Many people who advance particular views have not thought through the entailments of those views, so it’s fine to argue against those views by pointing out their entailments. The arguments you present against error theory and subjectivism aren’t bad because they’re question-begging, they’re bad because they rely on normative entanglement.
All of the force of your objections come from misleadingly implying that anti-realist views are saddled with unsavory normative implications that they aren’t.
Once we get clear on what people who affirm these positions are actually committed to, your objections are left with no bite.
You say “error theory posits there is nothing morally wrong with genocide”. On error theoretic semantics, to say “there is nothing wrong with genocide” is affirm the following proposition: There is no stance-independent non-natural moral fact that genocide is immoral.
This is a proposition that the majority of philosophers and meta-ethicists affirm. According to the PhilPapers survey, just 27% of philosophers and 37% of meta-ethicists are non-naturalists.
So if you want to say that this is an “absurd and unacceptable result,” you’re also committed to saying that the majority of philosophers and meta-ethicists affirm an absurd and unacceptable result.
Now you’re free to say that - I don’t think the fact that a position is held by a majority of philosophers immunizes it from accusations of absurdity, but I just want to be clear on what you’re committed to.
With respect to subjectivism, you say that it “cannot provide the grounds to legitimately criticise those with coherent sets of preferences/beliefs (no matter how vulgar)” and that it entails that “someone doesn’t have to rescue a drowning child if they don’t care to.”
Subjectivism does not entail that we have an obligation to refrain from criticizing other people’s preferences nor that is permissible for someone to refrain from saving a drowning child if they don’t care to.
The way you write about subjectivism, it is as if you think it is a normative ethical theory that says X is right as long as someone approves of it. But this is not what subjectivism is. It’s a meta-ethical theory that says when people say “X is right” they just mean “I approve of X”.
A subjectivist can consistently affirm the proposition “It is morally obligatory to save a drowning child even if you have no desire to” without contradiction - on speaker subjectivist semantics, this would just amount to affirming the following proposition: I disapprove of refraining from saving a drown child even if you have no desire to.
The criticisms you lob at subjectivism would at best only apply to agent subjectivism, not appraiser subjectivism. See this from the SEP on the distinction:
“Appraiser relativism suggests that we do or should make moral judgments on the basis of our own standards, while agent relativism implies that the relevant standards are those of the persons we are judging (of course, in some cases these may coincide). Appraiser relativism is the more common position, and it will usually be assumed in the discussion that follows.”
I'm not a philosopher, but I think there is salient distinction between the arguments against deontology or the golden rule and the argument against non-realism which you gloss over.
Non realism is descriptive while the others are prescriptive. A descriptive position succeeds based on its merit at addressing the definitions of the topic at hand, and no counterexample can succeed to uproot this in principle. A prescriptive position, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the underlying principle of many already agreed upon conclusions in order to extrapolate from there to other conclusions, and the second we can point to a counterexample of a conclusion that would follow that is not agreed upon, that works to demonstrate that this attempt fails at revealing the underlying criteria.
Thanks for the comment. Whilst that might be a difference (I’m not entirely sure it is tbh given the verdict about genocide and having moral requirements) I’m not sure if this is a crucial difference that undermines my overall argument. (Namely that such arguments aren’t question begging-or, at least not question begging in any problematic sense).
I don't see why that's true. If the argument doesn't reveal any flaws in the definition of anti realism by virtue of being unable to account for statements which constitute the grounding of that position in the same way the argument against deontology does, it should follow that it is begging the question in a problematic way.
IOW the very basis for the deontologist is the fact that this principle can account for large swaths of agreed upon statements, and therefore demonstrating that there is a counterexample that cannot account for shows a flaw and the principle which calls for its refinement. However, the justification for amtirealism is the claim that nothing we know indicatesthat moral realism is true, as our moral intuitions can be accounted for under non-realism as well, and therefore pointing to strong moral intuitions does nothing to move the needle in favor of moral realism unless we already accept the premise that moral intuitions in general need to be grounded in more realism, hence the argument is begging the question.
This seems very iffy. Further, I point to moral intuitions that each respective metaethical theory wants to explain away rather than accomodate.
