1.0 Folk realism & moral progress

According to Ben Watkins:

The intuition is that moral progress has been made and that we might morally regress. That intuition is part of common-sense morality. If we deny the objectivity of morality, we must give up that common-sense intuition. If we accept it, we must also accept objectivism.

Watkins appears to be making an empirical claim about the psychology of nonphilosophers. If he’s not, I am not sure what kind of claim he is making. If he is, there’s very little evidence that supports this claim.

When it comes to the notion of “moral progress,” realists sometimes maintain that one could only make sense of progress if the progress is made with respect to stance-independent moral truths. As a result, they insist, moral antirealists cannot make sense of the intuition people supposedly have that society has made moral progress. Watkins doesn’t explicitly make this claim, but if he did, he’d be mistaken.

I want to address two mistaken claims realists sometimes make (whether or not Watkins endorses one or both).

(1) Only moral realism can make sense of the notion of moral progress. Progress presupposes stance-independence.

(2) Ordinary people believe that there has been moral progress with respect to stance-independent moral truths.

2.0 Antirealism is consistent with progress

The first of these claims is mistaken. Nothing about the concept of progress requires or presupposes realism in any way. People make progress with respect to self-chosen goals or with respect to stance-dependent standards all the time. People make progress on their fitness goals, or at becoming better at singing for a metal band, or refining their skills as a serial killer. In none of these cases must we presume that there are stance-independent normative truths about what one’s fitness goals ought to be, or what kind of singing is good or bad, or what the best way to turn human skin into a lampshade might be. Progress can and simply does subsume any standard one can think of, no matter how arbitrary or repugnant. Progress simply refers to advancing towards some end or other.

Antirealists have no problem accounting for moral progress. Moral relativists can make progress relative to their own moral standards, or judge other societies as having made progress relative to the their own standards. Constructivist antirealists have the easiest time of it. An ideal observer theorist, for instance, can readily make sense of societies making progress: the closer they come to approximating the standards of an ideal observer, the more progress they’ve made. Given this, antirealism easily accommodates the notion of progress. Even those moral antirealists who’d deny moral progress has occurred can clarify that this doesn’t carry the implausible or objectionable implications realists may insist it does. Denying that there’s been moral progress, as an error theorist, for instance, does not entail that the error theorist doesn’t think it’s better that there’s less slavery or racism.

Given this, it simply wouldn’t follow that if ordinary people believe that there has been moral progress, then those people are or probably are moral realists. Instead, you’d have to show that they think the progress in question is progress with respect to better approaching the stance-independent moral truths.

Does existing empirical data support the conclusion that “the common-sense” view among laypeople is that there are stance-independent moral truths?

No. It does not, for reasons I’ve outlined in likely a dozen or more posts on this blog at this point. Here’s my most recent commentary on the matter in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.

3.0 There’s no good evidence ordinary people believe in stance-independent moral progress

Watkins’s remarks suggest that nonphilosophers are moral realists because he states that:

If we deny the objectivity of morality, we must give up that common-sense intuition.

This seems to imply the common-sense intuition entails moral realism.

There is no good empirical evidence that there is a widespread “common-sense intuition” that there are stance-independent moral truths. There isn’t even good evidence people generally believe in moral progress.

Only one paper from Pölzler, Zijlstra, and Dijkstra (2024) directly addresses this question. However, it does not support Watkins’s claims. They report that:

Our results suggest that, neither abstractly nor concretely, people dominantly believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, knowledge and error. They attribute less objectivity to these phenomena than in the case of science and no more, or only slightly more, than in the cases of social conventions and personal preferences.

They conducted one study on nonphilosophers and a second on philosophy faculty and students. In the first study (on nonphilosophers) participants were asked whether moral progress, knowledge, and error are:

1. Objectively possible

2. Subjectively possible

3. Not possible at all

These questions were asked both in the abstract (with respect to morality in general) and with respect to specific moral issues, since previous research has shown that people tend to give different responses to philosophical questions framed in abstract vs. concrete terms. Participants were assigned to receive either only abstract or only concrete questions regarding their attitude regarding knowledge, progress, and error with respect to morality, social conventions, personal preferences, and science.

For those in the concrete condition, they were given three concrete statements in each nonmoral domain and nine statements in the moral domain for a total of 18 statements I’ll present only the questions on progress, but see the article for the full set of measures (it’s open access, so you won’t face a paywall):

Similar questions were asked for both the possibility of knowledge and error. Here are the concrete moral items:

Helpfully, they provide a table of results which displays the percentage of objectivity judgments for all conditions:

As you can see, morality wasn’t treated all that differently from social conventions or subjective preferences.

The second study found similar results even among a sample of philosophers, which is surprising given that the 2020 PhilPapers survey found that 62% of philosophers accepted or leaned towards moral realism.

Now, one might raise methodological concerns with this study. I probably would. I don’t know if the participants (at least the nonphilosophers) interpreted these questions as intended. But this is not going to vindicate Watkins’s claims, as it would simply trade one problem for another. This is because, at face value, these findings suggest that a majority of respondents aren’t implicit moral realists. If there are issues with the validity of these measures, this might instead suggest it’s difficult to ascertain whether nonphilosophers are moral realists or not, since there may be difficulties with inferring that they understand what’s philosophically at stake in these disputes. Either way, the onus is on people like Watkins to provide good reasons to think that moral realism is some sort of “common-sense” view and, hopefully, to clarify what that means.

There are other studies that relate moral realism and moral progress. Uttich, Tsai, and Lombrozo (2014) measured both belief in moral realism and belief in moral progress, but found mostly nonsignificant or small correlations between belief in moral progress and responses to measures of moral realism. These findings suggest that the link between a belief in moral progress and endorsement of moral realism is not very strong. However, it should be noted that they adapted the methods used by Goodwin and Darley (2008), which are unlikely to be valid. There are other studies that indirectly bear on this question, but I have yet to see any study that convincingly shows that people generally believe in moral progress and believe this because of, or alongside, a belief that such progress is due to acting in greater conformity with stance-independent moral truth.

In fact, there’s at least some evidence that people report that society has been in moral decline, so it’s not even clear people generally believe there’s been a great deal of moral progress. For example, Mastroianni and Gilbert (2023) report that:

In study 1, we searched the databases of major survey research providers (using search terms shown in the Supplementary Information) and found 177 survey items that asked representative samples of a total of 220,772 US Americans if and how they thought other people’s morality had changed over time (Supplementary Table 1). These items were administered over a 70-year span from 1949 to 2019 […] On 84.18% of the items, the majority of participants reported that morality had declined.

However, they also purport to show that:

[…] people’s reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion.

The reality of what people believe, then, is messy. With respect to considering morality in the abstract, they appear to report belief in moral decline, but when asked more targeted questions, their responses appear inconsistent with this view. This makes it difficult to pin ordinary thought down as unambiguously disposed towards a belief in progress or decline. Instead, it’s a bit of a mess, with inconsistent reports emerging under different experimental contexts. Even if it could be argued that the kinds of concrete progress people report believing in would indicate that, in some deeper sense, they are committed to there having been moral progress, this is a far cry from showing that they believe in progress in any straightforward sense, much less that they think such progress has happened with respect to stance-independent moral truths.

I don’t take any of the preceding considerations to establish that most people are moral antirealists or that most people deny moral progress. Rather, I mention these studies to show that the literature doesn’t appear to clearly support Watkins. At first glance, it appears to run contrary to Watkins’s claims. While I could clench my fist in triumph and declare victory for antirealism, I think we should be far more cautious and circumspect about this literature. Evaluating how nonphilosophers think about metaethics is difficult, and this literature is relatively recent. We simply don’t know enough one way or another to make the sorts of confident claims Watkins has.

At best, the existing literature vaguely suggests that (a) it’s not the case that most people are moral realists and (b) people have mixed and complicated views about moral progress rather than unambiguously believing there’s been moral progress and that (c) the connection between moral realism and belief in moral progress among nonphilosophers is likely to be weak at best. Given this, it’s puzzling Watkins appears so confident about his claims when he’s presented little in the way of arguments, evidence, or reason in support of those claims.

References

Goodwin, G. P., & Darley, J. M. (2008). The psychology of meta-ethics: Exploring objectivism. Cognition, 106(3), 1339-1366.

Mastroianni, A. M., & Gilbert, D. T. (2023). The illusion of moral decline. Nature, 618(7966), 782-789.

Pölzler, T., Zijlstra, L., & Dijkstra, J. (2024). Moral progress, knowledge and error: Do people believe in moral objectivity?. Philosophical Psychology, 37(8), 2073-2109.

Uttich, K., Tsai, G., & Lombrozo, T. (2014). Exploring metaethical commitments: Moral objectivity and moral progress. In H. Sarkissian & J. C. Wright (Eds.), Advances in experimental moral psychology (pp. 188-208). London, UK: Bloomsbury.

I initially intended this to be a note but I figured I’d just post it as a blog post. I dashed it off quickly in one sitting and it isn’t intended to reflect the quality of a longer post that I’ve had more time to edit or support with research. I hope to say more about just how absurd and indefensible the current institutions and people’s attitude towards them are, but it’ll be a while before I have the time to do that.

Note: Unless otherwise specified, when I refer to “peer review” I’m typically referring not to the general idea of using relevant experts to evaluate one another’s work, but am instead referring to the peer review system we have in place, where articles only count as “peer reviewed” if they are published by what are regarded as reputable journals.

How did people become so convinced that the current peer review and academic publishing system is so critical and necessary for establishing the quality and credibility of research?

The range of quality for non-reviewed work covers the whole spectrum from raving nonsense to the best published work. But it’s true that there’s no good reason to think the peer review process doesn’t lop off a good chunk of the bottom half of the spectrum, filtering out quite a lot of nonsense; the review process can also tighten up research and arguments, resulting in improvements in what was initially submitted. So the average quality is undoubtedly better than what you’d find outside the process. But does this alone justify the process? No; what you’d need to show is that the process is worth the cost. This would require showing that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. You’d also want to show that it’s better than alternatives. Neither of these requirements is typically met by anyone defending the present system.

Ironically, there’s little evidence the present system is very good at what it’s supposed to do. And while it would make sense for people to regard it as better than nothing (though it’s not clear to me that it is), in practice many people put far more stock in it than it deserves. They don’t simply use peer review as a heuristic. Instead, they’re often dismissive towards work that isn’t peer reviewed independent of the actual content of the work in question; as if the mere fact that something isn’t peer reviewed is somehow to its discredit. This is stupid and lazy and a sign of bad thinking.

Mandatory pre-publication peer review is relatively recent. Almost all foundational work in science and the humanities predates current institutions. Those institutions weren’t necessary back then, so why treat them as some kind of holy anointing process now? This isn’t, of course, to say that we can’t come to recognize the importance of enshrining a genuinely necessary set of standards that we didn’t once have, but it is entirely legitimate to ask how and why the present system quickly became so entrenched that it’s anathema to question the legitimacy of its centrality.

I also think people don’t realize just how sloppy, haphazard, and lacking in rigor the actual process is. Some editor makes largely private decisions about whether to send a paper out for review or not. Then two or three people who don’t have the status or success to turn down the peer review and are guilted into reviewing it, usually with no compensation at all, are simply told to review it, with almost no guidelines, and certainly no training.

There’s no formal quality control. A review could involve a deep, systematic analysis of the entire article from top to bottom. But almost nobody does that.

It could also involve a graduate student or early career researcher barely competent to assess its contents skimming it or reading it halfheartedly on a random Thursday afternoon in their office and writing four sentences about it. The latter is far more typical. How is that supposed to be the gold standard for credibility? Are you kidding me? Almost nobody checks the data, reruns the code, or deeply evaluates the results or measures. These days, likely a lot of people are just tossing the paper through Claude or ChatGPT to review it, which is probably an improvement over what the typical reviewer achieves.

And ironically, there’s very little peer reviewed research establishing the efficacy of the peer review system we have in place. Almost all of the advocates of peer review don’t know anything about what research has been done anyway, so ironically they’re almost always basing their own support for how central peer review is off of…what? Assumptions? In any case it almost certainly isn’t based on peer reviewed research! So why is it that they feel justified in basing the entire foundation of credibility of all research in academia off of inferences they’ve made in the total or near total absence of supporting peer reviewed data, then leveraging these inferences to insist that peer review is so critical and necessary?

I also want to be clear that there’s a big difference between these claims:

1. The credibility of research in a given field should be evaluated by competent people and we should have some method or methods for distinguishing work acknowledged as credible from what isn’t that utilize competent/expert evaluation. This is peer review. Peer review is good and we should do that.

2. We should specifically employ the journal publishing industry to administer peer review and only things that go through this process should be considered “peer reviewed.” Having your work reviewed by any number of experts outside the academic publishing industry simply does not count as “actual” peer review. Even if every single person in your entire field reviewed your work, if it wasn’t done via the formal process of academic journal publishing, it’s just not peer review. Only academic journals are entitled to confer credibility on published work, regardless of the quality of the actual process in any given case.

I fully endorse (1). But (2) is stupid and arbitrary. People frequently conflate the two and don’t understand that I’m opposed to (2) and not (1). The general idea that we should assess the credibility of work and we need capable people to do so is a good one. But this isn’t the actual criterion we use to distinguish work that is “peer reviewed” from work that isn’t. The actual standard is whether work is published in an academic journal. Almost nobody actually seems to be defending peer review itself; what they defend is the practice of publishing in academic journals.

For instance, suppose you took two articles of exactly the same quality, and did the following:

One is submitted to a mid-tier journal with a lackadaisical editor who shrugs and sends it off to reviewers. Most decline. Finally, a graduate student and a middling early career researcher read it halfheartedly. The article cites the researcher, and the graduate student does similar work and finds the content appealing. They both write vaguely positive reviews. The article is published.

The second article is emailed by its author to five or six excellent and highly competent specialists who work on the topic the article is about. Most ignore it. But one is on sabbatical to write a book on a similar topic and figures “Why not?” They read it carefully and think the article is good, and they give thorough, comprehensive feedback that significantly improves the article. Another specialist reads it carefully and writes a short, approving email stating that they think it’s a solid paper. Nevertheless, the article remains unpublished.

By any sane standard, the second article has been more thoroughly “peer reviewed” than the former. And yet only the first article counts as peer reviewed. The second article doesn’t count as peer reviewed at all. “Peer reviewed” doesn’t actually mean “reviewed by one’s peers.” It means it’s been published by a journal after an editor decided it was worth publishing following a review process in which there’s at least some degree of lukewarm approval from one or more academics (who may not even be experts or peers of the author, aren’t required to have graduate degrees, don’t have to have published on the same topic, don’t have their work thoroughly checked, and probably don’t thoroughly check the work they’re reviewing).

Did they read the article? Who knows. Nobody checks. Did they put serious effort into examining it? Probably not, but who knows? Nobody checks. Are they actually experts or peers of the author? Who cares. Horseshoes and hand grenades! As long as they’re kind of in a related field that’s good enough. They aren’t accountable if their reviews are sloppy garbage, and the editor can make virtually any decision they want on the basis of however many reviews of whatever quality they want. The reviews themselves probably won’t be made public nor will the reviewers receive any public credit (or if they do, nobody cares and it’s mostly ignored anyway, so they have no incentive to do good work or care if they do bad work).

There’s little transparency, and it’s very unlikely any aspects of this process will be made publicly available. So if you see the article at all (which isn’t likely since so much is poorly archived and hidden behind paywalls), you won’t know anything about what the reviewers actually thought of the paper. So in addition to being a haphazard, unsystematic, informal process, most of the process is hidden behind emails, editorial decisions that exist exclusively in the minds of editors, and unpublished reviews archived in private accounts that will never see the light of day, ensuring an almost total lack of transparency and a comical lack of consistency, rigor, and quality control.

This is the process people think bestows credibility on publications? This is what many people think distinguishes genuine and credible work from frothing lunacy and tinfoil hats? Are you kidding me?

And yet many people will treat the paper that has gone through the official publication process as a very credible and serious piece of work, while having a highly dubious stance towards the second, i.e., an article that actually received substantive review by peer experts. It’s acceptable to cite the first in scholarly work, but not the second. This is absurd. If you’re a competent scholar and are capable of assessing the merits of an idea, it wouldn’t matter if the idea was scribbled in crayon in a bathroom stall. Yet many people would oppose citing unpublished work even if they knew it was reviewed approvingly by specialists. Indeed, it could be reviewed by all the specialists, and it still wouldn’t matter. After all, it’s not published.

This is idiotic. Heuristics are just that: heuristics. Publication isn’t a magic spell. This kind of lazy, ritualistic way of thinking about credibility is quasi-religious and yet it seems to have entrenched itself in the span of a few decades throughout academia and, by osmosis, here on Substack and the general online debate spaces at the periphery of academia.

And I haven’t even begun to address the fact that bias and other factors may motivate editors to publish some work rather than other work for reasons unrelated to quality, with little oversight, accountability, or means to object. When an article gets desk rejected, your best bet is almost always to move on to the next journal.

Nor have I brought up the fact that journals have an incentive to publish work that will be cited a lot, not merely the best work. Historically, this has promoted publication bias by discouraging failed replications and studies with null results, resulting in a warped and distorted picture of certain bodies of literature that has led to people mistakenly believing in the credibility of entire lines of research that have subsequently been discredited. Note that this has resulted in entire fields believing in fake phenomena for literally decades. This might still happen in the absence of our current institutions, but not only are they not a good filter against this happening, they actively facilitate it.

I also haven’t addressed how journals silo research behind paywalls that make it difficult for people to access and for many impossible to access legally. Even when research is technically accessible, it’s spread in haphazard ways across clunky websites that are hard to navigate, making it difficult to find and access even for academics at times, and even more challenging and in some cases effectively impossible for people without institutional affiliations. This contributes to papers potentially going months or years without anyone reading them. Isn’t the point of publishing work to make it widely available? So why are peer review and publication tied to systems that not only don’t facilitate spreading and sharing information, but actively work to sequester research and hold it for ransom?

Nor have I said that much about how the publication process usually lacks transparency or accountability. Journals are often highly reticent to retract papers, even when they should. It’s also difficult to countermand the decisions of editors…and think about it: even if you’re entirely right, if you make a fuss with an editor, do you think that journal is going to be more receptive to your work in the future, or less? Reviewers suffer little if any punishment for bad work. You can’t be fired for being a bad reviewer, because you weren’t hired in the first place. And consider that: why are the actual experts typically not being paid for their expertise? People go through hell to get PhDs only to receive no compensation for what is effectively expert consultation. A typical lawyer could charge hundreds of dollars an hour to provide fairly standard legal expertise. Yet an expert who may be one of only five or six specialists in the entire world, who received more education, and who is more experienced than a typical lawyer both in general and on the topic in question is given absolutely nothing to labor over a stranger’s work? How does that make any sense? Why aren’t academics charging consulting fees? Why did this become a case in which we’re expected to do an arbitrary amount of free consultation that is, in practice, heaped on those people who can afford the cost of extra labor the least, while the most successful academics and best reviewers are in a better position to turn down these requests? It’s not like we make it a job requirement to do peer reviews and mandate that they be distributed equally. No, the burden is haphazard, uncoordinated, and arbitrarily heaped onto some but not others. That’s the best we can do? In practice, the whole process has some of the trappings of a formal process, but in many ways it is completely informal and arbitrary.

I likewise have said little about how journals often take months or even years to publish research. This stifles progress, but it also throws up so much red tape that good work may go unpublished. It also rewards people who have the particular personality traits needed to push their work through the process, while discouraging those who don’t, which isn’t a quality filter so much as a personality filter. At the same time, it incentivizes “publishable” research. As a result, journals serve to establish certain kinds of work as credible or mainstream and certain other kinds of work as unconventional. Since career advancement, status, prestige, and grant funding all center on publishing in journals, this creates strong incentives to work on topics that journals are more receptive to. This can stifle innovation and undermine creativity. There are studies showing many researchers explicitly and very consciously state that they don’t work on the topics they prefer or at least do less work on those topics precisely for this reason.

And I haven’t added how the incentive systems this puts in place more generally lead to the extreme amplification of Goodhart’s law: that any measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure. The whole purpose of the peer review process is to serve as a quality filter. And yet when you turn the whole process into a competition where everyone involved’s ambitions hinge on publication, you create an incentive to publish for the sake of publishing itself. Researchers would be better off publishing three or four middling or even bad articles in journals than they’d be doing one slower, more careful project of higher quality. They’d be better off pursuing a weak project that they know journals in their field would be eager to publish than a strong project that would be hard to publish.

At the same time, there are powerful incentives due to Goodhart’s law to jockey to get your name on papers as a coauthor even if you’ve contributed little or nothing. This leads to a distorted and dishonest literature where names are attached to papers that don’t belong there. Bowing to such pressure can corrupt the people who do so. If you’re dishonest about this, why not be dishonest in other ways, too? After all, nobody is harmed by unjustified authorships, are they? This is a rhetorical question. Yes, everyone is harmed by it.

There are incentives to use AI to hasten your publication rate, even if you churn out slop. I saw but have yet to investigate a report that nearly a third of recent dissertations in STEM fields included AI-generated text. There’s incentive to cut corners, do easier research with a faster turnover rate, fail to take time to polish work because of deadlines (a certain number of publications may be required or expected to keep or obtain a job) or internal pressure (more publications are always better than fewer, all else being equal).

Given all these considerations I haven’t even begun to address in any detail, it may very well be that the norm of mandatory pre-publication peer review and the peer review process itself not only haven’t improved the quality of research, but have actively led to undermining the quality of research. But the rot doesn’t stop there. They’ve centered the entirety of academia around the process. As a result, they threaten not only the quality of research, but the quality of researchers themselves. We’re dragged along, kicking and screaming, by the yawning maw of the journal publication system, because our advancement and even continued participation in our respective fields require that we pass through this process.

We’ve created a system that isn’t actually measuring quality. It’s measuring an indirect indicator of quality. And because of the conflations mentioned at the start of this article, people are so lazy, stupid, naive, or negligent that they’re simply unwilling to look at the situation for what it is: we’ve let our metrics run amok, and have replaced an actual and direct evaluation of the merits and quality of work with a tool initially devised to serve as a public indicator of quality.

This process may have worked well initially, but with the gradual entropy associated with any system vulnerable to being Goodharted, exacerbated by the highly competitive job markets throughout nearly every academic field, the resulting system is one that not only no longer does a good job of serving its initial purpose, but one that has warped and corrupted academia and academics themselves.

I see little way out. The system has become so entrenched that not only has the measure become the target (i.e., the goal is publication, not the production of good research), it’s become so integral to career advancement that the costs of anyone abandoning ship are too massive, and individuals and smaller groups couldn’t defect without being marooned somewhere outside academia, where few would ever hear from them again. You can either participate in the process and be consumed by it, or you can be left behind.

It’s as if we all started out racing towards a bright finish line, only for it to gradually dawn on us that we were barreling towards a monster. And yet, despite the fact that many of us can see the many-tentacled horror looming on the horizon, we have to keep racing towards it. After all, we wouldn’t want our colleagues to get eaten first.

This article is a critical response to this one:

Both Sides Brigade

Moral Relativists Should Just Be Emotivists Instead

In the online philosophy space, relativism seems to be significantly more popular than emotivism among the anti-realist crowd. And for a while, that made sense to me, given that emotivism (supposedly) faces all sorts of problems that relativism can avoid. However, after going back to reread Jud…

Read more

3 months ago · 23 likes · 58 comments · Both Sides Brigade

Go check that out first.

1.0 Relativism is Weird

Metaethical relativism is a pretty weird position. Outside of academic philosophy, people will often say they are relativists, but further discussion will often reveal that the position they hold is a muddled amalgamation of normative, metaethical, and descriptive views: they want to be tolerant, they recognize different people and societies have different moral standards, they think that what’s right or wrong “depends on the context,” they think we should abstain from judging other people or cultures in specific circumstances (but often not others, and they’re often not very consistent or principled about this), that it’s difficult to figure out what’s right or wrong, and so on. This isn’t “metaethical relativism.” It is folk relativism: a cluster of associated and often incoherent views that are held to varying degrees by people who nominally identify as “moral relativists.”

Metaethical relativism can also be understood as a family of philosophical positions with tighter and more principled constraints. Yet even this position is routinely characterized in ways that are inadequate, muddled, inconsistent (internally or with respect to other accounts), or downright inaccurate. It is also frequently presented, including by professional philosophers, as a kind of punching bag: a caricature of a view presented to students solely for the purposes of ridiculing the view and explaining why it’s so stupid and terrible. Some of this may be motivated by the personal animus of instructors, but much of it may be motivated by the phenomenon of student relativism, the tendency for students to espouse relativism (often of the folk variety described above).

Student relativism can be an impediment to instruction, and so it is important for instructors to at least attempt to disabuse students of the notion in order to get on with the serious business of moral philosophy. I’ll save denunciations of such practices for another day, but for now it will suffice to say that it isn’t an instructor’s place to browbeat metaethical views out of students: yes, clear up confusions and reluctance to engage in serious thinking, but this should not come at the cost of coercing students into holding views more amenable to one’s own. That isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, the role of philosophical instruction.

2.0 Stance-dependence & Indexicality

For now, I want to focus on a peculiar line of critique against metaethical relativism. This critique only makes sense once we disambiguate some of the possible positions that one may describe as metaethical relativism. There is, as is typical for philosophy, no canonical, settled conception of metaethical relativism in the first place. Generally speaking, metaethical relativist positions allow for there to be more than one correct set of moral standards.

Yet philosophers are not always consistent with the terminology even in this regard. “Relativism” or its cousin “subjectivism” are sometimes used to refer to any position which treats moral claims as stance-dependent, even if there is only a single possible correct set of moral standards. So, for instance, ideal observer theory may be described as a “subjectivist” view. Nonphilosophers (and sometimes philosophers) will likewise describe Divine Command Theory as a form of “subjectivism,” even if the view holds that all moral truths are fixed by God’s stances (never mind that proponents of DCT often reject the notion that their position is a form of relativism, subjectivism, or antirealism).

Why would they do this? Part of the reason is that certain philosophical views tend to cluster together, and people often lump conjunctions of views under a common label even when one can extricate one philosophical view from another. Here are two important distinctions to consider:

As you can see above, there are two distinct questions: whether moral truths depend on stances, and whether the truth of moral claims involves indexing of some kind.

Here, I will understand relativism to be about indexicality, and not stance-dependence. Metaethical relativism is the view that moral claims contain an indexical element whereby they can only be judged as true or false relative to the standards to which they are indexed. This creates the possibility that a given moral claim can be true relative to one index, but false relative to another, just like the statement “I am in New York” can be true when one person says it but false when another says it. Relativism thus creates the possibility for more than one distinct standard of moral truth.

…That’s it. It is not about stance-dependence. And yet metaethical relativism is often defined as the view that moral truth is determined by the standards of individuals or groups. Why is this misleading? Because these definitions fail to draw a distinction between:

• Indexicality

• The standards to which moral claims are indexed.

All relativism requires is indexicality. It does not require that claims be indexed to stances. Or at least, the way I am using the term “relativism” draws a distinction between these, rather than sloppily smashing them together. After all, what would we call a metaethical view which includes indexicality but doesn’t index to stances? Why not use “relativism” for metaethical systems which index, and “stance-dependent cognitivism” or something along these lines to refer to systems which hold that there are moral truths, but they depend on stances?

Doing so allows us to create a 2 x 2 matrix that illustrates all four possible combinations of indexicality and stance-dependence:

Distinguishing indexicality from stance-dependence illustrates how there are multiple possible metaethical systems aside from non-indexical realism and stance-dependent relativism: you can also combine indexicality with stance-independence and non-indexical systems with stance-dependence, respectively. The latter yields antirealist positions which hold that there is a single standard of moral truth, but that this standard depends on a stance: god’s, an ideal observer’s, and so on. Likewise, you could hold that moral truth can vary depending on which standard it is indexed to, but hold that these standards are stance-independent.

I don’t know of anyone who has ever endorsed such a view, but it is conceptually possible to do so. If this sounds bizarre to you, imagine if someone held that each of us is obligated to abide by the standards of our astrological signs, or imagine a pagan world in which people are expected to abide by the moral standards of the patron religions of their respective city-states. In such a world, “It is wrong to steal” could be true relative to the standards of a Capricorn, but false relative to the standards of a Gemini. There is no good reason to ignore such conceptual possibilities merely because such views aren’t endorsed by contemporary academics.

Another benefit of distinguishing stance-dependence from indexicality is that it clarifies the nature of the philosophical dispute between realists and antirealists. Insofar as moral realism is understood to be the view that there are stance-independent moral truths, it should now be clear that relativism does not entail antirealism. Relativism concerns indexicality, not stance-dependence. Most contemporary moral realists probably want to rule out both stance-dependence and relativism, but technically this would mean that they’d be rejecting antirealist accounts and a subset of realist accounts: relativistic forms of realism. In practice relativists tend also to be antirealists, since they hold that moral claims are made true by the stances of individuals or cultures. But in principle they need not do so.

Yet contemporary moral realists typically favor a conception of morality in which there are not only stance-independent moral truths, but these truths are universal and nonrelative, and thus applicable to everyone. It simply wouldn’t do for people to be subject to different sets of standards. Realists usually want there to be one set of moral standards to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

3.0 Needlessly Complicating Things

Regrettably, clarity about this distinction alone is insufficient to address relevant variants of relativism. Philosophers often append more to relativism than is strictly needed. As I’ve presented it here, there is a close relation between meaning and reality. What does metaethical relativism commit one to? Only that:

• Moral claims can be true or false

• Their truth or falsity depends on the standard they’re indexed to

“Stealing is wrong” is true if it’s indexed to a standard that holds that it’s wrong, and false if it’s indexed to a standard that doesn’t hold that it’s wrong. I don’t want to complicate things further than this, but there is one more point to make, and it starts with a question: which moral claims? Whose moral claims is relativism supposed to account for?

Metaethical relativism is intended to provide a descriptive account of the meaning of everyday moral claims, e.g., “She shouldn’t have done that!” or “That man is a monster!” It is first and foremost a descriptive account of language. It’s not about how we should speak or could speak, but about how we do speak. Language is a behavior. Behavior is the domain of psychology. And thus metaethical relativism is ultimately a psychological hypothesis. While it is potentially coupled with metaphysical and other claims, these claims are all contingent on its empirical foundation as an account of what ordinary people are doing when they say certain sorts of things. At its core, then, metaethical relativism is simply the view that when people say things like “[Some action] is wrong,” they mean that the action is wrong according to some particular standard of evaluation among others. That standard could be their personal preferences. It could be the norms of their culture. It could be a set of rules printed on a sheet of paper they found in their basement.

Both Sides Brigade (BSB) has some issues with relativism, however. And according to BSB, they are:

[…] beginning to think that the supposed benefits of relativism pretty much disappear once you make some very plausible assumptions about how exactly it would have to work.

As I will argue, the assumptions BSB makes are not very plausible and do not capture “how exactly it would have to work.” BSB overcomplicates relativism and presumes the relativist wants to take on board many of the theoretical contrivances that motivate moral realism. While relativists can do this, they don’t have to, and abandoning them doesn’t involve paying any significant theoretical price or biting any bullets.

BSB begins with the following account of relativism, provided by Gilbert Harman:

For the purposes of assigning truth conditions, a judgment of the form It would be morally wrong of P to D, has to be understood as elliptical for a judgment of the form In relation to moral framework M, it would be morally wrong of P to D.

This characterization is fine as far as it goes. But BSB raises a concern:

Let’s start with a simple question: Just what, exactly, is a “moral framework” even supposed to be? For most other intrinsically relative statements, it’s easy enough to lay out the specific content of whatever standard makes them true. When I say that I was driving at sixty miles per hour, for example, basic physics tells us that the truth of my assertion depends on a reference frame, in the same way that the truth of my moral assertions (supposedly) depends on a moral framework. But in the case of my car, I can say more than that — I can say that the reference frame that makes my assertion true is, specifically, a coordinate system with its origin point at such-and-such a place. So what would be an equally informative account of the moral framework that, under relativism, makes my moral assertions true?

I don’t see what the issue is. To address the first question: a moral framework is any standard of moral evaluation at all, real or hypothetical. It could consist of a set of abstract normative moral principles, e.g.:

or it could be some complicated set of standards that vary across different types of actions:

However, technically speaking it isn’t sets of propositions that constitute a person’s moral framework. These propositions would be instantiated in some form: written on a sheet of paper, held as a set of values or standards a person endorsed and that were therefore encoded in some way in that person’s brain, and so on.

Now let’s turn to the second question:

So what would be an equally informative account of the moral framework that, under relativism, makes my moral assertions true?

That’s going to depend on the particular form of relativism. Relativism is an umbrella category that captures a range of possible views about what standards or frameworks people are indexing their claims to. Let’s go with a simple one: individual subjectivism. On this view, people are indexing moral claims to something like their personal values, standards, or preferences. I think it’s reasonable to want greater specificity about what values, standards, or preferences are. These are crude, underspecified terms. If we’re dealing with a psychological hypothesis, ideally we’d want to pin down the kinds of psychological states that form the foundation of a given account of metaethics. If BSB’s complaint is that nobody’s really done so, well, fair enough. I don’t think they have myself.

Some of the fault for this lies with relativists themselves. Metaethical relativism existed prior to contemporary analytic metaethics, but it hasn’t flourished under its aegis. Analytic metaethicists have inherited Western philosophy’s historical allergy to empiricism, and by that, I don’t mean analytic empiricism, I mean actual get-your-hands-dirty empiricism. The kind that involves, as the kids say, touching grass. Or more appropriately, digging up some grass and having a look at it under a microscope.

Part of the reason for this is that what moral standards hinge on can, like many philosophical issues, probably be largely set aside as less central to the relevant disputes. Must we pin down exactly what a “preference” is in order for relativism to excel over its competitors? If so, critics would be holding relativism to a standard they rarely hold themselves to. One could always nitpick: what’s a judgment? What’s a decision? What’s an act? If relativism is to be tied up in knots over what exactly moral claims are relativized to, similar persnickety problems would generalize to most of philosophy, including the views of its critics. One should always be mindful to beware isolated demands for rigor.

Note that BSB is comparing the index of moral claims for the relativist to physics, a notoriously precise discipline. Metaethical relativism is dealing in the realm of indexes: a more abstract notion that, unlike the content of physics, does not figure into a set of notions readily amenable to empirical inquiry. Metaethical relativism also remains far less developed than theories in physics, but is this the fault of the relativist? Here are some reasons to be sympathetic to the relativist:

• There aren’t that many relativists to begin with

• There is little incentive to develop certain aspects of relativism; the same cannot be said for physics

• Relativism has been on the receiving end of a sustained campaign of hostility, mischaracterization, and denigration by its critics, so much so that few philosophers explicitly advocate for the position or defend it

In spite of these setbacks, I still don’t see what the issue is. Can relativism provide as informative an account as physics?

No. Most relativists are likely to relativize moral claims to the standards of individuals or cultures. Psychology and sociology simply aren’t as precise or as developed as physics, and in any case few people working in either field are also working in contemporary analytic metaethics. This saddles the metaethicist with numerous obstacles:

1. Unlike the physicist, the relativist would have to do interdisciplinary work in both philosophy and whatever other fields would be necessary to clarify what “moral frameworks” are in an acceptable way, e.g., psychology, comparative linguistics, and so on

2. This is exacerbated by the fact that analytic metaethics operates within a fundamentally different paradigm from the natural sciences, so the interdisciplinary work would have to span disparate fields with different methods and frameworks

3. The fields the aspiring metaethical relativist would be required to work in also don’t deal with metaethical relativism very much, and lack the terminology, methods, conceptual resources, and historical body of literature to support such endeavors

The metaethical relativist thus faces a far steeper challenge than a physicist aspiring to offer an informative account of the relativity of e.g., motion. Given this, BSB’s request for an “equally informative account” of the moral frameworks that make moral assertions true is excessive, and, in any case, the absence of such an account could readily be attributed to the lack of comparative development in the fields relevant to addressing this question compared to physics. BSB is, in short, making an unreasonable, isolated demand for rigor.

BSB’s suggestions are also steeped in analytic presuppositions and assumptions, which only serves to reinforce my objection that contemporary metaethicists fail to appreciate that much of what they’re engaged with hinges on empirical questions about human psychology. Here is BSB’s first proposal:

In everyday life, we generally think of a person’s moral framework as a collection of all the moral principles they rely on to navigate life, like “demeaning others is wrong” or “you ought to help the less fortunate.” And so, at first glance, we might be tempted to think that the moral frameworks we’re talking about here are also sets of moral propositions, at least once they’re systematized in a certain way. But what many people — including many relativists — don’t seem to realize is that relativism’s core commitments explicitly rule this option out.

We might think of a moral framework as a “set of propositions,” but recall that this is an abstraction; the set of propositions reflects some underlying substrate: rules written on stone tablets, psychological states in a person’s brain, and so on.

For comparison, I have taste preferences: I like chocolate, I don’t like lima beans, I like spinach, I don’t like saltines, and so on. One could say that I have a “taste framework” that consists of a set of propositions of this kind. Supposing I’m a gastronomic relativist, and that the claims I make about what food is good or bad reflect my personal preferences, it isn’t the “taste framework” (e.g., the set of propositions that includes {cilantro is tasty}) that makes the statement “Cilantro is tasty” true when I say it; it’s my preference itself. So I’m quite puzzled at how BSB continues:

Here’s the problem: According to relativism, moral propositions are essentially… well, relative. And that means they’re ill-formed and vacuous apart from whatever framework makes them true or false, in the same way it would be meaningless to assert that something is “intrinsically stationary” apart from any reference frame. But if that really is how moral propositions get their truth values, then how could we ever make sense of the propositions that comprise a moral framework? Either each proposition would require its own moral framework, which of course would produce an infinite regress, or else the one moral framework you’ve got would be nothing but a collection of pseudo-propositions that are literally incoherent.

Something has gone wrong here. BSB seems to think that relativists think something like this: that moral frameworks are sets of propositions, e.g.:

{Stealing is wrong; lying is wrong; kindness is good; […]}

…Then BSB supposes that this set of propositions itself somehow makes statements like “Stealing is wrong” true. But this would make no sense. How can the proposition “Stealing is wrong” make the statement “Stealing is wrong” true? Unless it were made true by some more fundamental moral principle, which would simply iterate the same problem, leading to an infinite regress.

It isn’t an abstract set of propositions that makes claims made relative to the framework true. There’s no ineliminable elemental goodness here, where we somehow think a set of propositions that include “X is wrong” somehow makes “X is wrong” true. Wrongness must be discharged in some way: something is wrong when it is in violation of my personal preferences or when it is against the rules prescribed by a given system, or whatever.

So, for instance, a relativist that relativizes the truth of moral claims to personal preferences would hold that it is a person’s preferences that make their moral claims true or false. If a person prefers that people not steal, then this preference makes the statement “It is wrong to steal” true when this person makes such a claim. There’s no incoherence, no infinite regress, no philosophical problem at all. If there were, then it would apparently be a massive problem for a person to say “This pizza tastes good” and that person not be a gastronomic realist. What could they possibly mean? Wouldn’t their gastronomic claims be made true by a “gastronomic framework”? We might continue the argument along the same lines as BSB:

Wouldn’t gastronomic propositions be ill-formed and vacuous apart from whatever framework makes them true or false? How could we ever make sense of propositions that comprise a gastronomic framework? Either each proposition would require its own gastronomic framework, which of course would produce an infinite regress, or else the one gastronomic framework you’ve got would be nothing but a collection of pseudo-propositions that are literally incoherent.

Apparently, there is no way to make sense of taste claims being indexed to people’s personal preferences. There’s just no way to be a relativist about statements like “Pineapple on pizza is tasty.” Such a concern, if true, would prove too much. We should suspect, instead, that something has gone wrong with BSB’s characterization of relativism, or that, at best, BSB is targeting some bizarre form of analytic relativism that retains internally incoherent or poorly-considered features.

BSB provides us with an example to illustrate what the issue is supposed to be:

As an example, let’s say that Frank’s assertions about the rightness of X are made relative to a moral framework F, and that F contains the proposition “stealing is wrong.” If that proposition has no truth-making standard of its own, then it fails to mean anything at all, and so does his original assertion about the rightness of X. (This is because “X is right, relative to [ill-formed proposition]” is itself an ill-formed proposition.)

Why would any relativist have thought an abstract set of propositions that constitute a given standard are what make the statements made relative to that standard true? And makes it wrong how, exactly?

A better way to understand what the relativist is claiming is that if you take some set of standards, rules, and so on, one can simply report whether a given action is consistent with the standard or rule. For instance, you are allowed to kick the ball in soccer, but you may not kick the ball in basketball. Suppose someone said:

Kicking the ball is against the rules.

Suppose we know that this statement refers either to soccer or to basketball, but have no idea which one. Is this statement true or false?

It depends. In practice, this statement will be true or false relative to the game the person is indexing the statement to. People don’t typically need to state which game they’re referring to because context will resolve any such ambiguity. This is why such statements involve implicit indexing. If you’re at a basketball game and you see a player kick the ball into the net, only for the referee to call a foul and point out that “It’s against the rules to kick the ball,” it is fairly clear that they’re referring to basketball and not soccer.

What relativism facilitates is allowing one to index the truth of a claim. In the case of the rules of games, it clearly “works.” We collectively agree on the rules of a given game, and it’s our agreement that establishes what those rules are. Conditional on a given set of rules, when a person makes a claim about an action violating a rule, one simply checks which set of rules the claim is indexed to. Whether the statement is true or false turns on whether the claim is true given the rules of that game. The claim’s truth just hinges on its consistency with the given rule. It’s a separate question entirely what makes the rules true: in this case, some kind of collective agreement or socially constructed set of facts.

I think BSB has mixed up what causes or “grounds” a given moral framework and the content of the framework abstracted away from that cause/grounding, characterized as a set of propositions. The propositions don’t have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

BSB does appear to be aware that this isn’t necessary, and that some other set of facts can fix the truth of the claims in question. This would have to be the case, unless we’re to suppose all indexical claims are somehow nonsensical or incoherent. So I don’t know why BSB was ever tempted to think otherwise in the first place. Yet BSB still seems stuck on the relativist also believing in some kind of irreducible normative moral concepts. He continues:

But if, on the other hand, F’s anti-stealing proposition does come with another proposition that fixes its truth value, then that truth-making proposition would also need to be justified, in which case you inevitably end up with a framework full of infinitely complex propositions like: “Stealing is wrong, relative to a framework that says ‘stealing is wrong, relative to a framework that says “stealing is wrong, relative to…”’” and on and on forever.

It isn’t propositions that fix truth values, typically, but some fact or feature of the world. Sure, a relativist could opt for propositions to do all the work, if they’re some kind of weird analytic philosopher who constantly thinks in terms of propositions. But then the only problem with that particular relativist is that they’re thinking too much in line with BSB and other people who’ve imbibed too much analytic philosophy for their own good. The truth values could be fixed instead by e.g., psychological or sociological facts. The fact that I like chocolate makes the statement “I like chocolate” true. When I say “Chocolate is good” this is just a way of implicitly referencing my taste preferences, and it is those taste preferences (which are psychological facts) that make my statement true. This isn’t complicated or mysterious, and the same can readily apply to the moral relativist:

If “stealing is wrong” means “[I find] stealing wrong” and if when I say something is wrong it means it is inconsistent with my preferences, then if stealing is inconsistent with my preferences, it’s my preferences that make the statement “Stealing is wrong” true. My preferences, not some proposition floating in ethereal semantic space. You don’t get an infinite regress. You just get facts about people’s psychology and facts about whether statements are consistent with that psychology or not.

This isn’t just an issue for unqualified moral claims of the form “X is right” or “X is wrong,” either. The same dynamic applies to any normative assertion, including ones like “It would be good to X” or “X is valuable.” Because relativism frames all normative content as being tied to a particular framework, there’s no collection of irreducibly normative propositions (or, more accurately, pseudo-propositions) out there that could ever pull double-duty as their own truth-making grounds. But if moral frameworks can’t contain these sorts of pseudo-propositions, where else is there to look? If we want to keep the contents of the framework truth-apt, then it looks like we’ll have to consider purely descriptive propositions instead.

This isn’t an issue unless the relativist wants to have irreducibly normative moral truths as the foundation of their relativism. And why on earth would they want that? This is what brings me to the weird kind of analytic relativism BSB thinks has issues…and it does have issues.

The weird analytic form of relativism BSB is criticizing here is one according to which some set of propositions somehow determine what the locally applicable irreducibly normative truths are for each individual. There are multiple moral frameworks, each consisting of a set of propositions, and the propositions are somehow supposed to fix what irreducibly normative facts are applicable to each individual. BSB doesn’t say this, but perhaps each of these moral frameworks can somehow “give” the relevant agent or agents reasons. Is this a mess of incoherent nonsense?

Of course it is. But that has entirely to do with BSB grafting a whole contrivance of analytic nonsense like irreducible normativity onto the account of relativism he’s criticizing, and has nothing whatsoever to do with relativism itself facing any problems.

To put it simply: the only viable form of relativism is one that grounds the truth to which moral claims are relativized in descriptive facts all along. The problem was never relativism. The problem for the view BSB is criticizing here is irreducible normativity. As a moral antirealist, I don’t have a problem with stance-independence or nonrelativism. My problem is, and always has been, with irreducible normativity. Ironically, BSB seems to want to criticize and force concessions from a form of “relativism” that retains precisely the feature of moral realism that many of us antirealists consider its most fundamental issue. The form of “relativism” BSB has in mind here is barely recognizable to me; it’s about as weird and absurd as moral realism precisely because it shares the same feature that makes moral realism so objectionable in the first place: irreducible normativity.

This means that viable forms of relativism will relativize moral claims to some body of descriptive facts. This was how I conceived of relativism all along, so arriving at this point doesn’t involve me making any concessions, or to relativism proper facing any serious issues. BSB’s efforts up to this point have only illustrated the incompatibility between relativism and irreducible normativity. That they’re incompatible should come as no surprise: you can’t be compatible with nonsense.

Let’s call any form of relativism that relativizes normative truths to some set of non-normative descriptive facts reductive relativism. BSB also takes issue with reductive relativism:

The issue here, however, is two-fold: First off, there’s the well-worn criticism that making moral statements relative to descriptive facts about attitudes robs them of any actual normative heft; “X is wrong, relative to facts about what this particular community disapproves of” seems more like an anthropological observation than an actual moral assertion.

The first of these is no “criticism” at all, unless, and only unless, the proponent of such a view sees it as a cost to give up “normative heft.” I don’t. I think “normative heft” is nonsense and that it’s an advantage of an account that it doesn’t include it. It’s an advantage in the same way a good scientific theory does away with demons or mystic energy. Normative heft has about as much theoretical appeal to me as these; probably less, since demons and mystic energy sound cool and normative heft sounds boring.

Consider the latter part of this remark:

“X is wrong, relative to facts about what this particular community disapproves of” seems more like an anthropological observation than an actual moral assertion.

It is a kind of anthropological observation, but notice BSB’s use of misleading modifiers when saying that it seems more like this “than an actual moral assertion.” This use of “actual” is a misleading modifier: a way of implying that “actual” moral assertions couldn’t be anthropological observations, but must instead be something else. But the whole point of such accounts would be that the meaning of actual moral assertions is a kind of “anthropological observation.” (If you’re not familiar with the notion of a misleading modifier, consider checking out my article on the topic here.)

Not only do I find this utterly untroubling, this is exactly the point! Empirical hypotheses about what groups of humans mean when they say things should be a kind of “anthropological” observation about them. After all, the first and foremost task of metaethics is to describe what people mean when they make moral assertions. This is an empirical task, and BSB is objecting to an empirical answer as somehow not being an “actual” answer. The problem here isn’t with relativism, it’s with BSB failing to appreciate what a proper account looks like. My guess would be that this is because BSB fails to appreciate that the central task of these accounts is fundamentally a psychological one. A good explanation should sound psychological in exactly this way.

BSB insists this is some sort of issue for the relativist:

But the bigger issue is that, if relativists really do insist on seeing these expressions as legitimately moral ones, then they’ll have to go on record as saying that at least some purely descriptive facts can have substantive normative entailments all by themselves — and if you’re comfortable saying that, then why not just be a moral realist? If the natural fact that some critical mass of people in a community think X is wrong can produce actual, honest-to-goodness moral wrongness, then why not think other facts could too?

No, BSB, they do not have to go on record saying this. The relativist isn’t obliged to think that purely descriptive facts have “substantive normative entailments.” If they did, they should indeed consider just being moral realists. But again, if the relativist wants to insist that some descriptive fact like a preference “makes it true” that there’s an irreducibly normative fact about what I ought to do, and this fact “gives” me a reason, then sure: why not just be a realist? This isn’t technically realism (since moral truths are stance-dependent), but it sure is weird!

To that extent, I agree with BSB. But BSB is describing a relativist who rejects realism because they think moral truths are stance-dependent, but still wants to keep the irreducible normativity. It’s not realism, but it is something weird and objectionable. And again, ironically, what’s objectionable about it is precisely those features it shares with realism, and not the fact that the position is relativistic or stance-dependent, neither of which (by themselves or together) pose any problems at all. They’re only problems if you combine them with irreducible normativity. Of course they are: everything is a problem when you combine it with irreducible normativity!

I also want to draw attention to the persistent analytic language BSB employs. Look at the last part of this remark:

If the natural fact that some critical mass of people in a community think X is wrong can produce actual, honest-to-goodness moral wrongness, then why not think other facts could too?

First, BSB suggests people thinking something can “produce” moral wrongness, as if “moral wrongness” were some phenomenon independent of people thinking things. This is naked reification, and a strong indication that BSB is still thinking in conventionally analytic terms, whereby people thinking things has what strikes me as a kind of quasi-mystical power to produce things. When I think of production, I think of a farm producing broccoli, or a factory producing cars. Take some soil, seeds, and water, and make something new of it. Take a bunch of metal and rubber and other materials and arrange them just-so, and you get a car. In both cases, the product is something you didn’t previously have. Here, a critical mass of members in a community is supposed to make something new. But what, exactly? “Actual” and “honest-to-goodness” wrongness, apparently.

Suppose tens of thousands of years ago, before we minted coins, different tribes and communities wanted to trade. They all agreed to consider shells a form of currency. Their collective agreement effectively instituted a form of money. Did they produce anything new? Not literally: nothing physical about the shells changed. The only physical change is a kind of abstract fact about the beliefs and attitudes of members of this trade network: it really is instantiated in brain states, or neurophysiology, in some way, but the shells themselves didn’t change at all. A change in behavior followed. And that’s it. Money is socially constructed.

A relativist who thinks communities can institute, act on, and enforce norms may think of the claims people make in that community being made true to the extent that those claims just are claims about the attitudes of that community. The collective agreement to consider shells currency didn’t produce money in some deep sense; likewise, the collective attitudes of a community need not, on a relativist view, produce “actual” honest-to-goodness wrongness, whatever that’s supposed to be. Instead, the extent to which things are “right” or “wrong” is just a verbal description of facts about that community’s standards. There is no “wrongness” in some literal, reified sense. Wrongness just is constituted by the standards of the community. BSB is effectively still thinking in strict analytic reified terms, and projecting that misconception onto relativists, and finding what he sees weird and unconvincing. As he should. It would be weird and unconvincing, if the relativist were obliged to think in those terms. But they’re not.

To address this last question:

If the natural fact that some critical mass of people in a community think X is wrong can produce actual, honest-to-goodness moral wrongness, then why not think other facts could too?

This isn’t a problem for the reductive relativist. If moral claims consistently only describe what some critical mass of people in a community think is wrong, then the reason other facts wouldn’t entail that anything is right or wrong would be an empirical one: that’s just not what people mean when they say things are wrong. BSB’s question would be a bit like saying:

If the natural fact that some critical mass of people in a community think [shells] can be actual, honest-to-goodness currency, then why not think other things could be currency, too?

The answer here is obvious: they could be. They just aren’t. If people started using amber or bone for currency, then it’d be currency. Likewise, if people started using moral claims to describe something other than a critical mass of what people in a community think, then the meaning of their moral claims would change, and what those claims would be relativized to would change accordingly.

BSB might as well ask why any words mean anything. If the word “banana” refers to bananas, why not think some other word, like “manoonoo” could refer to bananas, too? It could. It just doesn’t. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, all relativism requires is an account of what a certain subset of sentences mean. While one can inject normativity into the picture, relativists don’t have to. Objections to such nonreductive forms of relativism simply won’t necessarily carry over to reductive forms of relativism. English sentences of the form “X is wrong” are used to report one’s personal preferences or the standards of their community. No reified honest-to-goodness moral truths need to be “produced” by this, and no irreducible normativity is required.

BSB goes on to argue that attitudes are more fundamental than commands, concluding that:

All this is to say: If you’re a relativist, you should think the content of the moral framework by which a person’s moral judgments get their truth values is a set of non-propositional attitudes.

…Yeah.

And for what it’s worth, this isn’t even a particularly controversial conclusion — in fact, my guess is that most sophisticated relativists don’t see our moral frameworks as being themselves truth-apt, and would prefer attitudes over commands when surveying all the non-propositional alternatives.

Probably, yes. Although I’d point out that there aren’t that many sophisticated relativists to my knowledge, because everyone’s been scared away from the position by the nonstop denigration, mischaracterization, and general hostility and disdain philosophers have heaped on it for decades.

BSB goes on to say that once we get to this point (which is where BSB should’ve started) we still supposedly get problems:

So it’s not as if, by pointing this out, I’ve done anything to disprove relativism. But with that said, I do think problems start showing up very quickly once you ask exactly how it is that these non-propositional attitudes ground our moral judgments.

The first issue is a delineation one:

The first issue, which I’ll just flag briefly before moving on, is that it’s not clear to me what standard is supposed to distinguish a specifically moral framework from any other set of attitudes, given that we all experience feelings of both moral and non-moral disapproval from time to time.

This is an issue. The problem is that it’s not at all clear that the same or similar problems don’t generalize to all metaethical accounts. It’s not as if realists or nonrelativists have offered a satisfactory account of what delineates moral from nonmoral norms. I don’t think anyone has. I endorse the position Stich takes in his article “The Moral Domain,” which you can find here. Stich puts it bluntly:

How can we specify the boundaries of the moral domain?

We can’t, because the moral domain does not exist.

One reason I’m a quietist and not a “moral relativist” or a “moral error theorist” and so on is because these accounts implicitly presuppose a uniform and determinate account of ordinary moral language, which is itself misguided (see here). However, another reason is that I don’t think there is a moral domain. This isn’t a matter of the term “moral” failing conceptual analysis; rather, it’s that the term is a conceptual kludge that arose in some cultures but fails to pick out a legitimate nomological cluster of associated features to constitute a legitimate domain at all; the same is not true of e.g., prudential or epistemic norms.

A “moral” relativist need not worry about this issue much for a few reasons. First, their position may not hinge on morality picking out a special domain of norms. They could be relativists about the category without supposing it’s a natural kind or that it has clear boundaries, and could simply decide, piecemeal, whether any given claim was relativistic or not based on some additional standards or criteria. Second, they might just shrug and acknowledge that there is no such domain and retreat to an even more antirealist position that would hardly vindicate critics of relativism. The problem BSB raises here would only remain a problem to someone who really super-duper wanted to insist that there is a moral domain and that it is relativistic, but that at least some other normative domains weren’t. That relativist may face some problems. But just about any metaethical theory would face similar problems.

Even so, we can address BSB’s claim straightforwardly:

For example, I have a powerful negative attitude towards country music, but enjoying country music doesn’t seem wrong, relative to that attitude — it just seems like something I don’t personally enjoy. Whereas it could be that I have an equally strong negative attitude towards some minor act of immorality, like cutting me off in traffic, that does end up grounding the assertion that cutting me off in traffic is wrong. So what, exactly, explains why one of these attitudes grounds wrongness and not the other?

This isn’t very difficult. The attitude need not be restricted to mere disapproval or dislike. It can be accompanied by other bells and whistles. Consider Alex. Alex has a strong negative attitude towards torture and country music. If asked, Alex would say that torture is morally wrong but that it’s not morally wrong to make or listen to country music. How can Alex reconcile this terrible inconsistency?

Easily. Alex can point to the following sorts of differences:

• Alex opposes people torturing, and thinks those who do so should be punished

• Alex does not oppose people producing or listening to country music, and does not think they should be punished

This opposition can be characterized in terms of attitudes if you like, but the point is that such distinctions simply are available to people. It is trivially easy for relativists to reconcile how they distinguish what’s “moral” from “nonmoral” in at least this loose sense.

BSB is supposing that the same attitude somehow “grounds” wrongness in one case but not the other. But we can simply point to differences in the attitudes (or beliefs or whatever other psychological states are needed to draw a distinction).

This leads to a bigger question, which has to do with the incredibly broad range of real-life moral discourse. When we engage in moral deliberation or express our moral views, we don’t just limit ourselves to assertions like “X is wrong” or “Y is bad.” We also judge that things are brave, or dishonest, or unkind, and we lay out complex relations like “Erick’s greed was worse than William’s carelessness” or “Contempt is a correct response to shamelessness.” So how are we supposed to understand the way these so-called “thick” moral assertions end up with their truth values, if the frameworks involved contain only assortments of attitudes?

At this point I feel my eyes glazing over. None of these problems are problems. Once again I’ll draw on a gastronomic parody to hopefully pump the intuition that this isn’t a troubling question at all:

This leads to a bigger question, which has to do with the incredibly broad range of real-life gastronomic discourse. When we decide what to eat for dinner or express our food preferences, we don’t just limit ourselves to assertions like “X is tasty” or “Y is gross.” We also judge that things are aromatic, cloying, gamy, unctuous, or funky, and we lay out complex relations like “Gordon Ramsay’s duck confit is worse than Jay Fai’s crab omelet” or “Contempt is a correct response to American cheese.” So how are we supposed to understand the way these so-called “thick” gastronomic assertions end up with their truth values, if the frameworks involved contain only assortments of attitudes?

As I hope you can see, these are non-issues. Thick moral concepts aren’t fully reducible to attitudes, but involve non-attitudinal descriptive facts as well, just like terms like “gamy” aren’t fully reducible to attitudes but to non-attitudinal, and ultimately non-evaluative features of the food we taste. The whole point of thick normative concepts is that they are a combination of normative and descriptive facts. If the subset of normative facts just is a subset of descriptive facts, that’s not a problem at all: one can simply distinguish these descriptive facts (in this case, attitudes) from others: in the case of thick moral concepts, it’d be some non-attitudinal description of people’s behavior or personality, and in the case of food it’d be something to do with the texture, aroma, chemical composition, and so on of the food. There shouldn’t be any difficulties understanding this.

BSB presents a proposal:

The way I see it, there are two general options available. The first would be to say that moral frameworks contain multiple distinct sorts of attitudes, each differing phenomenologically based on the concept they relate to or pick out. On this view, there’s a certain “felt sense” of greed-specific disapproval, another “felt sense” of justice-specific approval, and so on for every other basic moral concept. So when someone says that Sue’s actions were greedy, that claim would be made true by a framework containing some specific BOO_greediness attitude towards whatever it is that she did — where, to be clear, BOO_greediness would be a unique kind of attitude that grounds the truth of the claim “Sue was Greedy,” rather than just expressing generalized disapproval towards her greediness.

This isn’t necessary to account for thick moral concepts because thick moral concepts could be comprised of the same set of “moral attitudes” and whatever distinct, non-normative/non-attitudinal features are part of that thick concept. In other words, the attitudinal side of things could be the same, as long as you vary the non-attitudinal conjunct of the thick moral concept. For instance, opposition to greed and support for justice could both involve the same kind of attitude of approval or disapproval, coupled with the non-attitudinal features of what constitutes greed and justice. This is a non-issue. BSB’s proposed solution to this non-problem is so strange it almost seems like BSB doesn’t know what a thick moral concept is.

The problem with this approach is that I just cannot for the life of me understand what these distinct “felt senses” could even possibly be.

Why would that be a problem for the view rather than a problem with BSB’s own lack of imagination?

Whenever I reflect on my own experience of moral disapproval or approval, I don’t get the impression that any of those feelings come in different flavors at all.

Maybe BSB is conceptually impoverished (I’m joking, if that’s not obvious). However, in all seriousness, BSB may be overgeneralizing based on personal reflection. My feelings of approval and disapproval do sometimes come in different flavors, and I would bet many (if not most) people’s do. This may even manifest in the different emotional responses we have to different kinds of moral violations. Some moral violations are more likely to prompt a disgust response than others. Others prompt anger but less disgust. People’s moral opposition to incest may not feel the same way as moral opposition to corruption or injustice. However, this is largely an aside. Such feelings probably don’t do what BSB claims they’d need to do here, which is to be even more fine-grained: a greed-based attitude, a dishonesty-based attitude, and so on. I share skepticism that anything like this exists. But of course I don’t think it needs to.

What I disapprove of varies, of course, but the disapproval itself sure feels like the same attitude in all cases.

That’s fine, for the reasons outlined above. You don’t need different kinds of phenomenology or attitudes to account for different moral issues or to make sense of different thick moral concepts.

The alternative, then, would be to say that moral frameworks contain only the basic pro- and con- attitudes we all recognize, but just applied to particular specifications that “draw out” the intended moral concepts. I’ll symbolize this as BOO(X), where X stands in for some specification.

For example, we can imagine that Sue is selling her house, and she pulls off some sleazy maneuver to squeeze a couple thousand more dollars out of the buyer. In a case like this, it might be that the judgment “Sue is greedy” is made true relative to the speaker’s BOO(Pursuing more than what you’re fairly owed) attitude, with that specification intended to “draw out” the moral concept of greediness. But the issue here, which you might have noticed already, is that the description given is compatible with “drawing out” multiple different moral concepts; pursuing more than you’re fairly owed is, after all, not only greedy but also unfair and unkind. So no matter how carefully we try to describe the situation in a way that isolates the proper moral concept, there will always be situations where the same pro-attitude is forced to ground multiple moral judgments that are obviously distinct.

I don’t see what the issue is. There’s a distinction between expressing a pro- or con-attitude and why one expresses it. I can disapprove of Sue being greedy because it’s an instance of being unfair, because it’s an instance of being unkind, or both. The feelings and causes of the feelings are dissociable, much as I can like some foods and dislike others for different reasons. I like cold drinks on a hot day because they’re refreshing, but I like hot soup on a cold day because it warms me up. I can say “I like lemonade” and “I like soup” and express the same pro-attitude in both cases, despite there being different features of each associated with me liking them. I might like a particular soup because it reminds me of my childhood and because it tastes good at the same time. What’s the issue here? I don’t see one. And it’s not clear why one’s “boo attitude” towards a moral issue couldn’t have a similarly complicated, compound etiology. Recall that BSB outlines the issue like this:

This leads to a bigger question, which has to do with the incredibly broad range of real-life moral discourse. When we engage in moral deliberation or express our moral views, we don’t just limit ourselves to assertions like “X is wrong” or “Y is bad.” We also judge that things are brave, or dishonest, or unkind, and we lay out complex relations like “Erick’s greed was worse than William’s carelessness” or “Contempt is a correct response to shamelessness.” So how are we supposed to understand the way these so-called “thick” moral assertions end up with their truth values, if the frameworks involved contain only assortments of attitudes?

Thick moral concepts include both evaluative and non-evaluative content. The evaluative content can be a general pro/con attitude and the non-evaluative content could be whatever descriptive features are relevant. That these are dissociable and that thick moral concepts are compound concepts consisting of both evaluative and non-evaluative content that can come apart is the whole point. A person’s assessment of someone as greedy or dishonorable or whatever, on a relativist account, when it is used in such a way so as to include an evaluative component, can simply append a general pro/con attitude to some judgment that also includes descriptive content, e.g., one can judge that someone’s act involves an excessive concern for acquiring things for themselves and that they disapprove of this (they have a general con attitude towards this). In some other case they might judge that a person is cowardly because they acted in a way so as to preserve themselves out of fear at the expense of the welfare of others, and they disapprove of this. And so on. The pro/con attitudes can just be slapped onto whatever descriptive content coincides with the overall thick moral evaluation. If there’s a problem here, I don’t see what it is.

I’ll also pause to illustrate how the normative and descriptive elements of thick moral terms can be dissociated. The judgment that “Sue is greedy” could be used in a non-evaluative way, where it doesn’t even express a person’s disapproval. We can demonstrate this with Gricean cancellation. Here’s how this works. Some statements may be taken to mean or imply something, but subsequent qualification could be used to rule out particular interpretations. Consider this exchange:

Here, Sam’s response isn’t an explicit “yes,” but their response pragmatically implies that they’ve agreed to go. However, suppose Sam qualifies this remark:

Sam has canceled the conversational implicature in the first response. You can do this with thick moral terms:

One can cancel and even reverse any apparent negative evaluation of a person exhibiting these qualities. The descriptive content can come apart from what would normally be an implied negative evaluation. There are also contexts where one could offer a cold evaluation with no pro/con attitude at all, such as a robot describing a person as “greedy.”

Typically context will allow interpreters to recognize whether any given use of a thick moral term is associated with a pro or con attitude. There’s no need for fine-grained distinction, and appending general pro/con attitudes to such terminology faces no serious issues. What would make any given instance of someone saying “Sue is greedy” true or false would depend on the context of the utterance and the intentions of the speaker. Why would this person need to “isolate the proper moral concept”? BSB says:

So no matter how carefully we try to describe the situation in a way that isolates the proper moral concept, there will always be situations where the same pro-attitude is forced to ground multiple moral judgments that are obviously distinct.

It’s not even clear why this would be a problem, but a person who says someone is greedy may be only expressing one attitude at that time, even if they have other attitudes about that person as well. So they could have a con attitude about them being greedy, and a con attitude about them being unkind, but they’re only expressing the former. Or if the remark is intended to communicate both descriptive features, they could just have a con attitude towards both. Again, it’s not clear what the issue is supposed to be.

What, exactly, would be the point of adopting relativism?

This is a strange question. Adopting relativism? This language may be taken to imply something like personally accepting or committing oneself to the view. But relativism is a descriptive account that is intended to capture ordinary moral discourse. It’s about how other people speak. Whether they speak this way or not is an empirical question. BSB has raised what he takes to be problems with relativism, but are these reasons to think this isn’t how people do speak or think, or reasons to avoid personally choosing to adopt the position as a way to convey what one personally means? Because if it isn’t the former, then a proponent of the view could say that whatever problems one has with relativism, it is nevertheless how people speak and so it is true.

