Intellectual Virtue #2 - Michael Huemer on Intellectual Virtue

Michael Huemer, Knowledge, Reality, and Value, 2021. 

 

"What is it to think rationally? It is, in a certain sense, to think correctly. It is, for example, to accept the conclusions that one has good reason to accept, to avoid contradicting oneself, to avoid invalid deductive inferences or uncogent non-deductive inferences, to avoid reasoning circularly, and so on. . . . I don't mean necessarily having true beliefs . . . it is possible to be fully rational but mistaken, and also possible to be highly irrational yet luckily arrive at the truth." (25)  

 

"This shows that one can think rationally yet be wrong, and one can think irrationally yet be right. This can happen, but of course it usually does not. One way of characterizing rational beliefs is to say that they are the beliefs that are likely to be true, given the experiences and information available to you at the time. . . . Notice, by the way, that what is rational to believe is, as we say, 'relative to an observer': In other words, believing p could be rational for one person but not for another. This is because people might have different experiences and information available to them." (26)

 

"People sometimes wonder: Why should we be rational? . . . Given my account of rationality above, this question is not really sensible. It is like the question, 'Why are cats so feline?' or 'What color was George Washington's white horse?': If you understand what the question means, you don't need to ask it. To ask why one should be rational is to request a reason for being rational. But this is, in effect, to ask for a reason for responding to reasons – for example, a reason for believing what one has most reason to believe. If p is the rational thing for you to believe, then, by definition, it makes sense for you to believe that – because that's what we meant by calling it 'rational'. Once you have granted that p is rational, you've already granted that you have sufficient reason to believe p, so you don't need an additional reason 'to believe the rational things'." (27)

 

I can put it this way: Why should we be rational? ⟶ Why should we justify our beliefs and behaviors? ⟶ Why should we give reasons for our beliefs and behaviors? ⟶ Why should we give good answers to theoretical 'why' questions about our beliefs and behaviors? ⟶ Why should we request or demand good answers to 'why' questions? ⟶ Why should we ask why?

 

By asking this question you are demanding or requesting a good answer to a why question while simultaneously questioning that demand or request. That's self-refuting. If you accept the act of asking 'why' questions, then it doesn't make sense to question that act, and if you don't accept the act, then it doesn't make sense to perform it. 

 

"If you understand what the question means, you don't need to ask it." By asking a 'why' question, any 'why' question, you demonstrate an understanding of the need for explanation in terms of one's beliefs and behaviors. If you understand the need for explanation in terms of one's beliefs and behaviors, then you understand the need to be rational.

 

Though you might wonder what is the goal of rationality, or what goal does rationality further. That answer is easy: the goal is to arrive at true beliefs and to avoid false beliefs. As Huemer puts it: "So when someone asks, 'Why be rational?', perhaps they are asking: Why aim at having true beliefs?" (27) So we might put the question of why be rational as: I am seeking the truth about why should we seek truth. Whatever reason you have for seeking the truth about why should we seek truth, that same reason answers the question.

 

Huemer gives two reasons for seeking truth: First, your goals require you to have true beliefs. And second, it is immoral to think irrationally. I agree with these, though I might understand the idea of 'immorality' differently than how Huemer understands it. 

 

I'd add that we might seek truth for simple reasons surrounding pain and pleasure: We might simply feel curious to know what the truth is about something we find interesting, and experience a satisfaction in finding the answer, or experience relief from the frustration of not knowing. We naturally seek explanations to understand the world, and so it's no surprise we would seek explanations to understand why people believe and behave as they do.

 

Continuing:

 

"Intellectual virtues are character traits that help us form beliefs well, particularly traits that tend to help you get to the truth and avoid error in normal circumstances. Rationality is the master intellectual virtue, the one that subsumes all the others. (So if you are rational, you are intellectually virtuous, and vice versa.) But there is another intellectual virtue that is also extremely important, so much so that it also deserves a section of its own in this chapter. The virtue is objectivity. Objectivity, like all other intellectual virtues, is part of rationality. The character trait of objectivity is a disposition to resist bias, and hence to base one's beliefs on the objective facts. The main failures of objectivity are cases where your beliefs are overly influenced by your personal interests, emotions, or desires, or by how the phenomenon in the world is related to you, as opposed to how the external world is independent of you." (32)

 

". . . we often think of those we are arguing with as opponents, but we really shouldn't do so. We should think of them as fellow truth-seekers. . . ." (33)

 

"Objectivity is not to be confused with neutrality . . . I am not recommending that you refuse to take a side on controversial issues. It is generally false that both sides are equally good, and you should not refuse to evaluate issues. What I am recommending is that, if you take a side, you nevertheless treat the other side fairly, even while defending your side. I am recommending that you treat intellectual debate as a mutual truth-seeking enterprise, rather than as a personal contest." (34)

 

"As a rational thinker, you want your beliefs to be true, so you should welcome the opportunity to discover if your own current view is wrong; then you can eliminate a mistaken belief and move closer to the truth. If you are afraid to confront the strongest opposing views, represented in the fairest way possible, that means that you suspect that your own beliefs are not up to the challenge, which means you already suspect that your beliefs are false." (34) 

 

"The main thing human beings need, to make progress on debates in philosophy (and religion, and politics), is more objectivity. The human mind is not really designed for discovering abstract, philosophical truths. Our natural tendency is to try to advance our own interests or the interests of the group we identify with, and we tend to treat intellectual issues as a proxy battleground for that endeavor. Again, we don't expressly decide to do this; we do it automatically unless we are making a concerted, conscious effort not to. And naturally, when we do this, we form all sorts of false beliefs, because reality does not adjust itself to whatever is convenient for our particular social faction."  (35)

 

"All the paradigm forms of prejudice are, centrally and obviously, failures to be objective." (38)

 

Huemer gives tips on becoming more objective. Paraphrasing:

 

1) Acknowledge your bias;

 

2) Diversify your sources of information;

 

3) Think of reasons why your own views might be wrong.

 

Huemer points out a curious paradox – the paradox between bias of knowledge. The most biased folks tend to be the most knowledgeable. A scientist is biased in favor of the view that science is really important, but that scientist is also knowledgeable about science. The solution is to not throw out biased views automatically, as that would require throwing out well-informed views. Instead, diversify your exposure to well-informed-yet-biased views to get a more balanced picture of the options available and the arguments for and against each option.

