I don’t think this sufficiently steelmans the moral relativist side — and leans on lots of loaded terms for rhetorical points.
The problem with your sentences that seem “obviously true” is that the word “wrong” hasn’t been defined.
A smart moral relativist defines “wrong” as “something I deeply abhor”. Perhaps even “something society generally abhors.” That’s it. Critically, it’s seen as a *preference*. It doesn’t exist outside of the subjective preference of the subject.
Whereas a moral objectivist sees “wrong” as “something inherently wrong, written into the universe, and I can reach the true, objectively correct, answer.”
Regardless of which is easier to swallow, I think the preference way of looking at this has a lot of points in it favor, in terms of which framework is objectively true in reality.
I did define wrong later in the article. X is wrong iff we have impartial reason not to do X. The moral relativist mis defines wrong -- if their definition were true the following sentence would be incoherent.
I don't deeply abhor eating meat, but I think it's wrong nonetheless.
Similarly, the relativist is committed on this definition to the notion that if everyone thought that it was okay to torture infants for fun, then it would be. They're also committed to the notion that there can't be things that are immoral, which no one knows to be immoral.
You say "Regardless of which is easier to swallow, I think the preference way of looking at this has a lot of points in it favor, in terms of which framework is objectively true in reality."
I think I provide a series of arguments in favor of the notion that if some view has really implausible seeming conclusions, that gives us good reason to doubt its conclusions.
Words are tricky to define -- our basic intuitions about the meanings of words are better than formulaic necessary and sufficient conditions. Though I think that's only the definition of objectively wrong.
Also, “moral subjectivists” is probably the fairest term, followed by “moral relativists.”
“Anti-realists” reminds me of zealots in the abortion debate who wants to label all their opponents “anti-choice” or “pro-murder.” It’s like great, thanks for sharing your opinion, but this isn’t actually helpful for productive conversation.
The term moral subjectivists is a misleading term! Moral subjectivists are just one-third of anti-realists -- subjectivists think that moral facts are made true by some people's attitudes. There's also non-cognitivism and error theory -- both of which I define in the article. I'm not sure why anti-realist is a loaded term, akin to anti-choice or pro-murder. Anti-realist is the standard way that people who don't accept moral realism are described in the literature, is quite a natural phrase, and is a way that many who don't accept moral realism self identify.
I'm mostly unpersuaded by the examples of irrational desires because they are often so unusual. It seems Huemer's earlier point about thought experiments applies here:
"Our intuitions about strange scenarios may be influenced by what we reasonably believe about superficially similar but more realistic scenarios. We are particularly unlikely to have reliable intuitions about a scenario S when (i) we never encounter or think about S in normal life, (ii) S is superficially similar to another scenario, S’, which we encounter or think about quite a bit, and (iii) the correct judgment about S’ is different from the correct judgment about S."
Future Tuesday indifference (and many other of the alleged irrational desire cases) are paradigm examples of this.
But there are lots of unusual desires that don't seem irrational. If a person collects pickle jars and enjoys it, that's a bit weird, but it's not irrational.
Almost all of your examples of irrational desires involve a person desiring or being indifferent to some kind of suffering or death. In normal life, people have strong aversions to suffering and death, so our intuitions are likely influenced by this.
Is there anything similar that would cloud our judgment about collecting pickle jars?
"Additionally, we have good evidence from the dual process literature that careful, prolonged reflection tends to be what causes utilitarian beliefs — it’s the unreliable emotional reactions that causes our non-utilitarian beliefs."
I think this is not the best reading of the available evidence. Check out the Moral Myopia Model:
I also think this is not great evidence for moral realism in any case, since the dual process studies universally contrast utilitarianism vs non-utilitarianism. But they don't contrast moral realism with anti-realism.
are you analogously an aesthetic realist? like, it seems that a pile of shit and cum is typically ugly regardless of anyone's opinion. if there was a pile of shit and cum at the time of the dinosaurs, it was probably ugly even if they didn't notice
Moral realism is nonsense, it's just you projecting your moral prejudices onto an uncaring universe. Your only argument against subjectivism is "muh nazis". Hitler doesn't offer a rational reason to cross the is-ought gap no matter how bad he makes you feel.
