Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which bad. (Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy) It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone believes in moral realism and almost everyone, at least in the circles I usually move in, denies believing in it. Everyone, with the possible exception of psychopaths, feels that some things — stealing from a friend who trusts you, for example — are wrong, not just illegal or imprudent but wrong. And yet most people other than the seriously religious, at least in the academic world where I have spent most of my life, would deny the existence of moral facts, interpret them, if pushed, as preferences, like the preference for chocolate ice cream over vanilla, or as social rules we have been trained into.
"Perhaps our common moral perceptions are the result of evolution hard wiring into us beliefs that caused our ancestors to behave in ways that led to reproductive success."
I think this gets to the heart of the matter. Evolution designed wings that somehow grasp the fundamentals of aerodynamics. These fundamentals are real, at least in a sense. Similarly, morality is about coordinating actions in group settings. Evolution primed us to be able to recognize actions and beliefs that facilitated success in bands of gossiping foragers who got to choose who they did and did not cooperate with. Furthermore, we evolved to view morals as sacrosanct rather than instrumental, because people who viewed them this way proved over time to be better candidates for cooperation.
When someone says that moral realism is true, I'm not sure what exactly is being claimed. When someone makes an ordinary moral statement like "killing babies is wrong" I can understand their speech-act as something like a policy proposal: "let's not kill any babies (and let's punish anyone who does, etc.)". But I'm not sure what policy proposal the statement "moral realism is true" is supposed to correspond to. (Unless it's something like "let's do whatever most people say we should do, ceteris paribus", as seems to be suggested by your post.)
Since the claim being argued for is not (in my view) prima facie meaningful, the comparison between the quality of evidence for factual claims and evidence for moral claims falls flat.
“ if morality is real you ought not to do bad things.”
Let me summarize the argument as
1) Morality is either real or unreal.
2) If morality is real, everyone ought not to do bad things.
3) If morality is unreal, there are no bad things, just stupid things or inconvenient things, and no one has any obligations that they did not embrace by choice.
4) considering possible states of the world and strategies, to act as if morality is real is more prudent that acting otherwise.
Does this argument deduce an ought from an is? No. It escapes Hume through two escape hatches. It has a premise with an ought in it, premise 2. And it does not conclude that we ought to do anything. Rather, it recommends a strategy as more prudent. If we take the conclusion as containing the same kind of ought that appears in the premise, we equivocate between what we ought to do as a matter of moral obligation (premise) and what we ought to do as a matter of prudence (conclusion).
To go further would require another premise:
3a) If acting as if morality is real is more prudent than alternative strategies, then morality must be real.
This premise does not seem self-evident, and Hume has the other escape hatch anyhow.
I apologize if my summary seems like a straw man.
I am confused by the status of “morality is real.” This seems to be both a factual claim and a normative claim at the same time. If morality is real, it is both. I suppose we should then distinguish between facts and preferences instead.
The general point about non moral facts (such as peoples beliefs/intuitions) being evidence for moral facts is very much true, and fits nicely in a Bayesian framework, this makes the issue of moral disagreement (at least among roughly rational agents) even more interesting given Aumann's agreement theorem, my guess is that some resolution would probably involve justification about priors.
"It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone believes in moral realism and almost everyone, at least in the circles I usually move in, denies believing in it." At least in the circles I'm familiar with, roughly the opposite seems to be true, that is very few people would actually openly commit themselves to moral anti-realism (even if they clearly belief such), and those who do, often try their hardest to salvage every last bit of moral realism, moral language, ethical norms and such (would be happy to give examples) as opposed to just strictly speaking/thinking in terms of positive facts and preferences and beliefs etc. If I was to speculate I would say that this small group of moralistic anti-realists (who seem to me to be most anti-realists) probably experience many of the moral properties that regular people experience, but consciously find such properties too spooky.