 

I'm not sure I'd consider rationality to be the mother virtue of intellectual virtues. Defining rationality as "thinking well" makes rationality sound no different from intelligence. Though I suppose I actually would consider intelligence to be a fundamentally important trait for increasing the probability that one arrives at true beliefs and avoids false ones. But 1) intelligence needn't lead to the kinds of truths we are concerned with in this context, which are philosophical truths, and 2) Intelligence (the breadth and depth of one's mental powers) is probably considered a capacity or ability rather than a virtue. I'm not sure the distinction matters or is all that accurate; as far as I'm concerned, any characteristic of a person that makes it more likely for that person to arrive at true philosophical beliefs and avoid false ones is an intellectual virtue, which would include intelligence as a virtue.

 

Regardless, I would think of "passion for truth" or "love of truth" or "hunger for truth" or "curiosity" or "desire to believe what's true" as being the mother virtue of the intellectual virtues. Only someone who cares about truth will care about whether they possess all the other virtues that lead to truth, and indeed it may be a person's passion for truth that explains how it's even possible for that person to come to possess other intellectual virtues.

 

In light of what I say in this post: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/02/what-is-virtue-what-does-it-mean-to-be.html

 

I might do the taxonomy like so:

 

Intelligence = the breadth and depth of one's mental powers.

 

Wisdom = the mental power to be able to see (i.e. understand) the golden mean between two vices; the ability to recognize what is virtuous and vicious. (The idea being that it's impossible to understand without acting according to that understanding, assuming you have the power to act; in other words, wisdom immediately leads to virtue; it's impossible to be wise and not virtuous.)

 

Virtue = the golden mean between two vices; a virtuous action is the action a virtuous person would perform, an action that achieves the optimal balance between two extreme actions; a virtue is a character trait that a) describes what kind of a person you are, namely how you are b) disposed to behave given various situations, in this case c) behaving in a manner corresponding to the virtue in question. For example, bravery is a character trait that a) describes a person as brave, meaning that b) they are disposed to c) act bravely rather than recklessly (vice 1) or cowardly (vice 2).

 

['Person' here is understood in terms of your accidental properties. That is, virtues and vices are technically things you have; you are not identical to your virtues and vices.] 

 

There are different options for understanding what it means to act bravely. Aristotle would say that the brave man feels the right amount of fear. A reckless man feels too little fear than what he ought; a coward feels too much fear, while a brave man feels the right amount of fear. We might call this an emotion-based view of virtue.

 

An issue with this view is that there are cases where the right amount of fear you ought to feel is little to none. But it doesn't sound right to say a man acted bravely when he felt little to no fear; rather, such a man is fearless, which may or may not be a good thing depending on the situation.

 

A second option would be to say that a brave man is one who feels potentially a great deal of fear but overcomes that fear through strength. This is especially important when you consider people with anxiety disorders. When you have an anxiety disorder, you experience an unreasonable amount of fear. But it doesn't sound right to say that people with anxiety are automatically cowards. If the amygdalae in your brain are physically unusual, through mutation or a neurodevelopmental disorder (like autism), then it's not your fault that you feel too much fear; your brain literally causes you to feel that way. People with anxiety can learn to manage it and can, at least on occasion, overcome the overwhelming amount of fear their anxiety causes them to feel. So people with anxiety disorders are positioned to exemplify all the more bravery, because they have more opportunities to do so (because anxiety makes you nervous in even ordinary situations) and because the amount of fear they feel is greater than normal.

 

We might call this a strength-based view of virtue.

 

Maybe the emotion view is correct for some virtues, while the strength view is correct for others. For example, in the case of bravery, the strength view is correct; the brave person has the strength to do the right thing despite their fear; a coward fails to overcome their fear while a reckless person too easily overcomes their fear, failing to be cautious. But in the case of confidence, feeling too much confidence is arrogance while feeling too little is insecurity.

 

An issue with the strength view may be that there's no such thing as having too much strength, so a vice of excess strength doesn't really make sense. For example, you might argue that it's exactly the emotion of arrogance that allows a person to overcome their fear too easily. So the emotion view can't be avoided.

 

So a third option might be a hybrid view on which vices of deficiency are deficiencies of strength, while vices of excess are excesses of emotion.

 

But you could argue that there are situations where a deficiency of emotion is a failure to appreciate the magnitude of a situation. Righteous indignation is an appropriate kind of anger in reaction to injustice. Failing to feel anger in the face of injustice is apathy or callousness.

 

Besides, you might argue that even in the case of bravery, where one has sufficient strength to overcome their fear, that there is an appropriate level of emotion, something like determination, that allows one to overcome their fear. So bravery might be something like "feeling appropriate levels of determination to the point of overcoming feelings of fear", cowardice = "a deficiency of determination to the point of being overwhelmed by fear" or "feeling overly concerned with one's own survival at the expense of the greater good", recklessness = "arrogance or ignorance in the face of threat, leading to a lack of caution." This satisfies the intuition that in order to count as brave, fear must be present. 

 

A note on dispositions: You can take a probabilistic view of dispositions or a determining view. The probabilistic view says that if someone is disposed to do x, then generally they will do x, but it's not a guarantee. The determining view says that if someone is disposed to do x, then they will do x given the chance. 

 

I lean toward the determining view for the following reason: if someone does something cowardly, then it sounds strange to describe that person as brave because "they generally do the brave thing but didn't this time." The person is a de facto coward with respect to that situation. When someone is brave in some cases and not others, that's not because dispositions are probabilistic, but because there are many types of bravery and someone can possess some braveries while lacking others.

 

Given a consequentialist view, the badness of vice is grounded in the bad consequences of vices, and the goodness of virtue is grounded in the good consequences of having virtue.

 

Rationality, as a character trait, could refer to a number of things:

 

Rationality(1): The mental power related to formal reasoning, such as the ability to understand logical operators, to see whether an argument is valid or invalid, and to spot contradictions.

 

Rationality(2): The mental power related to informal reasoning, such as the ability to understand the importance of intellectual virtue, the importance of steelmanning rather than strawmanning, the ability to understand which fallacies matter and why and when, how to be a good discussant, and so on.

 

Rationality(3): The character trait that constitutes the disposition of having good reasons for one's beliefs and behaviors (in other words, the disposition of giving good answers to 'why' questions about your beliefs and behaviors). Basically, reasonableness. Also: The ability to tell which reasons are in fact good ones; not believing things on the basis of bad reasons; being "responsive to reasons."

