs or mind etc., but rather it punts that question and addresses to some extent our experience of creating the ideas. I have no interest in having the experience of making up morality and then living by it as certain moral anti-realists do.
I still think the moral anti-realist is doing the same thing as creating a star wars novel to the extent they create a system of moral rules or principles. From their experience they are producing ideas that are not constrained by objective reality. And I believe that is one of the key problems I have with moral anti-realism (except this doesn’t apply to nihilism and I have drafted a blog about that.)
So the analogy is that a moral anti-realist is essentially engaging in make believe in the same way the science fiction or fantasy writer is because they are expressing ideas that they fully recognize are not bound by objective reality. This is what I would call “my central thesis.”
With that in mind let me try to address some of your comments.
Travis:
“I agree that making distinctions between true and false beliefs (regardless of one’s preferred theory of truth) can be helpful for navigating objective reality, but that’s not the claim that I was responding to.”
Joe:
It is not clear to me that star wars would be false on a coherence theory. For example it is unclear that there is any clear logical contradiction between my beliefs and what is described as happening in a galaxy far far away. This is why I tend to think a coherence theory of truth is far too weak.
Travis:
“You said that our beliefs either accord with an objective reality or they don’t. I think you know that I lean toward pragmatic theories of truth, so that we probably wouldn’t agree on what “accords with” ultimately means.”
Joe:
By “accord” I do mean the same thing as “correspond” in the correspondence theory of truth. I think the word “accord” is better than correspond because correspondence can be “reverse correspondence.” When we say a statement is true we tend to think it not only corresponds with reality but agrees with it. But I am not trying to make any big point about the correspondence theory of truth. You can substitute “accords with reality” with “corresponds with reality.”
Are you referring to pragmatic theories of truth in the scientific sense of whatever works? If so I am not sure this would impact my central thesis. Even if people doing science in quantum mechanics (or whatever) take a pragmatic approach to truth they still feel their ideas and theories are constrained or dictated by objective reality.
Travis:
“And “objective reality” isn’t easy to pin down either – do only fundamental things (e.g., particles and fields) exist, or do higher level things possess an irreducible essence?”
Joe:
I agree that the edges of “objective reality” can be blurry. I talk about this a bit but I don’t claim to have all the answers. But even with the gray areas, I think we can see the difference between someone having the experience of writing something like star wars or anything else they view as not being “constrained by objective reality” and someone who has the experience that there are ideas are tied to objective reality. Its that experience of making up morality unconnected to objective reality and then living my life by that creation that I find intellectually distasteful. I can’t bring myself to do it.
Travis:
“Are shared constructions like nations and economies excluded from objective reality even though they are a undeniable part of our experience?“
These are good questions. I would say that my belief that I am typing is part of objective reality. So I do think beliefs are part of objective reality in the sense I mean. I recognize that some people think objective means provable or something like that. But that is not the sense of “objective” I mean. Objective in the sense I mean it is just that it is true regardless of peoples opinions. So if I believed the gun had real bullets before I pulled the trigger then it is objectively true to say I had that belief. Even after I am dead and everyone believes I thought there were no real bullets in the gun and there is no way to prove or even offer evidence that I believed their were real bullets it is still true that I believed there were real bullets in the gun. See this blog were I discuss these different understanding of “objective” if you want more detail. https://trueandreasonable.co/2017/04/24/scientific-imperialism-what-is-a-fact/
Travis:
“Then there’s the question of how we divide and assess beliefs – if I espouse a belief for which you say 99% of the content is true but 1% is false, do we label that as a false belief entirely? If we instead deconstruct beliefs to distinguish between true and false components then that project ultimately leads us to adopt foundationalism to arrive at the irreducibly true and false beliefs – but what about coherentism? I was saying that it is unhelpful to gloss over all of these considerations in the context of a philosophical discussion.”
Joe:
I would not draw a distinction between the “coherence theory of truth” and “foundationalism.” Rather I would draw the distinction between the “correspondence theory of truth” and a “coherence theory of truth.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/
Foundationalism as I understand it has more to do with when we are “justified” in believing something rather than whether something is in fact “true” or false. I think most people agree we can have justification for believing something that is in fact false. It is in the justification of beliefs where I tend to appeal to pragmatic reasons. But I do not think pragmatic reasons make something “true.” I just think rational people should consider the consequences of any volitional act and therefore they should consider the consequences of adopting a belief. (to the extent they have volition in adopting their beliefs)
It is true I assume a correspondence theory of truth because I have never actually run into anyone who held to a pure coherence theory of truth. But as for “my central thesis” I am not sure it makes much difference. Star wars and moral codes created by moral anti-realists can both be “true” (or false) in the coherence theory of truth. I am not sure how appealing to this other theory of truth effects the analogy of my central thesis.
Travis:
“I understand that these considerations are effectively hidden when we all readily agree (as with planetary orbits and Star Wars). And I understand the value of using clear-cut cases to highlight a distinction, but I think this can also misrepresent the situation by acting as if there isn’t any ambiguity. It’s like drawing a line in the middle of the visible light spectrum and calling everything below it “red” and everything above it “violet”. Yes, we can clearly see the difference between the red and violet, and there’s some sense in which that is helpful, but can you really tell me where “red” and “violet” start and end?”