The Pascals Wager you suggest, whilst I know you find to be very forceful, I think among many of the committed anti-realists even if they were 99% sure that moral properties existed and irreducible normativity was a thing. They would probably be almost indifferent to their existence, even if they as a matter of fact ought to care, and acknowledged this as being true. So I think your argument isn't very forceful with respects to the target demographic. I should also add that I can personally easily imagine lots scenarios where I do come to believe in moral properties, a simple "moral property detector" that seems to involve something very primitive/fundamental would be an example of such a scenario, say naturally occurring crystals that glow red when you point it at a baby being stomped on and green when you point it at a someone giving money to the against malaria foundation etc.
I’m not religious and never have been: I come from a non-religious family. I generally behave according to my own sense of morality, because I don’t usually find it difficult to do so, and because it makes me feel better. My morality is similar to other people’s, but not exactly the same in all respects.
This is normal. Morality differs at least slightly from person to person, so that any two people are unlikely to agree about every detail.
It seems to me that the topic of abortion is more political than moral. Forcing women to have unwanted children is (a) authoritarian behaviour and (b) likely to result in unhappy mothers and unhappy children, and increasing the unhappiness of the population is not a good thing to do politically. Of course, this is easy for me to say, because I live in western Europe, where abortion is readily available and uncontroversial for most people.
I literally don't even know what something being 'morally true' could possibly mean. It's "morally wrong" to do something? What does that mean? I oughtn't do it? Why not? Because it's morally wrong?
If it's to do with social benefit, why 'ought' I do what provides social benefit, other than a fiat declaration of the morality of such an action?
I'm ok with your conclusion that it's "logically possible to get positive evidence for normative conclusions", but I think it's a struggle to understand what the nature of the normative conclusions are without thinking of consistent moral beliefs (to the extent they exist) as the outcome of a kind of constant negototiation (or if you prefer a political settlement) among all members of a society such that the conclusions are slowly changing over time within a polity as well as changing between different cultures and ages.
> It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone believes in moral realism and almost everyone, at least in the circles I usually move in, denies believing in it.
Count me as someone who moves in the same circles, and subscribes to something closer to moral realism than to the more popular consequentialism and utilitarianism. (It's got elements of utilitarianism in there too, and a chunk of cultural relativism.)
OTOH, I'm not an academic; I'm a (retired) engineer. So perhaps "what works" is a bit stronger in my makeup, and "can I express it as a theory" is a bit weaker. Certainly I can't express my moral approach as any kind of simple theory.
> If morality is real and you act as if it were not, you will do bad things — and if morality is real you ought not to do bad things. If morality is an illusion and you act as if it were not you may miss the opportunity to commit a few pleasurable wrongs but since morality correlates tolerably, although not perfectly, with rational self interest, the cost is unlikely to be large. It follows that if you are uncertain which of the two explanations is correct you ought to act as if the first is.
I think there's an excluded middle here. When I encounter arguments about morality, they are generally about areas where moral feelings are NOT shared. Should all females subordinate themselves to all males? Is a zygote of equal moral worth to the woman whose uterus it might successfully implant itself in? Is respecting private property more important than saving lives? Is silence equivalent to violence?
No one argues about whether killing random members of your own social group/tribe/nation is good; at most they argue about what penalty it's appropriate to impose. And they'll continue not to argue about this regardless of what moral theories they profess. They also won't, in general, have any particular desire to do so. (Someone who has harmed or threatened you is not a RANDOM member of your social group, and someone you've "othered" is not a member of YOUR social group. Humans regularly argue about whether killing people in those categories counts as "murder", and often decide otherwise.)
Morality gets interesting when thinking about tradeoffs - which principle should take precedence in some particular case? Was that particular killing "murder", "self defence", or "war"? At an individual level, is this statement on my resume "lie", "exaggeration", "normal resume speak", or "excessively modest"? Should I edge a bit closer to what feels like "lie" to me, because "everyone does it" and "I really need this job"? (And humans are really good at finding ways to reclassify actions as "not really wrong".) I don't think anyone really needs reasons not to do things they themselves believe to be wrong.
