Acting like an error theorist: A response to Oliver Traldi
1.0 The abstract/concrete antirealism asymmetry
Oliver Traldi wrote an interesting commentary on error theory a few years ago. You can find that post here, and I encourage you to read it before reading this response.
Traldi begins by expressing frustration over an asymmetry in the public reception people have towards a concrete instance of a particular position and a more general expression of a position that would entail that concrete position. For instance, consider the following phrases:
There are no objective moral facts.
It is not objectively wrong to torture people for fun.
The former may look innocuous enough, whereas the latter could make you seem like a monster.
Traldi offers error theory as an example of an antirealist philosophical position according to which both (1) and (2) would be true. Standard forms of error theory hold that moral claims purport to describe objective moral facts, but there are no such facts, so all such claims are false. As a result, all claims of the form “X is morally wrong” are false.
Stated in abstract terms, this may not seem obviously odious. As Traldi points out, error theory is regarded as a respectable position. Philosophers routinely publish papers defending it. Yet error theory commits the error theorist to agreeing that, for any monstrous atrocity you can think of, “[atrocity] is morally wrong” is false. Or put a little differently, the error theorist is committed to saying that “it is not morally wrong to [atrocity].” So, for instance, error theorists are ostensibly committed to endorsing that statements like “it’s wrong to torture people for fun” are false (I say ostensibly since an error theorist could endorse fictionalism and continue to say that actions are morally right or wrong).
Error theory is just one example of several that all reveal the same asymmetry. Some metaethical positions appear to have few or no significant reputational consequences when stated in abstract terms, but explicitly expressing or endorsing concrete instances, or specific entailments of those positions would be reputationally harmful, e.g., “morality is relative,” may not sound so bad, but deploying relativism in concrete cases can make espousing relativism reputationally costly as well.
Traldi speculates about why this asymmetry might exist. For instance, perhaps people simply don’t draw out the implications of the views when stated in abstract terms, a possibility Traldi sets aside as unlikely. See Traldi’s article for a short discussion of a couple other possibilities.
2.0 Traldi’s explanation for the abstract/concrete asymmetry
However, Traldi settles on what he takes to be the “right explanation”:
The right explanation, I believe, is that nobody expects the moral error theorists to act on their view. Like some other philosophical ideas, solipsism, skepticism, and the like included, moral error theory seems to exist on a plane of abstraction. Not only can nobody go through life as a moral error theorist, since there are always choices to be made which require value judgments, philosophers have questioned whether it’s even possible to believe a moral error theory, since belief may be in some sense constitutively normative.
Traldi also suggests that nobody associates error theory with any partisan political perspective (including especially odious ones). That’s true enough, and we can set that aside. Instead, I want to focus on this first half of what Traldi takes to be the correct explanation, because I think it is mistaken. I will then propose an alternative, if partial explanation.
Traldi suggests that nobody expects the moral theorist to “act on their view,” and that “Not only can nobody go through life as a moral error theorist, since there are always choices to be made which require value judgments, philosophers have questioned whether it’s even possible to believe a moral error theory, since belief may be in some sense constitutively normative.”
I see several problems with these remarks. The first is that I deny that there is any distinctively different way one ought to expect error theorists to act, given their belief that no actions are morally right or wrong. All an error theorist is committed to is something like this:
Ordinary moral language involves a commitment to mistaken metaphysical presuppositions. As such, ordinary moral language is systematically false.
Error theory is a synthesis of a semantic thesis about ordinary moral language and a metaphysical thesis: the denial that there are stance-independent moral facts.
