Ridiculous claims about antirealism never end
Twitter Tuesday #40
In my previous blog post, I argued that when it comes to evaluating whether a person is morally good or bad, we should draw a distinction between:
Abstract considerations: Our position on abstract metaethical considerations, e.g., our views on the meaning of ordinary moral claims and the metaphysics of moral truths
Concrete considerations: Our moral character, values, attitudes, and behavioral disposition
I believe judgments about whether a person is morally good or bad should be made exclusively on the basis of concrete considerations, not abstract considerations. I suspect most people will agree with me, and that this is easy to demonstrate by examining how we judge people with different metaethical positions and behavioral dispositions. Judge for yourself: who is the better person?
(1) Sadistic moral realist
Alex is a moral realist. Alex believes there are stance-independent moral truths, such as that one should be kind to others and not cause unnecessary harm. Nevertheless, Alex is a sadist who enjoys manipulating and harming others. Alex routinely takes pleasure in causing misery to others and commits crimes whenever possible.
(2) Compassionate moral antirealist
Sam is a moral antirealist. Sam believes there are no stance-independent moral truths, so Sam does not think it is stance-independently good to be kind to others or stance-independently bad to cause unnecessary harm. Nevertheless, Sam personally regards kindness as good and unnecessary harm is bad, is deeply motivated by these sentiments, and acts accordingly.
If you were asked to rate how good or bad of a person Alex and Sam were on a scale from 1-10, with 1 representing extremely morally bad, and 10 representing extremely morally good, how would you rate them, all else being equal? I predict most people would rate Sam very low on this scale, and Alex very high.
If we swap out their metaethical views, would this make much of a difference to you?
(3) Sadistic moral antirealist
Blake is a moral antirealist. Blake believes there are no stance-independent moral truths, so Blake does not think it is stance-independently good to be kind to others or stance-independently bad to cause unnecessary harm. Blake is also a sadist who enjoys manipulating and harming others. Blake routinely takes pleasure in causing misery to others and commits crimes whenever possible.
(4) Compassionate moral realist
Taylor is a moral realist. Taylor believes there are stance-independent moral truths, such as that one should be kind to others and not cause unnecessary harm. Taylor also personally regards kindness as good and unnecessary harm is bad, is deeply motivated by these sentiments, and acts accordingly.
How would rate Blake and Taylor on a ten-point scale? I suspect most people would rate Taylor well and Blake very poorly. Would this differ much from one’s ratings of Alex and Sam? For me, not at all. What about for you? For some, perhaps a little. But I’d be surprised if people sincerely thought that one’s metaethical views were doing much work to move our evaluations of people up or down the dial here.
What matters to me, and what I’d bet matters to most people, isn’t a person’s stance on moral realism or antirealism, but what kind of person they are, what their motivations and disposition is like, and how they treat others.
In short, I think our evaluations of whether a person is morally good or bad turn less on what the person believes independent of the impact those belief have on their behavior, and more on what the person does or is disposed to do.
While our beliefs can and often do impact our behavior, it’s going to depend a lot on the belief in question. If someone believes other people are no better than livestock and may be exploited or killed at their leisure, this belief may motivate terrible actions on their part. While if they believe everyone has a right to life and happiness and should be treated equally, this may motivate good behavior.
In these cases, we may judge how good or bad someone is on the basis of their beliefs. But consider metaethical beliefs. Philosophers sometimes argue that beliefs are necessarily connected to motivations, such that to believe something is morally right or wrong is to thereby be necessarily (if defeasibly) motivated to act accordingly. Yet in such cases, note that the motivation is still in the picture. If the person wasn’t so motivated, would we really think they were a good person?
I doubt it. We might even think they were a worse person. Imagine if a person believed torturing others was morally wrong, but did it anyway. Is this person any morally better than someone who believes torture isn’t wrong, and tortures people? I doubt many people would think the person who believes torture is wrong but does it anyway is any better of a person. Worse, or just as bad. But not better.
So what is going on with people who insist antirealism entails, leads to, or is caused by some kind of sociopathy? Consider this remark from Ben Gross:
I think expressivism might be the single most unintuitive metaethical theory I've ever encountered, and yet it seems to run entirely on a set of intuitions that expressivists share. I can only conclude that they are all sociopaths.
