Reddit reviews Moral Realism: A Defence

>Would one have to argue for why humor is subjective? Or for why beauty is subjective? Or is it understood that these are matters of opinion as they exist only as constructs of the mind?

I'm just asking for arguments that morality is subjective. Surely isn't ludicrous to request arguments for a person's beliefs. Consider the same tactic used by a moral realist:

"You mean I have to argue that the Holocaust or torturing babies is objectively moral!?"

Also, assuming that these other kinds of value are subjective, how is that an argument for moral value being subjective? The argument seems to be this:

P) Most kinds of X are Y
C) Therefore, all kinds of X are Y.

But this is a fallacious inference; just replace 'X' with 'swans' and 'Y' with 'white'.

As for arguments for moral realism, The SEP article's on moral realism, moral non-naturalism, and moral naturalism would be good places to start. Moral Realism: A Defence by Russ Shafer-Landau and Taking Morality Seriously by David Enoch are two book length treatments.

I only mentioned the PhilPapers survey to suggest a bit of humility in discussing these matters.

Wish I had time to engage properly today but I don't. Here's some well regarded arguments for realism you can look into if you haven't already.

Enoch's Taking Morality Seriously Shafer-Landau's [Moral Realism: a Defense] (https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Realism-Defence-Russ-Shafer-Landau/dp/0199280207/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CNVDTNHGJW3FHXNR8821), Oddie's Value, Reality and Desire, Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism, Parfit's On What Matters Wedgwood's The Nature of Normativity, Cuneo's The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism.



And here's some free papers you can read (too lazy to name them all, sorry):
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Boyd5/publication/240034001_How_to_Be_a_Moral_Realist/links/556f6f4308aec226830aab09/How-to-Be-a-Moral-Realist.pdf


http://www.academia.edu/4116101/Why_Im_an_Objectivist_about_Ethics_And_Why_You_Are_Too_


https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=433000088031098030104101075089022124028072042008084011092124087113084016108098084005098003032035018116033080110110127020085084106080012039033080068103113067015099089032030091083096096084064089109093065079071016028099008078093021125125068072101086002&EXT=pdf


https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=207103102008006126082026003080087077015002001000090086121025066112086090029103080091030096049125038001052020081100031102121000046002046043009065006112075102115099049080048111067091106094117103109111097113120126103124079110093018090122114122112110007&EXT=pdf


http://www-personal.umich.edu/~umer/teaching/intro181/readings/shafer-Landau2005EthicsAsPhilosophyADefenseOfEthicalNonnaturalism.pdf


http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007/s11245-016-9443-7?author_access_token=R2EN7zieClp6VWWEo8DyZPe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6_LyD8T3yNLLNQUBcKQRpfV5lbirZE36eSIc6PLipzIUjIvQrTe9aO4meFw0oJ_Dp784B0R9TnA9qTFaNLe9oWPQUaroxf3o-BsITKWjp_6Q%3D%3D


http://www.owl232.net/5.htm

> One of the hardest things to learn from a philosophical perspective when one is agnostic or atheist is that all morality is relative.

Or, perhaps it's better stated that many who experience a dramatic shift in their world view have yet to be exposed to the various ways of thinking about ethics (morality), and that our species naturally intuits a position to moral relativity when the obligating justifications for their previous ethics break down (e.g. no god means no justification for grounded objective morality, in their minds).

There are a lot of different ways to approach morality, and relativism is the lowest-hanging of the bunch, in my view. It's easy and doesn't require a lot of effort, but it's also the laziest way to approach morality and the least justified.

The various positions are typically these:

• Moral relativism: Here, right or wrong is a construct; a preference or cultural norm.
  
  
• Moral universalism: Here, morality is objectively the same for everyone; observation and rational inference allegedly lead rational thinkers to the same conclusions about right and wrong, regardless of any preferences or cultural norms.
  
  
• Moral nihilism: Here, morality is meaningless. Right or wrong is incoherent.
  
  
• Moral realism (objectivism): Here, morality exists in reality. There are objective facts about right and wrong. Statements about right and wrong can be true or false based on their interaction with those facts. Two categories here, moral naturalism (morality is reducible to biology, sociology, etc.) and moral non-naturalism (it's not reducible and doesn't require science).
  
  
• Moral absolutism: Here, morality exists and there are things one must or mustn't do, and in fact required that one must or mustn't do; no exceptions, no changies, no take-backs.
  
  All of these areas are contentious areas of debate. Most philosophers fall on the side of moral realism (including your guy, Russ Schaefer-Landau), but that hardly settles the matter. He does have an excellent book, Moral Realism: A Defense
  
  What's healthy is discovering that there are truth-apt areas in each of these categories, with tons of overlap.

You are confusing the way one finds out what is objectively moral (epistemology) with the independence of the moral value. Lots of atheists believe in objective morality.

>Well, what's your argument for the "maybe not"? Where else would you propose moral intuitions come from?>

I personally wouldn't make any argument for it yet as I'm not informed enough to, but I plan to read a few books on the topic in the coming months. Have you ever checked out this article?


>we probably find a case where your emotional response/moral intuition can be shown to be a bad reference for value judgments. Or would you disagree?>

I wouldn't disagree. But again, I'd like to look a little more into the issue.


