Florence Bacus on grounding value in conscious states and on what morality is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zjflulzeAU

 

What morality is:

 

28m: ". . . without God, what is morality? So I think morality is just rational action independent of desire. . . . There are times where the reason I ought to do something is because it achieves some further end, but then there are cases, at least if morality is real, where you ought to do something regardless of whether you antecedently desire that end."

 

29m: "If you understand morality as something else, then okay that's fine, you're answering a different question from me. But I find myself in cases where I do various things just because I want to get what I want, and then I wonder are there cases where I should act a certain way even if it doesn't get me what I want in any respect. So if you're gonna tell me that I ought to do something, either you're telling me I can get what I want—and then I would say yeah, that's an important question, but it's not morality—or you might say I ought to do something regardless of what I want, and I would say okay yeah, I want to figure out what that is, that's what I call morality."

 

Florence goes on to accept a form of Kantianism. I reject Kantianism quite thoroughly, so it's no surprise that my value theory would differ from Florence's value theory as discussed in the next section.

 

I don't think there can be a categorical imperative, so the core questions of morality are different for me. People, including myself, tend to live their lives believing certain things about themselves, like that they are a good person, that their beliefs are true, and so on. Part of one's self-conception is that these beliefs that one has about the world and oneself are not totally, radically incorrect. Here's the problem: Your beliefs about the world and yourself are totally, radically incorrect. At least, they might be. Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, and naturalists cannot all be right. If naturalism is true, then the beliefs of Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims are profoundly false. People don't want to hold profoundly false beliefs about the world and themselves. They want to believe what's true. That will include truths about the nature of morality and what it means to be a good person.

 

Many people, myself included, and arguably all people capable of basic rationality, hold the following desire within themselves: "I want to believe what's true about morality. I want to believe what's true about right and wrong, so that I can do what's right and not do what's wrong. I want to desire what I ought to desire, and not desire what I ought not. I want to know what it means to be a good person so that I can become that kind of person."

 

This changes the framework: Morality is not about being rationally obligated to do something irrespective of what I want, but morality is, just like epistemology, about reconciling my beliefs to reality. If I believe rightly, I will desire and act rightly. Morality is not about acting against my desires for the sake of the greater good, but about adjusting my desires to be aligned with what the greater good actually is. To suggest that someone could have all true beliefs but still act wrongly is to suggest that truth and morality come apart, and I don't believe that. If I behave within the confines of truth, then I cannot be blamed, lest truth itself is somehow evil. (I have encountered philosophers who think truth and morality can come apart. Someone with all true beliefs could still lack the virtue to act according to those beliefs, or by akrasia do what's wrong despite knowing what's right. I accept the Socratic rejection of akrasia.)

 

(Feel free to replace 'greater good' for something more deontic sounding, like: for the sake of acting from a good will, or promoting the kingdom of ends, or treating people as ends unto themselves, or acting freely, or fulfilling obligations, or doing what I am rationally obligated to do, or doing what's right because it is right, or for the sake of moral goodness – basically, for the sake of right action broadly speaking: Morality is not about acting against my desires for the sake of right action, but about adjusting my desires to be aligned with what right action actually is.)

 

A potential challenge to my view falls along these lines: If morality is all about maximizing goodness, then doesn't morality fall apart at the point of survival? We don't blame predators for killing prey because their lives depend on it. Can we say the same for us? When Nazis murdered Jewish people and defended themselves by saying "We were just following orders", they apparently have in mind something like: "If I didn't follow orders, I would have been killed, and you can never blame a creature for doing whatever it takes to survive." You can tie this into desire in this way: Everyone has a desire to live; no amount of "reconciling your beliefs to reality" will change that. So if morality, to be a meaningful authority over us, requires us at some point to give up our lives for the greater good, then we will be acting against our desires.

 

I reject this and say yes, even the desire to live falls away when greater goods are recognized. Parents don't think twice in risking their lives for their children. In movies we often see characters sacrifice themselves to buy time for the rest of their group. If I realize the truth that my happiness is no more intrinsically valuable than the happiness of others, and thus come to have the goal of maximizing happiness period (not just my own), then at some point my own survival can become an obstacle to my goal if my survival requires the suffering of others. So we see that my consequentialist, "true belief first" approach to morality can accommodate the truth that for morality to be "authoritative" in some sense, morality cannot break down at the point of survival; at some point choosing your own survival over the happiness of others is evil.

