Does moral anti-realism change anything?
Moral anti-realism is the meta-ethical branch of various theories underneath which all subscribe to the view that value, morality, and normativity are somehow dependent on the mind to exist. According to anti-realist theories of morality, there is no objective difference between actions, events, states of affairs, etc in terms of normative value.
This of course has a surface of dualism to it, which may or may not be sustained under further development. Where does the mind end and the rest of the world begin? At what point does something become moral within a mind? More importantly, why does something become moral in the mind, and why does this morality not correspond to the world in some way?
Preliminary answers to this might be that the mind (whatever it ends up being) does not always agree with how the universe operates. The universe might have its own agenda and we're just along for the ride. Other answers would likely try to criticize any apparent teleology in the world: there might not be a telos to a planetary orbit that makes the orbit a "good" orbit (in the sense that it is fulfilling some kind of perfection, utility, or role). The latter argument is definitely dualistic in the sense that only the mind has value, whereas the former may or may not be dualistic but still maintains that for our purposes as sentient organisms, the operation of the universe is not of priority (morality becomes a certain kind of value). In any case both reject objective moral value and thus reject any sort of transcendental value, divine command theory, or moral naturalism (which is quite different than metaphysical naturalism).
So, if we're moral anti-realists, does this change how we do ethics? When we do substantial normative ethics, we seem to operate under the belief that further moral beliefs can be right or wrong. Even a non-cognitivist, who ultimately believes that moral beliefs have no truth-aptness, still would operate under a kind of fictional representation of morality - i.e. an as if belief, as if morality was actually objective (but really it isn't).
I believe it was Moore who argued that no matter the reality of morality, we still have to make decisions. The moral nihilist doesn't suddenly just not make decisions - anyone of sound mind clearly makes rational and articulated decisions, based upon what is perceived as value:
For example, surely anyone would pick a world in which the population is happy vs a world in which the population is sad. There's an implied value to this comparison that allows us to make a decision.
But if, as the moral anti-realist claims, value is entirely a mental illusion, how could we possibly come to a conclusion on a normative problem, except by pragmatic necessities? How are we able to condemn other people for being immoral, or affirm the value of our own personal moral beliefs?
I think that the answer to this would be that this kind of behavior requires an element of counterfactual fiction. If we both believe in the same basic principles (such as the value of pleasure, the disvalue of pain, the power of logic, and the susceptibility of moral claims to logical analysis), then we can dismiss wrong beliefs as wrong within the fictional framework. We have to pretend that our normative beliefs correspond to reality, as if objective morality is actually there.
Without this framework, anti-realist normative debates would seem to be destined to be quite short indeed, as there would be no way to legitimately evaluate two different claims.
This of course has a surface of dualism to it, which may or may not be sustained under further development. Where does the mind end and the rest of the world begin? At what point does something become moral within a mind? More importantly, why does something become moral in the mind, and why does this morality not correspond to the world in some way?
Preliminary answers to this might be that the mind (whatever it ends up being) does not always agree with how the universe operates. The universe might have its own agenda and we're just along for the ride. Other answers would likely try to criticize any apparent teleology in the world: there might not be a telos to a planetary orbit that makes the orbit a "good" orbit (in the sense that it is fulfilling some kind of perfection, utility, or role). The latter argument is definitely dualistic in the sense that only the mind has value, whereas the former may or may not be dualistic but still maintains that for our purposes as sentient organisms, the operation of the universe is not of priority (morality becomes a certain kind of value). In any case both reject objective moral value and thus reject any sort of transcendental value, divine command theory, or moral naturalism (which is quite different than metaphysical naturalism).
So, if we're moral anti-realists, does this change how we do ethics? When we do substantial normative ethics, we seem to operate under the belief that further moral beliefs can be right or wrong. Even a non-cognitivist, who ultimately believes that moral beliefs have no truth-aptness, still would operate under a kind of fictional representation of morality - i.e. an as if belief, as if morality was actually objective (but really it isn't).
I believe it was Moore who argued that no matter the reality of morality, we still have to make decisions. The moral nihilist doesn't suddenly just not make decisions - anyone of sound mind clearly makes rational and articulated decisions, based upon what is perceived as value:
For example, surely anyone would pick a world in which the population is happy vs a world in which the population is sad. There's an implied value to this comparison that allows us to make a decision.
But if, as the moral anti-realist claims, value is entirely a mental illusion, how could we possibly come to a conclusion on a normative problem, except by pragmatic necessities? How are we able to condemn other people for being immoral, or affirm the value of our own personal moral beliefs?