I don’t think that the active attitude (negative or positive) of a person described as moral relativist towards some human action can be considered inconsistent from the point of view of a relativist. Let’s us assume for example that I am such a relativist and I see my mother being murdered in front of my eyes. Most likely I’m going to feel a wild range of emotions towards the culprit because it is something that I do not want being done to me. I’m going to try to stop the murderer, persuade him to stop and try to punish him afterwards. All things that are consistent with both being a secret moral realist and not realizing it, or having a set of commitments and behaviour that try to minimize the chance of finding myself in such unwanted situations (without necessarily believe there is anything wrong with the situation in itself). For example if I find my mother being eaten alive by a lion, I’m going to try and stop the lion, kill him if necessary or convenient, without thinking of the lion as committing a morally wrong action. Moral relativism does not entail respect towards others moral systems or actions.
Moreover this does not even apply to moral skeptics or error theorist. Being convinced that there are no moral facts whatsover doesn’t entail being indifferent to what happens to my own life or others as a consequence of some actions. For example I might think that the proposition “lying is wrong” is epistemically incorrect but still act to minimize the chance of being lied to because I find it inconvenient to achieve my goals. Which is not the same as the non-cognitivist position which says that “lying is wrong” is in reality an expression of taste or preference.
Taking for a moment the moral realist point of view and try to apply your argument to them is fallacious. I still observe the same kind of apparent inconsistency in other moral realists, but that will not give me ground to say that they are secretely moral relativists. Let us assume that lying is wrong and that my professor believes this is a moral fact. I still observe that when a student push back on a professor’s theory that is wrong, the professor even knowing that he is wrong, actively lies to the student because he wants to defend his pride. From this behaviour I still cannot derive that the professor is a secret moral relativist because his action is inconsistent with his moral beliefs. Maybe the professor is simply mistaken and overran by emotions, which is a possibility that is taken seriously by lots of religions, enfacizing how human beings are morally fallacious even with the best of intentions.
Summing up I do not see how one can derive that the moral relativist position is inconsistent with an active attitude towards actions.
Passing to your improved Pascal’s Wager I think that there is a critical mistake in your line of reasoning. Mainly that it is not seems that common sense morality roughly correlates with individual self interest, but rather with social interest. For example let us assume that we have a society full of virtuous people that do not lie, steal and all other common sense virtues. In that society it is extremely convient to be a thief and a lier for one individual. But for a society it is not convinient having thiefs and liers going around. And that is why the equilibrium is not a population with all virtuous people.
To your third argument, you say that it is theoretically possible to derive some oughts from specific sets of is. As for that you give the following set of is statements as a possible example: intuitionism is true and there exist some behaviours considered good that are not explain by evolution or other explanations. However this set of “is-statements” has some problems in “Hume’s eye”. First the hypothesis of “intuitionism is true” by himself denies the is-ought impossibility. So if you use in one of your premises “you can derive oughts from is” it is not surprising that at the end you find it possible to do so. Intuitionism claims that “intuitions (that are a fact) know (or approximate) moral truths”, which is the exact negation of Hume’s position. We cannot assume it to be true in order to prove Hume’s argument false. The second problem is that even if there exist behaviours considered good not explained by any other theory, this is not enough to prove that intuitions are a source of moral knowledge. Maybe they are a source of absolutely no knowledge. Maybe they are just a collective fever dream similar to the one that people in the Matrix where subjected to while enslaved by evil machines. All of those alternatives and many others are compatible with Hume’s position and it is not clear why we should ignore them.
David, If I'm not mistaken, I have heard you say something to effect that you tend to make consequentialist arguments over moral ones, largely because you think you have better arguments along those lines, and that you and socialists will typically disagree about the facts, but in general will share the same basic moral assumptions. I'm curious if I have your position right, because this is something I'm very split on, especially when you consider that egalitarianism is assumed to have inherent value by many people, which I don't think is true (Huemer wrote a paper arguing that egalitarianism does not have inherent value, and it's pretty convincing).
