Recently Gil Sanders joined Philosophy for The People to offer a defense of moral realism. It was an engaging 2.5 hour episode, offering an excellent introduction to the field of ethics and competing theories therein. Even those critical of moral realism, such as YouTube user Just Questions, said how much they enjoyed the conversation. That tells me we did something right.
What do you think about Moore's open question? Given any ought "out there", one can non trivially ask if it ought to be the case that they follow the ought "out there"
//Just Questions further misses the point with his remarks about gastronomic realism and suggesting that realists are mistaken to think anti-realists can’t use terms like good or better, etc. But I’m not aware of moral realists saying that. Of course realists note that anti-realists can use terms like good (as in, I desire something) or better (as in, I prefer something) in a sense that doesn’t commit them to moral realism. But that was not the context of Gil’s comment.//
It wasn’t Gil’s comment, it was yours. You said this at 47:30:
“Right, but notice, notice right there there’s an assumption of a better in the background of that. Right? [...] This is what you have to be so careful of in these types of conversations, there’s moral realism right in the background of that counter.”
If you weren’t suggesting that my use of moral language somehow implied moral realism, then what did you mean? Because that sure looks like what you said.
//Rather, Gil’s comment was like a common atheist attack you hear against Christianity: “See, my moral code is better because I can do the right thing just because it’s the right thing, not because I’m afraid God will send me to hell.”//
No, you are mistaken. Gil was describing my views, not a common atheist attack against Christianity. So the context of Gil’s remark was an attempt to paraphrase my own views, not someone else’s. I don’t know if this needs to be said, but I have a better understanding of what I said and what I meant than you or Gil, and what you describe here doesn’t reflect the point I was making, and that Gil was describing. I do not think it’s the case that my moral code is “better” than a Christian’s because I do the right thing “because it’s the right thing.”
//Clearly, the above is an assumption of realism: that it is objectively (stance-independently, if you like) better to do the right thing because you recognize it is the right thing and desire to pursue it for the sake of it itself rather than fear of punishment.//
Even if that were true, that’s nothing like what I said or what I meant, so no, nothing I said committed me to realism. If you’d like to hear what my point was straight from me, I’d be happy to explain what my point was. It in no way presupposes realism.
//Gil’s comment — which should have been obvious from his hypothetically alternatively moral fact scenario — is parallel to that, so Just Questions response fails.//
Were you not aware that the entire context of that part of the discussion was Gil describing my views? I am the Lance he was referring to. It’s incredibly bizarre to have you try to explain to me why I misinterpreted the context, when the context is effectively a discussion of what I myself had said. What I said isn’t parallel to the scenario you describe, and nothing I said presumes realism. I don’t know where, exactly, Gil is paraphrasing me from, but we can try to find what I said, we can quote it verbatim, and you could explain to me how what I said presumes realism.
References
Mandik, P. (2016). Meta-illusionism and qualia quietism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 140-148.
Pölzler, T. (2017). Revisiting folk moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(2), 455-476.
Pölzler, T. (2018). How to measure moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(3), 647-670.
Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2019). Empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Philosophy Compass, 14(5), e12589. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12589.
//No surprise then, as Thomas Polzter has argued, that studies in this field have been poorly conducted. //
Yes, the same Pölzler who, after publishing that paper, has published a number of studies that attempt to correct for the methodological shortcomings of earlier studies, and where he explicitly argues that most people are moral antirealists.
In your endnote, you say this:
“Notice that, contrary to Just Questions claim, Poltzers’ review of the literature indicates a favoring of moral realism, though he is critical of how these studies in this field are conducted, “At the beginning many researchers claimed that the studies support a tendency towards realism. Goodwin and Darley, for example, summed up the findings of their influential 2008 study as follows: “Individuals seem to identify a strong objective component to their core ethical beliefs […]. Arguably, many of our participants viewed their ethical beliefs as true in a mind-independent way” (2008: 1359; see also, e.g., Joyce 2006: 129–130). More recently, in contrast, people have been thought rather to favor realism with regard to some moral sentences and anti-realism with regard to others — depending on factors such as their openness to alternative moral views and their perceptions of consensus (e.g., Goodwin and Darley 2012; Pölzler 2017; Wright et al. 2013, 2014).””
