The fake cheese fallacy: Pragmatics and the exploitation of deceptive modifiers

A sort of rhetorical grab bag has accrued over the years: an assortment of tropes, turns of phrase, misrepresentations, allusions, and implications that are recycled and uttered like a ritual whenever the topic of various antirealist positions comes up; typically moral relativism, but on occasion you’ll see references to nihilism or antirealism (though you’ll be unlikely to see direct references to error theory or noncognitivism unless you’re dealing with someone with an academic background or who is pitching their objections in a moral academic context). For instance, here’s one trope about relativism:

“Nobody can live like a relativist.”

The idea seems to be that if you were genuinely acting on a commitment to relativism, this would require certain sorts of behaviors that nobody actually acts on, e.g., not objecting when others harm you, or being completely indifferent to the welfare of anyone who isn’t yourself or a member of your culture. This is, in a word, nonsense. Moral relativism simply holds that moral claims are true or false relative to different moral standards (such as those of individuals or groups).

Moral relativism does not require indifference to other people’s actions. It doesn’t prohibit you from objecting to other people’s actions. And it doesn’t furnish us with a moral obligation to treat anyone in any particular way. This may be true of certain forms of agent relativism, but it makes no more sense to characterize relativism in general as though it were a specific form of agent relativism than it does to characterize all forms of moral realism as specifically Parfit’s conception of moral realism, or all forms of theism as specifically Calvinist conceptions of Christianity.

Why is it that critics of antirealist positions don’t treat antirealist positions with the level of nuance and charity they would other positions? (That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely curious what the reasons for this are).

One of the most common tropes is the use of qualifiers that are intended to subtly distinguish the realist’s conception of morality (or value) from the antirealist’s. For instance, realists may say that only the realist believes that murder is “really” wrong, or only the realist thinks that life “really” has meaning. “Really” is a weasel word in these cases. It is used to obscure what’s being said. If the realist merely means “stance-independent,” why not say so? Doing so would cause the remark to lose its rhetorical punch; of course the antirealist doesn’t think anything is stance-independently good or valuable; that’s just a restatement of the position.

“Stance-independent” is, more importantly, not a folk term, and the connotations associated with rejecting anything is good or valuable in this way won’t resonate with people because they don’t have a backlog of experiences and associations with the term that would cause them to instinctively and reflexively recoil at the thought that life isn’t “stance-independently valuable.” They very well might if they were asked to consider the notion that life isn’t “really” valuable, or if their family isn’t “genuinely” important. Terms like “really” and “genuinely,” are, when the realist uses them likely convey one or more of these notions:

(a) they are tautological, conveying nothing other than the technical distinction between realism and antirealism (i.e., stance-independence), or they imply some (ironically). If this is all realists mean, such remarks lack substance; that is, they simply restate the difference between realists and antirealists.

(b) the terms express the speaker’s normative evaluation of realist and antirealist conceptions of value; terms like “really,” “genuinely,” and so on thus convey the speaker’s normative judgment. Amusingly, such remarks would call for a metanormative evaluation of the meaning of the normative judgments being used to assess competing metanormative accounts, a meta-metanormativity; the antirealist could also deny meta-metanormative realism, as well, in which case such claims would be question begging.

(c) they convey a metaphysical claim about what conception of value accurately reflects reality. For instance, it may be that there are stance-independent moral facts, but no stance-dependent moral facts, in which case realist conceptions of value refer to things which exist, and antirealist conceptions of value don’t. On this view, “really,” ends up serving as a kind of metaphysical claim. This is the very thing the antirealist denies, so this would be question-begging.

If realists want to affirm (a), (b), or (c), they’re welcome to do so, but that leaves them with remarks that are empty or question begging. However, I don’t think this is the purpose of such remarks.

Rather, I think the purpose is rhetorical, a kind of exploitation of the pragmatics of everyday language. In colloquial use, terms like “really,” “genuine,” are often used to convey positive connotations. That is, the speaker is invited to consider something to be good if one view holds that it’s “really” the case and the other doesn’t; the implication is that the other view involves some phony, sham, counterfeit version of the real thing. This is why you’ll find products that proudly exclaim:

“Made with real cheese!”

As opposed to what? Fake cheese? Well, that’s the implication. And you don’t want to eat fake cheese, do you?

The idea here is that the realist will claim that their conception of morality or value involves a belief in “real,” or “true” or “actual” or “genuine” value, with the implication that the antirealist’s conception of morality or value is somehow not real. This is why I have dubbed this use of deceptive modifiers the fake cheese fallacy.

