Hi Kane, I just watched your video on abstract objects and it was amazing! I was wondering, do you believe in any concrete things that are not constructed? Like fundamental particles, or quantum fields? It seems to me that even if constructivism is true, there still needs to be some base reality out of which things are constructed. Thank you so much!
Could you make a video about the Experience machine? It's honestly quite interesting to me. Personally I would be the kind of person who would want to be plugged in but despite that I feel kinda guilty for it. Like I would be giving up on my loved ones and disappointing them. Kind of like becoming a drug junkie or something similar. I'd be "squandering my potential" to them. Note that I personally don't care about something like squandering my potential for pleasure. I only care that the people I love DO care about that and that I'd be letting them down. Though getting to actually live out the fantasies I have that aren't possible in reality would probably win me over. It's quite a weird spot to be in in my opinion. I also think it's interesting to consider that we might feel repelled by the experience machine because it simply messes with our status quo. The standard argument about the experience machine is about whether or not we want to get in it. But image if we already were plugged in and living some wonderful fantasy full of joy and pleasure and everything we desired would we want to get out if given the chance to go live a non-ideal but real life. I'd honestly think most of us would not.
This is a terrible argument. The moral non-naturalist, if they come to think non-natural facts do not exist, most likely becomes an anti-realist! (They don't adopt a "second-best" realist position). Sure, their moral intuitions may not change, but they recognise that these have no truth value and are just personal preferences or sentiments. Also, it’s ironic, as the argument claims question begging on part of the non-naturalist, but there is clear question begging on part of the one making the argument (i.e. by asserting that certain things are inherently wrong or "vicious"), without which the argument cannot be made!
Really fun video, thank you. I think objection 3 is saveable. I think the non naturalist can consistently hold 'if there are no non-natural facts, then there are still moral facts anyway' alongside 'if moral non-naturalism is true, then if there are no non-natural facts, there are no moral facts' and 'non-naturalism is true'. This is because I might think that the nearest worlds where there are no non-normative facts are just those worlds in which moral non-naturalism is false. If they can hold the above beliefs consistently (and I think it would be a cost to say they cant), then holding non-naturalism doesnt commit you to the morally problematic conditional. I recognize this is a little different to the original objection 3 tho.
Great video as usual. A point of note: you sometimes bring up the trolley problem involving pushing a fat man on the tracks to stop the train and say that a Utilitarian would be committed to pushing the man to save the five people. Not all Utilitarians would agree with this assessment, for instance, Rule Utilitarians may say that they would not push the man because that would be contrary to following rules that tend to lead to the greatest good. Precedent Utilitarians may find the pushing of the man ambiguous depending on the number of people on the tracks and so on and so forth.
Thinking about this, I do actually use these examples quite often. The reason is not that I think they are persuasive refutations of utilitarianism. Rather, it's that when discussing metaethics, it's often necessary to point to examples of moral reasoning. Utilitarianism is very simple to explain, and the standard arguments against it can be stated quickly and are easily understood by people without philosophical background. So they're good to use as illustrations or analogies. If you notice that I'm frequently talking about, say, the footbridge dilemma as an argument against utilitarianism, that's the reason why.
@@KaneB No problem, I am sure you know all this stuff very well, it was just for the sake of the viewers to give some extra info since that example comes up often.
Super interesting video. I’ve watched the first 20 min about 4 times now. Something seems off about the response to the first objection. If the MAAR is saying it’s morally objectionable to conditionalise all our moral commitments on there being non-natural facts and non-naturalists hold that moral facts are a typology of non-natural facts it just seems like it is saying ‘it’s immoral to conditionalise our moral commitments on there being moral facts.’ It just seems trivially true to say moral commitments would be conditional on moral facts and a non-naturalist would grant this. If this is begging the question then MAAR just hasn’t actually responded to the commitments of the non-naturalist at all because it wouldn’t be using the term ‘’moral fact” or “non-natural fact” in the way a non-naturalist is using them. Wouldn’t it just be equivocating terms? For Hayward to divorce the terms he would have to mean something other than a non-natural fact by “moral fact” and if that’s the case then in what way is he talking about the commitments of a non-naturalist at all?
Great video & there’s a lot here. Just some rambling thoughts: I think the first objection has merit by my lights. I don’t think the fact that some people change from non-naturalism to naturalism but don’t substantially change their ethical behavior has as much force as presented. Surely counterexamples exist, and conversely every religion can point to converts whose ethical behaviors & attitudes change following their changes in metaphysical perspectives. So I think counter examples exist in all cases. Likewise, I’m Sure some people engage in worse behavior after becoming non-naturalists too. By my lights I do think it’s a grounding issue. For me, natural law flowing from a divine simplicity metaphysical worldview is sufficient to ground morality. In helps solve the is-ought gap (by my lights) All non-naturalism ethical views seem to boil down to either personal/subjective preferences and/culturally determined Beliefs, placing our epistemology above ontology. Multiple times in the video examples were stated that we would find such a worldview “morally vicious”. My retort is according to what? The mere empirical fact that most people would find something morally vicious isn’t enough to ground something as ultimately wrong. Appeals to intuitions don’t accomplish enough as intuitions can mistaken/misleading by my lights, and what’s to say that intuitions ought be considered so primarily even under naturalism. Again it’s a grounding issues. Similarly, the fact that ethics is often discussed separately from metaphysics (I would argue this is primarily done for practical considerations to gain traction & allow discussions to get off the ground) doesn’t ontologically prove that moral claims are merely natural, or that the two metaphysics and ethics aren’t inherently connected. At least by my lights.
I understand what you're saying but that's not really what it's saying. The main crux is that Non-Naturalism would FORCE us to change our moral judgements if the non-natural facts change even if the natural facts stay the same, which is argued to be morally unconscionable. The Non-Natural facts changing isn't saying Non-Naturalism being wrong it's simply a change in which Non-Natural facts are believed which is perfectly fine thing.
