Think about whatever you believe is right (or wrong) that you would argue for. You probably don’t argue that it’s just your opinion.
We can’t prove modus ponens or that A=A. We can’t prove that we’re not in a simulation. Therefore math and induction and science are all theories. We can’t have certainty. But we have intuitions about logic as well as morality.
Hey! Thanks for the comment! I really appreciate it!
I mean, for 1, I do think that most things I believe are, reductionistically speaking, ‘just my opinion’, in the sense that they lack a strong, unassailable foundation. I just feel its very easy for to to compartmentalize ‘I have strong (and emotional) opinions about x’ from ‘I have a strong conviction and evidence that x is true’. For some of those beliefs I could perhaps fall back on what could count as acceptable evidence and/or arguments in their support that third parties would recognize. If we center on ethics, yes, there’s lots of stuff I feel strongly about: in most respects, I am your average WEIRD Westerner, and have been aligned since youth to find some stuff horrible, but I just fail to see the epistemic credentials of my moral intuitions. This connects with your second point: while ultimately, you can argue that it’s turtles all the way down and that logic, math, science, induction… ultimately rest on intuitions, I feel you are skipping a significant difference here. All of the latter are intuitions that can be tested with respect to some External World (it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to give metaphysical foundation to an external, nonhuman reality. It suffices to accept that we seem to interact with some outer world that has seems to have laws of its own that can be discovered and tested, have decent predictive power and that seem to have bad effects when you try to ignore them). You might not have certainty, but empirical observation, causality, logical consistency and mathematical modelling can be tested; while the moral intuitions cannot.
Agreed that empirical knowledge can be tested, but what about knowledge not gained through the senses? You believe in the law of non-contradiction, right? There’s no experiment that can be run to prove it’s true. Maybe logical beliefs are similar to moral beliefs?
I am generally very skeptical of purported knowledge that is neither gained through the senses nor independently constrained by empirical reality (but then, see my mathematical platonism). But in the case of logic (and math), I feel they are vindicated by contact with reality in a way in which moral beliefs aren’t. Math is indispensible for all our scientific explanations—without it, there would hardly be anything left in science; Logic can’t be proved by experiment, but Reality appears not to instantiate logical contradictions (so it is also indispensible). By contrast, objective moral facts seem explanatorily dispensible. I mean, you need them for social interaction, positive-sum games, but a world A where some moral beliefs are intrinsically, objectively true and a world B where they don’t exist work in exactly the same perceptible, visible, detectable way.
When you say “2 + 2 = 4” and then find 2 of something and 2 more and count 4, a logical intuition is instantiated.
When you say, “It would be good to help that old lady across the street,” and then you don’t help her, and regret it, a moral intuition is instantiated.
I think I might not have explained myself clearly in the previous comment. What I meant by instantiate was something like ‘validated by experience’, not ‘manifested in experience’. In the 2+2 case, your intuition gets externalized in a way that provides for independent checking (you can count again, somebody else who wasn’t there can count them and tell you the answer, etc...). The world constrains the answer. In the regret example, the regret testifies to a psychological state, which can be shared by others (or not?; definitely less shared than 2+2) but how you or others feel about an event is not constrained by the world. There is no detectable difference in a world were the only thing that changes in that scenario from feeling to not feeling regret. There is a world of difference (pun intended) in a world where adding two objects generates four to a world where adding two objects generates five.
I agree, with the one caveat that I think there is a detectable difference in a moral world and an amoral world. But the difference is normative and not absolute. If someone thinks misery is just as good as flourishing, then there’s no way to differentiate.
...but what about someone who doesn’t believe in non-contradtiction? He is logically confused; the misery-preferer is normatively confused.
