I don’t think I have much to object to that, but I do think that doesn’t look at all like ‘stance independent’ if we’re using that as the criterion for ethical realism. What you’re saying seems to boil down, if I understand it correctly is ‘given a bunch of intelligent creatures with some shared psychological perceptions of the world and some tendency towards collaboration, it is pretty likely they’ll end up arriving at a certain set of shared norms that optimize towards their well-being as a group -and in most cases, as individuals-. That makes the ‘state of moral norms that a lot of the civilizations eventually converge on’ something useful for ends x, y, z, but not ‘true’ and ‘independent of human or alien minds’.
Here are some senses in which it would make morality feel “more objective” rather than “more subjective”:
I can have the experience of having a view, and then hearing an argument, and updating. My stance towards my previous view then feels more like “oh, I was mistaken” (like if I’d made a mathematical error) rather than “oh, my view changed” (like getting myself to like the taste of avocado when I didn’t used to).
There can exist “moral experts”, whom we would want to consult on matters of morality. Broadly, we should expect our future views to update towards those of smart careful thinkers who’ve engaged with the questions a lot.
It’s possible that the norms various civilizations converge on represent something like “the optimal(/efficient?/robust?) way for society to self-organize”
I don’t think this is exactly “independent of human or alien minds”, but it also very much doesn’t feel “purely subjective”
I don’t really believe there’s anything more deeply metaphysical than that going on with morality[1], but I do think that there’s a lot that’s important in the above bullets, and that moral realist positions often feel vibewise “more correct” than antirealist positions (in terms of what they imply for real-world actions), even though the antirealist positions feel technically “more correct”.
I guess: there’s also some possibility of getting more convergence for acausal reasons rather than just evolution towards efficiency. I do think this is real, but it mostly feels like a distraction here so I’ll ignore it.
Terminology can be a bugger in these discussions. I think we are accepting, as per BB’s own definition at the start of the thread, that Moral Realism would basically reduce to accepting a stance-independent view that moral truths exist. As for truth, I would mean it in the way it gets used when studying other, stance-independent objects, i.e., electrons exist and their existence is independent of human minds and-or of humans having ever existed, and saying ‘electrons exist’ is true because of their correspondence to objects of an external, human-independent reality.
What I take from your examples (correct me if I am wrong or if I misrepresent you) is that you feel that moral statements are not as evidently subjective as say, ‘Vanilla ice-cream is the best flavor’ but not as objective as, say ‘An electron has a negative charge’, as living in some space of in-betweeness with respect to those two extremes. I’d still call this anti-realism, as you’re just switching from a maximally subjective stance (an individual’s particular culinary tastes) to a more general, but still stance-dependent one ( what a group of experts and-or human and some alien minds might possibly agree upon). I’d say again, an electron doesn’t care for what a human or any other creature thinks about its electric charge.
As for each of the bullet points, what I’d say is:
I can see why you’d feel the change from a previous view can be seen as a mistake rather than a preference change -when I first started thinking about morality I felt very strongly inclined to the strongest moral realism, and I know feel that pov was wrong- but this doesn’t imply moral realism as much as that if feels as if moral principles and beliefs have objective truth status, even if they were actually a reorganization of stance-dependent beliefs.
I, on the contrary, don’t feel like there could be ‘moral experts’ - at most, people who seem to live up to their moral beliefs, whatever the knowledge and reasons for having them. Most surveys I’ve seen -there’s a Rationally Speaking episode on this- show that Philosophers and Moral Philosophers specifically don’t seem to behave more morally than their colleagues and similar social and intellectual peers.
Convergence can be explained through evolutionary game theory, coordination pressures, and social learning, not objective moral truths. That many societies converge on certain norms just shows what tends to work given human psychology and conditions, not that these norms are true in any stance-independent sense. It’s functional success, not moral facthood.
is that you feel that moral statements are not as evidently subjective as say, ‘Vanilla ice-cream is the best flavor’ but not as objective as, say ‘An electron has a negative charge’, as living in some space of in-betweeness with respect to those two extremes
I think that’s roughly right. I think that they are unlikely to be more objective than “blue is a more natural concept than grue”, but that there’s a good chance that they’re about the same as that (and my gut take is that that’s pretty far towards the electron end of the spectrum; but perhaps I’m confused).
I’d say again, an electron doesn’t care for what a human or any other creature thinks about its electric charge.
Yeah, but I think that e.g. facts about economics are in some sense contingent on the thinking of people, but are not contingent on what particular people think, and I think that something similar could be true of morality.
I, on the contrary, don’t feel like there could be ‘moral experts’
The cleanest example I might give is that if I had a message from my near-future self saying “hey I’ve thought really hard about this issue and I really think X is right, sorry I don’t have time to unpack all of that”, I’d be pretty inclined to defer. I wonder if you feel differently?