A naturalist almost certainly doesn't conditionalize her moral commitments on the moral bridge laws, because moral bridge laws are semantic, not normative. Talking about semantics can be awkward because it is so prone to equivocation, so let's split moral language into two versions, one for each proposed semantics. Let's say that N-morality means morality as understood by the moral naturalist including the naturalist moral bridge laws, and we an use X-morality to mean whatever moral semantics we end up with when it turns out that the bridge laws are false, such as if the semantic theories that support the bridge laws turn out to be wrong. Now let's imagine a conversation between Nate the naturalist and Alice the antirealist. Nate: I'm committed to not torturing people because torture is N-wrong. Alice: Haven't you heard? The naturalist bridge laws are false. The word "wrong" doesn't actually mean N-wrong. Now we're all talking about X-right and X-wrong. So what does that do to your commitments on torture? Nate: That's fine. I'm still committed to not torturing people because torture is N-wrong. Alice: No, stop using the word N-wrong. It's semantically incorrect. Nate: That has nothing to do with my commitments. I'll just have to find different words to talk about N-wrongness and N-morality. My commitments don't come from semantics; they come from nature. If we somehow determine that N-wrong does not reflect the true meaning of "wrong" and X-wrongness is what moral language has always truly been about, then moral naturalists will be proven wrong about their metaethical claims, but there's no reason why that should have any effect upon their actual commitments. A moral naturalist who is concerned about N-morality can continue to be concerned about N-morality even if moral language isn't actually talking about N-morality. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and N-morality by any other name would still drive the commitments of a moral naturalist, since nature still exists. Whether a moral naturalist has any concern about X-morality or not will depend upon what X-morality turns out to be. If X-morality turns out to be some spooky non-natural property, then most likely a moral naturalist won't care about it at all. If X-morality turns out to be some noncognitivist nonsense, then surely no one has any reason to care about X-morality.
You seem to think that all that's required to be a moral naturalist is to have commitments that are responsive to the natural properties of actions. In that sense, I suppose that pretty much every antirealist is already a moral naturalist.
@@KaneB : Moral naturalism is a position on metaethics. Obviously almost any moral naturalist will tend to have commitments that are responsive to natural properties, since supposedly natural properties are the substance of morality, but what makes a moral naturalist is the assertion that morality simply is these natural properties. The fact that even antirealists also take their moral commitments from natural properties is probably the best argument for moral naturalism. It's certainly what convinces me that moral naturalism is correct.
Wouldn't it be wrong to say it begs the question? Like the contention doesn't seem to be whether or not moral non-naturalism is true but rather an argument of "Assuming it is true it leads to an immoral conclusion", no?
@@KaneB The first objection is that from the Non-Naturalist POV they aren't conditionalizing but rather "The claims about what matters ARE the non-natural facts themselves". The response to this was that this is question begging, that this counter argument assumes the validity of non-naturalism when what the MAAR is trying to argue against is the validity of non-naturalism. I find that odd as I don't think the MAAR is arguing about whether Non-Naturalism is valid instead it seems to say: "Assuming Non-Naturalism is valid we get very immoral conclusions because the natural facts can stay the same while the non-natural facts change and we would need to change our moral judgements which is bad" so... given that the objection seems perfectly fine and non question begging it's saying the opposite "Assuming Non-Naturalism the Moral Judgements ARE the Non-Natural facts so it isn't immoral to say that if a thing changes then it changes."
@@manorbros9590 I'm not sure what you mean by "valid" here. But the MAAR does not involve assuming that non-naturalism is true, or that we ought to accept non-naturalism, at any step. It argues directly that non-naturalism entails an immoral commitment.
@@KaneB Right but if the Non-Naturalist response that it doesn't entail that commitment because the Non-Natural Facts themselves are the moral judgements how is that question begging? From what I understand question begging is when your conclusion is in your premises. But the assumed premise is Non-Naturalism is correct but the conclusion isn't that Non-Naturalism is correct it's that Non-Naturalism doesn't entail an immoral commitment. So how is that question begging?
@@manorbros9590 The MAAR is offered as a challenge to the identification of moral facts with non-natural facts. If we think the conditionalization of moral facts on non-natural facts is immoral, we have at least some reason to be suspicious of non-naturalism. The non-naturalist responds that moral facts just are natural facts, so we're not really conditionalizing the former on the latter. But of course, this can only be convincing to people to already accept non-naturalism.
There seems to be some ability for a moral realist to save some of these concerns. In that they may be able to attribute realism to internally consistent models of morals as a rational and thus real thing. This incorporates some of the "metaphysics" of religion without the metaphysics. We can accept personality and thoughts are real things, thus keeping morals even in the absence of observed "utility" is still a "good" thing, as it helps keep us consistent. PS, you're date vs God example is a poor argument. Because unlike a date, "God" is a substitute to "universal" thus the claim is "if nothing universal exists, then universal morals don't exist". It's a tautology argument from (possibly) religion. It's wrong because it's a tautology, not because "God" is a poor argument. The base problem is they only wish for a universal decision, and miss the need for individual (thus specific) morals to check before they act. Overall, it's an averages vs specifics argument, that there is no true "answer" to, in the same way we cannot provide a generalised answer to the halting problem. However, we can chose a subset! :) So the subset of morals (anything less than universal) is possible. An example of this for both realists and non realists (in this example I'm assuming religions vs non religious etc), is asking "what about humans" or "what about nature" and groups/subgroups. As long as we don't go to too large a scale (the galaxy of aliens, or God and angels), we can consider possible solutions and understandings to morals (though Arrows Theorem also limits the scope and amount of success for each individual).
How would this argument be explicated in a deductive form? I'm not sure if i fail to understand the argument, objection number 1 or their response to it. Would this be proper? -Moral non-naturalist is committed to some conditionals of the form X=>nothing matters -Moral non-naturalist is committed to believe conditionals of that type are immoral to believe -Therefore, moral non-naturalist is committed to something immoral If this is proper, can i appeal to some sort of OIC to do the Moorean shift?
The claim is just that it's immoral to believe those conditionals, not that moral non-naturalists are committed to believe that it's immoral to believe those conditionals. If anything, moral non-naturalists are committed to believe that it's *not* immoral to believe those conditionals, since those conditionals follow from their theory. But then, the argument goes, since it is immoral to believe those conditionals, non-naturalism is in trouble.
I think this point is addressed at 20:44. If we think that moral realism is descriptively correct as an account of our moral discourse, but also that moral realism is immoral, then we can endorse reforming moral discourse.
