I think that’s what gives me pause. Your moral preferences aren’t based on the existence or non-existence of stance-independent moral facts; instead, you will hold to them whether or not such facts exist.
And I do comply with what I believe to be stance-independent moral facts. But perhaps the difference is that I feel *accountable* to them as a theist who subscribes to something like divine command theory.
Would it be accurate to say that you wouldn’t feel accountable to moral facts if they existed?
Very cool! Thanks for sharing my blog and your thoughts on it.
On the use of the word "Our", I think you're right that we can't make the maneuver that "X doesn't seem like a preference to me, so it must not seem like one to everyone else". I accept that some people, including yourself, will read the ideas I put forward and not have the intuitions I have on them.
Why use "our" then? Why not just say "my"? Well, because I want to invite people to consider the ideas for themselves and determine if they agree/disagree. If I just said "My", it would read a bit more like a journal, and even people without the same intuitions can agree with it. "Okay, it seems like X to Connor, so what?". I'd rather write something interesting that gets people thinking that they disagree with, than write journal-style or have many qualifications at each step.
It's just more of a writing decision, and invitation for people to see things my way, than it is a claim about every person in the world's psychology. You're right, I would have no way of knowing what everyone else thinks like - and there probably are some people that use moral language to purely describe only preferences!
An interesting response. I'm not sure how much of it I buy (moral realist here). Though I do want to make three remarks.
1. If some law is eternal, it couldn't have been made by necessity. (Just a thought to keep in mind for those who find the idea that laws do indeed require a law maker. It can't apply to eternal laws).
2. Mightn't the view that there is no single right view about how we use moral language mean that lots of folks are just talking past each other in moral discussions? I've seen a similar remark made to folks like divine command theorists who have to claim that they're speaking past atheists in moral discussions (as surely atheists aren't claiming God really made certain commands).
3. Regarding this notion that there is this feeling of an enchanted universe with objective value left over thanks to the influence of thinks like monotheism in the past. If there were moral facts that we've been in the throws of grasping since antiquity, and assuming religions are false, then we could appreciate how our knowledge of morality could have influenced our religious and cultural beliefs. We can then ditch religion, but not necessarily be suspicious of everything it involves. It's considerations like this that move me to think that pointing to how big an impact certain religions had in the past don't necessarily tell us which associated beliefs are undermined. Though I would assume this wound't apply to the companions in guilt of a religion (if the religion goes, then a bunch of other things must go too).
(1) I don’t study philosophy of religion, so I’m not sure why that would be true.
(2) It may be that people are often talking past one another, but I think they usually aren’t. I don’t think metaethical views figure much into ordinary discourse at all. Compare to mathematical discourse: as Michael Gill suggests, I don’t think ordinary math discourse involves any determinate commitment to mathematical platonism or anti-platonism. Even if people were nominally committed to one or the other, though, they’d still be able to “do math” and suspend those differences for getting things done using math. It’s not like a bunch of NASA scientists would be unable to land a probe on Mars if some of them were mathematical platonists and some weren’t: the calculations are still the same.
(3) I don’t think identifying religious origins for the disposition to endorse realism necessarily undermines belief in realism. I think it happens to in this case, but I don’t think it’d be enough to simply point to the causal origins of a disposition towards realism and declare “aha! Therefore we have no good reason to think realism is true.”
Rather, I think a causal story figures into a broader abductive case that the best explanation for why some people are disposed towards thinking realism is true is due to a cultural-historical account that induced them to think this way, and not because their disposition to do so is the result of some truth-tracking process. Showing that it isn’t truth-tracking is a whole additional task for me.
FWIW: I work more directly on that broader abductive case. My primary research centers on the psychology of metaethics, and I defend folk metaethical indeterminacy: the view that most nonphilosophers are neither realists nor antirealists.
RE: #1) not a phil-religion thing, just a general issue with modality. The "causing" relation is a temporal one, and so can't apply to effects that are never not happening; moreover, assuming moral facts are NECESSARILY true, then nothing even could stand in a "making" relation to them, since there's no counterfactual to even frame the assertion. And it's a heckuva bullet to bite to say there are nomologically possible worlds empirically identical to our own where the moral facts are the opposite of what they are here.
I don't think it's a heck of a bullet to bite. I'm not sure it's a bullet at all. I find the the idea of necessary moral truths to be ridiculous. But even if there were such things, that doesn't help people with the questions I'm asking because it's still an epistemic possibility that the necessary moral facts are different than what people think they are. Unless people think they have some kind of infallible access to or certain knowledge of the specific normative moral moral content of the moral facts, pointing out that the moral facts are necessary doesn't help at all and doesn't render my questions illegitimate. I don't think I'd be biting any bullets in denying that my opponents have infallible knowledge that they're correct.
"I find the the idea of necessary moral truths to be ridiculous." Obviously if one don't believe there ARE any moral truths, their necessity is going to be real angels on the head of a pin stuff. But it's one way of stating the supervenience thesis ("the least controversial thesis in metaethics" according to Gideon Rosen, not that he's an unchallengable Pope on these things or anything like that).
