The magic of value

This is a response to a discussion that took place for the post “When Metaethics Matters” from Richard Y Chappell on the Good Thoughts blog. You can see that post here. Whatever our disagreements, I am thrilled that such discussions can take place in public spaces like these, rather than the confines of academic journals. There’s a lot of great discussion there, and I hope that realists, antirealists, and people who haven’t taken a side on these matters will have a look.

Some objections in disputes between realists and antirealists concern substantive philosophical matters, e.g., metaphysical or epistemological questions: are there moral properties? What is their nature? How can we acquire knowledge of the moral facts?

Yet some matters concern how the debate itself is framed. One experience I’ve had when discussing these issues is the use of the term “really.” Realists will claim that, if realism is true, that certain sorts of things really matter, but if antirealism is true, then they don’t really matter.

This isn’t a substantive philosophical dispute. If, by “really,” you mean “stance-independently,” then it’s trivially true that if moral realism is true, some things “really matter,” because this just means that they “stance-independently matter.” If antirealism is true, then things don’t “really matter,” because they don’t “stance-independently matter.”

Although this isn’t a substantive dispute, and is a mere matter of terminology, antirealists should still object to this framing of the disagreement. To understand why, think about how a nonphilosopher would react, if given a description of realism and antirealism:

Realism: Some things really matter.

Antirealism: Nothing really matters.

Viewed in this way, this no longer looks like a technical dispute about the metaphysics of value. It’s not, that is, a dispute merely about whether things “matter” stance-independently, or whether they instead matter stance-dependently (or even whether the whole framing of things “mattering” or not is itself faulty, and whether the whole discussion is best framed in some other way).

Rather, this framing of the disagreement generates a kind of optical illusion. It makes realism seem like a positive, life-affirming, and highly appealing position. The people you love matter. Your life projects are meaningful. When a life is saved, something good has happened. And so on.

Antirealism, in contrast, seems like a bleak, unappealing, dark, nightmarish hellscape of a view. The people around you don’t matter. Your life doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Why do anything? Why care at all? Everything is empty and hopeless.

This is a highly misleading depiction of the dispute between moral realism and antirealism. Antirealists can and do care about things, think things matter, experience love and enjoy, consider life worth living, think happiness is good and suffering is bad, and so on. Antirealism does not consign one to a life of bleak, nihilistic woe.

I believe moral realism derives much of its appeal by relying on framing the dispute in these sorts of ways. This may be because realists themselves consider stance-independent value “real” value, and think there really is something bleak and undesirable about an antirealist outlook. But antirealists are welcome to dispute not only whether moral facts are stance-independent, but to also dispute the realist’s conception of value itself, and to object to the notion that there’s something bleak and horrible about a world without stance-independent value. Realists aren’t in a position to help themselves to their conclusions about the implications of realism and antirealism without risking begging questions against the antirealist.

Part of the problem with the realist’s framing of the dispute. A realist may maintain that realism holds that things “really matter,” but antirealism doesn’t. Yet the realist is helping themselves to much of the connotative and pragmatic force of “really.” At the same time they are helping themselves to a deeper, quasi-metaphysical implication about what it means for something to “really” be what it is.

Consider a stage magician performing an illusion: they step inside a large box, and close the lid. When the lid is opened, they are nowhere to be seen. They then appear on the opposite side of the room, bursting through an entryway with all the fanfare of a triumphant hero, to the wonder and delight of their audience.

Did they really perform magic? Well, what does it mean to say they “really” performed magic? This example was inspired by Dennett (2016) who in turn quoted Lee Seigel (1991):

‘I’m writing a book on magic,’ I explain, and I’m asked, ‘Real magic?’ By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. ‘No,’ I answer: ‘Conjuring tricks, not real magic.’ Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic. (p. 425, as quoted in Dennett, 2016, p. 66)

What’s amusing about this excerpt is that the magic that actually exists, conjuring tricks, aren’t “real” magic, while the magic that doesn’t actually exist is what people have in mind by “real” magic. In other words, real magic isn’t really real, but fake magic is.

Just the same, if antirealism is true, it doesn’t follow that “nothing really matters.” Rather, it may be that the realist’s conception of what it means for something to matter is itself flawed. Suppose, for instance, that there are stance-dependent ways in which things could be said to matter, but not any stance-independent ways in which things matter. If so, then we could say that there is a respect in which things “really” matter: in those ways that are consistent with antirealism. Just as conjuring tricks are real, but “real” magic isn’t, so too can things matter in an antirealist sense, but not really “really” matter.

If someone is so committed to the notion that the only acceptable characterization of magic is “real” magic, the kind one might see in a fantasy novel, then one might insist that the magician’s conjuring tricks simply aren’t magic. Well, fair enough, let’s say they’re not magic. This changes nothing about these tricks, however. They can still fool us, they can still inspire wonder, and they can still display a devilish facility for misdirection. Nothing about the substantive nature of the trick changes by saying it’s not real magic. It’s a mere labeling contrivance, and nothing more.

And that, ultimately, is what lies behind the realist’s proclamation that if antirealism is true, then nothing really matters. It gives the superficial impression that to make such a concession to the realist is to give up something of deep value…indeed, to give up everything of value. But in truth, this is in its own way a form of verbal prestidigitation.

Nothing at all is truly lost. Indeed, nothing changes at all. Just as declaring a conjuring trick to not be real magic makes no difference, and changes no facts about the magician’s craft, so too does declaring that nothing really matters on an antirealist worldview change anything about the actual world.

On an antirealist worldview, our love for our family remains unchanged. Our joys and our sorrows are as real as they ever were, and our opposition and repugnance to misdeeds isn't somehow empty: suffering is still suffering, lying is still lying, and a betrayal is still a betrayal. At the same time, our goals, our hopes, our aspirations, our dreams, our plans, our feelings, our quiet moments of contemplation, our wild cries of delight as we thunder along in a roller coaster, our revelatory moments of realization as we discover something new, our tears of grief as we attend a funeral, our paeans of exultation as we finally get our aunt’s cookie recipe just right, our quiet tears of joy as we set eyes on our child for the first time, none of this is threatened by the faintest ripple in a world without stance-independent moral value.

If moral antirealism is true all of it is remains as it was, and has always been.

References

Dennett, D. C. (2016). Illusionism as the obvious default theory of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 65-72.

Siegel, L. (1991) Net of magic: Wonders and deceptions in India. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.