Rhetoric in Robes (Part 3)

Twitter Tuesday #27

My previous post in this series didn’t even address any tweets. Instead, it laid some groundwork for responding to Stan’s original tweet. If you recall, Stan presented this meme:

Emerson Green responded with the following remark:

Why do moral antirealists always think pointing out the straightforward implications of their view is cheating or something

Maybe some antirealists object to people pointing out actual implications of their views. However, many antirealists instead object to claims that their views carry implications that the antirealist denies are actual implications of their views. 

In other cases, antirealists object to critics implying that antirealism commits one to absurd or monstrous views. In other cases, realists will imply or even explicitly claim that the antirealist themselves is stupid, evil, insane, dangerous, psychopathic, disingenuous, lying about their views, suffering from brain damage, and so on. I routinely see moral realists question the competence and character of moral antirealists, disparaging us while presenting this as some sort of legitime critique of our philosophical positions. 

If we think these accusations are false, unjustified, and not even genuine implications of our views, you’re damn right we see this as “cheating.” Misleadingly implying or outright falsely accusing your interlocutor of being various forms of incompetent or morally repugnant certainly meets my qualifications for “cheating” in an exchange, if by “cheating” we mean something like violating appropriate norms of conduct to achieve one’s argumentative ends in an illicit way. Realists often do this, and antirealists have every right to find it both philosophically bankrupt and immoral.

I go all over the internet looking for discussions about moral realism, and I’ve seen normative entanglement and various forms of rhetoric and disparagement exploited time and again to denigrate antirealists. In these discussions, antirealists are often on the receiving end of hostile characterizations not simply of their philosophical views but their personal character, with realists routinely implying antirealists are not opposed to atrocities or suggesting that widespread belief in antirealism would have disastrous social consequences. I have witnessed this virtually every week, almost without exception, for years. 

Also, even if realists sincerely believe antirealists are evil or lying, and even if they believe widespread belief in antirealism would harm society, such implications at the very least aren’t straightforward. It would be great if Emerson could consider that perhaps these implications don’t follow, or at least that we antirealists don’t think they follow, and that if those who think there are implications of antirealism think any given implication follows, they should argue for this rather than imply or assert or insist on it, and then be open to our responses, and consider engaging with us when we disagree. There are more than just philosophical stakes here: realists aren’t just depicting us as mistaken, they’re depicting us, personally, as bad people. I hope Emerson can appreciate why we’d prefer not to be depicted this way if we think such claims aren’t true.

Realists routinely appeal to evocative and graphic examples of horrendous atrocities in an effort to suggest antirealists aren’t simply mistaken about the metaphysical status of truth claims regarding the rightness or wrongness of the actions, but to imply that the antirealist lacks an appropriate attitude towards these events. This is almost never true, yet they do it anyway. It’s just as bad as Christians insisting that if you don’t believe in God that you’re a terrible person or can’t be trusted. I believe Emerson is a counter-apologist, and is probably familiar with efforts to smear the character of atheists and agnostics based on claims about the implications of nonbelief that are at least contestable, and that I expect Emerson doesn’t accept. So I hope Emerson will consider that perhaps his remarks offer support for doing much the same to moral antirealists. It’s one thing to claim we’re wrong. It’s another to insist we’re awful people or have awful attitudes. I am fed up with realists doing this. It’s not just philosophically indefensible, it’s immoral. Realists should really stop doing this, and I hope more people will criticize them when they do so.

What are these straightforward implications supposed to be, anyway? I don’t know. Emerson doesn’t say. If we’re going by what’s in the comic, the comic depicts an especially absurd form of normative entanglement: antirealists aren’t required to endorse that “throwing babies around is okay” if they disagree that it’s “[stance-independently] wrong.” 

An error theorist may hold that it is neither morally permissible or impermissible, and that in that respect, at least, it is neither right or wrong. As such, they’re not required to concede that hurting babies is “okay” if this is taken to mean “morally permissible.” An error theorist thinks all first-order moral claims are false, and this would include claims that repugnant actions are morally permissible. Such actions are neither morally permissible or impermissible for an error theorist. 

