Today, we’re going to take a look at section 1 of the article on Moral Realism, posted over at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This time out, we’re evaluating a section that they call “Moral Disagreement.” Will it make any sense? Only time will tell.
Get comfortable and we’ll dive right in.
“Perhaps the longest standing argument is found in the extent and depth of moral disagreement. The mere fact of disagreement does not raise a challenge for moral realism. Disagreement is to be found in virtually any area, even where no one doubts that the claims at stake purport to report facts and everyone grants that some claims are true.” Perhaps the biggest problem that I have so far with this page is the fact that, instead of actually trying to define or defend moral realism, it seems to be trying to fend off attackers. That raises a rather important point though. Maybe if you had any way to demonstrate that you were actually correct, you wouldn’t have so many people poking holes in your unjustified claims? If you go and get a textbook on evolution, you don’t see them spending most of their time trying to shore up their problems and point fingers at their critics. They just present evidence that they’re right. Just a thought.
“But disagreements differ and many believe that the sort of disagreements one finds when it comes to morality are best explained by supposing one of two things: (i) that moral claims are not actually in the business of reporting facts, but are rather our way of expressing emotions, or of controlling others’ behavior, or, at least, of taking a stand for and against certain things or (ii) that moral claims are in the business of reporting facts, but the required facts just are not to be found.” My question here is how would you actually tell the difference between these two propositions? I think the first one is accurate, based on the evidence that we actually have at hand. It makes morality purely subjective, based on how humans want to live, not how we’re obligated to live according to some force beyond us. Even if we were going to try to evaluate the second proposition, how could we possibly go about that? We only know what we know when we know it. This is the same kind of thing that the religious try. “Someday, God will prove that he exists!” Great, let me know when that happens because it is only after it happens that I’m going to believe. The time to accept any proposition is after you have the evidence that it’s true, not “I hope that someday we can prove it, but you should believe right now anyhow.” No, you shouldn’t. That’s absurd.
Yet it gets a lot worse. “Taking the first line, many note that people differ in their emotions, attitudes and interests and then argue that moral disagreements simply reflect the fact that the moral claims people embrace are (despite appearances) really devices for expressing or serving their different emotions, attitudes, and interests.” That’s actually demonstrable though. There are things that, generally speaking, humans have in common no matter where they are. People generally don’t want to die, hence the prohibition against murder is pretty widespread. However, you can find plenty of examples where murder of the out-group is just fine. Go to some hard-core Islamic countries and openly be gay. You won’t do well. Openly reject Islam, or worse, deconvert from Islam and you’re probably not long for this world. Therefore, the prohibition against murder is questionable at best. It is clear that moral precepts are, in fact, the product of human minds and emotional goals. You can’t really get to mind-independence as moral realism demands.
“Taking the second line, others note that claims can genuinely purport to report facts and yet utterly fail (consider claims about phlogiston or astrological forces or some mythical figure that others believed existed) and then argue that moral disagreements take the form they do because the facts that would be required to give them some order and direction are not to be found.” Here, I’m not sure what they’re even trying to get at. Can people be factually mistaken? Absolutely. Humans are fallible. Can people come up with “bad” philosophical justifications for moral behavior? Again, absolutely they can. Just ask the Jews who survived Nazi Germany. Now, why did I say “bad”? Because there’s no way to demonstrate that any particular moral framework is actually good or true or demonstrable. It’s all personal opinion. That seems blatantly obvious, again, which is why I’m a moral anti-realist.
“On either view, the distinctive nature of moral disagreement is seen as well explained by the supposition that moral realism is false, either because cognitivism is false or because an error theory is true.” Or, because there’s just no evidence whatsoever that supports the moral realist position. Again, this doesn’t seem to be a defense of moral realism, it’s more of a whine, “they’re telling us wrong and that doesn’t make us happy!” That’s just stupid!
