Morality: Pluralism, Naturalism and
Nihilism
Have you forgotten? The sin given to me
is “Pride.”
- Lucuha,
Lucu Lucu (as translated from
Japanese)
If uncomfortable truths are out there,
we should seek them and face them like intellectual adults, rather than
eschewing open-minded inquiry or fabricating philosophical theories whose only
virtue is the promise of providing the soothing news that all our heartfelt
beliefs are true.
- Richard
Joyce, The Evolution of Morality
We need to remember what we and our
forbears were looking for; that should help us remember that we already found some
of it.
- Me
Oh, so you’re a moral nihilist then. Are
you insane?! Do you eat babies as well?!
- unspoken
+ unacknowledged within most people’s mind when they first encounter moral
error theory or moral nihilism
*Om Nom Nom Nom*!
- my
trollish response to ridiculous questions and accusations when I was a moral
nihilist
Introduction
In this paper, I will explain why moral
nihilism is much more plausible than many people believe and defend a version
of pluralistic moral naturalism. I hope to further pare down the meta-ethical
landscape to just two plausible options: moral naturalism and moral nihilism.
[I
owe a debt of gratitude to the Youtube theist Clear404 for their critiques of
my arguments and their patience with my often maddening methods. Hope things go
well for them. I also thank angstreich, feathertop and Rayndeon for their
criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper. You guys know moral anti-realism is
of the devil, right?]
A lot of
this will be technical philosophy so make sure that before each topic an within
each section you link the discussion to everyday morality and the bigger
picture
Error
theory is a broader class than moral nihilism: Error theory says morality is
commited to some thing X, but X fails to obtains. Moral nihilists in particular
say X is the existence of moral properties, but other answers might obtain. For
example, one might take moral statements to be non-cognitive assertions that
need to be generally applicable (so no objectively moral properties needed,
even if they do exists) while denying that any such non-cognitive assertions
are generally applicable. Thus one adopts error theory without needing to be a
moral nihilist. Contrast with “success theory” where morality is said to meet
its requirements as a discourse. Anyway, I usually use the terms error theory
and moral nihilism interchangeable since the distinction between the two
normally isn’t crucial.
Argue
that moral nihilists can have an evaluative language for tracking properties
(use Blackburn’s quasi-realism as an example; explicitly state moral nihilists
can get involved in meta-ethical discussions as long as they admit they
tracking non-moral properties and advocating consideration of them)
Rebut
standard straw-man of nihilists: 1) the whole “well if ethics is relative, why
should I treat you well canard (the boring thought experiment with the teacher
and the relativistic student)” [rebut by showing analogous case with God and
showing we still care about stuff even when consideration of God passes away;
do the same with the moral case and show that even if moral properties fail to
exist, one can still care about non-moral properties like suffering,
compassion, courage, etc. and if one doesn’t [i.e. once one finds out moral
properties don’t exist one ceases to have an interest in others] than was one
acting from a moral motivation to begin with?]
