Realism and anti realism aren’t two well defined and distinct positions: rather there is a range of realistic and and anti-realistic positions.
The strongest forms of realism include universalism , the idea that ethical questions don’t just have answers, but acontextual answers that apply to everybody; and the idea that there is a special realm of moral objects or properties. Neither is needed for minimal moral realism, the idea ethical claims have (stance independent) truth values.
Anti realist positions include the extreme claims that moral propositions are meaningless (non cognitivism) or systematically false (nihilism) as well as relativistic claims, that moral claims have truth values dependent on individual stances or social agreements. Moderate anti realism is at least close to moderate realism, creating the possibility of a middle way.
In response, I mention an undercutting defeater: our moral intuitions ultimately exist in our brains that were shaped by evolution and natural selection. And they correspond suspiciously well to intuitions that would help individuals and societies have high reproductive fitness
You say that like it’s a problem. If morality is in fact a set of evolved habits and instincts for living in, and preserving , societies that is enough—that’s where the buck stops. And such a take on metaethics is different to strong anti realism (nihilism, subjectivism, etc) even if it doesn’t amount to full strength realism.
there’s no particular reason to think natural selection would result in moral instincts based on objective moral truth (since there’s no reason to think that following objectively correct morality helps you survive and reproduce).
The Open Question objection states that evolutionary ethics isn’t necessarily true. It isn’t a defeater in the strong sense of showing evolutionary ethics is necessarily false.
And if you are favouring something like subjectivism, you need to show that is true/workable separately—the truth of subjectivism doesn’t follow from the falsehood of realism. And if you are favouring something like nihilism, you need to be explain why societies have moral practices at all.
Truth is a multi faceted concept, too. Some kinds of truth are more obtainable than others. There is reason to think that natural selection (and cultural evolution) would result in ethics that’s fit-for-purpose. If you are willing to accept that kind off pragmatic adequacy as a kind of almost-truth, you can have an almost-realism.
Subjectivsm, emotivism, and nihilism have various problems that moral realism would not have. Ethics is called in to justify rules that apply to everybody, and actions that occur objectively, like putting people in jail. Neither nihilism nor non cognitivism find can justify such actions. Nor can subjectivism: if Alice thinks Charlie is a criminal, and Bob thinks us a hero, should Charlie get a jail sentence or a medal? Therefore, if something like Moral Realism does not exist, it would be desirable to invent it, to construct a system of ethics that is as close to realism as possible… and perhaps we have..
Minimally Moral realism is the idea that moral claims have mind independent truth values. Maximally, it is the idea that it requires it’s own domain of non natural entities … an idea driven by the correspondence theory of truth, and the is-ought gap.
The apparent requirement for supernatural entities is a common reason to reject moral.realism, but many naturalist theories of realism are available. Eg evolutionary ethics, contractarianism, Kantian ethics and game theoretical ethics. Maybe utilitarianism as well.
Naturalistic ethics can still be objected to on grounds of the is-ought gap. --.but I will argue that there is no such thing. How a thing should done is well. It is possible to gather bodies of theoretical and practical information on how to do something—build a bridge, or play chess—well. Such methodological knowledge is conditional: if you want to achieve X, you should do Y. So if we want to apply it to ethics, we need to figure out what ethics is for, what it’s purpose is.
This we can do. Ethics is social. If you are all alone in a desert island , there is nobody to steal from or murder. Ethics fulfils a role in society, and originated as a mutually beneficial way of regulating individual actions to minimise conflict, conserve resources, and solve coordination problems. A group of people on a.desert island would be better off if they created an ethical system from scratch … it’s in their interests to do so, so.there is a rational motivation to do so. That is the insight of contractarianism. Not only does ethics only make sense in a social context, every society has some form of it.
(And since its possible to think about ethics as a social technology, it’s not necessary to think of it in terms of subjective seemings—the phenomenal conservatism approach is not the only one).
This implies there is no universally correct system of ethics, since different societies operate under different constraints. Lack of universalism does not imply lack of realism. MR requires moral claims to have mind independent truth values …but their truth values can be dependent on other things. Objective truths can be local, indexed to time and space.
This does not imply that any defacto moral system is ideal. Therefore, it is possible to judge how well adapted a particular ethical system is. Therefore , a pragmatic twist on moral realism is available, and a problem of typical relativism, that “anything goes” so long as it’s done by a group—is avoided.
Phenomenal conservatism isn’t foundationally justified, the justification is more pragmatic—without PC, you have no starting point , and can’t say anything about anything.
Instead, I think the good is based on the intrinsic quality of our experiences. When I eat a food I like, the reason I enjoy it and desire it doesn’t seem to be reducible to anything other than that the experience seems good. Likewise, if I touch a hot stove, I have a desire to avoid that experience not because of the instrumental considerations of burning my hand, but rather some intrinsic quality of badness that the experience entails.
Are any of those moral goods and bads? Should you be punished for eating food you don’t like?
“Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person. If something is bad for me, I want to stop it, but if it isn’t bad for you, where does your motivation obligation come from—and without obligations, are we even talking ethics?
