Contra Bush on Moral Fetishism

Replying to a long comment

I recently published an article arguing against the charge of moral fetishism. Lance Bush wrote a sufficiently long comment that I thought it would be worth dedicating an article to addressing it — replying in a comment would have been inadequate. I’d recommend reading the original comment thread for reference.

Bush claims the following: “I am not sure if you appreciate just how fully I reject the framework in which you operate.” He claims that the confusion about meta-ethics is so deeply entrenched that “much contemporary analytic philosophy is fundamentally and wildly misguided, and that the result is an entire discipline that reliably fails to produce substantive answers to the questions it has set for itself.”

Bush has said repeatedly that he thinks that much of the moral language used by moral philosophers like external normative language is confused — he doesn’t understand what philosophers mean by the jargon surrounding reasons and counting in favor of, to the extent it can’t be given a reduction to facts about desires, for example. He thinks that this confusion is just due to a deeply confused and circular subject matter — no one can even attempt to explain coherently what it means to be an external normative reason, for example. This makes his opining on the alleged systematic errors particularly odd — if a hotly contested philosophical topic seemed totally unintelligible to me, I’d be very hesitant to confidently proclaim confusion on behalf of participants in the dispute. I have trouble understanding what platonists and nominalists are arguing about, so it would seem irresponsible to claim that the subject matter is confused. Maybe it is confused, or maybe I’m just conceptually impoverished. The same possibility seems true of Bush — I don’t know how he would know that the subject matter is confused, rather than it merely being him that’s confused.

But, putting aside those meta claims about morality, I’ll address each of the various charges Bush lays out. I think none of them give us any reason to think the moral fetishism charge is correct. My original quotes are bracketed like this //my claim//.

//No, it couldn't be that the moral facts command you to scream at tables. The moral facts necessarily don't say that -- they couldn't be different if we accept they're necessary. //

Why not? Do you have an objection or are you just asserting the contrary? If the latter, on what basis? Is there a logical contradiction of some kind in it being morally necessary to scream at tables? If so, what's the logical contradiction? If not, then on what grounds do you claim it's not possible for screaming at tables to be a necessary moral fact?

This seems like a fundamental confusion about the nature of necessity. If the moral facts are necessary and are hedonistic utilitarian in nature — as I have a 41 part series arguing — then they couldn’t be otherwise. Thus, imagining the moral facts being different from what they are is like imagining a square circle.

But there is a second reason I proposed why the moral facts can’t be bizarre things — commanding us to scream at tables. Morality would necessarily resonate with us if we were fully rational and impartial — this is true by definition, as I claim in the original article. But it couldn’t be that greater wisdom and impartiality made us conclude that tables were worth screaming at because tables have no features that make them worth screaming at. For this to be otherwise, greater wisdom and impartiality would have to make us conclude that tables are worth screaming at, but if this were so, it would no longer seem like we have no reason to scream at tables. By definition, in this bizarre subset of epistemic space, it would be only foolishness that makes us not scream at tables.

I agree that if moral facts are necessary that they couldn't be any different than they are. But that is compatible with it being morally necessary to scream at tables. It seems very strange for you to say they couldn't be different than they are as though there were some kind of refutation, when the very point being made is a challenge as to what the moral facts are. The hypothetical is predicated on an epistemic consideration, not a metaphysical one. That is, I am not granting that as a matter of fact, there are necessary moral facts, and they include moral facts {A, B, C}, but then I am asking us to consider the hypothetical possibility that the moral facts are instead {D.} That wouldn't make any sense, since if I accepted that they're necessarily {A, B, C}, then they couldn't be {D}, even in principle.

Now Bush seems to reformulate the challenge as an epistemic one — questioning how we could know that the moral facts don’t command us to scream at tables. My earlier comments explain this — the true moral facts would necessarily resonate with ideal observers. Additionally, as I argued at length in my moral realism article, we have reliable ways of gaining moral knowledge that inform us that we shouldn’t scream at tables.

The fetishism challenge is not best understood as an epistemic one, at least as it’s genuinely formulated. The question is not how we know that we shouldn’t scream at tables — though that is a question that can be raised, albeit not a particularly difficult challenge. Instead, it’s whether we would in fact have genuine reasons to do crazy things if the moral facts commanded them — things like yelling at tables. It’s intended as a reductio ad absurdum to the idea that we should follow the moral facts, whatever they are.

Bush next seems to take up the original version of the challenge — the fetishist version, not the epistemic version.

