Sorry for taking a while to reply, I have been pretty busy with grading. Here are some thoughts.
> I don’t know if criticism was implied in the throwaway line about the notion of a nonphilosopher being “imprecise,”
I wasn't implying any criticism.
> If I am correct, this undermines claims that there is a presumption in favor of moral realism because it is a “commonsense” or “intuitive” view widely held by nonphilosophers or is implicit in the way people are generally disposed to speak and/or think. ... Since the dilemma I propose maintains that training paradigms are either invalid in that they fail to measure people’s metaethical views or lacks external validity in that it does succeed but doesn’t allow for generalizations outside the study, *if* I am correct about these points, this would threaten the utility of such studies in resolving questions about whether moral realism is “commonsense.”
I think this is the key point. I am only assessing your dilemma insofar as it relates to this philosophical argument---insofar as it's not meant to relate to this, I have no criticism of it. The question I'm trying to answer is whether training paradigms can be useful for settling the dispute over the "argument from commonsense" that realists often appeal to. I claim that they can. If your dilemma is purely meant to target studies that are designed to capture the philosophical stances of people with zero philosophical training, with no assumption that the point of capturing ordinary people's philosophical stances is to make progress on the argument from commonsense, then I think it's correct.
But I took it that your dilemma for training paradigms was meant, at least in part, to show that training paradigms are not useful for resolving the dispute over the argument from commonsense, because they can't tell us anything about the stances of ordinary people. And your quote from above seems to confirm that. But my point is that what's relevant for the argument from commonsense, at least one important version of it, is not what stances ordinary people *actually* hold, but what stances they *would* hold under certain counterfactual conditions. And training paradigms *can* tell us about *that* (at least if they are otherwise well-designed). Let me briefly explain the argument from my initial post in a slightly different way, with this in mind.
I'll use your terminology of "stances" and "commitments." As I understand it, "stances" are people's explicit beliefs about philosophical questions, while "commitments" are philosophical views that would be implied by their actions or how they speak. (For instance, most ordinary people probably have a commitment to the negation of global skepticism, since they often say that they know things and act as if they know things, and knowing things is incompatible with global skepticism. But they probably don't have any stance on the nature of knowledge, e.g. whether the justified-true-belief account is accurate or not.) Let me know if I'm using these terms incorrectly.
Two simple versions of the argument from commonsense would go something like this:
S1. Most ordinary people have a stance that moral realism is true.
S2. If most ordinary people have a stance that some philosophical thesis is true, then that thesis is the default view.
S3. Therefore, moral realism is the default view.
C1. Most ordinary people have a commitment that moral realism is true.
C2. If most ordinary people have a commitment that some philosophical thesis is true, then that thesis is the default view.
C3. Therefore, moral realism is the default view.
The S argument is pretty bad, for basically the reasons Kauppinen gives in the "Rise and Fall" paper (which I recently read and enjoyed)---S2 is just false. C2 in the second argument is more promising, but I'm not sure whether training paradigms can tell us about people's commitments, so I'll just grant for the sake of argument that your dilemma shows that training paradigms can't tell us anything about whether C1 is true, and set the C argument aside.
Here is a third version:
H1. Most ordinary people would have a stance that moral realism is true, once they were taught the relevant concepts and distinctions.
H2. If most ordinary people would have a stance that some philosophical thesis is true, once they were taught the relevant concepts and distinctions, then that thesis is the default view.
H3. Therefore, moral realism is the default view.
A good chunk of my initial post was devoted to arguing essentially that the H argument, rather than the S argument, is the relevant one. The argument was basically this. Consider a fourth argument of the same form, based on the premise P2: If most *philosophers* have a stance that some philosophical thesis is true, then that thesis is the default view. P2 is false. The reason why it's false is that philosophers are biased in certain ways. In the context of the argument from commonsense, the reason to appeal to the views of ordinary people, rather than the views of philosophers, is to avoid those biases. And once we see that, we can see that H2, rather than S2, is what we want to base an argument from commonsense on. Another major chunk of my initial post then argues that training paradigms can help us assess whether H1 is true. So overall, my argument in the initial post is something like this:
A1. The H argument is the best version of the argument from commonsense
A2. Training paradigms can help us to assess whether H1 is true.
A3. If training paradigms can help us to assess whether H1 is true, then they are useful for resolving the dispute over the argument from commonsense. (Because the H argument is the best version of the argument from commonsense, and training paradigms can help us assess whether a premise of that argument is true.)
A4. Therefore, training paradigms are useful for resolving the dispute over the argument from commonsense.
> I believe Hans may be operating under the mistaken assumption that everyone already has metaethical intuitions and the goal of these studies is to find out what they are.
I am not operating under this assumption. What I meant by "reshape" was something like this. Suppose you're right that non-philosophers usually have no determinate stance on the realism/anti-realism question before being introduced to the philosophical concepts and distinctions explicitly. Now think of someone participating in an introduction to ethics class where there is a metaethics unit, and then going on to major in philosophy and go to graduate school in it. Before they study any philosophy, they have no stance on realism vs anti-realism. After they are first introduced to the question through the class, they have some stance on it (let's say they become an anti-realist). Then, throughout the rest of their philosophical training, they're exposed to all the pressures the profession might exert on people's stances---framing effects, social pressures, and so on. Under this influence, their intuition is reshaped, and they become a realist. Now consider someone undergoing a training paradigm study. Before they go through the training, they have no stance, just like the student. Then, once they're trained via the study instructions, they form a stance (let's say, again, that they become an anti-realist). But their stance doesn't undergo further pressures from being in philosophy academe for years on end. So their intuition is not reshaped. That's what I meant---I meant reshaped, as compared to the starting point where they first developed the intuition. (Though one's intuitions could also be distorted by having the concepts and distinctions explained to one in a way that biased one to form a particular stance initially; that's not quite "reshaping" since one didn't have initial intuitions to begin with, but this kind of thing probably also happens when students receive philosophical training.)
