Is being trivial and of low interest evidence that naturalist forms of realism are *false*? āRed things are redā is boring and trivial, but my credence in it is way above 0.99.
No, triviality doesnāt necessarily entail falsehood. But you can trivially establish anything as true if you gerrymander language. For example, I can define āGodā as āthis chair over here,ā point to the chair, and then say āGod exists.ā It would be true that āGod exists,ā in the sense that I am using the terms, but this would be trivial. Iād be a ātheistā in this respect.
So your claim is that naturalists are just stipulating a particular meaning of their own for moral terms? Can you say why you think this? Donāt some naturalists just defend the idea that moral properties could be identical with complex sociological properties without even saying *which* properties? How could those naturalists be engaging in stipulative definition, even accidentally?
Iād also say that this only bears on the truth/āfalsity of naturalism fairly indirectly. Thereās no particular connection between whether naturalism is actually true and whether some group of naturalist thinkers happen to have stipulatively defined a moral term, although I guess if most defenses of naturalism did this, that would be evidence that naturalism couldnāt be defended in other ways, which is evidence against itās truth.
No, sorry, I donāt think theyāre just stipulating or at least I donāt think they take themselves to be doing so. Thatās just an example of how terms can be trivial. Apologies for not being clear about that.
I donāt think naturalists are literally just stipulating terms in this way. But if all they are doing amounts to terminological relabeling, then their account would be trivial in the same respect. If theyāre doing more than this, then theyāre welcome to offer an account of what that is; itās going to vary from one account to another but the triviality of naturalist accounts runs deep and takes multiple forms. For instance, if the realistās account only furnishes us with descriptive facts, then it lacks the sort of normative authority non-naturalist realists try to retain. So we end up with āmoral factsā that have no practical relevance. For example, suppose someone says āMoral facts are facts about what increases or decreases wellbeing.ā
Even if I granted that this is true, what practical relevance does this have? As far as I can tell: none whatsoever. If naturalists disagree theyāre welcome to explain how there is any practical relevance to making such a discovery.
Donāt some naturalists just defend the idea that moral properties could be identical with complex sociological properties without even saying *which* properties
Yes. And you have synthetic naturalist accounts that purport to identify the moral facts with various types of natural facts that arenāt reducible to some kind of analytic claim. This is how I take Sterelny and Fraserās account. I reject those accounts not for the same reasons as analytic naturalist accounts but but for other reasons, e.g., empirical inadequacy and other forms of triviality.
Iād also say that this only bears on the truth/āfalsity of naturalism fairly indirectly.
I agree. Iām not necessarily going to insist naturalist accounts are false. I tend to argue for a trilemma: that all versions of moral realism are trivial, false, or unintelligible. I donāt think the worst thing a theory can be is necessary false; triviality can be a problem for an account as well. I should note, too, that Iām a pragmatist, so thereās a sense in which the triviality of an account can collapse into or play a role in its falsehood as well, on my view. But I try not to impose pragmatist preconceptions on others.
Personally I think naturalist accounts of realism āmiss the point.ā My concern is with rejecting irreducible normativity, external reasons, normative authority, and so on. Naturalist accounts donāt even seem to be in the business of trying to do this.
If you think there might well be forms of naturalism that are true but trivial, is your credence in anti-realism really well over >99%?
This forum probably isnāt the place for really getting into the weeds of this, but Iām also a bit worried about accounts of triviality that conflate a priority or even analyticity and triviality: Maths is not trivial in any sense of ātrivialā on which ātrivialā means ānot worth bothering withā. Maybe you can get out of this by saying maths isnāt analytic and itās only being analytic that trivializes things, but I donāt think it is particulary obvious that there is a sense making concept of analyticity that doesnāt apply to maths. Apparently Neo-Fregeans think that lots of maths is analytic, and as far as I know that is a respected option in the philosophy of math: https://āāplato.stanford.edu/āāentries/āālogicism/āā#NeoFre
I also wonder about exactly what is being claimed to be trivial: individual identifications of moral properties with naturalistic properties, if they are explicitly claimed to be analytic? Or the claim that moral naturalism is true and there are some analytic truths of this sort? Or both?
Also, do you think semantic claims in general are trivial?
Finally, do you think the naturalists whose claims you consider ātrivialā mostly agree with you that their views have the features that you think make for triviality but disagree that having those features means their views are of no interest. Or do most of them think their claims lack the features you think make for triviality? Or do you think most of them just havenāt thought about it/ādonāt have a good-faith substantive response?