Would the deontology argument be question begging if someone had already accepted the entailment? I ask this because it seems that you want to say (in so many words) that the arguments I present against these anti-realist views are question begging since someone must already be committed to rejecting each view if they accept the 2nd premises. Or as you put it, must already be committed to realism is some fashion (the analogy would be someone who’s already committed to non-absolutist deontology accepting the 2nd premise in my argument against the view).
The relevant similarity that I take there to be between these arguments, is that in denying the consequent we must first suppose the falsity of each position in a way.
I quite agree that showing that an entailment of a position is unacceptable shows that that position is unacceptable. But is that what this argument does?
> The Rescue Argument Against Subjectivism
> 1. If moral subjectivism is true, then someone doesn’t have to rescue a drowning child if they don’t care to.
> 2. But, such an individual would be required to save the child (all else being equal).
> 3. So, moral subjectivism is false. <
This argument is unsound. The problem is that neither premise (1) nor premise (2) is stance-independently true. In fact, premise (1) might not even express a proposition.
Consider premise 1: s -> (~c -> ~m), where s = subjectivism is true, c = person cares to save the drowning child, and m is person (morally) must save the drowning child.
Now it is *very important here* that m is a moral claim (s is meta-moral and c is presumably propositional). But if subjectivism is true, then moral claims have no truth value absent a particular moral stance; thus m does not have a truth value independent of some particular moral stance. You might as well write
1b. If moral realism is true, and Joe is tall, then is blue.
2b. Is not blue.
3b. Thus moral realism is false.
Very important: If subjectivism is true, then (1) is AT BEST only stance-dependently true. The argument covertly changes a moral claim (~m) into a propositional one -- something that only works if realism is true. Realism has been used as a premise to make that change. So, this argument begs the question.
OK, but presumably what the argument has in mind is that it is the stance of this person that they don't need to save the child:
1'. If moral subjectivism is true, and some person has a the moral stance (S) that they don't need to save the child, then they don't need to save the child.
2. But they do need to save the child.
3. So subjectivism is false.
OK, but (1') has the same problem. It passes from (/S makes ~m true/ to /~m is true/ -- explicitly this time. The change requires a realist interpretation of moral claims, and so is once again begging the question.
Let's try again:
1''. If moral subjectivism is true, and some person has a the moral stance that they don't need to save the child, then they hold that they don't need to save the child.
2. But they do need to save the child.
3. So subjectivism is false.
But (1'') has an unused antecedent -- the truth of subjectivism. The argument now has the form
A) If P and Q, then Q
B) not Q'
c) Thus not P.
That's not a valid argument -- and wouldn't be a valid argument even if Q = Q' -- which, per the subjectivist, it does not.
---
Now above I said that (1) is AT BEST stance-dependently true. I suggested that (1) might not even express a proposition. I think both of those are valid positions to take, but I prefer to say that premise (1) is simply false.
Note that the fact that someone doesn't care to rescue a drowning child does not entail that their moral code allows them not to save the drowning child. (I'll take moral code here as a stand-in for moral stance that allows the code itself to be true or false -- matching or not the supposed moral reality). Moral realists (IME) mostly say that it doesn't matter whether you care to save the child, you (morally) have to anyway.
But most subjectivists say the same thing. Most subjectivists will say that the person morally must save the child regardless of that person's feelings or moral stance.
[[Aside: the only people I've ever heard claim otherwise called themselves moral realists. I don't hold that against *you*; different moral realists have different moral stances, just like subjectivists do.]]
So there is nothing about subjectivism that forces a subjectivist to agree with the claim that someone doesn't need to save the child. Thus premise (1) is itself based on an invalid argument. (It must be, because it's false.)
Thanks for the comment (and what a long one it is).
- I deny that the consequent of premise one is a moral claim. It’s a metaethical claim.
The first premise is a particular instance of the following general conditional: If subjectivism is true, then you only have a moral demand/requirement/reason to do something if you have the prerequisite preference (or desire, care, etc). What is moral is up to the individual, under subjectivism. Thus, we can trivially extrapolate from this that: If moral subjectivism is true, then someone doesn’t have to rescue a drowning child if they don’t care to (if you want, you can add the clarification: "absent further considerations" e.g. like some other preference related to something else that would do the job, such as a desire to be liked). The argument works just as well using the general conditional if you’re happier to use that.