I mean no disrespect, but what you say here is not true. It is not the case that Pölzler’s view of the literature is that the evidence favors moral realism. You cited an older paper from 2018, Pölzler (2018). Pölzler was discussing one early paper from Goodwin and Darley (2008) where the authors interpret their data as evidence that people favor realism, when Polzler argues that their interpretation of their own data is flawed. In fact, Pölzler argues for exactly this point in an earlier paper, Pölzler (2017), which I’ll quote:
“While most recent research has been thought to contradict this claim, four prominent earlier studies (by Goodwin and Darley, Wainryb et al., Nichols, and Nichols and Folds-Bennett) indeed seem to suggest a tendency towards realism. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed internal critique of these four studies. I argue that, once interpreted properly, all of them turn out in line with recent research. They suggest that most ordinary people experience morality as Bpluralist-^ rather than realist-seeming, i.e., that ordinary people have the intuition that realism is true with regard to some moral issues, but variants of anti-realism are true with regard to others. This result means that moral realism may be less well justified than commonly assumed.” (p. 455)
Yet this is moot, since these comments do not reflect the current state of the literature. You did not quote Pölzler’s more recent studies, all of which support the conclusion that most people are antirealists. This includes Pölzler & Wright (2019; 2020a; 2020b), and this isn’t even an exhaustive list. To quote Pölzler and Wright (2019), for instance, they say:
“Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. On the face of it, empirical research suggests that these intuitions favor nonobjectivism‐leaning metaethical pluralism” (p. 11)
Here is what they say at the start of Pölzler and Wright (2020b)
“In our study, most of our participants denied the existence of objective truths about most or all moral issues. In particular, many of them had the intuition that whether moral sentences are true depends both on their own moral beliefs and on the dominant moral beliefs within their culture (“anti-realist pluralism”). This finding suggests that the realist presumptive argument may have to be rejected and that instead anti-realism may have a presumption in its favor.” (p. 53)
These comments are the result of their more recent, and more rigorous research, which found that people are more inclined towards antirealism than realism. These studies are designed to correct for the methodological shortcomings of previous studies, which is why Pölzler has been critical of studies like Goodwin and Darley’s. The claim that Pölzler thinks the literature points towards people favoring moral realism is decisively false.
//Gil’s original comment, apparently repeating something from a moral anti-realist, was this: “I’m more strongly against murdering babies than you are. Because if you found a moral fact that you ought to torture babies for fun, would you do it?”//
Gil was referencing me. I’m Lance.
//Of course, if this argument has ever actually been used by an anti-realist, it is exceptionally weak, and something the Thomist would claim is impossible.//
The part you quoted consists of a claim and a question. I don’t see an argument. What weak argument are you seeing there?
//Clearly, this assertion only has pull in the context of moral realism: the suggestion quite obviously being that it is (stance-independently) better to be more strongly against torturing and murdering babies, and that anti-realism provides a sturdier basis for that.//
That’s not true. A moral antirealist can make the same claim even if they endorse moral standards you and others disagree with.
//Bigfoot research is not a seriously scholarly field. //
I’m not sure how seriously we should take contemporary academic philosophy as a serious field, either. I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek. But only a little.
//Moral facts are more like consciousness or existence than Bigfoot//
What moral facts are like was completely irrelevant to the Bigfoot illustration, so this remark doesn’t really address any points that I’ve made. I think you may have missed the point of the Bigfoot example.
