8/27/11

The Confession of Joel Marks

Joel Marks is a recovering moralist, as he confessed a couple of days ago at The Stone. What I find especially notable about his column is the way it's reminiscent of other confessions--especially Tolstoy's (excerpts here). Only Marks's journey is in the other direction--from belief to disbelief, and what's at issue is objective morality. Here's a very Tolstoyan passage:
A friend had been explaining to me the nature of her belief in God. At one point she likened divinity to the beauty of a sunset: the quality lay not in the sunset but in her relation to the sunset. I thought to myself: “Ah, if that is what she means, then I could believe in that kind of God. For when I think about the universe, I am filled with awe and wonder; if that feeling is God, then I am a believer.”

But then it hit me: is not morality like this God? In other words, could I believe that, say, the wrongness of a lie was any more intrinsic to an intentionally deceptive utterance than beauty was to a sunset or wonderfulness to the universe? Does it not make far more sense to suppose that all of these phenomena arise in my breast, that they are the responses of a particular sensibility to otherwise valueless events and entities?

So someone else might respond completely differently from me, such that for him or her, the lie was permissible, the sunset banal, the universe nothing but atoms and the void. Yet that prospect was so alien to my conception of morality that it was tantamount to there being no morality at all. For essential to morality is that its norms apply with equal legitimacy to everyone; moral relativism, it has always seemed to me, is an oxymoron. Hence I saw no escape from moral nihilism.

The dominoes continued to fall. I had thought I was a secularist because I conceived of right and wrong as standing on their own two feet, without prop or crutch from God. We should do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, period. But this was a God too. It was the Godless God of secular morality, which commanded without commander – whose ways were thus even more mysterious than the God I did not believe in, who at least had the intelligible motive of rewarding us for doing what He wanted.

And what is more, I had known this. At some level of my being there had been the awareness, but I had brushed it aside. I had therefore lived in a semi-conscious state of self-delusion – what Sartre might have called bad faith. But in my case this was also a pun, for my bad faith was precisely the belief that I lacked faith in a divinity.

In the three years since my anti-epiphany I have attempted to assess these surprising revelations and their implications for my life and work.
Now have a look at Tolstoy's Confession.  Very similar.

Why am I pointing this out?  Because I think the genre is compelling but deceptive.  The convert presents himself (or herself) as traveling from darkness into light, and the sheer drama makes us think--yes, yes, yes, that's the light!  The story line of revelation is no substitute for good arguments.

**

Another tack. I argued here a while back that it's a very bad idea for atheism to conjoin itself with any particular metaethical theory, but particularly with the so-called error theory about morality.  Marks has become an error theorist.  All moral claims, on his view, are in error.
But suddenly I knew it no more. I was not merely skeptical or agnostic about it; I had come to believe, and do still, that these things are not wrong. But neither are they right; nor are they permissible. The entire set of moral attributions is out the window. Think of this analogy: A tribe of people lives on an isolated island. They have no formal governmental institutions of any kind. In particular they have no legislature. Therefore in that society it would make no sense to say that someone had done something “illegal.” But neither would anything be “legal.” The entire set of legal categories would be inapplicable. In just this way I now view moral categories.
Certainly I am not the first to have had thoughts like these, and today the philosopher Richard Garner in particular is a soul mate. Nor has there been a shortage of alternative conceptions of morality to the one I held. But the personal experiment of excluding all moral concepts and language from my thinking, feeling and actions has proved so workable and attractive, I am convinced that anyone who gives it a fair shot would likely find it to his liking.

Actually, no, I would not find it to my liking--as I said here.  I think there's a great deal we wish to say in ordinary and extraordinary situations that can't be said at all, or at least can't be said as well, without moral vocabulary.

For example, when I visited Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam this summer, there were many things that needed to be said and thought.  I thought it was wrong that this Jewish girl had to hide for years, just because she was Jewish, and that someone betrayed the family, and that she then died an unimaginably miserable death in a concentration camp.  Marks and Garner want me to say "it wasn't wrong, and it wasn't not wrong and it wasn't right and it wasn't not right...." All of these moral concepts are out the door, like the category of the taboo (credit for analogy:  Richard Joyce) is a relic of past thinking.

This should become the conjoined twin of atheism?