 

Rationality(4): Being rational as opposed to emotional, meaning feeling the right degree of emotion. Given the emotion view of virtue, this just means to be virtuous, or disposed to feel the right emotion to the right degree. Basically, levelheadedness. (Which translates into choosing the balanced action – it is by feeling the right emotion to the right degree that the right action is chosen. But with virtue, as an expression of wisdom, there's also a sense of understanding the consequences of various actions and being disposed to choosing the action with optimal consequences. So we might say it is by understanding that one feels the right emotion to the right degree.)

 

You can probably collapse all of these into a unified sense of rationality:

 

Rationality(U): The mental power related to understanding the principles of formal and informal reasoning and to analyzing arguments. This, combined with sufficient opportunities of education and reflection, instills within you the disposition of giving good answers to questions about why you believe and behave as you do.

This leaves out Rationality(4), but that is captured better by the notion of being virtuous anyway.

 

Test: Let's imagine the following:

 

A Christian refuses to read atheist books because he is afraid of finding out that he is wrong about views he wants to be right about.

 

This is a clear-cut case of intellectual cowardice. Question: What makes it cowardly?

 

A) The Christian feels too much fear. Really, he shouldn't be afraid at all of having his views challenged, and instead should be eager to have his beliefs corrected.

 

B) The right thing to do is to subject your beliefs to challenges. That's the only way to find out if they withstand scrutiny. If your goal is to believe what's true and avoid believing what's false, then you must do this. What's cowardly is not feeling the fear of losing your most cherished beliefs, which is a perfectly understandable feeling, but rather allowing that fear to prevent you from doing what's right – failing to overcome that fear with the determination to do the right thing.

 

On one hand, it makes sense to say that the virtuous person is the one who feels the ideal kinds and levels of emotions. It would be impressive for a Christian to fearlessly engage with atheist material with the understanding that he will grow closer to the truth either way. So is fearlessness the real virtue here?

 

And yet, there are many explanations why a Christian would be scared of the idea that Christianity is not true.

 

1) All past attempts to convert people are retroactively misguided, embarrassing, and harmful;

 

2) You have been massively mistaken all this time;

 

3) Your parents / community have been massively mistaken all this time;

 

4) Your heroes, such as pastors and missionaries, have been massively mistaken all this time;

 

5) Concluding that Christianity is false means losing your place in the church and losing your sense of community, requiring you to go alone or to find a new community (who may or may not accept you, and it's not like they will accept you because it's "what Jesus would do");

 

6) Losing family members and potentially being disowned by parents;

 

7) Facing the reality that death is permanent end of you, losing the sense that life is this grand, eternal adventure – in effect coming to view life as infinitely less meaningful than before;

 

8) Facing the reality that death is the permanent end of you, losing the sense that you are a being of infinite worth – in effect coming to the view that your value is very limited;

 

9) Facing the reality that there is no God who loves you, removing a significant source of validation and sense of self-worth;

 

10) Removing all future experiences of feeling God's presence in prayer and feeling loved by God;

 

11) Removing the sense of purpose of going forth to create disciples of every nation;

 

12) Feeling pressured by time now that you only have one life to live;

 

13) Losing the sense of safety that comes with believing that there is a loving God watching over you and your family, potentially becoming much more anxious and distrusting of life, losing the ability to embrace life as this fundamentally safe thing and instead living with a greater sense of dread, fear, and paranoia;

 

14) Losing the sense that life is ultimately fair and just as God will perfectly judge everyone in the end and set the record straight – instead, life is made out to be brutally unfair and all sorts of injustices will never be set straight ever – this is especially true for innocent victims of disease and murder;

 

15) Losing the belief that evils will be redeemed and made meaningful – instead, evils are left gratuitous;

 

16) Losing the hope that you will one day see your loved ones again in heaven;

 

17) Losing the sentiment that this world is worth fighting for;

 

18) Losing the belief that you must be as good a person as possible because this life is a test by God, and any evils committed will be acknowledged by God later – instead, evil people straight up get away with their evil in many cases and are indeed often advantaged by it;

 

19) Losing the belief that life is ultimately full of a deep spiritual reality, and that life is a grand story – instead, life is profoundly shallow, empty, and boring, nothing more than particles smashing together in extremely complex, but ultimately meaningless, ways.

 

20) Losing all basis by which to live one's life, feeling lost and confused;

 

21) Losing all sense of one's identity and place in the world (no longer made in God's image or a Child of God or regenerated by the Holy Spirit). 

 

The thought of losing all of this is understandably terrifying. So it's not remotely fair to expect a Christian to not feel any fear whatsoever over the thought that Christianity is false. But it is fair to call out a Christian for not overcoming that fear and doing the right thing as a truthseeker and engaging in opposition material. 

 

It seems like to understand what makes something a virtue we must first understand what makes a virtue good and what makes a vice bad, and thus we must understand what grounds the success of a virtue and what grounds the failure of a vice. Virtues are related to hitting some kind of mark, but what mark is that exactly?

 

We can keep these questions in mind as we go through this series on intellectual virtue.

Anti-Philosophy

William Lane Craig on the rationality of atheists

"No one is saying that it's compelling that every rational person has to believe that God exists on the basis of the evidence. I've avoided, I think if you look at my work, trying to bludgeon opponents as Keith seems to think I do. I don't think I've ever said that atheists are irrational. What I've argued is that faith is reasonable – reasonable faith – that it's rational in view of the evidence to have faith. And I don't think I've ever denounced atheists as irrational. Now, to be sure, I think that many atheists do believe some irrational things. For example, I do think it's irrational to believe that the universe popped into being uncaused out of nothing. I think it's irrational to believe, as some atheists do, that nothing ever begins to exist. I think it's irrational to think that time is not real, as some have claimed. But I've never tried to say that my opponents in these debates or the people I'm trying to persuade are irrational."

 

Reasonable Faith Podcast, "Atheism and Theistic Hypotheses", October 11, 2021, URL = <https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/atheism-and-theistic-hypotheses>.

 

"When I'm asked what is the most common misunderstanding about my work, I don't think that it would be about any particular argument that I offer. I think perhaps it would be that I regard these arguments as somehow rationally compelling, so that anyone who disagrees with me about them is irrational. And I've never said that."

 

YouTube, drcraigvideos, "The Biggest Misconception About My Work—Clearing the Confusion", June 27, 2025, URL = <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIEmLcDjxxQ>. 

Project: A Reverse Ontological Argument With a Phenomenal Symmetry Breaker

1) Carl Brownson III - EVIL AND THE ONTOLOGICAL DISPROOF - CUNY Dissertation, 2017.