A bad apple is just a natural occurrence. A bad movie makes the world a worse place, but doesn’t break any laws. But bad actions by bad people deserve punishment.There’s a confused argument that tries to lever morality from natural facts by saying that something is bad in some sense, and then holding it up as a evaluative and normative truth.
Phenomenal conservatism isn’t foundationally justified, the justification is more pragmatic—without PC, you have no starting point , and can’t say anything about anything.
PC is one possible starting point, but there are others. For example, axiomatic mathematics allows you to say that 2+2=4, without the justification for that being “it seems that 2+2=4”. As another example, you could assume anti-PC—that however the world seems to you, the truth must be the opposite. So “without PC, you have no starting point” is not a reasonable justification for PC, even from a pragmatic point of view.
Are any of those moral goods and bads? Should you be punished for eating food you don’t like?
I didn’t say anything about punishment. What I mean by bad here is given a choice between World A where I’m eating something tasty and World B where I’m eating something yucky, World B is less preferable, so it is bad in that sense.
“Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person.
Goodness and badness are traits of experience and actions, not objects. When we say someone is a “bad person”, we are capturing a bundle of intuitions about that person (they have bad intentions, their actions had bad results, etc). I don’t think analyzing goodness or badness as a trait of people generally is productive, since these intuitions aren’t actually rigorous (e.g. George Bush’s policies were generally bad, but PEFPAR saved tens millions of lives, so he was plausibly the best president of the 21st century in terms of lives saved?). Likewise with an apple or movie, calling an apple bad captures some intuitions about desireable properties of apples (tasty, does not give you illness, etc), but it’s not as if the apple has some inherent quality of goodness.
What I mean by bad here is given a choice between World A where I’m eating something tasty and World B where I’m eating something yucky, World B is less preferable, so it is bad in that sense.
If it is to be a theory of ethics at all, it needs to be bad in an ethical sense—not in the sense of aesthetics or personal preference, or inefficency, or the various other things that “bad” can mean.
I didn’t say anything about punishment.
I brought it in to act as a criterion of ethical badness.
“Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person.
Goodness and badness are traits of experience and actions, not objects.
English allows us to describe a rotten apple as bad. There are non ethical senses of bad. That’s why it’s not clear that the hedonic kind of badness that is immediately apprehensible in experience , the kind that analytical hedonism is based on, is the ethical kind I’m not saying that ethical goodness and badness are properties of objects, I’m doubting that they are properties of experiences. There are a lot more than two theories. Maybe ethical properties aren’t anywhere.
Since there is doubt, it not clear that analytical hedonism is the one true theory of metaethics. Which is normal—it’s not clear that any other theory is—metaethics is not a solved probelm.
There’s an argument for Analytical Hedonic consequentialism, which states that you can just immediately tell me what’s good and bad..The bad stuff hurts, the good stuff feels pleasurable. It seems appealing to its adherent s because it doesn’t need to appeal to non physical properties existing outside the mind or divine commands.
It has two main problems: It’s not at all clear that the kind of goodness and badness that is immediately apprehendable is an ethical kind; and it’s not clear how my subjective perceptions mean I should behave in any particular way toward others , as I don’t feel their pains.
Realism and anti realism aren’t two well defined and distinct positions: rather there is a range of realistic and and anti-realistic positions.
The strongest forms of realism include universalism , the idea that ethical questions don’t just have answers, but acontextual answers that apply to everybody; and the idea that there is a special realm of moral objects or properties. Neither is needed for minimal moral realism, the idea ethical claims have (stance independent) truth values.
Anti realist positions include the extreme claims that moral propositions are meaningless (non cognitivism) or systematically false (nihilism) as well as relativistic claims, that moral claims have truth values dependent on individual stances or social agreements. Moderate anti realism is at least close to moderate realism, creating the possibility of a middle way.
You say that like it’s a problem. If morality is in fact a set of evolved habits and instincts for living in, and preserving , societies that is enough—that’s where the buck stops. And such a take on metaethics is different to strong anti realism (nihilism, subjectivism, etc) even if it doesn’t amount to full strength realism.
The Open Question objection states that evolutionary ethics isn’t necessarily true. It isn’t a defeater in the strong sense of showing evolutionary ethics is necessarily false. And if you are favouring something like subjectivism, you need to show that is true/workable separately—the truth of subjectivism doesn’t follow from the falsehood of realism. And if you are favouring something like nihilism, you need to be explain why societies have moral practices at all.
Truth is a multi faceted concept, too. Some kinds of truth are more obtainable than others. There is reason to think that natural selection (and cultural evolution) would result in ethics that’s fit-for-purpose. If you are willing to accept that kind off pragmatic adequacy as a kind of almost-truth, you can have an almost-realism.
Subjectivsm, emotivism, and nihilism have various problems that moral realism would not have. Ethics is called in to justify rules that apply to everybody, and actions that occur objectively, like putting people in jail. Neither nihilism nor non cognitivism find can justify such actions. Nor can subjectivism: if Alice thinks Charlie is a criminal, and Bob thinks us a hero, should Charlie get a jail sentence or a medal? Therefore, if something like Moral Realism does not exist, it would be desirable to invent it, to construct a system of ethics that is as close to realism as possible… and perhaps we have..