I think that the answer to this would be that this kind of behavior requires an element of counterfactual fiction. If we both believe in the same basic principles (such as the value of pleasure, the disvalue of pain, the power of logic, and the susceptibility of moral claims to logical analysis), then we can dismiss wrong beliefs as wrong within the fictional framework. We have to pretend that our normative beliefs correspond to reality, as if objective morality is actually there.
Without this framework, anti-realist normative debates would seem to be destined to be quite short indeed, as there would be no way to legitimately evaluate two different claims.
Comments (19)
I don't think it's correct to call value an illusion, although it might be correct to say that value-realism is an illusion.
Why must such a framework be considered fictional? Like the above, I think it's incorrect to talk about such things as if they're not real, even though it might be correct to talk about such things as if they're not realist.
The implicit notion here that if a thing isn't objective – that if it isn't true as a matter if mind-independent fact – then it's somehow fake or lesser is misguided – particularly when it being some objective, mind-independent fact is nonsensical, as I would argue is the case when it comes to value.
Being that the only kind of value is the value that we project onto things it then follows that these anti-realist values are as real as any values can be - these are what real values are; these anti-realist moral frameworks are what real moral frameworks are.
What do people praise or blame? What can we generalise from these beginnings about virtues and vices? How can we build from this to make the polis or society work well? How can we then foster the right qualities in individuals, and how do individuals cultivate them in themselves? That's how Aristotle himself builds up his ethics. When we find there are differences between us, we negotiate, looking for common ground. Or we vote, where we can't agree. Or we go to war, if other city-states just refuse to see how wonderfully well-organised the Athenian city-state/the American way of life is.
That is why I said anti-realist normative debates would seem to require some element of fiction or as if discussion. Debate morality as if it actually exists outside of our minds. Which would unfortunately put many positions on the frying pan, as any anti-realist could just deny the reality of whatever someone is claiming and that's that.
This doesn't follow. If moral properties are mind-dependent – as anti-realists say they are – then moral propositions can still correspond to moral properties even if they don't correspond to something external to the mind.
Or they might reject the correspondence account of truth (at least when it comes to moral propositions). They might argue that moral propositions are made true by cohering with some agreed upon framework.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Mind is identical to particular brain states. Mind ends and the rest of the world begins where those brain states end and the rest of the world begins.
I believe that ethical judgments are essentially "yaying" or "booing" interpersonal behavior--interpersonal behavior that one considers more socially significant than matters of etiquette or manners. (Also note that "interpersonal" can be behavior towards oneself.)
It's not just arbitrarily yaying or booing behavior. It's yaying or booing based on "deep"/gut feelings or "intuitions" and instincts, many of which are evolutionarily biased.
X is moral(ly preferable) to S just in case S feels that x is desirable, preferable, permissible, recommendable etc. behavior, or just in case S feels that x (the behavior in question) is necessary to achieve y, some desirable, preferable, etc. state of affairs.
Something "becomes moral in the mind" when mental states (so brain states, that is) amount to the above from a first person perspective.
The reason it does not correspond to the world in some way is that no matter where you look in the world, you can not find yaying or booing or feeling that something is desirable, preferable, etc. in the extramental world.
Yes, purposes/goals are mental phenomena. They do not occur outside of that.
We could say that anything that says that only some things have property x as "dualistic" but it would be important in a context like this to stress that "dualism" isn't referring to physical/non-physical ontological/metaphyhsical dualism. A lot of people automatically read the word "dualism" that way.
Aside from people who believe that morality strictly comes from God, and so they check their Bibles or whatever to see if something is moral, I don't believe it changes how we do ethics at all. Since there are no extramental moral yays or boos, people have always had to use their own feelings/judgments to do ethics.
But no matter what you do, you can't actually check anywhere in the extramental world to see whether something is objectively right or wrong. People have always relied on their own feelings, their own intuitions and reasoning, etc.
That part isn't true. Maybe some people do that, but certainly not everyone does. I do not, for example.
This part is pertinent to people who say, "I have no moral stances whatsoever." They're like those folks who claim to have no beliefs. They actually do have moral stances, they just don't call them that. Same with beliefs. Everyone has beliefs, but some people refuse to call them that.
Moral anti-realists/noncognitivists in general, though, do not deny that we make moral judgments. We just deny that they're anything more than us feeling however we do.
I don't actually know about that, but I know some pretty weird people. At any rate, the vast majority of people would pick that, sure.
When I make my choice, I'm telling you what I'd prefer. I'm not pretending that there's some sort of objective value.
No. It's not any sort of illusion. Mental states are what moral stances ARE. There's nothing illusory about that. You're seeing it from an objectivist perspective, where you're assuming that what moral stances are are some sort of extramental whatevers. And then you're parsing the alternative (that it's only mental) as an illusion, as if we all really believe that moral stances are some sort of extramental whatevers. But we don't all believe that.