The fake cheese fallacy: The use of deceptive modifiers, when describing one’s own position in relation to other positions, e.g., “true,” “genuine,” or “real,” that give the misleading impression that one’s own position is in some way more likely to be correct or desirable. This works by exploiting the connotations with colloquial uses of these terms.

Example: “As a realist about moral value, only I think that actions are really right or wrong.”

In fact, the fake cheese fallacy is baked into the very names of the competing positions. Realists are, after all, realists. They think morality is “real,” allegedly, while antirealists don’t. This is, of course, also misleading and unhelpful.

I’m an antirealist, but I don’t think morality isn’t real; I think that there are no stance-independent moral facts. What would it even mean to say morality isn’t “real”? This leaves open what it is we’re saying isn’t real. While I and other antirealists don’t think there are stance-independent moral facts, this does not mean that we think nothing matters, or that we don’t oppose hurting people, or that happiness isn’t desirable and worth pursuing, and so on. Yet all of this is commonly implied or assumed by critics, and suggested by moral realists who ought to recognize none of this follows from our views (or, they might insist, it does follow; in which case they’d need an argument for this). We differ from moral realists not in that we don’t care about the same things, and that we can do so with just as much fervor as they do; it’s just that we don’t think this involves distinctive metaphysical and conceptual commitments.

While denying that anything is valuable in any respect at all is consistent with thinking that if things aren’t good or valuable in the realist’s sense, that they aren’t good or valuable at all, this isn’t an entailment of antirealism; an antirealist is free both to reject realist conceptions of goodness/value and to reject the notion that only realist conceptions of goodness/value are “true,” or “genuine” or “real.” The antirealist who doesn’t do this may be buying into realist’s notions that only their conceptions of morality and value are legitimate, even if the antirealist proceeds to deny that the realist’s position is true. And this may be due to a persistent campaign by realists to employ deceptive modifiers like “real” and “true,” modifiers that both create an unearned positive association with realist positions, and, if repeated often enough, can take advantage of truth-by-repetition; as the expression goes, if a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes the truth.

I’ll document instances where philosophers and nonphilosophers make use of this use of deceptive modifiers when I observe them, and report those cases here. Here, I want to discuss an interesting extension of the fake cheese fallacy. I am most familiar with the fake cheese fallacy occurring in disputes between moral realists and antirealists. Most philosophers are atheists, so there’s typically no presumption that theism is playing any important role in these disputes. Yet the same fake cheese fallacy frequently occurs in disputes between Christian apologists and atheists. Christian apologists often frame this in explicitly metaethical terms, arguing that only theism can ground moral realism, so atheists cannot have objective moral truth. However, they need not explicitly frame it this way (even if this is what’s underwriting their remarks). Sometimes, it’s simply asserted that theistic worldviews furnish one with genuine, true, real, or, (and this is more common among theists than secular moral realists), “ultimate” or “transcendent” value. For an excellent example of this, see the first three minutes of this video. However, I want to instead focus on the description, which reads as follows:

If I was an atheist I would be logically compelled to conclude we have no true purpose, no ultimate meaning, and no genuine morality, beauty or value. I’m not alone in this view. Many atheists have made the same devastating conclusion. Interestingly, this seems to push against common human perception and my own incredibly strong intuitions of these things (it most likely goes against yours as well). This alone is a strong reason to challenge atheism. On the other hand, Christians have a clear purpose, meaning, and concepts of morality, beauty and value.

Note the phrases “true,” “ultimate,” and “genuine.” This is exactly what I am talking about. And note how these claims are similar to refrains made by secular moral realists, e.g., that if you deny moral realism, then you don’t think anything is “really” wrong.

There is a common pattern in all three of these remarks. Some normative term or domain, e.g., “purpose,” “meaning,” or “morality” is preceded by some modifier used to imply that if you don’t agree with the proponent’s views about the source their view about the source or foundation for the notion in question, that you can’t have a genuine version of it, just some phony, knock-off brand. In Winger’s case, one needs theism for “true” or “ultimate” or “genuine” value. Sure, you can claim to have value or purpose or morality, but it won’t be the real thing. No work is done to show that Winger’s conception of morality/purpose/value is correct; we’re instead treated to the suggestion that only Winger’s conception of these things is worthwhile or desirable. Anything else is fake cheese. And we don’t want to eat fake cheese.

What is meant by “true” purpose, “ultimate” meaning and “genuine” morality? We get some indication that ultimate purpose may be a purpose that’s provided for you by some external source. Winger gives an example in the video: a hammer may have been created for a purpose, but even if it chooses its own purposes, these aren’t ones furnished upon it by its creator. So we could use this example to draw a distinction between what we might call external purposes and internal purposes. External purposes are those purposes intended by someone other than you, while internal purposes are “your own” purposes: purposes grounded in your goals, values, and motivations. Yet why should we think external purposes are any more desirable, good, worthy of pursuit, and so on than our internal purposes?