>I don't think that's a good thing, but it shows me how my moral intuitions/emotions/empathy doesn't reflect the reality of what's right and wrong because I know the pig is every bit as morally relevant as a dog.>

No, I think you're right actually. I'd probably get extra upset if I read that someone was abusing a white bulldog. And that makes sense, but not a lot of sense.



>Usually when people talk about ethics/morals they're talking about intentional choices to do some sort of good. This is a bit of a tangent, so probably no important. Just thought I'd mention that.>

I was kinda joking about the vultures and rats. I don't think they can be ethical like humans can be. That said, we're learning more about animal cognition all the time and I think we still have a lot more to learn. Have you ever read this article before? That and the other related SEP articles about animals are certainly worth checking out.



>Pulling the lever is what saves more people than simply leaving it, right?>

Right. A lot of people belittle this thought experiment but I think it's fun.

>So you'd argue that the conductor shouldn't save the several people on the tracks at the expense of the one fat guy or whatever?>

Right. And I think you phrased it right by saying shouldn't save. It boils down really to what one thinks about doing vs allowing harm. I think a consequentialist would say the difference between the two isn't morally relevant, right? If so, I understand where the consequentialist is coming from, but I might disagree. Again, I'm giving opinions about things like this when I shouldn't be, not having done my due diligence by reading more into ethics.

>Cute... In a hideous sort of way!>

That's the English Bulldog for ya. The English have a weird sense of humor.

>I haven't really thought about non-cognitivism specifically, but I have thought about moral anti-realism. It seems like non-cognitivism is a subset of that.>

There are some differences. The biggest being that moral anti-realism is a cognitivist metaethical theory and non-cognitivism theories like Emotovism are, obviously, non-cognitivist moral theories. I don't know if you require this, but I'll copy and paste something here for you:

>The cognitivist argues for two claims. The first is that when someone makes a moral claim they are expressing a belief. The second is that moral claims can be true or false; this is part of cognitivism because beliefs are the sort of thing that can be true or false. Philosophers call the potential for a claim to be true or false truth-aptness . Because beliefs are thought to be descriptions, cognitivism is sometimes called descriptivism.>

>Potential misunderstandings • Cognitivism is not the view that moral claims are true, since it is quite coherent for the cognitivist to hold that all moral claims are false (see Chapter 3 ). This is a common mistake and it is best avoided by remembering that cognitivism is a view about truth-aptness and not about truth.>

>Non-cognitivism The non-cognitivist argues that if a person makes a moral claim they are expressing a non-belief state such as an emotion: for example, to say that “killing is wrong” is to express disapproval towards killing. Put crudely, it is as if you are saying “Boo! Killing!” Consequently, because expressions of approval or disapproval are not the sort of things that can be true or false, the non-cognitivist thinks that moral claims are not truth-apt in the way that the cognitivist thinks moral claims are truth-apt.>

>Potential misunderstanding • Non-cognitivism is not the view that moral claims are about our own mental states. For example, it is not the claim that “killing is wrong” really means “I disapprove of killing”. In fact, this would be a form of cognitivism, which asserts that when we make a moral claim we are describing a mental state, in this case my disapproval of killing>

>Error theory in morality derives from three plausible views. The first is cognitivism, the view that moral judgements express beliefs and aim to describe some sector of reality and are consequently truth-apt. The second is non-realism , the view that there are no moral values that correspond to our moral beliefs. The third is that truth involves correspondence to facts. These three views lead to the radical conclusion that moral claims are systematically and uniformly false.>

>Moral error theory is a radical position. It is the view that all these statements are false : • Abducting and torturing children is morally wrong. • Providing famine relief to starving families is morally good. • Locking people in a church and throwing petrol bombs through the window is evil. • It is morally right to save the boy trapped in floodwaters. The error theorist would be quick to remind us that he is not saying that it is right to torture children, bad to give money to charity, wrong to save a boy trapped in floodwaters. For he argues that there is no moral truth at all.>

Moving on now.


>I think there is also factual evidence for morally relevant values. Those values being, as I mentioned before, positive and negative mental experiences.>

I think, but don't quote me on this, that another way of saying this is moral properties can be reduced to natural properties, and by "natural" philosophers mean the subject matter of the natural sciences, which include psychology.

Moral psychology would be an interesting project to look into.





>Here's a little thought experiment: Suppose we lived in a universe with no positive or negative mental experiences. So no suffering, no depriving another of happiness, no ability to be distressed or stressed. All mental experiences (if they existed) would be neutral. Could morality or ethics still exist? You couldn't hurt or help anyone. I'd take the position that it couldn't, there would be no morally relevant way to affect anything.>

I mean, I think that sounds certainly plausible.



>since we naturally will value our own positive/negative mental experiences, if we're being objective we couldn't discount another individual's positive/negative mental experiences. To be consistent, we'd have to value them similarly to our own. To place value on our mental experiences and discount another's, even though the experiences are comparable would be irrational. I don't think that helps with the "should", it just works with a motivation that already exists. There's no traction on people that aren't committed to being rational in the ways I described.>

Right. The only thing to my mind at this point is to say -- one ought to be rational. But I couldn't give you a decisive reason right now why we ought to be rational. As Walt Whitman said defiantly, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." He practically made a (rather benign) ethos out of that statement.