This is a rare case where antirealists and moral non-naturalists can at least agree that moral naturalism isn't able to do what we'd want an account of realism to accomplish. Naturalist accounts strike me as, at best, trivial, consisting of little more than labeling some set of descriptive facts "moral."
I'm sympathetic to the remark, but I think it'd be more apt to say that it'd be to become a moral antirealist (that is, to be more general about one's rejection of realism). I don't think the only or best option available is error theory in particular.
Er... yes, they're disagreeing. They bring different models and claim that their model is the one that applies to reality. It doesn't even guarantee internal consistency of either model, let alone its reality if it is consistent.
To strongly simplify: each has defined a function "good" that applies to acts in the world or states of the world or somesuch. Each gets some judgments about what that function returns on some discussed subset of acts/states. The rest is illusion of disagreement because they used the same word for different functions. (Kinda like, if you see a person bending over and I see a weapon, we can both type "bow", but it won't be the same bow.)
I could see some naturalists try to push back by insisting that they're not trying to offer an *analytic* (or conceptual) reduction, but merely a *metaphysical* one, which need not be transparent to ordinary language users.
Thanks! They could say that, but it's still really unclear what the natural property would be that preserves moral disputes being substantiveness. I do think the article you linked poses a related big problem for naturalism.
One of the things we (physicalists, people sympathetic to naturalism, even if we’re not necessarily naturalists, and so on) can do is to deny the substantiveness of the problems posed by opposing philosophical accounts. That is, in fact, exactly what I do much of the time.
For instance, you state in the post you refer to:
“So, a better intuitive basis for rejecting naturalism, it seems to me, is that it can't accommodate the datum that debates about the distribution of mental or moral properties are substantive.”
But naturalists are welcome to dispute what the “datum” supposedly are. With respect to consciousness, I deny there is any such thing as qualia. I don’t need to explain something if there isn’t something to explain. Those of us more sympathetic to naturalism and physicalism are under no obligation to accept various explanandum without argument.
In that post, you quote yourself as saying:
“The question whether my cyborg twin is conscious or not is surely a substantive question: I'm picking out a distinctive mental property, and asking whether he has it. Now, the problem for physicalists is that they can't really make sense of this. They can ask the semantic question whether the word 'consciousness' picks out functional property P1 or biological property P2. But given that we already know all the physical properties of my cyborg twin (say he has P1 but not P2), there's no substantive matter of fact left open for us to wonder about if physicalism is true. It becomes mere semantics.
It’s not clear to me that it would be a problem if we couldn’t make sense of it: what if there isn’t something to make sense of? In that case, not making sense of it is a theoretic virtue, since it means we’re not mistakenly convinced we’ve made sense of something that we haven’t actually made sense of. And I don’t think this is merely hypothetical. I don’t think “consciousness” is a distinctive mental property. Rather, I think it’s a term used to refer to a chaotic mess of phenomena that, when properly understood, don’t amount to any single, distinctive, specific property. Compare to “life.” I don’t think “life” is a specific property. I think “life” is a useful term for capturing a range of phenomena that aren’t some particular property, and especially not a categorical property thing a thing either has or doesn’t have.
As a result, I don’t accept the framework in which particular philosophical problems are posed, and particular problems are asked. I do think that at least some of the problems really are semantic (or conceptual) disputes, not substantive disputes. In other words, I think those of us who lean towards physicalist and naturalists positions are well within our capacity to deny that these face certain problems, not by resolving those problems, but by denying there is a problem to solve in the first place.
Yep, you can certainly say that. But once it's clear that the cost of being a physicalist is that you have to think the question of robot consciousness is as empty as the question whether viruses are "alive", I think far fewer people would find physicalism palatable!
I don't see that as a cost, any more than I think it's a cost of atheism that, if it is true, certain theological questions would be empty.
If physicalism is correct, and, as a consequence, some what of what appear to be genuine philosophical problems are not genuine philosophical problems, then rejecting these apparent problems as pseudoproblems is simply a reflection of an accurate understanding of how the world works.
If people find that unpalatable, that would be no shortcoming of physicalism.
This is a rare case where antirealists and moral non-naturalists can at least agree that moral naturalism isn't able to do what we'd want an account of realism to accomplish. Naturalist accounts strike me as, at best, trivial, consisting of little more than labeling some set of descriptive facts "moral."
