The following comment is not directly relevant to the argument that you present, but it might be worth talking about regardless. You say that you are a moral realist, and that this is just the view "that there are some moral statements where we can find out if they’re true." I think that moral realism is more than this. Consider theological voluntarism (TV):
Theological Voluntarism: The moral properties of an action constitutively depend on the action's being the object of an act of divine will. In other words, actions are morally wrong in virtue of God's willing that they not occur; actions are morally obligatory in virtue of God's willing that they occur.
TV is a subjectivist account of moral properties since, on TV, moral properties constitutively depend on the attitudes of a subject. However, on TV, there are some moral statements such that we can find out that they are true. We find out that moral claims (about actions) are true by finding out what God wills with respect to the relevant actions. So, on your account of moral realism, a subjectivist account of moral properties (TV) turns out to be a version of moral realism. I don't think that is a consequence that we should be comfortable with.
Here is an alternative account of moral realism, according to which TV (and all other versions of subjectivism) fail to be moral realist positions:
Moral Realism: The view that actions (and all other items of moral evaluation) genuinely possess moral properties and that they have their moral properties in virtue of their own nature. For example, an object is good in virtue of its intrinsic properties; an action is obligatory in virtue of its intrinsic properties (potentially including the fact that the action will bring about particular consequences).
This account of moral realism rules out TV as a realist position. And we should want an account of moral realism that rules out subjectivist accounts of moral properties.
Great question! A few thoughts: First, I think it matters whether you conceptualize this theory as one where God's desires *just are* the moral facts, or one where God's desires are some sort of "moral-fact-making machine" that produce objective moral facts as a result of the desiring. If it's the latter, then I guess I would say that is a form of realism - there are objective moral facts that are not identical to any subjective desire, even if they result from them - but I don't think it's conceptually possible so it doesn't concern me much.
Meanwhile, if it's the former, then I think a sort of technical way out would be to expand the "we" part of "we can find out if they're true" to encompass all rational agents, including God. If it does include God, then it would be false, because God would not be "finding out" but rather determining moral truths. And if you argue that this doesn't work because God is not properly conceived as a rational agent, then I think God is distinct enough from us that it no longer becomes obvious to me what it means for him to have subjective desires in the first place. So I'd say TV is either not realist, because there is at least one agent who can't "find out" if moral statements are true, or it is realist, but incoherent. Either way, I think your definition is good too, and I would probably assert that, properly understood, the two collapse into each other. But I agree yours is a much more robust and workable one. I think JJT's is just a nice quick gloss.
As a fellow moral realist, I think this argument misses the thrust of the anti-realist objection.
It is not obvious that if moral realism is true, then moral facts play a direct role in human moral judgments. Granting moral realism, it seems conceivable that an agent could form moral judgments on some other basis - e.g. I could program an AI to give moral judgments at random, or based on its imputation of what its mood should be, etc. By analogy, a lunatic might (dis)believe in the kitchen table on some other basis than whether they could sense it. Whether moral facts play a direct role in our moral judgments is in part a question about what kind of creatures humans are. Perhaps we are moral lunatics.
This is a good point, but I think it largely depends on what sort of moral facts you believe in. A naturalist has good reason to think moral facts at least sometimes play a major role in deliberation, or at least as much of a reason as the belief that physical facts play a role in our physical judgments. It gets trickier with non-natural moral facts, but there you wouldn't be arguing for a causal relationship anyway.
Off the top of my head I feel like moral judgments are the same as aesthetic judgments, i.e. they're expressions of human preferences, which tend to line up because people's brains are physically similar and they exist in the same cultural context. There are "moral facts" in the same way as there are "aesthetic facts". Shakespeare is better than J. K. Rowling unless you like Rowling better, in which case he's not. It's a fact about human preferences, it's real but limited in what you can do with it.
The Comanches thought it was morally good to torture someone just because you enjoyed it. They did it all the time, it was a big part of their culture. My preferences don't line up with those of a Comanche warrior circa 1800 - human suffering makes him feel good, whereas it makes me feel bad. But I'm not sure what the basis is, in the absence of God, for asserting that my preferences correspond more closely to objective reality than his do. Even utilitarianism is just an expression of a preference for other people not to suffer, which he doesn't have.
You can still behave as if moral facts were true though. They are "true" in some sense, they're just true physical facts about what makes your brain feel good. I don't know or particularly care if my aesthetic preferences correspond to "aesthetic facts", but I still behave as if they did by endeavouring to create a world with more aesthetically pleasing things in it. I mean if moral realism is fake then lying isn't wrong, and you're under no obligation to be intellectually consistent, so there's no reason to behave as if moral realism was fake. Unless of course you have a strong preference for it.
