A Simple Argument for Moral Realism

Hey Richard,

While anti-realists will no doubt claim that your argument is question begging (since you simply assert that certain moral statements that are true), I’m inclined to think that something like this argument works. One way to think of it is as a kind of Moorean response to moral skepticism, in which it is claimed that “Hitler was evil” and similar claims are more obviously true than the premises of any skeptical argument.

Some of these terms get fuzzy after a while, so I hope I understand your claim to moral realism correctly. I, for example, believe there are objective moral facts, but I still do not qualify as a realist. I understand moral realism only in the sense expressed by a fellow named Russ Shafer-Landau in his book, MORAL REALISM. He gives moral realism as the claim that

1) There are objective moral facts
2) We can in principle know them
3) These facts would obtain independent of any actual or hypothetical stance one might have toward them

On my view, 2 is trivially true or just plain unintelligible, and 3 could not be the case for me. Nonetheless, I am sympathetic toward moral realism. However, I don’t think your argument is convincing.

Like most ordinary language appeals, your argument suffers from the fact that just because we take certain claims to be straightforwardly true, it does not follow that they are, nor does it follow that they entail that the discourse refers to a real domain. I, for example, could refer to someone’s behavior as very expressive of a Capricorn. And in my circle of friends, discourse about zodiac signs is as common as discourse about the weather. So within the scope of my friend group with whom I regularly associate, talk of someone as being ‘just like a Capricorn,’ or someone having ‘a Scorpio sex drive,’ etc., appears to express claims that are straightforwardly true and which refer to a real domain. But it does not follow that there is zodiacal realism. The two conditions specified, that it seems to be true talk and that it seems to refer to a real domain, are not sufficient to make for a sound realism.

Oh I see, my mistake.

But all moral theories could be consistently wrong, right? In the same way we’ve long mistaken colors as objective properties, so too we could have long mistaken moral claims for expressing objective truths.

Before you get too carried away with the idea that there are moral truths, you might want to back up a bit and ask yourself what could possibly make a moral claim either true or false. Unless you are prepared to make do with unanalyzed moral qualities as constituents of moral facts – which can then be moral truthmakers – it’s difficult to see how you can make much progress.

At any rate, my intutions run in the opposite direction. I particular, I don’t think that it’s true that Hitler was evil. I say that he was evil in order to try to influence the behavior of others by expressing my (sincere) dissaproval of what he did and I advocate that other’s also express their dissapproval. However, just as no command is either true or false and no expression of dissapproval (or approval either for that matter) is either true or false, so, I think, moral claims do not express propositions.

As far as I can tell the function of a moral claim is to influence behavior by expressing (and by adovacting the expression of) approval or dissaproval. Moral claims concern what to do, not what is true. This is not to trivialize them. Rather it’s just that not everything that’s important is a matter of what is true.

It further seems to me that you have not given genuinely supporting evidence for your key claim that that there are some obvious moral truths. Rather, what would appear to be obvious is just that most people disapprove of certain kinds of acts strongly enough to advocate showing disapproval of them.

We may have a technical disagreement as to what sort of things truths and falsehoods are that’s worth mentioning in passing. According to me it’s necessary to distinguish between sentences and the propositions they express. Thus, for example, the English sentence ‘Some dogs are black’ expresses a truth, but is not itelf a truth. For if it were then some truths would begin with the letter ‘S’; even though when the same truth is expressed in Spanish the corresponding sentence does not begin with an ‘S’. Also (as I assume you are already aware) some sentences are ambiguous in such a fashion that they can be used to express both a truth and a falsehood. The sentence ‘All muslims are not terrorists’ is an example; for it can express the truth “Not all muslims are terrorists” as well as the falsehood “All muslims are non-terrorists”.

At any rate, we have a fundamental disagreement as to whether moral claims express propositions. In your last post you agreed with me that one function of moral claims is to influence how others behave. You then dismissed its importance, however, presumably because you reckon that that does not mean that a moral claim can’t ALSO express a proposition. If that’s what you had in mind then I have no particular objection. (I never meant to suggest that a claim might have more than a single function.) It is, however, relevant to our dispute because it’s an attempt to explain how a moral claim can be both meaningful and valuable even if it doesn’t express any proposition. Also, I presume that you’ll agree that many things we say in order to influence behavior clearly do not express propositions. ‘Take out the trash’ and ‘Let’s order a pizza for dinner tonight’ are examples. So, I think, your position (as so far stated) is no better than mine; and perhaps the burden falls more naturally on you to show that moral claims do express propositions. (I shan’t insist on that however.)

