The Weird Moral Facts Objection to Realism

What if we were obligated to do weird things?

I think there are some facts of the matter about what is good and bad in this world. Suffering, for example, is bad (all else being equal). Pleasure is good. War is bad. The Return of The King is good - common sense stuff.

This view, Moral Realism, is in opposition to Moral Anti-realism. Anti-realists come in many forms, but what they all agree on is that there are no objective facts of the matter about what is good or bad. Moral statements like “X is wrong” cannot be true in the same way that “The sky is blue” can be true.

One argument anti-realists sometimes deploy is what we’re going to call the “Weird Moral Facts Objection” (WMF). I say “we”, because this is my first collaboration article! I wrote this article with my friend, Talis. You can read his work on his blog here.

WMF

WMF is as follows. Moral Realists posit that there are moral facts, and they claim to use these to navigate the world. For example, they may explain their donation to charity by saying “Charity is good”. This all sounds sensible, but that’s only because what they think are the moral facts happen to be sensible actions - but what if they weren’t? What if it turned out that the truly moral thing to do was to scream at tables all day? Would the moral realist think it actually was good to scream at tables, and then do it?

The goal here is to get the Moral Realist to say “No, I would not spend time yelling at my desk, nor think it was good to do so”, which would be tantamount to them admitting that they never really cared about the moral facts to begin with. They were just doing what they always wanted to do, and imagined that they had stance-independent reasons for doing so.

Objection 1 - Bullet Crunching Time (Connor)

Now, the first option for the Moral Realist to take is to say were it the case it was moral to scream at tables, they actually would believe it was. This sounds like a massive bullet to bite, but I think it’s more of a small sized bullet. A bullet appetizer. A hollow point Hors d'oeuvre.

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Me, getting ready to take all of my rage out on this booth.

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The only reason this sounds like a strange thing to accept is because it’s so obvious that it is in fact not the moral thing to do to scream at tables. Imagine we tried this approach with another domain, like Mathematics.

Person 1: I think there are objectively correct answers to Mathematical questions.

Person 2: So, if it turned out to be the case that 1+1=3 would you believe it?

Person 1: I guess?

Person: That’s absurd!

The only reason Person 2 thinks it’s absurd is because it’s so obvious 1+1=2! Which, by the way, is a somewhat hard intuition to explain were it not the case that there were objectively correct answers to Mathematical questions. What the WMF really amounts to is “If what was true was really strange and different, would you have very strange and different beliefs?”. Not only is it not a bullet to bite to say yes, but you should say yes!

Now, the real question is, would you actually do it? It’s one thing to believe it’s moral to scream at tables, it’s another to do some vocal exercises and get to work. I think in this scenario, I would yell at tables at least some of the time.

This may sound strange, because it seems like a costly thing to do with little benefit to oneself, but remember a lot of us do things like that! Donating to charity, abstaining from animal products, jumping on a hand grenade to save your friends - all of these would seem like screaming at tables to someone who didn’t think they were good. I don’t think it’s a big stretch to think we’d scream at tables too (were it in fact good to scream at them).

Additionally, while I think I probably would spend some time table screaming, I don’t think it counts against Realism to say I wouldn’t. All that would say is “I think it is morally required to scream at tables all day, but I can’t bring myself to do it” - which is totally compatible with Realism. It’s not as though Moral Realism commits you to saying everyone, including ourselves, are always perfectly moral. Many people say that exact thing about giving up meat or donating to effective charities. It’s not inconsistent to think that were it morally required to do some absurd and difficult action, you would believe it so, but fail to actually do it.

The only reason any of this feels like bullet biting is because it’s very clearly the case that it’s not morally good to scream at tables. Sure, if it turns out it was, I would do it - but if my grandmother had wheels she'd have been be a bike.

Objection 2 - Moral Motivation (Talis)

Under one possible interpretation, the WMF objection might be attacking the commitment that morality is intrinsically motivating. That is, were moral facts to exist, they would always provide motivation for us to perform certain actions.

