Meta-ethics seem to structure applied ethical disputes. Whenever I engage in them, I'm asked for a "logical" or "rational" argument on suspiciously realist terms. Someone might say that a premise in my moral argument isn't "logical," by which they mean that it's "improperly connected" to the normative proposition. But as someone who doesn't think there's a stance-independently correct way of "connecting" the two, this beats me. For the premise to be true is just for it to capture my psychology. There might be a way of disambiguating this request and others like it on anti-realism, but I think it'd be a technicality a la realist relativism.
Man, you are super dedicated to fighting this intellectual battle. I don’t think I can read another defense of or attack on moral anti-realism. I’ve reached my satiation point haha. Kudos to you for fighting the good fight though.
Oh yeah, I always like seeing you in my feed, even if it’s another takedown of moral realism that I’ll probably not read. I do think it is super useful what you are doing. Someone needs to push back against the incessant attacks on moral anti-realism. Otherwise more impressionable minds will start to believe in the content-less concept of imaginary, inert, objective “moral facts”.
Agreed that the "X isn't REALLY immoral" language is misleading and manipulative and is likely often offered in bad faith, especially given how easily people who deploy it could use language that precisely matches their claim: namely, "X isn't FACTUALLY immoral". Their only fig leaf for deploying this misleading and manipulative language is the fact that in academic philosophy their position is identified (absurdly, in my view) as "REAL-ism" -- and that's one reason why I reject the philosophical taxonomy of morality in favor of the objective-vs-subjective distinction, which at least doesn't offer undeserved linguistic legitimacy to this kind of chicanery.
Your suggestion of "stance-independently" is certainly reasonable and accurate as well, though personally I go a different route. Given that I think "factually immoral" or "objectively immoral" are oxymorons and are just as nonsensical as claiming that married bachelors could exist or that 2+2=5, this is how I translate what these people are effectively saying:
1. Racism is so bad that 2+2=5
2. The holocaust was so bad that 2+2=5
3. Slavery is so bad that 2+2=5
4. It’s so good to help people that 2+2=5
Obviously if someone asks me "But do you really not believe that X is so bad that 2+2=5?", I'm always going to answer "Yes" -- not because of some defect in my character or morality, but because it's a nonsensical question.
Moral views like "X is bad" are inherently subjective, and despite the self-aggrandizement of those who claim that their personal moral views are somehow objective or factual, doing so doesn't give them any additional legitimacy or authority; it just shows that they've fundamentally failed to understand what morality is and (crucially) how it functions.
Kind of shocking to see this kind of thing coming out of Georgetown.
Here's my argument for why I don't think the Realists are going to knock it off with these entanglement arguments any time soon: Obedience is a virtue.
Like Chastity, and Poverty, Obedience is a first-order normative value, and Realism, being foundationalist in its justification structure, is the idea that normative obligation is something you do when you submit to the authority of something outside yourself.
To a Realist, denial that there is anything stance independently "really" good or bad just *is* the announcement that we are going to be Disobedient. Or at the very least, that we are not people who feel obligated to Obey.
Meta-ethics seem to structure applied ethical disputes. Whenever I engage in them, I'm asked for a "logical" or "rational" argument on suspiciously realist terms. Someone might say that a premise in my moral argument isn't "logical," by which they mean that it's "improperly connected" to the normative proposition. But as someone who doesn't think there's a stance-independently correct way of "connecting" the two, this beats me. For the premise to be true is just for it to capture my psychology. There might be a way of disambiguating this request and others like it on anti-realism, but I think it'd be a technicality a la realist relativism.
Man, you are super dedicated to fighting this intellectual battle. I don’t think I can read another defense of or attack on moral anti-realism. I’ve reached my satiation point haha. Kudos to you for fighting the good fight though.
Oh yeah, I always like seeing you in my feed, even if it’s another takedown of moral realism that I’ll probably not read. I do think it is super useful what you are doing. Someone needs to push back against the incessant attacks on moral anti-realism. Otherwise more impressionable minds will start to believe in the content-less concept of imaginary, inert, objective “moral facts”.
Hopefully you stick around for the other stuff. I don't see myself quitting this crusade any time soon.
Agreed that the "X isn't REALLY immoral" language is misleading and manipulative and is likely often offered in bad faith, especially given how easily people who deploy it could use language that precisely matches their claim: namely, "X isn't FACTUALLY immoral". Their only fig leaf for deploying this misleading and manipulative language is the fact that in academic philosophy their position is identified (absurdly, in my view) as "REAL-ism" -- and that's one reason why I reject the philosophical taxonomy of morality in favor of the objective-vs-subjective distinction, which at least doesn't offer undeserved linguistic legitimacy to this kind of chicanery.
Your suggestion of "stance-independently" is certainly reasonable and accurate as well, though personally I go a different route. Given that I think "factually immoral" or "objectively immoral" are oxymorons and are just as nonsensical as claiming that married bachelors could exist or that 2+2=5, this is how I translate what these people are effectively saying:
1. Racism is so bad that 2+2=5
2. The holocaust was so bad that 2+2=5
3. Slavery is so bad that 2+2=5
4. It’s so good to help people that 2+2=5
Obviously if someone asks me "But do you really not believe that X is so bad that 2+2=5?", I'm always going to answer "Yes" -- not because of some defect in my character or morality, but because it's a nonsensical question.
Moral views like "X is bad" are inherently subjective, and despite the self-aggrandizement of those who claim that their personal moral views are somehow objective or factual, doing so doesn't give them any additional legitimacy or authority; it just shows that they've fundamentally failed to understand what morality is and (crucially) how it functions.
Kind of shocking to see this kind of thing coming out of Georgetown.
Here's my argument for why I don't think the Realists are going to knock it off with these entanglement arguments any time soon: Obedience is a virtue.
Like Chastity, and Poverty, Obedience is a first-order normative value, and Realism, being foundationalist in its justification structure, is the idea that normative obligation is something you do when you submit to the authority of something outside yourself.
To a Realist, denial that there is anything stance independently "really" good or bad just *is* the announcement that we are going to be Disobedient. Or at the very least, that we are not people who feel obligated to Obey.