On some comments to a recent post by Mark on Sam Harris and the ought/is distinction, I noted that Harris assumes that "happiness" (or "flourishing") is an un-problematic concept -- a well-established ruler against which one can easily measure the success or failure of behaviors. Hence when he claims that science can tell us what is right and wrong -- by telling us what makes us happy -- he has merely tabled the harder, philosophical problem of what happiness is (not to mention whether it ought to be our measure of right and wrong).
In yesterday's Philosopher's Stone, Gary Gutting mines a similar vein: the nature of happiness is a) not uncontroversial and b) a philosophical rather than scientific question. Empirical studies that try to establish the nature of happiness by simply asking people what makes them happy are problematic because the meaning of "happy" is unclear and may vary between respondents significantly:
But the most powerful challenge concerns the meaning and value of happiness. Researchers emphasize that when we ask people if they are happy the answers tell us nothing if we don’t know what our respondents mean by “happy.” One person might mean, “I’m not currently feeling any serious pain”; another, “My life is pretty horrible but I’m reconciled to it”; another, “I’m feeling a lot better than I did yesterday.” Happiness research requires a clear understanding of the possible meanings of the term. For example, most researchers distinguish between happiness as a psychological state (for example, feeling overall more pleasure than pain) and happiness as a positive evaluation of your life, even if it has involved more pain than pleasure.
Hence if we wished to make rigorous empirical use of the concept "happiness," we would need to clarify it significantly with a non-empirical, philosophical analysis. But then this philosophical inquiry largely obviates the empirical one: saying what happiness really is requires philosophical reflection, not surveys.
I'd like to add here that respondents don't simply have different conceptions of happiness: they're likely to be uncertain as to what they think it is. That's why many of us have trouble formulating goals and figuring out whether we're satisfied when we've achieved them. If happiness were a well-defined, hash-marked ruler with which we could run about making uncontroversial empirical measurements, life would be a lot less hard than it is. The underlying explanatory model here is inner conflict: as in, one part of us wants one thing and one part wants another, not-entirely-consistent thing; and really there are very many working parts pulling in a vast number of directions ("everyone wants everything," to quote a psychoanalyst I know). And so to say what happiness means we might talk, for instance, about establishing harmony between conflicting parts of the psyche (see Plato, Aristotle, Freud, and Nietzsche).
I'd like to take this example -- barebones as it is-- and say a little more about what it means to give a philosophical as opposed to a scientific explanation. We can compare this case of a model of the psyche that employs the concepts of conflict and harmony with (because I happen to know a little about it) Bohr's atomic model. What phenomena are being explained in each case?
In the case of the scientific model the phenomena are clear: Bohr's atomic model, for instance, explains the frequencies of light produced by hydrogen gas after it has been heated and subsequently loses energy during cooling. The phenomena being explained are not themselves conceptually unclear: if we were unclear as working scientists about what "emissions spectrums" meant or looked like, we'd have to clear that up in order to do our work successfully. (We need other theories to do this by the way -- at minimum some theory of electromagnetic radiation, which might in turn be subject to revision as we try to work out a coherent picture; but this does not decrease the relative clarity of our working conceptions).
Further: when we develop an atomic theory, we do not have to query atoms about what spectra they're giving off and wait for them to report back to us; nor do we have to know what it's like to be an atom or give off spectra. The situation is radically different for psychology and philosophy. My concept "light" does not implicate me in it to the same degree as my concept "sadness." If I had to get another human being to understand the former, our joint attention to a few cases would be sufficient. But in the case of sadness, pointing to someone crying, or crying myself, would not in itself be a demonstration unless the person to whom I were demonstrating it a) had already experienced sadness and b) knew how to interpret the outward behaviors of others in terms of that experience (i.e., to empathize).
And so while I do not need to know what it is like be an atom, or spectra (or any other observable phenomenon that the atomic model serves) in order to do physics, I certainly need to know what it's like to be sad in order to employ the concept in a psychological study in which I survey people and ask people to rate their sadness on a scale of 1-10. To further complicate things, in a such a psychological study I am a) relying on second hand reports (people not only frequently deceive us about their emotions, but deceive themselves); b) asking for rankings for something that arguably cannot be ranked in this way, or not easily; and c) dealing with a complex and -- for these purposes -- unclear concept. The concept of spectra is clear and easily quantifiable, but there are many nuances and varied applications when it comes to the concept of sadness. Arguably, a good novel will use the concept of sadness much more rigorously than a psychological study with a numerical rating scale. (Incidentally, FMRI observations of the brain do not turn psychology into a hard science any more than do survey responses with sadness-numbers on them; such observations still have to be correlated with self-reports and an empathetic understanding of reports in a way that spectra simply do not; and I still need subjective mechanisms -- such as "hunger" -- at one level of explanation, even if I can explain behaviors entirely in terms of the brain at another).
So armchair psychologists and philosophers actually have some distinct advantages over the researchers who employ such surveys. Their data is various, but it critically involves -- shocking as it is to say in this brave new world in which such things are frowned upon -- reflection upon their own inner states. It's not the kind of data to which other researchers have public access, like the sadness rating forms, but it should be clear by now that those sadness forms supply us with the illusion of objectivity, not the real thing. The advantage I'm talking about here is the immediacy of the data (which is Descartes' fundamental point); yes, we're subject to the sort of self-deception and error in self-ascription I've already described, but so are our survey respondents. We're not helped by pretending that making someone write down a number about an ill-defined concept makes things more objective. By contrast, the hope is that reflection -- self-examination -- will help us come to terms with our self-deceptions.
So when philosophers develop a theoretical model -- say one involving "harmony" -- to explain happiness, they are doing something similar to science in important ways, and different in others. In the case of the atom, the phenomena to be explained are clear but their cause is not; the model will provide us with a cause, perhaps make seemingly inconsistent phenomena consistent, and can help us develop testable predictions.
In the case of happiness, the phenomenon is relatively opaque. We're not asking the question "where does [the uncontroversial, well-defined state] 'happiness' come from?" as an analog to "why does hydrogen gas emit these spectra when excited?" We're asking the questions "what is happiness?" and "what do we mean by happiness?" To answer these questions, I begin by thinking about my own use of the concept, and subjective states related to that use (impulses to sex and violence are obviously critical here); and I think about its use by others, including popular conceptions of happiness. I need not merely accept a popular conception as definitive here (e.g. happiness consists of wealth), because it might turn out when fully analyzed that this conception isn't even consistent with itself, or with other uses or concepts to which its proponents are committed. So my task is to take an unclear concept, look at its varied and even inconsistent applications in myself and others, and come up with a theory to explain all of this (including the partial truths reflected in even erroneous positions). My theory in turn must describe some model (say a tripartite soul) and mechanism (as in "harmony") that. like the model of the atom, helps clarify what's being explained. It's just where the model of the atom predicts and explains the origins of a collection of well-defined and publicly available phenomena, the model for happiness must explain an obscure (and publicly disputed) phenomenon by describing a subjective mechanism relating clearer (and yet still subjective and to some degree obscure) parts. The scientific model answers the question "why these phenomena?"; the philosophical model tries to answer the question "what are these phenomena really?" (including "what is their structure?" and "of what parts do they consist?"). And this latter, conceptual question is better explored in the armchair than in the laboratory. (This is not to say one's knowledge of other subjects, including for example history, sociology, and even the hard sciences, won't inform this reflection).
Does the idea of such armchair analyses bother you? Is it insufficiently empirical? I've tried to make the case here that this is not merely a lazy extravagance, but stems from the the nature of the beast-being-examined. By contrast, I think the fundamental hope of someone like Harris -- and the impetus of scientism -- is the idea that science will deliver us from a world in which reflection is necessary. That's because such reflection is open-ended, difficult, and never reaches the definitive, totalizing conclusions to which we are naturally drawn for comfort. Whether such comforting fundamentalisms are religious or anti-religious at bottom makes little difference: as Nietzsche pointed out, they come from the same nihilistic desire to step out of life's ongoing struggle and master it from an ultimate perspective that we simply do not have.
-- Wes
>> They deny the notion that there is such a thing as a value-neutral fact. <<
This, to me, seems false.
The fact that the hydrogen atom, for example, contains one electron is epistemically objective. There can be no description of whether this atom is "good or bad" ("right or wrong", etc.) unless you have a specific teleology in mind for the atom. (e.g. "I need a particular atom to suit a chemical need"… Well, in that case, you can talk about a particular hydrogen atom being "good or bad" for your particular purpose).
You take that concept and apply it right up the ladder until you hit the level of societies. That's how "morals" are derived.
“You take that concept and apply it right up the ladder until you hit the level of societies. That’s how ‘morals’ are derived.”
And yet, the above is not a point about meta-ethics and doesn’t address the relevant sense of derivation.
It’s tricky keeping this point in check, but is there any reason no one seems to realise that Sam Harris’s argument isn’t that oughts somehow reduce to is statments, and that the real argument is that is statements reduce to oughts? The real problem therefore is that Is/Ought plays on the intuition that’s almost certainly wrong that language, and content/belief more broadly, can *ever* fail to be normative or action guiding.
As a quick aside this doesn’t mean that I’m advocating Expressivism because for instance Verificationism and Davidsonian triangulation are both normative theories of meaning, and there are other examples I can appeal to in Quine, Grice or Wittgenstein.
Draper, this Searle argument that you’re excitedly mis-using on this thread is not widely considered to have worked. See for instance the flurry of immediate rebuttals in “Analysis”: Flew, “On Not Deriving an Ought from an Is,” and similar articles by Thomson, McClellan, Jobe. And for a quick and dirty online discussion, see: http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/topic/673-john-searle-and-the-is-ought-problem/. Beyond these rebuttals, we should be as suspicious of an argument that pretends to derive the existence of actual moral force from a description of someone’s use of moral language as we are of the ontological argument’s derivation of the existence of God from the concept of God.
And looking for papers available online that give a good overview of Searle’s theory (including its “Speech Acts” emendation and the tie-in to the more recent “The Construction of Social Reality”) and its problems, this is helpful: ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/138/Part3Chapter10Tsohatzidis.doc
Wes:
I’m not sure if you were aiming your ontological suspicions at me or not, but they’re certainly relevant. I’m personally still vascilating a bit to the degree that language or epistemic conclusions necessarily carry ontological commitments but that’s really not terribly important. What certainly is important, and pretty much all I need to do to get doubts about is/ought off the ground is to ask what it means for a thought to be *about* for instance red. The second you take the fairly popular approach of saying that my understanding what red means is my using it appropriately in appropriate situations you’ve admitted that even descriptive terms are normative and that’s most of the problem dealt with right there.
I do want to take you to task slight for saying:
“we should be as suspicious of an argument that pretends to derive the existence of actual moral force from a description of someone’s use of moral language”
You’re in danger here of confusing two different questions that need to get resolved to fully cope with is/ought. I know that they tend to be conflated but we’re philosophers and ought to know better. The first is the point about whether or not descriptive language is normative and I’ve outlined one reason why I think it is. The second is about whether or not certain states of affairs can act as reasons. It’s a tricky pair of concepts to unravel but this is roughly Bernard Williams’ distinction between internal and external reasons. Now me personally I don’t think there’s a real distinction to be made but that because I think that descriptive language is normative and reasons as a whole necessarily external as a result, but someone who admits Is/Ought but accepts that descriptive language is normative in some senses, is relying on this distinction about the nature of reasons to make their argument.
That Guy Montag,
I’ll be sure to call you “That” Guy Montag rather than “The” Guy Montag in the future (I suppose there might be other Guy Montag’s?).
I have a tendency to post a flurry and then stay away for several days/a week/ a month, etc, so let me just post something real quick while the posting is good, and come back hopefully in a few days.
My last post to you asks some questions that perhaps I should have saved, but now that it’s out there, let me move this post up in the batting order. I’ll start with a story from Mormonism, of all things…
Mormonism states that we all lived in a pre-mortal life, and that our experiences now are a part of a chapter in a long spiritual experience. Mormonism states that we have a kind of “veil” over our “spiritual eyes” such that we can’t remember this pre-mortal life. So when Mormons talk amongst themselves, they will talk in ways that acknowledge this veil and the shared belief in a pre-mortal existence. They’ll say “the veil feels very thin right now,” and what not.
Now, I find this story hard to accept. But the story that asserts that even basic beliefs *about* my hands are in fact beliefs that are normative-laden, (with talk about having good reasons to believe, reasons that are irreducible) well, this is a story I have an easier time accepting. But even if you’re right that descriptive language (not speaking of enthymemes now, but speaking of what some of us want to call “purely descriptive”) is itself normative, that doesn’t mean that we are commonly aware of that.
