I’m not arguing for moral realism here. I’m arguing against metaethical reductionism, which leaves open either realism OR error theory.
For all I’ve said, people may well be mistaken when they attribute normative properties to things. That’s fine. I’m just trying to clarify what it is that people are claiming when they make moral claims. This is conceptual analysis, not metaphysics. I’m pointing out that what you claim to be the meaning of ‘morality’ isn’t what people mean to be talking about when they engage in moral discourse. I’m not presupposing that ordinary people have any great insight into the nature of reality, but they surely do have some idea of what their own words mean. Your contrary linguistic hypothesis seems completely unfounded.
No, you learned that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, and that your mother was instead responsible for the observable phenomena that you had previously attributed to the tooth fairy.
(It’s a good analogy though. I do think that claiming that morality exists “as a computation” is a lot like claiming that the tooth fairy really exists “as one’s mother”.)
No, you learned that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist
No.
Usually, the first thing to do when guessing about a random number from 1-100 is to split the possibilities in half by asking if it is more than 50 (or odd. Etc.)
The tooth fairy example gets a variety of responses, from people insisting it is just objectively wrong to say “the tooth fairy doesn’t exist” to those saying it is just objectively wrong to say the tooth fairy was really my mother. I happen to agree with you about what the best way is to describe what went on in this specific case. However, this is a standard blegg-rube situation that is unusual only in that it is not clear which way is best to describe the phenomenon to others.
There is a constellation of phenomena that correlate to each other—the fairy being female, being magic, having diaphanous wings, collecting things for money, those things being stored under pillows, those things being teeth. None of these is qualitatively essential to be a tooth fairy to most people than “having ten fingers” is essential to being human. If tomorrow we learn that magic is real, a female sprite collects teeth from under pillows, and does so on the back of a termite (and has size-changing technology/magic, why not?), most people would naively say “the tooth fairy does not fly, but burrows on the back of a termite”. That’s OK, but not great if the true nature of the situation is not recognized, and they fall into error if they think “tooth fairy” has a meaning divorced from flight. Likewise, those who say “there was never a ‘tooth fairy’, there is rather the ‘burrowing tooth fairy’” are right that there was never a thing exactly like the classic description, but this group makes an error if they demand the first stop calling the “burrowing tooth fairy” the “tooth fairy”.
There is more to say, an individual who makes up explanations ad hoc is not communicating, and the relative confluence of idiolects is valid because of the tinkerbell effect. that makes saying “No, you learned that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist” really peculiar, in the face of the many who hold the opposite position, likewise endorsed as language by common usage!
When it comes to “morality”, the constellation of things represented with a token labeled “second order morality” had several stars, significantly organized around a few (mutually contradictory, but all validly denoted by the word “morality”) sets of answers to these eight questions in the SEP on Moral Reasoning:
How do relevant considerations get taken up in moral reasoning?
Is it essential to moral reasoning for the considerations it takes up to be crystallized into, or ranged under, principles?
How do we sort out which moral considerations are most relevant?
In what ways do motivational elements shape moral reasoning?
What is the best way to model the kinds of conflicts among considerations that arise in moral reasoning?
Does moral reasoning include learning from experience and changing one’s mind?
How can we reason, morally, with one another?
What is the importance of institutional authority and social roles to the structure of moral reasoning?
One characteristic of things often (and validly) called “morality” is that they include the following among other pieces to answer the above questions: “‘That which is good’ is an ephemeral property that is infused in things in a dualistic way, it can be separate from all concerns beings may have, “good” can be binding in a way that is tautological and pointless...etc.
Reductionism continues the tradition of “morality”, like other words, not meaning exactly what it did in the past, and it may be better to think of it as error theory in some cases. But all new theories claim the ones they supersede are in error, and there is nothing special about “morality minus magical deontology” or “moral reductionism” that one should consider them bad English by the usual standard.
After typing all of this, it strikes me that cars are a better example of no one component being essential. Cars without wheels will be “flying cars”, unless they get sufficient lift and air etc. such that as one goes down the line of models from flying jalopy to sports flying car, each successive flying car will be called “car” by fewer and fewer people as it more resembles a fighter jet or so...as perhaps our descendants will call nuclear-powered flying vehicles.
The important thing is that reductionism gets it right when describing reality, the problems with deontology etc., and explains why people think erroneously, and it then proceeds to tell one how to act such that first order moral claims have meaning. If despite all that, you want to focus on its erosion of folk theories to call it an error theory, that is understandable, but it will be uninteresting if you say to the multitude “It is wrong(RC) to call reductionism ‘moral’(RC),” since it is not wrong(everybody who recognizes not to misuse language by fixating on a connotation that often went along with a word when the contents described by that word are otherwise vindicated and under discussion, and we’re discussing language which means 1) constelations and 2) tinkerbell).
