I use the thought expirement to push the intuition that I only act in accord with my desires, and I invite others to consider if they think the same way. The goal is to prompt people to consider why they want to "do what's morally right". Why care about being moral? The standard realist response that it's by definition what I should do is irrelevant to me. I don't care about external reasons. I only care about my values. I'm puzzled at people who don't think this way.
Interestingly enough, there may be two quick responses a realist can give to this that involve an appeal to what morality demands. One, we have requirements to care about what morality says. Two, we don’t have requirements to care about what morality says, but that’s irrelevant to what’s expected of you from morality.
I think of the question “why care about X” to be asking for reasons as to why we should care. The realist either gives such reasons, or admits there are no such reasons, but that we still have the requirements we do, regardless of our cares (all else being equal).
On the other hand, when asking “why should I care?” a detractor might be asking something different. They might just be asking how morality aligns with what they already care about. But given that realism has no necessary link to what we happen to care about (unless we’re talking about things like partiality or something) then it’s not clear how the question is posing an issue for realism.
Though, regarding how you use it as an intuition pump, it still might be misleading. For instance, once we hear about the working out for some view, we might actually be moved to do it. But the hypothetical doesn’t explain the working out, it merely posits the answer.
Consider an analogy (I haven’t spent the time developing it into anything amazing, so let me know if you spot any disanalogies here). Imagine there is an accurate machine that tells you the best way of getting what you want. But it doesn’t tell you the working out. It just tells you what you need to accomplish. Suppose the machine tells you to enact violent acts and do a tonne of stuff you, at current time, wouldn’t want to do. I wouldn’t want to go along with the machine (if such a machine really could tell us such things-perhaps an analogy to moral fixed points). But surely that doesn’t tell me that I don’t wanna what I wanna do.
On a final note, it seems that the WMF (you’ve referred to it as the ‘Nuremberg objection’ right?) is a bit suspicious. It seems suspiciously more of a rhetorical move than simply trying to ask someone whether they think they’re only motivated by their desires. After all, it seems questions that don’t involve absurd examples like harming those closest to us or screaming at tables could work just as well.
Regarding the Nuremberg move: there's certainly some rhetoric to it, especially in the name. What I still want an answer to is why anyone would care to comply with objective moral rules, regardless of what they are. They could even be good. The moral rules could be to be kind and honest. But I don't try to be kind and honest because I'm morally required to do so. I try because I want to.
The short version is this. I only do what I want. Don't you? If you do, then do you want to do what's moral? If so, why? If you don't, what do you do that you don't want to do, and why do you do it?
This sorta reminds me about concerns of moral fetishism, i.e. doesn't it sound off to say you only did something for the sake of morality as opposed to, say, do something for the good of your friends, others, etc. I find this objection totally convincing tbh. So, I think objective morality can (instead) play the role of pointing out what things can be important to do irrespective of what is important to my own person (and the person of any other). There's a good paper called 'why care about non-natural reasons' that you might like (link: https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAANR-2.pdf) that goes over this idea a little.
My pre-emptive response to your further questions would simply be that given the moral facts aren't dependent on what we care about (at least fundamentally) it's entirely possible that they may contradict with our desires and what we want to do. It may perhaps merely be an empirical question if we hold the view that only desires motivate or make us care about stuff. Why would anyone care to comply with the objective moral rules? Because they've got some pre-requisite desire, that's why. It mightn't even make sense to ask 'why care' in the sense that they already have the desires they do, the best we can do is show how they might already have desires to care.
It might get more complicated considering views where we can be moved by certain beliefs we have (beliefs alone that is). Perhaps engaging in moral argumentation can lead to new beliefs that can (in making moral judgements) have us care about new things.
Questions like 'do I only do what i want?' can be a little vague. Like is it merely asking whether I can possibly act if I have some sort of motivation to? Is it displaying a commitment to a Humean theory of motivation and making a necessary link with motivation and desires? I would presume the latter (tho correct me if I'm wrong there). Then it might just come down to the empircal side of things again (whatever I happen to want to do will be my ultimate guide).
I would say I'm on the fence about what underlies motivation. I think I'm friendly to non-Humeanism, but I'm just not too confident in either direction. But suppose I held a non-Humean view where I could be motivated through certain beliefs alone. That could be an example of what I would do if I didn't have some desire to do it. If moral judgements about normative facts (that I believe are true) are such beliefs, then we may have a case where we can be moved to act morally (tho, not in a fetishistic way, but rather, for things like the sake of others).
We may also want to ask what's at stake in the question. If the realist agrees that we needn't care about such reasons, what's the fall out? A charge of triviality? Maybe, but that's also going to be a point of contention (as you well know) provided that realists and non-realists might hold very different views about what amounts to something being 'trivial' in this fashion. Just a fun example, for the longest time I thought by 'Naturalism being trivial' (in your trichotomy) you simply meant it didn't bring normativity along for the ride, i.e. it doesn't give us any reasons to go along with the natural moral laws.