@@KaneB I mean, I guess so. It’s just a bit confusing. Maybe I feel like the argument begs the question against certain normative ethical theories that are based on metaethical considerations. Surely a divine command theorist would say that it is immoral to reject the normative standards prescribed by their religion, which would in turn be false if the religion was false. Similarly, it might be reasonable to conclude that we ought not be moral realists under a particular normative framework, but I don’t see that conclusion doing anything but restating the thesis position that some anti-realists would hold to in opposition to certain realists. Maybe a further concern is that the argument relies on what is “possible” as opposed to what is “actual”. With the trolley problem you provided, that seems to be a direct consequence related to utilitarianism, but part of the argument presented by Howard seems to rely on the “possibility” of non-natural normative facts countering our moral intuitions. I don’t see why the realist can’t just reject such possibility (a bit more difficult for the moral naturalist to do, I think). Also, wouldn’t an anti-realist, like an emotivist, be in a similar situation if we say that their feelings “could have” led them (and maybe humans collectively) to express satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction in animal suffering? Sorry for rambling on.
@@mooseyzed >> Similarly, it might be reasonable to conclude that we ought not be moral realists under a particular normative framework, but I don’t see that conclusion doing anything but restating the thesis position that some anti-realists would hold to in opposition to certain realists. We have to assume some sort of normative framework in order to get the conclusion that it's morally wrong to conditionalize moral commitments on non-natural facts. But this could be a framework that's shared between the non-naturalists and their critics. It's worth noting that there are non-naturalists who are taking this argument as a genuine challenge (I noted Enoch in the video). >> I don’t see why the realist can’t just reject such possibility If we have in mind "metaphysical" possibility, non-naturalists would reject the possibility that there are no non-natural facts. As far as I understand, non-naturalists take the existence of non-natural facts to be metaphysically necessary (like how realists about abstract objects usually treat them as metaphysically necessary). But what's relevant to Hayward's argument is epistemic possibility. I really don't see how a non-naturalist could plausibly deny the epistemic possibility that there are no non-natural facts, or that the non-natural facts are different to what we think they are. What could justify holding non-naturalism with certainty? That would be absurdly dogmatic. >> Also, wouldn’t an anti-realist, like an emotivist, be in a similar situation if we say that their feelings “could have” led them (and maybe humans collectively) to express satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction in animal suffering? Yes, this is an interesting point. The antirealist also conditionalizes their moral commitments on their preferences or desires or dispositions or whatever. Though it's not quite the same as the non-naturalist's conditional. Recall: (N) If there are no non-natural facts, then nothing matters. So let's take the emotivist. I guess their conditional would be something like: (E) If there are no emotions, then nothing matters. It's more plausible to deny the epistemic possibility that there are no emotions. At the very least, it's hard to see how even the most extreme eliminativist could deny that there are emotion-like states. Perhaps this kind of move allows the antirealist to block the extension of the moral argument to her position. But I think you're right that this is a threat. Perhaps *every* metaethical position is immoral! (Or perhaps there's just something wrong with the moral argument. I suppose that would be the more reasonable, but less exciting conclusion.)
How could a metaethical theory per se have immoral implications? Stating or defending the theory might be an immoral action (and even this presupposes a certain moral framework, which is exactly what we are questioning), but trying to draw moral conclusions from a metaethical fact is impossible, given the inversion of the order of discourse. The attempt at self-reference fails given the confusion of two distinct levels. Of course, the way this argument hides this impossibility is by sneaking up a moral framework (in your formulation, one that states that people suffering is bad and the correct thing is to get involved and try to avoid it) once we have put into question the reality of one possible construction of moral frameworks, exactly the one you are trying to disprove. That is, to try to disprove non-naturalism, you assume in the argument that indeed moral facts exist even when no non-natural facts exist. You mentioned one of the non-naturalist rebuttals begs the question, but that's just because the MAAR itself does! If non-naturalism is true, the argument clearly doesn't work because you couldn't sneak up the moral framework if non-natural facts didn't exist. Only if non-naturalism is false does the argument work, so it is vacuous. Some other arguments against non-naturalism mentioned in the video are actually sound, and maybe even the MAAR can be understood as a heuristic intuition pump against moral realism, just a clumsy restatement of "If we somehow found out that the only moral universal norm is to eat babies, we still wouldn't do it. So it's apparent that the concept itself of a moral universal norm is senseless and the morality we talk about is grounded on our feelings and beliefs". But the MAAR understood as the rigorous argument it tries to be strikes me as just dumbfounded, not even understanding what it attempts to prove.
First, just to clarify, this isn't my argument (re comments like "you assume in the argument..."). Nor do I think that this argument is persuasive. I tried my best to present it in the strongest terms, but it's not an argument that I would use against realism. However, I'm not convinced that the MAAR is question-begging. Yes, we need some sort of moral framework in order to forward the argument. But (a) that framework can be shared by both the non-naturalist and the objector; and (b) it's agreed by all sides that the evidence and arguments used in defense of non-naturalism are different from that used for establishing first-order moral commitments. That is, we can get to certain first-order moral commitments without endorsing non-naturalist metaethics. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "sneaking up a moral framework". It's made absolutely explicit that we are assuming a moral framework. I mean, it's literally called "the moral argument against realism"!
This is basically "moral realism is counter-intuitive, therefore fuck it". I mean, unless you think that whatever is intuitive is true, then I don't think that this argument makes any point. Even then, moral realists probably intuitively think that there is such a thing as moral facts, that X is intuitively good, Y intuitively bad, etc., so why would this intuitive thing trump all of that? And that's if I accept the idea that the conditionality thing is intuitive, which I don't.
I agree, but I think part of the point is for antirealists to be able to make points using similar methods realists make. Basically, we antirealists can deliver a few blows to realism on their own turf. I don't really think antirealists need to do this since moral realists have no good arguments, but the more we can marshal to point out how ridiculous realism is, the better.
I don't see how. At least, no more than any normative argument appeals to intuitions. The responses to this video make me think that I did an extremely poor job of presenting the argument. Oh well.
