According to appraiser relativism, what is it that Alex is expressing in the example you give? If, according to individual relativism, we index the statement "Stealing isn't wrong" to mean "[I am not opposed] to stealing," how can Alex be wrong, even if we are judging his views and actions according to the appraiser's standards? Is it just that the appraiser thinks Alex is wrong for not being opposed to stealing? Even in that case, since we've indexed Alex's statement to mean "[I am not opposed] to stealing," we can't say that he is genuinely wrong, only that our standards clash. I don't necessarily think this is a problem with the view, I am just trying to better understand appraiser relativism and how the view conceives of moral language.
If I am judging someone else, and they say "Stealing is wrong," this is irrelevant to whether or not I judge whether it is wrong for them to steal. When I say it's wrong for them to steal, I mean that I disapprove of them stealing, not that they themselves disapprove of stealing. Their statement "It's okay for me to steal" would still be true, but what would be true is more or less that they think it's okay for them to steal. I'm not obliged to regard it as okay. I need only acknowledge that when they say it's okay, what they mean is that it's okay relative to their own standards, which it is.
But that is different from the truth of a moral judgement being judged according to the evaluator’s standards. Of course the appraiser can think that stealing is wrong even for someone who is not opposed to stealing. But in the article you say this:
“If you’re an appraiser relativist, then you judge whether what Alex said is true relative to the standards of whoever is evaluating the action and likewise judge whether the action is right or wrong on the basis of whoever is evaluating the action.”
How could the evaluator judge Alex’s statement “I am not opposed to stealing” as untrue relative to his standards? I see how he could think Alex actually stealing is wrong, but I’m still struggling with the whole language part of it.
>>How could the evaluator judge Alex’s statement “I am not opposed to stealing” as untrue relative to his standards?
They couldn’t, so you’re right that there’s a problem with my characterization here. There's a difference between judging whether the action is right or wrong and judging whether the statement made by the person is true or false. I’ll have to rethink how to restate things to avoid conflating the two. Appraiser relativism offers an account of how we judge whether an as-yet-unindexed statement is true or false: by indexing it to the evaluator’s standards. So on this view we shouldn’t be analyzing moral statements as expressions of the speaker’s own standards, since this bakes the index into the statement. It might be necessary to draw a distinction between a kind of speaker-indexed relativism where the index is built into the statement and an appraiser relativism that leaves the index open to the evaluator. Thanks for pointing out the problem.
Thanks for the response! I am not sure how you can index the statement to the evaluator without having it lapse into a form of non-cognitivism (eg. the speaker says “stealing isn’t wrong” and the appraiser indexes that to mean “yay stealing!” which he judges as a wrong (but not false) attitude) or realism (eg. the speaker says “stealing isn’t wrong,” and the appraiser indexes that to mean “you should not care about stealing” which would be a categorical statement). If you could find a formulation in which the statement is indexed to the evaluator while still remaining true/false only relatively let me know.
Also, this is a bit of a separate topic, but how do you feel about the argument from disagreement against anti-Realism regarding objectivity? I just came across it in Van Inwagen’s book on Metaphysics, and think it suffers from the same issues as the argument from disagreement against meta-ethical relativism (ie. Stipulates that disagreement must be about facts in the world and cannot just be about differing preferences/experiences).
Lance -- I'm actually writing a piece about why relativism isn't a metaethical view, but rather a normative-ethical one (and also speculating about why people came to see it as meta-ethical). So yeah, why do you think it's meta-ethical? You define it in terms of the meanings of ethical terms/concepts, but that seems optional to me, no more a required part of the view than if utilitarian claimed that "wrong" means "fails to maximize utility". (Also, I apologize in advance for my characterization of relativists in the post -- I try to balance it out by making fun of myself, too!)
I see it as a view about the truth status of moral claims. Doesn't get more metaethical than that. I don't know what you mean when you say that seems optional. Aren't all definitions optional? I don't really think there's a fact of the matter about what relativism is. There are just conventions on how we choose to use terms.
What I mean is: Utilitarianism seems like an ordinary moral theory, not a meta-ethical theory. It says that an act is morally wrong iff. it fails to maximize utility. Relativism, then, seems like an ordinary moral theory; it says that an act is morally wrong iff. the speaker or the agent or their cultures or whoever disapproves of it. You could append some further claim about meaning to relativism as I've just presented it, just as you could append some further claim about meaning to utilitarianism, but doing so doesn't make "bare utilitarianism" a meta-ethical theory, nor does it make the bare claim of relativism or stance-dependence generally a meta-ethical theory. Does that make sense?
Do you think moral non-naturalism is a normative ethical theory as opposed to a meta-ethical theory because it states than an act is morally wrong iff it doesn’t correspond to the non-natural moral facts?