But if by being trivial you just mean, 'I don't care about it's verdicts' (or perhaps that lots/most/all people don't), then I could agree by those lights that it's trivial (provided that those people didn't care about it). Though, this seems a largely unsatisfying agreement. It would also seem to make the triviality of objective morality a totally relative matter. It might also threaten to equalise to everything else (though objective morality is touted as being 'normative' and being importantly different from other run-of-the-mill facts about the universe).
We may also want to ask what's at stake in the question. If the realist agrees that we needn't care about such reasons, what's the fall out? A charge of triviality? Maybe, but that's also going to be a point of contention (as you well know) provided that realists and non-realists might hold very different views about what amounts to something being 'trivial' in this fashion. Just a fun example, for the longest time I thought by 'Naturalism being trivial' (in your trichotomy) you simply meant it didn't bring normativity along for the ride, i.e. it doesn't give us any reasons to go along with the natural moral laws.
But if by being trivial you just mean, 'I don't care about it's verdicts' (or perhaps that lots/most/all people don't), then I could agree by those lights that it's trivial (provided that those people didn't care about it). Though, this seems a largely unsatisfying agreement. It would also seem to make the triviality of objective morality a totally relative matter. It might also threaten to equalise to everything else (though objective morality is touted as being 'normative' and being importantly different from other run-of-the-mill facts about the universe).
Yes a charge of triviality. They can disagree on my account of triviality but terminological disputes won't get around the conclusion, if we reached such a conclusion, that the truth of moral realism made no practical difference for what we do.
There are different senses of triviality. Naturalism is usually trivial because it drops normativity. But even non naturalism strikes me as trivial in the "I don't care about that" sense. Yes, that's certainly relative and I fully embrace that. I want philosophy to focus on what I care about.
Yeah. The only thing I see about the relativity there, is that non-natural facts will be just as trivial as anything else. What makes something non-trivial would just be being caring about it (or perhaps, in a more narrow sense, what makes something non-trivial would just be individuals caring about it, but a similar thing applies). It might rob morality of being this thing that everyone necessarily cares about or something like this (given this understanding of triviality) but I don't know of any realist who would accept that as a necessary part of moral reality.
My main concern in bringing up the agreement with triviality is that it's not really getting at what we might be disagreeing about. I would presume it would be all about normativity.
We may also want to ask what's at stake in the question. If the realist agrees that we needn't care about such reasons, what's the fall out? A charge of triviality? Maybe, but that's also going to be a point of contention (as you well know) provided that realists and non-realists might hold very different views about what amounts to something being 'trivial' in this fashion. Just a fun example, for the longest time I thought by 'Naturalism being trivial' (in your trichotomy) you simply meant it didn't bring normativity along for the ride, i.e. it doesn't give us any reasons to go along with the natural moral laws.
But if by being trivial you just mean, 'I don't care about it's verdicts' (or perhaps that lots/most/all people don't), then I could agree by those lights that it's trivial (provided that those people didn't care about it). Though, this seems a largely unsatisfying agreement. It would also seem to make the triviality of objective morality a totally relative matter. It might also threaten to equalise to everything else (though objective morality is touted as being 'normative' and being importantly different from other run-of-the-mill facts about the universe).
Regarding being motivated by beliefs or desires, those questions seem underdeveloped to me, a bit of prescientific psychology. If we want to understand human motivation I think we should approach it from an empirical perspective and dig into the cognitive science of motivation. It's not clear to me why more philosophers don't do this, and worse, why they often disparage those who do.
I was just citing it as a possible view. I do think philosophers should ensure their views align with the best science so long as it's in the business of providing accurate and relevant information about that subject or sub-topic.
Sure, not intending that to be an objection to you. I find a lot of talk in philosophy frustratingly shallow when it touches on psychology. It bothers me that some philosophers ignore this and think it's a non issue, or just deny they're up to anything empirical in the first place.
I think it literally makes no sense to talk about things being important irrespective of what's important to us. That sounds like the idea of activities being fun independent of how much fun we have doing them. It seems oxymoronic to me.
I don't desire to comply with the moral facts. Perhaps other people do. I'm interested, if so, in why. It doesn't have to be a justificatory explanation, it can just be a causal one. So I think my question is a legitimate one and doesn't not make sense to ask.
Speaking for myself, as far as I can tell, I have zero desire to do what's moral and would not comply with moral facts even if I knew what they were. A desire to be moral is completely alien to me. I simply act on my preferences. I have no desire to follow outside rules. If others claim that they do want to, I'm curious as to why.
