To say that people act “as if” moral realism is true is to take some set of behavior or practices we have established people engage in, then offer a theoretical account of why people engage in that behavior that explains what’s going on.
The idea that ordinary people act “as if” moral realism is true is *obviously* true. We don’t need empirical studies to know that ordinary people act “as if” 2 + 3 = 5 is true; this is obvious from experience.
When people, say, condemn and criticize others for engaging in behavior that they judge to be morally wrong, it’s because they believe the wrongness of such behavior is a matter of objective truth. That is, people act as if they believe it is objectively true that certain behaviors are wrong (in the same way that people act as if they believe it is objectively true that 2 + 3 = 5).
Lance kind of already said this, but just to expand and give my view: the analogous claim would be more something like, "when people all agree with claims like '2+3=5', they act as if the Peano axioms are true" or "... they act as if the set of natural numbers exists".
I think there are a few different interpretations one can make of statements like this:
1. The only possible reason people agree on simple arithmetical statements is if they believe PA/the existence of N _and they are aware of that dependence_
2. The same as 1. but people might not be aware the only coherent way to agree with simple arithmetical truths is to believe in PA
3. Same as 2. but some (and 3a, 3b, etc can be defined for different values of "some") people not only aren't aware, but actively deny they believe in PA even though they couldn't actually coherently hold their first order beliefs if this were true
4. It's not the only coherent way to hold to simple arithmetical truths, but it's the simplest/most elegant/some other desirable feature way to express all of one's first order arithmetical beliefs. 5 and 6 relate to this one in the same way as 2 and 3 do to 1, in terms of how well people understand/agree with the relationship between their first order arithmetical beliefs and their belief in PA
7. PA is not the only, nor even a uniquely good way of holding all the right first order arithmetical beliefs--but people are wrong about this and think that it is.
8. There's nothing special about PA and no one believes there's anything special about PA.
In this case, I think 1 would be unambiguously interpretable as "people act as if PA is true", 8 is unambiguously "people don't act as if PA is true", but almost everything in between could be interpreted either way depending on your own commitments about the relationship between PA and first order arithmetical claims. Even in the face of unanimous-minus-one agreement that PA is unique, the one dissenting anti-realist could say that people only behave "as if PA is right" if you mistakenly think there's something special about PA--as it happens, most people do make that mistake! but with a proper understanding, they aren't necessarily interpreted as behaving "as if PA is true" even as they directly affirm that proposition!
I personally wouldn't die on that hill, I'd be happy to concede that people "behave as if", but they just have false beliefs that make them behave that way, and they could improve their beliefs without changing any of their behavior _wrt to arithmetical facts_, though they would change their behaviour as to how they _reflect on_ arithmetical facts.
But I think someone could make that case; and the case we're in with moral realism might be more like, "people behave in a way that is consistent with some naive interpretations of moral realism, but give confused answers as to their understanding of how they understand the relationship between their behaviour and their belief in moral realism, and we the disputants don't agree on how well 'moral realism' stacks up as an explanation for people's first order behaviours" in which case, while I am not totally opposed to the language of "behave as if realism is true", I do think we should be careful of drawing too strong conclusions from it on the basis that there might be other good interpretations of the same facts.
As I tried to explain in my response to Lance, that people act “as if” moral realism is true is strongly evidenced by their behavior during moral disagreements.
My view is: I'm more interested in the underlying facts of how what people believe and how they behave, and what we can learn from that about moral realism. If a moral realist and I agree on the underlying facts about how people behave (which of course we might not), and they want to characterize that as "... as if MR is true", and if putting a pin in the linguistic issue of "is this a fair characterization of the facts" helps us get to bigger cruxes faster, I'm fine with that.
I'm a bit puzzled at the suggestion that people behave as if more realism is true. What specific behaviors to people perform that would indicate that they're behaving is if it's true rather than as if some other metaethical theory is true?
To be clear, I'm not claiming that they do, the point I was conceding was that *in the case that people directly claimed that they believed in moral realism, and that the only possible justification for their first order actions is moral realism* I'd be happy to describe that case as "behaving as if moral realism is true"--even then it wouldn't prove that much since people might just be wrong about the relationship between their beliefs about moral realism and their behaviour, but I wouldn't feel too strongly about contesting the linguistic point.