It has no direct implications for our normative moral standards, our values, our attitudes, our emotional states, our motivation to act in any particular way, our actions, and so on behind a highly circumscribed set of beliefs (e.g., we must believe that there are no stance-independent moral facts) and what we’re committed to saying if speaking sincerely (e.g., we’d have to sincerely acknowledge that we think first-order moral claims are false). For instance, an error theorist agrees that the sentence:
It is morally wrong to torture people for fun
…is false, while a moral realist would probably judge it to be true. However, this is completely consistent with the error theorist, compared to the moral realist, being:
Equally outraged by torture
Equally opposed to torture
Equally disposed to act to prevent instances of torture
Equally motivated to attempt to stop people from torturing
Equally punitive towards those who commit acts of torture
Etc.
In general, a moral error theorist can and probably would be completely or almost completely indistinguishable from a moral realist with respect to their actions, reactions, and attitudes in all ordinary moral contexts. Yet this isn’t because error theorists would be acting in a way inconsistent with error theory; it’s because error theory (and many other abstract metaethical positions) don’t entail any particular normative or practical implications, and have few or no substantive behavioral consequences.
Nothing about error theory dictates or even implies that the error theorist would be any more or less opposed to any particular action. An error theorist could, if pressed, even engage in a bit of conceptual engineering, and propose a new set of terms and concepts to characterize their attitudes, judgments, and actions. Sure, they might maintain, they don’t consider actions “morally wrong.” But they could consider them “schmorally wrong.” Schmoral wrongness is just like moral wrongness, only it dispenses with the mistaken metaphysical presuppositions implicit in ordinary moral discourse, but retains everything else.
About the only thing one might expect of an error theorist is that they might, in certain academic contexts, acknowledge that they don’t think actions are literally moral or immoral. They may also change the way they speak in everyday contexts, but such alterations are likely a result of their commitment to changing their patterns of speech to be more in line with their metaethical views. That might lead to some awkward conversations, but error theorists aren’t going to start mugging people or expressing indifference to atrocities simply because they think the metaphysical presuppositions implicit in folk discourse are mistaken.
For instance, it would be ridiculous to think that if an error theorist witnessed someone injure another person, leave them for dead, and run away, the error theorist would shrug and say “well, since the action was not morally wrong, I see little reason to call the police…” nor is there any reason to think error theorists would be more likely to lie, steal, or kill, since these actions are not, technically speaking, “morally wrong.” Error theorists are not committed to callousness, psychopathy, or egoism.
In sum, I think Traldi is mistaken that the asymmetry is best explained by people not thinking error theorists will act on their view. And, if they did, this would reflect a misconception about error theory: it wouldn’t make much sense for people to be untroubled by error theorists because they won’t act on their view because error theory doesn’t have any substantive implications for how that person should be expected to act.
Of course, we must distinguish between the descriptive and justificatory considerations (something Traldi adroitly achieves in addressing various possible explanations). There are at least two separate considerations:
A descriptive account of why the asymmetry occurs
A justification for asymmetric reactions
I am objecting to (2). Traldi could be correct that the asymmetry in response between abstract and concrete expressions of error theory is, as a matter of descriptive fact, an accurate assessment of people’s reactions, even if these reactions would not be justified.
I’m not sure Traldi’s subsequent remarks convey Traldi’s own views, or the views of the hypothetical people who are assessing the error theorist’s remarks. Yet Traldi next says:
Not only can nobody go through life as a moral error theorist, since there are always choices to be made which require value judgment
Either way, such a view would be mistaken. People can (and do) go through life as error theorists. Error theory does not prohibit people from making choices that require value judgments.
For instance, suppose you believed most people were gastronomic realists: they thought some foods were stance-independently good, and others were bad, and that we all had an obligation to eat good food and avoid eating bad food. And suppose you thought this view was mistaken. As a result, you held the view that when ordinary people say things like “cheeseburgers are good,” that such statements are false.
Would this mean that you’d be unable to make decisions about what to eat? That you could make no value judgments about which foods are good or bad? Only in a weird, and circumscribed sense: an error theorist might not be able to make genuine and sincere judgments about whether foods are “good” or “bad” in the ordinary sense, but an error theorist does not have to think that their culinary decisions must strictly conform to the implicit commitments of ordinary language. They could still prefer some foods over others, adopt revisionary conceptions of goodness and badness, and act in accordance with some normative notions that fall outside the scope of ordinary language.
