Moral realism derives false appeal from misrepresenting relativism

The more I think about it, the more I suspect most of the appeal to moral realism comes from its proponents conflating metaethical and normative considerations, and thinking there's some kind of deep normative costs to being a moral antirealist, even though I don't think there are any at all.

One frequent exchange I see between moral realists and subjectivists is one like this:

Realist: Do you think it’s wrong to torture babies for fun?

Antirealist: Yes. I’m a moral subjectivist.

Realist: Okay, so if someone else thinks they should torture babies, then you would have to agree that they should torture babies, and that it’s good for them to do so.

Antirealist: No, not exactly.

Realist: Yes, that is what you are committed to. On your view, as a subjectivist, if someone thinks they should torture babies then they should. It’s good for them to do it.

Antirealist: That’s an extremely ambiguous way of framing things. You’re giving the impression I’m okay with baby torture under particular circumstances, and I am not. At best, the remark is misleading. At worst, it’s inaccurate.

The antirealist is correct. Here’s the problem. The realist is making it seem like, if you’re a subjectivist, *you* must think it’s right and good for someone else to torture babies, so long as that person thinks it’s right and good to do so.

You might think this, if you endorse agent relativism. But a subjectivist does not have to (and, I suspect, probably wouldn’t) endorse agent relativism, but might instead endorse appraiser relativism.

Agent relativism: An action is right or wrong depending on the standards of the agent performing the action.

Appraiser relativism: An action is right or wrong depending on the standards of the agent judging the action.

It seems many critics of relativism implicitly presume that we’re dealing with agent relativism. As a result, they presume that if I am a relativist, then I have can have no objections to, and would in fact have to approve of someone else’s contrary moral standards. So if someone else thinks it’s totally okay to torture babies, then I must agree that it is morally good for them to torture babies, and that they ought to do so.

This is *not* an implication of relativism. This is only an implication of a very specific form of relativism that relativists are not required to endorse. A relativist could instead think that whether or not an action is right or wrong can only be judged relative to different moral frameworks, but that such frameworks can include a stance towards the actions of any arbitrary number of moral agents (including all of them), regardless of the standards of those agents themselves.

For instance, a moral relativist could think that “relative to my standards, it is wrong for anyone, anywhere, to torture babies for fun.”

In short, relativism is compatible with a form of universalism (moral standards apply to everyone) and even absolutism (there are no exceptions to this moral rule). It’s just that such universalization and absolutism is itself relativized. Torturing babies is wrong universally…relative to their moral standards, and it is wrong without exception…relative to their moral standards.

This brings us back to the exchange above. The realist insists that the moral relativist must agree that if someone else thinks it’s morally right to torture babies, that the antirealist must agree that it’s right to torture babies. But what is meant by “right to torture babies”? The relativist need only agree that it is right *relative to that person’s moral framework*. They do not have to agree that it’s right according to *their* (the relativist’s) moral framework. So, for instance, an antirealist can say:

“No, I don’t think it’s right for someone else to torture babies, just because they think it’s okay to torture babies. I think it’s right relative to their moral standards, but it is still wrong relative to my moral standards.”

The problem with the realist’s accusation is that it is ambiguous between (a) a nonrelativist conception of “right” or “good”, (b) an agent relativist version (which relativists can also reject), and (c) an appraiser relativist position.

If (a) or (b), the realist is mischaracterizing the antirealist’s position or at best framing the question in a misleading or confusing way that may involve a degree of equivocation. If (c), there is no straightforward answer to the question:

“If someone else thinks it is morally right to torture babies, is it morally right?”

The question isn’t clear enough to answer, because it’s missing sufficient information to know which moral standard the “rightness” of the question is being relativized to.

For comparison, imagine someone said “Alex is standing somewhere on the earth. Is it winter?”

If you were asked this question, it would be confusing and incomplete. Is it asking if it’s winter where you are, or where Alex is?

I propose that the same problem emerges from moral realists insisting that relativists have to think that if someone else thinks it’s right or good to torture babies, that the relativist themselves must consider it “right” or “good” for them to torture babies - this relies on an equivocation or underspecification about what is meant by “right” or “good.”

My suspicion is that realists are smuggling in their own realist conceptions of “right” and “good,” into the question, and are taking advantage of the rhetorical impact it would have on an audience, by implying that the relativist is committed to, themselves, holding the *normative* stance that baby torture is good, or at least that it is good for some people to torture babies, even though this is not an implication of relativism and is not something relativists are committed to.

The more I examine the way realists engage with antirealist positions, the more I have the deep worry that the popularity of realism may rely on a wide variety of conflations, confusions, misleading framings, and so on, and that much of its appeal is bounded up in the mistaken notion that something about antirealist positions carries unsavory *normative* implications, even though it doesn’t.