These are good questions and reasonable concerns, and I share the sense that this forum may not be ideal for addressing these questions. So Iād be happy to move the discussion away from here. For now, Iāll say a few things. Regarding accounts of triviality conflating a priority or analyticity with triviality: I donāt think I am conflating anything; I do think theyāre trivial in the relevant respects. Take a possible naturalist account: moral facts are facts about what increases or decreases wellbeing. Okay, well I already think there are facts about what increases or decreases wellbeing.
What difference does it make if those are moral facts? I have concerns about what that might even mean, but even if I set those aside, what practical difference would this make? As far as the synthetic accounts, I might just reject them on other grounds aside from triviality, but insofar as they also reduce moral claims to descriptive facts, there still looks to me like a kind of triviality there: no set of descriptive facts, in and of themselves, necessarily have any practical relevance to me. In other words, from a practical and motivational perspective, discovering that something is a āmoral factā simply doesnāt make any difference to me, and itās not clear to me why it would make any difference to anyone else. Suppose, for instance, that someone like Oliver Scott Curry is correct, and that moral facts are facts about what promotes cooperations within groups. Okay. Now what? What do I do with this information?
Maths is not trivial in any sense of ātrivialā on which ātrivialā means ānot worth bothering withā.
Iām not sure the comparison would be apt, given that I think of math as a kind of useful social construction. Math is extremely useful, but itās useful in a way contingent on our goals and purposes. If we devised moral systems specifically to serve some purpose or goal in the way we did math, I might very well consider them nontrivial...but Iād also be an antirealist about them.
Maybe you can get out of this by saying maths isnāt analytic and itās only being analytic that trivializes things, but I donāt think it is particulary obvious that there is a sense making concept of analyticity that doesnāt apply to maths
Iām an empiricist and a pragmatist and I think the mathematical systems we develop and use earn their keep through their application to our ends. I donāt think the same is true of naturalist accounts of moral realism. Itād be hard to do many things without math. Conversely, if there were no stance-independent moral facts of the sort naturalists believe in, I struggle to see what difference it would make in principle.
Also, do you think semantic claims in general are trivial?
Iām not sure quite what you have in mind, so Iām not sure.
Finally, do you think the naturalists whose claims you consider ātrivialā mostly agree with you that their views have the features that you think make for triviality but disagree that having those features means their views are of no interest.
It depends on which objection Iām raising. That the moral facts are descriptive and lack some of the features non-naturalists claim moral facts have? Yea, probably. That theyāre just engaged in a pointless activity of figuring out how English speakers use moral language? Probably not. Since weāre operating on different accounts of truth and probably have other differences in our views, thereās likely to be more fundamental differences, too. Iām not really sure. I should probably just talk to more naturalists and maybe read more contemporary work. FWIW, some of the more traditional antirealists Iāve spoken to donāt share my objections and donāt think theyāre on the right track.
Or do you think most of them just havenāt thought about it/ādonāt have a good-faith substantive response?
I doubt that. Most naturalists have thought about their positions much more than I have, and would probably have a number of corrections to make of my characterization of their views.
>So your claim is that naturalists are just stipulating a particular meaning of their own for moral terms? Can you say why you think this?
In this instance, Bentham seems to be stipulating that āmorally correctā means āagrees with Benthamās intuitionsā. I think this because he consistently says that things āseemā that way to him, without taking into account how they seem to other people.
I donāt think Bentham is stipulating that. I think heās treating intuitions as providing epistemic access to the moral facts. For comparison, itād be a bit like arguing that trees exist because you can see them, and so can most other people. This wouldnāt be the same as saying that, as a matter of stipulation, for a tree to āexistā means that āit appears to exist to you personally.ā
Iāll note: someone suggested elsewhere in this thread that some of the terms and ways I frame my objections to Bentham suggest I wouldnāt be fair to him. Iāll note that here I am defending Bentham against what I take to be an inaccurate characterization.
I think heās treating intuitions as providing epistemic access to the moral facts
I think heās treating his intuitions that way. He does not seem to be treating intuitions in general that way, since he doesnāt address things like how throughout most people have had the intuition that treating the outgroup poorly is morally good, nor how I have the intuition that it is immoral to claim access to moral facts.
Presumably he has an answer to that; I still donāt think heās stipulating things as you suggest, but I am sympathetic to the concern you raise, which to me appears to be the systematic and longstanding variation in normative moral intuitions.
