Moral antirealism ≠ Psychopathy

Twitter Tuesday #41

Here’s the tl;dr:

• Moral antirealism has nothing to do with psychopathy

• There is no such thing as “practicing” moral realism or antirealism

• Antirealism/subjectivism do not entail that nothing matters

• Relativism ≠ Agent relativism specifically. Critics of relativism consistently depict relativism only as the most objectionable form of relativism

• We don’t need to justify our preferences

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Psychopathy is associated with a cluster of personality traits, including lack of empathy, reduced affect (cold or lacking in emotional expression), poor impulse control, and egocentrism, and is often associated with heightened propensity for antisocial and criminal behavior. Here’s a fairly standard characterization:

Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.

I don’t know of any research linking psychopathy to people’s stance on metaethics. Yet critics of antirealism often suggest that moral antirealism is linked to psychopathy, sociopathy, evil, and so on, often calling for sequestering the antirealist so they can’t harm the rest of society. Here is yet another example. Direct your attention to the latter part of the first of these images and the whole second image:

This needs to stop. There aren’t many other mainstream philosophical positions (at least none that I can think of) where it is considered socially acceptable to openly state that the people who endorse them are evil, antisocial monsters without any decent arguments or evidence. So why is this generally accepted in this case? Why isn’t anyone calling people out who say these sorts of things?

Such nonsensical claims may seem a little amusing to anyone who understands just how ridiculous they are, but I don’t think we should let our amusement get in the way of just how wildly unethical it is to characterize everyone who holds a philosophical stance as a psychopath.

Let’s have a look at Jack’s remarks to put them in more context. Jack entered a conversation about antirealism and veganism by responding to this remark:

I think Evan is already conceding too much. There are no difficult conclusions to antirealist positions. People often appear to believe things would be better if moral realism were true, and that there’s some kind of bullet to bite in accepting antirealism. There isn’t one. If you’re a moral realist, and you came to believe moral realism wasn’t true, how would you react? Would you stop caring about your family? Would you stop opposing human rights violations? If so, why? Nothing about the falsity of moral realism requires you to do anything. You can still act in exactly the same way as you did before.

What’s especially weird about Jack’s remarks, however, is the earlier claim that:

no one ever practices anything other than moral realism

As I will never stop saying, this is an empirical claim. There is no decent evidence that most people are moral realists. What’s especially bizarre, however, is the suggestion that people “practice” moral realism. What would that involve? How does one practice it?

A moral realist may “practice realism” by saying things like “That’s stance-independently wrong,” or by making other metaethical claims. But aside from this, everyday moral judgment, discourse, and behavior is equally consistent with antirealism as it is with realism. There’s nothing in particular people say or do that indicates they’re “practicing” moral realism. If Jack disagrees, or if you disagree, get in touch. You’d be welcome to post a comment here, appear on my YouTube channel, or otherwise engage me on the topic. Even if moral realists act differently in some cases, this wouldn’t necessarily entail that they act better. Maybe moral realists tend to be more intolerant, judgmental, and inflexible. Maybe they’re more inclined to be religious fundamentalists or to hold bigoted attitudes. Maybe a belief in moral realism makes people worse. In the absence of compelling evidence one way or another, there’s no good reason to claim that people act like moral realists, much less to suppose that this would be a good thing.

But there really isn’t much to “practice” when it comes to moral realism. It’s a metaethical view. It’s not a view about normative or applied ethics. Even if most people were moral realists, antirealists can mirror realist behavior in virtually every practically relevant respect: they can hold exactly the same normative moral standards, have exactly the same attitudinal disposition towards various actions, etc. Think about it this way:

If you observed a person going about their day, what, specifically, might they say or do that would indicate that wasn’t a direct expression of their metaethical views that would indicate that they were a moral realist or antirealist?

We might be able to identify some hypothetical things a person could do, but most typical, everyday behavior would tell us nothing about a person’s metaethical views.

• Donating to charity? Consistent with both

• Murdering someone? Consistent with both

• Lying to a friend? Consistent with both

• Going to work? Consistent with both

• Taking care of their kids? Consistent with both

…and so on. There just isn’t much a person could do to “practice” moral realism.

Consider what practicing moral realism is consistent with. Recall that Jack says that no one ever practices anything other than moral realism. The ancient world was rife with human sacrifice, often in ritualized form, with numerous witnesses serving as onlookers. Were the Aztecs practicing moral realism when they ritually carved out people’s hearts?

There are references to (verified or not) various forms of human sacrifice all over the world, including live burials, divining the future from the paroxysms of death, and ancient sacrificial pits filled with the corpses of infants. Were these people all practicing moral realism?

Or were ancient societies riddled with countless antirealist psychopaths? Maybe it was just a few people in positions of power! Consider, then, the everyday misogyny, racism, violence, ownership and abuse of slaves, cruelty towards animals, and on, and on, and on. By today’s standards, people in the past were absolute monsters by modern liberal moral standards. Were they all psychopaths? That’s doubtful. And if they weren’t, then were they all practicing moral realism? If so, then what, exactly, are the fruits of moral realism? Genocide, cruelty, slavery, and violence?

