This position seems confusing to me. So, either (1) ethics is something āout thereā, which we can try to learn about and uncover. Then, we would tend to treat all our theories and models as approximations to some degree because similar issues as in science apply. Or (2) we take ethics as something which we define in some way to suit some of our own goals. Then, itās pretty arbitrary what models we come up with, whether they make sense depends mainly on the goals we have in mind.
This kind of mirrors the question whether a moral theory is to be taken as a standard for judging ethics (1) or a definition of ethics (2). Even if you opt for (2) the moral theory is still an instrument that should be treated as useful means to an end-in-view. You want the definition to be convincing by demonstrating that it can actually get you somewhere that is desirable. Thus, it would be appropriate to acknowledge what this definition can and cannot do so that people can make appropriate use of it. Whatever road you chose you still come to the point where you need to debate which model āworksā best. Thatās the beauty of philosophical and ethical discourse.
And turning back to the question of value monism, I think Spencer Greenberg has some interesting discussion for people who are moral anti-realists (people who fall in camp 2 above) and utilitarians. Maybe thatās worth checking out.
Because my draft response was getting too long, Iām going to put it as a list of relevant arguments/āpoints, rather than the conventional format, hopefully not much is lost in the process:
-Ethics does take things out there in the world as its subjects, but I donāt take the comparison to empirical science in this case to work, because the methods of inquiry are more about discourse than empirical study. Empirical study comes at the point of implementation, not philosophy. The strong version of this point is rather controversial but I do endorse it, I will return to it in a couple bullets to expand it out
-Even in empirical sciences, the idea of theories just being rough models is not always relevant. it comes from both uncertainty and the positive view that the actual real answer is far too complicated to exactly model. This is the difference between say economics and physics ā theories in both will be tentative, and accept that they are probably just approximations right now because of uncertainty, but in economics this is not just a matter of historical humility, but also a positive belief about complexity in the world. Physics theories are both ways of getting good-enough-for-now answers, and positive proposals for ways some aspect of reality might actually be. Typically with plurality but not majority credence.
-Fully defining what I mean by ethics is difficult, and of less interest to me than doing the ethics. Maybe this seems a bit strange if you think defining ethics is of supreme importance to doing it, but my feeling of disconnect between the two is probably part of why Iām an anti-realist. Iām not sure thereās any definition I could plug into a machine to make an ethics-o-meter I would simply be satisfied taking its word for it on an answer (this is where the stronger version of bullet one comes in). This is sort of related to Brian Tomasikās point that if moral realism were true, and it turned out that the true ethics was just torturing as many squirrels as you can, he would have simply learned he didnāt care about ethics and it wasnāt what he was doing all along. I feel part of my caring about ethics is constituted by my understanding of how I got there more than it is about extrapolating from exact definitions. I know it when I do it, and it is a project that, to my understanding of it, I care about deeply right now.
-I donāt think this answer quite fits any of Greenbergās proposals exactly, but he is definitely confused, and fair enough, as he is confused about a confusing topic. I just want to note that it is meta-ethics that is confusing, not anti-realism. I think he blows past moral realism sort of quickly, expecting that what realists who subscribe to theories like these are doing is perfectly understandable, but I think it is still extremely weird. Most initial approaches one can take to moral realism either start out apparently collapsing into normative ethical theories instead, or else require some extremely unlikely empirical assumption. In order to rescue realist theories, you need to start getting ideas that are more complicated and recognize the dilemmas. I originally wrote two example dialogues to get at this point, but they wound up going on too long for a comment, so I just want to start by positing that, in my experience, this is the case. The obvious first approaches either in some way posit oneās normative theory to be what āvalueā is despite disagreement from other people who are using the same words, or else there is some sense in which the disagreement is explained away as coming from some source of irrationality that, if spelled out with an empirical prediction, requires a probably bad prediction. Meta-ethics always faces a foundational dilemma in spelling out what exactly moral disagreement is.
