Darwin and Moral Realism: The Survival of the Iffiest

I’ve covered Sharon Street’s evolutionary debunking argument of objective (mind-independent) moral reality before. I’ve also covered some responses to the argument, along with some more general reflections on arguments of this sort. I’d recommend reading some of those posts before tackling this one.

In this entry, I’ll be covering the following article:

Skarsaune, K.O. “Darwin and Moral Realism: Survival of the Iffiest” (2011) 152 Philosophical Studies 229

It’s a direct response to Street’s Darwinian dilemma. So a quick recap on her argument is our first port of call.


1. Street’s Darwinian Dilemma
Non-natural moral realists believe that moral properties (values, rights, wrongs etc) exist in some mind-independent realm. Further, these realists tend to believe that we acquire knowledge of this realm through the exercise of our intuitive evaluative judgments. In other words, our intuitive evaluative judgments are some how in tune with this mind independent realm.

Now we all know (irrespective of our metaethical proclivities) that most of our intuitive evaluative judgments are the products of a complex evolutionary history. That is to say, most of our intuitive judgments can be said to have come about due to their fitness enhancing abilities. So, for example, our belief that we have certain duties to protect our offspring, or our enthusiasm for reciprocal forms of altruism, can be explained in terms of fitness enhancement.

But this creates a problem for the defender of moral realism. It implies that our evolved judgments have somehow managed to coincide with the mind-independent moral truth.

The thoughts set out in the preceding paragraphs can be expressed as an evolutionary debunking argument:

(1) Causal Premise: Our intuitive evaluative judgments are the product of a complex evolutionary processes.

(2) Epistemic Premise: Evolutionary processes are fitness enhancing, they do not track the truth of mind-independent moral properties.

(3) Therefore, our intuitive evaluative judgments are unjustified.

Street thinks that in responding to this argument the realist is confronted with a dilemma. As with all dilemmas, there are two horns on which they can impale themselves:

First Horn: They can argue that there is a relation between evolutionary processes and the mind-independent moral truth (which seems implausible).

Second Horn: They can argue that there is no such relation, in which case they land themselves in an unwelcome form of scepticism.

Skarsaune thinks the realist can be open to both horns of the dilemma, no matter how pointy they may appear to be. To be precise, he argues that the realist can provide an account of the relation between evolutionary processes and moral truth; and that if this account fails, then they could happily embrace the scepticism conclusion. He also makes some interesting concluding remarks about the nature of moral realism. We’ll look at all three of these elements in what follows.


2. Pain and Pleasure
Skarsaune’s willingness to embrace the two horns of the dilemma stems from his belief that he can provide a pre-established harmony account of the relationship between evolved evaluative judgments and the moral truth. If you have read my series on David Enoch’s response to Sharon Street, this will be a familiar idea, however, I think Skarsaune’s account is slightly more persuasive.

Enoch focused on the correlation between evolutionary goals such as survival and reproduction and deeper moral truths like the intrinsic goodness or badness of pain; Skarsaune focuses directly on the evolutionary utility of pain and pleasure.

He begins by making the following substantive claim:

• P: Pleasure is usually good (for an agent) and pain is usually bad (for an agent).

This claim is agent-relative and non-absolute. It accepts that there may be exceptional cases in which pain might be good for the agent. This possibility does not matter for Skarsaune’s argument, provided such cases are relatively rare.

P can be restated using the language of reasons as follows:

• P*: The fact that x would give the agent (S) pleasure is usually a reason for S to bring about x; likewise, the fact that x would give S pain is a reason for S to avoid bringing about x.

Skarsaune argues that two plausible inferences can be made from P (or P*). The first of these maintains that if P is true, then the first horn of Street’s dilemma is tenable. That is to say, a connection between evolutionary processes and moral truth can be found. The second inference maintains that if P is false, then the second horn of Street’s dilemma is tenable. That is to say, the realist has nothing to fear if P is false because this would imply that an awful lot of what we think we know about morality and about reasons for action would be in error. Realists usually accept such risks of error (indeed, one reason for being a realist is that one accepts the risk of error).

3. The Evolutionary Utility of Pain and Pleasure
Turning our attention to the first inference, we need to understand Skarsaune’s confidence in the connection between evolution and pain and pleasure. Surely, we might argue, evolutionary processes direct us toward that which is fitness enhancing, not that which is intrinsically good or bad?

Yes, responds Skarsaune, but one way in which evolution directs us toward that which is fitness-enhancing is by making things that are evolutionarily beneficial pleasurable and things that are evolutionarily detrimental painful. (You might like to read this series I did on Paul Draper’s evidential argument from evil for related ideas).

It’s easy to see how this is the case in relation to pleasure: the belief that something is pleasurable provides motivation to act; those individuals who took pleasure from evolutionarily beneficial activities were motivated to act in evolutionarily beneficial ways; as a result they tended to leave more offspring than those who did not take pleasure from such actions. Thus, the fact that we associate pleasure with certain activities plays a part in evolutionary explanations of our existence.

So far so good, where do we go from here? Well, we simply point out that P is true - that pain and pleasure are part of the essential moral fabric of the universe - and so evolutionary processes can track the truth of moral states of affair. Problem solved; dilemma dissolved. Right?

Not so fast. Doesn’t this really only imply that evolutionary processes create value? In other words, that evolutionary processes have made certain things valuable to us, and not that evolutionary processes have somehow managed to direct us towards the independently determined moral truth?

Skarsaune has a response. It is true that evolution has created a type of value by using the pleasure/pain mechanism, but we need to be clear about what this is. Evolution has merely made it the case that we find certain states of affairs to be valuable; it has not made it the case that pleasurableness itself is a good. The goodness of pleasure (and badness of pain) is independent of evolution. The distinction is subtle, but essential.

So there is, in effect, a pre-established harmony between the pleasure-seeking (and pain-avoiding) mechanism used by evolution and an independently specified moral truth. This allows the realist to embrace the first horn of Street’s dilemma.


4. What if we are wrong about P?
Not content to rest on the foregoing argument, Skarsaune also thinks he can show that a moral realist should be undeterred by the second horn of Street’s dilemma. The realist might be forced into that horn by someone arguing that P is wrong: that pain and pleasure are not usually good/bad for the agent pursuing them.

Skarsaune asks us to assume, for sake of argument, that this critic is correct. What would follow from this? Only that most of our beliefs about practical reason and morality are false. And presumably if this is the case, we’ll have bigger things to worry about than the plausibility of moral realism.

For example, suppose it were really the case that pleasure did not supply you with a reason for action. This would mean that most of your beliefs about what you have reason to do would be false. Maybe that's not significant since it relates to the agent-relative aspects of pleasure and pain. What about the agent neutral aspects? Well, similarly, the falsity of P would deprive us of many reasons for acting in the interests of others since most of those reasons relate to making the lives of others more pleasurable.

Either way, if P is false, then a lot of what we take for granted is false.


5. Realism and Mind-Independence
Even if Skarsaune’s argument to this point has been convincing, there is one final objection. Indeed, this is an objection raised by Sharon Street in her original presentation of the dilemma. It runs roughly along the following lines:

Sure, we can say that pleasure and pain are valuable and can be tracked by evolution, but in saying this aren’t we renouncing our commitment to moral realism? After all, realism is usually understood to be the view that moral facts are mind-independent. But pain and pleasure are very clearly mind-dependent. So to place them at the centre of our moral theory is to switch from realism to anti-realism.

