J. P. Andrew: Let's schedule a debate on whether most people are moral realists
J. P. Andrew: Let's schedule a debate on whether most people are moral realists
(This post is a bit more critical than previous ones. I gave it some thought, and while there’s a bit more acid here than I’d normally feel inclined to express publicly, this was a case where I thought it was important enough to express my frustration with the way some of the people whose views I criticize respond to my work and the work of others in the field.)
J. P. Andrew claims that most people are moral realists:
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.
Andrew does not offer much in the way of compelling arguments or evidence for these claims. I provided a critical response here.
Some people in the comments mentioned my work, including a recent interview where I discuss my dissertation research and one of my coauthored papers. Unfortunately, Andrew responded with:
[…] some surveys aren’t remotely sufficient to dissuade me from (B).
Some surveys? This remark makes it seem like a couple people ran a couple simple studies, and left it at that. Here is a bibliography of this research I put together a while ago. Note that it may not be exhaustive and probably excludes some relevant studies and articles, and I stopped adding to it so there are probably newer studies that aren’t included:
Folk Metaethics Bibliography
Trainer, F. E. (1983). Ethical objectivism‐subjectivism: a neglected dimension in the study of moral thought. Journal of Moral Education, 12(3), 192-207.
Nichols, S., & Folds-Bennett, T. (2003). Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties. Cognition, 90(2), B23-B32.
Nichols, S. (2004). After objectivity: An empirical study of moral judgment. Philosophical Psychology, 17(1), 3-26.
Wainryb, C., Shaw, L. A., Langley, M., Cottam, K., & Lewis, R. (2004). Children's thinking about diversity of belief in the early school years: Judgments of relativism, tolerance, and disagreeing persons. Child Development, 75(3), 687-703.
Cova, F., Ravat, J. (2008). Common sense and moral objectivism: Global or local? A case of experimental philosophy. KLESIS - Revue philosophique, 9, 180-202.
Feltz, A., & Cokely, E. T. (2008). The fragmented folk: more evidence of stable individual differences in moral judgments and folk intuitions. In B. C. Love, K. McRae, & V. M. Sloutsky (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1771-1776). Austin, TX: Cognitive science society.
Goodwin, G. P., & Darley, J. M. (2008). The psychology of meta-ethics: Exploring objectivism. Cognition, 106(3), 1339-1366.
Sarkissian, H., Park, J., Tien, D., Wright, J. C., & Knobe, J. (2011). Folk moral relativism. Mind & Language, 26(4), 482-505.
Goodwin, G. P., & Darley, J. M. (2012). Why are some moral beliefs perceived to be more objective than others?. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 250-256.
Quintelier, K. J., & Fessler, D. M. (2012). Varying versions of moral relativism: The philosophy and psychology of normative relativism. Biology & Philosophy, 27(1), 95-113.
Young, L., & Durwin, A. J. (2013a). Moral realism as moral motivation: The impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(2), 302-306.
Rai, T. S., & Holyoak, K. J. (2013). Exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(6), 995-1001.
Quintelier, K. J., De Smet, D., & Fessler, D. M. (2013). The moral universalism-relativism debate. KLESIS–Revue Philosophique, 27, 211-262.
Heiphetz, L., Spelke, E. S., Harris, P. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2013). The development of reasoning about beliefs: Fact, preference, and ideology. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 559-565.
Wright, J. C., Grandjean, P. T., & McWhite, C. B. (2013). The meta-ethical grounding of our moral beliefs: Evidence for meta-ethical pluralism. Philosophical Psychology, 26(3), 336-361.
Quintelier, K., De Smet, D., & Fessler, D. (2014). Agent versus appraiser moral relativism: an exploratory study. In H. Sarkissian & J. C. Wright (Eds.), Advances in experimental moral psychology (pp. 209-230). London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic.
Uttich, K., Tsai, G., & Lombrozo, T. (2014). Exploring metaethical commitments: Moral objectivity and moral progress. In H. Sarkissian & J. C. Wright (Eds.), Advances in experimental moral psychology (pp. 108-208). London, UK: Bloomsbury.
Wright, J. C., McWhite, C. B., & Grandjean, P. T. (2014). The cognitive mechanisms of intolerance: Do our meta-ethical commitments matter?. In T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe, & S. Nichols (Eds.), Oxford studies in experimental philosophy (Vol. 1, pp. 28-61). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Beebe, J. R. (2014). How different kinds of disagreement impact folk metaethical judgments. In H. Sarkissian & J. C. Wright (Eds.), Advances in experimental moral psychology (pp. 167-187). London, UK: Bloomsbury.
Beebe, J. (2015). The empirical study of folk metaethics. Etyka, 50, 11-28.
