Abstract
Many philosophers think that moral objectivism is supported by stable features of moral discourse and thinking. When engaged in moral reasoning and discourse, people behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, and the seemingly most straightforward way of making sense of this is to assume that objectivism is correct; this is how we think that such behavior is explained in paradigmatically objectivist domains. By comparison, relativist, error-theoretic or non-cognitivist accounts of this behavior seem contrived and ad hoc. After explaining why this argument should be taken seriously (recent arguments notwithstanding), I argue that it is nevertheless undermined by considerations of moral disagreement. Even if the metaphysical, epistemic and semantic commitments of objectivism provide little or no evidence against it, and even if the alternative explanations of ‘objectivist’ traits of moral discourse and thinking are speculative or contrived, objectivism is itself incapable of making straightforward sense of these traits. Deep and widespread moral disagreement or, rather, the mere appearance of such disagreement, strongly suggests that the explanations operative in paradigmatically objective discourse fail to carry over to the moral case. Since objectivism, no less than relativism, non-cognitivism and error-theories, needs non-trivial explanations of why we behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, such behavior does not presently provide reason to accept objectivism.
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Notes
For versions of the argument, see e.g. Brink (1989, Chap. 2), Huemer (2005, Chaps. 2–3), McNaughton (1988, pp. 39–41), Sayre-McCord (2006, p. 42), Shafer-Landau (2003, Chaps. 2–3), Streiffer (2003, Chap. 1). Since versions of the straightforward argument seem to be the most commonly cited source of support for objectivism in contemporary metaethics, I expect it to be endorsed by a substantial part of the majority of philosophers sympathetic to objectivism. [According to a 2009 survey of almost a thousand professional philosophers (http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl), the majority accepts or leans toward ‘moral realism’; similar results were obtained for graduate students in philosophy. (‘Moral realism’ is often understood as implying what I call ‘moral objectivism’. There are exceptions, though: see e.g. Sayre-McCord (1991), who takes realism to be compatible with forms of relativism.)].
Objectivism is part of Kant’s transcendental ethics and among contemporary Kantians such as Korsgaard (1996, 2009), naturalistic (‘Cornell’) realism (Boyd 1988; Brink 1989, 2001), version of what Sharon Street (2006) calls ‘rigidifying antirealism’, ideal observer or advisor theories (Firth 1952; Hare 1981; Smith 1994), as well as typical non-naturalistic theories (Huemer 2005; Moore 1903; Parfit 2005, 2011; Shafer-Landau 2003). (In contrast to Firth or Smith, Hare insists that moral statements are prescriptive rather than descriptive. But he still thinks that constraints on moral language are such that, absent mistakes of reasoning and ignorance about relevant non-moral matters, every judge would make the same moral judgment).
Some uses of ‘objectivism’ rule out ideal observer theories because the latter make moral facts constitutively dependent on the attitudes of moral judges. For a discussion of the relevance of different notions of objectivity, see e.g. McDowell (1985, 1998). ‘Objectivism’ is also sometimes used to signify non-naturalist forms of what I call moral absolutism.
Absolutism concerns thoughts and concepts, not language. Suppose that ‘wrong’ means ‘violates norm N’, where N is determined contextually, thus giving talk and thought about wrongness different correctness-conditions in different contexts. Absolutism might still be true about our concept of moral wrongness if thoughts about what is morally wrong always relate to the same (relatively determinate) moral (rather than aesthetic, legal, etc.) norm. On the other hand, absolutism about moral wrongness is incompatible with the idea that our concept of moral wrongness is itself contextualist in that sense that it relates to different, incompatible standards in different contexts. It is also incompatible with the claim that although everyone’s concept of moral wrongness signifies a non-relative property, not everyone’s signifies the same non-relative property.
Various forms of absolutism might be trivially satisfied given cognitivism. Suppose, for example, that the concept expressed by the predicate ‘immoral’ has satisfaction-conditions that are relative to appraisers and times. Then absolutism would not hold for F = immorality, but it would hold for F = immorality relative to appraiser NN at time t. However, the forms of objectivism that have been at the focus of the debate concern non-relativized kinds of judgments that are of interest to people in general: judgments about what we have most reason to do; what we ought to, must, or must not do; or about what contributes to a good life or a just society.