-Since this is getting long winded and it seems like itās pretty much only us here at this point, I was wondering if you wanted to migrate this conversation in some way, for instance we could chat more via video call or something at some point. If not Iām also fine with that, we could call it here or keep going in the comments. I just thought I would mention that Iām open to it.
first of all, thanks for engaging and the offer in the end. If you want to continue the discussion feel free to reach out via PM.
I think there is some confusion about my and also Spencer Greenbergās position. Afaik, we are both moral anti-realists and not suggesting that moral realism is a tenable position. Without presuming to know much about Spencer, I have taken his stance in the post to be that he did not want to āargueā with realists in that post because even though he rejects their position, it requires a different type of argument than what he was after for that post. He wanted to draw attention to the fact that moral anti-realism and utilitarian value monism doesnāt necessarily and ānaturallyā go well together. Many of the statements he heard from people in the EA community were confusing to him not because anti-realism is confusing but being anti-realist and steadfastly holding on to value monism was, given that we empirically seem to value many more things than just one āsuper valueā such as āwelfareā and that there is no inherent obligation that we āshouldā only value one āsuper valueā. He elaborates that also in another post.
My point was also mainly to point out that we should see moral theories as instruments that can help us get us more of what we value. They can help us reach some end-in-view and be evaluated in this regard, anything else is specious.
From my perspective, adopting classic utilitarianism can be very limiting because it can oversimplify and obscure what we actually care about in a given situation. Itās maybe useful as a helpful guide for considering what should be important but I am trying to not delude myself that āwelfareā must be the only thing I should care about. This would be akin to a prematureclosure of inquiry into the specific situation at hand. I cannot and will never be able to fully anticipate all relevant details and aspects of a real world situation, so how can I be a priori certain that there is only one value I should care about?
If you are interested in this kind of position, feel free to check out: Ulrich, W. (2006). Critical Pragmatism: A New Approach to Professional and Business Ethics. In Interdisciplinary Yearbook for Business Ethics. V. 1, v. 1,. Peter Lang Pub Inc.
This position seems confusing to me. So, either (1) ethics is something āout thereā, which we can try to learn about and uncover. Then, we would tend to treat all our theories and models as approximations to some degree because similar issues as in science apply. Or (2) we take ethics as something which we define in some way to suit some of our own goals. Then, itās pretty arbitrary what models we come up with, whether they make sense depends mainly on the goals we have in mind.
This kind of mirrors the question whether a moral theory is to be taken as a standard for judging ethics (1) or a definition of ethics (2). Even if you opt for (2) the moral theory is still an instrument that should be treated as useful means to an end-in-view. You want the definition to be convincing by demonstrating that it can actually get you somewhere that is desirable. Thus, it would be appropriate to acknowledge what this definition can and cannot do so that people can make appropriate use of it. Whatever road you chose you still come to the point where you need to debate which model āworksā best. Thatās the beauty of philosophical and ethical discourse.
And turning back to the question of value monism, I think Spencer Greenberg has some interesting discussion for people who are moral anti-realists (people who fall in camp 2 above) and utilitarians. Maybe thatās worth checking out.
Because my draft response was getting too long, Iām going to put it as a list of relevant arguments/āpoints, rather than the conventional format, hopefully not much is lost in the process:
-Ethics does take things out there in the world as its subjects, but I donāt take the comparison to empirical science in this case to work, because the methods of inquiry are more about discourse than empirical study. Empirical study comes at the point of implementation, not philosophy. The strong version of this point is rather controversial but I do endorse it, I will return to it in a couple bullets to expand it out
-Even in empirical sciences, the idea of theories just being rough models is not always relevant. it comes from both uncertainty and the positive view that the actual real answer is far too complicated to exactly model. This is the difference between say economics and physics ā theories in both will be tentative, and accept that they are probably just approximations right now because of uncertainty, but in economics this is not just a matter of historical humility, but also a positive belief about complexity in the world. Physics theories are both ways of getting good-enough-for-now answers, and positive proposals for ways some aspect of reality might actually be. Typically with plurality but not majority credence.
