Reply to Patrick Flynn’s “In Defense of Moral Realism (with Response to Criticism)"

This is a response to an exchange that began in this video.

Patrick Flynn, host of the YouTube channel Philosophy for the People recently discussed moral realism with Gil Sanders. I wrote a handful of comments in response. This prompted both Patrick and Gil to post blog posts responding to my comments and defending moral realism.

I left a few comments in response to Patrick. However, I wasn’t satisfied with merely leaving a handful of comments. So I’ve decided to kick off my blog by expressing those criticisms here.

I have rewritten portions of the comments to direct them towards an audience, rather than towards Patrick, fixed minor errors and formatting issues, and embellished in some areas.

These comments are a direct reply to Patrick’s post, which you can see here:

1. Patrick is not clear whether he’s criticizing antirealist arguments for being question begging, or explanatorily inadequate

Patrick states the following:

But hold: Does it? The reason I find these responses often unsatisfactory is because they frequently assert greater simplicity with equal explanatory comprehensiveness without argument

Unfortunately, this remark is not very clear. Patrick specifically said that arguments for antirealism were question begging. An argument that purports to provide a better explanation that has the virtue of simplicity but falters in explanatory adequacy is, at best, a worse explanation than some alternative. That doesn’t make it question begging. Note that at 1:14:50 Patrick states that:

“I’ve never been, like, hugely impressed with these types of arguments because they always seem to be deeply question begging.”

Note that he said they “always” seem to be question begging. And yet he didn’t give any examples of question begging arguments for antirealism, he simply suggested that you don’t think he doesn’t think they’re explanatorily adequate.

He hedges his response in this reply to me by saying “question begging or unsatisfactory,” but which is it? Are such arguments question begging, or unsatisfactory? The former is a much more serious accusation, and demonstrating that an argument isn’t satisfactory (to him, at least), isn’t the same thing as showing it’s begging any questions.

2. Clarifying my remark about question begging

When referring to me, Patrick states that I ultimately think

that the moral realist is begging the question in assuming (by saying it’s obvious) moral facts exist

No, I don’t think that. My comment was about what he said, not about moral realists in general. I was suggesting that his comments in the video sounded much closer to question begging than the standard objections to realism from moral antirealists that appear in the literature.

I don’t think moral realists are question begging if they assume moral facts exist or claim that it’s obvious moral facts exist. Nothing about assuming something is true is question begging. Question begging is a feature of arguments, not claims. A moral realist would only be question begging if they presented an argument, the conclusion of which was something like “moral realism is true,” yet one or more of the premises presupposed the truth of moral realism.

The reason I think what he said in the video was fairly close to question begging is that it seems that the reason he thinks antirealist accounts lack explanatory adequacy is that they don’t explain the objective moral facts. It would be absurd to set confirming the truth of moral realism as a success condition for an adequate explanation, since this would mean that any explanation that failed to confirm that moral realism was true was ipso facto faulty for that reason alone. Yet on what grounds can one justify insisting that an account is only adequate if it confirms your position?

An antirealist could just as readily insist on the same: that any account of what the world is like that includes stance-independent moral facts must be rejected because such an account is, e.g., explanatorily superfluous. Realists are no more entitled to insist that the only adequate explanations account for stance-independent moral facts than antirealists are entitled to insist that any account which maintains that there are stance-independent facts is explanatorily superfluous; such claims are the very claims under dispute. One isn’t entitled to them at the outset of discussion.

Presuming the best explanation must include the very features that are under dispute by the opposing side would be absurd and very similar to question begging (and if formalized into an argument, might very well require question begging). Yet that appears to me to be what Patrick was alluding to. Patrick didn’t explicitly say that, though, so perhaps that isn’t what he had in mind.

3. The Bigfoot analogy

Next, we have the Bigfoot analogy:

Just Questions thinks this is like someone just saying it’s obvious Bigfoot exists and that any explanation of the world that doesn’t acknowledge Bigfoot is explanatorily inadequate. But this is horribly disanalogous. For one, the majority of philosophers, last I checked, are moral realists.”