Joe:
I certainly agree that there can be gray areas that are hard to sort through. For decades I have thought about how we can make coherent distinctions about how we can live morally. And thanks to our conversations over the years I have really focused in on the question “why do I find subjectivism (and many other moral antirealist positions) so illegitimate or at least intellectually distasteful?”
And I think for me it is this notion of living life based on what I would understand to be “make believe” in this sense that makes it a dead end. I just can’t live my life based on “make believe” as I understand that term. It may be that there is no objective moral reality. But here I am explaining why rejecting the objective moral realism leaves us intellectually worse off. Am I going to make up some subjective moral code to live by? Or am I a going to somehow stick to my intellectual guns and go with nihilism? I think there are pragmatic reasons to reject both views. It is at least possible that there is an objectively moral way to live. I have never heard a good reason to think it is impossible. So I am sort of pinning my view on that shot. Since the other options are intellectually untenable I don’t care that the probability of moral realism may be low – as long as it is not clearly zero I am going to do my best to find out what it is and at least try live my life by it.
Fair enough
No. When an anti-realist says that something is morally wrong, they are reporting their subjective sense (or intuition), which their experience suggests is largely in agreement with other people’s subjective sense. When the Star Wars author writes about Wookiees, they are knowingly fabricating a narrative.
Great. That fits beautifully with my objection. The experience of reporting on our subjective moral sense is completely unlike the experience of fabricating a narrative.
Who? What anti-realists are knowingly fabricating their moral intuitions?
Would this analogy also apply to somebody expressing a preference for a certain flavor of ice cream? There is no objective standard which says that vanilla is the best flavor, but we don’t think people are just arbitrarily making up their preferences. Rather, we understand that they are reporting on the subjective experience of taste.
I’m going to pass on addressing the follow-up responses you included in your comment because I think that would detract from the discussion of your central thesis. But there is one thing you said which I think is highly relevant:
What if we replaced “objectively” with “inter-subjectively”, as in “it is at least possible that there is an inter-subjectively moral way to live”? The anti-realist values realities which correlate with their judgement of moral goods and realities which do not correlate with their judgement of moral harms, and understands that those judgements are dependent on their biological dispositions and life experience (i.e., primarily via social interactions). You’re suggesting that our moral sense is only valuable if it maps to some mind-independent feature of reality. Why is the value dependent on objectivity?
Hi Travis thanks for your comment.
Joe 1:
Here are my thoughts on this.
objective moral reality exists. So to the extent they say something is “morally wrong” they clearly are not constrained by any objective moral reality.
Travis 1:
Fair enough
Joe 1:
And in that sense it seems to me they are doing the same thing as the star wars author. They are making it up.
Travis 1:
No. When an anti-realist says that something is morally wrong, they are reporting their subjective sense (or intuition), which their experience suggests is largely in agreement with other people’s subjective sense. When the Star Wars author writes about Wookiees, they are knowingly fabricating a narrative.
Joe 2:
Some anti-realists take the view that morality is “largely in agreement with other people’s subjective sense” but I don’t think that is necessary. Some subjectivists think that their morality is based on their own moral beliefs and everyone else can just be wrong. I realize you do not deny this and you probably agree, but I want to make sure we are on the same page about this.
But now I want to get to more of the real core of the issue.
First I think we both agree on 2 points. You agree that they are not even attempting to describe objective reality with whatever statements they make. And I would agree with your point that they are basing their moral beliefs on their intuitions/feelings etc. I am injecting the word feelings into my statement because I think it belongs. I think intuitions are often about a belief about objective reality rather than feelings which are about our subjective reality. But I am not here trying to draw a sharp distinction between the two.
I agree that merely describing our intuitions or feelings is different than what is happening when someone writes science fiction. But that is not all the subjectivist does. The Nihilist may stop there, but not the subjectivist. The nihilist can certainly say we have certain feelings about actions. And the nihilist is certainly willing to describe those feelings and say she doesn’t like them. But they do not take the next step. Nihilists do not say based on these feelings or intuitions X action is morally wrong. It’s the step where the subjectivist goes from describing his feelings or intuitions to making a claim that the action is morally wrong (despite admitting morality is not objectively real) where the subjectivist parts company with the nihilist and does indeed start making stuff up. My objection does not apply to the nihilist. But because the subjectivist goes beyond describing his or her feelings and intuitions and then makes a claim about morality (which the subjectivist admits is not part of objective reality) that the subjectivist steps into the land of make believe.
Joe 1:
I think that is relevant sense of what I mean by “make believe.” It’s not so much dealing with the issue of what causes our beliefs or mind etc., but rather it punts that question and addresses to some extent our experience of creating the ideas. I have no interest in having the experience of making up morality and then living by it …
Travis 1:
Great. That fits beautifully with my objection. The experience of reporting on our subjective moral sense is completely unlike the experience of fabricating a narrative.