 

Grounding value in conscious states: 

 

22m: "If we're going to assess the realist view that grounds [value] in the intrinsic goodness of states of consciousness, and I want to say no, [things are] only good because people prefer them, we'd want to look at a case where the two come apart. So, a case where a state of consciousness is good, but a person doesn't prefer it, or a state of consciousness is bad but a person doesn't disprefer it."

 

When Florence uses the term 'good' or 'bad', I don't know what these are supposed to mean. If these mean 'preferred' and 'dispreferred', then it's a tautology to say that good experiences are preferred experiences. Maybe the question is: Is there any analysis of good/bad on which a good experience can be dispreferred?

 

Yes. In the phenomenal analysis of good/bad where goodness/badness just are conscious states, there are cases where a state of consciousness is pro tanto good (good to a degree), but a person doesn't prefer that state because obtaining that state entails a cost that a different state doesn't.

 

There's always pro tanto desire for intrinsically good experiences, but there's also always pro tanto desire to avoid intrinsically bad experiences. There's also a pro tanto desire to obtain intrinsically better experiences; do I stay home and do something safe and comfortable, or do I go to the party and potentially have greater fun at the risk of greater discomfort?

 

So all of these calculations are warring within us, and this is why it's easy to make sense of avoidance behavior in response to something we know will feel good, and affective behavior in response to something we know will feel bad.

 

Avoidance behavior + intrinsic goodness: There are things we know will feel good but will make our lives worse in the long run. We see the intrinsic goodness and thus have a pro tanto desire for it, but we also see the cost and have a pro tanto desire to avoid that cost. Maybe this is eating junk food, procrastinating, smoking a cigarette, cheating on a partner, or getting back with an ex. Despite whatever intrinsic goods these things will provide in the moment, we avoid them when we do because of the greater costs down the road.

 

Affective behavior + intrinsic badness: There are difficult conversations to be had with ourselves or with a loved one, and that pain motivates us to avoid the conversation, but we see how things will be better over all if we suck it up and push through it. Applies also to chores, self-improvement, working towards difficult and personally meaningful achievements, and undergoing medical procedures – these things can be greatly painful but we do them anyway because not doing them is even more painful in the long run.

 

Paradoxically then, I might prefer to have a difficult conversation than to eat junk food, because I know one is worth the pain while the other isn't worth the happiness. And yet the pain of having a difficult conversation is still intrinsically bad despite preferring it to eating junk food, and the happiness of eating junk food is still intrinsically good despite dispreferring it to having a difficult conversation.

 

Indeed, I don't see how to make sense of the concept of preference without first going through the intrinsic goodness / badness of experience. To prefer X over Y is to see how X is better than Y, and to see that X is better than Y is to see that X is more good than Y (however good Y happens to be). If goodness just is preference, then this is circular. But this definition of preference appears non-circular to me, which tells me that goodness isn't just preference.

 

If goodness is defined in terms of desirability, and to prefer X over Y is to have greater desire for X than Y, then I don't see how to make sense of the concept of desire without first going through the intrinsic goodness / badness of experience. To desire X is not to see X as desirable, as that's a circular definition, but to see X as good. Why do we desire? Because we experience intrinsic goodness and intrinsic badness, and we desire intrinsic goodness because of what it is, and we desire to avoid intrinsic badness because of what it is. It is only because intrinsic goodness / badness have the essences they do that explains how it could be that desire exists at all.

 

Returning to preference, I don't see how to explain why my preference would be what it is without intrinsic goodness and badness. Experiences happen first, then preferences later. So preference depends on experience. But preference also depends on what I see as good or bad. So preferences depend on my good and bad experiences.

 

You might try to say that my preferences depend on what I take to be my good or bad experiences, but this just kicks the can down the road a step. Why would I take something to be good or bad? Because of the intrinsic goodness or badness that this thing constitutes or causes. There is a difference between experiencing badness and judging something to be bad. Experiences come first, and preferences and judgments come later based on experiences. Desires qua judgments of goodness come later, but desire as affective intending is simultaneous with intrinsically good experience; you can't have a good feeling without at the same time having an affective intentionality towards that feeling, meaning having a pro tanto desire for, like, conation, motivation for, or intending toward that feeling. As discussed here (https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2026/03/there-is-conceptual-connection-between.html), while affective behavior and intrinsically good experience can come apart, affective intentionality or intending toward is conceptually connected to intrinsic goodness. We intend to pursue happiness. Why? Because of what happiness is, and that intention begins the same moment the happiness is experienced.