Minimally Moral realism is the idea that moral claims have mind independent truth values. Maximally, it is the idea that it requires it’s own domain of non natural entities … an idea driven by the correspondence theory of truth, and the is-ought gap.
The apparent requirement for supernatural entities is a common reason to reject moral.realism, but many naturalist theories of realism are available. Eg evolutionary ethics, contractarianism, Kantian ethics and game theoretical ethics. Maybe utilitarianism as well.
Naturalistic ethics can still be objected to on grounds of the is-ought gap. --.but I will argue that there is no such thing. How a thing should done is well. It is possible to gather bodies of theoretical and practical information on how to do something—build a bridge, or play chess—well. Such methodological knowledge is conditional: if you want to achieve X, you should do Y. So if we want to apply it to ethics, we need to figure out what ethics is for, what it’s purpose is.
This we can do. Ethics is social. If you are all alone in a desert island , there is nobody to steal from or murder. Ethics fulfils a role in society, and originated as a mutually beneficial way of regulating individual actions to minimise conflict, conserve resources, and solve coordination problems. A group of people on a.desert island would be better off if they created an ethical system from scratch … it’s in their interests to do so, so.there is a rational motivation to do so. That is the insight of contractarianism. Not only does ethics only make sense in a social context, every society has some form of it.
(And since its possible to think about ethics as a social technology, it’s not necessary to think of it in terms of subjective seemings—the phenomenal conservatism approach is not the only one).
This implies there is no universally correct system of ethics, since different societies operate under different constraints. Lack of universalism does not imply lack of realism. MR requires moral claims to have mind independent truth values …but their truth values can be dependent on other things. Objective truths can be local, indexed to time and space.
This does not imply that any defacto moral system is ideal. Therefore, it is possible to judge how well adapted a particular ethical system is. Therefore , a pragmatic twist on moral realism is available, and a problem of typical relativism, that “anything goes” so long as it’s done by a group—is avoided.
@Dacyn
Phenomenal conservatism isn’t foundationally justified, the justification is more pragmatic—without PC, you have no starting point , and can’t say anything about anything.
@BrandonHowe
Are any of those moral goods and bads? Should you be punished for eating food you don’t like?
“Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person. If something is bad for me, I want to stop it, but if it isn’t bad for you, where does your motivation obligation come from—and without obligations, are we even talking ethics?
A bad apple is just a natural occurrence. A bad movie makes the world a worse place, but doesn’t break any laws. But bad actions by bad people deserve punishment.There’s a confused argument that tries to lever morality from natural facts by saying that something is bad in some sense, and then holding it up as a evaluative and normative truth.
PC is one possible starting point, but there are others. For example, axiomatic mathematics allows you to say that 2+2=4, without the justification for that being “it seems that 2+2=4”. As another example, you could assume anti-PC—that however the world seems to you, the truth must be the opposite. So “without PC, you have no starting point” is not a reasonable justification for PC, even from a pragmatic point of view.
I didn’t say anything about punishment. What I mean by bad here is given a choice between World A where I’m eating something tasty and World B where I’m eating something yucky, World B is less preferable, so it is bad in that sense.
Goodness and badness are traits of experience and actions, not objects. When we say someone is a “bad person”, we are capturing a bundle of intuitions about that person (they have bad intentions, their actions had bad results, etc). I don’t think analyzing goodness or badness as a trait of people generally is productive, since these intuitions aren’t actually rigorous (e.g. George Bush’s policies were generally bad, but PEFPAR saved tens millions of lives, so he was plausibly the best president of the 21st century in terms of lives saved?). Likewise with an apple or movie, calling an apple bad captures some intuitions about desireable properties of apples (tasty, does not give you illness, etc), but it’s not as if the apple has some inherent quality of goodness.
If it is to be a theory of ethics at all, it needs to be bad in an ethical sense—not in the sense of aesthetics or personal preference, or inefficency, or the various other things that “bad” can mean.
I brought it in to act as a criterion of ethical badness. “Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person.
English allows us to describe a rotten apple as bad. There are non ethical senses of bad. That’s why it’s not clear that the hedonic kind of badness that is immediately apprehensible in experience , the kind that analytical hedonism is based on, is the ethical kind I’m not saying that ethical goodness and badness are properties of objects, I’m doubting that they are properties of experiences. There are a lot more than two theories. Maybe ethical properties aren’t anywhere.
Since there is doubt, it not clear that analytical hedonism is the one true theory of metaethics. Which is normal—it’s not clear that any other theory is—metaethics is not a solved probelm.
There’s an argument for Analytical Hedonic consequentialism, which states that you can just immediately tell me what’s good and bad..The bad stuff hurts, the good stuff feels pleasurable. It seems appealing to its adherent s because it doesn’t need to appeal to non physical properties existing outside the mind or divine commands.
It has two main problems: It’s not at all clear that the kind of goodness and badness that is immediately apprehendable is an ethical kind; and it’s not clear how my subjective perceptions mean I should behave in any particular way toward others , as I don’t feel their pains.