Not presuming a Humean view. I'm asking people what motivates them and why. Introspection isn't super reliable but it's an okay place to start. What I want people to do is step back and consider why they care about morality. If they just do for inscrutable psychological reasons, that's fine. I'd like to study what's going on with that. Why don't I have this desire? Why do they? What caused it?
That's precisely the disagreement no? Though realists aren't claiming something contradictory. So it's like the fun analogy only if we're suppose mattering is just something stance-dependent.
My point was more that we can answer such questions, but it's probably not gonna tell us much about certain subject matters, e.g. the truth of realism (unless we pack in some additional premises). Your question is legitimate insofar as it tries to reach. If it's trying to reach where it can't, then it would seem illegitimate for that task, or at least, superfluous for the topic at hand. It can still be interesting just to know why someone might care about something, and it often is.
I think it literally makes no sense to talk about things being important irrespective of what's important to us. That sounds like the idea of activities being fun independent of how much fun we have doing them. It seems oxymoronic to me.
I don't desire to comply with the moral facts. Perhaps other people do. I'm interested, if so, in why. It doesn't have to be a justificatory explanation, it can just be a causal one. But as far as I can tell, I have zero desire to do what's moral and would not comply with moral facts even if I knew what they were. A desire to be moral is completely alien to me.
I think it literally makes no sense to talk about things being important irrespective of what's important to us. That sounds like the idea of activities being fun independent of how much fun we have doing them. It seems oxymoronic to me.
I don't desire to comply with the moral facts. Perhaps other people do. I'm interested, if so, in why. It doesn't have to be a justificatory explanation, it can just be a causal one. But as far as I can tell, I have zero desire to do what's moral and would not comply with moral facts even if I knew what they were. A desire to be moral is completely alien to me.
A further idea that I just remembered. Imagine we were to ask whether someone would commit atrocities if they had some strong desire to. I think lots of folks would say they wouldn’t do it. But I’m not sure how much evidence this would amount to against the Humean theory of motivation.
I am asking people a personal question: why do they care what's moral or immoral? Saying this isn't an issue for realism seems strange. I'm not presenting a syllogism with the conclusion "therefore, realism is false." I'm asking people if they care, and if so why. Presumably there will be answers to those questions regardless of whether realism is true.
tbh we weren't super sure how to interpret the objection/question. We assumed that it was supposed to convey some problem with realism, e.g. point out some absurdity, etc. and we ran with that.
I suppose the question is whether questions like 'why do they care what's moral or immoral?' are going to pose problems if answered in certain ways (at least as far as realism goes). It will come down again to what determines what we care about, and whether moral judgements (if realism is true) can have a motivating force to some extent (which i would assume could tag caring along for the ride (maybe)).
What do you take to be at stake in the question? For instance, I could give you a handful of reasons why I care about what is immoral or not. For instance, I care about animals (epic Vegan here) and I really care if it's the case that there are moral facts that require others to be Vegans too (or at the very least, that we should stop treating animals like mere objects by murdering them and exploiting them). I think it also brings along things like the possibility of blameworthiness (so it could be similar to why people are so fervent with holding onto free will, that see something important is lost, etc). Though of course, these reasons only favour me believing these views insofar as I want them to be true. But that doesn't seem to show to me whether they really are true, or whether these are adequate reasons for believing the views that I do.
In my own mind, citing reasons why I would care about what morality has in store (if cares are just determined by my desires) would only tell me what I want out of reality, rather than tell me what it is.
I sorta scratch my head when people ask me or other realists that question. I might have all sorts of personal stakes in what reality turns out to be. Like, if I'm having an argument with a friend and I still need to know more on the subject, I'll really hope the universe allows me to be right. I'll really hope the facts align to what I was saying before hand. I would care about what the stone-cold facts are in this case. But once more, like, where do we go from there? Reality will be as it is.
I'll say more when I'm at a keyboard. I hate being on my phone. But let me ask this way: if antirealism is true, would you stop being a vegan? Would you care less about animals?
Let me put it this way. I was a vegan before I was a realist. I would stay as I am provided the falsehood of realism didn’t provide other relevant information.
I’m a little confused about the part on moral motivation. According to paradigmatic realists, who believe that morals do not have to be motivating, why would someone follow the moral law? Why is it particularly good/ rational for someone to follow the moral law? It seems like one could not cause any action by merely stating that the moral law exists.
Well that’s why I also talked about moral judgements potentially being motivating. It depends on your notion of rationality, but it seems rational to act in accordance with morality if it provides the best reasons to do so (e.g. excellent categorical reasons). But I think it would have to be ‘good’ by necessity presuming you mean ‘morally good’. And yes you’re right, merely stating some moral law (especially if it’s not a moral judgement) won’t motivate-morality wouldn’t cause stuff.