> Hans’s next remark leaves me incredulous:
> > Actually, maybe it's better to say that people who haven't been trained in the relevant concepts and distinctions could not have views about these questions: the questions are framed in terms of the relevant concepts and distinctions (and so must any answers to the questions be), so anyone without the relevant concepts and distinctions literally could not have views on those questions, in the same way that someone who doesn’t know what a “vector” in the mathematical sense is could not have views on linear algebra.
> …my dissertation is a defense of exactly this claim. Hans doesn’t even seem to be unaware of this, because the very next remark is:
> > (As an aside, this seems like a solid argument in favor of Lance's "folk metaethical indeterminacy"—the folk do not have determinate views on metaethical questions, because they don’t understand the relevant concepts and distinctions.)
> …Yes…why do you think this appeared in a dissertation defending folk metaethical indeterminacy? (That’s a rhetorical question).
Yeah, sorry about this. As I said, I haven't read your dissertation yet (at least not much of it), and I thought your defense of folk metaethical indeterminacy was mainly on empirical grounds (namely your studies in which you provide evidence that people systematically interpret the questions in unintended ways). So I was thinking this was maybe a complementary argument to the one you give, on *a priori* grounds. But if you also give this argument as well, then I apologize.
Thanks for clarifying the remarks about reshaping. That's helpful.
>>Now think of someone participating in an introduction to ethics class where there is a metaethics unit, and then going on to major in philosophy and go to graduate school in it. Before they study any philosophy, they have no stance on realism vs anti-realism. After they are first introduced to the question through the class, they have some stance on it (let's say they become an anti-realist). Then, throughout the rest of their philosophical training, they're exposed to all the pressures the profession might exert on people's stances---framing effects, social pressures, and so on. Under this influence, their intuition is reshaped, and they become a realist.
The issue with this is that there's no way of presenting any of the material to this person at all that isn't culturally parochial or highly specific in ways that ineliminably create "bias." How could you possibly teach people philosophy without taking on board certain parochial assumptions based on your culture, language, perspective, contingent features of the history of the philosophical tradition(s) you're working in, and so forth? I think the answer is simple: you can't.
In the relevant sense of there being "biases," one way I might put this is that it is impossible to train participants in an unbiased way, at least in practice, if not in principle.
>>Now consider someone undergoing a training paradigm study. Before they go through the training, they have no stance, just like the student. Then, once they're trained via the study instructions, they form a stance (let's say, again, that they become an anti-realist). But their stance doesn't undergo further pressures from being in philosophy academe for years on end.
No, but whatever training or instructions they receive would unavoidably involve taking on board philosophical presuppositions about how to frame, describe, and present the positions in question. I'm a quietist. I reject many of the dichotomies characteristic of analytic philosophy. So how are you going to train them to draw the distinction between realism and antirealism without "biasing" participants against quietism? Simply put: you cannot. So literally *any training at all* that "clarifies" the distinction between realism and antirealism is already biasing those participants since *the very distinction is itself* is representative of a biased perspective. In other words, one issue would be biasing people towards moral realism or antirealism in particular. Maybe you could eliminate such biases. But there is no way to ask people if they're realists or antirealists that doesn't bias them towards thinking of the nature of morality in terms of the realism/antirealism distinction.
In short, there is no feasible way to train people to draw a distinction between P and not-P without presupposing the legitimacy of the distinction. Note that, as a quietist, I actually, technically speaking, reject the distinction as a false dichotomy. So to teach people to draw the distinction is *already* biasing participants. If you really wanted people to be unbiased even in this respect, you'd have to teach them...what? An infinite number of counterfactual philosophical traditions? Even if we compromised and wanted to teach them only those alternatives we considered most viable (thereby introducing our biases, anyway), this would be completely infeasible. They'd have to become experts in philosophy to adequately hold all the different positions in their head and compare them to one another. In other words, a proper measure of these "nonphilosophers" that didn't bias them would effectively require them to become world-class experts in every major philosophical tradition: a feat that no human being has ever achieved.
In other words, there is no feasible way to train participants to distinguish realism from antirealism in the way analytic philosophers do without biasing participants towards drawing distinctions between realism and antirealism in the way analytic philosophers do. Any training paradigm that presupposes analytic philosophical distinctions is thus already biased in favor of analytic philosophical distinctions...pretty much by definition.
As such, I don't see how you could possibly provide unbiased training to participants. I have no idea what that would look like and suspect it isn't actually possible.
>>But my point is that what's relevant for the argument from commonsense, at least one important version of it, is not what stances ordinary people *actually* hold, but what stances they *would* hold under certain counterfactual conditions.
That’s a separate question that I am simply not addressing with my argument. My argument is an argument about the views they *do* hold, not an argument about the views they *would* hold under counterfactual conditions. So you’re welcome to say that these studies can tell us about what people would hold under this or that counterfactual condition. There are problems with that, too, but that’s just not what my argument is about.
This remark is really strange to me:
>>A good chunk of my initial post was devoted to arguing essentially that the H argument, rather than the S argument, is the relevant one. T
What do you mean when you say it's the "relevant one"? I am responding to people making claims by saying those claims are false, and I am giving reasons for why those claims are false. I have no idea what it could possibly mean to say the argument for H is the relevant one.
So we have a situation like this:
Other people: We argue for S and C.
Me: Okay, S and C are wrong for reasons P.
You: Ahh, but my objection to P is that actually H is what's relevant, not S and C.
...This is a weird assessment of the situation. What's "relevant" to me is that people are making claims that I think are false, so I am arguing for why I think they're false.
>>And once we see that, we can see that H2, rather than S2, is what we want to base an argument from commonsense on.
I don’t see that. I am not concerned with "biases."
>>A1. The H argument is the best version of the argument from commonsense
I am probably going to end up rejecting this. Is there some reason I should accept it? My interest is in the stances and commitments of nonphilosophers, not some counterfactual claim about what stances or commitments they would have under some specified set of conditions.
** Disclaimer: I am not formally educated in Philosophy nor have a read all of your research nor am I intimately familiar with the study methodologies regarding metaethical positions in the general public. I have been following you on here for a while and I read a great deal of philosophy on a daily basis **
I feel like your argument is somewhat circular and in the manner that you present it impossible to argue against. Your metaphor with asking about Christianity to the island population makes this quite clear.
