Some initial thoughts on moral realism vs anti-realism
I wrote this last Summer as a private “blog post” just for me. I’m posting it publicly now (after mild editing) because I have some vague idea that it can be good to make things like this public. These thoughts come from my very naive point of view (as it was in the Summer of 2020; not to suggest my present day point of view is much less naive). In particular if you’ve already read lots of moral philosophy you probably won’t learn anything from reading this. Also, I hope my summaries of other people’s arguments aren’t too inaccurate.
Recently, I’ve been trying to think seriously about what it means to do good. A key part of Effective Altruism is asking ourselves how we can do the most good. Often, considering this question seems to be mostly an empirical task: how many lives will be saved through intervention A, and how many through intervention B? Aside from the empirical questions, though, there are also theoretical ones. One key consideration is what we mean by doing good.
Moral Philosophy
There is a branch of philosophy called moral philosophy which is (partly) concerned with answering this question.
It’s important to me that I don’t get too drawn into the particular framings that have evolved within the academic discipline of moral philosophy, which are, presumably, partly due to cultural or historical forces, etc. This is because I really want to try to come up with my own view, and I think that (for me) the best process for this involves not taking other people’s views or existing works too seriously, especially while I try to think about these things seriously for the first time.
Still, it seems useful to get familiar with the major insights and general way of thinking within moral philosophy, because
I’ll surely learn a lot of useful stuff
I’ll be able to communicate with other people who are familiar with moral philosophy (which probably includes most of the most interesting people to talk to on this topic).
Moral realism
I’ve read a couple of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles, and a series of posts by Lukas Gloor arguing for moral anti-realism.
I found the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles fairly tough going but still kind of useful. I thought the Gloor posts were great.
The Gloor posts have kind of convinced me to take the moral anti-realist side, which, roughly, denies the existence of definitive moral truths.
While I suppose I might consider my “inside view” to be moral anti-realist at the moment, I can easily see this changing in the future. For example, I imagine that if I read a well-argued case for moral realism, I might well change my mind.
In fact, prior to reading Gloor’s posts, I probably considered myself to be a moral realist. I think I’d heard arguments, maybe from Will MacAskill, along the lines that i) if moral anti-realism is true, then nothing matters, whereas if realism is true, you should do what the true theory requires you to do, and ii) there’s some chance that realism is true, therefore iii) you should do what the true theory requires you to do.
Gloor discusses an argument like this in one of his posts. He calls belief in moral realism founded on this sort of argument “metaethical fanaticism” (if I’ve understood him correctly).
I’m not sure that I completely understood everything in Gloor’s posts. But the “fanaticism” label does feel appropriate to me. It feels like there’s a close analogy with the kinds of fanaticism that utilitarianism is susceptible to, for example. An example of that might be a Pascal’s wager type argument—if there’s a finite probability that I’ll get infinite utility derived from an eternal life in a Christian heaven, I should do what I can to maximise that probability.
It feels like something has gone wrong here (although admittedly it’s not clear what), and this Pascal’s wager argument doesn’t feel at all like a strong argument for acting as if there’s a Christian heaven. Likewise, the “moral realist wager” doesn’t feel like a strong argument for acting as if moral realism is true, in my current view.
Moral anti-realism
Gloor also argues that we don’t lose anything worth having by being moral anti-realists, at least if you’re his brand of moral anti-realist. I think he calls the view he favours “pluralistic moral reductionism”.
On his view, you take any moral view (or maybe combination of views) you like. These can (and maybe for some people, “should”) be grounded in our moral intuitions, and maybe use notions of simplicity of structure etc, just as a moral realist might ground their guess(?) at the true moral theory in similar principles. Your moral view is then your own “personal philosophy”, which you choose to live by.
One unfortunate consequence of this view is that you don’t really have any grounds to argue with someone else who happens to have a different view. Their view is only “wrong” in the sense that it doesn’t agree with yours; there’s no objective truth here.
From this perspective, it would arguably be nicer if everyone believed that there was a true moral view that we should strive to follow (even if we don’t know what it is). Especially if you also believe that we could make progress towards that true moral view.
I’m not sure how big this effect is, but it feels like more than nothing. So maybe I don’t quite agree that we don’t lose anything worth having by being moral anti-realists.
In any case, the fact that we might wish that moral realism is true doesn’t (presumably) have any bearing on whether or not it is true.
Reflections
I already mentioned that reading Gloor’s posts has caused me to favour moral anti-realism. Another effect, I think, is that I am more agnostic about the correct moral theory. Some form of utilitarianism, or at least consequentialism, seems far more plausible to me as the moral realist “one true theory” than a deontological theory or virtue ethics theory. Whereas if moral anti-realism is correct, I might be more open to non-consequentialist theories. (I’m not sure whether this new belief would stand up to a decent period of reflection, though—maybe I’d be just as much of a convinced moral anti-realist consequentialist after some reflection).