In other words, what some of us want to call “purely” or “merely” descriptive language is purely descriptive from a semantic point of view if in fact your point that the descriptive is normative is commonly under-appreciated. It might require another conversation, but let’s just stipulate for now that the descriptive is normative. Where does that leave us?
Well if the fact that the descriptive is normative is “behind the veil,” as it were, then there is still a semantic split between the normative and descriptive, so the purely descriptive would carry no meaning about what ought to be done, or the fact that a state of affairs prevailed wouldn’t mean it should or shouldn’t.
I’m a little underwhelmed by whether “appropriate” is close enough to moral reasons, as general standards of appropriateness often are judged wrong by a minority in the present and by a majority in the future, so appropriate doesn’t mean “right,” not necessarily, at least. But I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, and I realize I could be missing something.
And anyway the reason I don’t want to put too fine a point on it is that I can concede that there’s something interesting in the fact that, say, raw perceptual inputs don’t come packed with “there is a good reason to believe that my perceptual inputs represent an external world accurately” yet we take this to be the case anyway. So there seems to be an epistemological gap between our raw perceptual inputs and our beliefs about the world. What closes that gap? I’m not sure. But probably something like “there is good reason, all other things equal, to believe that what seems to be the case is true.” In this way, perhaps even our most basic beliefs about the world have evaluative standards built in. So I suppose there’s not a *dichotomy* between facts and values.
But that there’s still a distinction in language seems plain, such that there is s semantic distinction between mere description and moral evaluation about what’s morally (and opposed to epistemologically) good and bad (I realize a lot will turn on what we take morality to require).
That Guy Montag,
Real quick, before falling asleep, I want to make clear, in case you follow the link I provided where you can read a review of Terrance Cuneo’s The Normative Web, I do allow that epistemologically some reasons override others (though the word “override” my be more technical than I’m allowing, I *think* I’m using it appropriately). For example, the fact that it seems like there are trees outside my window is good reason to believe that there actually are trees outside my window. I’m not on drugs which might make me hallucinate, the trees are there everyday, they look like trees to me, they sway and make rustling noises in the wind, etc. Though I don’t think I miss a beat between perceiving the trees and forming the belief that there are trees there, I do think that over time, when asked over and over about how I justify my basic beliefs, I eventually find in myself that I implicitly take the reasons for believing (in this case, in trees) I’ve listed here to override. What do they override? I’m not sure, I guess someone could say that tree-like perceptual input is really not a good reason for me to believe in trees, but instead I should use this perceptual input to form a belief that the Beatles are better than the Rolling Stones. That’s at least a competing conclusion, hypothetically, and it’s overridden. I have tree-like perceptual input, and no special reason to doubt it. Therefore, there are likely trees out there.
But when it comes to reasons for action that would override other reasons for action, like, say. the fact that something is morally good overriding my desire to be selfish and pursue my own pleasure, which is gained through doing things society considers bad, well, I can’t see how we endorse that, unless we rev up the intuitionism to a degree that leaves naturalism in the rear view mirror. I think this is the case even if we agree to the presence of evaluative standards present (but commonly unrecognized) in our basic beliefs.
I think in order for Harris’ bravado to be vindicated, a robust moral realism will have to be justified by his thesis, not just a minimal moral realism or mere normative realism that shows evaluation to be a rational activity, since this standard is liberal enough to allow in things we consider morally bad.
And like I said before, even if evaluative standards are present in our descriptive beliefs in ways that are under-appreciated, moral oughts aspire for reasons for action that override competing amoral/immoral considerations. So the semantic split between is and ought prevails if the evaluative standards implicit in our belief forming practices are hidden “behind the veil,” and the epistemological split prevails if moral standards carry aspirations that go beyond everyday epistemological reasons for belief, and overriding my (for the sake of argument) hedonism with moral goodness does strike me as a bolder aspiration than overriding competing reasons for belief.
Now, when I wake up tomorrow, I will resist the urge to clarify more. If I don’t hear back, that will be the end of it, I suppose. I’ll check in a couple/few days. Thx.
The Guy Montag,
Thanks for advancing the discussion. I’m wondering, do you take there to be overriding reasons for beliefs analogous to overriding reasons for being good?
I suppose it’s possible that you do think there are such reasons, or you think there’s no need for morality to have such reasons. I’m just saying, if there are no overriding reasons in epistemology or morality, then Sam Harris’ language on his book tour and throughout his book seems unwarranted. On the other hand, if there are such overriding reasons, then it’s hard to see how those reasons are accessible if not through some mechanism that would fit uncomfortably inside naturalism (intuitions). Either way, Harris seems to have a lot of explaining to do (not saying you disagree with the claim about Harris, just trying to tie to conversation back).
BTW, an interesting review of Terrance Cuneo’s The Normative Web has a proposed (and helpful) list of the similarities between moral and epistemological standards here:
http://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/the-normative-web-an-argument-for-moral-realism-by-terance-cuneo/
It’s down the page a bit. First there’s moral realism, which has 4 main theses, according the Cuneo (or more precisely, the reviewer’s take on Cuneo). Then down the page a bit 4 main theses of epistemological realism are listed.
To lay my cards down, I think 1-3 are uncontroversial, though 3 is pushing the envelope a bit. 4 I think crosses the line. I do think a person, all other things equal, seeing hands in front of them has good reason to believe there are hands there. But that doesn’t seem to get us all the way to “ought” when speaking morally (non-instrumental, non-desire dependents oughts) unless of course morality doesn’t require overriding reasons, in which case certain forms of moral relativism are still live options, which doesn’t seem comforting to Harris.
Anyway I’ll leave it alone for now. Look forward to your reply.
Tom, the only reason I brought up conversations at parties and Sam Harris and what not is because you used conversations you had with people as evidence for what this issue is about, and well, because Harris’ TML is tied to this topic. But I see that that’s a dead end.
As for the rest, I can’t sift through everything, but you did, in the course of our conversation, in response to a post of mine asking for considerations of something other than the ontological issue, at least temporarily, you had this to say in return,
“I whole-heatedly believe that this debate rests on an ontological distinction. Facts are truthful states of affairs, values are purported not to be, according to Hume. The implication is obvious: The justification for morality is reduced to subjective consensus or individual caprice. If this is a correct interpretation of the fact/value distinction, I need to reject it. To my mind, the fact/value distinction is morally arbitrary.”
I think the quoted language above was representative of how you discussed the issue throughout, which is to say what the fact/value distinction is, not to say that one of the shades of the fact/value topic strikes you a certain way. When I tried to persuade you that more was going on, and that at the very least, there was a semantic/ontological split at the heart of the issue, you insisted on ontology over and over, and asserted what the fact/value distinction is simply “morally arbitrary.” So long as we’re on the topic of short shrift is all.
But again, no hard feelings.
And anyway Tom, if I had more time, I would take the conversation offline. And this doesn’t have to stop you from posting on future topics. As for your concerns over the ontology of facts and values, I can’t say I completely disagree, I just don’t think you’ve exhausted the issue, or even started with first things first. In your last post though, you said that the is/ought, fact/value distinction is wrong “in an important sense.” That’s the most qualified statement than you made in the whole dispute. And for whatever it’s worth now, I agree that the split is wrong in *some* sense. I mean, I guess capitalism is wrong in *some* sense, but I’m not a Marxist, and anyway we never got clear on what was going on at the heart of the issue, or the varying avenues that the distinction can lead one down, so there’s no use getting into the different senses now.
And since you said you weren’t going to post on the topic anymore, I feel like I should back off too. So I will.
Jay, you’re taking things I’ve said out of context. I’ll clarify my position for the last time and then resign myself from this topic for good.
You maintained that brute facts could not terminate in evaluative or normative conclusions without an antecedent premise containing a desire or end. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough, but I admitted as much in my very first reply to you. I said that we could supplement value-laden arguments with axioms based on natural law. If you read over your replies, you’ll notice that you conceded this point. However, appeals to natural law are from essential to my earlier contentions. The basic problem, as I see it, is that you’ve failed to appreciate that the real force of the distinction–in its strongest form–rests on the claim that values or normativity are distinct categories, deprived of truth-value. If you accept the idea that facts and values are part of the same mental ontology, which you accepted at the outset of this discussion, you also need to acknowledge that the force of the original claim is largely deflated. This is why I keep bringing up the ontological point, which is far more important, in my view. If you grant this argument, then, all you’re left with is an anemic argument about semantics. Essentially, the distinctions you’re upholding only appear to make sense from a disembodied analytic perspective. They don’t undermine the phenomenology of moral experience nor the potential for understanding moral facts scientifically (see below).
I don’t see how you can accuse me of over-simplification. I’ve argued against the distinction in its earliest forms and provided reasons for rejecting it. In turn, you and others continue to defend the dichotomy, now in its third incarnation, by making recourse to a weak epistemic thesis; This is highly inconsistent. I never denied that there are “shades of the fact/value topic.” What I said was that the distinctions, as you’ve explained them, and as I understand it from reading SEP and other sources, doesn’t yield any important philosophical implications. In other words, the kind of force the distinction is thought to wield is unwarranted and superfluous by comparison to its original formulation. Moreover, you never actually state a specific position, you merely gesture to other sympathetic camps. I can’t tell if you were trying to defend non-reductive naturalism, moral skepticism, non-cognitivism, or what. You appear to take it for granted that there is convincing argumentation underlying the view, but you never make it explicit, nor do you show why such a view is superior to various kinds of moral naturalism.
So let me restate the point more emphatically: I think values and normativity are embedded in the structure of practical reality. We experience oughtness and valuation in the same way that we experience time, colour, shape, quantity, and so on. While there is a subjective quality to these categories we also acknowledge that they are underwritten by natural facts. We understand, for example, that our experience of the colour red corresponds to wavelengths of light between 620–750 nm. The qualia of redness is an epiphenomenal state that does not subvert an empirical account of colour. Similarly, the subjective experience of normativity or value does not undercut an empirical account of morality. If you’re saying that the strongest position for maintaining the distinction comes from non-reductive naturalism, it isn’t at all clear why this should be any more persuasive than the view I or others are trying to establish. So in summary, I’m claiming, first, that moral properties inhere in the relations between people and their ecological context. Second, that the structure of social relationships and the ends of human beings in general serve as the relevant factual background for deriving moral knowledge. And third, that we can come to a scientific understanding of certain moral claims by analyzing the rule-governed practices found in societies.
BTW, I never used informal conversations concerning the naturalistic fallacy as “evidence” for anything. What I said was that it concerned me how people, in general, used it without thinking. I believe most academic philosophers see the naturalistic fallacy for what it is; a weak argument.
Tom, taking your points out of order, you’ve said you weren’t using your experience in conversations as evidence of anything. This is what you said back a bit that prompted me to say that,
“I’m not sure if we’re going in circles or not. This issue is settled from my own perspective. If the fact/value-is/ought distinction doesn’t lead us to any interesting philosophical implications, then I’d say it’s pretty superfluous. However, I do think it’s relevant insofar as it continues to be propped up as a logical fallacy against legitimate normative issues. I’ve had this fallacy/problem thrown at me a number of times already by people who had nil understanding of what they were talking about. I think a lot of people assume that simply because the word ‘fallacy’ and ‘natural’ are tied together in the work of some notable philosophers, then that must mean it’s a serious logical error. The same issue pops up with the ad hominem fallacies, which are not nearly as fallacious as they might appear (e.g., see Walton). At any rate, this is part of the reason I wanted to hear people articulate the problem in their own words. Well, so far so good on that front.”
I see that you said that your conversations had bearing on the relevancy of the issue, but not the content, so forgive me for being imprecise. Let me revise: the only reason I brought up the issue about your conversations is that you brought up your conversations as evidence of the relevancy of the issue (but of course, we disagree on what the issue has to be). I don’t want to get too trivial with these details, but I would like you to see that I didn’t just arbitrarily pin you with a view.
Now, as for me not taking a position. I disagree because I think I have taken a position. My position is that you shouldn’t speak from the beginning of the is/ought distinction as if the issue is the ontological one you favor, and then talk as if “is/ought” is covered by your rendering. You talk as if the issue is the same as the ontological issue in which you express your concerns. I disagree that the is/ought issue *is* what you take it to be. Now, you’re talking on the topic generally, but I don’t think you’re hitting the bulleye because we should be getting clear on what the issue is *before* we trot out our pet theories on what’s right about the ethical world. This, all while you assert your particular ontology issue even as a response to my pleadings on the semantic/epistemological side of the issue. So it shouldn’t matter whether I’m a non-cognitivist, an error theorist, a non-naturalist, a non-reductive naturalist, or whatever.
As for whether these views are superior to pop kinds of naturalism (I say “pop” because non-reductive naturalism is, in fact, naturalism, if you take self-description as evidence), well, we’re talking about the is/ought issue only. So we have to tightly focus on that. Now, if you take your naturalism to not crudely derive “ought” from “is,” then it’s not clear you’re talking about plain old naturalism in anything more than the pop sense.
