Good topic, I think it's imperative that we acknowledge paralogical thinking here. We are both individuals AND part of a collective society. Both are true and if we expect our society to deliver justice and goodness then we have to bring that into being by balancing those aspects. The Golden Rule is so simple and yet so elusive when people want to rationalize why they don't need to take care of each other and only take care of numero uno.
The golden rule requires everyone wanting the same things. there are some basics for which that works, but most of the time it cannot apply. At the very least it's poorly phased. Many philosophers have independently derived The Platinum Rule to accommodate those differences - do unto others as they would have done unto them, but being kind to people isn't always warranted so that's not appropriate either. "Do unto others as they deserve done unto them" is proper, as it requires knowing what you're doing before acting, and forbearance otherwise. Bear in mind that the golden rule, in all it's variations, came from ancient times when civilization were much more sequestered and homogeneous than now, and people had much more similar needs relative to their peer group.
Of course I'm over simplifying as I will often do. To me and what I think is necessary for a Common Law kind of Golden Rule is that to be part of a nation or society, one has to contribute to the common good, therefore enhancing the synergistic power of what it means to be a part of something mutually beneficial.
First, I dislike the word "harm." It can so easily be misused.
"Your words harmed me."
"Your identity as a cis-het-white-male causes harm to our community."
"You are required to be silent and 'hold space'; failure to do so constitutes harm."
"Your face is a micro-aggression."
"Your superior abilities harm the chances of others to get ahead." (Harrison Bergeron)
I know that the NAP can seem trite. And that coercive force can sometimes be hard to identify on the margins. (Is cigar smoke force? How about gasoline dumped in the back yard?) But "initiation of coercive force" is far easier to define, and to protect from misuse, than "harm." (John Stuart Mill can feel free to contact my lawyers.)
Second, the inductive process you describe for deriving shared moral rules is going to produce the same core rules no matter who engages in the process.
Customs will differ. Virtue-ethical SHOULDs will differ somewhat. Justice and Fairness will start to look more similar, but will still vary from culture to culture. But then you get to the MUSTs/MUST NOTs, and they all look the same. There is a good reason for that.
When you unwind these four strands of the cord of morality, it becomes easier to see which ones are subjective and which are objectively true. Objectively real? Objective facts?
That brings us to…
Third, maybe the word "facts" is getting in the way. Love is real. Is it a "fact"? Even if love were nothing more than the result of oxytocin and other trickery Mother Nature plays on us to keep us breeding and protecting other members of the species, it would still be real.
Just because we cannot dig up moral principles from the ground and eat them like carrots, or find them elsewhere in nature and place them on shelf to gaze at lovingly, does not make them not real.
When we look at the most objective aspect of morality—the MUST/NOTs—we find them throughout nature. They permeate our existence. Toddlers, animals, and even plants understand them. Every culture understands them. They are universal.
I think the urge to identify them as facts, and the failure to find them as empirically measurable objects, ends up getting in the way of embracing them as a reality, just as we embrace love as something very real in our lives.
The universe is woven together with freedom-magic, my brother. Bask in its reality!
Harm just means making someone worse off. Perhaps the legal term "injury" is better. Whatever. The wordsmithing can come later, though I will say that "initiation of coercive force" is inadequate. Would you rather someone punch you in the face or spread gossip that you're a child molester? Anyway, just because SJWs are abusing words doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to own them. I hate what they've done with "justice" too, but I'm not giving up on it.
Now, I think you might be a little confused about MUST and MUST NOT, as opposed to OUGHT and OUGHT NOT. I consider the former the domain of coercion, full stop. Otherwise, it's just oughts with angry faces.
Finally, steer clear of the naturalistic fallacy and the ought from is derivation (yes, Hume again). Remember that Ayn Rand inspired legions of adolescents (I among them) but she was not a very good philosopher. So, just because nature makes you feel all squishy about your family doesn't make it objectively normative. Nature makes some people have all kinds of tingly feelings but that doesn't make it objectively normative to seize and inseminate the first hot woman you see on the street.
Anyway, apparently I struck a nerve. Perhaps it's at the heart of your book. Libertarians LOVE their precious foundational premises. And many are persuaded by those. But many are not. We have to find multiple pathways to getting people to agree to participate in our moral universes. (I refer you back to your statement about variations on notions of virtue above.)
The only nerve you struck was my happy place. I love talking about this stuff. And yes, I do love looking for signs of rights and freedom in the universe. Trying to figure this stuff out together is a wonderful place to be.
Good point re: face-punch vs. gossip. I will have to think about that. Do you have a way out of that issue?
I am a bit fuzzy on mustn't vs. oughtn't. Are you saying that it is more proper to say that one oughtn't commit cold-blooded murder than that one mustn't? It seems to me that mustn't is just as appropriate there. More so, because it carries with it an implicit promise: if Person A does commit murder, he may fully expect to have force used against him. Not coercive force, but protective force, deployed in response to the coercive force he has initiated.
I am all for multiple pathways. I entirely agree. And yeah, foundational principles, and a search for evidence of their roots in the natural world, figure heavily in my book. Especially the principles part. But I am not bothered in the least by challenges thereto—certainly not be fellow freedom lovers. I just want the world to be free!
Re: "my happy place." -- me too. This is what I (we) live for.
Re: face punch/gossip... My way out is hinted at here. If we agree to moral practices tacitly, we can also agree to legal rules explicitly. So, if we can prove someone spread such gossip, that's defamation. We could seek damages. Otherwise, we have to build communities of virtuous practice, such that we shun gossipers, or at least approach them with skepticism. (Tort law does a pretty good job of approximating basic anarchist morality.)
The MUST/OUGHT distinction is pretty much one I made up, but I hope you'll think it's intuitive. Must implies some manner enforcement (i.e. "or else" or coercion). Ought is the domain of persuasion, and is normative but doesn't imply enforcement. A less loaded way to put matters is must is a directive and ought is a suggestion.
I agree about the use of the term initiate, so we're clear that people can defend themselves and retaliate, although that latter can be sticky.
I will say it's hard being a metaethical skeptic and also an anarchist. But one of my favorite books, to this day, is _Morals by Agreement_ by David Gauthier. I'd just add that we need to start making actual contracts after reasoning in this fashion.
"I will say it's hard being a metaethical skeptic and also an anarchist.”
—OMG yes. I fear my tiny mind would break open if I tried to make that work, and bits of my brain would fly away like confetti. But you seem to be making it work just fine!
"A less loaded way to put matters is must is a directive and ought is a suggestion.”
—Ah, okay. That works as a distinction. The parlance I have been using is MUST and SHOULD. I believe they can be laid out along a continuum with “degree of objectivity” as the unit of measure. You can see a graphic of it in this post (made when my Substack was young, and right before I admitted to myself that I had in fact become an anarchist): https://christophercook.substack.com/p/appalling-quote-from-teddy-roosevelt
"If we agree to moral practices tacitly, we can also agree to legal rules explicitly…(Tort law does a pretty good job of approximating basic anarchist morality.)”
—My first instinct, if crafting a society from scratch, would be to establish a tiny set of MUST rules (or whatever we might call them—rules that, if violated, will definitely produce protective force in response). And then to empower a system of common law to figure out all the marginal stuff (defamation, e.g.).
And yeah, I would definitely base that tiny set of rules on foundational principles. Tacit agreement on aspirational values, virtue ethics, etc., yes. But a small number of explicitly stated rules based on moral principles.
That way, you’re getting the best of both worlds: Accumulated human wisdom and flexibility from common law, and a solid foundation from first principles.
Maybe whether we call them “real” or “facts” or “natural” doesn’t matter. But they have to have some sort of universal value, right? Otherwise, when I assert the claim that I have the right to EXIT or live or not be enslaved, why does my claim have any more weight than the polity next door to ours, or a government, who say different? Is it only consensus and contract?
I mean, if so, if you are right, then yeah, we’d really better get busy building consensus and signing contracts!
"Otherwise, when I assert the claim that I have the right to EXIT or live or not be enslaved, why does my claim have any more weight than the polity next door to ours, or a government, who say different?" Because enforcement -- the Magisterium of MUST - is binary. Either the MUST is enforced or it is not. More do the point: You are permitted to leave, or you are not. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't exercise moral suasion -- as I've said, that's how the world runs if you renounce the initiation of violence. My only point is that people who value freedom as we do must do more to start making our communities larger, stronger and deeper, which means coming together and carving out space for our values and virtues to be practiced. Otherwise, we will spend our days living under a growing totalitarian threat, as people (at best) take placards to city hall to wave at our superiors while they continue to treat us like their chattle. In other words, whether and to what extent our values are "universal" is irrelevant unless universality moves human souls -- either our allies will rally around those universals in solidarity, or our enemies/authorities will let go of the ring. If I thought sending everyone a postcard with the NAP written on it would move the needle of collective consciousness, I'd do it. But that has worked considerably less well than, say, howls about social justice.
