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 agree that the reason that you find the dispute unintelligible is that there's no subject matter to get. But I don't know how you would know -- assuming you don't understand what people mean by various moral terms like external normative reason -- whether there is some subject that they're discussing that's deep or whether they're just speaking gibberish. I'd feel very troubled declaring anything about the platonism vs nominalism dispute because, despite repeated attempts to explain it to me, I don't know what they're arguing about. But I'll add a clarification that you think that it's a totally unintelligible subject matter, leading to your confusion not being a result of confusion on your part, but just due to an unintelligible subject matter.
//But I don't know how you would know -- assuming you don't understand what people mean by various moral terms like external normative reason -- whether there is some subject that they're discussing that's deep or whether they're just speaking gibberish. //
If I know someone is talking gibberish, I know that I don't understand it. It's not that I think it's gibberish because I don't understand it. It's that I don't understand it because it's gibberish, and gibberish can't be understood. You seem to have this backwards.
As for how I know this, I have commented extensively on this, and would be happy to do so again. In any case, simply because you don't know how I'd know this doesn't mean it isn't my position that I do know this, so it's irrelevant whether you don't know how I'd know this. It's not like my position is contingent on how well you understand it.
//I'd feel very troubled declaring anything about the platonism vs nominalism dispute because, despite repeated attempts to explain it to me, I don't know what they're arguing about. //
It is not like this at all. There are different ways in which one can “understand” a subject matter. I’ll try to clarify by pointing to a nonsense sentence from Jabberwocky:
“Twas brillig and the slithy toves.”
This sentence is deliberately constructed to be meaningless nonsense. I know it doesn’t mean anything. We can draw a distinction between a first-order understanding of the sentence, and a second-order understanding of the sentence. A first-order understanding of the sentence would be an understanding of what the sentence itself means. Since the sentence doesn’t mean anything, I cannot have a first-order understanding of it. As such, I do not have a first-order understanding of the sentence. However, I do have a second-order understanding of the sentence: I understand *that* the sentence cannot be understood, because it is meaningless. In this respect, I do “understand the sentence”: I understand that it is nonsense!
When I criticize non-naturalist moral realism, I am drawing on my second-order understanding to deny that a first-order understanding is available to me or to anyone else. It is precisely in virtue of the fact that I *do* understand Jabberwocky on a more fundamental, second-order level that I understand that it has no first-order meaning.
The same is exactly the case with non-naturalist moral realism: it is in virtue of the fact that I *do* have a second-order understanding of the realism/antirealism dispute in metaethics that I understand that non-naturalist realism is a result of a confusion, is meaningless, and thus cannot be understood.
In other words, I am claiming that certain positions in metaethics are nonsensical *because* I “know what they’re talking about” in one respect: I know they’re talking nonsense, but I don’t know what they’re talking about in another sense: the actual content is itself nonsensical, and thus can’t be known.
Your example about platonism and nominalism reveals a failure to recognize the distinction. As a result, it gives the misleading impression that I’m simultaneously claiming to lack a second-order understanding of realism *and* to simultaneously hold a position on the matter that would require a second-order understanding. I’m not doing that. That would be stupid.
More generally, the way you characterize my views on the matter really does make it seem like I’m some bumbling idiot who has stumbled onto a dispute, has no idea what anyone is saying, and has declared it “meaningless,” when the exact opposite is the case. I have studied this topic extensively for a long time, and have reached my conclusions because of my understanding of metaethics, not because of my “confusion.”
I’m happy to patiently go over this with you in as much detail as you like, because it really seems to me like you’re failing to draw what strikes me as a very basic distinction that I have clarified ad nauseum at this point.
//But I'll add a clarification that you think that it's a totally unintelligible subject matter, leading to your confusion //
What do you mean by my “confusion”? I don’t think I’m confused. Didn’t we just go over this?
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 agree that the reason that you find the dispute unintelligible is that there's no subject matter to get. But I don't know how you would know -- assuming you don't understand what people mean by various moral terms like external normative reason -- whether there is some subject that they're discussing that's deep or whether they're just speaking gibberish. I'd feel very troubled declaring anything about the platonism vs nominalism dispute because, despite repeated attempts to explain it to me, I don't know what they're arguing about. But I'll add a clarification that you think that it's a totally unintelligible subject matter, leading to your confusion not being a result of confusion on your part, but just due to an unintelligible subject matter.
//But I don't know how you would know -- assuming you don't understand what people mean by various moral terms like external normative reason -- whether there is some subject that they're discussing that's deep or whether they're just speaking gibberish. //
If I know someone is talking gibberish, I know that I don't understand it. It's not that I think it's gibberish because I don't understand it. It's that I don't understand it because it's gibberish, and gibberish can't be understood. You seem to have this backwards.
As for how I know this, I have commented extensively on this, and would be happy to do so again. In any case, simply because you don't know how I'd know this doesn't mean it isn't my position that I do know this, so it's irrelevant whether you don't know how I'd know this. It's not like my position is contingent on how well you understand it.
//I'd feel very troubled declaring anything about the platonism vs nominalism dispute because, despite repeated attempts to explain it to me, I don't know what they're arguing about. //
It is not like this at all. There are different ways in which one can “understand” a subject matter. I’ll try to clarify by pointing to a nonsense sentence from Jabberwocky:
“Twas brillig and the slithy toves.”
This sentence is deliberately constructed to be meaningless nonsense. I know it doesn’t mean anything. We can draw a distinction between a first-order understanding of the sentence, and a second-order understanding of the sentence. A first-order understanding of the sentence would be an understanding of what the sentence itself means. Since the sentence doesn’t mean anything, I cannot have a first-order understanding of it. As such, I do not have a first-order understanding of the sentence. However, I do have a second-order understanding of the sentence: I understand *that* the sentence cannot be understood, because it is meaningless. In this respect, I do “understand the sentence”: I understand that it is nonsense!
When I criticize non-naturalist moral realism, I am drawing on my second-order understanding to deny that a first-order understanding is available to me or to anyone else. It is precisely in virtue of the fact that I *do* understand Jabberwocky on a more fundamental, second-order level that I understand that it has no first-order meaning.
The same is exactly the case with non-naturalist moral realism: it is in virtue of the fact that I *do* have a second-order understanding of the realism/antirealism dispute in metaethics that I understand that non-naturalist realism is a result of a confusion, is meaningless, and thus cannot be understood.
In other words, I am claiming that certain positions in metaethics are nonsensical *because* I “know what they’re talking about” in one respect: I know they’re talking nonsense, but I don’t know what they’re talking about in another sense: the actual content is itself nonsensical, and thus can’t be known.
Your example about platonism and nominalism reveals a failure to recognize the distinction. As a result, it gives the misleading impression that I’m simultaneously claiming to lack a second-order understanding of realism *and* to simultaneously hold a position on the matter that would require a second-order understanding. I’m not doing that. That would be stupid.
More generally, the way you characterize my views on the matter really does make it seem like I’m some bumbling idiot who has stumbled onto a dispute, has no idea what anyone is saying, and has declared it “meaningless,” when the exact opposite is the case. I have studied this topic extensively for a long time, and have reached my conclusions because of my understanding of metaethics, not because of my “confusion.”
I’m happy to patiently go over this with you in as much detail as you like, because it really seems to me like you’re failing to draw what strikes me as a very basic distinction that I have clarified ad nauseum at this point.
//But I'll add a clarification that you think that it's a totally unintelligible subject matter, leading to your confusion //
What do you mean by my “confusion”? I don’t think I’m confused. Didn’t we just go over this?
Pretty good steelman!!
Thanks.
Adding this to my SSD blocks