Skarsaune disagrees. He thinks Street only makes this argument because she has an impoverished conception of moral realism. Realism is not committed to the view that moral facts are entirely mind-independent. We have to be more discriminating in our understanding of what the realists think is independent from what.

To be precise, we need to more discriminating in our breakdown of the various mental states from which a moral fact can be independent. Skarsaune argues, citing the examples of Nagel, Parfit and Shafer-Landau, that realists do not think moral facts hold independently of all mental states. They think that moral facts hold independently of beliefs and judgments, not independently of affective states.

I don’t know what to make of that claim. In some ways, I don't care what those defending realism actually believe. It is often the case that individuals hold beliefs that are inconsistent with the theories they defend. What matters to me are the implications of those beliefs. I think that if what Skarsaune says is true, then there is no important difference between realist and anti-realist theories. This would be an odd result, but I'd be glad to hear that defenders of realism are coming round to my position.

On Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (Part Three)

(Part One, Part Two)

This post is the third in a short series of posts on the following article:

• Kahane, G. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments” (2011) 45 Nous 103-125

As we learned in part one, an evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) is something that attempts to undermine the warrant or justification for a particular belief by pointing out its evolutionary origins. All such arguments begin with a causal premise which specifies how evolution brings about the belief in question; they follow it up with an epistemic premise arguing that evolutionary processes do not track truth; and they thereby conclude that belief is unwarranted.

We saw in part two how such arguments are sometimes employed in disputes in normative ethics. The example given came from the work of Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. Both of these authors seemed to argue that deontological intuitions could be undermined by an EDA. This fact could be marshalled in support of utilitarian principles.

In response, it was argued that Singer and Greene’s argument is difficult to sustain since it needs to show that their preferred utilitarian principles do not draw upon other debunked intuitions. In other words, we need to be given some reason for thinking that global EDAs are not possible.

In this entry we consider whether global EDAs are possible.

1. Joyce and Street
In recent times, two authors in particular have pushed the idea of a global EDA. One of them is Richard Joyce; the other is Sharon Street. (I’ve discussed Street’s work at considerable length elsewhere on this blog, should you want more detail than you’ll be getting here). Michael Ruse should probably get an honourable mention as well.

Joyce argues that all our moral judgments can trace their origin to cultural and environmental influences affecting the hominid line. If we were, say, evolved from the social insects, we would come with a completely different set of pre-packaged moral commitments.

Joyce thinks this won’t do. On semantic grounds, Joyce maintains that moral discourse is committed to a type of absolutism, i.e. our moral discourse purports to provide us with a set of reasons for action that apply to all times, places and subjective dispositions. The contingency implied by modern evolutionary theory is diametrically opposed to this kind of absolutism. Thus we are forced to embrace a form of error theory about morality. (Joyce thinks we can still be happy with pragmatic, subjective reasons for action).

Street makes similar claims, but arrives at a different implication. She thinks that moral realists (particularly of the non-natural variety) should be deeply troubled by evolutionary history.

This history implies that many of our evaluative beliefs are directly moulded by the pressures of survival and reproduction. For example, altruism towards kin can be readily explained through evolutionary game theory. Despite this, realists must still believe that somehow these beliefs line-up with abstract moral truths. But surely this is incredible? Wouldn’t it be too much to think that the selective pressures of evolution just happened to coincide with the abstract, causally inert moral truth?

Street thinks this argument provides good reason for rejecting metaethical realism and embracing some form of antirealism (constructivism in particular). This position is not nihilistic or sceptical about moral truth. It just thinks that moral truths are not mind-independent.

Note that neither Joyce nor Street quite goes “all the way” with their debunking. Joyce still thinks it is rational to act in accordance with our subjectively perceived self-interest; and Street thinks moral truth can still exist. It might be possible to go even further with the debunking and point out that all normative beliefs (including beliefs about epistemic norms) are undermined by evolution. This is, effectively, what Alvin Plantinga does in his argument against evolutionary naturalism.


2. Responding to the Global EDA
At this stage its worth identifying the potential responses to EDAs by proponents of ethical objectivism/realism. There are three of them, and they should be unsurprising to anyone familiar with epistemological debates of this sort:

• They can say that no evaluative beliefs are affected by the argument.
• They can say that some evaluative beliefs are affected by the argument.
• They can say that all evaluative beliefs are affected by the argument.

The third option seems unattractive for a variety of reasons. As noted above, if the proposed scepticism leaks into other normative domains then it’s basically impossible to rationally justify anything. The first option looks equally unappealing. Someone wishing to make this response would need to argue that evolutionary processes really do track moral truth (see here for a version of that response).

The second option is probably the most attractive but it is precariously balanced. Its defender needs to show why certain beliefs are unaffected. Basically, this requires that they show how the evaluative belief they wish to protect originates in or is supported by considerations that override evolutionary history. It is this kind of position that interests Kahane since it is maintained by the likes of Singer and Greene.

Consider once more Singer’s position. He thinks that an EDA can undermine deontological intuitions but not utilitarian ones. How can he be so sanguine? Because he thinks utilitarianism is supported by rational reflection that is not the outcome of our evolutionary past.

Does this kind of response work? Here is where the role of the reflective equilibrium (RE) in normative reasoning might be important. The RE proposes a kind of test for ethical beliefs. The test is coherentist in nature. It begins with a set of moral principles, it then tests these against a range of scenarios, and then modifies these principles in accordance with what seems reasonable, usually appealing to intuition when doing so.

Such an approach to normative reasoning might be uniquely susceptible to an EDA. Why? Because the equilibrium could be based on debunked intuitions. If that is how Singer ultimately justifies his utilitarian principle then he could be in trouble.

On Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (Part Two)

(Part One)

This post is the second in a short series of posts on the following article:

• Kahane, G. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments” (2011) 45 Nous 103-125

As we learned in part one, Kahane’s article sets out to examine the use of evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) in normative and meta ethics. An EDA is an argument which attempts to show that the evolutionary origin of a particular belief undermines the warrant for that particular belief.

We’ve only really considered the use of such arguments in the abstract to this point. In this post we’ll look at an actual example of such an argument being used in a normative debate.


1. Deontology vs. Utilitarianism in the Trolley Problem
Most people reading this will be aware of the widespread use of trolley-problem thought experiments in ethics. The experiments are designed to show how people’s moral intuitions can vary as a result of seemingly insignificant changes in circumstances.

In the classic example, the trolley problem involves you having to make a decision to kill one person in order to save five or alternatively, let the five people die. In one scenario, the killing of the one person is an indirect consequence of another action (flipping a switch or a lever); in the other scenario, the killing of the one person is a direct consequence of your own actions (e.g. pushing someone off a bridge).

Most people, when asked what they would do in these scenarios, say they would be willing to indirectly kill the one in order to save the five in the first scenario, but they would not be willing to directly kill the one in order to save the five in the second scenario.

From a utilitarian perspective, these responses are difficult to explain. The utilitarian calculation is surely the same in both: one person dies, five people live. Killing the one person is clearly merited in both cases, isn’t it?

From a deontological perspective, the responses might be a little easier to explain. There is an absolute injunction against an action which directly kills another; there is no such injunction against an action which indirectly kills another. No problem.

For some reason, the majority of humanity seems to intuitively back the deontological position. Are they right to do so?

