You’re describing what I tried to address in my last paragraph, the stance I called “metaethical fanaticism.” I think you’re right that this type of wager works. Importantly, it’s dependent on having this strongly felt intuition you describe, and giving it (near-)total weight on what you care about.
Hmm, I think I’m talking about something different. (Though it may lead to the same problems, or be subject to the same counterarguments, or whatever, and maybe further discussion on this should be saved until after your next post.)
That section sounded like it was talking about people who are already committed to believing “irreducible normativity trumps everything”. Personally, I think it’s like I don’t believe that—I assign it very low credence—but I feel that intuition. So in a sense, I think I want to mostly think and act as though that were true.
So if you say “Hey, that seems to be based on a shaky philosophical assumption which may not even be meaningful”, perhaps I could be inclined to say “If that were so, I don’t think I’d feel a strong pull towards caring that that were so. So I’m just going to proceed as I am.”
Obviously, I’m not yet convinced enough about this wager to actually do that, given that I’m writing these comments. But it feels to me like maybe that’s the position I’d end up in, if I became more convinced of your arguments against my current moral realism wager (which is roughly the one you argue against in most of this post).
I meant it the way you describe, but I didn’t convey it well. Maybe a good way to explain it as follows:
My initial objection to the wager is that the anti-realist way of assigning what matters is altogether very different from the realist way, and this makes the moral realism wager question begging. This is evidenced by issues like “infectiousness.” I maybe shouldn’t even have called that a counter-argument—I’d just think of it as supporting evidence for the view that the two perspectives are altogether too different for there to be a straightfoward wager.
However, one way to still get something that behaves like a wager is if one perspective “voluntarily” favors acting as though the other perspective is true. Anti-realism is about acting on the moral intuitions that most deeply resonate with you. If your caring capacity under anti-realism says “I want to act as though irreducible normativity applies,” and the perspective from irreducible normativity says “you ought to act as though irreducible normativity applies,” then the wager goes through in practice.
(In my text, I wrote “Admittedly, it seems possible to believe that one’s actions are meaningless without irreducible normativity.” This is confusing because it sounds like it’s a philosophical belief rather than a statement of value. Edit: I now edited the text to reflect that I was thinking of “believing that one’s actions are meaningless without irreducible normativity” as a value statement.)
Ok, that makes sense, then. In that case, I’ll continue clinging to my strange wager as I await your next post :)
Do you think it’s fair to say that this is somewhat reminiscent of the argument you countered elsewhere in the series, that (belief in) normative anti-realism would be self-defeating? Perhaps there as well, your counterargument was valid in that there’s some question-begging going on when comparing between frameworks like that, but anti-realism could still be self-defeating in practice, for people with particular intuitions?
In that case, I’ll continue clinging to my strange wager as I await your next post :)
Haha. The intuition probably won’t get any weaker, but my next post will spell out the costs it would have to endorse this intuition as your value, as opposed to treating it as a misguiding intuition. Perhaps by reflecting on the costs and the practical inconveniences it could bring about to treat this intuition as one’s terminal value, we might come to rethink it.
You’re describing what I tried to address in my last paragraph, the stance I called “metaethical fanaticism.” I think you’re right that this type of wager works. Importantly, it’s dependent on having this strongly felt intuition you describe, and giving it (near-)total weight on what you care about.
Hmm, I think I’m talking about something different. (Though it may lead to the same problems, or be subject to the same counterarguments, or whatever, and maybe further discussion on this should be saved until after your next post.)
That section sounded like it was talking about people who are already committed to believing “irreducible normativity trumps everything”. Personally, I think it’s like I don’t believe that—I assign it very low credence—but I feel that intuition. So in a sense, I think I want to mostly think and act as though that were true.
So if you say “Hey, that seems to be based on a shaky philosophical assumption which may not even be meaningful”, perhaps I could be inclined to say “If that were so, I don’t think I’d feel a strong pull towards caring that that were so. So I’m just going to proceed as I am.”
Obviously, I’m not yet convinced enough about this wager to actually do that, given that I’m writing these comments. But it feels to me like maybe that’s the position I’d end up in, if I became more convinced of your arguments against my current moral realism wager (which is roughly the one you argue against in most of this post).
I meant it the way you describe, but I didn’t convey it well. Maybe a good way to explain it as follows:
My initial objection to the wager is that the anti-realist way of assigning what matters is altogether very different from the realist way, and this makes the moral realism wager question begging. This is evidenced by issues like “infectiousness.” I maybe shouldn’t even have called that a counter-argument—I’d just think of it as supporting evidence for the view that the two perspectives are altogether too different for there to be a straightfoward wager.
However, one way to still get something that behaves like a wager is if one perspective “voluntarily” favors acting as though the other perspective is true. Anti-realism is about acting on the moral intuitions that most deeply resonate with you. If your caring capacity under anti-realism says “I want to act as though irreducible normativity applies,” and the perspective from irreducible normativity says “you ought to act as though irreducible normativity applies,” then the wager goes through in practice.
(In my text, I wrote “Admittedly, it seems possible to believe that one’s actions are meaningless without irreducible normativity.” This is confusing because it sounds like it’s a philosophical belief rather than a statement of value. Edit: I now edited the text to reflect that I was thinking of “believing that one’s actions are meaningless without irreducible normativity” as a value statement.)
Ok, that makes sense, then. In that case, I’ll continue clinging to my strange wager as I await your next post :)
Do you think it’s fair to say that this is somewhat reminiscent of the argument you countered elsewhere in the series, that (belief in) normative anti-realism would be self-defeating? Perhaps there as well, your counterargument was valid in that there’s some question-begging going on when comparing between frameworks like that, but anti-realism could still be self-defeating in practice, for people with particular intuitions?
Yes, that’s the same intuition. :)
Haha. The intuition probably won’t get any weaker, but my next post will spell out the costs it would have to endorse this intuition as your value, as opposed to treating it as a misguiding intuition. Perhaps by reflecting on the costs and the practical inconveniences it could bring about to treat this intuition as one’s terminal value, we might come to rethink it.