 

2) Gordon, "God's problem of cut-and-paste." Faith and Philosophy, 2025.

 

3) Guleserian, "God and possible worlds: The modal problem of evil." Noûs, 1983.

 

4) Oppy, Graham. "The ontological arguments." Chapter 4 in Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Philosophy, edited by Donald M. Borchert, 51–64. Farmington Hills: Gale, 2016.

 

5) Oppy, Graham, Joshua Rasmussen, and Joseph Schmid, "Ontological Arguments", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2024/entries/ontological-arguments/>.

 

6) Rasmussen, Joshua. How Reason Can Lead to God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

 

7) Fritz, Peter, Tien Chun Lo, and Joseph Schmid. "Symmetry Lost: A Modal Ontological Argument for Atheism?" Noûs, forthcoming.

 

8) Schmid, Joseph. "Symmetry Breakers for the Modal Ontological Argument." Manuscript. URL = <https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHSBF-2>.

 

9) Schmid, Joseph. "Symmetry's Revenge." Analysis, 2023.

First Pass: Liar Paradox

I saw someone react to the Liar Paradox on YouTube so I'd thought I'd share some old thoughts of my own that form something of a first impression or first pass at the problem. I haven't read much on this topic, so I still have much to learn.

 

Part 1: Start with the Barber Paradox

 

A barber shaves all and only those people in the town that don't shave themselves. Question: Does the barber shave himself? If the barber shaves himself, then the 'only' part of the rule is violated, because the barber only shaves those people who don't shave themselves. If the barber does not shave himself, then the 'all' part of the rule is violated, because the barber shaves all people who don't shave themselves. So either way, the rule will be violated. The rule is impossible.

 

If we force the rule to go through, then the barber does and does not shave himself. Contradiction. Though there is another option: Keep the rule, but it applies to everyone except the barber. So we end up with the following inconsistent set:

 

1) Self-reference;

 

2) The Rule;

 

3) The Law of Non-Contradiction.

 

You can only keep two out of these three. One of them has to go.

 

Option A: If you keep 2 and 3, then self-reference is impossible.

 

Option B: If you keep 1 and 3, then the rule is impossible.

 

Option C: If you keep 1 and 2, then there are true contradictions.

 

Part 2: Option C doesn't work 

 

I have the following issue with Option C: You can verify that it doesn't work! At the end of the day, the barber will have either shaved himself or not. That's undeniable. So no matter what, Option C doesn't work, at least not in this case. But whatever necessary truths there are that would ground (or constitute) the necessary truth that Option C doesn't work, I don't see why those same necessary truths wouldn't apply in parallel cases.

 

So let's consider two parallel cases: Set Theory and Propositions. These are known as Russell Paradoxes after Bertrand Russell.

 

Part 3: Russell Paradoxes 

 

Set Paradox: There is a set that contains all and only those sets that don't contain themselves.

 

This is why it's nice to start with a concrete example like the barber paradox. With the set paradox, it's harder to see that Option C must be rejected. But if we can and must reject Option C in the barber case, I don't see why we shouldn't do the same in this case. So again, either the set does not self-refer OR the set's rule is not true because it's impossible. Just as there can be no self-referenced barber that satisfies the barber rule, for the exact same reason there can be no self-referenced set that satisfies the set rule. The barber is impossible, and so is the set. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

 

Proposition Paradox: There is a proposition about all and only those propositions that aren't about themselves.

 

Same deal. Thanks to the barber paradox we know that Option C doesn't work. And there are no relevant differences between the barber paradox and the set or proposition paradoxes. At least, this is true if we discover the principle behind the impossibility of Option C for the barber case and see that it applies just as well to these parallel cases. 

 

Part 4: The principle behind the impossibility of Option C 

 

The question now is, why is it the case that Option C is impossible? I can see that it is the case that Option C is impossible, because I can see that at the end of the day the barber will have either shaved himself or not, which means that either the rule has been violated or that the rule doesn't apply to the barber. But why is it that I can see such a thing? What makes Option C impossible?

 

Here's one explanation: Option C is impossible because true contradictions are impossible; the Law of Non-Contradiction is necessarily true.

 

Part 5: Option A (eliminate self-reference) or B (eliminate the rule), or leave it open?

 

Now how do we decide whether to go for Option A and say that self-reference is impossible, or B and say that the rule is impossible? One option would be to leave it open and say you can pick either one.

 

But we can force the issue by forcing self-reference:

 

Barber*: There is a barber that, including himself, shaves all and only those people in the town that don't shave themselves.

 

Set*: There is a set that, including itself, contains all and only those sets that don't contain themselves.

 

Proposition*: There is a proposition that, including itself, is about all and only those propositions that aren't about themselves.

 

Now my hand is forced and there is only one option: Option B. The rule itself is impossible.

 

It doesn't seem like there is a similar way to force the rule. Consider:

 

Barber**: There is a barber that, including himself, shaves all and only those people in the town that don't shave themselves, and this rule is necessarily true.

 

This doesn't force my hand in a similar way, because the rule is still just false. By tacking on the "necessarily true" part at the end, you're just adding another false bit to the rule.

 

But if self-reference is impossible, then the "including himself" bit is impossible. If that bit is included in the original rule, then you'd have a case where both self-reference and the rule are impossible, which amounts to choosing both Option A and Option B, which is not possible.

 

You could say that the "including himself" bit adds a second rule, and so Option A involves denying the self-reference rule while Option B involves denying the original rule.

 

So as far as I can tell, Option A and Option B are both available. Insofar as self-reference is necessary, then Option B is selected, and insofar as the original rule is necessary, then Option A is selected. But I don't see a way to force the truth of either the self-reference rule or the original rule. A couple thoughts:

 

Thought a) Intuitively, it feels like self-reference is easier to accept over the rule, because the rule itself is ad hoc while self-reference is a more stable or familiar concept. But I don't have a strong enough grasp of this to make an argument for treating self-reference as necessary.

 

Thought b) You could combine the self-reference rule with the original rule to get one rule with three components: the self-reference component, the 'all' component, and the 'only' component. This changes the Options from above to what's below:

 

Option A*: Deny the rule by eliminating the self-reference component.

 

Option B*: Deny the rule by eliminating the 'all' component.

 

Option C*: Deny the rule by eliminating the 'only' component.

 

Option D: Accept all components of the rule and reject the Law of Non-Contradiction.

 

Just as with Option C, Option D is necessarily rejected in the barber case. The only explanation I can think of that explains why Option D is impossible is because contradictions are impossible. But if the impossibility of contradictions is what explains the necessary rejection of Option D, then that same explanation carries over to parallel cases.