When trying to draw lines, it’s not obvious to many specialists what naturalism even is, see this link,
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/what-is-naturalism/
And see 1:05:24 on of this video clip:
http://www.philostv.com/matt-bedke-and-walter-sinnott-armstrong/
Non-reductive naturalism, in the context of meta-ethics, signals naturalist, not semantically reductive realism in meta ethics, i.e. a certain respect for the is/ought distinction all while committing to the truth of naturalism over all. But once we get into the weeds, it’s not all that clear that we have a consensus definition or hard and fast rules on what qualifies and what doesn’t qualify as naturalism. And you won’t necessarily enlighten us just by offering up another view on what it should be; that’s a huge topic. We can, however, use a couple shortcuts to make some progress. I take it that naturalists overtly eschew supernaturalist dualism in favor of monistic world that can be studied by science, for example. Science and empiricism is highly valued, etc.
With that heuristic, it’s not clear that the is/ought distinction is necessarily the deep ontological issue you want to say it is. Now, admittedly, if moral and descriptive properties are different in kind, technically that is an ontological issue, but a trivial one,and not the one motivating you throughout. I mean, we believe in all kinds of properties, yes? Hell non-cognitivists are in this whole camp too, and they don’t see a big ontological issue at all. The desires that underwrite expressions of tastes or prescriptions carry no inherent overriding reason giving power, for example, and can be fully explained by science (according to non cognitivists). Non-naturalists, by some renderings, emphasize the split between science and morality, on other renderings emphasize the difference between moral and purely descriptive properties, without the explicit endorsement of the harmony between scientific and moral knowledge. Error theorists see a distinction between is and ought as well, though their story is that moral oughts are false (as opposed to not truth apt, which what the non cognitivists think).
What each of these groups agree on is the semantic split between “is” and “ought,” and so when surveying this topic, we should be impressed with the most general agreement that is found among these groups. The groups disagree on why there is a semantic split between “is” and “ought,” but that’s at another level of the analysis. The most general issue is that “is” and “ought” don’t entail one another semantically.
Now, whether you think my view is anemic or not is not something I’m all that interested in. But I am interested in how you keep hammering home your opinion that the fact/value split is about truth/not truth. What happened to dualism? In at least one form, non-naturalism is dualistic, and in all forms, non-naturalism is moral realist. Therefore, the fact/value distinction is not necessarily about true/not true. Add on non-reductive naturalism, then we have a naturalistic form of realism impressed with the semantic distinction between facts and values, yet asserts its monist-naturalist credentials. Therefore, the is/ought distinction is not necessarily about the ontological issue of metaphysical dualism.
Now earlier I tried to emphasize that I wasn’t using the word semantic in the colloquial sense of “not important,” but since that didn’t move you, and since you insist that the semantic issue is anemic and “analytic,” then let’s do drop it, please.
If you had said, from the very beginning, “I’m talking about an issue that I think is more important than the responsible and sober classification of meta ethical views,” then I could have opted out of the conversation from the beginning.
For whatever it’s worth at this point, I think working hard to accurately characterize the ways the issues lump and split is good for its own sake (but I can’t prove it to you if you aren’t already inclined). I also think it’s relevant to the topic that has been thematic on this blog for a while now, which involves the is/ought issue and how it relates to Sam Harris (which is the instrumental reason to get very clear on the topic).
You have an specific beef you want to settle with this issue, so, fine. You understand that in analytic circles “semantic” doesn’t mean “trivial” yet you choose to dismiss the semantic issue as anemic. So, let me just begin my ending by saying, you can leave it here if you want, but if/when you post again, I will respond if I think it’s necessary to further characterize what I am saying (thought I will try hard to resist).
I’ve got to get some sleep, but let me just say that even if you think facts and values are the same thing such that they aren’t even different properties, the fact that you won’t entertain the split in semantics is disappointing to me, since I’ve invested so much time in the conversation (which shows me I was wise not to pursue the conversation via email). I mean, maybe our semantic habits have been corrupted by the odious philosophical influence of positivists and/or dualists who have blinded us to the ubiquity of normative evaluation. But hell we can’t even slow down for a few minutes to look and see if there is such a semantic distinction? That’s too bad.
You’ve been willing to hold out the possibility that perhaps if the deep ontological issue that preoccupies you isn’t live anymore, then the is/ought distinction is superfluous. And now you say that what I’m left with is an “anemic analytic” distinction once your preoccupation is put to bed. After the painstaking effort to carve out a space for the is/ought issue in language, what I get in return is the entertaining of the possibility of my view as “superfluous” and “anemic.” You’re moving very fast. Normally, people are impressed with quickness, but in this context I would follow Wittgenstein who said “In philosophy the one who runs the race the slowest is the winner.” The quote comes in a lot of versions, but that’s close enough. And since I can’t follow all of his doctrines, I can’t be certain that I move the way he would want. But in a rough sense, I think we can get a feel of what he meant. You haven’t shown me that you’ve familiarized yourself enough with the ambient issues to dismiss them as anemic or superfluous. What you seem to be doing is sneering at the issues you don’t like in favor of the ones you do like. The fact remains that the is/ought distinction is not exhausted by the issue you wish to talk about. As a matter of fact, the issue you’re fixated on is not even the most general feature of the topic. But I can see now that the features of the topic that are most pervasive you find anemic. And to that I say, well, OK.
And I suppose it’s possible that along the road of deciding what big huge picture beliefs to form about the nature of the universe on the whole, you’ve taken a side path to delve into the semantic issue of is/ought and come out with an informed view on how “anemic” and “superfluous” it is. It’s possible…
With that, here’s hoping you really will leave it alone this time. I know I’ll do my damndest.
BTW, as for the naturalistic fallacy being a weak argument, it kinda is, but it kinda isn’t. It’s unfortunate you you aren’t interested in hearing about both, and how the idea has helped spawn surprisingly varying views on the matter (thus making it less than obvious than simply calling it a “bad argument” is very helpful to deciding what the issue is really about at bottom).
Now, must have sleep. Goodnight.
Oh and darn it all Tom, you assert that the original formulation of the is/ought distinction had force, and the scraps I’m left with don’t. Well, the actual section of the SEP I linked to, when it got down to brass tacks, offered a very modest definition. So it could be that the hoopla you perceive was present, but the more subtle (or anemic, take your pick) issue was present as well. Combine that with the work after summarizing the work, add that with the admissions/wavering of the original philosophers, then add that with the contemporary work, then add that with the categories that have organized themselves in response to all this, then what we’re left with is the fact that the most general issue is the one that has the best claim to what the topic is about.
Maybe since you’re, as you said, Continental in orientation you’ve got some super duper historical expertise here. But based on the conversation we’ve had, and based on where the SEP differs from you’re claim that the original is/ought issue was big and bad and now and my characterization is something anemic, I’ll go with the SEP.
As for Moore and his contributions, I won’t yield on this one. Moore spent a good deal of time calling out supernatural justifications of morality for committing the naturalistic fallacy, and many have combed his work trying to characterize what he meant, and this has born real philosophical fruit. It’s not just a shadow of some larger issue, it’s in the same tradition.
As for whether what I’m talking about actually is anemic or superfluous, next time I’ll be more open to considering this if the proposition is advanced in a sober, methodical manner which makes it obvious that both sides will get their day in court, rather than in the quick and sweeping manner it has been here. Hell, you all but just decided on your own that the issue was either what you thought it was about or it was superfluous/anemic. So maybe there will be a next time, but this time is shot.
Jay,
1. I’ve provided you reasons against the first and second horn of the ontological/epistemological issue. I’ve clarified what I meant by “fact/value” and “is/ought” in a number of different ways: All of which are consistent with the literature. If you read over my replies, you’ll see that I’ve argued against the Humean and Moorean interpretations. I’ve also tried to show you the shortcomings of non-cognitivism and non-reductive naturalism, even though I agree that there is certainly some truth to these views. In any case, these were the most relevant positions to counter in light of our discussion. You should realize by now that I’m sensitized to the different “shades” this distinction can take. You should also be able to see that I’ve tried to account for some of these indirectly, as far as possible. If I had the time I’d be ready to argue against moral skepticism and various kinds of non-naturalistic intuitionism, but that opportunity hasn’t presented itself. On this basis, your complaint that I haven’t taken these problems seriously or that I’m conflating ontology with semantics is dubious and highly uncharitable. For whatever reason, you continue to gesture wildly at all these other views that I apparently fail to recognize. It’s quite possible, of course, that there are versions of the distinction I haven’t fully considered. However, it’s fruitless, in my view, to dissect every single disagreement in this area. I think it makes more sense to delimit a single coherent position and then defend or modify that view in light of internal contradictions or inconsistencies. If you could state your objections more explicitly or at least provide a positive argument in your defense, I’d be more inclined to listen. But so far, your criticisms really boil down to the following: “Tom, a large number of philosophers think the distinction is a significant issue. If you had the required expertise or grasped the fundamental problem, you’d probably agree with them too.” This lacks any and all substance.
2. As for pet theories, the kind of view I’ve advanced in outline is directly relevant to claims respecting the fact/value and is/ought problem. What I’ve been trying to do is demonstrate to you is that an important class of values and norms can be explained naturalistically (i.e., on rational/empirical grounds). If the position I’ve referred to time and again is indeed a counter-example, as I take it to be, then the distinction collapses under certain well-defined conditions. So to that extent, the credibility of the distinction is undermined. Also, I should add that your characterization of my position as “pop naturalism” is misguided. I’ve told you before that I’m defending a version of neo-Aristotelian naturalism. So let’s be clear, you’re basically saying that Aristotle, G. E. M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Rosalin Hursthouse, Alaisdair MacIntyre, Judith Jarvis Thompson, William Frankena, Michael Thompson, Svend Brinkmann, William Casebeer, and I’d add Quine and others, are all guilty of espousing a vulgar form of reductive or supervenient (i.e., of a reductive kind) or conceptual moral naturalism (see Robert Audi). If I’m to be identified with any camp, it’s at the intersection of these views. At bottom, I think moral properties are amenable to empirical and rational scrutiny. You might want to note that this was the dominant position until Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Moore, and other more recent proponents came onto the stage. However, I believe this was an accident of history, not a progressive leap forward in philosophical or scientific insight. It seems highly plausible to me that a large segment of theories purporting naturalistic credentials are fundamentally misconceived for this very reason (e.g., neo-Humeans, moral anti-realists and non-cognitivists, error theorists, moral skeptics, and non-reductive naturalists). All of these positions, in one way or another, seem to uphold a bizarre admixture of dualism and irrationalism. Yes, granted, there might be some unusual strand of moral theory within these camps that attempts to reconcile a naturalist conception with some kind of anomalism. However, I think this is a most unparsimonious and mysterious supposition, and I have yet to hear good reasons for accepting it.
3. While I’m at it, I should also point out to you that the sheer number of positions that embrace the distinction says nothing about its inherent reasonability or truth-value. You continually refer to other camps hoping that this will solidify your stance. Quite frankly, it does nothing of the sort; Most of the views you refer to could be based on a false assumption which would undercut their basic case. I’ve alluded to you what I think that false assumption amounts to: In most cases, it’s a certain kind of category error. The premises underlying these positions are constantly shifting and highly unstable, as you very well know. Essentially, what I’m seeing is a multiplicity of different versions of the fact/value and is/ought distinction. While you’re right to say that there is general agreement on the semantic trouble in deriving values and norms from descriptive statements, you should also admit that the reasoning supporting this agreement is highly diluted and potentially contradictory. What you seem to have is a conclusion floating in mid-air without any hard consensus about why it might be true. I can hardly be blamed for finding this muddle unpersuasive.
4. I’d also ask that you spare me the sarcasm. That is, “I’m talking about an issue that I think is more important than the responsible and sober clarification of meta-ethical views.” Don’t pretend like you have the philosophical high-ground; You don’t. There is genuine disagreement and controversy about the positions we’ve covered. Moreover, I’ve been appealing to metaethical considerations this entire time; Perhaps you’ve been too busy focusing on the semantic issue to notice.
5. On the topic of Sam Harris, as far as I know, he hasn’t even tried to advance a defensible position. Isn’t this the basic problem? His book and speaking tour is a polemical jab at Islam and soft-headed liberal scientists. This is why he’s a straw man, as I mentioned in an earlier post. He doesn’t give any argument for why he thinks the well-being of conscious creatures is the highest good; He merely asserted that position. In any case, I think if anyone intends to take on what Sam Harris is saying, they should at least try to give him a charitable reading and work out for themselves what the strongest positions are. As it stands, most people discussing this topic haven’t really tried to connect his views with the philosophical tradition. He obviously doesn’t care much for it, but that doesn’t suggest that his general stance is unfounded. As I’ve tried to say before, there are persuasive alternatives in the canon. These could be taken as tacit support for Harris’ convictions. Still, it’s not my place to defend Harris. I just think it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that anyone making naturalistic or empirical arguments about ethics is ignorant or intellectually dishonest.