Joe 2:
Well “reporting our moral sense” is really a 2 step process. Step one: I see images of the holocaust and have an overwhelming sense of disgust. Step two: is adding to that the claim that it was morally wrong. Nihilists take the first step but they unlike other anti-realists do not take the second step. I agree the first step is unlike writing star wars. The second step is exactly like writing star wars – because it is making claims you believe are not part of objective reality.
Joe 1:
… as certain moral anti-realists do
Travis 1:
Who? What anti-realists are knowingly fabricating their moral intuitions?
So the analogy is that a moral anti-realist is essentially engaging in make believe in the same way the science fiction or fantasy writer is because they are expressing ideas that they fully recognize are not bound by objective reality.
Would this analogy also apply to somebody expressing a preference for a certain flavor of ice cream? There is no objective standard which says that vanilla is the best flavor, but we don’t think people are just arbitrarily making up their preferences. Rather, we understand that they are reporting on the subjective experience of taste.
Joe 2:
I think your example helps illustrate my distinction between the nihilist and other anti-realists. First lets just assume for the sake of argument there is no objectively better tasting ice cream. The nihilist would happily “report their subjective experience” and say “I like this ice cream more than this other ice cream.” But I am saying if you go beyond what the nihilist would say and start claiming there is a whole realm of better tasting ice cream that goes beyond just reporting your subjective experience then you are engaging in make believe. Would you agree with the nihilist when it comes to ice cream? Or do you go beyond just saying I like this ice cream more and you like that other one more therefore you are wrong.
Travis 1:
I’m going to pass on addressing the follow-up responses you included in your comment because I think that would detract from the discussion of your central thesis. But there is one thing you said which I think is highly relevant:
It is at least possible that there is an objectively moral way to live. I have never heard a good reason to think it is impossible. So I am sort of pinning my view on that shot.
What if we replaced “objectively” with “inter-subjectively”, as in “it is at least possible that there is an inter-subjectively moral way to live”? The anti-realist values realities which correlate with their judgement of moral goods and realities which do not correlate with their judgement of moral harms, and understands that those judgments are dependent on their biological dispositions and life experience (i.e., primarily via social interactions). You’re suggesting that our moral sense is only valuable if it maps to some mind-independent feature of reality. Why is the value dependent on objectivity?
Joe 2:
The same reason I think it unimportant what ice cream you prefer. Do you care what sorts of ice cream people prefer? What if I told you I really care about what sort of ice cream people prefer and I want to pass laws about it based on all these rules I have long considered about what ice cream is tastes better and I can’t understand why you don’t care about it. What would you say in response? Would you not say all those rules I devised are just “made up” because in objective reality there is no “objectively better tasting ice cream”? And if I said yeah I know that my rules don’t correspond with any objective reality but it is based on my subjective experience of how ice cream tastes, but you should care about it, and we should pass all these laws based on this system of rules about what is better tasting Ice cream. Then what would you say?
Joe,
There’s a recurring theme in your response that may be central to the disagreement at this point. You’ve now focused on the implications of moral propositions, and it seems to me that you’re suggesting that claims which are not qualified with subjective language (like “in my opinion…”, or “I feel…”) are implicitly speaking about a mind-independent objective reality. I think you’re missing that this kind of language is perfectly suitable for coordinating on inter-subjective domains. When you say
you are ascribing intentions to the subjectivist that are not warranted by the language. The act of making moral claims is an act of publicizing the experience of our moral sense for the purpose of engaging with the moral sense of others. We don’t shout our moral judgements into the wind, we direct them at other moral agents. The realm “that goes beyond just reporting our subjective experience” is the social realm, which is inherently not mind-independent.
I would say that you are abnormal in your moralizing of ice cream preference and I would disagree with your laws. The things that we really value and care about tend to fall into the morality bucket, and this includes the inter-subjective engagement between the moral sense of individuals. If we all generally felt the same way about ice cream flavor as we do about murder, then ice cream flavor would be a morally relevant topic and there would be legislation about it. But that’s not how we feel, so ice cream flavor tends not to be moralized (though I would not be surprised if there are some people for whom it reaches that level).
Joe 1:
But I am saying if you go beyond what the nihilist would say and start claiming there is a whole realm of better tasting ice cream that goes beyond just reporting your subjective experience then you are engaging in make believe.
Travis1:
you are ascribing intentions to the subjectivist that are not warranted by the language.
Joe 2:
Your quote from me did not ascribe any intention to the subjectivist. It described what they are doing regardless of their intentions.
Travis 1:
The act of making moral claims is an act of publicizing the experience of our moral sense for the purpose of engaging with the moral sense of others. We don’t shout our moral judgements into the wind, we direct them at other moral agents. The realm “that goes beyond just reporting our subjective experience” is the social realm, which is inherently not mind-independent.
Joe 2:
But there is more than just reporting involved in moral consideration. There is the consideration itself – hopefully before the reporting. It is at that stage that the subjectivist has the big problems coming up with good reasons as to why they would curb certain feelings or desires as opposed to others. With no objective basis it becomes arbitrary.