1) in the case that moral judgements are motivating, what would it mean for them to be motivating? If we had some motivation for it already, wouldn’t fulfilling that motivation have nothing to do with the existence of moral facts?
2) I’m not sure I understand what it would mean for something to be good by necessity. What would be an example of something like this?
Yes it’s not the moral facts themselves motivating us, just our judgements/beliefs about them. The existence of these facts might be-as you point out-necessary in actually moving us. Though, if metaethics can influence what 1st order or 2nd order beliefs about morality we have (controversial) but that could influence what moral beliefs and judgements we might have-but it still wouldn’t be morality itself motivating us.
By it being good by necessity, it’s just baked in that if moral realism is right, then it determines what is good (morally good) so according in accordance with it would have to be good.
On a more general note, something being good by necessity might look something like a heavier thesis of the moral fixed points. “If the good exists (morality) then it is always pro tanto good (and requires) to perform easy rescues” etc.
> [T]here are hard limits to what morality could require of us. ... [W]e have a moral requirement to perform easy rescues....
I think that is an excellent approximation of most Westerners' views on morality. It is of course possible to concoct examples where an actor is morally required to forego an easy rescue -- all you need is a more pressing moral obligation. So I'm not sure that that counts as a "hard limit". (And I know of at least some people who hold that women are not morally allowed to rescue themselves if it would result in them being out in public without a male chaperone from their family, and I'm not sure those people are **conceptually** mistaken -- I think they've just got bad moral principles.)
I think I might have a hard limit for morality -- but it's not a conceptual one.
(HL1) The most stringent moral requirement is to succeed or die trying.
My reasoning is that the dead are not morally obliged to do anything (being dead and all), so if you die in an honest attempt to fulfil a moral obligation then the obligation goes away. And if it is in an honest attempt to succeed, then there is no moral fault for failing. The firefighters in the Towers on 9-11 were not morally at fault for failing to rescue the people they went in after.
But it's not a conceptual limit. If someone truly believed in life after death and the ability of dead souls to contact the living, then the soul might still be obliged to keep trying.
An aside --
> To deny them would be like affirming we could have square circles.
FYI, there are metrics (Chebyshev and Manhattan, possibly others) where circles are square. The shape of a circle depends on the metric used, so it's not a conceptual error to say we could have square circles.
Of course we normally use the Euclidean metric because it provides excellent approximations on small scales here on Earth. But it is an approximation. For example, the circumference of an Earth-surface circle with radius 10,000 km is 40,000 km, not 62,832km.
Thanks for the comment. Regarding the moral fixed points, they're 'hard limits' only in the sense that they couldn't have been different, as opposed to such points convey absolute moral requirements we can never ever ever break no matter what. (It didn't help that I didn't spell this out in the article).
Tbh, I think it would be a further fixed point that morality has these 'all things being equal' / 'absent countervailing considerations' clauses built in. Regarding easy rescues, it's gonna be that we're required to perform easy rescues 'all things being equal' / 'absent countervailing considerations'. Another way of putting it could be, 'there is always something morally important in performing easy rescues, even if morality requires us to forgo it'.
Regarding the notion that some might disagree with such fixed points needn't be any issue. Such folks just aren't getting it right in ethics, and I would favour the view that they're conceptually mistaken–though their disagreement might also be chalked up to disagreement about non-moral facts which then needn't entail they're conceptually deficient. But this also gets us to what I've refereed to as a minimal conception of the moral fixed points which is more just the view that 'if morality were objective, there would be these fixed points' as opposed to a stronger view which says that 'if morality exists, there would be these fixed points'. Given this, we'd have to find out if these people are citing objective morality (perhaps they're instead invoking divine commands, which I wouldn't count as objective morality. Same obviously goes for mere cultural norms). Either way there seems to be lots of nuance here that could avoid the charge that they're just conceptually deficient, though I'm not too jumpy as the prospect of taking that route either push comes to shove. Though even if there are no fixed points (sad) I think my final point should still comfortabley address the WMF objection.
By it being conceptually impossible to have a square circle, I'm simply asserting that it's impossible for something to be 100% round and 100% not round (e.g. a shape with 4 sides). Regardless of whether we can actually have 'square circles' as you speak of, the point I was putting forward was just something contradictory. Square circles are just a paradigm example of such things. So if you think there are square circles in some other sense than I've referred, it should be fine to just replace it with 'that would be like affirming a contradiction'.
Sorry, I should have made it clear that none of what I wrote was directly relevant to your main point. The objection was to the idea of moral fixed points. The aside was just some interesting math -- as if there were any other kind!
I use the thought expirement to push the intuition that I only act in accord with my desires, and I invite others to consider if they think the same way. The goal is to prompt people to consider why they want to "do what's morally right". Why care about being moral? The standard realist response that it's by definition what I should do is irrelevant to me. I don't care about external reasons. I only care about my values. I'm puzzled at people who don't think this way.