There are several problems with this response. First, Patrick makes a common mistake with analogies: pointing to irrelevant differences between a comparison between two things as a reason to say the comparison is “disanalogous.”

That most philosophers believe in realism but not Bigfoot is irrelevant to the point I’m making. Indeed, I chose Bigfoot precisely because most people don’t believe in it. The point is to illustrate that someone with an absurd and unjustified belief (e.g., belief in Bigfoot) could make the same move Patrick has made. It doesn’t work for Bigfoot. It also doesn’t work for realism. Pointing out that the majority of philosophers believe realism is true is no help: even if 100% of philosophers believed something was true, that would not make it any more appropriate to make the sort of move I describe (that is, insisting successful theories must vindicate a presupposition). Again, I don’t know if Patrick is doing this, but if he is, this wouldn’t be a legitimate move regardless of the proportion of people who believed it. Note that I’m not saying the proportion of philosophers who believe something is irrelevant to whether it’s true; I’m merely saying it’s irrelevant to the point I was making.

In short, the purpose of the Bigfoot example is to illustrate that it isn’t appropriate to presume that a particular conclusion, e.g., that moral realism is true, that Bigfoot exists, or even that tables and trees exist, and that *therefore* any argument to the contrary is ipso facto incorrect. To do so effectively amounts to judging any argument with a conclusion contrary to what you currently believe is true to be unsound entirely on the basis of the conclusion. In practice, this is the equivalent of treating the claim that e.g., moral realism is true to be effectively irrefutable. That’s not exactly question begging, but it’s an equally presumptuous and inappropriate move to make if one’s goal is to have a discussion with someone who disagrees, and where the putative facts are under dispute.

I’m not saying someone can’t genuinely feel so convinced something is true that they feel, or even could be infallible about it. Perhaps moral realists really are sure that moral realism is true because of some intuition or phenomenology or something. But even if this is the case, their interlocutors don’t have direct access to those intuitions or experiences themselves. So even if a moral realist really was able to infallibly detect moral facts, this wouldn’t necessarily serve as a compelling argument to someone else.

Note that all of this is predicated on what I took to be the implications of what Patrick was claiming. As I’ve said above, I’m not sure this is what he’s claiming, and if he misspoke and did make such claims, but doesn’t endorse them, I’m not going to hold him to things he said that he doesn’t really endorse. So I’d be happy to work with whatever clear and accurate version of his views he’d like.

What I’m most interested in, regarding this topic, is:

(1) Which arguments for antirealism Patrick thinks are question begging, and why they’re question begging.

(2) Why Patrick thinks antirealist accounts are explanatorily inadequate. What are they failing to explain?

Patrick says:

Bigfoot research is not a seriously scholarly field.

I’m not sure how seriously we should take contemporary academic philosophy as a serious field, either. I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek. But only a little.

He goes on to say:

Moral facts are more like consciousness or existence than Bigfoot

What moral facts are like was completely irrelevant to the Bigfoot illustration, so this remark doesn’t really address any points that I’ve made.

In any case, I’m happy to consider the claim that moral facts are like consciousness on its own terms. This, unfortunately, isn’t much help to me, since I also don’t know what’s meant by “consciousness”. As I said to Gil, I endorse qualia quietism and meta-illusionism about consciousness (see Mandik, 2016). As such, there’s a good chance I’d also deny that they have any “datum” on consciousness.

Roughly speaking, I deny phenomenal consciousness exists, and I also deny that ordinary people think that phenomenal consciousness exists. I think the central disputes in academic philosophy about consciousness are mostly the product of linguistic and conceptual confusions, that there is no hard problem of consciousness, and that a comparison between moral facts and consciousness, if this is meant to refer to qualia or phenomenal consciousness, is just comparing one thing I deny to yet another thing I deny on similar quietistic grounds.

