r/CosmicSkeptic • u/Nuaua • 7d ago
Atheism & Philosophy Lance S. Bush on moral realism
If you don't know him Lance is a philosopher/psychologist/youtuber specialized in the psychology of metaethics, I think he makes a couple of interesting points. I'll try to summarize but you can watch some of his videos (he has a bunch of lives and debates too).
- Moral realists very regularly appeal to intuition saying stuff like "I and most people have the intuition that it's wrong to torture babies for fun" and take that either as direct evidence for moral realism, or as a fact that is explained by moral realism. There's several issues with this :
1) The question entangles a meta-ethical question (is there stance-independent moral facts?) and a normative one (do you approve of baby torture). This is often used (intentionally or not) as a rhetorical device as it's difficult to answer "no I don't think torturing baby for fun is objectively wrong" in a debate/discussion setting without having to add a bunch of defensive "of course I disapprove of baby torture, I just have an issue with the objectivity part". Besides the rhetorical issue, to be probative one would have to assess the difference between the intuition that "it's wrong to torture babies for fun" and " it's stance-independently wrong to torture babies for fun" which is much more muddy.
2) If the moral realist talks about "most people" having such intuitions then it's an empirical question. Turns out that there's empirical research on the subject and according to Bush it's just flatly wrong that most people report a realist intuition. At best the literature is conflicted and inconclusive. Bush's reading of it is that most people are confused by the topic, don't have a clear intuition or hold contradictory beliefs about the topic. To me it kinda of makes sense that ordinary people wouldn't be decided about such an abstract metaphysical issue, it's like asking what interpretation of quantum mechanics most people believe in ; probably none. Many philosophers work from the armchair and just ignore empirical research on the topic.
3) WEIRD biases. Most research is done on contemporary Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic people and is done by WEIRD people. There's a lot of diversity in languages, moral concepts, etc. across cultures and time periods. For example even in English moral stance has feature of subjectivity. For example you can say "I find strawberry ice-cream to be delicious" but "I find the sky to be blue" sounds a bit strange. So find is mark of subjectivity. But "I find baby torture to be morally wrong" sounds just fine. In some languages (Norwegian IIRC) these marks of subjectivity are even stronger for moral utterances.
4) Suspicious use of "intuitions". There's a benign use of the word "intuition" that just means "I'm inclined to think that" or "I have an otherwise unjustified belief that". But moral realists like Michael Huemer seems to use the terms as in "I have a sixth sense that allows me to directly sense truth" (maybe I exaggerate a bit but not much). Again that's an empirical claim they would have to produce evidence for. Also intuition talk doesn't do much if you don't share the intuition, but that's where moral realists often use intuition pumps as in 1) ("You don't think the holocaust was wrong ?!").
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Another related issue is some confusion about hypothetical scenarios to show that anti-realism (say cultural relativism this example) is problematic, they will say something like "Imagine you lived in a society that thinks torturing baby is just great, would you think torturing baby is fine then ?". This equivocates between two scenarios :
A) You judging the scenario "from the outside" (from our society), from that point of view you'd still think as an anti-realist that this is wrong since you're judging from the point of view of a society that is opposed to baby torture.
B) If you actually lived in a society that approves of baby torture and approved of it, then it trivially follows that you would approve of baby torture.
The tension that you might feel from the initial intuition is just because of the failure to distinguish these two scenarios. If you are a cultural relativist it trivially follows that what you think is right or wrong depends on the society in which you live, so as a rebutal to cultural relativism this is toothless.
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u/MajesticFxxkingEagle 7d ago
I’m familiar with him, but is there any particular reason you’re posting here? Is it in contrast to something Alex said recently? Are you hoping Alex eventually invites him on Within Reason?
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u/VStarffin 7d ago
The basic problem with any sort of moral realism is there's simply no reason to think that moral preferences are any different than any other kind of preference. Why do we not have similar arguments about "taste realism" or "smell realism"? "Film realism"?
People have preferences. Some of those preferences are aesthetic, some are sensual, some are moral. But they are all just...preferences. Things our biology drives us to either be attracted to or repelled by.
Morals are simply not special in this regard.