The necessity was getting at here is a purely formal one, not an epistemic one and definitely anything deeply ontological: even an expressivist is fine saying that correct moral claims are correct whenever the relevant natural facts are identical. In contrast, it's not clear (to me at least) that it's even coherent to say there can be a normative difference (whatever one thinks norms are) without a difference in the underlying natural facts.
That said your questions are obviously legitimate; I intended this analysis to be a complementary top down one to your psychologistic bottom up one, which I also agree is probably in the long run on better footing.
1. Well if some law is made up, then there was a time in which it didn't exist, thus it wouldn't be eternal. (That's how I think about it).
2. I agree. Theorising about language in metaethical theory comes after looking at the language (as opposed to the other way around). Though I can also see how having some metaethical view could influence how one speaks about morality some of the time (but coming to that view still requires the other approach).
The NASA dudes might be able to do math, but if we declared many were referring to different things, it seems they would still be speaking past each other in a sense. It just might be that this doesn't lead to any disagreements or errors in how to land probes on mars and such. I see that you can get the same practical effects so long as both parties have beliefs that lead to this.
Though there would seem a commitment to something like mathematical platonism (or something like it) if we thought there were stance/construct-independent facts of the matter. To draw from an analogy you've used in the past, the quantum mechanics interpretation, it seems reasonable to think that if some interpretation violates the law of non-contradiction, and someone believes that the LNC is true, then we could reasonably say they might favour or be committed to one interpretation of quantum mechanics over another. Though maybe it might be more accurate to say certain beliefs they hold would commit them to certain views, as opposed to, say, they ARE committed to such and such. An analogy to realism might then be that, 'whilst we might not be able to say most people are LITERALLY moral realists without them expressly adopting the view, we can say instead, that their beliefs would commit them to realism' presuming they hold such beliefs. One such belief would be that brutal immoralists (e.g. those who act evilly and don't care for morality) have (moral) reasons to refrain from their immoral actions.
Hey Lance. As a clarification: you say that even if there were objective, normative moral facts, you wouldn’t care about them.
Do you mean, even if these objective moral facts were *known* and *accessible?*
Yes.
So does that mean you would knowingly and confidently act in ways that don’t correspond to certain aspects of reality?
I can barely make sense of what that could mean in principle, but what I mean is this:
If it's a stance-independent moral fact that "you ought to X," I simply do not care. At all. I act based on my personal values. Don't you?
*Why* wouldn’t you care, though? Why would you act on preferences that conflict with a stance independent moral fact you know to exist?
Because I am only interested in acting in accordance with my goals and values.
What about you? Would you comply with the stance-independent moral facts?
I think that’s what gives me pause. Your moral preferences aren’t based on the existence or non-existence of stance-independent moral facts; instead, you will hold to them whether or not such facts exist.
And I do comply with what I believe to be stance-independent moral facts. But perhaps the difference is that I feel *accountable* to them as a theist who subscribes to something like divine command theory.
Would it be accurate to say that you wouldn’t feel accountable to moral facts if they existed?
Very cool! Thanks for sharing my blog and your thoughts on it.
On the use of the word "Our", I think you're right that we can't make the maneuver that "X doesn't seem like a preference to me, so it must not seem like one to everyone else". I accept that some people, including yourself, will read the ideas I put forward and not have the intuitions I have on them.
Why use "our" then? Why not just say "my"? Well, because I want to invite people to consider the ideas for themselves and determine if they agree/disagree. If I just said "My", it would read a bit more like a journal, and even people without the same intuitions can agree with it. "Okay, it seems like X to Connor, so what?". I'd rather write something interesting that gets people thinking that they disagree with, than write journal-style or have many qualifications at each step.
It's just more of a writing decision, and invitation for people to see things my way, than it is a claim about every person in the world's psychology. You're right, I would have no way of knowing what everyone else thinks like - and there probably are some people that use moral language to purely describe only preferences!
An interesting response. I'm not sure how much of it I buy (moral realist here). Though I do want to make three remarks.
1. If some law is eternal, it couldn't have been made by necessity. (Just a thought to keep in mind for those who find the idea that laws do indeed require a law maker. It can't apply to eternal laws).
2. Mightn't the view that there is no single right view about how we use moral language mean that lots of folks are just talking past each other in moral discussions? I've seen a similar remark made to folks like divine command theorists who have to claim that they're speaking past atheists in moral discussions (as surely atheists aren't claiming God really made certain commands).
3. Regarding this notion that there is this feeling of an enchanted universe with objective value left over thanks to the influence of thinks like monotheism in the past. If there were moral facts that we've been in the throws of grasping since antiquity, and assuming religions are false, then we could appreciate how our knowledge of morality could have influenced our religious and cultural beliefs. We can then ditch religion, but not necessarily be suspicious of everything it involves. It's considerations like this that move me to think that pointing to how big an impact certain religions had in the past don't necessarily tell us which associated beliefs are undermined. Though I would assume this wound't apply to the companions in guilt of a religion (if the religion goes, then a bunch of other things must go too).
