I strongly agree with this piece. I also think that, when it comes to ethics specifically, it's easy for non-realists to dismiss realist intuitions as the product of socialization, cultural norms, or evolutionary pressures without ever considering that there may be equal and opposite influences pushing some people towards "intuitive" anti-realism. Lance is a very intelligent person and I respect the work he does, but I must admit that the few times I've engaged with him have been frustrating because he would slip into this very common attitude that realism and only realism was the culturally mandated, personally comforting position and that everyone just believes it for those reasons. But obviously, especially among secularists and materialists, there are also plenty of non-rational social influences that push people towards a sort of hyper-skepticism that sees any realist views as vaguely spooky and unacceptably "religious" or whatever. It can be frustrating to engage with non-realists because so many implicitly or explicitly have this mindset. It's like they can't imagine that anyone would ever be a non-realist for any reason other than pure, cold rationality - even though realism is decidedly uncool in a lot of these spaces and there's tons of pressure to give it up.
//it's easy for non-realists to dismiss realist intuitions as the product of socialization, cultural norms, or evolutionary pressures without ever considering that there may be equal and opposite influences pushing some people towards "intuitive" anti-realism. //
I don't think it's easy to dismiss realism on the basis of these sorts of considerations. I think it's quite difficult.
What's ironic about this remark is the latter part: The implication here seems to be that I haven’t even considered equal and opposite influences on myself. I've been at this for about twenty years, I'm familiar with heuristics and biases research, and I'm a psychologist. It would be profoundly strange if I hadn't considered my susceptibility to such biasing influences.
This remark is also ironic given that around the time your comment was posted I was discussing this exact topic in a livestream, and I explicitly talked about how I could be subject to similar biases in the opposite direction:
After discussing some of the causal factors that may bias people towards moral realism, I discuss my own biases. Here’s a transcription of the relevant remarks that I made (though you may want to listen ~1 minute or so before for more context):
“I think someone could do the same in my case. Someone could say that I caught this bug of really liking these contrarian views or really liking sparse ontologies and so I’m motivated by a desire to…I like the sort of just being anti…I want to get rid of things, I wanna expunge things. I get my joy out of tearing down other people’s philosophical views, and so I’m motivated by a desire to tear other people’s views down. And I have huge biases in favor of antirealist type accounts.
That might even be true. That doesn’t strike me as terribly implausible. I mean, for anybody that has heard me a whole lot doesn’t it seem like I like doing that kinda thing? It’s not that implausible that there’s some degree of motivation.”
//I must admit that the few times I've engaged with him have been frustrating because he would slip into this very common attitude that realism and only realism was the culturally mandated, personally comforting position and that everyone just believes it for those reasons.//
Note that you’re not commenting on anything I said, but are making an observation about my attitude. When you do that, that involves a heightened degree of attempting to read someone’s mind. And criticizing someone on the basis of tentative inferences about what you take to be their inner mental lives is a bit strange.
The attitude you describe is not one I’m familiar with, since it isn’t an attitude I’ve experienced. I don’t think that “realism and only realism was the culturally mandated, personally comforting position and that everyone just believes it for those reason.”
[Edited to add: Note that I say the opposite of this in the linked video. I emphasize that the biasing influences in question are just one among many causal influences. So not only do I not think that the biases only go in one direction, you attribute to me the notion that I think *everyone* believes it for these reasons. This is simply not true, and I explicitly said otherwise.]
//But obviously, especially among secularists and materialists, there are also plenty of non-rational social influences that push people towards a sort of hyper-skepticism that sees any realist views as vaguely spooky and unacceptably "religious" or whatever//
I agree. I’ve also made this point myself in discussions with others, though probably not as a matter of public record.
//It can be frustrating to engage with non-realists because so many implicitly or explicitly have this mindset.//
With respect, it can be frustrating to have conversations with people who presume to know what you think.
//It's like they can't imagine that anyone would ever be a non-realist for any reason other than pure, cold rationality//
Look at the transcript and video I just provided. I have explicit, public evidence that you are mistaken. It is not the case that I can’t imagine how someone like myself could be biased. In fact, it’s pretty easy for me to speculate, and I voluntarily did so on my own channel without any degree of coercion or prompting from a realist.
I appreciate your remarks and the respectful way in which they were expressed. However, I do think your perception of my attitude is quite mistaken: I’m well aware of my own biases and can readily speculate on the kinds of biases that could drive people towards skeptical and antirealist positions.
//Lance Bush seems to just not have the moral realist intuitions that lots of people seem to have. //
It’s interesting you say I don’t *seem* to. I have been explicit that I have no such “seemings.” Do you think I might have these seemings anyway? I grant that it’s possible, if so, but it’s strange that your remark hints at the possibility that you don’t take my word for it. I have more to say on this pending what you’d say in response. Note that if I cannot be trusted to be a reliable report about my own seemings, it’s not entirely clear why I should grant that you, or Huemer, or anyone else is. Skepticism about the contents of other people’s seemings is a two-way street.