To ramp up the example further, suppose you discovered that almost everyone else was committed to the belief that God personally sustained all of existence, and that, as a result, all claims describing physical reality presupposed the existence of God. And suppose you didn’t believe in God. If so, then all ordinary claims describing the physical world would be false. This would mean that you’d be an error theorist about everyday claims such as:
Trees exist
It is raining
I need to drink water
Fire is hot
After all, technically speaking, given ordinary language, the statement “trees exist” requires a commitment to the notion that God exists, which you don’t believe. As such, you must believe that “trees exist” is literally false.
Would this mean you must act as though trees didn’t exist in some other respect? Would you die of dehydration because, technically speaking, water doesn’t exist? Would you walk into walls because, technically speaking, walls didn’t exist? More generally, are you required to conform your actions to the commitments of ordinary language?
No. The fact that other people use language a certain way, and the fact that you recognize this doesn’t require you to do anything, nor is acting in any particular way with respect to your own values and attitudes some kind of performative contradiction or indication that you aren’t “really” acting in accordance with such a belief.
Your judgments, values, and decisions are not circumscribed by other people’s presuppositions, even if those presuppositions are so embedded in everyday discourse that they constitute the meaning of the terms in question.
We do not operate in a logico-semantic prison whereby our attitudes, preferences, and actions are delimited by the semantics of ordinary language.
3.0 Believing error theory
Traldi also states that,
philosophers have questioned whether it’s even possible to believe a moral error theory, since belief may be in some sense constitutively normative.
A moral error theorist doesn’t have to endorse a global normative error theory that includes whatever norms constitute of beliefs (presumably epistemic norms). They could reject parity premises between moral realism and epistemic realism. As a result, this problem may only arise if the moral error theorist also accepts some form of error theory or antirealism about epistemic norms, too.
This may be a reference to Streumer (2013). If so, I don’t find Streumer’s arguments persuasive. I deny that one needs to not believe they don’t have “reasons” to believe things in order to believe them. Yet this is what Streumer proposes. See e.g., this component of Streumer’s argument:
(B2) We cannot have a belief while believing that there is no reason for this belief (p. 196)
Streumer characterizes the reasons in question as follows:
I shall use the term “reason for belief” to mean a consideration that counts in favor of a belief. (p. 196)
I’m a quietist about many contemporary characterizations of normative reasons in the philosophical literature. Specifically, I deny that the notion of an irreducibly normative reason is meaningful. I don’t know exactly what conception of reasons Streumer has in mind here, but the characterization on offer is, at best, inadequate for me to evaluate its meaning, and at worst, is a quick way of referencing a characterization of “reasons” I would reject as unintelligible. I, for one, don’t think there are “reasons” of the sort many contemporary metaethicists believe in. As a result, I do believe that there are no normative reasons, and I believe I have no reason (in the sense I suspect Streumer means “reason”) to believe this.
Streumer is welcome to insist that I can’t do this. But one philosopher’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens. I am more committed to my rejection of unintelligible notions of normative reasons than I am to having beliefs. In which case, it would be more apt to say that, if Streumer is correct, that I literally have no beliefs, since I explicitly maintain that I have no “reasons” of the relevant kind for any of my beliefs.
Of course, I don’t think this. If this were an implication of Streumer’s view, I’d take it as a reductio, and I’d just reject Streumer’s account of the conditions necessary for belief (or Streumer’s conception of what a belief is). As far as I can tell, I have beliefs, and don’t think I have any reasons for them. Though again, if the cost of having beliefs is to give up denying that I have reasons for them, I’ll go for having no beliefs. In that case, I have “schmeliefs,” which function just like beliefs, only they drop the condition that I must not believe I have no reasons for schmelieving them.
