Inseparable subjectivity – Part 2: Critical vs moral blame

Part 2: Critical vs moral blame

Now that we have some idea of what ‘person’ refers to, we can make progress on what it means to blame a person. For a recap:

Person(1) = Public person = Your public person is that thing that generates within others certain experiences, such as visual experiences of a certain shape or auditory experiences of a certain sound (like the sound of your voice).
 
Person(2) = Private person = Your private self is any subjective / experiential / first-person / phenomenological property that carries a particular youness to it.

Because this is a phenomenal definition, it’s no surprise that it would be circular – i.e. you = those subjective properties that correspond to… you. The circularity is benign because phenomenal definitions must gesture toward a phenomenology. Compare: red = the red color, another phenomenal definition that is circular in a benign way, gesturing toward the phenomenology of seeing redness. Just as ‘red’ gestures toward the red experience you have, ‘you’ gestures toward the youness of any experience you have.

You can make further distinctions like where ‘you’ refers to the total experiences you caused others or the total experiences you’ve had. For now, these two key distinctions are enough.

I’ve made a distinction between moral versus critical blame, which basically means blaming Person(2) versus blaming Person(1), respectively. That is, to blame a person critically is to criticize the quality of their public properties. To blame a person morally is to criticize the quality of their phenomenal properties.

There’s two other distinctions of blame at work: Blame as cause and blame as blameworthy / blameless cause (or creditworthy / creditless), i.e., whether you are the cause in a way that reflects the quality of you. X can fail to be the cause of Y, explaining why the quality of Y says nothing about the quality of X. For example, I fail to be the cause of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal (so I claim), and so the badness of this disaster says nothing about the badness of me. Or, X can succeed in being the cause of Y, but in such a way that the quality of Y says nothing about the quality of X. For example, a baby succeeds in being the cause of accidentally knocking over a vase and breaking it. The badness of breaking the vase says nothing about the badness of the baby.

But that’s too quick. The badness of breaking the vase does say something about the badness of the baby: the baby can cause bad experiences in others by breaking their vases. So Baby(1) is extrinsically bad. But the badness of breaking the vase says nothing about the badness of the baby’s phenomenal properties, as the baby’s phenomenal properties had nothing to do with causing the vase to break. So Baby(2) is blameless with respect to breaking the vase.

But even if the baby’s phenomenal properties did have something to do with causing the vase to break, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that Baby(2) is bad. If the baby grows up and is now a teenager, and the teenager chooses to break the vase, and thus the teenager has a phenomenal property of making a choice, and if we allow for mental causation, then the teenager’s phenomenal properties do cause the vase to break. So doesn’t that mean that the badness of breaking the vase says something about the badness of Teenager(2)? Yes and no.

If we allow for mental causation, then Person(2) is embedded within Person(1), because “that thing that generates within others certain experiences” includes those phenomenal properties, like those involved in making choices, that cause one’s actions which then generate experiences within others. So if the badness of Y reflects the badness of what causes Y, then the badness of the bad experiences within others reflects the badness of that thing that generates within others those bad experiences. And so both public and private properties of personhood can be bad.

But we can imagine Pereboom-style manipulation cases where a person is manipulated into having properties, public or private, which cause those bad experiences within others. But whose fault is it that these badness-causing properties obtain? The fault lies with the source of the manipulation. But our deterministic (or random) inputs, like our genetics, social influences, and so on, all together comprise such a manipulator. We do not choose to be what we are. We do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that we have. So we do not choose for our decision-making process to be what it is. So we do not choose for our choices to come out as they do. The badness of our choices reflects the badness of our inputs, but not the badness of us. The badness of our choices does reflect the badness of us as choosers within such and such contexts (e.g., reflects our stupidity, irrationality, ignorance, etc.), but not the badness of us as experiencers, as pure subjects (i.e., as experiencers we did not choose to be stupid or irrational or ignorant, but we experience our stupidity, irrationality, ignorance, etc.).

Our first-person properties come from somewhere. They do not come, ultimately, from us, i.e., our first-person properties do not ultimately come from other first-person properties of ours. They come ultimately from sources outside of us.

What this comes to is that at bottom, the most fundamental self-property is the property of pure subjectivity, a property that is divorced from any choices made. This first-person property is not involved in the making of any choices, and so its quality cannot be fairly criticized.

To capture the distinction between those first-person properties that can be fairly criticized and those that cannot be fairly criticized, we must split Person(2) in two:

Person(2a) = The pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.

 

E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie all have something in common: the fact that these experiences are happening to you. There is a youness, a subjectivity, that these experiences have in common.

Person(2b) = The other properties of first-person properties that accompany the pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.

 

E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie have differences between them. That which distinguishes one experience from the other—the pain of venom in your veins versus the pain of the initial shock of cold water versus the happiness of the taste of melted chocolate—these differences show that these experiences cannot be the same, despite having a sameness to them, specifically the same subjectivity.

 

You(2a) is the ‘you’ referred to in the following sentence: You do not choose to be what you are. You do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that you have. So you do not choose for your decision-making process to be what it is. So you do not choose for your choices to come out as they do. The badness (or goodness) of your choices reflects the badness (or goodness) of your inputs, but not the badness (or goodness) of you.

 

But you(2b) is the 'you' referred to in the following sentence: The choices you made were good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy. I.e. the causal properties accompanying the pure subjectivity of first-person properties had good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy effects.

 

On good vs praiseworthy choices: Good choices include those choices that are good by accident, good in a way that doesn't reflect good qualities of Person(1) and Person(2b). Actions are praiseworthy when they do reflect good qualities of Person(1) and Person(2b). The difference is that a Person(1,2b) with good qualities will regularly make good choices, while a person who makes good choices by accident will only rarely make good choices. Ditto for bad and critique-worthy (aka blameworthy) choices. None of this speaks to the goodness or badness of Person(2a), who, as a pure subject, is merely along for the ride – only experiencing and never causing anything.