In this sense, the first premise of the argument against error theory is exactly alike: drawing a particular instance (genocide not being wrong (or right)) from the more general claim that nothing is wrong or right if error theory is true.
But furthermore, if a subjectivist were to say that someone should save the child, even if they lack all of the prerequisite preferences to ground such a moral demand/requirement of them, I’d have no idea what they were talking about. Since such preferences are the things that supposedly create those moral demands in the first place. It seems to me that they’d be claiming that someone has a demand to rescue the children, even if there is no such moral demand. But surely they’re not contradicting themselves so blatantly! I’m left to conclude that those who make this claim don’t truly understand what subjectivism is. To be honest, I would take such a declaration to be more of an endorsement of a moral realist commitment–categorical moral reasons exist.
There are lots of other things I take issue with your comment to. For instance, this is not an argument against non-cognitivist positions, which is what I assume you’re referring to by the view that moral claims aren’t propositional. But this is an argument against subjectivism (which I take to be a cognitivist position).
Yes, subjectivism is a cognitivist position. It says that the truth of a moral claim depends on the one making the claim. Consider this argument:
1t. If taste subjectivism is true, and a person doesn't care for chocolate, then vanilla tastes better than chocolate.
2t. But vanilla does not taste better than chocolate.
3t. Thus taste subjectivism if false.
The claim that vanilla tastes better than chocolate is not true or false one its own -- it is not a proposition, merely a claim. In order to make it true (or false) it needs to be connected to a person who is doing the tasting. Thus 1t should be replaced by 1ta: If taste subjectivism is true, and a person doesn't care for chocolate, then vanilla tastes better than chocolate **to them**.
Similarly, 2t would need to be replaced by 2ta: But vanilla doesn't taste better than chocolate **to me**. At which point 3t does not follow, and the argument fails.
The original argument fails for the same reasons. If moral subjectivism were true, then moral claims would have no truth value (i.e. not be a proposition) without an attached subject.
That the person is not morally required to rescue the drowning child is a moral claim, not a metaethical one. If subjectivism is true, it needs an attached subject to make it true. Premise 1 has no attached subject, and so (if subjectivism is true) it includes a non-propositional term in a propositional role. Hence premise 1 is not propositional. Hence it is not a metaethical proposition; hence it cannot play the role of a premise in a proper metaethical argument.
The only way you can make the moral claim true (and thus make premise 1 a proposition) is to assume realism. The required revision to premise 1 amounts to: If subjectivism is true and a person doesn't care to rescue the drowning child, then if realism is true they don't have to rescue the child. But if subjectivism is true then realism is not true, so the argument collapses on the first premise.
To be clear: subjectivism is the position that moral claim sentences have no truth value on their own, but moral claim sentences uttered by a particular subject do have truth values. In that they are like indexical sentences -- not true or false on their own, but true or false when uttered by a particular person. If we change the argument against moral subjectivism to a corresponding one against indexicalism, we get:
1i: If indexicalism is true, and a person is named Joe, then "My name is Joe" is true.
So, given what I said was wrong about the argument, here is a revised version that avoids the mentioned pitfalls:
1r: If moral subjectivism is true, then the claim that a person doesn't need to rescue a drowning child is true when made by a person with the appropriate moral stance.
2r. But the claim that a person doesn't need to rescue a drowning child is never true, not even when uttered by a person with an "appropriate" moral stance.
3r. Thus moral subjectivism is false.
It'd need to be dressed up with ceteris paribus conditions (or by reference to a particular situation wherein the claim is made), and the moral subjectivist will still object to the second premise (and possibly the first, if they go for a sort of moral-subjectivist-fixed-point theory), but it at least has a form that the subjectivist can accept as a valid argument.
The moral "fixed points" are just strongly felt & broadly held stances. "Permissible" means permitted by certain people or stances. "Not just anything goes" means we don't permit everything. "Fitting" means suited to certain people or stances. "Obligatory" and "required" means certain people or stances demand it.
