J. P. Andrew insists people are moral realists, but empirical data does not support this claim

At least some moral realists have insist most people are moral realists even when others point to empirical data which may suggest otherwise. J. P. Andrew states, on Twitter, that:

Are most people moral realists? Yes. (A) Most people subscribe to theistic worldviews that entail moral realism. (B) Most people act like moral realists when the stakes are high and personal. (C) But: moral realism is clearly true, irrespective of what most people think.

https://twitter.com/2Philosophical_/status/1689468357072871424

When someone posts a link to a recent video where I discussed the empirical evidence, which suggests that the claim that most people are moral realists is probably not true and is not supported by available data, Andrew's responds:

Yes. (A) stands, and some surveys aren’t remotely sufficient to dissuade me from (B).

A stands because…why exactly? This is a bad take for a few reasons.

(1) It’s not at all clear that most theistic worldviews “entail moral realism,” nor is it even clear that moral realism is a feature of most religious doctrines. Religions have moral codes, to be sure, but it’s not at all obvious or clear that any major religious traditions maintain that moral facts are stance-independently true, or irreducibly normative, and so on. The characteristics attributed to moral realism in contemporary analytic metaethics have been largely clarified, articulated, and discussed among academic philosophers; such terminology doesn’t appear in any scriptures I know of, and, at best, one might attempt to interpret such scripture in a way that indicated accordance with the terms, concepts, and categories in play in contemporary metaethics.

Even if it were, the mere fact that something is a part of a religious doctrine does not entail that people believe this, or are even aware of it. Does every Catholic endorse every official doctrine of the church? No, and we have empirical data to support this: Catholics routinely hold views on the moral status of abortion that are out of accord with the church. The same plausibly generalizes. Members of religions don’t automatically subscribe to their religion’s official tenets; in many cases, people aren’t even aware of official doctrine.

In short, the mere fact that most people are theists is not, by itself, a good indication that they are moral realists, and this wouldn’t even necessarily be true even if moral realism were a part of religious doctrine. J. P. Andrew would have to do a lot more work than I’ve seen from comments like this to actually demonstrate that people subscribe to moral realism. I have more to say about claims that we can infer realism from theism in an upcoming blog post that’s scheduled for a couple weeks from now, so stay tuned.

(2) Has Andrew looked at the data in question? If so, then Andrew may be aware that we're not talking "some surveys": we're talking studies spanning nearly two decades, with what now amount at least a dozen studies (probably more, depending on how you count them) and multiple paradigms. If Andrew doesn't think the data raises serious doubts about the claim that most people are moral realists, but is aware of it, I'd be interested to know why.

If Andrew hasn't looked at the data, that would be even worse. Andrew is making an empirical claim but not presenting any empirical data to support that claim. When someone mentions the empirical data, if Andrew hasn’t even looked into it, then this would involve dismissing that data without even seriously considering it. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but if it is, we're right back to (1).

In case you’re new to this blog and aren’t familiar with the empirical data, I wrote my dissertation on the psychology of metaethics, which included a comprehensive review and evaluation of the empirical research on whether ordinary people are moral realists. My own view is that available data casts very serious doubt on the notion that most people are moral realists, and this is far from a strained interpertation of the data. I’ve written a handful of blog posts that offer a cursory overview of some of this research. Here’s one such post. Here’s an excerpt:

After correcting for some of the methodological shortcomings of earlier studies, and providing people with detailed instructions and training exercises to familiarize them with metaethical terms and concepts, Pölzler and Wright (2020) found that a majority of people consistently favored antirealist responses across a variety of distinct paradigms. See Figure 1:

• Davis (2021) likewise found very high rates of antirealist responses. Noncognitivism was the most common response.

• Beebe (2015) pointed out that early versions of the disagreement paradigm (the main measure used to empirically assess folk metaethics) didn’t include a noncognitivist option. Once such an option was included, it was a common response (and was the modal response for three out of seven moral issues)

• Beebe and Sackris (2016) found that metaethical stances change over the lifespan, and likewise found high rates of antirealism.

• Beebe et al. (2015) replicated the finding that many people adopt antirealist stances towards particular moral issues in China, Poland, and Ecuador.

• Sarkissian et al. (2011) found that when you made cultural dissimilarities between two populations more explicit and distinct, people were more inclined to favor “antirealist” responses to versions of the disagreement paradigm.

Here’s Figure 1 from the Pölzler and Wright (2020) study:

Does that look like the kind of findings we should get if most people are moral realists? Note that this isn’t a single survey. This is the result of multiple converging measures in a study that carefully sought to correct for the methodological shortcomings of previous studies. Does this convince me most people are moral antirealists? No. Not even close. But what we don’t have is really good evidence that most people are realists.

Personally, I think the best interpretation of the evidence is that most people have no determinate metaethical stances or commitments at all: they are neither realists nor antirealists. Others maintain that people are pluralists, or mostly antirealists, or some type of relativist, or have inconsistent, incoherent, or irrational metaethical views, and perhaps a few also think most people are realists. What we don’t have is some kind of clear picture confirming the presumption that most people are moral realists. At present, that may be one of the least likely conclusions, given available data, other than that most people are noncognitivists or error theorists (though I don’t think anyone thinks that).

(3) However, the most objectionable part of this comment is (B): What, exactly, does Andrew think people do that indicates that they are moral realists? My suspicion is that we'd get the same unfounded claims we normally do, where realists just conflate people having normative moral standards or caring about what other people do as some kind of indication of realism, even though this type of behavior is consistent with many (if not most) forms of moral antirealism. Unfortunately, Andrew doesn't elaborate, so it's hard to assess the claims or offer a substantive critique.

My impression is that J. P. Andrew isn’t that interested in engaging with critics (myself included), but I’d nevertheless like to invite Andrew to a discussion: J. P. Andrew, if you think most people are moral realists, and think you can make a good case for this, I’d be happy to discuss this and I’d be happy to schedule a time to discuss this on my channel or we could find someone else to host the discussion on their channel. I doubt you’ll see this, but the offer stands, anyway.

References

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11, 53-82.