4.0 Normative entanglement provides a better explanation
Finally, I question whether Traldi’s explanation can account for asymmetry. If people aren’t troubled by someone saying “no actions are morally wrong,” because they don’t expect the person to act on this, why wouldn’t they be similarly untroubled by someone saying “it’s not morally wrong to torture babies for fun”? Are they, with respect to concrete cases, more concerned that they would act in some particular way (such as torturing babies, or failing to report someone doing so) in concrete cases? If so, why? I’m not sure Traldi’s explanation provides any clear answer.
This brings me to my partial solution. Those of you familiar with my work may have already anticipated it: normative entanglement.
Normative entanglement occurs whenever questions or statements are framed in ways that entangle metaethical and normative considerations, or are framed in ways that readily imply that one’s stance towards a metaethical issue carries some implication about their normative moral values or their attitude, character, or disposition.
For instance, imagine a dialog like this:
Alex: Do you think it’s objectively wrong to torture babies for fun?
Sam: No.
Sam’s response technically only entails that Sam denies that
It is stance-independently wrong to torture babies for fun.
This does not entail that:
Sam doesn’t think it’s wrong to torture babies for fun
Sam isn’t opposed to torturing babies for fun
Sam doesn’t find torturing babies for fun monstrous
Sam wouldn’t attempt to stop baby torture
…and so on. Yet those who observe this exchange could readily think that Sam does think some or all of these things.
Normative entanglement may account for Traldi’s asymmetry. Here’s how that would work: when someone states that, abstractly speaking, there are no objective moral facts, or that all statement of the form “X is wrong” are false, this carries no particular implication about their attitudes or beliefs because such remarks are “normative empty,” as it were: they don’t express any particular attitude towards any particular issue.
But the moment you fill in the blank with a concrete example, these remarks may carry implications about the person’s normative moral beliefs towards that issue, which in turn facilitates an appraiser’s judgment of their character.
Consider, for instance, someone who said:
It’s not objectively wrong to get an abortion.
This person could think it’s wrong to get abortions relative to their own values. Or they could be a noncognitivist, and strongly disapprove of abortion. All this remark really commits them to is a metaethical stance, not a normative moral stance. Yet in most everyday contexts it would look like this person is at least also making a normative moral claim, or at least alluding to a stance. I suspect if you asked people what this person thought about abortion, people would judge that:
They do not think abortion is morally wrong
They are not outraged at the thought of someone getting an abortion
They do not favor laws that ban all abortions
Yet none of this is logically entailed by such a remark. Think about how easily we could change how we’d interpret this remark if we simply change the emphasis:
It’s not objectively wrong to get an abortion.
If we imagine a person adding extra emphasis on “objectively,” now the person is indicating that they do think it’s morally wrong, just not objectively so.
I believe much of the way metaethical disputes have been framed has consistently failed to recognize the role pragmatic considerations play in the sorts of inferences we make about various philosophical claims. And I suspect this problem persists because philosophers constantly vacillate between the narrow, technical meanings of sentences expressed in a specific philosophical context, and their everyday meanings, which do tend to convey the various pragmatic implications associated with these remarks. So, for instance, while an error theorist may be committed to the claim that “murder is wrong” is technically false, this means something very narrow and specific and does not carry the implications ordinary people would associate with this remark. Yet, for some reason, philosophers seem to consistently fail to distinguish between the error theorist’s technical commitments, which are typically framed solely in virtue of semantic and metaphysical theses, which can be construed in philosophical contexts without the pragmatic associations their analysis of these statements would carry in ordinary discourse, and the pragmatic implications these claims would carry in everyday discourse. In other words, the moral error theorist thinks that the statement:
“Murder is wrong” is false only with respect to the propositional content carried exclusively by the “semantic” content of the sentence. This does not mean the error theorist is making any other claims, e.g., they are not committed, in judging such statements to be false, to any pragmatic implications that would be associated with this remark in an everyday context. There are, in other words, two versions of this statement: the purely semantic philosophical version, and the ordinary, everyday version, which includes both semantic content and expressive/pragmatic content that typically emerges in the contexts in which such remarks would be made in everyday contexts.