6. On the semantic distinction, I don’t know why you keep pressing that point. I agree, there is a semantic distinction. We’ve gone down that road and I conceded the issue. What I’ve been telling you this entire time is that I think it’s irrelevant, philosophically. What precisely do you think is so important about the distinctions? What are these groundbreaking philosophical implications? See, I don’t think there are any, and even if there are, they’re unlikely to be very interesting in light of alternative views. I’m wondering how you can know for sure that the distinction isn’t simply an artefact of analytic language? Seriously, it’s highly counter-intuitive to believe that we could be so confused about the moral life that we needed Hume and other philosophical luminaries to come along to reveal our ignorance to us. I’m not even sure what that ignorance is supposed to amounts to if, as I argued earlier, it doesn’t invalidate ethical experience nor the possibility of objective moral knowledge. So if we’re to believe that our philosophical reflections could be so completely at odds with commonsense, I think we need additional warrant before we can be justified in assenting to these views. Since that kind of credibility is far from forthcoming, I’ll continue to maintain that the distinction is courting a serious error.
7. I do appreciate your attempt to clarify the terrain surrounding this topic. So don’t take what I’m saying in a combative way. I’m merely expressing my disagreement and trying to provide you with the logic that underlies it. By all means, you’re free to believe or discuss whatever you want. I also appreciate the fact that you believe the tradition and literature is on your side, but really, I don’t get that impression, and moreover, I think there is going to be large amount of space left for future disagreement on precisely this issue. So with that, I’ll definitely leave this topic alone for a while. No doubt, it’s grating on everyone’s nerves, mine as well. I’m not sure what it is, but this topic has a way of gnawing at me. Consider this the final, read FINAL, addendum.
Tom, to deal with your points one by one,
1. “It’s quite possible, of course, that there are versions of the distinction I haven’t fully considered. However, it’s fruitless, in my view, to dissect every single disagreement in this area. I think it makes more sense to delimit a single coherent position and then defend or modify that view in light of internal contradictions or inconsistencies.”
Why on earth would you think I disagree with this? Hell, if you had actually done that, rather than re-assert by foot stomping your version of the argument the first few times I even proposed that there was more going on, I could have followed you. But you didn’t, you speak in very sweeping terms about what “is/ought” and “fact/value” is about, and when I brought up the shades, you said you fully believed the issue was about ontology. You didn’t say, “OK, well, maybe there’s more interesting stuff going on here, but I do think the thread I’m dealing with is important,” the closest you came was by acknowledging there could be more going on, but dismissed that potential other stuff as “superfluous” and “anemic!” And now you have the gall to assert that you were merely delimiting the issue the whole time?! Now I’m starting to see the virtue of NOT allowing editing in the comment section. Cuz if anyone is so inclined, they can see your ever so unsubtle opening salvo,
“Why are you people so convinced of the is/ought problem? And for that matter, why is non-cognitivism, the naturalistic fallacy, or open question argument any more persuasive than moral realism/naturalism? There is no shortage of principled resolutions to these complaints. I’d love to hear the knock-down argument that shows the fact-value distinction is valid.”
Hear you argue against a mere distinction! (keeping in mind no one is asserting a dichotomy, in spite of your characterization of my argument in this comment: http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/09/01/what-is-a-philosophical-explanation/comment-page-2/#comment-57171 )
Now, again, I was working to introduce a more subtle distinction (that you glibly dismiss as “anemic” “superfluous” “disembodied analytic”) all while you merely rejected it out of hand in favor of some really really huge and trippy ontological issue. Seeing how that’s how we got started, the idea that Wes would be motivated to intervene that you were missing something was warranted. That you took that frustration out on me and started emphasizing that we merely disagreed and that we need no cause to doubt your awareness of what was going on, wasn’t. Why? Well, I can only go by what you write. I mean, maybe you’re friggin’ John McDowell somewhere typin’ away, but from where I sit I can only critique your behavior. And your behavior was oblivious. As I brought up the possibility of a more subtle distinction, you did two things:
One is that you brought up another very very huge trippy metaphysical issue, non-emergence, when I brought up non-reductive naturalism.
The other is that you allowed that the door could be left ajar for more, but dismissed the possibility that any of that additional stuff was at all interesting. You say I merely “wildly gestured” at positions, but I don’t take it that it’s my responsibility to give you an SEP-level summary on the issue, rather than open the door that there more going on than you’re allowing. When I try to bring up the semantic/epistemological issue, you say maybe you can allow it *because of another ontological/metaphysical issue*. You are impressed with allowing for non-reductive naturalism because of your tolerance for emergence and what not. You say they don’t yield any important philosophical issues, but you’ll have to forgive me for believing that your arguments in this conversation give me no reason to think that you even understand the semantic/epistemological issue, much less have thoughtfully considered it and rejected it. Now, I’m not asserting that I can get in your head and watch what you’ve done; all I should be expected to go on is your arguments in this comment section.
On top of all this, you’ll just have to forgive me if I don’t jump in and start arguing right along with your bull-in-a-china-shop method, rather than asserting that there’s more going on, waiting on your to allow for that possibility without glibly dismissing it, then giving me the floor to explain it.
2. “As for pet theories, the kind of view I’ve advanced in outline is directly relevant to claims respecting the fact/value and is/ought problem.” OK, but, the kind of view I’m advancing in outline is directly relevant to claims respecting the fact/value distinction and is/ought problem as well. I didn’t deny yours, you denied that my issue was either relevant or interesting. For the record, I think my pet theory is more relevant to discussion over the is/ought distinction in meta-ethics *that relates to the claims of Sam Harris.* You’ve signaled very clearly that you don’t care much about Harris, but you can’t expect to do a cannon ball into a conversation that is tied in theme on this blog to Harris’ claims and just introduce your pet theory, then dismiss any other theories as uninteresting, *especially* if those other theories are relevant to the POST that prompted the comments in the comment section.
“At bottom, I think moral properties are amenable to empirical and rational scrutiny.”
Big deal.
“You might want to note that this was the dominant position until Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Moore, and other more recent proponents came onto the stage. However, I believe this was an accident of history, not a progressive leap forward in philosophical or scientific insight. It seems highly plausible to me that a large segment of theories purporting naturalistic credentials are fundamentally misconceived for this very reason (e.g., neo-Humeans, moral anti-realists and non-cognitivists, error theorists, moral skeptics, and non-reductive naturalists).”
Funny, I’ve read more than a couple of philosophers talk about how there’s more to Moore than meets the eye. So your talk of there now being a “third incarnation” of the fact/value or is/ought distinction is really very superficial, as if the issue wasn’t ambiguous *from the beginning.* As if the varying camps I’ve alluded to don’t find reasons for their view in Hume and Moore *because of a core issue you’re glibly dismissing*. As if there was some big clear issue that you’ve solved, leaving the “anemic” “superfluous” morsels for others, rather than there being a subtle and hard to grab interesting issue. Now, feel free to find any topic uninteresting, just don’t act as if it’s obvious to others. I haven’t denied your issue, I’ve merely tried to change the direction of your argument – to get you to change lanes. In reply to this, you don’t change lanes, you just say “we just disagree,” or “no my lane is where it’s at,” or “OK so you’re lane exists, it’s just not interesting.” If you can’t see by now how that’s maddening, you just won’t see it. In summary on this little sub-subtopic, you see there being a big clear historical issue “is/ought” and you believe I’m nipping at your heels to get you to consider some side issue. I acknowledge that many people *assert* that the is/ought issue is exhausted by your treatment, but I won’t admit that my points are “anemic” or “superfluous” as you’re been asserting all along.
“So let’s be clear, you’re basically saying that Aristotle, G. E. M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Rosalin Hursthouse, Alaisdair MacIntyre, Judith Jarvis Thompson, William Frankena, Michael Thompson, Svend Brinkmann, William Casebeer, and I’d add Quine and others, are all guilty of espousing a vulgar form of reductive or supervenient (i.e., of a reductive kind) or conceptual moral naturalism (see Robert Audi). If I’m to be identified with any camp, it’s at the intersection of these views.”
Oh gag me. Next you’ll tell me Error Theory contradicts Rawlsian Constructivism and all meta-ethical theses are direct challenges to all normative theories. We’re talking about meta-ethics as it relates to moral claims laypeople make, because that’s what Sam Harris wants to talk about being determined by science (he too merely dismisses the is/ought distinction in his book). If you don’t think Sam Harris is relevant at all to this discussion, then I wish you would have signaled that from the start (like by saying “Sam Harris was mentioned more than once in the post, but I don’t want to talk about that”), similar to the way you could have signaled that you were only wanting to talk about one thread of the is/ought problem, rather than behaving like the issue was exhausted by the thread that interests you, only to eventually allow that there might be more threads that are uninteresting or anemic or superfluous… as for your list of philosophers that support your view, mostly what we’re talking about here is your chosen method of communication and your sweeping proclamations on all shades of this issue. I don’t think you can find comfort for that among that group. Besides, though Quine was balls to the wall on naturalism, he would fit oddly with the Harris’ New Atheist laden thesis, namely that reality gives us reason to believe that are given. I mean, either Harris is guilty of succumbing the the Myth of the Given, or he should acknowledge the pervasiveness of the rationalistic and normative evaluations that must be present to make sense of the world at all (which would fit oddly with a rejection of intuitionism and rah rah naive realist scientism). But I mean, I’ve got to give it to ya, all those names dropped? Cool.
3. As for the premises of the is/ought issue “constantly” shifting, well, perhaps different people offer different reasons over why they’re moved by it. I would think thoughtful people would want to investigate to see if there is a thread that can be identified that each side would consent to. If so, I would think it would be interesting to see what this common thread means to the rest of us. Then we can argue over whether we divide up among the views we already know about, or if there are new views that emerge, or if certain views collapse into one another, or what not. What you’ve done is simply assert that the proposed common thread is as unimportant one imposed as a philosophical similarity among the groups rather than that an interesting and legitimate thread that’s been painstakingly discovered. Got it. I hope you stick to that position so much that when/if this issue arises again that I won’t have to have another conversation like this one with you.
4. First the semantic issue is contained within the meta-ethical issue. You’ve been on the ontological/metaphysical/ethical edge. As for tone, you seriously believe *I’m* the one being flippant/arrogant? Pot, I really think you should meet kettle. If you come back at all to this thread, I invite you to watch the back and forth between That Guy Montag and myself. He leans your way on a lot of this, and parts with me. If you’re right that this is merely a disagreement, then I should have the same conversational trouble with him. I can almost assure you that won’t happen. Why do you think that is? Consider that question rhetorical.
5. Sam Harris. So, you don’t want to defend him. Fine, but the thread of the is/ought issue that we’re discussing could still be tied to the mention of his claims and how they relate to how moral claims are asserted as right and more justified than others. That empirical claims lead to moral claims, or that everyday experience leads to moral beliefs, is not the issue, since we’re not merely explaining how people come to have moral beliefs, but whether we can say that one is justified over another (since, after all, our everyday moral practice self-consciously claims for itself the power to provide better reason than moral rivals and nihilists, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t go nearly as far as Harris wants, which is relevant to is/ought).
6. I don’t remember anyone saying anything “invalidates” moral experience. As for objective moral knowledge, it depends on what you mean by that. If you think that amounts to providing better reasons for action than other people offer in the way our everyday moral discourse aspires,(in the sense of justification) then I would say you should have provided a candidate for what would count as an overriding reason for action, even for someone that rejects your moral reasons. On the other hand, if you simply mean that we could find out *how* people form moral beliefs, (in the way of explanation) and that when certain moral axioms are granted, (in the sense of self-contained justification) we can see how moral life can make sense to those that have signed up for it, well, then, that’s fine, but that doesn’t get us over the is/ought distinction that is relevant to the theme this blog has been pursuing.
7. Whatever it is you think we’re talking about, you haven’t given me any reason to think you have a grip on what the issue is “precisely.” And as for your counsel to not take your words in a combative way, this is like on Christmas Vacation when Clark was having trouble with the Christmas lights. Seeing his son’s discouragement, Clark’s dad said “If you need any help son, come get me, I’ll be upstairs asleep.” I mean, is he really offering help, or just giving a rhetorical gesture toward helpfulness? OK, so don’t take what you say in a combative way. No problem. As for not taking what you say in a more maddening way, in general, I can’t make any promises.