A second concern is with the remark “that lots of people seem to have.” I’d be interested in hearing you elaborate on this. I don’t deny that lots of analytic philosophers and people who read analytic philosophy have these seemings (or should I say that they seem to have the seemings?). However, I do not think these populations comprise a large or representative body of human beings. So while the proportion of people who have these seemings may be large if we confine the population of interest to “people who study analytic philosophy” or something like that, this is not, itself, that large of a population relative to the world’s population. So “large” here is a bit underspecified. The amount who endorse such views may be large relative to some populations but very small relative to others.
//Now, as someone who does have them very strongly such that I think moral realism is blatantly obvious, it’s hard to take Lance’s position seriously.//
Note that to Christians who find God’s existence blatantly obvious, it’s hard to take atheism seriously. Obviousness isn’t a very impressive quality of a belief.
//But if one doesn’t have the intuitions, it’s hard to talk them into having them//
That’s plausible, but strikes me as an empirical question. And it may vary case-to-case. I don’t think there’s at least some evidence nonphilosophers don’t typically have qualia/hard problem of consciousness intuitions, but it may be fairly easy to talk them into having them.
//But here, I’ll argue that someone like Lance shouldn’t be that confident in anti-realism—if you just lack some requisite set of intuitions, then you should be near agnostic, rather than very confident that something doesn’t exist.//
This remark strikes me as a bit obscure. It seems to draw on a putative asymmetry, but I’m not entirely sure what you take our respective stances to be with respect to our position towards realism and antirealism. What do you take an intuition to be? And do you think you have intuitions in favor of realism, but I have no intuitions in favor of antirealism? I have some concerns here that I’ll abstain from expressing pending clarification on what you take our differences to be.
You also suggest I shouldn’t be confident if I “just” lack some requisite set of intuitions, but why should I put much stock in the intuitions of any particular group of people, such as you and other realists? What have you got going for you that should lend itself to agnosticism rather than skepticism? Presumably, there are a bunch of factors that are relevant to endorsing agnosticism or a skeptical stance towards some particular view. Among these are one’s assessment of factors relevant to the epistemic status of those reporting a particular set of intuitions. If it’s only a small, insular group of people that mostly interact with one another, or people only report the intuitions while on LSD, or if only people who join a particular cult claim to have the intuitions, these would strike me as reasons to be skeptical and to lean away from agnosticism. In the case of realists reporting realist intuitions, for me, what matters is why they are reporting those intuitions. I don’t know if I’m under any obligation to grant that the intuitions you and Huemer and others have are more reliable than the second process you describe; I’m also not sure my way of forming beliefs is strictly limited to the two processes you describe, nor whether my views exclusively fall into the latter category in the first place.
//In short, the first process of coming to beliefs is more reliable—and should consequently produce higher credences—than the second.//
When you say the “first process” do you mean these?:
“1. I have some strong intuition about the case that is incompatible with all the views except one.
2. I don’t have any especially strong intuitions, but I participate in the lengthy and drawn-out process of comparing the various views on offer to see which one is best.”
//Suppose that there are lots of really smart people who claim to have grasped some mathematical formula. You ask them to explain it, they try, but you find yourself unable to understand it. It seems unintelligible to you, and you’re not sure what intuitions they’re even supposed to be having. It just sounds like gibberish to you, and they explain their concepts in self-referential terms—you ask them to explain what a Morax Xephlorbinator is, and they make reference to a Slearax Zenzifrelator.//
How do you think I’d react to a situation like this? Do you think that if I encountered mathematicians that used concepts I couldn’t grasp that I’d think they weren’t saying anything meaningful?
//If we think of intuitions as intellectual appearances, as grasping something about apparent reality, then, just as if many people see a bear and some don’t, you’d expect there to be a bear, we should defer to the havers of intuitions over the people that don’t have them. //
The causal mechanisms behind why some people report having certain “appearances” and others don’t matter. Suppose much of the population is raised in a highly religious community. Most members of this community report having the intellectual seeming that God exists. Those outside the community are nonreligious. Very few report having the seeming that God exists. Should the members of the nonreligious community defer to the members of the religious community, and grant that given the reliability of intellectual seemings that God probably exists?
//The fact that you don’t grasp some particular thing about reality doesn’t give you any good reason to think that it isn’t true//
I don’t grant that you are grasping anything about reality. I think that I grasp reality as it is, and it doesn’t involve stance-independent moral facts any more than it involves pixies or unicorns.