Now as to your claim that “The sentence is true because Hitler deserved moral condemnation.” – well, I think you have to do far better than that. I’m mean, that’s little better than saying that Hitler was evil because he performed morally impermissible acts. In order to have a substantial backing for your position you must be able to explain what the truthmaker for “Hitler was evil” is; and it’s impossible to do that just by appealing to ordinary (morally neutral) facts.

Given that I’ve been quite explicit about the fact that I’m a non-cognitivist, it’s bizarre that you asked me to fill in the blanks myself by appealing to my favorite theory of justification. For as a non-cognitivist I believe that all theories of moral justification are fundamentally confused. (It would be like having a theory of the justification of requests. “Please pass the salt” is justified but “Please take your hands off my wife” is unjustified.

You claimed that you do not believe in unanalyzable moral properties. Honestly, I can’t see how you can possibly hope to avoid them. For you need truthmakers for your so-called moral truths; and these truthmakers are going to have to be facts that involve moral qualities. Hence your only way out is to instead have analyzable moral properties — and good luck with that!

Lastly, you said that you are attracted to a constructivist/rationalist theory of justification. When you get the time could you give me a brief explanation of the main idea? (At present I only have a vague idea of what you mean.)

Hugs and Kisses,
Semantic Terrorist

Thank’s for the speedy and detailed reply, Richard. (I’m rather new to the internet, and am glad to have discovered your site. It’s fun to talk shop with you and the other contributors.)

So then… … the propositions “Some dogs are black” and “Algunos perros son negros” aren’t the same truth. That’s very surprising to say the least! Indeed, it would seem to make the job of translating from English to Spanish a downright mysterious task – if not an impossible one. For ‘twould seem that no English truth can be a Spanish truth, and conversely. (By the way, I don’t believe that there’s any such thing as an English truth.) Still more surprisingly, the sentence ‘All Muslims are not terrorists’ is not necessarily identical to ‘All Muslims are not terrorists’! Curiouser and Curiouser.

Don’t take that the wrong way, man, I’m just having some fun joking around. As I figure it we simply don’t mean the same thing by ‘sentence’. I use it to mean a string of symbols, whereas you use it to mean what is sometimes called an interpreted sentence. (At least, I think that’s what you mean, because otherwise it wouldn’t make much sense to claim that ‘All Muslims are not terrorists’ is not necessarily identical to ‘All Muslims are not terrorists’. In short you seem to be including meaning in what you mean by a sentence. (But, not to worry, I’m becomming accustomed to your funky use of the terms.)

As concerns this side-issue, I have only one last comment – and then’ll drop it and stick to the proper topic. That last point is that we aren’t using the word ‘proposition’ in the same way either. I use it to mean a truth or a falsehood – and nothing more. (Damn it, how does that italics thing work???) Also, I have no theory on the nature of truths and falsehoods; nor do I find that topic very interesting. For me it’s enough that I know that the negation of every truth is a falsehood, and that it’s self-defeating to claim that there are no truths.

As concerns the more substantial issues, I’m working out a reply but I don’t have time to post it today. (I don’t have access to the internet from my home, and I won’t be back to work until monday – but I will post a reply then.)

Thanks again for making the site a fun place to talk shop.

Sorry that I’m late getting to this. My schedule got a bit out of whack because a friend and colleage of mine unexpectedly died on Friday.

[R. Brown post #4] “You say “I wish R. Brown would give me a fuller account of what makes some non-trivial (i.e. non-analytic) so-called moral truth true.” I thought I did in my response to your comment over at the other post. For me personally it has to do with the categorical imperative and our realizing that some action types result in contradiction. So, Ted Bundy’s actions are morally impermissible because they involve action types that do no pass the test of the categorical imperative.” [Note 1: R. Brown’s quote continues, but the rest is not relevant to what I have to say. Note 2: I still haven’t figured out how to write things in italics; and thus am requesting more detailed “instructions-for-dummies.]

R. Brown’s claim strikes me as utterly unconvincing for the following very simple reason: imperatives are commands. And, as everyone knows, commands are neither truths nor falsehoods. Hence, I reckon, ‘tis every bit as absurd to say that Kant’s categorical command is a truth as it to say that “Don’t bite my nipples so hard” is a truth.

As to R. Brown’s follow-up claim that “some ACTIONS result in contradiction”, it strikes me as blatant nonsense. Indeed, he might just as rationally have claimed that some kangaroo hops kill prime numbers. For ‘tis mighty hard to make any sense of the claim that a real-life performance of some act (type) is a contradiction; once that act (type) has actually been performed by some agent. Moreover, why the hell should any agent care that his performance of some act (type) is described by someone as “contradictory” once he has already performed it??? I mean, what the hell is that sort of insult supposed to do? [It’s nothing better than saying “You can’t possibly do that” after one has actually performed the act in question.]

