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Travis Talks's avatar

I remember when Matthew did that Twitter poll - I voted on it. I voted that torture would still be wrong even if everyone approved it. I interpreted the question as one about my normative views, not my meta-ethical ones.

Later at some point I had an exchange with Matthew about this talking point. I told him that the claim that X would still be wrong even if everyone approved of it is compatible with anti-realism.

I gave the following example to illustrate my point:

Suppose that every utilitarian either dies or converts to deontology. It is still the case that pushing the fat man is right relative to the standards of utilitarianism, even if no one actually abides by those standards.

Matthew bizarrely responded to this by telling me that things couldn’t be stance-dependently right or wrong if the stance was just hypothetical.

Meanwhile if we take a look at the IEP, they say this:

“Constructivism ought to be understood by contrast as a species of a stance-dependent view. On this account, there are no moral, or ethical, truths that obtain entirely independently of any actual or hypothetical perspective. The standards that fix the relevant class of ethical facts are always made true by virtue of their ratification from within some actual or hypothetical perspective.”

They explicitly make reference to hypothetical perspectives when describing how moral truths can be stance-dependent.

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Henrik Svensson's avatar

How many of the respondents to the Twitter poll did interpret the question as ”If you thought torturing babies for fun wasn’t wrong, would you still consider it wrong?” rather than, for example, ”If everyone else thought torturing babies for fun wasn’t wrong, would you still consider it wrong?”. The poll result doesn’t give you that information. The first sentence looks like a contradiction. But, I would argue, it is a valid reformulation of the poll question. Therefore, we have ”independent reasons” to reject moral realism, since moral realists seem to hold impossible views. Check mate, realists!

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