Address rayndeon’s point that the “moral
naturalism/nihilism” divide in ontologically thin and merely a semantic
difference (note the close-relatedness between them I began to suggest in the
previous paper, but say the ontological truth-claims between them differ, and
that’s a real difference; all the following are substantive conclusions:
denying a given property exists, a given concept has a referent, certain
properties serve as truth-makers for certain claim;
Address Joyce’s point reagarding
debunking explanations + math + railton in EOM with my own parallel to an
idealist response to realism Nothe that it is an achievement for science to
debunk moral capacities and use this to set the minimum bar: moral judgment
must be at least more unjustified and wayward the science shows our scientific
and other rational processes to be in oder for the “moral faculty
unreliability” argument to work
Give
four-part psychological tests from feathertop for internal versus external
(scientifically-respectable induction
conditions from external properties, not simply a result of internal emotional
responses [give caveats from Jonathan Smith’s paper in response to
Sinnott-Armstrong, but in the end, reject Smith’s move], can make sense of it
existing or being a truth-maker independent of the opinion of a mind,
inter-subjectively observable by other people), include Sinnott-Armstrong’s
criteria from EOM as well (go directly to Sinnott-Armstrong’s paper “Moral
Intuitionism Meets Empirical Psychology” as
well, along with pages 217-218 of “The Skeptick’s Tale” at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2008.00241.x/pdf)
Rebut
Joyce’s argument for reasons internalism (argue that it has all same
metaphysical problems as externalism via shafer-landau and olson), explain my
arguments for reasons externalism being better for moral realism than reason’s
internalism (so overlap with previous paper), give “naturalism-standard test”
[“naturalistic nihilism can explain moral behavior, moral experience, and so
on. So if a given account of normativity is non-naturalsitic, given arguments
in previous paper, we should prefer need really strong arguments before
accepting it as opposed to just up and adopting moral naturalism. So if moral
realism committed to non-natural normativity, then moral nihilism beckons. We
more forward with the standards and natural properties left over under moral
naturalism”]
Explain
why reasons internalism regarding morality does not work (Joyce’s “relativism
about realism fixing to the incorrect moral contexts” view as cited in response
to Finlay, give my arguments against Clear404’s view [Joyce criticism just
noted; forced to say we ought to do morally horrendous things in situation
where God would reward us for or and punish us for doing otherwise since there
are no external reasons; justifying reasons cannot count as the appropriately
motivating reasons {thus his view fails the self-reflection test; hiding one’s
justification from oneself normally shows that one thinks that justification is
crap as discussed in motivation argument in previous paper}; same
pre-theoretical judgments that lead people to reasons internalism also lead
them to reasons externalism; other criticisms from PM exchange.])
Defend Humean subjectivism regarding
normativity (above and beyond the normativity we assign above true and false;
say true and false aren’t really normative, but we add the layer when we start
judging from a standpoint of “correct” and “incorrect” when they mean more than
true and false; explicitly build off of Olson’s framework and account of
non-transcendentally normative reasons in relation to evidence and say that
this is what I refer to when discussing “reason to believe claim X” or
“evidence for X”), defend as applied to the scientific case (scientific goals
and standards geared towards helping someone gain truth), explain how
non-cognitivists account of what we’re doing in the normativity might be
helpful but there inessential since the crucial part of morality is the natural
properties (otherwise error theory reasons because there’s no objectivity
present), explain how emotions to comply that drive motivation can lead people
to feel pulled to describe moral normativity in convoluted ways even though
morality is not committed to such convolutions (cite example of “life” and
other normative domains [epistemology, aesthetics, etc.] to build off the
Dennett-ian point that we can come to view something differently and demystify
it overtime); Address Bilgrami’s argument regarding normativity; defend against
Joyce’s point that this emotional projectivist explanation leads to error
theory (done more below)
Address Bart Struemer’s series of papers
on normativity (especially starting with “Can we Believe the Error Theory” and
his other arguments on how there cannot be normative properties and normative properties
are descriptive properties)
Show non-natural accounts of normativity
don’t get real purchase (mention flaws of non-naturalism from previous paper;
can’t be that the non-naturalist can say, “well I can appeal to normativity to
end debate” since Nazi might not care much for their normativity [even for
their own desires; Nazi might not care that saying “I don’t care that I don’t
care” might lead to a contradiction], every consideration involves judgment
from concern for a certain property, cannot be that our normative discourse