In any case, I’m happy to consider the claim that moral facts are like consciousness on its own terms. This, unfortunately, isn’t much help to me, since I also don’t know what you mean by “consciousness”. As I said to Gil, I endorse qualia quietism and meta-illusionism about consciousness (see Mandik, 2016). As such, there’s a good chance I’d also deny that you have any “datum” on consciousness.
//Given our intuitive awareness of the moral realm //
Who is “our”? You’re welcome to report that you have an intuitive awareness of the moral realm, but that doesn’t justify making claims about what others are intuitively aware of. Claims about what others have intuitive awareness of are empirical, and you’d need to provide appropriate evidence to make such claims. I’m sure you can find quite a few people who claim to have intuitive awareness of the moral realm, but I can just as readily find people who claim to have seen aliens or ghosts. So it’d be helpful if you could be clear about who “our” is.
In any case, I deny there is any moral realm that you’re aware of. While I am happy to grant that you believe you have access to a moral realm, I don’t grant that you actually do. And it would be incredibly presumptuous to take as a starting piece of “datum,” that you do, in fact, have access to such a realm. If such a claim were to serve as a premise in an argument for moral realism, that would, in fact, be an instance of begging the question.
Since I deny that you have awareness of any moral realm, I’d be interested in arguments and evidence that you actually do have access to it. If you don’t have any good arguments and evidence, then the claim that you have access to such a realm is on the same epistemic footing as people who claim they have access to the spirit world and can consult with ghosts.
//and given how the vast majority of people act as if this moral realm is binding and real,//
Again, you’re helping yourself to empirical assertions about how people act that you have not provided any arguments, evidence, or justification for. I deny that the vast majority of people treat morality this way. Why do you think what you’re saying here is true?
Note, again, that you aren’t merely making a claim, you begin with “given.” Your assertions on this matter are very presumptuous. You speak as though you’re entitled to make uncontested proclamations about what is and isn’t the case, without providing any supporting arguments and evidence. This is unfortunate, since you claim that antirealist arguments lack explanatory adequacy, yet you’re showing a complete disregard for how well your claims are supported by available data.
//and given how there are no good arguments against moral realism that aren’t driven by some prior (highly controversial) metaphysics (like physicalism) or epistemology (like scientism), of course any theory that cannot explain the moral realm is explanatorily inadequate.
This is shockingly presumptuous. You make frequent use of claims like “given…” and “of course…” without justifying these claims. In fact, you haven’t presented any arguments that would justify the claim that there are no good arguments for antirealism that don't appeal to controversial metaphysics or epistemology. My position has nothing to do with physicalism or scientism. Which antirealist arguments are you talking about?
Unfortunately, it looks to me like you’re making assertions, but not presenting any arguments or evidence for them.
//Indeed, I would argue that it is ultimately incoherent to deny moral realism, as well.//
I deny it. I welcome an explanation for why that’s incoherent.
//I must say also that Just Questions thinking moral realism is less plausible than Bigfoot is a remark he should not have made public.//
I’ve already made similar remarks numerous times and enthusiastically stand behind them. I think moral realism may be the most absurd position that any serious number of academics endorse. As an aside, I’m an atheist and I think moral realism is much less plausible than theism. It’s hard to overstate just how absurd I think moral realism actually is.
//Here, one must ask how seriously anybody could take a psychological study purporting most people are moral anti-realists anymore than anybody could take seriously a psychological study claiming most people are eliminativists concerning consciousness or other minds. //
What is the claim, exactly? I take it seriously. Why don’t you?
You aren’t entitled to the presumption that most people are moral realists without an argument. It’s one thing to claim that you find moral realism intuitive. It’s quite another to claim to know how *other* people think.
//Thus, if a psychological studied produced that outcome, you wouldn’t just suspect — you would know — that something is wrong with that study.//
You know that most people aren't’ antirealists how, exactly? Is that also an intuition? Do you have intuitions about what other people’s intuitions are?