Incidentally, Tom,
I grant that I don’t agree with any and all attempts to *fully* account for the *justification* of moral statements in the history of philosophy. I do think, however, that you overshoot your target with your list of philosophical allies (thereby obfuscating your point) But suffice it to say, I acknowledge that I do disagree with attempts to fully account for the justification of moral statements without appealing to non-reductionism (of some sort) or skepticism (of some sort).
As for simply putting forth a normative theory, or a theory explaining how moral beliefs come about, then we’re talking apples and oranges. I would say that’s mostly what you’re doing with your posse of big name philosopher buddies. But not entirely, so, I’ll acknowledge parting ways with Phillpa Foot, for example, particularly her later work, because I do think that at times she attempted to tackle the fundamental meta-ethical problems with tools inadequate to the task. But insofar as she merely wanted to show the coherency of moral life, she’s not relevant to our dispute. Insofar as she wished to establish meta-ethical moral naturalist realism once and for all, such that no “non-reductive” qualifier was necessary or advised, then I suppose I don’t mind explicitly parting ways with her. And it doesn’t take ontological non-naturalism or moral skepticism to part ways with her here. Not necessarily, at least. If you insist on ontology, and acknowledge emergence, then it could very well be that moral claims are instantiated in a different way than merely descriptive (merely physical) facts about the world are. If so, this would warrant the belief that moral properties, while entirely natural, are different in kind, and this account for the semantic split in the way we talk (which gets us down the road a ways and satisfies some of what concerns you, but still maintains some of the non-naturalist restrictions on the way we claim justification for moral claims). Whether this achieves the realist need for overriding reasons for action, I’m not sure, but it does acknowledge the semantic/epistemological distinction, and makes an attempt to account for it. Once one acknowledges the semantic/epistemological issue, one is ready to start playing with these categories. For instance, once we see the way the reasons work in terms of what moral language comes packed with, we can see that non-reductive naturalism, as for meta-ethics, splits with the rest of naturalism and lumps with non-naturalism, but as for ontology, splits with non-naturalism and lumps with the rest of naturalism. But I know, I know, this is all anemic and superfluous to you.
I suppose you’re a naturalist that acknowledges the semantic issue and yet rejects the necessary function of the non-reductive qualifier in front of your meta-ethical proclamation of naturalism. Or at least you perceive the distinction between naturalism and non-reductive naturalism in meta-ethics as motivated by something “anemic,” “superfluous,” etc. (this is likely to be more of a substantive philosophical stance than you’re appreciating). But I know you said you were finished with this whole topic. So, OK. I’m relieved to have it over with.
Jay
Because you mentioned it , sadly Guy Montag is just a nom de plume and That a tacky punning rhetorical flourish. It would be therefore churlish of me to hold you to account for any errors.
Basically I’m just commenting biw to let you know I’ve seen your replies and I’ll try and get clearer about what I believe, just I haven’t a chance right now to do the weight of comment here justice. Tom, if you’re listening, some of us have heard the dog whistle and agree with you in parts.
More importantly, if anyone high above is listening though, it might be nice to get an email alert when replies are posted so I don’t have to obsessively recheck the post, forget to, return a week later only to lose the thread of the argument and have to refind it.
Okay while I’m not going to be able to match Tom’s reply for length, I can address one point. Sam Harris is quoting from a philosophical tradition. It’s actually rather safe to say he has been since The End of Faith. I’m not sure on exactly where he stands, but he clearly stands somewhere between Davidson and the Pittsburgh school in that he takes the question of cognitive content *very* seriously. So seriously that it’s very clearly why he went into neuroscience. One of the strongest chapters in The Moral Landscape is in face where he discusses his research. It’s likely that one problem people found with that chapter is that it’s unfortunately full of caveats due to the nature of brain scanning research, but one thing comes out clear: he found a correlation between belief, subjective notions of certainty and action in that all three are involved in making claims.
Now this essentially is the problem that I have with is/ought. The problem isn’t that there’s some semantic difficulty in bridging the two kinds of concept. To be honest, to get what we want out of is/ought a semantic difficulty won’t do. I can’t naturally describe skyscraper construction in terms of penguins, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t use the same tools to study both. The problem is that the more robust answer, the sort of mixed model of desires and belief, has a really shocking flaw in that it’s really hard to get to grips with how *thin* the notion of a belief needs to be to sustain this kind of a view and worse yet it seems to strip us of all of the tools that we would normally use to create a picture of the content of those beliefs, thinking here of for instance Wittgenstein’s Private Language argument which in its Verificationist flavour essentially defined content as normativity.
That Guy Montag,
I had the beginnings of a response sketched out, and then as I re-read your post, this sentence jumped out at me,
“To be honest, to get what we want out of is/ought a semantic difficulty won’t do.”
The “to get what we want” part strikes me as something very important. I don’t mean to hide anything behind my back while I demand a confession from you, but since you wrote this sentence, I wonder what it is you belief “we” want out of “is/ought.”
I thought about asking what you take is/ought to be, but the sentence I quoted from you seemed like a better place to start. But answering both (or even just one) of the question would be cool too.
Fair enough.
Is/Ought is supposed to establish a division between is statements and ought statements. This division however can’t be equivalent to saying they’re each parts of a broader whole so that you say one set of terms is useful for talking about skyscrapers and the other set of terms is useful for talking about penguins. Instead, it seems that the goal really is to build up the mixed model I mentioned where we’re dealing with two fundamentally different kinds of things, desires and beliefs, not simply two different kinds of beliefs. This really is the only way we can make the claim that there’s a necessary disconnect between is and ought statements as opposed to a merely contingent one that could in principle be resolved.
I hope my argument is clear from there but just in case the next step is just to ask ourselves whether the idea of a belief stripped of all of the affect that we’re supposed to get from our desires functions as a belief and I think it’s pretty clear that it doesn’t ergo, is/ought is a false dichotomy.
OK. Well, forgive me for pressing further, but I’m not sure the stage is set for the argument yet…
As for a dichotomy, I don’t hold one, and I’m not even sure if J.L. Mackie does (maybe we need to get more clear on what kind of dichotomy we’re talking about; suffice it to say for now, Mackie allows for all sorts of instrumental evaluation, and even Hilary Putnam – who vociferously denies the dichotomy – allows for the distinction, and does so in ways that seem to put a barrier between himself and New Atheism… and BTW I’m assuming Harris wants to keep this tie).
The is/ought distinction that is relevant to the run of posts on this blog dealing with Sam Harris, IMHO, is that a descriptive statement that can in principle be analogized in scientific language does not entail *moral* action guidance. I take this to be the case even if the view that our basic beliefs about the world are given, is false.
In other words, moral action guidance is of the “come hell or high water” variety. When we perceive a set of hands, perhaps we have a good reason to believe that there are hands there, even though the mere perceptual input doesn’t come with “good reasons.” What closes the gap between the input and the belief? Desires? A rationalistic mental apparatus? Standards of evaluation we inherit from the adults (and peers) that teach us language? I’m not sure.
Whatever the answer, it doesn’t seem strong enough to close the gap between the way we describe the world and the way we advance moral reasons. A moral reason is different from an epistemic one because if a person contemplating the phenomenological input of hands said to us “Well, I think I’ll train myself to believe something different from ‘there are hands here.’ In fact, I think I’ll believe there aren’t hands here.” To approximate a moral reason, we would say something like “No no no no no, that would be bad. You have no good reason to train yourself to believe there are no hands there, because the epistemic reason overrides whatever other desire you cite.”
So epistemic reasons may be underwritten by evaluation (or desire) but moral reasons ask us to go above and beyond that. One has a good reason to be moral no matter what else one desires, or so our moral discourse claims (and if it doesn’t, then the vociferous rejection of moral relativism seems unwarranted).
If we mean different things by moral statements on the one hand and mere descriptions that aren’t necessarily meant to guide others’ actions on the other, then the distinction between “ought” and “is” still counts as semantic, even if there is no universal dichotomy between is statements and ought statements in all linguistic contexts. So, for the record, the idea that description and evaluation are fundamentally and always severed and wholly distinct, is, I take it, false.
What sets the parameters of the discussion, in my view, is whether the topic is about moral reasons, and whether science can determine them and whether the is/ought problem can be wholly dealt with by dismissing as a mere “verbal trap” (as Harris did in his book).
So there is still a (purported by many of us) distinction in language between moral reasons and mere descriptions even if the interconnection and mutual dependence of description and evaluation in language is real and under-appreciated (which I think is true).
If missed your point about belief and desire, please break it down further for me (seriously) but for now, at least *I think* that I don’t see the moral issue and being settled even I agreed with much of what you said in the post I’m responding to here.
Listen, Tom, if you’re still paying attention to the comments to this post,
I’ve had a chance to let it all sink in, and I feel bad about all these intemperate comments out there, solidified, unable to be taken back or softened, from me. I’ve had spats with friends where one or the other said something ill-considered that led to a dispute.
We disagree about which one is responsible for it getting to this point, so suffice it to say, both of us have passionate feelings about a topic that would strike most people as hyper-technical (either of our perspectives would count as such to Sarah Palin’s Joe Sixpack, I take it). I can also ad that I’ve bounced back from arguments like this to relate quite well with the person I was arguing with.
There’s no use now pretending like what’s been said hasn’t, but if we both hang around this blog’s comment section, in future conversation(s) maybe we can just have a do-over. Now I’ll carry on with That Guy Montag, and then from here on hopefully we’ll all be able to understand one another better.
Jay
If I read you right you’re concentrating on Mackie’s Queerness Argument, that it’s a strange thing that’s both an object like a table and a reason at the same time. This isn’t anything new as far as the debate is concerned. Let’s make it clear that because I accept The Myth of the Given: I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be both those things; it’s all just reasons whether we’re talking about science, or morals.
Now I don’t think this condemns me to a Cartesian scepticism or even any particular caricature of Idealism. The reason I don’t is because meaning is normative. If I *understand* what red means, then the meaning of red guides my every action. That emphasis on understanding is key, and part of what characterises Tom’s appeals to modern Virtue Theory. Think understanding here as a kind of reflexive capability, the ability to be guided appropriately in the use of a term.
The other side of the coin to this way of thinking of content is that it’s often taken to be necessarily public. This is essentially Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument that I can’t simply point to some feature of my experience to give the normative grunt that content needs because I can never check whether I’m using my terms the same way each time.
The final point is roughly the one I’ve made before. Once we accept that meaning is public in this way we can’t simply hive off morals and science, they become merely different parts of the broader fabric of reasons. Sure, I may not need to appeal to science to make a moral point, but that it is cruel is a reason to stop a kid being bullied in exactly the same way that the genetic evidence is a reason to accept evolution whether you ultimately accept them as reasons or not.
OK thank you That Guy Montag, that helps.
Now I don’t want to saddle you with the whole history of the argument, but when you said that Sam Harris was quoting from a philosophical tradition, I wonder how robust a claim that is. I mean, at first glance, “the ability to be guided appropriately in the use of a term” seems to be in tension with the empiricist bravado throughout the New Atheist movement and in TML.
I don’t think an unsuspecting layperson, particularly those attracted to this movement’s publications, have the understanding that “it’s all just reasons” whether we’re talking about science, which brand of jeans to buy, or morals. Nor does Harris very clearly signal this in TML in a way that would clear it up to someone not trained in spotting it, or someone wanting to know how radically he was willing to push it.
And I mean, different cultures have different standards in terms of what counts for being guided appropriately by reasons, yet Harris and Dawkins and Hitchens etc want to vociferously assert a kind of universalism at the same time (and dismiss postmodernism, relativism, etc, because truth *isn’t* conventional to them, it just is).
So, I’m not sure if saying that Harris is quoting from a philosophical tradition was meant to be a partial defense of Harris, trying to get us to notice that he’s not completely out to lunch, or if you think the tensions I’m identifying in his work aren’t there the way I think they are, or what.
The thing is, I’m not sure if I can tackle the whole Wittgensteinian tradition and pit the more naive realist tradition against it and get very far in this comment section. I do have serious doubts about whether the option you’re pursuing is open to Harris in a larger way, however, given the other goals he’s pursued in his public career, and in TML.
Thoughts?
…Continuing… That Guy Montag, it’s not that I think you should be responsible for entire New Atheist canon, or even everything in TML, but in interpreting Harris, one reasonable way to do it is to keep constant the factors I’m suspecting are in tension with your interpretation (which is what I’ve been doing). Another way is to take much of what he says overall with a grain of salt, and then with a high degree of charity identify a thread though his work that makes a lot of sense (whether it’s in tension with the rest of the work or movement or not).. I do realize this turns on whether the tension I identify in the first place is actually there or not.
If it’s all just reasons the way you outlined, then it seems to me that much of the rest of the project is in peril. If upon another reading the claim is a very provisional one that Harris can merely be said to be consistent with the “it’s all just reasons” thesis you’ve cited, then maybe I could agree to that.