I think the analysis you're laying out is consistent - there's no reason it should be rejected out of hand - but I don't see why someone should believe it *instead* of moral realism. The moral disagreement you have with the Comanche is very real, but disagreement exists between cultures when it comes to all sorts of things, like history or science. I mean, you could also say:
"The Comanches thought the earth was on the back of a giant turtle. It was a big part of their culture. My beliefs about the earth don't line up with those of a Comanche circa 1800 - human he thinks it's a flat disk on a turtle, whereas I think it's a sphere in space. But I'm not sure what the basis is, in the absence of God, for asserting that my beliefs correspond more closely to objective reality than his do."
So the mere fact that cultures do disagree about moral facts isn't reason, by itself, to say there can't be an objective answer. Ultimately, both sides need to make a positive case for why they either should or shouldn't accept that moral facts exist, but I think general arguments that just reference disagreement or psychological states are going to prove too much - they let you be a skeptic about almost anything.
"Ultimately, both sides need to make a positive case for why they either should or shouldn't accept that moral facts exist."
I'm actually not sure about this. Like, if I'm a moral anti-realist, I don't need to make a positive case for anything, because I don't believe I have a moral obligation to do it.
If there are no moral facts, there's no reason to believe that there are no moral facts, because you're under no obligation to believe things that are true in preference to things that are false. So there's no argument from an anti-realist position that anyone else "ought" to stop believing in moral facts. As soon as you accept that other people "ought" to do something, you're accepting that moral facts exist.
This is probably my actual position. I still don't really think there are moral facts, but I don't feel the need to try to convince you of it, because if there aren't any moral facts, why would I? The only plausible answer to the question would be "because I have a strong preference for you to agree with me", which I don't, particularly.
So I think we basically agree - the point I'm making is consistent, but there's no reason for somebody to believe it instead of moral realism.
But isn't a view that no one has any reason to do anything at all maybe the least plausible view you could possibly take? It just seems obviously false. You're right that someone who *is* convinced of anti-realism should think they never have any reason to do anything ever... but I think that consequence should stop them from being an anti-realist! It's just hard to imagine what sort of argument for anti-realism could be more plausible than the basic intuition that sometimes, we should do something.
Good article. I’m also happy to see moral realists engaging with antirealism. I’m a moral antirealist, and wanted to ask about a few things in the article.
(1) Physicalism
I don’t take myself to be a “physicalist,” yet I am not an external world skeptic nor do I think there are no tables and chairs. Maybe by physicalism you have in mind something I wouldn’t find objectionable, and would call myself a physicalist in that sense, but it wasn’t clear to me what you took physicalism to be. If even with clarification I would still not be a physicalist, I may have some concerns about the claim that:
"Here, the response would be obvious: Our skeptic is just wrong to say that we would continuing making our normal judgments about tables or chairs in a world with no physical facts."
I make judgments about tables and chairs even though I don’t consider myself a physicalist.
(2) Abductive arguments
I also probably would endorse something like the skeptic’s argument. Though I think what I’d argue is that moral realists are making some kind of error and that we could account for their disposition to think that there are objective moral facts, along with all other observations about what the world is like, without positing those moral facts. In other words, I favor a kind of abductive argument where the best explanation for what the world is like doesn’t posit moral facts. Such an account would need to explain why people who think that there are such facts are mistaken.
Speaking for my own deliberative practices, absolutely nothing about how I go about making decisions, morally or otherwise, ever involves what seems to me to be any appeals to stance-independent normative facts. I am baffled that anyone would propose such facts. I act in accord with my goals and desires. I think everyone else does, too. I’m not even sure the notion of stance-independent moral facts makes sense, at least in a non-vacuous way.
(3) Meanings of terms
That brings me to my last question: I’m interested in what you take rightness, wrongness, goodness, and badness to mean. What does it mean, on your view, for instance, to say that suffering or inequality are “bad” or that one “should not” cause suffering for fun?
(4) Epistemic possibilities
You say this:
"But asking the realist to imagine a world where horrendous cruelty or viciousness exist but are not objectively wrong is, again, just asking the realist to imagine that realism is false and the skeptic’s view is true."
Is it, though? I would have thought that it is an open epistemic possibility that you could be mistaken about the substantive content of the normative moral facts. What if the things you think are morally wrong aren’t morally wrong? And that this includes everything on this list? Why can’t you imagine that these things occur but aren’t morally wrong?
The following comment is not directly relevant to the argument that you present, but it might be worth talking about regardless. You say that you are a moral realist, and that this is just the view "that there are some moral statements where we can find out if they’re true." I think that moral realism is more than this. Consider theological voluntarism (TV):
Theological Voluntarism: The moral properties of an action constitutively depend on the action's being the object of an act of divine will. In other words, actions are morally wrong in virtue of God's willing that they not occur; actions are morally obligatory in virtue of God's willing that they occur.