Interestingly enough, there may be two quick responses a realist can give to this that involve an appeal to what morality demands. One, we have requirements to care about what morality says. Two, we don’t have requirements to care about what morality says, but that’s irrelevant to what’s expected of you from morality.
I think of the question “why care about X” to be asking for reasons as to why we should care. The realist either gives such reasons, or admits there are no such reasons, but that we still have the requirements we do, regardless of our cares (all else being equal).
On the other hand, when asking “why should I care?” a detractor might be asking something different. They might just be asking how morality aligns with what they already care about. But given that realism has no necessary link to what we happen to care about (unless we’re talking about things like partiality or something) then it’s not clear how the question is posing an issue for realism.
Though, regarding how you use it as an intuition pump, it still might be misleading. For instance, once we hear about the working out for some view, we might actually be moved to do it. But the hypothetical doesn’t explain the working out, it merely posits the answer.
Consider an analogy (I haven’t spent the time developing it into anything amazing, so let me know if you spot any disanalogies here). Imagine there is an accurate machine that tells you the best way of getting what you want. But it doesn’t tell you the working out. It just tells you what you need to accomplish. Suppose the machine tells you to enact violent acts and do a tonne of stuff you, at current time, wouldn’t want to do. I wouldn’t want to go along with the machine (if such a machine really could tell us such things-perhaps an analogy to moral fixed points). But surely that doesn’t tell me that I don’t wanna what I wanna do.
On a final note, it seems that the WMF (you’ve referred to it as the ‘Nuremberg objection’ right?) is a bit suspicious. It seems suspiciously more of a rhetorical move than simply trying to ask someone whether they think they’re only motivated by their desires. After all, it seems questions that don’t involve absurd examples like harming those closest to us or screaming at tables could work just as well.
Those are my thoughts anyway.
Regarding the Nuremberg move: there's certainly some rhetoric to it, especially in the name. What I still want an answer to is why anyone would care to comply with objective moral rules, regardless of what they are. They could even be good. The moral rules could be to be kind and honest. But I don't try to be kind and honest because I'm morally required to do so. I try because I want to.
The short version is this. I only do what I want. Don't you? If you do, then do you want to do what's moral? If so, why? If you don't, what do you do that you don't want to do, and why do you do it?
This sorta reminds me about concerns of moral fetishism, i.e. doesn't it sound off to say you only did something for the sake of morality as opposed to, say, do something for the good of your friends, others, etc. I find this objection totally convincing tbh. So, I think objective morality can (instead) play the role of pointing out what things can be important to do irrespective of what is important to my own person (and the person of any other). There's a good paper called 'why care about non-natural reasons' that you might like (link: https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAANR-2.pdf) that goes over this idea a little.
My pre-emptive response to your further questions would simply be that given the moral facts aren't dependent on what we care about (at least fundamentally) it's entirely possible that they may contradict with our desires and what we want to do. It may perhaps merely be an empirical question if we hold the view that only desires motivate or make us care about stuff. Why would anyone care to comply with the objective moral rules? Because they've got some pre-requisite desire, that's why. It mightn't even make sense to ask 'why care' in the sense that they already have the desires they do, the best we can do is show how they might already have desires to care.
It might get more complicated considering views where we can be moved by certain beliefs we have (beliefs alone that is). Perhaps engaging in moral argumentation can lead to new beliefs that can (in making moral judgements) have us care about new things.
Questions like 'do I only do what i want?' can be a little vague. Like is it merely asking whether I can possibly act if I have some sort of motivation to? Is it displaying a commitment to a Humean theory of motivation and making a necessary link with motivation and desires? I would presume the latter (tho correct me if I'm wrong there). Then it might just come down to the empircal side of things again (whatever I happen to want to do will be my ultimate guide).
I would say I'm on the fence about what underlies motivation. I think I'm friendly to non-Humeanism, but I'm just not too confident in either direction. But suppose I held a non-Humean view where I could be motivated through certain beliefs alone. That could be an example of what I would do if I didn't have some desire to do it. If moral judgements about normative facts (that I believe are true) are such beliefs, then we may have a case where we can be moved to act morally (tho, not in a fetishistic way, but rather, for things like the sake of others).
We may also want to ask what's at stake in the question. If the realist agrees that we needn't care about such reasons, what's the fall out? A charge of triviality? Maybe, but that's also going to be a point of contention (as you well know) provided that realists and non-realists might hold very different views about what amounts to something being 'trivial' in this fashion. Just a fun example, for the longest time I thought by 'Naturalism being trivial' (in your trichotomy) you simply meant it didn't bring normativity along for the ride, i.e. it doesn't give us any reasons to go along with the natural moral laws.