It has turned out to be surprisingly difficult to distinguish quasi-realism from moral objectivism. For previous discussion, see e.g. O'Leary-Hawthorne and Price (1996), Blackburn (1993), Boghossian (1990), Divers and Miller (1994), Dreier (2002, 2004), Dworkin (1996), Gibbard (2003), Harcourt (2005), Lenman (2003), Nagel (1997), Rosen (1998), Sinclair (2006), Stoljar (1993), Wright (1985). However, since I have argued elsewhere that there is a satisfactory way of defining substantial non-projective correctness-conditions, and since the debate about the correctness of objectivism presupposes the intelligibility of non-projective correctness-conditions, I will simply assume that we understand such conditions well enough.
Cf. Dummett (1959) about bivalence as a mark of realism.
More precisely: most paradigm cases of disagreement are cases where exactly one party is right (i.e., not cases of true contradictions or indeterminacy).
Brink (1989, p. 202), Shafer-Landau (1994, 2003, pp. 118–120) and Sturgeon (1994, p. 96) argue that objectivism should allow for some amounts of indeterminacy. Moral objectivism, as understood here, allows that moral concepts are somewhat indeterminate, that common sense morality is conceptually confused in various ways and that everyday controversy about, say, justice or immorality are sometimes in need of disambiguation and that the correctness-conditions of moral concept vary somewhat from moral judge to moral judge.
For example, Gilbert Harman (1998, p. 5) reports that a large portion—perhaps a majority—of Princeton undergraduates has relativistic reactions to radical disagreements; I have had similar experiences with both undergraduates and laymen at public lectures. Recently there have also been some empirical investigations revealing considerable variation in apparently objectivist intuitions (Goodwin and Darley 2008), and some empirical evidence suggesting forms of cultural relativism (Sarkissian et al. 2011). Yasenchuk (1997) argues that diversity of moral phenomenology undermines Brink’s claim that ordinary moral experience puts the burden of proof on the antirealist (cf. Loeb 2007, pp. 472–474; Nichols 2004). Another possible reaction to differences in intuitions about radical disagreements is to argue that judgments made by different people need different metaethical accounts; for a defense and development of this idea, see Francén (2007).
Compare the treatment of apparently relativistic discourse in Timmons (1999, pp. 150–152).
Objectivism might also fail to fully vindicate our practice by implying that we irrationally take parties of moral disagreements to be concerned with the same issue, or have an irrational confidence in our own moral judgments. The discussion in the following sections provides some support for the first of these worries.
This is not to say that objectivists have done no explanatory work of relevance for the straightforward argument. In particular, their efforts to explain how absolutism might be compatible with deep moral disagreement do suggest ways in which objectivists might want to explain ‘objectivist’ behavior. Such suggestions will be discussed in the sections that follow. Moreover, various arguments have been given for cognitivism and against non-cognitivism, invoking difficulties for non-cognitivists to account for moral reasoning, for explanations of natural events in moral terms, and for the seeming possibility of amoralists. Our concern here, however, is primarily with absolutism.
Street (2006) argues at length that ‘realist’ theories of value cannot be reconciled with plausible evolutionary or naturalistic accounts of our moral judgments. Even if Street were right, this would not affect the present argument, as ‘objectivism’ in the present sense can take the form of what Street calls ‘rigidifying antirealism’, thus falling outside the scope of her argument.
The second premise can be expanded by spelling out the relevant way in which objectivism is supposed to make sense of the objectivist behavior. For example, it could be divided into the following two premises:
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(2a) The most straightforward explanation of why we behave ‘as if’ objectivism were true is that we do accept objectivism.
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(2b) The most straightforward explanation of why we accept objectivism is that it is correct.
An alternative explanation of (1) would take it that our behavior has been adapted (biologically, culturally, through the ordinary process of acquiring the relevant language) to the fact that objectivism is correct even though we have no corresponding belief that it is correct. Though these are significantly different ways of spelling out (2), they will make little difference to our discussion.
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This is not a uniform phenomenon: some argue that, and behave as if, there is one correct logic, where this goes beyond the claim that there is one best interpretation of natural language logical constants (for discussion, see Eklund (2012)). What is clear, however, is that absolutist behavior tends to be restricted under such circumstances.
Brink’s excellent discussion of moral disagreement applies in spite of his rejection of the criterial view.
Objectivists often blame the lack of agreement on fundamental issues in normative ethics on the fact that normative inquiry without religious or political dogmas is a young discipline (Brink 1989, pp. 205–206; Lear 1983, p. 60; Parfit 1984, pp. 453–454; Shafer-Landau 2003, p. 219; Smith 1994, p. 188). But although the youth of the discipline might weaken the negative induction from past failure of rational convergence to future failures, it provides no positive reason to think that there will be such convergence. Merli (2002, p. 224) thinks that we need to look at specific work in normative theory to see reasons to expect convergence. Even if such specific details were forthcoming, however, they would give no force to the straightforward argument.
