Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
J. P. Andrew made the following remark:
Many moral anti-realists betray the untenability of their own view in their critiques of moral realism, which are often tinged with a kind of moralistic outrage (“It’s wrong to be a moral realist!”) that makes little sense on the view that there aren’t objective moral truths.
Nothing about moral antirealism is inconsistent with expressing moralistic outrage. This makes about as much sense as saying that anyone who is an antirealist about whether food is good or bad betrays the untenability of their view when they express outrage about food (“that’s disgusting!”). This would be ridiculous, for the obvious reason that one’s attitudes towards food don’t require that one think food is stance-independently good or bad. Antirealists with respect to morality are no less capable of expressing moral attitudes.
Antirealists can express moral outrage and think that things are immoral in a way consistent with antirealism. Expressing normative moral stances such as the view that it’s wrong to be a moral realist, or moralistic attitudinal states such as moral outrage, are completely consistent with antirealism.
It may be that Andrew is criticizing antirealists for expressing normative moral stances based on the presumption that doing so doesn’t make sense either (a) because realism is true and antirealism isn’t (and that, as a consequence, only realist expressions of moral values/attitudes make sense) or that at best (b) even if realism isn’t true, only realist expressions of moral values/attitudes make sense, so if realism isn’t true, then no such expressions would make sense. But antirealists aren’t obligated to accept either of these views. Andrew’s remarks thus hint at the possibility of the halfway fallacy.
Realist conceptions of morality are not the only conceptions of morality. When Andrew states that an expression of moral outrage “makes little sense on the view that there aren’t objective moral truths,” this would only be true if whatever metaethical views Andrew endorses were correct, such that normative moral claims like those described in this tweet were somehow inconsistent with antirealism. Yet antirealists are free to dispute this.
Moral antirealists are under no obligation to accept that only realist conceptions of moral value make sense, nor are they obliged to accept that expressing normative moral views makes “little sense.” They don’t have to accept that moral realism has any dialectical advantage over their own views, does any better job of accounting for ordinary moral language than their views, and so on. And it’s not just that moral antirealists don’t have to; I don’t think they should. Depending on which moral realist stance Andrew endorses, it’s possible I would in fact think that when Andrew says that something is “morally wrong,” that I think what Andrew said not only makes little sense, but doesn’t make any sense at all.
Moral realists do not have a monopoly on normative moral language, and moral antirealists should feel no obligation to let them act as though they do. Nothing about expressing moral outrage or saying that realism is morally wrong requires the presumption of realism, any more than saying pizza is “tasty” requires the presumption of gastronomic realism. Normative domains in which people use the language of should, shouldn’t, good, and bad already exist; we routinely use such language when describing our food and music preferences. One might insist that to use language in the same way when discussing moral concerns is mistaken about metaethics, but it’s quite another thing to say that it makes little sense.
I want to propose a test for assessing whether remarks made by moral realists are unreasonable because the realist helps themselves to the presumption that their position is true while criticizing views contrary to their own. Call it the Theistic Comparison Test.
A theist could say the following:
“Many atheists betray the untenability of their own view in their critiques of theistic morality, which are often tinged with a kind of moralistic outrage (“It’s wrong of God to drown babies”) that makes little sense on the view that there is no God.”
Secular moral antirealists routinely respond to remarks like these by insisting that atheism is consistent with moral realism, and point to the many secular arguments for moral realism.
The problem with such remarks is that they presuppose that the existence of God is necessary for “genuine” morality. Yet such remarks only have force if morality is dependent on God. Atheists who deny that God exists are not obligated to agree that morality is dependent on God. They can deny this, too. This theistic remark thus exhibits precisely the sort of presumption that a secular moral realist is fully capable of rejecting. J. P. Andrew’s are, for all practical purposes, identical to the remark above.