**

Never fear, Marks suggests, we can still oppose and support the things we wish to oppose and support--
For instance, I used to think that animal agriculture was wrong. Now I will call a spade a spade and declare simply that I very much dislike it and want it to stop. Has this lessened my commitment to ending it? I do not find that to be the case at all. Does this lessen my ability to bring others around to sharing my desires, and hence diminish the prospects of ending animal agriculture? On the contrary, I find myself in a far better position than before to change minds – and, what is more important, hearts. For to argue that people who use animals for food and other purposes are doing something terribly wrong is hardly the way to win them over. That is more likely to elicit their defensive resistance.

Instead I now focus on conveying information: about the state of affairs on factory farms and elsewhere, the environmental devastation that results and, especially, the sentient, intelligent, gentle and noble natures of the animals who are being brutalized and slaughtered. It is also important to spread knowledge of alternatives, like how to adopt a healthy and appetizing vegan diet. If such efforts will not cause people to alter their eating and buying habits, support the passage of various laws and so forth, I don’t know what will.
So nothing has changed, and everything has changed. For while my desires are the same, my manner of trying to implement them has altered radically. I now acknowledge that I cannot count on either God or morality to back up my personal preferences or clinch the case in any argument. I am simply no longer in the business of trying to derive an ought from an is. I must accept that other people sometimes have opposed preferences, even when we are agreed on all the relevant facts and are reasoning correctly.
What does "it's wrong" do that "I don't like it and want it to stop" doesn't do?  It says that the state of affairs itself makes my dislike correct and appropriate.  For example, the awful suffering of young Anne Frank, and her being tormented just for being Jewish, is such as to make my dislike the only appropriate reaction.  If it were all a question of liking and not liking, I'm afraid we'd have to live with the strange diversity of human likes and dislikes.  Anne Frank's betrayer liked betraying her and her family. I think people are more likely to stop killing people for being Jewish, stop tormenting animals for profit, if they do have the notion of their likes and dislikes being either grounded in reality or ungrounded.

Analogy--suppose I am taking a math class, and the teacher tells us at the beginning of the semester that there are no mathematical truths. There are just answers to problems that she likes very much, and she's eager to have her students share her likes and dislikes.  She then tries to inculcate these preferences.  Will the students do as well, now that they lack the concept that math problems have right answers?  My guess is no--that particular meta-mathematics will alter performance.

The X-phi crowd will have to test this out, but I would hypothesize that people who accept the moral error theory will reach different and worse conclusions about moral questions.  And note--to test that hypothesis, we don't get to take people who have been completely imbued with conventional morality, and see if changing their metaethics makes a difference. We're going to have to round up some very young children and see what happens after we tell them that moral matters have to do with likes and dislikes, not with what's really right and wrong.  I suspect that metaethical theories have real world impact.

**

Ah, but moral realism must be rejected, because it involves "deriving ought from is", and that's a terrible mistake.  This is where things get interesting and difficult. It's unfortunate to see this Humean adage (you can't derive "ought" from "is") turned into a one sentence resolution of the entire philosophical debate about the nature of morality.  Must run and do Saturday morning chores, but here's food for thought--statements about consciousness cannot be derived from statements about brain states.  It takes quite a bit of philosophy of mind to see this, but they can't. That's no reason to think consciousness isn't real.  In fact, we know (first hand) that it is real. Moral facts could be genuine, even if not derivable from any other facts.

23 comments:

Rhys said...

"I think people are more likely to stop killing people for being Jewish, stop tormenting animals for profit, if they do have the notion of their likes and dislikes being either grounded in reality or ungrounded."

This sounds like the "useful fiction" approach that sees some good in religion whether it is true or not. It doesn't sound like you're saying that there's definitely an objective morality. It sounds like you think that believing in an objective morality leads to better outcomes.

Rhys said...

I agree with you that the language of moral objectivism is more convenient and satisfying. And if there is no right or wrong, then clearly it's not wrong to talk as if there is a right and wrong. If Marks is right that there is no right, the only reason to talk like there is no objective morality is if you prefer talking that way.

Jean Kazez said...

Part of the sales pitch for the error theory is that we don't need the notion of objective morality--it does nothing for us, we can give it up without any negative impact. Marks says that and so does Garner. I'm responding to that contention, that's all. You're inferring too much from my response--that I think we ought to retain objective morality if it's a "useful fiction"--but no, I didn't say or imply that. I'm inclined to think objective morality is not a fiction at all.

Rhys said...