I don’t say all this to condemn moral realism. I don’t think these people were practicing moral realism or antirealism. I don’t think metaethical views constitute much in the way of practices at all. They are too abstract and removed from everyday concerns to influence our behavior unless, and only unless, there’s some direct through-line from the metaethical view to specific normative views.

Agent relativism may be an instance of this. But note that agent relativism holds that each individual or society determines what is morally right or wrong for that society, and the rest of us have an obligation to respect this. Were ancient societies to practice agent relativism, we’d have seen a lot fewer wars and a lot less conflict, since people would have an obligation to abstain from imposing their standards on each other. What we observe is the exact opposite of this. The slaughter and oppression of the ancient world thus at least fits better with practicing moral realism than it does with practicing agent relativism. Most other antirealist views have no clear or immediate practical implications at all.

My point is not to indicate that practicing moral realism leads to bad consequences. It’s to note that “practicing moral realism” is a nonsensical notion: there are no specific practices associated with moral realism, beyond mouthing certain words in certain intellectual contexts. Here are some ways one can practice moral realism:

• Stating, “I am a moral realist.”

• Stating, “Moral facts are not made true by the standards of individuals or cultures.”

• Stating, “I agree with Mike Huemer’s main arguments in Ethical Intuitionism.”

• Checking the box “Moral realist” on a PhilPapers survey.

Another difference may be that one deliberates or reasons through moral problems in certain ways. One might think through what the stance-independently correct answer to a moral question is, rather than determine what one ought to do on some stance-dependent grounds. But it’s not clear how much this results in substantive differences in behavior. Maybe realists act differently than antirealists in other respects, but nobody’s done research on this and in any case it’s not at all clear why such differences, if they existed, would sustain presumptions that antirealists should behave in any observably worse way, such as acting more selfish, psychopathic, or antisocial. It’s even possible realists would act worse. Maybe they are more judgment, rigid in their thinking, or otherwise think or act in ways that have bad consequences. I doubt it, but available empirical evidence about whatever hypothesized behavioral differences there may be would be based on an almost total absence of any actual evidence one way or another. In any case, there’s no good reason to specifically suppose that antirealists should be significantly worse.

Are we to conclude that if someone doesn’t do these sorts of things when given the opportunity, that they’re:

• A psychopath

• Confused, but actually a moral realist

• A liar

Perhaps we should check self-professed moral antirealists for rabies? After all, if you’re going to suggest the absurd notion that we’re psychopaths, why not go all in? Why not insist that moral antirealists wear skinsuits to hide their scales? Why not claim that we froth at the mouth and scream “it burns!” when we see an image of Derek Parfit? If you’re going to demonize us, do it right: just declare that we are literally demons, pointy tails and all. I know I, at least, reek of brimstone.

There is no specific everyday set of actions associated with “practicing realism.” The very suggestion is ludicrous and an indication that one doesn’t know what they’re talking about. And I’m just tired of it. I am tired of being demonized and labeled a psychopath because people have perpetuated asinine characterizations of antirealism that caricature us like comic book villains.

Even those who throw an olive branch in our general vicinity capitulate more than they should. One commenter, responding to Jack, says:

The 56% is a reference to the percentage of philosophers that endorsed moral realism in the 2009 PhilPapers survey. This number has gone up to 62% in the 2020 PhilPapers survey. Buffering states that antirealism

doesn’t have any meaningful differences in our beliefs or actions

…exactly what I’ve been arguing, adding that:

If anything, moral antirealists can better relate... […] To some people.

Maybe. I’m not convinced. But see my research with my colleagues, which explores how expressions of realism and relativism are perceived, and the potential role they may play in signaling one’s tolerance (or intolerance) of others. Yet this same person goes on to make far too concessive a set of remarks:

Revisiting Jack’s initial post, I don’t know where the 72% is from, but alright. The latter remark about walking into any department and it being hard to find a moral antirealist is overstated. Antirealists make up 26.1% of respondents to the survey. That’s a little over 1 in 4.

My concern here is Buffering’s response. 62% is not a big number (and again, not sure where 72% is from). But what is up with this remark?

I think some non psychos practice AMR.

What on earth would it mean to “practice” antirealism? How do you “practice” it? Consider error theory:

1. Ordinary first-order moral claims purport to describe stance-independent moral facts.

2. There are no stance-independent moral facts.

3. Ordinary first-order moral claims are therefore systematically false.

What is there to practice? Error theory carries no more implications about what you should or shouldn’t do than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. An error theorist can be an error theorist and then do exactly what they would have done if they were a moral realist. There’s nothing to practice! Error theory is a theory about the meaning of ordinary moral claims and the metaphysical implications this has. It isn’t a theory of action guidance.

Yet Jack continues to espouse common misunderstandings about antirealism:

Antirealism does not entail that suffering (or whatever) “literally doesn’t matter.” A realist may think that if subjectivism were true, then suffering (or whatever) literally wouldn’t matter, but this isn’t an entailment of or feature of subjectivism itself. This is an instance of the halfway fallacy. People characterize views partially in terms of the view itself, and partially from the perspective of one or more views they themselves hold but which is not part of the view and isn’t entailed by it. From a realist’s perspective mattering is stance-independent. Thus, if nothing stance-independently matters, then it doesn’t matter at all. So, from a realist’s point of view a subjectivist may believe that suffering “literally doesn’t matter.”