@@KaneB I do also find normative arguments that appeals to intuition to be quite lacking, except rare exceptions that even though I disagree, I can respect them. This one though, seemed even more irrational, because it discredit a theory for something they clearly don't see a problem in. At least that's how I see it, I haven't talked to that many philosophers yet. If I say "if A, then B", I indeed accept that "if no B, then no A". If someone thinks that morality needs to be non-naturalistic to exists, then if that person learned that morality isn't non-naturalistic, then I don't see why they wouldn't just adopt the position that morality doesn't exists. Seems perfectly logical to me, and I don't see why they would think there decision is immoral since they would no longer believe that morality is a thing. All of this to say that it doesn't even appeal to the person making the decision about what they'll believe, but only to other people that are convinced that morality exists (making it more cercle jerking than anything else). I'm not sure if other arguments that appeal to intuition have the same issue, I'd have to think about it, but it seemed very evident in this case. But maybe I'm wrong, who knows
@@florentbourbeau880 Fair enough. Though it's worth noting that at least some non-naturalists do see a problem here -- albeit a problem for which they think they have convincing responses. At the very least, if you accept moral non-naturalism, it's worth asking yourself, "how would I respond if it turned out that there are no non-natural properties?" In practice, people who convert from non-naturalism to naturalism do not always just give up their moral commitments. This does seem to raise some kind of challenge to the view that non-natural properties determine what matters, what we ought to do, etc. Of course, if a non-naturalist were to just say, "sure, if I discovered there are no non-natural properties, then I'd give up all my moral commitments, and I don't see anything problematic about the fact that I'm committed to that" then the MAAR won't have any force for them.
@@KaneB I think see a problem though. Maybe I'm missing something but is what you're saying that in case of being wrong, either A : the moral non-naturalist think that nothing is moral or immoral, in which case MAAR won't have any force on them. Or B : the moral non-naturalist becomes a moral naturalist in which case their moral commitments aren't conditional on being right on moral non-naturalism, so it's not immoral to be a moral non-naturalism? It seems to me that either it's conditonnal, but can't be immoral, or it's not conditional, so some could be, but not them. That being said, I know barely nothing on naturalism and non-naturalism, so there might be something special about it that would invalidate my argument
The analogy to the mind-brain identity theory (24:50) is nonsensical. Of course, one can come to believe the antecedent and thereby reject the conditional in the claim “If I don’t have a brain, I don’t have thoughts”, as the consequent is self-evidently false (i.e. Descartes’ Cogito) - we KNOW that we have thoughts. This is NOT comparable to the non-natural moral realist’s claim that “if non-natural properties don’t exist, then moral facts don’t exist”, as we do NOT KNOW that moral facts exist: The consequent in this claim is NOT self-evidently false (in fact the host himself identifies as a moral anti-realist!) so even if the antecedent is accepted, the consequent CAN still follow - the conditional is still true.
I do not agree with the MAAR. And one point that you seem to have missed: This argument bites error theory even worse. Moral error theorists claim that nothing really matters. And that would be immoral according to Heywood.
It's not that I missed that point; I just chose not to talk about it. There are plenty of forms of antirealism other than error theory. I think we can take it for granted that any antirealist who wants to run the MAAR would adopt expressivism or constructivism or relativism or whatever else.
@@KaneB I guess the argument can run against other versions of antirealism too. All antirealists agree that nothing "really" matters. It is just a matter of convention or emotion, etc. Moreover, on other versions of antirealism the moral judgements are, in fact, conditionalized on something that might be different (i.e. emotions, conventions, etc.). So I think other antirealists are not immune either.
@@daraghaznavi7171 It depends on what you mean by "really". I think there are plenty of things that really matter. They just don't really matter in virtue of stance-independent normative facts. As for whether the argument can be generalized to antirealism, I'll copy what I said in response to Abdul Rahman: Yes, this is an interesting point. The antirealist also conditionalizes their moral commitments on their preferences or desires or dispositions or whatever. Though it's not quite the same as the non-naturalist's conditional. Recall: (N) If there are no non-natural facts, then nothing matters. So let's take the emotivist. I guess their conditional would be something like: (E) If there are no emotions, then nothing matters. It's more plausible to deny the epistemic possibility that there are no emotions. At the very least, it's hard to see how even the most extreme eliminativist could deny that there are emotion-like states. Perhaps this kind of move allows the antirealist to block the extension of the moral argument to her position. But I think you're right that this is a threat. Perhaps every metaethical position is immoral! (Or perhaps there's just something wrong with the moral argument. I suppose that would be the more reasonable, but less exciting conclusion.)
@@KaneB Do you think moral realists think if realism is false then nothing would matter from any perspective? I do not think so. Moral realists (and even error theorists) grant that even if moral realism is false there would still be things that would matter to people. People would still care about the lives of others.
@@KaneB With regard to E, I think that is not a correct formulation. I guess we'd better say something like E' E': if our social emotions were different then different things would matter. For example, if we did not have sympathy, then other people's pain would not matter (only our own would matter)
The argument puts the cart before the horses. The moral realist holds to her view because of her moral commitments, not the other way around. For her, the fact that, say, owning slaves is immoral (even if you are a Roman patrician 2000 years ago or a plantation owner in Georgia 200 years ago) is *proof that* there are moral facts, not *a consequence of* there being moral facts.
Huh? It's ok to behave immorally if there is no 'outside reality' as in a dreamstate, yet if there is no God (ultimate reality, residing outside of ours) it isn't ok to behave immorally? You are asserting that reality IS a dream by removing eternity and God. Death, nonexistence is your ultimate reality in this case and I don't see how that transfers moral responsibilities.
Hi Kane, I just watched your video on abstract objects and it was amazing! I was wondering, do you believe in any concrete things that are not constructed? Like fundamental particles, or quantum fields? It seems to me that even if constructivism is true, there still needs to be some base reality out of which things are constructed. Thank you so much!
Could you make a video about the Experience machine? It's honestly quite interesting to me.
Personally I would be the kind of person who would want to be plugged in but despite that I feel kinda guilty for it. Like I would be giving up on my loved ones and disappointing them. Kind of like becoming a drug junkie or something similar. I'd be "squandering my potential" to them. Note that I personally don't care about something like squandering my potential for pleasure. I only care that the people I love DO care about that and that I'd be letting them down. Though getting to actually live out the fantasies I have that aren't possible in reality would probably win me over.