I agree that it could be dangerous for everyone to stop believing in an objective right and wrong. Maybe I need to re-read the Marks piece, but I got the feeling that he wasn't advocating a widespread abandonment of that belief. His main point seemed to be that advocacy could be more effective if activists avoided talking in moral absolutes, telling meat eaters they are objectively wrong and so on. To an extent, that might be true. This could be one reason why Jonathan Safran Foer is more effective than Gary Francione.

Jean Kazez said...

I think he really is saying we should stop believing in moral truths, like we should stop believing in God.

That's a really interesting point about Francione vs. Foer, though. Foer's effectiveness might be grist for Marks's mill--the's a lot of "just facts" in Foer, plus a lot of "how I feel." Actually, Rhys, you wrote a review of Foer that emphasized some phrase or other he uses constantly. Something sort of irksome... What was that?!

Rhys said...

Ha, yeah, in Eating Animals he liked to say "matters" a lot. "[Something about meat or animals] matters." Or “[Blank] is a [blank] that matters."

Here's where I compiled all those from Eating Animals:

http://letthemeatmeat.com/post/443136310/eating-animals-a-book-that-matters

Jean Kazez said...

Ha, that's A LOT of mattering. Your pre-review there was pretty hilarious, even though I do think he's a good guy. I must visit your blog--haven't done so for a while.

crystal said...

I saw this post at The Stone too and also wrote something about it - it reminded me of a lecture I'd heard on Kant. When I do somethimes think God doesn't exist and that there are no intrinsic rights or wrongs, I also think that I'd still feel sick about torturing people or hurting animals. Maybe this means that means that deep down on a practical level I do feel and respond as if some things are right/wrong?

Simon Rippon said...

Great post!

Let me add another problem that wasn't mentioned with substituting "I don't like that!" for all uses of "That's wrong!" The problem is that different actions and attitudes are often appropriate towards things that are morally wrong, than would be appropriate towards things that I merely don't like. I'm not supposed to go around imposing my every desire on other people - especially my every desire about how *they* behave! If I don't like the wallpaper they've used to redecorate Anne Frank's home, well that's probably none of my business and I should probably just keep my mouth shut. That's still the case even if I *really, really* dislike the wallpaper. But if they're dragging her off to a concentration camp, well that's morally *wrong*. And I'd better stand up and do something about it, if doing anything about it is within my power. In losing sight of the distinction between morality and his own desires, Marks also loses sight of the differences in attitudes and actions that the two kinds of thing call for. (This might explain the difference in behaviour that is predicted in the post as a result of holding an error theory.)

One more thing: suppose that moral responses are indeed "the responses of a particular sensibility to otherwise valueless events and entities". Suppose also that it's intrinsic to moral discourse being the kind of thing it is that whatever else it demands, it demands that we respond in a way in which all others can (ideally) *come to agree* to respond - a shared system of rules. Then so what if someone else "responds differently" to me? If we aren't in agreement already, then it follows that at least one of us coming up short in our moral judgments. There's a moral argument to be had here, and no moral relativism in sight - yet there's no need for a platonic realm of "instrinsic" rightness and wrongness to justify it.

Jean Kazez said...

Thanks for the comment, Simon. I'm not sure how to square "no intrinsic rightness/wrongness" with the idea that moral discourse is the kind of thing that forces people to either agree to disagree ... but certainly see that as an attractive possibility. Intrinsic good/bad and rightness/wrongness are by all means strange things to countenance.

Rhys said...

Actually, I'd love some feedback on my latest entry.

Faust said...

It seems to me that you and Marks are talking past each other here. Marks writes:

“…is not morality like this God? In other words, could I believe that, say, the wrongness of a lie was any more intrinsic to an intentionally deceptive utterance than beauty was to a sunset or wonderfulness to the universe? Does it not make far more sense to suppose that all of these phenomena arise in my breast, that they are the responses of a particular sensibility to otherwise valueless events and entities?”


This is not just conversion talk; this is the core claim(s) Wood’s is making. Though he’s framing this material in the form of questions, he’s clearly saying (or wants to say): sunsets have no intrinsic beauty, lies have no intrinsic wrongness. Morality is just like aesthetics.

Your response to this is:

“What does "it's wrong" do that "I don't like it and want it to stop" doesn't do? It says that the state of affairs itself makes my dislike correct and appropriate.”