After all, if making relativism work requires solving all of emotivism’s problems, plus having answers to all the extra questions that pop up when you introduce an actual property of wrongness, then why not just leave that latter bit off and cut your losses?

Again, if this just is how people speak, then the reason for endorsing it is because it’s descriptively accurate. If it faces more “problems” this is irrelevant, unless these problems are taken to be reasons for thinking it isn’t descriptively accurate in the first place. Relativism isn’t something you have to “make work” other than in the sense of being explanatorily adequate in accounting for ordinary moral discourse. The relativist isn’t introducing a “property of wrongness,” the putative speakers of ordinary language apparently would be (if this is, in fact, part of one’s account). BSB’s language here is obscure. Maybe we’re still in the realm of trying to describe ordinary language, but it’s no longer clear to me that this is what BSB is doing. It sounds more like some kind of idealization that is so abstracted away from ordinary language it no longer looks like we’re addressing what are ultimately empirical questions.

As far as I can tell, there are two main concerns that tend to scare people off from emotivism: The Frege-Geach problem, first off, and then the more general sense that seeing moral assertions as being non-truth-apt expressions requires denying the self-understanding of everyday speakers. (Presumably, most people who make moral judgments take themselves to be doing more than just expressing feelings that are neither true nor false.)

Why presume? This is an empirical question. Why not run studies to address questions like this?

But what about the idea that expressivism requires some illegitimate presumptuousness about the intentions of normal people?

My response, which you might be able to predict, is that relativism has this exact same problem! Recall that relativists see moral assertions as intrinsically relative to a particular moral framework, which means that claims like “X is wrong” will always carry some elliptical standard waiting in the wings. But it seems patently obvious to me that the vast majority of everyday speakers don’t take their moral assertions to be made true solely by their own attitudes, or by anyone else’s. That doesn’t mean, to be clear, that everyday speakers are all moral realists instead — it just means that the average person has a folk conception of moral properties that doesn’t fit with the specific picture relativism paints.

Questions about people’s intentions are empirical. If you want to address these questions, you need to conduct empirical studies. And with respect to this remark:

But it seems patently obvious to me that the vast majority of everyday speakers don’t take their moral assertions to be made true solely by their own attitudes, or by anyone else’s.

…Why should any of the rest of us care what seems “patently obvious” to BSB? “The vast majority of everyday speakers” includes about 8.3 billion people speaking over 7,000 languages. Not all languages treat the terms and phrases relevant to assessing whether speakers are relativists or not the same, as Franzén details here:

Within contemporary metaethics, it is widely held that there is a “presumption of realism” in moral thought and discourse. Anti-realist views, like error theory and expressivism, may have certain theoretical considerations speaking in their favor, but our pretheoretical stance with respect to morality clearly favors objectivist metaethical views. This article argues against this widely held view. It does so by drawing from recent discussions about so-called “subjective attitude verbs” in linguistics and philosophy of language. Unlike pretheoretically objective predicates (e.g., “is made of wood”, “is 185 cm tall”), moral predicates embed felicitously under subjective attitude verbs like the English “find”. Moreover, it is argued that the widespread notion that moral discourse bears all the marks of fact-stating discourse is rooted in a blinkered focus on examples from English. Cross-linguistic considerations suggest that subjective attitude verbs are actually the default terms by which we ascribe moral views to people. Impressions to the contrary in English have to do with some unfortunate quirks of the term “think”.

Evidence about whether people speak or think like relativists would require extensive cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research. How many of these everyday speakers is BSB familiar with? How rigorous and systematic have his interactions with these people been? How many of these languages does he know well enough to critically assess their features for indications of whether those who speak them are inclined towards relativism or not? How many cultures is he familiar enough with alongside the relevant languages to make such assessments? There are over 1,000 distinct languages in New Guinea alone. How many of these languages does BSB speak? How many of the everyday speakers of these languages has he spoken to? My guess is: none, and there wouldn’t be a vindicatory response to any of the other questions I’ve posed.

And yet BSB seems entirely confident generalizing to all everyday speakers despite likely having access to less than 0.01% of them (and not even good access, at that). What’s more, BSB is writing in English and is presumably from a WEIRD population. As I’ve stressed countless times here, WEIRD populations are one of the least psychologically representative populations on the planet, including specifically with respect to their moral judgments, and we have very little data on the psychology of people from non-WEIRD populations, including with respect to their metaethical views. Simply put, BSB is not in a good position to make an informed judgment about “everyday speakers.” BSB’s knowledge is nonsystematic and exceptionally parochial.

Relying on what one finds obvious simply won’t do. Understanding what everyday speakers mean requires extensive empirical research. Neither BSB nor anyone else is entitled to make such sweeping generalizations in the absence of corroborating data.

In fact, if you gave the average person an interpretive choice between seeing their moral judgments as true, but only relative to some non-truth-apt set of attitudes, or just seeing their judgments as expressing those attitudes directly, it’s not at all obvious to me which one would feel “closer” to the folk conception that underlies general moral discourse. Relativism probably wins out on structural grounds, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone thought the sort of wrongness it provides was unsatisfying enough to make a direct reliance on attitudes more appealing. So if the problem with emotivism is supposed to be that it doesn’t match up with how everyday speakers understand their own judgments, then in my mind, relativists are throwing stones from glass houses.

What we see here is clear speculation about what ordinary people would think or say. If BSB wants to speculate about human psychology, that’s great. There’s already an empirical literature on the topic. Why not go read and address that?

Here’s a remark from Ben Watkins:

If morality were nothing more than whatever we wanted it to be, there would be no rational basis for condemning our own desires as morally wrong. Yet anyone who has felt guilty for acting selfishly recognizes that our desires can conflict with the demands of morality.

This is not true. A person can have one or more desires and also have other desires that they consider more important or prioritize over those desires. Consider a person who is addicted to smoking. This person can simultaneously both desire to quit smoking and have an intense desire to smoke. Are these “desires” exactly the same?

No. They aren’t. “Desire” is a folk psychological term that picks out a range of psychological phenomena that don’t function the same way, aren’t experienced the same way, and don’t stand in exactly the same relation to one another. An intense urge to smoke can be characterized as a desire. So, too, can a reflective, sober recognition that smoking is unhealthy and that one would be better off in the long-term if they quit smoking. One can judge the former desire by appealing to the latter.

For this reason, a person could readily judge that it would be irrational to act on their desire to smoke. You can recognize the presence of a desire and override that desire by appealing not to stance-independent normative truths about what you should do independent of your desires, but by simply appealing to other desires that you consider more important.

What this illustrates is that antirealists who ground normative evaluations of what is morally right or wrong, or normatively good or bad in nonmoral domains, can evaluate the rightness, wrongness, goodness, badness, rationality, irrationality, and so on of actions entirely by appealing to one or more existing values. Just as Alex can judge Sam by Alex’s standards, so too can a person judge some of their values by appeal to other values.

For instance, a person can recognize that they have a compulsion to steal, or are disposed towards angry outbursts, or that they are rude or abrasive or even abusive when they drink too much. Such a person can act on desires in all of these cases: a desire to steal, yell, drink, and so on, and yet consider these desires irrational, because these desires are inconsistent with promoting their overarching goals. Nothing about this is weird or a stretch or in any way difficult for the antirealist to account for.

On the contrary, I personally think it only makes sense to speak of actions as rational or irrational in relation to our goals, i.e., to think of rationality exclusively in instrumental terms. Non-instrumental conceptions of rationality end up holding what I find to be a very strange view: A person can act on their deepest and most fundamental desires, and fully achieve them, but this person is “irrational” according to such views. Conversely, a person would be rational to do something they found repugnant and despised and that thwarted their goals and made them miserable. This is a silly conception of “rationality” and yet it is the one Watkins’s account alludes to.

As Watkins’s remarks may suggest (I’m not entirely sure if Watkins himself thinks this), realists sometimes take guilt to be a signal that moral considerations involve appeal to stance-independent moral standards. There is no need to appeal to such standards, though. Guilt can be readily accommodated by moral antirealists without issue.

Guilt is a psychological phenomenon that can be and frequently is experienced as involuntary or unwanted. Does this suggest that moral demands are stance-independent?

No. It doesn’t do so any more than the fact that we can want to enjoy certain foods but find that we simply don’t like them, or want to appreciate a particular piece of art but simply find it unappealing. Guilt is not an intellectual phenomenon that tracks our implicit commitments regarding stance-independent moral truth.

Guilt is an emotional state that evolved to prompt us to experience negative affect under particular circumstances associated with our behavior in order to discourage the behavior. As we are enculturated into society, we learn about our society’s customs, norms, and expectations. We learn what others think we ought to feel guilty about. This can be internalized over time, such that the reaction we have when we perform a certain action comes unbidden and is outside our voluntary control.

Consider a person who is raised Catholic and is taught that masturbation is immoral. Even if this person becomes an atheist later in life, they may still feel guilt when they masturbate. Why? Because our brains create very strong associations with certain actions, and these associations aren’t under our voluntary control. A person can feel guilt even if they sincerely believe, with a high level of confidence, that the action in question isn’t even wrong.

Guilt wouldn’t function very well if we could simply turn it off on a whim. And so we can’t. Our lack of voluntary control over guilt is a feature of natural selection just like our lack of voluntary control over pain. Can we actively suppress pain and guilt to some extent in some cases? Sure. But our capacity to do so is limited.

Guilt can be thought of as a culturally mediated (i.e., culture and personal experiences influence what prompts us to feel guilt) but ultimately biologically based pain-like reaction to violating social norms and behaving in ways that are regarded as antisocial. We are “tuned” by our experiences to feel guilt reactions in response to certain behaviors, and this tuning can persist, and even be ineliminable, even when our philosophical beliefs completely change.

Consideration of guilt and related psychological states suggests that aspects of our motivation, emotions, attitudes, and goals fall outside the scope of our voluntary control. They simply aren’t whatever we want them to be.

More generally, critics of moral antirealism often depict antirealism as allowing for moral standards to be whatever we want them to be. But this is ambiguous. It is sometimes used to suggest or outright state that the moral antirealist’s moral values are mere whims that could change at any moment. Feel like torture or dishonesty today? Then it’s justified!

But human psychology doesn’t work this way. Our desires can be and often are fairly stable and difficult to change. Can a person change their taste preferences on a whim? No. Can they change their sexual orientation just because they feel like it? I know of no evidence that they can.

Part of what makes objections to antirealism so misguided is sloppy, uncareful consideration of the term “desire.” Desires can refer both to psychologically deep and highly ingrained dispositions and preferences that we couldn’t change without radical science-fiction technology, while at the same time referring to unstable, volatile, and whimsical dispositions and decisions, e.g., the decision to suddenly go for a drive, or have a snack. They can refer to stable commitments that never change over the course of our lives, and they can refer to fleeting moods and attitudes that strike us involuntarily and against our will, attitudes that we don’t identify with and hope never to act on. There is a vast chasm between one’s desire not to feel pain and one’s momentary, intrusive desire to give someone who cut them off on the highway the middle finger.

More generally, the “demands of morality” can feel “imposed from the outside.” But they aren’t. They are imposed on us by our own psychology, and one can internalize a guilt response that isn’t under voluntary control much as one can come to find certain things disgusting or annoying or funny. We are not torn between the false dichotomy that every response we have that involves taking an evaluative stance towards something as good, bad, right, wrong, must be either the result of some desire under our voluntary control, or that it must instead be a reaction to a recognition of stance-independent normative truths. Attitudes, preferences, and desires are, themselves, frequently outside of our control.

Yet when someone speaks of someone doing what they “want,” this doesn’t distinguish between acting on involuntary desires and goals, or acting on judgments or decisions that fall within the scope of our voluntary control. To act on or do what one wants usually implies the latter. If you go to a restaurant you can order whatever you want. But does this mean you have control over your food preferences? No. The ability to act on what one wants is circumscribed. Even when you can act on what you want, you can’t just choose to want whatever you want.

Once disambiguated properly, there is a sense in which morality can be whatever you want it to be, while at the same time you can condemn your desires as irrational or morally wrong. The experience of guilt does not illustrate otherwise. The existence of guilt is entirely consistent with antirealist conceptions of value.

1.0 Introduction

“Against Subjectivism” by Christian Gonzalez sets out to do what it says in the title: to argue against subjectivism. I’m not a subjectivist, but I’m subjectivism-adjacent. In this post, I will defend certain aspects of conventional analytic metaethical subjectivism, while proposing and defending a better alternative which is closer to my own position, quietist subjectivism. Quietist subjectivism differs from conventional subjectivism in that it rejects philosophically robust notions of normative reasons. By rejecting such notions, the resulting position is, I argue, impervious to all of the objections Christian presents. Furthermore, Christian claims that subjectivist positions commit one to biting many bullets. I likewise deny this. Whether a position requires one to “bite the bullet” can only be judged relative to background judgments about the relative defensibility or desirability of certain positions. Since I think moral realism is implausible and undesirable, I do not take rejecting it to carry any costs, and as such deny outright that subjectivism and other antirealist positions bite any bullets at all.

2.0 There are no subjectivists in foxholes!

The article begins with two remarks that raise my hackles:

“Things only matter if we care about them.” Of all the attempts to make sense of normativity, of what matters, this is the most intuitive. But you don’t really believe that. Almost no body [sic] actually does when pressed.

Cue my standard reaction to remarks like these: intuitive to who? Such remarks are underspecified. Is this a claim about some presumptively shared feature of human psychology, a normative claim about how people ought to react to such remarks, a claim about how one would react under some counterfactual circumstances (e.g., conditional on adequate reflection, rationality, training in philosophy, etc.)? Who knows. People rarely specify what they mean by such remarks. Making underspecified claims is a bad habit and philosophers should stop doing it.

The second set of remarks raise my hackles even further: Christian claims that readers don’t “really” believe that things only matter if we care about them, and that nobody maintains such a position when pressed.

There is no good reason for making either claim. Both are empirical claims about human psychology, and the latter is an especially tricky one since it’s a claim about what people would do under certain counterfactual conditions. There is no compelling evidence for either claim. People really need to get out of the business of making psychological claims but not supporting those claims with appropriate data, or at least very compelling theoretical reasons, which we aren’t given here. As an aside, people sometimes ask me if I think we need studies to confirm the sky is blue or that people don’t like being set on fire. No, I don’t think we need studies to confirm this. Certain sorts of claims can reasonably qualify as general knowledge. “People are moral realists” is not among such claims.

Such remarks are presumptuous and patronizing and I’d encourage those inclined to frame things this way to stop doing so. It reminds me of Christians who say that nobody is “really” an atheist, and that all atheists are “in denial.”

2.1 A double-edged sword

This kind of armchair psychology also cuts both ways. Realists are often confident that if you scratch the surface of a subjectivist (or antirealist in general), you’ll find a realist. But this could be the other way around. Antirealists could appeal to the asymmetry in stakes between realists and antirealists to argue that realists are more likely to be subject to motivated reasoning that biases them towards their views, and that deep down they’re antirealists in denial.

There are at least some reasons for thinking this could be true. “Against Subjectivism” focuses on Parfit’s perspective. Parfit was deeply emotionally invested in the truth of moral realism and would allegedly become despondent over the failure of his colleagues to adopt the position. Parfit appeared to believe that if realism were not true, that life would be meaningless and his life’s work would amount to nothing. For realists like Parfit, the stakes are high. And the author of this article echoes similar sentiments shortly after this by explicitly stating that the stakes “couldn’t be higher.”

How high are the stakes? For some realists, all meaning, value, and purpose hinges on the truth of realism. If realism isn’t true, then nothing matters. Conversely, the stakes are not similarly high for me or subjectivists, since we think things matter regardless of whether moral realism is true. In other words, there is an asymmetry in what is at stake between realists and antirealists. For realists, everything is at stake, while for antirealists, very little is at stake (if I were convinced of realism I might, e.g., be embarrassed to have defended the wrong view for so long. But that’s about it).

So all else being equal, we have far less of a basis for being biased in favor of our views. I could leverage that fact to write articles that begin by making this point, then insist that nobody is really a moral realist. Those who claim to be realists are actually just in a desperate state of denial and have deluded themselves in an attempt to stave off the existential dread of a universe without purpose or value. I don’t do this, because I have no idea if this is true and even if it was true to some extent for at least some realists, it’s not that relevant to assessing whether realism is true.

Most importantly, I don’t want to get into the habit of psychologizing the opposition. While this is sometimes inevitable and justified, it is too easy to unjustifiably bootstrap confidence in one’s own views by assuring oneself that one’s opposition lacks the same conviction as you. To express such views openly can also poison any hope of a productive conversation with precisely those people. I know I find it annoying when someone says that nobody really believes something I believe.

2.2 Antirealist intimidation

I also want to pause a moment to comment on the notion that subjectivists don’t adhere to their views when pressed. Pressed how, exactly? Realists may make such remarks based on anecdotal experiences: press the subjectivist, and they ultimately relent and make concessions.

I don’t doubt this does occur, but why does it occur? Maybe it’s because subjectivism is an indefensible position. But it could also be a result of who they argue with and how they argue. People often bow to social pressure, and the way I see people address antirealists and subjectivists in particular often sounds a bit coercive (even if unintentionally). Shout at a student “So if someone thought it was fine to punch you in your face and take your wallet, you’d be okay with that?!” and it should come as no surprise if a student sheepishly says “No” and slinks back into their chair, apparently humbled by the Truth that Subjectivism is Wrong. Only this isn’t a good way to criticize subjectivism, especially not under the circumstances in which this sort of thing typically occurs.

If you’re wondering, “Does this ever really happen?” Yes, it does. Pointing out that I’ve witnessed it countless times myself is likely to lead to outcries of “But that’s just anecdotal!” Well, sure, but I’m not making inferences about populations from samples. Even so, I can do at least a little more than say “Trust me, bro!” First, here’s a survey I ran on my YouTube channel. I asked this:

When people endorse relativism, others will often ask questions like, “So you don’t think the holocaust was actually, objectively wrong?” or say things like “Then you couldn’t object to someone punching you in the face and stealing your wallet.”

In other words, people use highly loaded, charged scenarios, often in a misleading fashion, in order to shame or coerce relativists into recanting their positions or shutting up by implying that the relativist holds a ridiculous position or would have to be okay with genocide or torture or couldn’t object to things they obviously object to.

Let’s call this antirealist intimidation. I’d like to ask separate questions about people being obnoxious towards moral realists or people who hold other sorts of positions. For now, my focus is specifically on people who direct these remarks at moral relativists and moral antirealists.

What I’d like to know is if you, whether as a student at university or elsewhere, have ever experienced this sort of rhetorical move or have personally witnessed others being subjected to it.

Here were the results:

At 164 votes at the time of writing, more than four out of five people report experiencing or witnessing antirealist intimidation. Here are a handful of excerpts where people elaborate on the intimidation they experienced or witnessed:

I’m not the only one who has had these sorts of experiences. What do they look like, in practice? Can I provide any examples at all of anyone doing this? Yes, I can. I can even provide an example from a professional philosopher. This is from the podcast Philosophy Gets Schooled, which begins around 8:27 here:

Telling a relativist that they’d have to walk up to people in a Nazi concentration camp and berate them for intolerance is extremely heavy-handed and likely to induce many students to recant the position not because they now recognize its intellectual shortcomings but because they don’t want to be seen as someone who’d be so disgusting and repugnant that they’d openly berate the victims of a genocide to their faces. Nothing about relativism requires that you do this.

Note, too, how students are allegedly told there’d be nothing “crass” about this. Moral relativism isn’t a position on what is or isn’t crass. This would be crass by the standards of any person I’d want to share a planet with. And one could, of course, be a relativist about crassness, so one could disagree about whether this is crass on such grounds (as an aside: it’s trivially straightforward for relativists to disagree; disagreement is not the sole province of realists, which is yet another myth realists perpetuate). Also, they incorrectly imply relativists deny there’s any truth at all, which is a basic mistake a professional philosopher shouldn’t make (and yet these remarks were made by a professional philosopher).

I want to stress that I do not take this antirealist intimidation to be intentional. It might be. But I think realists generally sincerely believe that the scenarios they describe and the questions they pose reveal the genuine implications of antirealist commitments. My task, then, is twofold: it is to show both that this isn’t the case, and that mistakenly presuming this is the case and framing questions and arguments in the way realists do can prompt people to retreat from antirealist positions not because of the philosophical indefensibility of those positions but because of inaccurate implications about the entailments of antirealist positions along with an accurate recognition that endorsing those positions would carry reputational costs, even if the potential antirealist recognizes the position in question doesn’t actually carry such unsavory implications. In other words: people can be misled into mistakenly thinking that antirealism carries terrible implications it doesn’t carry, and they can correctly recognize that even if it doesn’t carry these implications, if enough people think that it does, endorsing the position openly carries reputational costs people may be unwilling to pay.

Realists may also form the impression that subjectivists and other antirealists lack conviction or don’t seriously endorse these views because they form this impression on the basis of the subpopulations they happen to interact with. Many critics of subjectivism (and antirealism more generally) are arguing against impressionable undergraduates. It should be unsurprising if students turn out to have brittle commitments. Subjectivism and similar views are often the fence-sitter’s conciliatory stance, the sort of position one adopts in intellectually and culturally diverse environments where being perceived as tolerant and cosmopolitan is more desirable than signaling staunch adherence to stodgy principles. If these are the sorts of people realists often encounter, they build up experience dealing with soft targets who do, in fact, fold under pressure. This may give the impression that the position is weak when this isn’t the case and in fact tells us little about the merits of subjectivism.

Realists who don’t employ these strategies (whether intentional or not) still exist in an environment in which they are employed, which could result in developing the general impression that subjectivists (and other antirealists) aren’t committed to their views. Unfortunately, when one side always has the rhetorical disadvantage, this can become a self-reinforcing cycle: the very fact that they are perceived this way reinforces the impression that their position is weaker, which can bolster support for realism and weaken the resolve of anyone who dares to consider antirealist positions.

Even when one doesn’t employ these tactics, it is still inappropriate to presume to know what others think. And the claim that few people adhere to such views “when pressed” is not only a speculative claim about human psychology, but also a hypothesis about what people would do under poorly specified counterfactual conditions. Pressed how exactly? With good arguments, or rhetoric and coercion? Once again, Christian makes empirical claims for which he provides no meaningful support.

3.0 Setting up the claim

Next, Christian sets up the central thesis:

The thesis of this post is simple: there are things you should do which you nevertheless don’t want to do.

I don’t think this is simple. Even for an antirealist, it is intelligible to say that there are things you should do which you “don’t want to do.” I might say that I should go on a diet or exercise but that I don’t want to. Am I a realist? No. What I mean by this is that I believe it would be in my best interests to be healthier. This is one of the things I want. But that desire conflicts with my other desires, which are to eat lots of food and sit around writing blog posts about subjectivism. In other words, it would be in my best interests to be healthier but the actions I’d have to take in my long-term interests would be onerous and conflict with my short-term interests. Antirealism and even straightforward subjectivism are thus consistent with some construals of Christian’s remark. In order to disambiguate what the remark means in a way that rules out subjectivism would require unpacking the presuppositions implicit in the remark, such as what Christian has in mind by “should.” Yet following this remark, Christian immediately says:

This may seem so obvious as to not need to be mentioned, much less defended.

The apparent simplicity of the thesis conceals a mountain of metaphysics or, at best, underdescribed conceptual distinctions; e.g., it may invoke obscure concepts like “external reasons” that most people haven’t encountered. The obviousness of a position can often be concealed behind such underspecificity, such as the ambiguity between the ordinary meaning of terms and narrower concepts employed by philosophers. The setup continues:

But if we think that something mattering is only possible if we care about that thing, then this thesis becomes a real issue. Our options are:

1. subjective desires, or our caring about something, are the source of normativity

2. things matter objectively so, independent of our desires

3. nothing at all matters

I’m disappointed at the lack of parallelism in the three options. The first option mentions desires as the source of normativity, but the other two options don’t mention sources of normativity at all. Presumably there are objective facts in the second case that are the source of normativity, though it is unclear what the third position’s stance on normativity is: that there isn’t any?

Speaking for myself, I don’t endorse any of these positions. I don’t think there is any such thing as “normativity,” in any deep sense. While I think there is a subclass of descriptive facts one can refer to as normative facts, I don’t think there is any such thing as normativity itself, nor do I think there are any irreducibly normative facts. “Normativity” is, for me, a convenient term for picking out a potentially motivationally relevant subset of conditional facts about the relation between means and ends. So you could call me a normativity reductionist, or if you consider irreducibility to be a non-negotiable feature, I’d be an eliminativist. Without knowing what Christian has in mind by “normativity,” I simply can’t know if I’d endorse (1) or not.

I certainly wouldn’t endorse (2) or (3) though. I do think things matter, I don’t think they matter independent of our desires, and I don’t think our desires are “the source of normativity.” Without clarification, I can’t be sure these are our only options unless they were clearly reframed to be jointly exhaustive and to not rely on presuppositions I reject. Christian then says:

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

I mentioned this earlier, but this seemingly minor remark is critical. Aside from the social costs associated with taking stances on these issues, I don’t think there are any stakes. At least not from an antirealist perspective. While Christian and many realists may consider the stakes in the realist/antirealist dispute to be very high, this is itself something about which one might disagree, and that I do, in fact, disagree. It wouldn’t matter to me at all if moral realism is true. I’d have exactly the same values I currently do and act in exactly the same way. I have absolutely no interest in complying with norms or rules that are inconsistent with my personal values.

4.0 On the prevalence of subjectivism

I’ll skip over Christian’s summary of the article and move on to the next remarks of interest:

These arguments matter for two reasons. First, Subjectivism is so prevalent across moral philosophy and various other disciplines like economics and psychology that it is often implicitly assumed, or explicitly presented as if there could be no other possible way for things to matter. If these people are mistaken, clearing up this confusion is important.

I’m not sure about this. I don’t think subjectivism is that common among academic philosophers. The 2020 PhilPapers survey indicates that 62% are moral realists. Expressivists and error theorists make up 10.6% and 5.3% of antirealists, respectively, leaving us with 20.8% who endorse constructivism and another 17.8% who chose other responses. Some constructivists may regard themselves as subjectivists, but we don’t have data on how many. Likewise for those who chose “Other,” though most chose “Agnostic/undecided” or a combination of the other views. The number of subjectivists is thus, at best, a minority, and probably a small one.

I don’t know how popular it is outside of philosophy, since I haven’t seen data on that. I do suspect it’d be a lot higher in economics and psychology, but I don’t know how high. Someone should do a survey and find out. Though I’d put a big asterisk on any such survey, since I doubt people outside of philosophy, even academics, have a great understanding of what philosophers mean by “subjectivism.” More generally, research (including my own) has provided strong evidence that untrained survey respondents rarely demonstrate that they interpret metaethics stimuli as intended. Next Christian says:

Second, if I can convince you that things matter, whether we want them to or not, this may alter much of how you live your life. These are important arguments.

Speaking for myself, I am not so sure that it would. I act in accordance with my desires. If there were facts about what I should do independent of my desires I don’t think I would care at all. I think the same is true for most people, but that, too, is speculative. Questions about human psychology really are handled best by doing psychology. Not just speculating and calling that philosophy.

5.0 Reasons-first approaches

Christian takes a reasons-first approach. According to Christian, there’s a “steady consensus” that the best way to understand questions about what we should do is to construe “should” in terms of reasons. I don’t know what this alleged consensus was based on or how Christian formed this position. Is that even true? How did Christian determine this was the consensus? Christian adds:

The reasons we’ll be discussing are normative reasons (which justify actions), not explanatory or motivational reasons (which explain actions). We will not be discussing reasons which justify belief, epistemology is a whole other beast.

I don’t have a problem with reason-talk in general. And I certainly don’t have a problem with explanatory or motivational reasons:

Explanatory: “The reason it’s wet is because it’s raining.”

Motivational: “The reason I went to the store was to buy some bread.”

But Christian believes there are normative reasons, which allegedly justify actions. The “reasons-first” approach substitutes should-talk for reason-talk, such that questions about what we should do are best understood as questions about what we “have most reason to do” such that we can take:

(A) What should I do?

And translate it to:

(B) What do I have most reason to do?

Christian tries to motivate this account:

To motivate this translation to (B) consider an answer to the original question (A). Perhaps I should go for a walk, you might say. Why? What reason do I have to do that? Maybe I know it would make me feel better. But on the other hand I know that I have pressing work that needs to get done that I cannot put off any longer. This internal tug of war is hinting at what we do when we reason. We weigh up competing apparent reasons for or against an action. We then consider whether each reason is, in fact, a reason. Finally, after careful consideration, we know that we ought to do whatever we have most reason, or decisive reason to do.

Here’s the problem: I don’t think there are normative reasons. At all.

In fact, that’s not quite right. It’s not simply that I think that there could be normative reasons, but there aren’t any. It’s that I suspect the very notion of a “normative reason” is meaningless. I think the phrase normative reason is vacuous. Empty. It has no content. To illustrate why, let us consider how I’d assess the scenario Christian uses to motivate the translation of should questions into questions about “reasons.” Let’s say I am considering these questions:

Should I go for a walk?

Should I get some work done?

When I deliberate about these questions, my goal is to decide which I desire most, or which would best achieve my goals, all things considered. People are complex, and we have many competing desires that emerge from various psychological systems that serve different functions. We are motivated to reduce stress and experience immediate pleasure, but we are also motivated to think about our long-term interests and abstain from pleasure now for the sake of greater pleasure in the future. We can even value causes and people and prioritize these over our own happiness. These various goals can come into conflict, and we enter an internal tug-of-war that results in whatever course of action we ultimately take. But at no point in this process do we ever need to invoke the notion of normative reasons. All talk of motivation can be fully reduced to descriptive questions about what would or wouldn’t serve a particular goal, and whether we prioritize one goal over another.

If we construe “reasons,” including “decisive reasons” fully in terms of what would achieve our goals, then talk of “normative reasons” would be innocent. All such talk could be mapped onto existing features of our psychology and thus wouldn’t require us to posit anything conceptually or metaphysically distinct from those phenomena psychologists already acknowledge. But that does not appear to be what Christian has in mind, nor is it what Parfit has in mind. There are already hints of divergence between mine and Christian’s views in remarks like this:

We then consider whether each reason is, in fact, a reason.

What would it mean for an [apparent] reason to be “in fact, a reason”? This suggests there are such things as reasons, and that something can be one. But what does that mean? I worry that Christian has already stepped into the territory of reification. I don’t think there literally are reasons, the way there are tables or chairs (to be clear, I’m not insisting that all things that there “are” must be physical, just that the thing in question exists in some literal sense). On my view, all reason talk could be eliminated. I can’t tell if Christian would adopt a similar view or whether “reasons” are a thing in their own right that couldn’t be eliminated (either due to its conceptual indispensability, or because they exist in some ontologically substantive way, etc.). Christian continues:

This applies to all possible acceptable answers to (A). By the very act of asking this question we are implicitly requesting a reason to justify (either to ourselves or to others) what we should do.

See, that’s just it. I don’t agree. I don’t think asking what I should do implicitly involves requesting “a reason to justify […] what we should do.” What on earth does that mean? All this talk seems to sidestep psychology and replace it with ethereal philosophical notions. When I’m trying to decide what I “should do,” I am trying to figure out what would best achieve my desires. That’s it. What I am not doing is something like this:

Step 1: I want to know what I should do.

Step 2: There’s a problem. What does that mean?

Step 3: Let’s do philosophy to figure out what we’re trying to do when we ask “What should I do?” Perhaps this means we should act on our desires. Or perhaps it means we should act on something other than our desires, such as external reasons.

No. Here’s what I’m doing:

Step 1: What would best achieve my desires?

…That’s it. Just one step. I don’t think there is some philosophical problem about the meaning of normative terms like “should,” and that a desire-based account best fits the bill. I am simply and directly trying to achieve my desires from the very outset. I’m not motivated to do anything else. I don’t even know how one could be in principle, since my desires just are the things I’m motivated to do. In other words: I have goals. All of my voluntary actions are directed towards achieving those goals. How the hell else would anyone voluntarily do anything? I won’t insist they couldn’t. Throw some arguments at me. What I’m doing here is simply describing how I think about it. Someone could change my mind. But what I am not doing is thinking that my account offers a solution to a legitimate problem. Rather, I think there is no problem here, and if someone thinks I’m wrong to endorse a desire-based account, they’d have to first convince me there’s a problem, then convince me that they (as a realist) have the solution.

5.1 Desire-based alternatives

Now, one might pivot to asking me what a “desire” is. I am not wedded to there being any conceptually rich conception of a “desire” that meets the stringent standards of certain persnickety analytic philosophers. And perhaps they would say the same of their notion of “reasons,” though I do suspect it couldn’t serve the same role I think desire-talk can serve. “Desire” may be a bit of folk psychology that doesn’t really map onto a distinct phenomenon with a precise set of boundary conditions. Think of e.g., a desire to eat a cookie, a desire to get into shape, a desire to live a long happy life, and so on. Are these all the same phenomenon? Do they draw on the same cognitive processes? Are “desires” a natural kind? I don’t know. What I do know is that you can operationalize “desire” in empirical terms and make predictions based on some local account of desires. And such accounts will allow you to anticipate future experiences, make predictions, and differentiate different outcomes not just in principle but in practice. This may result in “desire” fragmenting into two or more distinct psychological phenomena, the way “memory” divides into working memory, episodic memory, semantic memory, and so on.

Given this, the notion of a “desire” can be deployed for practical purposes to capture a cluster of features of human behavior roughly centered on motivation and voluntary action. For me, this is good enough; I am not wedded to nor do I insist on reifying all the words I use and treating them as ontologically distinct entities; if “desire” turns out to be inadequate to capture the range of psychological phenomena that I have in mind, and I’d need two or more terms to get the job done, that’s fine. Even welcome.

I’m not committed to there being one notion to get the job done that I must remain loyal to because I’ve discovered it on a priori grounds or because it’s so central to my views I couldn’t manage without it. What will suffice is to be able to point to the behaviors in question and say “that’s what I’m talking about!” or to employ various models of human cognition that can fruitfully employ desire-talk or some alternative vocabulary that facilitates the relevant body of predictions and explanations. This kind of terminological and conceptual flexibility is a natural consequence of taking a pragmatist and empirical approach to such questions; as William James notes, pragmatism limbers up one’s thinking, allowing terms and concepts to be deployed without locking them in as unmoving and eternal features of one’s accounts.

Another way to put this is: I don’t see the sorts of positive accounts I offer hinging on concepts with precise conceptual contours; any positive account I put forward is provisional, action-oriented, and rooted in trying to achieve desirable outcomes. It is not about pinning down each and every concept as if one were embedding them in resin like a butterfly on display. It is enough for a notion like “desire” to serve whatever relevant predictive and explanatory roles it is suitable for in whatever model of psychology we are presently operating with and, if future discoveries recommend abandoning the notion by e.g., fragmenting the relevant processes into two or more other concepts, then so be it. In short: some distinctive account of “desires” isn’t critical to me, since any account I’d offer would be negotiable anyway. My core commitments and interests would be retained under a variety of conceptions of the notion, and would persist even were it extirpated from my accounts entirely. So if we substitute “desires” for whatever cluster of cognitive processes are associated with the initiation of voluntary action, I am fine with that.

5.2 Reasons and deliberation

Christian continues:

This is why “reasons provide the deceive [sic] battlefield” in ethics (OWM II, 269). The primacy of reasons is inescapable by virtue of playing the deliberation game.

This is premature. Christian still hasn’t given a clear explanation of what a “reason” is, much less shown that there are such things. We also haven’t been given an argument as to why we should think reasons are inescapable when deliberating. Whether that’s true or not is going to turn on what a “reason” is.

Christian then abruptly shifts into a discussion about embodied cognition. This does not seem relevant and I have no idea why Christian brings it up, though these paragraphs end with:

So further clarity on what counts as a reason is of interest even for the most vibes-first folks among us.

I want to know what a “reason” is before I know what “counts” as one, but perhaps explaining what counts as one will shed light on what they are. Unfortunately, the reification saga continues:

What’s more, all other normative concepts can be cast in this [sic] in terms of reasons. Reasons are, therefore, the most important normative concept. To cash this out explicitly:

• Something is good or valuable or desirable if, or just when, some feature of that thing gives us reason to promote it, preserve it, respect it, or bring it about in some way.

• Something is right if, or just when, we have most or decisive reason to do that thing.

• We should do what we have most or decisive reason to do.

Note the first remark: “Something is good or valuable or desirable if, or just when, some feature of that thing gives us reason to promote it, preserve it, respect it, or bring it about in some way.”

What on earth does it mean to say that “some feature of that thing gives us reason to promote it […]”? A desire gives me a reason? What does that mean? Does it cause a reason to begin to exist? How am I being given the reason? Is this talk metaphorical? Here’s an alternative model:

1. People have desires.

2. Those desires motivate them to act.

That’s it. The desires don’t give them reasons to act. They just deliberate about the various factors that impel them to act in one way or another and, via deliberation, select a course of action. Reasons serve as this superfluous middleman mediating between desires and actions. And this is important. On my view, we go directly from desires to motivation:

One might quibble about where to place “motivation” in this framing, and perhaps that matters. But right now I’m being crude. The alternative model construes reasons as serving this role:

Once one throws “reasons” into the mix, so as to precede the act of deliberation, one can then nominate non-desires as candidate factors that “give” us reasons, and then we’re off to the races: there’s already the possibility that our actions “should” be based on considerations other than our desires, because these non-desires “give” us “reasons.”

Note, too, that the very way Christian is describing reasons already begs the question against subjectivism. Reasons are already framed as being object-given, rather than stemming from or being reducible to facts about our desires (or any other stances). Recall that Christian says that things are good, valuable, or desirable when features of the things give us reason to promote them. This already presupposes that reasons are object-given, rather than stemming from our desires. This isn’t an appropriate way to describe normative reasons because it already externalizes normative and evaluative considerations to facts about the world independent of our desires, e.g., the features of families “give us reason” to have families, or the features of kindness “give us reason” to be kind. It is not appropriate to presuppose reasons are object-given in this way, since this frames all antirealist accounts which identify reasons with our desires as not technically providing us with normative reasons.

But I don’t think it means anything to say that non-desires can “give us reasons.” Technically speaking, I don’t think desires “give us reasons,” either, which I’ll get to. But for now, I want to focus on the notion of non-desires “giving” us reasons. When I ask realists what it would mean for something to give us a reason, or for us to have a reason, pretty much all I am told is that this means that some fact “counts in favor” of us performing the action in question. Yet as Parfit concedes, this just means that we have a reason. So, what we have is no explanation at all. “Reasons” of the relevant sort are ineffable. Their meaning cannot be communicated. I find this highly suspicious, but apparently almost nobody else does. As the article proceeds, we will see that Christian acknowledges that normative reasons are “undefinable,” but I think the situation is far worse than this.

Christian continues:

Someone may wish to define all these normative concepts in favor of their favorite, different, fundamental normative concept and then smack me over the head with a copy of Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good while shouting “Kegan stage 4!” but there’s several issues here. First, I see no way out of the inescapability of reasons as the implicitly requested answer format whenever we ask a question which invites deliberation on what we should do.

I’m puzzled by this last remark. Why are “reasons” inescapable? And why is Christian presuming that these are what we’re asking for when we ask questions which invite deliberation? That, too, is an empirical question.

They’re not what I’m asking for, and if they are what others are asking for, is that an empirical claim about their intentions? If so, is there evidence people employ this notion of normative reasons? If not, then what kind of claim is it? What research has shown that the goal of deliberation is to identify what “reasons” we have for action? This is a rhetorical question. No such research has (to my knowledge) been conducted. This is just more empirical speculation on Christian’s part.

I don’t really disagree much with the second part of this:

Second, most other senses of the word should do not help us deliberate. The first option is you define should in terms of some natural fact like happiness-maximization or pareto efficiency, in which case there’s no longer any normative component. If you tell me an action is pareto efficient, I can always respond with “so what?” Without a follow up claim about what I have reason to do, you might as well just point out the color of the sky or some other random fact which has no bearing on me. You need to give me a reason to care. Chances are, you’re implicitly assuming that I have a reason to be efficient, or to satisfy some desire, or to experience some positive state of consciousness. But that’s just reason-first again in a trench coat.

This applies equally well to “reasons” that don’t terminate in desires. Suppose you discovered you had a “reason” to do something entirely contrary to all that you hold dear and care about. I’d respond with a “So what?” What about you? I have no interest in doing anything utterly at odds with my desires.

Furthermore, you could always ask why if all someone gives you is some fact about how something maximizes happiness. And it would be a legitimate question. But for me, this terminates with a response like “because I want to” or “because it would achieve my goals.” I consider these adequate foundations on which to deliberate about what to do. Nothing further is needed. Now, perhaps you don’t agree, but I’m not trying to defend a positive account of some alternative notion here. That isn’t simply because my goal here is to critique, but because I don’t think there’s any problem in need of solving or any legitimate question in need of answering in the first place. It would suffice for me to raise enough problems and red flags with Christian’s account that one retreats from it, even if one is left adrift not knowing what to endorse instead.

Note, by the way, this remark:

You need to give me a reason to care.

Emphasis is placed on “reason,” but I think the more important word here is “care.” If you want me to do something, I would in fact say that you’d need to “give me a reason to care.” But I interpret this as a demand to explain to me how something promotes my goals and interests; that’s just what it means for me to care. It may be that Christian has unwittingly acknowledged that external reasons (i.e., reasons that aren’t reducible to or based on our desires or stances) only function or are relevant to us if they comport with our stances or desires. This would be a fairly massive concession for realists to make.

Also, if “only” caring about your own goals or values sounds selfish, keep in mind that this does not necessarily mean you only care about your personal happiness or success; your goals can be altruistic or involve concern for others. Subjectivism is not hedonism. It also doesn’t mean that you don’t care about other people’s goals or values. It just means that those goals or values are not your goals or values, and that to the extent that you value them (if you do value them), it is in virtue of the fact that you value people achieving their values, provided those values aren’t at odds with your own values. I don’t share the values of someone else who, for instance, wants to chop people up and eat them, nor do I want them to act on such a value. I do care about the concerns and values of others, but only in a kind of secondary way: I care about people being happy and achieving their goals, not because I share their goals or experience their happiness, but because I think it’s good when other people are happy and achieve their goals…good relative to my values. A subjectivist view thus in no way entails wanton hedonism or a disregard for other people’s interests.

I also don’t care if I have “reasons” to do things that aren’t consistent with my desires. Do you? If so, what does it mean for you to care about complying with these reasons independent of your desires? The notion of reasons that aren’t reducible to desires sets up a strange intermediary step, as noted above. I move from desire to action. While it’s possible to desire to comply with whatever one has desire-independent reasons to do, this still means that whether these “reasons” have any motivating force over us still turns on whether we care about complying with them, i.e., on our desires. Stance-independent normative truths are thus always dependent for their actionability on comporting with our stance-dependent values. In the absence of such values, they are utterly inert. Speaking for myself, I am baffled at the notion that someone would desire to comply with reasons that aren’t constituted by their desires, especially since few people believe they know precisely what these reasons are. Why would you outsource your decision-making to standards that aren’t your own? What’s the point? Why do you care? These aren’t rhetorical questions. I’d actually like to hear from realists about this.

Moving on, according to Christian we do have another option besides this reasons-first approach, along with a presage of its shortcomings:

Your other option is to define your terms in Subjectivist ways, to necessarily link should or ought or right with our subjective desires or aims. But this, as we will see below, is a concealed tautology.

It is a sort of tautology, but there’s no “but”. This isn’t a problem. If in saying “I should go to the store” I mean “I want to go to the store,” I am offering a tautology. But there’s no problem with this. If two statements mean the same thing, well, then that’s just true.

Christian also offers another rationale for taking the reasons-first approach which I am sympathetic to in principle: a pragmatic reason to do so:

The final reason we should be reasons-first comes when we take a pragmatist’s perspective. I would simply invite the reader to put on this reasons-first mask, look around for a while, and ask yourself if it’s a useful frame. Anecdotally, when I first came across this framework a lot snapped into place for me. Various normative concepts started to fit together rather elegantly and I was able to more adeptly use them in domains they were specifically suited for. Perhaps a similar level of clarity will begin to shape up for you. Perhaps it’s already starting to.

Ironically, I am a pragmatist, and one of the main reasons I not only reject the reasons-first approach, but dismiss the notion of normative reasons because I don’t think the concept does any work: it is explanatorily and deliberatively superfluous. In other words, we don’t need to posit “reasons” to explain any observations or solve any problems, nor are they helpful in deliberating about what to do.

6.0 Effing the Ineffable

If we’re going to take a reasons-first approach, it’d be helpful to know what a reason is. Unfortunately, like Parfit, Christian can’t help us:

So what then is a reason? Well, reasons are… undefinable. I could truly tell you that reasons are facts which “count in favor of” an action, belief, or attitude. But “counts in favor” roughly means “gives a reason for” (OWM II, 272). That may be unsatisfactory but that’s also to be expected of a fundamental concept. Nor is this unusual. Other baseline concepts like space, time, consciousness, possibility, and necessity are similarly non-circularly undefinable. The best we can do is wave our hands around and utter enough noises until the thoughts which contain this concept (or that of space, time, etc.) are elicited in another’s mind. This is true even of colors.

We’re given the standard reasons = things that “count in favor,” coupled with the acknowledgement that this doesn’t really get us anywhere. What I take issue with is this: Christian simply declares the concept a “fundamental” concept. Ordinarily, we might expect someone using some term, especially a technical term, to tell us what it means. We’re not told what it means. Instead, Christian suggests that (a) we already use terms like this and (b) we can at best try to point and grunt until someone gets the idea, like colors.

I don’t find either of these satisfactory, though it also remains unclear to me what Christian means by the term being undefinable. That could have a fairly narrow meaning (something like that we can’t give a conceptual analysis or dictionary definition) or something broad (we can’t communicate the concept at all). I don’t have a huge problem with the former, but I do have a problem with the latter. Regardless of whether a concept can be defined, we at least expect people who introduce us to a new term to do something to cause us to acquire the concept.

If a biologist identifies a new organ in an animal, we expect them to be able to tell us what it is. Describe it. Show us a picture. Tell us about what it does. Tell us where we can find it.

If a physicist posits a new particle, they’ll tell us what observations it explains, what problems positing it solves, and what predictions we might make, conditional on the particle existing, that we’d expect if it does exist and that differ from alternative accounts that don’t posit it.

I could go on, but the general point here is that if one throws a new term or concept out there, we typically expect some account of what it is. And in the case of the other terms Christian claims are undefinable, I think we can give an account of all of them, with the possible exception of “consciousness,” which, if it refers to phenomenal consciousness, is a term I explicitly regard as meaningless.

But Parfitian normative reasons aren’t like this. Nobody can tell us what they are, or how they work. They’re mysterious. Those who claim to understand the concept of a reason simply insist they have the concept. People who think they have qualia or phenomenal consciousness do much the same. But terms like space and time readily figure into models in physics. They may be difficult to grasp but they aren’t “primitive” or incapable of being understood.

Personally, I think the notion of a normative reason is a pseudoconcept. I think that what’s happened is that English-speaking philosophers have reified certain terms, like “reason,” and mistakenly taken them to be things-in-themselves, something one can have, something that can be “generated” by facts or desires. But really, it’s just a word that figures into our discourse in various ways but isn’t something independent of those phenomena that we uncontroversially do have, such as desires or beliefs. As a result, the notion of a “reason” can break away from its role in explaining or appealing to our desires and serve some other purpose, a purpose it doesn’t serve in ordinary language and is instead a philosophical invention, a mutated extension of its everyday uses that emerges only in theoretical contexts and that cannot be reabsorbed into ordinary practice in any distinctive way. I could be wrong about this. But I am not convinced any of those other terms are “undefinable” in any nontrivial sense.

But even if they were, why should we induct normative reasons into the hallowed halls of terms like “time” and “space”? How does one identify concepts that belong in this category rather than instances in which one is confused or mistaken and in the possession of a pseudoconcept?

The best we can do is wave our hands around and utter enough noises until the thoughts which contain this concept (or that of space, time, etc.) are elicited in another’s mind.

How does one know when they’ve acquired the concept rather than simply become confused and mistakenly think that they have it? How does one know that one’s concept is the same as someone else’s?

This is true even of colors.

Color discrimination is a functional ability with a well-described basis in features of human anatomy (eyes, the brain, etc.) and physics (light). Since I don’t think there are any qualia at all, including color qualia, I don’t think there is some distinctive phenomenon that resists definability in this case, either. Again, though, this is going to hinge on what one means by something being “undefinable.” Since I’ll have to keep repeating that point, I’ll set these concerns aside for now and simply say this:

My current stance on normative reasons is not that they don’t exist, but that there is no actual concept of a normative reason. I think talk of such reasons is a conceptual confusion invented by philosophers. It’s hard to say more against the concept because so little can be said about it in the first place. And yet despite this, it serves a foundational role in Parfit’s and similar metaethical views. I think this should be a massive red flag.

Christian goes on to say that we may still ask:

When do we have a reason to act?

We can ask this, but I don’t think it means anything. Christian continues:

For every philosophical question, there’s typically a “common sense” answer, at least from the perspective of Western, usually STEM-educated or otherwise analytical individual [sic]. These individual [sic] are usually secular, favor reductive explanations, and operate out of a materialist worldview. Perhaps they’ve even read a little philosophy and are familiar with Kant’s idea of a hypothetical imperative which, translating to our reasons-first language, states that one has a reason to X when one has a desire or aim to X. This seems so obvious as to hardly be worth mentioning. It’s an apoditic [sic] truth a Kantian would probably say. Wanting to do something counts in favor of doing that thing! Duh! This is the fundamental intuition behind the Subjectivist tradition dating back most famously to Hume.

I really like the emphasis on demographic characteristics influencing people’s worldviews, because this is a point I stress constantly. I don’t know quite why we’d consider the views of this population “common sense” or what that’s supposed to mean, but I don’t personally grant that “one has a reason to X when one has a desire or aim to X.” I suspect Christian and others who say things like this mean it literally: that desires cause there to be reasons, but I think this is confused. I think people have goals and they are motivated to pursue those goals. And I think there are no further facts in the relevant sense. I don’t think their goals (or desires, or aims, or whatever) “give” them reasons or that one “has” reasons. While I might say “Mike has a reason to go to the store,” what I don’t mean is that if Mike desires to get something he could get at the store, this “gives” him a reason to go to the store. What I mean is something like “It would serve Mike’s (or some other person’s) goals to go to the store.” Talk of desires (or any other facts) “giving” reasons should be understood as a figure of speech. I worry that philosophers may have inadvertently elevated mere figures of speech to the status of serious metaphysical theses. I’ve said more about this elsewhere, such as here, but I’ll have more to say about this in the future.

I don’t think wanting things “counts in favor” of doing them since I deny that this is meaningful. And I don’t think subjectivism should be saddled with the conceptual confusions that plague realists. In other words, I don’t think desires “give us reasons” or “count in favor” of actions any more than anything else does. So my account rejects any kind of metaphysically or conceptually laden subjectivism if it, too, takes such notions on board by adopting ineffable conceptions of “reasons.” Note, in other words, that so long as subjectivism or any other antirealist account is saddled with weird conceptions of “reasons,” then its problems may stem (at least in part) from this rather than whatever other issues the position has. Ironically, then, the main issue with some antirealist positions may be that they’re too much like realism.

I don’t want to dwell on the notion of reasons being “undefinable” too much, so I’ll cut things short here. I’ll end with two remarks.

First, that “reasons” talk is “undefinable” should be taken as a significant red flag about a view. It is always better to define or in some way communicate what you mean than to concede that you’re unable to do so and evoke a mysterious or obscure notion that you can’t explain.

Second, framing these matters in terms of “reasons” is a relatively recent, parochial development. It is quite strange when proponents of such views take their perspective to be so inescapably self-evident that they don’t bother to ensure that others think the same way, either historically or in the present. There is little empirical evidence that ineffable notions of normative reasons are a feature of ordinary thought or language, among native English speakers or otherwise. As such, those who claim to “have” the concepts in question are not entitled to insist that their possession of such concepts is ordinary, typical, or representative of some universal way of thinking. That’s an empirical question, and nobody’s done the work to show that it’s true. So people allegedly in possession of these concepts are making a mistake when they treat those, like me, who are skeptical that there even is a concept to be had as though we are psychological outliers: this has yet to be demonstrated.

7.0 Analytic Subjectivism

Recall that Christian stated that:

Wanting to do something counts in favor of doing that thing! Duh! This is the fundamental intuition behind the Subjectivist tradition dating back most famously to Hume.

I am not on board with this and consider such a move indefensible. I do not think that wanting things “counts in favor” of doing those things. I think this notion of “counting in favor” is philosophical gobbledygook that doesn’t mean anything and reintroduces core features of what I find unacceptable about realism into subjectivist accounts as well. This is why I favor quietism, because it is not Humean in the sense this passage alludes to, which retains objectionable reification. Now, the reason I say this is because Christian attributes features to subjectivist views that a subjectivist doesn’t have to endorse. The various forms of subjectivism he deals with ultimately inherit many of their features from the analytic tradition in which Christian operates and in which the whole realist/antirealist dialectic takes place. Many of the problems with this dialectic are symptomatic of all the standard positions, and when antirealist views are saddled with some of these features, they may turn out to have problems that arise from the poor synergy between these features and their other characteristics. One way to rescue subjectivism, then, is to shrug off these features, e.g., notions of desires “giving” reasons, and so on.

While I am happy to defend subjectivism, I will not defend any accounts of subjectivism that stick their necks out and embrace the faulty notions of analytic philosophers. When Christian turns his attention to analytic subjectivism, then, I will largely abandon it to the wolves. But all is not lost! As I will argue, something akin to analytic subjectivism can readily emerge from the analytic ashes and do just fine. What is this form of subjectivism? I will call it quietist subjectivism. Quietist subjectivism rejects the notion that wanting things “counts in favor” of doing them or “gives” us “reasons” to do them. Instead, one simply holds that we are motivated in certain ways and act on those motivations, and…that’s it. Such an account jettisons normativity as anything distinct from descriptivity. Subjectivists who construe normativity in such a way that they think that something gives, provides, or generates “reasons” that “count in favor” of what we “should” do make a serious mistake: they treat normative talk as something conceptually and/or metaphysically separate and distinct from descriptive facts, as something one needs an account of, as a problem to be solved, then present desires as the solution.

But normative talk is just that: a way of talking. It isn’t a distinct property or phenomenon in need of accounting for in some metaphysically distinct or even conceptually rich sense. All we have to do is account for normative language, and any question of deep metaphysical issues or robust conceptual distinctions dissolves. Analytic subjectivism almost does this, but the kinds of subjectivism Christian addresses don’t adequately finesse the distinction between normative discourse in an abstract, theoretical, or philosophical context from its use in richer, practical, real-world contexts. With a few modifications, it would do just fine. So the position I defend is in some ways similar to analytic subjectivism, which is the very first form of subjectivism Christian addresses and arguably the one many would consider the least defensible.

So let’s address why that is, and how with a few modifications it will work just fine, before addressing the cluster of latter-day forms of subjectivism that follow in its wake. Christian says that analytic subjectivists:

like to draw a straight line between should, reasons, and desires.

Christian draws on Parfit’s characterization of desires:

any state of being motivated, or of wanting something to happen and being to some degree disposed to make it happen, if we can. (As quoted in Parfit, 2011, p. 43)

This account of desires seems fine to me. But Christian charges proponents of this view with saying something vacuous. Here’s the problem. According to Christian, analytic subjectivists hold that we should interpret:

we have most reason to act in some way

as

this act would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

In addition, analytic subjectivists hold that:

we have most reason to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires

The problem is that once we combine these claims, the position amounts to holding that:

what would best fulfill our present fulfill [sic] informed terminal desires is what would best fulfil our present fully informed desires.

…So the position ends up as a tautology. Insofar as this is an accurate representation of an actual view, I don’t endorse it. Why? Because this account already bakes in some of the features Christian introduces later on, features which presuppose certain concerns analytic philosophers have that presuppose reason-talk. In this case, the main problem is the inclusion of “fully informed.” The purpose of this feature of the account is to distinguish between cases in which we have false information about what would serve our interests from cases in which we don’t. Suppose you wanted to drink a glass of clear liquid you mistakenly believed was water, when in fact it was poison. If you were fully informed, you wouldn’t want to drink it. This feature is supposed to account for the fact that you don’t “have a re ason” to drink the poison water. But this is only included as a result of confused reactions to thought experiments that fail to distinguish terminal and instrumental desires. Our “intuition” that we don’t “have a reason” to drink poison merely because we think it is water (and we want to drink water to quench our thirst) is better understood as recognizing that a particular desire (to quench our thirst) wouldn’t be satisfied in a scenario in which we stipulate a course of action wouldn’t satisfy the desire. We’ll encounter this below when we get to the relevant scenario. But the bigger problem with Christian’s characterization of the analytic subjectivist account is that the analytic subjectivist purportedly offers us an account of what it means to say we “have most reason” to do something, then once this is answered, repeats the question with the analysis excluded from the phrasing “most reason.” If the analytic subjectivist goes along with this, they have been complicit in walking into a linguistic trap they never needed to walk into. Note how Christian says that the analytic subjectivist analyzes:

we have most reason to act in some way

as

this act would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

then they allegedly turn around and say that the answer to what we have most reason to do is to:

best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

This is bizarre. Why would someone think that the answer to the question “What do you have most reason to do?” is to say that you have most reason to best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires, and to interpret the question as asking them what would best fulfill their present fully informed terminal desires, but somehow be so confused as to fail to distinguish the question itself as the culprit behind the terminology, and instead willingly allow one’s position to become some kind of tortured verbal abomination like this:

What would best fulfill our present fulfill informed [sic] terminal desires is what would best fulfil our present fully informed desires

As if one were separately answering the question in such a way that the notion of what one had most reason to do were distinct from the answer, while simultaneously analyzing the question itself in terms of the analysis predicated on one’s answer? This is as silly as doing the following:

Alex: What is your favorite fruit?

Sam: As an analytic bananaist, I interpret the phrase “favorite fruit” as “banana.” Therefore, I interpret your question to be asking me “What is your banana?” So my answer is that my banana is my banana.

Alex: …what?

Alex is right. What? What a bizarre response. The problem with the analytic bananaist’s response is that the question is asking them which account they favor. It is not asking them to offer an analysis of the question of which account they favor in terms of which account they favor, such that to ask them what their “favorite fruit” is is to ask them to offer an analysis of “favorite fruit” in such a way that this is taken to be identified with their answer, then reanalyzed in terms of their answer, such that the question becomes a weird and pointless inquiry that already presupposes their answer. Yet this is how the analytic subjectivist is depicted by Christian. The analytic subjectivist, for some reason, interprets the phrase “most reason to do” in terms of their account, then simultaneously treats “most reason to do” as distinct from the account, ratcheting in the account after this, such that:

Most reason to do = What would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

…and, at the same time, still treating what one has most reason to do as something one can offer an answer to distinct from the phrasing itself, as though there’s still a verbal slot open for the answer to the floating questions “What do you have most reason to do?” distinct from the analysis of the meaning of the question itself in terms of the answer. Let’s see how that works in dialog form.

Alex: What do you have most reason to do?

Sam: As an analytic subjectivist, I interpret the phrase “most reason to do” as “what would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires”. Therefore, I interpret your question to be asking me “What would best fulfill your present fully informed terminal desires?” So my answer is that “What would best fulfill my present fully informed terminal desires is what would best fulfill my present fully informed terminal desires.”

Alex: …what?

This is really bizarre. But it’s an understandable error that occurs when one attempts to offer an analysis in certain abstract, theoretical discussions among philosophers rather than simply talking about how you’d speak and what you’d mean by what you say in everyday contexts. In other words, Christian’s characterization of analytic subjectivism saddles them with offering an “account” that ends up an empty analysis of how to interpret a set of sentences outside any relevant contexts of usage. Whose discourse is it even an analysis of? I don’t endorse the view that this is what nonphilosophers mean when they make moral claims. And I don’t endorse the view that sentences have meanings independent of usage. And this isn’t what I mean. I see no reason why I should endorse this account. But I also don’t see why someone couldn’t reject this view, reject the reasons-talk common among philosophers, and the weird abstract contexts in which these analyses are being offered, and still be some sort of subjectivist. Yet Christian proposes that:

[…] to avoid circularity, Subjectivists should use the word “should” in the reason-implying sense, essentially, to mean that we should do what we have most reason to do.

Subjectivists don’t have to do this. They can simply recognize that what one should do in abstract terms is to act on their desires while also appreciating that in any concrete instance this would be realized in concrete terms by the specific desire in question. Suppose the gastronomic analytic subjectivist goes to dinner. Technically they believe that what one ought to choose for dinner is whatever would most satisfy their desires. After they look over the menu, and the waiter asks them what they’d like, do you suppose they’d respond:

“I’d like that which I most desire”?

I don’t think they would. I think they’d pick something in particular. Nothing about being committed to choosing the dish you most desire saddles you with an actual vacuous or problematic tautology in practice. What you would choose at the restaurant in the abstract is whatever you most desire. What you’d choose in concrete instances would be the specific dish. The appearance of a tautology only remains as long as you insist on framing the position in abstract terms.

Christian’s suggestion, on the other hand, may avoid meaningless and nonproblematic circularity (which needn’t be avoided in the first place), but at the cost of reintroducing a reified notion of “reasons” into our account that saddles the subjectivist account with one of the features I reject in realist accounts: an invocation of ineffable (and, I suspect, meaningless) notions of “reason.” Any form of subjectivism that imports such notions inherits precisely one of the central features of moral realism that make it so objectionable in the first place. In other words, if we go back to the original set of claims the analytic subjectivist allegedly endorses, I just wouldn’t endorse one-to-one correspondence between the phrases Christian provides and various “analyses” of those claims. I’d instead just say that there are facts about our desires and when I talk in certain, relevant contexts, what I’m doing is reporting what those desires are. This creates absolutely no problems whatsoever. I’ll say more about this in a bit. For now, Christian continues:

So if we are to make substantive claims, we need to use “most reason”, “should”, and “ought” in this reason-implying sense.

This is not the case. First, as already noted, we don’t need to do this since there was never a problem it’s needed to solve in the first place. Second, I deny reasons-implying claims are substantive, since I don’t think the notion of reasons at play in these accounts (some kind of normative reason) is substantive. As Christian noted, this concept of a reason is ineffable. I don’t think there are substantive but ineffable concepts, because I think that the reason why the terms can’t be understood is that there isn’t anything to understand. Reason-talk among philosophers is just a reification of some quirks in the English language, mistakenly perceived as some kind of independent property, when no such thing exists. It makes about as much sense to think there are reasons as that there are althoughs or howevers.

Third, rejecting analytic subjectivism doesn’t require you to endorse a specific alternative like this, for much the same reason that rejecting Christianity doesn’t require that you become an atheist. Our only options aren’t analytic subjectivism or a belief in allegedly substantive normative reasons. We can reject all of these positions and still make substantive claims. To be fair, I don’t think Christian is likely to have intended a genuine dichotomy (after all, someone could abandon all of these accounts and go be a noncognitivist or something); I just don’t think subjectivists, if they want to avoid tautology, have to embrace ineffable concepts.

The problem with analytic subjectivism as described here is that it tacitly concedes that one must offer some account of reasons, identifies these reasons with desires, then holds that one has reason to do what one desires. In effect, it reifies reasons, treats them as something distinct from desires, then offers an analysis that re-identifies them with desires, thereby treating them simultaneously both as distinct and not distinct, which is why once you unpack it you get this weird tautology. To summarize very quickly why this is silly, the view amounts to something like this:

1. My account of what it means to say I have most reason to do something is that it would fulfill my desires.

2. I think we have most reason to fulfill our desires.

3. So, my position is that it would fulfill my desires to fulfill my desires.

The mistake here is in step two. If you already think talk of what you have most reason to do reduces to what you desire, why would you say you have most reason to fulfill your desires? Recall: if you think “favorite fruit” just means “banana,” why would you say “My favorite fruit is banana”? This would be like saying “Banana is banana,” which is ridiculous. In most contexts, you wouldn’t say these sorts of things, but as we’ll see, this concealed tautology is perfectly respectable in certain contexts. Because of this, in a way, the tautologous aspect of analytic subjectivism isn’t the problem. Ironically, Christian thinks the only way for the analytic subjectivist to avoid the problem of one’s account revealing itself to be a tautology is to embrace a nonreductive, substantive notion of reasons distinct from desires. I argue that the opposite is the case: that the subjectivist has already conceded too much to Christian in granting that there is any meaningful conception of ineffable normative reasons apart from desires in the first place, such that they need to offer an “account” of them distinct from the reduction of reasons to desires.

For the analytic subjectivist, if you were asked why you have most reason to fulfill your desires, the answer would be “because it would fulfill my desires,” which is weird and vacuous and makes your position sound silly. But what an analytic subjectivist could do instead is insist that facts about what one has most reason to do just are facts about what would or wouldn’t fulfill one’s desires. And then asking someone: “What do you have most reason to do?” just becomes the question: “What would fulfill your desires?” At that point, it would be a little weird to say “I would fulfill my desires.” Is this vacuous? It sure seems like it. But that’s only because the question is being posed outside any specific context in which someone is asking which desires would be fulfilled by which actions. Instead, the question is posed in a context in which the analytic reduction of “most reason” to desire fulfillment hasn’t yet been implemented, such that the question leaves open what one might have “most reason” to do in a way that isn’t necessarily reducible to facts about desire fulfillment.

For comparison, if someone asks what your “favorite fruit” is, they are not asking you to offer a definition of “favorite fruit” that reduces it to whatever your favorite fruit is, such that to ask what someone’s favorite fruit is is to ask them a vacuous question from the outset: “What is your [whatever their answer is]?” which will yield the response “[their answer.]” This would be an insane question to ask. Rather, the person posing the question is asking something like

Of the possible fruits one might prefer, of which there are more than one, which one do you prefer?

To answer:

Banana.

…already tacitly acknowledges that something other than “banana” is a viable option. But if you’re an analytic subjectivist, do you interpret “most reason” in this open-ended way, such that one could in principle have “most reason” to do something other than what would fulfill their desires, or not?

There is no straightforward way to answer this question. Why? Because there are two separate answers: an unconditional and a conditional.