I’ll start off by saying you don’t need to pit any kind of naive realism against anything I’m saying. I tried to make it clear but it’s understandably not the most obvious conclusion to take out of the kind of argument I’m making so let’s be blunt: this view that it’s all reasons is about real as realism gets. In terms of practice, it tries to say we can’t get outside of giving reasons to and taking reasons from others, but in principle the first step of the argument says that every thought I have only has content because of the way the world is. Some of these implications are famously spelled out in Davidson’s On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3129898
Though it’s not central to our discussion this paper also suggests one way in which content denies that we can have necessarily different standards of what constitutes a reason, because truth (the world) plays a necessary role in our understanding what another person is saying. Another solution sees our accepting reasons as developing a faculty for perceiving reasons that exist in the world. This line of argument puts someone pretty close to where Tom stands with his Virtue Theory, but it’s also an undercurrent in the Philosophy TV video you linked to earlier, particularly from Sinnott-Armstrong.
As to whether or not Sam Harris is making the kind of argument I’ve been arguing for, I think I agree with you that some of the arguments for this sort of thinking are incredibly hard to sell to the lay public. In fact, let’s be blunt, these sets of ideas are some of the most contentious and difficult in philosophy. Full stop. That said, their conclusions aren’t and that’s exactly what he sets out. These are things like we can’t just step back and pretend that we don’t stand somewhere. That even difficult to decide problems accept better or worse answers. He even argues for a king of moral pluralism, that there may be many different kinds of human moral flourishing, about as far from a naive utilitarianism as you’re likely to get.
You’re also wrong that he doesn’t make this explicit in TML. Not only does he make it explicit, he repeats it in nearly every single talk I’ve heard him give. It’s just that everyone is in such a rush to tar and feather him they don’t recognise what he is saying and that’s what’s so infuriating about these arguments. Think back to the way he phrases his argument that any answer has to concern itself with wellbeing. He’s really making claims literally about what it means for anything to be a reason at all, that it has to place people somewhere in the Moral Landscape, or if you like within the “space of reasons”. The view that he’s somehow arguing that happiness constitutes moral states of affairs there is completely nonsensical.* Then there’s his chapter on Belief where he goes exactly where I have been going and says straight out, there is no problem in ethics that we don’t face in science, or if you’re paying attention, that it’s all reasons and we have no special reason to hive off moral concerns. But has this ever been mentioned in any discussion arguing how he apparently is just a naive utilitarian? Not likely.
*As an irrelevant aside, John Stuart Mill suffered this exact same fate in Utilitarianism.( Literally the same fate: Mill was making a very similar argument.) Poor bastard, being treated as straw man undergraduate filler for over 100 years!
Well, as for me being wrong about Harris and how explicit he made his point in TML, that was back when I thought you were going harder to the hole with some sort of Wittgensteinian language game stuff (I see I was off there). Now that we’re dealing with a moderate Davidsonian line, we’ll have to see.
I mean, when you say “…that it is cruel is a reason to stop a kid being bullied in exactly the same way that the genetic evidence is a reason to accept evolution whether you ultimately accept them as reasons or not” I still can’t quite get my head around that in terms of realism, particularly with the word “exactly” in there.
I mean, that it is cruel is often the very reason bullies engage in the behavior, i.e. the cruelty of a proposed endeavor guides their actions. Indeed, human cruelty is the worst kind because it has the aid of empathy (I think Hume made that point) thereby making it much more targeted to emotional vulnerabilities.
I suppose I can agree that what can count as a reason is not infinite; the world must place some constraints I suppose. But within that constrained space is apparently some disturbing wiggle room. I know Harris wants to say that religious extremists place their reasons in the fact that they will have an eternal reward in the afterlife, but it doesn’t have to run that way. Self-sacrifice and obedience and loyalty merely for the sake of it is a plausible/intelligible reason someone might offer. That runs counter to any reason that would move me, but that it can be the stated reason to guide someone else’s action.
That there might be some hidden (to the extremist in question) psychological motivation on the subsonscious level that if seen would show that the promise of an eternal reward in heaven is really what’s driving him, well, that’s fine but that’s another matter.
That there seem to be hands in front of me seems like good reason to accept that there are hands in front of me, and I’ll allow that understanding what they are guides my actions. But I would like to add a “all other things equal” caveat. I mean, if I decided to brainwash myself to not believe in the hands in front of me, such that after my program I would believe something different, something that didn’t match the way the world is, I don’t think we can say at that point that I have an overriding reason to accept the hands in front me, which is the kind of thing we need for morality.
But that’s getting slightly off track, because the bullies are responding to the same world I am (I hate bullies, btw). They don’t necessarily disagree with me on the natural facts of the matter. Yet moral discourse commonly assumes that the bullies have a reason to cease their behavior regardless of whether this fits with their desires and regardless of whether their anti-social behavior will reap other hedonistic benefits (high status, and the rewards that flow from it) that pro-social behavior might not under those circumstances.
I mean, the bullies also understand that the word “cruel” is often delivered to them with the connotation “to be avoided,” yet they seek such things out. I can’t imagine recourse to the way the world is, as we commonly understand it, that provides the super-duper reason we’re looking for that would apply to them.
As for whether I have a super duper reason to believe the hands in front of me, well, it doesn’t seem like I need one as strong. The seeming state is enough. We can imagine someone saying that the hands are evidence of something happening in another galaxy, but this is approaching nonsense, like saying 2+2=David Letterman. I mean, I just can’t wrap my head around it. But bullies getting together and using the very same facts about the world to guide their actions in ways very different from mine, as disturbing as it is, is perfectly intelligible to me.
But I’ve pursued this line already, making me think we’re still talking past each other a bit (not unusual at this level of discussion I take it). So, I look forward to your comments. I’ll be in and out over the next few days. My schedule may allow blogging away, or my time might be scant. But I’m still plugged in.
I
1. Jay, given the general tenor of your last post I think I need to respond. I intend to do a number of things here. First, I plan to diffuse your rhetoric and baseless criticisms. Second, since you’ve done such a fine job at mangling my arguments, I’ll also provide a more accurate representation of my position. And perhaps, third, along the way, I’ll offer a clearer explanation of our disagreement. Right. So I’ll begin by taking your points in serial order and add further commentary as I forge ahead.
“Why on earth would you think I disagree with this? Hell, if you had actually done that, rather than re-assert by foot stomping your version of the argument the first few times I even proposed that there was more going on, I could have followed you… And now you have the gall to assert that you were merely delimiting the issue the whole time?!”
2. This is an interesting caricature of what’s transpired. I thought I was defending neo-Aristotelian naturalism as a coherent metaethical position. You see, the fact-value/is-ought problem *is* logically inconsistent from my point of view. It might not have been immediately apparent to you, but this is what I’ve been doing this entire time. This makes me wonder whether you were even trying to understand what I was saying. I’ve been trying to tell you that moral properties can be explained rationally, naturalistically. This flatly contradicts the distinction. Now, by “foot stomping” I’ll assume you mean starting with a set of reasonable objections to the traditional Humean and Moorean arguments. That’s what it means to start with first things first, doesn’t it? No, no, you wanted to rush on to the real meaty versions in the contemporary literature, all while skipping over the problematic origins of this entire controversy. For you to then go on and charge that I was the one moving too quickly in this discussion is outlandish, to say the least.
“But you didn’t, you speak in very sweeping terms about what “is/ought” and “fact/value” is about, and when I brought up the shades, you said you fully believed the issue was about ontology.”
3. Well, let’s see, I said “I whole-heartedly believe that this debate rests on an ontological distinction.” Your interpretation is that I oversimplified the distinctions categorically. First off, you should recognize that we’ve been discussing these distinctions in two very different senses. Arguably, the strong sense is an ontological claim that divorces facts and values. The weak sense is a purely logical or semantic claim about the indefinability of evaluative statements in terms of analytic and/or synthetic statements, and vice versa. However, only the strong sense renders fallacy accusations intelligible (i.e., moral values and norms have no objective or rational foundation in the natural world). So we’re not talking about a mere distinction here, we’re dealing with a full-blown thesis claiming that morality is devoid of objective authority. *This* is the only sense that the distinction has any “relevant implications.” It’s the only issue currently motivating my disagreement. Now, of course, you want to say, “But hold on! There’s a whole lot more going on down here in epistemology and the philosophy of language! Factual and evaluative statements have radically different content. It turns out you can’t actually derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’! And not only that, you’ve got ‘supervenience’ to worry about too! You see, a bunch of really brilliant philsophers think moral properties are irreducible to natural ones, and so therefore, objective moral knowledge is not even possible! What luck, now we can all become nihilists or live out our days racked with skepticism…” I know, I know, this is a heady cocktail in analytic circles. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t stick around for your delicious refreshments.
4. Let me see if I’ve got this right then. A group of popular analytic philosophers come along and presents us with a seemingly innocuous logical and semantic claim. We say, “No problem, Mr. Analytic Philosopher, that sounds reasonable enough. We sure do have trouble capturing these enormously complex human values in language…” But, this concession isn’t enough for our crafty interlocutor. Now he goes on to expand the weak sense of his logical and semantic thesis into the strong sense of a categorical disjunction. Great, the stage is now set to claim the same implications as the onlogical argument. If it’s not clear to you, what’s going on here is intellectual obfuscation; It’s a veiled attempt to insulate clearly indefensible moral values from rational criticism. At the moment, I’m undecide whether this is politically motivated or not, but it’s definitely not good philosophy. Alright, fine, so I take it you’re still not convinced with my portrayal of the issues. No problem, I’ll provide a more systematic critique as I go on.
“Now I’m starting to see the virtue of NOT allowing editing in the comment section. Cuz if anyone is so inclined, they can see your ever so unsubtle opening salvo… Hear you argue against a mere distinction! (keeping in mind no one is asserting a dichotomy, in spite of your characterization of my argument in this comment: http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/09/01/what-is-a-philosophical-explanation/comment-page-2/#comment-57171 )”
5. I’m wondering whether you even recognize the contradictions within your own position. Here’s my characterization of your view in the comment you’re referring to: “You maintained that brute facts could not terminate in evaluative or normative conclusions without an antecedent premise containing a desire or end… The basic problem, as I see it, is that you’ve failed to appreciate that the real force of the distinction–in its strongest form–rests on the claim that values or normativity are distinct categories, deprived of truth-value.” Now, here’s one of your comments from September 2nd:
“I’ve tried to tell you that the meaning of mere facts does not contain reason giving power for recommendations or actions, at least not on their own separated from antecedent desires/ends [you defined an ‘end’ earlier as “values or desires that can make up the premises of a line of reasoning”], yet you stomp your foot on the ontology issue. I’ve even acknowledged that if values exist, then I cannot see any reason to assume there’s a fundamental ontological dualism between facts and values.”
6. Ok, so let’s disentangle this mess. My first statement is a direct parallel to your expressed view on the 2nd of September. So, I’ll assume you’re taking offense at my second statement. If so, you’ll want to note that I didn’t say it was your view, but rather, that you failed to recognize the legacy and relevance of the distinction in its strongest form. Also note that I didn’t refer to ontology in this second part. What I’m effectively saying is the same as my comment above. The “real force” of the distinction is an appendage left over from the ontological claim and should be cleaved off accordingly from the semantic thesis; which is a separate contention. Whether you personally disavowed yourself of this relation isn’t clear. However, what is clear is that a large cross-section of metaethical positions covertly insinuate similar implications as the ontological thesis. If I read you charitably, you might be saying that there is no considerable gap between facts and values and so objective moral knowledge is possible. Of course, you’d probably resist the addition of the caveat that it would be difficult rather than impossible to establish this connection on epistemological grounds. If this resembles your position, then I maintain that the distinction is superfluous *in contrast to its earlier form.* The only *important* implication I draw from this “weak” sense of the distinction is that it’s troublesome, given the current state of certain epistemological theories, for us to make sense of the semantic content of human values. On this reading, human values are not foreclosed from empirical and rational analysis, and moreover, there may be persuasive alternatives available to address these issues. Now, I happen to think that there are good reasons for believing that this challenge can be met, and moreover, that it can be met in terms of a rational and scientific reduction, contra non-reductive naturalism et al. Hopefully, you can appreciate that these are very different starting points. If the strong sense of the distinction is discredited, I think you’re left with something approximating this view and so therefore you’re not in a possition to pull-out fallacy accusations without qualification. That’s all it is, I’m saying nothing more nor less than this when I label the distinction “superfluous.”
“…the idea that Wes would be motivated to intervene that you were missing something was warranted. That you took that frustration out on me and started emphasizing that we merely disagreed and that we need no cause to doubt your awareness of what was going on, wasn’t. Why? Well, I can only go by what you write. I mean, maybe you’re friggin’ John McDowell somewhere typin’ away, but from where I sit I can only critique your behavior. And your behavior was oblivious.”