In other words: “wrongness” indicates that some state of affairs is intrinsically “wrong.” “Wrongness” inheres in the very form and structure of some state of affairs. This is of course what Woods has explicitly rejected. Beauty is not intrinsic to sunsets, wrongness is not intrinsic to suffering. I don’t see that Anne Frank’s suffering is any more of an argument than Wood’s conversion story. It’s rhetorically powerful, but it does nothing that demonstrates that what happened to Frank is intrinsically wrong, any more than any story about suffering demonstrates the intrinsic wrongness of suffering. It’s the typical move made in these arguments, a variant of “are you telling me torturing babies is no objectively wrong!?!?” But it’s just an appeal to what “any decent person would believe.” It’s a question begging appeal.

The comparison to mathematics does serve as a good counter analogy to the aesthetics analogy. Woods: morality is like aesthetics. Kazez: No, morality is like mathematics. Unfortunately for Kazez, (and Woods) there are realist and anti-realist camps for both aesthetics and mathematics. So we can just port the whole argument over to the analogous discipline and start all over again. Some mathematics classes are in fact taught by mathematical anti-realists, and I seriously doubt that such classes output students that can’t do math.

I do think the real money here comes from thinking about the practical consequences (if any) that come from adopting one or another meta-ethical stance. But since time is short…another time.

March Hare said...

The morality I have today is slightly different to the one I had yesterday and to the one I will have tomorrow. It varies over time, depending on my mood, tiredness, the colour of the room and the presence of strong magnetic fields. At all points it is objective to me but by any other definition subjective. This is unlike mathematics - if a magnetic field changes my opinion on a mathematical problem there is an objective way to determine if I am mistaken. Not so with morality.

"What does "it's wrong" do that "I don't like it and want it to stop" doesn't do?"
It makes an intrinsic appeal to others that they should agree due to some shared set of objective values that makes whatever's happening objectively wrong. This may often be the case (dragging Anne off to a concentration camp) or it may not (smacking a naughty child).

The clash with your values is so strong, according to your current principles, that you cannot see how any other could view it differently so it must be objective. This is simply not the case. We have grown up surrounded by a shared culture and shared values hence we are so alike that we get to call things wrong and automatically expect common agreement.

This is not to fall into the trap of cultural relative morality, simply to say that our morality is a personal basket of values and preferences and from that we get to call things right and wrong, but we cannot blithely assume others will agree. But, as Joel Marks points out, we can still fight for what's right (in our opinion) but we will be infinitely more effective by appealing to other people's actual values and preferences than by assuming they share our own i.e. simply calling something 'wrong'. Which is not utilitarianism or anything like it, although the end result may be similar.

Jesse Parrish said...

Why am I pointing this out? Because I think the genre is compelling but deceptive. The convert presents himself (or herself) as traveling from darkness into light, and the sheer drama makes us think--yes, yes, yes, that's the light! The story line of revelation is no substitute for good arguments.

I agree, and I'll add that the way he presents the story raises some oddities. I find it strange that a moral philosopher took so long to understand a major, centuries-old metaethical position. But then, many people have a hard time contemplating what moral non-realism actually means, so perhaps this should not surprise me overmuch.

I think there's a great deal we wish to say in ordinary and extraordinary situations that can't be said at all, or at least can't be said as well, without moral vocabulary.

I am a moral non-realist, and yet I use moral vocabulary. The point is that this `moral vocabulary' does not correspond to truth-valued `shoulds' which are part of the universe and can be said to either occur or not occur. In a Bayesian formalism, I would account for this by not ascribing probabilities to `ethical statements'; instead, one may rework ethics in a decision-theoretic framework.

This should become the conjoined twin of atheism?

I of course have objections to various moral realisms, but I would not yet propose that all atheists should be moral non-realists. If you follow my link, you'll see why I think it has many advantages.

What does "it's wrong" do that "I don't like it and want it to stop" doesn't do? It says that the state of affairs itself makes my dislike correct and appropriate. For example, the awful suffering of young Anne Frank, and her being tormented just for being Jewish, is such as to make my dislike the only appropriate reaction. If it were all a question of liking and not liking, I'm afraid we'd have to live with the strange diversity of human likes and dislikes.

Yes, that would be a terrifying universe to live in. Imagine, for a moment, that people existed who were not bound by easily discernible, objective moral guidelines which would prevent actions you find horrifying and despicable. I wonder what that world would look like.