//but the fact that you do grasp things does give you a good reason to believe they are true. //
There’s a big difference between reporting that one has the intellectual seeming that X and it being the case that “you do grasp things.” I’m not granting that you are grasping anything. It should come as no surprise to you that I think you *aren’t* grasping things and are instead mistaken.
//Just as you’d defer to have havers of mathematical intuitions, assuming they’re not crazy, so too should you in the moral case, and in various other philosophical cases.//
Is your view that if you don’t have intuitions about something that you should defer to those who do?
//And this doesn’t require thinking that these people are dumb or deficient. There are lots of things that all of us except Von Neumann can’t grasp. People have some intuitions that others don’t—so if people lack intuitions that you have, after suitable reflection, you shouldn’t give them weight.//
There are situations where some people genuinely understand reality as it is in ways others do not, and cannot. Perhaps some mathematicians or quantum physicists understand reality in ways you and I couldn’t fathom. But there are also people who are conceptually confused or mistaken, and as a result, believe they grasp reality as it is. Why should we think that you and other moral realists are in the former category, rather than the latter?
Deontologists have an intuition that rights matter. You don’t. Since having an intuition is stronger than not having an intuition, we should believe in rights.
> Lance Bush seems to just not have the moral realist intuitions that lots of people seem to have.
Depending on what you mean by "moral realist intuitions", I'm not sure what evidence you have that "lots" of people seem to have these intuitions.
If by moral realist intuition, you just mean an intuition that compels one to judge that something is right/wrong, and that one would maintain this judgment independently of the attitudes of others, then I agree that many people have this intuition. But I take it that every anti-realist understands these intuitions as they can be expected on many forms of anti-realist. The fact that one's moral judgments persists in these cases is compatible with most anti-realist theories about the nature of moral judgments.
But if what you mean is some kind of intuition about attitude-independent, irreducibly normative reasons for action, then it's not clear what evidence is there that "lots" of people have these intuitions. For lay persons, it's not clear if they even have clear enough moral judgments to say that they obviously have intuitions of this kind (or of any particular kind). Even among philosophers, realists are split between non-naturalists and naturalists, with the latter usually rejecting the existence of attitude-independent, irreducibly normative reasons for action (AFAIK).
> Suppose that there are lots of really smart people who claim to have grasped some mathematical formula. You ask them to explain it, they try, but you find yourself unable to understand it. It seems unintelligible to you, and you’re not sure what intuitions they’re even supposed to be having. It just sounds like gibberish to you, and they explain their concepts in self-referential terms—you ask them to explain what a Morax Xephlorbinator is, and they make reference to a Slearax Zenzifrelator.
Do you have any real examples of this? There's been times where I've been presented with mathematical formulas, proofs, problems, etc. that were difficult to think about. But there's never been a time where I couldn't grasp the fundamental concepts. For example, I have no idea whether the [Twin Prime Conjecture](https://oeis.org/wiki/Twin_prime_conjecture) is true, but the problem itself is very simple to understand. I understand what a prime number is, I understand what a twin prime is, and I understand very easily what it would mean for there to be infinitely many twin primes. And if I were presented with a proof, I could probably understand it with enough effort. There certainly wouldn't just be some fundamental concepts that I couldn't grasp.
If there was actually some mathematical formula or theorem that involved fundamentally inexplicable concepts that were understood by a very specific set of people within a very specific field, then I would just assume those people were crazy in some way (even if they were otherwise really intelligent).
By moral realist intuitions, I mean 'intuition that something is wrong that is not conditional on anyone's attitudes.' Idk, there seem to be lots of people--even smart ones--who have trouble grasping sort of abstruse philosophical concepts. Lots of people seem to lack the robust concept of modality that I have, and I have trouble grasping platonism vs nominalism about universals.
I had the same reaction to the remark about lots of people having realist intuitions. The claim is underspecified, which led me to wonder what exactly it meant. And depending on what was meant, it may not be true.
I like your remarks regarding math. Another thing I'd note is that if I have difficulty grasping certain concepts in math, there is still a clear path to grasping those concepts: studying more math. It's not at all clear what path one could take, even in principle, to grasp the kinds of intuitions BB has regarding realism. It's not like they're just really complicated and built on top of a bunch of antecedent philosophical work, and anyone who does that work tends to grasp the concepts in question. The concepts in question are, as far as I can tell, supposed to be really basic and simple.
I think once you start looking at the disanalogies between mathematics and moral realist intuitions, BB's case looks increasingly dubious.
As a moral realist, I do think I can intuitively relate to anti-realism for one important reason: there are other domains (e.g. poetry, humor, attractiveness of humans) in which I have very strong commitment to statements that sure seem to express propositions, and for which subjectivism seems to be the strongest metanormative account. Because of these, it's easy for me to project how subjectivists think about moral rightness, in a way that I can't manage for other forms of anti-realism.
