The most popular meta-ethical views on LessWrong seem to be relatively realist ones, with views like non-cognitivism and error theory getting significantly less support. From the 2016 LessWrong diaspora survey (excluding people who didn’t pick one of the options):
772 respondents (39.5%) voted for “Constructivism: Some moral statements are true, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by whether an agent would accept it if they were undergoing a process of rational deliberation. ‘Murder is wrong’ can mean something like ‘Societal agreement to the rule “do not murder” is instrumentally rational’.”
550 respondents (28.2%) voted for “Subjectivism: Some moral statements are true, but not universally, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by non-universal opinions or prescriptions, and there is no nonattitudinal determinant of rightness and wrongness. ‘Murder is wrong’ means something like ’My culture has judged murder to be wrong’ or ‘I’ve judged murder to be wrong’.”
346 respondents (17.7%) voted for “Substantive realism: Some moral statements are true, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by mind-independent moral properties. ‘Murder is wrong’ means that murder has an objective mind-independent property of wrongness that we discover by empirical investigation, intuition, or some other method.”
186 respondents (9.5%) voted for “Non-cognitivism: Moral statements don’t express propositions and can neither be true nor false. ‘Murder is wrong’ means something like ‘Boo murder!’.”
99 respondents (5.1%) voted for “Error theory: Moral statements have a truth-value, but attempt to describe features of the world that don’t exist. ‘Murder is wrong’ and ‘Murder is right’ are both false statements because moral rightness and wrongness aren’t features that exist.”
I suspect that a lot of rationalists would be happy to endorse any of the above five views in different contexts or on different framings, and would say that real-world moral judgment is complicated and doesn’t cleanly fit into exactly one of these categories. E.g., I think Luke Muehlhauser’s Pluralistic Moral Reductionism is just correct.
Thanks for sharing this, was not aware of the survey! Seems like this suggests I’ve gotten a skewed impression of the distribution of meta-ethical views, so in that sense the objection I raise in this post may only be relevant to a smaller subset of the community than I’d previously thought.
I agree with a lot of the spirit of PMR (that people use the word “should” to mean different things in different contexts), but think that there’s a particularly relevant and indespensible sense of the word “should” that points toward a not-easily-reducible property. Then the interesting non-semantic question to me—and to certain promiment “realists” like Enoch and Parfit—is whether any actions are actually associated with such a property.
(Within my cave of footnotes, I say a bit more on this point in FN14)
(Within my cave of footnotes, I say a bit more on this point in FN14)
From looking at the footnotes, I think maybe you mean the one that begins, “These metaphysical and epistemological issues become less concerning if...” Wanted to note that this is showing up as #15 for me.
(Though I don’t think I could have made a strong prediction like this a priori. If non-cognitivism or error theory had done better, someone could have said “well, of course!”, citing LessWrong’s interest in signaling or their general reductionist/eliminativist/anti-supernaturalist tendencies.)
One thing I’m confused about this post is whether constructivism, subjectivism count as realisms. The cited realists (Enoch and Parfit) are substantive realists.
I agree that substantive realists are a minority in the rationality community, but not that constructivists + subjectivists + substantive realists are a minority.
Moral realists are those who think that [...] moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. [...]
As a result, those who reject moral realism are usefully divided into (i) those who think moral claims do not purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false (noncognitivists) and (ii) those who think that moral claims do carry this purport but deny that any moral claims are actually true (error theorists).
Traditionally, to hold a realist position with respect to X is to hold that X exists in a mind-independent manner (in the relevant sense of “mind-independence”). On this view, moral anti-realism is the denial of the thesis that moral properties—or facts, objects, relations, events, etc. (whatever categories one is willing to countenance)—exist mind-independently. This could involve either (1) the denial that moral properties exist at all, or (2) the acceptance that they do exist but that existence is (in the relevant sense) mind-dependent. Barring various complications to be discussed below, there are broadly two ways of endorsing (1): moral noncognitivism and moral error theory. Proponents of (2) may be variously thought of as moral non-ojectivists, or idealists, or constructivists.
So, everyone defines “non-realism” so as to include error theory and non-cognitivism; some people define it so as to also include all or most views on which moral properties are in some sense “subjective.”
These ambiguities seem like good reasons to just avoid the term “realism” and talk about more specific positions, though I guess it works to think about a sliding scale where substantive realism is at one extreme, error theory and non-cognitivism are at the other extreme, and remaining views are somewhere in the middle.
Terminology definitely varies. FWIW, the breakdown of normative/meta-normative views I prefer is roughly in line with the breakdown Parfit uses in OWM (although he uses a somewhat wonkier term for “realism”). In this breakdown:
“Realist” views are ones under which there are facts about what people should do or what they have reason to do. “Anti-realist” views are ones under which there are no such facts. There are different versions of “realism” that claim that facts about what people should do are either “natural” (e.g. physical) or “non-natural” facts. If we condition on any version realism, there’s then the question of what we should actually do. If we should only act to fulfill our own preferences—or pursue other similar goals that primarily have to do with our own mental states—then “subjectivism” is true. If we should also pursue ends that don’t directly have to do with our own mental states—for example, if we should also try to make other people happy—then “objectivism” is true.