Joshua Greene

2. Singer and Greene: Debunking Deontology
Peter Singer and Joshua Greene think not. They reckon that the deontological intuition can be debunked using an EDA. Greene in particular seems to reason as follows:

• (1) Our commitment to the deontological intuition in the trolley problem is merely due to the fact that “up close and personal” violence was common in our environments of evolutionary adaptation (EEAs) and so an aversion to direct violence was selected for; indirect methods of killing are more evolutionarily recent and have not been selected against.

• (2) Evolution does not track the truth of evaluative propositions.

• (3) Therefore, we are not justified (or warranted) in our commitment to the deontological intuition.

There are several things that could be said about this argument. For one, the causal premise (1) could easily be challenged (as such explanations often are). For another, as noted in part one, the argument seems to assume metaethical realism/objectivism. If the person who is committed to deontology is not a realist, then they will be unswayed by this argument.

We will not focus on these points here. Instead, we’ll address the supposed implications of this argument. No doubt, both Singer and Green take it that this argument somehow supports utilitarianism. But clearly this is not a straightforward implication, however seductive or appealing it may seem to be.

To successfully infer that, one would have to show that the commitment to utilitarian principles is not also undermined by this argument. In other words, one needs to provide some reason for thinking that the EDA does not spread to all of our evaluative principles.

This raises the potentially unwelcome possibility of global debunking arguments. We’ll discuss these in part three.

On Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (Part One)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have previously covered some articles looking at the use of evolutionary debunking arguments in metaethics (see here and here, for examples).

I recently finished reading the following article which also looks at the use of such arguments:

• Kahane, G. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments" (2011) 45 Nous 103-125 (seems to be available for free at the moment)

I must not have read the abstract closely enough before downloading this one since I was expecting Kahane to offer a more fulsome critique of the use of such arguments, but it turns out that wasn’t really what he was interested in.

Nevertheless, the article is a good one and I thought I might share some of its details here. One thing I particularly liked about it was Kahane’s attempt to elucidate the general structure of such arguments and to show how they are used in normative and meta- ethics.

In this first part, I’ll cover Kahane’s general analysis of debunking arguments. In the next part I'll consider their use in normative ethics.


1. An Introduction to Debunking Arguments
First things first, we need to be clear about the nature of a debunking argument (DA). Obviously, “debunking” is, in its everyday usage, intended to denote the practice of undermining or exposing some set of beliefs as being false. Given that this seems to be a common goal in philosophy, there could be many philosophically interesting DAs worth considering.

For present purposes, the focus is on what might be called causal-DAs. These are arguments that try to undermine some belief or set of beliefs by explaining its causal origins. Such arguments are, in fact, widespread. You probably use them all the time.

To consider an obvious example, anyone who has studied Marxism will know that Marx seemed to think (or at least, can be interpreted as thinking) that offering a causal-historical explanation of an ideology could be an effective way of undermining that ideology.

Now expressed in these terms such an argument is patently unsuccessful. It is an example of the genetic fallacy: Just because an ideology has a particular causal origin, does not mean that the ideology is false. But this in itself doesn’t mean that causal DAs are without merit. They just need to be reinterpreted in a more subtle way - as arguments that don’t undermine the truth of particular belief, but do undermine the justification (or warrant) that the believer might have for holding that particular belief.

Here’s an example. Suppose Bob believes that there is a particular object (X) outside his house. Now suppose further that we learn that Bob has a rather peculiar process for determining what to believe is outside his house. Every morning he flips a coin, and if the coin comes up heads, he believes there is an X outside his house. Surely, such a causal explanation for a belief undermines the warrant or justification for holding that belief?

Contrast this with an alternative causal explanation. According to this explanation Bob acquires the belief that X is in front of his house through visual perception of the object. Surely this causal explanation (assuming no additional defeaters) supports the justification or warrant for Bob’s belief?

We can refer to the difference between these causal explanations in terms of processes that are “on track” (i.e. track the truth of whatever proposition is under consideration), and processes that are “off track” (i.e. don’t track the truth of whatever proposition is under consideration). This is illustrated below.

Note that in the example given, the “off track” process is purely random. A more common variety of “off track” process might be one that is biased in a particular direction.


2. The General Structure of (Evolutionary) Debunking Arguments
Building upon the preceding example, we can specify the general template or structure that is shared by all causal DAs. It looks something like the following:

Causal Premise: S’s belief that P is caused by causal process X. 

Epistemic Premise: Causal process X is off track 

Conclusion: The belief that P is unjustified (or unwarranted).

As you can see, this is an argument that could work with any type of belief and any allegedly off track causal process. The concern in this article is to specifically examine arguments that focus on the evolutionary process and its implications for our evaluative beliefs.

Such arguments will have the following structure:

Causal Premise: S’s evaluative belief that P is caused by the process of evolution. 

Epistemic Premise: The process of evolution does not track the truth of evaluative propositions of type P. 

Conclusion: S’s belief that P is unjustified, or unwarranted.

Before we consider specific examples, there are three things to note about this style of argument.

First, the causal premise refers to the process of evolution in general. It does refer to any specific mechanisms of evolutionary change. Although it is fair to say that most attention has been paid to adaptive explanations that appeal to the mechanism of natural selection, genetic drift or other processes could also be targeted.

Second, the epistemic premise needs to be supported in a particular way. It must be shown that the off track process (in this case evolution) completely removes the influence of any potentially on-track processes. If there are on-track processes that also contribute to the causal explanation of the belief, then they might restore justification or, at the very least, not completely undermine it.

Third, and this is one of Kahane’s key observations, the argument assumes that S is an ethical realist/objectivist. To be more precise, it assumes that S believes in mind-independent moral properties. Someone who believes that moral properties are constructed out of whatever evaluative attitudes we happen to have will be unpersuaded by this argument.

Okay, that’s enough for now. In part two we’ll consider an example of an EDA drawn from the field of normative ethics.

Craig on Objective Morality (Part Two)

(Part One)

You should probably read part one before attempting this, but if that seems like too much to ask, then be reassured that I’ll try my best to summarise the important parts of that discussion when it seems important to do so.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to work out exactly what Craig means when he says that God makes objective moral values and duties possible. As noted in part one, this is an important exercise since imprecision in what is meant by objectivity can be a way to both confuse and be confused.

Craig dedicates two paragraphs in his book Reasonable Faith to clarifying what he means by objectivity. Last time out, I subjected the first of these paragraphs to a close analysis and concluded that Craig seems to mean at least two things when he claims that an entity or property is "objective": (i) that it is mind-independent; and (ii) that it is non-relative. It is important to keep these two concepts distinct since they need not always go together.

In this entry, I’ll first look at paragraph two in more detail and then consider moral platitudes and metaethical theories in general.


1. Paragraph Two: Cognitivism
Again, for ease of reference, I’ll quote the paragraph in full:

“To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or bad independently of whether any human believes it to be so. Similarly to say that we have objective moral duties is to say that certain actions are right or wrong for us independently of whether any human being believes them to be so. For example, to say that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right, and it would still have been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them so that it was universally believed that the Holocaust was right. The of premise (1) [of Craig’s moral argument] is that if there is no God, then moral values and duties are not objective in this sense.”

In many ways, this paragraph just further elaborates on the distinctions and clarifications we discussed in part one. For instance, the concept of mind-independency is once again clearly to the fore, as is the idea that moral truths are not relative to particular sets of cultural beliefs and practices (e.g. those of the Nazis).