I'm not sure I understand the argument presented, it seems to be going beyond simply saying that reasonable people have beliefs that are correlated with the truth, therefore you shouldn't easily dismiss their moral beliefs. And say that the fact that you lack intuitions within the domain of interest is a reason to further doubt your beliefs. The problem with this is that myself and maybe other anti-realists, simply don't lack intuitions in the moral domain, and in my particular case I have very strong intuitions about say the implausibility of irreducible normativity or stomping on babies being bad or what have you. In the bear example, it wouldn't merely be that I have an intuition such that I feel I grasp why they are wrong, rather it would be more akin to me having an intuition about the impossibility/unlikeliness of the existence of the bear, or say even the existence of "not bear".
I should also add that their perhaps seems to be a class of intuitions that moral realists seem to lack, say intuitions regarding debunking arguments, that is for example it seems deeply obvious to me that beliefs about the permissibility of factory farming are a consequence of evolution, and yet such strong intuitions are not shared by some moral realists, does that entail that I ought to dismiss them due to their seeming lack of intuitions about the nature of evolution and its consequences? More broadly I think its hard in principle to demark between say "positive intuitions" and a lack of intuition. That is moral realists presuppose a moral reality that people can positively intuit, whereas I presuppose something akin to an evolved emotional gamut that people can positively intuit, both accounts might fit the pattern of evidence available, yet from each of our own framings it seems as if we have some positive intuition that the other doesn't.
debunking arguments don’t really turn on having a particular intuition, though, do they? more a rational apprehension of the nature of evolution and truth-sensitivity
I'm not sure what the difference is between intuition, and "rational apprehension" is, and even if one were to use such terminology, I don't think its obvious that I can't just come up with a new term to encompass both feelings, that is intuitions are just how things seem or appear to me, which just so happens to be how I would regard my feelings towards the force of debunking arguments. For a more concrete example, a moral realist might look at someone as if they were perceiving a moral reality, whereas I would look at that same person as if they were experiencing something that is a part of their evolved emotional gamut.
On a slightly unrelated note, I should add that viewing things through this model, explains/simplifies lots of other strange human behaviours/beliefs, that is one can easily group together and explain things such as, goodness, badness, justice, rights, duty, desert, virtue, beauty, consent, etc. whereas moral realists might have to construct various different theories or even fields of inquiry to encompass each of these intuitions, or view them as reducible to some more fundamental theory, or dismiss some of these "moralistic" like properties whilst preserving others. That is as a first approximation given general intuitions of the general public and such its not obvious why aesthetic objectivism is significantly less plausible than say the objectiveness of goodness and badness properties. Yet hopefully we can agree that aesthetic objectivism is a ridiculous position, and so such a moral realist would need some argument as to why they dismiss those particular intuitions.
I don’t get why we appeal and through around intuition as a de facto basis to make your beliefs somehow valid. Especially if you don’t understand the other side of the argument and it’s falsifiability or lack there of in good faith.
We know from history this is a fault of the human condition that has made us higher functioning yes, but not “truth” certain and seeking machines. In the past slavery was initiatively correct and true that one should value it as a moral good more so than a necessary evil, same things with the Nazis in the build up to ww2 and their relationship with Jews.
These are common tropes of course but history and even the present is riddled with things that present themselves as intuitive and true while it just simply not being the case. Not even in the sense of a difference in values a lot of the time but a clear shift in looking at something from a different angle with enough delving into the evidence arguments etc and being open to being wrong would do. Not that this is some simple solution and that it covers all or the a lot of cases but it does speak to the “intuition” being valid argument is just a bad argument.
I’ve seen you post a bit about “lowering credence” based on things like intuitions or likelihood. Do you have a sort of model in mind of levels of credence, or thresholds of proof/argument, tied to various levels of intuitiveness or likelihood?
An intuition is an intellectual appearance. Here’s an example that may help: If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A is better than C. You don’t know that by perception, but it’s not really a feeling either. It’s an “intellectual seeming” or “intuition.”
I’m sure in many cases purported intuitions are driven by feelings, but maybe not all cases. I have an intuition that nothing can be both red all over and green all over at the same time, but I don’t have any particularly strong feeling about the matter.
Your example still didn't clarify for me what an intellectual appearance is. I understand that if A > B and B > C then A > C, but is this supposed to be accompanied by a distinct type of mental state or distinctive phenomenology?
How did you become so confident that hedonistic utilitarianism is right? Did the intuition develop from being exposed to any particular readings you could direct me towards?