"...the question I am addressing is what nonphilosophers outside the context of these studies think about these questions."
You seem to argue that you are interested in understanding the answer to this problem but at the same time argue that it cannot be answered. What if you are wrong? If people do hold metaethical stances you don't leave any room for your theory to be falsified. As you say, any measure can simply be thrown out as "illusory appearance of success". It seems you've set the table in such a way that you cannot lose.
For the record, I think you might be right to some degree but I feel the manner in which your argument is made makes it impossible to know.
What I don't understand though is why questions like the following can't give us some insight into peoples views:
"Do you believe there are moral standards or values that hold true in every context?"
"Do you think it is ok to change your moral positions based on certain contexts?"
I don't think these questions are perfect but maybe lean towards a way of asking people about these issues in a manner in which the average person would understand and be able to answer in a meaningful way.
To put it into your Christianity metaphor, instead of asking people if they accept or reject Christianity (something that is clearly nonsensical to a population that has never heard of it) you could ask questions like this:
"Do you believe there is some invisible force in the universe capable of affecting the lives of people?"
"Do you believe that worshiping such forces can improve the outcome of your life?"
Again, these are just quick passes at more generalized questions but I think you get the idea.
It is obvious that people who have never heard of anti-realism or realism hold no views on the matter but that does not mean that those people could not think that their morals are absolute or not. You can always argue this is spontaneous theorizing but that could be argued about most surveys and if you want to hold that position then you are invalidating the entirety surveys that may ask people any generalized questions that they may not have ever stopped to think about before.
I am reminded of quantum decoherence and the measurement problem. Until we measure a particular quantum state it is considered to hold a range of values (wave function) and once we look at it it collapses down to one in particular. Physicists don't then say that the values they measure are useless and meaningless, what they do is make lots of measurements of different particles to develop a statisical model of the generalized behavior. While it's true that any one particle is unknown before measurement and the act of measurement does affect the outcome, the understanding gained from many measurements does provide insight into the general behavior of those particles.
Very cool response, thanks! My argument for indeterminacy is made elsewhere in my work. My argument about training paradigms is conditional on that argument. So the argument isn't circular, it just holds only conditional on another argument (which I spend a lot of time arguing for!).
The point of the Christianity is example is to provide a hypothetical scenario in which we stipulate that the people in question do not have views about whether Christianity is true or false. Any study that forced them to choose one of these responses (It's true or false) risks provide either an invalid measure. Any study that first teaches them about Christianity immediately invalidates any inferences about the views of people who, again, by definition, had no exposure to Christianity, since the participants in the sample aren't members of the population of "people with no exposure to Christianity." In principle, it could be that exposure to Christianity isn't causing them to form a belief about whether Christianity is true or false, because they could have already had a view. But if someone wants to make such a claim, the onus is on them to demonstrate that people already had a view about Christianity prior to exposure to training about Christianity. They aren't entitled to just presume people had views about Christianity before that.
Yet this isn't how work in the psychology of metaethics proceeds. Researchers simply presume people are already moral realists or antirealists, and that our task is to figure out which one of these they are. I argue that they aren't, and that if they aren't, training paradigms are not going to be a viable way to find out what they are, since the training paradigms would either fail at prompting them to become realists/antirealists or succeed at causing them to become realists/antirealists, even though members of the population they're from aren't realists/antirealists. This is a lose-lose for any attempt to make claims about the population they were sampled from. It is possible that these studies simply clarify what implicit views people already had, but those who believe this aren't entitled to simply presume this is the case. Yet that's exactly what they do.
So it certainly is possible to show that my view is mistaken: you can provide empirical evidence against folk indeterminacy. For instance, you could argue that training paradigms allow us to discover the views people had prior to participating in the study and do not, in fact, cause people to form those views. Have I proven that the studies do cause the views in question? No. I provide a proof of concept of how this could occur, and present indirect evidence that people don't already have the relevant concepts, but such evidence is not definitive, and I don't claim that it is.
So someone certainly could show that I am simply wrong about what the empirical evidence indicates. If this could be shown, then I would be mistaken. You could also show that the studies and considerations I present that purport to show that existing paradigms are invalid are mistaken, and that one or more paradigms are valid measures of people's existing metaethical stances or commitments. This approach would falsify my position on indeterminacy and could vindicate training paradigms.
You say:
"It is obvious that people who have never heard of anti-realism or realism hold no views on the matter but that does not mean that those people could not think that their morals are absolute or not."
I completely agree. But I do not argue that people couldn’t be moral realists or antirealists. I argue that they simply aren’t. That’s why my argument is an empirical one. If I thought it was a matter of impossibility I’d probably make some kind of deductive argument, not an abductive one. You also say:
"You can always argue this is spontaneous theorizing but that could be argued about most surveys and if you want to hold that position then you are invalidating the entirety surveys that may ask people any generalized questions that they may not have ever stopped to think about before."
You could and I do! I do think this problem is a threat to many other studies. It’s an empirical question in each case whether spontaneous theorizing invalidates results.
You say:
"I am reminded of quantum decoherence and the measurement problem."
Ha! It’s funny you mention that…the title of my dissertation is “Schrödinger's Categories: The Indeterminacy of Folk Metaethics,” and the central metaphor is related to quantum mechanics. As I say in the paper:
With respect to realism and antirealism, most ordinary people exist in a state of philosophical superposition that collapses only by engaging in philosophy.
Thank you so much for your response, I love how I was able to find your metaphor.
Regarding the training paradigms, I generally agree with your stance on the matter which is why I hadn’t brought it up in my response. What I believe is that there could be questions that don’t require any training that could still provide meaningful insight regarding the initial question.
Continuing the physics metaphor, if physicists do one day find a more fundamental theorem and this theorem is deterministic (the particles had definite states all along) and it shows how the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics arises from it, then it will be using different fundamental objects (strings for example) or “language” to describe it. That is to say, if we want to get underneath the issue of anti-realism/realism and its indeterminacy, then we should try to describe the fundamental components in a new way. This is why I was proposing those more generalized questions that can get at some of the underlying concepts that drive realism/anti-realism.