I'll be writing a longer response, but I do want to comment on this part:
"I think Lance does — he’s just terminologically confused. When he reflects on his pain, he concludes it’s worth avoiding — that’s why he avoids it! I think if he reflected on being in pain even in cases when he wanted to be in pain, he’d similarly conclude that it was undesirable. "
It's one thing for you to write a post describing what you think. It's quite another for you to write a post describing what someone else thinks. It's one thing to say that I am mistaken or confused, but you shouldn't be telling other people what their conclusions are.
I've reflected on this topic for more than twenty years. There's no need to speculate on what I would think under these conditions, because I already have.
I've already reflected on cases of being in pain even when I wanted to be in pain, and no, I have not concluded that they were "undesirable." Likewise, when I reflect on my pain (which I have done quite a lot, since I have a chronic pain condition), I have not concluded that it's "worth avoiding."
If you wanted to know what my conclusions were about these situations, you could have just asked me. But it's strange to discuss my thoughts on the matter under the apparent assumption that I'd never reflected on considerations this basic. I most certainly have many times. And I have not reached the conclusions or views you attribute to me. On the contrary, my reflecting on these matters has only served to further reinforce my antirealist views, and increase my confident that moral realists are mistaken.
I found the arguments towards all three anti realist positions off
On subjectivism you seem to confuse the evaluator and the person spoken about in the hypothetical
So if you ask me, David thinks murder is good, does it follow that murder is good?
Since I am not a realist I can only answer in two ways here, as I see it or as I take it David sees it*.
David sees it as good, I see it as bad, which question are you asking? If your answer is "I am asking in general" I will just point out again that I am an anti realist.
(same issue arises if you switch out David for a hypothetical me, the is it good either needs to target me or hypothetical me, when that has been made clear I can answer the question)
* I could of course answer how someone else sees it but that would be really silly
On the error theory there just seems to be normative entanglement confusion. If you overheard a known anti realist talk to some newbies and say "hey, error theory is super intuitive, I can say stuff like 'what hitler did was not good' and 'there is nothing wrong about homosexuality'" you would presumably want to step in and say "woah, those sentences don't mean what you think they mean"
but in the same way you are using sentences that makes it sound as en error theorist wouldn't be against some horrific stuff, or want to stop/change/prosecute whatever. I think that is confused.
Found the least concern with non-congnitivism but lay people often treat agreement as fact (to the dismay of most philosophers). So we can find people saying that something tastes bad simplicitor (and even warn others that it tastes bad). On the surface these seem like declarative statements that aren't subjective. But here I think non-cog is quite plausible. Also, real world contexts are often more non-cog than philosophical contexts.
Aside from that, I think combination hypothesis are the most likely, sometimes people do this, sometimes that. As Huemer says, people are very confused, philosophy can make us less confused. I think lay people use moral language in confused and contradictory ways.
As you alluded to at the end, I think the reason moral realism seems implausible to so many people is because they have the wrong moral views. It's hard to defend moral realism if you're a deontologist, for example. You have to explain why the deontic norms constitute objective reasons for action without appealing to consequences. The queerness objection feels much more powerful against deontology than utilitarianism, too. Realist deontic norms would indeed be very strange, probably because they don't exist.
> if X seems the case to you, in general, that gives you some reason to think X is, in fact, the case
Ahhhhh, how does one even talk with someone that has such poor epistemics? It makes me honestly feel it isn't worth the bother. I think this is a job for someone with a lot more patience than I.
> But in the case of a person to whom a certain religion seems true, this is no doubt not after careful, prolonged rational reflection in which they consider all of the facts.
This feels like you're trolling me. I know you aren't, but jeez man.
> If a very rational person considered all the facts and religion still seemed to have prima facie justification, it seems they would be justified in thinking religion is true.
Oh no it got worse
> in philosophy, it’s pretty widely accepted that what seems to be the case probably is the case, all else equal, in at least most cases
I am reminded of the time on my podcast when I said ~'I don't much care what philosophers say because they are sloppy thinkers' and my guest said ~'actually I think they're unusually anti-sloppy thinkers', and then a week later I read the literal words quoted above, smh
> The thing that’s bad about having one’s throat ripped out has nothing to do with the opinions of moral observers. Rather, it has to do with the actual badness of having one’s throat ripped out
If you're telling me that moral realism is the acknowledgment that pain sucks, which everyone already knows, I'm not going to let you sneak in "and thus morality is a fundamental part of physics" because that is a trick only an actually mentally-handicapped retard would fall for. I am a bit insulted that you linked me an article meant to trick mentally-handicapped retards and thought it would convince me.