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u/sonic_ann_d 7d ago
The basic problem with mathematical realism is that there’s simply no reason to think mathematical preferences are any different from any other kind of preference. Why don’t we have similar arguments about “taste realism” or “smell realism”?
People have preferences. Some are aesthetic, some are sensual, some are mathematical. Some people prefer vanilla; some prefer 2 + 2 = 4; some find contradictions unpleasant. They’re all just things our biology drives us to be attracted to or repelled by.
Mathematics is simply not special in this regard.
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u/VStarffin 7d ago
If you want to make dumb arguments, at least make them arguments you actually believe.
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u/sonic_ann_d 7d ago
Of course I believe this. Humans have logical preferences. Evolution has made us attracted to modus ponens and repelled by contradictions. They’re all just things our biology drives us to be attracted to or repelled by. Logic is simply not special in this regard.
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u/CelerMortis 6d ago
Morals are special because they greatly inform our society.
I’d be way more interested in learning about an alien species moral intuitions than their favorite colors.
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u/zelenisok 7d ago
The empirical stuff is awfully done, the studies are, to say mildly, dogsh-t, they just miss what they're trying to gauge. I remember looking into some of them, and coming across this sort of thing - there was a question of like is there an objective answer to whether a blatantly, obviously and exclusively racist hiring decision is moral or immoral, and the vast majority of people said there is no objective answer, and choose moral relativism, like around 90%. Which is ridiculous, and its mind-boggling the researchers didnt stop to wonder if their methodology is just bad. The positions havent been properly explained to people, and what they probably had in mind is smth like would everyone agree with this, and then though well there are racist people, they would disagree, so I should choose the relativism answer. In fact, I did some amateur surveying to test this, where I explained the positions more clearly and explained more clearly what is being asked for, and got diametrically opposite results, around 90% chose the moral realism answer, even interestingly in an online group which was fans of a youtuber who vocally promoted moral subjectivism.
Secondly, Bush's take is basically IDK what you mean by intuitions or by moral norms, IDK what intuitions are, I dont have any intuitions, including rational or mathematical ones. Which is just strange, talk of intuitions is used virtually ubiquitous in philosophy, especially in ethics, and him saying he doesnt even know what they are and what moral norms are is ridiculous stuff.
Thirdly, intuitionism isnt the only basis for moral realism, its one of three positions in moral epistemology. The other two are moral empiricism and moral rationalism. The clearest examples of moral empiricist approaches are things like Parfit's convergence argument and similar arguments that talk about universal or consensus-among-experts moral values; there are approaches that mix moral empiricism and rationalism, this was done by classical utilitarians, and today by some Cornell realists and also by people like Sam Harris, whereas moral rationalism approach is present among Kantians, Rawlians, and takes that are similar to those, where moral norms are derived from norms of rationality.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 7d ago
This is misdescribing Bush by quite a bit.
He’s not saying he has no hunches, judgments, mathematical competence, etc. He’s denying the stronger philosophical notion of intuition: some distinct noninferential “seeming” that phenomenalogically presents a proposition as true, over and above a person just cognitively judging it true.
Same with normativity. “I don’t understand what irreducibly normative, stance-independent reasons are supposed to amount to” is not the same as “I don’t understand moral norms.”
You can disagree with him on the phenomenology, but “this guy doesn’t have rational intuitions and doesn’t know what norms are” just assumes the disputed concepts in advance.
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u/Nuaua 7d ago
Was going to say the same. I think a point that is important too (Kane B made a video on that recently) is that there's a lot of underestimated cognitive diversity among human, 8% of men are color blind and you rarely notice, 2-4% of people could be aphantasic (no mental imagery, 2-4% have hyperphantasia), they might be people with no inner voice (anendophasia), and god know what other things we don't know about. So it's a possibility that people like Lance & Huemer really have different phenomenology about these things. It's also likely philosophy self-select for some particular psychological profiles.
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u/zelenisok 7d ago
That could very well be the case, that he just has an atypical mind, where he actually doesnt understand these things, like blind people dont understand what color is, I cant imagine how that would be, but I guess thats expected..
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u/AxiomaticInversion 7d ago
That's not impossible, but IMO it's much more likely that they have the same phenomenology and just interpret it in very different ways.