It's quite a weird spot to be in in my opinion.
I also think it's interesting to consider that we might feel repelled by the experience machine because it simply messes with our status quo. The standard argument about the experience machine is about whether or not we want to get in it. But image if we already were plugged in and living some wonderful fantasy full of joy and pleasure and everything we desired would we want to get out if given the chance to go live a non-ideal but real life. I'd honestly think most of us would not.
This is a terrible argument. The moral non-naturalist, if they come to think non-natural facts do not exist, most likely becomes an anti-realist! (They don't adopt a "second-best" realist position). Sure, their moral intuitions may not change, but they recognise that these have no truth value and are just personal preferences or sentiments.
Also, it’s ironic, as the argument claims question begging on part of the non-naturalist, but there is clear question begging on part of the one making the argument (i.e. by asserting that certain things are inherently wrong or "vicious"), without which the argument cannot be made!
The conversation about obligations has to precede this conversation. We need to establish to whom we have a rational reason to have an obligation to.
Really fun video, thank you.
I think objection 3 is saveable. I think the non naturalist can consistently hold 'if there are no non-natural facts, then there are still moral facts anyway' alongside 'if moral non-naturalism is true, then if there are no non-natural facts, there are no moral facts' and 'non-naturalism is true'. This is because I might think that the nearest worlds where there are no non-normative facts are just those worlds in which moral non-naturalism is false.
If they can hold the above beliefs consistently (and I think it would be a cost to say they cant), then holding non-naturalism doesnt commit you to the morally problematic conditional. I recognize this is a little different to the original objection 3 tho.
Great video as usual.
A point of note: you sometimes bring up the trolley problem involving pushing a fat man on the tracks to stop the train and say that a Utilitarian would be committed to pushing the man to save the five people. Not all Utilitarians would agree with this assessment, for instance, Rule Utilitarians may say that they would not push the man because that would be contrary to following rules that tend to lead to the greatest good. Precedent Utilitarians may find the pushing of the man ambiguous depending on the number of people on the tracks and so on and so forth.
It's just an analogy. I know that utilitarians have other responses to these kinds of cases (I assume Hayward knows this too).
Thinking about this, I do actually use these examples quite often. The reason is not that I think they are persuasive refutations of utilitarianism. Rather, it's that when discussing metaethics, it's often necessary to point to examples of moral reasoning. Utilitarianism is very simple to explain, and the standard arguments against it can be stated quickly and are easily understood by people without philosophical background. So they're good to use as illustrations or analogies. If you notice that I'm frequently talking about, say, the footbridge dilemma as an argument against utilitarianism, that's the reason why.
@@KaneB No problem, I am sure you know all this stuff very well, it was just for the sake of the viewers to give some extra info since that example comes up often.
Super interesting video. I’ve watched the first 20 min about 4 times now.
Something seems off about the response to the first objection. If the MAAR is saying it’s morally objectionable to conditionalise all our moral commitments on there being non-natural facts and non-naturalists hold that moral facts are a typology of non-natural facts it just seems like it is saying ‘it’s immoral to conditionalise our moral commitments on there being moral facts.’ It just seems trivially true to say moral commitments would be conditional on moral facts and a non-naturalist would grant this. If this is begging the question then MAAR just hasn’t actually responded to the commitments of the non-naturalist at all because it wouldn’t be using the term ‘’moral fact” or “non-natural fact” in the way a non-naturalist is using them. Wouldn’t it just be equivocating terms?
For Hayward to divorce the terms he would have to mean something other than a non-natural fact by “moral fact” and if that’s the case then in what way is he talking about the commitments of a non-naturalist at all?
Great video & there’s a lot here. Just some rambling thoughts: I think the first objection has merit by my lights.
I don’t think the fact that some people change from non-naturalism to naturalism but don’t substantially change their ethical behavior has as much force as presented. Surely counterexamples exist, and conversely every religion can point to converts whose ethical behaviors & attitudes change following their changes in metaphysical perspectives. So I think counter examples exist in all cases. Likewise, I’m Sure some people engage in worse behavior after becoming non-naturalists too.
By my lights I do think it’s a grounding issue. For me, natural law flowing from a divine simplicity metaphysical worldview is sufficient to ground morality. In helps solve the is-ought gap (by my lights) All non-naturalism ethical views seem to boil down to either personal/subjective preferences and/culturally determined Beliefs, placing our epistemology above ontology. Multiple times in the video examples were stated that we would find such a worldview “morally vicious”. My retort is according to what? The mere empirical fact that most people would find something morally vicious isn’t enough to ground something as ultimately wrong. Appeals to intuitions don’t accomplish enough as intuitions can mistaken/misleading by my lights, and what’s to say that intuitions ought be considered so primarily even under naturalism. Again it’s a grounding issues.
Similarly, the fact that ethics is often discussed separately from metaphysics (I would argue this is primarily done for practical considerations to gain traction & allow discussions to get off the ground) doesn’t ontologically prove that moral claims are merely natural, or that the two metaphysics and ethics aren’t inherently connected. At least by my lights.
The argument is basically the equivalent of saying "If moral realism is wrong it would be wrong"
I don't see how. Would you care to expand on this criticism?
I understand what you're saying but that's not really what it's saying. The main crux is that Non-Naturalism would FORCE us to change our moral judgements if the non-natural facts change even if the natural facts stay the same, which is argued to be morally unconscionable.
The Non-Natural facts changing isn't saying Non-Naturalism being wrong it's simply a change in which Non-Natural facts are believed which is perfectly fine thing.
Completely unrelated to the content of the video but is the background of the thumbnail taken from a Francis Bacon painting?
Yes. Head VI, with the colours altered.
A naturalist almost certainly doesn't conditionalize her moral commitments on the moral bridge laws, because moral bridge laws are semantic, not normative. Talking about semantics can be awkward because it is so prone to equivocation, so let's split moral language into two versions, one for each proposed semantics. Let's say that N-morality means morality as understood by the moral naturalist including the naturalist moral bridge laws, and we an use X-morality to mean whatever moral semantics we end up with when it turns out that the bridge laws are false, such as if the semantic theories that support the bridge laws turn out to be wrong. Now let's imagine a conversation between Nate the naturalist and Alice the antirealist.