> Classifying anti-realists
I gave this section an extremely quick skim, because I'm not a Non-cognitivism, Error Theorist, or Subjectivist, and thus they don't apply to me. (Does this make me a moral realist in your estimation?)
> Morality thus describes what reasons we have to do things, unmoored from our desires. When one claims it’s wrong to murder, they mean that, even were one to desires murdering another, they shouldn’t do it — they have a reason not to do it, independent of desires.
You're doing the "slight of hand that you're hoping the audience is too stupid to notice" thing again. You managed to swap out "one's personal desire" with "desires in the general sense." Even if one desires murdering another they shouldn't do it -- they have many reasons not to do it, due to the desires of others.
Indeed, desires are the fundamental basis of morality.
I'll provide three links of varied scholarship (easy lay summary, more technical discussion, very long dissertation), but in summary: all intentional actions are the results of reasons for that action. Ultimately, desires are the only "reasons for action" that exist. All of morality is an interplay of competing and complementary desires.
> 1 If there are desire independent reasons, there are impartial desire independent reasons
There are not desire independant reasons, so this proof fails at the first step.
> 4 The Discovery Argument
Irrelevant to the argument, this doesn't distinguish what your arguing for from standard morality. Also you can either accept both this and the argument for disagreement, or reject both, but you can't accept one and reject the other with a straight face. Do things converge or not?
> Phenomenal introspection involves reflecting on a mental state and forming beliefs about what its like.
Again, resorting to bottom-of-the-barrel epistemics. Actually makes the case weaker, so if I was trying to "win" something I'd be happy to see it here.
> Enoch puts these worries to rest decisively.
The use of your word "decisively" here, and various similar claims throughout all your posts, are the reason I don't think you're being serious. It's Trump-level claims to correctness that are not in evidence.
If this is a summary of the best arguments for moral realism I feel bad for the state of philosophy.
You say almost nothing of substance here. You don't respond to the arguments, just assert that it's bad epistemics. Look, I had similar epistemics to you a few years ago--what you're saying isn't mysterious. But it's wrong, and as I've learned more philosophy, I've come to see that. There's something maximally infuriating about these sorts of comments--condescending, confused, and snarky.
You say that you shouldn't murder other people even if you desire to do it because others desire for you not to. But this is just desire utilitarianism. Now, I happen to think desire utilitarianism is false, but it's not incompatible with realism. You're conflating what the moral theory says with whether it's stance independently true.
I mean, yes, but also this is the same emotion I kept feeling when I was reading. ^^; I'm going to limit myself from commenting because I want to stay true to my better self rather than falling prey to snark over and over. If desire utilitarianism is compatible with realism then we already agree on most things of substance.
"It really seems like the following sentence is true:
'It’s wrong to torture infants for fun, and it would be wrong to do so even if everyone thought it wasn’t wrong.'"
I definitely don't have the intuition that that sentence is true. I don't believe that doing or not doing something can "be" wrong, so it strikes me as a sentence that can't be either true or false.
You'll just have to trust me that that's my own personal phenomenological perception. However, I think that at least a lot of other people share my perception, because:
a) They usually act as though moral realism is false
b) Lots of people claim to explicitly believe that moral realism is false.
In general, then, I definitely deny that I have an intuition that moral facts exist, and I think that at least a significant number of other people perceive the situation similarly.
Bentham writes "in the actual world, people who think they should kill [strangers] are highly irrational in general and extremely unjustified in that belief in particular."
I replaced infidels with strangers here. Infidels are outsiders to the (religious) in-group, analogous to strangers.
There are (or perhaps used to be) tribes in New Guinea and elsewhere that tended to kill strangers who wandered onto their territory. Chimpanzees* have been known to do this as well. How is this irrational? They could be scouts for another group, and if left unmolested, may return with reinforcements, posing a threat to the tribe. Even if they were not scouts, their presence on the tribe's territory might result in depletion of resources potentially needed by the tribe. It seems eminently rational to kill them if you can do it safely (e.g. an ambush using projectile weapons)
*Chimpanzees when playing certain kinds of economic games were found to be rational utility maximizers to a greater extent than humans are.
> Now the anti-realist could try to avoid this by claiming that a decision is irrational if one will regret it. However, this runs into three problems.