The unconditional answer should be “yes”: not conditional on my analysis of “most reason,” one could slot some other answer into a response to the question of what one has most reason to do other than what would fulfill one’s desires.

The conditional answer would be “no”: conditional on “most reason” being analyzed in accord with the analytic subjectivist’s response, the question itself asks “What would fulfill your desires?” to which the analytic subjectivist responds “what would fill my desires.”

This distinction reveals something extremely important:

The tautology only emerges conditional on the analytic subjectivist’s account being accepted (at least conditionally) in the first place.

Why is that important? Because the “tautology” emerges only on the conditional victory of the analytic subjectivist. If they’ve already won, if we’ve already granted that “most reason” = “what would fulfill your desires,” they can close shop there and do a victory dance. The problem would be with the person posing the question. There’s nothing wrong with responding to a vacuous question with a vacuous answer. Ask empty questions, get empty answers.

There’s no other analysis of “most reason” on offer if we accept the conditional response, so there are facts about what would fulfill our desires and it wouldn’t make any sense to ask if one has “most reason” to do something else instead, because “most reason” just means what would fulfill one’s desires.

The reason the analytic subjectivist’s response appears to be a problematic tautology is a result of failing to distinguish these unconditional and conditional responses. The problem is that the question is structurally framed in a way that presents itself as an unconditional response. As a result, if one offers the conditional response, such that one reanalyzes the question in terms of the analysis, the question itself participates in setting up the tautology:

Question: What would fulfill your desires?

Answer: What would fulfill my desires.

Structurally, the analytic subjectivist is expected to simultaneously treat the question of what they have “most reason” to do in unconditional terms: as not reduced to “what would fulfill my desires” and at the same time treat it as conditional, such that it does mean this. Now when we go back to Christian’s characterization, we can see how this has occurred.

Here’s the analytic subjectivist’s conditional response:

These subjectivists use words like ‘reason’ and ‘should’ in the internal senses. So they interpret the claim

we have most reason to act in some way

as

this act would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

Then the analytic subjectivist is expected to offer an unconditional response in which the notion of “most reason” is held open to alternative possible accounts or reductions. Only Christian doesn’t pose the question that generates the problem. Christian just says:

we have most reason to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires

But if the analytic subjectivist already thinks “most reason” just means “what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires” why would they then say that they have “most reason” to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires? Conditional on their analysis, they wouldn’t; this would be redundant and an empty tautology. It’s only when “most reason” is taken to be unconditional and thus ex hypothesi not reduced to the analytic subjectivist’s analysis that they’d make the claim that

we have most reason to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires

…This is exactly like the banana example. If you’re asking me what my favorite fruit is in an unconditional sense, then it makes perfect sense to say:

My favorite fruit is banana.

If you’re asking in a conditional sense, where we reinterpret “favorite fruit” in line with my answer, now you are asking me something a bit awkward like

What is your banana?

Now, if I am required to verbally reiterate your distinction between “favorite fruit” and “banana” in my response, such that I am required, again, by the very setup you yourself are imposing on me, to slot “banana” in for “favorite fruit,” now I can’t just say:

Banana.

I have to say:

My favorite fruit banana is my banana.

The lesson we should extract from this is that analytic philosophers completely trip all over themselves creating pseudoproblems that result from a failure to be attentive to language, mostly to disambiguate and distinguish what one means in various contexts of usage. They conflate different contexts, smashing them together into a single question or single phrase or analysis or account, don’t keep the various contexts in which one might say one or another thing distinct, demand responses to questions that look awkward outside any real-world or practical contexts of usage, then declare victory when the result, which is often tortured, vacuous, and redundant verbiage looks weird or vacuous or empty or whatever. But such weird, vacuous language only emerges if one twists English into enough pretzels that one more or less compels a rival response to sound weird in the contrived, abstract contexts one has created. At least one problem is that these contexts often have little or no bearing on what a proponent of a position would say in any practical, concrete context. They don’t raise any actual practical problems with a position. And the theoretical problems are not genuine problems, either. They are pseudoproblems that only emerge when we aren’t careful with language.

To put it bluntly: objections to analytic subjectivism largely involve abusing language to generate the misleading impression of a problem. The analytic subjectivist’s position should be rejected insofar as the analytic subjectivist themselves buys into the practices of analytic philosophy that generate the problem. If analytic subjectivism is (perhaps a bit ironically) defined in terms of its commitment to these practices, then I reject it. If it isn’t, then analytic subjectivism in some form can be rescued.

But I’d prefer to just grant that the position is committed to its own internally self-negating confusions, and suggest quietist subjectivism as an alternative. Whether one wants to call this a form of analytic subjectivism is up to them. Words, after all, are subordinate to us, though people who do analytic philosophy too much seem to have it the other way around. In any case, quietist subjectivism dispenses with the verbal confusions characteristic of so much of analytic philosophy and stops Christian’s critique cold. Subsequent analyses of modifications to subjectivism are unnecessary, since we never give the initial ground that requires is to buy into the notion of construing normative considerations in a “reason-implying” sense, which I take to be a concession that there are ineffable reasons and any successful account would need to explain what we have “reasons” to do.

Have I rescued analytic subjectivism? Not necessarily. It depends on how much the analytic subjectivist wants to participate in the language games analytic philosophers engage in. I’ve maintained that there’s nothing inherently wrong with asserting a tautology. Carrots are carrots. As far as I can tell, that’s true. And I am not going to get struck by lightning for saying it. There’s nothing vacuous or obviously empty about saying that claims about what one has most reason to do will be understood as claims about what would promote one’s desires.

The real problem here isn’t the tautology in such a position, but that it accepts as meaningful to even say that one “most reason to fulfill our desires” as if there were some conception of should that didn’t reduce to fulfilling one’s desires while simultaneously maintaining that there isn’t. The whole way “I have most reason to fulfill my desires” is framed pragmatically implies that something other than desire fulfillment could be ratcheted into the slot for “should,” but, conditional on analytic subjectivism, it couldn’t. So really we should see the statement as an innocuous tautology conditional on analytic subjectivism, and there really shouldn’t be a problem with it consisting in a tautology. But it sounds weird, and if that’s reason enough to reject the view, we can finesse what a subjectivist is up to without paying tacit lip service to the legitimacy of “most reason” as a nonreductive notion while simultaneously claiming to have reduced it in the way we ourselves talk.

7.1 A detour about zapples

There’s some serious linguistic strangeness going on with the preceding critique of analytic subjectivism, and I really want to drive home what the issue is. So consider this section another attempt at approaching the topic. It may be slightly redundant, but this is a blog and part of what I am doing is thinking things through as I write. If you think you’ve understood well enough what I take the issue to be, you can skip ahead to the next section.

Suppose a new product comes along: the zapple. You examine it thoroughly and determine that zapples are just apples. Not a specific kind of apple or anything like that. They’re just plain ol’ apples. Now someone asks you:

What is a zapple?

And you say:

A zapple is an apple.

Would it be much of a critique of your view to say:

Oh, so if you say “This zapple is an apple” you mean to say “This apple is an apple”? That’s a tautology. Why would you go around saying something vacuous like that?

Do you see the problem? It isn’t the zapple-apple reductionist who proposed that zapples were something distinct from apples. And if they were to be in charge of how we spoke about zapples, they might suggest we drop all talk of zapples and just call them apples. So they’d never need to say “zapples are apples.” They’d just talk about apples. But it was other people who insisted on calling something a zapple rather than an apple. All the zapple-apple reductionist has done is close this verbal loop. Yet if they were engaged with zapple nonreductionists, the nonreductionists may insist on verbally distinguishing zapples from apples. In response, the zapple-apple reductionist may, in exasperation, insist that zapples just are apples, only to be met with:

But that’s a tautology! “Zapples are apples” just means “Apples are apples” on your view.

Indeed it does. But this isn’t vacuous or meaningless or a problem in the context of arguing with zapple-apple nonreductionists. In exactly the same way, a person who reduces talk of what one should do to talk of what would promote one’s desires can reduce the former to the latter in a way that would yield tautologies in an entirely innocent way: innocent in exactly the same way that someone who concluded that zapples were apples wouldn’t be saying anything vacuous or confused or mistaken in the context of a dialectic in which others held that zapples aren’t or at least might not be apples.

The “tautology” plays a dialectical role: it closes a verbal loop, and yields a tautology that effectively dissolves an undischarged demand for an account of zapples. Determining that there is no distinct thing as a zapple may simply be the correct position. Just so, judging that there is no distinct content to or conception of should-talk apart from it referring to one’s desires can settle any dispute about whether one should do something other than what one desires. One can even allow that a kind of open question could be meaningfully posed, but note that this would simply involve someone using the same terms to mean something other than what the analytic subjectivist themselves means: it’d be a tautology for the analytic subjectivist to say “I should do what I desire” but not for others. There’s just no problem with this.

But if an analytic subjectivist agrees with everyone else that reasons are something distinct from desires, while simultaneously trying to reduce reasons to desires, then of course they’re going to have a problem. I think one could perhaps still call themselves a subjectivist while denying this or any other problematic features Christian associates with the view, but let’s just grant that subjectivists hold some weird, objectionable view that buys into some of the assumptions of non-subjectivists but can’t successfully reconcile these with their account of reasons as desires. Fine. Then we can reject the view. But a suspiciously similar-looking phoenix can readily rise from the ashes, and simply abandon those dubious features it couldn’t reconcile.

A something-like-a-subjectivist like myself doesn’t have to grant that there are reasons, that reasons are desires, or that reasons “give” us reasons. My account simply rejects any notion of normative reasons altogether, and thus denies that I need to offer an “analysis” of “should” that treats it as distinct from facts about what would fulfill my desires in the first place. What I think is simple:

1. There are facts about our desires.

2. There are facts about what is conducive to achieving those desires.

3. There are no further normative facts at all. It isn’t the case that, e.g., we have “most reason” to act to fulfill our desires or anything of the sort.

This presents an alternative to analytic subjectivism which I’ll call quietist subjectivism or if that isn’t descriptive enough, reasons-eliminativist subjectivism. On this account, reasons-talk isn’t ineffable, reasons-talk and should-talk just is (at least for the quietist subjectivist) talk of desires. Insofar as this allegedly saddles the subjectivist with empty tautologies: it does not. The tautologies only emerge in contexts in which the subjectivist is clarifying their position on the meaning of should/reason talk. There is nothing vacuous about a non-subjectivist asking, “How do you use reasons-talk and should-talk?” and a subjectivist responding “to refer to desires.” If the non-subjectivist then says, “Wait, so if I asked what you should do, you’d say ‘fulfill my desires’? but all this would mean is that it would fulfill your desires to fulfill your desires! Why would you present me with a tautology?”

The subjectivist can point out that in the context of the question the meaning of “should” is being treated as theoretically open to non-subjectivist analyses that don’t reduce should-talk to desire talk. Since the analytic subjectivist does reduce should-talk to desire-talk, when they respond that one “should do what one desires,” all they are doing is collapsing the putative autonomy of the two concepts. This results in a tautology, but it isn’t a vacuous one: it is one that, in a dialectical context in which the subjectivist is distinguishing their position from non-subjectivist positions, illustrates the collapse, or reduction. This does not carry over outside this context into the subjectivist going around asserting tautologies like an idiot in any real-world contexts. In those contexts, people are almost always asked a context-specific practical should question. In other words, we can distinguish two types of “What should you do?” questions:

• Abstract theoretical
  What should you do?

• Contextualized practical
  What should you do?

Note how both look identical. But that is because sentences mean different things in different contexts. Let’s unpack what these questions involve in their proper contexts:

• Abstract theoretical

  What should you do? = What is your account of normativity? That is, when it comes to the question of how you deliberate about what choice to make and proceed to take action, what theory captures the considerations relevant to doing so?

• Contextualized practical

  (For this, I have to provide a hypothetical context. Here it is. You are deciding whether to eat leftovers or go out to have a nice dinner. What should you do?)

Note how in the second case, responding to “What should you do?” with “stay home and eat leftovers” or “go out to dinner” makes perfect sense: if you want to save money and eat healthy, stay home. If you want to splurge and enjoy yourself more, then go out to have a nice dinner. There’s no tautology here. If you responded with “what I desire,” that might seem vacuous, but that’s only because you aren’t clarifying what it is you desire. Think of it this way. If the question “what should you do?” in this situation amounted to “what do you desire?” in this situation, you could respond with “whatever I want.” This might be a glib and unhelpful response, and one might even say it’s vacuous, but so what? You’re not theorizing here. In a practical context, this couldn’t generate any serious philosophical problems for you. It is only in theoretical contexts where the nonspecificity is both mandated, because there is no specific context, and seemingly vacuous. But that seeming vacuity is a byproduct of philosophers failing to distinguish practical and abstract contexts, such that the sense of vacuity bleeds into how they’d interpret the remark in practical contexts. If the response to literally every question: “What should you do?” in every practical context amounted to “What I desire,” which was the equivalent of saying “What I should do,” you really would have an empty theory. But this isn’t what a quietist subjectivist (or an analytic subjectivist, for that matter) is actually committed to. In any practical context, they can just report the desire:

What should you do?

Go out and have a nice dinner.

There is nothing remotely vacuous about this.

With respect to the first, abstract theoretical question, the quietist subjectivist can respond: My account reduces considerations of what I should do to considerations of my desires. When deliberating, I would ideally choose that course of action most consistent with my desires (and I’d try to do my best given the information available to me). Note that on this view, a reduction can result in a tautology without any issue at all. Recall that if you think zapples are apples, such that you can substitute “zapple” for “apple,” then you can translate the statement “Zapples are apples,” which doesn’t look like a tautology, even though “Apples are apples,” clearly is a tautology. But this is an innocent tautology because the reduction of zapples to apples occurs in contexts where the status of zapples is in dispute: others may think they aren’t apples. That you think they are as a matter of definition does result in “Zapples are apples” meaning exactly the same thing as “Apples are apples,” but that you’re stuck with this tautology isn’t your fault; it’s a byproduct of a dialectic in which others hold incorrect or unspecified views.

If in practical contexts the notion of “should” weren’t in dispute, there is no need to be theoretically open about one’s meaning, so the tautologies need not emerge to threaten the subjectivist’s account. In those contexts, responding to practical questions about what one should do with “what I desire” would instead be used to express either an unwillingness or inability to respond, whether one is being glib or is confused. You may have heard conversations like this:

Parent: Well, if you’re not going to stay here and do your chores, what are you going to do?

Child: Whatever I want!!!

It would be silly to interpret the child as asserting a tautology. Keep the theoretical and practical contexts distinct, and subjectivists just don’t face any serious threat or need to invoke ineffable notions of reasons to explain what they mean and to offer a substantive account.

Incidentally, I think Christian has accurately diagnosed the problem with the analytic subjectivist position he outlines:

The issue with Analytical Subjectivism is not using reason in the internal sense alone. It’s using reason in the internal sense paired with using “most reason” or “should” in the internal or desire-fulfillment sense.

Christian believes the proper solution is to abandon this circularity by using the term “should” in the “reason-implying” sense:

Instead, and to avoid circularity, Subjectivists should use the word “should” in the reason-implying sense, essentially, to mean that we should do what we have most reason to do. This makes reasons alone to be the “key battle ground in ethics.” So if we are to make substantive claims, we need to use “most reason”, “should”, and “ought” in this reason-implying sense.

As I have argued, subjectivists do not need to embrace a reason-implying sense of “should” to make substantive claims. And I have argued that this isn’t the only or best path for the subjectivist to take. Instead, the subjectivist can just reject the demand that, in theoretical contexts, they are required to offer an account of “most reason” or “should” talk in such a way that they are saddled with weird tautologies. They can instead argue that such talk, in these conversations, is the artificial, theoretical construction of analytic philosophers, that it doesn’t map onto practical contexts or ordinary language, and that an account that reduces “should”-talk and “reason”-talk to desires can offer tautological responses in some of these contexts without this rendering their account vacuous or in any other way philosophically suspect. This quietistic move demonstrates that the subjectivist can speak and reason in ways that make perfect sense and don’t saddle them with vacuity.

In short, the problem with the analytic subjectivist as Christian depicts them here is that they appear to be complicit in tacitly conceding:

1. That there is an open question about normative questions about what one ought to do (or what one has “most reason” to do, or “should” do, etc.)

2. That this question is, in fact, closed: what one ought/has most reason to/should do is what would most fulfill their desires

Christian has thus crafted a position with an internal tension, then criticized it for having that tension. He then presents only one solution, and proceeds from there, without considering the way of resolving the tension I’ve proposed here. The critique of the position only lands insofar as the analytic subjectivist themselves fails to recognize that their position exists in a kind of Necker-cubean superposition, failing to collapse the open question into a closed one. But if they do close it, the problem dissolves, and the tautology is only a tautology in a cross-theoretical context, i.e., between proponents of the question being closed by analysis and those who think it remains open. That is, it only appears to be an empty tautology if we are discussing matters as if the question were closed, when in fact it isn’t empty in any context in which the reductive analysis that closes the verbal loop between normative terms (should, ought, most reason) and descriptive terms (what would most fulfill desires) remains open. For comparison, if the question of what a zapple is remains open, it is not at all empty or vacuous to propose that zapples are apples. But once we agree that zapples are apples by definition, now asking “What is a zapple?” becomes a closed question. But it is only a closed question once the analysis is accepted. It is equivalent to asking “What is an apple?” to which “An apple” is an entirely appropriate response in that context. Note, though, that “An apple” may seem glib or dismissive precisely because, if the question were closed, asking someone what an apple was would probably not be taken to ask whether an apple was an apple, but to ask something further, such as to ask about its properties or category memberships (e.g., a red or green fruit known for being crisp, slightly sweet…). Careful attention to language dissolves any problems analytic subjectivism might face on grounds of asserting empty tautologies.

Since the subjectivist doesn’t need to embrace should-talk in the reason-implying sense, I could end my rebuttal here. I have provided a way for analytic subjectivists to embrace a bit of quietism and thereby embrace quietist subjectivism. This allows a form of the position more or less like the original to emerge unscathed. But let’s continue anyway, to address Christian’s other remarks.

8.0 Non-analytic subjectivism

Christian next turns to non-analytic subjectivism. As someone who doesn’t think there are reasons, this is a worrisome beginning:

Here are the rules of the philosophy game we’re about to play. I’m going to propose a principle which tells us when we have a reason to act. I’m then going to raise various thought experiments that will prompt your intuitive responses. Some of these thought experiments will be outlandish and some will be tame. The point is to evoke your underlying beliefs about when we have a reason to act or not.

Given that I don’t think we have “reasons,” this is going to be a challenge for me, but let’s proceed:

Desire-based Theory: We have reason to do whatever would fulfill any of our present desires (OMW I, 58) [sic]

Since I don’t know what this question is asking, in that I don’t know what’s meant by “have reason,” I am unable to answer the question. I think talk of “reasons” only makes sense when its meaning is made clear in the relevant context. If someone asks about the reasons for why water turns to ice when it’s cold, there’ll be some explanation for this. If someone asks what reason I had to go to the store, I will report what my goals or motivations were. Reason-talk is, on my view, perfectly meaningful; it’s just that I don’t think we literally have reasons. So when someone asks me what my “reasons” are for something in some abstract, theoretical contexts, what are they asking me to do? I could convert their question into a question about my desires, in which case this question would just amount to:

I would desire to do whatever would fulfill any of my present desires.

Well, that’s true. So this statement is true, I suppose? But is that what I’m being asked? I don’t imagine Parfit intended to ask us to respond to a tautology. So what am I being asked?

I don’t know.

So there’s no way to respond. Note how Christian talks about this account, though:

On this theory there is no such thing as an irrational desire, all desires we have in the present moment provide us with a reason to act.

I agree that there are no irrational (non-instrumental) desires, though this remark doesn’t yet introduce a distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental desires. But what on earth would it mean to say that our desires provide us with a reason to act? If the claim is that our desires motivate us, that would be one thing. If a “desire” is operationalized by psychologists in terms of processes that motivate us to act, then this, too, would be rather empty. It would amount to saying:

All motivations we have in the present moment motivate us.

Christian seems to impute this ineffable notion of reasons, which desires allegedly can “provide” us, to the subjectivist. Next, we’re asked to consider this scenario:

Snake: While walking in some desert, you have disturbed and angered a poisonous snake. You believe that, to save your life, you must run away. In fact you must stand still, since this snake will attack only moving targets. (OMW I, 34). [sic]

Christian says:

In Snake you have a strong, present desire, predicated on false beliefs, to run away. Yet most of us would agree that this desire does not provide us with a reason to run. If we share this intuition, we ought reject the desire-based theory. Subjectivist [sic] could patch up their theory by incorporating one of two further principles to account for this tension.

This is a serious problem, not for me, but for how critics of subjectivism understand subjectivism. A sensible subjectivist doesn’t think that we “should” do whatever it is we desire to do, where “desire” is crudely understood to refer to whatever instrumental means we believe will achieve our desires. They think we should do what would in fact achieve our desires. What do I mean by this? I mean that, all things considered, the course of action I would like to act upon would be the one that most accomplishes my desires. Only I don’t know what, precisely, will achieve this outcome, since I don’t have perfect information or reasoning abilities. Given this, we can draw a distinction between:

• Non-instrumental desires
  The fundamental desires we want to satisfy

• Instrumental desires
  Given our limited information and fallibility, that set of desires or motivations we act upon in order to achieve our non-instrumental desires.

Let me illustrate the distinction. Suppose I am thirsty and would like to quench my thirst. I see a glass of what appears to be water on the table. Only it is not water, it is poison. Do I “have a reason” to drink the water? On the crude and inaccurate characterization of subjectivism, the answer is yes. After all, we’re told:

We have reason to do whatever would fulfill any of our present desires

The reasoning here is supposed to be that:

I desire to drink the glass of water.

However, since doing so would result in me dying, this wouldn’t be in my interests. The critic of the desire-based theory thus reasons that:

1. The desire-based theory holds that in the glass of water scenario, the desire-based theorist is committed to the belief that people have reason to act on their present desires.

2. Since they presently desire to drink the glass of water, they will act in such a way that they will bring about their own deaths.

3. This is counterintuitive. We shouldn’t favor a theory that holds that we have reason to bring about our deaths.

4. So the desire-based theory should (all else being equal) be rejected.

Yet there is a very clear and obvious mistake in this line of reasoning:

It’s simply false that the desire-based theorist’s only present desire is to drink the glass of water.

This line of reasoning fails to distinguish instrumental from non-instrumental desires. The desire-based theorist should (and probably does) think more like this:

1. I non-instrumentally desire to quench my thirst.

2. I don’t want to die.

3. This here is a glass of water which will quench my thirst.

4. I instrumentally desire to drink this glass of water in order to quench my thirst.

The desire-based theorist can thus identify the mistake being made as being a mistake with respect to one’s instrumental desires. But why is it a mistake? Why does the person in this scenario, who wants to quench their thirst and not die, desire to drink the water? Because they mistakenly believe it will achieve their fundamental desire. So the desire-based theorist can easily account for the “intuition” that the person does not “have a reason” to drink the water. They can easily explain the situation like this:

1. It would not satisfy their desires to drink the poison.

2. They mistakenly believe that it would.

Now, let’s go back for a moment to the original characterization of this account. We were told:

On this theory there is no such thing as an irrational desire, all desires we have in the present moment provide us with a reason to act.

In the present moment, my desire is to quench my thirst, and I believe that the means by which I can achieve this desire is to drink the glass of what appears to be water. While we can say I desire to drink the water, this is an instrumental desire. Instrumental desires can fail to achieve our non-instrumental desires. There just aren’t any issues here, unless, and only unless, one keeps trying to inject “reasons” into their account all willy-nilly. Subjectivism is entirely consistent with our instrumental desires being “irrational,” insofar as this consists in acting in ways inconsistent with our non-instrumental desires. However, this phrasing would be misleading. One might have no good evidence to believe what appears to be water is poison. A person mistakenly acting in a way inconsistent with their desires isn’t “irrational,” they’re just incorrect about what would achieve their non-instrumental desires. That’s all that’s going on in this scenario. There’s no need for fancy notions of rationality or normativity. Yet Christian’s claims would leave us with something like this line of reasoning:

Do we have a reason to drink the glass of apparent water? No! Because it would harm us! So the account that says we do “have a reason” must be wrong!

It’s easy to beat up on bad ideas. The idea here is that it’s counterintuitive to think you “have a reason” in this case. I don’t know what judgments or phenomenology are associated with people who’d report something like this, but my guess is that they think roughly that facts about what “count in favor” of an action shouldn’t be based on instrumental desires because instrumental desires can be mistaken and result in undesirable outcomes. Christian seems to treat the best solution for this to be to locate reasons elsewhere. But there’s a much simpler solution: abandon the notion of normative reasons entirely. If we construe this and any subsequent scenario entirely in terms of:

1. Psychological facts about what an agent believes

2. Facts about what is true or false

We can easily describe all of these scenarios without ever wondering whether any given set of facts, including facts about our desires, “give” us reasons. We can just say that there are facts about what our non-instrumental desires are, facts about what our instrumental desires are conditional on the information available to us in a given context, and facts about whether the instrumental desires would or wouldn’t achieve the non-instrumental desires. We don’t need to say anything else. Unless, of course, we have realist intuitions that aren’t satisfied by these accounts. But if that’s the case, of course these accounts aren’t going to appease such people. So what? It isn’t a requirement of a philosophical position that it satisfy the intuitions of people who have intuitions to the contrary.

When I, as an agent, am trying to decide what to do, my goal is always to try to achieve my non-instrumental desires by means of the instrumental desires I believe are most conducive to achieving those non-instrumental desires. We can then ask a host of epistemic questions about what course of action is most likely to yield success for me as an agent with bounded rationality operating under a given set of constraints. There are lots of questions to ask in such circumstances. But the question of whether any given set of instrumental desires, non-instrumental desires, or non-desires “give” me reasons never arises.

Parfit’s approach seems to kick up so much dust via reasons-talk that desire-based accounts look silly and indefensible. And they do look silly and indefensible if you twist them into pretzels by trying to force some intuitively satisfying notion of “reasons” into the mix. But such intuitive satisfaction is, I believe, a profound error; a result of buying into the reified and/or conceptually confused reasons-talk invented by philosophers, a form of thinking and discourse that clings like a parasite to some tentative conception of what we’d think and say in ordinary discourse, only extracted from those contexts and dissected outside of them in ways that appear to reveal anomalies: but those anomalies are only present due to the artificial armchair conditions in which the terms and concepts are being assessed. Philosophers are employing a method that can’t work, for much the same reason you cannot understand wild animal behavior by capturing animals and placing them into zoos. To understand how language works, you need to study it in the wild. Not study it in the armchair and insist that such study reveals its use in the wild.

Returning to Christian’s Snake scenario, it is easy to reanalyze this with these tools in hand:

1. I non-instrumentally want to avoid being bitten by a snake.

2. I mistakenly believe running away would achieve this desire.

Insofar as I could speak of “having a reason” to do things, I would cash it out in this way:

1. Given my mistaken beliefs, I “have a reason” to run away from the snake in the sense that I instrumentally desire to run away and am motivated to do this.

2. Given my non-instrumental desires, I “have a reason” to not run away from the snake in the sense that doing so would satisfy my desire to not be bitten.

The subjectivist faces absolutely no difficulties whatsoever in addressing this situation. The only apparent difficulties emerge from the confusions generated by talking about “having reasons,” and treating these as literal things one has. If one objects that I don’t actually “have a reason” to run away from the snake, because it won’t achieve my non-instrumental desires, then what sense are they using “have a reason” in? I can explain how I’d use the term; can they? Whereas they are stuck with an ineffable, apparently inarticulable sense that something about this or that scenario is “counterintuitive,” I can, in all such cases, discharge the meaning of the terms in familiar ways, then assess whether the statements are true or false, without need of intuitions. My account is better. It’s cleaner. The only thing it doesn’t do is appease realist intuitions. But again, I deny this is a requirement of a satisfactory account, for much the same reason a proponent of natural selection doesn’t have to satisfy the intuitions of people who insist nature appears to be “designed” and can’t shake the intuition. So much the worse for intuitive creationists. Just so, so much the worse for intuitive normative realists.

A desire-based theorist should adopt quietist subjectivism, and in doing so deny that any of their desires, instrumental or otherwise, “give” them or “provide” them with reasons. All the supposedly counterintuitive implications of subjectivism emerge from confusions generated by speaking in these terms. The way out for the subjectivist is to reduce and discharge all talk of having reasons by translating it into talk of instrumental and non-instrumental desires. Once they do, absolutely no problems for their position emerge at all.

I don’t need any intuitions to judge that, in a hypothetical scenario in which a person mistakenly thinks running away from a snake will serve their interests, and they are motivated to do so that they think doing so would serve their interests and are motivated to do so. This is simply what’s been stipulated. If that seems like a hollow analysis of the scenario, good. I wasn’t the one who adopted what I regard as a misguided method of analyzing such scenarios to demonstrate how one doesn’t have “reasons.” It isn’t a problem for me if the scenario doesn’t present any actual problems on my view; that’s the whole point. My approach to these issues doesn’t solve the problem by providing an answer; it solves the “problem” by showing it was never a problem in the first place. And this is exactly what I think about much of the way not only Parfit argues for his positions, but analytic philosophers in general: I am explicitly accusing them of using bad methods to generate pseudoproblems, then presenting their theories as solutions.

Christian (Parfit, too) is already aware of the instrumental/non-instrumental distinction, and moves on to allowing the desire-based theorist to introduce the distinction to “rescue” their position from absurdity:

Subjectivist [sic] could patch up their theory by incorporating one of two further principles to account for this tension.

(E) reasons are provided only by desires that depend on true beliefs

or

(F) reasons are provided only by terminal desires, or aims

This position is still inadequate because it continues to cling to ineffable notions of “reasons,” and so I still reject it in favor of a quietistic account that rejects what I’ve diagnosed as confused reason-talk.

I also want to draw attention to the unfortunate way Christian frames this: That the subjectivist can “patch up” their theory by making these moves, as if they hadn’t already done so in the first place. This is unfortunate because it is a common way of framing rival positions employed by philosophers. While I doubt Christian intends to employ rhetoric or strawman subjectivism, this way of framing things nevertheless serves this function even if it is entirely innocent and unintentional.

Let’s call it the Matryoshka Fallacy. My mom used to have a set of Matryoshka dolls: a set of hollow, painted wooden dolls, each designed to fit inside the other. When you opened the largest one, you’d find a smaller doll inside, and when you opened that, a smaller one still, until you reached the final doll.

Sometimes, when someone is describing an opposing position, instead of simply misrepresenting the position and then attacking that misrepresentation—a classic strawman—they present various weaker forms of the position, note deficiencies with these, and then state that the proponent of the view can “fix” or “patch up” or otherwise address shortcomings with the position by modifying or adding onto it. This ends up crafting a narrative in which the actual position a person holds is depicted as if it were the result of a desperate retreat that has resulted from multiple concessions and ad hoc maneuvers. The narrative looks something like this:

The rival position endorses X. But here’s a problem with X. They could shore up this weakness by adopting X*. But there’s a problem with X*. One way out of this is to adopt X**. But, alas! That suffers from a problem of its own. Of course, they could bite the bullet and retreat to X***…

This is misleading when the person endorsed X*** all along. It makes the position they already held appear to be this battered, beaten thing, not because it’s been battered and beaten, but because you’ve depicted it that way.

I already construed desires in terms of instrumental and non-instrumental desires, and already would’ve readily been able to respond to Parfit’s critiques of desire-based accounts before ever encountering Parfit. I imagine the same would be true of any competent subjectivist.

The positions Parfit is targeting here are crude and unsophisticated and seem artificially engineered to be vulnerable to a series of critiques. It’s as though Parfit is just lining up a series of strawmen he can knock down so that he can depict the final opposition as a craven, retreating position fleeing in terror from Parfit’s philosophical blitz. In any case, Christian insists these moves aren’t going to work:

While (E) might seem more plausible at first, we can post-pone [sic] any updates to the Desire-Based Theory by appeals to truth. Instead, we can appeal to (F). This would result in the simplest plausible subjective theory. To motivate (F) consider Apple.

Now we’re given a rather extensive hypothetical:

Apple: Suppose that I want to eat the two remaining apples that are on some tree. I also want to climb a ladder so that I can reach the higher apple. Suppose next that this tree’s owner allows me to eat only one of these apples, and lets me choose which apple I shall eat. If instrumental desires gave us reasons, I would have more reason to choose the higher apple. If I chose the lower apple, I would then fulfill only my desire to eat this apple. If I chose the higher apple, I would fulfill not only my desire to eat this other apple, but also my instrumental desire to climb this ladder so that I can reach this apple. [So I therefore should choose the higher apple as two desires would then be satisfied]. But this reasoning is obviously mistaken (OMW I, 59). [sic]

According to Christian:

As Apple highlights, instrumental desires do not provide us with reasons. If they did, a life well lived would merely consist in causing ourselves to have many arbitrary desires, and then satisfying them. If you agree at [sic] the absurdity of the situation, we can incorporate (F) by updating the Desire-based theory to

Christian doesn’t quote the rest of what Parfit says in this passage. Parfit adds:

This reasoning is obviously mistaken. Since I want to climb this ladder, not for its own sake, but only as a means of reaching this apple, I have no further, independent reason to fulfil this desire. My reason to climb this ladder derives entirely from, and adds nothing to, my reason to fulfil my desire to eat this higher apple. (OWM, vol. 1)

What Parfit is trying to do is show that instrumental desires can’t “give us reasons.” Parfit is right, of course. Instrumental desires don’t give us reasons. But who thought they did? Perhaps one of the Matryoshka dolls. The problem is, as before, Parfit’s own confused talk of reasons generating the apparent problem. Parfit’s scenario also doesn’t make much sense, and may even be incoherent. Let’s unpack the scenario:

1. I non-instrumentally want to eat two apples.

2. One is higher in a tree, one is lower in the tree.

3. I can only eat one apple.

4. I instrumentally want to climb the ladder to eat the taller apple.

5. If instrumental desires gave us reasons, I would have more reason to choose the higher apple than the lower apple.

This whole scenario only generates problems if the desire-based theorist has weird views about reasons and thinks instrumental and non-instrumental desires alike both “give” us reasons, and that instrumental desires give us reasons independent of what would be needed to achieve our non-instrumental desires. This way of characterizing reason-giving also collapses the distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental desires into both giving us just one kind of “reason.” But why think my “reasons” for acting in accord with my non-instrumental values are on the same footing as my reasons for acting on my instrumental desires? There is no good reason for this: it only makes sense to think of us as having a reason to act on instrumental desires insofar as doing so would serve some non-instrumental desire. But Parfit has given us a scenario in which someone has a free-floating instrumental desire. This makes no sense. It’s just not how instrumental desires work.

Look at this feature of the scenario:

I also want to climb a ladder so that I can reach the higher apple.

Later on, Parfit says:

If I chose the higher apple, I would fulfill not only my desire to eat this other apple, but also my instrumental desire to climb this ladder so that I can reach this apple.

There is a serious problem here. The only purpose of an instrumental desire is to achieve some non-instrumental desire. What non-instrumental desire is achieved by climbing the ladder? None! Parfit has stipulated a scenario that simply makes no sense. Either there would be some non-instrumental desire which would be achieved by climbing the ladder rather than not doing so, or there isn’t. If there is, then it makes perfect sense for a person to climb the ladder. If someone really enjoyed climbing ladders, or wanted to exercise when choosing apples, or wanted to get a better view from being up higher, then there’s nothing absurd or unreasonable about them climbing the ladder. If they don’t have a non-instrumental desire that’d be achieved by climbing the ladder, then it makes no sense to talk of them having an instrumental desire.

Parfit has set up a scenario that employs a concept in a way that omits an integral component of what would render the concept meaningful in the first place. In doing so, he creates the false impression that the problem is with the agent in the scenario, and the resulting analysis desire-based accounts would give of the scenario. But the problem is with Parfit’s set up.

But let’s set that aside for a moment to see what the issue is supposed to be. According to Christian:

As Apple highlights, instrumental desires do not provide us with reasons. If they did, a life well lived would merely consist in causing ourselves to have many arbitrary desires, and then satisfying them. If you agree at [sic] the absurdity of the situation, we can incorporate (F) by updating the Desire-based theory to:

Terminal Desire Theory: We have most reason to do whatever would best fulfill or achieve our present terminal desires or aims.

I don’t think this scenario illustrates much. Subjectivists are not committed to thinking that it would be a good thing to satisfy instrumental desires for their own sake. Yet Christian’s remark suggests that the subjectivist has a goal like:

Maximize the number of instrumental or non-instrumental desires fulfilled by one’s actions.

This just isn’t something subjectivists are committed to. So it does not follow that a life well-lived would, for the subjectivist, consist in generating then satisfying desires. So Christian has not identified an absurdity with the scenario. I want to satisfy whatever my desires are. I have no desire to have desires in order to satisfy them. We don’t need to consider instrumental desires “giving us reasons” to move on to the terminal desire theory. This is already what a subjectivist is likely to favor.

I still think the subjectivist should reject this and any other account which employs an ineffable conception of reasons. I don’t endorse the view that what we have “most reason” to do is whatever would best fulfill or achieve our present terminal desires or aims. Christian also suggests subjectivists may want to incorporate a truth requirement into the position, but this would depend on an empirical question:

Can beliefs cause us to have a different set of terminal desires or aims?

I don’t know the answer to this question. But I also don’t care much about incorporating truth conditions into my own account, so I’m not interested in pursuing this line of inquiry. Christian seems to believe adding a truth condition to one’s subjectivist account would enhance its plausibility. I don’t. Roughly, the idea would be something like this. At a given time, I have one set of non-instrumental desires. However, with new information, my beliefs may change, and if these could cause my non-instrumental desires to change, then I’d have “most reason” to do something other than what I seem to have most reason to do in the absence of this information. We can imagine scenarios where, in other words, my non-instrumental desires are based on false beliefs. In these cases, I’d simply note that one would be motivated or desire to achieve outcomes based on false beliefs. There’d just be a descriptive question here. And I wouldn’t have any further position on whether one “has a reason” to believe or non-instrumentally desire something else instead. This modification is so rooted in considerations of what one “has a reason” to do that it’s irrelevant to my own position.

Part of the reason I’m not that interested in this distinction is that any interest in correcting for one’s false beliefs such that they’d subsequently prompt changes in one’s desires would, for me, be predicated on whether one desires such changes. Desires are still in the driver’s seat, and it’s simply a further descriptive question whether one has the desire for their non-instrumental desires to be receptive to such changes or not. There’s no non-desire-based fact about what I have “most reason” to do that is given by facts alone, rather than my desires, which—consistent with subjectivism—can be responsive to facts. I see no need to entertain further complications Christian introduces and will thus hop off the metaphorical train here.

9.0 Against objective theories

Christian takes the remaining portions of his case against subjectivism in a new direction: referencing and briefly discussing objectivist theories, though Christian makes it clear this is just a brief overview, adding:

I will not defend this here as it would take far too long, it took Parfit 1200 pages to do so. I will merely state it so we can contrast it as we work through the objections to Subjectivism.

Christian begins by telling us how objective theories differ from subjectivism:

Objective theories hold that there are certain facts that give us (external) reasons to have certain aims and to do whatever would best achieve these aims.

I’ve always found this extremely puzzling. What could it possibly mean for a fact to give us an “external reason”? In any typical case, if one asked for the “reason” for something, this “reason” could be discharged. What I mean by this is that nobody would say that one has a reason simpliciter. Instead, they’d answer by stating what the reason was. For instance, if someone said “What was the reason the dinosaurs went extinct?” one might answer “An asteroid hit the earth.” Or one might say “Why did Charles die?” to which one might reply “He had pancreatic cancer.” These are explanatory reasons. But we also speak of reasons in a normative or justificatory sense in other contexts. “What reason did Sally have for yelling at Sam?” One might respond: “Sam called her names.” One normative reason we could give to account for our actions is to appeal to our desires:

Sam: Why are you majoring in engineering?

Alex: Because I want to be an engineer.

Sam: Why do you want to be an engineer?

Alex: Because the topic interests me, and it’s a career path that is likely to have jobs available that pay well.

Sam: Why do you want to get paid well and have a job? Why do what interests you?

Alex: Because I like having money. It lets me live comfortably and purchase things that ensure my wellbeing. And I do things that interest me because I like to do so, and would rather do that than something really awful and boring.

Sam: Why do you like ensuring your wellbeing and avoiding things that are awful and boring?

Alex: Because I want to be happy and avoid suffering.

Sam: Why?

Alex: I just do.

This conversation leads us to discover Alex’s non-instrumental desires. Non-instrumental desires can provide a “reason” for why you’d do something. What does this mean? One way you can understand this is to be an account of what explains why you are motivated to pursue the actions in question. But when someone comes along and supposes that we have “external reasons” to do things, reasons given by the facts themselves, but those facts are not our desires, what on earth could this possibly mean? There is a nominal attempt to discharge the reason:

Alex: You have external reasons not to torture people for fun.

Sam: Okay. What are those reasons?

Alex: Well, it would cause those people unnecessary suffering.

Sam: Okay, but why is that a reason not to do it?

Alex: No, it’s not that the fact is the reason, it’s that the fact gives you the reason.

Sam: Wait, so the fact isn’t the reason? It gives me the reason? Then what is the reason?

Alex: …What do you mean? What “is” the reason?

Sam: Yes. What is the reason why I shouldn’t torture people for fun?

Alex: Well, it would cause them unnecessary suffering.

Sam: I agree that it would. But what does it mean for that fact to give me a reason?

I don’t think Christian or anyone else can give us a good answer to this question (though they are welcome to try). I think talk of facts giving reasons is literal nonsense. And I think conversations like this one reveal that external reasons are not actually discharged. If one asks what the reason itself is, there is no answer: it is a reason simpliciter. One simply “has a reason” not to torture people for fun. I suspect the mistake is a kind of linguistic mirage. Here’s roughly what I think is going on. In ordinary language, reason-talk could always be discharged in principle. If someone asks what reason you had for doing something, you could, in principle, point to some explanation or goal or other consideration that would allow you to say what the reason was. In other words, there are no reasons simpliciter. Reasons are all checks that can be cashed in terms of explanations, desires, and so on.

What philosophers have done is to abstract away from any given context, then ask whether we could “have reasons,” as though reasons were some kind of autonomous property or phenomenon one could “have” simpliciter, without reducing or discharging reason-talk to desires, explanations, and so on. Reasons are their own thing, a bit like David S. Pumpkins. In short, philosophers have made something a bit like a grammatical mistake. For comparison, consider the term put. One can put on their shoes, or put their shoes away, or put the shoes inside a box, and so on. But one cannot simply put simpliciter. One must put something somewhere. Put on a smile. Put on a show. And so on. Put isn’t an intransitive verb. You put something somewhere. Even if someone said “put it” in a given conversation, there’d need to be some contextual cues indicating what was being put somewhere and where it was being put, e.g.:

Alex: Should I put the shoes away?

Sam: Yes, put them.

This use of put is a bit odd, but it would make sense in that context. All it would mean though is “Yes, put [the shoes away].” Put-talk has a specific role in ordinary discourse. Just so, I believe reason-talk works in a similar way. One cannot simply have reasons to do things. Facts and desires don’t give reasons; rather, reason-talk is cashed out in such a way that it simply serves as a stand-in for some specific explanation or desire relevant to that context, sometimes with and sometimes without specification:

The reason the ground is wet is because it rained.

The reason I went to the store was to buy groceries.

Reasons can be discharged by specifying what the reason is, just as “put” has to be discharged to be meaningful: you put the shoes in the box. You can’t just put the shoes. Or put in the box. Or put. Yet reason talk is weird, because you can state that someone “has a reason” to do something without specifying what the reason is.

She has a reason to go to the store.

Okay, well what is the reason? I take such remarks to only be meaningful if one could specify what the reason is. One can’t just have reasons. Yet because reason-talk doesn’t require explicit reference to what the reasons are, one can imagine anything “giving” or “providing” a reason in normative contexts. Not just desires, but facts themselves. So we can say things like:

The fact that torture would cause suffering gives you a reason to not torture.

What reason does it give you? Such a question isn’t supposed to make sense. The fact gives the reason, and it is a reason simpliciter. I think this way of speaking about reasons is something akin to bad grammar.

This is my general concern with approaches to morality (and normativity in general) that rely on ineffable notions of reasons. But Christian wants to explore some arguments and see how objective theories stack up against subjectivism.

9.1 The agony argument

This is a classic from Parfit and one I’ve engaged with extensively (mostly in its Future Tuesday form):

Case One: I know that some future event would cause me to have some period of agony. Even after ideal deliberation, I have no desire to avoid this agony. Nor do I have any other desire or aim whose fulfillment would be prevented either by this agony, or by my having no desire to avoid this agony (OMW I, 73-4). [sic]

Subjectivist accounts hold that one has no reason to avoid the agony. I agree with these accounts (because I don’t think there are reasons at all). According to Christian:

1. We all have a reason to want to avoid, and to try to avoid all future agony.

2. Subjectivism implies that we have no such reason.

3. Subjectivism is false.

Since subjectivism just is the view that there are no stance-independent normative facts of the sort required to “give us reasons” independent of our desires, the first premise is not meaningfully different from simply asserting that subjectivism is false. The argument isn’t much different from saying:

1. There are gods.

2. Atheism implies there are no gods.

3. Atheism is false.

Arguments like this only “work” by abstracting the language and its logical entailments away from the claim under dispute so the question-begging nature of the argument isn’t too obvious (which isn’t to say this is intentional). The result is, hopefully, that one can prompt their interlocutors to have an intuition of the appropriate kind. In this case, I’m supposed to have the intuition that we have a reason to avoid future agony. I don’t have such an intuition, so this argument is not compelling to me. If we don’t just accept the first premise on the grounds that it’s intuitive, then what’s the argument for the first premise? Whatever that argument is, it’s going to be tantamount to an argument for realism itself.

Christian considers a number of objections, but I don’t find any of them worth considering. Christian simply hasn’t given us any arguments for why we should think this is true:

We all have a reason to want to avoid, and to try to avoid all future agony.

Later, after viewing several objections, Christian states:

So the Agony Argument stands and provides a bullet that the Subjectivist must bite

I not only reject the argument, I also deny that in doing so I am biting any bullets. To bite a bullet is to accept some unsavory conclusion. But I find nothing unappealing or difficult with rejecting the agony argument and its Future Tuesday variant. Note that Christian says that subjectivists must agree that:

(G) the nature of agony gives us no reason to want to avoid being in agony.

Then adds that:

But we can argue:

(H) The nature of agony does give us a reason to want to avoid being in agony.

Okay, then what is the argument for (H)? Christian doesn’t give one. Instead, we’re told:

Subjectivists might claim that in arguing against (G) we are simply asserting (H). But if there is anything that gives us a reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony. This is a belief everyone who is not a nihilist would endorse. Therefore, these arguments stand.

This is not an argument. Christian simply asserts:

But if there is anything that gives us a reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony.

This is misleading. Throughout this entire section, Christian simply uses the term “reason.” But it’s not as though subjectivists (or myself) wouldn’t say that we “had a reason” to avoid agony. It’s just that what we mean by this is:

Subjectivists: Our desire not to be in agony gives us a reason to avoid agony.

Quietist subjectivist (i.e., myself): To say I “have a reason” to not be in agony is to simply say I don’t want to be in agony (but I don’t think this literally gives me a reason).

Christian’s arguments only work if the kind of “reason” a subjectivist (quietist or otherwise) doesn’t have access to is somehow inconsistent with subjectivism. Let’s call these “objective reasons.” So when Christian says:

But if there is anything that gives us a reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony.

This should read as something like:

But if there is anything that gives us an objective reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony.

Now it is easy for subjectivists and myself to respond: we can simply disagree. Nothing gives us objective reasons to do anything. That’s the whole damn point of our positions. Simply asserting:

If anything is an X, it’s Y.

…Simply doesn’t in any way demonstrate X. Perhaps nothing is an X!

This is a belief everyone who is not a nihilist would endorse .

What exactly does Christian mean? Why “nihilist” and not subjectivist?

Therefore, these arguments stand.

Note that Christian has not presented much support for the first premise, so he has not shown that the argument “stands.” It’s an argument, to be sure, but one I and others are entitled to simply reject one of the premises. And I do. An argument doesn’t “stand” because you asserted that it does. I could just present some argument to the contrary and declare that it “stands.” How convincing would Christian find that? Probably not at all.

9.2 The all or none argument

Next, Christian says:

Subjectivists might be inclined to say that all terminal desires (or all terminal desires after rational reflection) provide reasons. They are self-justifying.

Then we are given this case:

Case Two: I want to have some future period of agony. I am not a masochist, who wants this pain as a means to sexual pleasure. Nor am I [a] repentant sinner, who wants this pain as deserved punishment for my sins. Nor do I have any other present desire or aim that would be fulfilled by my future agony. I want this agony as an end, or for its own sake. I have no other present desire or aim whose fulfillment would be prevented either by this agony, or by my having my desire to have this agony. After ideal deliberation, I decide to cause myself to have this future agony, if I can (OMW I, 83). [sic]

According to Christian:

If all terminal desires were self-justifying, then so too would this desire to be in a future period of agony. This is hard to believe.

Christian simply asserts that this is “hard to believe.” For who? I don’t see an argument here. Just the assertion that something is hard to believe. If Christian is simply reporting it’s hard for him to believe something, none of the rest of us are obliged to assign much epistemic weight to this. If Christian is claiming that it’s hard for others to believe this, well, that’s an empirical question, it’s underspecified, and it may or may not apply to his readers. How hard something is to believe varies from one person to another, and I don’t see any particularly good reason to think it’s a good indication of what’s true. It’s hard for Christians to believe Jesus wasn’t the son of God. It’s hard for atheists to believe God will answer their prayers. What matters is why something is difficult to believe.

I also don’t know why a subjectivist would have any interest in arguing that their desires were “self-justifying.” Why think desires require justification at all? I don’t think they do. They’re just facts about us. My favorite color is purple. Does this require justification? Suppose I wasn’t justified in preferring the color purple. Okay. I’m not justified. Now what? What happens if I keep liking it? Are the Forms going to materialize and smite me? Critics of various antirealist or subjectivist views will often insist these views lack “justification” or fail to meet various criteria set by the critics. Simply because one claims that a particular position fails to meet some standard doesn’t mean this poses any meaningful problem even if it’s true that the position has that particular problem. For example, atheists cannot believe they are complying with the will of God. This is a problem if you think it’s very important to try to comply with God’s will. But not if you don’t care about complying with God’s will. Antirealists like myself don’t care if our moral values aren’t “justified” any more than we care whether our food preferences are justified. This isn’t a problem from our perspective, and we’re not required to grant that it is a problem any more than we’re required to grant moral realism itself.

Christian eventually suggests that one move subjectivists might take would be:

we have no reason to accept or reject any terminal desires

I endorse this position. I deny we have any reason to accept or reject any terminal desires. But Christian says:

But then no actions would be justified as all justification ultimately flows from these desires. All justification would ultimately be arbitrary, no justification at all.

Again, this simply isn’t a problem. If Christian thinks it is: okay, what exactly is the problem? I consider justification to only make sense relative to some standard or other. If Christian is employing a non-subjectivist notion of justification, then he’s helping himself to realist assumptions the antirealist isn’t going to grant in the first place. Note, too, how he says “no actions would be justified at all as all justification ultimately flows from these desires. This is virtually a contradiction within the same breath: if justification flows from these desires, then why does he say there’d be no justification? There is justification! It’s just not a kind of justification Christian endorses. He then reiterates the contradiction, stating that All justification would “be arbitrary,” then suggests this is “no justification at all.” Is it justification or not? How is it arbitrary justification…but also not justification? Which is it? Because it can’t be both.

So in one sense, I disagree: I employ alternative notions of justification which only work in a stance-dependent way, and thus play nicely with subjectivism but not realism. In another, I agree: insofar as I can make sense of what Christian is saying, I agree that no actions would be justified in the relevant sort of way. It’s just that I think there are absolutely no undesirable consequences of this. What would they be? Your actions can, on the antirealist view, be entirely justified with respect to your subjective standards, and be optimized for achieving your goals and acting on your values. The only sense in which they’d not be justified is insofar as they failed to comply with stance-independent normative standards. Why care about this? It carries no practical implications at all. It makes no practical difference whatsoever whether one complies with or completely ignores standards of justification that are disconnected from our values. Christian then says:

If we have desires-based reasons for acting, all that would matter is whether some act would fulfill the terminal desires that we now have after ideal deliberation. It would be irrelevant what we want, or would be trying to achieve.

Therefore:

Either all such desires give us reasons, or none of them do.

I don’t see the problem with this. Yet Christian continues:

If all such desires gave us reasons, our desires could give us decisive reasons to cause ourselves to be in agony for its own sake, to waste our lives, and to try to achieve countless other bad or worthless aims.

We could not have such reasons.

The former remark only makes sense if one reifies reasons. On the quietist view I’ve presented, there would simply be facts about what one desires. If someone desired to cause themselves to be in agony, it would simply be a fact about them that they did so. It wouldn’t “give” them a “decisive reason.” There are some other issues with this remark:

Waste our lives

try to achieve countless other bad or worthless aims.

These remarks are presumptuous and employ evaluative language without clarifying whether the language is itself presupposing realism. “Waste” relative to what standard? “Bad” or “worthless” aims relative to what standard? If you’re a subjectivist, and your only desire is to count blades of grass, Christian and others might regard this as a “waste” but the person counting the blades of grass wouldn’t. After all, that they don’t consider it a waste is a matter of stipulation! Whether it “really is” a waste independent of their subjective preferences just presupposes realism. It is simply not persuasive to a subjectivist to point out that we could subjectively value the incorrect things; the position practically is a direct repudiation of this view. Even if the values in questions are ones I don’t like, my opposition to them stops there, and that’s good enough: I am opposed to certain goals and values. Why would it matter if they were factually mistaken? Suppose a person only desired to set everyone else on fire. Would this be “bad”? Bad relative to whose standard? Not the person who wants to do this! But this has no practical relevance to what any of the rest of us “should” do. We have our desires, and they have theirs.

Christian continues with yet another conclusion that’s supposed to follow from this:

None of these desires gives us any reason. We have no such desire-based reason to have any desire, or to act in any way (OWM I. 90).

This is true. Is this a problem? If so, what is the problem? Why would I need a “desire-based reason” to have desires? Compare to your food preferences. Suppose you prefer chocolate over vanilla and are deciding what ice cream to get. Chances are you’ll choose chocolate. Now, do you have a desire-based reason to prefer acting on your taste preferences? Suppose (and I grant) that you don’t. Well then, I guess choosing chocolate over vanilla is “arbitrary” and you have no fundamental reason to do so. If this is supposed to be a problem it’s unclear what the problem is. I want to act on my preferences. I don’t need to have a preference to act on my preferences to “give me a reason” to do so. Christian concludes:

This is the All or None argument. Given the All or None argument, Subjectivists are faced with a dilemma. Since they cannot coherently accept some terminal desires and reject others which have survived ideal deliberation, they are forced to choose either

(1) All terminal desires provide us with normative reasons

or

(2) No terminal desires provide us with normative reasons.

According to Christian:

If Subjectivists appeal to (1), then they have to bite many bullets: the desire for future agony for instance.

I simply deny accepting future agony involves biting any bullets at all. This notion of “biting bullets” is a weird one. Christian and others often invoke this notion. But whether one considers any given implication a concession (or “bullet”) or not depends on their other views. Given the rest of my views, moral realism is absurd and positions which lead me to reject its implications are a theoretical virtue, not a cost or bullet to bite. There is no arbiter external to our respective worldviews by which we can determine that one position bites more bullets than another. How much a position bites bullets turns on the rest of one’s views.

If Subjectivists instead appeal to (2), then we have no reason to do anything at all since all reasons would end in desires which we do not have any reason to have.

This is the correct response. Since the notion of “reason” in question is unintelligible, abandoning it doesn’t cause any problems. Christian presents the following objection:

“If I want it for its own sake why should I need to scramble for a reason?”.

Christian responds:

Simple, because when we reflect on our desires, we will often find some of them to be worthy of question.

This is not what happened when I reflected on my desires. Once again, Christian makes an empirical claim about the results of a particular psychological procedure. And the results for me only serve to reinforce antirealism and the rejection of realism. Christian doesn’t even qualify his claim. Does he think everyone will arrive at the conclusion he proposes on reflection? What if they don’t? Did they make a mistake if they don’t? If so, what was the mistake? And how does he know?

My terminal desires are not the sort of thing to be “worthy of question,” and, in any case, I don’t find on reflection that there are any desire-independent standards by which I have ever questioned any of my desires. I can only judge any of my desires or standards by appeal to my other desires and standards. My deliberation is thoroughly subjectivist. I don’t question whether I have a ‘good reason’ for having my desires in the sense Christian implies. I’m not sure whether others do; that’s an empirical question and Christian has not presented any evidence that people generally arrive at the same conclusion as he has or that they do so using an epistemically respectable method (and that I don’t).

Objectivists, by contrast, make the much simpler claim: we can want things which are bad for us.

I don’t see any reason to view this as “simpler.” My view accommodates ordinary moral language without presuming to know a great deal about ordinary people’s psychology (which Christian’s position does and for which he’s presented essentially no meaningful evidence) and posits fewer metaphysical phenomena (the notion that we can want things which are “bad for us” requires at least certain irreducible concepts and will on most philosophers’ views other than e.g., Parfit, Scanlon, and so on). My position does away with all of this. It is in several respects much simpler. Realists do not have an advantage on grounds of parsimony, regardless of how important we consider parsimony to be.

10.0 Conclusion

Christian ends with a section called “Why people are subjectivists.” It begins with this remark:

At first subjectivism seems obviously true.

Seems obviously true to who? Christian does what so many other people do: simply makes assertions about how things seem without qualification. The reason-based conceptions of subjectivism Christian outlined here don’t seem obviously true to me, nor is there much evidence they seem obviously true to any particular proportion of the general population. Christian makes several other strange claims here:

The fact that our subjective aims often track what we objectively ought to aim at is the source of the fundamental confusion with subjectivists about reasons. They have it precisely backwards. It is not our desires which give us reasons it’s our responses to reasons which give us desires. Once you see the confusion it’s like showing a fly out of the bottle.

Is this an empirical claim? How does this work psychologically? Christian says our responses to reasons “give” us desires. Does this mean they cause us to have desires? If not, what does this mean? If so, how does that work? Reasons have causal powers? Whatever the case may be, Christian’s remarks are entangled in psychological claims about how human cognition works. There is, at present, no meaningful body of cognitive psychological research that supports these claims, nor any compelling theoretical basis for making them. This is speculative at best, but most likely is simply pseudopsychology. It is remarkable how often philosophers feel entitled to just make psychological claims without appreciating that they are no more epistemically entitled to do so when it comes to psychology than they are for chemistry or cosmology. Human cognition is not something you can figure out through a priori reasoning or theorizing from the armchair.

Christian’s claims are also woefully vague. It’s hard for me to even criticize this because I am not sure what Christian is even claiming. But if the claim is that reasons cause us to have desires, I’d like to know how that’s supposed to work and why I should think that this is true.

I’m reminded of those experiments where a patient’s corpus callosum is severed and they give one hemisphere an instruction, to get up for example. They then ask the other unknowing hemisphere why they’re getting up and a post-hoc rationalization soon follows. This is what I think these secular, Western, reductionist materialist types are doing. They search for a ground to justify normativity, and reach for what’s available and well within the materialist worldview: desires.

This isn’t a good dig. It’s just weak, speculative armchair psychologizing that stereotypes subjectivists. Christian sounds exactly like religious apologists who conflate “atheist” with being secular, a materialist, politically on the left, and so on. Christian even uses some of the exact same terms apologists use.

Despite being an arch-antirealist, Christian’s remarks don’t even apply to me. I’m not not a materialist! As far as “secular” and “Western,” well, guilty as charged. But I could turn this right around on Christian and note that the legacy of Plato and monotheism has left many philosophers and laypeople alike with a residual predisposition towards wanting to find meaning and value in something cosmic and external to themselves, and so they are drawn to the notion that value must be out there in the world. Nietzsche’s prescience on the matter could readily accommodate the modern renaissance of moral realism among secular moral philosophers. Thousands of years steeped in monotheism externalized our source of meaning and value to a higher power. Now that secular philosophers lack this foundation, they grope for it in philosophy itself. Armchair psychologizing like this is easy. The real feat would be to provide evidence for such claims. It is far easier to devise hypotheses like these than to confirm them. Anyone can psychologize in this way. The question is whether there’s actual evidence to support one’s claims. A bit of speculation can be fun, but it’s not going to get us very far. Christian continues:

But in most of their actual deliberations, they don’t use desires to justify their actions. They think they’re justifying actions with their desires, when in reality, they use their intuition to make judgements about what they have reason to do, and then corresponding desires spring up soon thereafter.

How does Christian know that most people’s deliberations don’t involve appealing to desires to justify actions? I welcome Christian to make a case for this. Christian is welcome to show me that I am mistaken about what I think I am doing. I don’t think I use intuitions to make judgments about what I have reason to do, since I don’t think there are any intuitions or reasons. I think these are pseudoconcepts philosophers made up that have little to do with how actual human psychology operates.

That Christian’s positions ultimately turn on so-called intuitions emerges in the conclusion:

The All or None Argument paired with the Agony Argument give [sic] the Subjectivist a dilemma: accept either that we are justified in having every single one of our present terminal desires, no matter how intuitively horrendous, or we have no reason whatsoever to have any of them and they’re all arbitrary yet immune to interrogation.

I don’t find any of the examples “intuitively horrendous” and find nothing remotely troubling about granting that we have “no reason whatsoever” to have any particular desire and that “they’re all arbitrary yet immune to interrogation.” I don’t technically grant that they’re immune to interrogation; it’s just that I think any such interrogation can only occur against the backdrop of my desires themselves; there’s no desire-independent standard from which to evaluate our desires. Either way, this latter horn of the dilemma is simply unthreatening.

Christian insists:

In either case, the Subjectivist has to bite a bullet.

No we don’t. What’s the bullet, exactly? That subjectivism lacks qualities realists think a good theory should have? So what? This isn’t any more of a bullet to bite than for a theist to critique atheism on the grounds that it “bites the bullet” that nature shows all the hallmarks of divine craftsmanship. The atheist will often think otherwise, which is part of why they’re an atheist in the first place.

Speaking for myself, I am under no obligation to grant that subjectivism bites any bullets at all. I consider whether the stance one takes involves biting a bullet to itself be relative. And, relative to my views, I think realism is one of the most outrageous and implausible positions anyone could have. Why would I think rejecting such a position involves biting bullets? Christian says:

Either we may have horrible desires (e.g. to cause ourselves to be in agony), or we may lack certain obviously good desires (e.g. to avoid causing ourselves to be in agony).

I think causing ourselves to be in agony is horrible because it’s inconsistent with my subjective standards, not because I think it’s horrible independent of them! And I think it’s entirely possible to lack certain “obviously good” desires that are obviously good relative to my subjective standards. Christian’s uses terms like “horrible” and “obviously good,” which can either be used in subjectivist ways that completely strip them of argumentative force, or they aren’t used in such a way, in which case Christian is simply helping himself to the presumption that things can be non-subjectively “horrible” or “good,” which is precisely what I and subjectivists aren’t going to grant. Ultimately, then, Christian seems to reject subjectivism because Christian personally finds it counterintuitive. Well, so what? I don’t have Christian’s intuitions. So why should I reject it?

To put this another way, “horrible” and “obviously good” are evaluative terms that can either be cashed out in a subjectivist way, in which case Christian’s point won’t land, or they presuppose realism, in which case the terrible consequences of subjectivism are, apparently, that it would allow for situations in which it would be subjectively good to act on non-subjectively bad values, and subjectively bad to act on non-subjectively good values. This is absurd: the subjectivist doesn’t think anything is good or bad in the non-subjective sense in the first place, so pointing to these consequences as a bullet to bite only makes sense if you think it’s a cost for a philosophical position if it is subjectivist. This is like a dualist claiming that physicalism must bite the bullet of denying the “obvious fact” that mind is non-physical.

Christian ends with a list of possible options. My position does not appear on the list. The closest would be:

Reject all normative reasons, become nihilists: Nothing matters, there’s nothing you have to do.

However, the problem is that I deny that in rejecting normative reasons one must become a nihilist and conclude that “nothing matters” or that “there is nothing you have to do.” I think things matter. And I think there are lots of things I have to do. I just don’t think mattering or having to do things has anything at all to do with normative reasons. I am especially opposed to any suggestion that adopting a position like this, or endorsing subjectivism, involves biting bullets. This makes it seem like accepting these positions requires paying some kind of cost, of accepting something one wouldn’t otherwise want to accept. But I find nothing appealing, desirable, or plausible about moral realism. If I thought of anything as biting a bullet, it’d be moral realism.

I recently addressed Rian Lobato’s absurd accusation that I am lying when I say that there is no good evidence that moral realism is a common view among nonphilosophers. I shouldn’t have to do this. And I probably don’t. Most people probably don’t care or would dismiss this accusation as obviously unjustified. But I’m nothing if not thorough when the mood strikes, and I opted to engage in the hope that Rian would retract the accusation and apologize. That hasn’t happened yet.

Part of the reason I chose to do so is because of my broader hostility towards reflexive, baseless accusations that others are lying. Psychological research shows that we are generally very bad at detecting whether other people are lying without access to contextual cues (Masip, 2017). Sure, if you know a person’s claims are inconsistent with independently verifiable facts, or you learn someone’s distinctive quirks, or you otherwise have specialized inside information or insight, then your assessment may be more accurate, or even virtually certain (e.g., if you have a recorded confession that they lied). Yet none of these standard cues were available to Rian. Nevertheless, Rian is one among many people on the internet that hurl accusations of dishonesty, lying, grifting, disingenuity, pretending, bad faith, and so on with reckless abandon.

This is as unethical as it is unjustified, and they should stop doing so. It is destructive to productive and friendly exchanges to be so quick to question people’s integrity. Such accusations should be made publicly only when we have good publicly available reasons to support the accusation. If Rian wants to insist I’m self-deceived or such nonsense and isn’t attacking my integrity, that’s fine, but (a) none of Rian’s original remarks made that clear, so Rian was at best irresponsible with his accusations and (b) claims of self-deception are even harder to support with evidence, since a self-deceived person could act in a way indistinguishable from an honest person…so what would be the basis for the claim? Either way, once a person has been accused of any of these things, anything they say can be dismissed out of hand. Serious and productive philosophical exchanges become pointless; their critics can always fall back on the “you’re lying” claim, and the victim of the accusation has little recourse or defense against these claims in many cases.

