Moral realism & the problem of motivation

According to moral realists, there are stance-independent moral facts. Such facts dictate which actions are morally right, wrong, permissible, impermissible, good, bad, and so on.

What I typically say about various accounts of moral realism is that all forms of moral realism are (1) trivial, (2) false, or (3) unintelligible.

Most disputes between moral realists and antirealists center on (2), with the antirealist arguing that moral realism is false.

I tend to emphasize (3), arguing that many forms of moral realism strike me as unintelligible, especially non-naturalist forms of realism.

However, (1) is actually one of the more interesting problems with moral realism: the claim that some forms of moral realism are trivial.

It’s difficult to characterize just what I have in mind by trivial; that will be a discussion for the future. Part of the issue is that I have several different things in mind. At least one easy way an account of moral realism faces a triviality challenge is if it doesn’t purport to offer irreducibly normative facts, or, that is, if it effectively jettisons normativity in favor of a purely descriptive account.

If, for instance, one’s account of moral facts is that they are analytically equivalent to facts about what increases or decreases wellbeing, such an account faces a certain kind of triviality: namely, that such facts alone can’t compel action. As various antirealists have put it, such an account would lack clout, “practical oomph”, or practical authority (Bedke, 2019). In other words, we could simply ignore such facts without cost.

The relation between certain analyses of the moral facts and motivation, normativity, and so on is fraught. If the realist insists on some thesis or theses, such as motivational internalism (the claim that moral beliefs are necessarily if defeasibly motivating), they could maintain that the triviality concern may be dealt with (Björnsson et al., 2015). That’s a big topic, and one I’ll set aside for now.

Here, I want to focus on a more straightforward and general sense in which all forms of moral realism, taken at face value (that is, without the inclusion of some extraneous set of theses, e.g., motivational externalism), strike me as trivial:

I simply do not care what the “moral facts” are, whatever they turned out to be.

I act only in accordance with my goals and interests. If the moral facts aren’t aligned with those goals and interests, so much the worse for the moral facts. I simply do not care. Yet this isn’t simply a matter of me not caring. I suspect that people in general are incapable of acting without being motivated to act, and I suspect that people are only motivated to act in accordance with their goals and desires. The latter remark often rouses a frustrating digression to deal with complaints:

“Well, someone could desire to do something that isn’t in their own interests, like a bad habit…”

Yes. Human psychology is complicated and we can have competing drives and interests. I may really want to stay up late writing angry comments about moral realism, but I may also want to get a good night’s sleep. These goals can conflict with one another, and I can find myself compelled to act in accordance with the former goal, despite, on reflection, recognizing that the latter is more prudent. Strangely, analytic philosophers suddenly become interested in empirical facts about human psychology when it will conveniently allow them to obscure matters and avoid engagement with the shortcomings of their views. That we may have competing drives or interests is irrelevant.

I’m not suggesting that we have a single “motivation system” in the brain that proceeds sequentially, prompting us to act on one motivation, then the next. The empirical reality can be far messier than that. I’m simply pointing out that we act on such motivations, goals, and drives, whatever their underlying structure and relationship to one another, while we don’t act based on possible actions that are not, in any way, aligned with the psychological processes prompting us with the various competing drives and motivations that we experience.

For instance, I may have competing goals: (1) Stay up late (2) Go to sleep. Whatever way I ultimately resolve this conflict, I’m going to do (1) or (2). But since I have no desire, motivation, or goal whatsoever to go stand outside in the cold, dark, and rain all night, that simply isn’t part of my motivational profile. It’s not that I can’t do it. It’s that I won’t do it… unless conditions change. If someone offered me $10,000 to stand outside in the cold, dark, and rain all night, then I would do it. But I’d do it because I want $10,000. That is, my actions always follow in accordance with my goals and interests.

Now back to realism. Some people may have the motivation to do whatever is morally right or wrong, regardless of what that turns out to be. Some moral realists may insist that the moral facts are circumscribed by our intuitions, or are self-evident, or are in some other way limited to some plausible set of actions in the vicinity of conventional motivational profiles. I’m not convinced. I don’t see any good reasons why it wouldn’t be logically possible for the stance-independent moral facts to be radically different from what we think they are. Even if we think this is very unlikely, that’s irrelevant to the point I am going to make. And that point is this:

Suppose the moral facts turned out to be misaligned with your personal goals, values, and interests. Would you nevertheless comply with the moral facts?

No. I don’t think you would. It’s not just that I don’t think you’d have any interest in doing so. I think you simply wouldn’t, full stop. Why would you? The moral facts aren’t aligned with your goals or interests! They would be as motivationally inert as any random suggestion to perform any particular action, independent of its connection to your goals and values: screaming at tables, eating socks, and so on.

Moral realists can insist that moral beliefs just are intrinsically motivating. Well, fine. Then these realists are welcome to conduct the proper empirical studies to see if anyone actually has “moral beliefs” of the relevant kind. If it turns out that humans are psychologically constituted in such a way that they just don’t have anything corresponding to these putatively intrinsically motivating beliefs, then it would simply turn out that people don’t have moral beliefs. If so, philosophers will have dreamed up a type of psychological state that nobody actually has. Or perhaps some people have them (perhaps moral realists) and others don’t.

I can’t resolve empirical questions about the connection between belief and motivation here. If realists want to insist on any particular thesis, the onus is on them to make a case for it. And I doubt they’re going to get there via a priori reasoning alone.

