What Lance is doing is no different from pointing out the confused nature of people talking about square circles or married bachelors. We understand all the individual words (“stance-independently,” “good,” “bad”), but they don’t amount to anything coherent when put together. Those putting these words together are consistently unable to furnish definitions that make sense of their combined phrasing. (They sometimes appeal to the notion of an unanalyzable concept, a bogus move that shows lack of awareness of the empirical literature on concept acquisition. All concepts ultimately bottom out in databases of associated observations.)
We all comprehend “good” (“bad”) as “(not) conforming to a stance: a standard, point of view, or goal.” Or we understand “(dis)value” as roughly “that which an agent tends to approach (or avoid). Moreover, we understand what it means for something to be “stance-independent” — for example, it is a stance-independent fact that the mass of the Earth is ~6 x10^24 kg.
What we deny is that these words (“stance-independently good/bad,” “stance-independent (dis)value”) make any sense when combined. The people combining them are deeply confused.
There is no coherent, noncircular, nonparochial definition of “value” that makes this combination of words coherent. “Value,” as used with maximal breadth by competent speakers of the language, quite clearly refers to a stanced tendency to approach or avoid something. We do tend to disvalue our own pain, but not in every context. And of course we disvalue our own suffering inasmuch as suffering simply is defined as a state an agent disvalues. However, our enemies might find value in our suffering, and disvalue in our happiness, and there is no credible case that they are somehow misunderstanding the concept of value. No one owns language. Words do not have meaning independent of how people use them. They are mouth-noises associated with databases of observations (again, see the literature on concept acquisition, esp. exemplar theory). For many words (“tree,” “table”), the consensus on these databases is quite high — high enough that if someone points at a tree and says “table,” we can make a credible case they are mistaken. But words like “good” and “value” lack such consensus. Their meaning is nowhere close to fixed. Usage of such words consistently points only to agents’ approach-avoid tendencies. In this regard these terms are much like common indexicals (“I,” “here,” “now”) which lack any fixed meaning but always indicate the standpoint of the speaker. Just so, words like “good” and “value” implicitly invoke a standard in the mind of the speaker, except when explicitly tied to some other standard (“X is good according to group Y or criterion Z”).
Lastly, Lance is a scholar who has extensively studied metaethics and specifically the psychology of metaethics, and he has published in this literature. He unquestionably knows more than you do about this topic. He probably knows as much as anyone except a comparably specialized scholar of significantly greater age. It is unbecoming of you to insinuate that he does not know the relevant subject matter. He is more than familiar with the philosophical papers, arguments, and major players in the field. What’s more, he is also familiar with the empirical psychological work that many of them — and you — appear to neglect. After all this study, it is his considered opinion — and he is not alone — that much of the philosophical discussion in metaethics rests on conceptual confusions. This does not mean he does not understand the literature. He understands the body of work. He simply — and correctly — points out that much of this work involves putting together words in superficially cogent ways that lack any deep coherence or meaning. Similar to “married bachelors” or “square circles,” the terms many philosophers use amount only to empty confusions.
Lance may have his own explanation of the source of these confusions, but I would hazard they are driven by motivated reasoning, hyperactive meaning-making (akin to pareidolia, creating meaning out of noise), and idiosyncratic training in a self-selected linguistic enclave.
“Bush has said repeatedly that he is deeply confused by moral language.”
This is not even close to what Lance Bush has said about moral language. What Lance *has* done is call into question the cogency of how you and other realists use moral language, often pointing to what he views as conceptual confusions (e.g. “stance-independent”), and asking for reality-facing explanations of what they might mean practically. Most often, moral realists pull what you just did and act as though, if he doesn’t “get it,” then he is just mentally defective—which may be a weak explanation that you find satisfying, but it is not an argument.
This kind of rhetoric is just gross; it’s your rephrasing and recasting of what Lance has *actually* said so that you can effectively express your own opinion (that Lance is an imbecile) and do so with some modicum of plausible deniability with your readers.
I'm curious as to why you say morality can be *defined* as what a fully rational and impartial person would do. Couldn't a fully rational person act immorally? Couldn't a moral act be partial (e.g. caring more for one's own children)?
These are substantive questions about morality, and it seems odd to simply rule them out by definition.