Some initial thoughts on moral realism vs anti-realism
I wrote this last Summer as a private “blog post” just for me. I’m posting it publicly now (after mild editing) because I have some vague idea that it can be good to make things like this public. These thoughts come from my very naive point of view (as it was in the Summer of 2020; not to suggest my present day point of view is much less naive). In particular if you’ve already read lots of moral philosophy you probably won’t learn anything from reading this. Also, I hope my summaries of other people’s arguments aren’t too inaccurate.
Recently, I’ve been trying to think seriously about what it means to do good. A key part of Effective Altruism is asking ourselves how we can do the most good. Often, considering this question seems to be mostly an empirical task: how many lives will be saved through intervention A, and how many through intervention B? Aside from the empirical questions, though, there are also theoretical ones. One key consideration is what we mean by doing good.
Moral Philosophy
There is a branch of philosophy called moral philosophy which is (partly) concerned with answering this question.
It’s important to me that I don’t get too drawn into the particular framings that have evolved within the academic discipline of moral philosophy, which are, presumably, partly due to cultural or historical forces, etc. This is because I really want to try to come up with my own view, and I think that (for me) the best process for this involves not taking other people’s views or existing works too seriously, especially while I try to think about these things seriously for the first time.
Still, it seems useful to get familiar with the major insights and general way of thinking within moral philosophy, because
I’ll surely learn a lot of useful stuff
I’ll be able to communicate with other people who are familiar with moral philosophy (which probably includes most of the most interesting people to talk to on this topic).
Moral realism
I’ve read a couple of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles, and a series of posts by Lukas Gloor arguing for moral anti-realism.
I found the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles fairly tough going but still kind of useful. I thought the Gloor posts were great.
The Gloor posts have kind of convinced me to take the moral anti-realist side, which, roughly, denies the existence of definitive moral truths.
While I suppose I might consider my “inside view” to be moral anti-realist at the moment, I can easily see this changing in the future. For example, I imagine that if I read a well-argued case for moral realism, I might well change my mind.
In fact, prior to reading Gloor’s posts, I probably considered myself to be a moral realist. I think I’d heard arguments, maybe from Will MacAskill, along the lines that i) if moral anti-realism is true, then nothing matters, whereas if realism is true, you should do what the true theory requires you to do, and ii) there’s some chance that realism is true, therefore iii) you should do what the true theory requires you to do.
Gloor discusses an argument like this in one of his posts. He calls belief in moral realism founded on this sort of argument “metaethical fanaticism” (if I’ve understood him correctly).
I’m not sure that I completely understood everything in Gloor’s posts. But the “fanaticism” label does feel appropriate to me. It feels like there’s a close analogy with the kinds of fanaticism that utilitarianism is susceptible to, for example. An example of that might be a Pascal’s wager type argument—if there’s a finite probability that I’ll get infinite utility derived from an eternal life in a Christian heaven, I should do what I can to maximise that probability.
It feels like something has gone wrong here (although admittedly it’s not clear what), and this Pascal’s wager argument doesn’t feel at all like a strong argument for acting as if there’s a Christian heaven. Likewise, the “moral realist wager” doesn’t feel like a strong argument for acting as if moral realism is true, in my current view.
Moral anti-realism
Gloor also argues that we don’t lose anything worth having by being moral anti-realists, at least if you’re his brand of moral anti-realist. I think he calls the view he favours “pluralistic moral reductionism”.
On his view, you take any moral view (or maybe combination of views) you like. These can (and maybe for some people, “should”) be grounded in our moral intuitions, and maybe use notions of simplicity of structure etc, just as a moral realist might ground their guess(?) at the true moral theory in similar principles. Your moral view is then your own “personal philosophy”, which you choose to live by.
One unfortunate consequence of this view is that you don’t really have any grounds to argue with someone else who happens to have a different view. Their view is only “wrong” in the sense that it doesn’t agree with yours; there’s no objective truth here.
From this perspective, it would arguably be nicer if everyone believed that there was a true moral view that we should strive to follow (even if we don’t know what it is). Especially if you also believe that we could make progress towards that true moral view.
I’m not sure how big this effect is, but it feels like more than nothing. So maybe I don’t quite agree that we don’t lose anything worth having by being moral anti-realists.
In any case, the fact that we might wish that moral realism is true doesn’t (presumably) have any bearing on whether or not it is true.
Reflections
I already mentioned that reading Gloor’s posts has caused me to favour moral anti-realism. Another effect, I think, is that I am more agnostic about the correct moral theory. Some form of utilitarianism, or at least consequentialism, seems far more plausible to me as the moral realist “one true theory” than a deontological theory or virtue ethics theory. Whereas if moral anti-realism is correct, I might be more open to non-consequentialist theories. (I’m not sure whether this new belief would stand up to a decent period of reflection, though—maybe I’d be just as much of a convinced moral anti-realist consequentialist after some reflection).