I think what you would find, as I am sure you would agree, is that people are on a spectrum and hold more nuanced beliefs than we presently describe with the metaethical terms used today. That said, I think statements like “People hold mostly realist views” or “People hold mostly anti-realist views” are not out of the question or uninformative.
These ideas could be reinforced with a survey that includes questions phrased in such a way to possibly lead people to show their contradictory views.
“Would you say there are moral values like “Murder is wrong” that hold true in all situations?”
…later on in the survey…
“Would you consider it wrong to kill someone in defence of your child?”
…
“Is it always wrong to murder?”
These are not 100% contradictory but I think you see my point. Is this how these surveys are performed? What is wrong with evaluating people's perspective in this way? What are your views on these questions or the ones I mentioned in the previous comment?
“For instance, you could argue that training paradigms allow us to discover the views people had prior to participating in the study and do not, in fact, cause people to form those views.”
People can argue these things but I feel your stance is defined such that you will always be able to reject them. That is to say no evidence could possibly convince you that people in general hold these views. But it seems to be a conceptual problem as you say, where some philosophers/psychologists are looking for a particular binary viewpoint and forcing the issue with their line of questions.
If you’ve noticed I pretty much agree with your premise but I feel like your argument is _too_ defensible. It seems impossible to topple your logic because it is, I think, literally impossible. Though that doesn’t appear to make your argument stronger, it seems to lead people to not want to argue with you.
Thank you again for beating your anti-realist drum, I think philosophy as a whole benefits from these viewpoints and they drive us forward towards a better understanding.
Most of the studies don’t use training paradigms and try instead to get at folk metaethical views using indirect methods, probably a bit in line with what you propose. Much more of my work involves critiquing these methods.
I think what you would find, as I am sure you would agree, is that people are on a spectrum and hold more nuanced beliefs than we presently describe with the metaethical terms used today. That said, I think statements like “People hold mostly realist views” or “People hold mostly anti-realist views” are not out of the question or uninformative.
I don’t think they’re out of the question; I just think they are mistaken.
These ideas could be reinforced with a survey that includes questions phrased in such a way to possibly lead people to show their contradictory views.
There are surveys/studies like this already. I critique these in my dissertation.
Is this how these surveys are performed?
Some of them, though your specific proposals would have considerable methodological challenges. None of them look to me like they could serve as valid measures of whether people are realists/antirealists. They appear to ask questions about people’s first-order/normative moral values and about the universality or scope of their moral standards, neither of which gets at the question of stance-independent vs. stance-dependence.
//People can argue these things but I feel your stance is defined such that you will always be able to reject them.//
I don’t really know why you think that; I already outlined a few ways someone could demonstrate that I am mistaken. There are probably others, too.
//That is to say no evidence could possibly convince you that people in general hold these views.//
Why think that? I don’t think I’d be that difficult to persuade. I am stubborn, but I don’t think I’m incorrigible on the matter.
Don't take it as a statement against your character but your argument. I am trying to think of what evidence could be gathered that would refute your position but it seems to me that any arbitrarily defined survey and/or training paradigm would necessarily always be subject to your criticism. Though the more we are here talking about it the more I think maybe that isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it makes more sense when framed as a wider criticism of all surveys.
"They appear to ask questions about people’s first-order/normative moral values and about the universality or scope of their moral standards, neither of which gets at the question of stance-independent vs. stance-dependence."
I am having trouble understanding why my perceived scope of my moral standards doesn't - at least to some degree - extend to my beliefs on stance-independent/dependent moral facts. If you ask me if I think it is always wrong to murder and I say yes, how does that not imply that I believe "Murder is wrong" is a stance-independent moral fact?
I've downloaded your dissertation and although I know I wont read it all (444 pages!) I will take a look through it later tonight to hopefully better understand your critique of these methods. If you can point to any specific sections that would be helpful.
My argument about training paradigms rests on various assumptions. To show the argument is wrong you'd simply need to show that one or more of those assumptions is wrong. And those assumptions largely consist of empirical claims I could certainly be mistaken about. I am not defending an undefeatable position here.
//I am having trouble understanding why my perceived scope of my moral standards doesn't - at least to some degree - extend to my beliefs on stance-independent/dependent moral facts.//
Scope is an orthogonal dimension to stance-dependence/independence. A moral realist could think moral standards apply only very narrowly. A moral antirealist could maintain that the same moral standards apply to everyone. Scope and stance-independence just aren't conceptually linked to one another.
//If you ask me if I think it is always wrong to murder and I say yes, how does that not imply that I believe "Murder is wrong" is a stance-independent moral fact?//
Because it is entirely consistent with antirealist positions to hold that there are stance-dependent but exceptionless moral rules. For instance, one may hold that all moral standards are fixed by whatever an ideal agent would endorse. And that ideal agent may endorse the view that "it is always wrong to torture, with no exceptions." Universalism, in this case, would be consistent with antirealism.
There is also a supplemental section that accompanies the dissertation. The full length with that included is 1249 pages. Which sections would be helpful to you would depend on what you're interested in, though I do specifically address scope/stance-independence somewhere in there.
Between Mark's comment below and a quick perusal of "Ctrl-f scope" in your dissertation, I think I finally have clear the distinction. Thank you both for taking the time to help me understand this. I think this interaction itself expresses clearly the difficulty of training people to understand these concepts. I have more thoughts on the matter but I think I will let them stew in the background and I'm sure we'll meet again in the comments section of some future post.
The same goes for my critique of your argument, which isn't about the training paradigms but more about your assertion that people don't have metaethical positions. When I can better express my intuitions I'll take another stab at it.
FTR, that murder is wrong is a conceptual truth. A killing is only murder if it is wrong. As such that claim can be held by moral anti-realists of some stripes.
Thank you! I didn't even see the bias in my question. I was thinking of "murder" as "intentional killing".
My question though, now rephrased, still stands. If you ask me if I think it is always wrong to intentionally kill another person and I say yes, how does that not imply that I believe "Intentionally killing other people is wrong" is a stance-independent moral fact?
And FTR, I don't think it is a stance-independent moral fact. I am just here trying to understand better these concepts.
The title is daunting. I’m not well-versed in philosophy or psychology. Should I give the article a try anyway?
Sorry for taking a while to reply, I have been pretty busy with grading. Here are some thoughts.
> I don’t know if criticism was implied in the throwaway line about the notion of a nonphilosopher being “imprecise,”
I wasn't implying any criticism.
> If I am correct, this undermines claims that there is a presumption in favor of moral realism because it is a “commonsense” or “intuitive” view widely held by nonphilosophers or is implicit in the way people are generally disposed to speak and/or think. ... Since the dilemma I propose maintains that training paradigms are either invalid in that they fail to measure people’s metaethical views or lacks external validity in that it does succeed but doesn’t allow for generalizations outside the study, *if* I am correct about these points, this would threaten the utility of such studies in resolving questions about whether moral realism is “commonsense.”
I think this is the key point. I am only assessing your dilemma insofar as it relates to this philosophical argument---insofar as it's not meant to relate to this, I have no criticism of it. The question I'm trying to answer is whether training paradigms can be useful for settling the dispute over the "argument from commonsense" that realists often appeal to. I claim that they can. If your dilemma is purely meant to target studies that are designed to capture the philosophical stances of people with zero philosophical training, with no assumption that the point of capturing ordinary people's philosophical stances is to make progress on the argument from commonsense, then I think it's correct.
But I took it that your dilemma for training paradigms was meant, at least in part, to show that training paradigms are not useful for resolving the dispute over the argument from commonsense, because they can't tell us anything about the stances of ordinary people. And your quote from above seems to confirm that. But my point is that what's relevant for the argument from commonsense, at least one important version of it, is not what stances ordinary people *actually* hold, but what stances they *would* hold under certain counterfactual conditions. And training paradigms *can* tell us about *that* (at least if they are otherwise well-designed). Let me briefly explain the argument from my initial post in a slightly different way, with this in mind.
I'll use your terminology of "stances" and "commitments." As I understand it, "stances" are people's explicit beliefs about philosophical questions, while "commitments" are philosophical views that would be implied by their actions or how they speak. (For instance, most ordinary people probably have a commitment to the negation of global skepticism, since they often say that they know things and act as if they know things, and knowing things is incompatible with global skepticism. But they probably don't have any stance on the nature of knowledge, e.g. whether the justified-true-belief account is accurate or not.) Let me know if I'm using these terms incorrectly.
Two simple versions of the argument from commonsense would go something like this:
S1. Most ordinary people have a stance that moral realism is true.
S2. If most ordinary people have a stance that some philosophical thesis is true, then that thesis is the default view.
S3. Therefore, moral realism is the default view.
C1. Most ordinary people have a commitment that moral realism is true.
C2. If most ordinary people have a commitment that some philosophical thesis is true, then that thesis is the default view.
C3. Therefore, moral realism is the default view.
The S argument is pretty bad, for basically the reasons Kauppinen gives in the "Rise and Fall" paper (which I recently read and enjoyed)---S2 is just false. C2 in the second argument is more promising, but I'm not sure whether training paradigms can tell us about people's commitments, so I'll just grant for the sake of argument that your dilemma shows that training paradigms can't tell us anything about whether C1 is true, and set the C argument aside.
Here is a third version:
H1. Most ordinary people would have a stance that moral realism is true, once they were taught the relevant concepts and distinctions.
H2. If most ordinary people would have a stance that some philosophical thesis is true, once they were taught the relevant concepts and distinctions, then that thesis is the default view.
H3. Therefore, moral realism is the default view.
A good chunk of my initial post was devoted to arguing essentially that the H argument, rather than the S argument, is the relevant one. The argument was basically this. Consider a fourth argument of the same form, based on the premise P2: If most *philosophers* have a stance that some philosophical thesis is true, then that thesis is the default view. P2 is false. The reason why it's false is that philosophers are biased in certain ways. In the context of the argument from commonsense, the reason to appeal to the views of ordinary people, rather than the views of philosophers, is to avoid those biases. And once we see that, we can see that H2, rather than S2, is what we want to base an argument from commonsense on. Another major chunk of my initial post then argues that training paradigms can help us assess whether H1 is true. So overall, my argument in the initial post is something like this:
A1. The H argument is the best version of the argument from commonsense
A2. Training paradigms can help us to assess whether H1 is true.
A3. If training paradigms can help us to assess whether H1 is true, then they are useful for resolving the dispute over the argument from commonsense. (Because the H argument is the best version of the argument from commonsense, and training paradigms can help us assess whether a premise of that argument is true.)
A4. Therefore, training paradigms are useful for resolving the dispute over the argument from commonsense.
> I believe Hans may be operating under the mistaken assumption that everyone already has metaethical intuitions and the goal of these studies is to find out what they are.
I am not operating under this assumption. What I meant by "reshape" was something like this. Suppose you're right that non-philosophers usually have no determinate stance on the realism/anti-realism question before being introduced to the philosophical concepts and distinctions explicitly. Now think of someone participating in an introduction to ethics class where there is a metaethics unit, and then going on to major in philosophy and go to graduate school in it. Before they study any philosophy, they have no stance on realism vs anti-realism. After they are first introduced to the question through the class, they have some stance on it (let's say they become an anti-realist). Then, throughout the rest of their philosophical training, they're exposed to all the pressures the profession might exert on people's stances---framing effects, social pressures, and so on. Under this influence, their intuition is reshaped, and they become a realist. Now consider someone undergoing a training paradigm study. Before they go through the training, they have no stance, just like the student. Then, once they're trained via the study instructions, they form a stance (let's say, again, that they become an anti-realist). But their stance doesn't undergo further pressures from being in philosophy academe for years on end. So their intuition is not reshaped. That's what I meant---I meant reshaped, as compared to the starting point where they first developed the intuition. (Though one's intuitions could also be distorted by having the concepts and distinctions explained to one in a way that biased one to form a particular stance initially; that's not quite "reshaping" since one didn't have initial intuitions to begin with, but this kind of thing probably also happens when students receive philosophical training.)