would collapse w/o non-natural normativity [include Joyce’s point about
linguistic term functioning in same way via witch example; mention
self-reflective test especially in connection to my motivation argument from
before: people should be able reflect on their given justification and still
feel like the normative system works, naturalistic properties pass this test
since people offer natural properties as conscious justifications for moral
assertions so moral judgments {when connected to natural properties} will pass
the self-reflection test and thus pass Joyce’s criterion of moral judgements
fitting out normative standards]; non-naturalist might over-analyze normativity
to the point where there are advocating something weirder than what’s needed to
do the job [especially when the emotional projection argument Joyce mentions in
EOM and MOM might leave this vague “fugitive thought” that non-naturalists wish
to non-natural properties to explain when we can just set this aside and
clarify our thoughts as we did in the vitalism/life case, non-naturalist should
not commit the lay concept of morality to more than it’s actually committed to)
Argue conceptual platitudes (meaning)
for moral concepts needs to be weak enough to allow people to disagree and not
attribute massive conceptual confusion to many people, give some minimal moral
conceptual restraints (as per Turiel’s moral/conventional distinction). Say
philosophers have a tendency to commit morality to too much, instead of doing
more tests to determine people’s actual moral conceptual intuitions and whether
their models fit the lay conception their supposed to either be defending or
rebutting, they adhere to a conception of morality which is often much stronger
and different for the lay view (mention Joyce’s response to this regarding
Mackie in the section rebutting naturalism in EOM; mention Stich’s work on
differences between philosopher’s and lay people’s moral intuitions [especially
section 2 of his paper with Weinberg called “Jackson’s Empirical Assumptions], go to <http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/> and read the articles under “The Relationship between
Moral Reflection and Moral Behavior”, reference shift in people’s
normative outlook from pre-theoretical childhood to the beginning of
theoretical college years in Nichols’ work among others, “Why Moral
Philosophers are not and should not be moral Experts” [a very simple argument;
cite more as a summary or alternative viewpoint than as support], Nichols’
article on empirical data on psychopathy overturned philosophers conceptual
intuitions, mention how the psychopath data controverts some philosopher’s
conceptual intuitions regarding MI, Richard Brown’s point regarding how one’s a
priori intuitions can be unconsciously influence by one’s pre-theoretical
commitments; Greene’s discussion in WarOnYourMind’s
series “The New Science of Morality” on how Bentham’s borderline autistic
emotional deficits allowed him to view morality in a way other’s could not; given
all this we need empical data and experimental philosophy to help give us
perspective on when our philosophical intuitions, personal quirks, and
micro-environment in philosophical community may be causing us to add on
conceptual additions to discourse when those commitments were never really
apart of the discourse)
Deal with twin-earth by our term
references the natural properties as per substantive non-conceptual arguments
that link to it the appropriate properties (water and H20) example (in case of
people in other twin earths, we could use either conceptual truths or
non-conceptual substantive arguments to argue against their reference claims;
if they agreed to very different non-conceptual claims then we did, that would
either be reflected at the level of different conceptual [i.e. meaning claims]
resulting in conceptual confusion or we simply point to the natural properties
such as harm and say either 1) “if they really attached the moral concept to
stuff that radically different from what we did, they ended up using the same
label and concept to refer to our thing, but that’s not our concept” or 2) “who
says referential errors aren’t as bad as conceptual ones. If the given
attributions disagree with people’s reflective substantive commitments, that
hurts the transworld opponents just as much”)
Deal with moral twin-earth even more
Moral statements express both beliefs
and Joyce’s conative state though the latter is not essential to the moral
statement (use example of “I find X beautiful, but I really don’t care for X”
or “that musical piece was harmonious, but I don’t like harmony”, none of these
claim’s are conceptually confused or exhibit Moore’s negation conundrum,
instead we normally have an expectation that people feel a certain with respect
to properties in a certain way in their statements and are surprised when they
do not, however one can still complete the speech act even when lacking the
appropriate emotion [ex: DM fans like me who recognize a given property yet
come to like it eventually, Dennett’s example of the coffee-tasters, etc.];
contrast w/ Joyce’s kraut case or the N words where the conation expressed is
essential to the expressed state and meaning {ex: nigger vs. nigga in expressed
belief and contative state});
advocate motivation externalism [ME];
mention Smith’s anti-ME argument and
cite Brink’s response in the handout (w/o endorsing it) and then give my own