Sociopathy is often associated with with a pronounced pattern of antisocial behavior. Sociopaths typically exhibit some combination of being manipulative and deceitful, impulsive, aggressive, show less regard for social norms, and exhibit a general lack of concern for the welfare of others. What does this have to do with expressivism?
Absolutely nothing. Expressivism is a position in metaethics according to which the primary function of moral claims is to express nonpropositional content. In other words, moral claims like “abortion is wrong” aren’t used to assert claims about what is true or false, or to describe the world, but are instead used to convey content that cannot be evaluated as true or false, such as the speaker’s emotional states (of e.g., approval or disapproval), to issue commands (“don’t get an abortion!”), and so on.
It is a theory about ordinary language and is therefore an account of how people in general speak and think. Whether this theory is true or not will turn on facts about the meaning of ordinary moral claims. Such accounts operate over the whole of moral language. Expressivism isn’t a personal declaration that one’s own moral claims don’t express propositional content, coupled with an acknowledgement that other people’s might. It’s a claim about how all ordinary language operates. For comparison, if a person believes that “all action is motivated by self-interest,” it would be ridiculous to interpret this as a declaration that one is, themselves, motivated by self-interest, but not other people. Sure, one might theorize that a person who thinks this way is extrapolating based on their own psychology: “I’m selfish, so everyone else is, too.” But critics are not warranted in making such inferences without evidence. A person who endorses psychological egoism may also donate a great deal to charity and be a great friend. This would obviate any suggestion that their philosophical views are merely personal projection.
Likewise, endorsing the truth of expressivism does not entail that you endorse its truth as a good thing, or are happy about it. You could discover that, while you’d like moral realism to be true, that, nevertheless, the way people speak entails that expressivism is true. To regard someone as a sociopath for endorsing expressivism makes about as much sense as regarding someone as a sociopath for any other linguistic analysis one might make about language. One might as well insist that anyone who thinks references to be “bananas” are typically used to describe these:
…is a sociopath. Endorsing expressivism has nothing to do with being manipulative or deceitful or impulsive or aggressive or lacking empathy for the welfare of others. An expressivist could be the most morally motivated, kind, thoughtful, altruistic person in the world. And a moral realist could be the most malicious, selfish monster in the cosmos.
Of course, I am just speaking of the content and commitments of the view. One might think something like this:
Anyone disposed to think expressivism is true would only do so because they lack the appropriate moral intuitions to recognize that some things are stance-independently right or wrong, or at least that moral claims express propositions that are true or false. So a person who is inclined towards or endorses expressivism may suffer from psychological abnormalities that render them a sociopath.
First, even if this were true, it wouldn’t make expressivism false. Intuitions are defeasible, and expressivism could simply turn out to be the correct account of ordinary moral language.
Second, fine. We have an empirical hypothesis. Those who endorse claims like this are welcome to present empirical evidence that there is a strong positive correlation between expressivism and sociopathy. Why think such a hypothesis is true, though? Why think expressivism is linked to specific types of unethical behavior? (And in case you’re wondering, we don’t have any decent evidence that expressivists are sociopaths).
What does believing there are stance-independent moral truths have to do with a person’s attitudes, values, disposition to act in certain ways, personality features, and so on? It’d be one thing to insist that it is immoral not to believe there are stance-independent moral truths, but this is obviated by the claim that expressivists are sociopaths. That isn’t a claim about their abstract commitments, it’s a claim about their personality and behavior.
I believe many realists are disposed, for whatever reason, to think there is some close connection between endorsing moral realism (holding a certain abstract view) and one’s concrete behavior (being disposed to be a good person and do good things). Yet such a link has never been convincingly established, and it isn’t logically entailed by one’s metaethical views (and, in any case, it’d be a bit weird to insist that behaviors are logically entailed by beliefs. I’m not sure logic works that way).
I really hope those who insist on associating moral antirealism with being evil or mentally ill will either start actually attempting to make a case for such views or will recognize how ridiculous and even unethical this is and simply stop. It’s embarrassing, and people who say these things should be criticized accordingly. That includes Ben Gross, who should be embarrassed about saying something this ridiculous.