I don’t think that moral philosophers in our society are necessarily hitting the bar I would like for “moral expert”. I also don’t think that people who are genuinely experts in morality would necessarily act according to moral values. (I’m not sure that these points are very important.)
I don’t think I have much to object to that, but I do think that doesn’t look at all like ‘stance independent’ if we’re using that as the criterion for ethical realism. What you’re saying seems to boil down, if I understand it correctly is ‘given a bunch of intelligent creatures with some shared psychological perceptions of the world and some tendency towards collaboration, it is pretty likely they’ll end up arriving at a certain set of shared norms that optimize towards their well-being as a group -and in most cases, as individuals-. That makes the ‘state of moral norms that a lot of the civilizations eventually converge on’ something useful for ends x, y, z, but not ‘true’ and ‘independent of human or alien minds’.
I’m not sure what exactly “true” means here.
Here are some senses in which it would make morality feel “more objective” rather than “more subjective”:
I can have the experience of having a view, and then hearing an argument, and updating. My stance towards my previous view then feels more like “oh, I was mistaken” (like if I’d made a mathematical error) rather than “oh, my view changed” (like getting myself to like the taste of avocado when I didn’t used to).
There can exist “moral experts”, whom we would want to consult on matters of morality. Broadly, we should expect our future views to update towards those of smart careful thinkers who’ve engaged with the questions a lot.
It’s possible that the norms various civilizations converge on represent something like “the optimal(/efficient?/robust?) way for society to self-organize”
I don’t think this is exactly “independent of human or alien minds”, but it also very much doesn’t feel “purely subjective”
I don’t really believe there’s anything more deeply metaphysical than that going on with morality[1], but I do think that there’s a lot that’s important in the above bullets, and that moral realist positions often feel vibewise “more correct” than antirealist positions (in terms of what they imply for real-world actions), even though the antirealist positions feel technically “more correct”.
I guess: there’s also some possibility of getting more convergence for acausal reasons rather than just evolution towards efficiency. I do think this is real, but it mostly feels like a distraction here so I’ll ignore it.
Terminology can be a bugger in these discussions. I think we are accepting, as per BB’s own definition at the start of the thread, that Moral Realism would basically reduce to accepting a stance-independent view that moral truths exist. As for truth, I would mean it in the way it gets used when studying other, stance-independent objects, i.e., electrons exist and their existence is independent of human minds and-or of humans having ever existed, and saying ‘electrons exist’ is true because of their correspondence to objects of an external, human-independent reality.
What I take from your examples (correct me if I am wrong or if I misrepresent you) is that you feel that moral statements are not as evidently subjective as say, ‘Vanilla ice-cream is the best flavor’ but not as objective as, say ‘An electron has a negative charge’, as living in some space of in-betweeness with respect to those two extremes. I’d still call this anti-realism, as you’re just switching from a maximally subjective stance (an individual’s particular culinary tastes) to a more general, but still stance-dependent one ( what a group of experts and-or human and some alien minds might possibly agree upon). I’d say again, an electron doesn’t care for what a human or any other creature thinks about its electric charge.
As for each of the bullet points, what I’d say is:
I can see why you’d feel the change from a previous view can be seen as a mistake rather than a preference change -when I first started thinking about morality I felt very strongly inclined to the strongest moral realism, and I know feel that pov was wrong- but this doesn’t imply moral realism as much as that if feels as if moral principles and beliefs have objective truth status, even if they were actually a reorganization of stance-dependent beliefs.
I, on the contrary, don’t feel like there could be ‘moral experts’ - at most, people who seem to live up to their moral beliefs, whatever the knowledge and reasons for having them. Most surveys I’ve seen -there’s a Rationally Speaking episode on this- show that Philosophers and Moral Philosophers specifically don’t seem to behave more morally than their colleagues and similar social and intellectual peers.
Convergence can be explained through evolutionary game theory, coordination pressures, and social learning, not objective moral truths. That many societies converge on certain norms just shows what tends to work given human psychology and conditions, not that these norms are true in any stance-independent sense. It’s functional success, not moral facthood.
I think that’s roughly right. I think that they are unlikely to be more objective than “blue is a more natural concept than grue”, but that there’s a good chance that they’re about the same as that (and my gut take is that that’s pretty far towards the electron end of the spectrum; but perhaps I’m confused).
Yeah, but I think that e.g. facts about economics are in some sense contingent on the thinking of people, but are not contingent on what particular people think, and I think that something similar could be true of morality.
The cleanest example I might give is that if I had a message from my near-future self saying “hey I’ve thought really hard about this issue and I really think X is right, sorry I don’t have time to unpack all of that”, I’d be pretty inclined to defer. I wonder if you feel differently?
I don’t think that moral philosophers in our society are necessarily hitting the bar I would like for “moral expert”. I also don’t think that people who are genuinely experts in morality would necessarily act according to moral values. (I’m not sure that these points are very important.)