 

P.S. - Florence mentions becoming an ex-Christian as of a year ago (so roughly March 2025). Being an ex-Christian myself, starting sometime in early-ish 2022, I understand what it's like to be a Christian for a long time and to feel the internal violence of being gutted of your entire worldview, being left to pick up the pieces. It's not easy, and it's traumatic, and I feel great sympathy for anyone who goes through that.

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.

Brian Cutter on the badness of pain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p41Ir-_9E-k

1:44:30 - 1:45:46

"I guess my thought with the normativity challenge is it seems to me more plausible that basic normative principles are fundamental simpliciter. Why is pain bad? Why does having a seeming that p justify the belief that p? This feels to me like a rock-bottom fact. Why is it wrong for me to press this button? Well, 'cause it would cause Joe an electric shock. Why is it wrong to cause Joe an electric shock? Well, 'cause it would cause him lots of pain. Why is it wrong to cause lots of pain? Well, because pain is bad. Why is pain bad? I feel like this is a plausible stopping point – we've hit bedrock. We know explanation needs to end somewhere – this seems like roughly the place it's gonna end. Maybe you can go like one or two layers deeper, but something normative seems to be – like these basic bedrock principles like the badness of pain or the justificatory power of experiences and so on – these seem to be bedrock principles that when you ask why they hold, the only thing to say is: that's just how it is, we've hit bedrock, explanation ends somewhere and it ends here."

Why I don't believe in subjectivism

Part 1: Travis Talks is right about some things

 

The Substack Travis Talks made a post titled "Objections to Subjectivism Are Terrible" (https://travistalks.substack.com/p/objections-to-subjectivism-are-terrible). In this post are many important takeaways that I agree with, including:

• If someone says something horrible like: "The Holocaust was good", it's important to distinguish between the subjective proposition "I approve of the Holocaust" (which is a true statement for a Nazi) versus the objective proposition "The Holocaust was good in such a way that if someone doesn't find the Holocaust to be good then they are mistaken" (which is a false statement). Failing to make this distinction can lead to 'normative entanglement' (see: https://www.lanceindependent.com/p/normative-entanglement-a-new-name-for-an-old-rhetorical-trick).
• Agent Relativism vs Appraiser Relativism: The former view says that what is in fact right or wrong is relative to individual standards. The latter view says that when a person says "x is wrong", they just mean "I disapprove x." So we can say that agent relativism is normative (about what is in fact morally right or wrong) while appraiser relativism is descriptive (about what people in fact mean when they make moral claims).

As the post shows, many objections to subjectivism trade on failures to understand distinctions such as these.

 

Note: My metaethical views are very much in progress; this is an exercise to help work out my thoughts. Currently, I don't accept the existence of categorical imperatives or irreducible normative properties, but I do accept objective value facts (facts about what is good, bad, better, valuable, worthless, etc.) and the objective descriptive truth of some 'should' and 'ought' claims. So I'm currently convinced of some form of descriptive moral realism while unconvinced of prescriptive moral realism. My lack of an acceptance of irreducible normative properties is something I have in common with subjectivists, and it may turn out that what I say here is compatible with some form of subjectivism or, like the objections responded to in the Substack post, trades on misunderstandings on what subjectivists are actually committed to. One of the core issues of this discussion, one I will be revisiting in future posts, is what it means to make a judgment, how our experiences relate to judgments, and what it means for the truth of a claim to be dependent or independent of judgment.

 

Part 2: Why I don't believe in subjectivism

 

This leads into an important quote from the Substack post:

 

"Subjectivism is not in the business of telling you what sorts of things are right or wrong. It's in the business of telling you what people are doing when they say things are right or wrong."

 

And what are people doing when they claim that an action is morally right or wrong, per subjectivism? They are voicing personal disapproval, and, key point here: They are not voicing a recognition of the stance-independent rightness or wrongness of an action.

 

And that's my key point: I am voicing a recognition of the stance-independent rightness or wrongness of an action when I make a moral claim.

 

Even if some people (or even if most people, or even if all other people besides me) mean "I disapprove of x" when they say "x is wrong", I am an exception to this description. That's not what I mean when I say "x is wrong."

 

Here is what I take to be a non-subjective, objective, judgment-independent, stance-independent (these are all synonyms) claim:

 

(S) Kaitlin Armstrong should not have killed Moriah Wilson.