Analogy--suppose I am taking a math class, and the teacher tells us at the beginning of the semester that there are no mathematical truths. There are just answers to problems that she likes very much, and she's eager to have her students share her likes and dislikes. She then tries to inculcate these preferences. Will the students do as well, now that they lack the concept that math problems have right answers? My guess is no--that particular meta-mathematics will alter performance.

If the teacher was familiar with the history of mathematical philosophy, she might easily tell students that mathematical axioms and language are more-or-less dictated by pragmatic considerations. (Does it work in science? Can we do cool stuff with it?) A brief survey of the history of interpretations of probability - there's a hot and and ongoing dispute - would reveal such a problem in a severe way.

Jesse Parrish said...

[Continued]

The X-phi crowd will have to test this out, but I would hypothesize that people who accept the moral error theory will reach different and worse conclusions about moral questions.

I'm interested in seeing that test. I suspect, like Russell did of utilitarians, that moral non-realists - if they are serious about analyzing their actions, even just the `rational' components like expected consequences - would fare `better' than most, as judged by consensus. I wonder how the Kantians would fare.

Ah, but moral realism must be rejected, because it involves "deriving ought from is", and that's a terrible mistake. [...]

Well, I do not think that non-realism follows from `ought does not follow from is'. There's more to it than that. (I note, as a quibble, that there's something to be said for eliminative materialism or accepting the non-reality of a `self'.)

For those who want to see in simple form how moral argument `works' for non-realists, I ask you to follow my post.

TheDudeDiogenes said...

I don't see at all what is lost if moral prescriptivity doesn't exist. What is it even supposed to do? Say I'm wrong to be a moral sceptic, and our universe is one of objective moral truths. The existence of these putative facts don't stop anyone from, say, murdering others.

Telling someone X is wrong may stop them from X-ing, but isn't that because of their psychological beliefs about right and wrong, not because the supposed moral facts somehow prohibited them?

Mayhap if someone was informed of moral scepticism, our argument might fail, but there are other ways to persuade people (perhaps even more effective ways!) than relying on convincing them that it is objectively immoral to X. Anyway, I doubt moral scepticism is going to catch on widely, whether it has deleterious effects or not.

Furthermore, but relatedly, our understanding of the the universe doesn't seem to change at all if we don't believe in objective moral truths. What I mean (to crudely summarize a terrific article by Brian Leiter on Nietzsche and our best explanations) the diversity of moral views seems best explained by the fact that there are no objective facts of the matter.

Our ontology should be determined by our best explanations, and moral truths don't seem to figure into our best explanations. Take slavery - if it is REALLY wrong, why did it take so long to discover this? Why are there still those who think it's acceptable, nay, even RIGHT?

This probably isn't as clear as I'd hoped, so let me recommend Brian Leiter's article, Richard Garner's book "Beyond Morality" and Joshua Greene's dissertation on error theory. I find them to be quite convincing.

Jean Kazez said...

I think quite a bit does change if you think moral questions don't have objectively correct answers. Think about how you handle debates where the partners agree in advance that there is no objectively correct answer. You bat things around for a while, then drop the subject. That's how things go when people are debating whether some composer or artist or novelist is good--you stop at some point. After all, there's no right answer, so why on earth keep going?

I think that sort of stopping would be a bad thing in the domain of morality. Slavery came to an end partly because people did keep debating whether it's morally permissible. We've also had centuries of debate about the treatment of animals. There are lots of other moral debates under way (veiling of women, FGM, gay marriage, whether health care should be universal, etc. etc. etc.). The notion that no one's right in these debates would get in the way of their proceeding toward the most reasonable outcomes.

I think Marks is not confronting this head on. He thinks he can stop talking about what's objectively right, and start talking about what he likes, and nothing will change. But I think that's just not true. Conversations about what we like just do not have the same trajectory as conversations about what's true. In fact, it's rude to try to get people to like what you like, after a certain point. By contrast, it's perfectly reasonable to keep debating an issue on and on, for months, years, decades, centuries .... IF everyone shares the assumption that there's a truth of the matter that will one day be settled.

So that's my answer to your question... or part of it. One thing we lose if we jettison the idea of moral truth is the motivation to engage in rigorous, careful, sustained moral debate.

Jesse Parrish said...