Right there with you on all of those tactical considerations.
One possible different approach—don't try to convince anyone. Simply secede, live one's own way, and enforce what must be enforced. And then prove to people that it works better, and then they'll join.
Hmm, now let's see—where's the flaw in that? Could it be where I glossed over the difficulties and said, "Simply secede"? 🤣
I had not heard of Hartley's "Facial Justice." Yet it isn't surprising that novels like those have been written.
After watching and studying the trajectory of the left over the last 200 years, and knowing human nature to the extent that I do, I believe such things could actually happen in the real world. Maybe not tomorrow, but if they keep gaining power, keep carrying their "principles" (such as they are) to their logical conclusions, and keep tweaking the worst of human emotions, who knows where we might get to!
That said, I admire your zeal! You're like someone who lives on a beach and keeps on trying to build a sandcastle strong enough to resist the waves, never having heard of dry land. But the dry land is there!
First, please note that there is a Thomas Hobbes and a David Hume, but no Thomas Hume.
Second, your interpretation of Hume's (presumably David) IS/OUGHT distinction is confused. In other words, Hume is not arguing that normative claims don't relate to moral facts, for example, as in Kant's "ought implies can." Hume is arguing that normative premises cannot be deduced or inferred from descriptive premises. To see why, you have to strip away all normative assumptions from your descriptive premises (you know, which is the whole point if being a descriptive/factual statement).
x is A
Therefore, x is good.
But if the first premise has normative content, then it's a hidden premise, and the second premise is therefore of no use (i.e. provides no derivation).
x is A (where A is self-evidently good!)
Therefore, x is good.
(Uh, no.)
Please note that we can have morals by agreement and virtues to practice together, a la MacIntyre, but no moral facts as such. MacIntyre is not a moral realist per se, yet you appeal to him as if he were. Is a virtue ethicist and communitarian, which is exactly what I am arguing here.
When it comes to zeal, particularly religious zeal, I feel the same way, only back in your direction. It's like you're pointing to glass sculptures hanging on skyhooks, saying: *Look! Morality! Obey!*
Why?
*Because those floating glass sculptures make me have strong FEELINGS and INTUITIONS, and as you know feelings and intuitions indicate moral--*
(Before he could finish his story leading to his recalling something important from the Sermon on the Mount, the brigand bludgeoned him and he went unconscious.)
By the way, two key examples from *After Virtue* might be helpful here: the farmer and the watch.
MacIntyre points out that from the premises, "This watch is too heavy to carry conveniently and does not keep timely reliably," the conclusion follows that "This is a bad watch." Similarly, from the premises, "His animals win prizes in all the fairs, his yields per acre are the highest in the county, and his innovative irrigation system is admired in agricultural colleges around the world," the conclusion follows, "He is a good farmer."
Clearly, when you think about it that way, some notion of purpose is built into the very concepts of "farmer" and "watch," and supplies an evaluative standard.
It's not obvious that purpose is built into the concept of "man" in a similar way. It's also not obviously that purpose is NOT built into it. There's a long conversation to be had. But once you give *telos* a foothold in your ontology, you start to see it everywhere. The farmer and the watch prove that you can't keep *telos* out.
Re: MacIntyre. He definitely denies the validity of Hume's hard and unbridgeable is/ought distinction. That's enough moral realism for me. Perhaps MacIntyre might lend himself to moral realism and non-moral realist readings, but I think his moral realism is pretty clear. He doesn't think virtue is just a social or cultural construct, it's something real.
I think this is where you go wrong: "you have to strip away all normative assumptions from your descriptive premises." That's not actually feasible. Goodness and often morality are so tightly interwoven into the concepts with which we think that it can't be stripped away. The concept of a man isn't ultimately separable from the concept of a good man.
Come on, Nathan. (And apparently, come on Alastair.)
If there is no such things as non-normative statements of fact, then there is no sense that can be made for derivation. Otherwise, you're just spinning tautologies.
Take an aesthetic example: There is a colorful sunrise on the horizon. (Hidden premise: Colorful sunrises are beautiful!) Therefore, colorful sunrises are beautiful.
WTF. Come on, now.
This watch is too heavy to carry conveniently and does not keep timely reliably.
Therefore, this watch is bad.
(Imbedded normative premises: Watches ought to be convenient to carry and ought to work according to the telos, or intent of the design.) Inconvenient, too heavy, and unreliable are evaluative claims. But the big heavy watch is made of gold and diamonds and belonged to Carl Jung, which means it fetches $200,000 at auction and is displayed in a stately home. Is it a bad watch? Even if it's bad at its intended watchness, that is not the point. The point is that IS claims are not, to Hume, evaluative claims.
I'll pass over the issue that neither sunrises nor watches are normative claims, that is OUGHTs to be derived from ISs. Still, I think Hume's rationale applies to such adjacent claims, too.
So yes, if you want to insist on calling it an "embedded [imbedded? -- is that a typo or a word I didn't know?] normative premise" that watches should be accurate and easily portable, nothing's stopping you. But obviously you really can't really talk or think about watches at all apart from that "embedded normative premise." You can't separate the meaning of a watch from the purpose of a watch. A watch that was meant to be accurate and portable but isn't is bad because it is a failure, performance not achieving purpose. A watch that was never intended to be accurate or portable isn't really a watch. Carl Jung's watch might be more like a piece of art mimicking a watch than a real watch. Certainly if something weighs 1,000 pounds and exhibits randomly fluctuating time, it's really not a watch at all even if it's made to resemble one in some ways. Purpose is essential.
Try to wrap your head around the idea that a bad man, or maybe a madman or a dead man, may be like a bad watch: there's some purpose that a man should fulfill, that defines what it is to be a man, which he's failing to fulfill. The goodness of a man is part of what he is, part of the essence. If it's part of the meaning of a man that he ought to tell the truth, then from the fact that a man tells lies, he's a bad man. You can't strip away the normative, it's indelibly interwoven in some of the concepts by which we interpret the world.
That's the claim anyway. It's hard to prove, but it ought to be intelligible.
I'm didn't work hard on this -- Hume did! We should honor Hume's insight, at least understand it well before we abandon it.
Let's call these "hidden" premises, then, (sorry about the "embedded" typo above). Hume's IS/OUGHT distinction is very clear: Normative premises cannot be inferred from non-normative premises. Once we hide evaluative premises--at all--we are being NORMATIVE, that is, expressing value. But THAT would be to argue that an OUGHT/VALUE can be derived from an OUGHT/VALUE, which is NOT what Hume is claiming.
I love MacIntyre. I do. But I think this watch example is a sleight of hand. Badness doesn't inhere in watches. The watch, shitty or not, gold or not, is valuable or not to a subject. The whole point of designating boring old true statements of fact is that they don't carry subjective (e-VALU-ative) language.
A steak knife used to stab a dog isn't evil, it's just a steak knife. So we don't have to worry about Jung's watch, the telos of watches, or whatever fancy teleological-cum-virtue theories MacIntyre present unless we want to change the subject from the fact/value distinction to notions about one's functional role in a community. And we have to be very careful when we do that, as well.
So some of this is right. A steak knife gratuitously used to kill an innocent dog isn't evil.
But there a key point that doesn't seem to have sunk in.
The point about the watch is that purpose/telos is both part of the definition of what a watch is, and supplies the evaluative standard by which a watch can be judged good or bad. Hume's move would be to say that whether something is a watch is a fact, but whether it's good or bad is a value. But watchness and goodness as a watch are part of the same continuum.
Just to vary the example, let's take steak knives. A steak knife is defined, above all, by its purpose of cutting steak. If it cuts steak well, it's a good steak knife. If it cuts steak poorly, but it was intended for the purpose of cutting steak, we can say that it's a bad steak knife, but still a steak knife.
But suppose I say, "I grant you, this steak knife doesn't cut steak well. But it was never intended to. That's why it's made of ceramic, not cutting material, and has a rounded, hollow shape, and is much too large to be held in the hand, and very dirty. But it's still useful. If you want to fill it with dirt and plant flowers in it, you'll find that its shape is perfectly suitable. For *that* purpose, it's the best steak knife around. And that's what I want it for. Value is subjective."
This is not a convincing argument that the flower pot is a good steak knife for someone who wants to plant flowers. It misses the point of what a steak knife is.