 

(W) Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong (incorrect, not right, mistaken, evil).

 

(Free will stuff: Is Armstrong blameworthy in the sense that she is liable for just deserts in the form of retributive punishment? I believe not, because I reject the notion of free will. Is Armstrong morally blameworthy in the sense that I can conclude that Armstrong qua experiencer is bad or evil? I don't think it makes any sense to view a person as a subject of experiences in evaluative terms. Is Armstrong critically blameworthy in the sense that what she has [in terms of virtue, reasoning, wisdom, reasons for actions, etc.] is of poor quality? Yes; it does make sense to view the accidental properties of persons in evaluative terms [e.g. my athleticism is an accidental property of me and it's entirely warranted to view its quality as, uh, non-Olympic, to put it nicely]. Is Armstrong qua experiencer unlucky to have these things in poor quality? Yes.)

 

When philosophers talk about tortured babies or murder, I bet that they usually aren't trying to imagine what these things look like. To make things a bit easier to imagine for us, here are a few details of the Wilson murder: 

• Armstrong apparently killed Wilson out of jealousy. 
• Wilson was shot twice in the head and once in the chest.  
• Prosecutor Rick Jones says Wilson screamed in terror before being shot, based on surveillance footage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15DY0NcfyLM).
• Caitlin Cash, friend of Moriah Wilson, said the following in her victim impact statement: "So many people in this room have lost so much. I'm angry. At you. At the utter tragic nature. At the senselessness. At not being able to hear Mo's voice again. I feel deep sadness for the road ahead" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go186wdXS04).
• Moriah Wilson's mother said the following: "I hate what you did to my beautiful daughter. It was very selfish and cowardly. That violent act on May 11th. It was cowardly because you never chose to face her woman to woman in a civil conversation. She would have listened. She was an amazing listener. She would have cared about your feelings."
• A KVUE article describes how Moriah Wilson's brother (Matt Wilson) broke into tears when he took the stand and was asked to speak about his sister (https://www.kvue.com/article/news/crime/kaitin-armstrong-trial-closing-arguments/269-7d7750ae-13e7-477e-a740-8ee80c09c796). Per that article, Matt Wilson said: "My sister had her life taken from her for no reason at all. She'll never ride a bike again, she'll never get married, never buy a home, have kids, never meet someone she loves ... I and my parents will never be able to see that happen and have her enjoy that life and build that life."
• After Armstrong was sentenced to 90 years in prison, Moriah Wilson's father said the following to the press (https://www.courttv.com/title/mo-wilsons-dad-there-really-are-no-winners-here/): "There really are no winners here. This is not a time for celebration, but a time for prayer. A time to pray for our family, our friends, the Armstrong family, and their friends. This sad story is a perfect example of why integrity and honesty are crucial in our personal relationships, and how dishonesty can often lead to unintended consequences. Selfish manipulation, jealousy, and hatred never lead to positive outcomes. Violence is never a good way to solve personal issues. In fact, violence doesn't solve anything. It only leads to more suffering."

It's one thing to talk about murder in the abstract. It's another to talk about Kaitlin Armstrong murdering Moriah Wilson and the horror, tragedy, and thoughtlessness of the event, and the permanent damage done to the families and communities involved.  

 

Do I personally disapprove of Armstrong's killing of Wilson? Yes, and if you were to ask me why, I would give an answer beyond "I don't like it" or "It goes against my values", and there would be a further answer to the question of why I give that answer rather than another. But more on that later. First, when I say "Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong", do I merely mean to say that "I personally disapprove of Armstrong's killing of Wilson"? 

 

Not at all. Instead, I mean to say that "Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson fails to further [goal]."

 

We can substitute [goal] with something like "the goal of maximizing flourishing."

 

This is why when I make a claim of the pattern "x is wrong", I am not making an internal, subjective claim about my values or feelings. I am making an external, objective claim about how an action fails to further a goal.

 

It's almost certainly the case that Armstrong had a goal of living well, of not going to prison (she tried to evade capture multiple times), of not facing the kind of social backlash one faces when one becomes a murderer, and so on. In that case, by killing Moriah, Armstrong failed at her own goals.