When an error theorist at an academic conference says:
“It’s not wrong to torture babies.”
They might as well be saying:
“Ordinary people who make moral claims mean to describe a stance-independent morality reality. Any given instance of such claims in ordinary discourse are thus technically false since those claims are committed to a false presupposition. This would include statements like ‘it’s wrong to torture babies.’ Such statements technically convey the proposition, ‘it is stance-independently wrong to torture babies.’ Whatever else they may be used to convey in ordinary contexts, there are no stance-independent moral facts, so, such statements are technically false.”
That is just the beginning of an effort to unpack what an error theorist is saying, and it takes an entire paragraph. Yet note that this has absolutely nothing to do with the error theorist’s attitude, disposition, sentiments, feelings, emotions, approval or disapproval of baby torture, and so on. If, on the other hand, one were to say
“It’s not wrong to torture babies.”
A person who makes such a claim in ordinary contexts is more likely than someone who doesn’t say such things to…well, torture babies. An error theorist, however, is probably no more likely to torture babies than a moral realist. This is because, in ordinary contexts, this would typically be employed not merely in evaluating the semantic commitments implicit in ordinary discourse, but to convey information about their own attitudes, feelings, sentiments, disposition to act, character, and so on
To provide a more grounded and plausible moral stance someone might take, imagine you heard someone say:
Abortion is not morally wrong.
In everyday contexts, this would very likely tell you a lot about this person’s normative stance, voting behavior, attitudes and disposition towards abortion, and so on. Yet if an error theorist said this in an academic context you wouldn’t be able to tell if they were pro-choice or not. An error theorist could easily say “technically speaking, I don’t think abortion is morally wrong” then go on to add that they’re pro-life and oppose abortion. There is no contradiction here. Yet it would be profoundly strange for a nonphilosopher, outside an academic context, to say “I don’t think abortion is morally wrong,” and do the same.
Error theory has nothing to do with the error theorist’s personal attitudes, character, or behavior at all. It is merely the view that when ordinary people engage in a certain kind of discourse, they’re systematically asserting false claims. In principle, this point could be made by an artificial intelligence that has no ability or interest in acting at all, and merely describes how ordinary people speak. Would we think this artificial intelligence is an evil monster that wants to torture babies? No. That would be ridiculous.
If error theory is true, it is true in virtue of (a) facts about how ordinary people talk and (b) whether the way they talk is subject to systematic error. Extrapolating from an error theorist’s account to the implication that the error theorist might be some kind of evil psychopath or a monster is absurd, and yet moral philosophers continue to be tempted to imply this. I believe normative entanglement may be at the heart of this, and that philosophers are getting tripped up over and conflating the pragmatic associations that the ordinary language form of a given sentence conveys with what an error theorist is technically committed to when assigning a true or false value to structurally identical versions of those sentences in a philosophical context. Literally speaking, the philosophical version of “murder is wrong” and the ordinary language version of “murder is wrong,” are simply not used to express, nor do they mean, the same thing.
If, as I suspect, philosophers are getting tripped up over this, it is a problem of their own making. They are at fault for mistakenly thinking it makes any sense to evaluate the meaning of sentences outside a context of usage, and to attempt to strip those sentences of their pragmatic implications. It looks to me as though philosophers persist in attempting to do so, and have reliably failed. The more I look at what philosophers do and how they do it, the more I am convinced that they invent the very problems they grapple with, and that many problems in philosophy could be resolved by simply letting go of one’s assumptions about how language and meaning work, to step outside the confines of the academy, and reevaluate the degree to which philosophical speculation emerges downstream of ordinary language, in all its beautiful, messy glory.
References
Streumer, B. (2013). Can we believe the error theory?. The Journal of Philosophy, 110(4), 194-212.