These terms are used in passive ways ("is obligatory," "is required," "is permissible," "is fitting") because depersonalization has rhetorical advantages (benign ones like brevity & generalization, and more sinister ones like obscuring stance drivers for compulsory "oomph").
The notion that you can have a moral proposition that is true irrespective of any cares & concerns isn't true and never made any sense.
I’m not sure that would prove. Often, I find myself not caring about something until hearing a good argument about it being wrong and then I come to care about it. So even if there is this correlation, it doesn’t mean that morality comes from our cares.
How we treat insects. Amos wollen recently wrote an article about them. Rekindled something in me. Same goes for how I see animals now (in particular, arguments of my own showing how we are one). (Vegan and ant-speciesist now).
Other sorts of examples exist (regarding moral propositions that others don't care about, as opposed to literally everyone). e.g. I think someone ought to rescue a drowning child even if they don't care about them. Sure, I care about children not being rescued (I want them to be saved), but that on it's own wouldn't necessarily ground the obligations of someone else. Even if though that's not an example of a moral proposition with content that nobody cares about, its a relevant example given who is doing the caring (me) and who has a moral requirement (someone who doesn't care).
A decade ago, I saw a video of a pig manipulating a joystick to navigate a simple maze video game for a reward. This changed a number of moral attitudes I had toward pigs, not because of the stanceless fact of their capability, but because it drew on my values and attitudes toward beings that have more going on upstairs -- it made me realize they're more like me than I thought, inviting them under the umbrella of my existing sympathetic cares & concerns whereas before they had been "left out" due to my ignorance / negligence. But that invitation did in fact leverage what I already had in my heart. That's what morality is really all about.
Keying off of the original reply, "is a requirement" is just a reified, roundabout way of speaking about the "require" actions of one or more people or stances. I morally require that we stop factory farming indifferent to the suffering of their animals. This requirement proceeds from my sympathetic cares & concerns. Factory farms are now morally required to stop accordingly -- per those sympathies.
Or a group of people can create standards for ethical treatment per their sympathies. Certain practices can be in accordance to or in violation of those standards, and objectively so. Both "crowd" and "codified" have the effect of separating the requirement from particular individuals and their sympathies. Furthermore, some of our most widely held & strongly felt stances we simply take for granted, leaving only stanceless considerations to debate, giving the whole discussion a stanceless vibe. These layers fully explain stanceless moral intuitions without pretending like morality isn't rooted in what values people cherish, impose, and enforce.
Regarding the premise "If moral error theory is true, then there is nothing wrong (or right) with genocide": it seems to me that the second part does not necessarily follow from the first.
I’m not sure I understand. Moral error theory is just the view that nothing is right or wrong. So trivially, if moral error theory is true, then nothing is wrong (or right) with genocide.
It’s been a while since I delved into error theory, but as I understand it, error theory is really about the claim that all claims about objective moral properties are false (because these properties do not exist). But does the theory really say that a claim about rightness or wrongness is necessarily a claim about objective moral properties? Wouldn’t the theory claim that in so far as a moral claim is based on supposed moral facts, it is false, but if it’s not, it is neither true or false.
I believe you’re thinking about moral nihilism, the view that there are no moral truths (which includes error theory, but as well as views like non-cognitivism).
Does error theorists believe, then, that all claims about wrongness are claims about objective moral properties, and that non-cognitivists who claim that they have views about the wrongness of actions are conceptually confused?
I don't know if one side would accuse the other of being conceptually confused. I suspect it would just amount to a disagreement on various levels. But I guess it really depends how they cash out their own views.
Many people who advance particular views have not thought through the entailments of those views, so it’s fine to argue against those views by pointing out their entailments. The arguments you present against error theory and subjectivism aren’t bad because they’re question-begging, they’re bad because they rely on normative entanglement.
All of the force of your objections come from misleadingly implying that anti-realist views are saddled with unsavory normative implications that they aren’t.
Once we get clear on what people who affirm these positions are actually committed to, your objections are left with no bite.