But if by being trivial you just mean, 'I don't care about it's verdicts' (or perhaps that lots/most/all people don't), then I could agree by those lights that it's trivial (provided that those people didn't care about it). Though, this seems a largely unsatisfying agreement. It would also seem to make the triviality of objective morality a totally relative matter. It might also threaten to equalise to everything else (though objective morality is touted as being 'normative' and being importantly different from other run-of-the-mill facts about the universe).
We may also want to ask what's at stake in the question. If the realist agrees that we needn't care about such reasons, what's the fall out? A charge of triviality? Maybe, but that's also going to be a point of contention (as you well know) provided that realists and non-realists might hold very different views about what amounts to something being 'trivial' in this fashion. Just a fun example, for the longest time I thought by 'Naturalism being trivial' (in your trichotomy) you simply meant it didn't bring normativity along for the ride, i.e. it doesn't give us any reasons to go along with the natural moral laws.
But if by being trivial you just mean, 'I don't care about it's verdicts' (or perhaps that lots/most/all people don't), then I could agree by those lights that it's trivial (provided that those people didn't care about it). Though, this seems a largely unsatisfying agreement. It would also seem to make the triviality of objective morality a totally relative matter. It might also threaten to equalise to everything else (though objective morality is touted as being 'normative' and being importantly different from other run-of-the-mill facts about the universe).
Yes a charge of triviality. They can disagree on my account of triviality but terminological disputes won't get around the conclusion, if we reached such a conclusion, that the truth of moral realism made no practical difference for what we do.
There are different senses of triviality. Naturalism is usually trivial because it drops normativity. But even non naturalism strikes me as trivial in the "I don't care about that" sense. Yes, that's certainly relative and I fully embrace that. I want philosophy to focus on what I care about.
Yeah. The only thing I see about the relativity there, is that non-natural facts will be just as trivial as anything else. What makes something non-trivial would just be being caring about it (or perhaps, in a more narrow sense, what makes something non-trivial would just be individuals caring about it, but a similar thing applies). It might rob morality of being this thing that everyone necessarily cares about or something like this (given this understanding of triviality) but I don't know of any realist who would accept that as a necessary part of moral reality.
My main concern in bringing up the agreement with triviality is that it's not really getting at what we might be disagreeing about. I would presume it would be all about normativity.
We may also want to ask what's at stake in the question. If the realist agrees that we needn't care about such reasons, what's the fall out? A charge of triviality? Maybe, but that's also going to be a point of contention (as you well know) provided that realists and non-realists might hold very different views about what amounts to something being 'trivial' in this fashion. Just a fun example, for the longest time I thought by 'Naturalism being trivial' (in your trichotomy) you simply meant it didn't bring normativity along for the ride, i.e. it doesn't give us any reasons to go along with the natural moral laws.
But if by being trivial you just mean, 'I don't care about it's verdicts' (or perhaps that lots/most/all people don't), then I could agree by those lights that it's trivial (provided that those people didn't care about it). Though, this seems a largely unsatisfying agreement. It would also seem to make the triviality of objective morality a totally relative matter. It might also threaten to equalise to everything else (though objective morality is touted as being 'normative' and being importantly different from other run-of-the-mill facts about the universe).
Regarding being motivated by beliefs or desires, those questions seem underdeveloped to me, a bit of prescientific psychology. If we want to understand human motivation I think we should approach it from an empirical perspective and dig into the cognitive science of motivation. It's not clear to me why more philosophers don't do this, and worse, why they often disparage those who do.
I was just citing it as a possible view. I do think philosophers should ensure their views align with the best science so long as it's in the business of providing accurate and relevant information about that subject or sub-topic.
Sure, not intending that to be an objection to you. I find a lot of talk in philosophy frustratingly shallow when it touches on psychology. It bothers me that some philosophers ignore this and think it's a non issue, or just deny they're up to anything empirical in the first place.
I think it literally makes no sense to talk about things being important irrespective of what's important to us. That sounds like the idea of activities being fun independent of how much fun we have doing them. It seems oxymoronic to me.
I don't desire to comply with the moral facts. Perhaps other people do. I'm interested, if so, in why. It doesn't have to be a justificatory explanation, it can just be a causal one. So I think my question is a legitimate one and doesn't not make sense to ask.
Speaking for myself, as far as I can tell, I have zero desire to do what's moral and would not comply with moral facts even if I knew what they were. A desire to be moral is completely alien to me. I simply act on my preferences. I have no desire to follow outside rules. If others claim that they do want to, I'm curious as to why.
Not presuming a Humean view. I'm asking people what motivates them and why. Introspection isn't super reliable but it's an okay place to start. What I want people to do is step back and consider why they care about morality. If they just do for inscrutable psychological reasons, that's fine. I'd like to study what's going on with that. Why don't I have this desire? Why do they? What caused it?