What is interesting about this paragraph is what it has to say about the truth value of moral propositions. It is clear that Craig thinks, in addition to being mind-independent and non-relative, moral propositions such as “the Nazis were wrong to carry out the Holocaust” have a truth value and, indeed, that that truth value is positive in this instance.

In some ways this observation probably ties in better with a discussion of premise (2) of Craig’s argument (in which he affirms the existence of objective moral values and duties), but I think it is worth making here for a couple of reasons.

First, not all metaethical theories accept that moral statements like “X is good” or “I have a duty to do A” have truth value. Such theories are non-cognitivist in nature. Examples include, universal prescriptivism, expressivism, and emotivism. These theories usually argue that a non-cognitivist approach is more plausible on semantic and ontological grounds, and that it can actually give us a good deal of what we want from morality in return for sacrificing the possibility of truth value.

Second, it is possible to believe that moral propositions are intended to refer to mind-independent phenomena, to be non-relative in their scope, and to have truth value, and still deny that they have positive truth value. In other words, it is possible to be a moral nihilist or error theorist and still accept Craig’s other claims about what is needed to have an objective morality. This would really be a rejection of premise (2) of Craig’s arugment. We call theories that accept the positive truth value of moral propositions “realist”.

Third, and most importantly, although it might be correct to say that cognitivism follows straightforwardly from mind-independence and non-relativity -- and so, one who accepts those claims automatically accepts cognitivism -- it is not necessarily true to say that one who rejects these properties rejects cognitivism. In other words, it could be argued that moral propositions are mind-dependent but still capable of having a positive truth value.

This is a significant observation since it seems to me that Craig’s argument as whole is intended to appeal to the fact that people really want to be able to affirm that certain things are good and bad ( or right and wrong). Like Craig, I think we all really want to be able to say that what the Nazis did was just wrong and that no amount of cultural brainwashing will make it otherwise. But if that’s what we want to be able to say, then it seems like all we really care about is positive truth value - mind-independency and non-relativity might be purely incidental.


2. What are the key moral platitudes?
So far I’ve been analysing what Craig has to say about objectivity. I now want to step back from this analysis and offer some more general comments on metaethics and successful metaethical theories.

Let's ask the question: What is so important about moral objectivity? Why does Craig latch onto objectivity in his moral argument? I hinted at this above, but to be more explicit now, I think Craig’s discussion is only interesting to the extent that it tells us something about the kinds of things we demand from a successful moral theory. These are sometimes referred to as the "platitudes" of moral discourse.

Craig clearly demands objectivity, but as we have seen his use of this term is imprecise. He could be referring to mind-independence, non-relativity, or cognitivism, or some combination of the three. It could also be that he has other demands that are more implied than explicit.

So let's not be too wedded to what Craig wants, let's focus instead on the kinds of things we all might want from a successful moral theory. I don’t know if I can do justice to all the demands we might place on a successful moral theory, but the following list seems to me to be fairly typical. I’ll define the terms as I go along (there’s going to be some overlap with what I’ve already said):

(a) Mind-Independence: We hope that moral properties exist independently of the desires and beliefs of human beings. If we wish, we can be even more discriminating in how we define mind-independency. We could, for example, distinguish between desire-independent and belief-independent theories. I won’t do that here, but it’s worth noting anyway. We could also distinguish between theories that make moral properties independent of our own personal minds and theories that make moral properties independent of all minds. 

(b) Absolutivity: We want moral propositions and claims to hold true for all people, at all times and all places. How absolute is “absolute”? That depends. We may include a number of contextual factors in our moral theories (e.g. “X is morally obliged not to kill another human being (Y) provided that Y is not trying to kill X), but we could hold that anyone who find themselves in a similar context is bound to affirm the truth of such a proposition. This would be a kind of absolute morality. To distinguish it from an even more absolute morality, we might like to refer to "strong" and "weak" forms of absolutivity.

(c) Practicality: We want moral properties to actually affect how people behave. In other words, if someone recognises that they have a moral obligation not to kill another human being (unless certain contextual factors apply), then we would expect them to acknowledge that they must act in a way that is compliant with this obligation. We could add an “overridingness” condition to this if we wish. This condition would stipulate that we expect the recognition of a particular moral status to supply a reason for action that overrides any other reasons for action that a particular agent may think he has. 

(d) Positive Truth Value: We want it to be the case that at least some moral propositions are true and at least some are false. We don’t want to be moral nihilists. 

(e) Non-trivial truth value: This might be a slightly unusual condition and so requires some explication. I’m adding it in here to exclude a certain type of moral theory. The theory I have in mind is one which satisfies our demand for positive truth value, but does so in a manner that is trivial or vacuous. As it turns out, this might be one ground upon which to object to a theistic metaethics, but it is not prejudicial against this position. It can apply equally well to non-theistic theories. Here’s an example: 

• In Plato's Republic, Cleitophon proposes at one point (340b) that “justice” is whatever the strongest believes to be to his advantage. Suppose we drop the “whatever the strongest believes...” clause and apply this to all individuals? This would mean that a proposition like “X is just” has a positive truth value. But that truth value is surely trivial in nature: the individual could never be mistaken about what is just since it is relativised to their occurrent beliefs about what is to their advantage.

(f) Non-Scepticism: We want it to be possible to find out which moral propositions are true and which are false; we don’t want to be moral sceptics. This is an epistemic constraint and Craig seems to think such constraints are irrelevant in metaethical debates (at least in the ones he has had). I disagree (see here for more). It seems to me that a moral theory which satisfies the other conditions but which forces us to be moral sceptics would be unwelcome.

(g) Fit with Background Knowledge: We want the theory to be consistent with other parts of our worldview. Obviously this might be difficult to apply in some cases: theists are likely to think that morality must be consistent with God’s existence, and naturalists are likely to think that it would be nice if moral properties were somehow reducible to natural properties. Despite its difficulty, it still seems like a reasonable condition since it applies to all theories, not just moral ones.

These are the platitudes or conditions of success I’ll work with for the remainder of this entry. I could probably add more, and refine them a little bit, but I don’t want this to become too tedious. If you have any complaints about what I’ve said, or think certain refinements are necessary, feel free to comment below.

I doubt very much that any metaethical theory can satisfy all of these demands. The history of moral philosophy would seem to support this observation. Still, I think it is possible for some metaethical theories to satisfy a good number of these demands and so get us a good deal of what we want from morality. Indeed, I think the way to assess competing theories is on the basis of which ones get us the most of what we want.

This suggests that when deciding which is to be our preferred metaethical theory, we may be forced to compromise. We may have to give up one of the things we want in order to have more of the others.

All of which begs the question: which of these platitudes would we be willing to give up?

I’ll lay my own cards on the table at this point. I’d be willing to give up mind-independence. If I could formulate a metaethical theory which allowed for some degree of absolutivity, practicality, non-triviality, positive truth value, non-scepticism, and is consistent with my background knowledge, I’d be delighted. It would be like all my Christmases come at once. It would be bordering on petulance if I were to hold out for mind-independence after getting all of these things. Wouldn’t it?


3. The Scorecard Exercise
Now that we have some idea of what we want from morality, we can put it to use in the analysis of Craig’s theory. As was the case in part one, I am going to propose an exercise here. Its completion is left to the reader.

