Nice paper. I agree that morals exist objectively but I want to give some worries which give me pause.
1. The moorean argument would also seem to imply the existence of aesthetic facts. So, for example, the proposition 'the sunset is more beautiful than a dirty toilet' is more plausible than the conjunction of premises that lead to the denial of the proposition. But it also seems very obvious that aesthetic facts don't exist. How would you respond to this? You can either (a) bite the bullet and accept that aesthetic facts do exist, or (b) assert that 'Objective aesthetic facts don't exist' is more plausible than 'the sunset is more beautiful than a dirty toilet' to evade the conclusion. Both options seem unsatisfying.
2. In your book Paradox Lost, you provide a highly satisfying solution to the Sorites paradox. When does a pile of grains become a heap? There is no fact of the matter, it's a semantic question. But couldn't you extend this to morals as well? So, for example, suppose we're asked:
a. Is it permissible to push the fat man off to save 2 people?
b. What about 3 people?
....
z. What about 1000000 people?
If you accept that it's impermissible in scenario (a), but it's permissible in (z), then that means there exists some number of people N such that it is impermissible to push the fat man off to save N people, but it's permissible to push the fat man off to save N+1 people. This seems obviously false.
One could evade the arbitrariness problem here by accepting utilitarianism and arguing it's obligatory to push the fat man in (a) because 2>1. This seems bizarre though; it's bizarre to say that someone who does _not_ push the fat man off the bridge to save 2 people possesses this objective property of making an error.
It seems to me that the most intuitive picture is to think there is no fact of the matter as to what the correct action is. This paradoxes stems out of conflicting preferences/attitudes that we have, not out of some deep metaphysical problem.
One needs a basis of measurement in order to reason out your question of "where do we stop" when considering the existence of some "number of people N such that it is impermissible to push the fat man off to save N people, but it's permissible to push the fat man off to save N+1 people." So the man's fat - who are these "N people"? Who else is the fat man? What's his relationship to me? Is he part of my familial group - extended familial group - and a net asset or liability as concerns my own judgment and attempts to manifest morality within the material plane?
Let's say it's not a fat man and some arbitrary type of physically healthy people - but instead, it's a lion vs five hyenas. Or, perhaps it's some kind of healthy bacterium and then some rotting and decomposing hominid tissue we're talking about instead. Do I sacrifice the healthy bacterium at the expense of the rotting and decomposing tissue? Or do I have the trolley lever move the trolley to crush the out-group harming me and mine over saving 10 of my own in-group trying to live moral and healthy lives which will benefit my own children - and theirs?
This makes it a lot easier to reason out. Because in the end, morality has to do with existence in nature. Hobbes pretty much states it as we ought to think about it. Existence presupposes you wish to exist, and in this lies the rational justification for your continuing to exist - and its morality. All should be assessed, discerned, and judged according to these parameters.
What counts as justification? It should not be circular; it would be silly to say that knowledge is justified true belief, and justification is what something needs in order to be known. Is there a good definition, or are we supposed to recognize it when we see it?
This seems to miss the point of the disagreement argument. With ordinary physical controversies, the problem is a lack of satisfactory evidence. We can easily imagine having enough evidence to settle such questions. What sort of evidence would settle moral questions? For consequentialists, it would be rigorous simulations of society run with and without the principle being considered, which is difficult to implement in reality. For non-consequentialists, it is even harder to imagine what sort of science fiction device might settle the question. And the fact that they would disagree on what sort of evidence would count seems a problem too. This is true for physical evidence (e.g. some people accept polygraph results, others do not), but it seems much more workable.
And achieving something like agreement is actually more important than deciding what meta-ethical position is true. Stipulate that the question was somehow settled; where it was settled would not change the situation faced by society significantly. There would still be a need to interpret and apply the real moral principles or pragmatic norms that had emerged from the process. The same biases noted in the post would still apply. Some abstract philosophical arguments would have been settled, but the pragmatic questions would still be controversial, and those are the controversies that really matter. Hence, it is settling those controversies that matters, not the abstract philosophical ones.
From ChatGPT: If I could ask Michael Huemer one question, it’d be:
“When two sincere, thoughtful people have opposing moral intuitions about a hard case (and neither seems biased or uninformed), what practical method should we use to decide which intuition to trust—and what would count as a clear ‘defeat’ for an intuition?”
Chatgpt is a tool created by and for Universalists, so I'm not sure it'd appreciate my own (unsolicited) answer - but here it is: Measure intuitions by kin/group relatedness and net fitness (familial asset/liability, in-group preservation vs out-group threat). In the end, defeat those failing Hobbesian existence parameters. Rational self/group continuation in nature trumps, always, decontextualized clashes.