I'm sympathetic to the remark, but I think it'd be more apt to say that it'd be to become a moral antirealist (that is, to be more general about one's rejection of realism). I don't think the only or best option available is error theory in particular.
...What exactly is the problem with "most arguments on the matter of morals are not substantive but simply model comparisons"?
Well it sure seems like when a deontologist and a utilitarian argue they're actually disagreeing.
Er... yes, they're disagreeing. They bring different models and claim that their model is the one that applies to reality. It doesn't even guarantee internal consistency of either model, let alone its reality if it is consistent.
So what fact are they disagreeing about?
Plus there's the meta question of which functions of this type are worthwhile (useful/informative/...) to define.
To strongly simplify: each has defined a function "good" that applies to acts in the world or states of the world or somesuch. Each gets some judgments about what that function returns on some discussed subset of acts/states. The rest is illusion of disagreement because they used the same word for different functions. (Kinda like, if you see a person bending over and I see a weapon, we can both type "bow", but it won't be the same bow.)
Great post!
I could see some naturalists try to push back by insisting that they're not trying to offer an *analytic* (or conceptual) reduction, but merely a *metaphysical* one, which need not be transparent to ordinary language users.
Even so, I think something in this vicinity -- the challenge of how to account for the substantiveness of boundary disputes -- provides the most fundamental reason to reject naturalism (about both normativity and qualia): https://www.philosophyetc.net/2016/03/the-basic-reason-to-reject-naturalism.html
Thanks! They could say that, but it's still really unclear what the natural property would be that preserves moral disputes being substantiveness. I do think the article you linked poses a related big problem for naturalism.
One of the things we (physicalists, people sympathetic to naturalism, even if we’re not necessarily naturalists, and so on) can do is to deny the substantiveness of the problems posed by opposing philosophical accounts. That is, in fact, exactly what I do much of the time.
For instance, you state in the post you refer to:
“So, a better intuitive basis for rejecting naturalism, it seems to me, is that it can't accommodate the datum that debates about the distribution of mental or moral properties are substantive.”
But naturalists are welcome to dispute what the “datum” supposedly are. With respect to consciousness, I deny there is any such thing as qualia. I don’t need to explain something if there isn’t something to explain. Those of us more sympathetic to naturalism and physicalism are under no obligation to accept various explanandum without argument.
In that post, you quote yourself as saying:
“The question whether my cyborg twin is conscious or not is surely a substantive question: I'm picking out a distinctive mental property, and asking whether he has it. Now, the problem for physicalists is that they can't really make sense of this. They can ask the semantic question whether the word 'consciousness' picks out functional property P1 or biological property P2. But given that we already know all the physical properties of my cyborg twin (say he has P1 but not P2), there's no substantive matter of fact left open for us to wonder about if physicalism is true. It becomes mere semantics.
It’s not clear to me that it would be a problem if we couldn’t make sense of it: what if there isn’t something to make sense of? In that case, not making sense of it is a theoretic virtue, since it means we’re not mistakenly convinced we’ve made sense of something that we haven’t actually made sense of. And I don’t think this is merely hypothetical. I don’t think “consciousness” is a distinctive mental property. Rather, I think it’s a term used to refer to a chaotic mess of phenomena that, when properly understood, don’t amount to any single, distinctive, specific property. Compare to “life.” I don’t think “life” is a specific property. I think “life” is a useful term for capturing a range of phenomena that aren’t some particular property, and especially not a categorical property thing a thing either has or doesn’t have.
As a result, I don’t accept the framework in which particular philosophical problems are posed, and particular problems are asked. I do think that at least some of the problems really are semantic (or conceptual) disputes, not substantive disputes. In other words, I think those of us who lean towards physicalist and naturalists positions are well within our capacity to deny that these face certain problems, not by resolving those problems, but by denying there is a problem to solve in the first place.
Yep, you can certainly say that. But once it's clear that the cost of being a physicalist is that you have to think the question of robot consciousness is as empty as the question whether viruses are "alive", I think far fewer people would find physicalism palatable!
I don't see that as a cost, any more than I think it's a cost of atheism that, if it is true, certain theological questions would be empty.
If physicalism is correct, and, as a consequence, some what of what appear to be genuine philosophical problems are not genuine philosophical problems, then rejecting these apparent problems as pseudoproblems is simply a reflection of an accurate understanding of how the world works.
If people find that unpalatable, that would be no shortcoming of physicalism.