First, I suggest that we construct a scorecard with which we can evaluate different metaethical theories. On the "row" side of the scorecard we will have the moral platitudes outlined above. On the "column" side of the scorecard we will align all the different metaethical theories. Obviously, the goal is to see how well the different theories do with respect to the platitudes.

To perform this evaluation properly, we will have to have some idea of the available competitor theories. This is one area in which Craig’s discussion in Reasonable Faith is sorely lacking. He only seriously considers non-natural realism (or Platonic realism, as he calls it) as an alternative to theistic metaethics. I think we need to be far more expansive in our search of the available theoretic space.

Here is an abbreviated list of the available moral theories to get the ball rolling (I’m going to exclude non-cognitive theories):

• (1) Non-natural realism: Moral properties are real, but they exist in some abstract, non-natural realm.

• (2) Theological voluntarism: Moral properties are real, but they depend for their existence on one or more of God’s voluntary acts (willings, desirings, or commands).

• (3) Paradigmatic Exemplarism: Moral properties are real, but only in virtue of the fact that there exists a being that is a paradigmatic exemplar of those properties (I confess, you probably won’t find this theory mentioned in the available textbooks. As far as I know, the name is of my own invention. Nevertheless, it comes close to Craig’s own views with respect to how God grounds the existence of certain moral properties; and it is distinct from theological voluntarism).

• (4) Naturalistic Realism: Moral properties are real, but they are *reducible* to natural properties. I use *reducible* somewhat reluctantly since there are different theories and some of them object to the label of reductionism (Luke Muehlhauser has been doing a series on these recently, which is well worth reading).

• (5) Extreme Moral Subjectivism: Moral properties are real but their content is directly determined by the beliefs and desires of each individual.

• (6) External Moral Subjectivism: Moral properties are real but they depend for their existence on the subjective attitudes of one or more individuals external to oneself.

• (7) Constructivism: Moral properties are real, but they depend for their existence on some appropriately construed constructive procedure (e.g. a social contract). This comes in a variety of forms (Kantian, Humean and Decision-theoretic) and has been discussed on this blog before.

• (8) Nihilism: Moral properties are not real. We might think they are, but they’re really not.

Here then is the proposed scorecard (click to embiggen).

Now all we have to do is determine how each of the available theories does in relation to each of the proposed platitudes. We could place a tick or an “x” in each box for comparative purposes, and whichever theory satisfies the most of these demands “wins” (gets the most ticks), in the sense that it is the best we can hope for. I've kick-started the process by marking the score for nihilism.

I suggest that if we perform this exercise, Craig’s theory might not do nearly as well as some of its competitors. Furthermore, even if it does equally as well as some of its competitors, Craig’s moral argument is undercut. Why? Because he claims that God’s existence is essential for getting what we want from morality, but if there are other theories that get the same amount (or more) then this is wrong.

We must careful when doing the necessary comparison. This is for two reasons. First, it is probably best to construct a separate scorecard for each of the moral properties under consideration, i.e. one for moral values and another for moral obligations. Second, we should only reach a determination on a particular criterion after having evaluated the associated argument.

I’m not going to go ahead and actually fill in the remainder scorecard here since it requires a good deal more careful analysis to do this properly. Still, I think this is a good methodology to adopt when addressing Craig’s (and others’) arguments about metaethics.



4. Conclusion
The discussion in this post has taken us away somewhat from the original concerns with Craig’s definition of objectivity. I’ll try to tie it all back together.

As we have seen, Craig thinks the existence of God is the only way in which to secure the objectivity of morality. The problem is that it is not entirely clear what he means by objectivity. He might mean mind-independence, or non-relativity or positive truth value, or some combination of all three.

In light of his lack of clarity, I suggest we are better off interpreting Craig’s claims about objectivity as being akin to those of someone placing demands or constraints on successful moral theories. I further suggest that there are many such demands and that those employed by Craig may not even be that important.

In order to properly evaluate proposed metaethical theories, I think we should construct a kind of scorecard on which we determine how many of our moral demands are satisfied by the different theories and compare them with one another.

That’s it for now.

Craig on Objective Morality (Part One)

[Note: I’m hoping that this might end up being part of longer a series, but I don’t want to get too ambitious at this stage. I would appreciate any comments and suggestions on improving my analysis, but do bear in mind that I have two more entries on the objectivity issue planned]

“So many debates in philosophy revolve around the issue of objectivity versus subjectivity that one may be forgiven for assuming that someone somewhere understands this distinction.” 

(Richard Joyce, “Moral Anti-realism”, SEP)

I like Richard Joyce. He has written some lucid and highly engaging stuff on moral philosophy over the years. Now I don’t ultimately agree with him, but I like the above quote because it captures one of the key difficulties in all philosophical arguments: the imprecision of terminology.

Many concepts that we use in everyday speech, like “objectivity” or “subjectivity”, have been subjected to highly intricate and elaborate philosophical theorisations. So to say that something is objective, or to affirm the existence of objective entities, can be both uninformative and misleading.

I mention all this because, of course, the centrepiece of Craig’s moral argument is the claim that “objective moral values and duties exist”, and that they can only do so if God exists as well. What does Craig mean by this? In the text of Reasonable Faith (p. 173, to be precise), Craig dedicates two paragraphs to directly answering this question (further indications of what he means by “objective” are peppered throughout his discussion). Let’s see if things become clearer if we subject these paragraphs to close scrutiny.


1. Paragraph One: Objectivity and Relativity
For ease of reference, I’ll quote the first paragraph in its entirety here (emphasis added):

“Let me say something to clarify the distinction between something’s being objective and something’s being subjective. To say that something is objective is to say that it is independent of what people think or perceive. By contrast, to say that something is subjective is just to say that it is not objective; that is to say, it is dependent on what human persons think or perceive. So, for example, the distinction between being on Mars and not being on Mars is an objective distinction; a particular rock’s being on Mars is in no way dependent on our beliefs. By contrast the distinction between “here” and “there” is not objective: whether a particular event, at a certain spatial location occurs here or there depends upon a person’s point of view.”

Noting the highlighted phrases, it becomes pretty clear that I think Craig makes two interesting clarifications here about the nature of objectivity. I want to discuss these in some detail.

The first clarification is the idea that in order for something to be objective, it must be mind-independent. In other words, like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, an objective entity continues to exist even in the absence of a mind which perceives its existence.

I like to think of this as the core, or privileged, sense of “objectivity”. In other words, as the sense that is closest to that implied in the paradigmatic applications of the term. But because I think objectivity is a confusing term, I will use the more precise term “mind-independence” to refer to this sense of objectivity. Similarly, I’ll use the term “mind-dependent” to refer to that which is typically considered under the term “subjective”.

The second interesting clarification comes from Craig’s use of the indexical terms “here” and “there”. When I see this it immediately sets certain alarm bells off in my head. Indexicals are probably the distinguishing mark of relativistic claims (moral or otherwise). So I take it that Craig’s use of the terms here is intended to exclude the relative from the domain of the objective.

But this raises the question: what does it mean for something to be relative? Roughly, a proposition or state of affairs is relative when its truth/falsity (or existence/non-existence) cannot be determined on its own terms, but only relative to some other proposition or phenomenon.

To modify Craig’s example, the claim “there is a desk ten feet in front of me” can only be assessed for its truth value relative to my current spatial location. It cannot be assessed in the absolute. It is perfectly possible for this claim to be true for me and not for you; no contradiction is entailed by this possibility (but note: it can still be true or false).