Similar worries concern related views of reference. For example, defenses of realism sometimes appeal to what we would end up with at the end of inquiry, or to moral kinds—kinds acknowledged by a mature moral science (Copp 2000, pp. 124–134; Sayre-McCord 1997). However, unless the relevant constraints of moral inquiry are specified, there is little reason to think that such descriptions pick out anything remotely determinate. Similarly, Pettit (1998, 1999) formulates the criterial view to allow for considerable opacity and dynamics and thereby convergence through conceptual discovery, but gives no straightforward reason to think that there will be such convergence. And there seem to be contrary evidence: the debate concerning various kinds of ideal observer or advisor models shows that as soon as details about these ideal observers are filled into yield determinate implications, controversy ensues. For related difficulties, see Holland (2001), Horgan and Timmons (1996, 2009).
For example, Gampel (1996) argues, in effect, that our criteria for concept application are in conflict with the causal-regulatory account. It is also an open question whether ‘teleosemantic’ views of reference of the sort developed by Boyd and Millikan are adequate for any concepts. See e.g. Fodor (1990, 1996), Papineau (1998) and Price (1998).
As Merli (2008) notes, expressivists and cognitivists alike seem to have trouble accounting for intuitions about Moral Twin Earth scenarios, making appeal to these intuitions problematic.
For related reasons, it does not help objectivists to say, with Wedgwood (2001, pp. 27–29), that ‘absolutist’ behavior is based on the fact that the judgments of the disagreeing parties have the same consequences for practical reasoning, in particular for what preferences and attitudes we are committed to have. That account endorses an explanation that seems equally open to relativists or expressivists. (Cf. Tersman’s (2006, Chap. 5) suggestion that radical moral disagreement shows that absolutism is false and that this undermines one important reason to accept cognitivism.).
I have not seen this reply in print, but enough people have made it in conversation to merit inclusion.
For a discussion of other ‘companions in guilt’ arguments for moral objectivism, see Lillehammer (2007).
See footnote 18.
An objectivist appeal to disagreements about the interpretation of quantum mechanics needs to make it plausible that people involved in that debate (a) seem to be widely disagreeing about both extension and fundamental criteria for the application of certain concepts and (b) display full objectivist behavior in relation to these concepts. I know too little about the interpretation of quantum mechanics to rule this out with confidence, but strongly suspect that one condition will tend to undermine the other.
Shafer-Landau (2006, p. 219) is right that disagreements about, say, the possibility of some suitably specified forms of free will seem perfectly objective: “Once we are sure of our terms and concepts, the judgments that affirm or deny the existence of such things are literally either true or false, in as robust a sense as we can imagine.” However, once we have reached that level of confidence (and similar confidence that our opponents understand the issue in the same way), these disagreements no longer satisfy condition Fundamental Disagreement.
Schroeter and Schroeter also require congruence, i.e., that the ‘individual speaker’s initial understanding of the term must not diverge so radically from that of others in the community as to undermine that coordinating intention’ (Schroeter and Schroeter 2009, p. 18).
For a recent exchange illustrating this, see Leiter’s (2010) ‘Moral Skepticism And Moral Disagreement: Developing An Argument From Nietzsche’ with comments from over 20 contributors and replies from Leiter at http://onthehuman.org/2010/03/moral-skepticism-and-moral-disagreement-developing-an-argument-from-nietzsche/.
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Acknowledgments
This paper has benefited from comments from audiences at Stockholm University, Lund University, Uppsala University, the University of Gothenburg, the University of Connecticut, and Oxford University. Special thanks go to Erik Carlson, Thomas Anderberg, Sven Danielsson, the late Jan Österberg, Frans Svensson, Ingmar Persson, Joakim Sandberg, Ragnar Francén Olinder, Torbjörn Tännsjö, John Eriksson, Caj Strandberg, Anna-Karin Andersson, Wlodek Rabinowicz, David Alm, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Johan Brännmark, Jonas Olson, Krister Bykvist, Nicholas Shea, Russ Shaffer-Landau, and several anonymous referees for The Journal of Ethics.
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Björnsson, G. Do ‘Objectivist’ Features of Moral Discourse and Thinking Support Moral Objectivism?. J Ethics 16, 367–393 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-012-9131-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-012-9131-9