Category: Metaethics

In this post, Bert Baumgaertner and Charles Lassiter discuss the article they recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of their article can be found here.

Imagine you’re convinced that you should pull the lever to divert the trolley because it’s better to save more lives. But suppose you find the thought of pushing the Fat Man off the bridge too ghoulish to consider seriously. You have a few options to resolve the tension:

1. you might revise your principle that saving more lives is always better;
2. you could revise your intuition about the Fat Man case;
3. you could postpone the thought experiment until you get clearer on your principles;
4. you could identify how the Fat Man case is different from the original one of the lone engineer on the trolley track.

These are our options when we are engaging in reflective equilibrium. We’re trying to square our principles and judgments about particular cases, adjusting each until a satisfactory equilibrium is reached.

Now imagine there’s a group of us, all trying to arrive at an equilibrium but without talking to one another. Will we all converge on the same equilibrium?

Consider, for instance, two people—Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They are both thinking about what to do in the many variations of the Trolley Problem. For each variation, Tweedledee and Tweedledum might have a hunch or they might not. They might share hunches or they might not. They might consider variations in the same order or they might not. They might start with the same initial thoughts about the problem or they might not. They might have the same disposition for relieving the tension or they might not.

Just this brief gloss suggests that there are a lot of places where Tweedledee and Tweedledum might diverge. But we didn’t just want suggestive considerations, we wanted to get more specific about the processes involved and how likely divergence or convergence would be.

To this end, we imagined an idealized version of the process. First, each agent begins with a rule of thumb, intuitions about cases, and a disposition for how to navigate any tensions that arise. Each agent considers a case at a time. “Considering a case” means comparing the case under discussion to the paradigm cases sanctioned by the rule. If the case under consideration is similar enough to the paradigm cases, the agent accepts the case, which amounts to saying, “this situation falls into the extension of my rule.” Sometimes, an agent might have an intuition that the case falls into the extension of the rule, but it’s not close enough to the paradigm cases. This is when our agents deliberate, using one of the four strategies mentioned above.

In order to get a sense of how likely it is that Tweedledee and Tweedledum would converge, we needed to systematically explore the space of the possible ways in which the process of reflective equilibrium could go. So, we built a computer model of it. As we built the model, we purposely made choices we thought would favor the success of a group of agents reaching a shared equilibrium. By doing so, we have a kind of “best case” scenario. Adding in real-world complications would make reaching a shared equilibrium only harder, not easier.

An example or story that is used for consideration, like a particular Trolley problem, is made up of a set of features. Other versions have some of the same features but differ on others. So we imagined there is a string of yes/no bits, like YYNY, where Y in positions 1, 2, and 4 means the case has that respective feature, while N in position 3 means the case does not. Of course examples used in real debates are much more complicated and nuanced, but having only four possible features should only make it easier to reach agreement. Cases have labels representing intuitions. A label of “IA” means a person has an intuition to accept the case as an instance of a principle, “IR” means to reject it, and “NI” means they have no intuition about it. Finally, a principle consists of a “center” case and a similarity threshold (how many bit values can differ?) that defines the extension of cases that fall under the principle. 

We then represented the process of reflective equilibrium as a kind of negotiation between principles and intuitions by checking whether the relevant case of the intuition is or isn’t a member of the extension of the principle. To be sure, the real world is much more complicated, but the simplicity of our model makes it easier to see what sorts of things can get in the way of reaching shared equilibrium.

What we found is that it is very hard to converge on a single interpersonal equilibrium. Even in the best case scenario, with very charitable interpretations of some “plausible” assumptions, we don’t see convergence.

Analysts of the process of reflective equilibrium are right that interpersonal convergence might not happen if people have different starting places. But they underestimate that even if Tweedledee and Tweedledum start from the same place, reaching convergence is hard. The reason is that, even if we rule out all of the implausible decision points, there are still so many plausible decision points at which Tweedledee and Tweedledum can diverge. They might both change their rule of thumb, for instance, but they might change it in slightly different ways. Small differences—particularly early in the process—lead to substantial divergence.

Why does this matter? Despite how challenging it is for our model, in the real world we find convergence all over the place—like philosophers’ intuitions about Gettier cases—supposedly from our La-Z-Boys. On our representation of reflective equilibrium, such convergence is highly unlikely, suggesting that we should look elsewhere for an explanation. One alternative explanation we suggest (and explore in other work) is the idea of “precedent”, i.e., information one has about the commitments and rules of others, and how those might serve as guides in one’s own process of deliberation.

Want more?

Read the full article at https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/4654/.

About the authors

In this post, Cathy Mason discusses the article she recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of Cathy’s article can be found here.