You say “error theory posits there is nothing morally wrong with genocide”. On error theoretic semantics, to say “there is nothing wrong with genocide” is affirm the following proposition: There is no stance-independent non-natural moral fact that genocide is immoral.
This is a proposition that the majority of philosophers and meta-ethicists affirm. According to the PhilPapers survey, just 27% of philosophers and 37% of meta-ethicists are non-naturalists.
https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5078
So if you want to say that this is an “absurd and unacceptable result,” you’re also committed to saying that the majority of philosophers and meta-ethicists affirm an absurd and unacceptable result.
Now you’re free to say that - I don’t think the fact that a position is held by a majority of philosophers immunizes it from accusations of absurdity, but I just want to be clear on what you’re committed to.
With respect to subjectivism, you say that it “cannot provide the grounds to legitimately criticise those with coherent sets of preferences/beliefs (no matter how vulgar)” and that it entails that “someone doesn’t have to rescue a drowning child if they don’t care to.”
Subjectivism does not entail that we have an obligation to refrain from criticizing other people’s preferences nor that is permissible for someone to refrain from saving a drowning child if they don’t care to.
The way you write about subjectivism, it is as if you think it is a normative ethical theory that says X is right as long as someone approves of it. But this is not what subjectivism is. It’s a meta-ethical theory that says when people say “X is right” they just mean “I approve of X”.
A subjectivist can consistently affirm the proposition “It is morally obligatory to save a drowning child even if you have no desire to” without contradiction - on speaker subjectivist semantics, this would just amount to affirming the following proposition: I disapprove of refraining from saving a drown child even if you have no desire to.
The criticisms you lob at subjectivism would at best only apply to agent subjectivism, not appraiser subjectivism. See this from the SEP on the distinction:
“Appraiser relativism suggests that we do or should make moral judgments on the basis of our own standards, while agent relativism implies that the relevant standards are those of the persons we are judging (of course, in some cases these may coincide). Appraiser relativism is the more common position, and it will usually be assumed in the discussion that follows.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/
I ended up turning this comment into an article where I elaborate a bit more on my problems with this piece:
https://open.substack.com/pub/travistalks/p/do-error-theory-and-subjectivism?r=h0hoy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
My response https://open.substack.com/pub/theperse/p/travis-tangle-a-response?r=2o78nc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I'm not a philosopher, but I think there is salient distinction between the arguments against deontology or the golden rule and the argument against non-realism which you gloss over.
Non realism is descriptive while the others are prescriptive. A descriptive position succeeds based on its merit at addressing the definitions of the topic at hand, and no counterexample can succeed to uproot this in principle. A prescriptive position, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the underlying principle of many already agreed upon conclusions in order to extrapolate from there to other conclusions, and the second we can point to a counterexample of a conclusion that would follow that is not agreed upon, that works to demonstrate that this attempt fails at revealing the underlying criteria.
Thanks for the comment. Whilst that might be a difference (I’m not entirely sure it is tbh given the verdict about genocide and having moral requirements) I’m not sure if this is a crucial difference that undermines my overall argument. (Namely that such arguments aren’t question begging-or, at least not question begging in any problematic sense).
I don't see why that's true. If the argument doesn't reveal any flaws in the definition of anti realism by virtue of being unable to account for statements which constitute the grounding of that position in the same way the argument against deontology does, it should follow that it is begging the question in a problematic way.
IOW the very basis for the deontologist is the fact that this principle can account for large swaths of agreed upon statements, and therefore demonstrating that there is a counterexample that cannot account for shows a flaw and the principle which calls for its refinement. However, the justification for amtirealism is the claim that nothing we know indicatesthat moral realism is true, as our moral intuitions can be accounted for under non-realism as well, and therefore pointing to strong moral intuitions does nothing to move the needle in favor of moral realism unless we already accept the premise that moral intuitions in general need to be grounded in more realism, hence the argument is begging the question.
This seems very iffy. Further, I point to moral intuitions that each respective metaethical theory wants to explain away rather than accomodate.
Would the deontology argument be question begging if someone had already accepted the entailment? I ask this because it seems that you want to say (in so many words) that the arguments I present against these anti-realist views are question begging since someone must already be committed to rejecting each view if they accept the 2nd premises. Or as you put it, must already be committed to realism is some fashion (the analogy would be someone who’s already committed to non-absolutist deontology accepting the 2nd premise in my argument against the view).
