Lance, I liked your point about moral realism not giving it the extra oomph. I’m toying with a position that just rejects metaethics, leaving normative ethics to be what it is, not trying to found it on something non-ethical. That sounds markedly similar to your point about the categories being confused. What do you think?
I wonder how much a pragmatist could take your criticisms of non-natural normative realism and flip them for an unorthodox cynical argument for normative realism.
"Oh, I'm totally with you on irreducible normativity being vacuously defined and lacking any practical oomph! But, because of that, there's basically zero cost to adding it to our ontology. There's really nothing to add, no causal effects that would mess up our predictions anywhere, so it can't do any harm to the rest of our worldview. How could we possibly be inhibited by these toothless commands floating around Plato's heaven?
So, why add them to our worldview? Because some people hear about meta ethics and go "But there has to be *something more* to morality for me to care! If there wasn't *something extra* to morality, then everything is meaningless and it doesn't matter what I do!" and there are enough incorrigable people in that camp for it to practically matter. You keep these people behaving in pro-social ways and donating to charity, for the cost of adding this little abstract "something extra" asterisk to your speech sometimes, so non-natural normative realism wins the trade-off!"
Wait...I think I might've accidentally wrapped back around to an "evil version" of Derek Parfit's view? He found the idea of normative anti-realism horrifying and ended up with an ontology where normative facts came for free with zero cost, true without any truthmaker...Hmmm....
Moral realism could simply be the stance that the moral intuitions we evolved did so because those intuitions helped groups of human beings survive better. This flattens the fact/value distinctions, because values become representations of what works or doesn’t work as a long term strategy. Objective morality then becomes the set of convergent instrumental subgoals that all agents have to follow if they want to keep existing.
Sure, but then "objective morality" would just be indexed to the goal of continued existence. As you said in your last sentence, there might be "subgoals that all agents have to follow *if* they want to keep existing," and that "if" might not be controversial in most cases, but it's still conditional. That's all consistent with anti-realism.
are you a non cog?
No I'm not.
Lance, I liked your point about moral realism not giving it the extra oomph. I’m toying with a position that just rejects metaethics, leaving normative ethics to be what it is, not trying to found it on something non-ethical. That sounds markedly similar to your point about the categories being confused. What do you think?
This is really nice. I'm glad that this exists so I can learn more about this Lance dude I follow and where in philosophy this all is.
I wonder how much a pragmatist could take your criticisms of non-natural normative realism and flip them for an unorthodox cynical argument for normative realism.
"Oh, I'm totally with you on irreducible normativity being vacuously defined and lacking any practical oomph! But, because of that, there's basically zero cost to adding it to our ontology. There's really nothing to add, no causal effects that would mess up our predictions anywhere, so it can't do any harm to the rest of our worldview. How could we possibly be inhibited by these toothless commands floating around Plato's heaven?
So, why add them to our worldview? Because some people hear about meta ethics and go "But there has to be *something more* to morality for me to care! If there wasn't *something extra* to morality, then everything is meaningless and it doesn't matter what I do!" and there are enough incorrigable people in that camp for it to practically matter. You keep these people behaving in pro-social ways and donating to charity, for the cost of adding this little abstract "something extra" asterisk to your speech sometimes, so non-natural normative realism wins the trade-off!"
Wait...I think I might've accidentally wrapped back around to an "evil version" of Derek Parfit's view? He found the idea of normative anti-realism horrifying and ended up with an ontology where normative facts came for free with zero cost, true without any truthmaker...Hmmm....
Maybe it *is* a pickle?
Sorry I'll see myself out.
oh no! You must stay. Tis a pickle.
Moral realism could simply be the stance that the moral intuitions we evolved did so because those intuitions helped groups of human beings survive better. This flattens the fact/value distinctions, because values become representations of what works or doesn’t work as a long term strategy. Objective morality then becomes the set of convergent instrumental subgoals that all agents have to follow if they want to keep existing.
Sure, but then "objective morality" would just be indexed to the goal of continued existence. As you said in your last sentence, there might be "subgoals that all agents have to follow *if* they want to keep existing," and that "if" might not be controversial in most cases, but it's still conditional. That's all consistent with anti-realism.