The WMF objection could be interpreted this way given that it posits an absurd example of what morality could require of us, and shows us how we wouldn’t be motivated to act in line with it. Realists think they’re being motivated by moral facts, but really they’re just being motivated by their desires like everyone else.

Paradigmatic realists would deny that morality needs to be intrinsically motivating. It’s not as if the moral facts are reaching down and placing motivation into our hearts and making us act in accordance with them. This view is available to any realist who thinks the moral facts are non-causal entities, like non-naturalists. However it’s important to note that this point is importantly different from the view that moral judgements necessarily motivate. I think realists might be able to accept or deny this connection, even though they should deny that morality is itself intrinsically motivating.

This gets us into discussion about what sorts of things can motivate us. Theories like the Humean theory of motivation claim that we can only be motivated if we have some prerequisite desire to act in some way. However I’ve also come across the view that beliefs can, all by themselves motivate us into action, even if it might be rare that we act without desire and solely on belief alone. Realists may also infer that only normative judgements and beliefs (e.g. moral judgements) could play this role, as opposed to just any ordinary belief. Personally I’m on the fence about this issue, but it does seem to be a common sense picture of morality that our moral judgements–at least a lot of the time–motivate us to some degree. But this doesn’t require a necessary connection.

This view seems safe–at least initially–from the WMF objection provided that simply stipulating the moral facts told us to scream at tables doesn’t equate to an actual moral judgement. To make a moral judgement we would actually have to believe screaming at tables was in fact a required and important thing to do. But we don’t.

Despite the fact that screaming at tables all day being morally important strikes me as absurd, there is something to be said about the ‘working out’ done to come to some belief. I currently hold many beliefs that I thought were super weird and mistaken before I believed them, that is, before I heard the arguments and reasons in favour of them. For instance, some people can’t comprehend how we could lack free will, but given various arguments, their confidence can wane–they might even become free will error theorists. Personally, I used to think moral realism was completely implausible–I didn’t know how it could be true. But then I read philosophy and listened to interviews with philosophers knowledgeable on the subject and my mind was changed. It’s quite interesting how seeing the working out behind some beliefs or views can make us rethink our stance. Though, given how absurd and mistaken I find the view that screaming at tables all day is morally required, the arguments better be unbelievably amazing.

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Objection 3 - Practical Relevance (Talis)

WMF may also be implying that saying you would scream at tables all day if you discovered it was morally required is absurd. It’s just super weird to have a motivational profile linked up to whatever the moral facts are. But why? Such motivations might be ‘weird’, but that needn’t be any strike against their legitimacy. Is the anti-realist suggesting there are motivations we ought to have, or would be good to have? Surely not (that’s our job!). Some folks may just be motivated to act in one way or another. 

This brings us back to Hume’s theory of motivation. Are we solely motivated by desires? Or can some beliefs motivate us all by themselves? It may be the honest moral beliefs (as moral judgements) about the objective moral facts will in fact motivate us. If not, then it seems we’ll just be motivated by whatever desires we possess.

But wouldn’t that make objective morality practically irrelevant?

This gets us into some tricky territory. My own view is that something needn’t motivate us to be practically relevant in a normative sense. Though it might be ‘practically irrelevant’ insofar as convincing someone of something or moving someone to act in some way. But I think this understanding of practical irrelevance is too narrow. For example, I think it’s practically relevant advice to tell my friend not to jump into the hot tub filled with acid in front of him. He ignores my pleas and jumps in.

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Oh hypothetical friend, what are you like?

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What I was telling my friend was practically relevant insofar as it aligned with his hypothetical reasons–he didn’t want to jump into acid. But this counts as advice regardless of whether it convinces my friend or motivates him to act in some way. The same can be true of things like categorical reasons. Both sorts of reasons concern how we ought to be living provided things like our goals and desires, as well as our moral requirements to others. To my mind, if something concerns how we should be living, then it’s certainly practically relevant as it’s directly concerned with our lives.