 

So <Kaitlin Armstrong should not have killed Moriah Wilson> = <Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goals of living well, not going to prison, increasing one's virtue, building a good reputation and legacy for oneself, etc.>

 

And if Armstrong had empathetic goals (which Armstrong did not have), then killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goal of maximizing the flourishing of Wilson and her family and friends, as well as that of Armstrong's own family and friends. If you understand the goodness of Moriah Wilson's (etc.) would-be flourishing, then you will have such an empathetic goal. If these empathetic goals were required to achieve Armstrong's more fundamental goals (say, the goal of not experiencing the judgment and shame of being on trial for murder), then Armstrong should have had these empathetic goals. In my view, 'should' picks out the action that best furthers a goal or is necessary to further a goal. So I'm not committing myself to some mysterious, irreducible normative property; I see 'should' statements as being descriptively true or false, describing which actions are best or necessary at furthering or achieving a goal.

 

So the killing of Moriah Wilson fails to maximize flourishing, and that is a true statement about the world and not just about myself or my personal feelings. It's true irrespective of anyone's judgment of its truth. When I say "the murder of Moriah Wilson fails to maximize flourishing", I am not saying "Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson? Yuck!", like the emotivist would claim, nor am I merely saying "While killing Moriah Wilson was truly good for Armstrong, at least in the moment if not in the aftermath, I personally disapprove of Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson and I view the act as murder." Rather, I am saying "Just as the world works such that, for example, light travels faster than sound, the world works such that Armstrong's killing of Moriah Wilson was bad, wrong, mistaken, incorrect – a failure."

 

The goals related to flourishing are so typical and obvious that we often assume that people have them. Indeed, if someone did not have the goal of living well, not going to prison, avoiding suffering, and so on, that would be hard to believe. Certainly, I have these goals, so if I were to murder someone in a similar fashion as Armstrong did, I would be failing my goals.

 

So there is a risk of goal-projection here: When someone says that a person ought not have done something, they may be projecting their own goals onto whoever is the subject of their moral criticism. Maybe Armstrong's goal was purely "kill Moriah." Relative to the goal of killing Moriah, Armstrong should kill Moriah. But how does the goal of killing Moriah relate to Armstrong's more fundamental goals? If the goal of killing Moriah fails to further a more fundamental goal, then the goal of killing Moriah is not a goal worth pursuing. Succeeding in that goal would be to fail in a more important one.

 

So we must distinguish which goals we are talking about: 

 

(1) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further Armstrong's goals (immediate and/or ultimate).

 

(2) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further my goals related to flourishing and I am projecting my goals onto Armstrong.

 

(3) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goals Armstrong would have were she to have the goals a typical person has.

 

(4) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goals Armstrong would have were she to have the goals a wise person would have in her situation.

 

When I make the claim:

 

(S) Kaitlin Armstrong should not have killed Moriah Wilson.

 

Is (1), (2), (3), or (4) the correct interpretation of what I mean?

 

In terms of immediate vs ultimate goals, certainly Armstrong had an immediate goal of killing Wilson, and killing Wilson successfully furthered (achieved) that goal. But given Armstrong's more ultimate goal of not going to prison (etc.), killing Wilson failed with respect to that (those) goal(s).

 

With 'ultimate goal' specified for 1, it's possible for all four interpretations to be correct at the same time. All four can be objectively true.

 

Interpretation (2) by itself does not secure the truth of S; if (2) is the only correct interpretation of S when I utter S, then S is false and, to preserve its truth, must be changed to:

 

(S2) I should not kill Moriah Wilson (within the same or similar context in which Armstrong killed Wilson).

 

So to argue that S is true is to argue that (1), (3), or (4) is true. 

 

But now reconsider:

 

(W) Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong (incorrect, not right, mistaken, evil).

 

What is the wrong-maker here? One option is that the wrong-maker is the failure to further a goal in one of the above senses. But I can't make sense of an objective notion of 'wrong' in any way other than the same wrongness as when someone holds a false belief.  

  

So a better option is that the wrong-maker is the false belief behind Armstrong's action, or any false belief that Armstrong is committed to in virtue of performing the action. What is Armstrong's held or committed false belief behind her choice to kill Wilson? A number of possibilities: 

 

"This is worth doing"

"The goodness of this action outweighs its badness"

"This action maximizes flourishing"

"This will make the world a better place" 

"This will make me happy in the long-term"

"This will make me happier than I would be otherwise" 

"This will further my ultimate goals"

"I won't regret this"

 

If Armstrong's ultimate goal is in fact: "Kill Moriah Wilson", then interpretation (1) is false. But a) It seems impossible for that to be Armstrong's ultimate goal, and b) Even if it were Armstrong's ultimate goal, the truth of interpretations (2)–(4) is preserved.