Nice paper. I agree that morals exist objectively but I want to give some worries which give me pause.
1. The moorean argument would also seem to imply the existence of aesthetic facts. So, for example, the proposition 'the sunset is more beautiful than a dirty toilet' is more plausible than the conjunction of premises that lead to the denial of the proposition. But it also seems very obvious that aesthetic facts don't exist. How would you respond to this? You can either (a) bite the bullet and accept that aesthetic facts do exist, or (b) assert that 'Objective aesthetic facts don't exist' is more plausible than 'the sunset is more beautiful than a dirty toilet' to evade the conclusion. Both options seem unsatisfying.
2. In your book Paradox Lost, you provide a highly satisfying solution to the Sorites paradox. When does a pile of grains become a heap? There is no fact of the matter, it's a semantic question. But couldn't you extend this to morals as well? So, for example, suppose we're asked:
a. Is it permissible to push the fat man off to save 2 people?
b. What about 3 people?
....
z. What about 1000000 people?
If you accept that it's impermissible in scenario (a), but it's permissible in (z), then that means there exists some number of people N such that it is impermissible to push the fat man off to save N people, but it's permissible to push the fat man off to save N+1 people. This seems obviously false.
One could evade the arbitrariness problem here by accepting utilitarianism and arguing it's obligatory to push the fat man in (a) because 2>1. This seems bizarre though; it's bizarre to say that someone who does _not_ push the fat man off the bridge to save 2 people possesses this objective property of making an error.
It seems to me that the most intuitive picture is to think there is no fact of the matter as to what the correct action is. This paradoxes stems out of conflicting preferences/attitudes that we have, not out of some deep metaphysical problem.
One needs a basis of measurement in order to reason out your question of "where do we stop" when considering the existence of some "number of people N such that it is impermissible to push the fat man off to save N people, but it's permissible to push the fat man off to save N+1 people." So the man's fat - who are these "N people"? Who else is the fat man? What's his relationship to me? Is he part of my familial group - extended familial group - and a net asset or liability as concerns my own judgment and attempts to manifest morality within the material plane?
Let's say it's not a fat man and some arbitrary type of physically healthy people - but instead, it's a lion vs five hyenas. Or, perhaps it's some kind of healthy bacterium and then some rotting and decomposing hominid tissue we're talking about instead. Do I sacrifice the healthy bacterium at the expense of the rotting and decomposing tissue? Or do I have the trolley lever move the trolley to crush the out-group harming me and mine over saving 10 of my own in-group trying to live moral and healthy lives which will benefit my own children - and theirs?
This makes it a lot easier to reason out. Because in the end, morality has to do with existence in nature. Hobbes pretty much states it as we ought to think about it. Existence presupposes you wish to exist, and in this lies the rational justification for your continuing to exist - and its morality. All should be assessed, discerned, and judged according to these parameters.
What counts as justification? It should not be circular; it would be silly to say that knowledge is justified true belief, and justification is what something needs in order to be known. Is there a good definition, or are we supposed to recognize it when we see it?
This seems to miss the point of the disagreement argument. With ordinary physical controversies, the problem is a lack of satisfactory evidence. We can easily imagine having enough evidence to settle such questions. What sort of evidence would settle moral questions? For consequentialists, it would be rigorous simulations of society run with and without the principle being considered, which is difficult to implement in reality. For non-consequentialists, it is even harder to imagine what sort of science fiction device might settle the question. And the fact that they would disagree on what sort of evidence would count seems a problem too. This is true for physical evidence (e.g. some people accept polygraph results, others do not), but it seems much more workable.
And achieving something like agreement is actually more important than deciding what meta-ethical position is true. Stipulate that the question was somehow settled; where it was settled would not change the situation faced by society significantly. There would still be a need to interpret and apply the real moral principles or pragmatic norms that had emerged from the process. The same biases noted in the post would still apply. Some abstract philosophical arguments would have been settled, but the pragmatic questions would still be controversial, and those are the controversies that really matter. Hence, it is settling those controversies that matters, not the abstract philosophical ones.
From ChatGPT: If I could ask Michael Huemer one question, it’d be:
“When two sincere, thoughtful people have opposing moral intuitions about a hard case (and neither seems biased or uninformed), what practical method should we use to decide which intuition to trust—and what would count as a clear ‘defeat’ for an intuition?”
Chatgpt is a tool created by and for Universalists, so I'm not sure it'd appreciate my own (unsolicited) answer - but here it is: Measure intuitions by kin/group relatedness and net fitness (familial asset/liability, in-group preservation vs out-group threat). In the end, defeat those failing Hobbesian existence parameters. Rational self/group continuation in nature trumps, always, decontextualized clashes.