Again, it is important to stress that all this means is that if “good” and “bad” just mean “stance-independently good” and “stance-independently bad” then nothing is good or bad. This doesn't mean the error theorist or other antirealists are somehow barred from approving or disapproving of those actions, or having exactly the same attitude towards them as realists do: there is absolutely no inconsistency whatsoever with an error theorist finding an atrocity just as repugnant as a realist.

When people began raising objections (in a way that, to me, seems fairly polite), Emerson unfortunately simply responded with sarcasm. Counter Apologist said:

I mean the moral antirealist could say they don't approve of throwing babies around and are willing to enact violence on others to ensure that it doesn't happen, no? 

Doesn't the antirealist just deny that moral values have the same ontology as chairs?

Emerson replied:

Moral antirealism is a broad category, but yes, of course moral antirealists behave just as normally/abnormally as realists. In my naive unsophistication, I failed to realize that their radical proclamations have zero practical implications whatsoever.

This appears to imply Emerson doesn’t think antirealists act any differently. Good, if so. Yet this is followed by a remark that appears to be sarcastic. Perhaps Emerson should consider that antirealism not only is true, but isn’t a radical proclamation. If Emerson thinks it is radical, well, why? What’s radical about it? It might be radically at odds with Emerson’s intuitions or beliefs, but it’s not as though we are obligated to grant that the degree to which antirealism is radical is to be determined specifically by the intuitions or beliefs of moral realists. Why should I grant any priority to their intuitions or beliefs, rather than my own?

Panth offers another interesting response: a quote from Richard Joyce’s entry “Moral-Antirealism” from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The last example (“Stealing is not morally wrong”) calls for an extra comment. In ordinary conversation—where, presumably, the possibility of moral error theory is not considered a live option—someone who claims that X is not wrong would be taken to be implying that X is morally good or at least morally permissible. And if “X” denotes something awful, like torturing innocent people, then this can be used to make the error theorist look awful. But when we are doing metaethics, and the possibility of moral error theory is on the table, then this ordinary implication breaks down. The error theorist doesn’t think that torturing innocent people is morally wrong, but doesn’t think that it is morally good or morally permissible either. It is important that criticisms of the moral error theorist do not trade on equivocating between the implications that hold in ordinary contexts and the implications that hold in metaethical contexts.

This is the earliest description of something approximating normative entanglement that I’ve seen! Amazing! And it’s reassuring to see one of the most prominent proponents of error theory recognizing a similar (or even the same) problem.

Unfortunately, Emerson once again responds in a way that seems to be sarcastic:

Ohh it’s neither good nor bad. Makes much more sense

Yes. That's just what the position is. What doesn’t make sense about that? Emerson is welcome to reply sarcastically to anyone, but I wish he’d engage with people raising these points instead. Many of them appear to be perfectly polite and willing to discuss their differences.

The sarcasm seems to center on the suggestion of some respondents that antirealism either doesn’t have the implications implied in the original comic. Emerson’s remarks go on to sarcastically claim that antirealism doesn’t have any implications, presumably because Emerson rejects this suggestion. Yet many forms of antirealism don’t have the specific implications outlined in the comic, nor do they have much in the way of significant practical implications in any general sense.

Other antirealist positions would be consistent with holding that hurting babies is wrong, e.g., appraiser relativism, antirealist constructivist accounts and relation-designating accounts like ideal observer theory , expressivists of various kinds, quasi-realists, error theorists who advocate for fictionalism or revisionary discourse, and antirealist quietists like myself. Given that, I hope Emerson doesn’t think the comic itself clearly outlines any distinctive implications of moral antirealism, because it doesn’t. I take it that the rhetoric in the comic is a bit hyperbolic, but even the most charitable interpretation of the realist in the comic’s remarks is still wrong.

A commitment to antirealism just doesn’t require one to be okay with hurting babies, or to be indifferent to or, not care, or even to think that it’s “not wrong” (error theorists in particular may think this, but many other antirealist positions don’t entail even this).