I mean you can say morality is just whatever you care allot about. Greedy people care allot about money, angry people might care about vengence etc etc. But that does turn morality on its head. Morality is what we *should* care about. If you change it to be whatever we happen to care about why invoke the term “morality” at all? Why not just be like the nihilist and say these are my desires and I want you to act a certain way to accomplish my desires?
Generally I wonder how you differentiate yourself from a nihilist. What is your problem with nihilism?
Is your subjectivism about what is moral based on your own view, or that of a certain community? If you disagree with the community, which has the true moral beliefs? Nihilists say neither it’s all error.
Nihilists care about things too. They also have wants. Some wants are more deeply held others less so. Why do you separate out some of your wants/cares and consider them morally relevant?
You also keep talking about a “moral sense.” This is a bit confusing to me because our 5 senses are detecting things about objective reality. But you say morality has no place in objective reality. Are you referring to a judgment process where we mentally sort through things and say I will deem this moral or not moral based on our feelings and/or our ability to achieve our desires?
Would you agree people can change their desires and feelings toward things/actions? Are people making “moral progress” when they change their feelings and desires to accord with your own feelings or desires?
Joe,
You compared the subjectivist to the nihilist by saying that the subjectivist will “start claiming there is a whole realm of … that goes beyond just reporting your subjective experience”. You seem to infer this by the absence of subjective qualifiers on moral claims. My contention is that you’re reading too much into the language, and ignoring the social realm as a legitimate element of moral claims. Moral language as we typically use it does not necessarily only make sense in reference to a mind-independent realm. It can also refer to our moral sense and a shared expectation of what that moral sense is like.
The intuition of “what we should care about” is roughly synonymous with the moral sense that I keep speaking of. Sure, we have all sorts of desires and they often compete with each other, but within that exists a distinct and recognizable class of desire that I think is not clearly reducible and is best understood as the root of our moral judgements, claims, considerations, etc… The term “morality” is the label we apply to that distinct and recognizable class of intuitions and desires.
I think nihilism goes too far by dismissing the subjective experience of recognizing a distinct class of intuitions, feelings, and desires that sit together under the “morality” label – what I’m calling the moral sense. I cannot deny that this sense exists and cannot operate as if it didn’t.
It is not something I actively do. It happens naturally.
That is why I often compare it to our aesthetic sense. If you don’t like using “sense” this way then we can pick a different word. The intent is only to label a distinct class of feelings \ intuitions \ desires.
As noted above, feelings and intuitions naturally arise which are distinctly recognizable to fit the domain that we call morality. I wouldn’t describe it as a willful act. Deliberation may be conscious, but it is little more than a process of integrating larger and larger sets of information and feelings so that the end judgement is influenced by a more complete set of inputs.
I would view this the same way I view beliefs, which is “indirect doxastic voluntarism”, meaning that you cannot directly change your desires and feelings by an act of conscious will, but you can make choices which will ultimately affect your desires and feelings.
I think that I still agree with my past self. We see “progress” when the associated moral reasoning has fewer inconsistencies and faults (i.e., fewer logical errors or false beliefs about the relevant aspects of reality), and when the result is a better aligned with innate values. Some of the recent comments between thetaoistatheist and myself on that post might be of interest to you.
HI Travis
Thanks for the comments. I think we are going off on a pretty interesting tangent – as to what separates a nihilist from a subjectivist. I think the question is how do we decide what concerns fit in the “moral category” of concerns.
You say they are the concerns that we think others should share. I also think those concerns need to be overriding or ultimate. That is, when we say X is immoral that answers the question of whether we should do it or not. We might say I really want to eat ice cream but I shouldn’t. But we would not say I think it is immoral to do X but I should do it. But there are a few other factors that tend to seperate out moral questions. I think it is worth while to get an understanding of what these factors are to help us better understand the difference between a nihilist and a subjectivist.
Joe:
“Are people making “moral progress” when they change their feelings and desires to accord with your own feelings or desires?”
Travis:
“I think that I still agree with my past self. We see “progress” when the associated moral reasoning has fewer inconsistencies and faults (i.e., fewer logical errors or false beliefs about the relevant aspects of reality), and when the result is a better aligned with innate values. Some of the recent comments between thetaoistatheist and myself on that post might be of interest to you.”
I do agree that logical consistency can be “progress” but this blog makes the argument that requirement is trivially easy to meet if there is no objectively real truth. Ad hoc changes to moral principles can prevent flat out logical contradiction, and if there is not objective answers to these questions it is hard to see why adhoc changes should be frowned on.
When you talk about “innate values” I am not sure what you mean. It appears male lions have “innate urges” to kill the cubs of a lioness unless they fathered them. These urges would seem to have their own natural selection advantages. Do you think our innate urges give rise to our own innate values? If a minority of people for whatever do not share the values or urges of the majority are they impeding moral progress or is the issue of moral progress based on your individual views. So if you are in the minority then it is progress for other peoples innate urges to line up with yours?