//But hold: Does it? The reason I find these responses often unsatisfactory is because they frequently assert greater simplicity with equal explanatory comprehensiveness without argument//
You aren’t being clear here. You specifically said that the arguments were question begging. An argument that purports to provide a better explanation that has the virtue of simplicity but falters in explanatory adequacy is, at best, a worse explanation. That doesn’t make it question begging. Note that at 1:14:50 you say:
“I’ve never been, like, hugely impressed with these types of arguments because they always seem to be deeply question begging.”
Note that you said “always” question begging. And yet you didn’t give any examples of question begging arguments for antirealism, you’ve simply suggested that you don’t think they’re explanatorily adequate.
You hedge in this blog post by saying “question begging or unsatisfactory,” but which is it? Are such arguments question begging, or unsatisfactory? The former is a much more serious accusation, and demonstrating that an argument isn’t satisfactory (to you, at least), isn’t the same thing as showing it’s begging any questions.
//Just Questions ultimately thinks that the moral realist is begging the question in assuming (by saying it’s obvious) moral facts exist //
No, I don’t think that. My comment was about what you said, not about moral realists in general. I was suggesting is that your comments in the video sounded much closer to question begging than the standard objections to realism from moral antirealists that appear in the literature.
I don’t think moral realists are question begging if they assume moral facts exist or claim that it’s obvious moral facts exist. Nothing about assuming something is true is question begging. Question begging is a feature of arguments, not claims. A moral realist would only be question begging if they presented an argument, the conclusion of which was something like “moral realism is true,” yet one or more of the premises presupposed the truth of realism.
The reason I think what you said in the video was fairly close to question begging is that it seems that the reason you think antirealist accounts lack explanatory adequacy is that they don’t explain the objective moral facts. It would be absurd to set confirming the truth of moral realism as a success condition for an adequate explanation, since this would mean that any explanation that failed to confirm that moral realism was true was ipso facto faulty for that reason alone. That would be absurd and very similar to question begging (and if formalized into an argument, might very well require question begging), and yet that appears to me to be what you were alluding to. You didn’t explicitly say that, though, so perhaps that isn’t what you had in mind. It’s merely the impression I had from your remarks, and I could be mistaken.
//Just Questions thinks this is like someone just saying it’s obvious Bigfoot exists and that any explanation of the world that doesn’t acknowledge Bigfoot is explanatorily inadequate.
But this is horribly disanalogous. For one, the majority of philosophers, last I checked, are moral realists.//
With respect, there are several serious problems with this response. First, you make a common mistake with analogies: pointing to irrelevant differences between a comparison between two things as a reason to say the comparison is “disanalogous.” The proportion of people who believe in Bigfoot and moral realism is completely irrelevant to my point. My example would work equally well if I used “trees” or “tables” instead of Bigfoot. Arguments against the existence of tables don’t fail merely because they conclude tables don’t exist, just the same as Bigfoot.
Second, the purpose of the Bigfoot example is to illustrate that it isn’t appropriate to presume that a particular conclusion, e.g., that moral realism is true, that Bigfoot exists, or even that tables and trees exist, and that *therefore* any argument to the contrary is ipso facto incorrect.
To do so effectively amounts to judging any argument with a conclusion contrary to what you currently believe is true to be unsound entirely on the basis of the conclusion. In practice, this is the equivalent of treating the claim that e.g., moral realism is true to be effectively irrefutable. That’s not exactly question begging, but it’s an equally presumptuous and inappropriate move to make.
Note that all of this is predicated on what I took to be the implications of what you were claiming. As I’ve said above, I’m not sure this is what you’re claiming, and if you misspoke and did make such claims, but don’t endorse them, I’m not going to hold you to things you said that you don’t really endorse. So I’d be happy to work with whatever clear and accurate version of your views you’d like.
What I’m most interested in, regarding this topic, is:
(1) Which arguments for antirealism you think are question begging, and why they’re question begging.
(2) Why you think antirealist accounts are explanatorily inadequate. What are they failing to explain?