Thanks for the comment!
(1) I don’t study philosophy of religion, so I’m not sure why that would be true.
(2) It may be that people are often talking past one another, but I think they usually aren’t. I don’t think metaethical views figure much into ordinary discourse at all. Compare to mathematical discourse: as Michael Gill suggests, I don’t think ordinary math discourse involves any determinate commitment to mathematical platonism or anti-platonism. Even if people were nominally committed to one or the other, though, they’d still be able to “do math” and suspend those differences for getting things done using math. It’s not like a bunch of NASA scientists would be unable to land a probe on Mars if some of them were mathematical platonists and some weren’t: the calculations are still the same.
(3) I don’t think identifying religious origins for the disposition to endorse realism necessarily undermines belief in realism. I think it happens to in this case, but I don’t think it’d be enough to simply point to the causal origins of a disposition towards realism and declare “aha! Therefore we have no good reason to think realism is true.”
Rather, I think a causal story figures into a broader abductive case that the best explanation for why some people are disposed towards thinking realism is true is due to a cultural-historical account that induced them to think this way, and not because their disposition to do so is the result of some truth-tracking process. Showing that it isn’t truth-tracking is a whole additional task for me.
FWIW: I work more directly on that broader abductive case. My primary research centers on the psychology of metaethics, and I defend folk metaethical indeterminacy: the view that most nonphilosophers are neither realists nor antirealists.
RE: #1) not a phil-religion thing, just a general issue with modality. The "causing" relation is a temporal one, and so can't apply to effects that are never not happening; moreover, assuming moral facts are NECESSARILY true, then nothing even could stand in a "making" relation to them, since there's no counterfactual to even frame the assertion. And it's a heckuva bullet to bite to say there are nomologically possible worlds empirically identical to our own where the moral facts are the opposite of what they are here.
I don't think it's a heck of a bullet to bite. I'm not sure it's a bullet at all. I find the the idea of necessary moral truths to be ridiculous. But even if there were such things, that doesn't help people with the questions I'm asking because it's still an epistemic possibility that the necessary moral facts are different than what people think they are. Unless people think they have some kind of infallible access to or certain knowledge of the specific normative moral moral content of the moral facts, pointing out that the moral facts are necessary doesn't help at all and doesn't render my questions illegitimate. I don't think I'd be biting any bullets in denying that my opponents have infallible knowledge that they're correct.
"I find the the idea of necessary moral truths to be ridiculous." Obviously if one don't believe there ARE any moral truths, their necessity is going to be real angels on the head of a pin stuff. But it's one way of stating the supervenience thesis ("the least controversial thesis in metaethics" according to Gideon Rosen, not that he's an unchallengable Pope on these things or anything like that).
The necessity was getting at here is a purely formal one, not an epistemic one and definitely anything deeply ontological: even an expressivist is fine saying that correct moral claims are correct whenever the relevant natural facts are identical. In contrast, it's not clear (to me at least) that it's even coherent to say there can be a normative difference (whatever one thinks norms are) without a difference in the underlying natural facts.
That said your questions are obviously legitimate; I intended this analysis to be a complementary top down one to your psychologistic bottom up one, which I also agree is probably in the long run on better footing.
Thanks for the response
1. Well if some law is made up, then there was a time in which it didn't exist, thus it wouldn't be eternal. (That's how I think about it).
2. I agree. Theorising about language in metaethical theory comes after looking at the language (as opposed to the other way around). Though I can also see how having some metaethical view could influence how one speaks about morality some of the time (but coming to that view still requires the other approach).
The NASA dudes might be able to do math, but if we declared many were referring to different things, it seems they would still be speaking past each other in a sense. It just might be that this doesn't lead to any disagreements or errors in how to land probes on mars and such. I see that you can get the same practical effects so long as both parties have beliefs that lead to this.
Though there would seem a commitment to something like mathematical platonism (or something like it) if we thought there were stance/construct-independent facts of the matter. To draw from an analogy you've used in the past, the quantum mechanics interpretation, it seems reasonable to think that if some interpretation violates the law of non-contradiction, and someone believes that the LNC is true, then we could reasonably say they might favour or be committed to one interpretation of quantum mechanics over another. Though maybe it might be more accurate to say certain beliefs they hold would commit them to certain views, as opposed to, say, they ARE committed to such and such. An analogy to realism might then be that, 'whilst we might not be able to say most people are LITERALLY moral realists without them expressly adopting the view, we can say instead, that their beliefs would commit them to realism' presuming they hold such beliefs. One such belief would be that brutal immoralists (e.g. those who act evilly and don't care for morality) have (moral) reasons to refrain from their immoral actions.
3. Nice.