 

On Person(1): You can distinguish between those first-person properties other people have about you. We can label this Person(1a). These are strictly private properties. Then there are those public properties that cause others to have the properties referred to by Person(1a). We can label this Person(1b). These are strictly public properties. If we allow for mental causation, and if we allow a distinction between Person(2a) and Person(2b), then the first-person properties of (2b) can cause the third-person properties of (1b) which then cause the first-person properties of (1a). In other words, your choices (and other internal states that lead to choices, like beliefs and memories) cause your actions (like writing) which cause others to have the experiences of you that they do (like reading your writing).

Spencer Case on evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhhIzTM9yIY&t=2961s

 

46:30 - 53:05

 

As J. P. Andrew mentions, Sharon Street is known for her evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism.

 

Spencer Case mentions that you don't need to appeal to evolution to motivate this kind of argument. You can appeal instead to just cultural influences – your moral beliefs came from your social environment. (But then you could say that the social environment is the way it is because of evolutionary pressures. So from my point of view it makes sense to press the evolutionary aspect of this argument.)

 

The general point is this: If you found out that you had been brainwashed to believe something, then upon discovering this you should lose confidence in that belief. If you can fully explain your moral beliefs via a non-truth tracking process, like evolution, then you have reason to doubt the truth of these beliefs. You don't believe that it's wrong to imprison innocent people for crimes they did not commit not because it's true in some robust, objective sense that it's wrong to imprison innocent people for crimes they did not commit; you believe that it's wrong to imprison innocent people for crimes they did not commit because you have been socially and biologically programmed to believe this.

 

Spencer Case gives an illustration of why this argument fails. 50:30 -  "Even if it's true that evolution pushes us in the direction to thinking that randomly harming yourself is bad, finding out that evolution has pushed you in that direction shouldn't make you think, 'Oh, well I just don't know whether it's actually bad for me to stab myself in the eye with this pencil.' No, I know that's bad for me."

 

So Spencer Case sees anti-realism motivated by evolutionary debunking as having the absurd result that we should be skeptical of the truth of whether randomly harming ourselves is bad. 

 

I agree that it's silly to think we should doubt our self-evident beliefs just because they are evolutionarily convenient.

 

J. P. Andrew then gives the sort of response to evolutionary debunking I would give, which is something along the following lines:

 

*Evolution selects for highly accurate beliefs over basic facts of our environment, as high accuracy over basic facts is needed for our survival.

 

*A certain kind of intelligence is needed to achieve highly accurate beliefs over basic facts, and so evolution selects for this kind of intelligence.

 

*In the case of humans, the kind of abstract thinking needed for language and planning allows for the abstract thinking needed for mathematics, logic, and reasoning. And so our ability to do philosophy and discover philosophical truths is incidentally selected for. We don't need high level mathematical and logical abilities to survive, but these abilities come bundled together incidentally with those abilities we do need to survive.

 

*This allows humans to, through reasoning, engage in evolutionarily inconvenient behaviors, like suicide, refusing to have children, or for speaking truth to power at the cost of one's own life (though in cases where folks with less access to resources and/or with lesser genetics tend to be those who choose death or who choose to refuse to have children, then even these "self-deletion" behaviors turn out to be evolutionarily convenient). The point is that evolution can accidentally give us the ability to discover abstract truths that aren't needed for our survival or for the survival of the species. Higher levels of reasoning and abstract truth-tracking that aren't selected for are packaged with lower levels of reasoning and abstract truth-tracking that are selected for. 

 

*In terms of the surface structure versus the deep structure, the surface structure incidentally gives us access to the deep structure.

 

*By way of analogy: Evolution does not select for heavy fur coats on bison. In fact, a very heavy coat might make things worse for the bison by lowering their speed and endurance. But evolution does select for a thick coat to protect the bison from the cold. And it just so happens that thick coats are heavy. And so evolution incidentally selects for thick coats for bison, and the tradeoff, if there is one, is to the bison's overall advantage. (I credit this analogy elsewhere, though I do not know its origins.)

 

And so this defeats evolutionary debunking arguments in the following way: 

 

*This theory predicts humans to be quite bad at arriving at metaphysical truths because possessing accurate metaphysical beliefs is only very incidentally selected for, and in some ways may be selected against (e.g. people who are overly concerned about truth will clash with the false beliefs of their tribes, potentially leading them to be casted out, losing access to the material resources the tribe provides). Sure enough, we are quite bad at arriving at metaphysical truth as seen by our rampant disagreement over metaphysical truth. So someone could arrive at true beliefs about the metaphysics of morality despite those truths not being selected for and even being selected against.

 

*Of course, this brings in a different, better argument against moral realism, which was already the main argument against moral realism: rampant and deep peer disagreement, and cultural disagreement, over a wide array of moral issues. But I'll set that aside for now and focus on evolutionary debunking.

 

*There are what we might call evolutionarily convenient beliefs (ECBs). These are beliefs like: I should get married, I should have children, I should promote marriage and having children to others, I should do all that I can to survive, I should do all that I can to help my children survive, and so on.

 

*While normally evolutionarily convenient beliefs would be worth doubting (because these beliefs may be caused by evolution and not caused by the truth of the belief interfacing with our ability to discover its truth), it would be silly to doubt self-evident truths like that pain is bad even if those self-evident beliefs are evolutionarily convenient.

 

*In general, if evolutionarily convenient beliefs have independent support, then you can lean on that support for justification. You can, for example, have children not because evolution commands it of you, but because you believe that this would maximize the happiness in the world and thus make the world a better place. You can take evolution's prodding as a recommendation, and then it's your own critical reflection on the goodness and badness of things that leads you to making your own decision to have children.

 

*The difference is that if someone were to ask you why you had children, if you did so purely out of instinct, you wouldn't be able to give much of an answer. But if you did so with purpose and principle in mind, then you would be able to give a sophisticated answer.

 

*There is objective good and bad in the sense that people can be just as mistaken about the goodness and badness of things as they can be mistaken about scientific facts.

 

*In fact, it’s even easier to see the truth of these value facts than it is to see the truth of scientific facts because the value facts are self-evident. If someone says that my pain does not have the qualities it does, then they are certainly incorrect.

 

*And if I base my morality on these value facts that are verified independently of evolution, then it’s not true as that my morality is based purely on evolutionarily convenient beliefs.