What do you think about Moore's open question? Given any ought "out there", one can non trivially ask if it ought to be the case that they follow the ought "out there"
Part 4 of 4:
//Just Questions further misses the point with his remarks about gastronomic realism and suggesting that realists are mistaken to think anti-realists can’t use terms like good or better, etc. But I’m not aware of moral realists saying that. Of course realists note that anti-realists can use terms like good (as in, I desire something) or better (as in, I prefer something) in a sense that doesn’t commit them to moral realism. But that was not the context of Gil’s comment.//
It wasn’t Gil’s comment, it was yours. You said this at 47:30:
“Right, but notice, notice right there there’s an assumption of a better in the background of that. Right? [...] This is what you have to be so careful of in these types of conversations, there’s moral realism right in the background of that counter.”
If you weren’t suggesting that my use of moral language somehow implied moral realism, then what did you mean? Because that sure looks like what you said.
//Rather, Gil’s comment was like a common atheist attack you hear against Christianity: “See, my moral code is better because I can do the right thing just because it’s the right thing, not because I’m afraid God will send me to hell.”//
No, you are mistaken. Gil was describing my views, not a common atheist attack against Christianity. So the context of Gil’s remark was an attempt to paraphrase my own views, not someone else’s. I don’t know if this needs to be said, but I have a better understanding of what I said and what I meant than you or Gil, and what you describe here doesn’t reflect the point I was making, and that Gil was describing. I do not think it’s the case that my moral code is “better” than a Christian’s because I do the right thing “because it’s the right thing.”
//Clearly, the above is an assumption of realism: that it is objectively (stance-independently, if you like) better to do the right thing because you recognize it is the right thing and desire to pursue it for the sake of it itself rather than fear of punishment.//
Even if that were true, that’s nothing like what I said or what I meant, so no, nothing I said committed me to realism. If you’d like to hear what my point was straight from me, I’d be happy to explain what my point was. It in no way presupposes realism.
//Gil’s comment — which should have been obvious from his hypothetically alternatively moral fact scenario — is parallel to that, so Just Questions response fails.//
Were you not aware that the entire context of that part of the discussion was Gil describing my views? I am the Lance he was referring to. It’s incredibly bizarre to have you try to explain to me why I misinterpreted the context, when the context is effectively a discussion of what I myself had said. What I said isn’t parallel to the scenario you describe, and nothing I said presumes realism. I don’t know where, exactly, Gil is paraphrasing me from, but we can try to find what I said, we can quote it verbatim, and you could explain to me how what I said presumes realism.
References
Mandik, P. (2016). Meta-illusionism and qualia quietism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 140-148.
Pölzler, T. (2017). Revisiting folk moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(2), 455-476.
Pölzler, T. (2018). How to measure moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(3), 647-670.
Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2019). Empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Philosophy Compass, 14(5), e12589. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12589.
Pölzler, T., & Cole Wright, J. C. (2020a). An empirical argument against moral non-cognitivism. Inquiry, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2020.1798280
Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020b). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 53-82.
Part 3 of 4:
//No surprise then, as Thomas Polzter has argued, that studies in this field have been poorly conducted. //
Yes, the same Pölzler who, after publishing that paper, has published a number of studies that attempt to correct for the methodological shortcomings of earlier studies, and where he explicitly argues that most people are moral antirealists.
In your endnote, you say this:
“Notice that, contrary to Just Questions claim, Poltzers’ review of the literature indicates a favoring of moral realism, though he is critical of how these studies in this field are conducted, “At the beginning many researchers claimed that the studies support a tendency towards realism. Goodwin and Darley, for example, summed up the findings of their influential 2008 study as follows: “Individuals seem to identify a strong objective component to their core ethical beliefs […]. Arguably, many of our participants viewed their ethical beliefs as true in a mind-independent way” (2008: 1359; see also, e.g., Joyce 2006: 129–130). More recently, in contrast, people have been thought rather to favor realism with regard to some moral sentences and anti-realism with regard to others — depending on factors such as their openness to alternative moral views and their perceptions of consensus (e.g., Goodwin and Darley 2012; Pölzler 2017; Wright et al. 2013, 2014).””