Like steak knives and watches, many of the concepts in which we deal are inherently teleological in nature. Their definition and their evaluative standard both depend on their telos.
Now, the grand conclusion that MacIntyre points to, even if he's a bit coy about it, is that human beings have a telos, an inherent purpose, and recognizing that is the key to morality, without which all attempts at constructing morality are foredoomed to failure. What that telos consists of is a long story. But if we accept that humans have a telos and the virtue is part of it, then to strip away normative conceptions from men might be as impossible as stripping away meat cutting from steak knives.
Compare:
1. He tells the truth and does his best to help others, therefore, he is a good man.
2. That knife cuts steak cleanly and easily, therefore, it is a good steak knife.
If man is a teleological concept, then (1) might be as valid as (2). A moral nature is part of what it is to be a man as cutting meat is part of what it is to be a steak knife. And more consistently and strongly to practice moral behavior makes a man good just as cutting meat efficiently makes a steak knife good.
The very concept of a fact needs to be questioned, because no fact can be stated without the help of concepts. And to allow concepts into one's ontology is ultimately fatal to Humean reductionism. Concepts are the original skyhooks, Plato's ideal forms. We can't think without them, and we can't reduce them to matter and energy. And if we surrender and let them have their way, they bring in all sorts of telos and evaluative standards with them.
"'you have to strip away all normative assumptions from your descriptive premises.' That's not actually feasible."
—That is an interesting point. The way I see it is similar—certain moral principles are so rooted in natural realities that they cannot be ignored as such. They cannot be stripped out of reality.
But maybe here is a possible bottom line…
Wherever moral principles come from, we need them.
If we are going to create new, free polities, we need to have good rules by which they function.
We have at least some example that explicit written rules are helpful. For example, without the 1st and 2nd Amendments, our speech and gun rights in America would be in even worse shape than they are now. They would already look like they do throughout the rest of the Anglosphere.
Not that I am a big fan of the system set up by the U.S. Constitution, but there is a lesson in there somewhere. It tells me that having explicit written rules has some value.
So then we need to know upon what principles we are basing those rules.
Max, you are right that some sort of consensus is needed among the people who agree to live with/under those rules. But all those people do not need to think up those rules—a small group is all that is needed for that. And trying to work out some sort of first-principles justification is very helpful in that process…wherever those principles may ultimately come from.
Sigh. The necessity of stripping away the normative assumptions is what helps it be a claim of fact and not of value. Otherwise, you're just saying a claim of value can be induced or deduced from a claim of value, which is trivially true, but helps us none where Hume is concerned.
It feels like we've discovered atoms and then looked deeper to find protons, electrons, and neutrons, and then even deeper to the subatomic. And we're looking for that one particle upon which everything else is based.
Maybe this is why you're all like, "Hey, let's just form a consensus around some rules that work really well." 🤣
Yes, indeed, sir. I was trying to find a metaphor for it. @lancelotfinn (Nathan Smith) remarked that I was trying to build a sand castle in the surf, and said I should just look to dry land as a better foundation (which I think for him is God's telos + virtue + The Golden Rule). In the meantime, I'm thinking about a galaxies metaphor, which are coherent and bound by invisible forces, but not built on foundations, per se. The invisible forces are us all saying "Yeah, I can get down with that. Let's agree."
When you say "we know it by conscience," who are you referring to by "we"? It doesn't seem like realism is true to me. It seems like it's not true. I don't recall a time when it ever seemed true to me. I take questions about what seems true or false to people to be psychological questions, and such questions are best addressed by appeal to the empirical evidence. At present, I've seen little substantive empirical evidence that would, on the whole, suggest that most people were moral realists.
An objective moral fact is: “one should be rational”. It’s axiomatic, because to question it implies either accepting it, or else denying all knowledge in general.
If you ask “why should one be rational?”, you either:
a) will only accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case you already implicitly accept the premise.
b) won’t accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case there’s no rational means of persuading you.
Ergo you have a rational, objective metaethic. In Humean “is-ought” terms: “reason is how one comes to justified conclusions, therefore one ought to follow reason”
If I ask "why should one be rational?" and I already implicitly accept the premise, then that would be subjective. If I deny that the use of logic and evidence is necessary for justification (persuading one), then it's not clear that one is behaving immorally. They could just be irrational (perhaps insane). In any case, objectivity means publicly observable and mind-independent, which is not quite the same as axiomatic. Something axiomatic might qualify as inter-subjective, though. Further, it sounds like what you're arguing here implicitly is instrumental rationality, not morality -- that is: If you want x, then you will use logic and evidence in your justification." That's great. But it is not morality in the sense of a moral fact that comes to be known.
> If I ask "why should one be rational?" and I already implicitly accept the premise, then that would be subjective.
It's not clear what you mean by "subjective" here. Yes, your accepting of the premise is done "subjectively", as in your own individual consciousness, however that's true of all premises, even those that are "publicly observable and mind-independent". In a technical sense no human claim about reality is truly mind-independent, even observations of physical reality are filtered through the senses and realized in the mind; we are capable of hallucinating them, etc.
> If I deny that the use of logic and evidence is necessary for justification (persuading one), then it's not clear that one is behaving immorally. They could just be irrational (perhaps insane).
You equate justification with mere persuasion, but that's not the sense in which I'm using the term here. I mean justification in the metaphysical sense, as in truly rationally justified. "Persuasion" refers to the subjective state of an individual, who may be persuaded by faulty pseudo-justifications (such as an insane person).
As to your point that irrational != immoral, that's merely a dispute about definitions. By the theory I'm positing, rational == moral, tautologically.
> In any case, objectivity means publicly observable and mind-independent, which is not quite the same as axiomatic. Something axiomatic might qualify as inter-subjective, though.
That definition of objective falls short by the mainstream, common understanding of the term. For example, would you say that rigorous mathematical statements are "objective"? If yes, then you've admitted a whole host of abstract statements that are not mind-independent by any sensible definition of the term, i.e. N-dimensional topography where N > 3 (and countless other examples). If you disagree then it's up to you to explain why an alternative definition is worthwhile, and/or (specific to this argument) why abstract logical/philosophical claims can't be treated as truly objective.
> Further, it sounds like what you're arguing here implicitly is instrumental rationality, not morality -- that is: If you want x, then you will use logic and evidence in your justification." That's great. But it is not morality in the sense of a moral fact that comes to be known.
The answer to this again relates to "justification" in the metaphysical sense. To complete your statement: "If you want metaphysical justification, then you will use logic and evidence in your justification". This again is axiomatic, if you decide you don't "want" metaphysical justification then there is no rational (justified, based in logic/evidence) argument that I can give you to change your mind. But that decision is also self-defeating, you have eschewed the very basis for objectivity and thereby any coherent philosophical discourse.
(For the sake of giving credit where credit is due and to point any readers in the direction of the full justification, these arguments originate from: https://reasonandliberty.com/rl)
Accepting the premise "one should follow reason" is ultimately axiomatic, not "subjective. Your remark "it's not clear" is, on the other hand, subjective. What it really means and what you should have said is "it's not clear *to me*". Ergo that remark isn't a counter-argument. Saying "they could just be irrational" is tautological, not a counter-argument. Your definition of "objectivity" is problematic at best. Declaring "facts" to be only "publicly observable" events is both arbitrary and unconventional and in any case very debatable. A person can be a sole witness to a real factual event. Furthermore, "facts" have a subjective (by your definition) quality: they are rooted in reports of individuals. What you are saying, I suppose, is you will only call something a "fact" when some percentage of people agree? But that's extremely problematic.
I could go on but suffice it to say you haven't actually countered the original point.
Accepting the premise "one should follow reason" is ultimately axiomatic, not "subjective.”
>>If it’s objective, then you should be able to say what reason is. Isaiah did mention the use of logic and evidence, so that’s a start. So let’s come back to that.
Your remark "it's not clear" is, on the other hand, subjective.
>>Yes, it’s subjective. But the whole point of persuasion is to bring another into intersubjective agreement with him. However, “It’s not clear” is also a diplomatic way of saying “you didn’t prove” and/or at least “the result is counterintuitive.” And, indeed, if “one should be rational” is a moral claim, then anyone who is being irrational is also being immoral. 90 of people on the planet belong to faith traditions in which there practices aren’t rational, which Isaiah suggested was the use of logic and evidence. If you think they’re being immoral, then just know I don’t share that belief.
What it really means and what you should have said is "it's not clear *to me*".
Ergo that remark isn't a counter-argument. Saying "they could just be irrational" is tautological, not a counter-argument.