 

*Intrinsic goods and evils (i.e. value facts) are not intuitions, judgments, interpretations, evaluations, or theories – they are data. I agree with Sharon Rawlette that this makes sense of where we get our notion of badness from. That is, the theory that badness is evaluative and not data fails to explain how it's even possible that we would have a notion of badness in the first place. On the other hand, if we view badness as fundamentally phenomenal – and I believe we can directly see that intrinsic badness is phenomenal, that the badness of our pain is something directly experienced and not imposed as an evaluation on our experience – then this explains where we get our concept of badness from. Phenomenal goodness / badness is a precondition necessary for evaluations about the extrinsic goodness and badness of things. We couldn't evaluate anything as good or bad without that precondition.

*So evolutionary debunking arguments, just like in epistemic cases, do not work against self-evident beliefs, and the pain of a burn is self-evidently bad.

 

*Another option I see is to say that truth for basic facts like how to procure food, clothing shelter, and how to get along with your tribe, is actually not that fundamentally different from truth for more abstract facts like whether God exists. And so evolution, by selecting us to discover basic truths, actually does select us to discover more abstract truths. For example, because we are selected to care deeply about survival, and because our survival does not depend on God in any tangible way, and because we are selected to observe our environment, and we don't see God anywhere, we are selected to observe that God is apparently hidden. While peer disagreement would normally be an obvious counter to the idea that we are selected to grasp philosophical truths, even theists often admit that God is apparently hidden (or at least that God is more hidden than what we can imagine, or at least that it makes sense why someone who has yet to search for God would think that God is apparently hidden) and try to come up with theories as to why God would be apparently hidden in this way. The data of God's hiddenness cannot be ignored.

 

*I think you can, and should, give an evolutionary explanation for why there is intrinsic badness in the first place. Intrinsic badness leads to aversion behavior that increases survival. But note what's at stake here: whether our ECBs, including value and moral beliefs, should always be doubted. They should be doubted until we find reasons for thinking they are true independent of the evolutionary explanation. That is, if I have an alternative explanation for why I believe an ECB, then that could be the real explanation for why I believe the ECB. And if that explanation involves the truth of the ECB interfacing with my ability to discern its truth, then we have a truth-tracking explanation for my ECB. If the theory that my ECB is explained in this truth-tracking way is superior to the theory that my ECB is explained in a non-truth-tracking way, then the debunking argument fails. The origins of the reasoning process that allows us to discern truth must itself be best explained in a truth-tracking way. And it is: if we were terrible at interfacing with reality on the whole, then we wouldn't have survived. Plus, if we allow for self-authenticating beliefs, like self-evident beliefs, then it's self-evident that our reasoning process is truth-tracking at least in some cases.

56 Questions on Morality

1) Descriptive metaethics: What do people mean in general when they make claims about what is good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong, good or evil, okay or not okay, fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved, justified or unjustified, reasonable or unreasonable, obligatory or prohibited, blameless or blameworthy, supererogatory or non-supererogatory, a duty, a right, a responsibility, a moral failure or success, a moral mistake, faulty or sound moral reasoning, a moral truth or falsity, a moral fact or opinion, a virtue or vice, or what someone should or should not do?

2) Self-descriptive metaethics: What do you mean when you use the above moral terms and make claims using those terms?

3) Prescriptive metaethics: What should people mean when they use the above moral terms and make claims using those terms?

4) What does it mean for something to be good or bad? What is the good-maker of good things and the bad-maker of bad things?

5) What is well-being? What does it mean to live a good life?

6) Can goals be good or bad, better or worse? What should the ultimate goal of the human being be?

7) What does it mean for something to be objective or objectively true? (More generally: What does it mean for something to be true?) What does it mean for something to be subjective or subjectively true? What does it mean for something to be true in a relative sense versus true in an absolute sense? What does it mean for a truth or claim to be stance-independent or judgment independent? What is a stance or a judgment?

8) What is value? Are there facts about value? (Generally: What are facts?) Is value objective or subjective?

9) If there are judgment-independent value facts or moral facts, does this mean there are judgment-independent gustatory facts or aesthetic facts? Why or why not?

10) What are mistakes? Can someone be mistaken about what’s good or bad?

11) What is poor reasoning? Can someone exercise poor reasoning over what’s good and bad?

12) What is normativity?

13) What does ‘should’ and ‘ought’ mean?

14) Can we derive an ought from an is? Why or why not?

15) How does description differ from prescription?

16) What is a categorical imperative? What is a hypothetical imperative?

17) Is there a categorical imperative?

18) Is there an irreducible normative property? What would that look like?

19) Are moral claims meaningful? If yes, then what makes moral claims meaningful? (Generally: What does it mean for a statement to be meaningful?)

20) What are moral intuitions, and what role do they play in our moral theories? (Generally: What are intuitions, and what role do they play in our philosophical theories?)

21) Are moral intuitions data? Are our intrinsic goods and evils data? Why or why not?

22) How does moral normativity (what we ought to do) relate to epistemic normativity (what we ought to believe)?

23) What does it mean for something to be right or wrong? What is the right-maker of right actions and the wrong-maker of wrong actions?

24) Is there a difference between epistemic wrongness and moral wrongness? “The sun is smaller than the moon” is wrong. Killing a child for fun is wrong. Sending a person to prison for a crime they did not commit is wrong. Does ‘wrong’ mean the same thing in both cases?

25) Are there moral facts? If so, what are they?

26) Are there moral mistakes? Can someone be mistaken about what’s right or wrong?

27) Is morality objective or subjective?

28) Is there objectively good and bad moral reasoning? (Generally: Is there objectively good and bad reasoning?)

29) If there is moral knowledge, how do we obtain it? If there are moral facts, then how do we discover them? (Generally: If there is knowledge, how do we obtain it?)

30) Are there morally justified and unjustified actions?

31) What does it mean for an action to be justified, and how does that relate to holding a justified belief?

32) Are there external reasons, or are reasons only internal? (Generally: What are reasons?)

33) How can we tell whether a reason for acting is motivating versus justifying?

34) If someone has a reason to act, must they be motivated to act?