But that's not where the hypothetical derives its force - from accepting a particular claim of necessity, then asking you to entertain an alternative claim to necessity. Rather, the argument can appeal to the epistemic possibility that you and others have failed to identify what the necessary moral facts are. And unless you are infallible, that remains an open possibility. Now, I'll grant that if you can demonstrate some kind of logical contradiction between the truth of moral realism and it being morally necessary to scream at tables, that you can show the latter cannot be one of the moral facts. But I very much doubt you can do so without appealing to the very premises I reject, leaving you with an argument that is, at worst, question-begging or mere assertion, and at best, an argument that only has appeal to someone who already accepts your substantive normative claims. Either way, I doubt you have a winning hand here.

As I explain in the article, morality necessarily does have force. Given that morality is about what we’d do if we were rational and impartial — if we cared about everyone equally and all the right things — in order for the moral facts to command screaming at tables, our failure to scream at tables must be a result of foolishness and partiality. But if it is — in that bizarre subset of epistemic space — then it seems totally reasonable that we should stop being foolish and scream at tables.

I also raised the epistemic analogy — if we had most epistemic reason to believe in skepticism or some other bizarre thing, then that’s obviously what we should believe. This is because the epistemic facts have force by virtue of being epistemic facts — moral facts are the same.

To be honest, I think you are question-beggingly assuming that your substantive normative moral conclusions are necessary, something I don't think you're entitled to do when considering the hypothetical.

I’ve argued for robust realism at length in my moral realism article. Robust realism implies that moral facts are belief-independent necessary facts. There’s no possible world in which pain is good, for example. Only naturalism holds that the moral facts can be contingent, but moral naturalism is implausible for lots of reasons.

With respect, I suspect you are trying to avoid the force of the hypothetical because the implications are devastating, but I don't think you're even remotely successful: your position requires something that involves some combination of

(1) question begging. In particular, you are now appealing to claims you've argued for elsewhere but you're not entitled to appeal to to resist the force of the hypothetical. After all, if you're permitted to appeal to positions you have argued for, but have not convinced others of - then so am I, in which case I will appeal to my own position, which entails that non-naturalist moral realism is unintelligible, in which case you're mistaken about moral realism outright. After all, I've argued for that elsewhere!

This is a particularly bizarre claim. Am I required to enumerate every single philosophical assumption that I make and lay them out in detail in the article, rather than reference other places where I’ve argued for them. Obviously, they can be disagreed with — if one accepts Bush’s other claims about moral realism being incoherent then my claims will have no force. But this is the nature of philosophical disagreement — often two people will have totally different webs of belief, making it so that each finds the other’s argument unpersuasive.

What you're doing is effectively making your current position contingent on other contested positions that you hold. And that's fine, but if your reasoning as to why such-and-such a claim isn't possible requires us to buy into the rest of your philosophical views, why should we do that?

Well, I’ve given reasons in other places. Given that these considerations are supposed to move us off of robust realism, rather than just preach to the anti-realist choir that’s confused about moral terms, it shouldn’t require the falsity of the rest of the realist hypothesis. If fetishism worries are inherently theory-laden, such that they have force if and only if one is an anti-realist, then they shouldn’t move realists at all.

We could then move the hypothetical over to those, ask you to consider a hypothetical in which those views are wrong, and then, once you're doing so, ask you to consider the current hypothetical. What are you going to do? Insist you can't do that, either? Is your entire philosophical position necessary? This isn't an appropriate way to escape a hypothetical. I could just as readily say that because I've argued for illusionism elsewhere, that therefore I'm correct that it's not possible for there to be qualia, You wouldn't take that seriously, and you shouldn't. Yet you're helping yourself to exactly that move here.

The illusionism analogy is particularly inapt. If I had some argument that was supposed to convince someone that illusionism was false, it couldn’t have premises that one would only accept if they’re not illusionists. For an argument to have force against another’s position, it should challenge their assumptions — if their position being true refutes the objection, then it’s just begging the question.

Hypotheticals can’t feature logically impossible things (plausibly). It would be bizarre to object to mathematical platonism on the grounds that it holds that if math were different then we’d get different results — on mathematical platonism, math couldn’t be difficult. If moral realism is true, the scenario is logically impossible — thus, it can’t feature in a genuine hypothetical.

//But also, as I explain at length, in the bizarre epistemic possibility that they required us to scream at tables,//

I deny that it's bizarre, outright. It may seem bizarre to you, but it wouldn't if you had a strong subjective moral preference to scream at tables, but no similar inclination to impartially maximize utility. What seems bizarre or not to you, morally speaking, is contingent on your personal moral attitudes, preferences, and sentiments; it is very much a contingent matter; your judgments about what's morally "necessary" are ironically completely beholden to contingent features of your human psychology and enculturation.