4. The moral realm

Patrick says:

Given our intuitive awareness of the moral realm

Who is “our”? Patrick is welcome to report that he has an intuitive awareness of the moral realm, but that doesn’t justify making claims about what others are intuitively aware of. Furthermore, while one may claim that they have intuitive awareness of the moral realm, and perhaps they do, I am not required to accept as an established fact that they in fact have intuitive awareness of the moral realm; that is, after all, one of the very things I’m disputing. I don’t think there is a moral realm, so I obviously don’t think anyone could have an intuitive awareness of it. I think people think that they have access to the moral realm, but that they are mistaken. So here, Patrick begins with a “Given…” but I reject precisely that which is presented as given.

Furthermore, claims about what others have intuitive awareness of are empirical, and you’d need to provide appropriate evidence to make such claims. I’m sure you can find quite a few people who claim to have intuitive awareness of the moral realm, but I can just as readily find people who claim to have seen aliens or ghosts.

5. Presumptive claims about folk metaethics

Patrick says:

and given how the vast majority of people act as if this moral realm is binding and real

Again, he’s helping himself to empirical assertions about how people act that he has not provided any arguments, evidence, or justification for. I deny that the vast majority of people treat morality this way. Why should we think that the vast majority “act as if this moral realm is binding and real”?

Note, again, that he isn’t merely making a claim, he begins with “given.” He speaks as though this is a claim he’s entitled to, without providing any supporting arguments and evidence. This is unfortunate, since he claims that antirealist arguments lack explanatory adequacy, yethe shows little regard how well his own claims are supported by available data. There’d be something explanatory inadequate about saying the vast majority of people act a certain way if they do not, in fact, do so. In other words, an explanation is inadequate whenever it’s just plain wrong.

Next he says:

and given how there are no good arguments against moral realism that aren’t driven by some prior (highly controversial) metaphysics (like physicalism) or epistemology (like scientism), of course any theory that cannot explain the moral realm is explanatorily inadequate.

Which arguments are these? My antirealist position doesn’t appeal to physicalism or scientism. Most antirealist accounts begin with a semantic analysis. For instance, moral relativism and noncognitivism don’t require or appeal to physicalism or scientism. They’re accounts of how people use moral claims. Even error theory doesn’t entail physicalism. One can deny the existence of stance-independent moral facts without thinking physicalism is true. Thus, all three major antirealist positions don’t appeal to physicalism or scientism.

Also, the way this is phrased implies that there are no good arguments other than the ones that appeal to physicalism or scientism. I’m guessing that was not the intent of the remark.

6. The alleged incoherence of denying moral realism

Patrick says,

Indeed, I would argue that it is ultimately incoherent to deny moral realism, as well.

I welcome an argument for why it is incoherent to deny moral realism.

7. On the comparative plausibility of realism and Bigfoot

Next, we have this remark:

I must say also that Just Questions thinking moral realism is less plausible than Bigfoot is a remark he should not have made public.

I’ve already made similar remarks numerous times and enthusiastically stand behind them. I think moral realism may be the most absurd position that any serious number of academics endorse. As an aside, I’m an atheist and I think moral realism is much less plausible than theism. It’s hard to overstate just how absurd I think moral realism actually is.

8. Again with the presumptions

Here, one must ask how seriously anybody could take a psychological study purporting most people are moral anti-realists anymore than anybody could take seriously a psychological study claiming most people are eliminativists concerning consciousness or other minds.

One would only be disposed to doubt the credibility of such studies merely in virtue of their conclusions if one were already extremely confident that you already know what most ordinary people think about metaethical issues. Yet the notion that most people are moral realists is precisely one of the things I’m disputing, and asking for arguments and evidence for. Again, I’ve been given virtually no arguments or evidence for why I should think most people are moral realists.

But just what is the claim, exactly? We should ask how seriously we should take these studies. Well, I take them seriously. Why doesn’t Patrick? What justifies the comparison to eliminativism about consciousness? Once again, we simply have a presumption masquerading as an objection. Patrick presumes most people are realists, and then leverages this presumption to doubt empirical studies. I could just as readily just leverage doubt that most people are realists and say “one must ask how seriously anybody could take a psychological study purporting most people are moral realists any more than anybody could take seriously a study claiming most people don’t believe in trees.” Such a question has very little force. It merely appeals to the reader’s existing level of confidence about what ordinary people think about moral realism/antirealism. And whatever that level of confidence is, the ultimate arbiter of what other people think is going to turn on empirical evidence, not anyone’s assumptions.