I wouldn’t dispute there’s some difference, i.e., given a set of normative values, an inner/outer observer would judge (and feel?) the situations differently depending on their values. I just don’t think it is doing any truth-tracking about reality. Your second example (‘the misery-preferer is normatively confused’) reminds me of a strategy I usually find in moral realists which I do not find convincing: it tries to establish a parallelism between logical rationality and normative rationality (there are ends or actions you have reason to choose regardless of your desires). I just disagree with the latter: there are no ends you have ‘rational reason’ to choose except those you desire as part of your preferences, and this is just some kind of quasi-Kantian attempt to smuggle normative ethics into reason. Affirming someone is ‘normatively confused’ seems to imply there is some correct, ‘objective’ set of norms a rational being has to follow lest he/she fall into error. Reason can tell you that your beliefs are inconsistent, or that your chosen means won’t achieve your ends, but I don’t see how reason by itself can supply the terminal ends.
I just don’t think it is doing any truth-tracking about reality.
Well, it tracks the truth that human values do exist, even if they vary somewhat. But agreed that it doesn’t tell you that there’s a source for normative values, or what that source might be.
Reason can tell you that your beliefs are inconsistent, or that your chosen means won’t achieve your ends, but I don’t see how reason by itself can supply the terminal ends.
Such a good point. Instrumental values are in the realm of logic (logically derived from terminal values) -- so given a terminal value, we can be logically right or wrong about the instrumental values that follow.
I have wondered (but perhaps haven’t stated clearly) if it is a fact about conscious minds that we have but one terminal value—a vague desire for “the good.” All our other values, even health, love, and not-misery, are instrumentally derived. If it is a fact that minds desire what they deem good (not that I can prove it), would that sway you at all toward moral realism?
In other words if it is a fact about minds that they desire the good, then the question becomes not “does goodness exist” but “what is good?”
Or would you just say well that makes goodness real for minds, but not objectively? This may be fair, but what does “objectively” mean in this case?
That’s a good and deep question, for which I don’t have an answer. My intuition about the answer would be no, though, i.e., we have different values/preferences with a complicated history and a degree of inconsistency forming some n-dimensional vector space that cannot be reduced to a simple scalar. But even granting that they could be reduced to a vague ‘desire for the good’ terminal value, it would seem you can develop this in wildly different and opposite ways. The fact that minds desire a common x would, if proven (like, sampling aliens for example) update me towards the existence of some shared, emergent subjective belief that arises in sentient and intelligent creatures, but I don’t see how it would update me towards believing this belief is ‘true’ in the naturalist, correspondence-to-an-external-reality kind of sense. I think I’d agree with your second interpretation, ‘that makes goodness real for minds, but not objectively’. Objectivity is a term whose use I always find extremely confusing. It makes sense to talk about natural phenomena with the lens of “based on real facts, evidence, and logic without letting personal feelings, likes, or unfair biases change your view”, because we’re assuming they are mind-independent and follow laws that are orthogonal to our subjective feelings, likes and biases. When you talk about what minds believe, it becomes messier (because a lot of facts are socially constructed, like money or laws, and not independent of feelings, likes and biases; in fact, they are intrinsic to what it is like to be a human, part of a human community with its intellectual and material limitations. What does ‘real’ mean when we say ‘this piece of paper is worth 100 dollars’ except something like “well, this is some kind of useful and enforced belief/practice which is contingent on the existence and interactions of a particular type of being with properties x, y, z”). There’s like three tiers here: stuff that’s mind-independent (it doesn’t matter what any mind or group of minds believe and think with respect to the underlying truth), stuff that’s intersubjective (which is mind-dependent but not amenable to change by an individual) and purely subjective stuff (which is completely dependent on the subject’s subjective beliefs, feelings, whatever). Morality is for me something that belongs to somewhere between the second and third tier (the ‘agreed social norms’ is 2nd tier, the personal belief that x is wrong independently of what anyone thinks, to 3rd tier).
So on moral realism: I just feel there’s nothing you can really use for updating on the view that there are “stance-independent moral truths whose truth does not depend on what any mind happens to value or desire.” (Theology is more updatable here; like, you just need to have God(s) appear, interact with you and do supernatural stuff repeatedly and measurably). If you view of moral realism is something like “Given creatures with volition, reason, different interests, etc..., who would want to engage in positive-sum social games, there might exist an optimal configuration of the latter that would be reachable by different creatures without any contact with each other”, then while I am still somewhat skeptic, this is something I can imagine to be true, and I can think of ways in which it can be updated.