I mean no disrespect, but what you say here is not true. It is not the case that Pölzler’s view of the literature is that the evidence favors moral realism. You cited an older paper from 2018, Pölzler (2018). Pölzler was discussing one early paper from Goodwin and Darley (2008) where the authors interpret their data as evidence that people favor realism, when Polzler argues that their interpretation of their own data is flawed. In fact, Pölzler argues for exactly this point in an earlier paper, Pölzler (2017), which I’ll quote:
“While most recent research has been thought to contradict this claim, four prominent earlier studies (by Goodwin and Darley, Wainryb et al., Nichols, and Nichols and Folds-Bennett) indeed seem to suggest a tendency towards realism. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed internal critique of these four studies. I argue that, once interpreted properly, all of them turn out in line with recent research. They suggest that most ordinary people experience morality as Bpluralist-^ rather than realist-seeming, i.e., that ordinary people have the intuition that realism is true with regard to some moral issues, but variants of anti-realism are true with regard to others. This result means that moral realism may be less well justified than commonly assumed.” (p. 455)
Yet this is moot, since these comments do not reflect the current state of the literature. You did not quote Pölzler’s more recent studies, all of which support the conclusion that most people are antirealists. This includes Pölzler & Wright (2019; 2020a; 2020b), and this isn’t even an exhaustive list. To quote Pölzler and Wright (2019), for instance, they say:
“Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. On the face of it, empirical research suggests that these intuitions favor nonobjectivism‐leaning metaethical pluralism” (p. 11)
Here is what they say at the start of Pölzler and Wright (2020b)
“In our study, most of our participants denied the existence of objective truths about most or all moral issues. In particular, many of them had the intuition that whether moral sentences are true depends both on their own moral beliefs and on the dominant moral beliefs within their culture (“anti-realist pluralism”). This finding suggests that the realist presumptive argument may have to be rejected and that instead anti-realism may have a presumption in its favor.” (p. 53)
These comments are the result of their more recent, and more rigorous research, which found that people are more inclined towards antirealism than realism. These studies are designed to correct for the methodological shortcomings of previous studies, which is why Pölzler has been critical of studies like Goodwin and Darley’s. The claim that Pölzler thinks the literature points towards people favoring moral realism is decisively false.
//Gil’s original comment, apparently repeating something from a moral anti-realist, was this: “I’m more strongly against murdering babies than you are. Because if you found a moral fact that you ought to torture babies for fun, would you do it?”//
Gil was referencing me. I’m Lance.
//Of course, if this argument has ever actually been used by an anti-realist, it is exceptionally weak, and something the Thomist would claim is impossible.//
The part you quoted consists of a claim and a question. I don’t see an argument. What weak argument are you seeing there?
//Clearly, this assertion only has pull in the context of moral realism: the suggestion quite obviously being that it is (stance-independently) better to be more strongly against torturing and murdering babies, and that anti-realism provides a sturdier basis for that.//
That’s not true. A moral antirealist can make the same claim even if they endorse moral standards you and others disagree with.
Part 2 of 4:
//Bigfoot research is not a seriously scholarly field. //
I’m not sure how seriously we should take contemporary academic philosophy as a serious field, either. I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek. But only a little.
//Moral facts are more like consciousness or existence than Bigfoot//
What moral facts are like was completely irrelevant to the Bigfoot illustration, so this remark doesn’t really address any points that I’ve made. I think you may have missed the point of the Bigfoot example.
In any case, I’m happy to consider the claim that moral facts are like consciousness on its own terms. This, unfortunately, isn’t much help to me, since I also don’t know what you mean by “consciousness”. As I said to Gil, I endorse qualia quietism and meta-illusionism about consciousness (see Mandik, 2016). As such, there’s a good chance I’d also deny that you have any “datum” on consciousness.