Rian isn’t the first person to accuse me of lying. Rian appears to be associated with David Ribeiro, who has made similar claims over the past few years. Today, I want to put those accusations to rest as well. You can find David’s account of what happened and why he thinks I’m lying here:

David has continued to reiterate accusations that I am dishonest as recently as a few weeks ago. Over the past few years he’d also show up in livestreams and comment sections telling others how he “caught” me lying and has screenshots proving it.

So let’s have a look at what David thinks is evidence I’m lying. The conversation in question took place on Facebook in May 2024. I decided to make it public so you can see it here. Here’s what I initially said:

I still can’t get a clear and consistent response as to what a philosophical intuition is supposed to be. I’m told we all need them and that nothing can get done without them, but I’m not quite sure what they are. When philosophers talk about having an intuition, are they making an empirical claim about human psychology? Just what are “intuitions”?

For comparison, if people went around saying they “had a perception” or “had a memory,” one would expect at least some aspects of these claims to be amenable to empirical inquiry. But when philosophers say they have “intuitions,” well, what are these? Are they a distinctive type of mental state? do they have a specific phenomenology? Do they employ specific regions of the brain? What are the processes involved in “intuitions” and why does it seem like philosophers often don’t care about the answers to these questions?

One of the most common, recent responses I’ve received is that they are “intellectual seemings.” This isn’t very helpful.

You can find the thread David took screenshots of in my response to Tom Wellborn. Tom said:

Philosophical intuitions are considered to be immediate, non-inferential beliefs or judgments that arise spontaneously without conscious reasoning. When philosophers refer to intuitions, they are generally not making empirical claims about human psychology, but rather describing a type of mental state that seems self-evident or self-justifying.

Key aspects would be something like Mental State, Phenomenology, Empirical Inquiry, Intellectual Seemings, and Philosophical Use

Tom provides no evidence that this is what intuitions “are considered.” Are considered by who? Some people, perhaps, but not others. But we’re given no references, no textual support, no survey data, no examples, and no indication that this is anything other than what Tom personally surmises.

Tom’s account likely does capture one of the ways some philosophers use the term “intuition” some of the time. But this is just one among many other proposed accounts of what an intuition is. It’s not the definition, it’s not canonical, there’s no consensus or agreement on it, and if you canvass the literature you won’t be able to ratchet this use of the term into every use of the term. For instance, some philosophers are quite explicit that intuitions are not beliefs or judgments.

Tom’s latter remark also doesn’t make much sense:

When philosophers refer to intuitions, they are generally not making empirical claims about human psychology, but rather describing a type of mental state that seems self-evident or self-justifying.

If you wanted to describe a possible mental state without attributing it to anyone, that might not be an empirical claim. But accounts of intuitions are intended to refer to mental states people actually supposedly have. It makes no sense, then, to suggest that philosophers who report having intuitions and presume people generally have them are “describing a type of mental state” but are somehow not making an empirical claim; to describe a type of mental state people have is to make an empirical claim.

Tom’s account also conflicts with many common conceptions of intuition. Some philosophers, e.g., Huemer, would deny that intuitions are beliefs (and he’d probably deny they’re judgments, too). So are they or are they not beliefs? Or can they include both beliefs and non-beliefs? Who knows! In any case, according to Tom, intuitions are “immediate” and “non-inferential” and they “arise spontaneously without conscious reasoning.” There are many problems with this. How quick is “immediate”? If a person pauses before responding to a trolley problem, is it no longer immediate and thus no longer an intuition? Must they be non-inferential? Inferential processes may not be available on introspection. So you could have two cases that are phenomenologically and functionally identical, where one involved unconscious inference and the other didn’t. How would a philosopher know which process was employed in a given instance? They certainly couldn’t know via introspection alone, since the inferential processes are unavailable to introspection by definition.

However, the main problem I took issue with in the discussion is that his account is too broad. If intuitions referred to any immediate, non-inferential judgment that arises without conscious reasoning it would include countless decisions we make on a constant basis. It would include, for instance, a snap decision to hit the brakes on my car, decisions about what to wear, the impulse to grab a cookie, and all kinds of judgments formed on the basis of beliefs or perception. Practically any mundane decision we make is a form of judgment. Mindlessly opening the refrigerator to consider what to eat? Intuition. Getting up in the middle of the night to pee? Intuition.

I am willing to bet that philosophers would not consider every one of these judgments to be an intuition. Perhaps some would. But many wouldn’t, and it’s an empirical question whether they would or not, and a further empirical question whether they’d use the term to refer to all of these judgments. I’m guessing they wouldn’t. I doubt you’ll find many instances of philosophers referring to their decision to turn left at an intersection as an “intuition.” Intuition doesn’t capture the right connotation in these cases. It’s just not typically used in so expansive a way as Tom’s account would suggest.

Given this, I don’t grant that what Tom has provided is an acceptable account of intuition. That was the whole point of me responding by saying that while I do have “immediate, non-inferential beliefs or judgments that arise spontaneously without conscious reasoning,” I don’t consider these to be intuitions. And I am right not to do so. David is wrong in thinking he caught me “admitting” I had something close enough to what philosophers consider intuitions that I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have intuitions. What Tom described is just an ordinary part of human cognition. This is because the description Tom gave doesn’t refer to the sorts of things adequate for sustaining the kind of rationalistic philosophy that Huemer and other philosophers engage in. So the thing I’m questioning, and denying, isn’t the mere capacity for the sorts of spontaneous judgments Tom described. In response to Tom, I said this:

I have immediate, non-inferential beliefs or judgments about what I’d like for breakfast, but I don’t take those to be philosophical intuitions.

//When philosophers refer to intuitions, they are generally not making empirical claims about human psychology, but rather describing a type of mental state that seems self-evident or self-justifying.//

I don’t grant that anyone is in a position to make claims about mental states that are self-evident or self-justifying. So if they don’t take themselves to be making empirical claims, that is going to be a very serious problem for me.

Notice my first remark; I’m making it clear I wouldn’t consider those intuitions. That is, I don’t question whether we have immediate, non-inferential beliefs or judgments.

Does this mean I’ve conceded that I have intuitions? It depends what you mean by “intuition.” Under some descriptions I think I and most other people have them and under other descriptions I think we don’t or that it’s unclear. What I deny is a cluster of phenomena potentially picked out by the term “intuition.” I don’t deny that one can use the word “intuition” to refer to something I think exists. That would be trivial. I can point to my socks and call them “God.” Would this prove theism? Not in any meaningful sense.

Now, someone could insist those just are what they mean by intuitions. Well then, I obviously have those! Does this mean I’ve been caught “admitting” I have intuitions and thus know what the term means? No. Peter David Jones had been hounding me about this topic for some time, and stepped in to say the following (the sections in double slashes are quotes from me):

//I have immediate, non-inferential beliefs or judgments about what I’d like for breakfast, but I don’t take those to be philosophical intuitions.

Why not? Because they are mundane? Because they are subjective? Because they are fallible?

And what happened to having *no* idea what “intuition” means?

//I don’t grant that anyone is in a position to make claims about mental states that are self-evident or self-justifying.

You constantly grant these at a mundane level, because everyone does. If your guest tells you that they would prefer tea to coffee, you just go with it, instead of screaming “how do you know that!!!” or putting them in a FMRI machine.

I addressed the first question above. Regarding the remark about having no idea what intuition means, I don’t know if I said that or where, but this is a very silly question. I’m a psychologist and a philosopher. The term “intuition” is used by psychologists in reference to dual process models of cognition. These hold that cognition employs roughly two systems, one which is slower, conscious, controlled, and deliberative, while the other is faster, automatic, unconscious, and intuitive.

Do Peter or David suppose I’m baffled if a psychologist says “an intuitive process” in the context of the model? I sure hope not. A charitable reading of what I’d mean if I said I had “no idea” what the term meant would be that in certain philosophical contexts the meaning of the term “intuition” is ambiguous and underspecified, and likely a defective concept. This is especially charitable given that I’ve said something like this repeatedly. This isn’t some esoteric inference about what I mean; I’ve stated what my issue is repeatedly.

I have no idea why Peter or David think they have some kind of gotcha here. What you can see is that someone simply asserted a definition of “intuition” without any references, in a casual discussion on Facebook, with no evidence and no references supporting the notion that this was a generally accepted or widely used conception of what an intuition was. I responded by critiquing that account as overly broad. How would that imply that I’m somehow being inconsistent if I said I had no idea what philosophers meant by intuition? It wouldn’t. Obviously I’ve been given various definitions before; the problem isn’t that people don’t give definitions…it’s that people don’t give consistent definitions, and thus, as a result, it’s hard to pin down what anyone means when they invoke the term unless they offer a local, stipulative definition. And even when someone does that, that doesn’t mean I’ve now been furnished with an adequate account of “intuition” I can go out and use. Knowing so-and-so uses a word a particular way doesn’t help me interpret a literature if I haven’t been given any good reasons to think that the way that person uses the term captures most of the uses in that literature. Notice the very first sentence I wrote in the post:

I still can't get a clear and consistent response as to what a philosophical intuition is supposed to be.

Note the qualities clear and consistent. Accounts of intuition tend to be unclear in that they are missing features or have features they shouldn’t have relative to the way others use the term. At the same time, the inclusion or exclusion of the features attributed to intuitions offered by one or another account are often explicitly in conflict with the features attributed to them by another account. For comparison, imagine you wanted to know what a bambador was.

You go out and ask experts who purportedly use bambadors. These are the definitions you get:

1. Bambadors are a kind of hat.

2. Bambadors are any piece of clothing.

3. Bambadors are something you use to cover your head, but they are definitely not hats.

4. Bambadors are a special kind of hat that has intrinsic magical properties.

5. Bambadors are hats or masks, but not scarves.

6. Bambadors are scarves but definitely not masks.

7. Bambadors are a special kind of hat only some people have.

8. Bambadors are definitely not special hats. Everyone has them.

…and so on.

If these were the answers you received, would it be reasonable to say you have “no idea” what “bambador” means? Yes. “No idea” does not typically mean that you literally couldn’t say anything intelligible at all about what the thing in question is. It can be meant literally, but it frequently (if not typically) isn’t used this way. Instead, it’s a colloquial phrase for conveying one’s profound lack of understanding about something. For instance, I don’t know how computers work. It would be reasonable, if an engineer asked me, to say “I have no idea how a computer works.” Now, is it true that I have no idea in the strictly literal sense that I could say nothing at all about how computers work? No. They have electricity and have various parts like processors and motherboards and little fans that keep them cool because they heat up and there’s transistors and something to do with binary code and there’s RAM and I think that means Random Access Memory. I can say a few things. But it’s so far from an adequate understanding that “no idea” is an entirely conventional and ordinary way to express one’s profound ignorance.

Now, I say all this on the off chance I did, in fact, say that I have no idea what intuitions are supposed to be. I searched the comments in that thread and another on intuitions from around the same time and couldn’t find it. So it’s not clear I even did say that. But it would be entirely defensible if I did.

Either way, the above situation with the notion of a bambador is similar to the situation we’re in with philosophical use of intuition. The problem is not that someone can’t locally specify some stipulative use of the term; the problem is that usage of the term is extremely underspecified or inconsistent across different instances of its application; that one doesn’t know what people mean by the term is thus a holistic assessment of a body of discourse. What I am definitely not saying is that I can’t understand someone who offers a specific, stipulative definition. Of course I can (unless it’s nonsense). David and Peter didn’t appear to even understand what I took the issue to be, and doggedly sought to snipe at me and try to take shots at me that simply didn’t land because they were confused.

To head off one bad objection to this problem, someone might argue that all terms are like this. All terms are used in ways that vary from one speaker or context to another. This is true. But it is a matter of degree. How much? Who knows! I don’t know how to quantify exactly how much use of a term needs to be variable, inconsistent, and contradictory across uses to qualify as a problem, but I won’t be intimidated by the same kind of vagueness and paradoxical Sorites problem that plagues so much of the rest of classification in the world. There are semi-arbitrary thresholds and cutoff points we all have to make. What distinguishes a mountain from a hill? I don’t know. But there are mountains and there are hills. So too are there terms that are used in ways too inconsistent for it to be reasonable to suppose they pick out a genuine thing, while others are consistent enough to do so.

Now let’s look at the next part of Peter’s post:

//I don’t grant that anyone is in a position to make claims about mental states that are self-evident or self-justifying.

You constantly grant these at a mundane level, because everyone does. If your guest tells you that they would prefer tea to coffee, you just go with it, instead of screaming “how do you know that!!!” or putting them in a FMRI machine.

This is completely confused. Here is the initial remark I was responding to:

//When philosophers refer to intuitions, they are generally not making empirical claims about human psychology, but rather describing a type of mental state that seems self-evident or self-justifying.//

What I am alluding to is, very roughly, a rejection of the notion that we have a capacity to discern self-evident or self-justifying truths, which are typically a priori. This would include judgments like that knowledge cannot be justified true belief due to Gettier cases, or that torture is stance-independently wrong, or that physicalism must be false because one has the intuition that Mary would learn something new when she saw red.

Another problem with Tom’s definition is the use of the term “seems.” If it’s playing the mundane epistemic hedging role it plays in much of ordinary language, that part, at least, would be fine. But philosophers often treat “seems” as a way to link philosophical intuitions to other forms of cognition that do exist, e.g., perceptions or memories. It seems to me that my name is Lance and it seems to me I’m typing at a computer right now. Memory and perception, respectively. So, too, are we told that it “seems” that Mary learns something new, which provides some defeasible justification for concluding that physicalism is false. This is supposed to be an “intellectual seeming,” which is like perception and memory in certain regards, but is its own thing. This is the kind of thing I am denying. So how did Tom mean “seems”? I don’t know, but it matters. If it was the innocuous kind, this part of the remark wouldn’t be an issue. If it was the objectionable kind, then the very response Tom offered recapitulated an undischarged use of a questionable concept, the very content of which is part of what I am skeptical about. And, furthermore, the existence of which is an empirical claim subject to skepticism, contrary to what Tom’s remarks suggest.

Conversely, a judgment about whether to have tea or coffee isn’t something I think is a plausible candidate for being the same kind of mental state as the alleged philosophical intuition that e.g., Jones doesn’t have knowledge in a Gettier case. Why should I grant that these are the same kind of psychological state, result from the same processes, etc.? I don’t grant this, and don’t see any good reason to.

So I don’t agree with Peter that I do grant what Tom was referring to in some mundane sense. I am drawing a distinction between using an intuition to determine that e.g., something is an instance of knowledge or is good, and deciding I’d prefer coffee over tea. People clearly can do the latter. But it would be ridiculous to insist that, because they can do the latter, and that’s an “intuition,” therefore they can do the former, and the former is simply the same kind of thing. I’m under no obligation to grant this. It does not follow that if someone thinks we have the psychological capacity to decide what to drink then we must grant a capacity to discern a priori truths. This type of dialectical piggybacking is a standard hallmark of the way proponents of intuitions try to establish their existence. They insist that intuitions are simply a part of human cognition, and because we have cognitive processes A, B, and C, therefore we have intuitions, even though they’re supposed to be distinct, and form their own category, D. This simply isn’t how you establish the existence of things. The fact that horses exist doesn’t entail that there are unicorns, even if unicorns are arguably a “type of horse.”

David quoted Peter and added this remark:

- Yes, where is the thing about “I have NO IDEA of what intuition CAN mean by philosophers and I suspect that they FABRICATED it”... I mean, what the hell?

I can’t tell if this is intended to be a literal quote or not. I couldn’t locate any reference to me saying this anywhere. If I did say this, I’d like to see the context. Outside of a context it sounds pretty confused and probably is something I’d not endorse. So maybe I made some kind of mistake. I certainly have some ideas on what philosophers can mean by “intuition.” They could, like Williamson, simply be referring to our ordinary methods of judgment. Or they could refer to dispositions to believe propositions. Or they could refer to hunches. Or they could refer to the processes associated with dual process models of cognition put forward by psychologists. There’s lots of things they can mean that do pick out real phenomena. So I’m puzzled as to why I’d say I have no idea what philosophers can mean.

Either way, if I said this about philosophers, and a random person showed up and gave a stipulative definition, which I then rejected (which is what happened in the thread) would that somehow mean I’ve conceded something and David has somehow exposed a problem with my initial claims? If so, what problem? This is all very obscure and unclear. Maybe it made more sense back then, but this was a few years ago. Looking at this now, it’s not clear to me what David is talking about. I did say this at the time:

I have beliefs and judgments. Nothing is gained by calling any of them “intuitions.”

//And what happened to having *no* idea what “intuition” means?”//

I’m not sure what you’re asking here. The word has lots of uses. I’m familiar with various uses to varying degrees.

That was the end of that particular thread. It remains unclear to me what David was on about there, but there were other skirmishes over this matter to review. Apparently at the time I explicitly stated that I was familiar with various uses of the term. And again, it’s worth emphasizing that they’re attributing claims to me that I was unable to locate in the thread, and in some cases are using quotations even though I can’t find the quotes. I’m not sure I even said the things they’re attributing to me. Maybe I did say them. If I did, is David going to accuse me of lying? Here we have a situation where claims are being attributed to me I don’t remember making. I’m not even denying I made them, but I can’t find them. Maybe you can. If so, I’m happy to claim them as my words.

In any case, this brings us to David’s accusations about me lying. David has repeatedly charged me with lying or dishonesty. Apparently David seems to think he “caught” me “admitting” to something that I am then denying. Here’s what he initially said:

O filósofo anti-realista moral e que trabalha com Filosofia Experimental Lance Bush meteu o Block em mim depois de uma discussão onde ele admitiu que possui algo similar ao que filósofos acadêmicos contemporâneos chamam de "intuições" e que ele vive dizendo que são "meaningless"

This is Twitter’s automatic translation:

The anti-realist moral philosopher who works with Experimental Philosophy, Lance Bush, blocked me after a discussion in which he admitted that he possesses something similar to what contemporary academic philosophers call “intuitions,” and which he keeps saying are “meaningless.”

David also elaborates in one of the screenshots he provides:

Look how it was an exchange that he had with Tom L. Wellborn, Peter David Jones and me, he admits that he does in fact possess something similar to what intuitive and/or intuitionist-friendly philosophers refer to as “intuitions,” how can he say that what philosophers mean by “intuitions” is COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS and that he have NO IDEA of what they COULD MEAN? Pretty weird.

No, David, I have not “admitted” that I possess something similar to what contemporary academic philosophers call intuitions. This makes it seem like he forced some kind of confession out of me, or that I slipped and revealed I “really” had something I’ve denied all along. This never happened.

As I pointed out above, I acknowledged that I have the state in question but that I didn’t consider the state to be an intuition, nor do I grant that it is what philosophers generally have in mind by “intuition.” Is it similar? Sure. Horses are similar to unicorns. If I agreed that I believe horses exist, but was expressing skepticism about the existence of unicorns, would getting me to acknowledge the existence of horses mean I “admit” that something like unicorns exist, and am therefore lying about my unicorn skepticism? No. Similar isn’t good enough. Yet this is similar to what David is doing. It’s silly.

Even if I’m wrong about Tom’s definition and it is an appropriate way to capture how philosophers use the term “intuition,” that’s irrelevant. The point is that I don’t believe this and so I don’t grant that what I “admitted” I have is what philosophers generally consider intuitions. And I said that in that very thread.

So it makes no sense to suggest I’m lying. And the whole point of the examples I gave wasn’t to “admit” I had what philosophers consider intuitions, it was to present a reductio that shows that philosophers probably don’t mean what Tom offered as an account by the term “intuition.” Again, even if I’m wrong about that, and that is how they use the term, that would at best mean that I have what philosophers consider intuitions but don’t realize it. That wouldn’t mean I’m lying. David seems to have a serious problem distinguishing disagreement from lying. At best, all David would be able to say is that I am mistaken (and perhaps stupid or ignorant). But being stupid, ignorant, and wrong doesn’t make you a liar.

My position was the same then as it is now. I don’t claim to have or not have intuitions, and I don’t claim that the notion of an intuition either is or isn’t meaningless. Whether I have intuitions depends on what you mean by “intuition.”

The term “intuition” is also used in an ordinary sense to refer to hunches. I have hunches. It’s used in psychology to refer to automatic, non-inferential psychological processes. I have those, too. Philosophers sometimes use the term in an utterly mundane sense to refer to dispositions to believe propositions. I have these, too. So yes, of course I “have intuitions” in some of the respects philosophers use the term. But the fact that some uses of a term are clear and meaningful and appropriate doesn’t vindicate all the other uses of a given term.

When I say that intuition talk is confused, defective, or meaningless, I am talking about the overall pattern of usage within a given discourse. What I object to is a distinct bandwidth of usages of the term: (1) those that occur in academic contexts where their meaning is underspecified such that it’s unclear given the context how they’re being used and (2) those that are explicitly used in accord with questionable conceptions of intuitions, e.g., ones that treat them as sui generis. The existence of instances of (2) creates a smokescreen of ambiguity for (1), and renders the whole discourse a problem as a result.

Imagine, for instance, that a community used the term “shoe” to either refer to its ordinary meaning of footwear, and also to some Lovecraftian mind-destroying nonsense: shaggalaothmathamolaogomech! Then they went around referencing shoes in contexts where it was entirely unclear which of these uses they were employing. Would it be appropriate to object? Yes. It would. And it wouldn’t be appropriate to insist that because I acknowledge that the term is sometimes used to refer to footwear I must therefore accept the Lovecraftian uses, too.

What David and others don’t seem to appreciate is that there is a whole population of usages of terms that exist in given discourses and that the legitimacy of localized instances doesn’t transfer to all other instances, and if one is raising an objection to those other instances one needs to be able to distinguish those problematic uses from the unproblematic ones. And this is not easy to do given that they’re all picked out using the same term and because the people in question are extremely unclear about what they mean. Unfortunately this results in David and others being extremely pushy and demanding for me to be crystal clear about everything, while they don’t notice the problem I’ve noticed: that there’s an entire field in which people aren’t being clear. Ironic, given how demanding David is in these threads for me to be clear. Apparently I’m held to a standard he isn’t interested in holding others to. Now, maybe David doesn’t think there’s an issue with the way the term “intuition” is being used. That’s his prerogative, but I’m entitled to think there is, and I do. That doesn’t make me dishonest.

Returning to the quote above, David frames things as if there is some distinctive notion of “intuition” among academic philosophers and that I claim to have something close enough to it that my claim that intuition-talk is confused and meaningless is somehow inconsistent with it. This is false, and David is simply confused. Philosophers use “intuition” in all sorts of ways. Roughly, you can plot these uses along a spectrum of mundane to distinct. At the far end of the mundane side of the spectrum intuitions are not distinct from any other psychological processes; instead, the term is simply another way of referring to preexisting and ordinary features of human psychology. This is the account of intuition Williamson (2004) favors:

What are called ‘intuitions’ in philosophy are just applications of our ordinary capacities for judgement. (p. 109)

At the other end, intuitions are a sui generis capacity that is distinct from all other psychological processes. Pust (2024) summarizes this account in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on intuition:

A final family of accounts holds that an intuition is a sui generis occurrent propositional attitude, variously characterized as one in which a proposition occurrently seems true (Bealer 1998, 2002; Pust 2000; Huemer 2001, 2005), in which a proposition is presented to the subject as true (Chudnoff 2011a; Bengson 2015), or which pushes the subject to believe a proposition (Koksvik 2011). Such views are united in denying that belief that p is necessary or sufficient for an intuition that p and in rejecting dispositional analyses of intuition. The close connection between intuition that p and disposition to believe p is explained by claiming that an intuition that p typically serves as a ground of the disposition to believe p.

According to proponents of accounts of this sort, when one has an intuition that p, one does not merely represent or believe or consider p. Rather, p is the content of a distinctive occurrent conscious non-belief propositional attitude. (Pust, 2024)

This is what I deny having and that I deny exists. What I don’t deny is that I have all the mundane psychological processes associated with judgment Williamson refers to. I address this in exhaustive detail in this post. There, another person (in this case, a very confused professional philosopher) accuses me of not having intuitions. Once again, my critics suffer from an astounding lack of understanding. There, I say much the same thing:

My remark is also orthogonal to whether I’d agree with the statement “I have intuitions.” The only way to answer this question is to know what a person has in mind by “intuition.” And I do think we have some of the things that philosophers describe as “intuitions.” It’s just that, even if we had sui generis faculties, dispositions to believe, and so on, we’re not obligated to refer to any of these in particular (or all of them, collectively) as “intuitions.” At least part of my objection to how we use the term is that it is used in too many inconsistent and underspecified ways, making it unclear what anyone is even saying they have when they report having an intuition. For comparison, if people used the term “papple” to refer to apples and pears, and people were constantly mixing them up, you could object to use of the term “papple” without thereby denying that apples or pears exist.

I’ve been very consistent on this over the past few years. It shouldn’t be that complicated for David to appreciate that I think I and others have intuitions under some descriptions but not others. Give me the specific description, and I’ll tell you whether I think I have that or whether others do. But David seems to think that if I say I have a psychological state someone has decided to call an intuition, and it has some of the features associated with some of the uses philosophers use the term “intuition” for, that I’ve been “caught” admitting I have intuitions. This is completely confused, because it equivocates between whether I “admit” to having what David considers an intuition and what I consider an intuition. The only way for me to be lying is for me to knowingly have what I consider to be an intuition, but then knowingly claiming to not have intuitions. But that never happened. At best, I have what David considers an intuition and what I’ve explicitly said I don’t consider to be one. So the accusation of lying makes no sense.

There are then a host of proposed psychological processes between Williamson on the one end and Bealer on the other where intuitions are distinguished in various sorts of ways: unconscious, non-inferential, possessing distinctive phenomenology, operating over a distinctive subset of propositions, and so on. There is no canonical account of “intuition” as it is used by philosophers. Think of it like this. Imagine there’s a whole set of properties for any prospective account of intuitions:

{A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K …}

Suppose A = belief, B = judgment, C = disposition, D = non-inferential, E = spontaneous, F = sui generis mental state, G = quasi-perceptual faculty, H = possesses a distinctive phenomenology, and so on. Philosophers don’t agree on what’s in the set. As a result, any given use of the term “intuition” by a philosopher leaves unspecified what cluster of properties they have in mind by use of the term. For some, it’s {A, B, C}, for others, it’s {D, E, F, ~A, ~B}, and so on (here ~A denotes that intuition must lack the property in question). These accounts don’t simply pick out distinct prospective phenomena; they explicitly and by stipulation exclude rival concepts. Some accounts of intuitions treat them as dispositions, while some not only don’t treat them as dispositions, but maintain that they definitely aren’t dispositions.

When you canvass the literature, then, you’ll see thousands of uses of “intuition.” And what do the philosophers in question mean? There’s usually no way to know because they don’t specify and nobody agrees. So they could mean by “intuition” any coherent (or perhaps even incoherent) combination of properties from the set above. The same philosopher might not even use the term “intuition” consistently across their work or in the same paper. The term is utterly amorphous.

Now, my position is that I question the existence of certain property clusters often picked out by use of the term “intuition.” Here are some candidate uses of the term:

1. A judgment that is either non-inferential or the inferential features of the judgment are unavailable to introspection

2. A disposition to believe propositions

3. A disposition to believe propositions that has a distinct phenomenology

4. A non-inferential belief in the truth of a subset of non-empirical propositions

5. The output of a sui generis quasi-perceptual faculty that grants distinctive epistemic access to the truth of a priori propositions

I have no problem endorsing the reality of (1) and (2). I’m skeptical of (3) and (4) but they’re not that outrageous, while I outright deny (5).

Now, David seems to think he’s caught me admitting to something inconsistent with my position on the matter. He hasn’t. David was, and apparently still is, simply confused.

I am tired of this. I have been and always will be aggressively sincere about what I think about these topics to the point that it sometimes gets me in trouble. So it’s incredibly annoying to have someone show up who thinks they’re clever and “caught” me lying.

Finally, suppose I was lying. So what? That doesn’t change anything about the merits of any points I make. Arguments aren’t somehow undermined by the author of the argument not endorsing them. Theories aren’t falsified by their proponents not really believing in them. There are exceptions. If, for instance, I took my personal lack of intuitions as strong evidence that they don’t exist, but I was knowingly lying about not having them when I did, that would undermine such arguments, since the lie was relevant to the truth of the premises of the argument. But the premises of arguments typically don’t require the honesty of their presenters. My claims about the problems with the field’s use of intuitions stand or fall regardless of whether I’m lying or not. That’s one reason why accusations of lying are so dialectically pointless. Not only are they false, and not only are they absolute poison to any effort to have a friendly and productive exchange. They’re also, for the most part, irrelevant.

I want to end by directing my remarks to David: your confusion and misunderstanding is not a justification for you concluding that I’m doing anything nefarious or deceptive. And it’s irresponsible, reckless, and shameful of you to have spent years going around in the comment sections and livestreams claiming to have caught me lying. You haven’t. I can be confused, or inconsistent, or wrong. And I have few qualms about you or anyone else suggesting I am any of those things (I won’t say no qualms, though; such claims can be similarly misguided and annoying). But I’m not dishonest.

What you’ve done is obnoxious and unethical. Your accusations are based on a confused misreading of my claims. You owe me an apology for putting me through this nonsense. I take my views seriously and at the risk of inviting more accusations from unscrupulous assholes who recognize that it’s effective, your accusations bother me. Your private thoughts are yours, but you’ve been repeatedly and publicly making accusations about me for a few years now that you’re unable to actually support. It’s time to stop. It’s time to acknowledge that the specific accusation that I’m dishonest or lying is unwarranted and that you made a mistake.

References

Masip, J. (2017). Deception detection: State of the art and future prospects. Psicothema, 29(2), 149-159.

Pust, J. (2024). Intuition. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2024 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuition/#IntuSuiGeneStat

Williamson, T. (2004). Philosophical ‘intuitions’ and scepticism about judgement. dialectica, 58(1), 109-153.

1.0 Selection effects & directional shift

Josh Rasmussen posed an excellent question on Twitter a few weeks ago:

Unlike in phil religion, where specializing affects the majority view about God's existence, the majority view about moral realism is independent of specialization.

I wonder why.

This remark refers to the 2020 PhilPapers survey. What Josh is drawing attention to is that if you look at the responses from all of the philosophers surveyed, a substantial majority accept or lean towards atheism. However, if you filter by those who specialize in philosophy of religion, this trend flips: a substantial majority favor theism.

Yet when it comes to moral realism, this flip doesn’t occur when you compare philosophers in general to specialists in metaethics.

Josh wonders why this flip occurs for theism, but not moral realism. While I can speculate, I don’t know why. I think this is a genuine and peculiar puzzle and I don’t have a good explanation for it.

A key consideration is selection effects. Selection effects occur whenever an observed measure or difference between measures intended to represent a given population is a result of a systematic tendency for members of the sample to consist of an unrepresentative subset of that population. For instance, if you were conducting a study on criminal behavior, people who have committed crimes may be less likely to volunteer to participate in the study. As a result, your sample may consist of a disproportionate number of law-abiding citizens relative to the population. And, of course, if you’re recruiting from the local population, some people may be unavailable because they are currently incarcerated. It seems intuitive to me that people in prison are more likely to be criminals than people who are not in prison.

One explanation for why philosophers of religion are more likely to be theists is that theists are more likely to study philosophy of religion. In fact, Adriano Mannino looked into the matter and found that selection effects not only accounted for the asymmetry in theism between specialists and non-specialists, but also that there is some indication that studying philosophy of religion actually caused more theists to become atheists than vice versa. Mannino points to a study from Helen De Cruz that investigated how the beliefs of philosophers of religion changed over time. The rate of revision to atheism/agnosticism was greater (11.8%) than the rate of revision to theism (8.1%). These aren’t titanic numbers nor a titanic difference, and they hardly settle the matter definitively, but these findings illustrate an important point: the raw proportion of philosophers that endorse a given view can be highly misleading.

Suppose that 95% of the population is inclined towards moral realism. And suppose philosophers are recruited at random from the population. This would mean that about 95% of people who begin studying philosophy are inclined towards moral realism. We then discover that the proportion of professional philosophers who endorse moral realism is about 62%. This would mean that the proportion who went from moral realists to moral antirealists must be much greater than the proportion who went from being antirealists to realists.

If this were the case, it would make very little sense to point to the fact that most philosophers are moral realists as evidence that moral realism is the most defensible view within academic philosophy. It would instead look like there’s a massive preexisting bias in favor of moral realism and that studying philosophy partially mitigates it. It would also be better evidence that the weight of philosophical argumentation favors antirealism over realism, at least insofar as many more people are won over by the case for antirealism from studying philosophy than vice versa.

This is why it’s important to stress the direction of belief change resulting from studying philosophy, and not just the raw numbers. Now, 95% is just a made up number. I don’t actually think 95% of nonphilosophers are moral realists. But ironically, it is moral realists themselves who routinely insist realism is extremely intuitive or obvious or the default position. What’s their explanation for why so many philosophers apparently reject realism and even become antirealists after studying philosophy in spite of this fact? 62% is hardly the ringing endorsement you’d expect of a position that’s so “obvious.” These considerations are worth noting in light of the post Josh was responding to:

If moral realism is clearly not true, why do over 60 percent of professional philosophers accept or lean towards it?

That’s not to say therefore the view is true, it could well be wrong, but if it were obviously false I don’t think it would be this big a divide.

The implication seems to be that the fact that over 60% of philosophers accept or lean towards moral reason poses a problem to those of us who think moral realism is clearly not true.

It doesn’t. Moral realism is clearly not true. And it is also clearly true that over 60% of philosophers got this one wrong. This says more about how wrong so many philosophers can be than it says about how confident we should be as antirealists.

People should not be intimidated by the proportion of philosophers that endorse a position. Philosophers don’t have a clear, well-developed set of methods, they remain divided on numerous issues, and ongoing contention in the field may have as much to do with current fashions and selection effects than with the quality of arguments.

2.0 More accessible

Others have weighed in on the question. Maverick Christian proposes:

I think because moral realism is (typically) more directly accessible by intuition; e.g., it just seems obvious to some people that it's wrong to torture infants. It's harder to come up with a good argument for moral realism for folks who don't already have such moral intuitions.

In contrast, God's existence isn't as immediately obvious and it's a subject matter that seems far more susceptible to arguments and evidence; e.g., psychophysical harmony and moral knowledge.

I think there’s some truth to this. The move to moral realism is more immediate than the case one typically makes for the existence of God or for other philosophical positions. I also agree that it’s hard to come up with a good argument for moral realism for people who don’t have moral intuitions. I part ways with Maverick, however, in that I don’t think anyone has moral intuitions because I don’t think philosophical intuitions are a genuine psychological phenomenon.

3.0 Lance is no expert!

Where things took an unfortunate turn is when I came up:

I doubt you and Lance Bush would agree about much but I believe he's dug into the numbers and argues that it's pretty split once one account non-natural moral realism, natural moral realism, and anti-realism.

I appreciate Gabriel referencing me and drawing attention to my previous remarks on the matter, but this remark is vulnerable to misinterpretation and, unfortunately, I think this is exactly what happened. Gabriel’s remark makes it seem like I was claiming that once you subdivide things the proportion of moral realists is no longer a majority and that it’s closer to a split. But I’ve never said this. You can see what I’ve written about this in an article titled “The moral realist/antirealist dispute is more like rock paper scissors than a dichotomy.” Here’s the relevant portion:

All major metaethical positions are “contentious,” and none commands a substantial majority of assent among philosophers. Even if you collapse naturalist and non-naturalist realists together, you only get 62% of philosophers. That’s nothing close to an established consensus. But I’m puzzled as to how Goff goes about deciding who “needs” to argue for their positions: Do you need to argue for a position if more than 50% of philosophers would disagree? If so, why?

And what level of abstraction is necessary? The arguments for non-naturalist realism and naturalist realism are not the same as one another, nor are the positions, themselves, the same. While 62% of philosophers endorse moral realism, this is an extremely misleading figure. The 2020 PhilPapers survey also includes a question that provides more specific information about the metaethical views of respondents:

As you can see, no position comes anywhere close to exceeding 50%. Non-naturalist realists make up 26.6%. The other survey question about realism vs. antirealism found that 26.1% of philosophers endorse moral antirealism. Then we have about 31.6% that endorse naturalism. Why lump naturalism and non-naturalism in together? Naturalists share many affinities with antirealists, in that naturalists tend to reject much of what antirealists find objectionable about realism, e.g., irreducible normativity and the like. 62% is a misleading and artificial figure. One could add up antirealists and naturalists, call the collective positions “Anti-Moorean,” and argue that non-naturalist views are “contentious,” noting, ironically, that there’s almost exactly as many non-naturalist realist respondents as there are antirealists. In light of this, perhaps we should insist that non-naturalist realism is a similarly contentious position and that people therefore need to argue for it!

For what it’s worth, if we consider constructivism, expressivism, and error theory to all technically be a form of antirealism, then even if some of the respondents to the direct realism/antirealism question may have eschewed the “antirealist” label, it may, in fact, be the case that some form of antirealism is the most common response if one divides responses into naturalist realism, non-naturalist realism, and some form of antirealism. The weird lumping together of naturalism and non-naturalism as some super-bloc is leveraged by realists to depict antirealism as some kind of weird minority position. It isn’t. The actual situation is far closer to rock paper scissors.

I don’t claim here that moral realists are not in the majority. I generally just collapse the accept/lean distinction in the data and acknowledge that moral realists are in the majority. What I am arguing isn’t that they aren’t the majority, but that the realism/antirealism divide isn’t the best way to carve up the position space of possible positions. There are other ways of dividing up the position space that are at least equally defensible. Here are two other possibilities:

1. Non-naturalist realists & antirealists vs. naturalist realists
Distinguish everyone who maintains that moral truths must have normative authority or force in a way that isn’t available to natural facts. As a non-negotiable requirement, some will hold that such facts exist, and others will hold that since no such facts exist, moral realism is false. This would place all non-naturalist realists and many antirealists on the same side, while naturalists and some antirealists would be on the other side. This would be similar to the incompatibilist/compatibilist dichotomy in free will, where free will skeptics and libertarians are on the same side, and compatibilists are on the other.

2. Naturalist realists & antirealists vs. non-naturalist realists
Distinguish everyone who maintains that whatever morality is, it can’t involve non-natural moral truths. This would place naturalists and moral antirealists on the same side, and non-naturalists on the other side.

The realism/antirealism divide is largely incidental and arguably an artifact of the fact that 20^th century metaethics focused so much on semantics. Naturalist and non-naturalist realists share similar views about the semantics of moral claims. Both are cognitivists, and both hold that moral claims purport to describe stance-independent moral truths. But the kinds of truths they think exist are very different from one another.

Incidentally, Huemer favors something very similar to (2) above. In Ethical Intuitionism he explicitly argues that the dividing lines would make more sense if it were the non-naturalist moral realists vs. everyone else. I agree with Huemer.

Another point worth emphasizing is that the PhilPapers survey includes both those who accept a position and those who lean towards a position. This is typically collapsed, but they can be disaggregated. When you do this, this is what you get:

Only 37.35% of philosophers accept moral realism. Personally, I take this to be a bit of a technicality, but it’s still, well, technically true. Discourse covers this here, though it now appears to be behind a paywall.

Thomas Metcalf appears to have interpreted Gabriel to be saying that I claimed realists were not in the majority:

Nope. Among metaethicists, non-naturalist realism is comfortably ahead, at 36%. Naturalist realism is at 30% and the clearly anti-realist disjunction sums to 22%:

https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5078?aos=28

Philosophers in general more-strongly reject anti-realism.

Everything Thomas Metcalf says here is true. The PhilPapers survey has two metaethics questions on moral realism. One distinguishes realists from antirealists. The other focuses on the specific position philosophers endorse. You can find results for that second question here. However, there’s a big problem with Thomas’s response. Thomas focuses specifically on the views of specialists in metaethics. Gabriel’s remark about it being split never clarified whether he was referring to philosophers in general or to specialists in metaethics. If you see my original article, you’ll see that I was discussing proportions among total respondents, not specialists. For instance, here’s the results I displayed there:

…as you can see at the bottom, the N = 1024 refers to all respondents, not specialists in metaethics. Thomas appears to have misunderstood Gabriel on two fronts: first, Gabriel’s remarks were interpreted such that I was taken to be denying realists comprise a majority of respondents. Second, Thomas focuses specifically on specialists, even though I wasn’t commenting on that proportion and Gabriel didn’t explicitly mention it. To be fair, neither of these mistakes is Thomas’s fault, for the most part. Gabriel’s remarks are unhelpfully vague, both with respect to what I was claiming and whether Gabriel was referring to philosophers in general or to specialists.

If you filter by specialists in metaethics, you get these results:

We’ll ignore the accept/lean distinction and simply add up everyone who is clearly a realist and everyone who is clearly an antirealist. “Clearly” here is important: it excludes constructivists, who are difficult to classify. We can then add up expressivists and error theorists as those who “clearly” endorse antirealism, and we get these results:

• Non-naturalist realists: 36.4%

• Naturalist realists: 29.7%

• Antirealists: 22.4%

Realists are in the clear majority among specialists in metaethics, and both non-naturalist realists and naturalist realists by themselves have more proponents than antirealism. Even if we included all constructivists among antirealists, we’d get only 39.4%, which is higher than naturalist or non-naturalist realism alone, but not even close to being higher than both together. And it wouldn’t be reasonable to include all constructivists; 26.1% of philosophers chose “antirealist” to the question that focused on the realism/antirealism divide. Constructivists are likely to fall on both sides of that dividing line.

Gabriel responded to Thomas:

Less than a 1/3 buy into non-naturalist realism with it only being ahead of antirealism by only 8%. Naturalists have a lot of the same issues with non-naturalists as anti-realists. Bush argues a descriptive thesis is closer to their view with no serious metaphysical baggage.

I’m not quite sure what data Gabriel is referring to. Perhaps he’s referring to philosophers in general rather than specialists. Among philosophers in general we get:

• Non-naturalist realists: 26.6%

• Naturalist realists: 31.6%

• Antirealists: 15.9%

I’m not sure where the 8% is coming from, though, so this may not be the divide Gabriel is referring to. All of this is unfortunate, because Thomas responds:

What survey results are you reading? I don’t know of any that present the findings you claim exist. More generally, in my experience, Bush doesn’t really understand metaethics very well compared to experts.

I can’t find the findings Gabriel is referring to either. But it’s the second comment that stands out to me:

More generally, in my experience, Bush doesn’t really understand metaethics very well compared to experts.

I doubt Thomas has much experience with me. This remark also implies I’m not an expert, which I’d dispute. Either way, in this case Thomas may be basing at least part of his assessment off of Gabriel’s remarks, rather than my own. This is ironic, given that as you can see above I agree with Thomas.

To my knowledge, I had one exchange with Thomas. I believe it was on Facebook. Thomas kept replying that I was “misinterpreting” him. I didn’t think I was, and if I was, I think it was probably his fault for not being very clear. Either way, I found him opaque, annoying, and difficult to speak to. I did not have a positive impression of Thomas. Apparently he didn’t have a positive impression of me.

That’s unfortunate, but perhaps we can try to reach an accord. I’ll be posting this and reaching out to Thomas to see if he’d like to have a conversation.

Someone else came to my defense with this remark:

If we're treating constructivism as antirealist (not sure what the language used in the survey was), it's 22.42% + 16.97% = 39.39%.
Lance *is* an expert, he is published in and teaches metaethics. He has written a series on the Philpapers survey here:

That’s a good series from me, so go check it out. Also, thanks Watchdominion!

As you can see above, these numbers do add up. Watchdominion is correct. If you treat constructivists as antirealists, that’s the number you get. You may also recall I make a similar remark in the longer quote from my earlier article:

For what it’s worth, if we consider constructivism, expressivism, and error theory to all technically be a form of antirealism, then even if some of the respondents to the direct realism/antirealism question may have eschewed the “antirealist” label, it may, in fact, be the case that some form of antirealism is the most common response if one divides responses into naturalist realism, non-naturalist realism, and some form of antirealism.

Note all the qualifications here: if we include constructivism, and if we split up naturalists and non-naturalists, then antirealism comes out on top. Which is true. But there’s a reason I excluded constructivism from the official antirealism tally, and presented this as a conditional: it’s not easy to classify as clearly realist or antirealist. I would generally exclude it…just like Thomas did. If my way of classifying things is an indication that I don’t have a good understanding of metaethics, this would apparently indicate Thomas doesn’t, either. Watchdominion likewise included the conditional “if,” so we’re on the same page.

I also agree with watchdominion that it’d be reasonable to consider me to be an expert in this area. While I don’t have as many publications in prestigious philosophy journals as more prominent and established figures, this isn’t necessary to be an expert. One’s knowledge and competence are all that’s required. This is why I was disappointed to see this response from Thomas:

But it's not correct to simply treat constructivism as anti-realist.

In any case, Bush doesn't seem to have any articles in important philosophy journals, and in my experience from personal correspondence, doesn't really deeply understand these debates.

I agree with Thomas that it’s not correct to simply treat constructivism as an antirealist position. My public remarks on the matter are that constructivism is difficult to classify, straddles the line, and may fall on one or the other side depending on the form of constructivism in question; generally speaking though, many constructivist accounts do qualify as antirealism and if I had to pick one side to put it on, it’d probably be the antirealist side. The issue with this, though, is that it’s not entirely up to me to resolve such matters, self-identification is the only apparent standard the PhilPapers survey was using, and they didn’t offer an explicit definition of “moral realism” or other concepts to my knowledge in the first place. Given this, categorization of constructivists remains a legitimately tricky matter and not something I am or have been dogmatic about.

Regarding Thomas’s second remark:

In any case, Bush doesn’t seem to have any articles in important philosophy journals, and in my experience from personal correspondence, doesn’t really deeply understand these debates.

I can’t really argue with the first part of that. I wouldn’t say I have any articles in what are generally regarded as prestigious philosophy journals, though I am quite happy with the journals I have published in. However, what is Thomas’s point? Are you only an expert if you publish in these journals? This seems like a weird bit of indirect gatekeeping.

Regarding “personal correspondence,” I already addressed that above. We had an exchange where I thought Thomas was unclear and annoying. It was relatively brief and certainly not enough for him to form much of an impression about whether I “deeply understand these debates.” The exchange continued after this:

Gabriel

But it’s also not correct to not simply treat the descriptive thesis like non-natural moral realism. I don’t think you have a very good understanding of Bush it sounds like regardless of your disagreements.

Thomas

I’m not treating naturalist moral realism like non-natural except that I’m counting it as a form of realism. Do you think that’s a mistake?

Gabriel

I think labeling both things realism doesn’t recognize them as substantially different theses. There is a reason it’s often called quasi-realism. It’s the same label for two different things.

I agree with Gabriel. I don’t think Thomas does have a very good understanding of my views or of the point Gabriel is making. And I of course agree that naturalist realism and non-naturalist realism are so qualitatively different it is misleading to lump them together and center philosophical disputes around realism vs. antirealism. At the same time, I agree with Thomas that naturalist and non-naturalist realism are both forms of moral realism. I’m not sure I understand Gabriel’s remark about quasi-realism though, as that’s a conjunction of several theses that fuses expressivism with deflationary views of truth and some other components into a strange cocktail that emerged from the antirealist camp but is now brushing up against the line between realists and antirealists so much so that it, too, is becoming hard to cleanly classify.

I want to thank Gabriel and Watchdominion for mentioning me and defending my views, though I do think Gabriel could be a bit more precise in conveying my ideas. I also want to thank Thomas for restraint in the critical remarks about me. I don’t agree with them, but they’re not vitriolic or overtly nasty.

4.0 An invitation

I’d be happy to speak to any or all of the people involved in this discussion. Gabriel and watchdominion: I’m not familiar with either of you, but you’re welcome to reach out and have a chat if you’d like. However, I’m especially interested in taking another shot at discussing metaethics with Thomas Metcalf.

Thomas, if you’re seeing this, reach out! I’d like to talk to you. We clearly didn’t make a good impression on each in our first encounter, but the internet often brings out the worst in us (or at least me!). I’d like the academic spaces we occupy to be ecumenical rather than adversarial. I think a talk on video where we can interact live would be more profitable and less likely to devolve into something unpleasant. I’m easy to contact, but I may reach out to you first.

9.0 Against objective theories

Christian takes the remaining portions of his case against subjectivism in a new direction: referencing and briefly discussing objectivist theories, though Christian makes it clear this is just a brief overview, adding:

I will not defend this here as it would take far too long, it took Parfit 1200 pages to do so. I will merely state it so we can contrast it as we work through the objections to Subjectivism.

Christian begins by telling us how objective theories differ from subjectivism:

Objective theories hold that there are certain facts that give us (external) reasons to have certain aims and to do whatever would best achieve these aims.

I’ve always found this extremely puzzling. What could it possibly mean for a fact to give us an “external reason”? In any typical case, if one asked for the “reason” for something, this “reason” could be discharged. What I mean by this is that nobody would say that one has a reason simpliciter. Instead, they’d answer by stating what the reason was. For instance, if someone said “What was the reason the dinosaurs went extinct?” one might answer “An asteroid hit the earth.” Or one might say “Why did Charles die?” to which one might reply “He had pancreatic cancer.” These are explanatory reasons. But we also speak of reasons in a normative or justificatory sense in other contexts. “What reason did Sally have for yelling at Sam?” One might respond: “Sam called her names.” One normative reason we could give to account for our actions is to appeal to our desires:

Sam: Why are you majoring in engineering?

Alex: Because I want to be an engineer.

Sam: Why do you want to be an engineer?

Alex: Because the topic interests me, and it’s a career path that is likely to have jobs available that pay well.

Sam: Why do you want to get paid well and have a job? Why do what interests you?

Alex: Because I like having money. It lets me live comfortably and purchase things that ensure my wellbeing. And I do things that interest me because I like to do so, and would rather do that than something really awful and boring.

Sam: Why do you like ensuring your wellbeing and avoiding things that are awful and boring?

Alex: Because I want to be happy and avoid suffering.

Sam: Why?

Alex: I just do.

This conversation leads us to discover Alex’s non-instrumental desires. Non-instrumental desires can provide a “reason” for why you’d do something. What does this mean? One way you can understand this is to be an account of what explains why you are motivated to pursue the actions in question. But when someone comes along and supposes that we have “external reasons” to do things, reasons given by the facts themselves, but those facts are not our desires, what on earth could this possibly mean? There is a nominal attempt to discharge the reason:

Alex: You have external reasons not to torture people for fun.

Sam: Okay. What are those reasons?

Alex: Well, it would cause those people unnecessary suffering.

Sam: Okay, but why is that a reason not to do it?

Alex: No, it’s not that the fact is the reason, it’s that the fact gives you the reason.

Sam: Wait, so the fact isn’t the reason? It gives me the reason? Then what is the reason?

Alex: …What do you mean? What “is” the reason?

Sam: Yes. What is the reason why I shouldn’t torture people for fun?

Alex: Well, it would cause them unnecessary suffering.

Sam: I agree that it would. But what does it mean for that fact to give me a reason?

I don’t think Christian or anyone else can give us a good answer to this question (though they are welcome to try). I think talk of facts giving reasons is literal nonsense. And I think conversations like this one reveal that external reasons are not actually discharged. If one asks what the reason itself is, there is no answer: it is a reason simpliciter. One simply “has a reason” not to torture people for fun. I suspect the mistake is a kind of linguistic mirage. Here’s roughly what I think is going on. In ordinary language, reason-talk could always be discharged in principle. If someone asks what reason you had for doing something, you could, in principle, point to some explanation or goal or other consideration that would allow you to say what the reason was. In other words, there are no reasons simpliciter. Reasons are all checks that can be cashed in terms of explanations, desires, and so on.

What philosophers have done is to abstract away from any given context, then ask whether we could “have reasons,” as though reasons were some kind of autonomous property or phenomenon one could “have” simpliciter, without reducing or discharging reason-talk to desires, explanations, and so on. Reasons are their own thing, a bit like David S. Pumpkins. In short, philosophers have made something a bit like a grammatical mistake. For comparison, consider the term put. One can put on their shoes, or put their shoes away, or put the shoes inside a box, and so on. But one cannot simply put simpliciter. One must put something somewhere. Put on a smile. Put on a show. And so on. Put isn’t an intransitive verb. You put something somewhere. Even if someone said “put it” in a given conversation, there’d need to be some contextual cues indicating what was being put somewhere and where it was being put, e.g.:

Alex: Should I put the shoes away?

Sam: Yes, put them.

This use of put is a bit odd, but it would make sense in that context. All it would mean though is “Yes, put [the shoes away].” Put-talk has a specific role in ordinary discourse. Just so, I believe reason-talk works in a similar way. One cannot simply have reasons to do things. Facts and desires don’t give reasons; rather, reason-talk is cashed out in such a way that it simply serves as a stand-in for some specific explanation or desire relevant to that context, sometimes with and sometimes without specification:

The reason the ground is wet is because it rained.

The reason I went to the store was to buy groceries.

Reasons can be discharged by specifying what the reason is, just as “put” has to be discharged to be meaningful: you put the shoes in the box. You can’t just put the shoes. Or put in the box. Or put. Yet reason talk is weird, because you can state that someone “has a reason” to do something without specifying what the reason is.

She has a reason to go to the store.

Okay, well what is the reason? I take such remarks to only be meaningful if one could specify what the reason is. One can’t just have reasons. Yet because reason-talk doesn’t require explicit reference to what the reasons are, one can imagine anything “giving” or “providing” a reason in normative contexts. Not just desires, but facts themselves. So we can say things like:

The fact that torture would cause suffering gives you a reason to not torture.

What reason does it give you? Such a question isn’t supposed to make sense. The fact gives the reason, and it is a reason simpliciter. I think this way of speaking about reasons is something akin to bad grammar.

This is my general concern with approaches to morality (and normativity in general) that rely on ineffable notions of reasons. But Christian wants to explore some arguments and see how objective theories stack up against subjectivism.

9.1 The agony argument

This is a classic from Parfit and one I’ve engaged with extensively (mostly in its Future Tuesday form):

Case One: I know that some future event would cause me to have some period of agony. Even after ideal deliberation, I have no desire to avoid this agony. Nor do I have any other desire or aim whose fulfillment would be prevented either by this agony, or by my having no desire to avoid this agony (OMW I, 73-4). [sic]

Subjectivist accounts hold that one has no reason to avoid the agony. I agree with these accounts (because I don’t think there are reasons at all). According to Christian:

1. We all have a reason to want to avoid, and to try to avoid all future agony.

2. Subjectivism implies that we have no such reason.

3. Subjectivism is false.

Since subjectivism just is the view that there are no stance-independent normative facts of the sort required to “give us reasons” independent of our desires, the first premise is not meaningfully different from simply asserting that subjectivism is false. The argument isn’t much different from saying:

1. There are gods.

2. Atheism implies there are no gods.

3. Atheism is false.

Arguments like this only “work” by abstracting the language and its logical entailments away from the claim under dispute so the question-begging nature of the argument isn’t too obvious (which isn’t to say this is intentional). The result is, hopefully, that one can prompt their interlocutors to have an intuition of the appropriate kind. In this case, I’m supposed to have the intuition that we have a reason to avoid future agony. I don’t have such an intuition, so this argument is not compelling to me. If we don’t just accept the first premise on the grounds that it’s intuitive, then what’s the argument for the first premise? Whatever that argument is, it’s going to be tantamount to an argument for realism itself.

Christian considers a number of objections, but I don’t find any of them worth considering. Christian simply hasn’t given us any arguments for why we should think this is true:

We all have a reason to want to avoid, and to try to avoid all future agony.

Later, after viewing several objections, Christian states:

So the Agony Argument stands and provides a bullet that the Subjectivist must bite

I not only reject the argument, I also deny that in doing so I am biting any bullets. To bite a bullet is to accept some unsavory conclusion. But I find nothing unappealing or difficult with rejecting the agony argument and its Future Tuesday variant. Note that Christian says that subjectivists must agree that:

(G) the nature of agony gives us no reason to want to avoid being in agony.

Then adds that:

But we can argue:

(H) The nature of agony does give us a reason to want to avoid being in agony.

Okay, then what is the argument for (H)? Christian doesn’t give one. Instead, we’re told:

Subjectivists might claim that in arguing against (G) we are simply asserting (H). But if there is anything that gives us a reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony. This is a belief everyone who is not a nihilist would endorse. Therefore, these arguments stand.

This is not an argument. Christian simply asserts:

But if there is anything that gives us a reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony.

This is misleading. Throughout this entire section, Christian simply uses the term “reason.” But it’s not as though subjectivists (or myself) wouldn’t say that we “had a reason” to avoid agony. It’s just that what we mean by this is:

Subjectivists: Our desire not to be in agony gives us a reason to avoid agony.

Quietist subjectivist (i.e., myself): To say I “have a reason” to not be in agony is to simply say I don’t want to be in agony (but I don’t think this literally gives me a reason).

Christian’s arguments only work if the kind of “reason” a subjectivist (quietist or otherwise) doesn’t have access to is somehow inconsistent with subjectivism. Let’s call these “objective reasons.” So when Christian says:

But if there is anything that gives us a reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony.

This should read as something like:

But if there is anything that gives us an objective reason to act, it’s the avoidance of agony.

Now it is easy for subjectivists and myself to respond: we can simply disagree. Nothing gives us objective reasons to do anything. That’s the whole damn point of our positions. Simply asserting:

If anything is an X, it’s Y.

…Simply doesn’t in any way demonstrate X. Perhaps nothing is an X!

This is a belief everyone who is not a nihilist would endorse .

What exactly does Christian mean? Why “nihilist” and not subjectivist?

Therefore, these arguments stand.

Note that Christian has not presented much support for the first premise, so he has not shown that the argument “stands.” It’s an argument, to be sure, but one I and others are entitled to simply reject one of the premises. And I do. An argument doesn’t “stand” because you asserted that it does. I could just present some argument to the contrary and declare that it “stands.” How convincing would Christian find that? Probably not at all.

9.2 The all or none argument

Next, Christian says:

Subjectivists might be inclined to say that all terminal desires (or all terminal desires after rational reflection) provide reasons. They are self-justifying.

Then we are given this case:

Case Two: I want to have some future period of agony. I am not a masochist, who wants this pain as a means to sexual pleasure. Nor am I [a] repentant sinner, who wants this pain as deserved punishment for my sins. Nor do I have any other present desire or aim that would be fulfilled by my future agony. I want this agony as an end, or for its own sake. I have no other present desire or aim whose fulfillment would be prevented either by this agony, or by my having my desire to have this agony. After ideal deliberation, I decide to cause myself to have this future agony, if I can (OMW I, 83). [sic]

According to Christian:

If all terminal desires were self-justifying, then so too would this desire to be in a future period of agony. This is hard to believe.

Christian simply asserts that this is “hard to believe.” For who? I don’t see an argument here. Just the assertion that something is hard to believe. If Christian is simply reporting it’s hard for him to believe something, none of the rest of us are obliged to assign much epistemic weight to this. If Christian is claiming that it’s hard for others to believe this, well, that’s an empirical question, it’s underspecified, and it may or may not apply to his readers. How hard something is to believe varies from one person to another, and I don’t see any particularly good reason to think it’s a good indication of what’s true. It’s hard for Christians to believe Jesus wasn’t the son of God. It’s hard for atheists to believe God will answer their prayers. What matters is why something is difficult to believe.

I also don’t know why a subjectivist would have any interest in arguing that their desires were “self-justifying.” Why think desires require justification at all? I don’t think they do. They’re just facts about us. My favorite color is purple. Does this require justification? Suppose I wasn’t justified in preferring the color purple. Okay. I’m not justified. Now what? What happens if I keep liking it? Are the Forms going to materialize and smite me? Critics of various antirealist or subjectivist views will often insist these views lack “justification” or fail to meet various criteria set by the critics. Simply because one claims that a particular position fails to meet some standard doesn’t mean this poses any meaningful problem even if it’s true that the position has that particular problem. For example, atheists cannot believe they are complying with the will of God. This is a problem if you think it’s very important to try to comply with God’s will. But not if you don’t care about complying with God’s will. Antirealists like myself don’t care if our moral values aren’t “justified” any more than we care whether our food preferences are justified. This isn’t a problem from our perspective, and we’re not required to grant that it is a problem any more than we’re required to grant moral realism itself.

Christian eventually suggests that one move subjectivists might take would be:

we have no reason to accept or reject any terminal desires

I endorse this position. I deny we have any reason to accept or reject any terminal desires. But Christian says:

But then no actions would be justified as all justification ultimately flows from these desires. All justification would ultimately be arbitrary, no justification at all.

Again, this simply isn’t a problem. If Christian thinks it is: okay, what exactly is the problem? I consider justification to only make sense relative to some standard or other. If Christian is employing a non-subjectivist notion of justification, then he’s helping himself to realist assumptions the antirealist isn’t going to grant in the first place. Note, too, how he says “no actions would be justified at all as all justification ultimately flows from these desires. This is virtually a contradiction within the same breath: if justification flows from these desires, then why does he say there’d be no justification? There is justification! It’s just not a kind of justification Christian endorses. He then reiterates the contradiction, stating that All justification would “be arbitrary,” then suggests this is “no justification at all.” Is it justification or not? How is it arbitrary justification…but also not justification? Which is it? Because it can’t be both.

So in one sense, I disagree: I employ alternative notions of justification which only work in a stance-dependent way, and thus play nicely with subjectivism but not realism. In another, I agree: insofar as I can make sense of what Christian is saying, I agree that no actions would be justified in the relevant sort of way. It’s just that I think there are absolutely no undesirable consequences of this. What would they be? Your actions can, on the antirealist view, be entirely justified with respect to your subjective standards, and be optimized for achieving your goals and acting on your values. The only sense in which they’d not be justified is insofar as they failed to comply with stance-independent normative standards. Why care about this? It carries no practical implications at all. It makes no practical difference whatsoever whether one complies with or completely ignores standards of justification that are disconnected from our values. Christian then says:

If we have desires-based reasons for acting, all that would matter is whether some act would fulfill the terminal desires that we now have after ideal deliberation. It would be irrelevant what we want, or would be trying to achieve.

Therefore:

Either all such desires give us reasons, or none of them do.

I don’t see the problem with this. Yet Christian continues:

If all such desires gave us reasons, our desires could give us decisive reasons to cause ourselves to be in agony for its own sake, to waste our lives, and to try to achieve countless other bad or worthless aims.

We could not have such reasons.

The former remark only makes sense if one reifies reasons. On the quietist view I’ve presented, there would simply be facts about what one desires. If someone desired to cause themselves to be in agony, it would simply be a fact about them that they did so. It wouldn’t “give” them a “decisive reason.” There are some other issues with this remark:

Waste our lives

try to achieve countless other bad or worthless aims.

These remarks are presumptuous and employ evaluative language without clarifying whether the language is itself presupposing realism. “Waste” relative to what standard? “Bad” or “worthless” aims relative to what standard? If you’re a subjectivist, and your only desire is to count blades of grass, Christian and others might regard this as a “waste” but the person counting the blades of grass wouldn’t. After all, that they don’t consider it a waste is a matter of stipulation! Whether it “really is” a waste independent of their subjective preferences just presupposes realism. It is simply not persuasive to a subjectivist to point out that we could subjectively value the incorrect things; the position practically is a direct repudiation of this view. Even if the values in questions are ones I don’t like, my opposition to them stops there, and that’s good enough: I am opposed to certain goals and values. Why would it matter if they were factually mistaken? Suppose a person only desired to set everyone else on fire. Would this be “bad”? Bad relative to whose standard? Not the person who wants to do this! But this has no practical relevance to what any of the rest of us “should” do. We have our desires, and they have theirs.

Christian continues with yet another conclusion that’s supposed to follow from this:

None of these desires gives us any reason. We have no such desire-based reason to have any desire, or to act in any way (OWM I. 90).

This is true. Is this a problem? If so, what is the problem? Why would I need a “desire-based reason” to have desires? Compare to your food preferences. Suppose you prefer chocolate over vanilla and are deciding what ice cream to get. Chances are you’ll choose chocolate. Now, do you have a desire-based reason to prefer acting on your taste preferences? Suppose (and I grant) that you don’t. Well then, I guess choosing chocolate over vanilla is “arbitrary” and you have no fundamental reason to do so. If this is supposed to be a problem it’s unclear what the problem is. I want to act on my preferences. I don’t need to have a preference to act on my preferences to “give me a reason” to do so. Christian concludes:

This is the All or None argument. Given the All or None argument, Subjectivists are faced with a dilemma. Since they cannot coherently accept some terminal desires and reject others which have survived ideal deliberation, they are forced to choose either

(1) All terminal desires provide us with normative reasons

or

(2) No terminal desires provide us with normative reasons.

According to Christian:

If Subjectivists appeal to (1), then they have to bite many bullets: the desire for future agony for instance.

I simply deny accepting future agony involves biting any bullets at all. This notion of “biting bullets” is a weird one. Christian and others often invoke this notion. But whether one considers any given implication a concession (or “bullet”) or not depends on their other views. Given the rest of my views, moral realism is absurd and positions which lead me to reject its implications are a theoretical virtue, not a cost or bullet to bite. There is no arbiter external to our respective worldviews by which we can determine that one position bites more bullets than another. How much a position bites bullets turns on the rest of one’s views.

If Subjectivists instead appeal to (2), then we have no reason to do anything at all since all reasons would end in desires which we do not have any reason to have.

This is the correct response. Since the notion of “reason” in question is unintelligible, abandoning it doesn’t cause any problems. Christian presents the following objection:

“If I want it for its own sake why should I need to scramble for a reason?”.

Christian responds:

Simple, because when we reflect on our desires, we will often find some of them to be worthy of question.

This is not what happened when I reflected on my desires. Once again, Christian makes an empirical claim about the results of a particular psychological procedure. And the results for me only serve to reinforce antirealism and the rejection of realism. Christian doesn’t even qualify his claim. Does he think everyone will arrive at the conclusion he proposes on reflection? What if they don’t? Did they make a mistake if they don’t? If so, what was the mistake? And how does he know?