 

There is a theoretical Option E, which is to accept A*, B*, and C* and deny all components of the rule. But that would fail to accurately describe what happened to the barber. The options can be framed as descriptions:

 

Description A: The barber successfully shaves all and only those people who don't shave themselves other than himself. The barber is an exception to the rule because self-reference is impossible in this case, because self-reference in this case entails a contradiction and contradictions are impossible, and anything that entails an impossibility is itself impossible.

 

Description B: The barber shaves all and only those who don't shave themselves, including himself. The barber does not shave himself. So really, he shaves almost all and only those people who don't shave themselves.

 

Description C: The barber shaves all and only those who don't shave themselves, including himself. The barber shaves himself. So really, he shaves all but not only those who do not shave themselves.

 

Description D: The barber shaves all and only those who don't shave themselves, including himself. The barber is both shaved and unshaved in the same sense at the same time.

 

(I suppose there is a bonus option: The barber is excluded from the category 'people' so that he does indeed shave all and only those people who do not shave themselves. But I take that to be clearly false: the barber is necessarily a person.)

 

Description D necessarily gives a false description. But do any of the other descriptions necessarily give a false description?

 

Following 'Thought a)', you could argue that as a matter of description, self-reference is taking place. You could imagine a kind of phenomenal self-reference in the form of an intentional self-reference. The barber says to himself, "I am going to shave all and only those people who don't shave themselves, including myself." There is now a mental, intentional moment of self-reference. Because of that, if you describe the situation as lacking self-reference, your description is incorrect. But does an intention of self-reference necessitate self-reference? You could describe the situation in terms of the barber intending and failing to self-reference. 

 

Purely intuitively, I suspect there's a way to get necessary self-reference out of the description, which would mean that Option A gives a necessarily false description. For example, if intentional self-reference entails necessary self-reference, then you can have your necessary self-reference at least that way. But I don't have a way to show this at the moment. So as far as I can tell, Description A, B, or C can apply to the barber paradox, the set paradox, and the proposition paradox.

 

Part 6: The Liar Paradox

 

Liar: This sentence is false.

 

The Law of Non-Contradiction explains why Description D is necessarily false. So if we take the idea seriously that there are no true contradictions, what becomes of the liar paradox? I see a number of options:

 

L1: Failed Reference Problem: 'This sentence' fails to refer to anything, because, like with Option A above, self-reference is impossible here because it entails a contradiction. So the liar is claiming that some indeterminate thing is false. But indeterminate things cannot be false. So the Liar is false.

 

Or, because 'This sentence' fails to refer to anything, the Liar sentence fails to be about anything, and thus fails to express a proposition, because propositions are necessarily about something.

 

L2: Fragment Problem: 'This sentence' refers to the literal sentence fragment 'this sentence', in which case the liar is saying that the sentence fragment 'this sentence' is false. But sentence fragments do not express propositions, and only propositions and their expressions can take on a truth value. So the Liar is false.

 

L3: Nesting Problem: 'This sentence' refers to the sentence 'This sentence is false.' But that means we can substitute any instance of 'this sentence' with 'This sentence is false.' But that means we have an infinite regress. When we unpack it once, we get: This sentence is false is false. When we unpack it again, we get: This sentence is false is false is false. When we fully unpack it, we get an infinite number of "is false" phrases at the end, and so the sentence never completes. Assuming propositions must complete, the Liar fails to express a proposition and so is neither true nor false.

 

L4: Aboutness Problem: This sentence is false. False about what? False about its being false. False about its being false about what? False about its being false about its being false. False about its being false about its being false about what? Again, this goes on forever, and the sentence has this infinite regress of intentionality. But propositions don't have regressing intentionality. So the Liar fails to express a proposition.

 

This applies to the 'Truth Teller': This sentence is true. True about what?

 

L5: The Meta Problem: For every proposition there is a meta proposition about that proposition. For example:

 

Proposition: The earth revolves around the sun.

 

Meta proposition: <The earth revolves around the sun> is true.

 

Meta meta proposition: [<The earth revolves around the sun> is true] is false.

 

Meta meta meta proposition: ([<The earth revolves around the sun> is true] is false) is true. Or: It's true that it's false that it's true that the earth revolves around the sun.

 

We can call these meta(1), meta(2), and meta(3). The truth value of a meta(1) proposition depends on the truth value of the corresponding proposition. That dependence relationship only goes one way; propositions can never have a truth value that depends on the truth of the meta proposition.

 

If 'This sentence is false' is translated as 'The meta proposition of this sentence is false', then the Liar is either false because it claims there is a false meta proposition when there isn't one, or fails to express a proposition because propositions cannot have their truth value depend on their meta proposition.

 

So it seems to me there is at least one way, if not several ways, that the Liar fails to express a proposition, or expresses a false proposition. I don't see any need to give up the Law of Non-Contradiction.

 

Part 7: Paradoxes of Law

 

While I'm at it, why not address paradoxes of law.

 

The following is my paraphrase of Kane B's formulation, wherever he got it from, from one of Kane B's videos:

 

Sidney is an Australian aboriginal. Like many aboriginals, she is a housekeeper. The owner of the house becomes fond of her and writes her into his will. After he dies, Sidney becomes the owner of his land.

 

There are two Australian laws:

 

Law(1): If you own land, you have a right to vote.

Law(2): If you are an aboriginal, you do not have a right to vote.

 

Normally, aboriginals cannot own land, as they are not allowed to purchase it. And normally, no one gifts land to aboriginals. But in this unique case, Sidney is both a landowner and aboriginal, and so Sidney both has and does not have a right to vote.

 

Because a right is a legal status granted by law, it's undeniable that Sidney has the legal status 'Can Vote' and it's undeniable that Sidney does not have the legal status 'Can Vote'. So we have a true contradiction: It's both true and false that Sidney has a right to vote.

 

But we see a similar problem as with the barber paradox: At the end of the day, it's undeniable that Sidney will either be allowed to cast a ballot or not. If Sidney is allowed to cast a ballot that counts, then she has a right to vote. If Sidney is forbidden from voting, or if her vote is tossed on account of her being aboriginal, then she does not have a right to vote.

 

What would be impressive would be showing Sidney casting a vote and not casting a vote in the same sense at the same time. But that can't be shown, because it's impossible, because contradictions are impossible. Instead, all we have is this suspicious notion of "legal status". 