7. I have to hand it to you, that’s some real vitriol you’re spewing. Let’s be clear about something, Wes’ intervention doesn’t bear down on anything that we’ve said. If I understood his intentions correctly, he was angry that we hijacked his topic and felt compelled to let us know, in a vague and roundabout way, that we were missing the deeper point; his view, clearly enough. That’s fine, Wes is a smart guy, and I’m sure he has his reasons for finding our, my, or other comments, misguided. Unfortunately, he never revealed what those reasons were, and so his intervention, to my mind, doesn’t undermine or advance anything substantial. Neither does it give you a free pass to walk over my view and pretend that your position has been vindicated. That’s far from settled. Now, I happen to be best friends with John McDowell. In fact, we play paintball together every second Tuesday; What a guy. Unfortunately, I can’t claim ownership for any of his ideas since I’m just an ignorant college dropout who enjoys the smell of laundry detergent.
II
“As I brought up the possibility of a more subtle distinction, you did two things: One is that you brought up another very very huge trippy metaphysical issue, non-emergence, when I brought up non-reductive naturalism. The other is that you allowed that the door could be left ajar for more, but dismissed the possibility that any of that additional stuff was at all interesting. You say I merely “wildly gestured” at positions, but I don’t take it that it’s my responsibility to give you an SEP-level summary on the issue, rather than open the door that there more going on than you’re allowing… you’ll have to forgive me for believing that your arguments in this conversation give me no reason to think that you even understand the semantic/epistemological issue, much less have thoughtfully considered it and rejected it”
8. Yes, I’d say that wild, maniacal gestures at other positions captures your basic argumentative strategy. Of course, you’re under no obligation to provide anything at all. But if there’s going to be an argument then we need at least two things: (1) disagreement, and (2) reasoning. Well, we definitely satisfied the first condition. However, it’s the second that’s left wanting. If you don’t care to advance a positive argument, that’s fine, but, then, don’t expect to be in a position to engage in a debate or make any claims about these topics. Now, you’re right to say that I haven’t offered comprehensive critque of the semantic issue. What I provided you was an abbreviated version of my objections, which you quickly brushed over. You’ll have to forgive me for assuming that you were already familiar with the common criticisms of that thesis. So alright, in this section I’ll take your accusation seriously and elaborate more on my earlier contentions in this thread.
9. As for non-reductive naturalism, and my trippy psychedelic hallucinations for that matter, we never even got started on that line of argument. I reject strong supervenience and its irreducibility thesis, which brings us right back to Moore and his followers. It’s often assumed that some version of the Open Question argument successfully established the irreducibility of the moral to the natural. However, this is suprising, given the weakness of the original argument and the fact that Moore himself viewed his claims about non-natural properties as “utterly silly and preposterous.” (1968, p. 581) What’s even more surprising is how Open Question-like arguments continue to be one of the main lines of defense for strong supervenience, even though considerable changes have transpired in the philosophy of language. Well, at any rate, there are two views that converge to give the strong supervenience thesis any substance. The first follows from certain versions of Moore’s Open Question argument, while the second is an elaboration of that argument in the work of Donald Davidson (i.e., Anomalous Monism). There are also some related issues surrounding the idea of ‘multiple realizability.’ But, let me begin by sketching out what I think is the strongest version of Moore’s argument and provide you with a fuller resolution. I won’t have space to deal with Davidson or the multiple realizability thesis, but suffice it to say, I reject these commitment to non-reductionism.
10. First off, I’ll be concerned here with the strong version of the Open-Question argument (SOQA), which advances the semantic thesis. Both the analytic-synthetic distinction and the traditional theory of meaning are presupposed on this view. Semantically, then, it’s claimed that analytic statements taken in isolation, or in combination with synthetic statements, cannot entail evaluative statements. More specifically, it’s said that there are no meaningful implications or synonymous relations between sets of evaluative properties and analytic and/or synthetic properties. This idea is based on the traditional theory of meaning, which states that synonymous relations obtain only insofar as the property-sets between terms can be sensibly associated in conventional language. Thus, a “competent speaker” of English would never confuse the token identity of one term for another. That sounds reasonable enough, so what’s the next step? The argument now claims that all questions employing the same token identities are closed questions, in the sense that it’s cognitively insignificant to ask whether A really is equivalent with A. Open questions, by contrast, are uncertain, in the sense that it’s cognitively significant to ask whether A really is equal to M. I’ll return to this premise shortly. The conclusion that follows is that evaluative terms can never be synonymous non-evaluative terms. And so therefore there can be no meaningful implications between evaluative properties and analytic and/or synthetc properties.
11. I have three resolutions to this argument. First of all, due to the traditional theory of meaning on which it rests, SOQA disclaims the possibility of complex or obscure forms of synonymy. This the most direct flaw with the argument. That is, it rejects the idea that synonymous properties between evaluative and non-evaluative terms can be established by way of rational or semantic analysis. However, so long as conceptual analysis can reveal the complex set of non-evaluative properties that are entailed by an evaluative concept, it’s quite irrelevant whether a “competent speaker” finds it sensible. Second, there are very few genuinely closed questions that are worth asking. That is, we don’t typically ask closed questions. It’s nowhere near obvious, for example, that the terms between different disciplines can be reconciled in the sense that SOQA requires. So presumably, biological terms are not to be reconciled with psychological terms, sociological terms with economic terms, linguistic terms with literary terms, and so on. That the relation between different sets of properties remains open-ended is effectively impotent from an explanatory point of view. Finally, third, there are good reasons for believing that conventional or folk concepts of morality are largely confused and in need of deeper analysis and revision. There is no reason to suppose that objective value or normativity is sufficienty captured in the moral language of competent speakers.In fact, it’s highly arbitrary, on my view, to conclude anything about the meaningful implications between the evaluative and the non-evaluative without first providing a stringent analysis of our moral concepts in naturalistic terms. This is one independent chain of argument against the strong supervenience and Open-Question thesis. Now, I also happen to have other independent reasons for believing that naturalistic reductions of the moral are possible. If I had the time I’d review these too, but, as you can probably tell, I’m running out of space. That said, if you’ve got a stronger version of the Open-Question argument, one that’s somehow immune to these criticisms, I’d love to hear it.
“So your talk of there now being a “third incarnation” of the fact/value or is/ought distinction is really very superficial, as if the issue wasn’t ambiguous *from the beginning.*”
12. Let’s see, there’s an ontological thesis, a logical/semantic thesis, and a non-reductive/strong supervenience thesis. That’s 1, 2, and 3, count ‘em, *three* incarnations of the fact-value/is-ought distinction. I had no intention of including every single sub-variant for these categories. And sure enough, the distinctions *are* highly ambiguous, which helps to explain why they’ve exerted so much influence. After all, how else could so many philosophers be mistaken if they weren’t confused about the issue from the very beginning? Perhaps I’m out of touch with the prevailing intellectual styles, but I don’t believe the fact-value/is-ought thesis has ever been demonstrated decisively, anywhere. In fact, in the current intellectual climate it’s extremely difficult to be taken seriously without buying into these non-reductive or anti-realist views. It’s almost like a scientist believing in creationism. It would have destructive professional consequences. Ethics, and anything else with the mark of the mental, is still considered sacred territory. Notions like property dualism and irreducibility are relics left over from our Cartesianism and should be seen for what they are: Veiled religious dogmas about the immorality of the soul. You have to wonder, at times, what it is that motivates a particular philosopher’s work. If they tacitly subscribe to some form of supernaturalism, I think it’s innevitable that this will seep into whatever secular contentions they seem to espouse. In fact, you could be perfectly agnostic or non-theistic and still inadvertently draw from obscure supernaturalistic premises. This is the real enemy of naturalism, not the putatively sophisticated metaphysical or epistemological arguments of philosophers. Once you extripate these irrational ideas, I think you’ll find there’s very little that is obscure about moral theory.
III
“Oh gag me. Next you’ll tell me Error Theory contradicts Rawlsian Constructivism and all meta-ethical theses are direct challenges to all normative theories. We’re talking about meta-ethics as it relates to moral claims laypeople make, because that’s what Sam Harris wants to talk about being determined by science… Besides, though Quine was balls to the wall on naturalism, he would fit oddly with the Harris’ New Atheist laden thesis, namely that reality gives us reason to believe that are given. I mean, either Harris is guilty of succumbing the the Myth of the Given, or he should acknowledge the pervasiveness of the rationalistic and normative evaluations that must be present to make sense of the world at all (which would fit oddly with a rejection of intuitionism and rah rah naive realist scientism). But I mean, I’ve got to give it to ya, all those names dropped? Cool.”
13. Funny, I never realized name-dropping achieved the status of a formal fallacy. For the record, I wasn’t referring to those authors to support any particular argument. I supplied those references to help you better understand the position I’ve been taking. Clearly, you’re not too familiar with this neighborhood in the literature. That’s fine. I wasn’t expecting you to have perfect knowledge about moral philosophy. It would, however, be incumbent on you to sensitize yourself to these other positions if you ever intend to have a more balanced perspective on these debates. Non-sequiturs aside, I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that Sam Harris is guilty of the Myth of the Given. It’s pretty hard to decipher what you could possibly even mean here. Our moral intuitions are likely to be a combination of different things. For one, they seem constituted, in part, by a suite of moral passions, either of the evolutionary or Humean sentimentalist variety. But, second, and more importantly, there’s good reason to think our moral intuitons are also conditioned by an objective belief-forming process.
14. I think the former kind of intuition is biologically normative, setting aside the question of justification. As for the latter kind, I think these are clearly ‘truth-apt’ in a way similar to propositional attitudes. Actually, I’d argue that *some* of our moral intuitions are relatively automatic or unconscious instantiations of objective moral knowledge. For example, practical reasoning could presumably be embedded in spontaneous moral reactions and dispositions. So really, a large swathe of our moral behaviour is tied into the cognitive output of true, or at least truth-apt, moral beliefs. On this view, moral psychology is constituted in such a way as to interpret natural moral properties in the world. This type of account would supply both an internalist and externalist explanation of objective moral knowledge and motivation. The moral claims that lay people make, then, are likely to be partly grounded in the objective moral authority of just this kind of processs. Of course, if you’re a hard core semantic realist or non-cognitivist you won’t consider any these claims to have any legitimacy. This, however, seem to me to be a failure of a naïve brand of philosophical skepticism, not an innate incapacity to form morally objective rational convictions. Well, hopefully this digression addresses some part of your problem with Sam Harris.
“As for tone, you seriously believe *I’m* the one being flippant/arrogant? Pot, I really think you should meet kettle.”
15. I have to say, your interpretation of your own behavior in these comments is abysmal. I can’t be held responsible if you can’t tell the difference between eristic and dialectical argument. Perhaps my replies were too blunt for your taste, but I never resorted to ridicule or baseless ad hominems to make my points. There’s a fine line to be respected in an argument. And I’m afraid you crossed that line with this groundless tirade of yours. You seem to admit as much in your last comment in this thread. So forgive me if I lack sympathy for your attacks and feel the need to reciprocate in kind.
“I don’t remember anyone saying anything “invalidates” moral experience. As for objective moral knowledge, it depends on what you mean by that. If you think that amounts to providing better reasons for action than other people offer in the way our everyday moral discourse aspires,(in the sense of justification) then I would say you should have provided a candidate for what would count as an overriding reason for action, even for someone that rejects your moral reasons.”
16. If it wasn’t clear, I was implying that the semantic version of the fact-value/is-ought distinction doesn’t invalidate the *objective character* of moral experience. I’ve explained my view of moral knowledge in (14), so I’ll provide a brief account of overriding normative reasons in this section. From a neo-Aristotelian perspective, there are two senses to the evaluative sense of “goodness.” First, the “natural good” derives its evaluative status from the well-functioning of human nature (or the intrinsic nature of organisms) as such, and; (2) The “practical good” derives its evaluative status from practical reasoning and genuine human creativity. Both senses of the good can be understood in terms of their relative or absolute aspect. The relative good is qualified by its relation to final ends or the absolute Good taken in its natural of practical sense.
17. So, for example, the “relative-natural” good for a human being is what is essential for his or her continued functioning as an organism (i.e., intellectual and moral agency or virtuosity). The relative-natural good for humanity is what is essential for its continued functioning as a social collective. In both the particular and general sense of the relative-natural good, then, there is an implicit aim in the direction of the absolute or final sense of the Good. The “final-natural” Good of a human being is the sum total of flourishing in a complete life. The final-natural Good of humanity, however, is an indefinable abstraction without terminus. I’d be ready to characterize Sam Harris’ position in this final-natural sense of the Good.