Beebe, J., Qiaoan, R., Wysocki, T., & Endara, M. A. (2015). Moral objectivism in cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 15(3-4), 386-401.
Yilmaz, O., & Bahcekapili, H. G. (2015). Without God, everything is permitted? The reciprocal influence of religious and meta-ethical beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58, 95-100.
Sarkissian, H. (2016). Aspects of Folk Morality. In J. Sytsma, & W. Buckwalter (Eds.), A companion to experimental philosophy (pp. 212-224). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Beebe, J. R., & Sackris, D. (2016). Moral objectivism across the lifespan. Philosophical Psychology, 29(6), 912-929.
Heiphetz, L., & Young, L. L. (2017). Can only one person be right? The development of objectivism and social preferences regarding widely shared and controversial moral beliefs. Cognition, 167, 78-90.
Fisher, M., Knobe, J., Strickland, B., & Keil, F. C. (2017). The influence of social interaction on intuitions of objectivity and subjectivity. Cognitive science, 41(4), 1119-1134.
Theriault, J., Waytz, A., Heiphetz, L., & Young, L. (2017). Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(11), 1586-1605.
Schmidt, M. F., Gonzalez-Cabrera, I., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Children’s developing metaethical judgments. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 164, 163-177.
Khoo, J., & Knobe, J. (2018). Moral disagreement and moral semantics. Noûs, 52(1), 109-143.
Wright, J. C. (2018). The fact and function of meta-ethical pluralism: Exploring the evidence. In T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe, S. Nichols (Eds.), Oxford studies in experimental philosophy (Vol. 2, pp. 119-150). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Yilmaz, O., & Bahçekapili, H. G. (2018). Meta-ethics and the mortality: Mortality salience leads people to adopt a less subjectivist morality. Cognition, 179, 171-177.
Colebrook, R. T. (2018). Toward a science of morals. [Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York.] CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2648
Ayars, A., & Nichols, S. (2020). Rational learners and metaethics: Universalism, relativism, and evidence from consensus. Mind & Language, 35(1), 67-89.
Johnson, S. G., Rodrigues, M., & Tuckett, D. (2021). Moral tribalism and its discontents: How intuitive theories of ethics shape consumers' deference to experts. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 34(1), 47-65.
Rose, D., & Nichols, S. (2019). From punishment to universalism. Mind & Language, 34(1), 59-72.
Hopster, J.K.G. (2019). Moral objectivity: Origins and foundations (Quaestiones Infinitae, volume 119) [Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University]. Utrecht University Repository. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/374619
Sarkissian, H., & Phelan, M. (2019). Moral objectivism and a punishing God. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 80, 1-7.
Becklloyd, D. and Sytsma, J.(2019). Simulating metaethics: Consensus and the independence of moral beliefs. PhilSci Archive. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/16461/
Zijlstra, L. (2019). Folk moral objectivism and its measurement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 84, 103807. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.04.005
Viciana, H., Hannikainen, I. R., & Gaitan Torres, A. (2019). The dual nature of partisan prejudice: Morality and identity in a multiparty system. PloS One, 14(7), e0219509. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0219509
Collier‐Spruel, L., Hawkins, A., Jayawickreme, E., Fleeson, W., & Furr, R. M. (2019). Relativism or tolerance? Defining, assessing, connecting, and distinguishing two moral personality features with prominent roles in modern societies. Journal of Personality, 87(6), 1170-1188.
Davis, T. (2021). Beyond objectivism: new methods for studying metaethical intuitions. Philosophical Psychology, 34(1), 125-153.
Pölzler, T., & Cole Wright, J. C. (2020a). An empirical argument against moral non-cognitivism. Inquiry, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2020.1798280
Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020b). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 53-82.
Stanley, M. L., Marsh, E. J., & Kay, A. C. (2020). Structure-seeking as a psychological antecedent of beliefs about morality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(10), 1908-1918.
Theriault, J., Waytz, A., Heiphetz, L., & Young, L. (2020). Theory of Mind network activity is associated with metaethical judgment: An item analysis. Neuropsychologia, 143, 107475. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107475
Yilmaz, O., Bahcekapili, H. G., Harma, M., & Sevi, B. (2020). Intergroup tolerance leads to subjective morality, which in turn is associated with (but does not lead to) reduced religiosity. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 42(2), 232-243.
Sousa, P., Allard, A., Piazza, J., & Goodwin, G. P. (2021). Folk moral objectivism: The case of harmful actions. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 2776. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.638515
Sytsma, J., Muldoon, R., & Nichols, S. (2021). The meta-wisdom of crowds. Synthese, 199(3), 11051-11074.
Viciana, H., Hannikainen, I. R., & Rodríguez-Arias, D. (2021). Absolutely right and relatively good: Consequentialists see bioethical disagreement in a relativist light. AJOB Empirical Bioethics, 12(3), 190-205.