The problem with moral realism is that it is not possible to establish a clear distinction between "Psychopats" and "Normal" as has been shown by the behavioural geneticists, we are all in a spectrum. Their findings (that DNA has a dramatic effect on human psychology and that psychiatric disorders are caused by many genes of small effect) send us in the direction of Hume. Morality is inside the brain, is not perceived. But our brains are different to one another, so morality has to be different.
> Perhaps our common moral perceptions are the result of evolution hard wiring into us beliefs that caused our ancestors to behave in ways that led to reproductive success. Perhaps we have been indoctrinated by our societies with beliefs that make societies more likely to survive, consistent across societies because societies that didn’t conform didn’t survive.
Ding ding ding!
Two things:
1. Looking at history really tells me not to trust intuitions. Slavery, sexism, the Holocaust, etc. etc. etc.
2. Most importantly - there is every reason to think that there is just physics. We *want* to believe more (we're special, we don't really die, etc.) and loads of smart people have wasted their lives trying to prove this. So we really have to beware of giving into our desires.
I don’t think you are arguing against Hume's actual position. He pointed out that if a deductive logical argument has only statements containing “is”, but the conclusion has an “ought” in it, some purely logical slight of hand has occurred. They are different sorts of predicates. In his comments immediately after the passage where he disparages the deductive method, he concludes that we use a variety of perception to come to moral conclusions. Here is the passage, from his A Treatise of Human Nature:
“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason shou’d be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the reader; and am perswaded, that this small attention wou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason. [Sect. 2. Moral distinctions deriv’d from a moral sense ] Thus the course of the argument leads us to conclude, that since vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas, it must be by means of some impression or sentiment they occasion, that we are able to mark the difference betwixt them. Our decisions concerning moral rectitude and depravity are evidently perceptions;”
It’s not obvious that he would agree with your account in this blog post, but his complaint about deductions indeed would not apply to it.
"Perhaps our common moral perceptions are the result of evolution hard wiring into us beliefs that caused our ancestors to behave in ways that led to reproductive success."
I think this gets to the heart of the matter. Evolution designed wings that somehow grasp the fundamentals of aerodynamics. These fundamentals are real, at least in a sense. Similarly, morality is about coordinating actions in group settings. Evolution primed us to be able to recognize actions and beliefs that facilitated success in bands of gossiping foragers who got to choose who they did and did not cooperate with. Furthermore, we evolved to view morals as sacrosanct rather than instrumental, because people who viewed them this way proved over time to be better candidates for cooperation.
When someone says that moral realism is true, I'm not sure what exactly is being claimed. When someone makes an ordinary moral statement like "killing babies is wrong" I can understand their speech-act as something like a policy proposal: "let's not kill any babies (and let's punish anyone who does, etc.)". But I'm not sure what policy proposal the statement "moral realism is true" is supposed to correspond to. (Unless it's something like "let's do whatever most people say we should do, ceteris paribus", as seems to be suggested by your post.)
Since the claim being argued for is not (in my view) prima facie meaningful, the comparison between the quality of evidence for factual claims and evidence for moral claims falls flat.
Maybe I spoke too hastily.
“ if morality is real you ought not to do bad things.”
Let me summarize the argument as
1) Morality is either real or unreal.
2) If morality is real, everyone ought not to do bad things.
3) If morality is unreal, there are no bad things, just stupid things or inconvenient things, and no one has any obligations that they did not embrace by choice.
4) considering possible states of the world and strategies, to act as if morality is real is more prudent that acting otherwise.