It seems to me that there is an alternate solution: a decision is rational if you want to make it (in the moment when you make it) & irrational otherwise. On this principle, the future-Tuesday-indifferent person is rational in choosing to accept their suffering on Tuesday, because when they make that choice they don't care about their suffering on Tuesday; that, on Tuesday, their preferences will change does not contradict this. If you do something you don't want to do (obvious example of this include procrastinating when you know you need to do some work to achieve your desires, or falling asleep when you want to stay awake), then you have acted irrationally, not because you have an irrational desire to do it, but because you do not desire it.
Your other examples in this section seem to have the same problem: if you define rationality in the normal economic way, as doing what you want to do, i.e. what you expect to produce the outcomes you want, then the people in the examples are acting according to their preferences, i.e. rationally; it's just that their preferences are strange enough that this is unintuitive. (Also, some of the situations described are similar to more probable situations in which a similar action is irrational: e.g., if I became allergic to grass, I might still pluck grass at first, not because I would want to do it & to receive the consequences of doing it, but because I would do it out of habit, without thinking about whether it's rational.)
> There are no serious philosophers that I know of who defend cultural relativism.
Some forms of social contract theory seem to amount to moral relativism, because they demand that a person follow the ethics of their particular society.
> Consider a few examples.
> Imagine the Nazis convinced everyone that their holocaust was good. This would clearly not make it good.
> Imagine there was a society that was in universal agreement that all babies should be tortured to death in a maximally horrible and brutal way. That wouldn’t be objectively good.
Under relativism it wouldn't be objectively good, because relativism denies that an objective good (regardless of the society you live in) exists. In your second example the torture of babies would be good according to that hypothetical society's values, but bad according to our society's values; this doesn't seem like a contradiction. (The Holocaust is a bad example because it was motivated not just by different values, but by wrong beliefs about the world. I.e. the Nazis falsely believed that the Jews were by nature enemies of Germany & that most or all of them were actively helping Germany's enemies; thus they devoted more resources to the Holocaust because they thought that, by killing the European Jews, they were eliminating some of their most powerful military enemies.)
> If it’s determined by society the following statements are false [...] “Some societal practices are immoral.”
This is consistent with relativism, because societies often do things that their culture considers immoral. (e.g. most modern Americans think war is generally wrong — an occasionally necessary evil at best — & yet America still fights wars.)
The principle that Having an intuition that A is prima facie reason to believe A is wildly un Bayesian.
Your degree of belief in A givin you have the intuition that A, which I will write I(A) should be P(I(A)|A)/P(I(A)|~A))*P(A)/P(~) converted into a probability from odds. So firstly, if you are as likely to have the intuition that A in cases where A is true as in cases where A is not true, your intuition that A tells you nothing. Secondly, in cases where A is already wildly unlikely or posits a very complicated world, an intuition may be evidence but not justify belief, because even though it makes A much more likely, it does not make it likely enough to "give a reason for belief" whatever that means.
The best arguments for anti realism rely on making both of these points. FIrst that you are as likely to have these intuitions in cases where moral realism is true as in cases where moral realism is false. Secondly that the world posited by moral realism is extremely queer, complicated, and unlikely. You didn't engage with these kinds of arguments much, and so I found this post totally unconvincing.
To be clear, the claim is that if something seems true that should raise our credence in it being true. Thus, I'd dispute the first claim for the reasons I present in the article -- most things that seem true are. I agree with B -- we'd have to compare the reasons on both sides. However, as I argue in the article, there are lots of reasons to believe realism and few to believe anti-realism.
I don’t think this sufficiently steelmans the moral relativist side — and leans on lots of loaded terms for rhetorical points.
The problem with your sentences that seem “obviously true” is that the word “wrong” hasn’t been defined.
A smart moral relativist defines “wrong” as “something I deeply abhor”. Perhaps even “something society generally abhors.” That’s it. Critically, it’s seen as a *preference*. It doesn’t exist outside of the subjective preference of the subject.
Whereas a moral objectivist sees “wrong” as “something inherently wrong, written into the universe, and I can reach the true, objectively correct, answer.”
Regardless of which is easier to swallow, I think the preference way of looking at this has a lot of points in it favor, in terms of which framework is objectively true in reality.