 

But it seems to me that the problem with interpretation (2) can be extended to interpretations (3) and (4). That is, to preserve the truth of (3) and (4), we'd need to similarly change them, respectively, to:

 

(S3) A typical person should not kill Moriah Wilson (within the same or similar context in which Armstrong killed Wilson).

 

(S4) A wise person should not kill Moriah Wilson (within the same or similar context in which Armstrong killed Wilson). 

 

If this is right, then for S to be true, interpretation (1) needs to be true. While it's impossible to know what Armstrong believed at the time of the murder, it seems nearly certain that she believed in false beliefs or was committed to false beliefs at the time as noted above, and it's the wrongness of these false beliefs that grounds the wrongness of the action. So even if interpretations (2)–(4) fail to secure the truth of S, interpretation (1) is easily defended.

 

Someone might wonder what difference there might be in claiming that Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong versus Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was evil.

 

My answer is that 'evil' in this context just means 'wrong' (mistaken, incorrect, holding false beliefs or being committed to false beliefs) within a moral context—a context of consequences, intentions, and virtues—where the happiness, pain, flourishing, and suffering of experiencers is at stake. We especially associate 'evil' with someone's intentions and character; so Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was evil = Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson in the context in which she did betrays Armstrong's vicious character and intentions.

 

Part 3: Clarifying thoughts around goals and 'should' statements

 

When a typical person says "X person should not have done Y", it's not clear what interpretation they would point out as their intended meaning. For all I know, most people don't care about what a person's actual ultimate goals are and instead care mainly about what a person's ultimate goal would be if that person were smart, well-informed, empathetic, and had true beliefs about the goodness and badness of things. So something like interpretation (4) might be a more popular interpretation. The problem with landing on interpretation (1) as I have is that the truth of "X person should not have done Y" literally depends on that person's actual ultimate goals. So consider:

 

(H) Hitler should not have systematically killed millions of Jews.

 

If Hitler's ultimate goal required systematically killing millions of Jews, then H is false under interpretation (1). It's plausible that Hitler's ultimate goals were something like "maximize flourishing for humanity", in which case H is true under interpretation (1). But let's explore what happens when interpretation (1) is false.

 

When it comes to the truth of 'should' statements we have to keep goal-relativity in mind, and while 'should' statements depend on goals, we can argue that some goals are better than others. Even if H is false relative to Hitler's goals, Hitler's goals were themselves insane and evil. So H can be reinterpreted as:

 

(H*) Hitler should not have had goals that required the systematic killing of millions of Jews. 

 

Again, because 'should' statements only make sense in the context of some goal, H* can only be true if there is some more fundamental goal of which the subgoal of systematic killing of millions of Jews fails to further, but that might not apply in Hitler's case. So we have to reinterpret farther:

 

(Hm) Hitler's goals were based on misunderstandings about race, about human flourishing, about the goodness and badness of things, and so on. 

 

(H**) Imagine Hitler had goals that were not based on these misunderstandings. Relative to these goals, Hitler should not have systematically killed millions of Jews.

 

But not only should Hitler not systematically kill millions of Jews relative to goals not based on misunderstandings, Hitler could not have done so if he had had different goals. Given that Hitler did in fact kill millions of Jews, Hitler did in fact have at least immediate goals that required the killing of millions of Jews. H** has us imagine a counterfactual (Hitler having different goals than he did) the truth of which is not relevant to the truth of H (as the truth of H depends on Hitler's actual goals under interpretation (1)).

 

I agree that the word 'should' is often interpreted as approval. So if I say "Hitler should have systematically killed millions of Jews", it sounds like I'm saying "I approve of Hitler systematically killing millions of Jews." But that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is "Killing millions of Jews furthered Hitler's ultimate goals, and not killing millions of Jews would have failed to further Hitler's ultimate goals." But I would also say "I do not approve of Hitler's ultimate goals" and that "Hitler's ultimate goals were based on misunderstandings."

 

So (H) Hitler should not have systematically killed millions of Jews is not necessarily true in the sense that systematically killing millions of Jews failed to further Hitler's ultimate goals, but is true in the sense that (Hm) Hitler's goals were based on misunderstandings about race, about human flourishing, about the goodness and badness of things, and so on and that systematically killing millions of Jews fails to further the goals of a person whose goals are not based on such misunderstandings.