I strongly agree with this piece. I also think that, when it comes to ethics specifically, it's easy for non-realists to dismiss realist intuitions as the product of socialization, cultural norms, or evolutionary pressures without ever considering that there may be equal and opposite influences pushing some people towards "intuitive" anti-realism. Lance is a very intelligent person and I respect the work he does, but I must admit that the few times I've engaged with him have been frustrating because he would slip into this very common attitude that realism and only realism was the culturally mandated, personally comforting position and that everyone just believes it for those reasons. But obviously, especially among secularists and materialists, there are also plenty of non-rational social influences that push people towards a sort of hyper-skepticism that sees any realist views as vaguely spooky and unacceptably "religious" or whatever. It can be frustrating to engage with non-realists because so many implicitly or explicitly have this mindset. It's like they can't imagine that anyone would ever be a non-realist for any reason other than pure, cold rationality - even though realism is decidedly uncool in a lot of these spaces and there's tons of pressure to give it up.
//it's easy for non-realists to dismiss realist intuitions as the product of socialization, cultural norms, or evolutionary pressures without ever considering that there may be equal and opposite influences pushing some people towards "intuitive" anti-realism. //
I don't think it's easy to dismiss realism on the basis of these sorts of considerations. I think it's quite difficult.
What's ironic about this remark is the latter part: The implication here seems to be that I haven’t even considered equal and opposite influences on myself. I've been at this for about twenty years, I'm familiar with heuristics and biases research, and I'm a psychologist. It would be profoundly strange if I hadn't considered my susceptibility to such biasing influences.
This remark is also ironic given that around the time your comment was posted I was discussing this exact topic in a livestream, and I explicitly talked about how I could be subject to similar biases in the opposite direction:
After discussing some of the causal factors that may bias people towards moral realism, I discuss my own biases. Here’s a transcription of the relevant remarks that I made (though you may want to listen ~1 minute or so before for more context):
“I think someone could do the same in my case. Someone could say that I caught this bug of really liking these contrarian views or really liking sparse ontologies and so I’m motivated by a desire to…I like the sort of just being anti…I want to get rid of things, I wanna expunge things. I get my joy out of tearing down other people’s philosophical views, and so I’m motivated by a desire to tear other people’s views down. And I have huge biases in favor of antirealist type accounts.
That might even be true. That doesn’t strike me as terribly implausible. I mean, for anybody that has heard me a whole lot doesn’t it seem like I like doing that kinda thing? It’s not that implausible that there’s some degree of motivation.”
Here's the timestamp: https://www.youtube.com/live/_YDeP-d-J4w?feature=share&t=4518
//I must admit that the few times I've engaged with him have been frustrating because he would slip into this very common attitude that realism and only realism was the culturally mandated, personally comforting position and that everyone just believes it for those reasons.//
Note that you’re not commenting on anything I said, but are making an observation about my attitude. When you do that, that involves a heightened degree of attempting to read someone’s mind. And criticizing someone on the basis of tentative inferences about what you take to be their inner mental lives is a bit strange.
The attitude you describe is not one I’m familiar with, since it isn’t an attitude I’ve experienced. I don’t think that “realism and only realism was the culturally mandated, personally comforting position and that everyone just believes it for those reason.”
[Edited to add: Note that I say the opposite of this in the linked video. I emphasize that the biasing influences in question are just one among many causal influences. So not only do I not think that the biases only go in one direction, you attribute to me the notion that I think *everyone* believes it for these reasons. This is simply not true, and I explicitly said otherwise.]
//But obviously, especially among secularists and materialists, there are also plenty of non-rational social influences that push people towards a sort of hyper-skepticism that sees any realist views as vaguely spooky and unacceptably "religious" or whatever//
I agree. I’ve also made this point myself in discussions with others, though probably not as a matter of public record.
//It can be frustrating to engage with non-realists because so many implicitly or explicitly have this mindset.//
With respect, it can be frustrating to have conversations with people who presume to know what you think.
//It's like they can't imagine that anyone would ever be a non-realist for any reason other than pure, cold rationality//
Look at the transcript and video I just provided. I have explicit, public evidence that you are mistaken. It is not the case that I can’t imagine how someone like myself could be biased. In fact, it’s pretty easy for me to speculate, and I voluntarily did so on my own channel without any degree of coercion or prompting from a realist.
I appreciate your remarks and the respectful way in which they were expressed. However, I do think your perception of my attitude is quite mistaken: I’m well aware of my own biases and can readily speculate on the kinds of biases that could drive people towards skeptical and antirealist positions.
//Lance Bush seems to just not have the moral realist intuitions that lots of people seem to have. //
It’s interesting you say I don’t *seem* to. I have been explicit that I have no such “seemings.” Do you think I might have these seemings anyway? I grant that it’s possible, if so, but it’s strange that your remark hints at the possibility that you don’t take my word for it. I have more to say on this pending what you’d say in response. Note that if I cannot be trusted to be a reliable report about my own seemings, it’s not entirely clear why I should grant that you, or Huemer, or anyone else is. Skepticism about the contents of other people’s seemings is a two-way street.