That's precisely the disagreement no? Though realists aren't claiming something contradictory. So it's like the fun analogy only if we're suppose mattering is just something stance-dependent.
My point was more that we can answer such questions, but it's probably not gonna tell us much about certain subject matters, e.g. the truth of realism (unless we pack in some additional premises). Your question is legitimate insofar as it tries to reach. If it's trying to reach where it can't, then it would seem illegitimate for that task, or at least, superfluous for the topic at hand. It can still be interesting just to know why someone might care about something, and it often is.
I think it literally makes no sense to talk about things being important irrespective of what's important to us. That sounds like the idea of activities being fun independent of how much fun we have doing them. It seems oxymoronic to me.
I don't desire to comply with the moral facts. Perhaps other people do. I'm interested, if so, in why. It doesn't have to be a justificatory explanation, it can just be a causal one. But as far as I can tell, I have zero desire to do what's moral and would not comply with moral facts even if I knew what they were. A desire to be moral is completely alien to me.
I think it literally makes no sense to talk about things being important irrespective of what's important to us. That sounds like the idea of activities being fun independent of how much fun we have doing them. It seems oxymoronic to me.
I don't desire to comply with the moral facts. Perhaps other people do. I'm interested, if so, in why. It doesn't have to be a justificatory explanation, it can just be a causal one. But as far as I can tell, I have zero desire to do what's moral and would not comply with moral facts even if I knew what they were. A desire to be moral is completely alien to me.
damn, substack comments are buggy as hell
I'm getting errors and it seems like some posts are duplicating. Maybe we should just talk on VC at some point.
A further idea that I just remembered. Imagine we were to ask whether someone would commit atrocities if they had some strong desire to. I think lots of folks would say they wouldn’t do it. But I’m not sure how much evidence this would amount to against the Humean theory of motivation.
I think that would be terrible evidence against Humean theories, ah definitely agree.
I am asking people a personal question: why do they care what's moral or immoral? Saying this isn't an issue for realism seems strange. I'm not presenting a syllogism with the conclusion "therefore, realism is false." I'm asking people if they care, and if so why. Presumably there will be answers to those questions regardless of whether realism is true.
tbh we weren't super sure how to interpret the objection/question. We assumed that it was supposed to convey some problem with realism, e.g. point out some absurdity, etc. and we ran with that.
I suppose the question is whether questions like 'why do they care what's moral or immoral?' are going to pose problems if answered in certain ways (at least as far as realism goes). It will come down again to what determines what we care about, and whether moral judgements (if realism is true) can have a motivating force to some extent (which i would assume could tag caring along for the ride (maybe)).
What do you take to be at stake in the question? For instance, I could give you a handful of reasons why I care about what is immoral or not. For instance, I care about animals (epic Vegan here) and I really care if it's the case that there are moral facts that require others to be Vegans too (or at the very least, that we should stop treating animals like mere objects by murdering them and exploiting them). I think it also brings along things like the possibility of blameworthiness (so it could be similar to why people are so fervent with holding onto free will, that see something important is lost, etc). Though of course, these reasons only favour me believing these views insofar as I want them to be true. But that doesn't seem to show to me whether they really are true, or whether these are adequate reasons for believing the views that I do.
In my own mind, citing reasons why I would care about what morality has in store (if cares are just determined by my desires) would only tell me what I want out of reality, rather than tell me what it is.
I sorta scratch my head when people ask me or other realists that question. I might have all sorts of personal stakes in what reality turns out to be. Like, if I'm having an argument with a friend and I still need to know more on the subject, I'll really hope the universe allows me to be right. I'll really hope the facts align to what I was saying before hand. I would care about what the stone-cold facts are in this case. But once more, like, where do we go from there? Reality will be as it is.
I'll say more when I'm at a keyboard. I hate being on my phone. But let me ask this way: if antirealism is true, would you stop being a vegan? Would you care less about animals?
Let me put it this way. I was a vegan before I was a realist. I would stay as I am provided the falsehood of realism didn’t provide other relevant information.
Ok cool. I guess I'm wondering if this doesn't generalize. Why would anything change if you accepted antirealism?
I’m a little confused about the part on moral motivation. According to paradigmatic realists, who believe that morals do not have to be motivating, why would someone follow the moral law? Why is it particularly good/ rational for someone to follow the moral law? It seems like one could not cause any action by merely stating that the moral law exists.
Well that’s why I also talked about moral judgements potentially being motivating. It depends on your notion of rationality, but it seems rational to act in accordance with morality if it provides the best reasons to do so (e.g. excellent categorical reasons). But I think it would have to be ‘good’ by necessity presuming you mean ‘morally good’. And yes you’re right, merely stating some moral law (especially if it’s not a moral judgement) won’t motivate-morality wouldn’t cause stuff.