This is important. For apparently R. Brown thinks that he means something intelligible in claiming that immoral performances of acts are contradictory. And yet, since he himself admits that what he deems to be immoral acts are sometimes performed, ‘twould seem clear that he is merely abusing those who perform such acts by labelling their acts as “contradictions”.

Is any rational being really supposed to believe that he didn’t perform some act which he damn well knows that he did perform just because someone claims that it’s an “action-contradiction”? Besides which, that phrase clearly has no fixed meaning anyway. Even worse, ‘twould be a mighty challenge to assign the phrase any sensible meaning – given that R. Brown freely admits that “action-contradictions” are performed.

Only propositions (and, indeed, only falsehoods) can be contradictions in the literal sense of the word. Moreover, insofar as I understand metaphorical extensions of the concept, it’s obviously false that what are commonly called immoral acts are contradictions – for not only are such acts possible, they are performed on a daily basis. Hence whatever R. Brown means, it can’t be along the [merely metaphorical] lines of “Square circles are contradictions

Now for R. Brown’s second follow-up claim that “Ted Bundy’s actions are morally impermissible because they involve action types that do no pass the test of the categorical imperative.” Even if I were to swallow the nonsense that Kant’s famous command is true, R. Brown’s inference would still be fallacious. For then everything would depend on the TYPE act that’s used to classify the particular TOKEN act in question. I mean, rationally speaking, mean-old-bastard Ted Bundy could simply retort “The relevant type act in question is the type act of TED BUNDY’S raping, beating and murdering girls for his own sexual gratification”. And Ted may very well see nothing wrong with making it a universally applicable rule that anyone identical to Ted Bundy may rape, beat and murder young women for his own sexual gratification.

I imagine that you would now like to retort: “But that ain’t playing fair, because the rule must be universalized to all persons – not just to persons identical to Ted Bundy”. And then I can ask you why such rules shouldn’t instead be universalized to all vertebrates.

[R. Brown post #4] “…what I claim is that moral judgments consist in a moral emotion and a belief that the emotion is the correct one to have. The belief is made true (or false) according to a theory of justification.”

This claim strikes me as a sly evasion.

Firstly, the phrase ‘moral emotion’ is not in common use. So, unless you are going to provide us with some tolerably clear definition, then it’s hard to see what you mean. [Indeed, the only sense that I can presently make of it is “non-cognitive attitude”, (or “attitude concerning what to do, how to act, whether to endorse some policy or proposal, or something along those lines).]

Secondly, if you are going to claim that some non-cognitive attitudes are cognitively correct whereas others are cognitively mistaken (so that it’s even possible for the sort of cognitive belief in question to be true or false) then you need to specify some criterion by which to distinguish the right attitudes from the wrong ones. And if this is to be anything beyond an unreasoned matter of opinion then you must appeal to objective facts. Appealing to theories is not the same thing at all. For if a theory is true, then ‘tis true because certain facts make it true. I mean, suppose that you hold one theory of moral justification and Brandon holds a slightly different one, and these two theories conflict as to whether a certain controversial act (such as first trimester surgical abortion) is morally impermissible. What are you going to say then? Are you really going to say that “the” truth as to whether the act is morally impermissible is theory-relative? If so, then why should anyone care? For then moral truths are just relative to theories; and thus are belief dependent (since its up to me whether I adopt a certain theory). Indeed, if that were the case I could “justify” what at first appeared to me to be a morally dubious act merely by rejecting my old theory of justification and adopting a new one.

I predict that you will be tempted to reply to this criticism by re-iterating your claim that all respectable moral theories agree on a great many points. Although I admit that that’s true after a certain very loose fashion (provided that you load the key word ‘respectable’ in the right non-cognitive way), I can’t see how it’s relevant. Nor, indeed, can I see how that’s supposed to convince any rational thinker that there are moral truths. For me personally, all it does is reinforce my longstanding belief that most persons share certain core non-cognitive attitudes about certain (typically extreme) course-grained policies or proposals (or certain extreme course-grained TYPE acts such as the (type) act of torturing someone for the purpose of sexual gratification). And so I say, “Big deal – I never doubted that most of we mentally and socially stable folks share similar non-cognitive attitudes towards extreme doings, or extreme courses of actions. But that hardly proves that moral claims express propositions. Instead it merely shores up the already highly verified belief that most human beings have very similar sorts of constitutions.