Patrick isn’t entitled to the presumption that most people are moral realists without an argument. It’s one thing to claim that you find moral realism intuitive. It’s quite another to claim to know how other people think.

Thus, if a psychological studied produced that outcome, you wouldn’t just suspect — you would know — that something is wrong with that study.

Patrick would know that most people aren't’ antirealists how, exactly? Is that also an intuition? Does he have intuitions about what other people’s intuitions are? It's one thing to claim to know that you, and the people around you, are moral realists. But to make sweeping claims about how most of humanity thinks requires justification. Again, we aren't given any.

9. Misrepresenting Pölzler

This is an accurate enough remark about Pölzler’s views:

No surprise then, as Thomas Polzter has argued, that studies in this field have been poorly conducted.

However, note that this is the same Pölzler who, after publishing that paper, has published a number of studies that attempt to correct for the methodological shortcomings of earlier studies, and where he explicitly argues that most people are moral antirealists. I’m skeptical of this research myself, but methodologically questionable research, almost all of which points to one outcome, versus a total absence of empirical evidence to the contrary, hardly favors the contrary.

Yet there’s an related remark that appears in an endnote:

Notice that, contrary to Just Questions claim, Poltzers’ review of the literature indicates a favoring of moral realism, though he is critical of how these studies in this field are conducted, “At the beginning many researchers claimed that the studies support a tendency towards realism. Goodwin and Darley, for example, summed up the findings of their influential 2008 study as follows: “Individuals seem to identify a strong objective component to their core ethical beliefs […]. Arguably, many of our participants viewed their ethical beliefs as true in a mind-independent way” (2008: 1359; see also, e.g., Joyce 2006: 129–130). More recently, in contrast, people have been thought rather to favor realism with regard to some moral sentences and anti-realism with regard to others — depending on factors such as their openness to alternative moral views and their perceptions of consensus (e.g., Goodwin and Darley 2012; Pölzler 2017; Wright et al. 2013, 2014).”

Unfortunately, the notion that Pölzler thinks the literature favors that most people are moral realists is not true. Patrick cited an older paper from 2018, Pölzler (2018). Pölzler was discussing one early paper from Goodwin and Darley (2008) where the authors interpret their data as evidence that people favor realism, when Polzler argues that their interpretation of their own data is flawed. In fact, Pölzler argues for exactly this point in an earlier paper, Pölzler (2017), which I’ll quote:

“While most recent research has been thought to contradict this claim, four prominent earlier studies (by Goodwin and Darley, Wainryb et al., Nichols, and Nichols and Folds-Bennett) indeed seem to suggest a tendency towards realism. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed internal critique of these four studies. I argue that, once interpreted properly, all of them turn out in line with recent research. They suggest that most ordinary people experience morality as pluralist rather than realist-seeming, i.e., that ordinary people have the intuition that realism is true with regard to some moral issues, but variants of anti-realism are true with regard to others. This result means that moral realism may be less well justified than commonly assumed.” (p. 455)

Yet this is moot, since these comments do not reflect the current state of the literature. Patrick did not quote Pölzler’s more recent studies, all of which support the conclusion that most people are antirealists. This includes Pölzler & Wright (2019; 2020a; 2020b), and this isn’t even an exhaustive list. To quote Pölzler and Wright (2019), for instance, they say:

“Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. On the face of it, empirical research suggests that these intuitions favor nonobjectivism‐leaning metaethical pluralism” (p. 11)

Here is what they say at the start of Pölzler and Wright (2020b)

“In our study, most of our participants denied the existence of objective truths about most or all moral issues. In particular, many of them had the intuition that whether moral sentences are true depends both on their own moral beliefs and on the dominant moral beliefs within their culture (“anti-realist pluralism”). This finding suggests that the realist presumptive argument may have to be rejected and that instead anti-realism may have a presumption in its favor.” (p. 53)

These comments are the result of their more recent, and more rigorous research, which found that people are more inclined towards antirealism than realism. These studies are designed to correct for the methodological shortcomings of previous studies, which is why Pölzler has been critical of studies like Goodwin and Darley’s. The claim that Pölzler thinks the literature points towards people favoring moral realism is simply not true.