>>To repeat, even if you believe in objective morality, one could be irrational without being immoral. Crazy people aren't immoral. They're just crazy. Or religious. Remember, the whole point of Isaiah’s post was to argue that “one should be rational” is a moral claim, which implies that it is wrong to be irrational. If it doesn’t, then it’s not a moral claim at all. Or at least, it's insufficient as it stands and he has more unpacking to do.
Your definition of "objectivity" is problematic at best. Declaring "facts" to be only "publicly observable" events is both arbitrary and unconventional and in any case very debatable.
>> Only if you have had no contact with the philosophical literature. Beyond the little qualifier “potentially” (which I could have added to ward off irrelevant cases in which someone is the sole observer of an act) the definition stands. Indeed, I added “mind independent,” which you can find on any discussion of the objective/subjective distinction. That said, here are a couple of examples of “publicly observable” or “publicly accessible” with respect to objective facts:
A person can be a sole witness to a real factual event.
>> This is irrelevant to the meaning of objectivity. Objective: Publicly accessible, mind-independent, like a chair or a star. Subjective: Not-publically accessible, like a feeling, a thought, or a sensation.
Furthermore, "facts" have a subjective (by your definition) quality: they are rooted in reports of individuals.
>>Not sure what you're referring to here, specifically.
What you are saying, I suppose, is you will only call something a "fact" when some percentage of people agree? But that's extremely problematic.
>>Nope. Never. Not at all. Facts don’t care what you think or feel. Facts just are, which is why I refer to them as “mind-independent” or “feelings independent.” By contrast, moral sentiments + justifications are subjective and lots of people may share them. I suspect almost everyone reading this would agree that torturing babies is "wrong." We can find near universal *agreement* about the claim, even if it is inter-subjective from the standpoint of metaethics. But that doesn’t make it objectively true or false like the claim “You are sitting down” is objectively true or false — because that fact of your sitting (or not) is potentially publicly observable and mind independent.
I could go on but suffice it to say you haven't actually countered the original point.
>>Do what you must. Isaiah’s original point conflates the appearance of universality and objectivity. Even if we thought his clever paradox game gave us reasons to cheer for reason, it doesn't change the metaphysical status of moral claims.
"However, “It’s not clear” is also a diplomatic way of saying “you didn’t prove"
Actually I think it's an ego-driven dodge from asking the simple question "Could you explain why? I don't see how you concluded that"; if you don't see a certain step of reasoning that's the rational way to proceed. Of course, on that premise you might have to actually change your mind about something and have to learn something. Easier to just feign omniscience and dodge that question.
As for the "you didn’t prove" remark -- well guess what, you didn't prove any number of your remarks either. In fact, it's impossible to prove everything as you go, and when you're engaging another party unless you're a mind-reader you don't know where their gaps of knowledge are unless they inform you of them somehow. They could do it politely, as in asking a plain question, or as an attempted dodge, as you did.
I disagree with your other responses too but if you're not open to learning another point of view the what's the point?
I don't think whether one should be rational or not seems like a moral claim, so I'm not sure why that'd be an objective moral fact. But there are antirealist construals of "one should be rational," either way, so an antirealist could readily affirm that claim without committing themselves to moral realism or any other form of normative realism.
A person can be rational because it is in their interests to be rational. They do not need to do so because there is some objective normative fact that one ought to be rational.
Your statement of the key moral problem: “even if there were moral facts or properties — which is doubtful — people would be terrible at knowing them.”
I would put it this way: “Values do exist in the sense that some actions promote life while others don’t; but because values are so contingent upon circumstances, (a) we can’t call them ‘facts’ and (b) it is impossible for the state to apply them universally.”
And my replies to your list of moral options:
<b>Deontic or Rules-based Ethics – </b>Because moral prescriptions are so situational, deontology can only provide ‘rules’ that are so general as to be worthless. A perfect example is Kant’s Moral Imperative: “Act externally in such a manner that the free exercise of thy Will may be able to coexist with the Freedom of all others, according to a universal law.” – To which a very moral Irishman might reply: “Everybody must get drunk on Sunday.”
Your own deontological prescription, the ZAP (zero aggression principle) so joyously celebrated by the libertarians, is so porous that you can drive a truck through it. For example, where does ‘purely defensive force’ begin? Some Leftists, abetted by Democrat politicians, apply the tactic of approaching ‘fascists’ (i.e., anybody who disagrees with them) in a public restaurant and screaming threatening obscenities in their faces. Should the pleasant libertarian (or one labeled ‘fascist’) serenely ignore that and continue enjoying his crème brûlée? Yeah, right.
<b>Contractarian – </b>By this principle of ‘solidarity’ as you call it, it’s just fine to dismantle Western Civ so long as a majority have “contracted” to do so, even when the “contract” is somehow implicit, as in Locke’s contractarian society. There is even the libertarian position of allowing personal slavery, so long as someone has freely “contracted” his own slavery.
<b>Consequentialist/Utilitarian – </b>Fails on two counts: It’s impossible to evaluate a utilitarian policy until <i>after</i> it has been applied, so is therefore worthless as a prescriptive guide; it’s impossible to perform interpersonal comparisons of happiness – Bentham’s “hedonistic calculus”.
<b>Virtue Ethics – </b>This is Alasdair MacIntyre’s famous solution, offered in 1981 with his book <i>After Virtue</i>. However imperfect it may be, it is the only viable option because it simultaneously recognizes necessity of moral standards while refusing to make universal claims for them.
I agree with almost every word you've written here, I think, though at times you use the 2nd person as if you're referring to me in particular, as in "Your own deontological prescription...". One gets the feeling you're reading into my commitments. Note that I referred to this proto-pledge as casting a series of persuasion "spells," which are contingent on someone's assent and agreement. I agree that you can drive a truck through each of them, but when you get them to cohere as a multi-ingredient persuasion spell, such that eventually people practice them as virtues, the spell animates a community as a geist. But even those vaunted virtues must take on the character of rules if they are to form the basis of law, for example, in the law of torts. Society can't function on virtue alone. Sometimes people have to make contracts and enforce them. Sometimes we have to imagine what consequences will flow from behaviors and rules (which sometimes helps justify virtues, too.) Virtue ethics also bake in consequentialist and deontological assumptions, too, which you seem to forget as you fawn over MacIntyre.) The entire point of this piece and The Moral Languages of Babel is to create a sketch of an integrated ethics of freedom, which has to approach a practice of non-violence, and to argue that any given one of these ethical systems in isolation is going to have severe limits --- especially if the point is persuasion. But your critiques, while they suggest you are unpersuaded by the proto-pledge, just tells me "back to the drawing board, Max!" not that After Virtue is the Tablets of Moses. :)
My use of "you" – no contentiousness intended, apologies if I gave that impression.
I caught a hangnail on the sense of "contractarian" in your article. For me, this is all Hobbes and Locke. But your understanding of the term really is based in David Gauthier. After putting a BandAid on my ignorance, I find Gauthier in harmony with MacIntyre, whom I admit fawning over, just short of _dulia_. – At least they're in harmony on the inevitably (thanks, Mr. Hume) subjective nature of values, and in harmony on how to get around that subjectivity. This harmony is the whole effort of my "The Constitution of Non-State Government" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947660853), where I add this subjectivity for values in a social setting as the FIFTH category of the current FOUR categories of praxeology (pages 45ff). Clearly I need to read Gauthier in depth.
"A perfect example is Kant’s Moral Imperative: “Act externally in such a manner that the free exercise of thy Will may be able to coexist with the Freedom of all others, according to a universal law.” – To which a very moral Irishman might reply: “Everybody must get drunk on Sunday.”
Good topic, I think it's imperative that we acknowledge paralogical thinking here. We are both individuals AND part of a collective society. Both are true and if we expect our society to deliver justice and goodness then we have to bring that into being by balancing those aspects. The Golden Rule is so simple and yet so elusive when people want to rationalize why they don't need to take care of each other and only take care of numero uno.
Word. If we could just get back to the Golden Rule, the world would heal so much more quickly.
The golden rule requires everyone wanting the same things. there are some basics for which that works, but most of the time it cannot apply. At the very least it's poorly phased. Many philosophers have independently derived The Platinum Rule to accommodate those differences - do unto others as they would have done unto them, but being kind to people isn't always warranted so that's not appropriate either. "Do unto others as they deserve done unto them" is proper, as it requires knowing what you're doing before acting, and forbearance otherwise. Bear in mind that the golden rule, in all it's variations, came from ancient times when civilization were much more sequestered and homogeneous than now, and people had much more similar needs relative to their peer group.