Nate: I'm committed to not torturing people because torture is N-wrong.
Alice: Haven't you heard? The naturalist bridge laws are false. The word "wrong" doesn't actually mean N-wrong. Now we're all talking about X-right and X-wrong. So what does that do to your commitments on torture?
Nate: That's fine. I'm still committed to not torturing people because torture is N-wrong.
Alice: No, stop using the word N-wrong. It's semantically incorrect.
Nate: That has nothing to do with my commitments. I'll just have to find different words to talk about N-wrongness and N-morality. My commitments don't come from semantics; they come from nature.
If we somehow determine that N-wrong does not reflect the true meaning of "wrong" and X-wrongness is what moral language has always truly been about, then moral naturalists will be proven wrong about their metaethical claims, but there's no reason why that should have any effect upon their actual commitments. A moral naturalist who is concerned about N-morality can continue to be concerned about N-morality even if moral language isn't actually talking about N-morality. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and N-morality by any other name would still drive the commitments of a moral naturalist, since nature still exists.
Whether a moral naturalist has any concern about X-morality or not will depend upon what X-morality turns out to be. If X-morality turns out to be some spooky non-natural property, then most likely a moral naturalist won't care about it at all. If X-morality turns out to be some noncognitivist nonsense, then surely no one has any reason to care about X-morality.
You seem to think that all that's required to be a moral naturalist is to have commitments that are responsive to the natural properties of actions. In that sense, I suppose that pretty much every antirealist is already a moral naturalist.
@@KaneB : Moral naturalism is a position on metaethics. Obviously almost any moral naturalist will tend to have commitments that are responsive to natural properties, since supposedly natural properties are the substance of morality, but what makes a moral naturalist is the assertion that morality simply is these natural properties. The fact that even antirealists also take their moral commitments from natural properties is probably the best argument for moral naturalism. It's certainly what convinces me that moral naturalism is correct.
Wouldn't it be wrong to say it begs the question? Like the contention doesn't seem to be whether or not moral non-naturalism is true but rather an argument of "Assuming it is true it leads to an immoral conclusion", no?
I'm afraid I simply don't understand what you're getting at. Could you explain in a bit more detail?
@@KaneB The first objection is that from the Non-Naturalist POV they aren't conditionalizing but rather "The claims about what matters ARE the non-natural facts themselves".
The response to this was that this is question begging, that this counter argument assumes the validity of non-naturalism when what the MAAR is trying to argue against is the validity of non-naturalism.
I find that odd as I don't think the MAAR is arguing about whether Non-Naturalism is valid instead it seems to say: "Assuming Non-Naturalism is valid we get very immoral conclusions because the natural facts can stay the same while the non-natural facts change and we would need to change our moral judgements which is bad" so... given that the objection seems perfectly fine and non question begging it's saying the opposite "Assuming Non-Naturalism the Moral Judgements ARE the Non-Natural facts so it isn't immoral to say that if a thing changes then it changes."
@@manorbros9590 I'm not sure what you mean by "valid" here. But the MAAR does not involve assuming that non-naturalism is true, or that we ought to accept non-naturalism, at any step. It argues directly that non-naturalism entails an immoral commitment.
@@KaneB Right but if the Non-Naturalist response that it doesn't entail that commitment because the Non-Natural Facts themselves are the moral judgements how is that question begging? From what I understand question begging is when your conclusion is in your premises. But the assumed premise is Non-Naturalism is correct but the conclusion isn't that Non-Naturalism is correct it's that Non-Naturalism doesn't entail an immoral commitment. So how is that question begging?
@@manorbros9590 The MAAR is offered as a challenge to the identification of moral facts with non-natural facts. If we think the conditionalization of moral facts on non-natural facts is immoral, we have at least some reason to be suspicious of non-naturalism. The non-naturalist responds that moral facts just are natural facts, so we're not really conditionalizing the former on the latter. But of course, this can only be convincing to people to already accept non-naturalism.
There seems to be some ability for a moral realist to save some of these concerns. In that they may be able to attribute realism to internally consistent models of morals as a rational and thus real thing. This incorporates some of the "metaphysics" of religion without the metaphysics. We can accept personality and thoughts are real things, thus keeping morals even in the absence of observed "utility" is still a "good" thing, as it helps keep us consistent.
PS, you're date vs God example is a poor argument. Because unlike a date, "God" is a substitute to "universal" thus the claim is "if nothing universal exists, then universal morals don't exist". It's a tautology argument from (possibly) religion. It's wrong because it's a tautology, not because "God" is a poor argument. The base problem is they only wish for a universal decision, and miss the need for individual (thus specific) morals to check before they act.
Overall, it's an averages vs specifics argument, that there is no true "answer" to, in the same way we cannot provide a generalised answer to the halting problem. However, we can chose a subset! :) So the subset of morals (anything less than universal) is possible. An example of this for both realists and non realists (in this example I'm assuming religions vs non religious etc), is asking "what about humans" or "what about nature" and groups/subgroups. As long as we don't go to too large a scale (the galaxy of aliens, or God and angels), we can consider possible solutions and understandings to morals (though Arrows Theorem also limits the scope and amount of success for each individual).
How would this argument be explicated in a deductive form? I'm not sure if i fail to understand the argument, objection number 1 or their response to it.
Would this be proper?
-Moral non-naturalist is committed to some conditionals of the form X=>nothing matters
-Moral non-naturalist is committed to believe conditionals of that type are immoral to believe
-Therefore, moral non-naturalist is committed to something immoral
If this is proper, can i appeal to some sort of OIC to do the Moorean shift?
The claim is just that it's immoral to believe those conditionals, not that moral non-naturalists are committed to believe that it's immoral to believe those conditionals. If anything, moral non-naturalists are committed to believe that it's *not* immoral to believe those conditionals, since those conditionals follow from their theory. But then, the argument goes, since it is immoral to believe those conditionals, non-naturalism is in trouble.
So if the conclusion is “we ought not be moral realists”, what position ought the anti-realist take if moral anti-realism turns out to be false?