But my final paragraph is saying I don't even think we're in the case--my nonobjection to "act as if true" language in the actual case I suspect we're in isn't me agreeing that it's the best way to characterize our actual situation; it's just me saying *even in a case where that language _is_ justified* it wouldn't settle the serious issues, so even if I grant that a moral realist isn't being completely unreasonable in using such language a) it still doesn't prove anything and b) they should be willing to acknowledge that an anti realist isn't being unreasonable to _deny_ that language.
2 + 3 = 5 is a first order claim. It tells you nothing about whether the person in question holds any specific metaphysical view about the nature of numbers. A better analogy would be whether when people say that 2 + 3 = 5 it's obvious that they are mathematical platonists. And it isn't obvious that they're mathematical platonistd.
It is not obvious that ordinary people are moral realists. In fact the best available evidence suggests that many of them are not. There is no good evidence that most people are more realists, or speak, think, or act like moral realists.
We have different understandings of what “realism” means. For example, if I’m an aesthetic realist about ice cream flavors, I may think it’s an objective fact that chocolate ice cream is more delicious than strawberry ice cream; and thus think assertions to the contrary are false, and that people who utter those contrary assertions are committing some kind of error. Disagreement over the better ice cream flavor, then, would be a genuine dispute about some purported fact that does not depend on mere subjective opinion.
Of course, most people are not aesthetic realists about ice cream flavors. Most people think there is no wrong answer to the question, “Is chocolate more delicious than strawberry?” Most people think there is no right answer, either. Asserting that one flavor is better than another is merely an expression of one’s personal opinion, rather than a representation that one flavor really is better, as a matter of objective truth.
In contrast, just about everyone is a realist about whether “2 + 3 = 5.” If two people, A and B, disagree over this claim (suppose A asserts “2 + 3 = 5,” while B asserts “2 + 3 = 23”), virtually everyone would think that A is correct and B is incorrect; everyone would think A is asserting a claim that is objectively true, while A is asserting a claim that is objectively false.
It’s obvious that, in regards to claims concerning ice cream flavors, most people act “as if” they are anti-realist about those claims. Equally obvious is that, in regards to claims concerning mathematical propositions, most people act “as if” they are realist about those claims.
Given the sense of “realism” I have in mind, I think it’s obvious that most people act “as if” moral realism is true. Most people treat moral propositions similar to mathematical propositions — as assertions purporting to be about objective facts, and can thus be true or false, regardless of one thinks. This is evident from moral disagreements. Unlike like aesthetic “disagreements” over ice cream flavors, moral disagreements assume there are objectively correct and incorrect positions, that errors about moral facts are possible. Case in point: the moral disagreement over slavery. Those who were vehemently antislavery were obviously acting “as if” they were realist about their position, by virtue of treating the pro-slavery position as being objectively wrong.
If you don't mean the same thing by moral realism than what do you mean by it? And why would you say people act as if it is true if you mean something different than me? That's irrelevant to any claim I am making. What matters is whether the claim I'm making is true. Not whether you can use the same words but mean something different. You can always use words differently.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on moral realism:
“Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common and more or less defining ground of moral realism (although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way).
As a result, those who reject moral realism are usefully divided into (i) those who think moral claims do not purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false (non-cognitivists) and (ii) those who think that moral claims do carry this purport but deny that any moral claims are actually true (error theorists).”
“Moral realism is not a particular substantive moral view nor does it carry a distinctive metaphysical commitment over and above the commitment that comes with thinking moral claims can be true or false and some are true.”
“The debate between moral realists and anti-realists assumes, though, that there is a shared object of inquiry—in this case, a range of claims all involved are willing to recognize as moral claims—about which two questions can be raised and answered: Do these claims purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false? Are some of them true? Moral realists answer ‘yes’ to both[.]”
I think it's not even clear what the domain of moral data is once we look outside our own culture. People in very different times and places have quite different standards of moral judgment. A "reasons first" analysis of morality would probably look quite odd to people from cultures that have no word or phrase corresponding to "reason for action".
I am not at all satisfied with attenpts to analyze moral concepts that begin and end with a few "paradigm cases" of modern english phrases.
I agree. I've written a bit about this elsewhere but if you're interested look into the work of Stich, Machery, and others on the topic of delineating moral from nonmoral norms. My general view is that there is no principled distinction between moral and nonmoral norms, and that "moral" serves a kind of loose social role in certain subcultures, has some historical roots in theism and Western notions, but is too porous and fuzzy a notion to serve as a legitimate boundary for a special domain of norms.