Thirdly, it’s not at all clear what you mean by saying that “moral judgments consist in a moral emotion and a belief that the emotion is the correct one to have”. But if you mean that a certain moral emotion is the correct emotion to have because it is morally correct to have that emotion, then your explanation is circular.

In any case, I’m still looking for a truthmaker for some so-called moral truth. Merely saying that such-&-such a theory holds that this claim is true is not the same thing. For if it’s true, then something has got to make it true; and whatever makes it true has got to be more like a fact than a theory.

Thanks for the instructions on how to write things in italics. Thank-you also for the expression of empathy regarding the recent and unexpected death of my friend.

If you first compose your postings using a regular word processing program (and save regularly) you should be able to avoid the sorts of problems that you have recently had with the “built-in” posting program for this site.

I will respond to all 7 points that you posted above; and will end by suggesting that we focus on the core issue that puts the difference between us as regards moral realism.

R. Brown’s point #1: “I never said that [Kant’s] categorical imperative was a truth. What I said was that it allows us to generate truths.”

As far I can tell, no one ever literally generates any truth. Rather we discover certain truths; or, in some cases, mistakenly believe that we do.

I do, of course, understand how one’s discovery of a given truth can lead to the discovery of other truths by deduction. What you seem to be saying, however, is quite different; and I genuinely don’t understand how one can reasonably believe that a mere command can lead to the discovery of any truth at all. [Note: it’s necessary to distinguish between the command (or imperative) itself, and such facts as so-&-so issued such-&-such a command on a certain date to a certain audience.] At any rate, my key point here is that, since commands are not propositions, no command can logically imply any truth.

Logical implication is a truth-preserving semantic relation. So if there’s no truth at issue to begin with then there’s no truth to be preserved by any inference that can be made from it. Indeed, I claim that you can no more cogently infer any truth from a command than you can cogently infer a truth from a cow, or a rock. That being the case, it’s not clear to me what you mean in saying that we can generate moral truths from Kant’s categorical imperative.

R. Brown point #2: “I was hasty when I said that some actions are contradictory, what I meant, as I suppose you well know, was that some actions cannot be willed without contradiction…”

That’s hardly a significant improvement on your first (goofed-up) claim; for I clearly can will to perform immoral acts. In order for me (or any other non-cognitivist) to take this claim seriously you must first explain what it’s supposed to mean for an ACT OF WILLING to be contradictory. And good luck with that; for ‘tis an obvious logical truth that every act of willing is an act; and so you’re right back in the same pile of crap that you attempted to crawl out of.

What Kant should have said is that some acts violate his policy (or “imperative”); especially some acts of willing. But that merely shows that his policy (or “rule”) has enough substance to it so that it can be violated.

In any case, the burden is on you to make literal sense of the claim that some acts (or actions) cannot be willed to be performed (or willed not to be performed) without contradiction. My challenge to you here is very simple: Give us a literal explanation of what it means for an act of willing to be a contradiction; and don’t water down the meaning of the word ‘contradiction’ in the process. [This is, of course, an impossible challenge to meet because only falsehoods can be contradictions; and acts of willing (or just plain “willings”) are acts, not falsehoods.

R. Brown point #3: “I do, in fact, think that [Kant’s] categorical imperative universalizes to all vertebrates.”

No doubt that sounds nice to vegans and such, but I don’t believe for a second that you really mean it. After all, some moral obligations concerns friends qua friends; and you are not really a friend to all vertebrates — except perhaps in some goofy and insubstantial metaphorical sense.

In any case, my point was that Kant’s categorical imperative is wide open to the objection that too much depends upon how a particular token act is described; and that every token act can be correctly described as falling under several different type acts. For example, Ted Bundy’s act of raping his first victim can correctly be described as (i) the act of raping a woman, (ii) a man’s first act of raping a woman, (iii) the act of Ted Bundy’s raping some woman, (iv) the act of some (male) vertebrate’s placing his (presumably erect) penis into some (female) vertebrate’s vagina either against her consent or at least independently of her consent, etc., etc., etc. Obviously, some descriptions are more complete, or more informative, than others. But how are we supposed to figure out which description is the so-called “right” one? Is it just a matter of consensus? Is it just a matter of opinion?