And just to clarify we all tend to think our moral views are correct so sure we all tend to think moral progress happens when more people do/believe what we consider moral. But the objective moral realist does not think that is what defines moral progress. That is objective moral realists think moral progress happens when others adopt views and stances that are objectively true. They just happen to think their own views and stances line up with that objective truth. I you think no objective moral reality exists for our views or stances to correspond with. So what is the truth relative to? You or a group or what natural selection gave to all animals or just humans? And if they disagree then whatever view or stances matches your view is true?
Joe,
I think you may be underestimating the constraints I suggested. Can you give me an example of an ad-hoc change to a moral claim that you think is unhindered by the factors I noted and substantially alters the claim’s moral implications?
If “urge” is roughly equivalent to “desire”, then I’ll give that a qualified yes. Our desires are certainly deeply entangled with our values, but there isn’t a perfect mapping. And as I have been saying all along, I see the moral domain as a subset of our desires and values as a whole, where the moral subset is distinguished from the rest by a distinctive subjective experience. I can appreciate that this might not be clear, but I’m not sure how else to explain it because the definition of “that which is moral” is a sort of tautology – something is in the moral domain if our experience has that distinctly moral characteristic. It’s a lot like Justice Stewart’s “I know it when I see it”.
All of the above, depending on context. If we’re talking about individual subjective experience, then the truth is relative to that individual’s moral sense. If we’re talking about a group, then the truth is relative to the collective moral senses; perhaps taking a sort of utilitarian approach of whatever produces the most moral satisfaction within the group. I don’t have a clear methodology for reconciling moral truth among divering moral senses (and am sympathetic to the notion that there isn’t a right answer to that question) but I think a sort of utilitarian approach might be the pragmatic course of action.
At the level of subjective experience, yes. At the level of group dynamics, see above.
I skipped this question because I figured the answers to the other questions above would do the job. Let me know if there’s additional clarification needed there.
In my blog here I use the the Adolf Hitler example for how avoiding contradiction and maintaining logical consistency is very easy. Yes it employs ad hoc reasoning but I explain ad hoc reasoning is only problematic for objective realist truth claims. And the reasons it is a problem for objective realist truth claims do not apply to subjectivists.
So if moral progress is just a matter of logical consistency then it is trivially easy – whether we are talking about the views of a group or individual. Ad hoc changes can be used to make any such views at least logically consistent.
But you also talk about something fitting our “innate values” or not. And I am trying to tease out what you mean. It smells of omr to me, but I want to better understand what you are saying. Do you think Hitlers desires of tribalism for his race were not innate or shared by many? But more importantly does it matter whether the view is innate to many or is it just a matter of whether that view is innate to you? I am trying to understand what moral truth is relative to in your view. If you think it is true if and only if you have that innate view and that defines moral goodness then sure you are a relativist. Same if you say the majority of living people or a certain council must have this view etc. But if you are saying these innate feelings are sometimes correct and sometimes not based on something other than just what you or some group thinks then I think you are getting into omr territory.
I won’t fault you for not being able to fully define what makes a moral view different from others. I have been giving that some thought in light of our discussion and in trying to understand how your view may be different than a nihilists.
But when you say a view must accord with our “innate values” I think I am entitled to some explanation of what you mean. Did Hitler Stalin and Mao have innate values? If you say they did not then where do these values come from? Innate to what your own mind?
If you say they had innate values then did they live by them? I mean if you say they had them but they rejected them and did not live by them – I think the evidence is against your view. I think the historical evidence shows all three of these men to be driven by innate values that they pursued. Mao from an early age seemed to value self promotion. He pursued that desire throughout his life. Are you going to suggest he really went against his innate desires and maybe felt guilty his whole life for lying and manipulating people to achieve his desires? Will you say the same of Hitler or Stalin?
If you agree with me that they lived by their desires then what is it that makes their desires wrong? What are they wrong relative to? Is it your own views because your own moral views define the truth and falsity in this area? That is a typical subjectivist view. But then do you see how that leads to morality being arbitrary? If you say they are not arbitrary because we get them through evolution or whatever they are still arbitrary? I mean they have no relationship with anything objectively real its hard to see what constrains them beyond mere logical consistency.
There’s a lot of question marks in that comment, so I’ll just try to pick a few representative ones to answer.
As previously noted, that would depend on the context. The idea is that the truth of individual moral claims is relative to one’s moral sense, and that the moral sense is partially driven by innate factors. By this I mean influences which are ultimately genetic (and epigenetic), and the innumerable ways in which our environment influences us as an indirect consequence of our biology. But when you get a group of individuals together, you have a soup of innate factors that don’t all necessarily align. So while there is undoubtedly a lot of commonality within the innate factors of the group, each individual is still likely to perceive differences. And the larger the group, the more opportunities for differences. Even so, at the scale of the human race it seems that there are some nearly universal moral dispositions, so that anybody who does not share those is likely to either be operating contrary to their nature, or is an outlier (e.g., psychopaths).