Does this argument deduce an ought from an is? No. It escapes Hume through two escape hatches. It has a premise with an ought in it, premise 2. And it does not conclude that we ought to do anything. Rather, it recommends a strategy as more prudent. If we take the conclusion as containing the same kind of ought that appears in the premise, we equivocate between what we ought to do as a matter of moral obligation (premise) and what we ought to do as a matter of prudence (conclusion).
To go further would require another premise:
3a) If acting as if morality is real is more prudent than alternative strategies, then morality must be real.
This premise does not seem self-evident, and Hume has the other escape hatch anyhow.
I apologize if my summary seems like a straw man.
I am confused by the status of “morality is real.” This seems to be both a factual claim and a normative claim at the same time. If morality is real, it is both. I suppose we should then distinguish between facts and preferences instead.
Consistency simply doesn’t close the logical gap; you’re shifting to the problem of induction, which is also infamously unsolved.
The general point about non moral facts (such as peoples beliefs/intuitions) being evidence for moral facts is very much true, and fits nicely in a Bayesian framework, this makes the issue of moral disagreement (at least among roughly rational agents) even more interesting given Aumann's agreement theorem, my guess is that some resolution would probably involve justification about priors.
"It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone believes in moral realism and almost everyone, at least in the circles I usually move in, denies believing in it." At least in the circles I'm familiar with, roughly the opposite seems to be true, that is very few people would actually openly commit themselves to moral anti-realism (even if they clearly belief such), and those who do, often try their hardest to salvage every last bit of moral realism, moral language, ethical norms and such (would be happy to give examples) as opposed to just strictly speaking/thinking in terms of positive facts and preferences and beliefs etc. If I was to speculate I would say that this small group of moralistic anti-realists (who seem to me to be most anti-realists) probably experience many of the moral properties that regular people experience, but consciously find such properties too spooky.
The Pascals Wager you suggest, whilst I know you find to be very forceful, I think among many of the committed anti-realists even if they were 99% sure that moral properties existed and irreducible normativity was a thing. They would probably be almost indifferent to their existence, even if they as a matter of fact ought to care, and acknowledged this as being true. So I think your argument isn't very forceful with respects to the target demographic. I should also add that I can personally easily imagine lots scenarios where I do come to believe in moral properties, a simple "moral property detector" that seems to involve something very primitive/fundamental would be an example of such a scenario, say naturally occurring crystals that glow red when you point it at a baby being stomped on and green when you point it at a someone giving money to the against malaria foundation etc.
I’m not religious and never have been: I come from a non-religious family. I generally behave according to my own sense of morality, because I don’t usually find it difficult to do so, and because it makes me feel better. My morality is similar to other people’s, but not exactly the same in all respects.
This is normal. Morality differs at least slightly from person to person, so that any two people are unlikely to agree about every detail.
It seems to me that the topic of abortion is more political than moral. Forcing women to have unwanted children is (a) authoritarian behaviour and (b) likely to result in unhappy mothers and unhappy children, and increasing the unhappiness of the population is not a good thing to do politically. Of course, this is easy for me to say, because I live in western Europe, where abortion is readily available and uncontroversial for most people.
I literally don't even know what something being 'morally true' could possibly mean. It's "morally wrong" to do something? What does that mean? I oughtn't do it? Why not? Because it's morally wrong?
If it's to do with social benefit, why 'ought' I do what provides social benefit, other than a fiat declaration of the morality of such an action?
I'm ok with your conclusion that it's "logically possible to get positive evidence for normative conclusions", but I think it's a struggle to understand what the nature of the normative conclusions are without thinking of consistent moral beliefs (to the extent they exist) as the outcome of a kind of constant negototiation (or if you prefer a political settlement) among all members of a society such that the conclusions are slowly changing over time within a polity as well as changing between different cultures and ages.
> It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone believes in moral realism and almost everyone, at least in the circles I usually move in, denies believing in it.
Count me as someone who moves in the same circles, and subscribes to something closer to moral realism than to the more popular consequentialism and utilitarianism. (It's got elements of utilitarianism in there too, and a chunk of cultural relativism.)
