Second, as Bramble (2017) points out, evolution just requires that pain isn’t desired, it doesn’t require the moral belief that the world would be better if you didn’t suffer. Given this, there is no way to debunk normative beliefs about the badness of pain.
Not really. Moral beliefs evolved as a consensus mechanism to improve fitness—if you didn’t believe your suffering is morally relevant, you were less likely to convince others to help alleviate your suffering, thus reducing your fitness. All of the examples I see given for things that can’t be explained with physical processes but can be explained by moral realism are just bad. I challenge you to give better ones.
If consciousness just is a physical phenomena, then it would be impossible to change conscious experiences without making a physical change. However, it seems eminently metaphysically possible that we could change consciousness but not make a physical change. Imagine a world physically identical to ours but in which one tomato that I see appears 1% redder than it does currently. If you think that world is possible, then consciousness is not purely physical.
Note, I’m perfectly willing to grant that based on the world as it currently exists, such a state would be impossible. There are, in my view, psychophysical laws that govern consciousness which make it so that consciousness can’t be different. However, we could make tweaks to those laws without having a physical effect, which shows consciousness is not physical.
I don’t agree. If physicalism is true, this is impossible. If consciousness operates on physical laws, then there is no “psychosocial law” to adjust. It’s physics all the way down. It’s like saying, “imagine a mathematically consistent world where math is the exact same, except 2+2=5″. Not possible.
The talk about access is actually the crux of moral realism. I highly disagree with the quote. If everything else in moral realism is convincing and sound, but access to moral truth is impossible, then the entire theory collapses. I could nod my head at everything else, but if you can’t explain how access works, I would immediately become very unconvinced. If your moral intuitions, theory, philosophy, ect. have no connection to moral truth, I don’t see any difference between your stance and moral anti-realism. Access is probably the biggest problem in moral realism, and I’ve never heard a satisfactory answer otherwise. I went and read the paper you linked. It doesn’t actually explain how we access moral truths. It literally says
“No realist (to the best of my knowledge) has ever addressed the challenge thus understood.23 For instance, in Brink’s (1989, Chap. 5), Scanlon’s (1998, pp. 64–72) and Shafer-Landau’s (2003, Chaps. 10–12) rather elaborate epistemological discussions—all conducted in the general context of defending some kind of moral realism—nothing like this challenge is even mentioned, let alone addressed.24 And the same is true of a fairly recent collection of papers on moral epistemology.
This is a big deal. You can’t just build a framework, notice that it’s missing a massive hole, refuse to explain, and leave. If access can’t be explained, then nothing else is needed to refute moral realism. It’s self-refuting.
Re Bramble, there’s no reason one has to have the moral belief that pain is bad to organize coalitions trying to avoid pain, based merely on it being disliked.
Re physicalism—well, I think the analogy doesn’t go through for a few reasons. First, it’s not even clear what it means to imagine that 2+2=5 without changing the definitions of words. But also, if we just reflect on what consciousness is, it’s very clear that we could imagine every particle moving the same way but there not being consciousness. I agree you have to deny that if you’re a physicalist—that’s one good reason not to be a physicalist.
Re the challenge that no realist has addressed—Enoch addresses it in that article. He also says they haven’t addressed the challenge that way, but the responses they gave still apply—eg the Parfit response to evolutionary debunking.
Not really. Moral beliefs evolved as a consensus mechanism to improve fitness—if you didn’t believe your suffering is morally relevant, you were less likely to convince others to help alleviate your suffering, thus reducing your fitness. All of the examples I see given for things that can’t be explained with physical processes but can be explained by moral realism are just bad. I challenge you to give better ones.
I don’t agree. If physicalism is true, this is impossible. If consciousness operates on physical laws, then there is no “psychosocial law” to adjust. It’s physics all the way down. It’s like saying, “imagine a mathematically consistent world where math is the exact same, except 2+2=5″. Not possible.
The talk about access is actually the crux of moral realism. I highly disagree with the quote. If everything else in moral realism is convincing and sound, but access to moral truth is impossible, then the entire theory collapses. I could nod my head at everything else, but if you can’t explain how access works, I would immediately become very unconvinced. If your moral intuitions, theory, philosophy, ect. have no connection to moral truth, I don’t see any difference between your stance and moral anti-realism. Access is probably the biggest problem in moral realism, and I’ve never heard a satisfactory answer otherwise. I went and read the paper you linked. It doesn’t actually explain how we access moral truths. It literally says
This is a big deal. You can’t just build a framework, notice that it’s missing a massive hole, refuse to explain, and leave. If access can’t be explained, then nothing else is needed to refute moral realism. It’s self-refuting.
Re Bramble, there’s no reason one has to have the moral belief that pain is bad to organize coalitions trying to avoid pain, based merely on it being disliked.
Re physicalism—well, I think the analogy doesn’t go through for a few reasons. First, it’s not even clear what it means to imagine that 2+2=5 without changing the definitions of words. But also, if we just reflect on what consciousness is, it’s very clear that we could imagine every particle moving the same way but there not being consciousness. I agree you have to deny that if you’re a physicalist—that’s one good reason not to be a physicalist.
Re the challenge that no realist has addressed—Enoch addresses it in that article. He also says they haven’t addressed the challenge that way, but the responses they gave still apply—eg the Parfit response to evolutionary debunking.