35) Are humans ultimately always motivated by their own pursuit of happiness? Does this make all humans implicit egoists? Is genuine altruism possible? If not, does this threaten the moral value of our actions? Why or why not?

36) What is the difference between moral reasoning and prudential reasoning?

37) How do reasons relate to moral justification?

38) Why be moral? Why be a good person? Why care about these things? How do these questions relate to the question: Why be rational?

39) What are rights?

40) Who has rights or should have them?

41) What are moral obligations? Who has them and when? How do we discover what our obligations are?

42) Which actions are supererogatory, and how can we tell?

43) How great should the moral burden we place on ourselves be? How hard should we strive to be moral, and why?

44) What is justice and injustice?

45) Does anybody deserve anything? What are just deserts? What does it mean to deserve something?

46) How does punishment relate to justice?

47) What is moral responsibility? How does it relate to blameworthiness, blamelessness, and free will?

48) What does it mean to be a moral agent or to have “agency”?

49) Is it possible to knowingly do what’s wrong? Or does everybody always do what they think in the moment is best, in some cases making highly conflicted choices, and in some cases coming to believe that they made the wrong choice?

50) What does it mean to forgive? When should we forgive or withhold forgiveness?

51) If actions are made wrong by something, what is it? Are they made wrong by their consequences, or by the nature of the actions themselves (e.g. a lack of good will behind the action), or by the viciousness of the kind of person who would engage in that kind of action? Or is it all of the above depending on context (pluralism)? Or is it something else (e.g. rationalism)?

52) Can we subsume moral concerns surrounding good will and treating people as ends unto themselves under consequences? Why or why not? 

53) What is virtue? What is vice? Are some actions knowably virtuous or knowably vicious? If so, how?

54) Can we subsume moral concerns surrounding virtue under consequences? Why or why not?

55) Where does morality come from? To what degree is morality selected for by evolution? In what ways, if any, is morality a social construct? Do debunking arguments give us reason to doubt the existence of moral facts, or to doubt the objectivity of morality?

56) How would a best Divine Command Theory—or any theistic metaethical system—spell out God’s relationship to goodness and badness, right and wrong, the objectivity of morality, God’s obligations—or lack thereof—toward creation, and God’s status as a moral agent?

Graham Oppy's definitions of atheism, naturalism, physicalism, and materialism

Oppy, Graham. Atheism and Agnosticism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

 

Oppy defines the following terms as such (my paraphrase):

 

Atheist: A person who believes that there are no gods.

 

Note: I take 'gods' to include both lesser gods and God.

 

Atheism: The belief that there are no gods.

 

Note: 'belief', 'view', 'position', and 'stance' are often used interchangeably.

 

Theist: A person who believes that there is at least one god.

 

Theism: The belief that there is at least one god.

 

Agnostic: A person who, having considered the issue, lacks both belief in any god and the belief that there are no gods.

 

Agnosticism: The (considered) suspension of belief as to whether there are any gods.

 

Innocent: A person who has never considered the issue of whether there are gods.

 

Innocence: The (non-considered) suspension of belief as to whether there are any gods.

 

Note: If we consider personhood to exist wherever first-person properties exist, and if we consider animals to have first-person properties, and if we consider those entities that we ascribe first-person properties to to be persons, then we consider animals to be persons. Animals, which presumably have not considered whether there are any gods, would therefore fall under the category of 'innocents'. You could also simply stipulate that any sentient creature that has never considered the issue of whether there are gods is an innocent.

 

Oppy helpfully points out many other different attitudes one can discuss surrounding these terms. Following Oppy's lead, I would put it like so: 

 

Expertise: How well-considered is this person's atheism / agnosticism / theism? How well-informed, educated, smart, intellectually virtuous, rational, or thoughtful is this person's atheism / agnosticism / theism? How many hours has this person spent reading, writing, and thinking about arguments for and against their atheism / agnosticism / theism?

 

Confidence: How confident is this person in the truth (or rationality) of atheism / agnosticism / theism – zero, low, moderate, high, or maximal?

 

Knowledge: Does this person claim to know that atheism / agnosticism / theism is true (and therefore claim to know that the other two positions are false)? 

 

Open-mindedness: How willing is this person to engage with arguments against the truth (or rationality) of their atheism / agnosticism / theism? How willing is this person to change their mind on the truth (or rationality) of their atheism / agnosticism / theism?

 

Interest: Does this person find debates surrounding the existence and nature of God exciting or boring?

 

Conation: Does this person desire for any gods to be real? 

 

Rationality: 

 

(a) Does this person claim that their atheism / agnosticism / theism is rational (whatever they take 'rational' to mean)? (Presumably yes. But what does this rationality consist in?)

 

(b) Does this person claim that their atheism / agnosticism / theism is more rational than the other two positions?

 

Put another way, in Oppy's words, does this person believe that: "all thoughtful, reflective, sufficiently intelligent, sufficiently well-informed people who give serious attention to the matter" believe in atheism / agnosticism / theism? Or can there be reasonable disagreement?

 

(c) Does this person claim that the other two positions are irrational – that being a thoughtful, reflective, sufficiently intelligent, sufficiently well-informed person who has given serious attention to the matter precludes one from adhering to the other two positions? What does this irrationality consist in, exactly?

 

(d) Does this person claim that while belief in the other two positions is rational, other attitudes are irrational?

 

E.g. An atheist might think that while belief in God is rational, certainty in the existence of God is irrational.

 

An agnostic might think that while atheism is rational, wanting God to not exist, or even lacking a want for God, is irrational.

 

Someone might have no opinion on whether atheism / agnosticism / theism is rational because they have no interest in these discussions and view interest in these discussions to be irrational.

 

Oppy says on pgs 9-10:

 

"Naturalism is the view that (a) there are none but natural entities with none but natural causal powers, and (b) well-established science is the touchstone for identifying causal entities and causal powers. . . .

 

Physicalism is the view that (a) there are none but physical entities with none but physical causal powers, and (b) well-established science is the touchstone for identifying causal entities and causal powers. Materialism is the view that (a) there are none but material entities with none but material causal powers, and (b) well-established science is the touchstone for identifying causal entities and causal powers."