A second concern is with the remark “that lots of people seem to have.” I’d be interested in hearing you elaborate on this. I don’t deny that lots of analytic philosophers and people who read analytic philosophy have these seemings (or should I say that they seem to have the seemings?). However, I do not think these populations comprise a large or representative body of human beings. So while the proportion of people who have these seemings may be large if we confine the population of interest to “people who study analytic philosophy” or something like that, this is not, itself, that large of a population relative to the world’s population. So “large” here is a bit underspecified. The amount who endorse such views may be large relative to some populations but very small relative to others.
//Now, as someone who does have them very strongly such that I think moral realism is blatantly obvious, it’s hard to take Lance’s position seriously.//
Note that to Christians who find God’s existence blatantly obvious, it’s hard to take atheism seriously. Obviousness isn’t a very impressive quality of a belief.
//But if one doesn’t have the intuitions, it’s hard to talk them into having them//
That’s plausible, but strikes me as an empirical question. And it may vary case-to-case. I don’t think there’s at least some evidence nonphilosophers don’t typically have qualia/hard problem of consciousness intuitions, but it may be fairly easy to talk them into having them.
//But here, I’ll argue that someone like Lance shouldn’t be that confident in anti-realism—if you just lack some requisite set of intuitions, then you should be near agnostic, rather than very confident that something doesn’t exist.//
This remark strikes me as a bit obscure. It seems to draw on a putative asymmetry, but I’m not entirely sure what you take our respective stances to be with respect to our position towards realism and antirealism. What do you take an intuition to be? And do you think you have intuitions in favor of realism, but I have no intuitions in favor of antirealism? I have some concerns here that I’ll abstain from expressing pending clarification on what you take our differences to be.
You also suggest I shouldn’t be confident if I “just” lack some requisite set of intuitions, but why should I put much stock in the intuitions of any particular group of people, such as you and other realists? What have you got going for you that should lend itself to agnosticism rather than skepticism? Presumably, there are a bunch of factors that are relevant to endorsing agnosticism or a skeptical stance towards some particular view. Among these are one’s assessment of factors relevant to the epistemic status of those reporting a particular set of intuitions. If it’s only a small, insular group of people that mostly interact with one another, or people only report the intuitions while on LSD, or if only people who join a particular cult claim to have the intuitions, these would strike me as reasons to be skeptical and to lean away from agnosticism. In the case of realists reporting realist intuitions, for me, what matters is why they are reporting those intuitions. I don’t know if I’m under any obligation to grant that the intuitions you and Huemer and others have are more reliable than the second process you describe; I’m also not sure my way of forming beliefs is strictly limited to the two processes you describe, nor whether my views exclusively fall into the latter category in the first place.
//In short, the first process of coming to beliefs is more reliable—and should consequently produce higher credences—than the second.//
When you say the “first process” do you mean these?:
“1. I have some strong intuition about the case that is incompatible with all the views except one.
2. I don’t have any especially strong intuitions, but I participate in the lengthy and drawn-out process of comparing the various views on offer to see which one is best.”
//Suppose that there are lots of really smart people who claim to have grasped some mathematical formula. You ask them to explain it, they try, but you find yourself unable to understand it. It seems unintelligible to you, and you’re not sure what intuitions they’re even supposed to be having. It just sounds like gibberish to you, and they explain their concepts in self-referential terms—you ask them to explain what a Morax Xephlorbinator is, and they make reference to a Slearax Zenzifrelator.//
How do you think I’d react to a situation like this? Do you think that if I encountered mathematicians that used concepts I couldn’t grasp that I’d think they weren’t saying anything meaningful?
//If we think of intuitions as intellectual appearances, as grasping something about apparent reality, then, just as if many people see a bear and some don’t, you’d expect there to be a bear, we should defer to the havers of intuitions over the people that don’t have them. //
The causal mechanisms behind why some people report having certain “appearances” and others don’t matter. Suppose much of the population is raised in a highly religious community. Most members of this community report having the intellectual seeming that God exists. Those outside the community are nonreligious. Very few report having the seeming that God exists. Should the members of the nonreligious community defer to the members of the religious community, and grant that given the reliability of intellectual seemings that God probably exists?
//The fact that you don’t grasp some particular thing about reality doesn’t give you any good reason to think that it isn’t true//
I don’t grant that you are grasping anything about reality. I think that I grasp reality as it is, and it doesn’t involve stance-independent moral facts any more than it involves pixies or unicorns.
//but the fact that you do grasp things does give you a good reason to believe they are true. //
There’s a big difference between reporting that one has the intellectual seeming that X and it being the case that “you do grasp things.” I’m not granting that you are grasping anything. It should come as no surprise to you that I think you *aren’t* grasping things and are instead mistaken.