My terminal desires are not the sort of thing to be “worthy of question,” and, in any case, I don’t find on reflection that there are any desire-independent standards by which I have ever questioned any of my desires. I can only judge any of my desires or standards by appeal to my other desires and standards. My deliberation is thoroughly subjectivist. I don’t question whether I have a ‘good reason’ for having my desires in the sense Christian implies. I’m not sure whether others do; that’s an empirical question and Christian has not presented any evidence that people generally arrive at the same conclusion as he has or that they do so using an epistemically respectable method (and that I don’t).

Objectivists, by contrast, make the much simpler claim: we can want things which are bad for us.

I don’t see any reason to view this as “simpler.” My view accommodates ordinary moral language without presuming to know a great deal about ordinary people’s psychology (which Christian’s position does and for which he’s presented essentially no meaningful evidence) and posits fewer metaphysical phenomena (the notion that we can want things which are “bad for us” requires at least certain irreducible concepts and will on most philosophers’ views other than e.g., Parfit, Scanlon, and so on). My position does away with all of this. It is in several respects much simpler. Realists do not have an advantage on grounds of parsimony, regardless of how important we consider parsimony to be.

10.0 Conclusion

Christian ends with a section called “Why people are subjectivists.” It begins with this remark:

At first subjectivism seems obviously true.

Seems obviously true to who? Christian does what so many other people do: simply makes assertions about how things seem without qualification. The reason-based conceptions of subjectivism Christian outlined here don’t seem obviously true to me, nor is there much evidence they seem obviously true to any particular proportion of the general population. Christian makes several other strange claims here:

The fact that our subjective aims often track what we objectively ought to aim at is the source of the fundamental confusion with subjectivists about reasons. They have it precisely backwards. It is not our desires which give us reasons it’s our responses to reasons which give us desires. Once you see the confusion it’s like showing a fly out of the bottle.

Is this an empirical claim? How does this work psychologically? Christian says our responses to reasons “give” us desires. Does this mean they cause us to have desires? If not, what does this mean? If so, how does that work? Reasons have causal powers? Whatever the case may be, Christian’s remarks are entangled in psychological claims about how human cognition works. There is, at present, no meaningful body of cognitive psychological research that supports these claims, nor any compelling theoretical basis for making them. This is speculative at best, but most likely is simply pseudopsychology. It is remarkable how often philosophers feel entitled to just make psychological claims without appreciating that they are no more epistemically entitled to do so when it comes to psychology than they are for chemistry or cosmology. Human cognition is not something you can figure out through a priori reasoning or theorizing from the armchair.

Christian’s claims are also woefully vague. It’s hard for me to even criticize this because I am not sure what Christian is even claiming. But if the claim is that reasons cause us to have desires, I’d like to know how that’s supposed to work and why I should think that this is true.

I’m reminded of those experiments where a patient’s corpus callosum is severed and they give one hemisphere an instruction, to get up for example. They then ask the other unknowing hemisphere why they’re getting up and a post-hoc rationalization soon follows. This is what I think these secular, Western, reductionist materialist types are doing. They search for a ground to justify normativity, and reach for what’s available and well within the materialist worldview: desires.

This isn’t a good dig. It’s just weak, speculative armchair psychologizing that stereotypes subjectivists. Christian sounds exactly like religious apologists who conflate “atheist” with being secular, a materialist, politically on the left, and so on. Christian even uses some of the exact same terms apologists use.

Despite being an arch-antirealist, Christian’s remarks don’t even apply to me. I’m not not a materialist! As far as “secular” and “Western,” well, guilty as charged. But I could turn this right around on Christian and note that the legacy of Plato and monotheism has left many philosophers and laypeople alike with a residual predisposition towards wanting to find meaning and value in something cosmic and external to themselves, and so they are drawn to the notion that value must be out there in the world. Nietzsche’s prescience on the matter could readily accommodate the modern renaissance of moral realism among secular moral philosophers. Thousands of years steeped in monotheism externalized our source of meaning and value to a higher power. Now that secular philosophers lack this foundation, they grope for it in philosophy itself. Armchair psychologizing like this is easy. The real feat would be to provide evidence for such claims. It is far easier to devise hypotheses like these than to confirm them. Anyone can psychologize in this way. The question is whether there’s actual evidence to support one’s claims. A bit of speculation can be fun, but it’s not going to get us very far. Christian continues:

But in most of their actual deliberations, they don’t use desires to justify their actions. They think they’re justifying actions with their desires, when in reality, they use their intuition to make judgements about what they have reason to do, and then corresponding desires spring up soon thereafter.

How does Christian know that most people’s deliberations don’t involve appealing to desires to justify actions? I welcome Christian to make a case for this. Christian is welcome to show me that I am mistaken about what I think I am doing. I don’t think I use intuitions to make judgments about what I have reason to do, since I don’t think there are any intuitions or reasons. I think these are pseudoconcepts philosophers made up that have little to do with how actual human psychology operates.

That Christian’s positions ultimately turn on so-called intuitions emerges in the conclusion:

The All or None Argument paired with the Agony Argument give [sic] the Subjectivist a dilemma: accept either that we are justified in having every single one of our present terminal desires, no matter how intuitively horrendous, or we have no reason whatsoever to have any of them and they’re all arbitrary yet immune to interrogation.

I don’t find any of the examples “intuitively horrendous” and find nothing remotely troubling about granting that we have “no reason whatsoever” to have any particular desire and that “they’re all arbitrary yet immune to interrogation.” I don’t technically grant that they’re immune to interrogation; it’s just that I think any such interrogation can only occur against the backdrop of my desires themselves; there’s no desire-independent standard from which to evaluate our desires. Either way, this latter horn of the dilemma is simply unthreatening.

Christian insists:

In either case, the Subjectivist has to bite a bullet.

No we don’t. What’s the bullet, exactly? That subjectivism lacks qualities realists think a good theory should have? So what? This isn’t any more of a bullet to bite than for a theist to critique atheism on the grounds that it “bites the bullet” that nature shows all the hallmarks of divine craftsmanship. The atheist will often think otherwise, which is part of why they’re an atheist in the first place.

Speaking for myself, I am under no obligation to grant that subjectivism bites any bullets at all. I consider whether the stance one takes involves biting a bullet to itself be relative. And, relative to my views, I think realism is one of the most outrageous and implausible positions anyone could have. Why would I think rejecting such a position involves biting bullets? Christian says:

Either we may have horrible desires (e.g. to cause ourselves to be in agony), or we may lack certain obviously good desires (e.g. to avoid causing ourselves to be in agony).

I think causing ourselves to be in agony is horrible because it’s inconsistent with my subjective standards, not because I think it’s horrible independent of them! And I think it’s entirely possible to lack certain “obviously good” desires that are obviously good relative to my subjective standards. Christian’s uses terms like “horrible” and “obviously good,” which can either be used in subjectivist ways that completely strip them of argumentative force, or they aren’t used in such a way, in which case Christian is simply helping himself to the presumption that things can be non-subjectively “horrible” or “good,” which is precisely what I and subjectivists aren’t going to grant. Ultimately, then, Christian seems to reject subjectivism because Christian personally finds it counterintuitive. Well, so what? I don’t have Christian’s intuitions. So why should I reject it?

To put this another way, “horrible” and “obviously good” are evaluative terms that can either be cashed out in a subjectivist way, in which case Christian’s point won’t land, or they presuppose realism, in which case the terrible consequences of subjectivism are, apparently, that it would allow for situations in which it would be subjectively good to act on non-subjectively bad values, and subjectively bad to act on non-subjectively good values. This is absurd: the subjectivist doesn’t think anything is good or bad in the non-subjective sense in the first place, so pointing to these consequences as a bullet to bite only makes sense if you think it’s a cost for a philosophical position if it is subjectivist. This is like a dualist claiming that physicalism must bite the bullet of denying the “obvious fact” that mind is non-physical.

Christian ends with a list of possible options. My position does not appear on the list. The closest would be:

Reject all normative reasons, become nihilists: Nothing matters, there’s nothing you have to do.

However, the problem is that I deny that in rejecting normative reasons one must become a nihilist and conclude that “nothing matters” or that “there is nothing you have to do.” I think things matter. And I think there are lots of things I have to do. I just don’t think mattering or having to do things has anything at all to do with normative reasons. I am especially opposed to any suggestion that adopting a position like this, or endorsing subjectivism, involves biting bullets. This makes it seem like accepting these positions requires paying some kind of cost, of accepting something one wouldn’t otherwise want to accept. But I find nothing appealing, desirable, or plausible about moral realism. If I thought of anything as biting a bullet, it’d be moral realism.

1.0 Introduction

This is the second part of a series of responses to Rian Lobato. In Part 1, I addressed Rian’s claim that I am lying about my position on the evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive.” As I showed, this claim is completely baseless.

This article will focus on Rian’s second critical response to my claim that there’s no good evidence for the claim he made that “moral realism is almost always extremely intuitive across populations.” I’ll focus on the empirical case made in this post:

Dear Lance: there is a substantial experimental literature on folk metaethics showing that ordinary people often display objectivist-seeming moral judgments. Goodwin & Darley (2008), for instance, found moral claims to be regarded as substantially more objective than matters of taste or social convention and in some respects almost as objective as scientific claims. Nichols & Folds-Bennett (2003) found analogous objectivist tendencies in children and Beebe et al (2015) found broadly similar patterns of moral-objectivity judgments across Chinese, Polish and even Ecuadorian samples.

Now, none of that establishes that people are uniformly or universally moral realists. Wright et al., Sarkissian et al., and others provide evidence for substantial metaethical pluralism and context-sensitivity particularly when disagreement is framed across radically different cultures. And there is an additional methodological dispute over whether standard disagreement tasks actually measure metaethical commitments reliably (including, ofc, your own work with Moss - which I personally find pretty weak, since showing that standard probes are open to non-metaethical interpretations does not by itself establish that they systematically fail to track metaethical attitudes and at most it raises a validity concern, and revised later work has explicitly tried to control for alternative interpretations and still found high rates of objectivist responding, especially for clear cases of harm and injustice, but anyway). More recent work such as Sousa et al has in turn argued that some apparently relativist results may partly reflect those very measurement problems.

You may disagree (and you'll) with the evidence. But simply calling "unsubstantied" that objectivist or realist-seeming moral intuitions are widespread and robust enough to constitute a genuine empirical phenomenon across multiple studied populations is simply to lie.

Let’s summarize the claims:

1. There’s substantial evidence that ordinary people “display objectivist-seeming moral judgments.”

2. This doesn’t establish uniform or universal folk moral realism, because there is evidence of metaethical pluralism (i.e., individual differences in the extent to which people endorse realism or antirealism)

3. There are methodological problems with this research, including problems I’ve raised

4. My work with Moss is “pretty weak” because we only raise the possibility of alternative interpretations and subsequent work has corrected for this

5. While I may disagree with the evidence, calling it “unsubstantiated” is a lie

The second and third claims are true: there is evidence of metaethical pluralism and there are methodological problems with research in experimental metaethics. However, Rian’s first claim is ambiguous, and is either trivially true in a way I never denied or is false, depending on how the ambiguity is resolved. His fourth and fifth claims are both false. My research doesn’t merely show the possibility of alternative interpretations; I provide reasonably strong (if still tentative) evidence that unintended interpretations are extremely common and I conducted thematic analysis to categorize the particular forms these unintended interpretations took across well over a dozen studies. Furthermore, my multiple choice paradigms tested the extent to which participants can match the stimuli used in published studies to alternative characterizations of the same metaethical concepts. People did worse than chance. This is evidence of systematic unintended interpretation. Here, I’ll defend the following claims:

1. While there is substantial research showing that people give realist-seeming responses, the methods used in these studies are not valid. Thus, while it’s true that people may display what appear to be “objectivist-seeming” views, this doesn’t entail that they actually have realist views, or that the evidence that they do is good enough to justify believing that such views are common among nonphilosophers. I fully grant that studies report and appear to show that they have them; what I’m arguing is that these studies don’t provide good evidence that these appearances are accurate.

2. My work with Moss isn’t weak but this is largely irrelevant, since the Bush and Moss (2020) paper was an early article that preceded my dissertation. My dissertation provides far more comprehensive evidence against the notion that moral realism is common among nonphilosophers. Rian doesn’t provide a citation to clearly indicate whether he’s referring to my paper with Moss or to my dissertation, but the latter wasn’t coauthored and almost all the points and analyses there were my own, so referring to my work with Moss would most plausibly imply he’s referring to the preliminary article with Moss. If he’s not, that’s Rian’s fault for being unclear.

3. Claims that we have justification for or good evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive” across populations are not substantiated by available empirical data.

In short: there’s no good evidence moral realism is common among nonphilosophers, claims that it is are unsubstantiated, and my evidence for this is stronger than Rian thinks that it is.

2.0 An ambiguous thesis

Rian begins with an ambiguous remark:

Dear Lance: there is a substantial experimental literature on folk metaethics showing that ordinary people often display objectivist-seeming moral judgments.

What this sounds like is the modest claim that there’s lots of evidence that people display moral judgments that seem like they’re “objectivist.” What, exactly, does that mean? That they seem this way at first glance, or that they seem this way on reflection or given full consideration of those factors relevant to assessing the validity of the measures used and the best interpretation of these findings?

Rian is not clear. Something can superficially seem to be a certain way, but on closer examination not seem that way. Or it could seem that way even on closer examination, but still not actually be that way. It’s simply unclear what Rian is actually saying.

However, if Rian is merely saying that these studies superficially appear to provide lots of evidence that realism is common among nonphilosophers, this is definitely true and not something I’ve ever disputed. In fact, my arguments all rely on this assumption. What I argue is that despite it appearing as though we have lots of evidence people are moral realists, in fact we don’t have any good evidence this is true because these studies turn out to have massive problems.

I have never claimed there aren’t any studies purporting to show that lots of people are moral realists. Instead, I have consistently argued that while many studies claim to provide good evidence for this, that their authors are mistaken.

So if Rian were making this more modest claim, it wouldn’t make any sense. I don’t dispute this claim and never have. It would only make sense for Rian to be making a stronger claim roughly of the form that these studies provide good evidence that ordinary people “often” exhibit realist judgments as a matter of fact. This is precisely what I deny. I don’t think available evidence shows this, because I don’t think any of the studies used to show this rely on valid measures.

To try to clarify what I am claiming is ambiguous, and why it matters, suppose someone claimed the following:

Now suppose someone came along and pointed out that Acme conducted lots of studies which purport to show that their thermometers do provide a valid measure of the temperature. They could say this:

The problem here is the term seeming. Imagine we drop it:

Notice how the moment we drop the term “seeming,” it becomes clear that the claim is that we have good evidence that Acme brand thermometers do, in fact, accurately measure the temperature. The inclusion of “seeming” throws a wrench in the spokes of any clear interpretation, because the claim that studies show “accurate-seeming” measurements is more consistent with the possibility that they only appear to at first glance but further analysis would reveal that they don’t, in fact, provide such accurate evidence. This would be consistent with what I’d say about the experimental metaethics literature: superficially, it seems like we have good evidence that nonphilosophers “often” endorse moral realism. I’m arguing that they don’t, in spite of how things seem.

But if “seeming” is taken to imply something stronger, as in evidence that isn’t merely superficial or “at first glance,” then “seeming” isn’t doing anything to assist and is at best superfluous. It shouldn’t be there.

Another problem is the use of the term “display.” This could likewise be leveraged to make a more modest claim. People could, in principle, “display” a realist judgment without actually making one. In other words, one could interpret the literature to show that when researchers attempt to assess whether nonphilosophers are moral realists, or make realist judgments, they “display” realist-seeming judgments only in the sense that their responses are in line with the operationalization researchers have employed for distinguishing realists from everyone else. If so, all Rian’s claim would consist of is the completely unobjectionable claim that we have lots of studies that are designed to assess whether people are moral realists, and that lots of people give the realist response in these studies. You will find that I explicitly draw this distinction in my discussions online about this research: I will emphasize that in certain studies most people give a realist response to the stimuli, which is distinct from them actually endorsing realism. You can choose a response that reflects realism without being a realist.

Again, if this is all Rian is saying, then of course I agree with that, and have explicitly said so publicly on many occasions. Indeed, my whole position turns on this being the case, since again, my position isn’t simply that it’s not the case that we have good evidence that nonphilosophers are moral realists, it’s that the evidence purporting to show that nonphilosophers are moral realists appears to show that they are, but fails because the measures used aren’t valid.

It would be unclear whether we disagreed about anything if Rian were making these more modest claims. However, because it would be inconsistent with Rian’s apparent position that we’re justified in endorsing his initial claim that moral realism is extremely intuitive across populations, I’ll interpret the “seeming” part of his remark as largely superfluous, and take his central thesis to be that we have substantial evidence that realism is intuitive among nonphilosophers. I think this is false.

As an aside, I’ve opted to use the terms “realism” and “realist” here for reasons recurring readers will be familiar with: these are more technical terms that do a better job of precisely conveying the relevant philosophical notion, whereas the terms objective/objectivist have too many colloquial uses misaligned with their narrower academic use.

3.0 Goodwin & Darley (2008)

Rian begins with the following claim:

Goodwin & Darley (2008), for instance, found moral claims to be regarded as substantially more objective than matters of taste or social convention and in some respects almost as objective as scientific claims.

This is a line from the abstract of the paper:

Experiment 1 showed that individuals tend to regard ethical statements as clearly more objective than social conventions and tastes, and almost as objective as scientific facts.

They are almost identical. Rian appears to have simply slightly reworded a sentence from the paper itself, and did so without attribution. This borders on plagiarism, but let’s set that aside. I think it is at least some evidence that Rian’s engagement with and depth of familiarity with this literature appear superficial; it seems Rian didn’t feel like putting the effort into describing the contents of this study in his own words. This is a bad sign.

But this isn’t the real issue. The real issue is that simply because a paper claims to show something, this doesn’t mean that it’s succeeded, or done a very good job of supporting the claim (and it’s worth emphasizing the claim is almost always that we have evidence for a conclusion; not decisive evidence that settles the matter). All Rian has done is tell us what Goodwin and Darley claim to have done. Did they succeed?

No. They did not. Now, I’m not one to reinvent the wheel, so let me first point out that Goodwin and Darley’s 2008 paper is considered a seminal work in the field among the few of us working in this area, and it has been subjected to extensive scrutiny. For instance, you can find an entire paper dedicated to critiquing their methods and conclusions from Pölzler (2017). Here’s the abstract:

Pölzler argues that the best interpretation of their findings would be that they support pluralism, not realism. The claim that people regarded moral claims as “substantially more objective than matters of taste” and “in some respects almost as objective as scientific claims” is highly misleading. To be clear, I only endorse the claim that a surface-level reading of these studies is best interpreted in line with pluralism; this does not mean I necessarily regard the studies as valid measures that indicate pluralism.

There are two issues here: an interpretative issue and a measurement issue. Pölzler’s point here is that a proper interpretation of the results would be that they would (at best) provide evidence of pluralism, not a tendency towards realism, in contrast to what the authors of these studies claim about their own results. That these studies also rely on invalid measures is a position I take in addition to this; so I am not agreeing with any interpretation of the data such as “these studies provide valid measures that indicate pluralism.” I’m merely agreeing with Pölzler that a careful reading of the results of these studies shows that they don’t even appear to support the claim that participants in the sample lean towards realism in a less pluralist way. Responses are highly variable across conditions. If someone hated three out of seven of something, and liked four of them, this could average out to them liking members of the category if you averaged across a Likert scale. But it would be highly misleading to say that they had a positive outlook without explicitly acknowledging intrapersonal variation of this kind.

We’ll get to problems with the validity of the measures used, but first let’s talk about the problem with Goodwin and Darley’s interpretation of the data. Goodwin and Darley’s (2008) first method asks participants whether a given moral statement is true, false, or an opinion or attitude:

How would you regard the previous statement? Circle the number.

(1) True statement.
(2) False statement.
(3) An opinion or attitude. (pp. 1343-1344)

Goodwin and Darley interpret (1) and (2) as evidence that the participant is a realist, and (3) as evidence that they are less disposed towards realism. They also employed a second method in which participants were asked to consider a disagreement between themselves and another person who had previously taken the same survey. They were then told that this person disagreed with them, and were asked whether:

(1) The other person is surely mistaken.
(2) It is possible that neither you nor the other person is mistaken.
(3) It could be that you are mistaken, and the other person is correct.
(4) Other.

(1) and (3) are interpreted as realism, while (2) is interpreted as subjectivism.

They then combined these into an aggregate measure, where people were classed as most realist (giving a realist answer to both), intermediately realist (giving a realist answer to one and a nonrealist answer to the other), or least realist (nonrealist answer to both).

There is no gentle way to put it: these measures are terrible. The issue isn’t simply that these measures might not work, but that it’s unclear whether they could work, given the number of problems with each of them. But before even getting to issues with the validity of these measures, there is a serious problem with how Goodwin and Darley interpreted these findings, which Pölzler takes to be the biggest issue with them:

In what follows I will therefore focus on what I take to be the above experiments’ main problem, namely their inadequate metaethical interpretation of subjects’ responses.

As Pölzler points out:

Consider experiment 1. Goodwin and Darley assume that those who answer that a given moral sentence is (R1) “true” or (R2) “false” tend towards realism, and those who answer that the sentence is (R3) an “opinion or attitude” tend towards subjectivism. But both of these categorizations are inadequate. To begin with, R1 and R2 are not only consistent with realism, but also with all other variants of cognitivism, i.e., with subjectivism and error theory. Subjectivists believe that moral sentences are true or false depending on whether they correctly represent the subjective moral facts. Error theorists believe that all moral sentences are false. Furthermore, R3 only appeals to non-cognitivists, for only they believe that moral sentences cannot be assessed in terms of truth or falsity at all. By contrasting subjects who opted for R1 and R2 with those who opted for R3, Goodwin and Darley thus did not measure the prevalence of realism versus subjectivism, but rather of cognitivism versus non-cognitivism […]

I agree. Distinguishing people who think moral claims are true or false from those who don’t would at best measure whether people are cognitivists or noncognitivists, not whether they are realists or subjectivists/antirealists. In other words, this measure completely lacks basic face validity (i.e., the extent to which a method appears to measure the phenomenon of interest). Goodwin and Darley simply and straightforwardly misoperationalized the measure they were intending to capture. This would be the equivalent of intending to design a thermometer but accidentally creating a device that measures what time it is. This measure simply measures the wrong thing. Given this, if it provides any evidence at all about whether people are realists, it would do so only by accident, and in any case the onus would be fully on proponents of the study’s efficacy as a measure of realism to show that it measures realism in spite of its total lack of face validity. I don’t know that anyone has tried to do this, because it’s patently clear to anyone with a basic understanding of metaethics how hopeless this would be. Either way, this method has been abandoned as a measure of realism, presumably because everyone realized it doesn’t work. Rian appears totally oblivious to this, completely underestimating how serious the methodological problems with this study actually are.

It is worth pausing here to emphasize just how much of a problem this already is for Rian. Rian has uncritically presented what is arguably one of the worst studies on this topic in the entire literature, with apparently no appreciation for this fact. This serves as considerable evidence that Rian has at best a superficial understanding of the literature, and is hardly in a position to make confident pronouncements about how dumb or dishonest I am. To be clear, I am explicitly stating that Rian’s particular choice of study undermines his credibility as an informed and knowledgeable person about this literature, though that’s not saying much since I haven’t seen anything else from Rian that would suggest familiarity with the literature. Nobody working in this area would point to this study’s findings if they were trying to show that there was good enough evidence to justify the belief that realism was extremely intuitive. It was one of the earlier studies and has more flaws than almost any subsequent research.

But I digress. This is only the beginning of a tsunami of shortcomings with this study. Goodwin and Darley (2008) repeat the same problem in a second study, where they ask participants:

According to you, can there be a correct answer as to whether this statement is true? (p. 1351)

Once again, this is not a valid measure of realism. It is at best only capable of measuring cognitivism. To put it simply: Goodwin and Darley did not appear to understand the relevant conceptual distinctions, and designed studies that can’t plausibly tell us whether people are realists or antirealists.

Now let’s return to their other measure, the classic disagreement paradigm. Again, participants were asked to provide their response to a person disagreeing with them about a moral issue, and were asked to choose from one of the following options:

(1) The other person is surely mistaken.
(2) It is possible that neither you nor the other person is mistaken.
(3) It could be that you are mistaken, and the other person is correct.
(4) Other.

Once again, there are extremely serious problems with this. They interpret thinking that one person is correct and the other is incorrect as an indication of realism (R1 below), while thinking it’s possible neither person is mistaken as an indication of subjectivism (R2 below). Why is this a problem?

The main problem with Goodwin and Darley’s and Wainryb et al.’s methodology is again their inadequate metaethical assumptions. First, as they describe the moral disagreements at issue, R1 is not only entailed by realism, but also by various non-individualistic variants of subjectivism. Consider, for example, cultural relativism. According to this view, to judge a thing good means to judge that the members of the culture within which the judgement is made predominantly believe that the thing is good. Within one particular culture there can only be one predominant view about whether a thing is good. In order for cultural relativism not to entail that one party of a moral disagreement is right and the other is wrong, this disagreement must therefore take place between members of different cultures. However, neither group of researchers promoted such an interpretation. Quite the contrary! Goodwin and Darley described the disagreeing parties as subjects of their own study, which suggests that they are students of the very same university (see 2008, p. 1362). And Wainryb et al. even presented drawings which show the disagreeing parties standing face to face to each other (2004, p. 692).

In other words, the main response they used to indicate support for realism is entirely consistent with a nonrealist view! And to add insult to injury, their instructions actually encourage miscategorizing antirealist relativists as realists since participants are given information that would lead them to believe the people they disagree with are from the same culture; if they’re a cultural relativist, then they ought to judge that at least one of these people must be mistaken. In other words, the “realist” response is the appropriate response for cultural relativists. Could this have inflated “realist” response rates? Yes. Subsequent data from Pölzler and Wright (2020) suggests cultural relativism was the most common choice overall across multiple measures in their samples:

In reality, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. There are a legion of problems with their measures and instructions. The use of terms like “surely” is inappropriate because they introduce epistemic notions into the measures, which may lead to conflating what is intended to be a metaphysical question about the nature of moral truth with an epistemic question about what we’re in a position to know or are justified in believing. Likewise, language like “possible” and “could” can lead to unintended interpretations and introduce complicated modal notions.

This isn’t even getting into the titanic list of other problems with the study: the risk of normative/first-order conflations, epistemic conflations, the lack of appropriate response options for existing metaethical positions (e.g., noncognitivism), the failure to distinguish different forms of relativism/subjectivism, stimulus sampling problems, and the risk of unintended interpretations, including conflating realism and antirealism with absolutism, universalism, and descriptive claims. This list of issues isn’t even exhaustive nor is it speculative. Subsequent studies show that when you provide alternative metaethical options, they are frequently chosen, e.g., see Davis (2021) and Beebe (2015).

Likewise, my dissertation research shows that many of the unintended interpretations are frequently offered when participants are asked to interpret stimuli or explain their decisions. See Table 2.1 on page 43 of my dissertation where I present a three-page list of methodological problems with the disagreement paradigm. It is, if anything, remarkable that so many problems could apply to a single method; there’s a veritable cornucopia of problems, and if anything the disagreement paradigm would better serve as an instructional tool for how a measurement tool can catastrophically fail than a tool anyone should actually use. And, for what it’s worth, there is both direct and circumstantial evidence for the genuine relevance of many of these problems; they’re not merely speculative. In other instances, the problems are theoretical and relate to the operationalization of the construct, and are thus not the sort of problem to be assessed empirically in the first place.

It’s also worth noting another misleading way in which Goodwin and Darley interpreted their findings. Recall that they report that moral claims were about as realist as scientific claims, and were far more realist than matters of taste or social convention. There are two very serious problems with this. First, this ignores intradomain variation, i.e., the extent to which participants tended to take a realist or antirealist stance towards individual items within a given category (moral, scientific, etc.). As they themselves report:

Considering the ethical statements, it is noticeable that the assignment of truth to ethical statements varies considerably with the content of the statement. Participants generally agreed (on a six-point scale) with the goodness of anonymous donations (5.42), the badness of opening gunfire on a crowd (5.79), or of robbing a bank (5.77), and the wrongness of conscious racial discrimination (5.86) or of cheating on a lifeguard exam (5.72). But they varied considerably in how likely they were to regard these statements as true: 36%, 68%, 61%, 54%, and 58%, respectively. Perhaps more strikingly, although participants generally agreed (albeit not as strongly) with the permissibility of abortion (4.12), assisted death (4.36), and stem cell research (4.58) in the way we described them, they were highly reluctant to assign truth to statements expressing this agreement: 2%, 8%, and 2%, respectively. In other words, meta-ethical judgments about the truth of ethical claims appear to be highly sensitive to the content of the claims in question (i.e., robbery vs. abortion), and not merely to whether the claims are generally agreeable. Only 13 out of 50 participants applied the same category (truth vs. opinion) to the eight ethical statements they rated in the first part of the experiment. The remaining 37 varied their assignment of truth/falsity versus opinion in some way. (p. 1346)

In other words, they don’t find that scientific issues are generally regarded in realist terms, matters of taste and social conventions in antirealist terms, and moral issues in roughly realist terms. Rather, they found that people’s judgments were all over the place regarding moral issues, with massive inversions in the proportion taking a realist or antirealist stance towards different issues, or even the same issue. This should be a red flag. If you use two or three measures ostensibly intended to measure the same thing, and get wildly different measures for the same thing, this is an indication that one or more of your measures may not be valid. It’s at least an indication that they’re not measuring the same thing because they lack convergent validity.

However, there is a more serious issue, indicated in bold above:

In other words, meta-ethical judgments about the truth of ethical claims appear to be highly sensitive to the content of the claims in question (i.e., robbery vs. abortion), and not merely to whether the claims are generally agreeable.

Bingo! Most readers will be familiar with the importance of randomizing participants in a study. However, stimuli used to represent a category or domain are typically drawn nonrandomly from that category, yet this nonrandomness isn’t factored into their analyses. When researchers analyze data, they typically factor the randomness of participants into their analyses, but rarely consider or factor in that the same concerns apply to stimuli. Instead, they tend to employ nonrandom stimuli unsystematically drawn from the population of stimuli, then don’t bother to model this in their analyses. Is this a problem? Yes. Yes it is. See Judd et al. (2012). From their abstract:

Throughout social and cognitive psychology, participants are routinely asked to respond in some way to experimental stimuli that are thought to represent categories of theoretical interest. For instance, in measures of implicit attitudes, participants are primed with pictures of specific African American and White stimulus persons sampled in some way from possible stimuli that might have been used. Yet seldom is the sampling of stimuli taken into account in the analysis of the resulting data, in spite of numerous warnings about the perils of ignoring stimulus variation (Clark, 1973; Kenny, 1985; Wells & Windschitl, 1999). Part of this failure to attend to stimulus variation is due to the demands imposed by traditional analysis of variance procedures for the analysis of data when both participants and stimuli are treated as random factors.

Did Goodwin and Darley draw a random sample of moral issues to represent the moral domain?

No. They did not. They simply created ad hoc items for the study, with no systematic effort to evaluate the breadth or general representativeness of those items. Given this, it makes no sense to treat these ten items as representative of the moral domain. Why? For the same reason it wouldn’t be appropriate to use a sample of ten people you nonrandomly chose to represent everyone else. The whole point of randomization is to ensure representativeness. Simply put: if you swapped in ten different items, you might get completely different results.

Is this merely a speculative concern? No; it is not. On the contrary, it turns out that it’s incredibly easy to generate items that wildly shift the total proportion of people giving “realist” responses, not just to moral issues, but even to scientific issues. It would be easy, for instance, to intentionally generate a set of ten scientific items and ten moral items that actually gave the appearance of people being more realist about morality than science. Beebe (2015) demonstrated how this could be done in a brilliant study where he showed that irrelevant features of scientific claims led to dramatically reduced rates at which participants chose realist responses. All he had to do was present people with controversial scientific issues. Consider the realist rates for these scientific/factual issues.

1. Frequent exercise usually helps people to lose weight.

2. Global warming is due primarily to human activity (for example, the burning of fossil fuels).

3. Julius Caesar did not drink wine on his 21st birthday.

4. There is an even number of stars in the universe.

5. Humans evolved from more primitive primate species.

6. Mars is the smallest planet in the solar system.

7. The earth is only 6,000 years old.

8. New York City is further north than Los Angeles.

See the dramatic difference? Most people appear to be “scientific antirealists” when it comes to claims about exercise or climate change, and “realists” about the age of the earth or the location of NYC. Now, is it plausible these people are all “pluralists” who are scientific realists about uncontroversial scientific issues, but are antirealists about the truth of controversial issues?

No. It’s more plausible they’re not interpreting these questions to be about realism or antirealism at all. In other words, the most plausible interpretation of the disagreement paradigm is that it isn’t measuring what researchers think it’s measuring. I’m not merely suggesting this is plausible; I’m suggesting it’s the best interpretation. The alternative requires concluding some very strange things about the way ordinary people think. For instance, about half of the participants across every country tested gave a “relativist” response as to whether a historical event took place (e.g., Caesar drinking wine on his 21st birthday). Is it plausible that half of the world’s population are relativists about historical events, such that they think that whether a historical event did or didn’t happen depends on your personal preferences? No. This is ridiculous, and serves as a sanity check to anyone paying attention to the results of these studies.

Incidentally, Beebe’s findings also reveal the same massive variation in realist/antirealist responses to moral issues:

As you can see, if you happened to pick items more like donating to charity or euthanasia, your participants would appear to lean heavily towards antirealism, while if you chose issues like racism, they’d appear to favor realism. Since none of these items are representative of the moral domain as a whole (or at least, there’s no evidence they are, and they weren’t designed to be, and it’s very unlikely they’d be representative by chance), researchers who draw general inferences about the domain from which these items were drawn are committing an inferential mistake, the stimuli-as-fixed-effect fallacy:

The basic problem is that standard statistical analyses in psychology treat participants (subjects) as a random factor, but stimuli as a fixed factor. Thus our statistics assume that the goal of inference is to say something about some population that those participants are representative of (rather than just the particular people in our study). By treating stimuli as fixed it is assumed that we’ve exhaustively sampled the population of interest in our study. This limits statistical generalization to those particular stimuli. This is an unattractive property for psycholinguists (because they tend to be interested in, say, all concrete nouns rather than the 30 nouns used in the study). The same issue may apply to lots of other types of stimuli (faces, people, voices, pictures, logic problems and so forth). Baguley (2012)

In other words, researchers cannot make justified inferences about the moral domain based on nonrandomly sampled stimuli. Since the items used by Goodwin and Darley weren’t randomly sampled, they cannot be used to make inferences about the moral domain as a whole. They simply aren’t in a position to claim that moral claims are treated almost as objectively as scientific claims, even if their data showed this, which it doesn’t. At best, they could only say that the haphazard set of moral issues they happened to choose averaged out in a way intermediate between how the scientific and taste issues they also haphazardly chose happened to average out. They can’t justifiably generalize from their stimuli any more than they could justifiably generalize from a nonrandom sample of participants to broader populations. As such, from the very ground up, their study design is simply inappropriate for making generalizations about whether people treat moral issues in general in a way that leans towards moral realism.

There are ways to mitigate this problem, but they are fairly difficult. In Moss et al. (2025), my colleagues and I devised a much larger set of moral issues that vary across a range of dimensions relevant to the degree to which these items represent the moral domain as a whole:

While prior studies have also employed a variety of different moral issues as items when examining individuals’ metaethical judgment (Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2012; Pölzler et al., 2022; Pölzler & Wright, 2020), for the most part, these studies have not systematically developed selections of items which vary across a set of different dimensions. For this reason, we created a database of 44 items with the a priori intent, based on our theoretical judgment, to vary along the dimensions of severity (low, medium, high), perceived objectivity (low, medium, high), and moral foundation (harm, fairness, authority, loyalty, purity). To examine how these items (along with an additional item that was removed in the study) varied in different dimensions (such as perceived objectivity, agreement and perceived consensus) we conducted a pretest with 300 participants. The pretest showed that the items vary substantially in these dimensions.

While this approach isn’t a perfect solution to the problem, it at least serves to mitigate problems with stimulus sampling. This is one small part of what it looks like to address methodological shortcomings with earlier research, and it should illustrate that I don’t take these methodological problems to be idle or merely abstract; circumventing them requires real effort.

Again, I must emphasize: Rian mentions none of this. He just presents the most superficial summary of the findings of the studies he mentions possible, with no appreciation for the actual content of these studies. He doesn’t carefully engage with their methods, their results, how those results were interpreted, or any other factors relevant to assessing the actual merits of the studies.

And again, this is before we even get to the issues David Moss and I focus on in the 2020 paper. In other words, before we even get to what I consider the most serious issues to be, this study already has so many problems there is very little reason to take the results very seriously. I don’t say this because I hate the study or think it’s worthless. I really appreciate this research and think they did a great job. But doing a great job can still result in a failure. We learn from those failures, make changes, and move forward. That’s how science works. Careful knowledge of the actual content of the science requires considerable effort and deep familiarity. Rian shows zero indication of serious engagement with the literature.

Now, let’s address the main issue Moss and I focus on: unintended interpretations. Rian says:

including, ofc, your own work with Moss - which I personally find pretty weak, since showing that standard probes are open to non-metaethical interpretations does not by itself establish that they systematically fail to track metaethical attitudes and at most it raises a validity concern […]

Our article doesn’t merely show that alternative interpretations were possible; we provide direct evidence of their frequency. Yes, our findings do show that their study systematically failed to track metaethical attitudes for a substantial proportion of participants. We don’t even need to do this though, because the studies in question were so poorly operationalized and so severely misinterpreted that if anything the onus would be on the authors to provide any good reasons to think their studies did track the intended metaethical attitudes in the first place. But how that’d even be possible should be a complete mystery, given that most of their measures aren’t even face valid (i.e., they don’t even appear to measure what they’re intended to).

I reanalyzed the Goodwin and Darley data again for my dissertation, so I’ll talk about that instead of the earlier paper. Here’s what I did. Goodwin and Darley happened to gather open response data from participants where they asked those participants to explain what they thought the source of the disagreement between themselves and the other person might be. They reported that virtually everyone interpreted the source of disagreement as intended, which would raise few validity concerns. I was skeptical of this, and evaluated the data myself. I found a clear intended interpretation rate of only 25%, and a clear unintended interpretation rate of 44% for their first study, and 36.2% intended and 52% unintended for their second study. Note that these proportions are asymmetric: interpreting the source of disagreement as intended is a necessary condition for the measure to be valid, but it isn’t sufficient. Conversely, if they didn’t interpret the source of the disagreement as intended, this would be sufficient to entail that their answers were invalid.

Because of this, a clear unintended interpretation would invalidate the results for a given participant, but a clear intended interpretation wouldn’t, since it reflects only one way in which they may have interpreted the overall stimuli as intended. Thus, 25% and 36% are at best upper bounds on how many people were likely to have interpreted the stimuli as intended (this is setting aside that some significant proportion of unclear responses might have interpreted the stimuli as intended, but this may be compensated by the sheer number of other problems that drive plausible unintended interpretations). Either way, the rate of clear unintended interpretations is high enough to be catastrophic to the validity of these studies (which, again, probably aren’t valid for other reasons, anyway).

I also replicated these findings in a follow-up study, Study 1C, in section S4.4.1 on page S4-590 of my dissertation. Finally, I conducted thematic analysis on the various responses people gave, which you can see beginning on S4.7.3, S4-670 of the dissertation. This involves devising distinct qualitative categories and counting up the number of responses that fit into one or more of these categories. Here you can see the way I classified the various responses, many of which clearly involve unintended interpretations. These unintended interpretations are so frequent that yes, we did provide pretty good evidence that their measures systematically fail to track metaethical attitudes, and again, given that they misoperationalized their measures from the outset, there are already sufficient theoretical grounds for doubting that they did so in the first place.

That, at the very least, is a more plausible conclusion than that their measures somehow do track the intended metaethical attitudes in spite of their poor face validity, stimulus sampling problems, misleading instructions, use of a forced choice paradigm that introduces confounds in the response options, and so on. Theoretical considerations are often sufficient on their own to cast serious doubt on a study, and this is one such case, entirely independent of my empirical findings. Collectively, these considerations are more than enough to firmly shift the burden squarely on proponents of the original study to demonstrate that their measures somehow did track metaethical attitudes as intended, despite so many people saying things in response that suggested they didn’t interpret the stimuli as intended.

Now, just because a person attributes the source of disagreement to something other than a fundamental moral disagreement, this doesn’t necessarily mean their results are invalid. This is because these open response questions rely on the participant giving a post hoc explanation of their reasoning and interpretation. It’s always possible that they did interpret the stimuli as intended at the time of their judgment, but their post hoc response doesn’t reflect this. I think this can and does occur, and probably quite often. So the percentages above might underestimate the amount of intended interpretations. But if a person answers in a way that indicates they didn’t interpret the question as intended, it isn’t reasonable to shrug and assume the measure was probably valid in spite of this; at the very least, the very high rate of unintended interpretations shifts the burden onto those who claim the measures are valid to provide evidence of their validity.

In other words, are David’s and my findings so strong we’ve established, definitively, that Goodwin and Darley’s measures are not valid? No. Nor have I provided overwhelming or even very strong evidence in other cases. My findings are fairly tentative. But seeing as most of the studies in question offer virtually no evidence or very little evidence in support of the validity of their measures, and given that there are good theoretical grounds for doubting the validity of these measures, the collective consequence of these theoretical and empirical issues is at least sufficient to shift the burden onto proponents of the validity of these measures. Could they be valid in spite of the concerns I and others have raised? Sure. Has their validity been substantiated? No.

The validity concerns I raise are not minor. They are extensive. The entire second chapter of my dissertation addresses more than a dozen other problems with the disagreement paradigm. The issues are genuinely that extensive.

4.0 Nichols & Folds-Bennett (2003)

An entire section of my dissertation is specifically dedicated to the methodological problems with this particular study. See the supplement to chapter 3, S3.4, page S3-396. This study also doesn’t provide good evidence that people are realists. I don’t want to have to fully repeat myself, so go check that section for a comprehensive discussion of the problems with this study. Here, I’ll note a few points:

First, the study was only conducted with children. Rates of realist and antirealist responses change over the lifespan and longstanding research in developmental moral psychology shows that children often give quite different responses than adults. Researchers cannot meaningfully generalize from studies in children to studies in adults, so even if this study found that most children were moral realists, this wouldn’t provide good evidence that moral realism was common among adults.

This isn’t really a methodological problem so much as a limitation worth noting. The issues with the study come from its actual design. The goal of the study is to determine whether children consider moral concepts like “good” and “bad” to be distinctively non-response-dependent, in contrast to taste preferences, which presumably are response-dependent. What does this mean? As they put it:

the basic idea is that a property is response-dependent just in case that property is constituted by the responses it elicits in a population; so the same object or event might have different response-dependent properties in different populations (p. B25).

“Icky” serves as an example. Whether something is icky or not depends on the responses of different individuals, and can therefore vary. Conversely, one might suppose that a property like “round” wouldn’t depend on responses in the same way. The question then is whether children treat moral concepts as response-dependent or not. If they do, this would imply they are antirealists, while if they don’t, this would imply that they’re realists. So what did they do to test this claim?

Children were asked whether a particular food like grapes was “yummy,” then given a scripted response intended to determine whether they treated taste preferences as response-dependent:

You know, I think grapes are yummy too. Some people don’t like grapes. They don’t think grapes are yummy. Would you say that grapes are yummy for some people or that they’re yummy for real? (p. B27)

Children are thus given a dichotomous choice between the following response options:

• Yummy for some people

• Yummy for real

There are a few problems with this setup. First, these options are not mutually exclusive. The fact that something is yummy for some people does not clearly entail that it’s not yummy for real. Consider, for instance, the fact that peanut allergies are dangerous for some people. Does this mean they’re not dangerous “for real”? Of course not. From the very outset, then, the response options aren’t designed very well. They already imply that for something to be yummy for only some people rather than everyone somehow means that it isn’t real. This doesn’t make much sense.

It also implies that response-dependent properties are somehow not real, and that only response-independent properties are. But this isn’t a requirement for endorsing one of these views, so the language used isn’t appropriate for its intended purpose. Realists are not, after all, required or even necessarily inclined to think that response-dependent or nonrealist properties aren’t real. If anything, such a characterization would reflect a bias against or misunderstanding of antirealist views; presumably response options shouldn’t be designed with the presumption that everyone who holds such a view is biased or confused about opposing views.

Furthermore, the only form of response-dependence tested here is personal response-dependence. While this makes sense for matters of taste, e.g., the notion of “icky,” if parallel structure was used for moral items this would mean that the only contrast was between a form of direct, individual relativism and the putative contrast of realism. But this is not an appropriate way to distinguish realism from antirealist options: it essentially involves giving one an option between what the study operationalizes as realism and what effectively serves as a narrow and specific form of relativism. Yet there are other forms of stance-dependent cognitivist accounts: cultural relativism, constructivism, and so on, according to which moral truths are stance-dependent but their truth doesn’t directly depend on our personal response to them. Given this, the study has misoperationalized the response options in such a way that isn’t genuinely exhaustive of the range of potential stances one might take towards them.

And that brings us to the more serious problem: this measure is only valid if children interpreted the question and response options in a way that if they did hold realist views, they would reliably choose “for real” while they wouldn’t if they didn’t. But why should we think this is a valid way to distinguish realists from antirealists? More generally, what does it even mean to say that grapes are yummy for real? Why should we suppose children would specifically interpret this to mean that whether grapes are yummy doesn’t depend on our reaction to their taste? Why would that be the only sense in which something could be yummy “for real”? Consider your own taste preferences. Do you like or dislike pineapple on pizza? Whatever your preference, if you think that whether pineapple on pizza is yummy or not depends in some way on your personal preferences, and that whether it’s yummy can vary from one person to another (i.e., it’s response-dependent), does this mean that you don’t think pineapple on pizza is good or bad “for real”? Are matters of personal taste somehow not real?

Furthermore, note that this question presents a forced choice. Your only options are to choose that it’s yummy for some people or for real. But who would disagree that grapes are yummy for some people? Of course they are! This is uncontroversially true! So why does the question present a forced choice between an unobjectionable claim and another, more obscure claim that isn’t even inconsistent with it? There simply isn’t a proper dichotomy or set of exclusive choices. But the pairing of “for some people” with another, more obscure option may prompt the presumptive contrast to be that they are either yummy only for some people or for everyone. If so, this would imply universality, and would instead be interpreted as a question about the proportion of people who like grapes. If so, children may have interpreted this as a question that effectively asked whether only a few people like grapes or if most or everyone does. Finally, “for real” can sometimes be used as a form of emphasis. If so, it could be interpreted as a remark about how yummy grapes are.

Either way, children may have judged that preferences about grapes are more variable than our stances on moral issues, or judged that taste preferences aren’t as serious and thus worth emphasizing, both of which could explain the asymmetry between children choosing the “for some” response for matters of taste to a greater extent than they did for moral issues.

In addition, it’s worth noting that this study also used a small pool of ad hoc stimuli and thus may likewise suffer from stimulus sampling issues. Nichols’s (2002) own work has shown that when the range of social/conventional violations is expanded to include violations previous studies hadn’t employed, the clustering of characteristics typically associated with the moral/conventional distinction came apart. This was an excellent illustration on his part of the problem of relying on a narrow and repeated subset of stimuli. In other words, one of the authors of this study has already conducted studies that reveal stimulus sampling problems in a related line of research. Why think such problems simply wouldn’t arise here?

Now, are these points speculative? Sure. And these possibilities aren’t exhaustive of the range of plausible alternative interpretations that could have prompted children to respond to the stimuli in ways unrelated to them taking any position on response-dependence/independence. But notice an asymmetry here. Is this how we judge whether a measure is valid: assume the measure is valid unless someone demonstrates that it isn’t? No. Measurement is not innocent-until-proven-guilty. If one can raise legitimate theoretical reasons to be skeptical of the validity of a measure, these can be sufficient to shift the burden onto those who employ the measure to demonstrate that it’s actually valid.

And it’s not like there are no tools or methods available to assess validity. You can assess validity by assessing whether different measures of the same construct yield similar results, you can consult expert judges, you can employ comprehension checks in your studies, you can use qualitative methods to assess how stimuli were interpreted, you can use cognitive interviewing to assess how participants are thinking through stimuli in real time, and so on. As far as I can tell, none of these methods were mentioned in the paper and thus it’s unlikely any active efforts were made to validate the measures that were used. I also don’t know of any attempts to replicate these results or corroborate the validity of these methods elsewhere. This is not an idle issue. Lack of evidence of validation is a serious and widespread problem in psychological research. See e.g., Flake et al. (2017):

The verity of results about a psychological construct hinges on the validity of its measurement, making construct validation a fundamental methodology to the scientific process. We reviewed a representative sample of articles published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology for construct validity evidence. We report that latent variable measurement, in which responses to items are used to represent a construct, is pervasive in social and personality research. However, the field does not appear to be engaged in best practices for ongoing construct validation. We found that validity evidence of existing and author-developed scales was lacking, with coefficient α often being the only psychometric evidence reported. We provide a discussion of why the construct validation framework is important for social and personality researchers and recommendations for improving practice.

Now let’s set aside all of the preceding issues. There’s still one very serious problem with this paper: the extremely low sample sizes for the studies, just n = 19 and n = 13 for their two studies. I cannot stress enough that these are extremely low sample sizes. These sample sizes would only be suitable for reliably detecting extremely large effects, and most effects in the social sciences are fairly modest. To my knowledge, this study has not been replicated, nor has their response-dependence paradigm been employed elsewhere. It’s likely that if there is a real effect, it is fairly small. Given this, both the results of this study and the methods used should be interpreted with considerable caution. This pair of studies would certainly not be adequate to justify any confident conclusions that most children are moral realists. While the study’s design is innovative and the method they take should be refined and replicated, this study hardly contributes to any robust body of empirical data showing that an appreciable number of people find moral realism “extremely intuitive.” In short: even if we set aside every methodological issue with the study and assumed the results were entirely without issue, these findings would provide extremely marginal evidence that realism is “extremely intuitive” even within the tested population, much less “across populations.”

Once again, it’s remarkable Rian would cite this study of all studies as support for the notion that we have good evidence of folk realism. This is, like the Goodwin and Darley study, one of the weaker studies, if for no other reason than its extremely low sample size, not to mention the use of a one-off paradigm in a sample of children that wasn’t replicated with a larger sample or across cultures. There are other, better choices for studies that serve as evidence for widespread realist intuitions. For instance, if you wanted a better developmental study, Reinecke and Heiphetz Solomon (2023) would be a better choice. While its measures are indirect, it at least features a much larger sample size (n = 129). However, there are also reasons to be skeptical that this study provides strong evidence that children are realists. See here.

Likewise, if you want an adult study with a broader range of measures and that has fewer methodological problems than Goodwin and Darley (2008), you could opt for e.g., Zijlstra (2023). This study also has significant shortcomings, but if I were trying to present evidence that realism was extremely intuitive I’d probably opt for something like this, and maybe Wright, Grandjean, and McWhite (2013) since it serves to replicate Goodwin and Darley’s findings under an additional constraint, which makes it at least slightly stronger. The point here is that there are better papers one could use as an example, but Rian didn’t use them. This suggests Rian really just isn’t very familiar with the academic literature. The articles he presents appear to have been chosen in an unprincipled way, and, ironically, are some of the weaker studies in support of his position.

5.0 Beebe et al. (2015)

Beebe et al. (2015) is the best of the three studies Rian cites, but it does little to advance the case that we have good evidence that moral realism is a highly intuitive position across cultures. Unlike the other studies, it actually presents cross-cultural data. However, this study employs the disagreement paradigm, and inherits many of the problems with Goodwin and Darley’s studies (though fortunately not the worst of them).

• The main problem is that it still employs the disagreement paradigm. As I argue in my dissertation, this method has well over a dozen problems. Its invalidity is overdetermined by the sheer number of flaws with this method, foremost among them low intended interpretation rates.

• It still has the stimulus sampling problem Goodwin and Darley’s studies suffer from; there’s no evidence or good reason to believe the set of moral items used represent the moral domain, and as such generalizing to other moral issues or the moral domain as a whole is inappropriate.

A couple other points worth noting about this study. First, the results show that realism rates are not very impressive across the moral items that they did present:

Averaging across the non-US samples, realist rates range from 33% to 67%, two items fall below the mean, and no items even approach unanimity. Rian never made it clear what it meant to say that realism is extremely intuitive across populations; if this just means it’s common then this would be evidence for that, but it wouldn’t support stronger claims about it approaching unanimity or being a strong majority view.

However, one reason it’s a bit ironic to choose this study is because their findings highlighted one of the most serious problems with the disagreement paradigm. Note in the graph above how low realist rates are for matters of scientific fact. The 21st birthday is a reference to whether Julius Caesar (or Confucius) ate soup (or drank wine; it varies across studies) on their 21st birthday. Consider this question set up:

If this question was interpreted as intended, selecting the first option would entail relativism about historical events. This would mean that it would be possible for a historical event to have both occurred and not occurred depending on the personal attitudes of the individual considering the matter. Across every culture, Beebe et al. found that about half of participants chose the “relativist” response to this question.

Is it even remotely plausible that half of the world’s population (or at least these cultures, assuming they’re not representative) are relativists about historical events?

No. It isn’t. The most plausible conclusion is that people did not interpret this question as intended. This wasn’t a one-off anomaly for this particular item. Realism rates were alarmingly low for the other factual issues they employed. These items ought to serve effectively as a comprehension check: not selecting the realist response option is better evidence that participants didn’t interpret stimuli as intended than it is evidence that the participant is a relativist about the issues in question. Take, for instance, the claim “Frequent exercise usually helps people to lose weight.” Realist rates for this were 38%, 43%, and 40% in the non-US samples. Is it remotely plausible that most of the participants think there is no stance-independent fact of the matter about this question? No, it isn’t.

The disagreement paradigm is not a valid measurement tool. Again, this is the best Rian has? Two weak studies and one study that, if anything, actually provides evidence against the main method used in experimental metaethics.

6.0 Sousa et al. (2021)

Now this brings us to Rian’s flagship study. As we will see, this study does nothing to help Rian and serves as evidence only of the fact that Rian doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Rian comments:

[…] including, ofc, your own work with Moss - which I personally find pretty weak, since showing that standard probes are open to non-metaethical interpretations does not by itself establish that they systematically fail to track metaethical attitudes and at most it raises a validity concern, and revised later work has explicitly tried to control for alternative interpretations and still found high rates of objectivist responding, especially for clear cases of harm and injustice, but anyway). More recent work such as Sousa et al has in turn argued that some apparently relativist results may partly reflect those very measurement problems.

This is a reference to Sousa et al. (2021). Fortunately, this article is freely available so you should be able to see the whole thing here. As you can see, Rian’s remarks imply that this article represents “revised later work” that addresses the methodological issues raised by Moss and me. Which work of mine is Rian referring to? He’s not clear, but his remarks imply it includes my dissertation, which would be a bit puzzling, but note what he says in response to Nathan, who points out that:

Lance’s entire dissertation is about how these studies don’t actually support folk moral realism

Rian responds:

You didn’t bother to read the whole text, right?

Rian is clearly suggesting Sousa et al. somehow addresses the concerns raised in my dissertation. It does not. It doesn’t even attempt to do so. Which is not surprising: it couldn’t have, given that my dissertation came out after this article! How could they have possibly addressed the specific concerns I raised before I raised them? Perhaps they noticed the same problems before my dissertation was published, then sought to address them? No. They didn’t. There is no indication of this in the article at all. They didn’t cite Bush and Moss (2020), nor did they show any particular interest in addressing the specific issues we raise or that I raise in later work.

This is because the methodological issue they address was one raised by a specific paper, Sarkissian et al. (2011). The goal of Sousa et al. is only to address a methodological issue associated with that particular study. The issue in question isn’t one I focus on in Bush and Moss (2020) nor is it an issue I focus on in my dissertation. Sure, they try to advance a case that many people are realists about a certain subset of issues, but they do so relying on—and failing to correct for—the problems with the same methods that I focus on in my work. The notion that this article somehow addresses my concerns makes absolutely no sense, and is a clear indicator that Rian may not even have a superficial understanding of the literature; he may be actively confused about it. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s have a look at the article.

The primary goal of the article is to establish that nonphilosophers at least tend to be realists about harmful actions that involve injustice. They attempt to establish this by developing on and reacting to a study by Sarkissian et al. (2011), so let’s talk about that study. Sarkissian et al. (2011) used a version of the disagreement paradigm. However, they also varied the degree of cultural difference between the participant and the hypothetical person who disagreed with them. They employed three conditions in which the person who disagrees with them is:

1. From the same culture

2. From an Amazonian warrior culture

3. From an alien species called Pentars whose only interest is in converting all matter into pentagons

What they found is that realism levels were highest in the same culture condition, intermediate in the other culture condition, and lowest in the other species condition. Their proposed explanation for this is that people don’t have a fixed commitment to moral realism or antirealism. Instead, people’s commitment varies in accord with the degree to which radically different moral perspectives are salient (i.e., present in awareness).

According to Sousa et al. (2021), this study has some methodological limitations:

In particular, participants may have assumed that the exotic or alien party misunderstood the harmful action, and this assumption, rather than a genuinely non-objectivist stance, may have contributed to the increase in non-objectivist responses.

This is a reasonable proposal. In order for the disagreement paradigm to serve as a valid measure, both of the people who disagree (the participant and whoever else) must understand the moral issue in the same way. If participants assume the other person misunderstood the scenario, then this may account for the participant’s response rather than the participant judging that the other person’s moral position is also correct. You can see that their entire emphasis is on addressing the question of whether the person from the other culture or the alien may have misunderstood the scenario, and their primary objective is to minimize the impact of this particular possibility on study results:

Study 1 replicated Sarkissian et al.'s results with additional follow-up measures probing participants' assumptions about how the exotic or alien party understood the harmful action, which supported our suspicion that their results are inconclusive and therefore do not constitute reliable evidence against the deflationary hypothesis. Studies 2 and 3 modified Sarkissian et al.'s design to provide a clear-cut and reliable test of the deflationary hypothesis. In Study 2, we addressed potential issues with their design, including those concerning participants' assumptions about how the exotic or alien party understood the harmful action. In Study 3, we manipulated the alien party's capacity to understand the harmful action. With these changes to the design, high rates of objectivism emerged, consistent with the deflationary hypothesis.

Before we have a look at what they did in their studies, let’s have a look at a few remarks made in their literature review:

Many results using this methodology (and ones like it) are indeed consistent with our hypothesis that people are objectivists concerning unjust harmful actions—e.g., cheating, stealing (for a review, see Goodwin, 2018). The great majority of adult participants accept that only one of two incompatible beliefs is correct with regards to such actions (see, e.g., Nichols, 2004; Goodwin and Darley, 2008, 2012). Furthermore, developmental work with children aged 5–13 years has shown that children are even more objectivist than adults in this respect (see, e.g., Wainryb et al., 1998, 2004). But while most current studies using the incompatible-beliefs paradigm provide clearer evidence about objectivism, they fall short of providing evidence on whether the objectivism at stake is one with a universalist scope, since the action evaluated is normally depicted in the context or society of the participant, rather than a context or society different from the participant’s own. As a result, these studies too fall short of providing complete evidence for the deflationary hypothesis.

Notice how the authors uncritically accept studies that employ the disagreement paradigm as generally valid and as establishing the ubiquity of moral realism among both children and adult populations. This would be a very strange set of remarks to make if the authors were highly sensitive to the suite of methodological issues raised by Pölzler, Moss, and myself among others. Notice how they present the Sarkissian study immediately following this:

Be that as it may, Sarkissian et al. (2011) provided evidence that seems to undermine the deflationary hypothesis. They argued that existing findings using the incompatible-beliefs paradigm are somewhat misleading because the incompatible beliefs are attributed to appraisers from the same cultural background or psychological profile.

Their focus, then, is only on addressing this one challenge to existing results. Even if they completely overcame this challenge, it would not entail that they addressed any of the challenges I’ve raised. Why? Because this isn’t even one of the challenges I raised, and even if it were, it’d only be one of them!

Simply put: this study has nothing to do with addressing the methodological problems I’ve raised. The authors begin with the assumption that the disagreement paradigm is a valid measure other than to the extent that it’s threatened by Sarkissian et al. (2011); they then seek to address the methodological problems raised by that article, and then conclude that because those concerns have been addressed, they’ve therefore established their conclusion that available evidence suggests people are moral realists at least about a subset of moral issues. The reasoning is all tightly contained within this structure, and in no way grapples with the concerns I raise.

Their objectives are, in fact, even more narrow than this. As they say:

We think Sarkissian et al. (2011) were right to identify limitations in the previous research, and that the overall strategy they used to remedy this was pertinent and original. Nonetheless, we do not think their results decisively resolve matters owing to potential issues concerning participants' interpretations of the disagreements. In their studies, the description of the stabbing action, reproduced above, does not completely specify all of the morally relevant aspects of the action (i.e., those aspects bearing on the perceived injustice of the act), which leaves open the possibility that the harmful action was understood as an instance of justifiable harm, rather than as involving injustice. This may not have affected participants' own understanding of the action, or their interpretation of the American appraisers' understanding of the action. But it may have led many participants to infer that the appraisers from a different culture or species had a very different understanding of the situation. For instance, participants may have inferred that, given their radically distinct background, the exotic and alien appraisers understood the harmful action as being one that was performed with the consent of the victim (e.g., as part of a cultural ritual), or because the victim was guilty of a crime, or for some other justifiable reason. In other words, the exotic and alien appraisers may be thought to have appraised fundamentally different harmful actions, actions that might be justified, even from the point of view of the participant.

Their focus was thus not only on specific conditions used in Sarkissian et al. (2011), which it’s worth noting are virtually never employed in any other studies, but on the specific moral issues employed alongside those conditions. It doesn’t get more narrow than this. Debunking problems posed by one study doesn’t, in any way, show that there aren’t any other problems. And again, this isn’t even one of the problems I focus on.

Yet for some reason, Rian seems to think this particular study somehow resolves the concerns I raise in my work. There is no way for Rian to think this unless he is comically confused or simply didn’t read the Sousa article at all.

This brings us to Rian’s final post, which you can find here. Since it’s very long, I’ll handle it in parts.

Here we go again! Lance “Burro” (as we call here in Brazil - in case anyone in the audience are reading this and don’t know what “burro” means, feel free to Google it) strikes again.

My wife and in-laws are Brazilian. Burro literally translates to “donkey” and means something like “idiot” or “stupid person.”

I’m going to skip over the implicit ridiculous appeal to authority at the beginning of your post.

There is nothing ridiculous about pointing out that I am an authority on this topic. There’s nothing ridiculous about drawing attention to one’s expertise on a topic. Appeals to authority only become a problem when one appeals to authorities in a way that serves to circumvent the evidential or argumentative foundation on which that authority rests, e.g., “you should accept this claim because it comes from authority and for that reason alone.” I didn’t do that, so it’s unclear what exactly Rian thinks is ridiculous. Rian may have a poor understanding of informal fallacies and mistakenly and reflexively react to any reference to authority or expertise as somehow ridiculous.

In any case, I am not making an implicit appeal to my authority; I’m making an explicit appeal. I specifically specialize in the psychological methods used to assess whether nonphilosophers are moral realists or antirealists. I obtained my PhD in psychology in 2023 and wrote my dissertation specifically on this topic. I’ve spent over a decade studying experimental metaethics and the methods used in the field. While there are a handful of researchers who have published in the field, very few specialize in it. I am one of the only people in the world who specializes in this topic. It is entirely possible that there isn’t a single person out of the ~8.3 billion people on the planet more knowledgeable than me about this particular body of literature.

So when I say I’m an expert on this literature, this is, if anything, an understatement. A reasonable case could be made that I am the expert on this research. Does that make me perfect, or omniscient, or infallible? No. But this isn’t a standard case in which a person has a degree in a topic and then points to the degree as evidence they’re an expert on the topic. Rather, this is a case where a person has dedicated a considerable portion of their adult life to specifically studying this particular topic. It’s a niche field, there aren’t that many people in it, many of the people who published in this area have moved on to other topics, and it’d be exceptionally difficult to find anyone else with more extensive knowledge of these studies than myself. I cannot think of a single plausible candidate. They might be out there, but they’re certainly keeping their head down. This isn’t a matter of being pompous or arrogant or thinking I’m superior to other people. I always do my best to defer to the facts and data, and I have a long history of opposition to gatekeeping, elitism, and credentialism. So what I am not doing is saying something like “I study this topic and have degrees, therefore I am correct about it.” Far from it.

What I am saying is that if anyone is looking at this conversation from the outside, it is far closer to a situation in which a random person on the internet is arguing with one of the world’s foremost specialists in a particular disease about the nature of that specific disease than it is to an argument between two peers or even an argument between a random person and a random doctor about a general matter of health. Should people defer to me merely because of my expertise? No. I don’t want anyone to do so, including Rian. If I did, I wouldn’t have bothered writing all of this. I’d just appeal to my credentials. But I didn’t do that. And I didn’t take people’s advice to ignore people like Rian, because I dislike the notion that questions should be settled by appeals to credentials or authority and dislike precisely the mindset where a person would deem others unworthy of their time or attention merely due to their lack of credentials. I don’t personally care very much about credentials at all. But I will note that, in this particular case, I have them. That’s not really what matters, though. What matters is that I can back them up.

Questions should be settled by an examination of the actual basis for our respective views: the arguments and evidence we’re capable of marshalling for our respective sides. So that’s what I am doing throughout the entirety of the rest of this post. But I do think it’s worth flagging that I am, in fact, an expert in this research, and that Rian almost certainly isn’t.

Let’s recall what your original claim was: that there is no (good) evidence whatsoever for the claim that something like moral realism is intuitive across populations and that anyone who says otherwise is simply asserting it gratuitously, out of thin air, in an unsubstantiated way.

That is not my original claim. Rian has added and embellished on the original remark. This is a recurring theme in Rian’s responses: he twists, distorts, and exaggerates other people’s claims. This is my original claim:

There is no good evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive across populations.” It’s downright bizarre for people to keep making this unsubstantiated empirical claim.