I can’t help but think that they were outliers (see above), but I really don’t know. As far as I can tell, the research seems to indicate that psychopaths are not operating with a divergent moral sense, but rather with a diminished moral sense. In other words, their subjective experience lacks the distinctly moral experience I refer to, and what the rest of us consider to be moral claims look and feel more like music preferences. For them, morality is more epistemic (learned from others) than intuitive, which means it does not have as much of an advantage when placed in competition with desires and values (even if innate) that others would consider amoral.
Relative to whatever individual or group is claiming that they are wrong. In this case, that’s something like 99% of humanity.
I don’t see how this makes morality arbitrary, but we may disagree on the definition of ‘arbitrary’. Can you clarify what you mean by arbitrary? I perceive that you are possibly conflating contingent and arbitrary, and then devaluing a contingent moral sense by labeling it as arbitrary, thus implying that it is subject to the same kind of whimsy that we might employ when choosing a salad dressing. To further clarify, I would suggest that morality is emergent – it is neither a fundamental constituent of reality nor readily reducible to anything fundamental.
“Relative to whatever individual or group is claiming that they are wrong. In this case, that’s something like 99% of humanity.”
99%? Stalin and Mao were pretty popular after WWII even today lots of people in China like/love Mao.
I tend to think relativists just sort of brush off self centered people or people who think differently as if they shouldn’t count.
But I think the main point I am getting at is this: Relativists think moral claims are true and false and they are sometimes true. This is different then the nihilist who basically says all such claims are mistaken and “pretty much” false. So if someone from China tells you Mao’s decision to implement the cultural revolution was a morally good act – presumably you would say that claim is false. If someone said the cultural revolution was morally wrong you would say that is true.
My question is when you yourself assign truth or falsity to these claims what are you, in fact, referring to? Are you comparing the claim to your own view if the claim matches your own view that makes it true? Or are you thinking what others in your community think and that is what makes the claim true?
“I don’t see how this makes morality arbitrary, but we may disagree on the definition of ‘arbitrary’. Can you clarify what you mean by arbitrary? I perceive that you are possibly conflating contingent and arbitrary, and then devaluing a contingent moral sense by labeling it as arbitrary, thus implying that it is subject to the same kind of whimsy that we might employ when choosing a salad dressing. To further clarify, I would suggest that morality is emergent – it is neither a fundamental constituent of reality nor readily reducible to anything fundamental.”
Do you think the divine command theory of morality would make morality arbitrary?
This is going to sound redundant, but that depends on the context. If you just ask for my judgement, then the referent is my moral sense. If you ask in a way that redirects the referent to another person, or group, then I’ll do my best to estimate how the claim relates to that reference. But I think it’s worth noting that an estimation like that does not necessitate taking self-report at face value. That is certainly a key element, but I am also going to scrutinize the influences on their self-report, and take account of the fact that there are good reasons to believe that their moral sense shares in some core dispositions which I have access to via my moral sense.
That would probably depend on the way the theory is defined. I’m taking “arbitrary” to be roughly equivalent to “having no explanation”. What do you mean by arbitrary?
Travis thanks for the comments.
Let me try to narrow down what I am getting at. And that will require me to sort of restate the position as I understand it. So you think that moral claims are sort of like subjective claims about taste except that one thing (not necessarily the only thing) that makes moral claims different than claims about taste is that we want other people to hold the same view.
So you are right if I say “ice cream tastes good” one might ask what do I mean by that. Do I mean I like ice cream or do I mean most people like Ice Cream. Both are factually true statements. And I would agree either response might be acceptable to justify my claim that “ice cream tastes good” depending on the context.
But with morals we have that extra element not present in tastes. We have the element where we want others to accept/believe the “truth” as well. So what is the truth you are wanting them to accept/believe. Is it what you believe or what some group believes?
As for what makes a belief arbitrary, I would say it is something that is believed for no good reason. As I explained in other blogs it seems that when you define the truth of something as whatever someone or group happens to believe it becomes very hard to have “good reasons” to believe it. One persons environment and genes lead them to believe X another persons genes and enviornment lead them to believe not-X. But X is “true” because that is you or the group that truth is relative to. I talk about what I consider the 3 catagories of “good reasons” to hold a belief, practical, evidential, and logical and explain why the first 2 do not really work with subjectivist views in this blog.
https://trueandreasonable.co/2019/05/09/more-on-the-euthyphro-dilemma-does-it-really-help-atheists/
The blog we are currently commenting on explains why pure logical constraints are way too loose on their own to constrain our moral beliefs. It is just too easy to make exceptions that save you from literal contradiction. The exceptions may be ad hoc but that is only of concern when we are trying to make our views accord with objective reality. In science and many other forms of belief objective reality is the 800 pound gorilla that decides the truth. And we tend to think objective reality has some regularity. But when we make our own mind the 800 pound gorilla that defines truth there is no reason why it should have any regularity. Regardless of whether it is regular or adhoc our mind (or a mind) defines the truth.