 

I don't find anything objectionable to these definitions, though I do wonder about the meaning of and difference between 'physical' and 'material'. Similarly, this definition of naturalism demands the question of the meaning of 'natural' in contrast to 'non-natural' or 'supernatural'. Before getting into a discussion on the meaning of 'natural', it's faster to say naturalism is the view that all religions are false. This quickly communicates the core idea: "I have a belief system that doesn't include any religious claims."

 

Religious apologists might complain that this definition lacks any positive content – it doesn't say anything about what the naturalist actively believes. But this is silly, and I suspect this comes out of ignorance from not having seen any well-articulated naturalist worldviews. But a good naturalist worldview will have a well-articulated epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory, the same as any good worldview, and that set of epistemic, metaphysical, and value theory claims that makes up that naturalist worldview is the set of positive beliefs of that worldview. So the positivity is there, the apologist just isn't aware of it.

 

Atheists will turn rabid if you call atheism a worldview. I've always found this bizarre. It's obvious to me that when apologists use language like "According to the atheist worldview...", what they mean is something like "According to the worldview apparent of those kinds of people who introduce themselves as atheists...".

 

The trouble is that Christians introduce themselves as Christians and there is a Christian worldview, Muslims introduce themselves as Muslim and there is a Muslim (Islamic) worldview, and so on. And so it's no wonder that people would follow this pattern where terms of identity correspond to terms of worldview. If atheism is not your worldview, then why are you introducing yourself as an atheist? Why is that your identity term of choice? (In fact, that is part of why I would not call myself an atheist, instead calling myself an ex-Christian and naturalist, as those are better identifiers as to where I am coming from.)

 

Certainly, atheists have worldviews, and certainly those worldviews are atheistic. So there's no problem in complaining about atheistic worldviews, which is, charitably, what Christians are doing when they complain about "the atheist worldview". But it's true that if we're being careful, we would instead use the term "atheistic worldview". The problem with calling atheism a worldview is that worldviews are complex sets of many theories, and atheism is just one theory, even if it's a core theory of atheistic worldviews.

The task of self-descriptive metaethics

Part I: Descriptive metaethics

 

The task of descriptive metaethics is to describe what it is that most people think they are doing when they make claims about what is good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong, good or evil, okay or not okay, fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved, justified or unjustified, reasonable or unreasonable, obligatory or prohibited, blameless or blameworthy, supererogatory or non-supererogatory, a duty, a right, a responsibility, a moral failure or success, a moral mistake, faulty or sound moral reasoning, a moral truth or falsity, a moral fact or opinion, a virtue or vice, or what someone should or should not do.

 

Humans often perform acts of moral protest, in some cases by literal protesting with picket signs, or by expressing disapproval through speech, behavior, or writing. The question is, what do folks take themselves to be doing when they engage in these acts of moral protest? What do folks take themselves to mean when they claim, for example, that Israeli forces were wrong—profoundly wrong—to kill Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to help her?

 

When making claims of moral protest, do folks in general see themselves as voicing a mere preference they have, similar to food or aesthetic preferences? Or do they see themselves as making truth claims about the way things really are? Or something else, or one in one context and the other in a different context?

 

Part II: Reacting to Lance Bush 

 

Lance Bush left a comment on a YouTube video (youtube.com/watch?v=vhhIzTM9yIY) in response to commenter Nathan. I will put his comments in red and react to them:

 

Original comment by Nathan:

 

While of course most people have never explicitly considered claims that amount to moral realism, they do tend to think (1) moral mistakes are possible: "I used to think doing X was wrong, but I was mistaken about that," (2) that collective mistakes are possible--there's moral progress and decline, not just change, (3) that just because someone, or some group, disapproves of people doing some action X, that doesn't necessarily mean doing X is wrong, and (4) that there can be disagreements in ethics, with one side being mistaken, and with no good reasons for their [views]. Those are just a few things off the top of my head that at least suggest such people tend to be accepting something like realism, although of course not in those terms. That's the most "natural" interpretation of these observations.

 

Hi Nathan. I’m consistently frustrated when philosophers make claims about human psychology without appealing to or conducting the appropriate empirical research. [Agreed.] . . . To my knowledge, you're not a social scientist and have not conducted or engaged in empirical research on how nonphilosophers think about moral realism, nor have you presented or appealed to any empirical evidence to support any of your claims. If you want to know how nonphilosophers think you should consult appropriate research rather than relying on speculation, personal anecdote, or whatever armchair rationale analytic philosophers typically rely on. [Agreed.]

At present, there is no compelling body of empirical evidence to support any of your claims. Worse still, they are all described in a way that would be insufficient as an operationalization of an indication of support for moral realism.

“(1) moral mistakes are possible: "I used to think doing X was wrong, but I was mistaken about that”

A belief in the possibility of moral mistakes is consistent with many forms of moral antirealism, so this would not be especially diagnostic of people being moral realists. [I would want to hear more on this. Spencer Case mentions in the video an example of attitudes of disgust. Eating grubs is gross to me, but I would not consider it a mistake for an aboriginal to eat grubs.] There’s also no compelling body of evidence showing most people think moral mistakes are possible. “Mistake” would also have to be operationalized. For instance, a relativist could believe it’s wrong to steal, and steal anyway, acting against their own moral standards. [I doubt it's possible for someone to act against their own moral standards. Action it seems to me is admission of acceptance of what you are doing. Even in the case of addiction, where people may do things they explicitly hate because they are addicted, the addiction itself is what makes the addictive act worth it for the person addicted despite all the negatives that come with the addictive act.]  Presumably they’d think they were making a moral mistake. [Presumably not, as evidenced by the fact that they acted in the way they did.] But that’s different then being mistaken about whether or not stealing is morally right or wrong in the first place. It’d be challenging to conduct research on this, and I don’t know of any such research. Even if there is some, there won’t be much. There’s no robust cross-cultural body of data showing people think moral mistakes of the relevant kind are possible. [The concept of 'mistake' seems objective to me and nothing said here would convince me otherwise. I can imagine someone defining anti-realism, one layer of anti-realism, as the view that there are only hypothetical imperatives of the form "If you want X, then you should Y." Failing to do Y would be a mistake with respect to the goal over X, and that mistake would be objective (in line with the objectivity of the concept of mistake), but this position would be anti-realist in the sense that it would not admit of a categorical imperative.]