Notice how Rian tosses my use of the term “good” into parentheses, which serves to downplay the critical importance that qualification plays in my original remark: my position is that there’s no good evidence. It shouldn’t be in a parenthetical. I also don’t use the phrase “whatsoever.” This serves to subtly distort my claim, especially when appended to “no” with “good” shunted into a parenthetical. It makes it sound a bit closer to the notion that I’m claiming there’s no evidence at all. I also never said that anyone who says otherwise is doing so in a way that is gratuitous or “out of thin air.” Rian simply made these up. That’s a bit ironic, for someone who has made a point of accusing me of dishonesty. Is it dishonest to say that you’re going to present someone else’s claim, then embellish and distort that claim by adding elements to it the person didn’t say? Only if you’re doing so intentionally, as far as I’m concerned. And unlike Rian, I don’t take myself to have the telepathic power to tell if a person is lying.

Now, anyone who has taken Epistemology 101 knows that evidence can only be called “good” in the relevant sense insofar as it makes it rational to hold some belief X.

This isn’t Epistemology 101. It’s not even true! This is one way in which a person might use the term good, but it isn’t the sense in which I was using it. But a person can adopt a more modest conception of what it would mean for there to be good evidence. On this more modest view, good evidence is something more like evidence that convincingly and significantly raises the probability of a given claim, all else being equal. This is consistent with it still not being rational to hold the view in question. This is because there can be very good evidence for X, but such good evidence against X that it isn’t rational to believe X, anyway. Whether a belief is rational or not turns on consideration of all relevant evidence available to you, not just isolated pieces of evidence.

When I made the claim that there’s no good evidence, I wasn’t merely claiming the evidence wasn’t good enough to justify Rian’s claim, I was making the stronger claim that there isn’t even a single study that significantly raises the probability of the claim, all else being equal. Ironically, Rian seems convinced I’m lying about a claim that he thinks conflicts with the data, but the actual claim I’m making is, in fact, stronger than the claim Rian seems to think I’m making.

So Rian is wrong about what I meant and fails to acknowledge alternative interpretations of what I said, one of which is more accurate and makes an even stronger claim than Rian supposes. Rian continues:

For example, atheism/naturalism is, in my view, a false belief. That doesn't mean I say that there are no good justification/evidence for atheism/naturalism, given, for example, the evidential problem of evil. It's simply the case that, since long before Gettier, everyone should know that there's a distinction between being justified/rational in believing something (that's all substantiation/evidence/justification could be about) and that belief being true.

This latter remark is presumably intended to imply I don’t understand this distinction. But it is Rian who is confused. You could hold the following views about an opposing position:

1. There is no evidence for the view

2. There is some evidence for the view, but it isn’t very good and doesn’t justify belief in that view

3. There is some evidence for a view, and it is good, but it’s not enough to justify belief in that view

4. There is some evidence for a view, and it is good, and it’s enough to justify believing in that view (even though you yourself don’t believe it)

Nobody is obligated to think that if there’s evidence for a view they don’t hold that the evidence is good, nor do they have to think the evidence is good enough that belief in the opposing view is rational. They can think this, but they don’t have to. It almost seems as though Rian doesn’t appreciate that a person can endorse (2) or (3) above. Sure, maybe Rian thinks there’s some good evidence for naturalism/atheism, good enough to justify belief in these views. That’s fine.

But I don’t think there’s good enough evidence that it’s rational to think moral realism is “extremely intuitive across populations.” I don’t even think there’s any good evidence in the non-justificatory sense!

What all of your works shows is that there are objections to these empirical studies - especially concerning the metaethical interpretation inferred from them. Fine. That happens with every conceivable piece of empirical research. It would be strange if it couldn’t. What none of your work shows: that there is no good reason whatsoever to believe that there is empirical evidence substantiating the claim that moral realism is intuitive across populations and that everyone who's saying this is mere affirming in a unsubstantied manner.

It apparently hasn’t occurred to Rian that I don’t agree with his assessment of what my research shows. No, my data doesn’t merely show that there are objections to the empirical studies. My arguments and data show that there are numerous compelling objections to the validity of existing methods in experimental metaethics and that, as a result, we should conclude that none of the measures used in these studies are valid, which in turn indicates that claims that moral realism is widespread among nonphilosophers are unsubstantiated. My work, in other words, does show that there’s no good reason to believe moral realism is intuitive across populations and it does show that claims to the contrary are unsubstantiated. The scope and severity of the issues I raise don’t generally apply to other psychological research, so Rian’s claim that my objections are applicable to “every conceivable piece of empirical research” is simply untrue. The sorts of validity issues I raise do apply to some other paradigms, but many are distinctive to metaethics or to a subset of other, similarly flawed methods, and Rian doesn’t present any good reason to think they do, anyway.

In fact, I’ll go further and say that Rian’s interpretation of my data is itself unsubstantiated. Note that Rian simply asserts these claims about my data and arguments. He doesn’t quote a single piece of my work that I saw, and does not substantively engage with my work. He doesn’t discuss any of my studies, doesn’t meaningfully engage with, much less refute, any of my objections, and in general simply makes assertions without presenting substantive arguments or evidence for his claims. This is the very definition of unsubstantiated. Go look at the tweet. Where are Rian’s arguments against my research? Where is the analysis of my data showing that his interpretation is correct and mine isn’t? You won’t find it, because it isn’t there. Rian is just making claims without supporting them. For someone who wants to lecture me about Epistemology 101, Rian appears to have a dismal understanding of what it means to present arguments, evidence, and reasons for a position. Rian hasn’t even presented much evidence that he’s read or understood any substantial portion of my work, much less that he has good reasons for his assessment of it.

After not presenting any substantive arguments or evidence for his assessment of my research, Rian then continues with his nonsensical and unsubstantiated accusations about me lying:

If you say that, sorry, then: a) either you’re being dishonest/lying - and you could write a thousand pages defending it and it would still be a lie (the part about doing it “wholeheartedly” doesn’t change the fact that you can still be lying: you know, there's such a thing as self-deception, motivated rationalization or simply maintaining two different cognitive standards at once; great news: sincerity about your conclusion doesn't imply sincerity in how you represent the reasons available for that conclusion, since you can sincerely believe that P is false and still lie about whether there is evidence for P) or b) you’re ignorant enough to not understand the distinction between: (i) there being good evidence/justification or substantive empirical support for a position and (ii) that evidence actually settling the >truth< of the position.

Merely because you’ve constructed a dichotomy doesn’t mean it’s legitimate or that the possibilities you present are the only ones on offer. What are Rian’s arguments that I’m lying? What is his evidence that I’m lying? I can’t find any. Maybe you can. And he continues to make confused remarks:

and you could write a thousand pages defending it and it would still be a lie (the part about doing it “wholeheartedly” doesn’t change the fact that you can still be lying

Rian apparently doesn’t understand the difference between actuality and possibility. Here, Rian insists I can be lying. Of course I could be lying! I’ve never disputed that it’s possible I’m lying. I’m arguing that I’m not lying, and that Rian has no good arguments, evidence, or reasons for thinking that I am. Where’s your evidence I’m lying, Rian? What are your arguments for this accusation?

Rian also misrepresents my objections to his accusations of lying. First, the conventional meaning of “lying” is to intentionally make claims you believe are false for the purpose of deceiving others. Rian’s accusations all occurred in contexts in which this is the most plausible interpretation of what he meant; at no point did Rian cancel the pragmatic implicature that would prompt this interpretation by qualifying his remarks to suggest that I may be a pathological liar or profoundly self-deceived. Given this, the bulk of my objections were directed against what a reasonable person would interpret Rian to have been claiming: that I was intentionally lying. While Rian floats the possibility that I could be “lying” in some unintentional sense, nothing about what he initially said could be reasonably interpreted in line with these possibilities.

Furthermore, is Rian accusing me of unintentional lying? If so, why not say so? And if he is: great, then my previous points are good evidence against intentional lying, which would at least pressure Rian to now make a narrower claim: not that I’m lying either intentionally or unintentionally, but instead that I’m specifically lying unintentionally.

If Rian would like to specifically accuse me of unintentionally lying, fine: what are his arguments or evidence for this? Merely floating the possibility does nothing to actually support the claim that I’m doing so.

Rian also says:

sincerity about your conclusion doesn't imply sincerity in how you represent the reasons available for that conclusion, since you can sincerely believe that P is false and still lie about whether there is evidence for P) or b) you’re ignorant enough to not understand the distinction between: (i) there being good evidence/justification or substantive empirical support for a position and (ii) that evidence actually settling the >truth< of the position

I never claimed there was no evidence for Rian’s claim; I claimed there was no good evidence for it and that it was unsubstantiated. Rian has yet to present any good reason to think I’m lying (intentionally or otherwise) about this.

Rian then presents the suggestion that I’m so ignorant I don’t understand the difference between there being good evidence/justification for something and evidence that settles the truth of that position. But this once again is very silly: I’ve never conflated these. Of course I deny there’s enough evidence to settle on the truth that moral realism is extremely intuitive across populations. That’s a given. But what I am also denying is that there’s good evidence, justification, or substantive empirical support that moral realism is widespread across populations. Rian appears to think that I think (ii) above, which presumably would be justified on his view, but conflated this with (i), and asserted (i) instead because I’m too stupid to know the difference. No. I’m just asserting something closer to (i).

It may be that Rian is so convinced that (i) is true that he can’t imagine that anyone could sincerely disagree. If so, then the mistake at the heart of this whole dispute is a simple and sad one: that with respect to certain claims, Rian may be incapable of imagining that someone could sincerely disagree with him about those claims.

Rian continues:

Those are obviously not the same thing. Evidence can make a belief rationally warranted without making it true, let alone conclusively true: that distinction is elementary epistemology.

Nobody involved in this conversation thinks otherwise. Rian is tilting at windmills. Rian makes a few remarks after this that I want to conclude on, so let’s skip ahead a bit:

Now, about the empirical research: in fact, the paragraph you quoted expressly acknowledged substantial metaethical pluralism/intrapersonal variation/context-sensitivity and the methodological dispute about whether disagreement tasks transparently measure metaethical commitments.

I’m aware of what the articles I quote say. I can quote an article to make a point without endorsing the other remarks made in the article. I don’t agree with the authors of the article that there’s substantial evidence of metaethical pluralism.

Replying that these studies do not support the claim that most people are moral realists is simply attacking a stronger thesis that I went out of my way to disclaim.

Fair enough, but this is still irrelevant. Your original claim was vague and you never clarified, so it wasn’t clear what your claim was. But either way, I don’t think moral realism is a common view among nonphilosophers, so I also reject just about any plausible instance of a weaker claim you could be endorsing. Given this, I don’t only critique the stronger claim and nothing about my position specifically centers on the notion that most people are realists. I think the actual number is negligible and that it’s just not true that it’s “extremely intuitive” to people in general, other than to at best an idiosyncratic minority.

Your work, even if it were strong (and it isn’t) challenges the construct-validity inference from certain responses to full-blown realist commitments: that is not even remotely the same claim as showing that the objectivist-seeming response pattern itself is unsubstantiated.

Rian once again claims that my work isn’t strong without any arguments, evidence, or substantiation. He just asserts this. Now, Rian’s remark is not very clear, but he seems to be saying something like that all my research does is threaten the validity of the studies that purport to show that many people choose realist response options, i.e., what my findings do is challenge whether we’re justified in inferring that these findings show that the people in question do, in fact, have realist commitments. But, Rian insists, this isn’t the same thing as showing that the mere fact that these studies show that people give “objectivist-seeming” responses is unsubstantiated.

Rian is correct. This isn’t the same thing! Which is entirely fine, because I never claimed that the latter claim was unsubstantiated in the first place. Rian is drawing a distinction I agree with, and arguing that evidence of the former isn’t evidence of the latter. The problem is that my position is only about the former and not the latter, so this is completely irrelevant. In fact, it wouldn’t even make any sense to take evidence of the former as evidence against the latter: the whole point of the former claim is that measures which purport to show that a large number of participants are realists fail to accurately measure realism. The former claim, in other words, relies on the truth of the latter claim.

For comparison, imagine I said “While it seems like that object is red, it’s actually not.” Now imagine Rian came along and said that I am lying because there’s lots of evidence that the object seems red. This would make no sense. The claim I’m making is that it isn’t red, despite seeming to be red. Not that it doesn’t even seem red. This claim presupposes agreement with the claim that the object seems red.

Rian’s other comments don’t always seem to consistently suggest he’s drawing this distinction and only arguing for the latter, but I’ll try to clear up the confusion: my position is that there’s no good evidence significant numbers of nonphilosophers have realist stances or commitments. I also claim that while many studies purport to show that this is the case, every single one of these studies relies on invalid measures, and that there is no good evidence that the participants in these studies in fact have realist stances or commitments in significant numbers.

If Rian is only arguing that there are lots of studies that purport to show that nonphilosophers are realists, then I not only don’t disagree, my entire position presupposes this is true.

If, instead, Rian is not arguing for this but is instead arguing that whatever their methodological shortcomings, these studies actually do provide so much good evidence that a significant number of nonphilosophers are realists, then I disagree, but in that case his remarks here are very weird: why make a point of saying the latter is very different from the former?

Or maybe I’ve misinterpreted Rian. I can’t tell because he’s often unclear. However, it does appear that Rian is drawing this distinction and correctly recognizes what my claim is:

Indeed, your own 2026 paper opens by saying that “most research” in experimental metaethics reports substantial interpersonal and intrapersonal variation in support for realism and antirealism and explicitly notes that earlier studies found high rates of both: let's remember that your objection is to what those responses warrant us in attributing to participants, not to whether such responses occur.

Yes. Lots of studies report high rates of moral realism. As you can see here, not only have I never denied this, I begin with this assumption in my work. The whole point of my view is that people reporting high levels of moral realism aren’t justified in interpreting these studies as evidence that these responses are good evidence that many people actually have realist intuitions because their measures aren’t valid. As I say in the abstract:

Most research in experimental metaethics suggests high levels of interpersonal and intrapersonal variation in support for moral realism and antirealism among nonphilosophers (i.e., people without significant training in philosophy). These findings challenge the assumption that nonphilosophers share a uniform commitment to moral realism. Recent evidence challenges the validity of these studies by demonstrating that many people do not interpret questions about metaethics as intended.

So what is Rian’s point? Why is Rian drawing a distinction between these claims if he’s going to “remind” me of my own position and do nothing with the distinction? This doesn’t make any sense.

Rian then returns to the Sousa et al. (2021) paper above. This return is immensely embarrassing for Rian. Rian says:

This is particularly relevant because it does not merely recycle the original disagreement task: the authors explicitly modify earlier designs to reduce alternative interpretations and then obtain high rates of objectivist responding.

Rian presents this as if what they did is modify the design of the study to reduce the kinds of alternative interpretations Moss and I raise in our 2020 paper and that I raise later in my dissertation. But this is false. This study doesn’t address the alternative interpretations we raise at all. In fact, I had contacted Sousa in 2021 in regard to the 2021 paper. From private correspondence he explicitly confirmed that he hadn’t read even our 2020 paper prior to authoring this paper. Since my dissertation hadn’t been written yet, he also couldn’t have read that. So this paper could not have addressed the specific concerns we raised explicitly in either paper, at least not explicitly and intentionally, unless they somehow anticipated precisely those concerns (which they hadn’t, and which they don’t discuss in the paper, so this possibility is moot).

The Sousa et al. (2021) paper instead only focuses on minimizing the inference that Mamilons (the Amazonian warrior tribe) and Pentars misunderstood the moral issues they were presented with. This is a narrow attempt at resolving a problem distinctive to a single study; it doesn’t solve other problems with that study and doesn’t address the general set of problems Moss and I raise at all.

Rian simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In Study 2, the objectivist response was selected by 82% of participants in the same-culture condition and 74% in the exotic-culture condition. In Study 3, once the alien appraiser was explicitly described as understanding the morally relevant properties of the harmful action, objectivist responding was 74% and 70%, versus 48% when that understanding was absent.

So what? I’ve never denied these studies can and do yield high rates of realist responses. That doesn’t mean the measures used in this study are valid. They’re not. They’re just more iterations of Sarkissian et al.’s disagreement paradigm, which isn’t a valid measure. They don’t do anything to circumvent the validity issues I’ve raised. All these findings show is that when they modified the original Sarkissian et al. study’s wording it closes the gap in realist response rates across conditions. That doesn’t show that these measures are valid and that we therefore have strong evidence that many people are realists; again, and I cannot stress this enough: the modifications to this study are only specifically designed to address methodological concerns with Sarkissian et al. (2011); they are not intended to and don’t serve to address the methodological concerns myself and others have raised.

Rian continues:

Studies 4a and 4b are even more inconvenient for your blanket statement. In the injustice conditions, objective-wrongdoing responses were 88% for killing and 88% for stabbing in Study 4a, and 92% for killing and 81% for stabbing in Study 4b. Study 4b deliberately used the much more explicit formulation that the action was “inherently wrong,” i.e. wrong independent of any prevailing cultural norms. The authors themselves describe Studies 2–3 as showing “high objectivist responding” and Studies 4a–4b as showing a “quite high rate” of objective-wrongdoing responses.

No, none of this is remotely inconvenient for my position. That the realist response rates are higher here isn’t good evidence of the validity of the measures. It would hardly matter if these studies found 100% realist response rates. As long as there are good reasons to question the validity of these measures that the authors haven’t addressed (and there are), and as long as there’s no adequate evidence of their general validity, then there’s no good reason to trust these measures any more than other measures that I’ve critiqued. 100% of people can interpret stimuli in unintended ways, just as 85% or 50% of people can.

This remark in particular is rather silly:

Study 4b deliberately used the much more explicit formulation that the action was “inherently wrong,” i.e. wrong independent of any prevailing cultural norms.

It’s odd for Rian to drop the full quote and present the latter description outside the quotes. What the item states is that the action was:

inherently wrong, that is, it is wrong independent of any prevailing cultural norms."

Now, this is a problem for a few reasons. First, whether something is wrong independent of cultural norms only technically rules out cultural relativism; it does not rule out other forms of antirealism. So this already isn’t a good way to measure whether a person is a realist or an antirealist since it measures whether a person is a cultural relativist vs. whether they’re not a cultural relativist. Rejecting cultural relativism does not mean you’re a realist. I reject cultural relativism. I’m not a realist.

Second, do we have any reason to think that this explicit formulation of “inherently wrong” is an improvement and resulted in a more valid measure? I don’t think so, and Rian doesn’t provide any. Generally speaking, explicit formulations can be an impediment because they can prompt metalinguistic theorizing and actually interfere with a valid measure, so there’s even reason to think that explicit formulations are worse in some cases. This may be how Rian interprets that phrase. But what matters is how participants interpreted that phrase. That participants may interpret stimuli including phrases like this in unintended ways is the main point of my critique, and my dissertation research shows that intended interpretation rates are exceptionally low for every tested measure, including the terminology used in Fisher et al.’s (2017) explicit formulation that used the term “objective.”

So what we have here is a novel measure that might be interpreted as intended, but for which there is little supporting evidence. In fact, I wasn’t immediately aware of what study Rian was referring to when he mentioned Sousa. This is because I assumed he was referring to a newer study. Why refer to an old study that doesn’t actually make any significant methodological headway over prior studies? But Rian was referring to this study, which was published five years ago, before I had completed my dissertation, and that doesn’t do or even attempt to do what Rian says it does.

Sousa et al. gathered open response data that provides some insight into how participants may have interpreted the stimuli in this study. However, they do not offer any systematic examination of this data. Instead, they only report a handful of select examples from Study 4a (and none from 4b, which are the stimuli Rian mentions above):

we believe most participants choosing “Person A is correct” in fact expressed an objectivist position. At least this interpretation was often conveyed by their justifications:

“I believe that there is such a thing as moral truths. (…)” (Killing)

“Person A is right, just because Baako doesn’t have the moral intelligence to know that the stabbing is wrong does not make it okay.” (Stabbing)

Neither of these responses provides clear or even good evidence that participants interpreted the prompt as intended. First, they cut off the first of these quotes. This first quote is from response #181 in their raw dataset. Here is the full quote:

I believe that there is such a thing as moral truths. I think that value systems vary from better to worse depending primarily on how well they promote or are an obstacle to the flourishing of sentient beings. Killing children for being unattractive sees [sic] to bad for human flourishing.

Notice the latter remark: that value systems can vary from better to worse. Does this sound like something a moral realist would say? No, it does not. This might instead be a judgment about how closely first-order normative systems accord with the respondent’s own normative moral standards, in which case this response would indicate an unintended interpretation. Alternatively, if this remark is intended as metaethical, it could reflect at least in part a somewhat more relativistic view about morality.

The second remark likewise does not indicate that the participant interpreted the stimuli in line with a realist interpretation. It sounds like they are saying that the person from the other culture has compromised cognitive faculties associated with moral judgment; one might imagine a person with psychopathy or who was brainwashed into thinking violence or murder are okay. This person appears to be saying that just because a person with such deficiencies thinks such actions are okay, this does not make them okay.

This does not indicate that the participant is taking a realist stance. On the contrary, a more conventional realist interpretation actually conflicts with these remarks. The best indicator of realism would be where one fully appreciates that the other person is in possession of a capacity of reasoning about morality, but has reached a contrary conclusion to you, and yet you still maintain that they’re mistaken. This participant appears to be offering an explanation for the psychology of the other person that exempts them from being a genuine peer with a contrary moral perspective. In other words, rather than considering their disagreement with this person to be a disagreement with a fully cognitively capable moral agent who has arrived at a different conclusion about morality, they appear to be inferring that the person lacks moral competence, much as we would not consider the actions of an insane person or an animal to be morally permissible merely because the insane person or animal doesn’t have the moral faculties to appreciate the moral status of their actions.

In other words, the two examples Sousa et al. present as evidence that participants interpreted their stimuli as intended not only fail to do so, they might even serve as evidence to the contrary! And keep in mind they could have chosen any examples from the data to support their claim; if this is the best they can do, this should if anything lead us to be suspicious that any appreciable number of participants genuinely appear to have interpreted the stimuli as intended.

Unfortunately, they offer no systematic evaluation of their open response data that would support the conclusion that most participants interpreted the prompt as intended (i.e., in line with realism). Incidentally, I had commented on this fact in my dissertation:

Even when researchers do appeal to open response data, they rarely do so in a systematic and thorough way. For instance, Sousa et al. (2021) appeal to open response data to support their explanation of their findings. However, they only highlight one or two examples to support a point, rather than appealing to systematic analysis of the data they collected. (p. 101, footnote 61)

As it happens, I had the raw data from their open response questions at the time and have already examined it. Their data is publicly available here and you can go see it for yourself. If you look at the open responses for Study 4a, they don’t show a massive shift towards intended interpretation rates relative to other studies.

Let’s go through these. The first is the closest to a good sign of intended interpretation and if I were coding the responses here I’d label this as an intended interpretation. But note that this is already being extremely generous. Such a remark potentially illustrates only a superficial capacity to recapitulate information provided in the instructions or stimuli. After all, participants are told that the person thinks “What Baako did is still wrong, even if the Mamilons do not think it is wrong.” It is not difficult for a person who has little or no understanding of relativism or antirealism to respond with a first-order moral judgment, and then dismiss the idea that a culture could fix the rightness of an action, without understanding the sense in which relativists think cultures serve to determine the truth of moral claims.

Skepticism about the superficiality of such responses is warranted given both the overarching data I have on participant interpretation, and David Moss’s experience with interviewing students about their metaethical views (Bush & Moss, 2016). Even so, proponents of validity are off to a good start with this remark. Subsequent remarks quickly reveal that this first response was an anomaly. The second response expresses a normative standard and universalism, not anything related to realism (universalism is not the same thing as realism). The third makes a descriptive claim. The fourth simply expresses agreement, without any explicit metaethical content. The fifth judges the person and offers a reason for why they might make a given choice, but doesn’t clearly frame this in metaethical terms. The sixth expresses an absolutist view rather than a view about realism or antirealism, and so on.

As you can see, there’s no clear pattern of responses indicating a propensity to draw on metaethical considerations. The 12th item hints at a metaethical view when it says “regardless of beliefs,” the 14th conveys fairly sophisticated metaethical views, and the 15th appears to endorse agent relativism. A generous reading of these responses would indicate maybe about 20% say things that support an intended interpretation. This is in line with the data reported in my dissertation. Again, though, note that a person could have a metaethical interpretation but not indicate it in their response, or appear to have a metaethical interpretation but have an inadequate or superficial understanding of the stimuli, so findings like these are not an especially compelling bit of evidence on their own. Most importantly, this particular line of questioning simply asked the participant to explain their response and did not specifically probe their interpretation, so it’s not well suited to addressing interpretation rates.

However, Rian emphasized the stimuli used in Study 4b. What do the authors say about it?

More importantly, we replicated this result in Study 4b, in which the response probe differed from that in 4a, such that it articulated a more unequivocally objectivist position (“Baako’s action is inherently wrong, that is, it is wrong independent of any prevailing cultural norms.”). Neither a relativist, a nihilist nor a subjectivist could choose the option “Person A is correct” here.

This isn’t even true. Notice that they define “inherently wrong” as wrong in a way that is “independent of any prevailing cultural norms.” “Inherently wrong” is a bit of unclear jargon. An untrained participant with no background in philosophy could interpret it in a variety of ways. But the only way for it to be interpreted in a way that relativists, nihilists, and subjectivists couldn’t choose option A is if they understood it to mean something like “stance-independently true,” and, technically, since relativism and subjectivism are consistent with stance-independence, it would have to be stance-independent and we’d have to ignore realist forms of relativism or presume they also inferred universality. But we can set all of that aside because the stimuli instruct readers in how to interpret “inherently wrong”: to mean wrong in a way that isn’t determined by culture. Can relativists, nihilists, and subjectivists judge that an action is wrong independent of prevailing cultural norms?

Yes. Yes they can. Individual relativists wouldn’t think cultural norms determine right or wrong, nor would quasi-realists, expressivists, constructivists, fictionalist error theorists, quietists like myself, and so on. In fact most antirealist positions are consistent with this, besides traditional noncognitivism, cultural relativism, and non-fictionalist error theory. So some antirealists couldn’t consistently select this option, but many could.

Note, then, that the authors themselves are mistaken about the responses antirealists could consistently offer in response to this prompt. However, this is largely moot, because this is all only relevant on the assumption participants have these views and have interpreted stimuli as intended. In other words, their claims about how a person could or couldn’t respond require that participants have these views, require that they interpret the prompt as intended, require that they somehow circumvent the misleading information that the authors provide that qualifies “inherently wrong” to mean only culture-independent when it should have been stance-independent in a more general sense, and require that they answer in a way consistent with their positions. Those are a lot of requirements and notably they presuppose precisely those assumptions that I am denying: that participants do hold these views and that they do interpret the stimuli as intended. The authors’ claims are thus not an especially good reason to think the stimuli serve as a valid measure. They’re not even intended to; this isn’t a claim about validity in a direct sense; it’s a claim about the accuracy of their operationalization in principle. The responses to this prompt aren’t any more impressive than for 4a.

Overall for Study 4b you get the same pattern of people repeating the instructions from the prompts/stimuli, expressing their first-order moral views, and so on. Participants do not appear to consistently respond in a way that suggests they interpreted the question in metaethical terms. Does this mean they didn’t interpret it in metaethical terms? No, but again, given that we have so many other reasons to doubt the validity of metaethics measures, and especially the disagreement paradigm, this coupled with the same pattern in their open response data is most consistent with my stance, which is that we expect this measure not to be valid, either.

Many participants simply reiterate that it’s wrong to kill or insist it’s wrong to kill “for any reason.” Such responses remain in the realm of first-order judgment and at best suggest participants are judging the action in terms of whether there are exceptions to norms against killing. Many others say things that are ambiguous or unclear and don’t tell you one way or another whether they interpreted the stimuli as intended. You do get a handful of people that do respond in ways that either strongly hint at or quite explicitly suggest an intended interpretation. For instance, you get responses like this:

These are good responses, and the kind I’d code as indications of intended interpretation. These sorts of responses are quite rare, though, and probably comprise less than 20-30% of responses. Note that not giving a response like this doesn’t mean that participants didn’t interpret stimuli as intended. Intended response rates might be higher. Conversely, offering a response like these isn’t strong evidence that they do interpret stimuli as intended, since these remarks are often shallow and underdeveloped, or invoke technical terminology that other data suggests nonphilosophers frequently understand in ways that are inconsistent with the concept being studied by researchers. This kind of open response data just isn’t very diagnostic one way or another. This is due in part to what Sousa et al. asked. They asked participants to explain why they answered the question in the way they had. This is a good question to ask, and can reveal important data about how participants reason, but it’s not specifically designed or optimized for assessing intended interpretation. Given this, we shouldn’t put much stock in this data as evidence for or against the validity of the measures. But from a cursory glance, it looks to me to provide some small evidence against validity.

Rian also continues to push an irrelevant distinction:

And notice the distinction I made from the beginning: Sousa et al. themselves explicitly caution that these results do not settle whether folk objectivism amounts to correspondence-style moral realism.

Of course they don’t settle it. Rian continues to be confused about what my position is. None of us working in the field consider individual studies like these to be decisive or to settle anything. That’s never been at issue. I’m not confused about this. Rian seems to think, for no apparent reason, that I’m confused about the difference between evidence decisively establishing something and it justifying it. I’m not confused about this distinction and never drew on or even alluded to it. I’m not merely saying that studies like these don’t confirm or settle the question of whether realism is common among nonphilosophers; I’m saying these studies don’t provide good enough evidence at all to justify thinking that realism is common among nonphilosophers. This is a different interpretation of the results of these studies than those presented by the authors themselves; it’s as if Rian somehow thinks it’s not possible or defensible for me to disagree with the authors of a study, or if the authors say something about their findings, that it must be true.

I’m not sure why Rian thinks I’m confused about this. I meant exactly what I said. Maybe Rian’s incredulity that someone could take this strong of a stance has led him to think it’d only be charitable to assume I couldn’t really be making this strong of a claim. Rian is wrong. I am making that strong of a claim. I am saying there is not a single study in existence, nor is there a credible body of literature as a whole that justifies belief that realism is common among nonphilosophers. I’m not just saying we don’t have decisive evidence of widespread realism. I’m saying we don’t have any good evidence at all, including this study.

Rian continues:

Objectivist intuitions “might be realist,” they say, but might instead admit another interpretation. Exactly. That is why I said objectivist or realist-seeming, rather than claiming that these experiments establish that most people are card-carrying metaethical realists!

Rian continues to be confused. The authors take their findings to be based on valid measures that provide significant but non-decisive justification for moving in the direction of the conclusion that many nonphilosophers are moral realists about at least some issues. That their findings move the dial in this direction would only be true if their measures were valid. They think they are. A single set of studies presenting good evidence of a claim is still interpreted among scientists as tentative because we care about what the overarching body of literature as a whole ultimately says about the matter. Yet Rian goes back to using the ambiguous phrase “realist-seeming,” and contrasts this with the notion that the evidence establishes their hypothesis. Again, Rian is mixing things up. There are four claims in play here:

1. Whether lots of participants choose the realist responses in these studies.

2. Whether the measures used in these studies are valid, and that we therefore have at least some significant evidence that many nonphilosophers are moral realists.

3. Whether the measures used in these studies are valid, and the evidence is so strong so as to justify belief that many nonphilosophers are moral realists.

4. Whether the results of the study are overwhelming and decisive evidence that many nonphilosophers are moral realists.

Rian seems to think I’m mixing these up, and mistakenly thinks that I am only making the claims I do because I think the alternative is (4). I don’t think this. I take a holistic approach to bodies of literature. We don’t typically judge whether a hypothesis is true or false on the basis of a single study. We look at the literature as a whole. Any one study could appear in isolation to be very strong evidence for a claim. But this evidence must be weighed against all the other evidence and theoretical considerations to the contrary. This approach to evaluating evidence is so standard that it operates in the background among scientists.

That Rian would so blithely presume I think otherwise, and get tangled up in such elementary confusions and assumptions about how I and others would think about data is little more than a testament to Rian’s own ignorance and a strong indication that Rian is an amateur with little understanding of how experienced researchers evaluate evidence. Mind you: Rian presents no good reasons at all to suppose that I think this way. He just assumes it, apparently based on his own misguided assumptions. I’ve made numerous public remarks about holistic evaluation of the evidence and routinely speak about the importance of converging lines of evidence. Nobody familiar with my past statements or how I think would make these errors. Rian is unfamiliar with the literature, unfamiliar with where the Sousa et al. paper fits into the literature, unfamiliar with my past statements and ways of thinking, and unfamiliar with conventions and norms about how scientists reason and think about evidence. Rian appears to be so thoroughly ignorant of just about everything it is remarkable that he appears so confident. But maybe it shouldn’t be so remarkable. Some people are so profoundly misinformed that they aren’t aware of how badly misinformed they are. I think this is what’s going on with Rian.

Rian concludes:

Sorry, but based on everything so far, it seems to me that the inclusive disjunction I laid out there about you stands still.

In other words, Rian thinks what he’s just said supports the conclusion that I am lying and/or dumb. Let’s return now to a remark Rian made earlier:

Applying the principle of charity to your intelligence, I initially went with the first option: that you know the distinction and are simply being dishonest about what the literature actually supports. But the second option remains entirely possible as well. And, in case you missed it: this is an inclusive disjunction, since both a) and b) could be true. So here's my retraction: Lance, you're lying or being ignorant/dumb (maybe both).

No, Rian. I disagree with you about what the literature supports. You have presented no good reasons or evidence to conclude that I am lying or that I’m being ignorant or dumb.

Rian’s suggestion that I am dumb and/or lying is ironic given that Rian has, time and again, displayed an astonishing inability to understand me and to understand the experimental metaethics literature. He shows no indication of being in a credible position to judge my intelligence or my honesty.

Such profound confusion would be unfortunate but hardly a vice were it not coupled with a cartoonish degree of childish smugness, condescension, and unwarranted hostility. This is not the behavior of a serious or thoughtful person. It is the behavior of an angry, petulant, and immature person who has a lot of growing up and a lot of reading to do.

References

Baguley, T. (2012, June 21). The stimuli-as-fixed-effect fallacy. R-bloggers. https://www.r-bloggers.com/2012/06/the-stimuli-as-a-fixed-effect-fallacy/

Beebe, J. (2015). The empirical study of folk metaethics. Etyka, 50, 11-28.

Beebe, J., Qiaoan, R., Wysocki, T., & Endara, M. A. (2015). Moral objectivism in cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 15(3-4), 386-401.

Bush, L. S. (2023). Schrödinger's Categories: The Indeterminacy of Folk Metaethics. Cornell University.

Bush, L. S. (2026). Why training paradigms won’t rescue experimental metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1-26.

Bush, L. S., & Moss, D. (2016, September). Qualitative studies in metaethics: Variability, inconsistency, & indeterminacy. Invited talk at the 2016 Buffalo Annual Experimental Philosophy Conference, Buffalo, NY.

Bush, L. S., & Moss, D. (2020). Misunderstanding metaethics: Difficulties measuring folk objectivism and relativism. Diametros 17(64): 6-21.

Davis, T. (2021). Beyond objectivism: New methods for studying metaethical intuitions. Philosophical Psychology, 34(1), 125-153.

Fisher, M., Knobe, J., Strickland, B., & Keil, F. C. (2017). The influence of social interaction on intuitions of objectivity and subjectivity. Cognitive Science, 41(4), 1119-1134.

Flake, J. K., Pek, J., & Hehman, E. (2017). Construct validation in social and personality research: Current practice and recommendations. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(4), 370-378.

Goodwin, G. P., & Darley, J. M. (2008). The psychology of meta-ethics: Exploring objectivism. Cognition, 106(3), 1339-1366.

Judd, C. M., Westfall, J., & Kenny, D. A. (2012). Treating stimuli as a random factor in social psychology: A new and comprehensive solution to a pervasive but largely ignored problem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(1), 54–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028347

Moss, D., Montealegre, A., Bush, L. S., Caviola, L., & Pizarro, D. (2025). Signaling (in)tolerance: The reputational implications of metaethical relativism and objectivism. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/62z8c

Nichols, S. (2002). Norms with feeling: Towards a psychological account of moral judgment. Cognition, 84(2), 221-236.

Nichols, S., & Folds-Bennett, T. (2003). Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties. Cognition, 90(2), B23-B32.

Pölzler, T. (2017). Revisiting folk moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(2), 455-476.

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 53-82.

Reinecke, M. G., & Solomon, L. H. (2023). Children deny that God could change morality. Cognitive Development, 68, 101393.

Sarkissian, H., Park, J., Tien, D., Wright, J. C., & Knobe, J. (2011). Folk moral relativism. Mind & Language, 26(4), 482-505.

Sousa, P., Allard, A., Piazza, J., & Goodwin, G. P. (2021). Folk moral objectivism: The case of harmful actions. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 638515.

Wright, J. C., Grandjean, P. T., & McWhite, C. B. (2013). The meta-ethical grounding of our moral beliefs: Evidence for meta-ethical pluralism. Philosophical Psychology, 26(3), 336-361.

Zijlstra, L. (2023). Are people implicitly moral objectivists? Are People Implicitly Moral Objectivists?. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 14(1), 229-247.

"The Vision of Saint Hubert" - Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1617-1620)

This is a guest post written by an anonymous author.

Long-form YouTube videos detailing the miraculous evidence for theism are currently sparking heated debates online. These debates have mainly been fueled by the very public conversion of Joe Schmid, a Princeton University philosophy PhD student and prolific YouTuber. By his own telling, Joe’s conversion to Catholicism depended heavily on miracle claims, and Joe has devoted hours of video on his channel to documenting these claims and to defending theistic explanations of these claims against naturalistic alternatives. As I will argue in this post, Schmid and other apologists pay far too much attention to the details of miracle claims, and reasoning correctly about miracle claims (or really any kind of claim) involves a more holistic mode of evaluation.

When evaluating miracle claims, the central question is not whether the details of any particular miracle claim can be explained naturalistically. The miracle skeptic should fully expect that some miracle claims—even if naturalistically explicable in principle—will not be naturalistically explicable in practice. The central question for both miracle defenders and miracle skeptics is whether the distribution of miracle claims is more likely under one’s preferred metaphysical hypothesis (e.g., theism) than under relevant alternatives (e.g., naturalism). To the extent that the observed distribution is more likely under one’s preferred hypothesis than under relevant alternatives, the evidence of miracles counts in favor of that hypothesis. To the extent that the observed distribution is less likely under one’s preferred hypothesis than under relevant alternatives, the evidence of miracles counts against that hypothesis.

When evaluating the distribution of miracle claims, we might look to a number of factors, but to my mind, the most important things to consider are (i) the number of miracle claims and (ii) the degree to which the facts surrounding those claims resist naturalistic explanation (hereafter, “recalcitrance”).1 Indeed, we can imagine a histogram representing this distribution of miracle claims, with bins representing levels of recalcitrance and bars representing the number of claims at each level. Each hypothesis under consideration will propose a prior distribution over the frequency of miracle claims and the parameters of the observed distribution of miracle claims (e.g., its mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis). We can then compare the predicted frequency of miracle claims to the actual frequency of miracle claims as well as the probability density of the observed statistics under each prior distribution. This will allow us (i) to compute the ratio of the likelihood of our observations under our preferred hypothesis compared to its alternatives (i.e., its Bayes factor) and (ii) to update our prior probabilities for each hypothesis.

This holistic reasoning is entirely consistent with seemingly contradictory reasoning about specific cases. For example, the theistic defender of miracles is entitled to hold that naturalism better predicts a particular miracle claim (e.g., because the claimed miracle seems to be a fraud).2 Similarly, the naturalistic skeptic of miracles is entitled to hold that theism better predicts a particular miracle claim (e.g., because the claimed miracle seems to be a result of divine intervention). This might seem surprising, but it is no more surprising than a doctor admitting that one symptom is best predicted by a particular condition while holding that the overall pattern of symptoms is best predicted by another. Clearly, what matters is the pattern of evidence and not our judgment about any particular case in isolation.3

This simple observation knocks out what I take to be one of the two major argumentative strategies of theistic miracle defenders. This strategy is to present numerous miracle claims in the hope that the audience will (i) agree that at least one of the claims is best predicted by divine intervention and (ii) accept the apparent theistic implications. As we can now see, this strategy invites the audience to draw a theistic conclusion prematurely.4 This observation should also be a relief to the tireless naturalist who endeavors in every single case to defend the naturalistic hypothesis as more predictive than the theistic hypothesis. While this work is admirable, and I often agree that the naturalistic hypothesis is more predictive, neither party is obliged to maintain that none of the claims favor their opponent’s hypothesis when considered in isolation.5 As I will not tire of saying, it is the overall distribution of miracle claims that is relevant.

All that said, theistic miracle defenders have more sophisticated argumentative strategies available. For example, many of the more thoughtful (and statistically numerate) miracle defenders will argue that the evidence for miracles is part of a cumulative case. As they recount this evidence, they hope that their audience will be moved step-by-step to the view that the theistic hypothesis is more likely than not. This does require that one’s prior probability on the theistic hypothesis not be too low, and for this reason, theistic miracle defenders will package their miracle arguments with reasons for thinking that theism is at least plausible on its other merits. With this non-negligible prior in place, the theist trusts that Bayesian updating will carry the day eventually.

Unfortunately, this argumentative strategy is also misguided, and it rests on a specific misuse of Bayesian inference. A presentation of miracle claims (even a comprehensive or representative one) does not exhaust the relevant evidence. We must also consider all the cases where (i) a miracle might have been claimed but (ii) no miracle was actually claimed. Some of these will be more relevant than others. For example, theism plausibly places a higher likelihood on a miracle claim when a devout believer offers intercessory prayer than when no one prays at all. But all of these cases matter, because the evidential significance of miracle claims depends on the rate at which they occur, not their raw number. To put the point another way: we cannot weigh the significance of any particular number of miracle claims unless we have some sense of how many opportunities there were for such claims to be made. Without that denominator, we cannot say whether the number of claims at each level of recalcitrance exceeds what naturalism would predict.

What matters is (again) whether or not the overall distribution of miracle claims is more likely under one’s preferred metaphysical hypothesis. Are there more or fewer claims than we might expect? Are they more or less recalcitrant than we might expect? Are there more or fewer claims than we might expect at each level of recalcitrance? Answering these questions requires us to undertake a holistic evaluation of the pattern of miracles claimed (and not claimed) before being at all confident that the evidence of miracle claims favors our preferred view. As I will argue in the rest of this post, this kind of holistic evaluation is extremely challenging and unlikely to render a decisive answer either way.

To be clear, the challenge here is not that the cases under consideration are very numerous (though they are). When confronting an overwhelming body of data (e.g., all events where a miracle might have been claimed), it is perfectly reasonable to rely on a sample of that data. However, that sample must be unbiased for it to support any direct statistical inferences. We might forgive miracle defenders for presenting only miracle claims and not presenting a representative sample which includes cases where no miracle is claimed. We might even forgive miracle defenders for presenting only the most recalcitrant miracle claims. Nevertheless, unless we understand (i) how many candidate claims there were and (ii) how the claims presented were selected, we can’t learn much from them.

If we do know (i) and (ii), there are multiple ways we can learn from a biased sample. For example, we might expect upstanding politicians to have one or two plausible allegations of corruption. There are all kinds of ways for proper behavior to appear improper, and we can fully expect a politician’s rivals to find and publicize any apparent improprieties they can through oppo research. Does this mean we should never take these allegations seriously? Of course not. There will be some set of allegations (weighted by their number, severity, and evidential basis) which the filtering effect of oppo research cannot adequately explain.

In this case, it doesn’t matter that the rivals will only release negative information. We know that only a relatively small number of a politician’s actions might appear corrupt, and the sample provided by the rival places a lower bound on the number of apparently corrupt actions. At some point, there will simply be too many apparently corrupt actions released for the actual number of apparently corrupt actions to be an acceptably small subset of the politician’s past behavior.

The preceding example leaned heavily on our knowing the size of the population from which the biased sample was drawn. To see a case where the precise nature of the selection mechanism plays a more central role, suppose we are trying to estimate the ratio of black to white balls in a large urn using a small sample. Our assistant draws balls one at a time out of view and puts back every other white ball. If we know this, we can just double the number of white balls reported to recover an accurate sample.

So, do we know (i) how many candidate claims there were and (ii) how the claims were selected when evaluating a long apologetics presentation with many miracle claims? Not well, but we can roughly characterize them. With respect to (i), it seems likely that the number of cases in which a miracle claim might or might not have been made is staggeringly large, but even narrowing it down to the right order of magnitude seems challenging. We could restrict this considerably by asking how many cases of serious disease occur each year (in the case of medical miracles), or how many hosts are consecrated each year (in the case of Eucharistic miracles). Even in these restricted cases, the numbers are almost certainly extremely large, likely in the hundreds of millions each year.

With respect to (ii), it depends greatly on the source of the reported miracle claims. We might hear a report from a family member who claims to have experienced a miracle. We might hear one from an apologist specializing in miracle research. The selection effects here will be very different in each case. However, given the recent surge of interest in miracle claims presented by apologists, I will focus on those here. In this case, the selection effect seems extremely strong—if the apologists’ own reports are to be believed. Here is a quote from miracle researcher Ethan Muse:

“The vast majority of miracle claims are false. So therefore, the mere fact of a claim, without the additional substantiation and corroboration like we’re talking about here, the fact that you have a claim [by itself] is not good. Even sometimes testimony—lots of multiply attested testimony, even from people who were firsthand—you would not believe in researching the number of examples of that quality of testimony that I found that I can then show was spurious. It just turns out retrospective memory is unreliable, especially when people are giving testimony a lot later. There’s a certain fraction of people that will tell lies that will seem implausible or surprising to us. There’s a natural tendency for legendary embellishments and exaggerations to occur. There are misinterpretations that happen all the time. Sometimes there are coincidences. All these things do happen, and they happen with great frequency, which is why you need to be as forensic and analytical about verifying each case as we’ve been here and not just super credulous...”

It seems clear that Ethan is keen to show that he only reports on miracle claims he believes have passed his careful vetting and failed to admit mundane explanations (e.g., fraud, unreliable memory, exaggeration, etc.). Further, he is keen to show that the fraction surviving this vetting is very small. This constitutes a very strong selection bias in favor of recalcitrant miracle claims. This is perfectly reasonable if you believe that some miracle claims are genuine and you want to report as few spurious miracle claims as possible. In fact, the real selection effect here is probably stronger than Ethan suggests because he primarily investigates miracle claims that have risen to his attention—a process that requires individuals and the people around them to be sufficiently impressed by a claim that they amplify it.

While this kind of filtering may be admirable under certain assumptions, this is actually quite problematic for the miracle defender when their audience wants to evaluate miracle evidence as a whole. Given the prevalence of religious belief (along with the incentives Ethan cites above) and the many opportunities for miracle claims to be asserted (discussed above), we can safely conclude that the number of reported miracles is extremely large. This means that even if the naturalist predicts a small rate of inexplicable miracle claims, the number that exist will be significant. If even one in a million miracle claims is inexplicable, then there will almost certainly be quite a significant number of such claims. Further, given the filter applied by researchers like Ethan, we should expect their presentations to almost exclusively feature claims of this kind.

The problem for the miracle defender here is straightforward: This expectation should hold whether theism is true or naturalism is true. Both hypotheses predict with high probability that apologists will be able to fill long videos with impressive miracle claims. Charitably, the theistic hypothesis might place a slightly higher likelihood on this observation, but I suspect we are dealing with likelihoods very near 1 in both cases. Hence, apologetics videos of this kind should in practice convince no one.

While I have much more to say on this subject (and hope to say it in future posts), what I have said so far cuts both ways. If it is extremely hard to get a good sense of the distribution of miracle claims given the available evidence (i.e., heavily selected samples predicted similarly well by rival hypotheses), then the evidence of miracles simply does not favor either side. While this is equally true for both sides, it seems likely to disappoint miracle defenders far more than naturalists. The naturalist is generally playing defense and sees miracle claims as a challenge to be defused. Neutralizing miracle claims, as I have done here, will seem like a victory in this context. On the other hand, miracle defenders such as Ethan Muse and, more recently, Joe Schmid place extraordinary importance on miracle claims in support of their theological positions. Both routinely use miracle claims, for example, to justify the acceptance of positions that (at least in the case of Joe) they previously found deeply morally questionable.6

For example, Joe has said that the argument from evolutionary animal suffering is a very powerful version of the argument from evil and that he had grave concerns about Catholic teachings on gay sex and hell (understood as eternal conscious torment).7 Despite these objections, he subjected his intellect and will to Church teaching primarily on the basis of the strength of miracle claims presented to him by Ethan and others. As he states:

“I didn’t have a satisfactory response to all these problems until after I was just utterly flooded with overwhelming evidence for miracles.”

While he also offers direct responses to these objections, Joe is explicit that these responses only aim to blunt their force, and that this is acceptable since the miraculous evidence outweighs whatever force those objections retain. Joe also reports that his intuitions have begun to change following his conversion, but by his own admission, we might expect this as a result of cognitive penetration.

If the argument in this post succeeds, Joe must reassess whether the total evidence favors Catholicism. Perhaps he will discover arguments that do more than merely blunt the force of his objections and, instead, make Catholic teachings plausible. Perhaps he will not, and his objections will lead him to once again reject Catholicism. Naturally, this project will depend a great deal on the kind of philosophical reasoning that Joe now regards with suspicion, and I will leave it to him to wrestle with the implications of his meta-philosophical concerns. Fundamentally, my worry is that the argument from miracles has become a thought-stopping mechanism for Joe—one that shields against theological doubts and offers refuge in the face of philosophical uncertainty.

This is the first in a series of posts on arguments for theism based on miracles. In the next post, I will consider two major objections: (i) the possibility of a single miracle so well-evidenced that it alone supports belief in God and (ii) the possibility of a set of recalcitrant miracle claims so large that it overwhelms the problems introduced by selection. In the post after that, I will discuss the value of constructing naturalistic explanations of miracle claims and what those efforts might tell us about theism and naturalism.

8.0 Non-analytic subjectivism

Christian next turns to non-analytic subjectivism. As someone who doesn’t think there are reasons, this is a worrisome beginning:

Here are the rules of the philosophy game we’re about to play. I’m going to propose a principle which tells us when we have a reason to act. I’m then going to raise various thought experiments that will prompt your intuitive responses. Some of these thought experiments will be outlandish and some will be tame. The point is to evoke your underlying beliefs about when we have a reason to act or not.

Given that I don’t think we have “reasons,” this is going to be a challenge for me, but let’s proceed:

Desire-based Theory: We have reason to do whatever would fulfill any of our present desires (OMW I, 58) [sic]

Since I don’t know what this question is asking, in that I don’t know what’s meant by “have reason,” I am unable to answer the question. I think talk of “reasons” only makes sense when its meaning is made clear in the relevant context. If someone asks about the reasons for why water turns to ice when it’s cold, there’ll be some explanation for this. If someone asks what reason I had to go to the store, I will report what my goals or motivations were. Reason-talk is, on my view, perfectly meaningful; it’s just that I don’t think we literally have reasons. So when someone asks me what my “reasons” are for something in some abstract, theoretical contexts, what are they asking me to do? I could convert their question into a question about my desires, in which case this question would just amount to:

I would desire to do whatever would fulfill any of my present desires.

Well, that’s true. So this statement is true, I suppose? But is that what I’m being asked? I don’t imagine Parfit intended to ask us to respond to a tautology. So what am I being asked?

I don’t know.

So there’s no way to respond. Note how Christian talks about this account, though:

On this theory there is no such thing as an irrational desire, all desires we have in the present moment provide us with a reason to act.

I agree that there are no irrational (non-instrumental) desires, though this remark doesn’t yet introduce a distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental desires. But what on earth would it mean to say that our desires provide us with a reason to act? If the claim is that our desires motivate us, that would be one thing. If a “desire” is operationalized by psychologists in terms of processes that motivate us to act, then this, too, would be rather empty. It would amount to saying:

All motivations we have in the present moment motivate us.

Christian seems to impute this ineffable notion of reasons, which desires allegedly can “provide” us, to the subjectivist. Next, we’re asked to consider this scenario:

Snake: While walking in some desert, you have disturbed and angered a poisonous snake. You believe that, to save your life, you must run away. In fact you must stand still, since this snake will attack only moving targets. (OMW I, 34). [sic]

Christian says:

In Snake you have a strong, present desire, predicated on false beliefs, to run away. Yet most of us would agree that this desire does not provide us with a reason to run. If we share this intuition, we ought reject the desire-based theory. Subjectivist [sic] could patch up their theory by incorporating one of two further principles to account for this tension.

This is a serious problem, not for me, but for how critics of subjectivism understand subjectivism. A sensible subjectivist doesn’t think that we “should” do whatever it is we desire to do, where “desire” is crudely understood to refer to whatever instrumental means we believe will achieve our desires. They think we should do what would in fact achieve our desires. What do I mean by this? I mean that, all things considered, the course of action I would like to act upon would be the one that most accomplishes my desires. Only I don’t know what, precisely, will achieve this outcome, since I don’t have perfect information or reasoning abilities. Given this, we can draw a distinction between:

• Non-instrumental desires
  The fundamental desires we want to satisfy

• Instrumental desires
  Given our limited information and fallibility, that set of desires or motivations we act upon in order to achieve our non-instrumental desires.

Let me illustrate the distinction. Suppose I am thirsty and would like to quench my thirst. I see a glass of what appears to be water on the table. Only it is not water, it is poison. Do I “have a reason” to drink the water? On the crude and inaccurate characterization of subjectivism, the answer is yes. After all, we’re told:

We have reason to do whatever would fulfill any of our present desires

The reasoning here is supposed to be that:

I desire to drink the glass of water.

However, since doing so would result in me dying, this wouldn’t be in my interests. The critic of the desire-based theory thus reasons that:

1. The desire-based theory holds that in the glass of water scenario, the desire-based theorist is committed to the belief that people have reason to act on their present desires.

2. Since they presently desire to drink the glass of water, they will act in such a way that they will bring about their own deaths.

3. This is counterintuitive. We shouldn’t favor a theory that holds that we have reason to bring about our deaths.

4. So the desire-based theory should (all else being equal) be rejected.

Yet there is a very clear and obvious mistake in this line of reasoning:

It’s simply false that the desire-based theorist’s only present desire is to drink the glass of water.

This line of reasoning fails to distinguish instrumental from non-instrumental desires. The desire-based theorist should (and probably does) think more like this:

1. I non-instrumentally desire to quench my thirst.

2. I don’t want to die.

3. This here is a glass of water which will quench my thirst.

4. I instrumentally desire to drink this glass of water in order to quench my thirst.

The desire-based theorist can thus identify the mistake being made as being a mistake with respect to one’s instrumental desires. But why is it a mistake? Why does the person in this scenario, who wants to quench their thirst and not die, desire to drink the water? Because they mistakenly believe it will achieve their fundamental desire. So the desire-based theorist can easily account for the “intuition” that the person does not “have a reason” to drink the water. They can easily explain the situation like this:

1. It would not satisfy their desires to drink the poison.

2. They mistakenly believe that it would.

Now, let’s go back for a moment to the original characterization of this account. We were told:

On this theory there is no such thing as an irrational desire, all desires we have in the present moment provide us with a reason to act.

In the present moment, my desire is to quench my thirst, and I believe that the means by which I can achieve this desire is to drink the glass of what appears to be water. While we can say I desire to drink the water, this is an instrumental desire. Instrumental desires can fail to achieve our non-instrumental desires. There just aren’t any issues here, unless, and only unless, one keeps trying to inject “reasons” into their account all willy-nilly. Subjectivism is entirely consistent with our instrumental desires being “irrational,” insofar as this consists in acting in ways inconsistent with our non-instrumental desires. However, this phrasing would be misleading. One might have no good evidence to believe what appears to be water is poison. A person mistakenly acting in a way inconsistent with their desires isn’t “irrational,” they’re just incorrect about what would achieve their non-instrumental desires. That’s all that’s going on in this scenario. There’s no need for fancy notions of rationality or normativity. Yet Christian’s claims would leave us with something like this line of reasoning:

Do we have a reason to drink the glass of apparent water? No! Because it would harm us! So the account that says we do “have a reason” must be wrong!

It’s easy to beat up on bad ideas. The idea here is that it’s counterintuitive to think you “have a reason” in this case. I don’t know what judgments or phenomenology are associated with people who’d report something like this, but my guess is that they think roughly that facts about what “count in favor” of an action shouldn’t be based on instrumental desires because instrumental desires can be mistaken and result in undesirable outcomes. Christian seems to treat the best solution for this to be to locate reasons elsewhere. But there’s a much simpler solution: abandon the notion of normative reasons entirely. If we construe this and any subsequent scenario entirely in terms of:

1. Psychological facts about what an agent believes

2. Facts about what is true or false

We can easily describe all of these scenarios without ever wondering whether any given set of facts, including facts about our desires, “give” us reasons. We can just say that there are facts about what our non-instrumental desires are, facts about what our instrumental desires are conditional on the information available to us in a given context, and facts about whether the instrumental desires would or wouldn’t achieve the non-instrumental desires. We don’t need to say anything else. Unless, of course, we have realist intuitions that aren’t satisfied by these accounts. But if that’s the case, of course these accounts aren’t going to appease such people. So what? It isn’t a requirement of a philosophical position that it satisfy the intuitions of people who have intuitions to the contrary.

When I, as an agent, am trying to decide what to do, my goal is always to try to achieve my non-instrumental desires by means of the instrumental desires I believe are most conducive to achieving those non-instrumental desires. We can then ask a host of epistemic questions about what course of action is most likely to yield success for me as an agent with bounded rationality operating under a given set of constraints. There are lots of questions to ask in such circumstances. But the question of whether any given set of instrumental desires, non-instrumental desires, or non-desires “give” me reasons never arises.

Parfit’s approach seems to kick up so much dust via reasons-talk that desire-based accounts look silly and indefensible. And they do look silly and indefensible if you twist them into pretzels by trying to force some intuitively satisfying notion of “reasons” into the mix. But such intuitive satisfaction is, I believe, a profound error; a result of buying into the reified and/or conceptually confused reasons-talk invented by philosophers, a form of thinking and discourse that clings like a parasite to some tentative conception of what we’d think and say in ordinary discourse, only extracted from those contexts and dissected outside of them in ways that appear to reveal anomalies: but those anomalies are only present due to the artificial armchair conditions in which the terms and concepts are being assessed. Philosophers are employing a method that can’t work, for much the same reason you cannot understand wild animal behavior by capturing animals and placing them into zoos. To understand how language works, you need to study it in the wild. Not study it in the armchair and insist that such study reveals its use in the wild.

Returning to Christian’s Snake scenario, it is easy to reanalyze this with these tools in hand:

1. I non-instrumentally want to avoid being bitten by a snake.

2. I mistakenly believe running away would achieve this desire.

Insofar as I could speak of “having a reason” to do things, I would cash it out in this way:

1. Given my mistaken beliefs, I “have a reason” to run away from the snake in the sense that I instrumentally desire to run away and am motivated to do this.

2. Given my non-instrumental desires, I “have a reason” to not run away from the snake in the sense that doing so would satisfy my desire to not be bitten.

The subjectivist faces absolutely no difficulties whatsoever in addressing this situation. The only apparent difficulties emerge from the confusions generated by talking about “having reasons,” and treating these as literal things one has. If one objects that I don’t actually “have a reason” to run away from the snake, because it won’t achieve my non-instrumental desires, then what sense are they using “have a reason” in? I can explain how I’d use the term; can they? Whereas they are stuck with an ineffable, apparently inarticulable sense that something about this or that scenario is “counterintuitive,” I can, in all such cases, discharge the meaning of the terms in familiar ways, then assess whether the statements are true or false, without need of intuitions. My account is better. It’s cleaner. The only thing it doesn’t do is appease realist intuitions. But again, I deny this is a requirement of a satisfactory account, for much the same reason a proponent of natural selection doesn’t have to satisfy the intuitions of people who insist nature appears to be “designed” and can’t shake the intuition. So much the worse for intuitive creationists. Just so, so much the worse for intuitive normative realists.

A desire-based theorist should adopt quietist subjectivism, and in doing so deny that any of their desires, instrumental or otherwise, “give” them or “provide” them with reasons. All the supposedly counterintuitive implications of subjectivism emerge from confusions generated by speaking in these terms. The way out for the subjectivist is to reduce and discharge all talk of having reasons by translating it into talk of instrumental and non-instrumental desires. Once they do, absolutely no problems for their position emerge at all.

I don’t need any intuitions to judge that, in a hypothetical scenario in which a person mistakenly thinks running away from a snake will serve their interests, and they are motivated to do so that they think doing so would serve their interests and are motivated to do so. This is simply what’s been stipulated. If that seems like a hollow analysis of the scenario, good. I wasn’t the one who adopted what I regard as a misguided method of analyzing such scenarios to demonstrate how one doesn’t have “reasons.” It isn’t a problem for me if the scenario doesn’t present any actual problems on my view; that’s the whole point. My approach to these issues doesn’t solve the problem by providing an answer; it solves the “problem” by showing it was never a problem in the first place. And this is exactly what I think about much of the way not only Parfit argues for his positions, but analytic philosophers in general: I am explicitly accusing them of using bad methods to generate pseudoproblems, then presenting their theories as solutions.

Christian (Parfit, too) is already aware of the instrumental/non-instrumental distinction, and moves on to allowing the desire-based theorist to introduce the distinction to “rescue” their position from absurdity:

Subjectivist [sic] could patch up their theory by incorporating one of two further principles to account for this tension.

(E) reasons are provided only by desires that depend on true beliefs

or

(F) reasons are provided only by terminal desires, or aims

This position is still inadequate because it continues to cling to ineffable notions of “reasons,” and so I still reject it in favor of a quietistic account that rejects what I’ve diagnosed as confused reason-talk.

I also want to draw attention to the unfortunate way Christian frames this: That the subjectivist can “patch up” their theory by making these moves, as if they hadn’t already done so in the first place. This is unfortunate because it is a common way of framing rival positions employed by philosophers. While I doubt Christian intends to employ rhetoric or strawman subjectivism, this way of framing things nevertheless serves this function even if it is entirely innocent and unintentional.

Let’s call it the Matryoshka Fallacy. My mom used to have a set of Matryoshka dolls: a set of hollow, painted wooden dolls, each designed to fit inside the other. When you opened the largest one, you’d find a smaller doll inside, and when you opened that, a smaller one still, until you reached the final doll.

Sometimes, when someone is describing an opposing position, instead of simply misrepresenting the position and then attacking that misrepresentation—a classic strawman—they present various weaker forms of the position, note deficiencies with these, and then state that the proponent of the view can “fix” or “patch up” or otherwise address shortcomings with the position by modifying or adding onto it. This ends up crafting a narrative in which the actual position a person holds is depicted as if it were the result of a desperate retreat that has resulted from multiple concessions and ad hoc maneuvers. The narrative looks something like this:

The rival position endorses X. But here’s a problem with X. They could shore up this weakness by adopting X*. But there’s a problem with X*. One way out of this is to adopt X**. But, alas! That suffers from a problem of its own. Of course, they could bite the bullet and retreat to X***…

This is misleading when the person endorsed X*** all along. It makes the position they already held appear to be this battered, beaten thing, not because it’s been battered and beaten, but because you’ve depicted it that way.

I already construed desires in terms of instrumental and non-instrumental desires, and already would’ve readily been able to respond to Parfit’s critiques of desire-based accounts before ever encountering Parfit. I imagine the same would be true of any competent subjectivist.

The positions Parfit is targeting here are crude and unsophisticated and seem artificially engineered to be vulnerable to a series of critiques. It’s as though Parfit is just lining up a series of strawmen he can knock down so that he can depict the final opposition as a craven, retreating position fleeing in terror from Parfit’s philosophical blitz. In any case, Christian insists these moves aren’t going to work:

While (E) might seem more plausible at first, we can post-pone [sic] any updates to the Desire-Based Theory by appeals to truth. Instead, we can appeal to (F). This would result in the simplest plausible subjective theory. To motivate (F) consider Apple.

Now we’re given a rather extensive hypothetical:

Apple: Suppose that I want to eat the two remaining apples that are on some tree. I also want to climb a ladder so that I can reach the higher apple. Suppose next that this tree’s owner allows me to eat only one of these apples, and lets me choose which apple I shall eat. If instrumental desires gave us reasons, I would have more reason to choose the higher apple. If I chose the lower apple, I would then fulfill only my desire to eat this apple. If I chose the higher apple, I would fulfill not only my desire to eat this other apple, but also my instrumental desire to climb this ladder so that I can reach this apple. [So I therefore should choose the higher apple as two desires would then be satisfied]. But this reasoning is obviously mistaken (OMW I, 59). [sic]

According to Christian:

As Apple highlights, instrumental desires do not provide us with reasons. If they did, a life well lived would merely consist in causing ourselves to have many arbitrary desires, and then satisfying them. If you agree at [sic] the absurdity of the situation, we can incorporate (F) by updating the Desire-based theory to

Christian doesn’t quote the rest of what Parfit says in this passage. Parfit adds:

This reasoning is obviously mistaken. Since I want to climb this ladder, not for its own sake, but only as a means of reaching this apple, I have no further, independent reason to fulfil this desire. My reason to climb this ladder derives entirely from, and adds nothing to, my reason to fulfil my desire to eat this higher apple. (OWM, vol. 1)

What Parfit is trying to do is show that instrumental desires can’t “give us reasons.” Parfit is right, of course. Instrumental desires don’t give us reasons. But who thought they did? Perhaps one of the Matryoshka dolls. The problem is, as before, Parfit’s own confused talk of reasons generating the apparent problem. Parfit’s scenario also doesn’t make much sense, and may even be incoherent. Let’s unpack the scenario:

1. I non-instrumentally want to eat two apples.

2. One is higher in a tree, one is lower in the tree.

3. I can only eat one apple.

4. I instrumentally want to climb the ladder to eat the taller apple.

5. If instrumental desires gave us reasons, I would have more reason to choose the higher apple than the lower apple.

This whole scenario only generates problems if the desire-based theorist has weird views about reasons and thinks instrumental and non-instrumental desires alike both “give” us reasons, and that instrumental desires give us reasons independent of what would be needed to achieve our non-instrumental desires. This way of characterizing reason-giving also collapses the distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental desires into both giving us just one kind of “reason.” But why think my “reasons” for acting in accord with my non-instrumental values are on the same footing as my reasons for acting on my instrumental desires? There is no good reason for this: it only makes sense to think of us as having a reason to act on instrumental desires insofar as doing so would serve some non-instrumental desire. But Parfit has given us a scenario in which someone has a free-floating instrumental desire. This makes no sense. It’s just not how instrumental desires work.

