For moral talk to be capable of serving this practical purpose we just need some degree of people being inclined to respond to the same kinds of things or to be persuaded to share the same attitudes. But this doesn’t require any particularly strong, near-universal consensus or consensus on a particular single thing being morally good/bad. [...] This seems compatible with very, very widespread disagreement in fact: it might be that people are disposed to think that some varying combinations of “fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicancy, and queuing”
Sorry, I should’ve addressed this directly. The SMB-community picture is somewhat misleading. In reality, you likely have partial overlap in SMB and the intersection of your whole community of friends is less (but does include pain aversion). Moral disagreement attains a particular level of meaningfulness when both speakers share SMB relevant to their topic of debate. I now realize that my use of ‘ostensive’ was mistaken. I meant to say, as perhaps has already become clear, that SMB lends substance to moral disagreement. SMB plays a role in defining moral disagreement, but, as you say, SMB likely plays a lesser role when it comes to using moral language outside of disagreement.
It doesn’t seem to me like we have any particular reason to privilege these basic intuitive responses as foundational, in cases where they conflict with our more abstruse reasoning.
If we agree that SMB plays a crucial role in lending meaning to moral disagreement, then we can understand the nature of moral disagreement without appeal to any ‘abstruse reasoning’. I argue that what we do when disagreeing is emphasizing various parts of SMB to the other. In this picture of moral language = universalizable preferences + elicit disapproval + SMB subset, where does abstruse reasoning enter the picture? It only enters when a philosopher sees a family resemblance between moral disagreement and other sorts of epistemological disagreement and thus feels the urge to bring in talk of abstruse reasoning. As described in the OP, for non-philosophers abstruse reasoning only matters as mediated by meta-reactions. In effect, reasoning constraints enter the picture as a subset of our universalizable preferences, but as such there’s no basis for them to override our other object-level universalizable preferences. Of course, I use talk of preferences here loosely; I do believe that these preferences have vague intensities which may sometimes be compared. E.g. someone may feel their meta-reactions particularly strongly and so these preferences may carry more weight than other preferences because of this intensity of feeling.
This leads us back into the practical conclusions in your OP. Suppose that a moral aversion to impure, disgusting things is innate (and arguably one of the most basic moral dispositions). It still seems possible that people routinely overcome and override this basic disposition and just decide that impurity doesn’t matter morally and disgusting things aren’t morally bad.
I’m not sure if I know what you’re talking about by ‘impure things’. Sewage perhaps? I’m not sure what it means to have a moral aversion to sewage. Maybe you mean something like the aversion to the untouchable caste? I do not know enough about that to comment.
Independently of the meaning of ‘impure’, let me respond to “people routinely overcome and override this basic disposition”: certainly people’s moral beliefs often come into conflict e.g. trolley problems. I would describe most of these cases as having multiple conflicting universalizable preferences in play. Sometimes one of those preferences is a meta-reaction, e.g. ‘call to universality’, and if the meta-reaction is more salient or intense then perhaps it carries more weight than a ‘basic disposition’. Let me stress again that I do not make a distinction between universalizable preferences which are ‘basic dispositions’ and those which I refer to as meta-reactions. These should be treated on an equal footing.
I’m afraid now the working week has begun again I’m not going to have so much time to continue responding, but thanks for the discussion.
I’m not sure if I know what you’re talking about by ‘impure things’. Sewage perhaps? I’m not sure what it means to have a moral aversion to sewage. Maybe you mean something like the aversion to the untouchable caste? I do not know enough about that to comment.
I’m thinking of the various things which fall under the Purity/Disgust (or Sanctity/Degradation) foundation in Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. This includes a lot of things related to not eating or otherwise exposing yourself to things which elicit disgust, as well as a lot of sexual morality. Rereading the law books of the Bible gives a lot of examples. The sheer prevalence of these concerns in ancient morality, especially as opposed to modern concerns like promoting positive feeling, is also quite telling IMO. For more on the distinctive role of disgust in morality see here or here.
Let me stress again that I do not make a distinction between universalizable preferences which are ‘basic dispositions’ and those which I refer to as meta-reactions. These should be treated on an equal footing.
I’m not sure how broadly you’re construing ‘meta-reactions’, i.e. would this include basically any moral view which a person might reach based on the ordinary operation of their intuitions and reason and would all of these be placed on an equal footing? If so then I’m inclined to agree, but then I don’t think this account implies anything much at the practical level (e.g. how we should think about animals, population ethics etc.).
I argue that what we do when disagreeing is emphasizing various parts of SMB to the other.
I may agree with this if, per my previous comment, SMB is construed very broadly i.e. to mean roughly emphasising or making salient shared moral views (of any kind) to each other and persuading people to adopt new moral views. (See Wittgenstein on conversion for discussion of the latter).