The tooth fairy example gets a variety of responses
Seriously? I’ve never heard anyone insist that the tooth fairy really exists (in the form of their mother). It would seem most contrary to common usage (in my community, at least) to use ‘Tooth Fairy’ to denote “whoever replaced the tooth under my pillow with a coin”. The magical element is (in my experience) treated as essential to the term and not a mere “connotation”.
I’ve heard of the saying you mention, but I think you misunderstand people when you interpret it literally. My response was not intended as some “peculiar” declaration of mind-independent meaning facts, but rather as a straightforward interpretation of what people who utter such claims have in mind when they do so. (Ask them, “Do you mean that the tooth fairy exists?” and I expect the response, “No, silly, I just mean that my mother is responsible for the coin under my pillow.”)
So, to clarify: I don’t think that there are free-floating “meaning” facts out there independently of our linguistic dispositions. I just dispute whether your definitions adequately capture the things that most people really care about (i.e. treat as essential) when using the terms in question.
It’s no excuse to say that metaethical reductionism “gets reality right” when the whole dispute is instead over whether they have accommodated (or rather eliminated) some concept of which we have a pre-theoretic grasp. Compare the theological reductionist thesis that “God is love”. Love exists, therefore God exists, voila! If someone pointed out that this view is needlessly misleading since love is not what most people mean to be talking about when they speak of ‘God’ (and it would be more honest to just admit one’s atheism), it would be no response to give a lecture about constellations and tinkerbell.
I just dispute whether your definitions adequately capture the things that most people really care about (i.e. treat as essential) when using the terms in question.
It’s no excuse to say that metaethical reductionism “gets reality right” when the whole dispute is instead over whether they have accommodated (or rather eliminated) some concept of which we have a pre-theoretic grasp.
What if metaethical reductionism is not meant (by some) to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of most people, but just to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of people like lessdazed? Could metaethical reductionism be considered a “respectable position” in that sense?
And separately, suppose the main reason I’m interested in metaethics is that I am trying to answer a question like “Should I terminally value the lives of random strangers?” and I’m not sure what that question means exactly or how I should go about answering it. In this case, is there a reason for me to care much about the pre-theoretic grasp of most people, as opposed to, say, people I think are most likely to be right about morality?
Compare the theological reductionist thesis that “God is love”. Love exists, therefore God exists, voila!
This is a good example, as people saying this are in some ways doing the opposite of what you advocate, but in other ways, they are doing the same thing.
I think people are motivated to say “God is love” out of a desire to avoid being logically compelled to view certain others as wrong (there is a twist, some passive aggressive non-believers say it to claim atheists are wrong when saying theists are wrong). The exact motivation isn’t important, but its presence would provide a countervailing force against the sheer silliness of their confusion (which is worse than yours in an important way) and explain how they could possibly make it.
The mistake being made is to pretend that there are inherently attached meanings to a word, as if those words simply had that meaning, regardless of context of using words in general, and that word in particular, when that context is totally adequate to explain meaning. When it is clear that contemporary theists and all their ancestors were in error, the hippie says “God is love” to pretend there is no disagreement, and that “God” meant love—instead of what was obviously meant, or often weirdly in addition to the contradictory thing that they admit was meant.
You do the opposite in that rather than seek ways to interpret others as agreeing or being right, even when there is obvious disagreement, you seek ways to interpret others as disagreeing or being wrong. You use the exact same mechanism of ignoring context and how language is used.
You avoid the worst error of the hippies, which is claiming that others mean both “God is love” and “God is an agent, etc.”
However, reductionists take the history of language and find words have many connotations, the meaning of “moral” and find it has a long history of meaning many different things, many of several things, and that the meaning people accept as associated to the term has to do with the quantity and quality of many aspects, none of which are intrinsic.
You have apparently decided that it’s magic or moral facts are the type of facts that can’t be explained in terms of how the world is is the element absolutely essential to “morality”, when (presumably, as so many random hundreds I’ve encountered accept the reductionist usage) thousands of others do not.
I doubt that were there a room full of hippies totally separated from theism that they would feel any need to obfuscate by saying “God is love”, which is why it is appropriate to barge in and correct the usage, as the usage is confusion designed to create the illusion of agreement.
You are attempting to create an illusion of disagreement about morality, where your disagreement is with how multitudes use “morality”—and that is not the sort of argument that it is possible to win because if that’s how we’re using it, that makes it right when we talk without confusion among each other, and reasonably use it with those whose linguistic sensibilities we don’t know explicitly. The reason why we’re doing so is because it most clearly communicates (out of all the words we could have used), and our stretching the meaning of “morality” to exclude magic is no more unusual than the stretching of the term “write” to include jabbing at keys with the fingers. We would continue to use it so in absence of non-reductionists, whereas hippies would revert to “love” in absence of theism.