Suppose you found out you were created in a lab by a psychopathic scientist who intended to raise you to be the ultimate assassin. The scientist had intended for you to train you so that you could eventually take out rivals, like that one editor who rejected one of the mad scientist’s papers (it was a brilliant paper at that, called “Reinforcement learning for reinforcements: How to train squirrels to be the ultimate deadly warriors,” an important extension of and vindication of behaviorism) or that time he was denied promotion due to a “recurrent and disturbing pattern of attempting to convert virtually anything into assassins, warriors, or ultimate weapons.” After that incident with the toaster, who could blame them?

Unfortunately, our erstwhile scientist met an unfortunate end when an experiment involving badgers, magnets, and (for some reason) several cans of peaches. Confused investigators found you in a crib with several other babies slated for assassin training.

In the present day, haunted by memories of the past, you stumble across a backup lab run by the scientist. There, you find a recorded message:

“If you watching this message, then I have died. It was probably the thing with the badgers. Anyway, I had intended for you to be an assassin. Although you lack the training, here, on the desk, is a pill that, if you take it, will imbue you with all the knowledge and skills of the ultimate assassin. Carry out my plans. Seek out my rivals, and complete your true ultimate purpose.”

Would you have any interest in taking out their rivals? I wouldn’t. I value my own goals, purposes, and interests. Not those of someone else. Even if God created us for some purpose, that doesn’t mean we have to care about that purpose, or that it’d be “good” or “better” for us to comply with it. What if God’s purpose for us isn’t something we care about? If you’re charitably inclined, you might imagine a benevolent God who knows better than you. In which case, acting with God’s purpose in mind may lead you to a happier and more fulfilling life, or may be the altruistic thing to do (assuming God’s ultimate plan is a good one). On the other hand, maybe it isn’t, or maybe you just don’t care. Maybe God’s plans are just as inscrutable, petty, or stupid as a scientist who wants to make everything into a weapon and has an inordinate fondness for canned peaches.

The point here is that, while Winger is free to say that if there were a God, they could have created us for some purpose, which could very well be true (hypothetically), such a purpose isn’t thereby better or true or genuine or whatever. It’s just an external purpose. And that purpose may align with your goals, interests, and values. For instance, suppose God’s purpose for you is noble and altruistic and serves the greater good. If this is what you value doing, then it would make sense to act in accordance with God’s purpose. But what if you don’t? You’d still have no personal motivation or interest in complying with God’s plan. Or suppose God’s purpose for you is one that you’d find more fulfilling and desirable on reflection. And suppose that is what you want: in that case, it might make sense to pursue God’s purpose, but only because it exactly aligns with your internal purpose. In other words, the only way I can even make sense of judging the value of external purposes, and to decide whether or not I’d want to comply with them, is by reference to my internal purpose, and I think this generalizes to everyone else: either God’s purpose for us aligns with our interests and values, in which case we could have pursued those interests and values without needing God to furnish us with a purpose, or it doesn’t, in which case the external purpose would be irrelevant. Either way, our internal purpose will always be the final arbiter of the value of an external purpose.

Yet I doubt Winger merely wishes to draw a distinction between external and internal purposes. Rather, I suspect external or “true” or “ultimate” purposes are supposed to somehow be more compelling and important. If so, what’s the argument for that? I don’t know, and I don’t think we’re given one.

Setting aside this digression to address one potential (but probably incomplete) account of ultimate purpose, a general problem with all of these words persists. Namely, that their meaning is underspecified which, I suspect, serves to obscure the meaning of each of these terms: that is, they carry no substantive semantic weight, and their force is carried entirely by their connotative force: a kind of hollow sphere where the outside looks great, but the inside is a void empty of meaning.

What I mean is that terms that carry certain connotations may be presumed to have some substantive and meaningful conceptual content in addition to whatever positive or negative associations they are used to conn0te. But perhaps sometimes terms just aren’t used this way, and the reason the meaning is underspecified and obscure is a feature, and not a bug: their meaning is unclear because it simply isn’t the purpose of these terms to carry any substantive e.g., philosophical content or to commit the speaker to any particular substantive position; rather, they are used merely to create positive associations with whatever they are appended to and, by implication, negative associations with whatever the putative rival position is. I don’t know of a good term for such terminological usage, but it is a fascinating type of pure rhetoric.

I propose we call terms that function in such a way so as to include no substantive content but exist solely to convey the connotative force of the terms being used as deceptive modifiers.

