When I originally said that moral judgments couldn’t be right or wrong, I was defining “ought” in the common sense meaning of the word, which I believe to roughly correspond to emotivism.
Here’s my argument against emotivism. First, I don’t dispute that empirically most people form moral judgments from their emotional responses with little or no conscious reflection. I do dispute that this implies when they state moral judgements, those judgements do not express propositions but only emotional attitudes (and therefore can’t be right or wrong).
Consider an analogy with empirical judgements. Suppose someone says “Earth is flat.” Are they stating a proposition about the way the world is, or just expressing that they have a certain belief? If it’s the latter, then they can’t be wrong (assuming they’re not deliberately lying). I think we would say that a statement like “Earth is flat” does express a proposition and not just a belief, and therefore can be wrong, even if the person stating it did so based purely on gut instinct, without any conscious deliberation.
You might argue that the analogy isn’t exact, because it’s clear what kind of proposition is expressed by “Earth is flat”, but we don’t know what kind of proposition moral judgements could be expressing, nor could we find out by asking the people who are stating those moral judgements. I would answer that it’s actually not obvious what “Earth is flat” means, given that the true ontology of the world is probably something like Tegmarks’ Level 4 multiverse with its infinite copies of both round and flat Earths. Certainly the person saying “Earth is flat” couldn’t tell you exactly what proposition they are stating. I could also bring up other examples of statements whose meanings are unclear, which we nevertheless do not think “can’t be right or wrong”, such as “UDT is closer to the correct decision theory than CDT is” or “given what we know about computational complexity, we should bet on P!=NP”.
(To be clear, I think it may still turn out to be the case that moral judgments can’t be said to mean anything, and are mere expressions of emotional attitude (or, more generally, brain output). I just don’t see how anyone can state that confidently at this point.)
Right now I’m unable to untangle my intuitions about that connection, as I hadn’t realized the existence of the issue before reading your comment.
I’d be interested in your thoughts once you’ve untangled them.
As far as I can tell, in this comment you present an analogy between moral judgements and empirical judgements. You then provide arguments against a specific claim saying “these two situations don’t share a deep cause”. But you don’t seem to have provided arguments for the judgements sharing a deep cause in the first place. It seems like a surface analogy to me.
Perhaps I should have said “reason for skepticism” instead of “argument”. Let me put it this way: what reasons do you have for thinking that moral judgments can’t be right or wrong, and have you checked whether those reasons don’t apply equally to empirical judgments?
Occam’s Razor, I suppose. Something roughly like emotivism seems like a wholly adequate explanation of what moral judgements are, both from a psychological and evolutionary point of view. I just don’t see any need to presume that moral judgements would be anything else, nor do I know what else they could be. From a decision-theoretical perspective, too, preferences (in the form of utility functions) are merely what the organism wants, and are simply taken as givens.
On the other hand, empirical judgements clearly do need to be evaluated for their correctness, if they are to be useful in achieving an organism’s preferences and/or survival.
Consider an analogy with empirical judgements. Suppose someone says “Earth is flat.” Are they stating a proposition about the way the world is, or just expressing that they have a certain belief? If it’s the latter, then they can’t be wrong (assuming they’re not deliberately lying).
They can be wrong if they should on reflection change this belief.
Nesov, I’m taking emotivism to be the theory that moral judgments are just expressions of current emotional attitude, and therefore can’t be wrong, even if on reflection one would change one’s emotional attitude. And I’m arguing against that theory.
Here’s my argument against emotivism. First, I don’t dispute that empirically most people form moral judgments from their emotional responses with little or no conscious reflection. I do dispute that this implies when they state moral judgements, those judgements do not express propositions but only emotional attitudes (and therefore can’t be right or wrong).
Consider an analogy with empirical judgements. Suppose someone says “Earth is flat.” Are they stating a proposition about the way the world is, or just expressing that they have a certain belief? If it’s the latter, then they can’t be wrong (assuming they’re not deliberately lying). I think we would say that a statement like “Earth is flat” does express a proposition and not just a belief, and therefore can be wrong, even if the person stating it did so based purely on gut instinct, without any conscious deliberation.
You might argue that the analogy isn’t exact, because it’s clear what kind of proposition is expressed by “Earth is flat”, but we don’t know what kind of proposition moral judgements could be expressing, nor could we find out by asking the people who are stating those moral judgements. I would answer that it’s actually not obvious what “Earth is flat” means, given that the true ontology of the world is probably something like Tegmarks’ Level 4 multiverse with its infinite copies of both round and flat Earths. Certainly the person saying “Earth is flat” couldn’t tell you exactly what proposition they are stating. I could also bring up other examples of statements whose meanings are unclear, which we nevertheless do not think “can’t be right or wrong”, such as “UDT is closer to the correct decision theory than CDT is” or “given what we know about computational complexity, we should bet on P!=NP”.
(To be clear, I think it may still turn out to be the case that moral judgments can’t be said to mean anything, and are mere expressions of emotional attitude (or, more generally, brain output). I just don’t see how anyone can state that confidently at this point.)
I’d be interested in your thoughts once you’ve untangled them.
As far as I can tell, in this comment you present an analogy between moral judgements and empirical judgements. You then provide arguments against a specific claim saying “these two situations don’t share a deep cause”. But you don’t seem to have provided arguments for the judgements sharing a deep cause in the first place. It seems like a surface analogy to me.
Perhaps I should have said “reason for skepticism” instead of “argument”. Let me put it this way: what reasons do you have for thinking that moral judgments can’t be right or wrong, and have you checked whether those reasons don’t apply equally to empirical judgments?
(Note this is the same sort of “reason for skepticism” that I expressed in Boredom vs. Scope Insensitivity for example.)
Occam’s Razor, I suppose. Something roughly like emotivism seems like a wholly adequate explanation of what moral judgements are, both from a psychological and evolutionary point of view. I just don’t see any need to presume that moral judgements would be anything else, nor do I know what else they could be. From a decision-theoretical perspective, too, preferences (in the form of utility functions) are merely what the organism wants, and are simply taken as givens.
On the other hand, empirical judgements clearly do need to be evaluated for their correctness, if they are to be useful in achieving an organism’s preferences and/or survival.
They can be wrong if they should on reflection change this belief.
Nesov, I’m taking emotivism to be the theory that moral judgments are just expressions of current emotional attitude, and therefore can’t be wrong, even if on reflection one would change one’s emotional attitude. And I’m arguing against that theory.
Ah, I see, that was stupid misinterpretation on my part.