What Lance is doing is no different from pointing out the confused nature of people talking about square circles or married bachelors. We understand all the individual words (“stance-independently,” “good,” “bad”), but they don’t amount to anything coherent when put together. Those putting these words together are consistently unable to furnish definitions that make sense of their combined phrasing. (They sometimes appeal to the notion of an unanalyzable concept, a bogus move that shows lack of awareness of the empirical literature on concept acquisition. All concepts ultimately bottom out in databases of associated observations.)
We all comprehend “good” (“bad”) as “(not) conforming to a stance: a standard, point of view, or goal.” Or we understand “(dis)value” as roughly “that which an agent tends to approach (or avoid). Moreover, we understand what it means for something to be “stance-independent” — for example, it is a stance-independent fact that the mass of the Earth is ~6 x10^24 kg.
What we deny is that these words (“stance-independently good/bad,” “stance-independent (dis)value”) make any sense when combined. The people combining them are deeply confused.
There is no coherent, noncircular, nonparochial definition of “value” that makes this combination of words coherent. “Value,” as used with maximal breadth by competent speakers of the language, quite clearly refers to a stanced tendency to approach or avoid something. We do tend to disvalue our own pain, but not in every context. And of course we disvalue our own suffering inasmuch as suffering simply is defined as a state an agent disvalues. However, our enemies might find value in our suffering, and disvalue in our happiness, and there is no credible case that they are somehow misunderstanding the concept of value. No one owns language. Words do not have meaning independent of how people use them. They are mouth-noises associated with databases of observations (again, see the literature on concept acquisition, esp. exemplar theory). For many words (“tree,” “table”), the consensus on these databases is quite high — high enough that if someone points at a tree and says “table,” we can make a credible case they are mistaken. But words like “good” and “value” lack such consensus. Their meaning is nowhere close to fixed. Usage of such words consistently points only to agents’ approach-avoid tendencies. In this regard these terms are much like common indexicals (“I,” “here,” “now”) which lack any fixed meaning but always indicate the standpoint of the speaker. Just so, words like “good” and “value” implicitly invoke a standard in the mind of the speaker, except when explicitly tied to some other standard (“X is good according to group Y or criterion Z”).
Lastly, Lance is a scholar who has extensively studied metaethics and specifically the psychology of metaethics, and he has published in this literature. He unquestionably knows more than you do about this topic. He probably knows as much as anyone except a comparably specialized scholar of significantly greater age. It is unbecoming of you to insinuate that he does not know the relevant subject matter. He is more than familiar with the philosophical papers, arguments, and major players in the field. What’s more, he is also familiar with the empirical psychological work that many of them — and you — appear to neglect. After all this study, it is his considered opinion — and he is not alone — that much of the philosophical discussion in metaethics rests on conceptual confusions. This does not mean he does not understand the literature. He understands the body of work. He simply — and correctly — points out that much of this work involves putting together words in superficially cogent ways that lack any deep coherence or meaning. Similar to “married bachelors” or “square circles,” the terms many philosophers use amount only to empty confusions.
Lance may have his own explanation of the source of these confusions, but I would hazard they are driven by motivated reasoning, hyperactive meaning-making (akin to pareidolia, creating meaning out of noise), and idiosyncratic training in a self-selected linguistic enclave.
“Bush has said repeatedly that he is deeply confused by moral language.”
This is not even close to what Lance Bush has said about moral language. What Lance *has* done is call into question the cogency of how you and other realists use moral language, often pointing to what he views as conceptual confusions (e.g. “stance-independent”), and asking for reality-facing explanations of what they might mean practically. Most often, moral realists pull what you just did and act as though, if he doesn’t “get it,” then he is just mentally defective—which may be a weak explanation that you find satisfying, but it is not an argument.
This kind of rhetoric is just gross; it’s your rephrasing and recasting of what Lance has *actually* said so that you can effectively express your own opinion (that Lance is an imbecile) and do so with some modicum of plausible deniability with your readers.
I'm curious as to why you say morality can be *defined* as what a fully rational and impartial person would do. Couldn't a fully rational person act immorally? Couldn't a moral act be partial (e.g. caring more for one's own children)?
These are substantive questions about morality, and it seems odd to simply rule them out by definition.
We need a YouTube live-streamed debate :)