10. A case of mistaken identity?

Next, we discuss some remarks from Gil:

Just Questions also disagrees with my response to Gil that a certain anti-realist response brought realism back in through the back door.

Yes, I disagree, because that “certain anti-realist” was me, and he did not accurately represent my views. From the way he says “a certain anti-realist response,” he was apparently not aware that Gil was describing my views. It would appear that Patrick wasn’t aware that it was my own view being described, and so now I’m in the unusual situation of having someone suggest that their interpretation of my views is more accurate than my own. While possible, I’d suggest that I’m probably in a better position to explain what I mean when I say things than someone who’s only heard about my views second hand and in passing.

Gil’s original comment, apparently repeating something from a moral anti-realist, was this: "I’m more strongly against murdering babies than you are. Because if you found a moral fact that you ought to torture babies for fun, would you do it?"

I’m drawing attention to this remark because it highlights that Patrick was not aware that the moral antirealist in question was me.

Of course, if this argument has ever actually been used by an anti-realist, it is exceptionally weak, and something the Thomist would claim is impossible.

The part that was quoted consists of a claim and a question. I don’t see an argument. I’m not sure what argument is being attributed to me.

Clearly, this assertion only has pull in the context of moral realism: the suggestion quite obviously being that it is (stance-independently) better to be more strongly against torturing and murdering babies, and that anti-realism provides a sturdier basis for that.

That’s not true at all. The point of the argument is to appeal to shared, intersubjective values held between the antirealist and their interlocutors. It does not require any presumption of realism. It’s remarkable that someone who does not know me and did not directly hear what I said from me would tell me what I meant when I said something. No, I was not suggesting anything is stance-independently better, and no, I certainly do not think that anti-realism provides a sturdy basis for the claim that something is stance-independently better than something else, since I take anti-realism to deny that anything can be stance-independently better in the relevant respect.

For instance, if I’m against stealing, and so is the person I’m talking to, pointing out that I’d be against stealing even if God insisted stealing would be morally permissible does not require some kind of appeal to it being stance-independently wrong to steal for the pull of the point.

The pull comes from the presumption that the person you’re talking to would agree that stealing would be bad, and would not want to steal, even if it turned out that the stance-independent moral facts permitted stealing. Indeed, the whole point I was making relies on a hypothetical in which moral realism is true, but the moral facts end up being horrible things we don’t want to do. Within this hypothetical, I couldn’t be thinking of my values as true in a realist sense, because the whole point is that my values would be inconsistent with whatever the stance-independent moral facts were. In other words, my hypothetical still maintains that my personal moral values are not stance-independent moral facts.

Indeed, that’s the whole point. So suggesting that my point only has pull in the context of moral realism doesn't make any sense. In other words, my point is that I’d be opposed to stealing even if it were a stance-independent moral fact that we ought to steal. Saying that my view involves the suggestion that it’d be stance-independently better not to steal in this situation makes literally no sense: by stipulation, it wouldn’t be!

11. Allegedly missing the point

Next, I allegedly missed a point with the gastronomic realism example I gave in a comment:

Just Questions further misses the point with his remarks about gastronomic realism and suggesting that realists are mistaken to think anti-realists can’t use terms like good or better, etc. But I’m not aware of moral realists saying that. Of course realists note that anti-realists can use terms like good (as in, I desire something) or better (as in, I prefer something) in a sense that doesn’t commit them to moral realism. But that was not the context of Gil’s comment.

This is a bit strange, because I was commenting on what Patrick himself said, not Gil, so I’m not sure why he’s saying that this was not the context of Gil’s comment. At 47:30 in the video, Patrick (not Gil) says:

Right, but notice, notice right there there’s an assumption of a better in the background of that. Right? [...] This is what you have to be so careful of in these types of conversations, there’s moral realism right in the background of that counter.