If we agree that SMB plays a crucial role in lending meaning to moral disagreement, then we can understand the nature of moral disagreement without appeal to any ‘abstruse reasoning’… In this picture of moral language = universalizable preferences + elicit disapproval + SMB subset, where does abstruse reasoning enter the picture? It only enters when a philosopher sees a family resemblance between moral disagreement and other sorts of epistemological disagreement and thus feels the urge to bring in talk of abstruse reasoning.
I think this may be misconstruing my reference to “abstruse reasoning” in the claim that “It doesn’t seem to me like we have any particular reason to privilege these basic intuitive responses as foundational, in cases where they conflict with our more abstruse reasoning.” Note that I don’t say anything about abstruse reasoning being “necessary to understand the nature of moral disagreement.”
I have in mind cases of moral thinking, such as the example I gave where we override disgust responses based on reflecting that they aren’t actually morally valuable, (I think this would include cases like population ethics and judging that whether animals matter depends on whether they have the right kinds of capacities).
It now sounds like you might think that such reflections are on an “equal footing” with judgments that are more immediately related to basic intuitive responses, in which case there may be little or no remaining disagreement. There may be some residual disagreement if you think that such relatively rarefied reflections can’t count as meta-reflections/legitimate moral reasoning, but I don’t think that is the view which you are defending now. My sense is that more or less any moral argument could result from a process of people reflecting on their views and the views of others and seeking consistency, in which case it doesn’t seem to me like any line of moral argument is ruled out or called into question by your metaethical account. That is fine in my view since I think that it’s appropriate that philosophical reflections should ‘leave everything as it is.’
Thanks for the lively discussion! We’ve covered a lot of ground, so I plan to try to condense what was said into a follow-up blog post making similar points as the OP but taking into account all of your clarifications.
I’m not sure how broadly you’re construing ‘meta-reactions’, i.e. would this include basically any moral view which a person might reach based on the ordinary operation of their intuitions and reason and would all of these be placed on an equal footing?
‘Meta-reactions’ are the subset of our universalizable preferences which express preferences over other preferences (and/or their relation). What it means to be ‘placed on equal footing’ is that all of these preferences are comparable. Which of them will take precedence in a certain judgement depends on the relative intensity of feeling for each preference. This stands in contrast to views such as total utilitarianism in which certain preferences are considered irrational and are thus overruled independently of the force with which we feel them.
more or less any moral argument could result from a process of people reflecting on their views and the views of others and seeking consistency
The key point here is ‘seeking consistency’: my view is that the extent to which consistency constraints are morally relevant is contingent on the individual. Any sort of consistency only carries force insofar as it is one of the given individual’s universalizable preferences. In a way, this view does ‘leave everything as it is’ for non-philosophers’ moral debates. I also have no problem with a population ethicist who sees eir task as finding functions which satisfy certain population ethics intuitions. My view only conflicts with population ethics and animal welfare ethics insofar as ey take eir conclusions as a basis for language policing. E.g. When an ethicist claims eir preferred population axiology has implications on understanding everyday uses of moral language.
I have in mind cases of moral thinking, such as the example I gave where we override disgust responses based on reflecting that they aren’t actually morally valuable.
Within my framework we may override disgust responses by e.g. observing that they are less strong than our other responses, or by observing that—unlike our other responses—they have multiple meta-reactions stacked against them (fairness, ‘call to universality’, etc.) and we feel those meta-reactions more strongly. I do not endorse coming up with a theory about moral value and then overriding our disgust responses because of the theoretical elegance or epistemological appeal of that theory. I’m not sure whether you have in mind the former or the latter case?
[From a previous DM comment]
Sorry, I should’ve addressed this directly. The SMB-community picture is somewhat misleading. In reality, you likely have partial overlap in SMB and the intersection of your whole community of friends is less (but does include pain aversion). Moral disagreement attains a particular level of meaningfulness when both speakers share SMB relevant to their topic of debate. I now realize that my use of ‘ostensive’ was mistaken. I meant to say, as perhaps has already become clear, that SMB lends substance to moral disagreement. SMB plays a role in defining moral disagreement, but, as you say, SMB likely plays a lesser role when it comes to using moral language outside of disagreement.
If we agree that SMB plays a crucial role in lending meaning to moral disagreement, then we can understand the nature of moral disagreement without appeal to any ‘abstruse reasoning’. I argue that what we do when disagreeing is emphasizing various parts of SMB to the other. In this picture of moral language = universalizable preferences + elicit disapproval + SMB subset, where does abstruse reasoning enter the picture? It only enters when a philosopher sees a family resemblance between moral disagreement and other sorts of epistemological disagreement and thus feels the urge to bring in talk of abstruse reasoning. As described in the OP, for non-philosophers abstruse reasoning only matters as mediated by meta-reactions. In effect, reasoning constraints enter the picture as a subset of our universalizable preferences, but as such there’s no basis for them to override our other object-level universalizable preferences. Of course, I use talk of preferences here loosely; I do believe that these preferences have vague intensities which may sometimes be compared. E.g. someone may feel their meta-reactions particularly strongly and so these preferences may carry more weight than other preferences because of this intensity of feeling.