Fair enough. Thanks for sharing your perspective on the matter.
The idea that ordinary people act “as if” moral realism is true is *obviously* true. We don’t need empirical studies to know that ordinary people act “as if” 2 + 3 = 5 is true; this is obvious from experience.
When people, say, condemn and criticize others for engaging in behavior that they judge to be morally wrong, it’s because they believe the wrongness of such behavior is a matter of objective truth. That is, people act as if they believe it is objectively true that certain behaviors are wrong (in the same way that people act as if they believe it is objectively true that 2 + 3 = 5).
Lance kind of already said this, but just to expand and give my view: the analogous claim would be more something like, "when people all agree with claims like '2+3=5', they act as if the Peano axioms are true" or "... they act as if the set of natural numbers exists".
I think there are a few different interpretations one can make of statements like this:
1. The only possible reason people agree on simple arithmetical statements is if they believe PA/the existence of N _and they are aware of that dependence_
2. The same as 1. but people might not be aware the only coherent way to agree with simple arithmetical truths is to believe in PA
3. Same as 2. but some (and 3a, 3b, etc can be defined for different values of "some") people not only aren't aware, but actively deny they believe in PA even though they couldn't actually coherently hold their first order beliefs if this were true
4. It's not the only coherent way to hold to simple arithmetical truths, but it's the simplest/most elegant/some other desirable feature way to express all of one's first order arithmetical beliefs. 5 and 6 relate to this one in the same way as 2 and 3 do to 1, in terms of how well people understand/agree with the relationship between their first order arithmetical beliefs and their belief in PA
7. PA is not the only, nor even a uniquely good way of holding all the right first order arithmetical beliefs--but people are wrong about this and think that it is.
8. There's nothing special about PA and no one believes there's anything special about PA.
In this case, I think 1 would be unambiguously interpretable as "people act as if PA is true", 8 is unambiguously "people don't act as if PA is true", but almost everything in between could be interpreted either way depending on your own commitments about the relationship between PA and first order arithmetical claims. Even in the face of unanimous-minus-one agreement that PA is unique, the one dissenting anti-realist could say that people only behave "as if PA is right" if you mistakenly think there's something special about PA--as it happens, most people do make that mistake! but with a proper understanding, they aren't necessarily interpreted as behaving "as if PA is true" even as they directly affirm that proposition!
I personally wouldn't die on that hill, I'd be happy to concede that people "behave as if", but they just have false beliefs that make them behave that way, and they could improve their beliefs without changing any of their behavior _wrt to arithmetical facts_, though they would change their behaviour as to how they _reflect on_ arithmetical facts.
But I think someone could make that case; and the case we're in with moral realism might be more like, "people behave in a way that is consistent with some naive interpretations of moral realism, but give confused answers as to their understanding of how they understand the relationship between their behaviour and their belief in moral realism, and we the disputants don't agree on how well 'moral realism' stacks up as an explanation for people's first order behaviours" in which case, while I am not totally opposed to the language of "behave as if realism is true", I do think we should be careful of drawing too strong conclusions from it on the basis that there might be other good interpretations of the same facts.
As I tried to explain in my response to Lance, that people act “as if” moral realism is true is strongly evidenced by their behavior during moral disagreements.
I don't see what the point of saying that is if you don't mean the same thing by "moral realism."
My view is: I'm more interested in the underlying facts of how what people believe and how they behave, and what we can learn from that about moral realism. If a moral realist and I agree on the underlying facts about how people behave (which of course we might not), and they want to characterize that as "... as if MR is true", and if putting a pin in the linguistic issue of "is this a fair characterization of the facts" helps us get to bigger cruxes faster, I'm fine with that.
I'm a bit puzzled at the suggestion that people behave as if more realism is true. What specific behaviors to people perform that would indicate that they're behaving is if it's true rather than as if some other metaethical theory is true?
To be clear, I'm not claiming that they do, the point I was conceding was that *in the case that people directly claimed that they believed in moral realism, and that the only possible justification for their first order actions is moral realism* I'd be happy to describe that case as "behaving as if moral realism is true"--even then it wouldn't prove that much since people might just be wrong about the relationship between their beliefs about moral realism and their behaviour, but I wouldn't feel too strongly about contesting the linguistic point.