-Fully defining what I mean by ethics is difficult, and of less interest to me than doing the ethics. Maybe this seems a bit strange if you think defining ethics is of supreme importance to doing it, but my feeling of disconnect between the two is probably part of why Iām an anti-realist. Iām not sure thereās any definition I could plug into a machine to make an ethics-o-meter I would simply be satisfied taking its word for it on an answer (this is where the stronger version of bullet one comes in). This is sort of related to Brian Tomasikās point that if moral realism were true, and it turned out that the true ethics was just torturing as many squirrels as you can, he would have simply learned he didnāt care about ethics and it wasnāt what he was doing all along. I feel part of my caring about ethics is constituted by my understanding of how I got there more than it is about extrapolating from exact definitions. I know it when I do it, and it is a project that, to my understanding of it, I care about deeply right now.
-I donāt think this answer quite fits any of Greenbergās proposals exactly, but he is definitely confused, and fair enough, as he is confused about a confusing topic. I just want to note that it is meta-ethics that is confusing, not anti-realism. I think he blows past moral realism sort of quickly, expecting that what realists who subscribe to theories like these are doing is perfectly understandable, but I think it is still extremely weird. Most initial approaches one can take to moral realism either start out apparently collapsing into normative ethical theories instead, or else require some extremely unlikely empirical assumption. In order to rescue realist theories, you need to start getting ideas that are more complicated and recognize the dilemmas. I originally wrote two example dialogues to get at this point, but they wound up going on too long for a comment, so I just want to start by positing that, in my experience, this is the case. The obvious first approaches either in some way posit oneās normative theory to be what āvalueā is despite disagreement from other people who are using the same words, or else there is some sense in which the disagreement is explained away as coming from some source of irrationality that, if spelled out with an empirical prediction, requires a probably bad prediction. Meta-ethics always faces a foundational dilemma in spelling out what exactly moral disagreement is.
-Since this is getting long winded and it seems like itās pretty much only us here at this point, I was wondering if you wanted to migrate this conversation in some way, for instance we could chat more via video call or something at some point. If not Iām also fine with that, we could call it here or keep going in the comments. I just thought I would mention that Iām open to it.
Hey Devin,
first of all, thanks for engaging and the offer in the end. If you want to continue the discussion feel free to reach out via PM.
I think there is some confusion about my and also Spencer Greenbergās position. Afaik, we are both moral anti-realists and not suggesting that moral realism is a tenable position. Without presuming to know much about Spencer, I have taken his stance in the post to be that he did not want to āargueā with realists in that post because even though he rejects their position, it requires a different type of argument than what he was after for that post. He wanted to draw attention to the fact that moral anti-realism and utilitarian value monism doesnāt necessarily and ānaturallyā go well together. Many of the statements he heard from people in the EA community were confusing to him not because anti-realism is confusing but being anti-realist and steadfastly holding on to value monism was, given that we empirically seem to value many more things than just one āsuper valueā such as āwelfareā and that there is no inherent obligation that we āshouldā only value one āsuper valueā. He elaborates that also in another post.
My point was also mainly to point out that we should see moral theories as instruments that can help us get us more of what we value. They can help us reach some end-in-view and be evaluated in this regard, anything else is specious.
From my perspective, adopting classic utilitarianism can be very limiting because it can oversimplify and obscure what we actually care about in a given situation. Itās maybe useful as a helpful guide for considering what should be important but I am trying to not delude myself that āwelfareā must be the only thing I should care about. This would be akin to a premature closure of inquiry into the specific situation at hand. I cannot and will never be able to fully anticipate all relevant details and aspects of a real world situation, so how can I be a priori certain that there is only one value I should care about?
If you are interested in this kind of position, feel free to check out: Ulrich, W. (2006). Critical Pragmatism: A New Approach to Professional and Business Ethics. In Interdisciplinary Yearbook for Business Ethics. V. 1, v. 1,. Peter Lang Pub Inc.