Look at this feature of the scenario:

I also want to climb a ladder so that I can reach the higher apple.

Later on, Parfit says:

If I chose the higher apple, I would fulfill not only my desire to eat this other apple, but also my instrumental desire to climb this ladder so that I can reach this apple.

There is a serious problem here. The only purpose of an instrumental desire is to achieve some non-instrumental desire. What non-instrumental desire is achieved by climbing the ladder? None! Parfit has stipulated a scenario that simply makes no sense. Either there would be some non-instrumental desire which would be achieved by climbing the ladder rather than not doing so, or there isn’t. If there is, then it makes perfect sense for a person to climb the ladder. If someone really enjoyed climbing ladders, or wanted to exercise when choosing apples, or wanted to get a better view from being up higher, then there’s nothing absurd or unreasonable about them climbing the ladder. If they don’t have a non-instrumental desire that’d be achieved by climbing the ladder, then it makes no sense to talk of them having an instrumental desire.

Parfit has set up a scenario that employs a concept in a way that omits an integral component of what would render the concept meaningful in the first place. In doing so, he creates the false impression that the problem is with the agent in the scenario, and the resulting analysis desire-based accounts would give of the scenario. But the problem is with Parfit’s set up.

But let’s set that aside for a moment to see what the issue is supposed to be. According to Christian:

As Apple highlights, instrumental desires do not provide us with reasons. If they did, a life well lived would merely consist in causing ourselves to have many arbitrary desires, and then satisfying them. If you agree at [sic] the absurdity of the situation, we can incorporate (F) by updating the Desire-based theory to:

Terminal Desire Theory: We have most reason to do whatever would best fulfill or achieve our present terminal desires or aims.

I don’t think this scenario illustrates much. Subjectivists are not committed to thinking that it would be a good thing to satisfy instrumental desires for their own sake. Yet Christian’s remark suggests that the subjectivist has a goal like:

Maximize the number of instrumental or non-instrumental desires fulfilled by one’s actions.

This just isn’t something subjectivists are committed to. So it does not follow that a life well-lived would, for the subjectivist, consist in generating then satisfying desires. So Christian has not identified an absurdity with the scenario. I want to satisfy whatever my desires are. I have no desire to have desires in order to satisfy them. We don’t need to consider instrumental desires “giving us reasons” to move on to the terminal desire theory. This is already what a subjectivist is likely to favor.

I still think the subjectivist should reject this and any other account which employs an ineffable conception of reasons. I don’t endorse the view that what we have “most reason” to do is whatever would best fulfill or achieve our present terminal desires or aims. Christian also suggests subjectivists may want to incorporate a truth requirement into the position, but this would depend on an empirical question:

Can beliefs cause us to have a different set of terminal desires or aims?

I don’t know the answer to this question. But I also don’t care much about incorporating truth conditions into my own account, so I’m not interested in pursuing this line of inquiry. Christian seems to believe adding a truth condition to one’s subjectivist account would enhance its plausibility. I don’t. Roughly, the idea would be something like this. At a given time, I have one set of non-instrumental desires. However, with new information, my beliefs may change, and if these could cause my non-instrumental desires to change, then I’d have “most reason” to do something other than what I seem to have most reason to do in the absence of this information. We can imagine scenarios where, in other words, my non-instrumental desires are based on false beliefs. In these cases, I’d simply note that one would be motivated or desire to achieve outcomes based on false beliefs. There’d just be a descriptive question here. And I wouldn’t have any further position on whether one “has a reason” to believe or non-instrumentally desire something else instead. This modification is so rooted in considerations of what one “has a reason” to do that it’s irrelevant to my own position.

Part of the reason I’m not that interested in this distinction is that any interest in correcting for one’s false beliefs such that they’d subsequently prompt changes in one’s desires would, for me, be predicated on whether one desires such changes. Desires are still in the driver’s seat, and it’s simply a further descriptive question whether one has the desire for their non-instrumental desires to be receptive to such changes or not. There’s no non-desire-based fact about what I have “most reason” to do that is given by facts alone, rather than my desires, which—consistent with subjectivism—can be responsive to facts. I see no need to entertain further complications Christian introduces and will thus hop off the metaphorical train here.

Over on Twitter, Rian Lobato said:

Because atheism is the default belief in our age (except in philosophy of religion circles) whereas moral realism is almost always extremely intuitive across populations.

I reposted this on Substack and said the following:

There is no good evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive across populations.” It’s downright bizarre for people to keep making this unsubstantiated empirical claim.

Rian appears to have taken offense at this remark, and this sparked an exchange, part of which is over on Twitter/X and part of which is right here on Substack. I will be addressing Rian’s initial claim and the exchange as a whole in this post and subsequent posts. My focus here will be on the initial claim and Rian’s subsequent accusation that I am lying about my views.

1.0 The initial claim

There is no good evidence that moral realism is “almost always extremely intuitive across populations.”

However, this remark is vague. Just what does Rian mean by “extremely intuitive”? There’s a lack of quantification here. “Extremely” appears to apply to “intuitive”, suggesting not that lots of people have the intuition, but that the intuitions they have are themselves “extreme.” Whatever that means. Could Rian mean most people have realist intuitions across most populations? Or that it’s common? If the latter, how common? 5%? 10%? And what does it mean for it to be “almost always” intuitive “across populations”? The “almost always” could mean simply that we find that it’s “extremely intuitive” in almost all populations, but again, there’s no quantification about the proportion of people within any given population. For what it’s worth, existing studies have looked at only a handful of populations: the US, Singapore, China, Poland, Japan, Ecuador, Turkey, and perhaps a few others I don’t immediately recall.

There are, in all of these cases, legitimate questions about the representativeness of the samples, since studies often rely on student populations. Furthermore, many of these studies rely on different methods, so there’s a lack of consistency in the measures used to assess people’s views across populations. But even under the most optimistic assumptions—which definitely haven’t been met—in which we assume all of the samples are fully representative of the nations they were drawn from and all the measures were consistent and valid, this still wouldn’t justify the notion that realism is “extremely intuitive” in most populations (if that’s what Rian means), since it’s not reasonable to generalize from a small handful of populations to the rest of the world’s populations unless there is compelling theoretical reason to do so (e.g., the traits in question are closely tied to basic biological functions, e.g., that most populations have livers is a good reason to think most other populations have livers).

It would not, for instance, warrant the inference that indigenous or preliterate societies hold the same views as those tested, or that societies with radically different cultures held the same views. Generalizing to most of the world’s populations requires more work than a handful of studies, even if those studies were well-designed and drew on representative samples (and in this case, the studies have serious methodological shortcomings and didn’t draw on representative samples).

Either way, I think the most plausible interpretation of Rian’s remark is that a very high proportion of laypeople around the world (as opposed to those with formal training in some technical field) are disposed to find moral realism intuitive. But even this isn’t that clear. So at least one issue with Rian’s remark is that it’s slightly obscure what exactly the initial claim is. However, since my position isn’t simply that most people are not moral realists, but that very few nonphilosophers are moral realists or find moral realism intuitive, this will be irrelevant for most points that I make here. In other words, if Rian were making a strong claim, I’d be extremely confident it was false, but even more modest readings of this remark would likely also be false.

There might be ways of clarifying Rian’s initial remark where it would be a bit more defensible, but provided it is intended to be the empirical claim that a very substantial proportion of nonphilosophers have realist intuitions, there simply isn’t adequate empirical evidence to support such a claim, and if the claim is that a majority of people across most populations have realist intuitions, then the claim would be especially unsubstantiated (though it’s notable that Rian never specified most).

So what, exactly, is my position? There certainly are studies purporting to show that moral realism is common among nonphilosophers, with some studies maintaining that it is the predominant view. These studies purport to vindicate the longstanding presumption among analytic philosophers that moral realism is “the common sense” position, what Neil Sinclair (2012) refers to as a “dialectical presumption in favor of moral realism”.

However, as I argue in my dissertation, all of these studies rely on invalid measures. What does this mean? It means that none of these studies employ tools that are adequate for measuring whether nonphilosophers are realists or not. I do not make the more modest claim that these studies have shortcomings but are still generally informative. Rather, I argue that the methodological shortcomings with these studies are so severe that they should not be used as confident tools of assessment at all. This would be a bit like saying that the manufacturing process behind a batch of thermometers is so flawed that we shouldn’t trust the results of the thermometers pretty much at all. While I can’t precisely quantify the degree of signal to noise, I at least attempt to show that there’s likely so much noise that we have little basis for confidence in any apparent signal.

Is this a bold claim? Sure. Could I be mistaken? Of course. But am I lying about this? No. As I outline in exhaustive detail in my dissertation, along with the appendices and supplements that accompany it, there are extensive methodological shortcomings with existing research in experimental metaethics. In fact, I exhaustively canvass all major paradigms and scales used in the field, and critique them individually. Coupled with this, I conducted an extensive series of studies directly assessing how participants interpreted the stimuli in these studies, along with how they interpreted certain key terms and phrases used in most studies.

As I attempt to show in my dissertation, intended interpretation rates are so low that we have little reason to believe participants are interpreting these studies as intended. If you’re wondering how much of a problem that is (or would be, if I’m correct), the answer is that it’s completely fatal to the validity of these studies. Validity in psychology refers to how well a measure captures what it is intended to measure. For comparison, a thermometer is intended to measure the temperature. It’s only a valid measure if the readings on the thermometer adequately (though not perfectly) correspond to the actual temperature. Likewise, if a psychological measure is intended to determine whether a person believes X or Y, it is only valid if it sorts people who believe X from people who believe Y adequately.

Conventional measures used in experimental metaethics rely on self-report: participants verbally report a response, write a response down, select a multiple choice option, and so on. These various responses are reactions to questions, instructions, and prompts that require the participant to interpret what they’ve heard or read. In order for a response to be valid, the participant must interpret the prompt as intended. For example, if I were trying to figure out if a person liked pineapple on pizza, and they interpreted me to be asking them if they liked pepperoni on pizza, a response of “Yes” or “No” would be useless: it wouldn’t indicate whether they liked pineapple on pizza.

Just so, if participants interpret stimuli intended to determine whether they are moral realists or antirealists in unintended ways, their responses are useless. I argue in my dissertation that available evidence suggests few participants interpret experimental metaethics stimuli as intended. I present a wealth of theoretical reasons and point to several forms of circumstantial evidence to support this claim. These reasons aren’t minor, and shouldn’t be discounted merely because they are not themselves direct empirical findings. However, I then spend the latter portion of the dissertation, along with a great deal of work in the supplemental sections, supporting this claim with extensive empirical studies assessing how participants interpret stimuli. I routinely find intended interpretation rates below 10%, and unintended interpretation rates above 30-40% (with the remainder often being unable to be categorized with confidence). These are absolutely dismal rates.

Given my findings, I would put the order of the most reasonable position to take on existing literature as follows:

1. Folk metaethical indeterminacy: the reason these studies are invalid is because there isn’t a meaningful psychological construct to measure among nonphilosophers, i.e., ordinary people generally aren’t moral realists or antirealists. Studies remain noisy and validity has been elusive because there’s no way to design valid studies in the first place.

2. Agnosticism: Since available studies are invalid, at best we should simply conclude that we don’t currently know whether nonphilosophers are moral realists or not.

3. Folk pluralism: Both realism and antirealism are common among nonphilosophers, and their rates vary depending on the population. Among at least some US populations (e.g., students and people on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk), antirealist rates rose to a consistent 75% across seven different measures in Pölzler and Wright’s studies (2020). Since I believe this is the best available study by a significant margin, I think it’d be reasonable to suppose that if we have valid measures of what nonphilosophers think, at least some populations lean towards antirealism. Ironically, since these are US populations, they comprise the bulk of the people moral realists typically appeal to as anecdotal evidence that most people are realists. Don Loeb’s (2008) incoherentism would be a variant of this hypothesis. This would hold that people are pluralists in an inconsistent way, which would result in a form of antirealism. For what it’s worth, I don’t even think the best study has valid measures, as I argue in my most recent paper, Bush (2026).

4. Folk pluralism/antirealism: This is the view Pölzler and Wright defend: that most people lean towards antirealism but the form of antirealism varies (though they think it largely excludes noncognitivism; notably it probably also excludes error theory but I don’t think they talk about this much).

5. Folk pluralism/realism: This would be pluralism but with a preponderance of people leaning towards realism.

6. Folk antirealism: This would be the view that enough people lean towards antirealism that we can effectively regard the remaining realists as outliers. This would reflect the first non-pluralist, uniformist view.

7. Folk realism: This would be the view that enough people lean towards realism that we can effectively regard the remaining antirealists as outliers.

As you can see, ranked in order from the most to least likely hypothesis, I don’t consider realist-leaning hypotheses to be especially plausible. From this list, Rian most likely endorses (3), (5), or (7). I can see why someone would be disinclined to endorse my preferred position. If so, I think their best bet would be agnosticism or pluralism. I consider agnosticism a very reasonable stance on the literature. This is because I think my case against the validity of existing measures is stronger than my case for indeterminacy. I also consider pluralism (the third option) a somewhat reasonable but slightly iffy stance that fails to fully appreciate the severity of the methodological shortcomings with existing studies. It’s unclear whether the rates of realism Rian thinks there are are so common that they’d go beyond conventional pluralism and put him in categories (5) or (7). Roughly, then, if I had to indicate which positions I think are justified, I’d go with the first two: indeterminacy and agnosticism. That means that, regardless of Rian’s position, I do not consider his position justified, since the only positions I think are justified are ones that hold that claims about lots of people being realists are unsubstantiated.

Yet for some reason, Rian thinks I am lying. There is virtually no good reason to think that I am lying, and Rian offers no concrete evidence or basis for believing that I am. Rian just asserts repeatedly that I must be lying, essentially providing no substantive basis for this accusation beyond dubious speculation about the incentives I might have for doing so and, as far as I can tell, a kind of confused credulity: he appears to be so confident that his preferred hypothesis is “justified,” that I simply must personally agree, and thus if I say otherwise I must be lying. What I’d advise Rian to do is to reflect on the possibility that other people are capable of disagreeing with him.

Suggestions aside, publicly accusing others of lying without any good evidence isn’t just bad form as far as philosophical debates go, it is irresponsible and unethical. Rian’s subsequent conduct reveals a pattern of immaturity and hostility that is shameful, and in this first post, I will exhaustively respond to Rian’s preliminary remarks and address the accusation that I’m lying.

Some people have advised me to not bother. They’re probably right that I shouldn’t bother. I doubt Rian, or his friends, all of whom appear to have a personal vendetta against me and to delight in publicly insulting me, will change their minds about anything or make any meaningful concessions. But I’d like to at least try to reach them, and in doing so perhaps my remarks will be instructive for others. Finally, this is an opportunity to revisit some of my favorite literature from a few years ago, and dust off some old findings and data.

So let’s get started. My post that started this whole exchange was this remark:

There is no good evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive across populations.” It’s downright bizarre for people to keep making this unsubstantiated empirical claim.

Given the preceding context, it should be clear what I am saying: that there isn’t good evidence for Rian’s claim, and that the notion that realism is “extremely intuitive across populations” is unsubstantiated. As we’ll see, a great deal hinges on the terms “good” and “unsubstantiated.”

2.0 Accusations of lying

My post prompted a long tweet from Rian. The rest of this post is a response to the following remark:

Dear Lance: there is a substantial experimental literature on folk metaethics showing that ordinary people often display objectivist-seeming moral judgments. Goodwin & Darley (2008), for instance, found moral claims to be regarded as substantially more objective than matters of taste or social convention and in some respects almost as objective as scientific claims. Nichols & Folds-Bennett (2003) found analogous objectivist tendencies in children and Beebe et al (2015) found broadly similar patterns of moral-objectivity judgments across Chinese, Polish and even Ecuadorian samples.

Now, none of that establishes that people are uniformly or universally moral realists. Wright et al., Sarkissian et al., and others provide evidence for substantial metaethical pluralism and context-sensitivity particularly when disagreement is framed across radically different cultures. And there is an additional methodological dispute over whether standard disagreement tasks actually measure metaethical commitments reliably (including, ofc, your own work with Moss - which I personally find pretty weak, since showing that standard probes are open to non-metaethical interpretations does not by itself establish that they systematically fail to track metaethical attitudes and at most it raises a validity concern, and revised later work has explicitly tried to control for alternative interpretations and still found high rates of objectivist responding, especially for clear cases of harm and injustice, but anyway). More recent work such as Sousa et al has in turn argued that some apparently relativist results may partly reflect those very measurement problems.

You may disagree (and you'll) with the evidence. But simply calling "unsubstantied" that objectivist or realist-seeming moral intuitions are widespread and robust enough to constitute a genuine empirical phenomenon across multiple studied populations is simply to lie.

I want to start with the accusation that I am lying:

But simply calling “unsubstantied” that objectivist or realist-seeming moral intuitions are widespread and robust enough to constitute a genuine empirical phenomenon across multiple studied populations is simply to lie.

An alarming number of people are inclined to specifically accuse me of lying, dishonesty, disingenuity, bad faith, and so on. It is so frequent I’ve started keeping a list, and this remark will serve as a prime example of such accusations.

I’m curious why this happens, so if you have any thoughts, please share them. Such accusations are sometimes the result of people being imprecise and simply conflating a claim being false for the claim being a lie. However, I suspect such accusations are part of a broader trend of people with poor theory of mind struggling to appreciate that people can honestly arrive at different conclusions from them, resulting in them inferring that if a person says something that they think is false, that this person must know better and is therefore intentionally lying. Alternatively, people sometimes slightly misinterpret other people’s remarks, and then model the plausibility that the other person is lying on the basis of their misinterpretation. It’s also possible these factors collectively contribute to such accusations, since they’re not mutually exclusive.

As for the claim that I am lying:

I am not. I wrote my entire dissertation on the question of whether nonphilosophers are moral realists. In my dissertation, I defend the following theses:

1. All existing methods used to evaluate whether nonphilosophers are realists or antirealists rely on invalid measures.

2. It is not the case that most ordinary people are moral realists or antirealists.

3. Instead, the best explanation of the existing literature, in conjunction with the theoretical considerations and empirical data I present in the dissertation, is folk metaethical indeterminacy, the empirical hypothesis that ordinary people are neither realists nor antirealists, and that ordinary moral discourse is not distinctively committed to either.

I invested several years in developing and defending these points, and have spoken about them at length both publicly and, most importantly, privately. The notion that I’m lying is preposterous. It would require me to lie about a rather innocuous theoretical point that has little practical application (it’s not like I can leverage these supposed lies to make money or achieve anything of note), to do so consistently for years, and to dedicate the bulk of my academic work to this endeavor.

2.1 Incentives to lie

I certainly could be lying in principle, but this would be an outrageously costly lie for which there is little incentive. When considering whether someone might be lying, it is important to ask what the incentives to do so would be, especially if one lacks a defensible body of external, corroborating evidence of dishonesty (which Rian doesn’t have). Someone pointed out the implausibility that I’d invest so much effort into a lie over on Twitter:

If someone writes 400+ pages about how the empirical literature doesn't support folk moral realism, it's very implausible that they're "lying" when they say the empirical literature doesn't support folk moral realism.

You might disagree with him. But he's obviously sincere.

400 pages sounds like a lot. Yet this actually wildly understates how big the investment was. My dissertation included extensive supplemental sections and appendices. Taken together, the whole document is 1,249 pages. I subsequently created a blog with over 300 posts and a YouTube channel with hundreds of videos where I discuss these topics and have continued to make the same points. I have made, at this point, hundreds if not thousands of comments about my views on metaethics, spanning YouTube, Discord, Facebook, and elsewhere. If I were lying, I’d have to be one of the most obsessive, dedicated, and incredibly gifted liars on the internet. I’d have to keep up the charade and constantly lie to thousands of people. I’d have to lie at conferences, lie to my colleagues, lie to my students, lie to my friends, lie to random people I meet at dinner parties, lie to everyone on the internet, lie in private email correspondence, lie in private messages, lie to my father, lie to my wife, and perhaps even lie to myself. I’d have to just lie lie lie lie lie lie all the damn time. And for what?

Just to insist it’s not the case that we have good evidence that ordinary people frequently or typically find moral realism intuitive?

What on earth would be the point of that? What a bizarre notion for someone to dedicate so much time and effort to lying about.

Keep in mind that I could, if necessary, post private messages or correspondence corroborating my public statements. Or friends or colleagues who know me could testify as to what I’ve expressed in private. My wife could readily recount how obsessive I am about metaethics, and how I’ve made these same points many times to her. If anything, my private remarks to her and others are even more confident and emphatic than my public remarks. If I provided such testimony, what would Rian suggest? That I am so dedicated to my lies that I’ve maintained the same lie in private with the people closest to me for years? Or perhaps they’re all lying too? Is there a grand conspiracy to protect my lie?

Of course these suggestions would all be completely ridiculous. And that’s the point. The notion that I’m lying about this is absolutely silly, and such an accusation would be more of an offense if it weren’t so patently ludicrous as to simply serve to discredit the person making the accusation. Rian’s accusation that I’m lying isn’t just a hostile, shameful, indefensible accusation, it is preposterous to a degree that should embarrass any serious person.

And yet when challenged on the accusation, Rian doubled down. Rian responded to Nathan:

Of course. Because if someone spends 400 pages hammering that "the empirical literature doesn’t support folk moral realism" the only logical possibility is that they’re being absolutely sincere. Never, under any circumstances, could it be:

i) a little academic hunting for citations and tenure;
ii) a guy who already decided the conclusion in the preface and then went cherry-picking studies that confirm what he already wanted;
iii) or maybe (just maybe) simply someone who confuses "I wrote a doorstopper" with "therefore I’m right and honest."

No, no. Given 400 pages = absolute moral purity. If the volume is thick enough, sincerity comes free with the purchase. Thank you for the masterclass in epistemology, professor. Now I finally understand: the more pages, the less chance of bias. Brilliant.

Anyway, the "lying" part was never about "you’re not allowed to disagree with the evidence" (I take it as explicit in the last paragraph). It was about pretending in the post that there is zero support whatsoever for the idea - as if the claim just floats in pure thin air.

The more careful (and honest) move would be to say the evidence is underdetermined, that it can be contested or that it's somehow open to challenge. But Lance “Burro” (as we affectionately call him here in Brazil) won’t touch that: because he’s far more interested in waving to his bubble than in having an actual and reasonable honest debate.

There are numerous problems here. First, Nathan only said that it’s very implausible that I was lying. Yet Rian distorts and misrepresents this remark in his reply, exaggerating it by saying:

Of course. Because if someone spends 400 pages hammering that "the empirical literature doesn’t support folk moral realism" the only logical possibility is that they’re being absolutely sincere. Never, under any circumstances, could it be:

Nathan never said it’s logically impossible for me to be lying, or that I couldn’t be lying under any circumstances. This is an inappropriate distortion of Nathan’s remark. Of course it’s logically possible for me to be lying. It’s logically possible I’m a sentient tuna sandwich. It’s logically possible the Harry Potter universe is real and I’m a wizard. The question isn’t whether it’s logically possible, but whether it’s plausible. And there’s a further question of whether Rian has any defensible basis for sustaining the accusation that I’m lying. It’s not, and he doesn’t. Yet Rian goes on to suggest some possible incentives I might have for lying. Let’s go through each of these:

2.2 Lying for citations and tenure

i) a little academic hunting for citations and tenure;

I don’t believe I’ve applied for any tenure track positions since completing my dissertation, but even if I had, this suggestion would make very little sense. First, how would lying in my dissertation further the pursuit of tenure? Sure, I could defend a bold hypothesis despite knowing it’s a lie because doing so could advance my career. But the hypothesis in question is an obscure and unpopular one that few people would care about; I’d be better served by pursuing a wide variety of more conventional forms of research. And dissertation work contributes very little to obtaining tenure. Obtaining tenure has more to do with publishing, obtaining grants, and performing well after you’ve been hired. Your dissertation is mostly irrelevant.

If I wanted tenure, it would make far more sense for me to have spent much less time on my dissertation so that I could finish it as quickly as possible, while working to publish other work in higher-tier journals. That would actually enhance my CV and make me a more desirable candidate for a hiring committee. That’s the exact opposite of what I did. Rather than doing that, I spent an obsessive, excessive amount of time working for years on my dissertation, doing far more work than was necessary to complete it. I suffered severe burnout. But the most important point is simply that I did this instead of doing things that would improve my tenure candidacy. What I did isn’t merely inconsistent with the suggestion that I did so to acquire tenure; I did pretty much the opposite of what someone should do.

Furthermore, the theses I defend, while bold, are in an obscure, comparatively small interdisciplinary literature that would if anything make me less appealing to many departments, further restricting my appeal as someone to hire for a tenure track job. If I wanted tenure, it’d have made far more sense to do more conventional work in social psychology. In fact, the “he did this for tenure” account is even less plausible than the topic of my dissertation would suggest. I employed a mixed methods approach, which isn’t especially popular, in the service of defending a thesis that is largely of interest to philosophers, not psychologists. And the thesis is one that is extremely critical both of mainstream analytic philosophy and the adequacy of conventional social scientific methods. This is not a position one would defend if they’re trying to win hiring committees over. Most departments are not as receptive to experimental philosophy, and my work specifically critiques even experimental philosophers themselves, which could alienate me both from mainstream philosophers and experimental philosophers, not to mention psychologists. In short: this is not the kind of work someone would do if their primary goal is tenure, for the simple reason that it’s extremely difficult to market and would be of little appeal to most departments and programs. I did this research because it personally interests me and I care about it.

As for the claim that I’d have defended this thesis for citations: this is equally implausible. My publication record isn’t extensive, and I don’t focus on or write about topics that are disposed towards receiving high citation counts. I’m clearly not motivated by a desire to get citations. And anyone who knows me personally will be well aware of my repeated references to Goodhart’s law and the misguided way in which the professionalization of modern academia has led to the unhealthy norm of “publish or perish.” I’m also publicly critical of the peer review system. I’m the opposite of a careerist academic. I pursue topics because they interest me and I care about them, despite knowing they aren’t the most popular or hot topics, and despite knowing this makes the hill I need to climb for my career to be successful much harder. The notion that I would pursue this specific topic and lie about it for tenure and citations is beyond ridiculous and is quite literally the opposite of true, both because of the nature of the research and because this suggestion is completely inconsistent with my overall academic trajectory.

Also, Rian may simply not be aware of how unimportant dissertations are generally considered. They usually aren’t cited that often. They don’t appear in major journals and aren’t typically a major source of citations. If one’s goal were citations, it’d make far more sense to write a high volume of comparatively shorter articles and submit them to prestigious journals. Excessive focus on one’s dissertation rather than focusing on journal articles not only isn’t a good way to obtain citations, it’s the exact opposite of what someone would do if they were seeking citations.

The takeaway from all of this is that my academic history is, at least in this regard, misaligned with the kinds of career-oriented incentives that Rian suggests could motivate me to lie. Thus, my academic history not only isn’t good evidence that I’d lie; it makes his suggestion that I’m lying less plausible.

2.3 Lying due to confirmation bias

ii) a guy who already decided the conclusion in the preface and then went cherry-picking studies that confirm what he already wanted;

This just sounds like a classic case of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. Yet these cognitive biases typically operate to reinforce what a person believes to be the case. In other words, this is how they typically operate:

1. A person is convinced of a claim

2. They are so convinced of the claim this causes them to be extremely biased towards evidence in favor of the claim and against evidence to the contrary

3. They go out and gather evidence in a way that ultimately amounts to cherry-picking

This isn’t good behavior and it’d be bad if I’d done that, but it wouldn’t make sense as an explanation for why I’m lying. I think Rian may have forgotten what he was accusing me of or is confused in some other way, since presenting this as a basis for why it’s possible I’m lying doesn’t make sense.

Now, if the idea is that I don’t actually believe what I say I do, but went ahead and sought out evidence to support that claim, then this would just be a description of the precise manner in which I developed the lies, rather than an account of why I was lying, so this still wouldn’t make sense as an explanation for why I’m lying.

But the account Rian is putting forward is actually at odds with accusations of lying. This is because it provides an alternative explanation for why a person would go around saying things that are false and that they should know are false. One reason a person might do this is because they are lying. But another is because they were so confident initially that they sought out evidence that reinforced their views, and as they continued to obtain such evidence, they became increasingly confident of their sincere but false belief. This happens all the time. Think of shoddy detectives who are convinced a suspect is guilty, so they go out and dig up evidence consistent with this conclusion and ignore evidence to the contrary. These detectives are caught in a self-reinforcing loop of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, but their belief in the guilt of the suspect is sincere, even if it borders on delusional. Rian’s suggestion highlights how a similar possibility could account for my claims. In other words, Rian has ironically put forward a suggestion that would be a reason to think I’m not lying.

As an aside, this particular explanation is also an unusually poor account of how the main theses of my dissertation developed. I began planning out my dissertation in 2019. At the time, the goal was to design a new metaethics scale. However, I discovered that Collier-Spruel et al. (2019) had just finished putting together a very good moral relativism scale. I was so upset I hopped in my car and left to visit my fiancée (she was working elsewhere) and spent a week there. Concerns about the validity of the measures used to assess metaethics only gradually emerged after the fact, and as I began various research projects based on my initial suspicions, the theses I ultimately defended in the dissertation gradually emerged, changed over time, and eventually solidified. In other words, the suggestion that I started out with a particular conclusion then “cherry picked” evidence is not an accurate account of how my views developed. Here’s an excerpt from early in the dissertation:

On a personal note, these criticisms are not motivated by hostility towards research on folk philosophy or folk metaethics in particular. After years of frustrating attempts to study folk philosophy, I have grudgingly accepted that a great deal of projects are dead ends. Rather, I am motivated by the desire for philosophers and psychologists working at the intersection of our fields to conduct the highest quality research possible.

I came to my conclusions gradually and grudgingly. This is not consistent with the picture of a person motivated to draw particular conclusions no matter what. Of course, maybe I’m just lying here, too! Maybe I’m constantly lying, all the time!

Finally, it’s worth noting that, generally speaking, when people devise studies they usually are trying to demonstrate a point or reach a desired conclusion. This is a totally normal and nearly unavoidable feature of research. Research projects have purposes and goals, and usually aren’t instances of blind groping for data. We test hypotheses. And we usually have expectations about what conclusions we’ll find, and want. If I’m to be condemned for that, Rian might as well condemn pretty much every scientist in the world. Sure, well-designed studies should be set up so as to optimize the likelihood of falsifying a hypothesis, but in these cases it still isn’t true that the people who design well-designed studies capable of falsifying their hypotheses want them to be falsified. It’s just that honest and competent researchers recognize that the best way to gather good evidence for a hypothesis is to design studies that put their hypotheses at risk of failure.

It’s worth noting that Rian’s suggestion here is mere speculation, as well. He offers no concrete or specific evidence that the mere possibility that I could be objectionably motivated to arrive at particular conclusions actually comports with how my research was conducted. What Nathan was arguing is that it’s not plausible that I’m lying, not that it’s not possible. And yet all Rian is offering are possible factors that might explain why I’m lying. This is not a reasonable or compelling way to respond to Nathan’s objection. In other words, you have an exchange like this:

Nathan: It’s not plausible Lance is lying about his views.

Rian: Well, it’s possible! Here are some possible reasons why he might be lying.

Rian hasn’t really presented any substantive reasons to think I am lying.

Yet another reason why this particular accusation is very silly is the specific suggestion that I “went cherry-picking studies to confirm what [I] already wanted.” This is absurd and the opposite of true. The main reason it’s not true is because I discussed virtually every extant study in the entire field. Cherry-picking involves selectively targeting a subset of a category, but I addressed almost the entire thing. Furthermore, I not only addressed essentially the whole literature, I went out of my way to exhaustively critique those studies, rather than burying or ignoring them. In fact, my engagement with these studies was so extensive it comprised hundreds of pages of supplementary material, far exceeding the ordinary length of a dissertation. I not only didn’t cherry pick, I did the exact opposite of that, to a level totally atypical of academic research and that could reasonably be described as neurotic and obsessive. Not only is this not the behavior of a person cherry-picking, it is the behavior of a person doing the exact opposite of that.

iii) or maybe (just maybe) simply someone who confuses "I wrote a doorstopper" with "therefore I’m right and honest."

This doesn’t make much sense, either. I never claimed that merely because I wrote a lot “therefore I’m right and honest.” Also, how would I be confused about this? I would know if I’m honest or not! I have access to my own brain! The only people in a position to be uncertain about my honesty are other people (unless Rian wants to put forward the proposal that I am also lying to myself; good luck with that). Also, my dissertation is way too large to be used as a doorstopper.

Either way, as a general heuristic, someone putting a lot of effort into something in the way I did is at least less consistent with them lying than someone who put less effort in; people are usually more invested in things they care about and put lots of work into than things they merely want to lie about. (I also want to flag here that if someone wants to take this remark out of context and imply I’m putting a lot of stock in effort as an indicator of honesty: you are bullshitting and quoting me out of context if you don’t factor in the remarks that appear below; I don’t think the effort of writing a lot is a good indicator of honesty).

Of course people can and do invest in lies, and I wouldn’t put much stock in any sort of effort = honesty claim. Either way, though, at best all this point would establish is that the length of a work isn’t a good indication of the sincerity of its author. I agree with that. But note that this doesn’t advance any specific claim about any particular author, such as myself, not being honest; it simply observes that one particular piece of evidence in favor of honesty isn’t very good, which is true. But the onus isn’t on me to prove I am honest; it’s on Rian to demonstrate that I’m not, and that’s a burden Rian hasn’t come close to establishing.

Rian continues his response by distorting and misrepresenting Nathan’s more modest point:

No, no. Given 400 pages = absolute moral purity. If the volume is thick enough, sincerity comes free with the purchase. Thank you for the masterclass in epistemology, professor. Now I finally understand: the more pages, the less chance of bias. Brilliant.

Nathan never made the stronger claim that if someone writes 400 pages this entails that the person has “absolute moral purity.” It’s not appropriate to take a more modest claim and respond to it as if the person had made a far stronger claim. This remark is also dripping with contempt and condescension, which is ironic given that Nathan never said anything rude and was nothing but polite to Rian as far as I can tell, and yet Rian responds with an extremely aggressive, warped, hostile, contemptuous, and condescending response. This is hypocritical given that Rian took issue with my initial critical remark allegedly being condescending:

I didn’t like the condescending way you posted my tweet as if I were just asserting something out of thin air, and I already have a very bad impression of some of your attitudes toward people close to me, such as David Ribeiro. But we can leave that aside. After your reply, we can talk about discussing this.

I don’t think my initial remark was condescending, but let’s suppose it was for the sake of argument. If it’s a slight against Rian for me to be condescending, why does Rian feel entirely fine being condescending to others, in addition to contemptuous, mocking, hostile, and aggressive? If you go over to Substack, you can also see Rian engaging with others there. Rian exhibits a consistent pattern of hostility, immaturity, and condescension throughout his exchanges.

2.4 Pretending there’s no evidence

Rian continues:

Anyway, the "lying" part was never about "you’re not allowed to disagree with the evidence" (I take it as explicit in the last paragraph). It was about pretending in the post that there is zero support whatsoever for the idea - as if the claim just floats in pure thin air.

Rian appears to have misunderstood my initial post. Recall that I said this:

There is no good evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive across populations.” It’s downright bizarre for people to keep making this unsubstantiated empirical claim.

Did I say that there’s “zero support whatsoever” for the claim that realism is “extremely intuitive across populations”?

No. I did not. I never made such a claim. I am generally sympathetic to Bayesian approaches to evidence and, as a matter of public record, have explicitly stated that there is at least some evidence for just about any claim. In fact, I think the mere fact that anyone believes a particular claim is evidence for that claim. For instance, I think eyewitness reports of Bigfoot are some evidence that Bigfoot exists. Why? Because such claims are more likely to occur on the hypothesis that Bigfoot does exist than that Bigfoot doesn’t exist. All else being equal, then, eyewitness testimony of just about anything should prompt you to update in favor of the increased likelihood of the hypothesis.

I think there’s evidence for all manner of things I am very confident aren’t true. I think there’s evidence God exists. I think there’s evidence miracles occur. I think there’s evidence ghosts exist. I think there’s evidence for every religion on earth. Evidence comes cheap, and you will not find me claiming or thinking that there’s literally zero support whatsoever for any claim; at least not lately or consistently (as this is certainly something I might have said in the past; if so I categorically retract such claims and in any case Rian didn’t present any even though this would help his case).

Of course there’s evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive.” I just don’t think the evidence is good. That’s why I used the qualifier good, for fuck’s sake! Notice what I said:

There is no good evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive across populations.”

In case it needs more emphasis, here it is:

There is no GOOD evidence that moral realism is “extremely intuitive across populations.”

Even when I explicitly include qualifiers, people still misinterpret the claim. My claim is that available evidence isn’t good. It doesn’t justify the conclusion.

Rian may have also misunderstood the second part of my remark:

It’s downright bizarre for people to keep making this unsubstantiated empirical claim.

The key term here is “unsubstantiated.” What do I mean by that? Well, suppose a person is accused of a crime. Police investigate, and determine that there’s insufficient evidence to arrest them. They decline an arrest on the grounds that the accusation is “unsubstantiated.” This is a completely normal use of the term. So what does it mean? Does it mean that the police found no evidence whatsoever? No. It means that the evidence they found wasn’t good enough to rise to the level of justifying an arrest.

Here are some dictionary definitions of the meaning of the term. First we have Merriam-Webster:

not proven to be true : not substantiated

This links to “substantiated.” What do they list as the meaning for that? Here’s the main relevant definition:

: to establish by proof or competent evidence : verify

Here’s another definition from dictionary.com:

not substantiated; unproved or unverified.

I used “unsubstantiated” in the primary, conventional sense relevant to the context: to mean that the claim hasn’t been proven or verified (which, just to be clear, I don’t take to mean “entails the truth of”; others may associate these remarks with something being definitively established as true but I don’t. I take these terms to carry legalistic implications with an implied e.g. “beyond reasonable doubt” where their falsehood remains technically possible but has been ruled given available evidence to be very unlikely. For what it’s worth, I would also find it inappropriate to impose formal logical categories on much of ordinary language; ordinary people rarely think in terms of strict logical possibility when employing these terms).

“Unsubstantiated” is rarely used to mean “literally no evidence at all.” Instead, it’s typically used with the normative connotation that the status of the evidence isn’t good enough to establish the claim being made. This is the sense in which I used the term. That this is what I meant isn’t simply conveyed by the conventional meaning of the term, but by my preceding remark about the lack of good evidence; after all, if I thought there was no evidence, why wouldn’t I say that? And it’s inconsistent with my public record of talking about evidence for moral realism, which I have repeatedly acknowledged and discussed for years.

It appears Rian may have misunderstood my initial remarks, interpreting them to be the stronger claim that there’s no evidence or support, rather than what I actually meant and think, which is that available evidence isn’t good enough to support such claims (though subsequent remarks from Rian suggest he did interpret me this way and thinks I’m lying anyway, but we’ll get to that)…though I would and have defended the stronger claim that the evidence doesn’t even come close to doing so. But that’s a far cry from the outlandish suggestion that there’s no evidence.

Given Rian’s clear and totally unjustified distortion of Nathan’s remarks, exaggerating and warping them beyond recognition, Rian appears to be at best negligent in his epistemic responsibility to interpret what others say accurately. This is unfortunate, because Rian may be trapped in a state in which he misinterprets other people in such a way that if those people were making the stronger and less plausible claims Rian thinks they are, then his frustration would be more warranted, but they aren’t, and so Rian’s reactions are excessive, unjustified misfires that target distorted versions of what others are saying rather than what they are actually saying. A bit of charity and patience would go a long way in facilitating more productive engagement with others, and I’d encourage Rian to consider asking for clarification before leaping to conclusions, e.g., he could have asked me “Are you saying there’s no support whatsoever?” to which I would have readily replied: no, I am not saying that.

Rian continues:

The more careful (and honest) move would be to say the evidence is underdetermined, that it can be contested or that it’s somehow open to challenge. But Lance “Burro” (as we affectionately call him here in Brazil) won’t touch that: because he’s far more interested in waving to his bubble than in having an actual and reasonable honest debate.

The remark about having a debate is especially bizarre, given that I actively seek out and have had more discussions and debates with proponents of moral realism than most academics working on these topics. I might even be the person with the most debates on these topics working in academia. Most academics don’t have blogs and aren’t on YouTube or TikTok or Discord. I am one of the few actively going out of their way to invite challenge and opposition. I can see why so many are reluctant: they have to put up with people like Rian. Who wants to do that? Apparently I do. This isn’t an idle point: I’m barely rewarded for the masochism it takes to respond to posts like Rian’s. Rian’s suggestion that I’d lie for tenure and citations is wildly inconsistent with my actual behavior. I could be writing an article for a journal right now. Or a grant proposal. These would help advance my career far more than responding to random tweets from hostile non-academics.

And yet here I am responding. What has been the reward for my public outreach? To be repeatedly insulted, ridiculed, and mocked by people like Rian, while paying massive opportunity costs in terms of advancing my career. No, Rian, I’m here for the love of the game. I’m here because I care about these topics enough to probably waste my time dealing with accusations like yours.

Returning to the first part of the quote, it makes no sense to claim that this is the more “honest” move. Someone can look at the evidence and disagree that it’s underdetermined. This would not make them dishonest. Honesty isn’t predicated on whether a person reaches the conclusion Rian thinks is most reasonable. Honesty is entirely determined by the intentions and beliefs of the person themselves. If a person sincerely believes something, no matter how preposterous, they’re not lying when they espouse that belief.

One interpretation of available empirical evidence about whether nonphilosophers are moral realists or antirealists would be that the evidence is underdetermined. I think that’s a pretty reasonable take on the literature. Ironically, though, if that were the case, a possible interpretation of this would be that Rian’s claim that moral realism is extremely intuitive across populations is unsubstantiated! At the very least, it wouldn’t be more substantiated than competing hypotheses, barring extra-empirical considerations. This would suggest that Rian himself could be committed to the conclusion that the most honest interpretation of the literature supports my claim and not his.

This is a bit tricky, though, and not something I’m inclined to actually attribute to Rian for two reasons. First, I think Rian’s initial response to me may be based on a misinterpretation of my claim about the status of the evidence (I think the evidence is not good, Rian seems to think I think there’s no evidence, though his remarks are ambiguous and seem inconsistent about this).

Second, to say that a claim is unsubstantiated suggests there’s insufficient evidence for it. In reality, though, if the theory is underdetermined by the evidence it may be very well supported by the available evidence, but simply isn’t strongly favored relative to competing hypotheses that are equally or about equally well-supported. So Rian could maintain that his original claim is true because it’s supported by the evidence (along with other considerations), while also acknowledging that the set of competing hypotheses are underdetermined by available evidence. You could endorse one hypothesis over another for reasons that aren’t reducible to the empirical evidence alone, for instance. Nevertheless, Rian doesn’t present any of those theoretical considerations and barring them it’d be a bit odd both to claim our theories are underdetermined by the data and to endorse one of them in particular; I’ll assume, then, that Rian has reasons for doing so that fall outside the scope of available data.

In any case, let’s now turn to the latter portion of the quote:

The more careful (and honest) move would be to say the evidence is underdetermined, that it can be contested or that it’s somehow open to challenge. But Lance “Burro” (as we affectionately call him here in Brazil) won’t touch that: because he’s far more interested in waving to his bubble than in having an actual and reasonable honest debate.

Rian seems to be suggesting I “won’t touch” the possibility of underdetermination of available evidence. This is false.

First, the theme of underdetermination is critical to the very notion of the core thesis I defend, folk metaethical indeterminacy, and looms in the background of the way in which I discuss indeterminacy and the possible forms that it could take. See Supplement 1, pages S1-40 through S1-45 for an extended digression where I address possible conceptualizations of indeterminacy before clarifying my particular thesis.

Second, my dissertation proceeds in the following steps. First, I attempt to show that existing measures are invalid, and thus we do not have compelling evidence one way or another as to whether most nonphilosophers have realist or antirealist stances or commitments in any appreciable number. Second, I present a series of studies which purport to offer an explanation for why existing studies are invalid and why available data is so inconclusive: that there isn’t a relevant psychological construct to measure in the first place. Existing studies are designed to sort participants into one or another of various discrete categories: realist or antirealist, cognitivist or noncognitivist, and so on. As I argue, efforts to do this are predicated on the notion that such distinctions are reflected in preexisting features of ordinary thought and discourse. I present a series of studies intended to support the abductive conclusion that the best interpretation of available data is that these efforts have failed because such preexisting stances and commitments simply aren’t present in significant numbers among ordinary people.

For comparison, imagine we came across an alien species that had never interacted with humanity or anything we’ve produced and tried to measure whether members of the population preferred Backstreet Boys over NSYNC prior to exposure to either and we tried to determine whether this preference was reflected in the way they speak and think. This would be absurd because an alien population wouldn’t have any preexisting preference and there’d be no plausible basis for supposing such a preference was reflected in their language and thought. My hypothesis is suggesting something along the same lines with respect to the realism/antirealism dispute: that realism and antirealism simply aren’t a feature of the way ordinary people speak or think.

Now, do I insist in the dissertation that this is the only possible conclusion? Absolutely not! I present my data as fairly tentative evidence for this conclusion, acknowledge tensions, and directly consider and engage with competing hypotheses. Of course I think available data can be contested: I contest it and welcome those who would contest my account! Of course I think it’s open to challenge! I myself am one of the people who’s presented such a challenge; that’s the whole damn point of the dissertation! And I certainly don’t think I’ve decisively settled the matter.

Here are some excerpts from the dissertation that illustrate this:

One way these findings corroborate previous research is that the same pattern of realism and relativism emerged across moral and nonmoral domains as prior research using first person measures (e.g., Goodwin & Darley, 2008; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013). Participants judged others to be most inclined to support realism and reject relativism for facts, followed by morals, social conventions, and matters of taste. While this corroborates the order of judgments about realism and relativism with respect to these domains, it remains an open question whether or not, and to what extent, any given population is more inclined towards realism or antirealism about morality in particular. (p. 281)

Here’s another:

I am claiming that they have no determinate second-order moral stances or commitments specifically with respect to whether first-order moral claims are stance-independently true or not.

I say most because there are some instances in which ordinary people do hold a determinate stance towards realism or antirealism, and there are some instances of moral judgment and discourse that best fit one or another of competing metaethical analyses. Thus, I acknowledge that there are portions of folk metaethical discourse that are determinate with respect to moral realism and antirealism (see Gill, 2009). My position could be more accurately characterized as indeterminacy with a splash of pluralism, the hypothesis that elements of both realism and antirealism do determinately characterize some instances of folk moral thought and language. However, insofar as this is the case, it is unlikely that ordinary moral thought and language share a uniform commitment to a shared metaethical framework (see Gill, 2009). It also remains an open question how much, and to what extent, ordinary moral thought and language is characterized by determinate metaethical stances and commitments. (S1-1 - S1-2)

Notice qualifications, nuance, and specificity offered here. There are pages and pages of similar caveats, clarifications, and qualifications. I am far more careful than Rian’s remarks would suggest, and he’s done nothing to substantiate the accusation that I wouldn’t touch underdetermination as a possibility. Most importantly, consider this remark:

If people really do have all this exposure to philosophy, then why propose that folk philosophy is (at least in some cases) indeterminate? Why not suspect varied but determinate philosophical stances and commitments? That is, why not embrace folk pluralism instead of folk indeterminacy? This is a good question because most studies on metaethics at least superficially suggest folk pluralism. There are at least three ways to interpret this evidence:

(1) Accept it at face value. Pluralism seems to be true because it is true (e.g., Davis, 2021; Hopster, 2019; Pölzler, 2017; Pölzler & Wright, 2020a; 2020b, Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013).

(2) Argue for an error theory. There is systematic error in one or more patterns of response. Once accounted for, ordinary people share uniform and determinate stances/commitments (Beebe, 2020, Sarkissian et al., 2011).

(3) Argue for indeterminacy (or agnosticism). Apparent variability is an artifact of experimental design and does not reflect genuine pluralism in ordinary thought and language (Bush & Moss, 2020).

The first is the most straightforward interpretation and seems to be widely accepted among researchers. Given the strength of the evidence for (1), anyone who wants to present a case for (2) or (3) has their work cut out. Not surprisingly, I will present a case for (3). However, there are good arguments for all three views and, at present, there is no decisive evidence in favor of any of these perspectives.

Notice the remark above: I lay out the primary competing alternatives, explicitly state that there are good arguments for them (which does not entail that they’re justified), and explicitly state that the evidence in favor of my view (or any other) is not decisive. Rian’s remark suggests I’m not receptive to alternative characterizations of the literature. This is demonstrably false.

I shouldn’t have bothered to do any of this. Public, unsubstantiated accusations of lying, coupled with insults and mockery, are beneath contempt and don’t deserve a response. Rian has exhibited a consistent pattern of childish, immature, and hostile behavior coupled with an irresponsible and negligent handling of the claims made by others. He’s shown a total lack of charity, a hypocritical willingness to insult and mock others while expressing offense at even the hint of condescension directed his way, and has in general exhibited a pattern of behavior that would prompt most people to block or ignore him. For instance, consider this post, which followed Rian’s recent replies to me:

Here, Rian mocks my appearance by associating me with an unflattering meme. I responded to this on Substack:

You’re not exactly doing a good job of creating a good impression about yourself, given that you are posting things like this. You could try being polite instead of publicly mocking me. Do you think mocking people’s appearance creates a good impression about you? Is this the kind of person you want to be?

Rian replied:

Hey, don’t be so squeamish about it, dude. It’s a joke lol. I couldn’t resist the comparison. It’s SO similar and I had no idea when I’d ever get another chance to use it. As you don’t even believe that there’s something like stance-independent normative facts, what exactly am I supposed to make of the outrage here? Well, unless your subjective state of being personally annoyed by this now suddenly gives you some normative authority over me independently of my own stance, all you’ve really said is that you didn’t like the joke. Which is pretty fine! You can dislike it and I can like it. But if your disapproval is now supposed to generate some norm that somehow (?) binds me regardless of my own stance... well, well, congrats: now you’ve somehow managed to reinvent your own “à la carte realism” (to put it in your own terms) over a joke 😉

This is quintessentially immature and disreputable behavior. Rian also used this as an opportunity to pivot by making this remark:

As you don’t even believe that there’s something like stance-independent normative facts, what exactly am I supposed to make of the outrage here?

I suggested he was making a bad impression of himself, as you can see above. This meme is so ridiculous it’d be hard to experience outrage. This isn’t a matter of like or dislike; that’s irrelevant. It’s a question of whether this is an appropriate thing to post when you’re trying to have a serious conversation with someone. It isn’t. Rian also seems to have poor impulse control (“I couldn’t resist the comparison”) and can’t help but try to mock and ridicule others in a juvenile way. Given this, if Rian is trying to be taken seriously then he’s acting in a way inconsistent with that goal. My suggestion for Rian is to not do these sorts of things and to rein in his impulses.

Several subsequent remarks reinforce the conclusion that Rian has misinterpreted my original claim. Here’s a link to the full exchange. This involved an exchange between Nathan and Rian. I’ll use purple text for Nathan and green text for Rian to help distinguish them.

You claimed he was lying about the lack of support for folk moral realism. This implies he believes there *is* support but he's being dishonest about it

This is extremely implausible

More plausible is that he just disagrees that there's support

Rian replied:

It's lying to say that there's nothing to substantiate this position. There is - it's just that the evidence can be contested.

Justification/substantiation =/= being the truth. That's Epistemology 101.

Nathan responded:

It is very likely that Lance is sincere when he says the extant empirical literature doesn't count as good evidence. Or would you say he does think it counts as good evidence?

To which Rian replied:

The other option is that he’s dumb enough not to know that something can be substantiated or justified without necessarily being true, which is something you learn in basic epistemology. But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Nathan:

It is very unlikely that Lance thinks folk moral realism is justified. If he doesn't think it's justified and he says there's no good evidence for it, this does not seem dishonest to me. This just sounds like him expressing his sincere opinion

Rian:

As I said, there is empirical justification for moral realism being intuitive. Justification does not, however, imply that the position is true: we can have reasons for believing something and still be wrong.

I gave the example of naturalism/atheism in my own case. A person who has justification for believing something is rational in believing it, in the sense that the belief has some grounding or substantiation rather than simply being asserted out of thin air, as Lance seemed to imply, while still being wrong for X or Y reasons.

So Lance is either lying when he says there is no justification whatsoever, or he is dumb enough to confuse a position having justification/substantiation with that justification being sufficient to make the position true.

Nathan:

To have *any justification at all* is not the same as *being justified* or having *good justification*.

When Lance says there's no *good* evidence, it's extremely likely that he does not consider the extent literature as good evidence because it contains confounds, etc.

Rian:

The point is exactly that he has to be lying when he says it isn’t good justification (in the only sense in which a justification can properly be called good: that it makes it rational to hold the belief) or else he’s dumb enough to think a good justification has to settle the truth (almost every empirical literature in this area has confounds, so simply contesting can't be sufficient to say that a justification isn't good - it's just that, as every justification/substantiation can be, it's doesn't automatically is perfect to settle the truth).

To be honest, I think Bush is both dishonest and dumb enough to be doing both (that’s an inclusive disjunction).

Nathan:

This doesn't mean that Lance is unbiased or that it's logically impossible for him to lie.

But if you think he does genuinely disagree with you, then that entails that he isn't lying!

What a mess. Let’s start cleaning this up. For the most part, I naturally believe Nathan has the right of it, while Rian remains confused, belligerent, and mistaken. Let me first clarify that I don’t quite agree with this remark from Nathan:

More plausible is that he just disagrees that there’s support

This is ambiguous. By disagreeing that “there’s support,” does this mean I disagree that there’s any evidence in favor of a view, or that the evidence in favor of the view isn’t sufficient to justify believing the view is true, or that there isn’t enough evidence to justify believing the view is the best explanation? I support the latter two claims (that belief in folk moral realism is unjustified and not the best explanation of available data) but not the first. Careful, Nathan! Yet the problems with Rian’s remarks are far more severe.

It's lying to say that there's nothing to substantiate this position. There is - it's just that the evidence can be contested.

Justification/substantiation =/= being the truth. That's Epistemology 101.

First of all, no, it isn’t lying to claim that there’s “nothing to substantiate this position.” Whether a claim is a lie or not has nothing to do with the content of the claim and everything to do with the relation between the claim and the beliefs of the person making the claim. This would be a lie if the person making this claim believed it to be false, and it wouldn’t be a lie if they believed it to be true. Rian may not entirely understand what it means for a person to lie. A lie occurs when a person intentionally states what they believe to be false.

In order to show that I am lying, Rian would have to make a case that I am intentionally making claims I myself believe are false. It’s always possible I am just wildly mistaken about something. People frequently are. That doesn’t make those people liars. Rian and many others are far too quick to accuse others of lying when it would suffice simply to claim that the person’s remarks are false without having to make further inferences about the beliefs of the person making those claims. Rian has presented no good evidence or reasons to sustain the claim that I am lying. Just about the best reason available would be that the claim I’m supposedly lying about is so outrageous I couldn’t honestly believe it. But this wouldn’t be a very defensible appeal, since lots of people believe all sorts of stupid and mistaken things. Why not just accuse me of profound ignorance or stupidity?

But the more serious problem with Rian’s remark is, again, ambiguity. Just what does it mean to say that “there’s nothing to substantiate this position”? When I said the claim was unsubstantiated, I was making a claim about the degree of evidence:

Here Rian says “nothing to substantiate this position.” This use of “substantiate” is ambiguous between at least three interpretations:

1. Support/evidence for

2. Justify/warrant belief in

3. Establish/confirmed by a sufficient body of available evidence and considerations to be considered verified (a higher standard than the second)

I would only reject (2) and (3), but not (1). Rian’s follow-up remark appears to rule out (3):

Justification/substantiation =/= being the truth. That’s Epistemology 101.

“Substantiation” could be being used alongside “justification” to mean something like the fact that a claim is justified/supported doesn’t entail that it’s true, or it could be used as a synonym, where “substantiation” just means “justified” or something similar. It’s not clear here. So it remains unclear at this point what exactly Rian means when he uses the term “substantiated.”

Nathan’s response pivots back to my original remark about the absence of good evidence:

It is very likely that Lance is sincere when he says the extant empirical literature doesn't count as good evidence.

Or would you say he does think it counts as good evidence?

Rian’s remark is, once again, not very helpful:

The other option is that he’s dumb enough not to know that something can be substantiated or justified without necessarily being true, which is something you learn in basic epistemology. But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

How flattering. I’m aware the term is an epistemological one and I’m aware of the logical possibility that a position considered “substantiated” could be false. One might question Rian’s own understanding of these concepts. However, from the exchanges I’ve seen Rian engaged in I see little indication Rian has any better a grasp of these terms, their standard uses, or their application to philosophical matters than myself or the people he’s arguing with. Yet I don’t personally think not having a sophisticated grasp of these terms would mean that a person is “dumb.”

Nathan pivots back to commenting on whether I think the evidence is good:

It is very unlikely that Lance thinks folk moral realism is justified. If he doesn't think it's justified and he says there's no good evidence for it, this does not seem dishonest to me. This just sounds like him expressing his sincere opinion

That’s correct. I don’t think belief in folk moral realism is justified. That would require an adequate degree of evidence, which I don’t think we have. Now look at Rian’s response:

As I said, there is empirical justification for moral realism being intuitive. Justification does not, however, imply that the position is true: we can have reasons for believing something and still be wrong.

If by “empirical justification” Rian means “sufficient evidence that it would be reasonable to conclude that moral realism is intuitive” (this still lacks quantification, so it’d be helpful to have a more precise claim like “among most people in most populations") then my position is: no, there isn’t. If Rian is instead claiming merely that there’s some evidence without quantification then of course there is, but the latter claim would be trivial. This difference is extremely important, but Rian simply isn’t clear. There’s a difference between there being some evidence for a view, and there being good arguments for a view, and that evidence and those arguments being good enough to justify the view.

Rian continues:

I gave the example of naturalism/atheism in my own case. A person who has justification for believing something is rational in believing it, in the sense that the belief has some grounding or substantiation rather than simply being asserted out of thin air, as Lance seemed to imply, while still being wrong for X or Y reasons.

This still isn’t clear. What does it mean to have “some grounding or substantiation”? Some? Some could mean literally any quantity above zero. If that’s the case, then there’d be at least some “grounding or substantiation” for just about any belief at all (e.g., the earth being flat, every conspiracy theory, and so on), especially if you endorse phenomenal conservatism and think the mere fact that something seems to you to be true provides some justification. Rian isn’t being clear about the standards here. “Some” grounding or justification typically wouldn’t be regarded as sufficient to justify or make it rational to believe something, especially because it would matter whether there is a greater amount of grounding or justification for an alternative account.

Rian contrasts this with a claim being “asserted out of thin air,” which he says “Lance seemed to imply.”

No I didn’t. I said the claim was unsubstantiated. This does not imply that the claim was “asserted out of thin air.” I’m aware and have always been aware that people who think moral realism is intuitive have reasons for thinking this. I don’t think they have no reasons; I think their reasons aren’t good enough to substantiate claims about realism being intuitive among nonphilosophers. That I’m aware they have reasons and have presented evidence for their claims is a matter of public record. In short: claims can be unsubstantiated without being asserted “out of thin air.”

What has happened here is that Rian has misinterpreted me, reading phantom “implications” into my remarks that weren’t present and that he simply imagined. It’s unfortunate Rian has opted to hold me accountable for claims I didn’t make and slights I didn’t commit.

So Lance is either lying when he says there is no justification whatsoever, or he is dumb enough to confuse a position having justification/substantiation with that justification being sufficient to make the position true.

The claim that there’s “no justification whatsoever” is ambiguous. “Justification” could be used to mean anything that could serve as evidence and thus potentially justify a belief, regardless of whether the total amount of evidence for and against a given position was sufficient to justify holding the position. Alternatively, “justification” could refer to there being enough evidence to justify or make rational belief in the claim in question. Roughly, there would be at least two interpretations of “no justification whatsoever”:

1. That there’s no evidence for Rian’s claim

2. That there’s not adequate evidence to make Rian’s claim justified or rational

Once again, Rian simply isn’t clear about what he means. I’d only endorse the latter claim and not the former. If Rian is making the first claim, then that’s not something I’ve ever claimed. If he’s making the latter claim, well, I think the claim is true, so I’m not lying about it. Once again, it makes no sense to insist someone is lying merely on the basis of the nature of the claim itself. Even if you think the claim is preposterous or clearly wrong, that still doesn’t mean that if someone makes such a claim then they’re lying. This puts Rian in a very bad position. If on disambiguation he opted for the “no evidence” claim, then I don’t endorse that and never made such a claim, in which case his accusation would be false. If he instead opted for the “adequate” evidence claim, then I do endorse that, but it’s no longer clear why he’d insist I was lying about it. It’d be ridiculous to think that if someone holds that one or more views they reject are unjustified, that therefore this person must be lying. Theists routinely think atheists are not justified in their atheism; does this mean they’re lying? No, of course not. Thinking alternative positions are not justified is ubiquitous and in no way suggests a person is lying. Thus, on either of the disambiguations provided here, Rian’s accusations wouldn’t make any sense and would be indefensible.

Needless to say, the dichotomy he’s offered is absurd and indefensible, and he provides no good reasons to think it’s true. Most of Rian’s remarks consist of assertions and repetitions of those assertions, with little in the way of supporting arguments or evidence.

Nathan appreciated the ambiguity and immediately pointed it out:

To have *any justification at all* is not the same as *being justified* or having *good justification*.

When Lance says there's no *good* evidence, it's extremely likely that he does not consider the extent literature as good evidence because it contains confounds, etc.

Now we can see how Rian resolves the ambiguity:

The point is exactly that he has to be lying when he says it isn’t good justification (in the only sense in which a justification can properly be called good: that it makes it rational to hold the belief) or else he’s dumb enough to think a good justification has to settle the truth (almost every empirical literature in this area has confounds, so simply contesting can't be sufficient to say that a justification isn't good - it's just that, as every justification/substantiation can be, it's doesn't automatically is perfect to settle the truth).

To be honest, I think Bush is both dishonest and dumb enough to be doing both (that’s an inclusive disjunction).

Rian resolves the ambiguity in the direction of the second of the two notions of justification above:

1. That there’s not adequate evidence to make Rian’s claim justified or rational

No, Rian, I think the claim you made isn’t justified in precisely the sense that I don’t think you have good enough evidence for it to be reasonable to believe what you claimed. Why would I have to be lying about this? You have a few positions you can take for people who hold contrary views:

1. That their views are also true

2. That their views are not true, but the person who holds them is justified in believing them

3. That their views are not true, and that the person who holds them is not justified in believing them

With respect to folk moral realism, I endorse (3). Rian seems to think that the evidence is good enough that one is justified in believing his claim. I don’t. The mere fact that there’s contestable evidence to support his claim doesn’t mean that I must conclude that the evidence is good enough to justify belief in folk moral realism. I have never suggested that I am so confused I think that people’s claims must be either irrational or true, and that there’s no possibility a person could rationally hold views contrary to my own. Of course I think that’s possible, and I’ve never said anything that would suggest otherwise. Rian’s dichotomy is a completely manufactured fantasy that has no substantive basis in what I actually said. Finally, we have this remark:

To be honest, I think Bush is both dishonest and dumb enough to be doing both (that’s an inclusive disjunction).

What should we make of this? Rian has presented no good reasons to think I’m lying or that I’m dumb. Both of these claims are also unsubstantiated.

Rian’s consistent pattern of belligerence, lack of charity, penchant for public mockery, confusion, distortion and misinterpretation of other people’s claims, ambiguous and imprecise claims, general lack of supporting argument and evidence for his claims, and overall conduct all suggest that Rian may lack the acumen to assess how honest or intelligent I am. From all appearances, Rian is an immature, ignorant, hostile person. He appears to have a personal grudge against me, given his remarks about his friendship with David Ribeiro:

I didn’t like the condescending way you posted my tweet as if I were just asserting something out of thin air, and I already have a very bad impression of some of your attitudes toward people close to me, such as David Ribeiro. But we can leave that aside. After your reply, we can talk about discussing this.

I blocked David a few years ago for endorsing a false accusation of lying. David seemed to be extremely aggrieved by this and began showing up on YouTube in comments and streams repeatedly accusing me of lying and claiming he had evidence that I lied. He does not, and his behavior arguably constituted harassment.

Rian appears to have formed his bad impression based off of the confused errors of his friend, David. If I had to speculate, I would suggest that they have formed a distorted conception of me in their minds as a dishonest person pretending to hold views that I don’t really hold mostly resulting from David being upset about me blocking him. I usually block anyone who accuses me of lying, which is weirdly and surprisingly frequent.

This is unfortunate, as it’s very difficult to disabuse people of these notions. What I am dealing with appears to be people with an unfortunate and likely intransigent personal grudge against me who are likely to interpret what I say in light of that grudge. This will inevitably result in them seeing lies and subterfuge where none exists. I doubt there’s much I can do to remedy this. I can only hope that if I repeatedly address them in a more civil manner than they’ve addressed me it might dawn on them at some point that maybe, just maybe, they screwed up and got this one wrong. I’ve seen some of David’s remarks elsewhere, and the sad part is we seem fairly aligned on many issues. I think if the particular situation where I ended up blocking David hadn’t occurred, we may be on quite friendly terms. So I’ll take this as an opportunity to invite David and Rian to have a discussion with me. Maybe we can clear matters up. Maybe we can’t. But I’d rather be on good terms with them than on bad terms. Rian’s loyalty and commitment to his friend are commendable. But your friends can be wrong.

As a final note on the accusation that I am lying, I want to stress what I take to be one of the strongest reasons to believe these claims are so baseless and misguided: it would be pretty easy for me to provide testimony from friends and family who speak to me privately. I express the same views, including the view that there’s no good evidence that people are moral realists repeatedly in these contexts. For Rian to be convinced I’m lying, I’d have to maintain the same lie in my private life. This is completely silly. It’s absurd to suppose that I’d put that much effort into so trivial a lie.

