I’m surprised that you put moral realism on the same tier as self-oriented reasons for action. It would seem much more astounding to claim that pain and pleasure are neither good nor bad *for me*, then to claim that there’s no objective stance by which others should consider my pain good or bad. The Pascal’s wager argument is also much stronger too.
I can see why this is surprising. I just noticed that the crux for me is more about the notion of speaker-independent reasons altogether. If self-oriented reasons existed, I would feel a bit pedantic to say, “I’m still not a moral realist because there’s no single correct way to ‘take an impartial stance.’” (It might be true that there’s no single way to, e.g., solve population ethics, but for most purposes I think utilitarianism is so elegant as a solution, and alternatives like prioritarianism seem so stilted, that I wouldn’t mind calling this “moral realism.”)
That said, I think it’s important to highlight that I wouldn’t be convinced of a theory of self-oriented reasons for action that said that the only such reasons are things like “all else equal, don’t subject yourself to torture.” If the self-oriented reasons for action leave it largely underdetermined how personal flourishing would look like, then I don’t count it as moral realism. As I argue in my third post, if the only speaker-independent reasons for action are universal uncontroversial principles like “all else equal, don’t subject yourself to torture,” that notion of realism won’t differ from (what I think of as) anti-realism in any action-relevant ways.
“If the self-oriented reasons for action leave it largely underdetermined how personal flourishing would look like”—If we accept pleasure and pain, then we can evaluate other actions in high likely they are to lead to pleasure/pain in the long term, so I don’t see how actions are underdetermined.
I’m surprised that you put moral realism on the same tier as self-oriented reasons for action. It would seem much more astounding to claim that pain and pleasure are neither good nor bad *for me*, then to claim that there’s no objective stance by which others should consider my pain good or bad. The Pascal’s wager argument is also much stronger too.
I can see why this is surprising. I just noticed that the crux for me is more about the notion of speaker-independent reasons altogether. If self-oriented reasons existed, I would feel a bit pedantic to say, “I’m still not a moral realist because there’s no single correct way to ‘take an impartial stance.’” (It might be true that there’s no single way to, e.g., solve population ethics, but for most purposes I think utilitarianism is so elegant as a solution, and alternatives like prioritarianism seem so stilted, that I wouldn’t mind calling this “moral realism.”)
That said, I think it’s important to highlight that I wouldn’t be convinced of a theory of self-oriented reasons for action that said that the only such reasons are things like “all else equal, don’t subject yourself to torture.” If the self-oriented reasons for action leave it largely underdetermined how personal flourishing would look like, then I don’t count it as moral realism. As I argue in my third post, if the only speaker-independent reasons for action are universal uncontroversial principles like “all else equal, don’t subject yourself to torture,” that notion of realism won’t differ from (what I think of as) anti-realism in any action-relevant ways.
“If the self-oriented reasons for action leave it largely underdetermined how personal flourishing would look like”—If we accept pleasure and pain, then we can evaluate other actions in high likely they are to lead to pleasure/pain in the long term, so I don’t see how actions are underdetermined.