Another, related problem is variation in metaethical positions/āāseemings.ā Bentham makes all sorts of remarks about how things seem to him that only make sense if youāre a moral realist, but things donāt seem that way to me. If they seem any way at all, its the exact opposite.
I still donāt think heās stipulating things as you suggest
Thatās fair. I suppose that I was attempting to translate his statements into something that I could understand rather than taking them literally, as I should have.
Is being trivial and of low interest evidence that naturalist forms of realism are *false*? āRed things are redā is boring and trivial, but my credence in it is way above 0.99.
No, triviality doesnāt necessarily entail falsehood. But you can trivially establish anything as true if you gerrymander language. For example, I can define āGodā as āthis chair over here,ā point to the chair, and then say āGod exists.ā It would be true that āGod exists,ā in the sense that I am using the terms, but this would be trivial. Iād be a ātheistā in this respect.
So your claim is that naturalists are just stipulating a particular meaning of their own for moral terms? Can you say why you think this? Donāt some naturalists just defend the idea that moral properties could be identical with complex sociological properties without even saying *which* properties? How could those naturalists be engaging in stipulative definition, even accidentally?
Iād also say that this only bears on the truth/āfalsity of naturalism fairly indirectly. Thereās no particular connection between whether naturalism is actually true and whether some group of naturalist thinkers happen to have stipulatively defined a moral term, although I guess if most defenses of naturalism did this, that would be evidence that naturalism couldnāt be defended in other ways, which is evidence against itās truth.
No, sorry, I donāt think theyāre just stipulating or at least I donāt think they take themselves to be doing so. Thatās just an example of how terms can be trivial. Apologies for not being clear about that.
I donāt think naturalists are literally just stipulating terms in this way. But if all they are doing amounts to terminological relabeling, then their account would be trivial in the same respect. If theyāre doing more than this, then theyāre welcome to offer an account of what that is; itās going to vary from one account to another but the triviality of naturalist accounts runs deep and takes multiple forms. For instance, if the realistās account only furnishes us with descriptive facts, then it lacks the sort of normative authority non-naturalist realists try to retain. So we end up with āmoral factsā that have no practical relevance. For example, suppose someone says āMoral facts are facts about what increases or decreases wellbeing.ā
Even if I granted that this is true, what practical relevance does this have? As far as I can tell: none whatsoever. If naturalists disagree theyāre welcome to explain how there is any practical relevance to making such a discovery.
Yes. And you have synthetic naturalist accounts that purport to identify the moral facts with various types of natural facts that arenāt reducible to some kind of analytic claim. This is how I take Sterelny and Fraserās account. I reject those accounts not for the same reasons as analytic naturalist accounts but but for other reasons, e.g., empirical inadequacy and other forms of triviality.
I agree. Iām not necessarily going to insist naturalist accounts are false. I tend to argue for a trilemma: that all versions of moral realism are trivial, false, or unintelligible. I donāt think the worst thing a theory can be is necessary false; triviality can be a problem for an account as well. I should note, too, that Iām a pragmatist, so thereās a sense in which the triviality of an account can collapse into or play a role in its falsehood as well, on my view. But I try not to impose pragmatist preconceptions on others.
Personally I think naturalist accounts of realism āmiss the point.ā My concern is with rejecting irreducible normativity, external reasons, normative authority, and so on. Naturalist accounts donāt even seem to be in the business of trying to do this.
If you think there might well be forms of naturalism that are true but trivial, is your credence in anti-realism really well over >99%?
This forum probably isnāt the place for really getting into the weeds of this, but Iām also a bit worried about accounts of triviality that conflate a priority or even analyticity and triviality: Maths is not trivial in any sense of ātrivialā on which ātrivialā means ānot worth bothering withā. Maybe you can get out of this by saying maths isnāt analytic and itās only being analytic that trivializes things, but I donāt think it is particulary obvious that there is a sense making concept of analyticity that doesnāt apply to maths. Apparently Neo-Fregeans think that lots of maths is analytic, and as far as I know that is a respected option in the philosophy of math: https://āāplato.stanford.edu/āāentries/āālogicism/āā#NeoFre
I also wonder about exactly what is being claimed to be trivial: individual identifications of moral properties with naturalistic properties, if they are explicitly claimed to be analytic? Or the claim that moral naturalism is true and there are some analytic truths of this sort? Or both?