Re: moral realism, I’ve got 2 for you:
Think about whatever you believe is right (or wrong) that you would argue for. You probably don’t argue that it’s just your opinion.
We can’t prove modus ponens or that A=A. We can’t prove that we’re not in a simulation. Therefore math and induction and science are all theories. We can’t have certainty. But we have intuitions about logic as well as morality.
Hey! Thanks for the comment! I really appreciate it!
I mean, for 1, I do think that most things I believe are, reductionistically speaking, ‘just my opinion’, in the sense that they lack a strong, unassailable foundation. I just feel its very easy for to to compartmentalize ‘I have strong (and emotional) opinions about x’ from ‘I have a strong conviction and evidence that x is true’. For some of those beliefs I could perhaps fall back on what could count as acceptable evidence and/or arguments in their support that third parties would recognize. If we center on ethics, yes, there’s lots of stuff I feel strongly about: in most respects, I am your average WEIRD Westerner, and have been aligned since youth to find some stuff horrible, but I just fail to see the epistemic credentials of my moral intuitions. This connects with your second point: while ultimately, you can argue that it’s turtles all the way down and that logic, math, science, induction… ultimately rest on intuitions, I feel you are skipping a significant difference here. All of the latter are intuitions that can be tested with respect to some External World (it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to give metaphysical foundation to an external, nonhuman reality. It suffices to accept that we seem to interact with some outer world that has seems to have laws of its own that can be discovered and tested, have decent predictive power and that seem to have bad effects when you try to ignore them). You might not have certainty, but empirical observation, causality, logical consistency and mathematical modelling can be tested; while the moral intuitions cannot.
Agreed that empirical knowledge can be tested, but what about knowledge not gained through the senses? You believe in the law of non-contradiction, right? There’s no experiment that can be run to prove it’s true. Maybe logical beliefs are similar to moral beliefs?
I am generally very skeptical of purported knowledge that is neither gained through the senses nor independently constrained by empirical reality (but then, see my mathematical platonism). But in the case of logic (and math), I feel they are vindicated by contact with reality in a way in which moral beliefs aren’t. Math is indispensible for all our scientific explanations—without it, there would hardly be anything left in science; Logic can’t be proved by experiment, but Reality appears not to instantiate logical contradictions (so it is also indispensible). By contrast, objective moral facts seem explanatorily dispensible. I mean, you need them for social interaction, positive-sum games, but a world A where some moral beliefs are intrinsically, objectively true and a world B where they don’t exist work in exactly the same perceptible, visible, detectable way.
When you say “2 + 2 = 4” and then find 2 of something and 2 more and count 4, a logical intuition is instantiated.
When you say, “It would be good to help that old lady across the street,” and then you don’t help her, and regret it, a moral intuition is instantiated.
...I think?
I think I might not have explained myself clearly in the previous comment. What I meant by instantiate was something like ‘validated by experience’, not ‘manifested in experience’. In the 2+2 case, your intuition gets externalized in a way that provides for independent checking (you can count again, somebody else who wasn’t there can count them and tell you the answer, etc...). The world constrains the answer. In the regret example, the regret testifies to a psychological state, which can be shared by others (or not?; definitely less shared than 2+2) but how you or others feel about an event is not constrained by the world. There is no detectable difference in a world were the only thing that changes in that scenario from feeling to not feeling regret. There is a world of difference (pun intended) in a world where adding two objects generates four to a world where adding two objects generates five.
I agree, with the one caveat that I think there is a detectable difference in a moral world and an amoral world. But the difference is normative and not absolute. If someone thinks misery is just as good as flourishing, then there’s no way to differentiate.
...but what about someone who doesn’t believe in non-contradtiction? He is logically confused; the misery-preferer is normatively confused.
I wouldn’t dispute there’s some difference, i.e., given a set of normative values, an inner/outer observer would judge (and feel?) the situations differently depending on their values. I just don’t think it is doing any truth-tracking about reality. Your second example (‘the misery-preferer is normatively confused’) reminds me of a strategy I usually find in moral realists which I do not find convincing: it tries to establish a parallelism between logical rationality and normative rationality (there are ends or actions you have reason to choose regardless of your desires). I just disagree with the latter: there are no ends you have ‘rational reason’ to choose except those you desire as part of your preferences, and this is just some kind of quasi-Kantian attempt to smuggle normative ethics into reason. Affirming someone is ‘normatively confused’ seems to imply there is some correct, ‘objective’ set of norms a rational being has to follow lest he/she fall into error. Reason can tell you that your beliefs are inconsistent, or that your chosen means won’t achieve your ends, but I don’t see how reason by itself can supply the terminal ends.
Well, it tracks the truth that human values do exist, even if they vary somewhat. But agreed that it doesn’t tell you that there’s a source for normative values, or what that source might be.
Such a good point. Instrumental values are in the realm of logic (logically derived from terminal values) -- so given a terminal value, we can be logically right or wrong about the instrumental values that follow.
I have wondered (but perhaps haven’t stated clearly) if it is a fact about conscious minds that we have but one terminal value—a vague desire for “the good.” All our other values, even health, love, and not-misery, are instrumentally derived. If it is a fact that minds desire what they deem good (not that I can prove it), would that sway you at all toward moral realism?
In other words if it is a fact about minds that they desire the good, then the question becomes not “does goodness exist” but “what is good?”
Or would you just say well that makes goodness real for minds, but not objectively? This may be fair, but what does “objectively” mean in this case?
That’s a good and deep question, for which I don’t have an answer. My intuition about the answer would be no, though, i.e., we have different values/preferences with a complicated history and a degree of inconsistency forming some n-dimensional vector space that cannot be reduced to a simple scalar. But even granting that they could be reduced to a vague ‘desire for the good’ terminal value, it would seem you can develop this in wildly different and opposite ways. The fact that minds desire a common x would, if proven (like, sampling aliens for example) update me towards the existence of some shared, emergent subjective belief that arises in sentient and intelligent creatures, but I don’t see how it would update me towards believing this belief is ‘true’ in the naturalist, correspondence-to-an-external-reality kind of sense. I think I’d agree with your second interpretation, ‘that makes goodness real for minds, but not objectively’. Objectivity is a term whose use I always find extremely confusing. It makes sense to talk about natural phenomena with the lens of “based on real facts, evidence, and logic without letting personal feelings, likes, or unfair biases change your view”, because we’re assuming they are mind-independent and follow laws that are orthogonal to our subjective feelings, likes and biases. When you talk about what minds believe, it becomes messier (because a lot of facts are socially constructed, like money or laws, and not independent of feelings, likes and biases; in fact, they are intrinsic to what it is like to be a human, part of a human community with its intellectual and material limitations. What does ‘real’ mean when we say ‘this piece of paper is worth 100 dollars’ except something like “well, this is some kind of useful and enforced belief/practice which is contingent on the existence and interactions of a particular type of being with properties x, y, z”). There’s like three tiers here: stuff that’s mind-independent (it doesn’t matter what any mind or group of minds believe and think with respect to the underlying truth), stuff that’s intersubjective (which is mind-dependent but not amenable to change by an individual) and purely subjective stuff (which is completely dependent on the subject’s subjective beliefs, feelings, whatever). Morality is for me something that belongs to somewhere between the second and third tier (the ‘agreed social norms’ is 2nd tier, the personal belief that x is wrong independently of what anyone thinks, to 3rd tier).
So on moral realism: I just feel there’s nothing you can really use for updating on the view that there are “stance-independent moral truths whose truth does not depend on what any mind happens to value or desire.” (Theology is more updatable here; like, you just need to have God(s) appear, interact with you and do supernatural stuff repeatedly and measurably). If you view of moral realism is something like “Given creatures with volition, reason, different interests, etc..., who would want to engage in positive-sum social games, there might exist an optimal configuration of the latter that would be reachable by different creatures without any contact with each other”, then while I am still somewhat skeptic, this is something I can imagine to be true, and I can think of ways in which it can be updated.
Or here’s a better intuition pump: argue for something you believe in vehemently, but don’t act like it’s actually true.