> Hans’s next remark leaves me incredulous:
> > Actually, maybe it's better to say that people who haven't been trained in the relevant concepts and distinctions could not have views about these questions: the questions are framed in terms of the relevant concepts and distinctions (and so must any answers to the questions be), so anyone without the relevant concepts and distinctions literally could not have views on those questions, in the same way that someone who doesn’t know what a “vector” in the mathematical sense is could not have views on linear algebra.
> …my dissertation is a defense of exactly this claim. Hans doesn’t even seem to be unaware of this, because the very next remark is:
> > (As an aside, this seems like a solid argument in favor of Lance's "folk metaethical indeterminacy"—the folk do not have determinate views on metaethical questions, because they don’t understand the relevant concepts and distinctions.)
> …Yes…why do you think this appeared in a dissertation defending folk metaethical indeterminacy? (That’s a rhetorical question).
Yeah, sorry about this. As I said, I haven't read your dissertation yet (at least not much of it), and I thought your defense of folk metaethical indeterminacy was mainly on empirical grounds (namely your studies in which you provide evidence that people systematically interpret the questions in unintended ways). So I was thinking this was maybe a complementary argument to the one you give, on *a priori* grounds. But if you also give this argument as well, then I apologize.
Thanks for clarifying the remarks about reshaping. That's helpful.
>>Now think of someone participating in an introduction to ethics class where there is a metaethics unit, and then going on to major in philosophy and go to graduate school in it. Before they study any philosophy, they have no stance on realism vs anti-realism. After they are first introduced to the question through the class, they have some stance on it (let's say they become an anti-realist). Then, throughout the rest of their philosophical training, they're exposed to all the pressures the profession might exert on people's stances---framing effects, social pressures, and so on. Under this influence, their intuition is reshaped, and they become a realist.
The issue with this is that there's no way of presenting any of the material to this person at all that isn't culturally parochial or highly specific in ways that ineliminably create "bias." How could you possibly teach people philosophy without taking on board certain parochial assumptions based on your culture, language, perspective, contingent features of the history of the philosophical tradition(s) you're working in, and so forth? I think the answer is simple: you can't.
In the relevant sense of there being "biases," one way I might put this is that it is impossible to train participants in an unbiased way, at least in practice, if not in principle.
>>Now consider someone undergoing a training paradigm study. Before they go through the training, they have no stance, just like the student. Then, once they're trained via the study instructions, they form a stance (let's say, again, that they become an anti-realist). But their stance doesn't undergo further pressures from being in philosophy academe for years on end.
No, but whatever training or instructions they receive would unavoidably involve taking on board philosophical presuppositions about how to frame, describe, and present the positions in question. I'm a quietist. I reject many of the dichotomies characteristic of analytic philosophy. So how are you going to train them to draw the distinction between realism and antirealism without "biasing" participants against quietism? Simply put: you cannot. So literally *any training at all* that "clarifies" the distinction between realism and antirealism is already biasing those participants since *the very distinction is itself* is representative of a biased perspective. In other words, one issue would be biasing people towards moral realism or antirealism in particular. Maybe you could eliminate such biases. But there is no way to ask people if they're realists or antirealists that doesn't bias them towards thinking of the nature of morality in terms of the realism/antirealism distinction.
In short, there is no feasible way to train people to draw a distinction between P and not-P without presupposing the legitimacy of the distinction. Note that, as a quietist, I actually, technically speaking, reject the distinction as a false dichotomy. So to teach people to draw the distinction is *already* biasing participants. If you really wanted people to be unbiased even in this respect, you'd have to teach them...what? An infinite number of counterfactual philosophical traditions? Even if we compromised and wanted to teach them only those alternatives we considered most viable (thereby introducing our biases, anyway), this would be completely infeasible. They'd have to become experts in philosophy to adequately hold all the different positions in their head and compare them to one another. In other words, a proper measure of these "nonphilosophers" that didn't bias them would effectively require them to become world-class experts in every major philosophical tradition: a feat that no human being has ever achieved.
In other words, there is no feasible way to train participants to distinguish realism from antirealism in the way analytic philosophers do without biasing participants towards drawing distinctions between realism and antirealism in the way analytic philosophers do. Any training paradigm that presupposes analytic philosophical distinctions is thus already biased in favor of analytic philosophical distinctions...pretty much by definition.
As such, I don't see how you could possibly provide unbiased training to participants. I have no idea what that would look like and suspect it isn't actually possible.
>>But my point is that what's relevant for the argument from commonsense, at least one important version of it, is not what stances ordinary people *actually* hold, but what stances they *would* hold under certain counterfactual conditions.
That’s a separate question that I am simply not addressing with my argument. My argument is an argument about the views they *do* hold, not an argument about the views they *would* hold under counterfactual conditions. So you’re welcome to say that these studies can tell us about what people would hold under this or that counterfactual condition. There are problems with that, too, but that’s just not what my argument is about.
This remark is really strange to me:
>>A good chunk of my initial post was devoted to arguing essentially that the H argument, rather than the S argument, is the relevant one. T
What do you mean when you say it's the "relevant one"? I am responding to people making claims by saying those claims are false, and I am giving reasons for why those claims are false. I have no idea what it could possibly mean to say the argument for H is the relevant one.
So we have a situation like this:
Other people: We argue for S and C.
Me: Okay, S and C are wrong for reasons P.
You: Ahh, but my objection to P is that actually H is what's relevant, not S and C.
...This is a weird assessment of the situation. What's "relevant" to me is that people are making claims that I think are false, so I am arguing for why I think they're false.
>>And once we see that, we can see that H2, rather than S2, is what we want to base an argument from commonsense on.
I don’t see that. I am not concerned with "biases."
>>A1. The H argument is the best version of the argument from commonsense
I am probably going to end up rejecting this. Is there some reason I should accept it? My interest is in the stances and commitments of nonphilosophers, not some counterfactual claim about what stances or commitments they would have under some specified set of conditions.
** Disclaimer: I am not formally educated in Philosophy nor have a read all of your research nor am I intimately familiar with the study methodologies regarding metaethical positions in the general public. I have been following you on here for a while and I read a great deal of philosophy on a daily basis **
I feel like your argument is somewhat circular and in the manner that you present it impossible to argue against. Your metaphor with asking about Christianity to the island population makes this quite clear.