It’s a bit ambiguous to me how the terms in the LessWrong survey map onto these distinctions, although it seems like “subjectivism” and “constructivism” as they’re defined in the survey probably would qualify as forms of “realism” on the breakdown I just sketched. I think one thing that sometimes makes discussions of normative issues especially ambiguous is that the naturalism/non-naturalism and objectivism/subjectivism axes often get blended together.
The most popular meta-ethical views on LessWrong seem to be relatively realist ones, with views like non-cognitivism and error theory getting significantly less support. From the 2016 LessWrong diaspora survey (excluding people who didn’t pick one of the options):
772 respondents (39.5%) voted for “Constructivism: Some moral statements are true, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by whether an agent would accept it if they were undergoing a process of rational deliberation. ‘Murder is wrong’ can mean something like ‘Societal agreement to the rule “do
not murder” is instrumentally rational’.”
550 respondents (28.2%) voted for “Subjectivism: Some moral statements are true, but not universally, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by non-universal opinions or prescriptions, and there is no nonattitudinal determinant of rightness and wrongness. ‘Murder is wrong’ means something like
’My culture has judged murder to be wrong’ or ‘I’ve judged murder to be wrong’.”
346 respondents (17.7%) voted for “Substantive realism: Some moral statements are true, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by mind-independent moral properties. ‘Murder is wrong’ means that murder has an objective mind-independent property of wrongness that we discover by empirical investigation, intuition, or some other method.”
186 respondents (9.5%) voted for “Non-cognitivism: Moral statements don’t express propositions and can neither be true nor false. ‘Murder is wrong’ means something like ‘Boo murder!’.”
99 respondents (5.1%) voted for “Error theory: Moral statements have a truth-value, but attempt to describe features of the world that don’t exist. ‘Murder is wrong’ and ‘Murder is right’ are both false statements because moral rightness and wrongness aren’t features that exist.”
I suspect that a lot of rationalists would be happy to endorse any of the above five views in different contexts or on different framings, and would say that real-world moral judgment is complicated and doesn’t cleanly fit into exactly one of these categories. E.g., I think Luke Muehlhauser’s Pluralistic Moral Reductionism is just correct.
Thanks for sharing this, was not aware of the survey! Seems like this suggests I’ve gotten a skewed impression of the distribution of meta-ethical views, so in that sense the objection I raise in this post may only be relevant to a smaller subset of the community than I’d previously thought.
I agree with a lot of the spirit of PMR (that people use the word “should” to mean different things in different contexts), but think that there’s a particularly relevant and indespensible sense of the word “should” that points toward a not-easily-reducible property. Then the interesting non-semantic question to me—and to certain promiment “realists” like Enoch and Parfit—is whether any actions are actually associated with such a property.
(Within my cave of footnotes, I say a bit more on this point in FN14)
From looking at the footnotes, I think maybe you mean the one that begins, “These metaphysical and epistemological issues become less concerning if...” Wanted to note that this is showing up as #15 for me.
Example: Eliezer’s Extrapolated Volition is easy to round off to “constructivism”, By Which It May Be Judged to “substantive realism”, and Orthogonality Thesis and The Gift We Give To Tomorrow to “subjectivism”. I’m guessing it’s not a coincidence that those are also the most popular answers in the poll above, and that no one of them has majority support.
(Though I don’t think I could have made a strong prediction like this a priori. If non-cognitivism or error theory had done better, someone could have said “well, of course!”, citing LessWrong’s interest in signaling or their general reductionist/eliminativist/anti-supernaturalist tendencies.)
One thing I’m confused about this post is whether constructivism, subjectivism count as realisms. The cited realists (Enoch and Parfit) are substantive realists.
I agree that substantive realists are a minority in the rationality community, but not that constructivists + subjectivists + substantive realists are a minority.
Sayre-McCord in SEP’s “Moral Realism” article:
Joyce in SEP’s “Moral Anti-Realism” article:
So, everyone defines “non-realism” so as to include error theory and non-cognitivism; some people define it so as to also include all or most views on which moral properties are in some sense “subjective.”
These ambiguities seem like good reasons to just avoid the term “realism” and talk about more specific positions, though I guess it works to think about a sliding scale where substantive realism is at one extreme, error theory and non-cognitivism are at the other extreme, and remaining views are somewhere in the middle.
Terminology definitely varies. FWIW, the breakdown of normative/meta-normative views I prefer is roughly in line with the breakdown Parfit uses in OWM (although he uses a somewhat wonkier term for “realism”). In this breakdown:
“Realist” views are ones under which there are facts about what people should do or what they have reason to do. “Anti-realist” views are ones under which there are no such facts. There are different versions of “realism” that claim that facts about what people should do are either “natural” (e.g. physical) or “non-natural” facts. If we condition on any version realism, there’s then the question of what we should actually do. If we should only act to fulfill our own preferences—or pursue other similar goals that primarily have to do with our own mental states—then “subjectivism” is true. If we should also pursue ends that don’t directly have to do with our own mental states—for example, if we should also try to make other people happy—then “objectivism” is true.
It’s a bit ambiguous to me how the terms in the LessWrong survey map onto these distinctions, although it seems like “subjectivism” and “constructivism” as they’re defined in the survey probably would qualify as forms of “realism” on the breakdown I just sketched. I think one thing that sometimes makes discussions of normative issues especially ambiguous is that the naturalism/non-naturalism and objectivism/subjectivism axes often get blended together.