 

So when it comes to:

 

(Hw) Hitler was wrong to systematically kill millions of Jews.

 

Hitler wasn't necessarily wrong in the sense of holding or being committed to false beliefs relative to how systematically killing millions of Jews will further his ultimate goals, but Hitler was wrong in the sense of holding or being committed to false beliefs when it comes to the goals themselves. The wrongness of the beliefs, either held or committed to, that ground Hitler's goals grounds the wrongness of the actions taken to further those goals.

 

Part 4: Intrinsic goods ⟶ Value facts ⟶ Descriptive moral realism

 

Quoting the Substack post: "To my mind realists have a very strange psychology. It’s as if they don’t intrinsically disvalue suffering itself - rather they only instrumentally disvalue it insofar as it’s out of accord with the stance-independent moral facts."

 

This is a curious thing to say, because I would think that it's the intrinsic badness of pain and intrinsic goodness of happiness that provides an argument for axiological realism—the view that there are objective value facts—which in turn provides an argument for some kind of moral realism (not necessarily a "categorical imperative / irreducible normative property" kind of moral realism, which I don't accept, but a descriptive kind of moral realism where moral facts are grounded in value facts, which are themselves descriptive).

 

(It's also a curious thing to say because it sounds like the author is saying that realists who "only instrumentally disvalue pain insofar as it's out of accord with stance-independent moral facts" are making an objective mistake about value. So are there objective mistakes about value? If yes, then isn't that an objective value fact?) 

 

Consider what Sharon Rawlette says (The Feeling of Value, Dudley & White, 2016):

 

"Pain is the most frequently cited example of something that is objectively, intrinsically bad. The badness of torture . . . is probably the moral value the most easily agreed upon and the most frequently appealed to in arguments for the self-evidence of certain moral truths. There is something about the experience of pain that convinces many people of moral realism. . . . I believe that part of the usual phenomenology of pain is an instantiation of the phenomenal quality of undesirability—of badness—and that instantiation of this quality is bad no matter what judgments anyone makes about it. Experience of this quality is what I believe leads many people to assert with such confidence that pain is objectively bad." (75)

 

She then goes on to defend the idea that there is a quale of badness. Shockingly, some philosophers attack the notion of intrinsic badness. But I won't go into that here. Because the topic at hand is subjectivism, a subjectivist can agree that there really is a quale of badness, but will want to say that it is only subjectively true that pain is intrinsically bad. Indeed, they might say that the notion of intrinsicality used here necessarily includes the notion of subjectivity. How could pain be objectively bad?

 

Rawlette helps us untangle what it means to say something is objectively bad:

 

"On my view, moral facts are not mind-independent. They are quite dependent on whether people are in the mental states of pleasure or pain. . . . However, on my view and on these other realist views, facts about the goodness of pleasure and the badness of pain . . . are judgment-independent. These views say . . . pain is pro-tanto bad, and . . . this badness . . . exists independently of whether anyone judges it to be there." (15)

 

So the subjectivist is right that my pain is subjective in the sense that my pain depends on my subjectivity; my pain depends on my mind. More generally, goodness and badness depends on minds. But whether an instance of pleasure or pain has the qualities it does, that doesn't depend on anyone's judgment, not even on the judgment of the subject of that pleasure or pain. Experiences are pre-judgment; indeed, where could our judgments come from, or be based on, if not our experiences? The truth of the statement "Chocolate tastes good" is judgment-dependent (put another way: its truth is relative), but the experience of chocolate tasting good is not judgment-dependent (and the truth that such an experience took place and had the qualities it had is absolute and not relative).

 

Case in point, even if animals are not capable of the kinds of evaluative judgments that we humans make, the pain of animals still has the quality that it does, including the quality of badness.

 

Part 5: Truthseeker objection to anti-realism and the problem of undergenerated reasons

 

Quoting the Substack post: "I find the idea that my goals must somehow be ordained by the universe in order to act on them profoundly bizarre."

 

When I hear this, alarm bells go off in my head. I'm sensitive to any anti-truth sentiments; being a genuine truthseeker, in my mind, comes first above all things in philosophy.

 

A (perhaps not-so-charitable) interpretation of this might be:

 

"I find the idea that I ought to act according to what's true profoundly bizarre."

 

Or:

 

"I find the idea that I ought to be bothered by the fact that my actions are based on false beliefs profoundly bizarre."