TV is a subjectivist account of moral properties since, on TV, moral properties constitutively depend on the attitudes of a subject. However, on TV, there are some moral statements such that we can find out that they are true. We find out that moral claims (about actions) are true by finding out what God wills with respect to the relevant actions. So, on your account of moral realism, a subjectivist account of moral properties (TV) turns out to be a version of moral realism. I don't think that is a consequence that we should be comfortable with.
Here is an alternative account of moral realism, according to which TV (and all other versions of subjectivism) fail to be moral realist positions:
Moral Realism: The view that actions (and all other items of moral evaluation) genuinely possess moral properties and that they have their moral properties in virtue of their own nature. For example, an object is good in virtue of its intrinsic properties; an action is obligatory in virtue of its intrinsic properties (potentially including the fact that the action will bring about particular consequences).
This account of moral realism rules out TV as a realist position. And we should want an account of moral realism that rules out subjectivist accounts of moral properties.
Great question! A few thoughts: First, I think it matters whether you conceptualize this theory as one where God's desires *just are* the moral facts, or one where God's desires are some sort of "moral-fact-making machine" that produce objective moral facts as a result of the desiring. If it's the latter, then I guess I would say that is a form of realism - there are objective moral facts that are not identical to any subjective desire, even if they result from them - but I don't think it's conceptually possible so it doesn't concern me much.
Meanwhile, if it's the former, then I think a sort of technical way out would be to expand the "we" part of "we can find out if they're true" to encompass all rational agents, including God. If it does include God, then it would be false, because God would not be "finding out" but rather determining moral truths. And if you argue that this doesn't work because God is not properly conceived as a rational agent, then I think God is distinct enough from us that it no longer becomes obvious to me what it means for him to have subjective desires in the first place. So I'd say TV is either not realist, because there is at least one agent who can't "find out" if moral statements are true, or it is realist, but incoherent. Either way, I think your definition is good too, and I would probably assert that, properly understood, the two collapse into each other. But I agree yours is a much more robust and workable one. I think JJT's is just a nice quick gloss.
Divine Command Theory is subjectivist and thereby anti-realist.
As a fellow moral realist, I think this argument misses the thrust of the anti-realist objection.
It is not obvious that if moral realism is true, then moral facts play a direct role in human moral judgments. Granting moral realism, it seems conceivable that an agent could form moral judgments on some other basis - e.g. I could program an AI to give moral judgments at random, or based on its imputation of what its mood should be, etc. By analogy, a lunatic might (dis)believe in the kitchen table on some other basis than whether they could sense it. Whether moral facts play a direct role in our moral judgments is in part a question about what kind of creatures humans are. Perhaps we are moral lunatics.
This is a good point, but I think it largely depends on what sort of moral facts you believe in. A naturalist has good reason to think moral facts at least sometimes play a major role in deliberation, or at least as much of a reason as the belief that physical facts play a role in our physical judgments. It gets trickier with non-natural moral facts, but there you wouldn't be arguing for a causal relationship anyway.
Off the top of my head I feel like moral judgments are the same as aesthetic judgments, i.e. they're expressions of human preferences, which tend to line up because people's brains are physically similar and they exist in the same cultural context. There are "moral facts" in the same way as there are "aesthetic facts". Shakespeare is better than J. K. Rowling unless you like Rowling better, in which case he's not. It's a fact about human preferences, it's real but limited in what you can do with it.
The Comanches thought it was morally good to torture someone just because you enjoyed it. They did it all the time, it was a big part of their culture. My preferences don't line up with those of a Comanche warrior circa 1800 - human suffering makes him feel good, whereas it makes me feel bad. But I'm not sure what the basis is, in the absence of God, for asserting that my preferences correspond more closely to objective reality than his do. Even utilitarianism is just an expression of a preference for other people not to suffer, which he doesn't have.
You can still behave as if moral facts were true though. They are "true" in some sense, they're just true physical facts about what makes your brain feel good. I don't know or particularly care if my aesthetic preferences correspond to "aesthetic facts", but I still behave as if they did by endeavouring to create a world with more aesthetically pleasing things in it. I mean if moral realism is fake then lying isn't wrong, and you're under no obligation to be intellectually consistent, so there's no reason to behave as if moral realism was fake. Unless of course you have a strong preference for it.