"...the question I am addressing is what nonphilosophers outside the context of these studies think about these questions."
You seem to argue that you are interested in understanding the answer to this problem but at the same time argue that it cannot be answered. What if you are wrong? If people do hold metaethical stances you don't leave any room for your theory to be falsified. As you say, any measure can simply be thrown out as "illusory appearance of success". It seems you've set the table in such a way that you cannot lose.
For the record, I think you might be right to some degree but I feel the manner in which your argument is made makes it impossible to know.
What I don't understand though is why questions like the following can't give us some insight into peoples views:
"Do you believe there are moral standards or values that hold true in every context?"
"Do you think it is ok to change your moral positions based on certain contexts?"
I don't think these questions are perfect but maybe lean towards a way of asking people about these issues in a manner in which the average person would understand and be able to answer in a meaningful way.
To put it into your Christianity metaphor, instead of asking people if they accept or reject Christianity (something that is clearly nonsensical to a population that has never heard of it) you could ask questions like this:
"Do you believe there is some invisible force in the universe capable of affecting the lives of people?"
"Do you believe that worshiping such forces can improve the outcome of your life?"
Again, these are just quick passes at more generalized questions but I think you get the idea.
It is obvious that people who have never heard of anti-realism or realism hold no views on the matter but that does not mean that those people could not think that their morals are absolute or not. You can always argue this is spontaneous theorizing but that could be argued about most surveys and if you want to hold that position then you are invalidating the entirety surveys that may ask people any generalized questions that they may not have ever stopped to think about before.
I am reminded of quantum decoherence and the measurement problem. Until we measure a particular quantum state it is considered to hold a range of values (wave function) and once we look at it it collapses down to one in particular. Physicists don't then say that the values they measure are useless and meaningless, what they do is make lots of measurements of different particles to develop a statisical model of the generalized behavior. While it's true that any one particle is unknown before measurement and the act of measurement does affect the outcome, the understanding gained from many measurements does provide insight into the general behavior of those particles.
Very cool response, thanks! My argument for indeterminacy is made elsewhere in my work. My argument about training paradigms is conditional on that argument. So the argument isn't circular, it just holds only conditional on another argument (which I spend a lot of time arguing for!).
The point of the Christianity is example is to provide a hypothetical scenario in which we stipulate that the people in question do not have views about whether Christianity is true or false. Any study that forced them to choose one of these responses (It's true or false) risks provide either an invalid measure. Any study that first teaches them about Christianity immediately invalidates any inferences about the views of people who, again, by definition, had no exposure to Christianity, since the participants in the sample aren't members of the population of "people with no exposure to Christianity." In principle, it could be that exposure to Christianity isn't causing them to form a belief about whether Christianity is true or false, because they could have already had a view. But if someone wants to make such a claim, the onus is on them to demonstrate that people already had a view about Christianity prior to exposure to training about Christianity. They aren't entitled to just presume people had views about Christianity before that.
Yet this isn't how work in the psychology of metaethics proceeds. Researchers simply presume people are already moral realists or antirealists, and that our task is to figure out which one of these they are. I argue that they aren't, and that if they aren't, training paradigms are not going to be a viable way to find out what they are, since the training paradigms would either fail at prompting them to become realists/antirealists or succeed at causing them to become realists/antirealists, even though members of the population they're from aren't realists/antirealists. This is a lose-lose for any attempt to make claims about the population they were sampled from. It is possible that these studies simply clarify what implicit views people already had, but those who believe this aren't entitled to simply presume this is the case. Yet that's exactly what they do.
So it certainly is possible to show that my view is mistaken: you can provide empirical evidence against folk indeterminacy. For instance, you could argue that training paradigms allow us to discover the views people had prior to participating in the study and do not, in fact, cause people to form those views. Have I proven that the studies do cause the views in question? No. I provide a proof of concept of how this could occur, and present indirect evidence that people don't already have the relevant concepts, but such evidence is not definitive, and I don't claim that it is.
So someone certainly could show that I am simply wrong about what the empirical evidence indicates. If this could be shown, then I would be mistaken. You could also show that the studies and considerations I present that purport to show that existing paradigms are invalid are mistaken, and that one or more paradigms are valid measures of people's existing metaethical stances or commitments. This approach would falsify my position on indeterminacy and could vindicate training paradigms.
You say:
"It is obvious that people who have never heard of anti-realism or realism hold no views on the matter but that does not mean that those people could not think that their morals are absolute or not."
I completely agree. But I do not argue that people couldn’t be moral realists or antirealists. I argue that they simply aren’t. That’s why my argument is an empirical one. If I thought it was a matter of impossibility I’d probably make some kind of deductive argument, not an abductive one. You also say:
"You can always argue this is spontaneous theorizing but that could be argued about most surveys and if you want to hold that position then you are invalidating the entirety surveys that may ask people any generalized questions that they may not have ever stopped to think about before."
You could and I do! I do think this problem is a threat to many other studies. It’s an empirical question in each case whether spontaneous theorizing invalidates results.
You say:
"I am reminded of quantum decoherence and the measurement problem."
Ha! It’s funny you mention that…the title of my dissertation is “Schrödinger's Categories: The Indeterminacy of Folk Metaethics,” and the central metaphor is related to quantum mechanics. As I say in the paper:
With respect to realism and antirealism, most ordinary people exist in a state of philosophical superposition that collapses only by engaging in philosophy.
Thank you so much for your response, I love how I was able to find your metaphor.
Regarding the training paradigms, I generally agree with your stance on the matter which is why I hadn’t brought it up in my response. What I believe is that there could be questions that don’t require any training that could still provide meaningful insight regarding the initial question.
Continuing the physics metaphor, if physicists do one day find a more fundamental theorem and this theorem is deterministic (the particles had definite states all along) and it shows how the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics arises from it, then it will be using different fundamental objects (strings for example) or “language” to describe it. That is to say, if we want to get underneath the issue of anti-realism/realism and its indeterminacy, then we should try to describe the fundamental components in a new way. This is why I was proposing those more generalized questions that can get at some of the underlying concepts that drive realism/anti-realism.
