>JPA seems to be suggesting that we may suffer from an evolved, localized cognitive impairment that prevents us from thinking effectively about metaethics because if we did, we might question value realism, and that could undermine our wellbeing (and presumably decrease our reproductive fitness)
I think he just meant that it would've been a wasteful tradeoff to spend time thinking idly about abstract things rather than hunting for food.
If that's what he meant he could have just said that. I'd still object even to that. Natural selection doesn't have a bunch of distinctive systems for thinking about specific things. It allows us to think in a more flexible and open-ended sense, which has been adaptive, and as a byproduct of this we might end up thinking up and doing some silly things. Not every byproduct of an adaptation has to enhance our fitness. So thinking about abstract things may be a product of, e.g., recursive thinking, skill at planning, metacognition, the ability to engage in mental simulation, facility with metaphor, and other skills that stem from general cognitive abilities. Those abilities can be adaptive even if existential worrying isn't.
I agree, but I think there's a folk understanding of evolution that's developed by describing cases where an agent has a tradeoff between doing things that are stipulated to reduce their reproductive fitness (thinking of philosophy) and doing things that aren't normally regarded to reduce reproductive fitness (hunting food) and so that's taken as the explanation for why the agent didn't evolve "for" the stipulated low reproductive fitness thing. In light of this, JP's remarks are in alignment with this paradigm, and aren't him "suggesting that we may suffer from an evolved, localized cognitive impairment that prevents us from thinking effectively about metaethics because if we did, we might question value realism, and that could undermine our wellbeing (and presumably decrease our reproductive fitness)." Although obviously I agree with your criticisms that this is a bad paradigm and using it to communicate a legitimate point rather than a toy point is bad.
This sort of reasoning is used in a lot of different areas, by lots of different people, who want to make claims that aren't empirically substantiated, or may not even be substantiable.
I call it evolutionism: a plausible, hand-wavy appeal to evolution to support a 'common sense' point.
I did not read that as an empirical claim about why the ordinary person should **not** endorse value realism, and I am not sure this is what the author believes, either, though he could. I read it as a claim that there is insufficient empirical evidence that the ordinary person should endorse value realism, which is the thesis of the whole post; and, in particular, as a response to someone who claimed the opposite without the accompanying evidence.
Would it have been clearer if phrased as follows?
"There have been shown no strong pragmatic reasons that an ordinary person ought to endorse value realism."
"The ordinary person does not have any strong pragmatic reasons to endorse value realism."
This is just a clear claim. I get you're saying this is a statement about how there's no evidence. I'm not seeing words like "evidence" in here. You can always make an indefensible claim defensible by asserting there's implicit caveats.
In any case, seems like we just have different readings. I'm agreeing with your critique assuming your reading is true, and seems like you're agreeing with my critique assuming my reading is true. If there's nothing else you want to mention, I say we just wrap it up here.
In any case, to address the question of what I'm arguing for: I didn't have any clear distinction in mind between a positive thesis that people wouldn't benefit from endorsing value realism and a negative thesis that there's no good evidence that they would. I could have been clearer about that. I can see why the title could lead someone to adopt the former interpretation, but to hang so much on the title of a blog post is a bit of petty nitpickery I have little interest in dealing with.
Regarding the positive case: this isn't that complicated. If there are few or no pragmatic benefits to endorsing value realism, then there'd be no incentive for people to do so. I argue that the only way in which people would obtain practical benefits from endorsing value realism is if they valued stance-independent values and were motivated to comply with them. There's no direct empirical evidence that people wouldn't care about value realism if they endorsed it, but we do have empirical data that indirectly bears on this question, including my own research. Namely, I believe the best interpretation of existing empirical evidence is that most people have no determinate metaethical stances at all: they're neither realists nor antirealists. This metaethical dispute is, I contend, one that emerged almost exclusively among academic philosophers and has little to do with ordinary moral thought. On abductive grounds one can make the case that if the notion of value realism is a historically contingent and confused invention of academic philosophers, it's not likely that nonphilosophers would care about it a great deal.
FWIW, I would have been happy to make an empirical case for the positive claim. It would, roughly, be an abductive inference based on the explanatory adequacy of characterizing human cognition in terms of motivations to pursue what matters to people coupled with the absence of any compelling reason to suppose that people are generally inclined to desire to do whatever would be stance-independently valuable.
This would work much the way that if one could account for all human facial expressions by positing, e.g., five specific emotions, there'd be no good reason to posit a sixth unless, and only unless, there were good evidence to do so. In this case, the absence of good evidence that people do or would care to comply with stance-independent values, coupled with adequate accounts of human motivation in terms of things mattering to people, provides an explanatory comprehensive account of human behavior without having to posit something extra. So we'd have something along the lines of an explanatory superfluity argument, and those are, in fact, informed by empirical findings.
However, this person unfortunately went the route of implying deception on my part, so they are no longer welcome to participate in these discussions.
Worrying that the things you care about might not matter "in the deepest possible sense" is a bit like being a billionaire and worrying that your net worth isn't "the largest possible number."
Great article! Personally, I prefer not to use nihilism as a description for anti-realism because of all the negative connotations it gets given. I find it really, really hard to take moral realism seriously; although I am trying to read the best arguments for it, it just feels like wishful thinking and religious-like belief.
>JPA seems to be suggesting that we may suffer from an evolved, localized cognitive impairment that prevents us from thinking effectively about metaethics because if we did, we might question value realism, and that could undermine our wellbeing (and presumably decrease our reproductive fitness)
I think he just meant that it would've been a wasteful tradeoff to spend time thinking idly about abstract things rather than hunting for food.