Of course I'm over simplifying as I will often do. To me and what I think is necessary for a Common Law kind of Golden Rule is that to be part of a nation or society, one has to contribute to the common good, therefore enhancing the synergistic power of what it means to be a part of something mutually beneficial.
Oh, so many thoughts!
First, I dislike the word "harm." It can so easily be misused.
"Your words harmed me."
"Your identity as a cis-het-white-male causes harm to our community."
"You are required to be silent and 'hold space'; failure to do so constitutes harm."
"Your face is a micro-aggression."
"Your superior abilities harm the chances of others to get ahead." (Harrison Bergeron)
I know that the NAP can seem trite. And that coercive force can sometimes be hard to identify on the margins. (Is cigar smoke force? How about gasoline dumped in the back yard?) But "initiation of coercive force" is far easier to define, and to protect from misuse, than "harm." (John Stuart Mill can feel free to contact my lawyers.)
Second, the inductive process you describe for deriving shared moral rules is going to produce the same core rules no matter who engages in the process.
Customs will differ. Virtue-ethical SHOULDs will differ somewhat. Justice and Fairness will start to look more similar, but will still vary from culture to culture. But then you get to the MUSTs/MUST NOTs, and they all look the same. There is a good reason for that.
When you unwind these four strands of the cord of morality, it becomes easier to see which ones are subjective and which are objectively true. Objectively real? Objective facts?
That brings us to…
Third, maybe the word "facts" is getting in the way. Love is real. Is it a "fact"? Even if love were nothing more than the result of oxytocin and other trickery Mother Nature plays on us to keep us breeding and protecting other members of the species, it would still be real.
Just because we cannot dig up moral principles from the ground and eat them like carrots, or find them elsewhere in nature and place them on shelf to gaze at lovingly, does not make them not real.
When we look at the most objective aspect of morality—the MUST/NOTs—we find them throughout nature. They permeate our existence. Toddlers, animals, and even plants understand them. Every culture understands them. They are universal.
I think the urge to identify them as facts, and the failure to find them as empirically measurable objects, ends up getting in the way of embracing them as a reality, just as we embrace love as something very real in our lives.
The universe is woven together with freedom-magic, my brother. Bask in its reality!
Harm just means making someone worse off. Perhaps the legal term "injury" is better. Whatever. The wordsmithing can come later, though I will say that "initiation of coercive force" is inadequate. Would you rather someone punch you in the face or spread gossip that you're a child molester? Anyway, just because SJWs are abusing words doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to own them. I hate what they've done with "justice" too, but I'm not giving up on it.
Now, I think you might be a little confused about MUST and MUST NOT, as opposed to OUGHT and OUGHT NOT. I consider the former the domain of coercion, full stop. Otherwise, it's just oughts with angry faces.
Finally, steer clear of the naturalistic fallacy and the ought from is derivation (yes, Hume again). Remember that Ayn Rand inspired legions of adolescents (I among them) but she was not a very good philosopher. So, just because nature makes you feel all squishy about your family doesn't make it objectively normative. Nature makes some people have all kinds of tingly feelings but that doesn't make it objectively normative to seize and inseminate the first hot woman you see on the street.
Anyway, apparently I struck a nerve. Perhaps it's at the heart of your book. Libertarians LOVE their precious foundational premises. And many are persuaded by those. But many are not. We have to find multiple pathways to getting people to agree to participate in our moral universes. (I refer you back to your statement about variations on notions of virtue above.)
The only nerve you struck was my happy place. I love talking about this stuff. And yes, I do love looking for signs of rights and freedom in the universe. Trying to figure this stuff out together is a wonderful place to be.
Good point re: face-punch vs. gossip. I will have to think about that. Do you have a way out of that issue?
I am a bit fuzzy on mustn't vs. oughtn't. Are you saying that it is more proper to say that one oughtn't commit cold-blooded murder than that one mustn't? It seems to me that mustn't is just as appropriate there. More so, because it carries with it an implicit promise: if Person A does commit murder, he may fully expect to have force used against him. Not coercive force, but protective force, deployed in response to the coercive force he has initiated.
I am all for multiple pathways. I entirely agree. And yeah, foundational principles, and a search for evidence of their roots in the natural world, figure heavily in my book. Especially the principles part. But I am not bothered in the least by challenges thereto—certainly not be fellow freedom lovers. I just want the world to be free!
Re: "my happy place." -- me too. This is what I (we) live for.
Re: face punch/gossip... My way out is hinted at here. If we agree to moral practices tacitly, we can also agree to legal rules explicitly. So, if we can prove someone spread such gossip, that's defamation. We could seek damages. Otherwise, we have to build communities of virtuous practice, such that we shun gossipers, or at least approach them with skepticism. (Tort law does a pretty good job of approximating basic anarchist morality.)
The MUST/OUGHT distinction is pretty much one I made up, but I hope you'll think it's intuitive. Must implies some manner enforcement (i.e. "or else" or coercion). Ought is the domain of persuasion, and is normative but doesn't imply enforcement. A less loaded way to put matters is must is a directive and ought is a suggestion.
I agree about the use of the term initiate, so we're clear that people can defend themselves and retaliate, although that latter can be sticky.
I will say it's hard being a metaethical skeptic and also an anarchist. But one of my favorite books, to this day, is _Morals by Agreement_ by David Gauthier. I'd just add that we need to start making actual contracts after reasoning in this fashion.
Keep up the great work, Christopher!
"I will say it's hard being a metaethical skeptic and also an anarchist.”
—OMG yes. I fear my tiny mind would break open if I tried to make that work, and bits of my brain would fly away like confetti. But you seem to be making it work just fine!
Add to that I'm a determinist who doesn't believe in free will.
My soul is crying right now.🤣
Finally, I feel lucky to be alive, and to be working in this space. Every day, I leave the old world a little further behind.
We are explorers, standing one the precipice of a whole new world. This is freakin’ awesome!
"A less loaded way to put matters is must is a directive and ought is a suggestion.”
—Ah, okay. That works as a distinction. The parlance I have been using is MUST and SHOULD. I believe they can be laid out along a continuum with “degree of objectivity” as the unit of measure. You can see a graphic of it in this post (made when my Substack was young, and right before I admitted to myself that I had in fact become an anarchist): https://christophercook.substack.com/p/appalling-quote-from-teddy-roosevelt
"If we agree to moral practices tacitly, we can also agree to legal rules explicitly…(Tort law does a pretty good job of approximating basic anarchist morality.)”
—My first instinct, if crafting a society from scratch, would be to establish a tiny set of MUST rules (or whatever we might call them—rules that, if violated, will definitely produce protective force in response). And then to empower a system of common law to figure out all the marginal stuff (defamation, e.g.).
And yeah, I would definitely base that tiny set of rules on foundational principles. Tacit agreement on aspirational values, virtue ethics, etc., yes. But a small number of explicitly stated rules based on moral principles.
That way, you’re getting the best of both worlds: Accumulated human wisdom and flexibility from common law, and a solid foundation from first principles.
Maybe whether we call them “real” or “facts” or “natural” doesn’t matter. But they have to have some sort of universal value, right? Otherwise, when I assert the claim that I have the right to EXIT or live or not be enslaved, why does my claim have any more weight than the polity next door to ours, or a government, who say different? Is it only consensus and contract?
I mean, if so, if you are right, then yeah, we’d really better get busy building consensus and signing contracts!
"Otherwise, when I assert the claim that I have the right to EXIT or live or not be enslaved, why does my claim have any more weight than the polity next door to ours, or a government, who say different?" Because enforcement -- the Magisterium of MUST - is binary. Either the MUST is enforced or it is not. More do the point: You are permitted to leave, or you are not. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't exercise moral suasion -- as I've said, that's how the world runs if you renounce the initiation of violence. My only point is that people who value freedom as we do must do more to start making our communities larger, stronger and deeper, which means coming together and carving out space for our values and virtues to be practiced. Otherwise, we will spend our days living under a growing totalitarian threat, as people (at best) take placards to city hall to wave at our superiors while they continue to treat us like their chattle. In other words, whether and to what extent our values are "universal" is irrelevant unless universality moves human souls -- either our allies will rally around those universals in solidarity, or our enemies/authorities will let go of the ring. If I thought sending everyone a postcard with the NAP written on it would move the needle of collective consciousness, I'd do it. But that has worked considerably less well than, say, howls about social justice.
Right there with you on all of those tactical considerations.
One possible different approach—don't try to convince anyone. Simply secede, live one's own way, and enforce what must be enforced. And then prove to people that it works better, and then they'll join.
