I agree with the thrust of this post, but I suppose in the spirit of candor, one could be more charitable to the realists here and suggest that their objections isn't a failure to imagine the antirealist position, but rather an appeal to an impulse they infer others have. Presumably they believe others to feel a particularly different feeling upon apprehending moral arguments from arguments about descriptive facts.
That's how I understand the discursive argument offered in the initial examples; they're suggesting it's odd to treat moral disagreements with any stridency or strong personal convictions if there's nothing unique about disagreeing on those facts that doesn't apply to disagreements about the effects of gravity.
I understand an antirealist response to this could simply be that people's dispositions vary internally and with respect to each other, and that their dispositions being different for different contexts is an interesting descriptive fact about them, not probative on what properties normative facts have. But I could see how that's less obvious or appealing than "maybe the thing that feels special (to you) is special!"
If it were merely an impulse they infer others have, one would expect different framing than what we see here and in many other instances. What we see is them assuming that we antirealists think like realists. Not asking. Just assuming. And their assumptions are often tinged with incredulity and bafflement, even in cases where antirealists have repeatedly explained why we think what we do. What I see is people who look to me like they have trouble understanding our perspective, not people who simply believe we have a contrary perspective.
If you constantly go around assuming that everyone thinks the way you do even when those people explicitly and repeatedly tell you they don't think the way you do, this starts to look like a problem you have, not a problem they have. And this is exactly what I see: moral realists who appear to me to have a lot of trouble grokking the antirealist perspective.
It's also very strange to be so confident that everyone must think the way you do. This is itself independently objectionable.
//Presumably they believe others to feel a particularly different feeling upon apprehending moral arguments from arguments about descriptive facts.//
This is an empirical question. And if they're talking to another person, they can just ask that person. If they're talking about antirealists, they can ask us. If they want to make empirical claims, they can gather empirical data. But they typically don't. They just assume people think like they do and are flabbergasted, and sometimes even hostile when people report not sharing their perspectives.
//That's how I understand the discursive argument offered in the initial examples; they're suggesting it's odd to treat moral disagreements with any stridency or strong personal convictions if there's nothing unique about disagreeing on those facts that doesn't apply to disagreements about the effects of gravity.//
Yea, that's a weird thing to think is odd. There's nothing odd about being strident about what you care about. And there is something unique about moral disagreements: for antirealists, they reflect positions we have on how we want the world to be. My beliefs about gravity aren't like that (though if I or others could alter the effects of gravity, I might care, since this could yield outcomes I find desirable). So there are differences here, but those differences have nothing to do with realism.
I also want to stress that I think this is completely obvious, and it should be obvious to moral realists, which is why them finding it odd isn't warranted and shows a failure of imagination on their part.
To put it simply: this is a very silly thing to find odd. There's nothing odd about being strident about the fact that I don't want my family to be tortured and am going to object a lot to someone who wants to torture my family, but that I care a lot less about someone who holds a contrary view about some matter that doesn't threaten me or the people I care about.
//I understand an antirealist response to this could simply be that people's dispositions vary internally and with respect to each other, and that their dispositions being different for different contexts is an interesting descriptive fact about them, not probative on what properties normative facts have. But I could see how that's less obvious or appealing than "maybe the thing that feels special (to you) is special!"//
Nothing about how my moral standards feel feels so special I feel the need to posit special concepts or metaphysical properties to account for them. I find this incredibly bizarre.
I have a quick question. Do you think that the existence and identification of a stance-independent truth is not pragmatically useful in communication, in particular communication with the goal to persuade?
Probably not in most cases, unless the person is weirdly inclined to want to comply with whatever they think the stance-independent normative facts are.
Isn't this basically the Companions in Guilt argument, a la Cuneo? As go moral facts, so go epistemic, hence the anti-realist's argument is self-defeating. But I think epistemic normativity, at least w.r.t. the mundane physical world, can be grounded in my desire (i.e. my stance) to navigate that world in a way promotes pleasure over pain. And I suspect (not that I've worked it out ;-) that that can be extended to more abstract domains. Moral normativity would be grounded in our common (with some exceptions) desire to live in a peaceable, orderly social environment, which to me gestures in the direction of some variety of contractarianism.
And this "If the other guy doesn't care about breaking the law, then he's right to murder me, and I have no valid objections" strikes me as just plain weird. Even if we accept that kind of relativism, my dying violently is against *my* value system, which gives me the right to resist by all means available.
Something like a CGA seems like it might be implied, yea. But these objections are terrible: you can simply reject both moral and epistemic realism without any issues at all. Realists think there are issues, but they think this because they think you need realism. You don't.
"And this "If the other guy doesn't care about breaking the law, then he's right to murder me, and I have no valid objections" strikes me as just plain weird. Even if we accept that kind of relativism, my dying violently is against *my* value system, which gives me the right to resist by all means available."
Yes. Exactly. I don't know why people are so confused about this.
I think (though I do not know, I have no evidence, sorry) that many people genuinely find relativistic views like this hard to understand, since it may be hard to square with the fact that people seem to have similar views. I think there's an extent to which they're appealing to the uniformity of people's dispositions about murder as evidence of an independent fact driving that shared context. Perhaps to them it's odd for that independent fact to simply be a descriptive fact that implies a shared index for relativized views.
I am not objecting to your view here, only that I can see why someone would be confused by this. At first pass it can present like claiming that instead of gravity being a fundamental force it's an emergent consequence of fields, and so on. One is simpler and explains the basic stuff they're worried about, the other avoids problems they don't know exist yet and requires cognitive overhead.