This seems to be a strange proprietary anti-realist notion of bizarreness. Even if we accept anti-realism, it would be a strange fact if morality commanded us to scream at tables. As I explain, we have reliable ways of gaining moral knowledge — these reliable ways inform us of hedonism or something close. Morality commanding us to scream at tables is epistemically unlikely — my earlier comments address the epistemic challenge.

Remember, I’m currently not claiming that a person who spends their life screaming at tables is necessarily irrational or bizarre — though I would claim that. I’m merely claiming here that it would be a bizarre turn of events if that’s what the moral facts really commanded.

//But also, as I explain at length, in the bizarre epistemic possibility that they required us to scream at tables, then our refraining from screaming at tables is built on partiality and ignorance -- this makes it seem especially clear that we do have good reason to scream at tables if, in fact, the moral facts command it. //

This strikes me as a total capitulation to the objection, which should have been construed as epistemic in the first place. By initially misframing the objection, you give the misleading impression that you’ve refuted the actual argument, but now can make a lesser concession to a weaker form of it.

In the "bizarre" epistemic possibility that the moral facts required you to torture everyone forever, or convert all matter into bananas, and you had the power to do so, would you do it? If so, this is all that critics like me need to establish to raise doubts about your position.

As I said before, this is not a genuine metaphysical possibility, so there’s no possible world in which one should convert all matter into bananas — except on utilitarian grounds, of course — thus, it can’t feature in a thought experiment. But as I describe in the passage quoted and the part after it — in a point seemingly ignored by Bush — morality denotes what we’d do if we were rational and impartial; thus, in this segment of epistemic space, it must be partiality and foolishness that makes us not turn the world into bananas. So the objection, when we reduce morality to its essence, questions whether, if perfect wisdom and kindness would lead us to do weird things, whether we should do those things. The answer is clearly yes — this would show it’s simple error on our part to oppose conversion of the universe to bananas.

//However, thought experiments that we have good reason to think are metaphysically impossible//

I don’t agree that we have good reasons to think it’s metaphysically impossible that it’s morally necessary to scream at tables. And if you’re entitled to appeal to extraneous arguments, so am I, and I’ll simply appeal to contrary arguments. Again, you’re not entitled to help yourself to dialectical double standards.

This was addressed above — I don’t have additional comments. The moral facts if existent — like mathematical facts — would have to be necessary.

//Yetter Chappell argues persuasively//

I don’t think Yetter Chappell has argued persuasively. I’ve argued persuasively that your position is false - do you accept such an assertion? If not, then why should I accept that Yetter Chappell has argued persuasively for something?

I’ve read the blog you linked, and all of Carlsmith’s entries on metaethics. I agree much more with Carlsmith than with Yetter Chappell, and do not think Yetter Chappell’s objections are persuasive.

Yetter Chappell states: “Furthermore, in addressing the question why helium-maximizing would be so misguided, I think the answer, "because people are what really matter!" is better than "because there's no way I would ever care about helium so much!"”

This does not strike me as a good objection. It just seems question begging. We could run into helium maximizers who could make the exact same kinds of appeals to their moral intuitions, and they might even outnumber us, and display an extraordinary expertise in moral philosophy on top of that. I see no reason to prioritize the moral intuitions of people-matter intuiters over helium-matters intuiters.

Bush’s objection misidentifies the point. If we accept that we have ways of reasoning about morality — which we should — then we’re justified in thinking that the moral facts almost certainly hold that people matter and helium doesn’t. One can always imagine a scenario in which many more experts disagreed with us about a basic claim — we could imagine all very wise aliens rejecting illusionism about consciousness — but the fact that there’s a hypothetical scenario in which we’d lack justification in believing some claim doesn’t mean we’re unjustified in believing it in the actual world.

There's a persistent tendency for your local arguments to rely on the presumption that extraneous arguments have been settled in your favor, even though many of the rest of us have not conceded to these other arguments and don't find them persuasive. This isn't a great way to argue - your arguments here seem to only work if we already buy into much of the rest of your philosophical views, which of course I don't! Imagine we flipped the tables, and you were raising objections to some specific argument I made. Then, instead of addressing your objections, I punted by claiming that as Carlsmith persuasively argued in some blog post, you're wrong about some background assumption you're appealing to to resist my argument, even though you'd already read Carlsmith's post and didn't agree with it. Imagine how unsatisfying it'd be to be in that situation - I'd simply be presuming not only that my current argument is correct, but also that I've won a bunch of other arguments that you don't think I've won at all.

This was addressed above — for an argument to be dialectically persuasive, it shouldn’t assume background claims that the other person would reject. However, refuting an objection to a worldview can appeal to other claims of that world view — this serves as an undercutting defeater.

Well, we’ve made it to the end. I’ve addressed every substantive point raised in the comment. None of them seem to salvage the moral fetishism charge from my objections.