If that's what he meant he could have just said that. I'd still object even to that. Natural selection doesn't have a bunch of distinctive systems for thinking about specific things. It allows us to think in a more flexible and open-ended sense, which has been adaptive, and as a byproduct of this we might end up thinking up and doing some silly things. Not every byproduct of an adaptation has to enhance our fitness. So thinking about abstract things may be a product of, e.g., recursive thinking, skill at planning, metacognition, the ability to engage in mental simulation, facility with metaphor, and other skills that stem from general cognitive abilities. Those abilities can be adaptive even if existential worrying isn't.
I agree, but I think there's a folk understanding of evolution that's developed by describing cases where an agent has a tradeoff between doing things that are stipulated to reduce their reproductive fitness (thinking of philosophy) and doing things that aren't normally regarded to reduce reproductive fitness (hunting food) and so that's taken as the explanation for why the agent didn't evolve "for" the stipulated low reproductive fitness thing. In light of this, JP's remarks are in alignment with this paradigm, and aren't him "suggesting that we may suffer from an evolved, localized cognitive impairment that prevents us from thinking effectively about metaethics because if we did, we might question value realism, and that could undermine our wellbeing (and presumably decrease our reproductive fitness)." Although obviously I agree with your criticisms that this is a bad paradigm and using it to communicate a legitimate point rather than a toy point is bad.
This sort of reasoning is used in a lot of different areas, by lots of different people, who want to make claims that aren't empirically substantiated, or may not even be substantiable.
I call it evolutionism: a plausible, hand-wavy appeal to evolution to support a 'common sense' point.
My metaethics is particularly-malevolent-or-anti-social-ism.
"The ordinary person does not have any strong pragmatic reasons to endorse value realism."
Seems like an empirical claim, yet I'm not seeing you give supporting empirical research. What's the empirics showing this?
I did not read that as an empirical claim about why the ordinary person should **not** endorse value realism, and I am not sure this is what the author believes, either, though he could. I read it as a claim that there is insufficient empirical evidence that the ordinary person should endorse value realism, which is the thesis of the whole post; and, in particular, as a response to someone who claimed the opposite without the accompanying evidence.
Would it have been clearer if phrased as follows?
"There have been shown no strong pragmatic reasons that an ordinary person ought to endorse value realism."
People who accuse me of dishonesty are permanently banned from all future engagement with me.
> OP clearly claims it's false the ordinary person has pragmatic reason to accept value realism
Sorry, I just don't think your interpretation is correct.
Person 1: Claims X
Person 2: No, you haven't shown X, there is no proof of X, or reason for X.
How is Person 2 dodging a burden of proof?
> You haven't seen any empirical case that "The ordinary person does not have any strong pragmatic reasons to endorse value realism."
Sure, but I'm not sure why empirical evidence is needed to prove the abscence of a claim.
"The ordinary person does not have any strong pragmatic reasons to endorse value realism."
This is just a clear claim. I get you're saying this is a statement about how there's no evidence. I'm not seeing words like "evidence" in here. You can always make an indefensible claim defensible by asserting there's implicit caveats.
In any case, seems like we just have different readings. I'm agreeing with your critique assuming your reading is true, and seems like you're agreeing with my critique assuming my reading is true. If there's nothing else you want to mention, I say we just wrap it up here.
👍
In any case, to address the question of what I'm arguing for: I didn't have any clear distinction in mind between a positive thesis that people wouldn't benefit from endorsing value realism and a negative thesis that there's no good evidence that they would. I could have been clearer about that. I can see why the title could lead someone to adopt the former interpretation, but to hang so much on the title of a blog post is a bit of petty nitpickery I have little interest in dealing with.
Regarding the positive case: this isn't that complicated. If there are few or no pragmatic benefits to endorsing value realism, then there'd be no incentive for people to do so. I argue that the only way in which people would obtain practical benefits from endorsing value realism is if they valued stance-independent values and were motivated to comply with them. There's no direct empirical evidence that people wouldn't care about value realism if they endorsed it, but we do have empirical data that indirectly bears on this question, including my own research. Namely, I believe the best interpretation of existing empirical evidence is that most people have no determinate metaethical stances at all: they're neither realists nor antirealists. This metaethical dispute is, I contend, one that emerged almost exclusively among academic philosophers and has little to do with ordinary moral thought. On abductive grounds one can make the case that if the notion of value realism is a historically contingent and confused invention of academic philosophers, it's not likely that nonphilosophers would care about it a great deal.
FWIW, I would have been happy to make an empirical case for the positive claim. It would, roughly, be an abductive inference based on the explanatory adequacy of characterizing human cognition in terms of motivations to pursue what matters to people coupled with the absence of any compelling reason to suppose that people are generally inclined to desire to do whatever would be stance-independently valuable.
This would work much the way that if one could account for all human facial expressions by positing, e.g., five specific emotions, there'd be no good reason to posit a sixth unless, and only unless, there were good evidence to do so. In this case, the absence of good evidence that people do or would care to comply with stance-independent values, coupled with adequate accounts of human motivation in terms of things mattering to people, provides an explanatory comprehensive account of human behavior without having to posit something extra. So we'd have something along the lines of an explanatory superfluity argument, and those are, in fact, informed by empirical findings.
However, this person unfortunately went the route of implying deception on my part, so they are no longer welcome to participate in these discussions.
Worrying that the things you care about might not matter "in the deepest possible sense" is a bit like being a billionaire and worrying that your net worth isn't "the largest possible number."
Great article! Personally, I prefer not to use nihilism as a description for anti-realism because of all the negative connotations it gets given. I find it really, really hard to take moral realism seriously; although I am trying to read the best arguments for it, it just feels like wishful thinking and religious-like belief.
I never use it outside of this article. I used it in this article to match the way the terminology in the article I was responding to was being used.