Great question. Non-naturalism has normative implications -- centrally, the one you mention, and this very fact has made it a target for criticism by philosophers like Max Hayward and Matt Bedke. But it's ALSO a meta-ethical theory, because it takes a stand on the metaphysics of moral properties, the reference of moral concepts/terms. Relativism needn't do that, as I explained in my post. It says nothing about the nature of moral properties or the reference of moral terms.
I think I can make some sense of that but I see utilitarianism as just setting aside questions about whether what makes utility good/bad (stances or something other than stances) and instead just presuming we've settled metaethical questions and then saying okay, so, what's the good stuff? Utility.
Conversely, I see relativism as focused on what makes moral claims true in a more fundamental sense.
I am annoyed by critics of antirealist positions constantly mischaracterizing antirealism. I want my opposition to be well-informed and offer good objections, not an endless barrage of strawmen and confused nonsense. It's tedious to deal with.
I only remember moral anti realism. Anyways, I'm happy your ideas are getting out there. I still disagree with you and you never answered my killer argument, but I appreciate what you contribute.
Need to read it again carefully and think it over, to see if I find anything to disagree with and how it maps to what I feel is my own stance. Haven't read metaethics yet (my approach to these topics has mostly come from evolution, game-theory and evolutionary psychology texts). I feel I have a very robust Moral antirealism, in which moral claims are rejected as saying anything about a stance-independent world. Beyond that, I am not sure if this would take to to affirming all ethical statements are false (that would be my initial inclination, in the sense of: assuming a correspondence theory of truth, there is no object of which moral claims of any type are a correspondence). I am not sure if I understood properly what stance-dependent moral facts would be. Is it something like: if you assume certain moral axioms (whether at the individual or the social level) some actions become 'true' or 'false' given those axioms and people that accept them? Like, I think i also accept a weak version of this, i.e., societies have evolved morality both biologically and culturally as a way of solving coordination problems, and if you accept some very minimal axioms you can perhaps build a contractarian view of morality as the set of freely agreed upon norms and rules that maximize individual and group flourishing and well-being.
According to appraiser relativism, what is it that Alex is expressing in the example you give? If, according to individual relativism, we index the statement "Stealing isn't wrong" to mean "[I am not opposed] to stealing," how can Alex be wrong, even if we are judging his views and actions according to the appraiser's standards? Is it just that the appraiser thinks Alex is wrong for not being opposed to stealing? Even in that case, since we've indexed Alex's statement to mean "[I am not opposed] to stealing," we can't say that he is genuinely wrong, only that our standards clash. I don't necessarily think this is a problem with the view, I am just trying to better understand appraiser relativism and how the view conceives of moral language.
If I am judging someone else, and they say "Stealing is wrong," this is irrelevant to whether or not I judge whether it is wrong for them to steal. When I say it's wrong for them to steal, I mean that I disapprove of them stealing, not that they themselves disapprove of stealing. Their statement "It's okay for me to steal" would still be true, but what would be true is more or less that they think it's okay for them to steal. I'm not obliged to regard it as okay. I need only acknowledge that when they say it's okay, what they mean is that it's okay relative to their own standards, which it is.
But that is different from the truth of a moral judgement being judged according to the evaluator’s standards. Of course the appraiser can think that stealing is wrong even for someone who is not opposed to stealing. But in the article you say this:
“If you’re an appraiser relativist, then you judge whether what Alex said is true relative to the standards of whoever is evaluating the action and likewise judge whether the action is right or wrong on the basis of whoever is evaluating the action.”
How could the evaluator judge Alex’s statement “I am not opposed to stealing” as untrue relative to his standards? I see how he could think Alex actually stealing is wrong, but I’m still struggling with the whole language part of it.
>>How could the evaluator judge Alex’s statement “I am not opposed to stealing” as untrue relative to his standards?
They couldn’t, so you’re right that there’s a problem with my characterization here. There's a difference between judging whether the action is right or wrong and judging whether the statement made by the person is true or false. I’ll have to rethink how to restate things to avoid conflating the two. Appraiser relativism offers an account of how we judge whether an as-yet-unindexed statement is true or false: by indexing it to the evaluator’s standards. So on this view we shouldn’t be analyzing moral statements as expressions of the speaker’s own standards, since this bakes the index into the statement. It might be necessary to draw a distinction between a kind of speaker-indexed relativism where the index is built into the statement and an appraiser relativism that leaves the index open to the evaluator. Thanks for pointing out the problem.