 

I don't know how jurisprudence systems interpret the notion of 'legal status' or how they interpret what laws are really saying or doing. At the very least, we can say that if a law makes a false claim or implies acceptance of a false claim, then that doesn't make that claim true.

 

If we interpret the laws as saying:

 

Law(1*): If you own land, you have a right to vote. That is, you can cast a vote without being physically stopped or you can vote without having your vote tossed.

Law(2*): If you are an aboriginal, you do not have a right to vote. That is, you will be physically stopped from casting a vote, or if you do vote your vote will be tossed.

  

Now it's undeniable that one of the laws will be proven false when Sidney goes to vote. 

 

Instead of interpreting rights as these magical legal statuses that people have, if rights are interpreted as descriptions of what will happen given varying circumstances or how the state will treat a citizen, then the paradox resolves. 

 

Another interpretation:

 

Law(1**): If you own land, you have a right to vote. That is, you can vote without violating any laws. 

Law(2**): If you are an aboriginal, you do not have a right to vote. That is, there are no laws granting you the right to vote.

 

In this case, both laws are false. Sidney cannot vote without violating any laws and there is a law granting Sidney the right to vote. So both laws contain falsehoods with Sidney acting as the exception to both laws.

 

Another interpretation of law is that laws are something like performative commands under fictional canons. So if I say "Harry Potter defeated Voldemort", I say something true relative to a fictional canon, but not true in any absolute sense. If I write my own fanfic where "Voldemort defeated Harry Potter" is true, then that claim is true relative to a fictional canon as well. But that doesn't mean there's a true contradiction that Harry Potter defeated and failed to defeat Voldemort.

 

So Sidney could have a right to vote according to a canon established by one law, and not have a right to vote according to a canon established by another law. But just like fictions, there is no absolute truth to either canon. I'm aware of Kathleen Stock's idea of collective fiction. So law might work in that way, as a collective fiction. State and country borders, and legal entities being treated as persons, are examples of legal fictions. Legal fictions correspond to social facts, facts about how people behave as if something is true. So while there is no objective border that delineates one state from another, we will still behave as if such a border exists. Likewise, while there is no objective fact that someone has or does not have a right, we will behave as if that person has or does not have that right.

 

Another way to impress me would be this: When lawmakers discover that Sidney's situation creates a contradiction within the law, they leave the contradiction. After all, if contradictions are not fundamentally problematic, lawmakers can just leave the contradiction there. Sure, it's true that Sidney has a right to vote. And sure, it's true that she doesn't. What's the problem? Haven't you heard, there are true contradictions, and this is one of them. Of course, that's not what happens. Lawmakers or a judge would issue a ruling and resolve the contradiction, either by having one law trump the other or by changing the laws. If laws are meant to dictate behavior, then it is exactly because we cannot behave as if a contradiction is true that is why the contradiction cannot be left in the law. The idea that contradictions are fundamentally problematic makes sense of all of this.

 

(Imagine what that behavior would look like and how absurd it would be. Sidney casts her ballot. When folks are asked whether Sidney voted, they will say "Yes she did, but also no she didn't." And imagine that her vote happens to be the tie-breaking vote. "Yes, the election was a tie. It's also the case that the election was not a tie." The elected official would be both elected and unelected, and they would have to both implement and not implement a tie-breaking procedure because there both was and was not a tie. Imagine if through that procedure the rival candidate wins the tie-breaker. Then you'd have two officials, both elected and non-elected, both serving and not serving the same governing role. Any laws they veto would be both vetoed and not-vetoed. And so on.)

 

The point is that what laws are really doing metaphysically needs to be explained. Given the surface-level explanations here, there's no true contradiction in the Sidney case.

 

(As an aside, I see how a representational theory of truth can work neatly with fictions: By treating a fiction as a backdrop for external properties, then you can measure internal properties against that backdrop. So the internal properties within the sentence "Harry Potter marries Hermione" fails to match with the "external" properties of the canon established by the Harry Potter books. But the properties of the canon itself fail to match the external properties of the real world. So that's how fictional claims can be true and false in different ways at the same time.)

 

I don't have a citation for this but I think it's a fun story. There's an interview on YouTube featuring JC Beall where he mentions that Graham Priest doesn't take Liar paradoxes to be the best candidate for true contradictions, but takes paradoxes of law to be better candidates. Beall implies that he disagrees with this and thinks paradoxes of law are no good, or at least not as good as Liar paradoxes. So while it's tempting to think that all logicians who deny classical logic in favor of some kind of subclassical or paraconsistent logic are on the same team, in typical philosophy fashion there can still be a great deal of disagreement within that space. So even philosophers who defend subclassical logics can agree with my conclusions about one category of paradoxes while disagreeing with my conclusions about the other category.

Rationalistic answers to Douglas Portmore's questions over moral theories

I'm not necessarily advocating for the following answers, just curious as to what they would be under rationalistic metaethics:

 

Source: https://sites.google.com/site/dwportmore/kantsequentialism-a-morality-of-ends. Portmore's words are in red.

 

(Q1) Which acts are wrong? Actions that depend on false beliefs are wrong.

 

(Q2) Which feature of actions is the fundamental wrong-maker? The falsity of the false belief that grounds the action is the wrong-maker.

 

(Q3) What accounts for this being the fundamental wrong-maker? To be wrong about something is to be mistaken, and to be mistaken is to hold a false belief (or other doxastic attitude similar to belief; henceforth 'belief'). Wrong actions, to be wrong, must depend upon a mistake, and thus a false belief. ('Mistake' can also refer to an action that fails to further a goal or leads to a goal not being met.)

 

(Q4) What should be the ultimate moral concern of each agent? If 'should' as in "You should do x" means "Failing to do x is a mistake", then we can analyze 'should' statements in terms of mistakes. 

 

Mistakes, in turn, can be analyzed in terms of goals: "Failing to do x fails to further goal y."

 

So the notion of 'should' depends on 'mistake' and 'mistake' depends on 'goal' or 'end'.

 

So you can't ask what goal a person should have, because 'shoulds' don't exist until a goal is already in place.

 

The exception is if the goal you are talking about is a subgoal, the failing to meet of which fails to further a more ultimate goal.  

 

So if 'ultimate moral concern' means 'ultimate moral goal', then it's impossible for there to be a true or false 'should' statement about that, as 'shoulds' only come after a goal is already in place. The truth or falsity of 'should' statements just is the truth or falsity about what furthers a goal.

 

What you can ask is "What is the ultimate desire or moral concern or value concern of each person?" Alternatively: "What are the moral urgencies or exigencies of each person?"