I’m not sure if I know what you’re talking about by ‘impure things’. Sewage perhaps? I’m not sure what it means to have a moral aversion to sewage. Maybe you mean something like the aversion to the untouchable caste? I do not know enough about that to comment.
Independently of the meaning of ‘impure’, let me respond to “people routinely overcome and override this basic disposition”: certainly people’s moral beliefs often come into conflict e.g. trolley problems. I would describe most of these cases as having multiple conflicting universalizable preferences in play. Sometimes one of those preferences is a meta-reaction, e.g. ‘call to universality’, and if the meta-reaction is more salient or intense then perhaps it carries more weight than a ‘basic disposition’. Let me stress again that I do not make a distinction between universalizable preferences which are ‘basic dispositions’ and those which I refer to as meta-reactions. These should be treated on an equal footing.
I’m afraid now the working week has begun again I’m not going to have so much time to continue responding, but thanks for the discussion.
I’m thinking of the various things which fall under the Purity/Disgust (or Sanctity/Degradation) foundation in Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. This includes a lot of things related to not eating or otherwise exposing yourself to things which elicit disgust, as well as a lot of sexual morality. Rereading the law books of the Bible gives a lot of examples. The sheer prevalence of these concerns in ancient morality, especially as opposed to modern concerns like promoting positive feeling, is also quite telling IMO. For more on the distinctive role of disgust in morality see here or here.
I’m not sure how broadly you’re construing ‘meta-reactions’, i.e. would this include basically any moral view which a person might reach based on the ordinary operation of their intuitions and reason and would all of these be placed on an equal footing? If so then I’m inclined to agree, but then I don’t think this account implies anything much at the practical level (e.g. how we should think about animals, population ethics etc.).
I may agree with this if, per my previous comment, SMB is construed very broadly i.e. to mean roughly emphasising or making salient shared moral views (of any kind) to each other and persuading people to adopt new moral views. (See Wittgenstein on conversion for discussion of the latter).
I think this may be misconstruing my reference to “abstruse reasoning” in the claim that “It doesn’t seem to me like we have any particular reason to privilege these basic intuitive responses as foundational, in cases where they conflict with our more abstruse reasoning.” Note that I don’t say anything about abstruse reasoning being “necessary to understand the nature of moral disagreement.”
I have in mind cases of moral thinking, such as the example I gave where we override disgust responses based on reflecting that they aren’t actually morally valuable, (I think this would include cases like population ethics and judging that whether animals matter depends on whether they have the right kinds of capacities).
It now sounds like you might think that such reflections are on an “equal footing” with judgments that are more immediately related to basic intuitive responses, in which case there may be little or no remaining disagreement. There may be some residual disagreement if you think that such relatively rarefied reflections can’t count as meta-reflections/legitimate moral reasoning, but I don’t think that is the view which you are defending now. My sense is that more or less any moral argument could result from a process of people reflecting on their views and the views of others and seeking consistency, in which case it doesn’t seem to me like any line of moral argument is ruled out or called into question by your metaethical account. That is fine in my view since I think that it’s appropriate that philosophical reflections should ‘leave everything as it is.’
Thanks for the lively discussion! We’ve covered a lot of ground, so I plan to try to condense what was said into a follow-up blog post making similar points as the OP but taking into account all of your clarifications.
‘Meta-reactions’ are the subset of our universalizable preferences which express preferences over other preferences (and/or their relation). What it means to be ‘placed on equal footing’ is that all of these preferences are comparable. Which of them will take precedence in a certain judgement depends on the relative intensity of feeling for each preference. This stands in contrast to views such as total utilitarianism in which certain preferences are considered irrational and are thus overruled independently of the force with which we feel them.
The key point here is ‘seeking consistency’: my view is that the extent to which consistency constraints are morally relevant is contingent on the individual. Any sort of consistency only carries force insofar as it is one of the given individual’s universalizable preferences. In a way, this view does ‘leave everything as it is’ for non-philosophers’ moral debates. I also have no problem with a population ethicist who sees eir task as finding functions which satisfy certain population ethics intuitions. My view only conflicts with population ethics and animal welfare ethics insofar as ey take eir conclusions as a basis for language policing. E.g. When an ethicist claims eir preferred population axiology has implications on understanding everyday uses of moral language.
Within my framework we may override disgust responses by e.g. observing that they are less strong than our other responses, or by observing that—unlike our other responses—they have multiple meta-reactions stacked against them (fairness, ‘call to universality’, etc.) and we feel those meta-reactions more strongly. I do not endorse coming up with a theory about moral value and then overriding our disgust responses because of the theoretical elegance or epistemological appeal of that theory. I’m not sure whether you have in mind the former or the latter case?