2. Do we need to distinguish the objective from the relative?
If Craig is conflating relativism and mind-independence in the course of clarifying the nature of the “objective” in paragraph one, then there might be a problem. While it might generally be true that mind-dependency and relativity are present at the same time, it is not necessarily true.

Richard Joyce actually makes this point in the course of his article on Moral Anti-realism. He argues that there can be mind-independent relativisms and mind-dependent absolutisms. As follows:

Mind-Independent Relativism: Michael Jordan might be tall relative to most other men, but he might be average in height relative to other basketball players. Thus the truth of any claim about his tallness is going to be relatively determined, but at the same time there is nothing particularly mind-dependent about it.

Mind-Dependent Absolutivity: We might decide that “X is good” means “My grandmother approves of X”. This would make goodness a mind-dependent property, but would it make the claim “X is good” a relativistic one? No; the truth conditions of that statement would hold true for all individuals at all spatial and temporal locations (it might be epistemically difficult for some of those individuals to gain access to those truth conditions, but that’s another matter).

This suggests that we can construct the following two-by-two matrix.

In future entries, I’m going to suggest that this two-by-two matrix is inadequate because there are even more dimensions to be considered when assessing metaethical theories. But for the time being we can use it to perform two interesting exercises.

First, considering the two dimensions we have identified, ask yourself: what is it that we would like from a metaethical theory? Is mind-independency really that important? Or is absolutivity the most important thing? I’m not going to propose any answers here. But it’s worth thinking about since one of the most common ways to do metaethics is to first specify what we demand from our moral terms and then look around to see if any of the available theories satisfy these demands. It could well be that no single theory satisfies all the demands and so when it comes to actually figuring out which theory is the most acceptable we have to compromise.

The second exercise we can perform is to try to position some moral theories on the grid. I have provided an illustration below. I put “extreme moral subjectivism” in the top left. This is the theory that makes moral truth entirely dependent on your subjective whims, which can vary from time to time and place to place. I put “external moral subjectivism” in the top right. This is theory that makes moral truth dependent on the subjective whims of another. This would be akin to the grandmother subjectivism discussed above. I put nothing in the bottom left because I am unsure what belongs there. And I tentatively place Craig’s preferred metaethics in the bottom right.

The placement is tentative for a couple of reasons. Although it is true that -- based on what he has said in paragraph one -- Craig wants his theistic metaethics to belong in the bottom right quadrant, his desires are obviously not going to determine the issue. We need to see whether his actual theory merits this placement. It may not.

For instance, Luke Muehlhauser has been arguing for some time that Craig’s theory really belongs in the upper right quadrant since he makes moral truth dependent on God’s mind (much like I did with my grandmother earlier in this post).

We need to be somewhat careful about this claim since it raises issues relating to the Euthyphro dilemma and Craig has some responses to this (or, rather, he adopts the responses of others) which I’ll have to comment on later (even though I have discussed them before).

But I should note that I have similar concerns with Craig’s theory myself. Elsewhere in his discussion, Craig seems to endorse the idea that moral obligations are relativistic. To be precise, he endorses the claim that moral obligations arise from relations between human beings and God. This would seem to make obligations (if not values) relativistic. Now maybe he could argue in response that the obligations we have towards God never change and are hence (contingently) absolute. The problem with this is that it is not obviously or necessarily true. For instance, I am sure a Christian (who believes in Hell) would have to believe that our obligations changed in the post-Jesus era. If this is right, then our obligations are not absolute.

Anyway, that’s enough for this post. I’ll look into paragraph two next time round.

The End of Moral Realism? (Part 3)

This post is part of my series on Steven Ross's article "The End of Moral Realism?". Parts one and two are available here and here.

Ross's article tries to make the case for metaethical constructivism. It does so by first suggesting that traditional debates in metaethics are too heavily focused on questions of moral ontology and not enough focused on moral justification. It then argues that two classic metaethical theories -- namely, realism and projectivism -- are incapable of providing a satisfactory account of justification, while constructivism is capable of providing exactly this.

We have already gone through Ross's case against realism and projectivism. In this post, we will look at his case in favour of constructivism.


1. The Constructivist Methodology
I have covered constructivism in the past, however, Ross has a slightly different take (or emphasis) on it which I will try to convey here. Obviously, he takes it that constructivism's key attraction is its ability to provide an account of moral justification. He thinks it does so because there is a distinctive method to the constructivist's madness:

• (1) Define the Project: The constructivist begins by defining projects that seem important to our moral lives, such as: what are the correct principles for cooperation? Is capital punishment ever acceptable? When are we responsible for our actions?

• (2) Identify the Considerations: Having determined their project, the constructivist proceeds to identify the kinds of considerations that seem important to that project. For example, if the project is to figure out the principles of cooperation, we need to consider how much effort people are expected to expend in cooperation as well as the distribution of the product of their cooperation. This requires some sensitivity to the capabilities and capacities of others.

• (3) Construct the Principles: once the project and the considerations have been identified, the constructivist can proceed to construct the relevant principles. This is where the idea of justification comes into play. The constructivist views justification as the process of showing how the principles handle the considerations in a manner that is relevant to the project. The classic example here is Rawls's Difference Principle which shows how considerations of equal opportunity along with recognition of some asymmetry in capacities can be handled when completing the project of cooperation.

These are the basic elements to constructivist's method. Four additional features should be borne in mind. First, in constructing the principles it will sometimes be necessary to come up with a formal constructive procedure. For example, when constructing the principles of cooperation, many theorists like to use the formal device of bargaining theory. 

Second, Ross argues that this method, can account for the rivalry between different ethical positions. His example is the debate between Nozick and Rawls on the correct principles of political justice. It is a debate which, according to Ross, is primarily about the kinds of consideration that need to be included in this project. Nozick, for example, argues that Rawls's Difference principle cannot adequately account for the idea of entitlement through effort.

Third, Ross argues that this method can capture what happens when one decides between rival views, such as those proffered by Nozick and Rawls. What happens is that one makes a judgment and decides that some considerations are more important to the project than others. Neither of the other metaethical views -- i.e. realism and projectivism -- can appropriately capture the idea of making of judgment.

Finally, the method applies across numerous moral contexts not just those pertaining to political and social cooperation. This is important because the examples given, along with the general history of constructivist thought, might incline one to believe otherwise.

2. Metaethical Constructivism?

Put simply, the central contribution of constructivism to moral thought is its provision of an account of moral justification. It says "a principle is justified if it (best) handles the considerations that are relevant to a moral project". This does not mean that justification is a straightforward process, it may well be messy and complex. 

That is all well and good but what about the other typical metaethical concerns with moral ontology. How are these handled by constructivism?

Ross's claim is that constructivism is compatible with the non-controversial aspects of realist and projectivist ontology. For example, he thinks that constructivism can embrace the token realism that was discussed in part one. In other words, our moral terms can be meaningfully applied to features of the external world without this entailing that moral justification is a species of fact detection.

Likewise, the picture of justification that is being advanced clearly does not rely on the existence of some mind-independent moral truth. To this extent, it is compatible with the projectivist view of moral ontology. 

But Ross's key point is that these concerns about moral ontology are not all that important and that metaethics would do well to downplay them. His goal has been to switch focus; to show that ontology can fall into place after we get the right picture of justification.

3. Conclusion

I like Ross's overall idea but I think he hasn't done enough to distinguish projectivism from constructivism. His objection to projectivism was that it can't explain why certain kinds of consideration deserve to be included in our projections. But I am not sure that his account of constructivism can explain this either. 