//Just as you’d defer to have havers of mathematical intuitions, assuming they’re not crazy, so too should you in the moral case, and in various other philosophical cases.//
Is your view that if you don’t have intuitions about something that you should defer to those who do?
//And this doesn’t require thinking that these people are dumb or deficient. There are lots of things that all of us except Von Neumann can’t grasp. People have some intuitions that others don’t—so if people lack intuitions that you have, after suitable reflection, you shouldn’t give them weight.//
There are situations where some people genuinely understand reality as it is in ways others do not, and cannot. Perhaps some mathematicians or quantum physicists understand reality in ways you and I couldn’t fathom. But there are also people who are conceptually confused or mistaken, and as a result, believe they grasp reality as it is. Why should we think that you and other moral realists are in the former category, rather than the latter?
Deontologists have an intuition that rights matter. You don’t. Since having an intuition is stronger than not having an intuition, we should believe in rights.
> Lance Bush seems to just not have the moral realist intuitions that lots of people seem to have.
Depending on what you mean by "moral realist intuitions", I'm not sure what evidence you have that "lots" of people seem to have these intuitions.
If by moral realist intuition, you just mean an intuition that compels one to judge that something is right/wrong, and that one would maintain this judgment independently of the attitudes of others, then I agree that many people have this intuition. But I take it that every anti-realist understands these intuitions as they can be expected on many forms of anti-realist. The fact that one's moral judgments persists in these cases is compatible with most anti-realist theories about the nature of moral judgments.
But if what you mean is some kind of intuition about attitude-independent, irreducibly normative reasons for action, then it's not clear what evidence is there that "lots" of people have these intuitions. For lay persons, it's not clear if they even have clear enough moral judgments to say that they obviously have intuitions of this kind (or of any particular kind). Even among philosophers, realists are split between non-naturalists and naturalists, with the latter usually rejecting the existence of attitude-independent, irreducibly normative reasons for action (AFAIK).
> Suppose that there are lots of really smart people who claim to have grasped some mathematical formula. You ask them to explain it, they try, but you find yourself unable to understand it. It seems unintelligible to you, and you’re not sure what intuitions they’re even supposed to be having. It just sounds like gibberish to you, and they explain their concepts in self-referential terms—you ask them to explain what a Morax Xephlorbinator is, and they make reference to a Slearax Zenzifrelator.
Do you have any real examples of this? There's been times where I've been presented with mathematical formulas, proofs, problems, etc. that were difficult to think about. But there's never been a time where I couldn't grasp the fundamental concepts. For example, I have no idea whether the [Twin Prime Conjecture](https://oeis.org/wiki/Twin_prime_conjecture) is true, but the problem itself is very simple to understand. I understand what a prime number is, I understand what a twin prime is, and I understand very easily what it would mean for there to be infinitely many twin primes. And if I were presented with a proof, I could probably understand it with enough effort. There certainly wouldn't just be some fundamental concepts that I couldn't grasp.
If there was actually some mathematical formula or theorem that involved fundamentally inexplicable concepts that were understood by a very specific set of people within a very specific field, then I would just assume those people were crazy in some way (even if they were otherwise really intelligent).
By moral realist intuitions, I mean 'intuition that something is wrong that is not conditional on anyone's attitudes.' Idk, there seem to be lots of people--even smart ones--who have trouble grasping sort of abstruse philosophical concepts. Lots of people seem to lack the robust concept of modality that I have, and I have trouble grasping platonism vs nominalism about universals.
I had the same reaction to the remark about lots of people having realist intuitions. The claim is underspecified, which led me to wonder what exactly it meant. And depending on what was meant, it may not be true.
I like your remarks regarding math. Another thing I'd note is that if I have difficulty grasping certain concepts in math, there is still a clear path to grasping those concepts: studying more math. It's not at all clear what path one could take, even in principle, to grasp the kinds of intuitions BB has regarding realism. It's not like they're just really complicated and built on top of a bunch of antecedent philosophical work, and anyone who does that work tends to grasp the concepts in question. The concepts in question are, as far as I can tell, supposed to be really basic and simple.
I think once you start looking at the disanalogies between mathematics and moral realist intuitions, BB's case looks increasingly dubious.
As a moral realist, I do think I can intuitively relate to anti-realism for one important reason: there are other domains (e.g. poetry, humor, attractiveness of humans) in which I have very strong commitment to statements that sure seem to express propositions, and for which subjectivism seems to be the strongest metanormative account. Because of these, it's easy for me to project how subjectivists think about moral rightness, in a way that I can't manage for other forms of anti-realism.