I did define wrong later in the article. X is wrong iff we have impartial reason not to do X. The moral relativist mis defines wrong -- if their definition were true the following sentence would be incoherent.
I don't deeply abhor eating meat, but I think it's wrong nonetheless.
Similarly, the relativist is committed on this definition to the notion that if everyone thought that it was okay to torture infants for fun, then it would be. They're also committed to the notion that there can't be things that are immoral, which no one knows to be immoral.
You say "Regardless of which is easier to swallow, I think the preference way of looking at this has a lot of points in it favor, in terms of which framework is objectively true in reality."
I think I provide a series of arguments in favor of the notion that if some view has really implausible seeming conclusions, that gives us good reason to doubt its conclusions.
The other problem is that giving a specific meaning to "wrong" tends to beg the question, eg. "Unlawful", "destroys utility" , etc.
That's why keeping it broad at just "what we have imaprtial reason not to do" is useful.
Impartial begs the question against the relativisms.
Words are tricky to define -- our basic intuitions about the meanings of words are better than formulaic necessary and sufficient conditions. Though I think that's only the definition of objectively wrong.
Also, “moral subjectivists” is probably the fairest term, followed by “moral relativists.”
“Anti-realists” reminds me of zealots in the abortion debate who wants to label all their opponents “anti-choice” or “pro-murder.” It’s like great, thanks for sharing your opinion, but this isn’t actually helpful for productive conversation.
The term moral subjectivists is a misleading term! Moral subjectivists are just one-third of anti-realists -- subjectivists think that moral facts are made true by some people's attitudes. There's also non-cognitivism and error theory -- both of which I define in the article. I'm not sure why anti-realist is a loaded term, akin to anti-choice or pro-murder. Anti-realist is the standard way that people who don't accept moral realism are described in the literature, is quite a natural phrase, and is a way that many who don't accept moral realism self identify.
I'm mostly unpersuaded by the examples of irrational desires because they are often so unusual. It seems Huemer's earlier point about thought experiments applies here:
"Our intuitions about strange scenarios may be influenced by what we reasonably believe about superficially similar but more realistic scenarios. We are particularly unlikely to have reliable intuitions about a scenario S when (i) we never encounter or think about S in normal life, (ii) S is superficially similar to another scenario, S’, which we encounter or think about quite a bit, and (iii) the correct judgment about S’ is different from the correct judgment about S."
Future Tuesday indifference (and many other of the alleged irrational desire cases) are paradigm examples of this.
But there are lots of unusual desires that don't seem irrational. If a person collects pickle jars and enjoys it, that's a bit weird, but it's not irrational.
Almost all of your examples of irrational desires involve a person desiring or being indifferent to some kind of suffering or death. In normal life, people have strong aversions to suffering and death, so our intuitions are likely influenced by this.
Is there anything similar that would cloud our judgment about collecting pickle jars?
"Additionally, we have good evidence from the dual process literature that careful, prolonged reflection tends to be what causes utilitarian beliefs — it’s the unreliable emotional reactions that causes our non-utilitarian beliefs."
I think this is not the best reading of the available evidence. Check out the Moral Myopia Model:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Justin-Landy/publication/311964487_The_Moral_Myopia_Model_Why_and_How_Reasoning_Matters_in_Moral_Judgment/links/58653ac008aebf17d397f279/The-Moral-Myopia-Model-Why-and-How-Reasoning-Matters-in-Moral-Judgment.pdf
I also think this is not great evidence for moral realism in any case, since the dual process studies universally contrast utilitarianism vs non-utilitarianism. But they don't contrast moral realism with anti-realism.
This essay has not convinced me. Moral realism is false. https://zerocontradictions.net/pdfs/case-against-moral-realism.pdf
are you analogously an aesthetic realist? like, it seems that a pile of shit and cum is typically ugly regardless of anyone's opinion. if there was a pile of shit and cum at the time of the dinosaurs, it was probably ugly even if they didn't notice
Moral realism is nonsense, it's just you projecting your moral prejudices onto an uncaring universe. Your only argument against subjectivism is "muh nazis". Hitler doesn't offer a rational reason to cross the is-ought gap no matter how bad he makes you feel.
He in fact gave many more arguments than that if you read the whole post.
