This is an interesting perspective. I have indeed noticed for a while that my moral uncertainty has the very weird feature that I’m not even sure what shape or type of solution I’m after, or what criteria I’d evaluate it against. And this seems to mesh well with your comments about this seeming to be ill-defined, and a matter where people don’t even know what they’re uncertain about.
Thus far, I’ve basically responded to that issue with the thought that: “I’m extremely confused about lots of things, including things that I have reason to believe really do correspond to reality like quantum mechanics or the ‘beginning’ or ‘ending’ of the universe. So even if I’m extremely confused about this, maybe there’s still something real going on there that I’m uncertain about, rather than there just being nothing [in the sense of speaker-independent normativity] going on there.” (I”m aware that anti-realism doesn’t mean “there’s no normativity at all going on here”.)
But I definitely think that the case for believing in things like quantum mechanics despite not understanding them is much stronger than the case for believing in things like speaker-independent normativity despite not understanding it.
Also, just in case this wasn’t clear, by those sentences of mine that you quoted, I meant that I’m not sure I’d call “uncertainty that’s just about what should follow from our fundamental goals” normative/moral uncertainty, rather than logical or empirical uncertainty. I would call “uncertainty about what our fundamental goals should be” normative/moral uncertainty. (And then that’s subject to your criticisms.)
This is an interesting perspective. I have indeed noticed for a while that my moral uncertainty has the very weird feature that I’m not even sure what shape or type of solution I’m after, or what criteria I’d evaluate it against. And this seems to mesh well with your comments about this seeming to be ill-defined, and a matter where people don’t even know what they’re uncertain about.
Thus far, I’ve basically responded to that issue with the thought that: “I’m extremely confused about lots of things, including things that I have reason to believe really do correspond to reality like quantum mechanics or the ‘beginning’ or ‘ending’ of the universe. So even if I’m extremely confused about this, maybe there’s still something real going on there that I’m uncertain about, rather than there just being nothing [in the sense of speaker-independent normativity] going on there.” (I”m aware that anti-realism doesn’t mean “there’s no normativity at all going on here”.)
But I definitely think that the case for believing in things like quantum mechanics despite not understanding them is much stronger than the case for believing in things like speaker-independent normativity despite not understanding it.
Also, just in case this wasn’t clear, by those sentences of mine that you quoted, I meant that I’m not sure I’d call “uncertainty that’s just about what should follow from our fundamental goals” normative/moral uncertainty, rather than logical or empirical uncertainty. I would call “uncertainty about what our fundamental goals should be” normative/moral uncertainty. (And then that’s subject to your criticisms.)