I’m going to skip over the bald rationalization where they attempt to harmonize the two positions because it doesn’t actually work. Let’s skip down to something that actually addresses moral realism then. “Moral realists are committed to holding, though, that to whatever extent moral claims might have other uses and might be made by people with indefensible accounts of moral facts, some moral claims, properly understood, are actually true. To counter the arguments that appeal to the nature of moral disagreement, moral realists need to show that the disagreements are actually compatible with their commitments.” That’s actually poor phrasing. I don’t care what they’re “committed to holding”, I care what they can demonstrate is factually true. It’s pure subjectivity on display. It’s “we can’t prove that any of this is true but we hold it for purely emotional reasons”. That’s not something to be proud of. You can’t start with a commitment to a specific philosophical ideology, any more than the religious can start with the conclusion that God exists. You have to prove that it’s reasonable to accept first, based on evidence that corroborates your ideas. The more that I read through this, the more it sounds a lot like religious faith. Kind of sad, isn’t it?
Then they go into a long diatribe trying to survive the disagreements without ever showing them to be inaccurate. At one point, they pull the old, tired chestnut, “properly understood”, which tends to mean in these contexts “if you agree with us”. This is another place where the moral realists sound an awful lot like the religious. “The Bible, properly understood, is absolutely perfect!” Can you demonstrate any of that objectively? Of course not!
This whole thing is sounding less and less coherent. Maybe it’s just this section, I don’t know, I haven’t read further yet, but when these philosophical arguments are virtually indistinguishable from religion, there’s a clear problem that a lot of people just don’t want to address. That’s not something that anyone ought to be proud of. So much is in the way they phrase things. They “want” to believe. They are “committed” to a position. There’s never any talk about being able to back any of it up rationally. This whole thing becomes an entirely subjective, emotional response and that’s not worth the electrons that store the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page. If this is the best that you can do, you’ve got problems.
We’ll see as we move forward though. Maybe this was just a bad section. We’ll just have to see.
I think your criticism of moral disagreement is unfair.
Moral disagreement arguments are mostly dead in the water, and very few people still take them seriously in academics. Despite that, they’ve been historically popular and are very popular outside of philosophy. One doesn’t have to be a realist if moral disagreement arguments don’t work – so the author is doing their job. They’re introducing key arguments and giving a rough lay of the current land.
Moral realism remains popular, and I think rightly so. But I don’t see this article as an attempt to defend moral realism. We can see some of that lack of bias here: “By all accounts, moral realism can fairly claim to have common sense and initial appearances on its side. That advantage, however, might be easily outweighed; there are a number of powerful arguments for holding that it is a mistake to think of moral claims as true.”
Your second point on disagreement is a bit odd – you ask how you can tell the difference between those two questions. Perhaps that’s meaningful, but it’s meaningful for the anti-realist posing the argument, right? These are proposed as anti-realist explanations and you’re asking how we can tell which of these is the best. That might be a good question – but then you’re asking about why would anyone favour non-cognitivism to fictionalism or visa versa. The moral realist says you shouldn’t favour either of those!
You need to be careful not to question beg in favour of the anti-realist. The moral realist doesn’t deny that moral disagreement exists. They deny that moral disagreement is good evidence in favour of anti-realism. So when you say “this is demonstrable” I have to ask “what part of emotivism do you think is demonstrable?” Remember, you’re not being asked to prove that moral disagreement exists. You’re being asked why you think moral disagreement gives us reasons to think emotivism is true.
Then you say this isn’t a defence of moral realism. It isn’t trying to be. It is assessing an argument to see if it is any good. We sometimes talk about the principle of charity, but you seem to think the encyclopedia article is trying to defend a moral realism. It isn’t. It’s giving a lay of the land, and trying to chart popular and contemporary views.
To sum up, your objection seems to be that in a section titled “Moral Disagreement” you’re annoyed that the author of the article isn’t talking about some other objection. That, to me, seems like a really bizarre criticism.
Do you have anything specific to say in defence of moral disagreement?
That part is fine, except people keep insisting that they are moral realists and morals are mind-independent, which is kind of the point of contention. Show us how you rationally came to that conclusion and how we can independently and objectively demonstrate it to be true! That’s where this whole thing falls apart. I don’t care what you believe, I care if you can demonstrate that it’s true and nowhere in this entire article do they even make a good-faith attempt to do so. They start with the unevidenced assumption that they are right and then they try to “support” it by claiming that the opposition is wrong.