 

The answer will differ from person to person, but generally I think the ultimate urgency is first and foremost to avoid unbearable suffering (in fact, I suspect that it is necessarily the case that the greatest moral urgency is to be free from unbearable suffering). After that, the ultimate urgency is to flourish, which roughly means: 

 

A human is flourishing when: 

1) Their basic needs are met, such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
 
2) Their more advanced psychological needs are met, including independence, acceptance into a community, feeling useful to others, and feeling a sense of belonging in the world.

 
3) They experience happiness on a regular basis.
 
4) They do not experience pain on a regular basis.
 
5) The pains they do experience are instrumentally good, such as the natural pains that accompany self-improvement and the establishing and maintaining of a eudaimonic system (guilt, forgiveness, effort, etc.). The instrumental goodness of these pains outweighs their intrinsic badness.

 

In other words, pains are always lesser evils that lead to greater goods. Flourishing especially precludes unbearable pain, which is pain so great that it makes life not worth living for the person suffering it.

6) The happiness experienced is instrumentally good, meaning that it leads to greater goods (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater goods lead to even greater evils). 

The happiness experienced is not instrumentally bad, meaning that it does not lead to greater evils (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater evils lead to even greater happiness).

Conversely, a human is suffering when:

1*) Their basic needs are NOT met, such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
 
2*) Their more advanced psychological needs are NOT met, including independence, acceptance into a community, feeling useful to others, and feeling a sense of belonging in the world.

 
3*) They DO NOT experience happiness on a regular basis.
 
4*) They DO experience pain on a regular basis.
 
5*) The pains they do experience are NOT instrumentally good, such as the natural pains that accompany self-improvement and the establishing and maintaining of a eudaimonic system (guilt, forgiveness, effort, etc.). WHATEVER instrumental goodness of these pains, IF ANY, IS OUTWEIGHED BY their intrinsic badness.

 

In other words, pains are NEVER lesser evils that lead to greater goods. PAINS MAY INCLUDE unbearable pain, which is pain so great that it makes life not worth living for the person suffering it.

6*) The happiness experienced is NOT instrumentally good, meaning that it does NOT lead to greater goods (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater goods lead to even greater evils). 

The happiness experienced IS instrumentally bad, meaning that it DOES lead to greater evils (greater in terms of quantity and/or quality) for the self and/or others (unless those greater evils lead to even greater happiness).

Two notes on item 6: First: This relates to what JL Mackie referred to as lower and higher order goods and evils in his famous 1955 paper "Evil and Omnipotence". A lower order evil, or evil(1), is something basic that doesn't depend on some lower evil or happiness. So, pains of various kinds make up evils(1). Then there are goods that cannot exist without pains, such as the goods of various virtues (sympathy, bravery, strength, etc.). These are goods(2). Mackie saw vices (the failure to be sympathetic, brave, strong, etc.) as being examples of evils(2). Mackie also suggested that free will is, or is meant to be, a good(3) because it depends on evils(2). (He says free will is incoherent, but sets that aside for the sake of argument. Always nice to find a fellow skeptic of free will.)

 

I will make a distinction between higher order goods and higher goods. Higher order goods are just those goods that depend on more basic goods or evils for their existence. For example, the intrinsic good of feeling a sense of accomplishment often depends on the pain of effort and perseverance.

 

Higher goods are goods that are better than lower goods in their quality. For example, the intrinsic good of feeling a sense of accomplishment is greater in its quality compared to the intrinsic good of eating a snack, and the feeling of being loved may be even greater than the feeling of accomplishment. So higher and lower goods are always intrinsic, as extrinsic and depriving goods have no intrinsic quality. For clarity, I will refer to higher goods as 'greater intrinsic goods' and lower goods as 'lesser intrinsic goods'. 'Greater goods' refers to goods that are greater in their intrinsic, extrinsic, or saving qualities, or some combination thereof. 'Lesser goods' refers to goods that are lesser in their intrinsic, extrinsic, or saving qualities, or some combination thereof. A greater good can be equal or even lesser in its intrinsic goodness compared to a lesser good, but so great in its quantity that the aggregate intrinsic goodness is greater.

 

Higher order goods can be greater goods, but need not be. For example, that my friend feels a great sense of accomplishment makes me happy, a happiness that depends on that good (well, depends on my belief in that good, and if that belief itself depends on the reality of my friend's sense of accomplishment, then my happiness depends on that good), and so my happiness is of a higher order than my friend's sense of accomplishment, but my friend's sense of accomplishment is more vivid than my second-hand happiness.

 

A common misunderstanding of hedonism is that it is a crude theory of value, because it places too much emphasis on lesser intrinsic goods and not enough on greater intrinsic goods, or because it treats lesser and greater intrinsic goods as equal. But this is false. The central claim of hedonism is that it does not make sense to speak of something's being good unless you are speaking of its intrinsic goodness or its ability to give rise to intrinsic goods (or prevent intrinsic evils). So the idea of a "higher good" that is not itself a form of happiness or something that leads to happiness is incoherent. When people talk about greater goods they often list things like: knowledge, autonomy, love, relationships, and virtue. On hedonism, these things can only be good insofar as they constitute forms of happiness, or alleviate pains, or prevent things that prevent happiness, and so on. These goods are goods because they are 1) Intrinsic, 2) Instrumental, or 3) Saving. The confusion, says the hedonist, is that we recognize that some forms of happiness are less valuable than others, and are even damaging in the long run (i.e. the instrumental badness of some joys outweighs their intrinsic goodness). We recognize that the quality of some kinds of happiness is much richer than other kinds. Playing video games gives a dopamine rush. Achieving a great achievement gives so much more than just dopamine, but a deep-seated satisfaction in oneself, self-admiration, a feeling of completeness, a satisfaction over one's life, and so on. These forms of happiness are far richer and deeper than mere dopamine. So we recognize that playing video games is a waste of time compared to doing greater work.

 

So Item 6 (and Item 5) is pointing out that pains and joys that lead to greater happiness are better than pains and joys that fail to lead to greater happiness or even lead to greater pains. Higher order goods can justify lower order evils, just as higher order pains can render lower order goods unjustified. So hedonism does not, in the slightest, entail some kind of crude preference of goods(1). Just the opposite is the case: Because the quality of happiness is what makes goods good, of course deeper forms of happiness, which are greater in their quality, are preferable over more shallow forms of happiness. 