“(2) that collective mistakes are possible--there's moral progress and decline, not just change”

First, progress and decline is consistent with many forms of antirealism. [Agreed, in the goal-relative sense noted above.] It’s even consistent with relativism: there is progress or decline relative to the moral standard in question. The concepts of progress and decline do not require, presuppose, or even hint at realism. People make progress on personal goals, or at becoming better artists, for instance. People can and do already employ the notion of progress and decline relative to self-chosen goals all the time. [Perhaps buried within the intuition that Nathan is getting at is that some goals are obviously better than others. From an Islamic standpoint, more countries being ruled under Sharia would be progress, but from other standpoints it would be a decline. So you might think that progress with respect to an objectively better goal is objective progress, while progress with respect to an objectively lesser goal is objective decline. But this requires one to believe that some goals are objectively better than others, and I don't know of any empirical research suggesting that people in general believe that some goals are objectively better than others. That would be a great question to include in a metaethical survey.]

Second, there is no established body of empirical evidence that supports the claim that most people think moral progress in such a way that is most consistent with realism is possible. On the contrary, the best available study that specifically addresses the question of objective moral progress suggests most people reject this idea. Here is an excerpt from the abstract:

“Our results suggest that, neither abstractly nor concretely, people dominantly believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, knowledge and error. They attribute less objectivity to these phenomena than in the case of science and no more, or only slightly more, than in the cases of social conventions and personal preferences. This finding was obtained for a regular sample as well as for a sample of people who are particularly likely to be reflective and informed (philosophers and philosophy students). Our paper hence contributes to recent empirical challenges to the thesis that people believe in moral objectivity.”

Pölzler, T., Zijlstra, L., & Dijkstra, J. (2024). Moral progress, knowledge and error: Do people believe in moral objectivity?. Philosophical Psychology, 37(8), 2073-2109.

“(3) that just because someone, or some group, disapproves of people doing some action X, that doesn't necessarily mean doing X is wrong,”

This would at best only indicate whether people endorsed agent relativism, so this would not be a good way to ensure that people are not appraiser relativists nor any other form of antirealist. As such, rejecting this notion would not be a strong indicator that a person is a moral realist. I reject this, and I’m the most prolific antirealist there is. [This is confusing. I think Lance is saying that he accepts the idea that just because someone, or some group, disapproves of people doing some action, that doesn't mean doing that action is wrong. But Lance is still an anti-realist. Probably, a more charitable interpretation of what Nathan is saying is that most people believe that individuals and groups can be wrong about what is wrong. But that's the same as point (1).] As such, this is not diagnostic of or strongly indicative of being a moral realist. Furthermore, this once again is an empirical question and at least some studies that use wording consistent with agent relativism not only find that many participants select these response options, but that variations of relativism were the most common response even after participants underwent training in familiarizing themselves with metaethics and were given comprehension checks and detailed response options. And this held up across seven different paradigms. Does this mean most people are moral relativists? No, but it is better than anecdotes and the self-reports of philosophers. See here:

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 53-82.

“(4) that there can be disagreements in ethics, with one side being mistaken, and with no good reasons for their reviews” [Again, a repeat of point (1).]

Again,you present no evidence that most people think this. The main paradigm in experimental metaethics is, incidentally, the disagreement paradigm. And it in fact finds very high rates of antirealist responses from participants, especially in newer, better-designed studies. Furthermore, disagreement is consistent with antirealism. 

In addition, there is some empirical evidence suggesting folk notions of disagreement differ from the kind that would support the notion that they are implicit realists. See: 

Khoo, J., & Knobe, J. (2018). Moral disagreement and moral semantics. Noûs, 52(1), 109-143.

From the abstract: “We show that there are moral conflict cases in which people are inclined to say both (a) that the two speakers disagree and (b) that it is not the case at least one of them must be saying something incorrect.” [The grubs illustration comes to mind again. Consider the claim, "Grubs are delicious." I disagree with this claim. There's an aboriginal out there that agrees with this claim. Do I think the aboriginal is mistaken in his affirmation of this claim? Nope. But when we remove ambiguity, things become more clear: "Grubs are delicious to everyone." Okay, now this claim is clearly false, and now affirming it would be to make a mistake. So consider: "Killing Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to help her is wrong to everyone." Again, we arrive at a clearly false claim, as the killing was not wrong according to the Israeli soldiers. So we must remove the ambiguity enough so we can see what makes it true or false. Something like: The goal of maximizing goodness is the best goal, and the killing of Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to help her fails to further this goal. So the Israeli soldiers furthered an objectively worse goal, which demonstrates a failure of understanding of the goodness and badness of things.]

In short, not a single one of your four examples, even if it was true, would be good evidence that people are realists, since all such responses are consistent with antirealism. Second, whether most people think anything in particular is an empirical question and you present no empirical evidence to support your claims. At present, there is no good evidence most people are moral realists. 

 

Part III: Self-descriptive metaethics  

 

The Pölzler and Wright (2020) study says the following:

 

"To begin with, we explain the difference between what we call “normative” and “meta-ethical” sentences about morality:
 

Normative sentences about morality express moral judgments. In uttering these sentences we evaluate something morally; we indicate that we regard something as morally right or wrong, good or bad, virtuous or vicious, and so on.

[…]

Meta-ethical sentences about morality do not express moral judgments. In uttering them we remain evaluatively neutral. Instead, we are making claims about the nature of morality itself." (59)

 

"Following these explanations, we test and improve participants’ understanding of the normative/metaethical distinction by two comprehension checks: (1) a theoretical question about what they have just read (right answer: “Normative sentences express moral judgments and meta-ethical sentences make claims about the nature of morality itself”) . . ." (59) 

 

Taking 'judgment' to mean something like: a conclusion reached after a process of reasoning, I don't believe that when I describe something as good or bad that I am making a normative judgment. 