But if subjectivism is true, it does not entail that only realists have the correct account of what it would mean for something to literally matter. This is itself a matter of contention, and the subjectivist can maintain that things only matter in the subjectivist’s sense. In other words, subjectivism, insofar as it holds that there are stance-dependent moral truths but no stance-independent moral truths, is consistent with the view that “literal” mattering just is stance-dependent mattering, and that since the subjectivist believes things stance-dependently matter, and the realist doesn’t, that only subjectivists believe things literally matter, while realists don’t believe things literally matter.

Critics of subjectivism routinely suffer from a partial failure of imagination: they evaluate subjectivism from a realist’s vantage, judging it to be deficient for lacking certain qualities. But antirealists are not obliged to accept this any more than they’re obliged to accept realism itself.

In short, subjectivism does not entail that nothing “literally” matters.

Jack continues:

For the thousandth time, this is only true of agent relativism, not appraiser relativism. Critics of “relativism” almost never distinguish the two. Once you disambiguate the two, then this criticism simply does not apply to appraiser relativism. People have come to associate relativism with agent relativism for no good reason. For the love of Mackie, please distinguish the two! Jack goes on and on about the allegedly weird implications of relativism/subjectivism. I’ll just quote the whole thing here:

Subjectivists are in a even weirder position in that if someone attacks you or someone else because they want to, even though you “dislike” it, the attacker obviously “likes” it, but then you lack the ground to say that it shouldn’t happen - again if one’s to truly be a Subjectivist then it’s most logical for them to be somewhat indifferent to it. All of that, I think, is somewhat psychotic

The “conflict of values” issue would be a problem only if you have a weird semi-realist self-legislative view of morality, where if you think X is wrong, it is wrong “for you” and if someone else thinks X is right, it is right “for them.” This can cause all sorts of weird situations. What if you believe it’s morally required for you to resist attacks, but someone else believes it’s morally required to attack you? What do you do? Since it’s required of you to fight back, you must fight back. But since it’s required of them to attack you, it’s morally good and you should respect that and not fight back. Oh no! The paradox! Relativists are such stupid idiots oh my gosh!

Maybe there are very silly relativists out there who are committed to a view like this. But this isn’t the only or most defensible form of relativism. Jack doesn’t distinguish this view from appraiser relativism.

Relativism ≠ Agent relativism specifically

But even if you had a view like this, Jack would still be wrong that “it’s most logical for them to be somewhat indifferent to it.” The paradox outlined above doesn’t mandate or even suggest indifference. Nothing about subjectivism, agent or appraiser, suggests that indifference is morally mandated. As far as this being “psychotic,” well, what does that mean? “Insane”? Psychopathy isn’t the same thing as insanity. So does this mean “insane” or “psychopathic” or something else? Who knows? It’s all terribly unclear.

Another issue is that if it’s merely like/dislike, then you lack any reason to like or dislike anything - other than that being an untenable view of desires/wants/needs, if someone was to honestly think that, then they’d quickly see your likes/dislikes disappear Because the way that we have most of our likes/dislikes are grounded in reasons - if you think that there are reasons to actually have something (objective ethics), then you’d lack the grounds for which you have your dislikes/likes. Again, they’d then be no reason to continue to Appease those likes/dislikes if they require lots of risk/danger/time

Neither subjectivism nor antirealism in general entails that you “lack any reason to like or dislike anything.” Firstly, what does that even mean? What does Jack mean by a “reason” to like or dislike something, and why would antirealism entail that you didn’t have them? Antirealist accounts can readily accommodate a notion of “having reasons” so this is just false on the face of it. The only reasons that aren’t available to antirealists are external reasons, but this isn’t the only possible conception of a “reason.” I like the color purple. If by “reason” one means a causal explanation for why I like purple, well, antirealism certainly allows for that. So that’s probably not what Jack is referring to. If, instead, this is some kind of normative notion, like a “justifying reason,” then while subjectivism doesn’t actually entail that we don’t have these, I’m perfectly willing to deny we do.

Second, suppose subjectivism meant no reasons.

So what?

I don’t believe I need a justification or “grounds” or external reasons, nor is it clear why subjectivists need any of this. And, contra Jack, I don’t agree that:

the way that we have most of our likes/dislikes are grounded in reasons

…in the first place. If this is supposed to suggest that we have reasons for our preferences, well, I simply deny this. I don’t have justifications, or reasons, or grounds for my food preferences. Imagine how silly that would be.

Alex: I don’t like cilantro.

Sam: But what’s grounds do you have for disliking it? If you cannot provide a philosophically defensible rationale for your dislike of cilantro, then your dislike of cilantro isn’t justified. Now shut up and eat this cilantro.

What grounds do I have for liking the color purple? What reason do I have for liking sushi? Must I offer a philosophical defense of the fact that I enjoy certain kinds of music more than others? Our preferences don’t require justification, or reasons, or grounding, or anything of the sort. They are simply psychological facts about us.