But my final paragraph is saying I don't even think we're in the case--my nonobjection to "act as if true" language in the actual case I suspect we're in isn't me agreeing that it's the best way to characterize our actual situation; it's just me saying *even in a case where that language _is_ justified* it wouldn't settle the serious issues, so even if I grant that a moral realist isn't being completely unreasonable in using such language a) it still doesn't prove anything and b) they should be willing to acknowledge that an anti realist isn't being unreasonable to _deny_ that language.
2 + 3 = 5 is a first order claim. It tells you nothing about whether the person in question holds any specific metaphysical view about the nature of numbers. A better analogy would be whether when people say that 2 + 3 = 5 it's obvious that they are mathematical platonists. And it isn't obvious that they're mathematical platonistd.
It is not obvious that ordinary people are moral realists. In fact the best available evidence suggests that many of them are not. There is no good evidence that most people are more realists, or speak, think, or act like moral realists.
We have different understandings of what “realism” means. For example, if I’m an aesthetic realist about ice cream flavors, I may think it’s an objective fact that chocolate ice cream is more delicious than strawberry ice cream; and thus think assertions to the contrary are false, and that people who utter those contrary assertions are committing some kind of error. Disagreement over the better ice cream flavor, then, would be a genuine dispute about some purported fact that does not depend on mere subjective opinion.
Of course, most people are not aesthetic realists about ice cream flavors. Most people think there is no wrong answer to the question, “Is chocolate more delicious than strawberry?” Most people think there is no right answer, either. Asserting that one flavor is better than another is merely an expression of one’s personal opinion, rather than a representation that one flavor really is better, as a matter of objective truth.
In contrast, just about everyone is a realist about whether “2 + 3 = 5.” If two people, A and B, disagree over this claim (suppose A asserts “2 + 3 = 5,” while B asserts “2 + 3 = 23”), virtually everyone would think that A is correct and B is incorrect; everyone would think A is asserting a claim that is objectively true, while A is asserting a claim that is objectively false.
It’s obvious that, in regards to claims concerning ice cream flavors, most people act “as if” they are anti-realist about those claims. Equally obvious is that, in regards to claims concerning mathematical propositions, most people act “as if” they are realist about those claims.
Given the sense of “realism” I have in mind, I think it’s obvious that most people act “as if” moral realism is true. Most people treat moral propositions similar to mathematical propositions — as assertions purporting to be about objective facts, and can thus be true or false, regardless of one thinks. This is evident from moral disagreements. Unlike like aesthetic “disagreements” over ice cream flavors, moral disagreements assume there are objectively correct and incorrect positions, that errors about moral facts are possible. Case in point: the moral disagreement over slavery. Those who were vehemently antislavery were obviously acting “as if” they were realist about their position, by virtue of treating the pro-slavery position as being objectively wrong.
If you don't mean the same thing by moral realism than what do you mean by it? And why would you say people act as if it is true if you mean something different than me? That's irrelevant to any claim I am making. What matters is whether the claim I'm making is true. Not whether you can use the same words but mean something different. You can always use words differently.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on moral realism:
“Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common and more or less defining ground of moral realism (although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way).
As a result, those who reject moral realism are usefully divided into (i) those who think moral claims do not purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false (non-cognitivists) and (ii) those who think that moral claims do carry this purport but deny that any moral claims are actually true (error theorists).”
“Moral realism is not a particular substantive moral view nor does it carry a distinctive metaphysical commitment over and above the commitment that comes with thinking moral claims can be true or false and some are true.”
“The debate between moral realists and anti-realists assumes, though, that there is a shared object of inquiry—in this case, a range of claims all involved are willing to recognize as moral claims—about which two questions can be raised and answered: Do these claims purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false? Are some of them true? Moral realists answer ‘yes’ to both[.]”
I think it's not even clear what the domain of moral data is once we look outside our own culture. People in very different times and places have quite different standards of moral judgment. A "reasons first" analysis of morality would probably look quite odd to people from cultures that have no word or phrase corresponding to "reason for action".
I am not at all satisfied with attenpts to analyze moral concepts that begin and end with a few "paradigm cases" of modern english phrases.
I agree. I've written a bit about this elsewhere but if you're interested look into the work of Stich, Machery, and others on the topic of delineating moral from nonmoral norms. My general view is that there is no principled distinction between moral and nonmoral norms, and that "moral" serves a kind of loose social role in certain subcultures, has some historical roots in theism and Western notions, but is too porous and fuzzy a notion to serve as a legitimate boundary for a special domain of norms.