Hmm, now let's see—where's the flaw in that? Could it be where I glossed over the difficulties and said, "Simply secede"? 🤣
Chris, love it that you cited Kurt Vonnegut's famous short story "Harrison Bergeron" – it's in a league with L.P. Hartley's novel _Facial Justice_.
I had not heard of Hartley's "Facial Justice." Yet it isn't surprising that novels like those have been written.
After watching and studying the trajectory of the left over the last 200 years, and knowing human nature to the extent that I do, I believe such things could actually happen in the real world. Maybe not tomorrow, but if they keep gaining power, keep carrying their "principles" (such as they are) to their logical conclusions, and keep tweaking the worst of human emotions, who knows where we might get to!
It feels mean to say this, but to me, it's clear this is all futile. Moral realism is true, we know it by conscience, and if you start by dismissing it, you've exiled yourself into ethical topsy-turvydom from which there's no escape. Like C.S. Lewis said in *Mere Christianity* and elsewhere. More about it from me here: https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/the-grand-coherence-chapter-11-the. And here: https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/the-grand-coherence-chapter-9-the.
That said, I admire your zeal! You're like someone who lives on a beach and keeps on trying to build a sandcastle strong enough to resist the waves, never having heard of dry land. But the dry land is there!
First, please note that there is a Thomas Hobbes and a David Hume, but no Thomas Hume.
Second, your interpretation of Hume's (presumably David) IS/OUGHT distinction is confused. In other words, Hume is not arguing that normative claims don't relate to moral facts, for example, as in Kant's "ought implies can." Hume is arguing that normative premises cannot be deduced or inferred from descriptive premises. To see why, you have to strip away all normative assumptions from your descriptive premises (you know, which is the whole point if being a descriptive/factual statement).
x is A
Therefore, x is good.
But if the first premise has normative content, then it's a hidden premise, and the second premise is therefore of no use (i.e. provides no derivation).
x is A (where A is self-evidently good!)
Therefore, x is good.
(Uh, no.)
Please note that we can have morals by agreement and virtues to practice together, a la MacIntyre, but no moral facts as such. MacIntyre is not a moral realist per se, yet you appeal to him as if he were. Is a virtue ethicist and communitarian, which is exactly what I am arguing here.
When it comes to zeal, particularly religious zeal, I feel the same way, only back in your direction. It's like you're pointing to glass sculptures hanging on skyhooks, saying: *Look! Morality! Obey!*
Why?
*Because those floating glass sculptures make me have strong FEELINGS and INTUITIONS, and as you know feelings and intuitions indicate moral--*
(Before he could finish his story leading to his recalling something important from the Sermon on the Mount, the brigand bludgeoned him and he went unconscious.)
By the way, two key examples from *After Virtue* might be helpful here: the farmer and the watch.
MacIntyre points out that from the premises, "This watch is too heavy to carry conveniently and does not keep timely reliably," the conclusion follows that "This is a bad watch." Similarly, from the premises, "His animals win prizes in all the fairs, his yields per acre are the highest in the county, and his innovative irrigation system is admired in agricultural colleges around the world," the conclusion follows, "He is a good farmer."
Clearly, when you think about it that way, some notion of purpose is built into the very concepts of "farmer" and "watch," and supplies an evaluative standard.
It's not obvious that purpose is built into the concept of "man" in a similar way. It's also not obviously that purpose is NOT built into it. There's a long conversation to be had. But once you give *telos* a foothold in your ontology, you start to see it everywhere. The farmer and the watch prove that you can't keep *telos* out.
Re: David/Thomas Hume. Oops, thanks! Corrected! I got it right in this one: https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/the-grand-coherence-chapter-2-how
Re: MacIntyre. He definitely denies the validity of Hume's hard and unbridgeable is/ought distinction. That's enough moral realism for me. Perhaps MacIntyre might lend himself to moral realism and non-moral realist readings, but I think his moral realism is pretty clear. He doesn't think virtue is just a social or cultural construct, it's something real.
I think this is where you go wrong: "you have to strip away all normative assumptions from your descriptive premises." That's not actually feasible. Goodness and often morality are so tightly interwoven into the concepts with which we think that it can't be stripped away. The concept of a man isn't ultimately separable from the concept of a good man.
Come on, Nathan. (And apparently, come on Alastair.)
If there is no such things as non-normative statements of fact, then there is no sense that can be made for derivation. Otherwise, you're just spinning tautologies.
Take an aesthetic example: There is a colorful sunrise on the horizon. (Hidden premise: Colorful sunrises are beautiful!) Therefore, colorful sunrises are beautiful.
WTF. Come on, now.
This watch is too heavy to carry conveniently and does not keep timely reliably.
Therefore, this watch is bad.
(Imbedded normative premises: Watches ought to be convenient to carry and ought to work according to the telos, or intent of the design.) Inconvenient, too heavy, and unreliable are evaluative claims. But the big heavy watch is made of gold and diamonds and belonged to Carl Jung, which means it fetches $200,000 at auction and is displayed in a stately home. Is it a bad watch? Even if it's bad at its intended watchness, that is not the point. The point is that IS claims are not, to Hume, evaluative claims.
I'll pass over the issue that neither sunrises nor watches are normative claims, that is OUGHTs to be derived from ISs. Still, I think Hume's rationale applies to such adjacent claims, too.
You're working very hard at this!
So yes, if you want to insist on calling it an "embedded [imbedded? -- is that a typo or a word I didn't know?] normative premise" that watches should be accurate and easily portable, nothing's stopping you. But obviously you really can't really talk or think about watches at all apart from that "embedded normative premise." You can't separate the meaning of a watch from the purpose of a watch. A watch that was meant to be accurate and portable but isn't is bad because it is a failure, performance not achieving purpose. A watch that was never intended to be accurate or portable isn't really a watch. Carl Jung's watch might be more like a piece of art mimicking a watch than a real watch. Certainly if something weighs 1,000 pounds and exhibits randomly fluctuating time, it's really not a watch at all even if it's made to resemble one in some ways. Purpose is essential.
Try to wrap your head around the idea that a bad man, or maybe a madman or a dead man, may be like a bad watch: there's some purpose that a man should fulfill, that defines what it is to be a man, which he's failing to fulfill. The goodness of a man is part of what he is, part of the essence. If it's part of the meaning of a man that he ought to tell the truth, then from the fact that a man tells lies, he's a bad man. You can't strip away the normative, it's indelibly interwoven in some of the concepts by which we interpret the world.
That's the claim anyway. It's hard to prove, but it ought to be intelligible.
I'm didn't work hard on this -- Hume did! We should honor Hume's insight, at least understand it well before we abandon it.
Let's call these "hidden" premises, then, (sorry about the "embedded" typo above). Hume's IS/OUGHT distinction is very clear: Normative premises cannot be inferred from non-normative premises. Once we hide evaluative premises--at all--we are being NORMATIVE, that is, expressing value. But THAT would be to argue that an OUGHT/VALUE can be derived from an OUGHT/VALUE, which is NOT what Hume is claiming.
I love MacIntyre. I do. But I think this watch example is a sleight of hand. Badness doesn't inhere in watches. The watch, shitty or not, gold or not, is valuable or not to a subject. The whole point of designating boring old true statements of fact is that they don't carry subjective (e-VALU-ative) language.
A steak knife used to stab a dog isn't evil, it's just a steak knife. So we don't have to worry about Jung's watch, the telos of watches, or whatever fancy teleological-cum-virtue theories MacIntyre present unless we want to change the subject from the fact/value distinction to notions about one's functional role in a community. And we have to be very careful when we do that, as well.
So some of this is right. A steak knife gratuitously used to kill an innocent dog isn't evil.
But there a key point that doesn't seem to have sunk in.
The point about the watch is that purpose/telos is both part of the definition of what a watch is, and supplies the evaluative standard by which a watch can be judged good or bad. Hume's move would be to say that whether something is a watch is a fact, but whether it's good or bad is a value. But watchness and goodness as a watch are part of the same continuum.
Just to vary the example, let's take steak knives. A steak knife is defined, above all, by its purpose of cutting steak. If it cuts steak well, it's a good steak knife. If it cuts steak poorly, but it was intended for the purpose of cutting steak, we can say that it's a bad steak knife, but still a steak knife.
But suppose I say, "I grant you, this steak knife doesn't cut steak well. But it was never intended to. That's why it's made of ceramic, not cutting material, and has a rounded, hollow shape, and is much too large to be held in the hand, and very dirty. But it's still useful. If you want to fill it with dirt and plant flowers in it, you'll find that its shape is perfectly suitable. For *that* purpose, it's the best steak knife around. And that's what I want it for. Value is subjective."