OTOH, I'm not an academic; I'm a (retired) engineer. So perhaps "what works" is a bit stronger in my makeup, and "can I express it as a theory" is a bit weaker. Certainly I can't express my moral approach as any kind of simple theory.
> If morality is real and you act as if it were not, you will do bad things — and if morality is real you ought not to do bad things. If morality is an illusion and you act as if it were not you may miss the opportunity to commit a few pleasurable wrongs but since morality correlates tolerably, although not perfectly, with rational self interest, the cost is unlikely to be large. It follows that if you are uncertain which of the two explanations is correct you ought to act as if the first is.
I think there's an excluded middle here. When I encounter arguments about morality, they are generally about areas where moral feelings are NOT shared. Should all females subordinate themselves to all males? Is a zygote of equal moral worth to the woman whose uterus it might successfully implant itself in? Is respecting private property more important than saving lives? Is silence equivalent to violence?
No one argues about whether killing random members of your own social group/tribe/nation is good; at most they argue about what penalty it's appropriate to impose. And they'll continue not to argue about this regardless of what moral theories they profess. They also won't, in general, have any particular desire to do so. (Someone who has harmed or threatened you is not a RANDOM member of your social group, and someone you've "othered" is not a member of YOUR social group. Humans regularly argue about whether killing people in those categories counts as "murder", and often decide otherwise.)
Morality gets interesting when thinking about tradeoffs - which principle should take precedence in some particular case? Was that particular killing "murder", "self defence", or "war"? At an individual level, is this statement on my resume "lie", "exaggeration", "normal resume speak", or "excessively modest"? Should I edge a bit closer to what feels like "lie" to me, because "everyone does it" and "I really need this job"? (And humans are really good at finding ways to reclassify actions as "not really wrong".) I don't think anyone really needs reasons not to do things they themselves believe to be wrong.
I don’t think that the active attitude (negative or positive) of a person described as moral relativist towards some human action can be considered inconsistent from the point of view of a relativist. Let’s us assume for example that I am such a relativist and I see my mother being murdered in front of my eyes. Most likely I’m going to feel a wild range of emotions towards the culprit because it is something that I do not want being done to me. I’m going to try to stop the murderer, persuade him to stop and try to punish him afterwards. All things that are consistent with both being a secret moral realist and not realizing it, or having a set of commitments and behaviour that try to minimize the chance of finding myself in such unwanted situations (without necessarily believe there is anything wrong with the situation in itself). For example if I find my mother being eaten alive by a lion, I’m going to try and stop the lion, kill him if necessary or convenient, without thinking of the lion as committing a morally wrong action. Moral relativism does not entail respect towards others moral systems or actions.
Moreover this does not even apply to moral skeptics or error theorist. Being convinced that there are no moral facts whatsover doesn’t entail being indifferent to what happens to my own life or others as a consequence of some actions. For example I might think that the proposition “lying is wrong” is epistemically incorrect but still act to minimize the chance of being lied to because I find it inconvenient to achieve my goals. Which is not the same as the non-cognitivist position which says that “lying is wrong” is in reality an expression of taste or preference.
Taking for a moment the moral realist point of view and try to apply your argument to them is fallacious. I still observe the same kind of apparent inconsistency in other moral realists, but that will not give me ground to say that they are secretely moral relativists. Let us assume that lying is wrong and that my professor believes this is a moral fact. I still observe that when a student push back on a professor’s theory that is wrong, the professor even knowing that he is wrong, actively lies to the student because he wants to defend his pride. From this behaviour I still cannot derive that the professor is a secret moral relativist because his action is inconsistent with his moral beliefs. Maybe the professor is simply mistaken and overran by emotions, which is a possibility that is taken seriously by lots of religions, enfacizing how human beings are morally fallacious even with the best of intentions.