I do not dispute that our moral faculties have this property of strongly seeking agreement, but I suspect that it is an artifact of the social conditions under which the moral sense has evolved and develops. In most cases we are wanting others to agree with our personal judgement, but we can fall into groupthink and adopt our group’s judgement as if it were our own. I’m not sure that answers the question?
And what constitutes a good reason? You seem to be taking the stance that nothing with any mind dependence can be a good reason. I am content to accept the moral faculty itself as an underlying reason, so long as it has been sufficiently scrutinized. You feel that this is not a “good reason”, and it needs to trace to something mind-independent. If I understand correctly, this is largely motivated by the perceived superiority of immutable moral facts.
To be honest, I do feel the allure of immutable, objective moral facts (but only if they agree with me, of course). If they are immutable then we don’t have to worry about them changing. If they are objective then the pursuit of agreement has a shared target. This lays waste to the chaos. But is that a good reason – because it seems stable? Or have I misunderstood?
There are at least two types of relativists. Both say claims can be true or false. One associates truth with their own view. The other associates truth with some other mind or group of minds. We want people to believe true things. So how in your view does one do that? Do they agree with you and then it is true or do they need to agree with some other mind or group? That is in your view what do you want them to adopt so that they can have true beliefs on morality?
Ok on to “good reasons” I am not saying nothing with mind dependence can serve as a good reason. But rather I am arguing that if the truth of moral beliefs is mind dependent then there can be no good reasons to adopt one moral belief versus another. If you want to say the fact that I believe it is a “good reason” for me to believe it would mean we have a “good reason” for any belief we hold. So the question is what would constitute a “good reason” for a moral relativist to change or continue his view? It may seem like there can be lots of good reasons. But when we define truth based on the persons view such that whatever they believe is by definition true things get difficult (I think impossibly difficult) from an evidential reasoning point of view.
On the practical reasoning side of things I offer a few different reasons why we can’t have practical good reason to hold a moral belief.
I think “good reasons” to believe something fall into one of 3 categories. There are good theoretical reasons (usually means evidence that this is true) to believe something, there are good practical reasons to believe something or you believe something to avoid logical contradiction with your other beliefs.
I talk about practical versus theoretical reasons to believe here.
https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/06/30/practical-versus-theoretical-rationality/
Note though that I think we can have good practical reasons to believe something but I am not completely sold on the practical theory of truth. That is we may have practical reasons justifying that a used needle is infected with a harmful virus but that does not make it true that the needle is infected. Sometimes people talk about the pragmatic view of truth and that is something I am not committed to.
In the earlier blog here
https://trueandreasonable.co/2019/03/15/morality-problems-with-divine-command-subjectivism-and-anti-realism/
(sorry I think I linked the wrong blog in my earlier comment)
I argue that we can not have good evidential/theoretical reasons for subjective beliefs nor can we have good practical reasons for moral subjective beliefs.
In this blog that we are commenting on I argue that the third option applies it is simply too easy to avoid because we can simply make ad hoc changes to accommodate our beliefs. I give the Hitler example etc.
So it seems to me that if someone could disagree by saying there are other types of “good reasons” to believe something other than theoretical, practical, or logical reasons. Or they can say my arguments on one of these 3 types are not convincing. But that is the structure of my arguments. all “good reasons” must fall into one of those 3 types and reasons of those types don’t help the moral relativist. As to each of the different types I try to break up the first blog to make it clear which of the 3 types of “good reasons” I am addressing.
This framing only works for the committed philosophical realist. In practice, what we actually want is for people to agree with our judgement (with the majority being naive realists who treat their judgement as objectively correct). Though we may appreciate somebody being careful and honest with their moral judgements, that typically will not trump our desire for agreement.
It’s basically a philosophical exercise of examining all the different information and influences on a moral judgement and scrutinizing them for accuracy, completeness, coherence, and alignment with our intuitions (which are ultimately the bedrock of a relativist account, from a foundationalist perspective). I’m not going to pretend that I have some sort of repeatable, prescriptive formula for scrutinizing all moral claims, but to use your ad-hoc example of adding “… unless that person was Adolf Hitler” to a claim, I strongly suspect that an honest analysis of anybody making such a claim would demonstrate that it did not actually derive from a genuine moral intuition correlated to that particular element, but rather to a ideological committment that is largely dictated by social factors which have been in part influenced by errant information about what distinguishes a “German” from others.
To be clear, my position is not just “whatever they believe is by definition true” and I think my deviation from that has been adequately communicated, but I do not disagree that it is very difficult (maybe even effectively impossible) to tease out the relation that we could consider “true”. But I contend that the exercise itself is still worthwhile, especially if we do in fact have a human nature that will guide us toward more agreement than disagreement once the obstacles are properly addressed. My suspicion is that the “progress” many of us perceive over time is reflecting this.
Regardless, I don’t see that the abstract realist is in any better position. In the absence of objectively accurate epistemic access to moral facts, how is the realist’s evidential reasoning any better off? The dopamine utilitarians and their ilk are the only kinds of realists that really have evidential mechanisms available to them once you grant their foundational axiom.