response (need some reflective distance between belief and response [belief
then emotion then deliberation then action action; goes with my judge1/judge2
distinction] which externalism provides; once person recognizes natural
properties are natural properties they will clearly care for the appropriate
thing via the example of S2 Koharu; even when a person has trouble realizing
the identity relationship between moral and natural properties [analogous to
water and H2O case] they end up tracking the right properties anyway and using
the right justifications that result in appropriate concern for others even on
ME theory; how does MI proponent deal with cases mentioned by Joyce of people
who want to do something b/c they think it’s evil [consider including Alex from
A Clockwork Orange or someone else
who treats evil as an art-form to pursue], will they really say that person
does not make a genuine moral judgments [distinguish between emotion being
absolutely necessary for making a moral judgment vs emotional statements being
typically important for making moral judgments but not always being essential
especially if one picks up on social cues of information {analogy to blind
person socially provided information regarding the external world}vs mental
states essentially and inessentially expressed by moral statements; distinguish
between psychopaths who exhibit behavioral defects that suggest lack of real
moral belief from {likely hypothetical} psychopaths who lack the emotional cus
but pick up on the social/conceptual/linguistic guidelines for moral statements
and form the requisite beliefs, and train themselves to behave in the requisite
ways, argue the latter have moral beliefs) empricaly evidence rebutting MI
(“Are ethical judgments intrinsically motivational? Lessons from “acquired
sociopathy””; make sure to distinguish between data regarding how people
actually make moral judgments [i.e. what moral judgments actually are] from
what people think is going on [i.e. what determines the linguistic notions
expressed by a verbal moral judgment]; put in context of Joyce 2006, 56-57,
125, 132)
Begin
by noting that the usual triviality of the question “why is N good” when
brought up by Internet moral anti-realists (the naturalism’s in this section
will say the 2 concepts co-refer and the 2 properties are identical [supported
via my reference argument from previous paper and principle of epistemic
conservation fitted together with the motivational argument and empirical data
from section I-B-3 and III-E-1]; if someone persists in say “why is N good?” or
some specific form of the general question “why does natural concept N co-refer
with moral concept M?” then this becomes a trivial dodge [as I mentioned in
section I-C and V-B someone can simply refuse to accept evidence for a given
conclusion no matter what one says or what arguments one gives, so the moral
realist should not be bothered by the moral anti-realist if this is what they
are doing anymore than philosophers are bothered by the fact that some people
will deny any argument for a given conclusion or scientists are bothered by the
fact that some people will reject any scientific evidence they are provided; if
the antu-realists is not simply “why?” as a knee-jerk reaction to an argument
for a conclusion they don’t like, they either need to rebut the moral
naturalist’s argument for their identity thesis or provide an argument for
their denial of the identity thesis {ex: Joyce’s and Sinnot-Armstrong’s claims
regarding the moral sense and moral epistemology, the argument from moral
properties needing to be normative while natural properties are not, Ruse’s and
Joyce’s Occam’s razor argument, etc.}, I’ve addressed such arguments as best I
can, so unless the anti-realist has additional points in support of their
question I take the “why is N good” or “why does natural concept N co-refer
with moral concept M?” to be dealt with.
Survey
of different types of moral naturalism: reductionist varieties such as
old-school consequentialism, societal functionalist accounts such as Copp’s and
maybe Brink’s (often overlap with the first reductionist variety), disjunctive
varieties such as Frank Jackson’s analytic functionalist, naturalistic
pluralism like mine (cite Ross as my inspiration and my affinity for his ideas;
go over the multiple realizability point for predicates in the higher sciences
[ex: the predicates “mountain” or “building” or “cat”; mention Goldman’s
different ways of pointing out instances of a concept [different types of
ostensive examples, necess and sufficient conditions, etc.] and mention how
this relates to Methodism/particularism, note that we use these examples to pick
out instances of a given multiply realizable predicate and the rules of thumb
we generate from these to pick out the predicate [basically, some of the things
the instances share in common] admit of some exceptions [ex: note some
exceptions to some general statements made regarding “cats”] but this does not
make these predicates non-natural or useless or lacking a reference) and use
that as a parallel to morality, nothing untoward or underhanded about saying
you can recognize a property in a given situation when it is realizable in
multiple naturalistic variants as long as you can make some general statements
regarding when the higher level property is instantiated and the similarities
