As always, there’s a simple objection to arguments for normative theories that presume moral realism: there are no good arguments for moral realism. All versions of moral realism are trivial, false, or unintelligible. You say:
“On the point about moral realism, anti-realism is wildly implausible, as I argue here.”
I think you failed to show that moral antirealism is even a little bit implausible. It only seems implausible if you endorse moral realism, but of course to an antirealist that would seem implausible. I have yet to see any claims about moral antirealism being “implausible” that don’t presuppose moral realism.
I wrote a few responses to that original post, though Substack doesn’t seem to have a good format for extended replies. I have yet to create a blog of my own where we can have a back and forth on the matter, but I’d like to continue that discussion
You also recommend Parfit’s On What Matters. Do you know if OWM has any good arguments for moral realism? The only bits I recall from looking at the sections on moral realism consisted of Parfit more or less claiming that antirealists often just lacked the proper concepts. This struck me as speculative psychologizing, rather than anything amounting to a reasonable objection to antirealists.
Have you read ethical intuitionism? I haven’t read the book, but I’d be interested in discussing any arguments in the book for why antirealism is implausible.
You say: “The semantic account and the epistemological account would both be similar to how we came to know about and talk about other abstract realms, such as math and sets.”
What is the claim here, exactly? I don’t think ordinary mathematical language presumes any kind of “abstract realm” of mathematical objects or facts. Are you claiming that it does? I’m also not sure anyone has come to know about any substantive kind of mathematical realism. Even if they did, it’s not clear why I should think moral realism was anything like mathematical realism. Moral realism strikes me as far more likely to be a parochial human invention than math.
You say, “We can reason about such things, and they can explain particular moral judgments that we make, which feature in our moral language.”
I can reason about what music I am going to listen to and what food I am going to eat. Yet I am not a gastronomic or music realist. The ability to reason about normative and evaluative domains is not a good indication that those domains are comprised of stance-independent normative facts.
As far as explaining the moral judgments that “we” make, this is an empirical claim. If moral philosophers want to explain moral judgments, they’d need to provide a good account of what a moral judgment is, how their metaethical accounts can explain them, and so on, in such a way that they engage with the empirical evidence on the matter. I rarely see moral philosophers do this. They instead seem to rely largely on toy sentences and armchair analysis. I don’t think these are the proper methods for making discoveries about what nonphilosophers are doing when they engage in moral judgment. Again: descriptive questions about the moral judgments of nonphilosophers are best resolved by appeal to empirical evidence, not armchair speculation.
As always, there’s a simple objection to arguments for normative theories that presume moral realism: there are no good arguments for moral realism. All versions of moral realism are trivial, false, or unintelligible. You say:
“On the point about moral realism, anti-realism is wildly implausible, as I argue here.”
I think you failed to show that moral antirealism is even a little bit implausible. It only seems implausible if you endorse moral realism, but of course to an antirealist that would seem implausible. I have yet to see any claims about moral antirealism being “implausible” that don’t presuppose moral realism.
I wrote a few responses to that original post, though Substack doesn’t seem to have a good format for extended replies. I have yet to create a blog of my own where we can have a back and forth on the matter, but I’d like to continue that discussion
You also recommend Parfit’s On What Matters. Do you know if OWM has any good arguments for moral realism? The only bits I recall from looking at the sections on moral realism consisted of Parfit more or less claiming that antirealists often just lacked the proper concepts. This struck me as speculative psychologizing, rather than anything amounting to a reasonable objection to antirealists.
Have you read ethical intuitionism? I haven’t read the book, but I’d be interested in discussing any arguments in the book for why antirealism is implausible.
You say: “The semantic account and the epistemological account would both be similar to how we came to know about and talk about other abstract realms, such as math and sets.”
What is the claim here, exactly? I don’t think ordinary mathematical language presumes any kind of “abstract realm” of mathematical objects or facts. Are you claiming that it does? I’m also not sure anyone has come to know about any substantive kind of mathematical realism. Even if they did, it’s not clear why I should think moral realism was anything like mathematical realism. Moral realism strikes me as far more likely to be a parochial human invention than math.
You say, “We can reason about such things, and they can explain particular moral judgments that we make, which feature in our moral language.”
I can reason about what music I am going to listen to and what food I am going to eat. Yet I am not a gastronomic or music realist. The ability to reason about normative and evaluative domains is not a good indication that those domains are comprised of stance-independent normative facts.
As far as explaining the moral judgments that “we” make, this is an empirical claim. If moral philosophers want to explain moral judgments, they’d need to provide a good account of what a moral judgment is, how their metaethical accounts can explain them, and so on, in such a way that they engage with the empirical evidence on the matter. I rarely see moral philosophers do this. They instead seem to rely largely on toy sentences and armchair analysis. I don’t think these are the proper methods for making discoveries about what nonphilosophers are doing when they engage in moral judgment. Again: descriptive questions about the moral judgments of nonphilosophers are best resolved by appeal to empirical evidence, not armchair speculation.