I think the analysis you're laying out is consistent - there's no reason it should be rejected out of hand - but I don't see why someone should believe it *instead* of moral realism. The moral disagreement you have with the Comanche is very real, but disagreement exists between cultures when it comes to all sorts of things, like history or science. I mean, you could also say:
"The Comanches thought the earth was on the back of a giant turtle. It was a big part of their culture. My beliefs about the earth don't line up with those of a Comanche circa 1800 - human he thinks it's a flat disk on a turtle, whereas I think it's a sphere in space. But I'm not sure what the basis is, in the absence of God, for asserting that my beliefs correspond more closely to objective reality than his do."
So the mere fact that cultures do disagree about moral facts isn't reason, by itself, to say there can't be an objective answer. Ultimately, both sides need to make a positive case for why they either should or shouldn't accept that moral facts exist, but I think general arguments that just reference disagreement or psychological states are going to prove too much - they let you be a skeptic about almost anything.
"Ultimately, both sides need to make a positive case for why they either should or shouldn't accept that moral facts exist."
I'm actually not sure about this. Like, if I'm a moral anti-realist, I don't need to make a positive case for anything, because I don't believe I have a moral obligation to do it.
If there are no moral facts, there's no reason to believe that there are no moral facts, because you're under no obligation to believe things that are true in preference to things that are false. So there's no argument from an anti-realist position that anyone else "ought" to stop believing in moral facts. As soon as you accept that other people "ought" to do something, you're accepting that moral facts exist.
This is probably my actual position. I still don't really think there are moral facts, but I don't feel the need to try to convince you of it, because if there aren't any moral facts, why would I? The only plausible answer to the question would be "because I have a strong preference for you to agree with me", which I don't, particularly.
So I think we basically agree - the point I'm making is consistent, but there's no reason for somebody to believe it instead of moral realism.
But isn't a view that no one has any reason to do anything at all maybe the least plausible view you could possibly take? It just seems obviously false. You're right that someone who *is* convinced of anti-realism should think they never have any reason to do anything ever... but I think that consequence should stop them from being an anti-realist! It's just hard to imagine what sort of argument for anti-realism could be more plausible than the basic intuition that sometimes, we should do something.
Good article. I’m also happy to see moral realists engaging with antirealism. I’m a moral antirealist, and wanted to ask about a few things in the article.
(1) Physicalism
I don’t take myself to be a “physicalist,” yet I am not an external world skeptic nor do I think there are no tables and chairs. Maybe by physicalism you have in mind something I wouldn’t find objectionable, and would call myself a physicalist in that sense, but it wasn’t clear to me what you took physicalism to be. If even with clarification I would still not be a physicalist, I may have some concerns about the claim that:
"Here, the response would be obvious: Our skeptic is just wrong to say that we would continuing making our normal judgments about tables or chairs in a world with no physical facts."
I make judgments about tables and chairs even though I don’t consider myself a physicalist.
(2) Abductive arguments
I also probably would endorse something like the skeptic’s argument. Though I think what I’d argue is that moral realists are making some kind of error and that we could account for their disposition to think that there are objective moral facts, along with all other observations about what the world is like, without positing those moral facts. In other words, I favor a kind of abductive argument where the best explanation for what the world is like doesn’t posit moral facts. Such an account would need to explain why people who think that there are such facts are mistaken.
Speaking for my own deliberative practices, absolutely nothing about how I go about making decisions, morally or otherwise, ever involves what seems to me to be any appeals to stance-independent normative facts. I am baffled that anyone would propose such facts. I act in accord with my goals and desires. I think everyone else does, too. I’m not even sure the notion of stance-independent moral facts makes sense, at least in a non-vacuous way.
(3) Meanings of terms
That brings me to my last question: I’m interested in what you take rightness, wrongness, goodness, and badness to mean. What does it mean, on your view, for instance, to say that suffering or inequality are “bad” or that one “should not” cause suffering for fun?
(4) Epistemic possibilities
You say this:
"But asking the realist to imagine a world where horrendous cruelty or viciousness exist but are not objectively wrong is, again, just asking the realist to imagine that realism is false and the skeptic’s view is true."
Is it, though? I would have thought that it is an open epistemic possibility that you could be mistaken about the substantive content of the normative moral facts. What if the things you think are morally wrong aren’t morally wrong? And that this includes everything on this list? Why can’t you imagine that these things occur but aren’t morally wrong?
Morality is a personal understanding of best practices when dealing with other creatures. Ethics is formalized. usually shared, morality.
Ethics is contingent on the priorities of everyone involved. There is group meaning only to the extent people share priorities.
These are ethical universals:
a) survival is a prerequisite for all meaningful goals.
b) truth is a prerequisite for all non-arbitrary goals
c) sustainability is a prerequisite for all non-temporary goals.
d) reciprocity is a prerequisite for civilization.
"Our skeptic is just wrong to say that we would continuing" - Typo here. Should be "continue"