 

I am not making a judgment at all, much less a normative judgment, when reporting on the goodness or badness of my directly experienced intrinsic goods or evils. The goodness or badness of these goods and evils is directly observed, and so statements that amount to pure reports of this goodness or badness do not involve any kind of reasoning process or a conclusion, but just a report of directly accessed data.

 

When it comes to beliefs about extrinsic and depriving evils, then there is a judgment there, but I don't take it to be a normative one. I don't know what work the word 'normative' is meant to be doing here. I don't believe in any kind of categorical imperative or sui-generis, irreducible normative property because a) I have no idea what that would look like and b) it seems to be that positing such a property is poorly motivated, motivated by a misunderstanding of the essence of 'should.'

 

Okay, but the study specifies that normative judgments occur when we evaluate something as morally good or bad, and not (presumably) axiologically good or bad. Fine, but it's not obvious what the distinction between moral goodness and axiological goodness is meant to amount to, and it's easy to imagine a view where there is no such distinction, or where moral goodness is just a subset of axiological goodness. If moral goodness is just a subset of axiological goodness, and axiological goodness is non-normative, then even moral goodness is non-normative in that case.

 

Some philosophers (Steven Mitchell, Against Metaethical Descriptivism (2011), David Copp, (Ethical Naturalism and the Problem of Normativity (2024)) say that normativity is the core question of metaethics. So no surprise, the question of what normativity is, what 'normativity' means, and what normativity is about is a matter of significant debate.

 

Here's where I am at the moment: Normativity is about the concepts referred to by the words 'ought' and 'should'. What does it mean if I ought to do something or ought not believe something? To analyze normativity just is to analyze what it is we are doing when we make claims about what we ought to do or believe.

 

Okay. If that's right, then I do not consider judgments or apprehensions about what is good or bad to be normative. Something can be bad in some sense and yet you ought to do it, and something can be good in some sense and yet you ought not do it. So goodness and badness come apart from ought and ought not.

 

You might think that this is true – that something can be bad and yet you ought to do it – only in cases where the badness is outweighed by goodness in other areas. So if something is pro toto (in total) good, then it ought to be. But if that's right, then something's being pro tanto (to that extent) good is for that thing to ought to be pro tanto.

 

But I reject both the idea that something ought to be (simpliciter) just because it is good pro toto, and I reject the idea that oughtness can come in degrees. Something either ought to be done or not; it's a binary. This is because 'should' is conceptually dependent on the concept of goals; "you should do xyz" is always true or false relative to a goal.

 

Note 1: Degrees of normativity might be like degrees of truth. The belief that the moon is the size of a pea is, in a sense, more wrong than the belief that the moon is the size of Pluto. But in classical logic truth and falsity are binaries; there aren't degrees of truth. Maybe in a similar way some actions are better or worse at furthering a goal, suggesting degrees of what you ought to do (you ought to do the best action over the second best, the second best over the third best, the third over the fourth, and so on), but strictly speaking what you should do relative to a goal simply comes down to what is in fact the action that best furthers that goal.

 

Note 2: In the case of multiple equally best actions, that set is the best action, and not any particular individual. But 1) It's impossible to know whether the actions are truly equal or whether it's just that you can't tell which one's better, except for maybe extremely simple goals, and 2) There may always be an action that is technically ever-so-slightly better than alternatives, even if the difference is subtle or obscured enough that no human could ever have figured it out.

 

This is why it doesn't make sense to say something ought to be simpliciter, as that would suggest of an ought divorced of a goal. The closest you could get to that, as already hinted at, is the idea of a best goal. But even there, if someone fails to have the best goal in mind, then all there is to say at that point is that this person failed to understand the goodness and badness of things. And this is why I reject, in some sense, the existence of irreducible normativity and go for some kind of descriptivism.

 

The point in all this is that if someone comes to me and asks me to fill out a survey describing my metaethical commitments, I might disagree with the way terminology is used by the survey and I might use key terms under a different understanding. If answers are constrained to multiple choice, I might not be able to honestly select any answer. If answers are open, then my response might be misinterpreted by the study, and the data I provide would be useless. If the premise of the study is to see whether the subject is a realist or anti-realist, and if I have a problem with this dichotomy – because there are multiple layers of the concepts 'realist' and 'anti-realist' and I'm convinced that it's possible to mix and match layers – then I will disagree with the premise of the survey itself. So if the survey takes my answer and puts me into the oversimplified 'realist' or 'anti-realist' box, then I will have given the survey bad data.

 

This is why the task of descriptive metaethics is less interesting to me compared to the task of self-descriptive metaethics. 

 

In the following section I will try to peel back some of those layers of realism and anti-realism. 

 

Part IV: Realism and Anti-realism

 

On the question of normativity, someone could say that normativity is about prescription in contrast to description (i.e. what you should do is what is prescribed to you), and that prescription is categorically separate from description. Prescription is conceptually connected to ought, so this isn't necessarily a separate view from the view that says normativity is about the concept of oughtness. The point here is that the default view in philosophy is that description is categorically separate from prescription and that one cannot be reduced to the other, and so the question of normativity is the question of the nature of this irreducible normative category. Anti-realism is the view that denies the existence of this irreducible normative category while realism is the view that accepts the existence of this irreducible normative category – so says one way to characterize the anti-realist / realist divide.

 

I mentioned that I go for some form of descriptivism. That means I depart from the default view and believe that prescriptions can be reduced to descriptions; there are no irreducible oughts, only is, and oughts are a species of is. 

 

So I'm convinced of the following anti-realist views:

 

(a) There is no irreducible normative property. There is a normative property, but it reduces to properties related to goal-furthering, which are descriptive and non-normative.

 

(b) There is no categorical imperative, only hypothetical imperatives.

 

(c) There is no irreducible prescription. Oughts reduce to is. To say someone ought to do xyz is just to describe xyz as the best and/or necessary actions to further a goal, and thus to describe whether someone succeeded or failed to further that goal. 

 

But I'm convinced of the following realist views:

 

(d) There are true and false 'should' and 'ought' statements, and the truth or falsity of these statements is judgment-independent.