Also, do you think semantic claims in general are trivial?
Finally, do you think the naturalists whose claims you consider ātrivialā mostly agree with you that their views have the features that you think make for triviality but disagree that having those features means their views are of no interest. Or do most of them think their claims lack the features you think make for triviality? Or do you think most of them just havenāt thought about it/ādonāt have a good-faith substantive response?
These are good questions and reasonable concerns, and I share the sense that this forum may not be ideal for addressing these questions. So Iād be happy to move the discussion away from here. For now, Iāll say a few things. Regarding accounts of triviality conflating a priority or analyticity with triviality: I donāt think I am conflating anything; I do think theyāre trivial in the relevant respects. Take a possible naturalist account: moral facts are facts about what increases or decreases wellbeing. Okay, well I already think there are facts about what increases or decreases wellbeing.
What difference does it make if those are moral facts? I have concerns about what that might even mean, but even if I set those aside, what practical difference would this make? As far as the synthetic accounts, I might just reject them on other grounds aside from triviality, but insofar as they also reduce moral claims to descriptive facts, there still looks to me like a kind of triviality there: no set of descriptive facts, in and of themselves, necessarily have any practical relevance to me. In other words, from a practical and motivational perspective, discovering that something is a āmoral factā simply doesnāt make any difference to me, and itās not clear to me why it would make any difference to anyone else. Suppose, for instance, that someone like Oliver Scott Curry is correct, and that moral facts are facts about what promotes cooperations within groups. Okay. Now what? What do I do with this information?
Iām not sure the comparison would be apt, given that I think of math as a kind of useful social construction. Math is extremely useful, but itās useful in a way contingent on our goals and purposes. If we devised moral systems specifically to serve some purpose or goal in the way we did math, I might very well consider them nontrivial...but Iād also be an antirealist about them.
Iām an empiricist and a pragmatist and I think the mathematical systems we develop and use earn their keep through their application to our ends. I donāt think the same is true of naturalist accounts of moral realism. Itād be hard to do many things without math. Conversely, if there were no stance-independent moral facts of the sort naturalists believe in, I struggle to see what difference it would make in principle.
Iām not sure quite what you have in mind, so Iām not sure.
It depends on which objection Iām raising. That the moral facts are descriptive and lack some of the features non-naturalists claim moral facts have? Yea, probably. That theyāre just engaged in a pointless activity of figuring out how English speakers use moral language? Probably not. Since weāre operating on different accounts of truth and probably have other differences in our views, thereās likely to be more fundamental differences, too. Iām not really sure. I should probably just talk to more naturalists and maybe read more contemporary work. FWIW, some of the more traditional antirealists Iāve spoken to donāt share my objections and donāt think theyāre on the right track.
I doubt that. Most naturalists have thought about their positions much more than I have, and would probably have a number of corrections to make of my characterization of their views.
>So your claim is that naturalists are just stipulating a particular meaning of their own for moral terms? Can you say why you think this?
In this instance, Bentham seems to be stipulating that āmorally correctā means āagrees with Benthamās intuitionsā. I think this because he consistently says that things āseemā that way to him, without taking into account how they seem to other people.
I donāt think Bentham is stipulating that. I think heās treating intuitions as providing epistemic access to the moral facts. For comparison, itād be a bit like arguing that trees exist because you can see them, and so can most other people. This wouldnāt be the same as saying that, as a matter of stipulation, for a tree to āexistā means that āit appears to exist to you personally.ā
Iāll note: someone suggested elsewhere in this thread that some of the terms and ways I frame my objections to Bentham suggest I wouldnāt be fair to him. Iāll note that here I am defending Bentham against what I take to be an inaccurate characterization.
I think heās treating his intuitions that way. He does not seem to be treating intuitions in general that way, since he doesnāt address things like how throughout most people have had the intuition that treating the outgroup poorly is morally good, nor how I have the intuition that it is immoral to claim access to moral facts.
Presumably he has an answer to that; I still donāt think heās stipulating things as you suggest, but I am sympathetic to the concern you raise, which to me appears to be the systematic and longstanding variation in normative moral intuitions.
Another, related problem is variation in metaethical positions/āāseemings.ā Bentham makes all sorts of remarks about how things seem to him that only make sense if youāre a moral realist, but things donāt seem that way to me. If they seem any way at all, its the exact opposite.
Thatās fair. I suppose that I was attempting to translate his statements into something that I could understand rather than taking them literally, as I should have.