This is not a convincing argument that the flower pot is a good steak knife for someone who wants to plant flowers. It misses the point of what a steak knife is.
Like steak knives and watches, many of the concepts in which we deal are inherently teleological in nature. Their definition and their evaluative standard both depend on their telos.
Now, the grand conclusion that MacIntyre points to, even if he's a bit coy about it, is that human beings have a telos, an inherent purpose, and recognizing that is the key to morality, without which all attempts at constructing morality are foredoomed to failure. What that telos consists of is a long story. But if we accept that humans have a telos and the virtue is part of it, then to strip away normative conceptions from men might be as impossible as stripping away meat cutting from steak knives.
Compare:
1. He tells the truth and does his best to help others, therefore, he is a good man.
2. That knife cuts steak cleanly and easily, therefore, it is a good steak knife.
If man is a teleological concept, then (1) might be as valid as (2). A moral nature is part of what it is to be a man as cutting meat is part of what it is to be a steak knife. And more consistently and strongly to practice moral behavior makes a man good just as cutting meat efficiently makes a steak knife good.
The very concept of a fact needs to be questioned, because no fact can be stated without the help of concepts. And to allow concepts into one's ontology is ultimately fatal to Humean reductionism. Concepts are the original skyhooks, Plato's ideal forms. We can't think without them, and we can't reduce them to matter and energy. And if we surrender and let them have their way, they bring in all sorts of telos and evaluative standards with them.
"'you have to strip away all normative assumptions from your descriptive premises.' That's not actually feasible."
—That is an interesting point. The way I see it is similar—certain moral principles are so rooted in natural realities that they cannot be ignored as such. They cannot be stripped out of reality.
But maybe here is a possible bottom line…
Wherever moral principles come from, we need them.
If we are going to create new, free polities, we need to have good rules by which they function.
We have at least some example that explicit written rules are helpful. For example, without the 1st and 2nd Amendments, our speech and gun rights in America would be in even worse shape than they are now. They would already look like they do throughout the rest of the Anglosphere.
Not that I am a big fan of the system set up by the U.S. Constitution, but there is a lesson in there somewhere. It tells me that having explicit written rules has some value.
So then we need to know upon what principles we are basing those rules.
Max, you are right that some sort of consensus is needed among the people who agree to live with/under those rules. But all those people do not need to think up those rules—a small group is all that is needed for that. And trying to work out some sort of first-principles justification is very helpful in that process…wherever those principles may ultimately come from.
Sigh. The necessity of stripping away the normative assumptions is what helps it be a claim of fact and not of value. Otherwise, you're just saying a claim of value can be induced or deduced from a claim of value, which is trivially true, but helps us none where Hume is concerned.
Ah, I see what you mean.
It feels like we've discovered atoms and then looked deeper to find protons, electrons, and neutrons, and then even deeper to the subatomic. And we're looking for that one particle upon which everything else is based.
Maybe this is why you're all like, "Hey, let's just form a consensus around some rules that work really well." 🤣
Yes, indeed, sir. I was trying to find a metaphor for it. @lancelotfinn (Nathan Smith) remarked that I was trying to build a sand castle in the surf, and said I should just look to dry land as a better foundation (which I think for him is God's telos + virtue + The Golden Rule). In the meantime, I'm thinking about a galaxies metaphor, which are coherent and bound by invisible forces, but not built on foundations, per se. The invisible forces are us all saying "Yeah, I can get down with that. Let's agree."
When you say "we know it by conscience," who are you referring to by "we"? It doesn't seem like realism is true to me. It seems like it's not true. I don't recall a time when it ever seemed true to me. I take questions about what seems true or false to people to be psychological questions, and such questions are best addressed by appeal to the empirical evidence. At present, I've seen little substantive empirical evidence that would, on the whole, suggest that most people were moral realists.
An objective moral fact is: “one should be rational”. It’s axiomatic, because to question it implies either accepting it, or else denying all knowledge in general.
If you ask “why should one be rational?”, you either:
a) will only accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case you already implicitly accept the premise.
b) won’t accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case there’s no rational means of persuading you.
Ergo you have a rational, objective metaethic. In Humean “is-ought” terms: “reason is how one comes to justified conclusions, therefore one ought to follow reason”
If I ask "why should one be rational?" and I already implicitly accept the premise, then that would be subjective. If I deny that the use of logic and evidence is necessary for justification (persuading one), then it's not clear that one is behaving immorally. They could just be irrational (perhaps insane). In any case, objectivity means publicly observable and mind-independent, which is not quite the same as axiomatic. Something axiomatic might qualify as inter-subjective, though. Further, it sounds like what you're arguing here implicitly is instrumental rationality, not morality -- that is: If you want x, then you will use logic and evidence in your justification." That's great. But it is not morality in the sense of a moral fact that comes to be known.
> If I ask "why should one be rational?" and I already implicitly accept the premise, then that would be subjective.
It's not clear what you mean by "subjective" here. Yes, your accepting of the premise is done "subjectively", as in your own individual consciousness, however that's true of all premises, even those that are "publicly observable and mind-independent". In a technical sense no human claim about reality is truly mind-independent, even observations of physical reality are filtered through the senses and realized in the mind; we are capable of hallucinating them, etc.
> If I deny that the use of logic and evidence is necessary for justification (persuading one), then it's not clear that one is behaving immorally. They could just be irrational (perhaps insane).
You equate justification with mere persuasion, but that's not the sense in which I'm using the term here. I mean justification in the metaphysical sense, as in truly rationally justified. "Persuasion" refers to the subjective state of an individual, who may be persuaded by faulty pseudo-justifications (such as an insane person).
As to your point that irrational != immoral, that's merely a dispute about definitions. By the theory I'm positing, rational == moral, tautologically.
> In any case, objectivity means publicly observable and mind-independent, which is not quite the same as axiomatic. Something axiomatic might qualify as inter-subjective, though.
That definition of objective falls short by the mainstream, common understanding of the term. For example, would you say that rigorous mathematical statements are "objective"? If yes, then you've admitted a whole host of abstract statements that are not mind-independent by any sensible definition of the term, i.e. N-dimensional topography where N > 3 (and countless other examples). If you disagree then it's up to you to explain why an alternative definition is worthwhile, and/or (specific to this argument) why abstract logical/philosophical claims can't be treated as truly objective.
> Further, it sounds like what you're arguing here implicitly is instrumental rationality, not morality -- that is: If you want x, then you will use logic and evidence in your justification." That's great. But it is not morality in the sense of a moral fact that comes to be known.
The answer to this again relates to "justification" in the metaphysical sense. To complete your statement: "If you want metaphysical justification, then you will use logic and evidence in your justification". This again is axiomatic, if you decide you don't "want" metaphysical justification then there is no rational (justified, based in logic/evidence) argument that I can give you to change your mind. But that decision is also self-defeating, you have eschewed the very basis for objectivity and thereby any coherent philosophical discourse.
(For the sake of giving credit where credit is due and to point any readers in the direction of the full justification, these arguments originate from: https://reasonandliberty.com/rl)
Accepting the premise "one should follow reason" is ultimately axiomatic, not "subjective. Your remark "it's not clear" is, on the other hand, subjective. What it really means and what you should have said is "it's not clear *to me*". Ergo that remark isn't a counter-argument. Saying "they could just be irrational" is tautological, not a counter-argument. Your definition of "objectivity" is problematic at best. Declaring "facts" to be only "publicly observable" events is both arbitrary and unconventional and in any case very debatable. A person can be a sole witness to a real factual event. Furthermore, "facts" have a subjective (by your definition) quality: they are rooted in reports of individuals. What you are saying, I suppose, is you will only call something a "fact" when some percentage of people agree? But that's extremely problematic.
I could go on but suffice it to say you haven't actually countered the original point.
Accepting the premise "one should follow reason" is ultimately axiomatic, not "subjective.”
>>If it’s objective, then you should be able to say what reason is. Isaiah did mention the use of logic and evidence, so that’s a start. So let’s come back to that.
Your remark "it's not clear" is, on the other hand, subjective.
>>Yes, it’s subjective. But the whole point of persuasion is to bring another into intersubjective agreement with him. However, “It’s not clear” is also a diplomatic way of saying “you didn’t prove” and/or at least “the result is counterintuitive.” And, indeed, if “one should be rational” is a moral claim, then anyone who is being irrational is also being immoral. 90 of people on the planet belong to faith traditions in which there practices aren’t rational, which Isaiah suggested was the use of logic and evidence. If you think they’re being immoral, then just know I don’t share that belief.