I think there is an implicit claim to the effect that defining the project will somehow tell us which factors need to be included in the overall moral construction. But surely more needs to be done? Surely some people might think, for example, that one's attitude towards religious truth is a relevant consideration and some might think otherwise? How can we decide between these views without necessarily presupposing certain moral values? And if we presuppose some moral values, aren't we failing to provide a truly constructivist metaethics?

The End of Moral Realism? (Part 2)

This post is part of my series on Steven Ross's article "The End of Moral Realism?". Part one is available here.

The purpose of Ross's article is to make the case for metaethical constructivism. He does so in a roundabout kind of way by first suggesting that traditional metaethical debates are too heavily focused on moral ontology and not enough focused on moral justification, and then suggesting that traditional metaethical theories such as realism and projectivism are ill-equipped to answer the justification-question.

Last time out, we considered Ross's case against different forms of moral realism. In this post, we will look at his case against the different forms projectivism.


1. What is Projectivism?
Unlike the realist, the projectivist maintains that moral properties and moral facts are not to be found "out there" in the world that is independent of our senses and rational interests. Instead, moral judgments are seen as projections of our internal mental lives.

The basic tenets of projectivism can be applied to a number of disciplines, from constitutional interpretation and the rules of chess, to artistic criticism and etiquette. All these disciplines involve some sort of projection of our internal mental representations onto the external world (i.e. adding something to brute fact reality).

So we must ask: what is distinctive about moral projectivism? Well, the popular forms of moral projectivism envisage the act of moral adjudication as equivalent to the act of projecting principles or life plans onto the external world. So, for example, saying "willful murder is vicious" would, in a projectivist worldview, be reinterpreted as a statement or expression about the general principles and plans according to which one lives one's life.

Versions of moral projectivism can be found in the work of R.M. Hare, Allan Gibbard and Simon Blackburn.


2. The Problem with Projectivism
Ross is willing to agree with projectivists to a certain extent, particularly in its characterisation of the ontology of moral values. He thinks it is right to say that moral values are dependent upon (or projections of) internal mental representations. In this regard, projectivism seems to have the upper hand over realism.

Where projectivism fails is in its account of moral justification. Ross argues that, as was the case with the realists, the projectivists are incapable of saying why certain sorts of projection or internal mental representation deserve a certain sort of consideration or weight. For example, most people would say that the autonomy of their fellow human beings is an important consideration, something to be given due weight in practical reasoning. Projectivists are unable to explain why this should be the case.

To draw out this point, Ross asks us to imagine that our evaluative responses are arrayed along a spectrum, with simple visceral responses to stimuli at one end and full-blown moral judgments at the other.

Now, when it comes to the visceral responses there is no need to talk about whether they are justified or acceptable. They are simply products of our contingent biological and personal histories. But when we move along to consider artistic and aesthetic judgments, not to mention moral judgments, the idea of justification and criticism of judgment begins to get a foothold.

If someone judges, say, the later works of Henry James to be psychologically complex and appreciates them for this quality, we think they are justified in their responses: they are seeing something important about James's work. They are seeing a quality that deserves a certain kind of consideration. But it's not clear how the mere idea of projectivism can account for that phenomenon.

When it comes to a projectivist metaethics, its proponents need to tell us why, when projecting principles or life plans, certain kinds of quality or property deserve to included, such as autonomy. Ross thinks they can't do this.

Indeed, he notes two trends in the history of projectivist thought. The first, associated with Hare and existentialists like Sartre, accepted that projectivism could not explain why particular qualities deserved consideration. They embraced the fact that we had total freedom to project whatever values we might like onto the world.

The second trend, associated with Blackburn and Gibbard, tries to retreat from the existentialist void and claim that certain values will, of course be included. They might, for example, appeal to evolution and say that this ensures that, say, parental love will always be among the values that are projected onto the world. Ross thinks that this appeal can do little to stem the tide of moral scepticism because evolution also seems to have endowed us with plenty of unwelcome dispositions and preferences.

So, Ross concludes that projectivists have no account of justification. At this point, having pinpointed the failings of realism and projectivism, Ross proceeds to consider the constructivist alternative. We will look at that next time out.

The End of Moral Realism? (Part 1)

"The End of Moral Realism?" is an article by Steven Ross which argues that constructivism, an ethical theory which I have covered before, offers us the hope for a coherent metaethics. Since this is a topic I am interested in, I will run through the arguments in Ross's paper. (Note: Springer seem to have open access to their journals right now so you can get the article for free)

Ross's central contention is that most metaethical debates revolve around the correct nature of moral ontology, i.e. the kinds of things to which moral terms like good and bad refer. Ross thinks this focus is unfortunate because the question of justification -- i.e. determining the truth conditions of moral statements -- is far more important to morality than that of ontology. Once we get the right picture of justification, the problem of ontology disappears.

Ross's article tries to show how two classic metaethical theories, realism and projectivism, utterly fail to account for justification, and how constructivism can account for justification. He notes at the outset that one should not expect neat and decisive results in moral theory because the questions being pursued are difficult. Nonetheless, he still thinks constructivism is better than rival metaethical theories.

In this post I will look at Ross's arguments against moral realism. Next time I will consider the arguments against projectivism. And after that, I will summarise his case in favour of constructivism.


1. A Taxonomy of Realisms
Put simply, moral realism is the view that there are mind-independent moral facts, i.e. facts that do not depend on us for their existence. There are different varieties of moral realism, and in the interests of conceptual clarity, Ross proposes the following taxonomy.

First, there are the non-natural, Platonic realists. They maintain that moral facts exist, but are not reducible or equivalent to natural facts. They are more akin to abstract metaphysical properties like mathematical truths (although there plenty of disagreement about the correct form of mathematical ontology as well).

Second, there are the naturalist realists. Again, they maintain that moral facts exist, but they differ from the Platonists by maintaining that there is a direct equivalency (or supervenience relationship) between natural facts and moral facts. Ross suggests we call this type-type natural realism in order to distinguish it from a third version of realism....

This third version is something Ross calls trivial token natural realism (see here on the type-token distinction for more). Token natural realists simply maintain that moral terms like "good" "bad", "right" "wrong" are appropriately applied to natural facts. But they do not think moral goodness (etc) is constituted by natural facts. In other words, this is a theory about the application of moral terms, not about the truth conditions of those terms.

2. The Problem with Realism
Ross thinks that nobody could take issue with trivial token natural realism. After all, even Platonists would say that one can meaningfully apply the moral term "bad" to a natural set of facts such as the murder of one human being by another. However, that's the problem: it's trivially true.

The real metaethical weight is being carried by the other two versions of realism but Ross thinks that neither can do the necessary work. Why is this? Well there are well-rehearsed ontological problems with both views. Platonists face the problem of adhering to a (potentially) extravagant and metaphysically indulgent ontology. Naturalists face G.E. Moore's open question argument.

Ross notes these ontological worries, but doesn't push them. He thinks the more fatal problem with realism, of both varieties, is that it has no proper account of moral justification. In other words, it cannot tell you why you are right to say that murder is wrong, or that charity is good.

Why not? Ross says the problem is that both views turn justification into a species of fact detection: it is simply by recognising or becoming aware of the existence of moral and immoral states of affairs that we become justified in saying they are good/bad/right/wrong.