The relevant similarity that I take there to be between these arguments, is that in denying the consequent we must first suppose the falsity of each position in a way.
I quite agree that showing that an entailment of a position is unacceptable shows that that position is unacceptable. But is that what this argument does?
> The Rescue Argument Against Subjectivism
> 1. If moral subjectivism is true, then someone doesn’t have to rescue a drowning child if they don’t care to.
> 2. But, such an individual would be required to save the child (all else being equal).
> 3. So, moral subjectivism is false. <
This argument is unsound. The problem is that neither premise (1) nor premise (2) is stance-independently true. In fact, premise (1) might not even express a proposition.
Consider premise 1: s -> (~c -> ~m), where s = subjectivism is true, c = person cares to save the drowning child, and m is person (morally) must save the drowning child.
Now it is *very important here* that m is a moral claim (s is meta-moral and c is presumably propositional). But if subjectivism is true, then moral claims have no truth value absent a particular moral stance; thus m does not have a truth value independent of some particular moral stance. You might as well write
1b. If moral realism is true, and Joe is tall, then is blue.
2b. Is not blue.
3b. Thus moral realism is false.
Very important: If subjectivism is true, then (1) is AT BEST only stance-dependently true. The argument covertly changes a moral claim (~m) into a propositional one -- something that only works if realism is true. Realism has been used as a premise to make that change. So, this argument begs the question.
OK, but presumably what the argument has in mind is that it is the stance of this person that they don't need to save the child:
1'. If moral subjectivism is true, and some person has a the moral stance (S) that they don't need to save the child, then they don't need to save the child.
2. But they do need to save the child.
3. So subjectivism is false.
OK, but (1') has the same problem. It passes from (/S makes ~m true/ to /~m is true/ -- explicitly this time. The change requires a realist interpretation of moral claims, and so is once again begging the question.
Let's try again:
1''. If moral subjectivism is true, and some person has a the moral stance that they don't need to save the child, then they hold that they don't need to save the child.
2. But they do need to save the child.
3. So subjectivism is false.
But (1'') has an unused antecedent -- the truth of subjectivism. The argument now has the form
A) If P and Q, then Q
B) not Q'
c) Thus not P.
That's not a valid argument -- and wouldn't be a valid argument even if Q = Q' -- which, per the subjectivist, it does not.
---
Now above I said that (1) is AT BEST stance-dependently true. I suggested that (1) might not even express a proposition. I think both of those are valid positions to take, but I prefer to say that premise (1) is simply false.
Note that the fact that someone doesn't care to rescue a drowning child does not entail that their moral code allows them not to save the drowning child. (I'll take moral code here as a stand-in for moral stance that allows the code itself to be true or false -- matching or not the supposed moral reality). Moral realists (IME) mostly say that it doesn't matter whether you care to save the child, you (morally) have to anyway.
But most subjectivists say the same thing. Most subjectivists will say that the person morally must save the child regardless of that person's feelings or moral stance.
[[Aside: the only people I've ever heard claim otherwise called themselves moral realists. I don't hold that against *you*; different moral realists have different moral stances, just like subjectivists do.]]
So there is nothing about subjectivism that forces a subjectivist to agree with the claim that someone doesn't need to save the child. Thus premise (1) is itself based on an invalid argument. (It must be, because it's false.)
Thanks for the comment (and what a long one it is).
- I deny that the consequent of premise one is a moral claim. It’s a metaethical claim.
The first premise is a particular instance of the following general conditional: If subjectivism is true, then you only have a moral demand/requirement/reason to do something if you have the prerequisite preference (or desire, care, etc). What is moral is up to the individual, under subjectivism. Thus, we can trivially extrapolate from this that: If moral subjectivism is true, then someone doesn’t have to rescue a drowning child if they don’t care to (if you want, you can add the clarification: "absent further considerations" e.g. like some other preference related to something else that would do the job, such as a desire to be liked). The argument works just as well using the general conditional if you’re happier to use that.