Ok, I'll be more substantive. For a given moral dilemma:

1. Take various moral realist systems and describe the possible `stopping points'.
2. Take a moral non-realist system and describe the possible `stopping points'.
3. Look at the values which people normally have, whatever their meta-ethic.
4. Attempt to determine an answer to the following: under what circumstances do we expect two people with a moral realist stance to `stop', and under what circumstances do we expect two people with a moral non-realist stance to `stop'?

The interesting question is as follows: do we expect moral non-realists to have more trouble having substantive debate or do we expect (various combinations of) moral realists to have more trouble conducting substantive debate?

Take the trolley problem (kill one to save 5, or save 1 and let 5 die), and consider utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics, and moral non-realist ethics.

The utilitarian, maximizing utility, chooses to save the 5 people.
The deontologist, obeying an imperative against murder, chooses to let the 5 people die.
The moral non-realist contrasts the value of the two options: comparing the value of the imperative and one person, and the value of the 5 people and maximizing general happiness, and makes some choice, depending on his preferences.

Now, who did best? If you take either of the realist stances, your answer is a conditional, depending on the preferences of the non-realist: the non-realist might or might not have made the irrational decision, but someone will accuse him of irrationality.

A moral non-realist analyzing these choices, however, will not say that any decision was irrational per se, and the open optional is to be preferred. She might further argue that the non-realist was the most rational whatever his choice, as his took account of more possibilities and information.

A deontologist and a utilitarian debating the choice will arrive at an impasse, two of either metaethic will stop debating as they agree, but any debate involving a non-realist remains open.

Jesse Parrish said...

To capture the general insight: in non-realist argument, the debate goes on as long as the involved actors care about truth-seeking (gathering relevant information of the circumstances, their own desires, the desires of others, the implications of the choice on their utility function, etc.) or the limited amount of information present is sufficient to warrant ending the investigation.

And the latter is exactly what moral realism demands. Up to making a decision, a Kantian is satisfied on checking the categorical imperative. A utilitarian is less easily satisfied, but only worries about estimating expected values of the general happiness. A moral non-realist, however, is only as satisfied insofar as his desire to know more permits him to be.

I hold that moral non-realism is in fact the best metaethic for truth-seeking.

Jean Kazez said...

Jesse, Your response doesn't really "engage" with my argument. What I said was that we've got all sorts of ongoing public debates, and we want them to continue. In many cases, they seem to be heading in a desirable direction. For example, the debate about gay marriage is going in the right direction.

What I am worried about is the premature termination of these debates. So take the gay marriage debate. Now imagine a public debate is about to take place, but there's going to be a metaethics prelude to the debate. Joel Marks is the speaker, and he tells us that the statement "Gay marriage should be legalized" is neither true nor false. In fact, he goes on to say, some people just like gay marriage being legal. And other people dislike it. But there is no position on this that's more rational or less so, more objectively right or less so. It all comes down to likes and dislikes.

I think this will hinder the debate. People will not work as hard at making arguments. I believe when people do work hard, ultimately (perhaps after a lot of time) most people come to think gay marriage should be legal. So it would be very unwelcome to have Joel Marks in there bringing about premature termination of the debate.

Note--this is certainly not an argument for moral realism. I'm just addressing Marks's claim that we lose nothing by giving it up.

Jesse Parrish said...

Jesse, Your response doesn't really "engage" with my argument. What I said was that we've got all sorts of ongoing public debates, and we want them to continue. In many cases, they seem to be heading in a desirable direction. For example, the debate about gay marriage is going in the right direction.

Ok, so if I want to address this argument, what sort of thing would I have to show you? I translated your claims about the debates `stopping' in what I thought to be the most plausible way. So - in my strangely debate-preventing non-realist way - I pursued an open discussion by proposing a procedure for investigating this, and then looking at a familiar example in this context. What you appear to want more concerns the question of the feeling of motivation. Ok, one strategy is to convince people that a full exploration of relevant information and facts about each other is unnecessary (most forms of moral realism), or we can convince them that pursuing truth should lead them to a discussion wholly compatible with non-realism.

Our desires are not arbitrary. People care about principles. Non-realist moral argument `works'. You can stipulate that some principles are `true', or you can prove that to really value such principles, one must explore the relevant information and weigh the details with care. More strongly, one may need to convince others to recognize them, which requires investigation of various value systems and desires. I think that such insights are very... motivational.