I'll be writing a longer response, but I do want to comment on this part:
"I think Lance does — he’s just terminologically confused. When he reflects on his pain, he concludes it’s worth avoiding — that’s why he avoids it! I think if he reflected on being in pain even in cases when he wanted to be in pain, he’d similarly conclude that it was undesirable. "
It's one thing for you to write a post describing what you think. It's quite another for you to write a post describing what someone else thinks. It's one thing to say that I am mistaken or confused, but you shouldn't be telling other people what their conclusions are.
I've reflected on this topic for more than twenty years. There's no need to speculate on what I would think under these conditions, because I already have.
I've already reflected on cases of being in pain even when I wanted to be in pain, and no, I have not concluded that they were "undesirable." Likewise, when I reflect on my pain (which I have done quite a lot, since I have a chronic pain condition), I have not concluded that it's "worth avoiding."
If you wanted to know what my conclusions were about these situations, you could have just asked me. But it's strange to discuss my thoughts on the matter under the apparent assumption that I'd never reflected on considerations this basic. I most certainly have many times. And I have not reached the conclusions or views you attribute to me. On the contrary, my reflecting on these matters has only served to further reinforce my antirealist views, and increase my confident that moral realists are mistaken.
I found the arguments towards all three anti realist positions off
On subjectivism you seem to confuse the evaluator and the person spoken about in the hypothetical
So if you ask me, David thinks murder is good, does it follow that murder is good?
Since I am not a realist I can only answer in two ways here, as I see it or as I take it David sees it*.
David sees it as good, I see it as bad, which question are you asking? If your answer is "I am asking in general" I will just point out again that I am an anti realist.
(same issue arises if you switch out David for a hypothetical me, the is it good either needs to target me or hypothetical me, when that has been made clear I can answer the question)
* I could of course answer how someone else sees it but that would be really silly
On the error theory there just seems to be normative entanglement confusion. If you overheard a known anti realist talk to some newbies and say "hey, error theory is super intuitive, I can say stuff like 'what hitler did was not good' and 'there is nothing wrong about homosexuality'" you would presumably want to step in and say "woah, those sentences don't mean what you think they mean"
but in the same way you are using sentences that makes it sound as en error theorist wouldn't be against some horrific stuff, or want to stop/change/prosecute whatever. I think that is confused.
Found the least concern with non-congnitivism but lay people often treat agreement as fact (to the dismay of most philosophers). So we can find people saying that something tastes bad simplicitor (and even warn others that it tastes bad). On the surface these seem like declarative statements that aren't subjective. But here I think non-cog is quite plausible. Also, real world contexts are often more non-cog than philosophical contexts.
Aside from that, I think combination hypothesis are the most likely, sometimes people do this, sometimes that. As Huemer says, people are very confused, philosophy can make us less confused. I think lay people use moral language in confused and contradictory ways.
Indeterminancy is also a cool view.
"positing real moral facts explains the convergence, for example, in our moral views"
Whereas relativsm. explains the divergence!
No it doesn't. If we create the moral facts, why would they converge?
I said divergence, but relativism can explain either. Group.level relativism explains convergence as one culture or ideology becoming widespread.
It doesn't explain the particular convergence pattern I describe about arguments pushing overwhelmingly in the direction of one normative theory.
As you alluded to at the end, I think the reason moral realism seems implausible to so many people is because they have the wrong moral views. It's hard to defend moral realism if you're a deontologist, for example. You have to explain why the deontic norms constitute objective reasons for action without appealing to consequences. The queerness objection feels much more powerful against deontology than utilitarianism, too. Realist deontic norms would indeed be very strange, probably because they don't exist.
> if X seems the case to you, in general, that gives you some reason to think X is, in fact, the case
Ahhhhh, how does one even talk with someone that has such poor epistemics? It makes me honestly feel it isn't worth the bother. I think this is a job for someone with a lot more patience than I.
> But in the case of a person to whom a certain religion seems true, this is no doubt not after careful, prolonged rational reflection in which they consider all of the facts.
This feels like you're trolling me. I know you aren't, but jeez man.
> If a very rational person considered all the facts and religion still seemed to have prima facie justification, it seems they would be justified in thinking religion is true.