 

(e) There are intrinsically good and intrinsically bad things and the goodness and badness of these things is there regardless of anyone's judgment (but not regardless of anyone's experience; goodness and badness are experience-dependent, but judgment-independent). Therefore, I believe in judgment-independent value facts, i.e. axiological realism.

 

(f) Because there are true value facts about some things being good, bad, better, or worse, there are true facts about some goals being better or worse than other goals.

 

(g) So there are true facts about which actions further better or worse goals, and true facts about which actions further or fail to further the best goal of maximizing goodness.

  

(h) A person who was all-knowing, privy to all knowable facts about all things, who only believes what's true and acts according to those true beliefs, has perfect understanding, is perfectly rational, is maximally intelligent, is perfectly intellectually virtuous, and is perfectly morally virtuous – such a person would not be capable of [insert horribly evil action here].

 

(i) Failing to have a goal of maximizing goodness is to fail to have the best goal.

 

(j) Actions that depend on objectively false (wrong) beliefs are themselves, in a sense, objectively false (wrong). That is, if you have a goal to believe what's true, then you will, if consistent, have a goal to not perform those actions that depend on false beliefs.

 

(k) There is objectively good and bad reasoning. There is objectively good and bad reasoning over issues of morality. There are mistakes and false beliefs. There are mistakes with respect to moral goals (i.e. the goal to make the world better, to be virtuous, to avoid committing agent-restricted actions, or to act with a good will) and false beliefs about morality, e.g. about which actions are or are not mistakes with respect to moral goals. 

 

(l) There are true facts about whether an action, attitude, habit, state of mind, or person is virtuous or vicious.

 

(m) Normative pressure is real and falls out naturally from the objectivity of mistakes.  

 

I agree that descriptive metaethics is an empirical study requiring empirical work best suited for experimental philosophy. My point in all of this is that if someone comes to me and asks me to fill out a survey about my metaethical beliefs, I won't be able to do it, because I don't have my beliefs fleshed out. And if I have to fill out the survey under a pretense I disagree with, like, "Claims about axiological goodness and badness are normative claims", or if I'm working with a different understanding of key terms and my answers are misinterpreted, then my answers will be bad data. Depending on how the survey defines anti-realism and realism, I might be crudely placed under either the 'realist' or 'anti-realist' category while holding to metaethical beliefs that some would consider to belong to the opposite category. In theory, two separate, independent surveys could place my views under opposing categories!

 

In response to being prompted by the survey, I would want to first spend time figuring out what I believe and why. And so the task of self-descriptive metaethics comes before descriptive metaethics. Certainly, the task of self-descriptive metaethics is dialectical like the rest of philosophy, so the 'self' in self-descriptive metaethics does not imply that this is a solo task. The point is that if you ask someone what their metaethical views are, and they haven't yet engaged in the task of self-descriptive metaethics (which includes dialogue) to any degree, then they won't have an answer, or their answer will be contradictory, confused, or too vague. But after engaging in the task of self-descriptive metaethics for some time, not only might the subject's answer be well-articulated, consistent, systematic, and so on, the subject might disagree with assumptions of the survey such that their answer cannot be used to answer the question the survey was trying to answer (e.g. if the survey is trying to answer the question of whether this subject is a realist or anti-realist, the subject might disagree with this simplistic dichotomy and find themselves having both realist and anti-realist beliefs).

But if philosophy requires of me to go to others and inquire about their beliefs, what if they too must, at my prompting, go away to first figure out what they believe and why? The difference is that dialectic is done through reading and writing, so when reading you are reading the thought-out, comprehensive and articulated views of someone who has themselves been reading, writing, and thinking about that particular topic for years. That's very different from asking a random person their metaethical views.

 

Part V: Ordinary Language Objection to my view

 

Someone might say that because morality is constructed, like language, the idea of someone going off on their own to figure out what moral terms mean is nonsense. That would be like someone going off on their own to figure out the meaning of other English words. Just as language in general is a construct and fundamentally dependent on the social group, moral language in particular is a construct and fundamentally dependent on the understanding of the social group. So if you want to know what moral terms mean, descriptive metaethics is the only viable approach to answer those questions, and "self-descriptive" metaethics is a non-starter.

Reply 1: The value of systems

 

Basic words have clear and easy meanings, and it would be silly to go off on one's own to try to understand the meaning of those basic words. But words like good, bad, right, wrong, normative, should, etc. – these are way more polysemous, abstract, and ambiguous, and when we try to disambiguate these terms and situate them in a consistent, comprehension, and coherent framework that shows how all these terms relate to each and relate to other philosophical terms like 'truth' and 'fact', it's a lot of work to build out that system. Ordinary folks will not have done this work, and even for folks who have attempted to create such a system, there will be objections to their system. 

 

Reply 2: Expert opinion

This leads to the additional point that because there is skill involved in systematizing one's moral language, experts who are especially trained and gifted in this skill will have better answers to questions pertaining to the meaning of metaethical terms compared to non-experts. 

 

Just as we shouldn't put much stock into the typical non-philosopher's views about knowledge or metaphysics, we shouldn't put much stock into the typical non-philosopher's views about metaphysics either.

 

There is something to be said about the value of defending "common sense" beliefs. I tend to think of common sense as something like: the ease of which it is to get folks to understand the appeal of your view. The more commonsensical your views, the easier it is to get folks to understand your views and to understand why someone would find them likely to be true.

 

But the common sense view is that common sense has its limitations. Common sense-ness is a theoretical virtue, but it's not the end all be all theoretical virtue. Other theoretical virtues take precedent. Historically, germ theory was not common sensical (with folks of the past believing in things like "balancing the humors" and miasma), and neither was the evilness of slavery and racism.

A point in favor of the importance of common sense-ness comes out of the theoretical virtue of simplicity. All else being equal, simpler theories are more likely to be true, and simpler theories tend to be easier to get the common person to understand and see the appeal of. Indeed, perhaps common sense-ness is a theoretical virtue just because simplicity is a theoretical virtue. But problems like the Monty Hall problem show that even simple truths can be counterintuitive.

So even if it's difficult to get the common person to understand your metaethical views or understand their intellectual appeal, that wouldn't by itself count for much against your views.