I agree with the thrust of this post, but I suppose in the spirit of candor, one could be more charitable to the realists here and suggest that their objections isn't a failure to imagine the antirealist position, but rather an appeal to an impulse they infer others have. Presumably they believe others to feel a particularly different feeling upon apprehending moral arguments from arguments about descriptive facts.
That's how I understand the discursive argument offered in the initial examples; they're suggesting it's odd to treat moral disagreements with any stridency or strong personal convictions if there's nothing unique about disagreeing on those facts that doesn't apply to disagreements about the effects of gravity.
I understand an antirealist response to this could simply be that people's dispositions vary internally and with respect to each other, and that their dispositions being different for different contexts is an interesting descriptive fact about them, not probative on what properties normative facts have. But I could see how that's less obvious or appealing than "maybe the thing that feels special (to you) is special!"
If it were merely an impulse they infer others have, one would expect different framing than what we see here and in many other instances. What we see is them assuming that we antirealists think like realists. Not asking. Just assuming. And their assumptions are often tinged with incredulity and bafflement, even in cases where antirealists have repeatedly explained why we think what we do. What I see is people who look to me like they have trouble understanding our perspective, not people who simply believe we have a contrary perspective.
If you constantly go around assuming that everyone thinks the way you do even when those people explicitly and repeatedly tell you they don't think the way you do, this starts to look like a problem you have, not a problem they have. And this is exactly what I see: moral realists who appear to me to have a lot of trouble grokking the antirealist perspective.
It's also very strange to be so confident that everyone must think the way you do. This is itself independently objectionable.
//Presumably they believe others to feel a particularly different feeling upon apprehending moral arguments from arguments about descriptive facts.//
This is an empirical question. And if they're talking to another person, they can just ask that person. If they're talking about antirealists, they can ask us. If they want to make empirical claims, they can gather empirical data. But they typically don't. They just assume people think like they do and are flabbergasted, and sometimes even hostile when people report not sharing their perspectives.
//That's how I understand the discursive argument offered in the initial examples; they're suggesting it's odd to treat moral disagreements with any stridency or strong personal convictions if there's nothing unique about disagreeing on those facts that doesn't apply to disagreements about the effects of gravity.//
Yea, that's a weird thing to think is odd. There's nothing odd about being strident about what you care about. And there is something unique about moral disagreements: for antirealists, they reflect positions we have on how we want the world to be. My beliefs about gravity aren't like that (though if I or others could alter the effects of gravity, I might care, since this could yield outcomes I find desirable). So there are differences here, but those differences have nothing to do with realism.
I also want to stress that I think this is completely obvious, and it should be obvious to moral realists, which is why them finding it odd isn't warranted and shows a failure of imagination on their part.
To put it simply: this is a very silly thing to find odd. There's nothing odd about being strident about the fact that I don't want my family to be tortured and am going to object a lot to someone who wants to torture my family, but that I care a lot less about someone who holds a contrary view about some matter that doesn't threaten me or the people I care about.
//I understand an antirealist response to this could simply be that people's dispositions vary internally and with respect to each other, and that their dispositions being different for different contexts is an interesting descriptive fact about them, not probative on what properties normative facts have. But I could see how that's less obvious or appealing than "maybe the thing that feels special (to you) is special!"//
Nothing about how my moral standards feel feels so special I feel the need to posit special concepts or metaphysical properties to account for them. I find this incredibly bizarre.
Thank you for another good read, Lance.
I have a quick question. Do you think that the existence and identification of a stance-independent truth is not pragmatically useful in communication, in particular communication with the goal to persuade?
Probably not in most cases, unless the person is weirdly inclined to want to comply with whatever they think the stance-independent normative facts are.
Isn't this basically the Companions in Guilt argument, a la Cuneo? As go moral facts, so go epistemic, hence the anti-realist's argument is self-defeating. But I think epistemic normativity, at least w.r.t. the mundane physical world, can be grounded in my desire (i.e. my stance) to navigate that world in a way promotes pleasure over pain. And I suspect (not that I've worked it out ;-) that that can be extended to more abstract domains. Moral normativity would be grounded in our common (with some exceptions) desire to live in a peaceable, orderly social environment, which to me gestures in the direction of some variety of contractarianism.
And this "If the other guy doesn't care about breaking the law, then he's right to murder me, and I have no valid objections" strikes me as just plain weird. Even if we accept that kind of relativism, my dying violently is against *my* value system, which gives me the right to resist by all means available.
Something like a CGA seems like it might be implied, yea. But these objections are terrible: you can simply reject both moral and epistemic realism without any issues at all. Realists think there are issues, but they think this because they think you need realism. You don't.
"And this "If the other guy doesn't care about breaking the law, then he's right to murder me, and I have no valid objections" strikes me as just plain weird. Even if we accept that kind of relativism, my dying violently is against *my* value system, which gives me the right to resist by all means available."
Yes. Exactly. I don't know why people are so confused about this.
I think (though I do not know, I have no evidence, sorry) that many people genuinely find relativistic views like this hard to understand, since it may be hard to square with the fact that people seem to have similar views. I think there's an extent to which they're appealing to the uniformity of people's dispositions about murder as evidence of an independent fact driving that shared context. Perhaps to them it's odd for that independent fact to simply be a descriptive fact that implies a shared index for relativized views.
I am not objecting to your view here, only that I can see why someone would be confused by this. At first pass it can present like claiming that instead of gravity being a fundamental force it's an emergent consequence of fields, and so on. One is simpler and explains the basic stuff they're worried about, the other avoids problems they don't know exist yet and requires cognitive overhead.