Oh no it got worse
> in philosophy, it’s pretty widely accepted that what seems to be the case probably is the case, all else equal, in at least most cases
I am reminded of the time on my podcast when I said ~'I don't much care what philosophers say because they are sloppy thinkers' and my guest said ~'actually I think they're unusually anti-sloppy thinkers', and then a week later I read the literal words quoted above, smh
> The thing that’s bad about having one’s throat ripped out has nothing to do with the opinions of moral observers. Rather, it has to do with the actual badness of having one’s throat ripped out
If you're telling me that moral realism is the acknowledgment that pain sucks, which everyone already knows, I'm not going to let you sneak in "and thus morality is a fundamental part of physics" because that is a trick only an actually mentally-handicapped retard would fall for. I am a bit insulted that you linked me an article meant to trick mentally-handicapped retards and thought it would convince me.
> Classifying anti-realists
I gave this section an extremely quick skim, because I'm not a Non-cognitivism, Error Theorist, or Subjectivist, and thus they don't apply to me. (Does this make me a moral realist in your estimation?)
> Morality thus describes what reasons we have to do things, unmoored from our desires. When one claims it’s wrong to murder, they mean that, even were one to desires murdering another, they shouldn’t do it — they have a reason not to do it, independent of desires.
You're doing the "slight of hand that you're hoping the audience is too stupid to notice" thing again. You managed to swap out "one's personal desire" with "desires in the general sense." Even if one desires murdering another they shouldn't do it -- they have many reasons not to do it, due to the desires of others.
Indeed, desires are the fundamental basis of morality.
I'll provide three links of varied scholarship (easy lay summary, more technical discussion, very long dissertation), but in summary: all intentional actions are the results of reasons for that action. Ultimately, desires are the only "reasons for action" that exist. All of morality is an interplay of competing and complementary desires.
https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions_about_Desire_Utilitarianism
http://www.justopia.org/desirism--the-most-honest-mainstream-ethical-philosophy.html
https://desirism.com/morality-from-the-ground-up
> 1 If there are desire independent reasons, there are impartial desire independent reasons
There are not desire independant reasons, so this proof fails at the first step.
> 4 The Discovery Argument
Irrelevant to the argument, this doesn't distinguish what your arguing for from standard morality. Also you can either accept both this and the argument for disagreement, or reject both, but you can't accept one and reject the other with a straight face. Do things converge or not?
> Phenomenal introspection involves reflecting on a mental state and forming beliefs about what its like.
Again, resorting to bottom-of-the-barrel epistemics. Actually makes the case weaker, so if I was trying to "win" something I'd be happy to see it here.
> Enoch puts these worries to rest decisively.
The use of your word "decisively" here, and various similar claims throughout all your posts, are the reason I don't think you're being serious. It's Trump-level claims to correctness that are not in evidence.
If this is a summary of the best arguments for moral realism I feel bad for the state of philosophy.
You say almost nothing of substance here. You don't respond to the arguments, just assert that it's bad epistemics. Look, I had similar epistemics to you a few years ago--what you're saying isn't mysterious. But it's wrong, and as I've learned more philosophy, I've come to see that. There's something maximally infuriating about these sorts of comments--condescending, confused, and snarky.
You say that you shouldn't murder other people even if you desire to do it because others desire for you not to. But this is just desire utilitarianism. Now, I happen to think desire utilitarianism is false, but it's not incompatible with realism. You're conflating what the moral theory says with whether it's stance independently true.
I mean, yes, but also this is the same emotion I kept feeling when I was reading. ^^; I'm going to limit myself from commenting because I want to stay true to my better self rather than falling prey to snark over and over. If desire utilitarianism is compatible with realism then we already agree on most things of substance.
Ignore the other comment--it was mean!
"It really seems like the following sentence is true:
'It’s wrong to torture infants for fun, and it would be wrong to do so even if everyone thought it wasn’t wrong.'"
I definitely don't have the intuition that that sentence is true. I don't believe that doing or not doing something can "be" wrong, so it strikes me as a sentence that can't be either true or false.
You'll just have to trust me that that's my own personal phenomenological perception. However, I think that at least a lot of other people share my perception, because:
a) They usually act as though moral realism is false
b) Lots of people claim to explicitly believe that moral realism is false.
In general, then, I definitely deny that I have an intuition that moral facts exist, and I think that at least a significant number of other people perceive the situation similarly.
Bentham writes "in the actual world, people who think they should kill [strangers] are highly irrational in general and extremely unjustified in that belief in particular."
I replaced infidels with strangers here. Infidels are outsiders to the (religious) in-group, analogous to strangers.