What it really means and what you should have said is "it's not clear *to me*".
>>I don’t think it’s *clear* to anyone beyond perhaps Randian Objectivists.
Ergo that remark isn't a counter-argument. Saying "they could just be irrational" is tautological, not a counter-argument.
>>To repeat, even if you believe in objective morality, one could be irrational without being immoral. Crazy people aren't immoral. They're just crazy. Or religious. Remember, the whole point of Isaiah’s post was to argue that “one should be rational” is a moral claim, which implies that it is wrong to be irrational. If it doesn’t, then it’s not a moral claim at all. Or at least, it's insufficient as it stands and he has more unpacking to do.
Your definition of "objectivity" is problematic at best. Declaring "facts" to be only "publicly observable" events is both arbitrary and unconventional and in any case very debatable.
>> Only if you have had no contact with the philosophical literature. Beyond the little qualifier “potentially” (which I could have added to ward off irrelevant cases in which someone is the sole observer of an act) the definition stands. Indeed, I added “mind independent,” which you can find on any discussion of the objective/subjective distinction. That said, here are a couple of examples of “publicly observable” or “publicly accessible” with respect to objective facts:
https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/introductiontophilosophy/chapter/the-problem-of-other-minds/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/science-theory-observation/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5147434/
A person can be a sole witness to a real factual event.
>> This is irrelevant to the meaning of objectivity. Objective: Publicly accessible, mind-independent, like a chair or a star. Subjective: Not-publically accessible, like a feeling, a thought, or a sensation.
Furthermore, "facts" have a subjective (by your definition) quality: they are rooted in reports of individuals.
>>Not sure what you're referring to here, specifically.
What you are saying, I suppose, is you will only call something a "fact" when some percentage of people agree? But that's extremely problematic.
>>Nope. Never. Not at all. Facts don’t care what you think or feel. Facts just are, which is why I refer to them as “mind-independent” or “feelings independent.” By contrast, moral sentiments + justifications are subjective and lots of people may share them. I suspect almost everyone reading this would agree that torturing babies is "wrong." We can find near universal *agreement* about the claim, even if it is inter-subjective from the standpoint of metaethics. But that doesn’t make it objectively true or false like the claim “You are sitting down” is objectively true or false — because that fact of your sitting (or not) is potentially publicly observable and mind independent.
I could go on but suffice it to say you haven't actually countered the original point.
>>Do what you must. Isaiah’s original point conflates the appearance of universality and objectivity. Even if we thought his clever paradox game gave us reasons to cheer for reason, it doesn't change the metaphysical status of moral claims.
"However, “It’s not clear” is also a diplomatic way of saying “you didn’t prove"
Actually I think it's an ego-driven dodge from asking the simple question "Could you explain why? I don't see how you concluded that"; if you don't see a certain step of reasoning that's the rational way to proceed. Of course, on that premise you might have to actually change your mind about something and have to learn something. Easier to just feign omniscience and dodge that question.
As for the "you didn’t prove" remark -- well guess what, you didn't prove any number of your remarks either. In fact, it's impossible to prove everything as you go, and when you're engaging another party unless you're a mind-reader you don't know where their gaps of knowledge are unless they inform you of them somehow. They could do it politely, as in asking a plain question, or as an attempted dodge, as you did.
I disagree with your other responses too but if you're not open to learning another point of view the what's the point?
I don't think whether one should be rational or not seems like a moral claim, so I'm not sure why that'd be an objective moral fact. But there are antirealist construals of "one should be rational," either way, so an antirealist could readily affirm that claim without committing themselves to moral realism or any other form of normative realism.
A person can be rational because it is in their interests to be rational. They do not need to do so because there is some objective normative fact that one ought to be rational.
There are moral universals, they're just contingent, not objective;
a) survival is a prerequisite for all meaningful goals
b) truth is a prerequisite for all non-arbitrary goals
c) sustainability is a prerequisite for all non-temporary goals
d) reciprocity is a prerequisite for civilization
Peterson puts it better; abstain from causing unnecessary harm
Max,
Your statement of the key moral problem: “even if there were moral facts or properties — which is doubtful — people would be terrible at knowing them.”
I would put it this way: “Values do exist in the sense that some actions promote life while others don’t; but because values are so contingent upon circumstances, (a) we can’t call them ‘facts’ and (b) it is impossible for the state to apply them universally.”
And my replies to your list of moral options:
<b>Deontic or Rules-based Ethics – </b>Because moral prescriptions are so situational, deontology can only provide ‘rules’ that are so general as to be worthless. A perfect example is Kant’s Moral Imperative: “Act externally in such a manner that the free exercise of thy Will may be able to coexist with the Freedom of all others, according to a universal law.” – To which a very moral Irishman might reply: “Everybody must get drunk on Sunday.”
Your own deontological prescription, the ZAP (zero aggression principle) so joyously celebrated by the libertarians, is so porous that you can drive a truck through it. For example, where does ‘purely defensive force’ begin? Some Leftists, abetted by Democrat politicians, apply the tactic of approaching ‘fascists’ (i.e., anybody who disagrees with them) in a public restaurant and screaming threatening obscenities in their faces. Should the pleasant libertarian (or one labeled ‘fascist’) serenely ignore that and continue enjoying his crème brûlée? Yeah, right.
<b>Contractarian – </b>By this principle of ‘solidarity’ as you call it, it’s just fine to dismantle Western Civ so long as a majority have “contracted” to do so, even when the “contract” is somehow implicit, as in Locke’s contractarian society. There is even the libertarian position of allowing personal slavery, so long as someone has freely “contracted” his own slavery.
<b>Consequentialist/Utilitarian – </b>Fails on two counts: It’s impossible to evaluate a utilitarian policy until <i>after</i> it has been applied, so is therefore worthless as a prescriptive guide; it’s impossible to perform interpersonal comparisons of happiness – Bentham’s “hedonistic calculus”.
<b>Virtue Ethics – </b>This is Alasdair MacIntyre’s famous solution, offered in 1981 with his book <i>After Virtue</i>. However imperfect it may be, it is the only viable option because it simultaneously recognizes necessity of moral standards while refusing to make universal claims for them.
Was any of your article inspired by pages 109ff of the wonderful book that you’re reading: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947660853
If MacIntyre, Nietzsche, and Gauthier had a love child, it would capture 90 percent of my views on morality.
I agree with almost every word you've written here, I think, though at times you use the 2nd person as if you're referring to me in particular, as in "Your own deontological prescription...". One gets the feeling you're reading into my commitments. Note that I referred to this proto-pledge as casting a series of persuasion "spells," which are contingent on someone's assent and agreement. I agree that you can drive a truck through each of them, but when you get them to cohere as a multi-ingredient persuasion spell, such that eventually people practice them as virtues, the spell animates a community as a geist. But even those vaunted virtues must take on the character of rules if they are to form the basis of law, for example, in the law of torts. Society can't function on virtue alone. Sometimes people have to make contracts and enforce them. Sometimes we have to imagine what consequences will flow from behaviors and rules (which sometimes helps justify virtues, too.) Virtue ethics also bake in consequentialist and deontological assumptions, too, which you seem to forget as you fawn over MacIntyre.) The entire point of this piece and The Moral Languages of Babel is to create a sketch of an integrated ethics of freedom, which has to approach a practice of non-violence, and to argue that any given one of these ethical systems in isolation is going to have severe limits --- especially if the point is persuasion. But your critiques, while they suggest you are unpersuaded by the proto-pledge, just tells me "back to the drawing board, Max!" not that After Virtue is the Tablets of Moses. :)
Max,
My use of "you" – no contentiousness intended, apologies if I gave that impression.
I caught a hangnail on the sense of "contractarian" in your article. For me, this is all Hobbes and Locke. But your understanding of the term really is based in David Gauthier. After putting a BandAid on my ignorance, I find Gauthier in harmony with MacIntyre, whom I admit fawning over, just short of _dulia_. – At least they're in harmony on the inevitably (thanks, Mr. Hume) subjective nature of values, and in harmony on how to get around that subjectivity. This harmony is the whole effort of my "The Constitution of Non-State Government" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947660853), where I add this subjectivity for values in a social setting as the FIFTH category of the current FOUR categories of praxeology (pages 45ff). Clearly I need to read Gauthier in depth.
"A perfect example is Kant’s Moral Imperative: “Act externally in such a manner that the free exercise of thy Will may be able to coexist with the Freedom of all others, according to a universal law.” – To which a very moral Irishman might reply: “Everybody must get drunk on Sunday.”
—Try telling that to a drunk Irishman.