I think this point is addressed at 20:44. If we think that moral realism is descriptively correct as an account of our moral discourse, but also that moral realism is immoral, then we can endorse reforming moral discourse.
@@KaneB what if it’s prescriptively correct?
@@mooseyzed Then presumably you're rejecting the conclusion that we ought not to be moral realists?
@@KaneB I mean, I guess so. It’s just a bit confusing. Maybe I feel like the argument begs the question against certain normative ethical theories that are based on metaethical considerations. Surely a divine command theorist would say that it is immoral to reject the normative standards prescribed by their religion, which would in turn be false if the religion was false. Similarly, it might be reasonable to conclude that we ought not be moral realists under a particular normative framework, but I don’t see that conclusion doing anything but restating the thesis position that some anti-realists would hold to in opposition to certain realists.
Maybe a further concern is that the argument relies on what is “possible” as opposed to what is “actual”. With the trolley problem you provided, that seems to be a direct consequence related to utilitarianism, but part of the argument presented by Howard seems to rely on the “possibility” of non-natural normative facts countering our moral intuitions. I don’t see why the realist can’t just reject such possibility (a bit more difficult for the moral naturalist to do, I think). Also, wouldn’t an anti-realist, like an emotivist, be in a similar situation if we say that their feelings “could have” led them (and maybe humans collectively) to express satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction in animal suffering?
Sorry for rambling on.
@@mooseyzed >> Similarly, it might be reasonable to conclude that we ought not be moral realists under a particular normative framework, but I don’t see that conclusion doing anything but restating the thesis position that some anti-realists would hold to in opposition to certain realists.
We have to assume some sort of normative framework in order to get the conclusion that it's morally wrong to conditionalize moral commitments on non-natural facts. But this could be a framework that's shared between the non-naturalists and their critics. It's worth noting that there are non-naturalists who are taking this argument as a genuine challenge (I noted Enoch in the video).
>> I don’t see why the realist can’t just reject such possibility
If we have in mind "metaphysical" possibility, non-naturalists would reject the possibility that there are no non-natural facts. As far as I understand, non-naturalists take the existence of non-natural facts to be metaphysically necessary (like how realists about abstract objects usually treat them as metaphysically necessary). But what's relevant to Hayward's argument is epistemic possibility. I really don't see how a non-naturalist could plausibly deny the epistemic possibility that there are no non-natural facts, or that the non-natural facts are different to what we think they are. What could justify holding non-naturalism with certainty? That would be absurdly dogmatic.
>> Also, wouldn’t an anti-realist, like an emotivist, be in a similar situation if we say that their feelings “could have” led them (and maybe humans collectively) to express satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction in animal suffering?
Yes, this is an interesting point. The antirealist also conditionalizes their moral commitments on their preferences or desires or dispositions or whatever. Though it's not quite the same as the non-naturalist's conditional. Recall:
(N) If there are no non-natural facts, then nothing matters.
So let's take the emotivist. I guess their conditional would be something like:
(E) If there are no emotions, then nothing matters.
It's more plausible to deny the epistemic possibility that there are no emotions. At the very least, it's hard to see how even the most extreme eliminativist could deny that there are emotion-like states. Perhaps this kind of move allows the antirealist to block the extension of the moral argument to her position. But I think you're right that this is a threat. Perhaps *every* metaethical position is immoral! (Or perhaps there's just something wrong with the moral argument. I suppose that would be the more reasonable, but less exciting conclusion.)
How could a metaethical theory per se have immoral implications? Stating or defending the theory might be an immoral action (and even this presupposes a certain moral framework, which is exactly what we are questioning), but trying to draw moral conclusions from a metaethical fact is impossible, given the inversion of the order of discourse. The attempt at self-reference fails given the confusion of two distinct levels. Of course, the way this argument hides this impossibility is by sneaking up a moral framework (in your formulation, one that states that people suffering is bad and the correct thing is to get involved and try to avoid it) once we have put into question the reality of one possible construction of moral frameworks, exactly the one you are trying to disprove.
That is, to try to disprove non-naturalism, you assume in the argument that indeed moral facts exist even when no non-natural facts exist. You mentioned one of the non-naturalist rebuttals begs the question, but that's just because the MAAR itself does! If non-naturalism is true, the argument clearly doesn't work because you couldn't sneak up the moral framework if non-natural facts didn't exist. Only if non-naturalism is false does the argument work, so it is vacuous.
Some other arguments against non-naturalism mentioned in the video are actually sound, and maybe even the MAAR can be understood as a heuristic intuition pump against moral realism, just a clumsy restatement of "If we somehow found out that the only moral universal norm is to eat babies, we still wouldn't do it. So it's apparent that the concept itself of a moral universal norm is senseless and the morality we talk about is grounded on our feelings and beliefs". But the MAAR understood as the rigorous argument it tries to be strikes me as just dumbfounded, not even understanding what it attempts to prove.
First, just to clarify, this isn't my argument (re comments like "you assume in the argument..."). Nor do I think that this argument is persuasive. I tried my best to present it in the strongest terms, but it's not an argument that I would use against realism.
However, I'm not convinced that the MAAR is question-begging. Yes, we need some sort of moral framework in order to forward the argument. But (a) that framework can be shared by both the non-naturalist and the objector; and (b) it's agreed by all sides that the evidence and arguments used in defense of non-naturalism are different from that used for establishing first-order moral commitments. That is, we can get to certain first-order moral commitments without endorsing non-naturalist metaethics.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "sneaking up a moral framework". It's made absolutely explicit that we are assuming a moral framework. I mean, it's literally called "the moral argument against realism"!
Wouldn't not conditionolising non-natural moral facts being immoral be a non-natural moral fact in by itself or am I in over my head here?
This is basically "moral realism is counter-intuitive, therefore fuck it". I mean, unless you think that whatever is intuitive is true, then I don't think that this argument makes any point. Even then, moral realists probably intuitively think that there is such a thing as moral facts, that X is intuitively good, Y intuitively bad, etc., so why would this intuitive thing trump all of that? And that's if I accept the idea that the conditionality thing is intuitive, which I don't.