Joe:
We want people to believe true things. So how in your view does one do that?
Travis:
This framing only works for the committed philosophical realist. In practice, what we actually want is for people to agree with our judgement (with the majority being naive realists who treat their judgement as objectively correct). Though we may appreciate somebody being careful and honest with their moral judgements, that typically will not trump our desire for agreement.
Joe’s response:
I want people to hold true moral beliefs even if they disagree with me. At least that is what I consider the correct mindset. I do not think I should say if I am wrong I should drag everyone down with me.
I don’t want people to agree with me when I am wrong and especially not on issues of morality.
Joe:
So the question is what would constitute a “good reason” for a moral relativist to change or continue his view?
Travis:
It’s basically a philosophical exercise of examining all the different information and influences on a moral judgement and scrutinizing them for accuracy, completeness, coherence, and alignment with our intuitions (which are ultimately the bedrock of a relativist account, from a foundationalist perspective).
Joe’s response:
A relativist could have any sort of bedrock he chooses. Also there is an intuitionist form of moral realism that I GE Moore espoused and in more recent times a philosopher Mike Huemer defended.
Intuitions are not necessarily linked to relativism. Relativists could choose whatever they want because by definition whatever the ultimately choose/land on *is the truth.* That makes it radically different from how we evaluate our beliefs about objective reality.
Travis (contuned):
I’m not going to pretend that I have some sort of repeatable, prescriptive formula for scrutinizing all moral claims, but to use your ad-hoc example of adding “… unless that person was Adolf Hitler” to a claim, I strongly suspect that an honest analysis of anybody making such a claim would demonstrate that it did not actually derive from a genuine moral intuition correlated to that particular element, but rather to a ideological committment that is largely dictated by social factors which have been in part influenced by errant information about what distinguishes a “German” from others.
Joe’s response:
But who cares if it fits our intuitions? I am wondering if perhaps your strongest affinity would be for a form of moral realism called ethical intuitionism. It was espoused by GE Moore and more recently by Michael Huemer.
I am vaguely familiar with 2 sorts of foundations for this view. (This is just the gist as I recall it any mistakes are mine.)
1) If we believe something is true then we are justified in that belief unless there is evidence to show it is not true.
2) If the contradiction of the conclusion (not C) is more strongly held then our belief in the premises that lead to the conclusion (C) then we have a reductio ad aburdem and reason to reject the premises. Our belief murder is really immoral is stronger than any premise that leads us to think nothing is really immoral. But if nothing is really immoral then murder is immoral. Therefore we should reject the premise that nothing is really immoral.
https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746
Here are 2 reviews of his book:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/ethical-intuitionism/
Click to access joyce_2009_symposium.huemer.pdf
Travis:
when we define truth based on the persons view such that whatever they believe is by definition true things get difficult (I think impossibly difficult) from an evidential reasoning point of view.
To be clear, my position is not just “whatever they believe is by definition true”
Joe’s response:
But that is moral relativism. It seems to me you may be a stinking moral realist just like me! Or maybe not just like me but rather you might be a realist that subscribes to intuitionalism.
Travis:
and I think my deviation from that has been adequately communicated, but I do not disagree that it is very difficult (maybe even effectively impossible) to tease out the relation that we could consider “true”. But I contend that the exercise itself is still worthwhile, especially if we do in fact have a human nature that will guide us toward more agreement than disagreement once the obstacles are properly addressed. My suspicion is that the “progress” many of us perceive over time is reflecting this.
Regardless, I don’t see that the abstract realist is in any better position. In the absence of objectively accurate epistemic access to moral facts, how is the realist’s evidential reasoning any better off?
Joe’s response:
You would agree it is at least possible that God exists and gave us access to these truths do you not?
Travis:
The dopamine utilitarians and their ilk are the only kinds of realists that really have evidential mechanisms available to them once you grant their foundational axiom.
Joes response:
I think we agree on the point you are getting at. Once we decide on goals we can use evidence to get to those goals. I would say we need to grant quite a few foundational claims for their model to get off the ground and start using evidence.
Because you are the kind of committed philosophical realist for whom the “want people to believe true things” framing works.
You’re defining a type of meta-relativism, wherein the relation itself is a choice. I agree that there are many different types of relativism, but definitions can exclude the kind of choice you identify here. The variety I am proposing does not say that we can choose the moral referent, but rather that our moral sense is the referent.
We do. Our “caring” is one of the most salient characteristics of the moral domain.
That is only moral relativism when it is defined as being in relation to belief, regardless of how the belief was formed. I have placed it in relation to a sense (or intuition) with additional caveats about the correctness of the influences on that intuition.
After skimming the SEP page, no. While I generally agree with the notion that we apprehend moral truths via intuition (aka the moral sense), the page indicates a few additional properties that I generally do not agree with, namely:
1) Mind-independent moral truths (due to the definition of “self evident”)
2) Epistemic foundationalism
3) Existence of non-natural moral properties
Sure, it’s possible. Do you think God actually gave us objectively accurate epistemic access to moral facts? And do we all have equal opportunity to this access?
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