In this sense, the first premise of the argument against error theory is exactly alike: drawing a particular instance (genocide not being wrong (or right)) from the more general claim that nothing is wrong or right if error theory is true.
But furthermore, if a subjectivist were to say that someone should save the child, even if they lack all of the prerequisite preferences to ground such a moral demand/requirement of them, I’d have no idea what they were talking about. Since such preferences are the things that supposedly create those moral demands in the first place. It seems to me that they’d be claiming that someone has a demand to rescue the children, even if there is no such moral demand. But surely they’re not contradicting themselves so blatantly! I’m left to conclude that those who make this claim don’t truly understand what subjectivism is. To be honest, I would take such a declaration to be more of an endorsement of a moral realist commitment–categorical moral reasons exist.
There are lots of other things I take issue with your comment to. For instance, this is not an argument against non-cognitivist positions, which is what I assume you’re referring to by the view that moral claims aren’t propositional. But this is an argument against subjectivism (which I take to be a cognitivist position).
Yes, subjectivism is a cognitivist position. It says that the truth of a moral claim depends on the one making the claim. Consider this argument:
1t. If taste subjectivism is true, and a person doesn't care for chocolate, then vanilla tastes better than chocolate.
2t. But vanilla does not taste better than chocolate.
3t. Thus taste subjectivism if false.
The claim that vanilla tastes better than chocolate is not true or false one its own -- it is not a proposition, merely a claim. In order to make it true (or false) it needs to be connected to a person who is doing the tasting. Thus 1t should be replaced by 1ta: If taste subjectivism is true, and a person doesn't care for chocolate, then vanilla tastes better than chocolate **to them**.
Similarly, 2t would need to be replaced by 2ta: But vanilla doesn't taste better than chocolate **to me**. At which point 3t does not follow, and the argument fails.
The original argument fails for the same reasons. If moral subjectivism were true, then moral claims would have no truth value (i.e. not be a proposition) without an attached subject.
That the person is not morally required to rescue the drowning child is a moral claim, not a metaethical one. If subjectivism is true, it needs an attached subject to make it true. Premise 1 has no attached subject, and so (if subjectivism is true) it includes a non-propositional term in a propositional role. Hence premise 1 is not propositional. Hence it is not a metaethical proposition; hence it cannot play the role of a premise in a proper metaethical argument.
The only way you can make the moral claim true (and thus make premise 1 a proposition) is to assume realism. The required revision to premise 1 amounts to: If subjectivism is true and a person doesn't care to rescue the drowning child, then if realism is true they don't have to rescue the child. But if subjectivism is true then realism is not true, so the argument collapses on the first premise.
To be clear: subjectivism is the position that moral claim sentences have no truth value on their own, but moral claim sentences uttered by a particular subject do have truth values. In that they are like indexical sentences -- not true or false on their own, but true or false when uttered by a particular person. If we change the argument against moral subjectivism to a corresponding one against indexicalism, we get:
1i: If indexicalism is true, and a person is named Joe, then "My name is Joe" is true.
2i. But my name is not Joe.
3i. Thus indexicalism is false.
I hope everyone can see why that argument fails.
(This will be my last comment btw)
I hold by my claim that the consequent of the first premise is a metaethical claim.
1. If moral subjectivism is true, then someone doesn’t have to rescue a drowning child if they don’t care to.
Or, in a generalised form:
1. If moral subjectivism is true, then someone isn't required to X, if they lack the prerequisite preferences to X. (Where X is some action).
So, given what I said was wrong about the argument, here is a revised version that avoids the mentioned pitfalls:
1r: If moral subjectivism is true, then the claim that a person doesn't need to rescue a drowning child is true when made by a person with the appropriate moral stance.
2r. But the claim that a person doesn't need to rescue a drowning child is never true, not even when uttered by a person with an "appropriate" moral stance.
3r. Thus moral subjectivism is false.
It'd need to be dressed up with ceteris paribus conditions (or by reference to a particular situation wherein the claim is made), and the moral subjectivist will still object to the second premise (and possibly the first, if they go for a sort of moral-subjectivist-fixed-point theory), but it at least has a form that the subjectivist can accept as a valid argument.
