I’m not sure if my position would be considered “moral anti-realist”, but if so, it seems to me a bit like calling Einstein a “space anti-realist”, or a “simultaneity anti-realist”. Einstein says that there is space, and there is simultaneity. They just don’t match our folk concepts.
I feel like my position is more like, “we actually mean a bunch of different related things when we use normative language and many of those can be discussed as matters of objective fact” than “any discussion of morality is vacuous”.
Does that just mean I’m an anti-realist (or naturalist realist?) and not an error theorist?
EDIT: after following the link in the footnotes to Luke’s post on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism, it seems like I am just advocating the same position.
EDIT2: But given that the author of this post was aware of that post, I’m surprised that he thought rationalist’s use of normative statements was evidence of contradiction (or tension), rather than of using normative language in a variety of different ways, as in Luke’s post. Does any of the tension survive if you assume the speakers are pluralistic moral reductionists?
I’m not sure if my position would be considered “moral anti-realist”, but if so, it seems to me a bit like calling Einstein a “space anti-realist”, or a “simultaneity anti-realist”. Einstein says that there is space, and there is simultaneity. They just don’t match our folk concepts.
That’s a great way to describe it. I think this is completely normal for anti-realists (at least in EA and rationality). Somehow the realists rarely seem to pass the Ideological Turing Test for anti-realism (of course, similar things can be said for the other direction and I think Ben Garfinkel’s post explains really well some of the intuitions that anti-realists might be missing, or ways in which some might simplify their picture).
Quite related: The Wikipedia page on Anti-realism was recently renamed to “Nihilism.” While that’s ultimately just semantics, I think this terminological move is insane. It’s a bit as though the philosophers who believe in Libertarian Free Will had conspired to only use the term “Fatalism” for both Determinism and Compatibilism.
Re-posting a link here, on the off-chance it’s of interest despite its length. ESRogs and I also had a parallel discussion on the EA Forum, which led me to write up this unjustifiably lengthy doc partly in response to that discussion and partly in response to the above comment.
Thanks for this! My thinking is similar (I have an early draft about why realists and anti-realists diagree with one another, and have been trying to get closer to passing the Ideological Turing Test for realism. It was good to be able to compare my thinking to that of someone with stronger sympathies toward realism!)
I’m not sure if my position would be considered “moral anti-realist”, but if so, it seems to me a bit like calling Einstein a “space anti-realist”, or a “simultaneity anti-realist”. Einstein says that there is space, and there is simultaneity. They just don’t match our folk concepts.
I feel like my position is more like, “we actually mean a bunch of different related things when we use normative language and many of those can be discussed as matters of objective fact” than “any discussion of morality is vacuous”.
Does that just mean I’m an anti-realist (or naturalist realist?) and not an error theorist?
EDIT: after following the link in the footnotes to Luke’s post on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism, it seems like I am just advocating the same position.
EDIT2: But given that the author of this post was aware of that post, I’m surprised that he thought rationalist’s use of normative statements was evidence of contradiction (or tension), rather than of using normative language in a variety of different ways, as in Luke’s post. Does any of the tension survive if you assume the speakers are pluralistic moral reductionists?
That’s a great way to describe it. I think this is completely normal for anti-realists (at least in EA and rationality). Somehow the realists rarely seem to pass the Ideological Turing Test for anti-realism (of course, similar things can be said for the other direction and I think Ben Garfinkel’s post explains really well some of the intuitions that anti-realists might be missing, or ways in which some might simplify their picture).
Quite related: The Wikipedia page on Anti-realism was recently renamed to “Nihilism.” While that’s ultimately just semantics, I think this terminological move is insane. It’s a bit as though the philosophers who believe in Libertarian Free Will had conspired to only use the term “Fatalism” for both Determinism and Compatibilism.
Re-posting a link here, on the off-chance it’s of interest despite its length. ESRogs and I also had a parallel discussion on the EA Forum, which led me to write up this unjustifiably lengthy doc partly in response to that discussion and partly in response to the above comment.
Thanks for this! My thinking is similar (I have an early draft about why realists and anti-realists diagree with one another, and have been trying to get closer to passing the Ideological Turing Test for realism. It was good to be able to compare my thinking to that of someone with stronger sympathies toward realism!)