//Given our intuitive awareness of the moral realm //
Who is “our”? You’re welcome to report that you have an intuitive awareness of the moral realm, but that doesn’t justify making claims about what others are intuitively aware of. Claims about what others have intuitive awareness of are empirical, and you’d need to provide appropriate evidence to make such claims. I’m sure you can find quite a few people who claim to have intuitive awareness of the moral realm, but I can just as readily find people who claim to have seen aliens or ghosts. So it’d be helpful if you could be clear about who “our” is.
In any case, I deny there is any moral realm that you’re aware of. While I am happy to grant that you believe you have access to a moral realm, I don’t grant that you actually do. And it would be incredibly presumptuous to take as a starting piece of “datum,” that you do, in fact, have access to such a realm. If such a claim were to serve as a premise in an argument for moral realism, that would, in fact, be an instance of begging the question.
Since I deny that you have awareness of any moral realm, I’d be interested in arguments and evidence that you actually do have access to it. If you don’t have any good arguments and evidence, then the claim that you have access to such a realm is on the same epistemic footing as people who claim they have access to the spirit world and can consult with ghosts.
//and given how the vast majority of people act as if this moral realm is binding and real,//
Again, you’re helping yourself to empirical assertions about how people act that you have not provided any arguments, evidence, or justification for. I deny that the vast majority of people treat morality this way. Why do you think what you’re saying here is true?
Note, again, that you aren’t merely making a claim, you begin with “given.” Your assertions on this matter are very presumptuous. You speak as though you’re entitled to make uncontested proclamations about what is and isn’t the case, without providing any supporting arguments and evidence. This is unfortunate, since you claim that antirealist arguments lack explanatory adequacy, yet you’re showing a complete disregard for how well your claims are supported by available data.
//and given how there are no good arguments against moral realism that aren’t driven by some prior (highly controversial) metaphysics (like physicalism) or epistemology (like scientism), of course any theory that cannot explain the moral realm is explanatorily inadequate.
This is shockingly presumptuous. You make frequent use of claims like “given…” and “of course…” without justifying these claims. In fact, you haven’t presented any arguments that would justify the claim that there are no good arguments for antirealism that don't appeal to controversial metaphysics or epistemology. My position has nothing to do with physicalism or scientism. Which antirealist arguments are you talking about?
Unfortunately, it looks to me like you’re making assertions, but not presenting any arguments or evidence for them.
//Indeed, I would argue that it is ultimately incoherent to deny moral realism, as well.//
I deny it. I welcome an explanation for why that’s incoherent.
//I must say also that Just Questions thinking moral realism is less plausible than Bigfoot is a remark he should not have made public.//
I’ve already made similar remarks numerous times and enthusiastically stand behind them. I think moral realism may be the most absurd position that any serious number of academics endorse. As an aside, I’m an atheist and I think moral realism is much less plausible than theism. It’s hard to overstate just how absurd I think moral realism actually is.
//Here, one must ask how seriously anybody could take a psychological study purporting most people are moral anti-realists anymore than anybody could take seriously a psychological study claiming most people are eliminativists concerning consciousness or other minds. //
What is the claim, exactly? I take it seriously. Why don’t you?
You aren’t entitled to the presumption that most people are moral realists without an argument. It’s one thing to claim that you find moral realism intuitive. It’s quite another to claim to know how *other* people think.
//Thus, if a psychological studied produced that outcome, you wouldn’t just suspect — you would know — that something is wrong with that study.//
You know that most people aren't’ antirealists how, exactly? Is that also an intuition? Do you have intuitions about what other people’s intuitions are?