Iris Murdoch’s ethics is filled with discussions of moral reality, moral truth and how things really stand morally. What exactly does she mean by these? Her style is certainly a non-standard philosophical style, and her ideas are remarkably wide-ranging, but it can seem appealing to think that at heart her metaethical commitments largely align with standard realists’. I suggest, however, that this reading of Murdoch is mistaken: her realism amounts to something else altogether.

I take standard realism to be roughly captured by the following definition from Sayre-McCord:

Moral realists hold that there are moral facts, that it is in light of these facts that peoples’ moral judgments are true or false, and that the facts being what they are (and so the judgments being true, when they are) is not merely a reflection of our thinking the facts are one way or another. That is, moral facts are what they are even when we see them incorrectly or not at all. (Sayre-McCord 2005: 40)

Does Murdoch subscribe to this view? It can certainly be tempting to think so. She repeatedly talks about ‘realism’ and ‘objectivity’, and remarks like the following seem well-understood in standard realist terms:

The authority of morals is the authority of truth, that is of reality. (TSG 374)

The ordinary person does not, unless corrupted by philosophy, believe that he creates values by his choices. He thinks that some things really are better than others and that he is capable of getting it wrong. (TSG 380)

Here, Murdoch clearly commits to the idea that some moral claims are true, and that what makes them true is not something to do with the valuer, but something about the world. All this sounds very much like standard realism.

However, it would be a mistake to think that these surface similarities point towards a deeper congruence between Murdoch and standard realists. For a start, realists typically take moral facts to be one kind among many. Just as there are mathematical facts and psychological facts, so too there are moral facts. Yet Murdoch repeatedly insists that all reality is moral—and thus that all facts are in some sense moral facts (e.g. IP 329, OGG 357, MGM 35). Moreover, though Murdoch insists on the truth of some moral claims, she understands the notion of truth very differently from standard realists.  Whereas realists typically regard truth as something abstract, Murdoch suggests that it can only be understood in relation to truthfulness and the search for truth. The seeming agreement between Murdoch and standard realists on the truth of some ethical claims thus belies deeper disagreements between them.

What’s more, standard realism is hard to square with some wider views Murdoch holds. First, she suggests that some moral concepts can be genuinely private: fully virtuous agents may have different moral concepts without either of their conceptual schemas being inaccurate or incomplete. Second, she suggests that there can be private moral reasons: moral reasons need not be universal. It is hard to see how there could be room for private moral concepts and reasons within standard realism: either there are facts corresponding to a moral belief, or there are not. If there are, then it is a kind of moral ignorance to ignore such facts. If not, then the belief is simply false. Finally, Murdoch rejects the idea common in standard realism that the moral supervenes on the non-moral, since she suggests that there simply is no non-moral reality.

What, then, does Murdoch have in mind when she discusses realism? In most cases where Murdoch introduces ideas such as realism or objectivity, she is discussing the moral perceiver’s relation to the thing perceived, rather than only talking about the thing perceived. Her realism is a claim about the reality of the moral where reality is understood as that which is discerned by the virtuous perceiver.

Take, for example, the following passages:

[T]he realism (ability to perceive reality) required for goodness is a kind of intellectual ability to perceive what is true, which is automatically at the same time a suppression of self. (OGG 353)

[A]nything which alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity and realism is to be connected with virtue. (TSG 369)

In both of these quotes, Murdoch discusses the relation between a moral perceiver and the thing perceived. Realism or objectivity is talked of not as a metaphysical feature of objects, properties or facts, but as a feature of moral agents who are epistemically engaged with the world.

Of course, the standard realist might allow that there is such a thing as realism as a feature of a moral perceiver, and understand this in terms of accessing facts or properties which independently exist. Yet this ordering of explanations is ruled out by Murdoch’s insistence that reality itself is a normative (moral) concept. What is objectively real, for Murdoch, cannot be understood apart from ethics, apart from the essentially human activity of seeking to understand the world which is subject to moral evaluation. This is not to suggest that reality is a solely moral concept: it is also linked to truth, to how the world is. But it is to suggest that a conception of how the world is, of reality, must be essentially ethical.

What kind of relation, then, must the realistic observer stand into the thing observed? Murdoch suggests that no non-moral answer can be given here, no description that demarcates the realistic stance in an ethically neutral way. However, a description can be given in rich ethical terms. To be realistic is best understood as doing justice to the thing one is confronted with, being faithful to the reality of it, being truthful about it, and so on. All of these terms capture the idea that perception can be genuinely cognitive, whilst at the same time being a fundamentally ethical task.

Want more?

Read the full article at https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/4653/.