I'm not sure I understand the argument presented, it seems to be going beyond simply saying that reasonable people have beliefs that are correlated with the truth, therefore you shouldn't easily dismiss their moral beliefs. And say that the fact that you lack intuitions within the domain of interest is a reason to further doubt your beliefs. The problem with this is that myself and maybe other anti-realists, simply don't lack intuitions in the moral domain, and in my particular case I have very strong intuitions about say the implausibility of irreducible normativity or stomping on babies being bad or what have you. In the bear example, it wouldn't merely be that I have an intuition such that I feel I grasp why they are wrong, rather it would be more akin to me having an intuition about the impossibility/unlikeliness of the existence of the bear, or say even the existence of "not bear".
I should also add that their perhaps seems to be a class of intuitions that moral realists seem to lack, say intuitions regarding debunking arguments, that is for example it seems deeply obvious to me that beliefs about the permissibility of factory farming are a consequence of evolution, and yet such strong intuitions are not shared by some moral realists, does that entail that I ought to dismiss them due to their seeming lack of intuitions about the nature of evolution and its consequences? More broadly I think its hard in principle to demark between say "positive intuitions" and a lack of intuition. That is moral realists presuppose a moral reality that people can positively intuit, whereas I presuppose something akin to an evolved emotional gamut that people can positively intuit, both accounts might fit the pattern of evidence available, yet from each of our own framings it seems as if we have some positive intuition that the other doesn't.
debunking arguments don’t really turn on having a particular intuition, though, do they? more a rational apprehension of the nature of evolution and truth-sensitivity
I'm not sure what the difference is between intuition, and "rational apprehension" is, and even if one were to use such terminology, I don't think its obvious that I can't just come up with a new term to encompass both feelings, that is intuitions are just how things seem or appear to me, which just so happens to be how I would regard my feelings towards the force of debunking arguments. For a more concrete example, a moral realist might look at someone as if they were perceiving a moral reality, whereas I would look at that same person as if they were experiencing something that is a part of their evolved emotional gamut.
On a slightly unrelated note, I should add that viewing things through this model, explains/simplifies lots of other strange human behaviours/beliefs, that is one can easily group together and explain things such as, goodness, badness, justice, rights, duty, desert, virtue, beauty, consent, etc. whereas moral realists might have to construct various different theories or even fields of inquiry to encompass each of these intuitions, or view them as reducible to some more fundamental theory, or dismiss some of these "moralistic" like properties whilst preserving others. That is as a first approximation given general intuitions of the general public and such its not obvious why aesthetic objectivism is significantly less plausible than say the objectiveness of goodness and badness properties. Yet hopefully we can agree that aesthetic objectivism is a ridiculous position, and so such a moral realist would need some argument as to why they dismiss those particular intuitions.
I don’t get why we appeal and through around intuition as a de facto basis to make your beliefs somehow valid. Especially if you don’t understand the other side of the argument and it’s falsifiability or lack there of in good faith.
We know from history this is a fault of the human condition that has made us higher functioning yes, but not “truth” certain and seeking machines. In the past slavery was initiatively correct and true that one should value it as a moral good more so than a necessary evil, same things with the Nazis in the build up to ww2 and their relationship with Jews.
These are common tropes of course but history and even the present is riddled with things that present themselves as intuitive and true while it just simply not being the case. Not even in the sense of a difference in values a lot of the time but a clear shift in looking at something from a different angle with enough delving into the evidence arguments etc and being open to being wrong would do. Not that this is some simple solution and that it covers all or the a lot of cases but it does speak to the “intuition” being valid argument is just a bad argument.
I’ve seen you post a bit about “lowering credence” based on things like intuitions or likelihood. Do you have a sort of model in mind of levels of credence, or thresholds of proof/argument, tied to various levels of intuitiveness or likelihood?
One of the largest disagreements I have with the Lance crowd is that of the intelligibility of reasons-facts that favour or oppose.
Especially since they maintain that others don’t understand what they are either.
How is an intuition different from a feeling? I am not sure I understood the explanation.
An intuition is an intellectual appearance. Here’s an example that may help: If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A is better than C. You don’t know that by perception, but it’s not really a feeling either. It’s an “intellectual seeming” or “intuition.”
It seems like a way to add credence to feelings.
I’m sure in many cases purported intuitions are driven by feelings, but maybe not all cases. I have an intuition that nothing can be both red all over and green all over at the same time, but I don’t have any particularly strong feeling about the matter.
Your example still didn't clarify for me what an intellectual appearance is. I understand that if A > B and B > C then A > C, but is this supposed to be accompanied by a distinct type of mental state or distinctive phenomenology?
How did you become so confident that hedonistic utilitarianism is right? Did the intuition develop from being exposed to any particular readings you could direct me towards?
Not really, it's just always seemed obvious to me. Here's where I've written about it a bit https://benthams.substack.com/p/all-my-writings-on-utilitarianism, but we also have, I think, quite strong arguments against all the specific non-utilitarian views.
Great. Thanks!