In fact, he goes on to say, some people just like gay marriage being legal. And other people dislike it. But there is no position on this that's more rational or less so, more objectively right or less so. It all comes down to likes and dislikes.

Suppose Joel Marks actually talks like a non-realist, and instead illustrates that a ban on gay marriage requires e.g. a relatively low value on individual liberty and a relatively high value on the right of the State to prevent private contracts and police matters of morality. Then, he adds, "so I suppose that religious conservatives cannot be libertarians." Do you think that conservatives will find that uninteresting?

I think this will hinder the debate. People will not work as hard at making arguments. I believe when people do work hard, ultimately (perhaps after a lot of time) most people come to think gay marriage should be legal. So it would be very unwelcome to have Joel Marks in there bringing about premature termination of the debate.

No, I think that moral realism hinders debate. I think that moral absolutism hinders debate especially. Do you think people will be more inspired by ethical naturalism. "Given a (secular) set of ought-statements, including an ought involving the maximization of liberty, we should..."

Yes, that's much more powerful. Except that its force relies wholly on suppositions which moral non-realism can employ.

Russell Blackford said...

Jean, I will probably address the point you make over on my own blog, but just briefly (ha!) I doubt that that has to happen - this premature giving up you describe. In some cases, giving up quickly on reaching agreement and agreeing to live and let live may well be better than arguing interminably. But I suspect in practice that error theorists and the like are going to be as capable of arguing interminably as anyone else.

After all, even if there's no objectively binding right answer to a question such as "is same-sex marriage a good social institution to have" we still need to make a political decision, and that decision will still involve numerous issues of fact, of what people desire, and so on.

Anyway, to take an analogy. No one thinks that there is an objectively binding answer to the question of which book should have won the Booker of Bookers. And yet, I'm sure that there could be (and were) very rich critical discussions of the merits of Midnight's Children versus the other contenders. Those discussions could delve into the literary qualities of the works concerned, our ideas - perhaps conflicting, perhaps largely converging - about what we really want from literary novels, and on and on.

It's not as if dialogue where we recognise there is no ultimately binding answer becomes just, "'I like this' 'Well I like that'." Rather, it challenges us to think deeply about what is really going on - why I like certain things, what higher level desires I have to affirm or criticise my own surface-level desires, how desire-independent properties interface with our desires, how willing we are to understand and take into account the desires of others. And in many cases there may be complex questions about what the desire-independent properties really are. Even desire-independent properties may not be independent of other things about us (such as our interpretive protocols for reading novels), which then opens a new layer of questions.

In fact, an argument between two people trying to figure out what "we" should do - whether it's awarding a prize to a book or adopting a particular social policy - is likely to be just as complicated even if each participant acknowledges that there is no rationally-binding "right" answer. The discussions may, in many cases, be very much as they are now even if the idea of an objectively binding answer drops out of the picture.

Jean Kazez said...

Russell,

Your Booker example doesn't seem to me to work, because I think when people are vehemently disagreeing about the best book, or the best movie, or the best music (etc) they are at least at that time in the mode of seeing the debate as a rational one about which is really best. Each side gives reasons that are meant to show they are right and the other side is wrong. Objectivism about aesthetic properties can be called into question, but people in the middle of an aesthetic debate are not normally calling it into question.

Now--what happens if you introduce some sort of subjectivism or error theory about aesthetics? What happens normally, I think, is that the debate subsides. We don't try too hard to alter people's likes and dislikes, because we think everyone's entitled to their personal preferences. It's also much harder to do. It's one thing to try to persuade someone that opera or country music or some such is objectively good, but another to try to get them to like it.

OK, so one of your points is that when moral questions are being debated, we have to converge on answers because they are matters of general concern, public policy, etc. So--this is like the panel deciding on one book to give a prize to, or two people deciding what movie or restaurant to go to. They are forced into a discussion because they have to reach agreement. How's that going to go, if they agree in advance that there are no right answers?

You say the process will continue just as long and vigorously as a normal moral debate, but I don't see why that should be so. It's going to be a very different process from an ordinary debate, and may terminate in a different way. Perhaps the likes and dislikes just won't change. Perhaps early on things will just have to be put to a vote. But why one person-one vote? What procedure will they use to come to a decision, considering that they've thrown out moral concepts like fairness? I have no idea what this would look like, and don't think it makes sense to assume much similarity to normal moral debate.