I’ve heard of the saying you mention, but I think you misunderstand people when you interpret it literally.
Please understand, the disagreement is not about what happens but about what it means to literally be the tooth fairy.
I’m not arguing for moral realism here. I’m arguing against metaethical reductionism, which leaves open either realism OR error theory.
For all I’ve said, people may well be mistaken when they attribute normative properties to things. That’s fine. I’m just trying to clarify what it is that people are claiming when they make moral claims. This is conceptual analysis, not metaphysics. I’m pointing out that what you claim to be the meaning of ‘morality’ isn’t what people mean to be talking about when they engage in moral discourse. I’m not presupposing that ordinary people have any great insight into the nature of reality, but they surely do have some idea of what their own words mean. Your contrary linguistic hypothesis seems completely unfounded.
When I was young, I learned that the tooth fairy was really my mother all along.
What do you think of that?
(This isn’t meant to be insulting or anything similar.)
No, you learned that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, and that your mother was instead responsible for the observable phenomena that you had previously attributed to the tooth fairy.
(It’s a good analogy though. I do think that claiming that morality exists “as a computation” is a lot like claiming that the tooth fairy really exists “as one’s mother”.)
Yes.
No.
Usually, the first thing to do when guessing about a random number from 1-100 is to split the possibilities in half by asking if it is more than 50 (or odd. Etc.)
The tooth fairy example gets a variety of responses, from people insisting it is just objectively wrong to say “the tooth fairy doesn’t exist” to those saying it is just objectively wrong to say the tooth fairy was really my mother. I happen to agree with you about what the best way is to describe what went on in this specific case. However, this is a standard blegg-rube situation that is unusual only in that it is not clear which way is best to describe the phenomenon to others.
There is a constellation of phenomena that correlate to each other—the fairy being female, being magic, having diaphanous wings, collecting things for money, those things being stored under pillows, those things being teeth. None of these is qualitatively essential to be a tooth fairy to most people than “having ten fingers” is essential to being human. If tomorrow we learn that magic is real, a female sprite collects teeth from under pillows, and does so on the back of a termite (and has size-changing technology/magic, why not?), most people would naively say “the tooth fairy does not fly, but burrows on the back of a termite”. That’s OK, but not great if the true nature of the situation is not recognized, and they fall into error if they think “tooth fairy” has a meaning divorced from flight. Likewise, those who say “there was never a ‘tooth fairy’, there is rather the ‘burrowing tooth fairy’” are right that there was never a thing exactly like the classic description, but this group makes an error if they demand the first stop calling the “burrowing tooth fairy” the “tooth fairy”.
There is more to say, an individual who makes up explanations ad hoc is not communicating, and the relative confluence of idiolects is valid because of the tinkerbell effect. that makes saying “No, you learned that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist” really peculiar, in the face of the many who hold the opposite position, likewise endorsed as language by common usage!
When it comes to “morality”, the constellation of things represented with a token labeled “second order morality” had several stars, significantly organized around a few (mutually contradictory, but all validly denoted by the word “morality”) sets of answers to these eight questions in the SEP on Moral Reasoning:
One characteristic of things often (and validly) called “morality” is that they include the following among other pieces to answer the above questions: “‘That which is good’ is an ephemeral property that is infused in things in a dualistic way, it can be separate from all concerns beings may have, “good” can be binding in a way that is tautological and pointless...etc.
Reductionism continues the tradition of “morality”, like other words, not meaning exactly what it did in the past, and it may be better to think of it as error theory in some cases. But all new theories claim the ones they supersede are in error, and there is nothing special about “morality minus magical deontology” or “moral reductionism” that one should consider them bad English by the usual standard.
After typing all of this, it strikes me that cars are a better example of no one component being essential. Cars without wheels will be “flying cars”, unless they get sufficient lift and air etc. such that as one goes down the line of models from flying jalopy to sports flying car, each successive flying car will be called “car” by fewer and fewer people as it more resembles a fighter jet or so...as perhaps our descendants will call nuclear-powered flying vehicles.
The important thing is that reductionism gets it right when describing reality, the problems with deontology etc., and explains why people think erroneously, and it then proceeds to tell one how to act such that first order moral claims have meaning. If despite all that, you want to focus on its erosion of folk theories to call it an error theory, that is understandable, but it will be uninteresting if you say to the multitude “It is wrong(RC) to call reductionism ‘moral’(RC),” since it is not wrong(everybody who recognizes not to misuse language by fixating on a connotation that often went along with a word when the contents described by that word are otherwise vindicated and under discussion, and we’re discussing language which means 1) constelations and 2) tinkerbell).