R. Brown point #4: ‘moral emotion’ is in common usage…”

I’ll grant you this one on your say so; but the key point is exactly what I claimed: it has to be some sort of NON-COGNITIVE attitude. Have it your way, if you like, and we’ll agree that it means a moral sort of non-cognitive attitude. But then the obvious question is what makes a non-cognitive attitude a moral one. My answer is that it’s the sort of non-cognitive attitude that prompts one to advocate that others also express either approval or disapproval as the case may be. [Incidentally, you have not given any indication that you have a better way of distinguishing between moral and non-moral non-cognitive attitudes.]

R. Brown point #5: “No, I would not say that the truth is theory-relative but rather that we don’t know which theory is correct. That was the point of the original post. Even if we don’t know which one is correct, we can infer that one of them must be.”

Your first sentence indicates that you are willing to claim that moral facts make moral truths true; and thus makes correct moral theories correct. Hallelujah!

The point of your original posting assumes (but does not argue) that there are moral truths — which is exactly what I deny.

Your final claim that “Even if we don’t know which [moral theory] is correct, we can infer that one of them must be [correct]” is obviously true — but ONLY in the trivial sense that it’s easy to make fallacious inferences. In other words, you can infer whatever the hell you want. Indeed, perhaps in some extremely goofy sense you can even (mistakenly) infer a cow from a pig.

What you need to prove, or at least argue convincingly for, is that there is something that could make a moral theory correct in the first place. So far, however, you have merely concluded that there are moral truths because all realistic theories of morality agree on that assumption; and [insofar as you are willing to call them “respectable”] also agree on particular (typically extreme!) policies or proposals such as torturing others for sexual gratification, or killing Jews just because they are Jews. I mean, it’s not as though you can sell the idea that all “respectable” theories of morality agree that it’s morally permissible for a woman to have a first trimester surgical abortion, but it’s morally impermissible for her to have a second trimester surgical abortion.

R. Brown point #6: “What I mean is that some non-cognitive attitudes are justifiable and others are not. That is not circular.”

Yeah, alright — perhaps it’s not circular per se — depending upon exactly what argument we have in mind. But it still begs the question (against all non-cognitivists) as to whether a man’s holding of some particular non-cognitive attitude is justifiable in the key sense that it’s TRUE that his non-cognitive attitude is either morally permissible or morally impermissible. So it’s still just unreasoned opinion as far as the Semantic Terrorist is concerned.

At any rate, you first have to explain what you mean by the word ‘justifiable’. For if all you mean is ‘morally justifiable’ then you are simply begging the question against non-cognitivists. And if you mean that a person must make some cognitive mistake in adopting an immoral policy or proposal then you need to give some sort of credible reason for believing that it is a cognitive mistake.

R. Brown point #7: “What makes it true is that it follows from the correct moral theory. The [correct moral] theory takes account of the facts and organizes them in an appropriate way; what else would you expect a theory to do?

“George Bush is a transsexual” follows from “George Bush is a sexy transexual”; but that hardly shows that George Bush is a transsexual. It’s foolish to say that a proposition is true because it is implied by a theory. And to say that a proposition is true because it is implied by a correct theory only raises the issue of what makes the theory correct. (George Bush is male because the individual, George Bush, exemplifies the property of being male ; not because someone has come up with a correct theory that implies that George Bush is male.)

The question is not what a theory is supposed to do, but whether any moral theory is the sort of thing that could be correct in the first place. It’s all well and good for you to at least halfway agree with me that correct theories are made true by facts; but you need to actually identify facts that make particular moral claims true. (And you haven’t done that yet. Instead you just keep on talking about how moral truths are made true by [correct] moral theories.)

LET’S FOCUS ON THE KEY ISSUE
The key issue, as it seems to me, is whether there are any moral facts; or any truthmakers for moral claims. You are convinced that there whereas I am equally convinced that there aren’t. So let’s try to stay focused on that key issue for a few posts.

I’d go ahead and just not fail to credit Ross for the continuum of objectivism through relativiism (or moral determininacy to indeterminacy if you prefer) in his “The Nature and Limits Of Moral Objectivism”- which if you didn’t read, you will love, and if you did, I’d prefere he get the credit than the ‘it seems to go along a continuum”. NO I’m not the plagarism police (nor do I wish to even remotely suggest that there IS any plagiarism here at all of course) It’s a blog ferchrissakes etc-
I merely mention that as ‘also a long-time student and friend’ of ross (he’s a shining light in moral theory, I know- right?) i find his actual robust moral theory to go undercredited and if you ask me- under-read in phil. in general- and so- that’s just a friendly “there’s more where that came from’- there’s a full moreal theory worked out in his writing that- I think, if read as a complete work (if you read all the papers- about six or so) – finally (and I use the term in the philosophical not the abosolutest sense) still ‘gets it right’. peace,
-jeanne p.