I think what you would find, as I am sure you would agree, is that people are on a spectrum and hold more nuanced beliefs than we presently describe with the metaethical terms used today. That said, I think statements like “People hold mostly realist views” or “People hold mostly anti-realist views” are not out of the question or uninformative.
These ideas could be reinforced with a survey that includes questions phrased in such a way to possibly lead people to show their contradictory views.
“Would you say there are moral values like “Murder is wrong” that hold true in all situations?”
…later on in the survey…
“Would you consider it wrong to kill someone in defence of your child?”
…
“Is it always wrong to murder?”
These are not 100% contradictory but I think you see my point. Is this how these surveys are performed? What is wrong with evaluating people's perspective in this way? What are your views on these questions or the ones I mentioned in the previous comment?
“For instance, you could argue that training paradigms allow us to discover the views people had prior to participating in the study and do not, in fact, cause people to form those views.”
People can argue these things but I feel your stance is defined such that you will always be able to reject them. That is to say no evidence could possibly convince you that people in general hold these views. But it seems to be a conceptual problem as you say, where some philosophers/psychologists are looking for a particular binary viewpoint and forcing the issue with their line of questions.
If you’ve noticed I pretty much agree with your premise but I feel like your argument is _too_ defensible. It seems impossible to topple your logic because it is, I think, literally impossible. Though that doesn’t appear to make your argument stronger, it seems to lead people to not want to argue with you.
Thank you again for beating your anti-realist drum, I think philosophy as a whole benefits from these viewpoints and they drive us forward towards a better understanding.
Most of the studies don’t use training paradigms and try instead to get at folk metaethical views using indirect methods, probably a bit in line with what you propose. Much more of my work involves critiquing these methods.
I think what you would find, as I am sure you would agree, is that people are on a spectrum and hold more nuanced beliefs than we presently describe with the metaethical terms used today. That said, I think statements like “People hold mostly realist views” or “People hold mostly anti-realist views” are not out of the question or uninformative.
I don’t think they’re out of the question; I just think they are mistaken.
These ideas could be reinforced with a survey that includes questions phrased in such a way to possibly lead people to show their contradictory views.
There are surveys/studies like this already. I critique these in my dissertation.
Is this how these surveys are performed?
Some of them, though your specific proposals would have considerable methodological challenges. None of them look to me like they could serve as valid measures of whether people are realists/antirealists. They appear to ask questions about people’s first-order/normative moral values and about the universality or scope of their moral standards, neither of which gets at the question of stance-independent vs. stance-dependence.
//People can argue these things but I feel your stance is defined such that you will always be able to reject them.//
I don’t really know why you think that; I already outlined a few ways someone could demonstrate that I am mistaken. There are probably others, too.
//That is to say no evidence could possibly convince you that people in general hold these views.//
Why think that? I don’t think I’d be that difficult to persuade. I am stubborn, but I don’t think I’m incorrigible on the matter.
Don't take it as a statement against your character but your argument. I am trying to think of what evidence could be gathered that would refute your position but it seems to me that any arbitrarily defined survey and/or training paradigm would necessarily always be subject to your criticism. Though the more we are here talking about it the more I think maybe that isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it makes more sense when framed as a wider criticism of all surveys.
"They appear to ask questions about people’s first-order/normative moral values and about the universality or scope of their moral standards, neither of which gets at the question of stance-independent vs. stance-dependence."
I am having trouble understanding why my perceived scope of my moral standards doesn't - at least to some degree - extend to my beliefs on stance-independent/dependent moral facts. If you ask me if I think it is always wrong to murder and I say yes, how does that not imply that I believe "Murder is wrong" is a stance-independent moral fact?
I've downloaded your dissertation and although I know I wont read it all (444 pages!) I will take a look through it later tonight to hopefully better understand your critique of these methods. If you can point to any specific sections that would be helpful.
My argument about training paradigms rests on various assumptions. To show the argument is wrong you'd simply need to show that one or more of those assumptions is wrong. And those assumptions largely consist of empirical claims I could certainly be mistaken about. I am not defending an undefeatable position here.
//I am having trouble understanding why my perceived scope of my moral standards doesn't - at least to some degree - extend to my beliefs on stance-independent/dependent moral facts.//
Scope is an orthogonal dimension to stance-dependence/independence. A moral realist could think moral standards apply only very narrowly. A moral antirealist could maintain that the same moral standards apply to everyone. Scope and stance-independence just aren't conceptually linked to one another.
//If you ask me if I think it is always wrong to murder and I say yes, how does that not imply that I believe "Murder is wrong" is a stance-independent moral fact?//
Because it is entirely consistent with antirealist positions to hold that there are stance-dependent but exceptionless moral rules. For instance, one may hold that all moral standards are fixed by whatever an ideal agent would endorse. And that ideal agent may endorse the view that "it is always wrong to torture, with no exceptions." Universalism, in this case, would be consistent with antirealism.
There is also a supplemental section that accompanies the dissertation. The full length with that included is 1249 pages. Which sections would be helpful to you would depend on what you're interested in, though I do specifically address scope/stance-independence somewhere in there.
Between Mark's comment below and a quick perusal of "Ctrl-f scope" in your dissertation, I think I finally have clear the distinction. Thank you both for taking the time to help me understand this. I think this interaction itself expresses clearly the difficulty of training people to understand these concepts. I have more thoughts on the matter but I think I will let them stew in the background and I'm sure we'll meet again in the comments section of some future post.
The same goes for my critique of your argument, which isn't about the training paradigms but more about your assertion that people don't have metaethical positions. When I can better express my intuitions I'll take another stab at it.
FTR, that murder is wrong is a conceptual truth. A killing is only murder if it is wrong. As such that claim can be held by moral anti-realists of some stripes.
Thank you! I didn't even see the bias in my question. I was thinking of "murder" as "intentional killing".
My question though, now rephrased, still stands. If you ask me if I think it is always wrong to intentionally kill another person and I say yes, how does that not imply that I believe "Intentionally killing other people is wrong" is a stance-independent moral fact?
And FTR, I don't think it is a stance-independent moral fact. I am just here trying to understand better these concepts.