7 Comments

"What would be implausible, inconsistent, or incoherent about a moral antirealist having first-order moral standards? First, consider a gastronomic comparison: is there something implausible, incoherent, or incoherent about not being a gastronomic realist, but still having first-order gastronomic commitments, e.g., “Malbecs are tastier than cabernets”? "

That's not analogous to ethics. People who are opposed to murder, slavery etc, want there to be *no* murder slavery etc. -- they don't wan the muderers and slavers to carry on doing their own thing.

Expand full comment

That difference is irrelevant to my point.

Expand full comment

"It seems obvious to me that there's something very implausible (inconsistent, incoherent?) about moral anti-realists having first-order moral commitments, "

Yep, it's inconsistent/incoherehent to for someone play language games on the lines of "you should do what I say, you should be persuaded, you should change your behaviour" when that speaker doesn't believe in the stance independent norms that would motivate that.

Expand full comment

I don't think stance independent norms motivate. People motivated by their desires and values. ONLY moral antirealism makes sense of actual behavior. Realism is at best superfluous, if not outright nonsense.

Expand full comment

People can have stance independent norms, and be motivated them, just as people can have objectively true beliefs. People can't be motivated by norms or beliefs they don't actually hold, but someone's merely holding a norm or belief doesn't make it stance dependent.

Anti realism of a kind that rejects all.norms, makes no sense of behaviour either. If there are no shared norms for settling a debate ,then there is no point in having one. Yet you debate.

And you assume shared norms, because you assume an audience who accept "don't believe things without evidence" and "don't believe contradictions", among other basic principles.

Anti realism of a kind that only rejects perfect epistemic norms that descend from Plato's heaven might be defensible. But a modest quasi-realism , where people share norms that seem to work, is compatible with that kind of anti (extreme) realism.

Expand full comment

You can be motivated to comply with what you believe the stance-independent norms are, sure. But I'm not denying that. I deny that the norms themselves do the motivating or have motivation built into them. I don't think norms themselves motivate. Motivation is a feature of the psychology of agents, not a property of some abstract philosophical concept.

//People can't be motivated by norms or beliefs they don't actually hold, but someone's merely holding a norm or belief doesn't make it stance dependent.//

I agree. Did you think that I thought otherwise? If so, then you misunderstood my position.

//Anti realism of a kind that rejects all.norms, makes no sense of behaviour either//

Antirealism has no problem making sense of behavior. There is absolutely no behavior that only makes sense if moral realism is true.

//. If there are no shared norms for settling a debate ,then there is no point in having one. Yet you debate.//

Antirealism does not entail that people don't share norms. It is consistent with antirealism for people to share norms and to have debates.

//And you assume shared norms, because you assume an audience who accept "don't believe things without evidence" and "don't believe contradictions", among other basic principles.//

Assuming people share the same or similar values is consistent with antirealism.

Expand full comment

Anti realism has a great deal of difficulty in explaining anything , because it isn't a theory...it's the negation of a theory. Specific anti realist theories include subjectivism , non cognitivism, etc. all of which have specific problems.

Expand full comment