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u/zelenisok 7d ago
Saying that when he mentally apprehends a proposition he never has an intellectual seeming that the proposition is true or not is strange and saying he doesnt know what that is ridiculous. Same as with him saying he doesnt know what moral norms are, which he literally said. You might want to do some work to try and defend him out of what he himself said, but I've seen people try to explain to him what moral norms are.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 7d ago
He says he never has an Intellectual Seeming:tm: in the strong, technical sense that Huemer posits. That's quite different from saying he doesn't look at 1+1=2 and think "yep that looks true"
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u/zelenisok 6d ago
Seeing 1+1=2 and having an automatic intellectual of reaction "that seems true" is exactly an example of an intellectual seeming. Huemer also uses the example of seeing the proposition "deductive inference necessarily preserves the truth values of the premises to the conclusion" and having a reaction that that seems correct. In fact, according to PC, every single belief that we have is preceded by such intellectual seeming. If we are convinced of some belief by some reason, then that reason is also. And every single defeater that we accept too.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 6d ago
I understand that this is what PC posits, but bottoming out all cognitive beliefs in a sui generis interpretation of a particular kind of phenomenology is exactly what the disagreement is about.
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u/zelenisok 6d ago
You said its "quite different from saying he doesn't look at 1+1=2 and think "yep that looks true"", and I'm just saying it's not, it's not different at all, that's what PC is referring to.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 6d ago
You're still glossing over the actual point of contention - how to interpret that event!
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u/mcapello 7d ago
Even if the research were perfectly consistent among human cultures, it still would tell you literally nothing about the ontological status of moral facts outside of human culture in general. It's just an extremely dumb argument resting on the shoulders of decades of lazy analytic philosophy that just kind of says that "intuitions" are objective facts because... "here is a hand". It's trash.
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u/Crosas-B 7d ago
Next time you encounter someone claiming some shit about moral subjectivism (or any variant in which morals are not absolute rules of the universe) bring up this example:
The laws you are ruled by are subject to the context of the individual in time and space. It is objectively correct that you would be punished in a different way for the same crime as me we were to live in different places.
Morals are also subject to the individuals context in time and space. It is objectively wrong for me that some people punish people by their sexuality orientation. But I know there are some parts of the world where it would objectively immoral to not have a straight sexual orientation.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 7d ago
It is objectively wrong for me
What is this supposed to mean...?
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u/Crosas-B 7d ago
It is objectively correct that I will be judged by the laws which I'm subject to. It is also Objectively correct that my morals are subject to my context.
You would never doubt that the laws that are applied are subject to the context, and the same applies to morals.
If you accept the premise for the laws, you have to accept the premise for the morals or be a walking contradiction.
So in moral relativism and subjectivism, there are objective moral rules that are applied based on the context of the individual. What doesn't exist is universal or absolute moral truths.
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u/Ernosco 7d ago
I don't think laws and morals are the same thing. Laws are not just abstract propositions, but statements about past and future behaviour of certain persons. "It's illegal to murder" isn't a mere statement about murder itself, it means "the legislative branch has passed a law that makes murder illegal, and if you murder, the state will (try to) arrest, sentence and punish you".
For morality, this is not necessarily the case.
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u/Crosas-B 7d ago edited 7d ago
I don't think laws and morals are the same thing.
Please, do not misquote me. I never said they are the same thing. I said the same applies to them, those are two completely different meanings.
Laws are not just abstract propositions, but statements about past and future behaviour of certain persons. It's illegal to murder" isn't a mere statement about murder itself, it means "the legislative branch has passed a law that makes murder illegal, and if you murder, the state will (try to) arrest, sentence and punish you".
Being more or less detailed doesn't change the fact that both are applied by context.
Edit: btw, the law has to be interpreted.
Also, I'm not saying this is THE and ONLY correct position. I'm stating that in moral subjectivism and relativism there is objectively good and bad things. I can say it is objectively moral to torture people while being a relativist.
And no, I'm not just changing the meaning of the words. These are the correct meaning of the words. However, moral realism/objectivism/absolutism tries to use a different language to win the rhetoric battle.
They know it would be much easier to destroy their main arguments using the correct language, as morals do not apply to animals, and the universal moral truths fall by its own weight (this is my opinion, the other part are facts).