Summing up I do not see how one can derive that the moral relativist position is inconsistent with an active attitude towards actions.
Passing to your improved Pascal’s Wager I think that there is a critical mistake in your line of reasoning. Mainly that it is not seems that common sense morality roughly correlates with individual self interest, but rather with social interest. For example let us assume that we have a society full of virtuous people that do not lie, steal and all other common sense virtues. In that society it is extremely convient to be a thief and a lier for one individual. But for a society it is not convinient having thiefs and liers going around. And that is why the equilibrium is not a population with all virtuous people.
To your third argument, you say that it is theoretically possible to derive some oughts from specific sets of is. As for that you give the following set of is statements as a possible example: intuitionism is true and there exist some behaviours considered good that are not explain by evolution or other explanations. However this set of “is-statements” has some problems in “Hume’s eye”. First the hypothesis of “intuitionism is true” by himself denies the is-ought impossibility. So if you use in one of your premises “you can derive oughts from is” it is not surprising that at the end you find it possible to do so. Intuitionism claims that “intuitions (that are a fact) know (or approximate) moral truths”, which is the exact negation of Hume’s position. We cannot assume it to be true in order to prove Hume’s argument false. The second problem is that even if there exist behaviours considered good not explained by any other theory, this is not enough to prove that intuitions are a source of moral knowledge. Maybe they are a source of absolutely no knowledge. Maybe they are just a collective fever dream similar to the one that people in the Matrix where subjected to while enslaved by evil machines. All of those alternatives and many others are compatible with Hume’s position and it is not clear why we should ignore them.
David, If I'm not mistaken, I have heard you say something to effect that you tend to make consequentialist arguments over moral ones, largely because you think you have better arguments along those lines, and that you and socialists will typically disagree about the facts, but in general will share the same basic moral assumptions. I'm curious if I have your position right, because this is something I'm very split on, especially when you consider that egalitarianism is assumed to have inherent value by many people, which I don't think is true (Huemer wrote a paper arguing that egalitarianism does not have inherent value, and it's pretty convincing).
The problem with moral realism is that it is not possible to establish a clear distinction between "Psychopats" and "Normal" as has been shown by the behavioural geneticists, we are all in a spectrum. Their findings (that DNA has a dramatic effect on human psychology and that psychiatric disorders are caused by many genes of small effect) send us in the direction of Hume. Morality is inside the brain, is not perceived. But our brains are different to one another, so morality has to be different.
> Perhaps our common moral perceptions are the result of evolution hard wiring into us beliefs that caused our ancestors to behave in ways that led to reproductive success. Perhaps we have been indoctrinated by our societies with beliefs that make societies more likely to survive, consistent across societies because societies that didn’t conform didn’t survive.
Ding ding ding!
Two things:
1. Looking at history really tells me not to trust intuitions. Slavery, sexism, the Holocaust, etc. etc. etc.
2. Most importantly - there is every reason to think that there is just physics. We *want* to believe more (we're special, we don't really die, etc.) and loads of smart people have wasted their lives trying to prove this. So we really have to beware of giving into our desires.
https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
I don’t think you are arguing against Hume's actual position. He pointed out that if a deductive logical argument has only statements containing “is”, but the conclusion has an “ought” in it, some purely logical slight of hand has occurred. They are different sorts of predicates. In his comments immediately after the passage where he disparages the deductive method, he concludes that we use a variety of perception to come to moral conclusions. Here is the passage, from his A Treatise of Human Nature:
“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason shou’d be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the reader; and am perswaded, that this small attention wou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason. [Sect. 2. Moral distinctions deriv’d from a moral sense ] Thus the course of the argument leads us to conclude, that since vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas, it must be by means of some impression or sentiment they occasion, that we are able to mark the difference betwixt them. Our decisions concerning moral rectitude and depravity are evidently perceptions;”
It’s not obvious that he would agree with your account in this blog post, but his complaint about deductions indeed would not apply to it.