Deceptive modifiers are used whenever the speaker wants to associate some term or concept with something they expect their audience to favor or disapprove of, merely in virtue of the linguistic labels used to refer to the thing in question, but critically without conveying any substantive philosophical position at all.

As a toy example, imagine a philosophical dispute between philosophical positions X and Y. A proponent of X may argue that only X holds that food is “actually” tasty, whereas position Y doesn’t hold that food is “actually” tasty. The use of “actually” here implies that the proponent of X’s view of tastiness is somehow better or more desirable to their audience. Yet, critically, “actually” doesn’t actually mean anything; it’s merely used to attach positive associations to position X. In this case, “actually” doesn’t actually mean anything; it’s a deceptive modifier.

I consider this a key insight into the way Winger and other people’s objections to various antirealist conceptions of value work. They work by exploiting the connotative force of positive-sounding words, appending them to their own positions, but doing so in a way that doesn’t include, or at least doesn’t derive its argumentative force, from the substantive content of the meaning of these terms in the contexts in which they are being used. It’s a kind of artificial inflation of the importance or value of their position relative to rival positions, created by a linguistic mirage.

Let’s get into addressing each of Winger’s empty labels individually.

(1) Individuals can have purposes in their lives that reflect their own goals and values. Purpose doesn’t need to be given to us by anyone else, such as God. Self-directed purposes that we choose for ourselves aren’t somehow false or not actual purposes. So what, exactly, is meant by “true” purpose? I suspect it doesn’t mean anything. “True” is serving as a deceptive modifier here.

(2) I’m not so sure the idea of “ultimate” meaning makes sense. Things can be meaningful to us according to our standards or values, but things can’t be meaningful in any other way. If the concept of ultimate meaning isn’t intelligible, theism isn’t going to change this. It’s not clear to me you can have ultimate meaning even if there were a God, any more than God could create square circles. “Ultimate” is a deceptive modifier, or, at best, the sense in which meaning is “ultimate” can be cashed out in terms of it being external, which doesn’t (by itself) clearly indicate why such meaning is better or more desirable or moral real or important than internal or subjective meaning. One would need an argument for that, and I doubt there any good arguments. Indeed; it’s not even clear one could argue for this since, at least in this case, ultimate meaning may be unintelligible.

(3) What’s “genuine” morality? Why would it require God? Yet again, the implication here is that without God somehow the morality we’d have wouldn’t be genuine. This is a deceptive modifier, and relies on the fake cheese fallacy.

Winger continues:

“Interestingly, this seems to push against common human perception and my own incredibly strong intuitions of these things (it most likely goes against yours as well). This alone is a strong reason to challenge atheism.”

The common human perception? Note the use of language like this. While it is possible to maintain that we literally perceive various kinds of values (see ,moral perceptualism from Werner, 2020, and or ,this video from Kane B: “Can we perceive moral properties?”), this is a highly controversial position. Is Winger claiming people literally perceive purpose, meaning, and value? Or is this some kind of metaphor? If it’s a metaphor, a metaphor for what? What does it mean? And if it isn’t literal or metaphorical, then why say it? Let’s take it, charitably, as metaphorical (at least). Winger is perhaps simply using “perception” to mean something like “view” or “perspective” or whatever, without committing to any particular account of the phenomenology or psychological states involved. Fine. We can still ask how common it actually is, and among which populations. Is it common among WEIRD populations? All populations? Who, exactly, are we talking about? Winger does the same thing many philosophers do: make vague quantitative claims about how people think without the barest attempt at specificity about who he’s referring to.

However, the parenthetical is the most objectionable part of Winger’s remark: “it most likely goes against yours as well.)” Here, Winger seems to be hypothesizing that most viewers would endorse what (I suspect) is a realist conception of meaning and value. It is thus likely an echo of the common presumption in favor of realism, a claim I have repeatedly challenged. The claim that most people are disposed towards realism about morality or value is an empirical hypothesis about human psychology for which there is almost no compelling evidence, and at least some evidence suggesting it’s not the case. The presumption in favor of realism is simply unsupported by available data, and yet moral realists continue to claim that most people find realism intuitive.

If I have to keep saying this every day for the rest of my life, I will: the claim that most people are realists is an empirical claim and it is, at least as of 2023, not supported by available empirical evidence. On the contrary, the best available empirical evidence suggests that, at least among surveyed populations, the majority don’t endorse moral realism. We can challenge these studies on empirical grounds, but even if we threw out the results entirely, that would at best leave us with no compelling evidence one way or the other. Thus, at best, the empirical hypothesis that most people are moral realists would be without any substantive empirical support.

References

Werner, P. J. (2020). Moral perception. Philosophy compass, 15(1), e12640.