A belief in moral antirealism may have contingent psychological consequences for humans (e.g., less motivation to act morally, less interest in moral philosophy), but these aren’t practical implications that are entailed by moral antirealism. For comparison, if belief in atheism made people more afraid of death, this wouldn’t mean that atheism entailed a greater fear of death. Contingent practical consequences like these also wouldn’t be a good reason to reject a position. Sometimes people struggle to accept certain truths. Sometimes the truth changes a person’s behavior. But that doesn’t make it false. Just so, even if moral antirealists were a bunch of raving cannibals who craved nothing but human flesh and to inflict as much misery on others as possible, antirealism could still be true.

When someone responded that the contents of the comic were not a straightforward implication of their view, Emerson gave an example of what may be an indication of what Emerson takes to be an implication of at least one antirealist position, error theory:

Error theorist: all moral propositions are false

Me: so then all moral propositions are false?

Error theorist: stop strawmanning me

I’ve never seen an error theorist respond this way. Every error theorist I’ve encountered is willing to say that all (technically first-order) moral propositions are false. I am guessing this is hyperbole on Emerson’s part and not a serious attempt at characterizing error theorists. If so, with all the hyperbole and sarcasm, it’s hard to know what Emerson actually thinks. 

Fortunately, some people have noticed what the actual problem is, which is the problem of conflating what an error theorist’s remarks commit them to in a philosophical context, and how those remarks would be interpreted in colloquial, everyday contexts, where pragmatics fleshes out what people mean and how others interpret what they mean in ways that an error theorist wouldn’t  be committed to. This even includes professional philosophers, such as Joyce above.

J. Jeffers makes a similar point and develops on this in response to Emerson:

All moral propositions are false in a highly rarefied, meta sense, and mixing this way of talking with everyday senses of moral talking is obnoxious. For example >>

In everyday discourse, “murder is wrong’ is false” suggests the speaker doesn’t find murder abhorrent or thinks things that are false must be reversed (therefore, murder is okay?).  Realists sometimes behave in this obnoxious manner.

See the rest of the tweet thread where J. Jeffers develops on these points further. Others have noticed the same thing I do. Error theory commits one to a claim about the semantics of moral claims, but not the pragmatics of those claims. If one holds that the semantics of moral claims involve an implicit commitment to a false presupposition, then those claims are false. But this does not mean that one rejects the pragmatic implications typically associated with everyday moral claims. In everyday contexts, our moral claims, in addition to whatever else they may express, typically express our attitudes and provide information about our character and disposition to act. In rejecting moral claims as false, the error theorist does not have to abandon all the attitudes, dispositions to act, and so on that accompany everyday moral claims. And if the error theorist thinks it is our attitudes rather than our beliefs that motivate us to act, then moral realism isn’t simply false, but practically superfluous: beliefs about the truth of first-order moral claims simply aren’t needed for us to find bad things repugnant and to act accordingly.

Realist critics of error theorists often imply or appear to outright maintain that error theorists also reject the pragmatic associations that accompany moral claims. Critics of error theory aren’t simply mistaken when they state or imply this, because they aren’t just giving the impression that the error theorist is factually mistaken about some philosophical matter. When they do this, they imply that the error theorist is a terrible person. This takes the realist’s criticism of error theorists outside the exclusive realm of an intellectual discourse by making it personal. Whenever the stakes are that high—where the moral character of one’s interlocutor is on the line—we are especially responsible for making sure we don’t mislead audiences, misrepresent other people’s views, or make false claims.

Many realists fail to live up to this responsibility. By treating their dispute with antirealists in a negligent and careless way, they’re not only doing bad philosophy, they’re being disrespectful towards their interlocutors.

Personally, I am absolutely sick of the constant attempts by moral realists to smear antirealists by implying we’re evil, psychopathic monsters who care less about the welfare of others than the realist, or else hopelessly confused and possibly disingenuous morons claiming to adhere to a position while living our lives in a way hopelessly at odds with our expressed commitments. We are none of those things. We aren’t monsters, and we aren’t insincere idiotic liars. Stop saying we are, and don’t criticize us when we object.

I would be happy to discuss antirealism with Emerson Green or anyone else who believes that antirealism has significant practical implications. Feel free to contact me! I would not insist on a live or public discussion, I’d be happy to speak to you on my discord server or one-on-one.