Wagner, J. M., Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2021). Implicit Metaethical Intuitions: Validating and Employing a New IAT Procedure. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00572-3
Zijlstra, L. (2021). Are people implicitly moral objectivists?. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00593-y
Cova, F. (2022, June 15). The need for measure calibration in experimental philosophy: the case of measures of folk objectivism. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kcft9
Lewry, C., & Lombrozo, T. (2022). Ethical Explanations. In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati & V. Ramenzoni (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 44(44), 42-48. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2rv1r2s0
Chvaja, R., Horský, J., Lang, M., & Kundt, R. (2022). Positive Association Between Ritual Performance and Perceived Objectivity of Moral Norms. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2022.2121454
Pölzler, T., Zijlstra, L., & Dijkstra, J. (2022). Moral progress, knowledge and error: Do people believe in moral objectivity?. Philosophical Psychology, 1-37.
Rodríguez-Pérez, A., Rodríguez-Torres, R., Betancor, V., Chen-Xia, X. J., & Rodríguez-Gómez, L. (2022). Are Civility Norms Morality Norms’ Little Sister? The Truth Value That Lay Thinking Associates with Civility and Morality Social Norms. Social Sciences, 11(12), 568.
Wright, J. C., & Pölzler, T. (2022). Should morality be abolished? An empirical challenge to the argument from intolerance. Philosophical Psychology, 35(3), 350-385.
Does that look like it’s just “some surveys” to you?
This doesn’t include some non-empirical papers that discuss the literature, excludes more recent research, and does not include my dissertation, which includes well over a dozen additional studies:
Bush, L. S. (2023). Schrödinger's Categories: The Indeterminacy of Folk Metaethics (Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University).
Is Andrew even aware of this literature? Has he read it? If so, characterizing it as “some surveys” would be misleading. If not, then Andrew is exhibiting a negligent ignorance of the actual state of the literature, which is not merely “some surveys.”
Calling this research “surveys” also does a disservice to the state of the literature. It could readily be interpreted to imply some kind of superficial polling, e.g., “are you a moral realist? Yes/No.”
I have been more critical of this research than anyone I know (I wrote entire chapters dedicated specifically to critiquing the methods in these studies, after all), but the paradigms that have been devised are not simply “surveys.” There are a variety of scales one could call “surveys” to be sure (and there’s nothing wrong with carefully-designed surveys), but there is also the disagreement paradigm, response-dependent measures, Zijlstra’s three implicit measures (based on Enoch’s realist tests), training paradigms, truth-aptness tasks, metaphor tasks, Pölzler and Wright’s theory task, neuroscientific research, behavioral studies, and likely a handful I can’t immediately recall. Dismissing all of this as mere “surveys” is disrespectful to the time and dedication researchers have put in to empirically studying folk metaethics. More importantly, it is a misleading way of characterizing that gives the impression this research is less than it is.
However, the available literature doesn’t merely include numerous empirical studies. It also includes substantive philosophical and methodological work. My own research centers on critically evaluating the methods used in these studies, though I also have at times reflected on the methodological implications of these studies, and discussed their relevance to metaethics and to philosophy more broadly. We are not just running some surveys.
I am curious what kind of empirical data would convince Andrew. More surveys? How high of a bar does the empirical data need to reach to overcome Andrew’s personal confidence that most people are realists?
When Andrew was presented with my blog post response (linked above), his response was:
Weird.
That’s it. Just “Weird.” This is what I mean when I say that Andrew is dismissive towards critics. I went out of my way to write a critical response, and rather than engage with it, Andrew just calls it “Weird” and says no more.
Andrew then posted the following remark, shortly after these exchanges:
Some moral anti-realists seem to think that in fact there *is* one stance-independent moral duty: to oppose, criticize, and denigrate moral realism whenever and wherever assent to it is expressed.
Andrew responded to one person who replied by saying:
[…] I am not persuaded by the studies you cite. If you are, fine. We disagree.
The person in question only linked to one study (Bush & Moss, 2020) and it certainly wouldn’t be decisive on its own. The article in question focuses on critiquing the validity of other studies. It doesn’t even make any kind of forceful case against the claim that most people are moral realists (For that, you’d want to see my dissertation, or a handful of papers from other people arguing for various positions that differ from mine, e.g., Pölzler and Wright, Colebrook, etc.). If Andrew had read it, and found it unpersuasive, why not point this out?
Bush and Moss (2020) is hardly the most substantive case against folk moral realism. But what about the rest of the papers out there, like the ones above? Which studies does Andrew find unpersuasive? Pölzler and Wright? Davis? Beebe? ? Who knows! We’re not given any details as to which studies are unpersuasive, or why they’re unpersuasive.