In any case, if he wasn’t suggesting that my use of moral language somehow implied moral realism, then I’m not sure what he did mean. Because that sure looks like exactly what he said.

Either way, there was no moral realism lurking in the background of my remarks. I know because I was the person who made the remarks Gil was talking about, and I happen to have better access to what I thought than Gil or Patrick.

12. Common atheist attacks

Next, he says:

Rather, Gil’s comment was like a common atheist attack you hear against Christianity: “See, my moral code is better because I can do the right thing just because it’s the right thing, not because I’m afraid God will send me to hell.

Gil was describing my views, not a common atheist attack against Christianity. So the context of Gil’s remark was an attempt to paraphrase my own views. Unfortunately, Patrick does not seem to be aware of this, and is offering a rebuttal to me without realizing we’re the same person.

I don’t know if this needs to be said, but I have a better understanding of what I said and what I meant than Patrick or Gil, and what Patrick describes here doesn’t reflect the point I was making (see above). I do not think it’s the case that my moral code is “better” than a Christian’s because I do the right thing “because it’s the right thing.”

Nevertheless, I’m told that this view, which is compared to mine, assumes realism (which suggests that, by implication, I assume realism):

Clearly, the above is an assumption of realism: that it is objectively (stance-independently, if you like) better to do the right thing because you recognize it is the right thing and desire to pursue it for the sake of it itself rather than fear of punishment.

Even if that were true, that’s nothing like what I said or what I meant, so no, nothing I said committed me to realism. There’s something very strange about the kind of move being made here: as though one can infer that actual people mean X by imagining a hypothetical scenario where someone means X, and just declaring that what the actual person meant was the same thing as the hypothetical person. This is not a reasonable way to determine what the actual person meant.

Next:

Gil’s comment — which should have been obvious from his hypothetically alternatively moral fact scenario — is parallel to that, so Just Questions response fails.

It’s incredibly bizarre to have someone try to explain to me why I misinterpreted the context, when the context is effectively a discussion of what I myself had said. What I said isn’t parallel to the scenario Patrick describes, and nothing I said presumes realism. I don’t know where, exactly, Gil is paraphrasing me from, but we can try to find what I said, we can quote it verbatim, and if Patrick thinks what I actually said presumes realism, I’d welcome that explanation.

13. Erroneous claims about question begging and disanalogies

Lastly, in an endnote, Patrick states the following:

Equally, Questions alter comment about being realists concerning ghosts and pixies is either disanalogous or question begging. It is disanalogous to the extent that while people have basic beliefs about the existence of other minds, the external world, moral facts, and God, most do not have any basic belief in pixies, as in little magical elves. If, however, the claim is that people have basic beliefs about the existence of spiritual entities (which is another way of understanding pixie), then the objection is question begging, because (as many would contend) there are good reasons to think general spiritual entities exist – for example, angels. These reasons might extend through revelation or philosophical reflection or both. Either way, if general spiritual entities do exist, then our seemings about spiritual realities are broadly accurate, and what might be the case is that error is creeping in at the level of interpretation (are the entities angels, ghosts, pixies, gods, or… ?). But of course that is no problem for moral realists, so the objection falls flat.

Here is the comment (from me) that Patrick is referring to, which is allegedly question begging and "disanalogous":

"At 1:45:15 Gil brings up the case where the skeptic doesn’t share the same seeming.

Gil states:“I would just say that it seems to me you know whenever we’re confronted with being our default position is to take it in a realist sense.”

First, it doesn’t seem this way to me. That is, it does not seem to me that our default position should be realism about anything in particular.

But the second, and more serious problem, is that on the face of it this suggestion would commit us to being realists about how anything seems to anyone. If we were to do that, then this would suggest our default position should be that all religions are true, that all paranormal phenomena are real, and so on. That is, our default position should be realism about ghosts, alien abductions, unicorns, goblins, pixies, and so on.

I doubt this is what Gil has in mind. In which case, I’m not sure what is meant pending clarification. Why should our default position be realism about morality? Is there an argument for that?"

