I’m watching this to and fro with much interest because my personal intuitions lean significantly toward one side here (not declaring them though). Anyway, thanks to both for these arguments.
This is not bad. Thanks for doing this. It’s more accurate than I expected. I’ll hold off on commenting on the substance of the post for now, since there are a variety of ways things are stated that I’d quibble over.
Instead, what I'd ask moving forward is that, if you have a decent enough understanding of my view (as you appear to), that you avoid characterizing what I think in ways that run a high risk of giving a misleading or false impression of what I think. It’s a step in the right direction to be able to decently steelman my position when specifically asked to do so. But it’s still important not to mischaracterize my position outside the context of an explicit steelmanning. For example, consider this remark from your previous post:
"Bush has said repeatedly that he thinks that much of the moral language used by moral philosophers like external normative language is confused — he doesn’t understand what philosophers mean by the jargon surrounding reasons and counting in favor of, to the extent it can’t be given a reduction to facts about desires, for example. This makes his opining on the alleged systematic errors particularly odd — if a hotly contested philosophical topic seemed totally unintelligible to me, I’d be very hesitant to confidently proclaim confusion on behalf of participants in the dispute. "
This remark continues a theme of misunderstanding and thereby misrepresenting my views. The unintelligibility of the contested topic is a judgment I've made because I believe I understand the debate, not because I don’t understand the debate. As such, there's nothing odd about it. Yet your remark could easily be read to give the impression that there’s some substantive and coherent subject matter, but that I personally just don’t get it. That is not at all what I think. It’s not that the dispute “seems” unintelligible to me, it’s that I think it *is* unintelligible. And one cannot understand the unintelligible. One can only understand that the unintelligible is unintelligible.
You’ve consistently failed to disambiguate these two senses of not understanding:
(1) One cannot understand something that could be understood, due to one’s one limitations
(2) One cannot understand something because there isn’t something to understand in the first place.
The only sense in which I’ve ever suggested I “don’t understand” the metaethical dispute is in in the sense of (2), and such “not understanding” is specifically based on the fact that I understand that the dispute isn’t something that can be understood, because its participants are confused. It takes a lot of understanding to understand when something can’t be understood. Yet your remarks give the impression of the opposite: that I’m claiming to lack understanding, when in fact I’m claiming to have a more extensive and accurate understanding than you and others.
I think the move of implying I “don’t understand,” stripped of context, gives your audience the impression that I’m a self-admittedly ignorant and confused person, which could serve to discredit me by undermining my credibility. I’m not suggesting this is intentional, as it may be that you’ve simply consistently failed to understand my views. But I am confident it gives people that impression, nevertheless.
In other words, I find your characterization of my views in your previous posts not merely to be inaccurate, but tendentious. While a decent steelman (I have reservations, but I won’t quibble about them just yet) goes some way in alleviating my concerns, I think you have overall handled my views outside of this post in a highly uncharitable way, and it will take more than an isolated and semi-accurate characterization to overcome that impression.
I’m watching this to and fro with much interest because my personal intuitions lean significantly toward one side here (not declaring them though). Anyway, thanks to both for these arguments.
This is not bad. Thanks for doing this. It’s more accurate than I expected. I’ll hold off on commenting on the substance of the post for now, since there are a variety of ways things are stated that I’d quibble over.
Instead, what I'd ask moving forward is that, if you have a decent enough understanding of my view (as you appear to), that you avoid characterizing what I think in ways that run a high risk of giving a misleading or false impression of what I think. It’s a step in the right direction to be able to decently steelman my position when specifically asked to do so. But it’s still important not to mischaracterize my position outside the context of an explicit steelmanning. For example, consider this remark from your previous post:
"Bush has said repeatedly that he thinks that much of the moral language used by moral philosophers like external normative language is confused — he doesn’t understand what philosophers mean by the jargon surrounding reasons and counting in favor of, to the extent it can’t be given a reduction to facts about desires, for example. This makes his opining on the alleged systematic errors particularly odd — if a hotly contested philosophical topic seemed totally unintelligible to me, I’d be very hesitant to confidently proclaim confusion on behalf of participants in the dispute. "
This remark continues a theme of misunderstanding and thereby misrepresenting my views. The unintelligibility of the contested topic is a judgment I've made because I believe I understand the debate, not because I don’t understand the debate. As such, there's nothing odd about it. Yet your remark could easily be read to give the impression that there’s some substantive and coherent subject matter, but that I personally just don’t get it. That is not at all what I think. It’s not that the dispute “seems” unintelligible to me, it’s that I think it *is* unintelligible. And one cannot understand the unintelligible. One can only understand that the unintelligible is unintelligible.
You’ve consistently failed to disambiguate these two senses of not understanding:
(1) One cannot understand something that could be understood, due to one’s one limitations
(2) One cannot understand something because there isn’t something to understand in the first place.
The only sense in which I’ve ever suggested I “don’t understand” the metaethical dispute is in in the sense of (2), and such “not understanding” is specifically based on the fact that I understand that the dispute isn’t something that can be understood, because its participants are confused. It takes a lot of understanding to understand when something can’t be understood. Yet your remarks give the impression of the opposite: that I’m claiming to lack understanding, when in fact I’m claiming to have a more extensive and accurate understanding than you and others.
I think the move of implying I “don’t understand,” stripped of context, gives your audience the impression that I’m a self-admittedly ignorant and confused person, which could serve to discredit me by undermining my credibility. I’m not suggesting this is intentional, as it may be that you’ve simply consistently failed to understand my views. But I am confident it gives people that impression, nevertheless.
In other words, I find your characterization of my views in your previous posts not merely to be inaccurate, but tendentious. While a decent steelman (I have reservations, but I won’t quibble about them just yet) goes some way in alleviating my concerns, I think you have overall handled my views outside of this post in a highly uncharitable way, and it will take more than an isolated and semi-accurate characterization to overcome that impression.
Pretty good steelman!!
Adding this to my SSD blocks