Objection 4 - Table Screaming Skepticism (Talis)

One final concern - could morality really be that weird? Is the realist saddled with the same view as the anti-realist that truly ANYTHING could be morally good, bad, and justifiable? No I don’t believe so. There’s a thesis referred to as ‘The Moral Fixed Points’ supported and defended by the philosophers Russ Shafer-Landau, John Bengson, and Terence Cuneo. The minimalist conception of this thesis is just the idea that if moral facts exist, there are hard limits to what morality could require of us. For instance, all things being equal, we have a moral requirement to perform easy rescues, to refrain from inflicting terrible suffering on others, and so forth. Such truths would be conceptual truths. To deny them would be like affirming we could have square circles. This offers a clear response to at least some possible weird moral facts. It really couldn’t be the case that we could be obligated to do terrible or ridiculous things for their own sake.

To continue the analogy to mathematics. If someone were to ask whether I’d believe 1+1=3 if it were true, a response akin to the moral (math) fixed points, would be to charge them of not really understanding what 1 amounts to. It just couldn’t be the case that 1+1 = 3. The weird moral facts objection (at least concerning the most heinous candidates for evil moral facts) then seems to be asking a very problematic question. What if you were morally required to do what you couldn’t be morally required to do? That’s clearly not any sort of sensible question. I think the minimalist thesis of the moral fixed points is quite plausible and it offers a nice counter to the WMF objection as it merely assumes there are no moral fixed points.

On a separate but related note, suppose it were conceptually possible that screaming at tables could be morally required. I have strong doubts, but suppose I’m wrong about that. I think it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that, were we to figure out that was true (and see the working out!) and that we still found it completely absurd, that we could lower our credence in moral realism. However this would only count as evidence against realism if it were actually true. Admitting this doesn’t itself count against the plausibility of moral realism. David Enoch offers a plausible analogy in a paper discussing a semi-related (but importantly different) subject. Suppose we confidently believe that having something like a brain is necessary for a creature to be conscious. But then suppose we had a head scan done and figured out your skull was empty. This would seem to count against the confidence in your previous view. Personally I would count it as near conclusive proof that we don’t need a brain to be conscious. However–and this is the crucial part–accepting that our mind would be changed in that state of affairs, doesn’t mean we should change our views here and now. We’re simply affirming that if this were to happen our confidence in our original belief would strongly wane, or at least be up for reconsideration. 

The WMF objection presents a very odd (if not conceptually and necessarily impossible) state of affairs and essentially asks us how it would affect our credence in moral realism. Wouldn’t it be absurd to scream at tables all day? Yes it would be. But given the WMF is a thought experiment, and not describing our actual state of affairs, it’s not the situation we’re in. If I were to have access to a conclusive argument for the view that screaming at tables all day was morally required if moral realism were true, I’d either be convinced to do so after consulting the working out (you never know!), or, if it still strikes me as absurd, I could simply lower my credence in moral realism, if not reject it. No harm done to my existing credence in moral realism. 

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So, we don’t find WMF a particularly compelling objection to Moral Realism. Again, if you liked what Talis had to say, check out his blog here (he pays for a Midjourney subscription instead of my lowly Chat GPT one, so his article images bang). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to give a strong word to my kitchen counter.

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References:

1. Shafer-Landau, R. Bengson, J. Cuneo, T. (2014). ‘The Moral Fixed Points: New Directions for Moral Nonnaturalism’.Philosophical Studies, 171(3). Springer Verlag, pp. 399-443

2. Enoch, D. (2020). ‘Thanks, We’re Good: Why Moral Realism is Not Morally Objectionable’. Philosophical Studies, 178(5). Springer Verlab, pp. 1689-1699

3. Bedke, M. (2010). ‘Might All Normativity be Queer?’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 88(1), pp. 41-58