References

• Murdoch, Iris (1999). “The Idea of Perfection”. In Peter Conradi (Ed.), Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (299–337). Penguin. [IP]
• Murdoch, Iris (1999). “On God and Good”. In Peter Conradi (Ed.), Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (337–63). Penguin. [OGG]
• Murdoch, Iris (1999). “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts”. In Peter Conradi (Ed.), Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (363–86). Penguin. [TSG]
• Murdoch, Iris (2012). “Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals”. Vintage Digital. [MGM]
• Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey (2005). “Moral Realism”. In David Copp (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (39–62). Oxford University Press.

About the author

In this post, Laura and François Schroeter discuss their article recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of the article can be found here.

Many metaethicists are attracted to a position Matti Eklund (2017) calls ‘Ardent Normative Realism’. The main motivation behind this position can be illustrated with the help of a couple of examples.

Imagine you are disagreeing with a friend about whether abortion at 20 weeks is morally wrong. Imagine further that the two of you have a very different understanding of what it takes for an action to be morally wrong: you think that morality is determined by God’s law, while your friend does not. Despite this divergence, you two seem to be genuinely disagreeing about the same topic. If we interpreted you as talking past each other, we would be failing to take the normative authority of morality seriously (Enoch 2011). Both of you are interested in what is morally wrong tout court, not what is morally wrong according to the idiosyncratic standards of some individual.

Similarly, if we imagine two separate communities debating the same issue, we would have to say that they are interested in finding out whether abortion at 20 weeks is morally wrong tout court, rather than whether it is wrong according to the normative standards specific to the community. Settling for less would deflate the normative authority of morality.

In order to vindicate these intuitions, proponents of Ardent Normative Realism endorse a strong form of metaphysical realism in the moral domain. According to the Ardent Normative Realist, “reality itself favors certain ways of valuing and acting” (Eklund 2017: 1). If two communities disagree on moral questions, they cannot both be getting it right. At most, one of them is “limning” the normative structure of reality (22).

Now, suppose we grant that reality does indeed favor certain ways of valuing and acting. The Ardent Realist still faces an important problem. Given their radically different understandings of what makes an action morally wrong, how is it possible for individuals and communities to pick out the same reference with their moral terms? Contrast the moral term with the term ‘bachelor’, for example. The term ‘bachelor’ has the same reference, even when used by different individuals, because we all have very similar empirical criteria for who counts as a bachelor: unmarried eligible males. But imagine we introduce a new term, ‘nuba’, and different individuals have radically divergent views about what it takes for something to be a nuba. How can the term ‘nuba’ pick out the same property when it is used by individuals who rely on different application criteria?

To address this problem, many Ardent Realists have been tempted by a thesis Eklund calls ‘Referential Normativity’:

Two predicates or concepts conventionally associated with the same normative role are thereby determined to have the same reference. (Eklund 2017: 10)

Imagine that all it takes to count as competent with our new term, ‘nuba’, is that it plays the same normative role in one’s psychology that English speakers associate to ‘morally wrong’. For instance, if a speaker judges that an action is nuba, they will be disposed to avoid performing that action or to feel guilt if they do perform it. According to Referential Normativity, all it takes for speakers to pick out the same reference is that they take ‘nuba’ to play this normative role; their divergent empirical criteria for classifying actions as ‘nuba’ are strictly irrelevant to fixing its reference.

Obviously, it would be great news for Ardent Realists if Referential Normativity were true. However, we argue that Referential Normativity is just too good to be true. To show what’s problematic about it, we need to step back and ask foundational questions about how reference is determined. There is much controversy in the philosophical literature concerning this topic, but we seek to sidestep those divergences by focusing on points of agreement among theorists of reference determination.

What is the point of referential ascriptions? We suggest that ascribing a specific reference to an adjective like ‘nuba’ must:

(i) help explain the reasoning and actions of subjects using the term ‘nuba’, and

(ii) set truth-conditions for assessing whether assertions and beliefs involving ‘nuba’ are correct. 

Suppose, for instance, that we interpret competent speakers’ use of ‘nuba’ as attributing the property of being loud. This interpretation flouts both (i) and (ii). The interpretation is not explanatory because most users of ‘nuba’ will not associate its defining normative role with all and only loud actions, and so attributing this reference will not help to explain their reasoning and actions. And the interpretation does not set a plausible standard of correctness because there is no plausible story why all competent users are failing to live up to their semantic commitments if they fail to apply ‘nuba’ to loud actions. We must conclude that the interpretation of ‘nuba’ as referring to being loud is mistaken. 

In the full-length version of our paper, we examine different attempts to reconcile Referential Normativity with constraints (i) and (ii). We argue that these attempts all fail. In a nutshell, Referential Normativity tries to pull a rabbit out of a hat. The mere normative role associated with a term like ‘morally wrong’ is insufficient to ground the ascription of any empirically instantiated property as its reference. 

Want more?

Read the full article at https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/1135/

References

• Eklund, M. (2017). Choosing Normative Concepts. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Enoch, D. (2011). Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

About the authors