That sounds distinctly religious, doesn’t it?
Yet the second that you point this out, all any of them can do is say “go read this person” or “go read that person”, they can never actually answer the question directly. It’s just a whole bunch of words meant to distract you from the point. They have no evidence to present.
I don’t care if it’s popular, I care if it’s demonstrably true. People like it because people tend to be intellectually lazy. They want to live in a world where everyone is just like they are. That’s just not the world they actually live in. The point of the disagreement is to get them to realize that the things in their head are not demonstrably indicative of what exists in the real world, but they don’t want to do that because it’s emotionally uncomfortable. They don’t want to have to deal with the fact that morality is inherently messy. It doesn’t get any better by going “nuh-uh!”
It isn’t an odd take at all. The truth ought to matter to everyone, full stop. That it doesn’t, that’s another question entirely. This entire article begins with the unjustified assumption that moral realism is true. Then, from that unassailable perspective, it attempts to say that the people who disagree are wrong. How do you know that if you’ve never even tried to demonstrate that your side is correct? You’ve just asserted it. This is exactly what religion does. Religion is right because it makes people feel good to think that it’s right. It doesn’t stand up to any critical scrutiny. It doesn’t make any rational sense. It’s just a position, held on faith and feelings because that’s what they WANT to be true. Please show me how moral realism is any different than that!
I’m not looking for favor from any side, I’m looking for evidence. I think we can make a really good case for moral anti-realism because that seems to describe what we actually see going on in the real world. Moral realism seems, at least that I’ve seen so far, to have absolutely nothing in favor of it. If it did, I’d love someone to present that evidence because so far, every time I ask, the philosopher just runs away. That’s identical to how the religious work too. If you don’t take their blind faith seriously, they cast insults and empty threats behind them and head for the hills.
I’m using the SEP because it keeps getting used as a definitive source by people who hold this position. It makes me think that none of them have actually read this entry critically. What people want to be true isn’t relevant. It matters only what they can DEFEND as true and so far, I haven’t seen anyone do more than play word games and hold positions on faith.
And no, I don’t want the author to present ANY disagreements. I want him to present his own evidence! You don’t support creationism by trying to poke holes in evolution. You do it by directly supporting the beliefs that you hold. How have any of these people rationally come to this conclusion, absent their emotions? That’s the question and, spoiler alert, nowhere in this entire article do they even try to provide anything. Moral realism doesn’t become true just because you defeat all of the criticism. It becomes true if, and only if, it can be demonstrated to be true.
Where is that? I’m just not seeing it.
This is all pretty confused. You end by saying you want the author to demonstrate that moral realism is true. But it’s an encyclopedia entry. It’s not a paper or book in defence of moral realism. So why do you think it’s going to argue distinctly for moral realism?
I’ve talked about a few books/articles that defend a moral realism. This isn’t one of them – this is designed to give you a rough lay of the contemporary philosophical landscape.
So, and none of my questions are rhetorical, why did you pick this for the purpose you’ve picked it for?
The article doesn’t assume moral realism is true. In fact, in another comment I cite where the author quite clearly hedges their philosophical bets. Sayre-McCord is the author of the first edition of this article and probably is a moral realist, but I cannot see why you’d think they’ve assumed moral realism is true?
It seems right that someone would combat popular arguments against their position, but if you only want positive arguments how about you read the stuff I’ve already shared with you? I talked about Hursthouse and Naturalism. That’s a positive account.
It seems like an odd choice to pick the SEP and then complain that it is doing the job of an introductory, general article.
If it’s not going to demonstrate anything, what’s the point? This entry gets pointed to by a lot of moral realists as something that demonstrates their case. If it’s not going to do anything but say “nuh-uh!” then why does it exist? You seem to be dodging the very simple questions that NOBODY has presented any evidence that moral realism is actually demonstrably true in the real world. 100% of every moral realist I’ve ever talked to, their entire position is “of course it’s true!” The second you try to hold their feet to the fire, they run away.
Why is that? Please explain.
long time no see!
I’ve told you what the point is, and I’ve directly talked about demonstrations. If you want to understand a position and the arguments for it you need to read more than the introduction to a short article!