There are (or perhaps used to be) tribes in New Guinea and elsewhere that tended to kill strangers who wandered onto their territory. Chimpanzees* have been known to do this as well. How is this irrational? They could be scouts for another group, and if left unmolested, may return with reinforcements, posing a threat to the tribe. Even if they were not scouts, their presence on the tribe's territory might result in depletion of resources potentially needed by the tribe. It seems eminently rational to kill them if you can do it safely (e.g. an ambush using projectile weapons)
*Chimpanzees when playing certain kinds of economic games were found to be rational utility maximizers to a greater extent than humans are.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/06/06/1179194759/chimp-empire-and-the-economics-of-chimpanzees#:~:text=For%20decades%2C%20researchers,than%20we%20are.
> Now the anti-realist could try to avoid this by claiming that a decision is irrational if one will regret it. However, this runs into three problems.
It seems to me that there is an alternate solution: a decision is rational if you want to make it (in the moment when you make it) & irrational otherwise. On this principle, the future-Tuesday-indifferent person is rational in choosing to accept their suffering on Tuesday, because when they make that choice they don't care about their suffering on Tuesday; that, on Tuesday, their preferences will change does not contradict this. If you do something you don't want to do (obvious example of this include procrastinating when you know you need to do some work to achieve your desires, or falling asleep when you want to stay awake), then you have acted irrationally, not because you have an irrational desire to do it, but because you do not desire it.
Your other examples in this section seem to have the same problem: if you define rationality in the normal economic way, as doing what you want to do, i.e. what you expect to produce the outcomes you want, then the people in the examples are acting according to their preferences, i.e. rationally; it's just that their preferences are strange enough that this is unintuitive. (Also, some of the situations described are similar to more probable situations in which a similar action is irrational: e.g., if I became allergic to grass, I might still pluck grass at first, not because I would want to do it & to receive the consequences of doing it, but because I would do it out of habit, without thinking about whether it's rational.)
> There are no serious philosophers that I know of who defend cultural relativism.
Some forms of social contract theory seem to amount to moral relativism, because they demand that a person follow the ethics of their particular society.
> Consider a few examples.
> Imagine the Nazis convinced everyone that their holocaust was good. This would clearly not make it good.
> Imagine there was a society that was in universal agreement that all babies should be tortured to death in a maximally horrible and brutal way. That wouldn’t be objectively good.
Under relativism it wouldn't be objectively good, because relativism denies that an objective good (regardless of the society you live in) exists. In your second example the torture of babies would be good according to that hypothetical society's values, but bad according to our society's values; this doesn't seem like a contradiction. (The Holocaust is a bad example because it was motivated not just by different values, but by wrong beliefs about the world. I.e. the Nazis falsely believed that the Jews were by nature enemies of Germany & that most or all of them were actively helping Germany's enemies; thus they devoted more resources to the Holocaust because they thought that, by killing the European Jews, they were eliminating some of their most powerful military enemies.)
> If it’s determined by society the following statements are false [...] “Some societal practices are immoral.”
This is consistent with relativism, because societies often do things that their culture considers immoral. (e.g. most modern Americans think war is generally wrong — an occasionally necessary evil at best — & yet America still fights wars.)
The principle that Having an intuition that A is prima facie reason to believe A is wildly un Bayesian.
Your degree of belief in A givin you have the intuition that A, which I will write I(A) should be P(I(A)|A)/P(I(A)|~A))*P(A)/P(~) converted into a probability from odds. So firstly, if you are as likely to have the intuition that A in cases where A is true as in cases where A is not true, your intuition that A tells you nothing. Secondly, in cases where A is already wildly unlikely or posits a very complicated world, an intuition may be evidence but not justify belief, because even though it makes A much more likely, it does not make it likely enough to "give a reason for belief" whatever that means.
The best arguments for anti realism rely on making both of these points. FIrst that you are as likely to have these intuitions in cases where moral realism is true as in cases where moral realism is false. Secondly that the world posited by moral realism is extremely queer, complicated, and unlikely. You didn't engage with these kinds of arguments much, and so I found this post totally unconvincing.
To be clear, the claim is that if something seems true that should raise our credence in it being true. Thus, I'd dispute the first claim for the reasons I present in the article -- most things that seem true are. I agree with B -- we'd have to compare the reasons on both sides. However, as I argue in the article, there are lots of reasons to believe realism and few to believe anti-realism.