While I am willing to meet with and discuss these matters with Rian, I will not pull punches on how poor his conduct has been (along with David’s). The accusation that I’m lying is so preposterous, obnoxious, unsubstantiated, and downright unethical that it doesn’t deserve a response. I would be entirely within my rights to ignore Rian, block him, and go about my business. Publicly accusing others of lying without adequate evidence isn’t just foolish, it is immoral, and Rian should be ashamed of both the accusation and his subsequent juvenile behavior: the insults (dumb, burro, etc.), and the meme mocking my appearance.

I have opted to respond to Rian anyway. My prediction is that Rian will make no concessions, apologize for nothing, and continue to maintain that I am lying, dumb, or both, despite my having thoroughly refuted every confused, unsubstantiated, and outlandish claim he’s made so far.

I hope I’m wrong.

References

Bush, L. S. (2026). Why training paradigms won’t rescue experimental metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1-26.

Collier‐Spruel, L., Hawkins, A., Jayawickreme, E., Fleeson, W., & Furr, R. M. (2019). Relativism or tolerance? Defining, assessing, connecting, and distinguishing two moral personality features with prominent roles in modern societies. Journal of personality, 87(6), 1170-1188.

Loeb, D. (2008). Moral incoherentism: How to pull a metaphysical rabbit out of a semantic hat. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.), Moral psychology: The cognitive science of morality (Vol. 2, pp. 355-386). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of philosophy and psychology, 11(1), 53-82.

Sinclair, N. (2012). Moral realism, face‐values and presumptions. Analytic Philosophy, 53(2), 158–179.

I haven’t said much about the miracle talk here. I don’t think miracle claims rise to the level of sufficient plausibility to be worthy of serious investigation or discussion by most people. This doesn’t mean I think people shouldn’t investigate these claims, but they should be handled the same way we’d investigate claims about alien abductions, magic powers, and so on. It’s a niche topic that a handful of skeptics can dispense with. Generally speaking, people should approach these issues with their skepticism hat firmly affixed. Sure, any of these things could be real. But the approach I’ve seen people take on here is so laughably credulous I just shake my head in dismay.

To some, this may seem overconfident or dismissive. But a person is only dismissive if they never acted with due epistemic diligence in the first place. It’d be reasonable to call a person who has just heard about miracles dismissive if they wouldn’t consider them and had no antecedent reasons to be very skeptical. But we do have a capacity for inductive and abductive reasoning, and we can build up a stock of experience that can warrant skepticism about new and similar cases to those we’ve encountered previously.

General experience can also warrant skepticism within a particular domain of inquiry. Experienced doctors are in a good position to be skeptical of medical claims. Experienced physicists are in a good position to be skeptical of claims about perpetual motion machines. The same generalizes to claims that the ordinary course of events has been subverted: when one has knowledge of many similar claims and prior cases, and has seen these claims collapse under scrutiny, one becomes well-positioned to be skeptical on inductive and abductive grounds about the likelihood that some new case is the exception. So I want to say a little about why I think miracle claims are so implausible and why, as a result, I am not very interested in them.

I’ve always been fascinated by certain kinds of mysteries. Not murder mysteries. Not missing people. But rather the kind that would interest Fox Mulder. That “I want to believe” spirit animated me throughout my youth. I was fascinated by cryptids and ancient astronauts. Crystal skulls. Bigfoot. Alien abductions. The Mothman. Mysterious beings, entities, sightings, experiences. All of it. It was thrilling to look out at this mundane world and envision mysteries lurking deep in the woods, in the ocean’s abyss, in remote mountains and hidden glades. Maybe aliens once visited the earth and had contact with humanity. Maybe ghosts lurk in moldering crypts and quiet, abandoned places. Maybe eldritch entities loom outside our radar and telescopes, with malevolent intent. I read every book and article I could on these topics. I had a collection of little crystal skulls.

Had the internet been as much a fixture of our lives, I’d have been on forums and consuming podcasts and TikToks with unmitigated ferocity. But it was perhaps the isolation of the pre-internet and early internet days that kept me insulated from reality for so long in the first place. Either way, at the time, I was a believer.

I believed aliens had come to earth on numerous occasions and were among us now, possibly infiltrating the upper echelons of power. I believed our world had potentially been engineered and human civilization steered by the hand of extraterrestrials. I believed in astrology. Witchcraft. Numerology. Magic. Ghosts. Zombies. Aliens. Ancient, lost civilizations. Mysterious monsters. Telepathy. Astral projection. If it was paranormal, or dubious, or the kind of thing you’d find in a new age store, I was into it.

Then I encountered James Randi. I was speaking with a person who was into numerology and the paranormal. They told me a “psychic investigator” was coming to give a talk. I went to the talk expecting to see a person who solved crimes or found missing people using psychic powers. I was wrong. What I encountered was a person who investigated psychics themselves. Randi was a magician with a penchant for debunking claims of the paranormal. I won’t digress to give his whole backstory, since you can find far better accounts elsewhere. The tl;dr version is this: Randi was an expert at exposing charlatans and bullshitters. His presentation shook me to my foundations and I began rethinking everything. Yet it was the accumulation from subsequent interactions, as well as reading his books and the work of other skeptics who debunked claims of the paranormal that eventually led me to flip from a credulous conspiracy theorist into a skeptic.

Over that span of time, I obsessively read or listened to countless instances of paranormal or supernatural claims: psychics, ghosts, aliens, miracles. In many of these cases, a superficial summary of the situation would often appear compelling, prompting one to wonder: how could this possibly be explained in mundane terms? Again and again, they’d be debunked. I’d hear about a case. I’d feel that thrill of excitement:

Wow! Incredible! There’s no way anyone could explain that!

And then they simply would be explained. Claims about alleged reports or verified data weren’t actually that credible. Witnesses couldn’t be located. It was a hoax and we caught the perpetrator. Clever sleuthing uncovered the legerdemain at work behind the scenes. Over. And over. And over. Case after case. Story after story.

And eventually the lesson sunk in. Randi would frequently point out how easy it is to fool ourselves, to overlook something, to not notice what’s going on behind the scenes.

Magicians often have a special insight into how easy people are to fool. I once stood behind Randi while he was performing sleight of hand, and got to see what he was really doing. From that vantage, I was also able to see the looks of bewildered delight on the faces of people as he performed what to them looked like magic, but I could see what was actually going on. Magicians become masters of misdirection, of exploiting expectation, attention, gaze, belief, confusion, awe, and naivety, blending it all into a cocktail of confusion. They come to see how readily we misremember. How readily we distort the past, or warp our perception of ongoing events in a vain effort to make sense of them. They know how this can happen quickly, in real time, in front of a crowd. They know how gullible we are. How credulous.

And they know this scales up and generalizes and extends to all aspects of our lives. People misremember events, blending reality with narrative coherence and distortions that lend gravity to an account, conveniently inclined to impress others. The fish was smaller than we recall. Our survival was less extraordinary than we make it out to be. The coincidence of a friend calling just when we thought of them is far less coincidental because we forgot it was our birthday or we’d commented on a social media post.

Anthropologists could readily describe the many fascinating paranormal accounts from around the world: ghosts, goblins, duende, zombies, witchcraft, curses, sorcery, spirits. The people who provide these reports are most likely sincere. And yet none of these things exist. That people are nevertheless sincere, often in droves, is testament to how malleable the human mind is, and how vulnerable we are to superstition.

Did everyone here on Substack forget this? Or did they never learn the same lessons I did? To truly establish the existence of miracles, or Bigfoot, or telepathy, we need more than testimony, or blurry photos, or reports from doctors. Doctors are trained to be doctors. They are not trained to avoid being duped, or fooled, or deluded. People would often present cases of scientists and other (hopefully) credible and capable thinkers reporting instances of people with paranormal or inexplicable powers, only for Randi to offer an incredibly simple explanation. My recollection of some of these stories is from more than twenty years ago, but I’ll try to describe a specific instance. Randi received a call from physicists who encountered a person who seemed to have telekinetic powers. They could raise and lower a matchbox placed on the back of their hand. No strings. No air blowing. No tape, or props, or sticky substances. No clear indication of what the trick was.

Randi asked them to check if the person had pinched a bit of skin and closed the matchbox on it, enabling them to raise and lower the matchbox by tensing their hand. They checked. They hung up the phone. No reports of wondrous telekinesis were ever forthcoming. That, at least, is roughly the story I recall. It didn’t occur to the physicists that the person they were dealing with was a bullshitter using a simple method to fool them.

I’m a psychologist. And I know a bit about how people can fool themselves and others. I am not impressed with reports from doctors or scientists. I’ve seen no good reason to believe they typically have the skeptical faculties, training, or general competence to appropriately assess these cases. At least most of the time. And witness testimony is reliably unreliable. That people could put so much stock in such evidence is a testament to their own poorly calibrated critical faculties. But I don’t hold people at fault for this all that much. The kind of experiences I’ve had are not ones you can simply read about or pick up overnight. They’re the result of repeated exposure over an extended period of time. No book, algorithm, or procedure can compensate for the wisdom of experience, or repeated subversion of one’s expectations not one or even a dozen but hundreds of times. There’s nothing like a bit of conditioning to really come to internalize a well-calibrated epistemic foundation.

So I won’t be spending much time on Zeitoun or Fatima. I’m not interested. Sure, they’re worthy of investigation. But they’re worthy of investigation for the same reason any other fraud or delusion is worthy of investigation; we are entirely within our rights to presume in advance, with a very high level of confidence, that these cases are rubbish, and I predict that were I somehow compelled to investigate, I’d find these cases to be a mess of inconsistencies and questionable evidence, while the basis for confidence in them would be grounded in credulity and dubious inference. I’ve seen it many times before, and I predict these cases are no different. Of course that doesn’t foreclose the possibility that these could be the real deal. Of course I don’t think nobody should bother to investigate, seriously or thoroughly. But if you’d read what I’ve read: case after case after case of alleged miracles or alien abductions or ghost encounters or people with psychic powers gets bulldozed by people with an aptitude for skeptical inquiry, you’d feel the same way I do: utterly dismissive.

I take instances of Catholic miracles to be far less likely than an alien abduction conspiracy or a moon landing hoax or any manner of other, similar events. Hoaxes and conspiracies require implausible levels of coordination or planning. And there’s no particularly good reason to think aliens couldn’t come here, nor is their existence at odds with my understanding of what the world is like. But miracles are inconsistent with my understanding of how things are. Does this mean they couldn’t happen? No; it just means that conditional on my current beliefs, miracles are much less likely than these other events occurring. So much less likely that I’d need considerably more evidence than sketchy accounts of miracles to be convinced they’ve occurred. And since I think we are entitled to be dismissive, and even contemptuous towards the serious and sustained insistence that the moon landing was somehow faked (it wasn’t), I see little reason to take cases of Marian apparitions appearing any more seriously.

This is part of an ongoing series. Here is the full series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

7.0 Analytic Subjectivism

Recall that Christian stated that:

Wanting to do something counts in favor of doing that thing! Duh! This is the fundamental intuition behind the Subjectivist tradition dating back most famously to Hume.

I am not on board with this and consider such a move indefensible. I do not think that wanting things “counts in favor” of doing those things. I think this notion of “counting in favor” is philosophical gobbledygook that doesn’t mean anything and reintroduces core features of what I find unacceptable about realism into subjectivist accounts as well. This is why I favor quietism, because it is not Humean in the sense this passage alludes to, which retains objectionable reification. Now, the reason I say this is because Christian attributes features to subjectivist views that a subjectivist doesn’t have to endorse. The various forms of subjectivism he deals with ultimately inherit many of their features from the analytic tradition in which Christian operates and in which the whole realist/antirealist dialectic takes place. Many of the problems with this dialectic are symptomatic of all the standard positions, and when antirealist views are saddled with some of these features, they may turn out to have problems that arise from the poor synergy between these features and their other characteristics. One way to rescue subjectivism, then, is to shrug off these features, e.g., notions of desires “giving” reasons, and so on.

While I am happy to defend subjectivism, I will not defend any accounts of subjectivism that stick their necks out and embrace the faulty notions of analytic philosophers. When Christian turns his attention to analytic subjectivism, then, I will largely abandon it to the wolves. But all is not lost! As I will argue, something akin to analytic subjectivism can readily emerge from the analytic ashes and do just fine. What is this form of subjectivism? I will call it quietist subjectivism. Quietist subjectivism rejects the notion that wanting things “counts in favor” of doing them or “gives” us “reasons” to do them. Instead, one simply holds that we are motivated in certain ways and act on those motivations, and…that’s it. Such an account jettisons normativity as anything distinct from descriptivity. Subjectivists who construe normativity in such a way that they think that something gives, provides, or generates “reasons” that “count in favor” of what we “should” do make a serious mistake: they treat normative talk as something conceptually and/or metaphysically separate and distinct from descriptive facts, as something one needs an account of, as a problem to be solved, then present desires as the solution.

But normative talk is just that: a way of talking. It isn’t a distinct property or phenomenon in need of accounting for in some metaphysically distinct or even conceptually rich sense. All we have to do is account for normative language, and any question of deep metaphysical issues or robust conceptual distinctions dissolves. Analytic subjectivism almost does this, but the kinds of subjectivism Christian addresses don’t adequately finesse the distinction between normative discourse in an abstract, theoretical, or philosophical context from its use in richer, practical, real-world contexts. With a few modifications, it would do just fine. So the position I defend is in some ways similar to analytic subjectivism, which is the very first form of subjectivism Christian addresses and arguably the one many would consider the least defensible.

So let’s address why that is, and how with a few modifications it will work just fine, before addressing the cluster of latter-day forms of subjectivism that follow in its wake. Christian says that analytic subjectivists:

like to draw a straight line between should, reasons, and desires.

Christian draws on Parfit’s characterization of desires:

any state of being motivated, or of wanting something to happen and being to some degree disposed to make it happen, if we can. (As quoted in Parfit, 2011, p. 43)

This account of desires seems fine to me. But Christian charges proponents of this view with saying something vacuous. Here’s the problem. According to Christian, analytic subjectivists hold that we should interpret:

we have most reason to act in some way

as

this act would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

In addition, analytic subjectivists hold that:

we have most reason to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires

The problem is that once we combine these claims, the position amounts to holding that:

what would best fulfill our present fulfill [sic] informed terminal desires is what would best fulfil our present fully informed desires.

…So the position ends up as a tautology. Insofar as this is an accurate representation of an actual view, I don’t endorse it. Why? Because this account already bakes in some of the features Christian introduces later on, features which presuppose certain concerns analytic philosophers have that presuppose reason-talk. In this case, the main problem is the inclusion of “fully informed.” The purpose of this feature of the account is to distinguish between cases in which we have false information about what would serve our interests from cases in which we don’t. Suppose you wanted to drink a glass of clear liquid you mistakenly believed was water, when in fact it was poison. If you were fully informed, you wouldn’t want to drink it. This feature is supposed to account for the fact that you don’t “have a re ason” to drink the poison water. But this is only included as a result of confused reactions to thought experiments that fail to distinguish terminal and instrumental desires. Our “intuition” that we don’t “have a reason” to drink poison merely because we think it is water (and we want to drink water to quench our thirst) is better understood as recognizing that a particular desire (to quench our thirst) wouldn’t be satisfied in a scenario in which we stipulate a course of action wouldn’t satisfy the desire. We’ll encounter this below when we get to the relevant scenario. But the bigger problem with Christian’s characterization of the analytic subjectivist account is that the analytic subjectivist purportedly offers us an account of what it means to say we “have most reason” to do something, then once this is answered, repeats the question with the analysis excluded from the phrasing “most reason.” If the analytic subjectivist goes along with this, they have been complicit in walking into a linguistic trap they never needed to walk into. Note how Christian says that the analytic subjectivist analyzes:

we have most reason to act in some way

as

this act would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

then they allegedly turn around and say that the answer to what we have most reason to do is to:

best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

This is bizarre. Why would someone think that the answer to the question “What do you have most reason to do?” is to say that you have most reason to best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires, and to interpret the question as asking them what would best fulfill their present fully informed terminal desires, but somehow be so confused as to fail to distinguish the question itself as the culprit behind the terminology, and instead willingly allow one’s position to become some kind of tortured verbal abomination like this:

What would best fulfill our present fulfill informed [sic] terminal desires is what would best fulfil our present fully informed desires

As if one were separately answering the question in such a way that the notion of what one had most reason to do were distinct from the answer, while simultaneously analyzing the question itself in terms of the analysis predicated on one’s answer? This is as silly as doing the following:

Alex: What is your favorite fruit?

Sam: As an analytic bananaist, I interpret the phrase “favorite fruit” as “banana.” Therefore, I interpret your question to be asking me “What is your banana?” So my answer is that my banana is my banana.

Alex: …what?

Alex is right. What? What a bizarre response. The problem with the analytic bananaist’s response is that the question is asking them which account they favor. It is not asking them to offer an analysis of the question of which account they favor in terms of which account they favor, such that to ask them what their “favorite fruit” is is to ask them to offer an analysis of “favorite fruit” in such a way that this is taken to be identified with their answer, then reanalyzed in terms of their answer, such that the question becomes a weird and pointless inquiry that already presupposes their answer. Yet this is how the analytic subjectivist is depicted by Christian. The analytic subjectivist, for some reason, interprets the phrase “most reason to do” in terms of their account, then simultaneously treats “most reason to do” as distinct from the account, ratcheting in the account after this, such that:

Most reason to do = What would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

…and, at the same time, still treating what one has most reason to do as something one can offer an answer to distinct from the phrasing itself, as though there’s still a verbal slot open for the answer to the floating questions “What do you have most reason to do?” distinct from the analysis of the meaning of the question itself in terms of the answer. Let’s see how that works in dialog form.

Alex: What do you have most reason to do?

Sam: As an analytic subjectivist, I interpret the phrase “most reason to do” as “what would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires”. Therefore, I interpret your question to be asking me “What would best fulfill your present fully informed terminal desires?” So my answer is that “What would best fulfill my present fully informed terminal desires is what would best fulfill my present fully informed terminal desires.”

Alex: …what?

This is really bizarre. But it’s an understandable error that occurs when one attempts to offer an analysis in certain abstract, theoretical discussions among philosophers rather than simply talking about how you’d speak and what you’d mean by what you say in everyday contexts. In other words, Christian’s characterization of analytic subjectivism saddles them with offering an “account” that ends up an empty analysis of how to interpret a set of sentences outside any relevant contexts of usage. Whose discourse is it even an analysis of? I don’t endorse the view that this is what nonphilosophers mean when they make moral claims. And I don’t endorse the view that sentences have meanings independent of usage. And this isn’t what I mean. I see no reason why I should endorse this account. But I also don’t see why someone couldn’t reject this view, reject the reasons-talk common among philosophers, and the weird abstract contexts in which these analyses are being offered, and still be some sort of subjectivist. Yet Christian proposes that:

[…] to avoid circularity, Subjectivists should use the word “should” in the reason-implying sense, essentially, to mean that we should do what we have most reason to do.

Subjectivists don’t have to do this. They can simply recognize that what one should do in abstract terms is to act on their desires while also appreciating that in any concrete instance this would be realized in concrete terms by the specific desire in question. Suppose the gastronomic analytic subjectivist goes to dinner. Technically they believe that what one ought to choose for dinner is whatever would most satisfy their desires. After they look over the menu, and the waiter asks them what they’d like, do you suppose they’d respond:

“I’d like that which I most desire”?

I don’t think they would. I think they’d pick something in particular. Nothing about being committed to choosing the dish you most desire saddles you with an actual vacuous or problematic tautology in practice. What you would choose at the restaurant in the abstract is whatever you most desire. What you’d choose in concrete instances would be the specific dish. The appearance of a tautology only remains as long as you insist on framing the position in abstract terms.

Christian’s suggestion, on the other hand, may avoid meaningless and nonproblematic circularity (which needn’t be avoided in the first place), but at the cost of reintroducing a reified notion of “reasons” into our account that saddles the subjectivist account with one of the features I reject in realist accounts: an invocation of ineffable (and, I suspect, meaningless) notions of “reason.” Any form of subjectivism that imports such notions inherits precisely one of the central features of moral realism that make it so objectionable in the first place. In other words, if we go back to the original set of claims the analytic subjectivist allegedly endorses, I just wouldn’t endorse one-to-one correspondence between the phrases Christian provides and various “analyses” of those claims. I’d instead just say that there are facts about our desires and when I talk in certain, relevant contexts, what I’m doing is reporting what those desires are. This creates absolutely no problems whatsoever. I’ll say more about this in a bit. For now, Christian continues:

So if we are to make substantive claims, we need to use “most reason”, “should”, and “ought” in this reason-implying sense.

This is not the case. First, as already noted, we don’t need to do this since there was never a problem it’s needed to solve in the first place. Second, I deny reasons-implying claims are substantive, since I don’t think the notion of reasons at play in these accounts (some kind of normative reason) is substantive. As Christian noted, this concept of a reason is ineffable. I don’t think there are substantive but ineffable concepts, because I think that the reason why the terms can’t be understood is that there isn’t anything to understand. Reason-talk among philosophers is just a reification of some quirks in the English language, mistakenly perceived as some kind of independent property, when no such thing exists. It makes about as much sense to think there are reasons as that there are althoughs or howevers.

Third, rejecting analytic subjectivism doesn’t require you to endorse a specific alternative like this, for much the same reason that rejecting Christianity doesn’t require that you become an atheist. Our only options aren’t analytic subjectivism or a belief in allegedly substantive normative reasons. We can reject all of these positions and still make substantive claims. To be fair, I don’t think Christian is likely to have intended a genuine dichotomy (after all, someone could abandon all of these accounts and go be a noncognitivist or something); I just don’t think subjectivists, if they want to avoid tautology, have to embrace ineffable concepts.

The problem with analytic subjectivism as described here is that it tacitly concedes that one must offer some account of reasons, identifies these reasons with desires, then holds that one has reason to do what one desires. In effect, it reifies reasons, treats them as something distinct from desires, then offers an analysis that re-identifies them with desires, thereby treating them simultaneously both as distinct and not distinct, which is why once you unpack it you get this weird tautology. To summarize very quickly why this is silly, the view amounts to something like this:

1. My account of what it means to say I have most reason to do something is that it would fulfill my desires.

2. I think we have most reason to fulfill our desires.

3. So, my position is that it would fulfill my desires to fulfill my desires.

The mistake here is in step two. If you already think talk of what you have most reason to do reduces to what you desire, why would you say you have most reason to fulfill your desires? Recall: if you think “favorite fruit” just means “banana,” why would you say “My favorite fruit is banana”? This would be like saying “Banana is banana,” which is ridiculous. In most contexts, you wouldn’t say these sorts of things, but as we’ll see, this concealed tautology is perfectly respectable in certain contexts. Because of this, in a way, the tautologous aspect of analytic subjectivism isn’t the problem. Ironically, Christian thinks the only way for the analytic subjectivist to avoid the problem of one’s account revealing itself to be a tautology is to embrace a nonreductive, substantive notion of reasons distinct from desires. I argue that the opposite is the case: that the subjectivist has already conceded too much to Christian in granting that there is any meaningful conception of ineffable normative reasons apart from desires in the first place, such that they need to offer an “account” of them distinct from the reduction of reasons to desires.

For the analytic subjectivist, if you were asked why you have most reason to fulfill your desires, the answer would be “because it would fulfill my desires,” which is weird and vacuous and makes your position sound silly. But what an analytic subjectivist could do instead is insist that facts about what one has most reason to do just are facts about what would or wouldn’t fulfill one’s desires. And then asking someone: “What do you have most reason to do?” just becomes the question: “What would fulfill your desires?” At that point, it would be a little weird to say “I would fulfill my desires.” Is this vacuous? It sure seems like it. But that’s only because the question is being posed outside any specific context in which someone is asking which desires would be fulfilled by which actions. Instead, the question is posed in a context in which the analytic reduction of “most reason” to desire fulfillment hasn’t yet been implemented, such that the question leaves open what one might have “most reason” to do in a way that isn’t necessarily reducible to facts about desire fulfillment.

For comparison, if someone asks what your “favorite fruit” is, they are not asking you to offer a definition of “favorite fruit” that reduces it to whatever your favorite fruit is, such that to ask what someone’s favorite fruit is is to ask them a vacuous question from the outset: “What is your [whatever their answer is]?” which will yield the response “[their answer.]” This would be an insane question to ask. Rather, the person posing the question is asking something like

Of the possible fruits one might prefer, of which there are more than one, which one do you prefer?

To answer:

Banana.

…already tacitly acknowledges that something other than “banana” is a viable option. But if you’re an analytic subjectivist, do you interpret “most reason” in this open-ended way, such that one could in principle have “most reason” to do something other than what would fulfill their desires, or not?

There is no straightforward way to answer this question. Why? Because there are two separate answers: an unconditional and a conditional.

The unconditional answer should be “yes”: not conditional on my analysis of “most reason,” one could slot some other answer into a response to the question of what one has most reason to do other than what would fulfill one’s desires.

The conditional answer would be “no”: conditional on “most reason” being analyzed in accord with the analytic subjectivist’s response, the question itself asks “What would fulfill your desires?” to which the analytic subjectivist responds “what would fill my desires.”

This distinction reveals something extremely important:

The tautology only emerges conditional on the analytic subjectivist’s account being accepted (at least conditionally) in the first place.

Why is that important? Because the “tautology” emerges only on the conditional victory of the analytic subjectivist. If they’ve already won, if we’ve already granted that “most reason” = “what would fulfill your desires,” they can close shop there and do a victory dance. The problem would be with the person posing the question. There’s nothing wrong with responding to a vacuous question with a vacuous answer. Ask empty questions, get empty answers.

There’s no other analysis of “most reason” on offer if we accept the conditional response, so there are facts about what would fulfill our desires and it wouldn’t make any sense to ask if one has “most reason” to do something else instead, because “most reason” just means what would fulfill one’s desires.

The reason the analytic subjectivist’s response appears to be a problematic tautology is a result of failing to distinguish these unconditional and conditional responses. The problem is that the question is structurally framed in a way that presents itself as an unconditional response. As a result, if one offers the conditional response, such that one reanalyzes the question in terms of the analysis, the question itself participates in setting up the tautology:

Question: What would fulfill your desires?

Answer: What would fulfill my desires.

Structurally, the analytic subjectivist is expected to simultaneously treat the question of what they have “most reason” to do in unconditional terms: as not reduced to “what would fulfill my desires” and at the same time treat it as conditional, such that it does mean this. Now when we go back to Christian’s characterization, we can see how this has occurred.

Here’s the analytic subjectivist’s conditional response:

These subjectivists use words like ‘reason’ and ‘should’ in the internal senses. So they interpret the claim

we have most reason to act in some way

as

this act would best fulfill our present fully informed terminal desires

Then the analytic subjectivist is expected to offer an unconditional response in which the notion of “most reason” is held open to alternative possible accounts or reductions. Only Christian doesn’t pose the question that generates the problem. Christian just says:

we have most reason to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires

But if the analytic subjectivist already thinks “most reason” just means “what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires” why would they then say that they have “most reason” to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires? Conditional on their analysis, they wouldn’t; this would be redundant and an empty tautology. It’s only when “most reason” is taken to be unconditional and thus ex hypothesi not reduced to the analytic subjectivist’s analysis that they’d make the claim that

we have most reason to do what would best fulfil our present fully informed terminal desires

…This is exactly like the banana example. If you’re asking me what my favorite fruit is in an unconditional sense, then it makes perfect sense to say:

My favorite fruit is banana.

If you’re asking in a conditional sense, where we reinterpret “favorite fruit” in line with my answer, now you are asking me something a bit awkward like

What is your banana?

Now, if I am required to verbally reiterate your distinction between “favorite fruit” and “banana” in my response, such that I am required, again, by the very setup you yourself are imposing on me, to slot “banana” in for “favorite fruit,” now I can’t just say:

Banana.

I have to say:

My favorite fruit banana is my banana.

The lesson we should extract from this is that analytic philosophers completely trip all over themselves creating pseudoproblems that result from a failure to be attentive to language, mostly to disambiguate and distinguish what one means in various contexts of usage. They conflate different contexts, smashing them together into a single question or single phrase or analysis or account, don’t keep the various contexts in which one might say one or another thing distinct, demand responses to questions that look awkward outside any real-world or practical contexts of usage, then declare victory when the result, which is often tortured, vacuous, and redundant verbiage looks weird or vacuous or empty or whatever. But such weird, vacuous language only emerges if one twists English into enough pretzels that one more or less compels a rival response to sound weird in the contrived, abstract contexts one has created. At least one problem is that these contexts often have little or no bearing on what a proponent of a position would say in any practical, concrete context. They don’t raise any actual practical problems with a position. And the theoretical problems are not genuine problems, either. They are pseudoproblems that only emerge when we aren’t careful with language.

To put it bluntly: objections to analytic subjectivism largely involve abusing language to generate the misleading impression of a problem. The analytic subjectivist’s position should be rejected insofar as the analytic subjectivist themselves buys into the practices of analytic philosophy that generate the problem. If analytic subjectivism is (perhaps a bit ironically) defined in terms of its commitment to these practices, then I reject it. If it isn’t, then analytic subjectivism in some form can be rescued.

But I’d prefer to just grant that the position is committed to its own internally self-negating confusions, and suggest quietist subjectivism as an alternative. Whether one wants to call this a form of analytic subjectivism is up to them. Words, after all, are subordinate to us, though people who do analytic philosophy too much seem to have it the other way around. In any case, quietist subjectivism dispenses with the verbal confusions characteristic of so much of analytic philosophy and stops Christian’s critique cold. Subsequent analyses of modifications to subjectivism are unnecessary, since we never give the initial ground that requires is to buy into the notion of construing normative considerations in a “reason-implying” sense, which I take to be a concession that there are ineffable reasons and any successful account would need to explain what we have “reasons” to do.

Have I rescued analytic subjectivism? Not necessarily. It depends on how much the analytic subjectivist wants to participate in the language games analytic philosophers engage in. I’ve maintained that there’s nothing inherently wrong with asserting a tautology. Carrots are carrots. As far as I can tell, that’s true. And I am not going to get struck by lightning for saying it. There’s nothing vacuous or obviously empty about saying that claims about what one has most reason to do will be understood as claims about what would promote one’s desires.

The real problem here isn’t the tautology in such a position, but that it accepts as meaningful to even say that one “most reason to fulfill our desires” as if there were some conception of should that didn’t reduce to fulfilling one’s desires while simultaneously maintaining that there isn’t. The whole way “I have most reason to fulfill my desires” is framed pragmatically implies that something other than desire fulfillment could be ratcheted into the slot for “should,” but, conditional on analytic subjectivism, it couldn’t. So really we should see the statement as an innocuous tautology conditional on analytic subjectivism, and there really shouldn’t be a problem with it consisting in a tautology. But it sounds weird, and if that’s reason enough to reject the view, we can finesse what a subjectivist is up to without paying tacit lip service to the legitimacy of “most reason” as a nonreductive notion while simultaneously claiming to have reduced it in the way we ourselves talk.

7.1 A detour about zapples

There’s some serious linguistic strangeness going on with the preceding critique of analytic subjectivism, and I really want to drive home what the issue is. So consider this section another attempt at approaching the topic. It may be slightly redundant, but this is a blog and part of what I am doing is thinking things through as I write. If you think you’ve understood well enough what I take the issue to be, you can skip ahead to the next section.

Suppose a new product comes along: the zapple. You examine it thoroughly and determine that zapples are just apples. Not a specific kind of apple or anything like that. They’re just plain ol’ apples. Now someone asks you:

What is a zapple?

And you say:

A zapple is an apple.

Would it be much of a critique of your view to say:

Oh, so if you say “This zapple is an apple” you mean to say “This apple is an apple”? That’s a tautology. Why would you go around saying something vacuous like that?

Do you see the problem? It isn’t the zapple-apple reductionist who proposed that zapples were something distinct from apples. And if they were to be in charge of how we spoke about zapples, they might suggest we drop all talk of zapples and just call them apples. So they’d never need to say “zapples are apples.” They’d just talk about apples. But it was other people who insisted on calling something a zapple rather than an apple. All the zapple-apple reductionist has done is close this verbal loop. Yet if they were engaged with zapple nonreductionists, the nonreductionists may insist on verbally distinguishing zapples from apples. In response, the zapple-apple reductionist may, in exasperation, insist that zapples just are apples, only to be met with:

But that’s a tautology! “Zapples are apples” just means “Apples are apples” on your view.

Indeed it does. But this isn’t vacuous or meaningless or a problem in the context of arguing with zapple-apple nonreductionists. In exactly the same way, a person who reduces talk of what one should do to talk of what would promote one’s desires can reduce the former to the latter in a way that would yield tautologies in an entirely innocent way: innocent in exactly the same way that someone who concluded that zapples were apples wouldn’t be saying anything vacuous or confused or mistaken in the context of a dialectic in which others held that zapples aren’t or at least might not be apples.

The “tautology” plays a dialectical role: it closes a verbal loop, and yields a tautology that effectively dissolves an undischarged demand for an account of zapples. Determining that there is no distinct thing as a zapple may simply be the correct position. Just so, judging that there is no distinct content to or conception of should-talk apart from it referring to one’s desires can settle any dispute about whether one should do something other than what one desires. One can even allow that a kind of open question could be meaningfully posed, but note that this would simply involve someone using the same terms to mean something other than what the analytic subjectivist themselves means: it’d be a tautology for the analytic subjectivist to say “I should do what I desire” but not for others. There’s just no problem with this.

But if an analytic subjectivist agrees with everyone else that reasons are something distinct from desires, while simultaneously trying to reduce reasons to desires, then of course they’re going to have a problem. I think one could perhaps still call themselves a subjectivist while denying this or any other problematic features Christian associates with the view, but let’s just grant that subjectivists hold some weird, objectionable view that buys into some of the assumptions of non-subjectivists but can’t successfully reconcile these with their account of reasons as desires. Fine. Then we can reject the view. But a suspiciously similar-looking phoenix can readily rise from the ashes, and simply abandon those dubious features it couldn’t reconcile.

A something-like-a-subjectivist like myself doesn’t have to grant that there are reasons, that reasons are desires, or that reasons “give” us reasons. My account simply rejects any notion of normative reasons altogether, and thus denies that I need to offer an “analysis” of “should” that treats it as distinct from facts about what would fulfill my desires in the first place. What I think is simple:

1. There are facts about our desires.

2. There are facts about what is conducive to achieving those desires.

3. There are no further normative facts at all. It isn’t the case that, e.g., we have “most reason” to act to fulfill our desires or anything of the sort.

This presents an alternative to analytic subjectivism which I’ll call quietist subjectivism or if that isn’t descriptive enough, reasons-eliminativist subjectivism. On this account, reasons-talk isn’t ineffable, reasons-talk and should-talk just is (at least for the quietist subjectivist) talk of desires. Insofar as this allegedly saddles the subjectivist with empty tautologies: it does not. The tautologies only emerge in contexts in which the subjectivist is clarifying their position on the meaning of should/reason talk. There is nothing vacuous about a non-subjectivist asking, “How do you use reasons-talk and should-talk?” and a subjectivist responding “to refer to desires.” If the non-subjectivist then says, “Wait, so if I asked what you should do, you’d say ‘fulfill my desires’? but all this would mean is that it would fulfill your desires to fulfill your desires! Why would you present me with a tautology?”

The subjectivist can point out that in the context of the question the meaning of “should” is being treated as theoretically open to non-subjectivist analyses that don’t reduce should-talk to desire talk. Since the analytic subjectivist does reduce should-talk to desire-talk, when they respond that one “should do what one desires,” all they are doing is collapsing the putative autonomy of the two concepts. This results in a tautology, but it isn’t a vacuous one: it is one that, in a dialectical context in which the subjectivist is distinguishing their position from non-subjectivist positions, illustrates the collapse, or reduction. This does not carry over outside this context into the subjectivist going around asserting tautologies like an idiot in any real-world contexts. In those contexts, people are almost always asked a context-specific practical should question. In other words, we can distinguish two types of “What should you do?” questions:

• Abstract theoretical
  What should you do?

• Contextualized practical
  What should you do?

Note how both look identical. But that is because sentences mean different things in different contexts. Let’s unpack what these questions involve in their proper contexts:

• Abstract theoretical

  What should you do? = What is your account of normativity? That is, when it comes to the question of how you deliberate about what choice to make and proceed to take action, what theory captures the considerations relevant to doing so?

• Contextualized practical

  (For this, I have to provide a hypothetical context. Here it is. You are deciding whether to eat leftovers or go out to have a nice dinner. What should you do?)

Note how in the second case, responding to “What should you do?” with “stay home and eat leftovers” or “go out to dinner” makes perfect sense: if you want to save money and eat healthy, stay home. If you want to splurge and enjoy yourself more, then go out to have a nice dinner. There’s no tautology here. If you responded with “what I desire,” that might seem vacuous, but that’s only because you aren’t clarifying what it is you desire. Think of it this way. If the question “what should you do?” in this situation amounted to “what do you desire?” in this situation, you could respond with “whatever I want.” This might be a glib and unhelpful response, and one might even say it’s vacuous, but so what? You’re not theorizing here. In a practical context, this couldn’t generate any serious philosophical problems for you. It is only in theoretical contexts where the nonspecificity is both mandated, because there is no specific context, and seemingly vacuous. But that seeming vacuity is a byproduct of philosophers failing to distinguish practical and abstract contexts, such that the sense of vacuity bleeds into how they’d interpret the remark in practical contexts. If the response to literally every question: “What should you do?” in every practical context amounted to “What I desire,” which was the equivalent of saying “What I should do,” you really would have an empty theory. But this isn’t what a quietist subjectivist (or an analytic subjectivist, for that matter) is actually committed to. In any practical context, they can just report the desire:

What should you do?

Go out and have a nice dinner.

There is nothing remotely vacuous about this.

With respect to the first, abstract theoretical question, the quietist subjectivist can respond: My account reduces considerations of what I should do to considerations of my desires. When deliberating, I would ideally choose that course of action most consistent with my desires (and I’d try to do my best given the information available to me). Note that on this view, a reduction can result in a tautology without any issue at all. Recall that if you think zapples are apples, such that you can substitute “zapple” for “apple,” then you can translate the statement “Zapples are apples,” which doesn’t look like a tautology, even though “Apples are apples,” clearly is a tautology. But this is an innocent tautology because the reduction of zapples to apples occurs in contexts where the status of zapples is in dispute: others may think they aren’t apples. That you think they are as a matter of definition does result in “Zapples are apples” meaning exactly the same thing as “Apples are apples,” but that you’re stuck with this tautology isn’t your fault; it’s a byproduct of a dialectic in which others hold incorrect or unspecified views.

If in practical contexts the notion of “should” weren’t in dispute, there is no need to be theoretically open about one’s meaning, so the tautologies need not emerge to threaten the subjectivist’s account. In those contexts, responding to practical questions about what one should do with “what I desire” would instead be used to express either an unwillingness or inability to respond, whether one is being glib or is confused. You may have heard conversations like this:

Parent: Well, if you’re not going to stay here and do your chores, what are you going to do?

Child: Whatever I want!!!

It would be silly to interpret the child as asserting a tautology. Keep the theoretical and practical contexts distinct, and subjectivists just don’t face any serious threat or need to invoke ineffable notions of reasons to explain what they mean and to offer a substantive account.

Incidentally, I think Christian has accurately diagnosed the problem with the analytic subjectivist position he outlines:

The issue with Analytical Subjectivism is not using reason in the internal sense alone. It’s using reason in the internal sense paired with using “most reason” or “should” in the internal or desire-fulfillment sense.

Christian believes the proper solution is to abandon this circularity by using the term “should” in the “reason-implying” sense:

Instead, and to avoid circularity, Subjectivists should use the word “should” in the reason-implying sense, essentially, to mean that we should do what we have most reason to do. This makes reasons alone to be the “key battle ground in ethics.” So if we are to make substantive claims, we need to use “most reason”, “should”, and “ought” in this reason-implying sense.

As I have argued, subjectivists do not need to embrace a reason-implying sense of “should” to make substantive claims. And I have argued that this isn’t the only or best path for the subjectivist to take. Instead, the subjectivist can just reject the demand that, in theoretical contexts, they are required to offer an account of “most reason” or “should” talk in such a way that they are saddled with weird tautologies. They can instead argue that such talk, in these conversations, is the artificial, theoretical construction of analytic philosophers, that it doesn’t map onto practical contexts or ordinary language, and that an account that reduces “should”-talk and “reason”-talk to desires can offer tautological responses in some of these contexts without this rendering their account vacuous or in any other way philosophically suspect. This quietistic move demonstrates that the subjectivist can speak and reason in ways that make perfect sense and don’t saddle them with vacuity.

In short, the problem with the analytic subjectivist as Christian depicts them here is that they appear to be complicit in tacitly conceding:

1. That there is an open question about normative questions about what one ought to do (or what one has “most reason” to do, or “should” do, etc.)

2. That this question is, in fact, closed: what one ought/has most reason to/should do is what would most fulfill their desires

Christian has thus crafted a position with an internal tension, then criticized it for having that tension. He then presents only one solution, and proceeds from there, without considering the way of resolving the tension I’ve proposed here. The critique of the position only lands insofar as the analytic subjectivist themselves fails to recognize that their position exists in a kind of Necker-cubean superposition, failing to collapse the open question into a closed one. But if they do close it, the problem dissolves, and the tautology is only a tautology in a cross-theoretical context, i.e., between proponents of the question being closed by analysis and those who think it remains open. That is, it only appears to be an empty tautology if we are discussing matters as if the question were closed, when in fact it isn’t empty in any context in which the reductive analysis that closes the verbal loop between normative terms (should, ought, most reason) and descriptive terms (what would most fulfill desires) remains open. For comparison, if the question of what a zapple is remains open, it is not at all empty or vacuous to propose that zapples are apples. But once we agree that zapples are apples by definition, now asking “What is a zapple?” becomes a closed question. But it is only a closed question once the analysis is accepted. It is equivalent to asking “What is an apple?” to which “An apple” is an entirely appropriate response in that context. Note, though, that “An apple” may seem glib or dismissive precisely because, if the question were closed, asking someone what an apple was would probably not be taken to ask whether an apple was an apple, but to ask something further, such as to ask about its properties or category memberships (e.g., a red or green fruit known for being crisp, slightly sweet…). Careful attention to language dissolves any problems analytic subjectivism might face on grounds of asserting empty tautologies.

Since the subjectivist doesn’t need to embrace should-talk in the reason-implying sense, I could end my rebuttal here. I have provided a way for analytic subjectivists to embrace a bit of quietism and thereby embrace quietist subjectivism. This allows a form of the position more or less like the original to emerge unscathed. But let’s continue anyway, to address Christian’s other remarks.

Metaethical relativism is a position on the nature of moral truth. A simplified version is that the truth of ordinary moral claims is indexical, such that the truth of any given moral claim can only be judged relative to one or another set of moral standards. This involves two theses:

Note that the claim that moral truth claims contain an implicit indexical element describes the world. It tells us what is the case. It doesn’t recommend, prescribe, or encourage us to adopt relativism.

Despite this, some critics of relativism (and of moral antirealism) moralize endorsement of relativism. Relativism is either true or false regardless of whether we want it to be true or prefer it to be the case. Ironically, whether relativism is true is itself not true in a relative respect. Unless, of course, you’re a relativist about relativism, but I doubt most critics of relativism are. It certainly isn’t part of metaethical relativism that it is itself only true in a relative sense.

This is why it’s very strange that even professional philosophers such as Jason Brennan have argued that endorsing moral relativism is evil. Specifically, Brennan argued the following in a Facebook comment some years ago:

1. It is evil to think that whether the holocaust was good or bad for you depends upon whether you like it or approve of it.

2. Some people subscribe to meta-ethical theories which imply that whether the holocaust was good or bad depends upon whether they like it or approve of it.

3. So some people are evil.

This makes no sense. Whether relativism is true or not is a matter of how ordinary people use words. Correctly recognizing how they use them couldn’t reasonably make you evil. This makes about as much sense as thinking it’s evil to think the word “motherfucker” is an insult.

A related line of objection psychologizes advocacy for relativism by proposing that there are incentives to adopt the view independent of a sincere and unbiased belief that it’s simply true. Christian Gonzalez has expressed such a view here:

@cxgonzalezascend #philosophy #spirituality

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

It’s gotta be so nice to be a moral subjectivist. It just gets you off the hook. Like ‘No, the only thing that I should be doing is whatever I want.’ Like what in the 11-year-old ass philosophy is that. No like I want…I should have ice cream because I want it. Like dog, no. There’s some things that are good for you and some things that are bad for you and it doesn’t matter what you think about it.

Moral subjectivism doesn’t “get you off the hook” any more than realism does. Moral subjectivists have moral standards, and they can live up to them or fail to live up to them just like a moral realist.

Nothing about subjectivism entails that a subjectivist believes or is committed to thinking that you can do “whatever you want.” And in practice, this is almost never the case. People have principles they are stubbornly committed to. They can no more change these on a whim than we can change our food preferences, music preferences, or sexual orientation merely because we feel like it. Human psychology doesn’t work that way.

Preference doesn’t mean “under total volitional control.” It doesn’t mean “whim.” My values as an antirealist are not whimsy. I take them as seriously as realists do.

Furthermore, moral realism is vulnerable to the parallel charge that it can allow its proponent to get off the hook. Here’s how. A moral realist could hold absolutely atrocious moral views, but then insist that because those views are true independent of their own values and preferences, it’s not their fault morality is the way that it is. For instance, a devout Catholic may insist that eternal conscious torment in hell is a just and appropriate punishment. If you balk at this and insist ETC is evil, they can throw up their hands and say:

I sympathize, but it’s outside my control. I don’t endorse ETC because I like it, but because it’s true that it’s the objectively correct punishment.

Moral realism allows for what we can call the Normative Nuremberg defense. The traditional Nuremberg defense is to insist that you should not be judged (or judged as harshly) for actions because you were “following orders.”

A moral realist could endorse or even commit any atrocity, then insist that because it’s stance-independently correct, that therefore it simply doesn’t matter how horrifying you find it: the action was justified, even morally righteous.

Moral realists can thus likewise let themselves off the hook: they can always emotionally and personally distance themselves from their moral commitments, and thereby take no responsibility for them.

There are other issues with Christian’s remark. One is that it implies (without him outright stating) that perhaps people endorse subjectivism/relativism because it gets them off the hook. This is a tendentious and uncharitable empirical notion for which I doubt Christian has any substantive evidence.

Christian may also not endorse such a claim, but even if he doesn’t, he still has a responsibility not to say things that could reasonably be expected to cause his audience to draw such inferences, and I think this is a case of this. Making subjectivists out to be intellectually dishonest people who adopt positions to evade moral responsibility is not a very nice thing to do if you aren’t able or willing to back this suggestion up.

Disparaging the position as being childish is also usually not the best way to handle rival positions, unless you have a good case for the view being childish, which I don’t think Christian does.

This is part of an ongoing series. Here is the full series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

6.0 Effing the Ineffable

If we’re going to take a reasons-first approach, it’d be helpful to know what a reason is. Unfortunately, like Parfit, Christian can’t help us:

So what then is a reason? Well, reasons are… undefinable. I could truly tell you that reasons are facts which “count in favor of” an action, belief, or attitude. But “counts in favor” roughly means “gives a reason for” (OWM II, 272). That may be unsatisfactory but that’s also to be expected of a fundamental concept. Nor is this unusual. Other baseline concepts like space, time, consciousness, possibility, and necessity are similarly non-circularly undefinable. The best we can do is wave our hands around and utter enough noises until the thoughts which contain this concept (or that of space, time, etc.) are elicited in another’s mind. This is true even of colors.

We’re given the standard reasons = things that “count in favor,” coupled with the acknowledgement that this doesn’t really get us anywhere. What I take issue with is this: Christian simply declares the concept a “fundamental” concept. Ordinarily, we might expect someone using some term, especially a technical term, to tell us what it means. We’re not told what it means. Instead, Christian suggests that (a) we already use terms like this and (b) we can at best try to point and grunt until someone gets the idea, like colors.

I don’t find either of these satisfactory, though it also remains unclear to me what Christian means by the term being undefinable. That could have a fairly narrow meaning (something like that we can’t give a conceptual analysis or dictionary definition) or something broad (we can’t communicate the concept at all). I don’t have a huge problem with the former, but I do have a problem with the latter. Regardless of whether a concept can be defined, we at least expect people who introduce us to a new term to do something to cause us to acquire the concept.

If a biologist identifies a new organ in an animal, we expect them to be able to tell us what it is. Describe it. Show us a picture. Tell us about what it does. Tell us where we can find it.

If a physicist posits a new particle, they’ll tell us what observations it explains, what problems positing it solves, and what predictions we might make, conditional on the particle existing, that we’d expect if it does exist and that differ from alternative accounts that don’t posit it.

I could go on, but the general point here is that if one throws a new term or concept out there, we typically expect some account of what it is. And in the case of the other terms Christian claims are undefinable, I think we can give an account of all of them, with the possible exception of “consciousness,” which, if it refers to phenomenal consciousness, is a term I explicitly regard as meaningless.

But Parfitian normative reasons aren’t like this. Nobody can tell us what they are, or how they work. They’re mysterious. Those who claim to understand the concept of a reason simply insist they have the concept. People who think they have qualia or phenomenal consciousness do much the same. But terms like space and time readily figure into models in physics. They may be difficult to grasp but they aren’t “primitive” or incapable of being understood.

Personally, I think the notion of a normative reason is a pseudoconcept. I think that what’s happened is that English-speaking philosophers have reified certain terms, like “reason,” and mistakenly taken them to be things-in-themselves, something one can have, something that can be “generated” by facts or desires. But really, it’s just a word that figures into our discourse in various ways but isn’t something independent of those phenomena that we uncontroversially do have, such as desires or beliefs. As a result, the notion of a “reason” can break away from its role in explaining or appealing to our desires and serve some other purpose, a purpose it doesn’t serve in ordinary language and is instead a philosophical invention, a mutated extension of its everyday uses that emerges only in theoretical contexts and that cannot be reabsorbed into ordinary practice in any distinctive way. I could be wrong about this. But I am not convinced any of those other terms are “undefinable” in any nontrivial sense.

But even if they were, why should we induct normative reasons into the hallowed halls of terms like “time” and “space”? How does one identify concepts that belong in this category rather than instances in which one is confused or mistaken and in the possession of a pseudoconcept?

The best we can do is wave our hands around and utter enough noises until the thoughts which contain this concept (or that of space, time, etc.) are elicited in another’s mind.

How does one know when they’ve acquired the concept rather than simply become confused and mistakenly think that they have it? How does one know that one’s concept is the same as someone else’s?

This is true even of colors.

Color discrimination is a functional ability with a well-described basis in features of human anatomy (eyes, the brain, etc.) and physics (light). Since I don’t think there are any qualia at all, including color qualia, I don’t think there is some distinctive phenomenon that resists definability in this case, either. Again, though, this is going to hinge on what one means by something being “undefinable.” Since I’ll have to keep repeating that point, I’ll set these concerns aside for now and simply say this:

My current stance on normative reasons is not that they don’t exist, but that there is no actual concept of a normative reason. I think talk of such reasons is a conceptual confusion invented by philosophers. It’s hard to say more against the concept because so little can be said about it in the first place. And yet despite this, it serves a foundational role in Parfit’s and similar metaethical views. I think this should be a massive red flag.

Christian goes on to say that we may still ask:

When do we have a reason to act?

We can ask this, but I don’t think it means anything. Christian continues:

For every philosophical question, there’s typically a “common sense” answer, at least from the perspective of Western, usually STEM-educated or otherwise analytical individual [sic]. These individual [sic] are usually secular, favor reductive explanations, and operate out of a materialist worldview. Perhaps they’ve even read a little philosophy and are familiar with Kant’s idea of a hypothetical imperative which, translating to our reasons-first language, states that one has a reason to X when one has a desire or aim to X. This seems so obvious as to hardly be worth mentioning. It’s an apoditic [sic] truth a Kantian would probably say. Wanting to do something counts in favor of doing that thing! Duh! This is the fundamental intuition behind the Subjectivist tradition dating back most famously to Hume.

I really like the emphasis on demographic characteristics influencing people’s worldviews, because this is a point I stress constantly. I don’t know quite why we’d consider the views of this population “common sense” or what that’s supposed to mean, but I don’t personally grant that “one has a reason to X when one has a desire or aim to X.” I suspect Christian and others who say things like this mean it literally: that desires cause there to be reasons, but I think this is confused. I think people have goals and they are motivated to pursue those goals. And I think there are no further facts in the relevant sense. I don’t think their goals (or desires, or aims, or whatever) “give” them reasons or that one “has” reasons. While I might say “Mike has a reason to go to the store,” what I don’t mean is that if Mike desires to get something he could get at the store, this “gives” him a reason to go to the store. What I mean is something like “It would serve Mike’s (or some other person’s) goals to go to the store.” Talk of desires (or any other facts) “giving” reasons should be understood as a figure of speech. I worry that philosophers may have inadvertently elevated mere figures of speech to the status of serious metaphysical theses. I’ve said more about this elsewhere, such as here, but I’ll have more to say about this in the future.

I don’t think wanting things “counts in favor” of doing them since I deny that this is meaningful. And I don’t think subjectivism should be saddled with the conceptual confusions that plague realists. In other words, I don’t think desires “give us reasons” or “count in favor” of actions any more than anything else does. So my account rejects any kind of metaphysically or conceptually laden subjectivism if it, too, takes such notions on board by adopting ineffable conceptions of “reasons.” Note, in other words, that so long as subjectivism or any other antirealist account is saddled with weird conceptions of “reasons,” then its problems may stem (at least in part) from this rather than whatever other issues the position has. Ironically, then, the main issue with some antirealist positions may be that they’re too much like realism.

I don’t want to dwell on the notion of reasons being “undefinable” too much, so I’ll cut things short here. I’ll end with two remarks.

First, that “reasons” talk is “undefinable” should be taken as a significant red flag about a view. It is always better to define or in some way communicate what you mean than to concede that you’re unable to do so and evoke a mysterious or obscure notion that you can’t explain.

Second, framing these matters in terms of “reasons” is a relatively recent, parochial development. It is quite strange when proponents of such views take their perspective to be so inescapably self-evident that they don’t bother to ensure that others think the same way, either historically or in the present. There is little empirical evidence that ineffable notions of normative reasons are a feature of ordinary thought or language, among native English speakers or otherwise. As such, those who claim to “have” the concepts in question are not entitled to insist that their possession of such concepts is ordinary, typical, or representative of some universal way of thinking. That’s an empirical question, and nobody’s done the work to show that it’s true. So people allegedly in possession of these concepts are making a mistake when they treat those, like me, who are skeptical that there even is a concept to be had as though we are psychological outliers: this has yet to be demonstrated.

What should you do? Perhaps you should do what you presently desire the most. Or maybe you should deliberate about what the best course of action would be independent of your desires, and work up the motivation to do that instead. These possibilities reflect the subjectivist and realist conceptions of value, respectively.

Or perhaps you should do something a bit more subtle. Perhaps you should think about what a perfectly rational version of you, free of your biases, would prefer. You could also imagine this perfectly rational version of you being in possession of all non-normative facts relevant to making any given decision, as well. This version of you would be able to reason perfectly and know all relevant facts. While you are not this being, you can do your best to imagine what this being would be like, and approximate the course of action you have reason to believe it would favor.

Such a possibility carves a middle path between acting on our present desires and acting on reasons that have no connection to those desires. This middle path appreciates the connection between normative value and our personal goals and values, while also recognizing that we can be misinformed or biased in ways that we would not on reflection wish to influence our decisions.

You may desire to go for a walk, but you presumably wouldn’t desire to go for a walk on a particular day if you knew you’d be hit by a car if you did. And you may desire to eat at the same restaurant again rather than try a new one, but you presumably wouldn’t if you knew if you’d only try the new restaurant you’d have an incredible experience. Sure, we generally want to act on our desires, but our desires can prompt us to pursue courses of action that are misinformed or warped by our psychological shortcomings.

If only we knew. If only we could reason in a perfectly rational, unbiased way. What would we choose?

That is the rationale behind this suggestion. And it may appear to be a compelling one. Of course this ideal version of you is a fiction. A fantasy. Not someone who could ever really walk the earth. None of us could be functionally omniscient. None of us could fully extirpate even the most minor of biases. But this fictional version of us nevertheless represents, so we may be inclined to suppose, a single, fully optimized version of us. A complete, or perfect version of us. A normative North Star around which our deliberations can gravitate. Sure, we can never reach this ideal, but we can at least do our best to approximate it. And perhaps, with time, we can asymptotically approach our ideal selves.

I don’t think this makes much sense. The whole point of the notion of outsourcing what you should do to this ideal version of yourself is to provide a single, definitive answer about what you should do in a given situation while preserving stance-dependence. But the very notion of a perfectly rational version of you, or a notion of all the relevant facts, as well as the very concept of an ideal version of you already rely on normative concepts. There are an infinite number of possible versions of you that think differently and have access to different information. Which ones count as the perfectly rational ones? Which ones count as the perfectly informed ones? Answers to these questions will inevitably turn on normative considerations. And how do you determine what the proper normative considerations are? You already gave up appealing to your own subjective standards and to stance-independent standards, so your only option would be to appeal to the standards of some ideal version of yourself…but that’s the very person whose standards you’re trying to figure out in the first place.

Furthermore, while the hypothetically singular, ideal version of you is intended to be a fiction that cannot be realized in practice, that we cannot become such a person is a practical limitation, not a conceptual or logical one. It is at least possible in principle to occupy the point of view of the ideal version of ourselves. If not, it would make no sense to try to approximate such a being’s point of view in the first place.

But I’m not convinced an ideal version of us is a coherent notion in the first place. Our values are shaped not simply by particular epistemic practices and non-normative facts about what the world independent of ourselves is like, but by our predispositions, personalities, inclinations, and experiences. And these simply cannot be eliminated from the picture through a process of “debiasing” without stripping us of any coherent sense of self in the first place; what distinguishes us from one another is partially constituted by our eccentricities. One might suppose that we could strip all of these away and locate some core self distinct from the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of each individual, and perhaps if we did we’d find the same foundation present in the mind of every agent. If so, perhaps we all share the same ideal version of ourselves.

I don’t think so. The notion of some abstract, undifferentiated, primordial “us” that would emerge if we eliminated our personalities, quirks, and experiences isn’t some fanciful fiction we could imagine but never arrive at in practice; it is a non-entity. Strip away everything that makes us us and you have nothing but a nervous system with only the rawest and most basic drives: hunger, thirst, fatigue. Even if we could sand away everything that makes us unique, identify some undifferentiated core to our agency, then imagine such a being knowing everything relevant to making decisions, why suppose it’d want anything in particular at all? Would it want a family? Would it want to see a movie? Would it enjoy music? Which music? And why would it enjoy that music, as opposed to something else?

No, such a being would be so alien that we face two questions. First, how could we possibly know what such a being would favor under ideal conditions? It is so unlike us we’d have little to grasp when it comes to reasoning about what its conclusions would be. This epistemic gap is, I believe, insurmountable. We simply lack the conceptual tools to make any reasonable judgments about what such a being would favor.

Second, it was already a stretch to suppose we would care what an “ideal” version of us would favor. Now we’re supposed to imagine an ideal version of us that lacks the many features that make us unique. Our prejudices, our biases, our eccentricities, everything that makes us unique isn’t merely some distorting factor; it is a push and pull, a response to stimuli, an impression, a scar, an internalized emotive response, a barely remembered trauma, it is all of this and more, it is the very assembly of experiences and memories that makes us people to begin with. If I’m to jettison all of that, then imagine what I’d want, I’m left doing little more than scratching my head. Can I even imagine that? How would I know if I’d succeeded? And if I did, why, at that point, would I even care what such a being would want? It is alien to me in precisely the ways that matter to me.

Most importantly, this whole hopeless exercise rests on the notion that there is a single, ideal version of us, and this, in turn, relies on the notion that there is a single set of standards for evaluating which state of affairs we could be in that would be ideal. But to make such a determination would require adopting a privileged perspective independent of any one of us in the first place. There are countless combinations of standards or states of mind we could in principle consider unbiased, and just as many combinations of facts we could consider relevant; there is no single, privileged set of standards and facts in the first place; judgments about appropriately unbiased standards and relevant facts can only be made from within a particular vantage point.

The whole point of the exercise was to avoid such a view from nowhere; yet such a view remains operating in the background, implicitly. But suppose it isn’t. In that case, we’d be back where we started: do we appeal to our present standards of evaluation for what constitutes an ideal self? Presumably not! That’s what we wanted to avoid. Do we appeal to the standards of an ideal version of ourselves? Of course not! We’re trying to settle on a single standard for what would constitute an ideal version in the first place; we can’t appeal to such an entity to determine what that entity would be like without having already settled what it would be like.

There’s no way around this.

There is a simple explanation for this. There is no single standard for what makes something ideal or relevant. These notions are ineliminably bound up in our individual perspectives, and are themselves always and inextricably perspectival. I believe this has broader implications for philosophy, but the takeaway here is that it’s not simply the case that we can’t adequately approximate what an ideal version of ourselves would favor in practice, but that it makes no sense to suppose there is an ideal version of ourselves to begin with.

I’ve done my best to transcribe excerpts from this clip:

Antirealists frequently want to make room for people to do moral reasoning. They don’t want the whole field of ethics to be made obsolete by the fact that there are no moral truths. So then they will say something like “Well, so you can still do reasoning to try to make your moral attitudes consistent.” And so okay we supposedly still have reason to do that […] And that’s supposedly what we’re doing in moral philosophy, okay. But my claim is “No, there’d be no reason to do that. Like if there aren’t any objective moral truths there’d be no reason to worry about the consistency of your attitudes.”

Huemer makes several mistakes in this short clip.

First, he implies that antirealists think that there are no moral facts. But this is imprecise. Some moral antirealists think there are no moral truths (error theorists, noncognitivists), but others don’t (constructivists, subjectivists, some contemporary expressivists). What Huemer said isn’t quite incorrect so much as imprecise and potentially misleading.

Second, his statement that “And so okay we supposedly still have reason to do that” is ambiguous. What kind of reason is he referring to? A stance-independent reason, or a stance-dependent one? Both pose a problem for Huemer’s remarks.

Huemer goes on to say “No, there’d be no reason to do that. Like if there aren’t any objective moral truths there’d be no reason to worry about the consistency of your attitudes.” This implies Huemer is only thinking in terms of stance-independent reasons, and is assuming that the antirealists who say they’d care about consistency think they have stance-independent reasons to do so. This is because he concludes that if there aren’t any objective (stance-independent) moral truths, then there’d be “no reason” to worry about consistency. This wouldn’t follow unless the reasons were stance-independent.

One problem with this claim is that moral antirealists only deny that there are stance-independent moral truths. Is the norm “one ought to have consistent beliefs” a moral norm, or a nonmoral norm? Having consistent beliefs is not a paradigmatic instance of a moral norm, but is perhaps closer to an epistemic, logical, or prudential norm (or some combination of these). While one could make the case that it’s a moral norm, moral antirealists are not obliged to do so. They could be antirealists about moral truths, but could be normative realists about whatever normative domain they believed consistency fell within. Given this, the rejection of moral realism does not straightforwardly entail that one does not have stance-independent reasons to have consistent beliefs.

Second, Huemer doesn’t appear to even consider another possibility: that the moral antirealist is also an antirealist about whatever reasons they’d have for favoring consistency. The reason an antirealist would care about consistency in such circumstances could simply be that they subjectively value consistency. Moral antirealists face no challenges whatsoever in rejecting moral realism and believing one has stance-dependent reasons to be consistent.

Huemer continues:

The reason why we care about the consistency of our beliefs is that inconsistent beliefs are guaranteed to be false […] If there’s no facts, it doesn’t matter.

It’s true that if you have inconsistent beliefs, some of those beliefs must be false. But this isn’t the entire story. I don’t simply care about maximizing the number of true beliefs I have and minimizing the number of false beliefs. I care about having the sorts of beliefs that allow me to succeed in pursuing my goals. And inconsistent beliefs are an impediment to pursuing our goals effectively. Truth, for me, is bound up in goal pursuit, in success, and, ultimately, in action. I am not simply a truth-tallying lump that sits around attempting to have consistent beliefs because I want to minimize false beliefs. I care about consistency to the extent that it is useful to do so.

Right now, each and every one of us holds at least some inconsistent beliefs. Are you desperately trying to root out every inconsistency and eliminate it? Probably not. Why not? Because you have better things to do with your time. You’d be late for a meeting if you did that. You need to pick the kids up from school. You need another cup of coffee. You need to answer that annoying email. We are not subordinate to the pursuit of consistency because we are in turn subordinate to holding true beliefs; no, our epistemic pursuits are ultimately subordinate to our ends.

His latter remark is especially baffling. He says, “If there’s no facts, it doesn’t matter.” It’s not clear what facts Huemer is implying the antirealist thinks don’t exist; he just says “no facts” without qualification. Antirealists typically believe in all sorts of facts. They only deny that there are stance-independent moral facts (and if they are normative antirealists, that there are stance-independent normative facts). They don’t necessarily deny that there are facts of any other kind. And we antirealists encounter the same world as everyone else. If I hold inconsistent beliefs, there could be consequences. Maybe I hold inconsistent beliefs about the Napoleonic Wars. This is unlikely to ever have any real-world consequences for me. I may never discover the inconsistency. Yet if I hold inconsistent beliefs about whether the pill on my table is a medication I need or a dangerous poison, well, now I’m in trouble. Yes, consistency matters because it is related to truth, but we are only concerned in practice with consistency when it matters to us, when we care, when it impacts us.

And, of course, there is a problem with the claim that “it doesn’t matter.” Does Huemer mean that it doesn’t stance-independently matter, or that it doesn’t matter in any respect at all? Because antirealism does not entail that nothing matters, it only denies that anything stance-independently matters… and even that’s a stretch, because again, moral antirealists only deny that there are stance-independent moral facts. This is entirely consistent with being a realist about other sorts of value, and thinking that things can “stance-independently matter” in various nonmoral domains.

What I find most frustrating with these remarks is the imprecision and ambiguity that result from constantly using normative language without making the metanormative presuppositions implicit in his use of those terms explicit. While in most contexts doing so isn’t necessary, in this case, for the sake of clarity, it is.