between it’s instantiations, there may be some vague/border-line/indeterminate
cases but that occurs with many predicates and may reflect an epistemic as
opposed to metaphysical issue); explain why I think my pluralism fits better
with our pre-theoretical judgments that other types of naturalism, but why I
still favor consequentialism (utilitarianism’s [and reductionism in general] us
that it reduces morality and moral concerns down to one even though there are
really many other factors we care about (mention utilitarian criticism surveyed
by Greene, along with A companion to Ethics discussion of consequentialism and
utilitarianism), one can care about bravery or compassion independent of
considerations pleasure/plain/preference benefits it, pluralism avoids this
problem; major problem for pluralists is lacking a clear decision procedure or
having one that’s so vague that it allows for ad hoc reasoning and abuse (refer
Dancy’s “moral judgment view” from Timmons’ section of particularism), we can
address this problem by realizing the utilitarians were on to something: even
though pleasure/pain/harm are not the only relevant natural properties, they
are the overwhelmingly relevant one’s (when they show, everything else starts
to look really small), so thought I’m a pluralist, my decision procedure gives
massive weight to utilitarian and consequentialist concerns [helps avoid the
deonotological habit Greene discussed of using our vague references to “should
not be done regardless of consequences or affects on others” as a post hoc
cover for one’s emotional dislike of something (though mention Gill’s critique
of Greene at the end of his article), let’s focus on actual effects and actual
natural properties to avoid that mistake; advocate something like Foot’s hybrid
account with virtue ethics and note that general tradition of utilitarian
thought that factors in other things and tries to avoid utter fous on
pleasure/harm/preferences beginning with Epicurus and going through J.S. Mills’
rule utilitarianism). If it turns out that the high-level natural property of
my pluralism argument is not moral goodness and no natural property could be a
moral property (ex: maybe the normativity arguments against moral naturalism
work) then I’ll adopt moral nihilism while still using pluralism as my guide
for determining what to do, what actions to argue in favor of and what actions
to argue against, etc. [goes back to my discussion of nihilism in section IV-D-3e-ii
of previous paper where I stated I care about natural properties and morality
only derivatively; many moral anti-realists act as if morality is the only
framework we use to determine what to do and what not to do, moral judgments
are used to oppress people (hence many of their disinclination to accept moral
realism regardless of the arguments presented for it), etc., this is false,
even moral anti-realists and moral nihilists can argue for and against behavior
and step into a situations due to the natural properties of it, if a given
moral anti-realist disagrees {ex: they really would not step in to prevent an
abusive husband from hitting their wife and causing her unwanted pain SIMPLY
BECAUSE that action was not morally long} then I assume their either lying or
are cowards {NOTE: rephrase this when placed in paper}; once we realize that
much of our concern for morality arises only derivatively from concern for
natural properties, then: 1) much of the entrenched anti-realist opposition to
accepting moral naturalist’s arguments should evaporate since naturalists are
not using morality as a veil to judge others [they’d step in in precisely the same
situations if they were moral nihilists] and 2) much of the entrenched realist
opposition to accepting moral nihilist’s arguments should evaporate for much
the same reason
Give a few test cases to show how
naturalistic pluralism fits with everyday moral reasoning (especially in light
of data from sections III-E-1 and III-E-2 of previous paper) where we discuss
natural properties to determine if a higher-level natural property is
instantiated (have them sort of be a back-and-forth as in the Koharu
conversations from before; have a case of judging one society’s behavior and one
of the speakers finding out they use much the same moral principle we do but
leads to different results due to context and thus revising their moral
judgment [ex: Inuit’s leading the elderly off into the snow to die and
infanticide due to scarce resources], use the homosexual marriage case [example
where natural properties people cite are not enough to show instantiation of
higher-level property and we can clearly see the role emotional response {as
opposed to recognition of natural properties} plays here; reiterate how
deontology’s reference to duties apart from consequences and natural properties
is a recipe for this kind of abuse], politics case where people share the same
moral beliefs but one of them just has an incorrect non-moral belief [mention
other general cases in which both parties care about having true beliefs and
would revise their moral judgments in light of evidence and true beliefs, but
one party just happens to have a false non-moral belief {religion is the best
case of this}]
Modifying Joyce [“Surpassing Sensei”]
Addressing Joyce’s argument [“Richard Joyce,
I’m really happy for ya and Imma let ya finish, but.., (I’ll re-use if I damn
well please!)]
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