 

I worry that anti-realist views imply that an omniscient, perfectly rational person who acts purely according to the facts can commit atrocities, say, a mass shooting. I'm convinced that an omniscient, perfectly rational person who acts purely according to the facts cannot commit a mass shooting. (Call this the "truthseeker objection" to anti-realism, an objection I have yet to see a good response to.)

 

This brings me back to the question of why I disapprove of Armstrong's murder of Wilson. As I understand it, this gets to the "undergeneration of reasons" objection to moral anti-realism (see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-internal-external/#UndArg – strictly speaking this relates to internal vs external reasons, though reasons themselves relate to realism vs anti-realism).

 

Consider a bus driver who drives children to an elementary school each morning during the school semester. The bus driver is aware that there is a cliff near the school, and that if the driver wanted, they could, one morning, drive the bus off the cliff and kill themselves and all the children inside.

 

Nearly all bus drivers nearly all the time would not choose to do this given the chance. Question: Why not? Why wouldn't I drive the bus off the cliff killing myself and dozens of children in the process given the chance?

 

Explanation 1: Evolution. Evolution selects for pro-survival, pro-social behaviors and attitudes, and that explains why I have the pro-survival and pro-social behavior of not driving the bus off a cliff.

 

Explanation 2: Social programming. I have been raised by loving parents and a healthy social and psychological environment, instilling within me a strong sense of empathy, compassion, and a desire to do the right thing. Maybe I've been indoctrinated to believe that evil people go to hell when they die, or that only good people go to heaven when they die. So out of fear of hell, or desire for heaven, or out of empathy and compassion, or a desire to make my parents proud or what have you, any of these things can explain why I wouldn't drive the bus off the cliff.

 

As far as I can tell (an anti-realist can correct me if I'm mistaken), anti-realists take it for granted that something like explanation 1 or 2 (or both) must be true and that's all there is to say about why people do what they do. This undergenerates reasons. There's another explanation, one that I introspect and see to be true in my case (and perhaps true in addition to aspects of explanations 1 and/or 2):

 

Explanation 3: Sight. I see how goodness and badness work. I see how death is a depriving evil, depriving the one who dies from future good experiences. I see how my death would deprive me from future good experiences, and how the deaths of the children would deprive them of future good experiences. I see how I don't know what the future of these children holds, or how much they will suffer or flourish, and so I cannot assume that these deaths would save more than deprive. I see how flourishing works like a web, and how our actions reverberate like ripples in a pond, and how the deaths of these children would tear apart their families and their communities, and would even bring a touch of despair to strangers who hear the story. I understand the intrinsic badness of pain, and the sheer pain of loss, grief, and lost optimism that would occur for the surviving families, leaving wounds that would never truly heal. I understand the goodness of flourishing and the badness of suffering, and by this understanding I have the goal to maximize goodness and minimize suffering. I understand how driving the bus off the cliff would fail to further this goal, and by this I understand why it's true that I ought not drive the bus off the cliff, and I understand why denying this truth is to say something false; its truth is not relative and does not depend on anyone's judgment.

 

This might lead to an argument in favor of external reasons, with an external reason being a theoretical answer to a 'why' question that would answer the question in a true and relevant way grounded in truths external to one's own feelings.

 

Given the 'why' question "Why don't you drive the bus off a cliff?", I could answer "Because I don't feel like it", and while that answer might be true and relevant, it wouldn't be grounded in truths external to my feelings. But the answer given under Explanation 3 is grounded in truths external to my feelings: truths about the goodness and badness of things and about what experiences certain people would have under different circumstances.

 

If an anti-realist says "There are no external reasons", and by that they mean "If someone is asked 'Why don't you drive the bus off a cliff', they will not be able to give a true and relevant answer grounded in truths external to personal feelings", then the anti-realist says something false. I can, and just did, give a true and relevant answer grounded in truths external to my personal feelings to that question.

 

In conclusion, when I say "X action is wrong", I am not primarily making a claim about my own personal preferences, values, likes, dislikes, opinions, or feelings. I am claiming to recognize the truth of the goodness and badness of the actions involved, whether and how an action furthers a goal, and the truth of the falsity of the beliefs that ground the actions and goals involved. These truths remain true regardless of anyone's judgment. It is from this recognition that my disapproval originates, and I can introspect and see that this recognition is part of, and even primary to, the explanation as to why I disapprove of the actions I conclude to be wrong. Explanations of my disapproval that don't include my recognition of external truths undergenerate reasons for my disapproval.