Moral stances are always ultimately how we feel about interpersonal behavior, the treatment of others, etc. It shouldn't be a mystery that we can feel ways about things (unless one has some sort of psychological block re emotions, preferences, etc.) We can reason based on our feeling ("I feel that everyone should have shelter. Therefore, it's morally right to offer lodging to homeless people" for example--the second statement is a reasoned conclusion based on the first), but ultimately it comes down to us feeling particular ways, having preferences, etc.
Having preferences means that we don't like some things--and quite strongly we don't like some things. That's all that condemnation is. Affirmation shouldn't be a mystery. It's what preferences are in the first place.
"Wrong" morally is just "booing" something.
No, that doesn't follow at all. Again, I do not at all do this. It seems like you've been an objectivist, and so you're trying to parse anti-realism from within an objectivist framework to make sense of it.
You're not evaluating different moral stances for their truth values. Since morals are about interpersonal behavior, it's important for our preferences that alternate preferences aren't instantiated socially instead. So moral disagreements amount to attempting others to change their preferences, or at least allow room for alternate preferences where possible. One way we can do that is by appealing to consistency re the various preferences that someone has. That takes exploration.
Anti-realists aren't saying that there aren't real states of affairs that moral judgments are about. We're just saying that the moral judgments themselves are not real (that is, extramental).
So when we appeal to states of affairs, we're pointing out facts that can influence one's mental judgment re behavioral preferences.
Forget about morality for a moment. Imagine that I'm writing a song or painting a picture. I show it to my friend, Paul. He says he's not quite satisfied with it. So I play some different chords, or add a couple colors/tweak some shapes. I ask whether he likes it better now. Whether he likes it is a matter of how he feels about it. But no one is saying that the chords/soundwaves or that the paints I applied or the shapes on the canvas, etc. are not real/objective.
Pointing out facts about states of affairs in an ethical debate is like changing chords or adding colors. It's giving the person other information to think about re how they feel about the situation.
For some anti-realists, such as me, they aren't truth-apt. I'm a noncognitivist on ethics (and aesthetics and some other things, too).
It depends on the truth theory one is using, though, as Michael pointed out above. Coherence theorists can say that moral stances are truth-apt because what makes something true isn't correspondence to some objective state of affairs. It's coherence with the other propositions that are accepted as true.
When I say that "x should be the case" in a moral context, I mean either:
(a) That I prefer that x is the case,
(b) That I prefer y, which I believe is contingent on x being the case,
(c) People that I care about, whom I prefer to be happy/satisfied/etc., are people for whom either (a) or (b) are true, or for whom I believe that (a) or (b) would be true for them contra alternatives, even though they might not think this yet or might not have considered it.
Some combination of those can all be the case, too.
In moral reflection, one can use logic to work out the best way to satisfy one's moral feelings.
I think I can agree to this. Fundamentally the reaction I have to things I consider moral or immoral is some sort of approval or disapproval. From this I can figure out what makes it the case that I feel this way about something.
However what happens if our moral beliefs are illogical? What happens when, upon further analysis, we find that the moral belief does not conform to logic, or is ad hoc, or begs the question? Which takes precedence, the illogical belief or the logic?
It's important to realize this, because anti-realism/subjectivism/noncognitivism isn't going to parse well under an objectivist framework. To understand it, you need to try to understand it as anti-realists etc. do. That doesnt mean you need to agree with them, but you need to try to put yourself in those shoes if you want to get a better handle on how it works under that framework.
It's also a matter of how you're defining 'mind'! The notion of 'mind-independent', in the sense being used here, is very much a product of scientific or naive realism, it has nothing to do with scholastic realism, which is about the reality of universals and other abstracts. So by using 'mind independent' in that modern sense, the implication is that 'what is real' is 'what exists independently of any mind'. But if you drill down on that idea, it is philosophically problematical for reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread, but are still relevant to it.
I think value is dependent on mind/body to think and feel it and morality is dependent on mind/body to think and act it. I don't believe it has anything to do with "normativity' which I see as being an utterly empty notion.
So, if the anti-realist view wants to separate mind from body, and render everything mind-dependent then it is really eliminating body as being anything other than a function of mind.
Thus this question Quoting darthbarracuda has no real sense in such a standpoint.
And this question Quoting darthbarracuda would, I guess, be answered by the anti-realist in terms of the mere relativism of doxa. Thus something does not "become moral, but is merely thought to become moral. And no morality corresponds to the world or anything in the world because there is no world but only the idea of a world. So, there is only the idea of morality and the idea of a world. And an idea of morality may correspond to an idea of the world; there would seem to be no mystery in what is merely a matter of stipulation for the anti-realist.