I’m glad to see others critiquing Bentham’s post. I think he presents a fairly underdeveloped case for realism and could have done a lot more to present a broader array of arguments and to more effectively anticipate and handle antirealist responses.
I’m a moral antirealist, and wanted to leave a few comments.
1. You agree moral antirealism is weird. Why do you think that it’s weird? I don’t find it weird myself.
2. You say
BB claims that because moral claims and factual claims are linguistically the same (they’re both propositions), therefore moral claims must be objective. I claim that this linguistic similarity might just be a weird quirk of English, without any deeper significance than that.
I am not sure Bentham would endorse precisely this characterization. I think the linguistic claim is intended to prompt people who consider the linguistic claim to endorse the metaethical view in question. In other words, Bentham prompts me (as a reader) to consider what I’m committed to. I consider whether I think moral claims can’t be true or false. I’m supposed to think: yea seems right. And it doesn’t seem they’re all false. And it doesn’t seem their truth depends on the attitudes of people or cultures. So whatever they are, they’re (a) not incapable of being true or false, (so noncognitivism is wrong), (b) they’re not all false (so error theory is wrong), and (c) their truth doesn’t depend on attitudes, so stance-dependent cognitivist accounts (e.g., standard forms of relativism, constructivism, etc.) are wrong. So the idea is that other people can triangulate on their own metaethical position by uncovering their commitments through analysis of and reaction to various thought experiments that reveal how they employ their concepts.
I don’t agree with Bentham anyway but I think you may be oversimplifying what he’s trying to do.
3. You say:
BB claims that moral realism is intuitive, and barring a good reason not to, we should believe in intuitive things. I claim that this is wrong because unlike most other human intuitions, moral intuitions are not testable.
I’m curious how Bentham would respond to this objection, but there’s another issue here: intuitive to who? I don’t have the same intuitions as Bentham.
4. You say:
Here’s the most plausible account, in my mind, for how moral realism could be true: There exists a God, and this God decided to establish a system of morality.
Why would this give you moral realism, even if there were a God that established a system of morality?
I’m glad to see others critiquing Bentham’s post. I think he presents a fairly underdeveloped case for realism and could have done a lot more to present a broader array of arguments and to more effectively anticipate and handle antirealist responses.
I’m a moral antirealist, and wanted to leave a few comments.
1. You agree moral antirealism is weird. Why do you think that it’s weird? I don’t find it weird myself.
2. You say
I am not sure Bentham would endorse precisely this characterization. I think the linguistic claim is intended to prompt people who consider the linguistic claim to endorse the metaethical view in question. In other words, Bentham prompts me (as a reader) to consider what I’m committed to. I consider whether I think moral claims can’t be true or false. I’m supposed to think: yea seems right. And it doesn’t seem they’re all false. And it doesn’t seem their truth depends on the attitudes of people or cultures. So whatever they are, they’re (a) not incapable of being true or false, (so noncognitivism is wrong), (b) they’re not all false (so error theory is wrong), and (c) their truth doesn’t depend on attitudes, so stance-dependent cognitivist accounts (e.g., standard forms of relativism, constructivism, etc.) are wrong. So the idea is that other people can triangulate on their own metaethical position by uncovering their commitments through analysis of and reaction to various thought experiments that reveal how they employ their concepts.
I don’t agree with Bentham anyway but I think you may be oversimplifying what he’s trying to do.
3. You say:
I’m curious how Bentham would respond to this objection, but there’s another issue here: intuitive to who? I don’t have the same intuitions as Bentham.
4. You say:
Why would this give you moral realism, even if there were a God that established a system of morality?