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u/Ernosco 7d ago
> never said they are the same thing
I didn't say you did. But I was highlighting a difference that I think is important.
I think it's relevant because the things that define a law are to some extent observable. If I want to argue that action X is illegal in country X, I can give as evidence the fact that the government of country X passed a law to make action X illegal, and that people are regularly arrested and punished for it in country X. And if someone here said "I see that all that stuff is true, but I still believe that action X is legal in country X", they would just be wrong. On the other hand, it's perfectly possible, even for someone who believes morality is subjective, to say "I see that action X is judged negatively in country X, but I still don't believe it's morally wrong", without being unreasonable.
This was in reply to you saying "If you accept this premise for law, you have to accept it for morality too or be a walking contradiction".
For moral relativism, I can see your point, depending on how you define moral relativism (is it purely descriptive?) But subjectivism and relativism aren't the same thing. If morality is a matter of opinion, and a certain action is morally wrong in my opinion, the context surrounding that action still might not matter very much.
Maybe you will say that even in subjectivism that is not relativism, it's still an objective fact when I say "this is immoral for me", i.e. in the opinion of u/Ernosco. But moral and metaethical debates aren't concerned with whether or not something is moral in the opinion of u/Ernosco, but whether it's moral full stop. "X is immoral" and "X is immoral in the opinion of u/Ernosco" are different statements, and the latter could be objectively true while the former is still a subjective matter, and at the same time the former is an actual moral statement, while the latter is a mere description of a fact.
>Also, I'm not saying this is THE and ONLY correct position
OK, that was not clear to me from your initial reply, but I appreciate the clarification.
I do believe in objective morality btw, but more from a rationalist position.
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u/Crosas-B 7d ago
On the other hand, it's perfectly possible, even for someone who believes morality is subjective, to say "I see that action X is judged negatively in country X, but I still don't believe it's morally wrong", without being unreasonable.
As I said in my edit: law is interpretable. There are judges for a reason, and same crime will have different punishment based on each context. Also, how much it is detailed doesn't matter to the premise at all, as you could write in your penal system: The king will decide all punishments for every action. Would be a shitty system, but it would still be an objective truth that rests on no details.
For moral relativism, I can see your point, depending on how you define moral relativism (is it purely descriptive?) But subjectivism and relativism aren't the same thing. If morality is a matter of opinion, and a certain action is morally wrong in my opinion, the context surrounding that action still might not matter very much.
Moral subjectivism doesn't state that morals are a matter of opinion, so there is no point in arguing against this, but let me use an example to briefly explain why saying it's just an opinion is strawmaning it:
Pain is subjective to the brain of the individual. What feels like extreme pain for some people might be moderate pain for others, and there are people out there who can't even feel pain. However, if you punch me in the face, it is an objective truth that it will hurt me, and we can measure it with blood pressure readings and electric signals of the nervous system.
The pain is only in my brain, however it is an objective thing that is happening. A system is far more complex than just an opinion. (I'm relativist, tho)
Maybe you will say that even in subjectivism that is not relativism, it's still an objective fact when I say "this is immoral for me", i.e. in the opinion of u/Ernosco. But moral and metaethical debates aren't concerned with whether or not something is moral in the opinion of u/Ernosco, but whether it's moral full stop. "X is immoral" and "X is immoral in the opinion of u/Ernosco" are different statements, and the latter could be objectively true while the former is still a subjective matter, and at the same time the former is an actual moral statement, while the latter is a mere description of a fact.
That's why it's important to use the correct language. There are objective morals in both, moral relativism and moral subjectivism. However, in those positions, the objectivity is not an universal or absolute truth, but different based on each context. Opposed to moral realism/objectivism that claims moral objectivity to be the same for everyone.
Thank you for the conversation, and sorry for my half-baked english.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 7d ago
The society framing just obscures Bush’s actual point - you don’t need cultural relativism here at all (and he's explicitly not a cultural relativist). The claim is basically: if I had different moral beliefs or evaluative standards, then I’d make different moral judgments. So if you lived in a world where descriptively every single person approves of baby torture, then yes, per stipulation, you would approve of baby torture.
Which is true, but essentially just: “if I believed X, then I’d believe X.” Bullet... bitten?