I agree, but I think part of the point is for antirealists to be able to make points using similar methods realists make. Basically, we antirealists can deliver a few blows to realism on their own turf. I don't really think antirealists need to do this since moral realists have no good arguments, but the more we can marshal to point out how ridiculous realism is, the better.
I don't see how. At least, no more than any normative argument appeals to intuitions. The responses to this video make me think that I did an extremely poor job of presenting the argument. Oh well.
@@KaneB I do also find normative arguments that appeals to intuition to be quite lacking, except rare exceptions that even though I disagree, I can respect them. This one though, seemed even more irrational, because it discredit a theory for something they clearly don't see a problem in. At least that's how I see it, I haven't talked to that many philosophers yet. If I say "if A, then B", I indeed accept that "if no B, then no A". If someone thinks that morality needs to be non-naturalistic to exists, then if that person learned that morality isn't non-naturalistic, then I don't see why they wouldn't just adopt the position that morality doesn't exists. Seems perfectly logical to me, and I don't see why they would think there decision is immoral since they would no longer believe that morality is a thing. All of this to say that it doesn't even appeal to the person making the decision about what they'll believe, but only to other people that are convinced that morality exists (making it more cercle jerking than anything else). I'm not sure if other arguments that appeal to intuition have the same issue, I'd have to think about it, but it seemed very evident in this case. But maybe I'm wrong, who knows
@@florentbourbeau880 Fair enough. Though it's worth noting that at least some non-naturalists do see a problem here -- albeit a problem for which they think they have convincing responses. At the very least, if you accept moral non-naturalism, it's worth asking yourself, "how would I respond if it turned out that there are no non-natural properties?" In practice, people who convert from non-naturalism to naturalism do not always just give up their moral commitments. This does seem to raise some kind of challenge to the view that non-natural properties determine what matters, what we ought to do, etc. Of course, if a non-naturalist were to just say, "sure, if I discovered there are no non-natural properties, then I'd give up all my moral commitments, and I don't see anything problematic about the fact that I'm committed to that" then the MAAR won't have any force for them.
@@KaneB I think see a problem though. Maybe I'm missing something but is what you're saying that in case of being wrong, either A : the moral non-naturalist think that nothing is moral or immoral, in which case MAAR won't have any force on them. Or B : the moral non-naturalist becomes a moral naturalist in which case their moral commitments aren't conditional on being right on moral non-naturalism, so it's not immoral to be a moral non-naturalism? It seems to me that either it's conditonnal, but can't be immoral, or it's not conditional, so some could be, but not them. That being said, I know barely nothing on naturalism and non-naturalism, so there might be something special about it that would invalidate my argument
The analogy to the mind-brain identity theory (24:50) is nonsensical. Of course, one can come to believe the antecedent and thereby reject the conditional in the claim “If I don’t have a brain, I don’t have thoughts”, as the consequent is self-evidently false (i.e. Descartes’ Cogito) - we KNOW that we have thoughts. This is NOT comparable to the non-natural moral realist’s claim that “if non-natural properties don’t exist, then moral facts don’t exist”, as we do NOT KNOW that moral facts exist:
The consequent in this claim is NOT self-evidently false (in fact the host himself identifies as a moral anti-realist!) so even if the antecedent is accepted, the consequent CAN still follow - the conditional is still true.
Good job
I do not agree with the MAAR. And one point that you seem to have missed: This argument bites error theory even worse. Moral error theorists claim that nothing really matters. And that would be immoral according to Heywood.
It's not that I missed that point; I just chose not to talk about it. There are plenty of forms of antirealism other than error theory. I think we can take it for granted that any antirealist who wants to run the MAAR would adopt expressivism or constructivism or relativism or whatever else.
@@KaneB I guess the argument can run against other versions of antirealism too. All antirealists agree that nothing "really" matters. It is just a matter of convention or emotion, etc. Moreover, on other versions of antirealism the moral judgements are, in fact, conditionalized on something that might be different (i.e. emotions, conventions, etc.). So I think other antirealists are not immune either.
@@daraghaznavi7171 It depends on what you mean by "really". I think there are plenty of things that really matter. They just don't really matter in virtue of stance-independent normative facts. As for whether the argument can be generalized to antirealism, I'll copy what I said in response to Abdul Rahman:
Yes, this is an interesting point. The antirealist also conditionalizes their moral commitments on their preferences or desires or dispositions or whatever. Though it's not quite the same as the non-naturalist's conditional. Recall:
(N) If there are no non-natural facts, then nothing matters.
So let's take the emotivist. I guess their conditional would be something like:
(E) If there are no emotions, then nothing matters.
It's more plausible to deny the epistemic possibility that there are no emotions. At the very least, it's hard to see how even the most extreme eliminativist could deny that there are emotion-like states. Perhaps this kind of move allows the antirealist to block the extension of the moral argument to her position. But I think you're right that this is a threat. Perhaps every metaethical position is immoral! (Or perhaps there's just something wrong with the moral argument. I suppose that would be the more reasonable, but less exciting conclusion.)
@@KaneB Do you think moral realists think if realism is false then nothing would matter from any perspective? I do not think so. Moral realists (and even error theorists) grant that even if moral realism is false there would still be things that would matter to people. People would still care about the lives of others.
@@KaneB With regard to E, I think that is not a correct formulation. I guess we'd better say something like E'
E': if our social emotions were different then different things would matter.
For example, if we did not have sympathy, then other people's pain would not matter (only our own would matter)
why Francis bacon
why not?
The argument puts the cart before the horses. The moral realist holds to her view because of her moral commitments, not the other way around. For her, the fact that, say, owning slaves is immoral (even if you are a Roman patrician 2000 years ago or a plantation owner in Georgia 200 years ago) is *proof that* there are moral facts, not *a consequence of* there being moral facts.
Is it not a only proof because it is a consequence? If it weren’t a consequence, it would prove nothing.
9:28 🍮
10:15 I found this part interesting as somone who can't get a girlfriend
Huh? It's ok to behave immorally if there is no 'outside reality' as in a dreamstate, yet if there is no God (ultimate reality, residing outside of ours) it isn't ok to behave immorally? You are asserting that reality IS a dream by removing eternity and God. Death, nonexistence is your ultimate reality in this case and I don't see how that transfers moral responsibilities.