This, I think, is a key point, and one that could be stressed more forcefully:
“I suspect that the appeal of meta-ethical hedonism derives at least in part from mixing normative epistemology together with the epistemology of consciousness in a manner that allows confusions about the latter to disguise muddiness about both.”
Many of these arguments seem to appeal to questionable views about consciousness; if we reject those views, then it’s not clear how plausible the rest of the argument is, or indeed, if elements of the argument aren’t even intelligible (because they rely on confusions about consciousness that can’t be made coherent), then we’re not even dealing with an argument, just the appearance of one.
This points towards a deeper worry I have about arguments like these. While you raise what I take to be credible epistemic concerns, it’s unclear whether metaethical hedonism can even get to the stage of being evaluated in this way if we cannot first assess whether it can offer us an account of normative realism that isn’t vacuous, self-contradictory, or unintelligible.
Take the claim that there are stance-independent normative moral facts. A naturalist might end up identifying such facts with certain kinds of descriptive claims. If so, it’s unclear how they can capture the kinds of normativity non-naturalists want to capture. While such accounts can be intelligible, it’s unclear whether they can simultaneously be both intelligible and nontrivial: such accounts would amount to little more than descriptive identifications of moral facts with some set of natural facts. Without bringing the unintelligible elements back in, this takes morality out of the business of having the overriding authority to mandate what we should and shouldn’t do independent of our goals and values.
Naturalism ends up delivering us a completely toothless notion of moral “norms”: these are norms that I either already cared about because they aligned with my goals, or still don’t care about because they don’t align with my goals. In the former case, I would have acted on those goals anyway, and realism adds nothing to my overall motivation, while in the latter case, I would at worst simply come to recognize I have no interest in doing what’s “morally good.” And what is the naturalist going to say? That I am “incorrect”? Well, so be it. That I am “irrational”? Again, so what? All these amount to are empty labels that have no authority.
But with non-naturalist realist, what would it even mean for there to be a normative fact of the relevant kind? The kinds of facts that purport to have this kind of authority are often described as e.g., irreducibly normative, or as providing us with some kind of decisive, or external reasons that “apply” to us independent of our values. I don’t think proponents of such views can communicate what this would mean in an intelligible way.
When I go about making decisions, I act in accordance with my goals and interests. I am exclusively motivated by those goals. If there were irreducibly normative facts of this kind, and they “gave me reasons,” what would that mean? That I “should” do something, even if it’s inconsistent with my goals? Not only am I not interested in doing that, I am not sure how I could, in principle, comply with such goals, unless, and only unless, I had the goal of complying with whatever the stance-independent moral facts turned out to be. As far as I can tell, I have no such goal. So I’m not even sure I could comply with those facts.
When it comes to pleasure and pain, these can either be trivially described so as to just be, by definition, states consistent with my goals and motivations, e.g., states I desire to have and to avoid, respectively. If not, it’s unclear what it would mean to say they were “intrinsically” good.
Philosophers routinely employ terms that may superficially appear to be meaningful. But, scratch the surface, and their terms simply can’t thread the conceptual needle.
In short, there is a deeper, and more worrisome problem with many accounts of moral realism: not only do they face seemingly insurmountable epistemic problems, and in the case of non-naturalist realism metaphysical problems but that at the very least non-naturalist realism also faces a more basic problem, which is that it’s so conceptually muddled it’s unclear whether there is an intelligible position to reject in the first place.
This, I think, is a key point, and one that could be stressed more forcefully:
“I suspect that the appeal of meta-ethical hedonism derives at least in part from mixing normative epistemology together with the epistemology of consciousness in a manner that allows confusions about the latter to disguise muddiness about both.”
Many of these arguments seem to appeal to questionable views about consciousness; if we reject those views, then it’s not clear how plausible the rest of the argument is, or indeed, if elements of the argument aren’t even intelligible (because they rely on confusions about consciousness that can’t be made coherent), then we’re not even dealing with an argument, just the appearance of one.
This points towards a deeper worry I have about arguments like these. While you raise what I take to be credible epistemic concerns, it’s unclear whether metaethical hedonism can even get to the stage of being evaluated in this way if we cannot first assess whether it can offer us an account of normative realism that isn’t vacuous, self-contradictory, or unintelligible.
Take the claim that there are stance-independent normative moral facts. A naturalist might end up identifying such facts with certain kinds of descriptive claims. If so, it’s unclear how they can capture the kinds of normativity non-naturalists want to capture. While such accounts can be intelligible, it’s unclear whether they can simultaneously be both intelligible and nontrivial: such accounts would amount to little more than descriptive identifications of moral facts with some set of natural facts. Without bringing the unintelligible elements back in, this takes morality out of the business of having the overriding authority to mandate what we should and shouldn’t do independent of our goals and values.
Naturalism ends up delivering us a completely toothless notion of moral “norms”: these are norms that I either already cared about because they aligned with my goals, or still don’t care about because they don’t align with my goals. In the former case, I would have acted on those goals anyway, and realism adds nothing to my overall motivation, while in the latter case, I would at worst simply come to recognize I have no interest in doing what’s “morally good.” And what is the naturalist going to say? That I am “incorrect”? Well, so be it. That I am “irrational”? Again, so what? All these amount to are empty labels that have no authority.
But with non-naturalist realist, what would it even mean for there to be a normative fact of the relevant kind? The kinds of facts that purport to have this kind of authority are often described as e.g., irreducibly normative, or as providing us with some kind of decisive, or external reasons that “apply” to us independent of our values. I don’t think proponents of such views can communicate what this would mean in an intelligible way.
When I go about making decisions, I act in accordance with my goals and interests. I am exclusively motivated by those goals. If there were irreducibly normative facts of this kind, and they “gave me reasons,” what would that mean? That I “should” do something, even if it’s inconsistent with my goals? Not only am I not interested in doing that, I am not sure how I could, in principle, comply with such goals, unless, and only unless, I had the goal of complying with whatever the stance-independent moral facts turned out to be. As far as I can tell, I have no such goal. So I’m not even sure I could comply with those facts.
When it comes to pleasure and pain, these can either be trivially described so as to just be, by definition, states consistent with my goals and motivations, e.g., states I desire to have and to avoid, respectively. If not, it’s unclear what it would mean to say they were “intrinsically” good.
Philosophers routinely employ terms that may superficially appear to be meaningful. But, scratch the surface, and their terms simply can’t thread the conceptual needle.
In short, there is a deeper, and more worrisome problem with many accounts of moral realism: not only do they face seemingly insurmountable epistemic problems, and in the case of non-naturalist realism metaphysical problems but that at the very least non-naturalist realism also faces a more basic problem, which is that it’s so conceptually muddled it’s unclear whether there is an intelligible position to reject in the first place.