Probably intuitions about this issue depend on which type of moral or religious discourse one is used to. As someone who spent a year at a Christian private school in Texas where creationism was taught in Biology class and God and Jesus were a very tangible part of at least some people’s lives, I definitely got a strong sense that the metaphysical questions are extremely important.
By contrast, if the only type of religious claims I’d ever came into contact with had been moderate (picture the average level of religiosity of a person in, say, Zurich), then one may even consider it a bit of a strawman to assume that religious claims are to be taken literally.
I think this concern is somewhat relevant to the broader discussion, too, because you seem to imply that we can’t (or even shouldn’t?) make any advances on non-metaphysical claims before we haven’t figured out the metaphysical ones.
Just to be clear, all I’m saying is that I think it’s going to be less useful to discuss “what are moral claims usually about.” What we should instead do is instead what Chalmers describes (see the quote in footnote 4). Discussing what moral claims are usually about is not the same as making up one’s mind about normative ethics. I think it’s very useful to discuss normative ethics, and I’d even say that discussing whether anti-realism or realism is true might be slightly less important than making up one’s mind about normative ethics. Sure, it informs to some extent how to reason about morality, but as has been pointed out, you can make some progress about moral questions also from a lens of agnosticism about realism vs. anti-realism.
To go back to the religion analogy, what I’m recommending is to first figure out whether you believe in a God or an afterlife that would relevantly influence your priorities now, and not worry much about whether religious claims are “usually” or “best” to be taken literally or taken metaphorically(?).
As someone who spent a year at a Tennessean high school surrounded by Baptists, I understand your experience. I just ended up with a different conclusion: no one is interested in the metaphysical questions because they have to be settled if you want to continue living your “normal” life. What looks like interest in the metaphysical questions is a mere self-preservation mechanism for the normative ethical claims and not to be taken at face value.
To me, it seems faulty to assume any believer “reasons” about the existence of god, their brains just successfully trick them into thinking that. That’s why I felt it was weak as a metaphor for anti-realism vs realism. So from an outside view your metaphor makes sense if you take believers to be “reasoning” about anything but felt to me like it was more distracting from the thing you meant to point at, than actually pointing at it. The thing being:
I think it’s going to be less useful to discuss “what are moral claims usually about.” What we should instead do is instead what Chalmers describes (see the quote in footnote 4). Discussing what moral claims are usually about is not the same as making up one’s mind about normative ethics. I think it’s very useful to discuss normative ethics, and I’d even say that discussing whether anti-realism or realism is true might be slightly less important than making up one’s mind about normative ethics. Sure, it informs to some extent how to reason about morality, but as has been pointed out, you can make some progress about moral questions also from a lens of agnosticism about realism vs. anti-realism.
Probably intuitions about this issue depend on which type of moral or religious discourse one is used to. As someone who spent a year at a Christian private school in Texas where creationism was taught in Biology class and God and Jesus were a very tangible part of at least some people’s lives, I definitely got a strong sense that the metaphysical questions are extremely important.
By contrast, if the only type of religious claims I’d ever came into contact with had been moderate (picture the average level of religiosity of a person in, say, Zurich), then one may even consider it a bit of a strawman to assume that religious claims are to be taken literally.
Just to be clear, all I’m saying is that I think it’s going to be less useful to discuss “what are moral claims usually about.” What we should instead do is instead what Chalmers describes (see the quote in footnote 4). Discussing what moral claims are usually about is not the same as making up one’s mind about normative ethics. I think it’s very useful to discuss normative ethics, and I’d even say that discussing whether anti-realism or realism is true might be slightly less important than making up one’s mind about normative ethics. Sure, it informs to some extent how to reason about morality, but as has been pointed out, you can make some progress about moral questions also from a lens of agnosticism about realism vs. anti-realism.
To go back to the religion analogy, what I’m recommending is to first figure out whether you believe in a God or an afterlife that would relevantly influence your priorities now, and not worry much about whether religious claims are “usually” or “best” to be taken literally or taken metaphorically(?).
Thanks, this makes sense.
As someone who spent a year at a Tennessean high school surrounded by Baptists, I understand your experience. I just ended up with a different conclusion: no one is interested in the metaphysical questions because they have to be settled if you want to continue living your “normal” life. What looks like interest in the metaphysical questions is a mere self-preservation mechanism for the normative ethical claims and not to be taken at face value.
To me, it seems faulty to assume any believer “reasons” about the existence of god, their brains just successfully trick them into thinking that. That’s why I felt it was weak as a metaphor for anti-realism vs realism. So from an outside view your metaphor makes sense if you take believers to be “reasoning” about anything but felt to me like it was more distracting from the thing you meant to point at, than actually pointing at it. The thing being: