Antirealists need not grant "moral data" at the outset of inquiry

A response to Pat Flynn

In a recent post, Patrick Flynn states that:

I suggest that metaphysical data encompasses any broad feature of reality that we have reason to believe is actually real at the beginning of our investigation. Examples include contingency, change, consciousness, stability/order, freedom, and morality. Such data typically arise from common sense, common experience, or both.

One can stipulate that by “metaphysical data” they mean any feature of reality that “we have reason to believe is actually real at the beginning of our investigation.” But all this amounts to is a definition, and tells us nothing about what the content of the “metaphysical data” actually is.

I have a few worries here: one is the use of “our.” Who is included in this? What if I disagree about what “we” “have reason to believe”?

I typically take “data” to be a kind of given, something that conflicting parties agree on, but then dispute how best to interpret it, offering different theories and accounts. By employing the term “metaphysical data” one may give the misleading impression that one has uncontroversially established what we “have reason to believe” at the outset of inquiry, even if others dispute this fact.

For instance, at the outset of inquiry, I don’t think I have any reason to believe in phenomenal consciousness, freedom (in the sense of free will), or moral realism. That may seem preposterous to others, but their views strike me as just as implausible at the outset of inquiry.

Yet Patrick says this:

I claim we have good reason at the start of metaphysical investigation to accept stance-independent moral facts […]

When Patrick say “we” have good reason, what, exactly, does this mean? Who is we? Does that include me? Do we all have the same reasons to think the same things at the outset of inquiry? If so, why? If not, in what ways do we differ, and are those differences justified? If they are, then universal statements of them for “we have,” without qualification, will not be true.

Patrick says this, in support of such a claim:

“This data is derived from common sense and common experience, frequently evident in moral thought and discourse.”

Yet this strikes me as an empirical claim. If it isn’t, then what kind of claim is it? If it is, then it is subject to empirical investigation. At present, I do not believe there is good empirical evidence that moral realism is “derived from commonsense” or “common experience,” nor that it is “frequently evident in moral thought and discourse.”

On the contrary, I have documented on numerous occasions that available empirical evidence does not support these claims. https://www.lanceindependent.com/p/j-p-andrew-insists-people-are-moral is one article where I discuss this.

The best available empirical studies find that nonphilosophers are more likely to endorse antirealist response options than realist ones, and that, even when more recent studies find a majority of participants give responses operationalized to indicate moral realism, that these majorities are slim and unstable and often flip under different conditions (see e.g., Zijlstra, 2023 for one such example). However, as I argue in my https://ecommons.cornell.edu/items/068e8d33-af37-407c-b3fe-d2035afed62f, I believe the best explanation of available data is that nonphilosophers have no determinate metaethical stances at all, and are neither moral realists nor antirealists.

Even if one discounts this entire literature, that would still leave those who claim realism is a commonsense view with little more than anecdotal and armchair claims, and I am not obliged to grant that their anecdotes and armchair theorizing are sufficient to establish that moral realism is a commonsense view, nor am I obliged to prioritize their experiences over my own. And it is simply not my experience that I or others speak, think, or act in a way that distinctively favors moral realism as the best explanation of everyday thought and behavior. Among the many shortcomings of such claims, most of us have extremely limited experience in terms of language and culture, and are simply not in a position to generalize from our own experiences to all of humanity, at least not without a considerable body of empirical evidence that would warrant generalizations in the relevant domain. Simply put: we do not have sufficient cross-cultural data to support such claims. What we do have is cross-cultural data showing very high rates of antirealist responses among participants from different societies.

Patrick says:

Error theorists, committed to moral nihilism, must disable this data to maintain their theory's viability—obviously. They typically do so by arguing that such moral facts would be intolerably queer, or by citing moral disagreement or evolutionary theory.

Maybe so, but only insofar as “error theory” is defined in terms of its concession that realism is a commonsense view. Insofar as it does so, I reject error theory, and I think other antirealists should, too. We simply have no reason to concede to realists that realism is a commonsense position or better accords with how people typically speak or think in the first place.

References

Zijlstra, L. (2023). Are people implicitly moral objectivists?. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 14(1), 229-247.