Thanks for the response! I am not sure how you can index the statement to the evaluator without having it lapse into a form of non-cognitivism (eg. the speaker says “stealing isn’t wrong” and the appraiser indexes that to mean “yay stealing!” which he judges as a wrong (but not false) attitude) or realism (eg. the speaker says “stealing isn’t wrong,” and the appraiser indexes that to mean “you should not care about stealing” which would be a categorical statement). If you could find a formulation in which the statement is indexed to the evaluator while still remaining true/false only relatively let me know.
Also, this is a bit of a separate topic, but how do you feel about the argument from disagreement against anti-Realism regarding objectivity? I just came across it in Van Inwagen’s book on Metaphysics, and think it suffers from the same issues as the argument from disagreement against meta-ethical relativism (ie. Stipulates that disagreement must be about facts in the world and cannot just be about differing preferences/experiences).
I made edits to the section to try to address the error you pointed out.
I have a post that addresses the argument from disagreement at length. If you check it out, let me know if it addresses your concerns:
https://www.lanceindependent.com/p/kinds-of-disagreements
Have you written a book on metaethics, or do you intend to do so?
Not yet but I will
I'd like to get your book when it's published. How can I find out when it's available?
Lance -- I'm actually writing a piece about why relativism isn't a metaethical view, but rather a normative-ethical one (and also speculating about why people came to see it as meta-ethical). So yeah, why do you think it's meta-ethical? You define it in terms of the meanings of ethical terms/concepts, but that seems optional to me, no more a required part of the view than if utilitarian claimed that "wrong" means "fails to maximize utility". (Also, I apologize in advance for my characterization of relativists in the post -- I try to balance it out by making fun of myself, too!)
I see it as a view about the truth status of moral claims. Doesn't get more metaethical than that. I don't know what you mean when you say that seems optional. Aren't all definitions optional? I don't really think there's a fact of the matter about what relativism is. There are just conventions on how we choose to use terms.
What I mean is: Utilitarianism seems like an ordinary moral theory, not a meta-ethical theory. It says that an act is morally wrong iff. it fails to maximize utility. Relativism, then, seems like an ordinary moral theory; it says that an act is morally wrong iff. the speaker or the agent or their cultures or whoever disapproves of it. You could append some further claim about meaning to relativism as I've just presented it, just as you could append some further claim about meaning to utilitarianism, but doing so doesn't make "bare utilitarianism" a meta-ethical theory, nor does it make the bare claim of relativism or stance-dependence generally a meta-ethical theory. Does that make sense?
Do you think moral non-naturalism is a normative ethical theory as opposed to a meta-ethical theory because it states than an act is morally wrong iff it doesn’t correspond to the non-natural moral facts?
Great question. Non-naturalism has normative implications -- centrally, the one you mention, and this very fact has made it a target for criticism by philosophers like Max Hayward and Matt Bedke. But it's ALSO a meta-ethical theory, because it takes a stand on the metaphysics of moral properties, the reference of moral concepts/terms. Relativism needn't do that, as I explained in my post. It says nothing about the nature of moral properties or the reference of moral terms.
I think I can make some sense of that but I see utilitarianism as just setting aside questions about whether what makes utility good/bad (stances or something other than stances) and instead just presuming we've settled metaethical questions and then saying okay, so, what's the good stuff? Utility.
Conversely, I see relativism as focused on what makes moral claims true in a more fundamental sense.
What’d you write this for? I’m just curious.
I am annoyed by critics of antirealist positions constantly mischaracterizing antirealism. I want my opposition to be well-informed and offer good objections, not an endless barrage of strawmen and confused nonsense. It's tedious to deal with.
Btw ir you from your discord server and ask yourself’s. Are you still an error theorist?
I wasn't an error theorist to begin with.
I only remember moral anti realism. Anyways, I'm happy your ideas are getting out there. I still disagree with you and you never answered my killer argument, but I appreciate what you contribute.
Need to read it again carefully and think it over, to see if I find anything to disagree with and how it maps to what I feel is my own stance. Haven't read metaethics yet (my approach to these topics has mostly come from evolution, game-theory and evolutionary psychology texts). I feel I have a very robust Moral antirealism, in which moral claims are rejected as saying anything about a stance-independent world. Beyond that, I am not sure if this would take to to affirming all ethical statements are false (that would be my initial inclination, in the sense of: assuming a correspondence theory of truth, there is no object of which moral claims of any type are a correspondence). I am not sure if I understood properly what stance-dependent moral facts would be. Is it something like: if you assume certain moral axioms (whether at the individual or the social level) some actions become 'true' or 'false' given those axioms and people that accept them? Like, I think i also accept a weak version of this, i.e., societies have evolved morality both biologically and culturally as a way of solving coordination problems, and if you accept some very minimal axioms you can perhaps build a contractarian view of morality as the set of freely agreed upon norms and rules that maximize individual and group flourishing and well-being.