Patrick is apparently focusing on the second claim. Note that my claim is something like this: If Gil is saying our default position on whether something exists or not should be realism, and if this is a general principle, then this would commit us to being realists about a bunch of things we're probably not realists about.

As such, I'm not even presenting any kind of analogy. So my remarks can't be "disanalogous." Patrick's comments on that thus don't make any sense. No analogy was being given. For comparison, if someone said, "We should always believe what the Bible says," and the Bible contained genuine contradictions, we'd be committed to contradictory claims. Pointing this out would simply be a claim about the implications of always believing what the Bible says. Pointing out an implication isn't an analogy.

But let's examine the purported way they're "disanalogous." This allegedly has something to do with the fact that people have basic beliefs about certain things, but don't have basic beliefs about pixies and the like. Well, so what? Sure, people appear to have basic beliefs about the former but not about the latter. But what's the "disanalogy"? Pointing to differences between two sets of things wouldn't indicate that a comparison between them was necessarily faulty, unless that difference were relevant to the point of the comparison. I wasn't even making a comparison, though.

Second, Gil appeared to be stating a general principle about being a realist about things. I could be wrong, but I don't recall this remark including any reference to "only basic beliefs" or anything like that. If he did say that, then I'd be wrong about the entailment, but it still wouldn't be a "disanalogy."

Next, let's focus on the part about question begging:

If, however, the claim is that people have basic beliefs about the existence of spiritual entities (which is another way of understanding pixie), then the objection is question begging, because (as many would contend) there are good reasons to think general spiritual entities exist – for example, angels.

Question begging is a feature of arguments. An argument begs the question when one or more premise assume the truth of a conclusion. It's not even clear I was making an argument. But if I was, it's unclear which questions are being begged. I'm saying something that amounts to, roughly, a claim like this:

"As far as I can tell, a literal interpretation of Gil's comment would be X. But X would entail Y. And Y is absurd. So Gil probably doesn't mean to say X. Since I can't think of any other interpretations, I don't know what Gil means."

Since X would entail Y by stipulation, there's no reasonable way to deny that X would entail Y. My interpretation of X just is a claim that entails Y. So what we have here is me effectively saying that someone seems to be saying something that has absurd implications, so they probably don't mean that. For comparison, suppose you thought you heard someone in the distance say "I saw a square circle." Your reaction might be that, if that is what they said, then they said something absurd, but that because it's absurd, they probably didn't say that. Would you be begging a question? If so, what question would you be begging? And if it makes no sense in that situation to talk of begging questions, it likewise makes no sense in my original comment, since that's all I was doing.

In any case, my remarks do rely on the suggestion that there'd be something absurd about believing the examples I provide (pixies included). Yet the fact that I think this would be absurd is not, by itself, question begging. Which is why it's really strange that Patrick suggests that my remarks would be question begging, apparently because there are good reasons to believe in spiritual beings.

It almost seems as though Patrick thinks that if someone presents an argument that includes a premise the author of the argument thinks is true, but that others might not think is true, that this means the argument is question begging. This is suggested by his latter remark, that the objection would be question begging "because (as many would contend) there are good reasons to think spiritual entities exist." Sure. Maybe there are. But disagreeing with a premise in an argument doesn't entail the argument is question begging. Unfortunately, I'm not clear on what question Patrick things is being begged, and how I'm supposed to be begging it. Perhaps we can try to extract a formal argument out of my remark that I agree was what I meant. I'm not sure we can, but unless we pull a formal argument out of what I said, and look to see if there's any question begging going on, I maintain I wasn't begging any questions.

References

Mandik, P. (2016). Meta-illusionism and qualia quietism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 140-148.

Pölzler, T. (2017). Revisiting folk moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(2), 455-476.

Pölzler, T. (2018). How to measure moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(3), 647-670.

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2019). Empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Philosophy Compass, 14(5), e12589. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12589.

Pölzler, T., & Cole Wright, J. C. (2020a). An empirical argument against moral non-cognitivism. Inquiry, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2020.1798280

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020b). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 53-82.