Right, thanks for the reply. Two more things:
1) in the case that moral judgements are motivating, what would it mean for them to be motivating? If we had some motivation for it already, wouldn’t fulfilling that motivation have nothing to do with the existence of moral facts?
2) I’m not sure I understand what it would mean for something to be good by necessity. What would be an example of something like this?
Yes it’s not the moral facts themselves motivating us, just our judgements/beliefs about them. The existence of these facts might be-as you point out-necessary in actually moving us. Though, if metaethics can influence what 1st order or 2nd order beliefs about morality we have (controversial) but that could influence what moral beliefs and judgements we might have-but it still wouldn’t be morality itself motivating us.
By it being good by necessity, it’s just baked in that if moral realism is right, then it determines what is good (morally good) so according in accordance with it would have to be good.
On a more general note, something being good by necessity might look something like a heavier thesis of the moral fixed points. “If the good exists (morality) then it is always pro tanto good (and requires) to perform easy rescues” etc.
> [T]here are hard limits to what morality could require of us. ... [W]e have a moral requirement to perform easy rescues....
I think that is an excellent approximation of most Westerners' views on morality. It is of course possible to concoct examples where an actor is morally required to forego an easy rescue -- all you need is a more pressing moral obligation. So I'm not sure that that counts as a "hard limit". (And I know of at least some people who hold that women are not morally allowed to rescue themselves if it would result in them being out in public without a male chaperone from their family, and I'm not sure those people are **conceptually** mistaken -- I think they've just got bad moral principles.)
I think I might have a hard limit for morality -- but it's not a conceptual one.
(HL1) The most stringent moral requirement is to succeed or die trying.
My reasoning is that the dead are not morally obliged to do anything (being dead and all), so if you die in an honest attempt to fulfil a moral obligation then the obligation goes away. And if it is in an honest attempt to succeed, then there is no moral fault for failing. The firefighters in the Towers on 9-11 were not morally at fault for failing to rescue the people they went in after.
But it's not a conceptual limit. If someone truly believed in life after death and the ability of dead souls to contact the living, then the soul might still be obliged to keep trying.
An aside --
> To deny them would be like affirming we could have square circles.
FYI, there are metrics (Chebyshev and Manhattan, possibly others) where circles are square. The shape of a circle depends on the metric used, so it's not a conceptual error to say we could have square circles.
Of course we normally use the Euclidean metric because it provides excellent approximations on small scales here on Earth. But it is an approximation. For example, the circumference of an Earth-surface circle with radius 10,000 km is 40,000 km, not 62,832km.
Thanks for the comment. Regarding the moral fixed points, they're 'hard limits' only in the sense that they couldn't have been different, as opposed to such points convey absolute moral requirements we can never ever ever break no matter what. (It didn't help that I didn't spell this out in the article).
Tbh, I think it would be a further fixed point that morality has these 'all things being equal' / 'absent countervailing considerations' clauses built in. Regarding easy rescues, it's gonna be that we're required to perform easy rescues 'all things being equal' / 'absent countervailing considerations'. Another way of putting it could be, 'there is always something morally important in performing easy rescues, even if morality requires us to forgo it'.
Regarding the notion that some might disagree with such fixed points needn't be any issue. Such folks just aren't getting it right in ethics, and I would favour the view that they're conceptually mistaken–though their disagreement might also be chalked up to disagreement about non-moral facts which then needn't entail they're conceptually deficient. But this also gets us to what I've refereed to as a minimal conception of the moral fixed points which is more just the view that 'if morality were objective, there would be these fixed points' as opposed to a stronger view which says that 'if morality exists, there would be these fixed points'. Given this, we'd have to find out if these people are citing objective morality (perhaps they're instead invoking divine commands, which I wouldn't count as objective morality. Same obviously goes for mere cultural norms). Either way there seems to be lots of nuance here that could avoid the charge that they're just conceptually deficient, though I'm not too jumpy as the prospect of taking that route either push comes to shove. Though even if there are no fixed points (sad) I think my final point should still comfortabley address the WMF objection.
By it being conceptually impossible to have a square circle, I'm simply asserting that it's impossible for something to be 100% round and 100% not round (e.g. a shape with 4 sides). Regardless of whether we can actually have 'square circles' as you speak of, the point I was putting forward was just something contradictory. Square circles are just a paradigm example of such things. So if you think there are square circles in some other sense than I've referred, it should be fine to just replace it with 'that would be like affirming a contradiction'.
Sorry, I should have made it clear that none of what I wrote was directly relevant to your main point. The objection was to the idea of moral fixed points. The aside was just some interesting math -- as if there were any other kind!
"I know of" --> "I have heard of"
And apparently it was "immodest dress" that was the problem, rather than male chaperones. Memory if fallible.