When asked what it is allows for such justification, realists are usually at a loss. So much so that they will tend to flirt with alternative metaethical theories and mutate their realism into its trivial form. For example, a realist might say we are justified in calling non-consensual sexual intercourse (i.e. rape) morally wrong because it harms certain interests or violates autonomy. In doing so, they switch to an anti-realist conception of morality (i.e. one that thinks morality is dependent on the mental states of conscious, intentional agents) with just a trivial form of realism left over.

So realism, for Ross, fails to account for moral justification. Perhaps projectivism will fare better. We will see next time out.

Enoch on The Epistemological Challenge to Metanormative Realism (Part 3)

David Enoch, on the left

This post is part of a short series on David Enoch's article "The Epistemological Challenge to Metanormative Realism". Parts one and two are available here and here.

In the previous part, we outlined the precise nature of the epistemological challenge facing non-natural ("Robust") moral realists. We can briefly restate it as follows:

• Robust realists think that there is some coincidence between our moral beliefs and moral truth. They owe us some explanation of how this could be the case given that, by their own lights, moral truths are independent of our judgments and are causally inert.

In this part, we will see how Enoch responds to the challenge.

He starts with some methodological points.

1. The Plausibility Game

As outlined above, the challenge is an explanatory one. But there is a problem with this: there could be brute, unexplainable facts. There is certainly no obvious logical contradiction in the notion of a brute fact. Given this possibility, robust realism's lack of an explanation for the coincidence simply deducts a few plausibility points from the overall theory. It may still win the plausibility game.

That said, robust realists shouldn't shirk the challenge. If they can provide an explanation, and if their theory is more plausible than alternatives, it would be all the better. And when looking for an explanation we follow the standard rules of the explanation game: we try to satisfy a set of explanatory criteria and we compare and contrast competing explanations.

Three additional points need to be made about the kind of explanation we are looking for.

First, Enoch thinks that it is important to bear in mind that the coincidence between our moral beliefs and moral truth is not all that striking. No moral realist thinks that we always get things right or that our intuitions are infallible. They would agree that sound moral reasoning requires special training and sensitivities. (Note that the same is true for mathematical Platonists.) And because the correlation is weak, a relatively weak explanation is all that is required.

Second, we must accept the possibility that an fallible reasoning mechanism could become more refined and accurate in its judgments over time, e.g. by eliminating inconsistencies, increasing coherence, drawing analogies and so on. There could even be some evolutionary story about how, say, the more primitive primate reasoning mechanism was refined into the more sophisticated homo sapiens mechanism. Could the same not be true of the portion of the reasoning mechanism responsible for moral judgments?

Third, there are two traditional ways to explain a correlation between two sets of facts. First, we can say that all B-facts are constituted by A-facts. Second, we can say that all B-facts are (causally) responsible for A-facts. Obviously, neither of these approaches is an option when it comes to robust realism.

However, there is another possibility: a third factor explanation. In other words, an explanation that shows how A-facts and B-facts are linked by a third factor C that is responsible for both A-facts and B-facts. Pre-established harmony explanations are of this sort, and Enoch wants to offer a pre-established harmony explanation for the troubling coincidence.

2. Survival as a Moral Good
Enoch's explanation is roughly as follows.

Let's begin with some assumptions about what is or is not a moral good (or, more generally, a moral truth). For example, let's assume that pain is morally bad and pleasure is morally good (not always and everywhere, but for the most part). Let's further assume that survival and reproduction are, in some sense, moral goods. This may be because they are correlated with the more basic moral good of pain.

This is not a strong assumption. Survival and reproduction do not trump all other moral goods, but they are usually better than the alternatives (death and infertility), in an all-things-considered sort of way.

Now, obviously, survival and reproduction are the key selection pressures in evolutionary history. So it would be unsurprising to find that evolved beings like ourselves have beliefs and desires that were correlated with them.

But since those selection pressures are in turn correlated with some moral truths (namely, that survival and reproduction are moral goods) we have an explanation of the puzzling coincidence between our normative beliefs and the mind-independent, causally inert moral truth.

In other words, what is evolutionarily beneficial has pre-established harmony with what is morally good, and what is evolutionarily beneficial causally shapes our cognitive faculties. This is, in effect, an inversion of Street's Darwinian Dilemma. It shows how robust realists have nothing to fear from evolutionary processes.

While you are digesting all of this, bear in mind that Enoch does not think that the correlation that needs to be explained is particularly impressive. So it does not matter if survival is not a primary or essential moral good. All that matters is that there is some slight correlation between normative beliefs and moral truths.


3. Too Good to be True?
Isn't this explanation just a little too convenient? Isn't there something fishy about it? For starters, why think that survival is a moral good?

Enoch offers a few responses. First, as noted above, it may be because it is itself correlated with other more basic moral goods, such as the absence of pain. Second, it may be true that some creatures are particularly evil and their continued existed would be bad. That, he thinks, does not really matter. As long as survival is good for creatures like us -- even if only because it makes other moral goods possible -- it is enough.

Maybe it is, but even so, hasn't Enoch just replaced one puzzling coincidence with another? I mean, isn't it somehow miraculous that evolutionary selection pressures just happened to align themselves with moral truths? This is a problem arising from the lack of counterfactual robustness inherent in Enoch's explanation: if things had been different...

Again, Enoch has a few responses. First, it is not clear that things could have been different. Could evolutionary processes really have aimed at something other than survival and reproduction?

Second, Enoch thinks it significant that he has reduced several puzzling coincidences -- between different normative beliefs and different moral truths -- to just one puzzling coincidence -- between the central evolutionary aim and a moral good. In the context of the plausibility game outlined above, this helps to raise realism's attractiveness.

Finally, brute luck is surely lurks behind other cognitive faculties that are shaped by evolutionary forces, e.g. those used in mathematical reasoning. So there is a level playing field when it comes to this issue.

4. Concluding Thoughts

So that's it; that's Enoch's solution to the epistemological challenge. He agrees that there are still concerns, but thinks his response can help to increase the plausibility of robust realism. In the final section of his article, he considers whether his solution could generalise to other contexts in which similar epistemological challenges are faced.

Unfortunately, he doesn't say very much. He says that its generalisability will depend on whether an analogue of the "goodness of evolutionary aims" can be found in other domains.

Maybe I can say a few words. As noted in part two, mathematical Platonism is the other theory that clearly faces a similar challenge. But, in some ways, I think the challenge may be easier to meet in that domain than it is in the case of morality.

Why do I think this? Well, I suppose I have in mind the fact that physical reality seems to be structured in a mathematical way. This is certainly the assumption underlying the science of physics. And since we have causal interactions with that physical reality, the fact that our mathematical beliefs line-up with mathematical truth is not particularly surprising.

Now there are gaps in this explanation. Certainly, the more abstruse aspects of number theory may have little connection with the physical structure of reality (I'll have to plead ignorance here). But that's not too worrying since, as Enoch noted, the correlation is relatively weak: not everyone is a good mathematician.

The question we need to consider is whether the response to the challenge in the case of mathematical Platonism is any better or worse than Enoch's response? It might be better in that the fact that evolutionary processes are subject to mathematical physical laws is less surprising than the fact (if it is a fact) that they are subject to moral laws. I certainly find the latter to be odder than the former, although I can't articulate the reason for my discomfort.

On the other hand, it may just be that I have found the analogy Enoch was alluding to.

Any thoughts?