 

Alternative theories of value need to explain in virtue of what is knowledge, autonomy, love, relationships, and virtue good. If they can't, then their theory lacks explanatory power compared to hedonism.

 

Second:  

 

Flourishing and suffering can come in degrees, with more or fewer of the above criteria being met. For example, the intrinsic badness of someone's pain might not outweigh the instrumental goods of that pain, but merely counterbalance. Someone could in theory exist in a vague average between flourishing and suffering, which is probably where most people are most of the time.

 

Continuing with the ultimate moral concern, what humans want at the end of the day is to be happy. As Ecclesiastes 3:12 says (NIV): "I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live."

 

Why is this? For any question of desire ("Why do you want...") we can ask the further question of "Why do you want that?" But eventually explanation will bottom out in an essence fact. Why do you want happiness? Because happiness has the essence it does. There are no further possible why questions. (There are no further possible why questions of desire, that is, internal why questions. We can ask the external question of why, scientifically, it would be the case that happiness has the quality that it does, and we can give an evolutionary explanation for that: pro-survival behavior is selected, and so, assuming that mental causation is real, a phenomenal attraction-generating quality that causes a disposition to engage in pro-survival behaviors is selected.)

 

It makes sense that desires would map onto goals. Indeed, don't goals just follow from desires? So: Why have the goal of being happy? Because I desire to be happy. Why desire happiness? Because happiness has the essence it does.

 

What complicates things is the fact that there are different kinds of happiness and pain, with some forms of happiness leading to greater pains and some forms of pain leading to greater happiness. Some people find some kinds of happiness essential while others don't, and some people find some kinds of pain unbearable while others find them manageable. There is no fact of what kind of happiness you "should" strive for, because 'should' maps onto a goal, in this case the goal of being happy. So you should strive for the greatest kind of happiness, whatever that happens to be for you. That will depend both on 1) What it is that would make you happiest; and 2) What it is that could make you happiest. Maybe having one's child be raised from the dead would make a grieving parent happiest, but that is not what could make the parent happiest because it's an impossible event. After identifying what would make us happiest, we have to then prioritize these things in terms of possibility.

 

(I believe this gets at Graham Oppy's argument against pro-theism and anti-atheism. Roughly, on Oppy's view it's impossible for God to exist, and impossibilities fail to be objects of desire, so both pro-theism and anti-theism are irrational attitudes. My own gloss on this—which may or may not differ substantially from Oppy's exact argument—is that desires for impossible things map onto impossible goals. When you have an impossible goal, there is no true 'should' statement with respect to that goal. 'Should' statements reduce to descriptive facts about which action from a list of possible actions best furthers that goal, so for an impossible goal there is no best possible action that furthers that goal. So if someone desires God, then they necessarily have a goal to be with God. And if someone desires for God to not exist, they necessarily have a goal to avoid the existence of God. But when one realizes that there is no possible action for them to take to further a goal, the goal naturally disappears, and along with it the goal's corresponding desire. An example of this: Say Bob wants world peace. So Bob's goal is to achieve world peace. But Bob discovers that world peace is impossible, so Bob loses the goal and loses the desire that entails such a goal, perhaps replacing it with something possible, such as avoiding conflict in his personal life. But do desires necessitate goals in this way? I think there are ways to defend pro-theism despite this argument, but that's for another time.) 

 

Flourishing then is the ideal balance of pain and happiness under ideal conditions. Because such conditions are impossible to achieve or maintain for any length of time, true flourishing, eudaimonia, can only be an aspirational goal. So only a pseudo-eudaimonia (pseudaimonia?) can be hoped to be achieved; your ultimate moral goal has to make room for messiness. In cases where pseudo-eudaimonia cannot prevent unbearable pain, and if preventing unbearable pain is of the utmost moral priority, then pseudo-eudaimonia is not the ultimate moral goal. However, I suspect that when people in general strive to alleviate their worst pains and pursue their greatest joys, they will incidentally create pseudo-eudaimonia when these pursuits are sufficiently successful. 

 

Before addressing Portmore's other questions, here is a list of questions of my own:

 

Consider the following statement: (NTB) You should not torture babies for fun.

 

M: Concerning the meaning of NTB, and other similar 'should' or 'ought' sentences, what is your reaction? 

 

(M1) I won't speak for anyone else, but NTB is certainly meaningful (i.e. expresses a proposition or propositions) when I utter it, and I can explain what that meaning is.

 

(M2) Speaking for myself and for everyone else, NTB is certainly meaningful (i.e. expresses a proposition or propositions) when anyone utters it and we can at least in principle discover what that meaning is or very likely is.  

 

(M3) When I or anyone else utters NTB, NTB always fails to express a proposition. Instead, to utter NTB is to issue a command unto oneself or others or to express an emotion or desire one feels.

 

T: Concerning the truth of NTB, and other similar 'should' or 'ought' sentences, what is your reaction?

 

(T1) I won't speak for anyone else, but NTB is certainly true when I utter it, and I can explain what it means for NTB to be true.

 

(T2) Speaking for myself and for everyone else, NTB is certainly true when anyone utters it and we can at least in principle discover what it means for NTB to be true.

 

(T3) Whether I utter NTB or anyone else does, NTB is always failing to express a truth or falsehood because only propositions and expressions of propositions can take on a truth value, and NTB fails to express a proposition, instead expressing a command, an emotion, or a desire.

 

(T4) Whether I utter NTB or anyone else does, NTB is always expressing a falsehood, because NTB entails that there is a moral fact that makes it true, but there are no moral facts.

 

J: If NTB is true or false, what is the status of the objectivity of its truth / falsity?

 

(J1) NTB is true independent of judgment (aka, independent of stance). That is, if a person believes NTB is false, then they are mistaken. If a person does not believe NTB, then that is one less true belief in their inventory of true beliefs.

 

(J2) NTB is false independent of judgment. That is, if a person believes NTB is false, then they are mistaken. If a person does not believe that NTB is false, then that is one less true belief in their inventory of true beliefs.

 

(J3) NTB is true relative to the judgment of an individual or culture. 

 

I'll leave questions 5–8 for another time. I think you could rewrite a similar list to Portmore's but with a specific sentence in mind like NTB, giving us something concrete to react to. Rationalism I believe would take M1, T1, and J1. J1 because whether an action furthers a goal is a matter of description, so there are objectively right and wrong answers as to which actions further a goal. But you might say that goals themselves are person-relative. So you might want to fill in a gap by asking a question as to what counts as good or bad and what is the good-maker and bad-maker of good and bad things.