Seriously? I’ve never heard anyone insist that the tooth fairy really exists (in the form of their mother). It would seem most contrary to common usage (in my community, at least) to use ‘Tooth Fairy’ to denote “whoever replaced the tooth under my pillow with a coin”. The magical element is (in my experience) treated as essential to the term and not a mere “connotation”.
I’ve heard of the saying you mention, but I think you misunderstand people when you interpret it literally. My response was not intended as some “peculiar” declaration of mind-independent meaning facts, but rather as a straightforward interpretation of what people who utter such claims have in mind when they do so. (Ask them, “Do you mean that the tooth fairy exists?” and I expect the response, “No, silly, I just mean that my mother is responsible for the coin under my pillow.”)
So, to clarify: I don’t think that there are free-floating “meaning” facts out there independently of our linguistic dispositions. I just dispute whether your definitions adequately capture the things that most people really care about (i.e. treat as essential) when using the terms in question.
It’s no excuse to say that metaethical reductionism “gets reality right” when the whole dispute is instead over whether they have accommodated (or rather eliminated) some concept of which we have a pre-theoretic grasp. Compare the theological reductionist thesis that “God is love”. Love exists, therefore God exists, voila! If someone pointed out that this view is needlessly misleading since love is not what most people mean to be talking about when they speak of ‘God’ (and it would be more honest to just admit one’s atheism), it would be no response to give a lecture about constellations and tinkerbell.
What if metaethical reductionism is not meant (by some) to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of most people, but just to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of people like lessdazed? Could metaethical reductionism be considered a “respectable position” in that sense?
And separately, suppose the main reason I’m interested in metaethics is that I am trying to answer a question like “Should I terminally value the lives of random strangers?” and I’m not sure what that question means exactly or how I should go about answering it. In this case, is there a reason for me to care much about the pre-theoretic grasp of most people, as opposed to, say, people I think are most likely to be right about morality?
This is a good example, as people saying this are in some ways doing the opposite of what you advocate, but in other ways, they are doing the same thing.
I think people are motivated to say “God is love” out of a desire to avoid being logically compelled to view certain others as wrong (there is a twist, some passive aggressive non-believers say it to claim atheists are wrong when saying theists are wrong). The exact motivation isn’t important, but its presence would provide a countervailing force against the sheer silliness of their confusion (which is worse than yours in an important way) and explain how they could possibly make it.
The mistake being made is to pretend that there are inherently attached meanings to a word, as if those words simply had that meaning, regardless of context of using words in general, and that word in particular, when that context is totally adequate to explain meaning. When it is clear that contemporary theists and all their ancestors were in error, the hippie says “God is love” to pretend there is no disagreement, and that “God” meant love—instead of what was obviously meant, or often weirdly in addition to the contradictory thing that they admit was meant.
You do the opposite in that rather than seek ways to interpret others as agreeing or being right, even when there is obvious disagreement, you seek ways to interpret others as disagreeing or being wrong. You use the exact same mechanism of ignoring context and how language is used.
You avoid the worst error of the hippies, which is claiming that others mean both “God is love” and “God is an agent, etc.”
However, reductionists take the history of language and find words have many connotations, the meaning of “moral” and find it has a long history of meaning many different things, many of several things, and that the meaning people accept as associated to the term has to do with the quantity and quality of many aspects, none of which are intrinsic.
You have apparently decided that it’s magic or moral facts are the type of facts that can’t be explained in terms of how the world is is the element absolutely essential to “morality”, when (presumably, as so many random hundreds I’ve encountered accept the reductionist usage) thousands of others do not.
I doubt that were there a room full of hippies totally separated from theism that they would feel any need to obfuscate by saying “God is love”, which is why it is appropriate to barge in and correct the usage, as the usage is confusion designed to create the illusion of agreement.
You are attempting to create an illusion of disagreement about morality, where your disagreement is with how multitudes use “morality”—and that is not the sort of argument that it is possible to win because if that’s how we’re using it, that makes it right when we talk without confusion among each other, and reasonably use it with those whose linguistic sensibilities we don’t know explicitly. The reason why we’re doing so is because it most clearly communicates (out of all the words we could have used), and our stretching the meaning of “morality” to exclude magic is no more unusual than the stretching of the term “write” to include jabbing at keys with the fingers. We would continue to use it so in absence of non-reductionists, whereas hippies would revert to “love” in absence of theism.
Please understand, the disagreement is not about what happens but about what it means to literally be the tooth fairy.