Part 1 of 4:
//But hold: Does it? The reason I find these responses often unsatisfactory is because they frequently assert greater simplicity with equal explanatory comprehensiveness without argument//
You aren’t being clear here. You specifically said that the arguments were question begging. An argument that purports to provide a better explanation that has the virtue of simplicity but falters in explanatory adequacy is, at best, a worse explanation. That doesn’t make it question begging. Note that at 1:14:50 you say:
“I’ve never been, like, hugely impressed with these types of arguments because they always seem to be deeply question begging.”
Note that you said “always” question begging. And yet you didn’t give any examples of question begging arguments for antirealism, you’ve simply suggested that you don’t think they’re explanatorily adequate.
You hedge in this blog post by saying “question begging or unsatisfactory,” but which is it? Are such arguments question begging, or unsatisfactory? The former is a much more serious accusation, and demonstrating that an argument isn’t satisfactory (to you, at least), isn’t the same thing as showing it’s begging any questions.
//Just Questions ultimately thinks that the moral realist is begging the question in assuming (by saying it’s obvious) moral facts exist //
No, I don’t think that. My comment was about what you said, not about moral realists in general. I was suggesting is that your comments in the video sounded much closer to question begging than the standard objections to realism from moral antirealists that appear in the literature.
I don’t think moral realists are question begging if they assume moral facts exist or claim that it’s obvious moral facts exist. Nothing about assuming something is true is question begging. Question begging is a feature of arguments, not claims. A moral realist would only be question begging if they presented an argument, the conclusion of which was something like “moral realism is true,” yet one or more of the premises presupposed the truth of realism.
The reason I think what you said in the video was fairly close to question begging is that it seems that the reason you think antirealist accounts lack explanatory adequacy is that they don’t explain the objective moral facts. It would be absurd to set confirming the truth of moral realism as a success condition for an adequate explanation, since this would mean that any explanation that failed to confirm that moral realism was true was ipso facto faulty for that reason alone. That would be absurd and very similar to question begging (and if formalized into an argument, might very well require question begging), and yet that appears to me to be what you were alluding to. You didn’t explicitly say that, though, so perhaps that isn’t what you had in mind. It’s merely the impression I had from your remarks, and I could be mistaken.
//Just Questions thinks this is like someone just saying it’s obvious Bigfoot exists and that any explanation of the world that doesn’t acknowledge Bigfoot is explanatorily inadequate.
But this is horribly disanalogous. For one, the majority of philosophers, last I checked, are moral realists.//
With respect, there are several serious problems with this response. First, you make a common mistake with analogies: pointing to irrelevant differences between a comparison between two things as a reason to say the comparison is “disanalogous.” The proportion of people who believe in Bigfoot and moral realism is completely irrelevant to my point. My example would work equally well if I used “trees” or “tables” instead of Bigfoot. Arguments against the existence of tables don’t fail merely because they conclude tables don’t exist, just the same as Bigfoot.
Second, the purpose of the Bigfoot example is to illustrate that it isn’t appropriate to presume that a particular conclusion, e.g., that moral realism is true, that Bigfoot exists, or even that tables and trees exist, and that *therefore* any argument to the contrary is ipso facto incorrect.
To do so effectively amounts to judging any argument with a conclusion contrary to what you currently believe is true to be unsound entirely on the basis of the conclusion. In practice, this is the equivalent of treating the claim that e.g., moral realism is true to be effectively irrefutable. That’s not exactly question begging, but it’s an equally presumptuous and inappropriate move to make.
Note that all of this is predicated on what I took to be the implications of what you were claiming. As I’ve said above, I’m not sure this is what you’re claiming, and if you misspoke and did make such claims, but don’t endorse them, I’m not going to hold you to things you said that you don’t really endorse. So I’d be happy to work with whatever clear and accurate version of your views you’d like.
What I’m most interested in, regarding this topic, is:
(1) Which arguments for antirealism you think are question begging, and why they’re question begging.
(2) Why you think antirealist accounts are explanatorily inadequate. What are they failing to explain?