Love the layout, IDK if I was inattentive in the other things of yours I’ve read, but this one seems pretty well organized.
Why thank you
The moral "fixed points" are just strongly felt & broadly held stances. "Permissible" means permitted by certain people or stances. "Not just anything goes" means we don't permit everything. "Fitting" means suited to certain people or stances. "Obligatory" and "required" means certain people or stances demand it.
These terms are used in passive ways ("is obligatory," "is required," "is permissible," "is fitting") because depersonalization has rhetorical advantages (benign ones like brevity & generalization, and more sinister ones like obscuring stance drivers for compulsory "oomph").
The notion that you can have a moral proposition that is true irrespective of any cares & concerns isn't true and never made any sense.
I disagree
Can you think of a true moral proposition that does not in any way trace from what we strongly care about?
I’m not sure that would prove. Often, I find myself not caring about something until hearing a good argument about it being wrong and then I come to care about it. So even if there is this correlation, it doesn’t mean that morality comes from our cares.
What's an example of something you didn't care about, but an argument made you care about it?
How we treat insects. Amos wollen recently wrote an article about them. Rekindled something in me. Same goes for how I see animals now (in particular, arguments of my own showing how we are one). (Vegan and ant-speciesist now).
Other sorts of examples exist (regarding moral propositions that others don't care about, as opposed to literally everyone). e.g. I think someone ought to rescue a drowning child even if they don't care about them. Sure, I care about children not being rescued (I want them to be saved), but that on it's own wouldn't necessarily ground the obligations of someone else. Even if though that's not an example of a moral proposition with content that nobody cares about, its a relevant example given who is doing the caring (me) and who has a moral requirement (someone who doesn't care).
A decade ago, I saw a video of a pig manipulating a joystick to navigate a simple maze video game for a reward. This changed a number of moral attitudes I had toward pigs, not because of the stanceless fact of their capability, but because it drew on my values and attitudes toward beings that have more going on upstairs -- it made me realize they're more like me than I thought, inviting them under the umbrella of my existing sympathetic cares & concerns whereas before they had been "left out" due to my ignorance / negligence. But that invitation did in fact leverage what I already had in my heart. That's what morality is really all about.
Keying off of the original reply, "is a requirement" is just a reified, roundabout way of speaking about the "require" actions of one or more people or stances. I morally require that we stop factory farming indifferent to the suffering of their animals. This requirement proceeds from my sympathetic cares & concerns. Factory farms are now morally required to stop accordingly -- per those sympathies.
Or a group of people can create standards for ethical treatment per their sympathies. Certain practices can be in accordance to or in violation of those standards, and objectively so. Both "crowd" and "codified" have the effect of separating the requirement from particular individuals and their sympathies. Furthermore, some of our most widely held & strongly felt stances we simply take for granted, leaving only stanceless considerations to debate, giving the whole discussion a stanceless vibe. These layers fully explain stanceless moral intuitions without pretending like morality isn't rooted in what values people cherish, impose, and enforce.
Regarding the premise "If moral error theory is true, then there is nothing wrong (or right) with genocide": it seems to me that the second part does not necessarily follow from the first.
I’m not sure I understand. Moral error theory is just the view that nothing is right or wrong. So trivially, if moral error theory is true, then nothing is wrong (or right) with genocide.
It’s been a while since I delved into error theory, but as I understand it, error theory is really about the claim that all claims about objective moral properties are false (because these properties do not exist). But does the theory really say that a claim about rightness or wrongness is necessarily a claim about objective moral properties? Wouldn’t the theory claim that in so far as a moral claim is based on supposed moral facts, it is false, but if it’s not, it is neither true or false.
I believe you’re thinking about moral nihilism, the view that there are no moral truths (which includes error theory, but as well as views like non-cognitivism).
Does error theorists believe, then, that all claims about wrongness are claims about objective moral properties, and that non-cognitivists who claim that they have views about the wrongness of actions are conceptually confused?
Yes.
I don't know if one side would accuse the other of being conceptually confused. I suspect it would just amount to a disagreement on various levels. But I guess it really depends how they cash out their own views.