More generally, let’s focus a bit more on the remark itself. I can’t tell if I’m included in the moral antirealists who purportedly think this way. I would hope the remark is tongue in cheek. If so, I happily embrace the connotation: it certainly is one of my goals to oppose and criticize moral realism whenever and wherever assent to it is expressed. That sounds awesome, and I’d be delighted to get the recognition I’ve worked hard for. I don’t know about “denigrate,” though.
What’s strange about the remark is that it gives off the vibe that Andrew is personally affronted that someone would make it their personal quest to critique moral realism, as if there were something wrong with them for doing so. I think the view is mistaken, and I’m an academic who, like other people working in my field, takes a stance on varoius issues then argues against opposing views. This is literally part of our job.
Am I at fault for pursuing that job … too much? What should I do, only critique moral realists sometimes? Maybe I should give them a day off once in a while? Maybe when I see the fifth objectionable, misleading, confused, false, or asinine comment from a moral realist for the day, I should think “pointing out how facile this person’s points are for the fifth time is going too far…”? Does moral realism need our mercy to survive? If so, then it isn’t a very compelling view to begin with, is it? Note that we critics are criticized for “denigrating” moral realism, when moral realists have no qualms about publicly implying antirealists like me can’t or don’t object to baby torture, when they constantly insinuate we’re awful and repugant people with horrible moral character, and who constantly and confidently insist we’re so confused and hypocritical that we are incapable of living consistently by the light of our own convictions…but we’re denigrating realism?
This isn’t even a double standard. It’s something even more hypocritical. This is like one person constantly implying their neighbor might torture babies, or at least doesn’t care if other people do, and then when that person gets tired of this, and actively makes a point to say “that’s not true,” their accuser protests “stop denigrating my views!” I have no interest in denigrating moral realism. But I would like it if moral realists stop exploiting normative entanglement to imply that I’m literally evil just because I don’t buy into their metaphysical views or disagree with their views about semantics.
But philosophical critique is not denigration. Is there something wrong with pursuing my academic interests in an enthusiastic way, taking the time to engage with those willing to discuss the topic and to critique those with contrary positions? Isn’t that what philosophers should be doing? Is it somehow to someone’s discredit if they go out of their way to engage with others?
If so, I think Andrew has this backwards: Andrew has a penchant for blocking people on Twitter and being terse or dismissive towards people who raise contrary perspectives. Is that somehow better? Am I somehow at fault for actively seeking out discussions about moral realism in order to offer my perspective and critique them…but Andrew isn’t at fault for actively cultivating an echo chamber by blocking people and ignoring or dismissing invitations to discuss or debate his views?
Does Andrew think that would be a productive way for us to make philosophical progress? As far as I can tell, if most other philosophers acted the way Andrew does, the field would collapse within the year. Just picture a philosophy conference where nobody interacted with anyone who disagreed with them. You’d just see a crowd of people with their fingers in their ears going “lalalalalalala!” I suspect universities would not be interested funding a field like that. Asserting one’s views with supreme confidence, and brushing off anyone who disagrees with them with nothing but snark isn’t something you need to pay people to do: they’ll do that for free.
What’s more troubling about Andrew’s remarks is that I’m not even sure they were meant to be a joke. Another person said:
Cute. I'm assuming this is snark and not a sincerely held belief about one or more actual moral anti-realists?
Surprisingly, Andrew responded:
It’s not mere snark: lots of anti-realists do act as if they think there is something *wrong* (in a way that isn’t consistent with their anti-realism) about defending moral realism and evince an odd sort of moral indignation about it.
A comment I took it to be meant as a joke is, apparently, a serious claim. Well, okay then! According to Andrew, some antirealists “act as if they think there is something *wrong*” in a way that “isn’t consistent with their anti—realism.”
What kinds of actions would indicate inconsistency with antirealism? Andrew doesn’t say. Unfortunately, when asked to provide an example, Andrew offered to DM an instance where this was supposedly on display:
DM if you’d like — I have a debate in mind in which this was on display.
Since Andrew didn’t end up describing what behavior was supposedly inconsistent with antirealism, this leaves me without further comments to respond to. Maybe Andrew would surprise me and describe actions that would be inconsistent with antirealism. I doubt this, and, in any case, I certainly doubt Andrew could point to anything I’ve said or done that is inconsistent with antirealism. I invite Andrew to respond in any format with a description of the relevant sorts of actions. I’m curious to know what they might be.
More generally, I’d like to reiterate my offer to have a discussion with Andrew about whether most people are moral realists. In case that offer isn’t sufficiently clear, I’ll make it a bit more theatrical:
J. P. Andrew, I hereby formally challenge you to a public debate about whether most people are moral realists. Feel free to contact me to arrange the details.