I can’t get there through a priori reasoning alone, either, but such reasoning can perhaps do some argumentative work. I have in mind Don Loeb’s (2003) excellent and amusing article on gastronomic realism. Gastronomic realism is the view that there are stance-independent gastronomic facts about what we should and shouldn’t do, gastronomically speaking. This should not be confused with other reasons we might have to eat certain foods: nutritional value, ethical considerations, and so on. Rather, it’s that we have gastronomic reasons to eat certain foods in virtue of their superior gastronomic properties.

Loeb is hesitant to present it as a reductio, but gastronomic realism serves as a kind of parody of the rationales offered for moral realism, lampooning it via unflattering comparison. Consider just what gastronomic realism would commit us to. Gastronomic facts obtain independent of our taste preferences. If it’s a gastronomic fact that you ought to eat chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla, then gastronomically speaking, you ought to eat chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla, even if you prefer vanilla and dislike chocolate.

Suppose you were sitting down to enjoy a dinner, when you were confronted by a group of gastronomic realists. You had intended to order a soufflé. They insist that you should not. Instead, you should order the peach galette. It is far better, they insist. But suppose you’re not fond of peaches. You’d quite like the soufflé, and have no interest in the peach galette.

“You don’t understand,” they say. “You have a gastronomic obligation to eat the peach galette instead of the soufflé. If you order the soufflé, you’d be gastronomically incorrect.”

Suppose all else being equal, you simply have no desire to eat the galette, but would greatly enjoy the soufflé. Suppose you’re an excellent judge of your food preferences, and have tried both at this exact restaurant on numerous occasions. Every time you’ve tried the soufflé you liked it, and every time you tried the peach galette, you found it was unappealing. You have no reason to think this has changed. In short, you know you’d enjoy the soufflé and would dislike the peach galette.

What would you do?

All else being equal, I’m confident you’d order the soufflé. Perhaps the gastronomic realists could prompt you to eat the galette but why would you do so, if you did? If they seemed dangerous you may order it to avoid a conflict. Or they may offer to pay for your dinner. Or they might implore you and insist they’d be personally devastated if you didn’t order the galette. Yet notice in all of these cases the only factors relevant to what you decide to do would involve changes to your incentives that impacted your motivations in some way.

Now suppose they sat down and argued with you about your decision.

“I insist you provide a justification for ordering the soufflé. On what grounds can you justify eating it, instead of the galette?”

You could say, “because I want to.” But why bother? Why think you need a justification for anything that you do?

Yet they might insist you simply are not justified in eating the soufflé unless you can provide a justification. And if you appeal to your goals or preferences or anything other than a stance-independent gastronomic normative fact, you’re not giving “real” reasons for what you do. None of this flimsy, stance-dependent, or non-normative nonsense is adequate. Without an appeal to genuine, robust, stance-independent gastronomic facts, you are simply not justified in eating whatever you want.

After all, you have to have a reason to do what you do. And while your goals and preferences may provide reasons to eat what you want, there are external reasons to eat the galette. Such reasons are independent of your goals, standards, and values. And, critically, they are overriding. It simply does not matter if you want to eat the soufflé, your reasons for eating the galette are overriding, and thus provide more reason to eat the galette than to eat the soufflé. Your goals aren’t adequate to justify eating the soufflé because our goals, preferences, and values are arbitrary. Absent a philosophically defensible rationale, you are therefore incorrect if you eat the soufflé.

How would you react to this situation? Would you have any interest in providing a justification for your decision to order the soufflé? Would you listen to all this, realize you don’t have any justification for eating the soufflé, and abandon your decision to eat the soufflé and instead eat the galette, knowing you won’t like it?

Now generalize this to all of your decisions about what you eat. Would you only comply with the gastronomic facts about what’s gastronomically good and bad, and stop concerning yourself altogether with what you want to eat?

This is how morality seems to me. It seems like someone coming along and insisting I “should” do things regardless of whether I have any interest in doing so, and indeed, that I “must” do so.

My answer to moral realists is simple:

No.

What now? What happens if I just don’t do what’s moral? What’s the moral realist going to do? Tell me I’m “morally incorrect” or that what I did was “morally bad”? So what? Why should I care about that? There is no cosmic force that will annihilate my soul if I don’t comply with the “moral facts.” Is the moral realist going to insist I’m “not being rational”? Again, so what? If being “rational” required me to do things that didn’t serve my interests, then so much for that notion of “rationality,” I’ll pass.

Moral realism is the product of conceptual and linguistic mistakes. It’s the sanctification of alleged folk terms, as though we’re bound by oath to comply with the presumptions implicit in the way ordinary people (i.e., nonphilosophers) think and speak about matters.

What makes this whole enterprise all the more pointless is that realists are wrong about what the folk view is. Moral realism is not built into the way ordinary people speak or think. Neither is antirealism. These are philosophical inventions.

Moral realism is a popular position among philosophers. I suspect this is due, in part, to analytic philosophy’s bizarre goal of attempting to vindicate what it takes to be “the commonsense” view. Unfortunately, in their efforts to remain methodologically autonomous, philosophers eschew empirical research. This has resulted in a century lost to armchair speculation predicated on the mistaken notion that ordinary people think and speak like moral realists. As the evidence rolls in, it’s becoming increasingly evident that they don’t.

As the case against folk moral realism grows, I suspect (and I hope) this will lead to a decline in moral realism among philosophers, as the motivation to preserve “the folk view” declines with the knowledge that realism isn’t even “the” folk view, and is at best one among many.

References

Bedke, M. (2019). Practical oomph: A case for subjectivism. The Philosophical Quarterly, 69(277), 657-677.

Björnsson, G., Strandberg, C., Francén Olinder, R., Eriksson, J., & Björklund, F. (Eds). (2015). Motivational internalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Loeb, D. (2003). Gastronomic realism—A cautionary tale. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 23(1), 30-49.