I claim that there are basically four positions here:
1. Magical-thinking anti-realist: There’s nothing special about morality, it’s just like the rules of chess. So let’s stop being moral!
2. Reasonable anti-realist: There’s nothing special about morality, it’s just like the rules of chess. It’s important to emphasize that the magical-thinking realists are wrong, though, so let’s say ‘moral statements aren’t mind-independently true’, even though there’s a sense in which they are mind-independently true (eg, the same sense in which statements about chess rules are mind-independently true).
3. Reasonable realist: There’s nothing special about morality, it’s just like the rules of chess. It’s important to emphasize that the magical-thinking anti-realists are wrong, though, so let’s say ‘moral statements are mind-independently true’, even though there’s a sense in which they aren’t mind-independently true (eg, the same sense in which statements about chess rules aren’t mind-independently true).
4. Magical-thinking realist: Morality has to be incredibly magically physics-transcendingly special, otherwise (the magical-thinking anti-realist is right / God doesn’t exist / etc.). So I hereby assert that it is indeed special in that way!
Terminology choices aside, views 2 and 3 are identical, and the whole debate gets muddled and entrenched because people fixate on the ‘realism’ rather than on the thing anyone actually cares about.
Cf. people who say ‘we can’t say non-realism is true, that would give aid and comfort to crazy cultural relativists who (incoherently) think we can’t ban female genital mutilation because there are no grounds for imposing any standards across cultural divides’.
Whether you’re more scared of crazy cultural relativists or of crypto-religionists isn’t a good way of dividing up the space of views about the metaphysics of morality! But somehow here (I claim) we are.
My own view is the one endorsed in Eliezer Yudkowsky’s By Which It May Be Judged (roughly Frank Jackson’s analytic descriptivism). This is what I mean when I use moral language.
When it comes to describing moral discourse in general, I endorse semantic pluralism / ‘different groups are talking about wildly different things, and in some cases talking about nothing at all, when they use moral language’.
You could call these views “anti-realist” in some senses. In other senses, you could call them realist (as I believe Frank Jackson does). But ultimately the labels are unimportant; what matters is the actual content of the view, and we should only use the labels if they help with understanding that content, rather than concealing it under a pile of ambiguities and asides.
When it comes to describing moral discourse in general, I endorse semantic pluralism / ‘different groups are talking about wildly different things, and in some cases talking about nothing at all, when they use moral language’.
I agree, but this is orthogonal to whether moral realism is true. Questions about moral realism generally concern whether there are stance-independent moral facts. Whether or not there are such facts does not directly depend on the descriptive status of folk moral thought and discourse. Even if it did, it’s unclear to me how such an approach would vindicate any substantive account of realism.
You could call these views “anti-realist” in some senses. In other senses, you could call them realist (as I believe Frank Jackson does).
I’d have to know more about what Jackson’s specific position is to address it.
But ultimately the labels are unimportant; what matters is the actual content of the view, and we should only use the labels if they help with understanding that content, rather than concealing it under a pile of ambiguities and asides.
I agree with all that. I just don’t agree that this is diagnostic of debates in metaethics about realism versus antirealism. I don’t consider the realist label to be unhelpful, I do think it has a sufficiently well-understood meaning that its use isn’t wildly confused or unhelpful in contemporary debates, and I suspect most people who say that they’re moral realists endorse a sufficiently similar enough cluster of views that there’s nothing too troubling about using the term as a central distinction in the field. There is certainly wiggle room and quibbling, but there isn’t nearly enough actual variation in how philosophers understand realism for it to be plausible that a substantial proportion of realists don’t endorse the kinds of views I’m objecting to and claiming are indicative of problems in the field.
I don’t know enough about Jackson’s position in particular, but I’d be willing to bet I’d include it among those views I consider objectionable.
Copying over a comment I left on Facebook:
My own view is the one endorsed in Eliezer Yudkowsky’s By Which It May Be Judged (roughly Frank Jackson’s analytic descriptivism). This is what I mean when I use moral language.
When it comes to describing moral discourse in general, I endorse semantic pluralism / ‘different groups are talking about wildly different things, and in some cases talking about nothing at all, when they use moral language’.
You could call these views “anti-realist” in some senses. In other senses, you could call them realist (as I believe Frank Jackson does). But ultimately the labels are unimportant; what matters is the actual content of the view, and we should only use the labels if they help with understanding that content, rather than concealing it under a pile of ambiguities and asides.
I agree, but this is orthogonal to whether moral realism is true. Questions about moral realism generally concern whether there are stance-independent moral facts. Whether or not there are such facts does not directly depend on the descriptive status of folk moral thought and discourse. Even if it did, it’s unclear to me how such an approach would vindicate any substantive account of realism.
I’d have to know more about what Jackson’s specific position is to address it.
I agree with all that. I just don’t agree that this is diagnostic of debates in metaethics about realism versus antirealism. I don’t consider the realist label to be unhelpful, I do think it has a sufficiently well-understood meaning that its use isn’t wildly confused or unhelpful in contemporary debates, and I suspect most people who say that they’re moral realists endorse a sufficiently similar enough cluster of views that there’s nothing too troubling about using the term as a central distinction in the field. There is certainly wiggle room and quibbling, but there isn’t nearly enough actual variation in how philosophers understand realism for it to be plausible that a substantial proportion of realists don’t endorse the kinds of views I’m objecting to and claiming are indicative of problems in the field.
I don’t know enough about Jackson’s position in particular, but I’d be willing to bet I’d include it among those views I consider objectionable.