18. Now, the practical good is far more complicated since it introduces an indedinite number of artificial virtues and creative goods. The “relative-practical” good for an individual is what is valued for the sake one’s practical projects and particular circumstances (e.g., social roles, civic duties, leisure activities, etc.). The relative-practical good for society is what is deemed collectively valuable by rational consensus (e.g., constitutional privileges, social institutions, scientific progress, etc.). So, in a similar way as the natural good, the practical good, in both its particular and general sense, is aimed in the direction of an absolute or final end. The “final-practical” good for an individual is what practical reason prescribes as ultimately worth striving for in a complete life. The final-practical good for a society is determined through shared public reasoning concerning the absolute ideals worth striving for in a political culture.
19. The evaluative sense of normativity, what provides us with overriding reasons for action, is encapsulated under these different senses of the good. First, the natural good is superordinate to the practical good. Natural goods are innate, while practical goods are acquired. What is acquired cannot exist prior to what is natural. Moreover, what is acquired is more variable than what is naturally given. Therefore, what is natural is essentially good, in the soft sense of essentialism. Hence, the natural good is a universal law of nature or general purpose axiom. I think this confers the natural good with normative authority over the practical good. Additionally, the natural good is composed by its own internal ordering of normative value. Intellectual functioning could be said to have priority over moral functioning, for example. Although this might be an arbitrary distinction, I think a case can be made about the relative importance of different functions or virtues. Under my current view, practical reason is the highest virtue since it coordinates and maintains the activity of all the other functions. A similar normative scheme could be drawn up for the practical good as well. The relative-practical good would be defined a posteriori based on the circumstances of different individuals. The final-practical good would be better served by a coherentist epistemology. At any rate, I’ve said enough on this particular topic, and so I’ll move on.
“And as for your counsel to not take your words in a combative way, this is like on Christmas Vacation when Clark was having trouble with the Christmas lights. Seeing his son’s discouragement, Clark’s dad said “If you need any help son, come get me, I’ll be upstairs asleep.” I mean, is he really offering help, or just giving a rhetorical gesture toward helpfulness? OK, so don’t take what you say in a combative way. No problem. As for not taking what you say in a more maddening way, in general, I can’t make any promises.”
20. Look, you can interpret or misinterpret my intentions to your hearts content. The only reason I’ve discussed these ideas is because I find it intrinsically rewarding to do so. I take no enjoyment in aimless criticism or destructive rhetoric. Either you can take me at my word and have a civilized conversation, or you can resort to name-calling and other parlor tricks and let the conversation degenerate. In any event, I’ve said everything I needed to say on these issues. In the future, if there is a future, I’d suggest holding back before you go guns-blazing into an argument with the kind of baseless accusations you’ve displayed in this thread. And for what it’s worth, if this post comes off as excessively critical or mean-spirited, you can be sure that it’s merely a reactionary maneuver on my part. I’d soften it if I could, but frankly, I’m not sure where to start so, I’ll leave this reply as it is. Hopefully, we can wash our hands of this discussion and act on more cordial terms in the future. And so with that, I’m relieved too. Wonderful.
Tom,
My last post actually expressed regret at the intemperate comments in my last few posts. That you’ve decided to skip over that and go back to the pissy part of the conversation is disappointing, but so be it.
I can’t deal with the book you’ve just written, so suffice it to say, picking off a few of your points:
As for mangling your arguments, I can only deal with what you’ve said. It’s your job to say stuff, and mine to respond. My issue this whole time is that you actually didn’t demarcate your position on the is/ought issue from the beginning, but talked in very sweeping ways (starting with your original challenge “what is it you people find so compelling about the is/ought distinction?”) about what the entire issue was about. When I tried to introduce an aspect of the issue, the fact/value distinction (a mere distinction, mind you, involving the epistemological terms “fact” “is” etc) you said that you do entertain that there’s some superfluous side issue. And you continue to hold that perhaps I am right about something, but only something very “anemic” or “superfluous.”
So, to summarize, you speak of the whole issue as if it’s one thing. So my *only* argumentative responsibility is to motivate concern for one shade of the issue that stands and is relevant to the string of posts on this blog dealing with the issue as it relates to Sam Harris. You allowed my shade of the issue but only as a “superfluous” possibility.
I can’t expected to carry on normally when you show up doing a cannon ball into the conversation challenging anyone and everyone to justify the is/ought distinction, then dismiss as superfluous and anemic attempts to do so, because you can tell the actually important historical issues.
I think next time you want to cannon ball into the conversation on a philosophy blog, you should pause to realize that there may be people that believe that the big historical issue you’re concerned about not only has spawned more subtle shades, but that the reason that the subtle shades have emerged is in part due to re-thinking key parts of the *original* literature (that means we believe we have a better handle on the issues that were going on *even then* not just that we’ve pulled a side issue out of our butts). And this subtle shade *may still* be relevant to the issue that’s being discussed in the post that prompts the comment section.
But we never got that far, and I know why. As for me being on call to give arguments, well, when I talk to people about interesting topics, I expect that we’ll ask each other questions, we’ll clarify our stances around the edges, and responsibly wrap our minds around what’s going on, keeping track of the issue and how it got started. I suppose you want to use a sort of high school debate dialectic, (I guess you can get credit for rising above eristic argument, but just barely) arguing your stance back and forth without being careful about what the issue was about at the beginning so as to put parameters around the conversation. After an extended period of time with the interlocutors throwing rhetorical haymakers at the issue, one side’s argument prevails or is meshed with the other side. Spare me.
Before we fly off half-cocked, it’s important to non-argumentatively get one’s bearings by deciding what prompted the topic in the first place, and ask questions of one another and get clear on what’s being said. You showed up making very sweeping demands and proclamations.
Now, even Wes decided to intervene on behalf of decent philosophical conversation, and that apparently gassed you up a little bit, because then you started going on about how I wasn’t more sophisticated, but instead there was a real disagreement (I admit that I lectured Anthony Draper, but not you, at least not then). But see, the only reason I even hinted around at my frustration before that is that you didn’t demonstrate that you understood anything I was getting at in my attempts to usher in the semantic/epistemological side of the argument. You kept plugging away at your preoccupation with your side of the issue (again, I can’t judge your insides, only what you said). But see, it’s not my job to redeem the way you came out (I find it completely ironic that *you* warn *me* about coming out with “guns blazing”). And it’s not my job to demonstrate my familiarity with all the thinkers you listed. This isn’t a confessional where we all just toss around our feelings about the issue, particularly if you start with very bold propositions about what the issue is and isn’t about, challenging anyone around to demonstrate the mere distinction between is and ought, completely unhinged from the topic in the post. So, you see, it’s not on me to patiently pat you on the head about your neat insights that you’re preoccupied with, it’s your job to demonstrate that your suspicions of all aspects of the is/ought distinction are misguided or unimportant (and if you don’t suspect all aspect, then you should start out so sweeping). When I started to outline the issue for you, you *kept right on* talking about your previous preoccupation. I suppose at that point I suppose you expect me to beg you to consider (which I practically did) that something else might be going on. But see, you have to at first ACT like you’re involved in the listening part of the discussion. If you expect me to provide arguments elaborating on my issues, saying you wholeheartedly believe the issue is what *you’ve* *already said it’s about* is not going to engender more collegial conversation.
Now,
For the record, it might just be that the sense of goodness that we’re discussing relates back to what Sam Harris hopes to accomplish with his book, whether he succeeds, whether he succeeds on his own terms, etc. But again this is a part of the discussion that we didn’t get to, because as soon as I would bring up another shade of the issue, you would talk *as if* you understood it by reemphasizing your commitment to your preoccupation with the issue. I actually imagine that Wes’ intervention was mostly aimed at Anthony Draper, whose contribution was as crude as a bull in a china shop, but that he didn’t single him out leads me to believe that your dialectical and borderline off-topic argumentative methods were frustrating to not only me.
Imagine a cloth thread going back to the post on this blog, and to your opening comments, and to your first few treatments of the issue. Now, the issue has parameters because of that origin. The parameters mean that it’s on me only to motivate sympathy for the shade that’s merely important enough to count as relevant to Sam Harris’ thesis. You dismissed it, and when you think you acknowledged it, you didn’t, but merely reemphasized your own preoccupation. At no point did you say, “Oh OK, I see that I overshot my target there at the beginning. So, let me back up and say there is a large issue that I do have a strong view on.” Had you done that, things would have sailed much more smoothly. But you charged ahead. So, I am emphatic about how this conversation has gone, even if you’re John McDowell’s effin mentor. Wes’ intervention doesn’t disprove your views, and I know you’re very very preoccupied with getting the bottom of the big huge topic and not particularly interested in my pesky side topics. But I only put forward his intervention as further evidence, since he explicitly excepted my contributions from correction (he may feel differently after all this) that it was about how the conversation was going, rather than you being wrong about the particular piece of the issue you were and are convinced on.
The blog post started and ended in reference to Sam Harris, and even linked to the Sam Harris is/ought issue. So while the happiness thrust of the post has been swept aside, perhaps unfortunately, I think I’ve been paying sufficiently close attention to watching the thread of the conversation, tracing it back both to comments that prompted responses, and to the original post that prompted the entire comment section.
As for your Johnny come lately sophisticated discussion of the issue, I suppose I should thank you for sharing your reasons with me. Suffice it to say, though, that there’s more beyond the semantic issue you cite. There’s also an issue how we talk in everyday contexts, and whether there’s a split between the kinds of reasons we give. I suggest you read, “Was Moore a Moorean” by Jamie Drier, and “The Open Question as a Linguistic Test” by Frank Snare.” After that, read Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape (actually I do assume you already have, but you may want to skim again) realizing the book was written for laypeople (therefore what our common moral language aspires to is very important) and was accompanied by the bravado of his media tour and introduction to the book. Then think about whether Sam Harris side steps the most robust ways our moral language functions without telling us he was doing it (by, say, either explicitly admitting that our moral realism needs to be less robust than many hope for and that certain shades of moral relativism are actually live options even with our latest science). And think about whether the whole issue gives Harris so little trouble that he’s warranted in dismissing it as a “verbal trap” in his introduction.
Now, you say that the is/ought, fact/value distinction has never been demonstrated conclusively but that’s AFTER you acknowledge the shades of it and that you may not be up on the latest work on it. But see that’s backwards. What you should want to do is to get very clear on the issue and its shades first, before you brashly talk about the big huge issue that someone in Barnes and Noble would know of. Now, the shade may not interest you, but it does interest many people who have studied the issue closely, and the claim on the table that is relevant to the blog post is that this sense gives Sam Harris more trouble than he imagines in his latest book.
Moving on from dismissing the concerns I bring up as “superfluous” and “anemic” you’ve said,
“Tom,
My last post actually expressed regret at the intemperate comments in my last few posts. That you’ve decided to skip over that and go back to the pissy part of the conversation is disappointing, but so be it.
I can’t deal with the book you’ve just written, so suffice it to say, picking off a few of your points:
As for mangling your arguments, I can only deal with what you’ve said. It’s your job to say stuff, and mine to respond. My issue this whole time is that you actually didn’t demarcate your position on the is/ought issue from the beginning, but talked in very sweeping ways (starting with your original challenge “what is it you people find so compelling about the is/ought distinction?”) about what the entire issue was about. When I tried to introduce an aspect of the issue, the fact/value distinction (a mere distinction, mind you, involving the epistemological terms “fact” “is” etc) you said that you do entertain that there’s some superfluous side issue. And you continue to hold that perhaps I am right about something, but only something very “anemic” or “superfluous.”
So, to summarize, you speak of the whole issue as if it’s one thing. So my *only* argumentative responsibility is to motivate concern for one shade of the issue that stands and is relevant to the string of posts on this blog dealing with the issue as it relates to Sam Harris. You allowed my shade of the issue but only as a “superfluous” possibility.
I can’t expected to carry on normally when you show up doing a cannon ball into the conversation challenging anyone and everyone to justify the is/ought distinction, then dismiss as superfluous and anemic attempts to do so, because you can tell the actually important historical issues.
I think next time you want to cannon ball into the conversation on a philosophy blog, you should pause to realize that there may be people that believe that the big historical issue you’re concerned about not only has spawned more subtle shades, but that the reason that the subtle shades have emerged is in part due to re-thinking key parts of the *original* literature. And this subtle shade *may still* be relevant to the issue that’s being discussed in the post that prompts the comment section.
But we never got that far, and I know why. As for me being on call to give reasons, well, when I talk to people about interesting topics, I expect that we’ll ask each other questions, we’ll clarify our stances around the edges, and responsibly wrap our minds around what’s going on, keeping track of the issue and how it got started. I suppose you want to use a sort of high school debate dialectic, arguing your stance back and forth without being careful about what the issue was about at the beginning so as to put parameters around the conversation. After an extended period of time with the interlocutors throwing rhetorical haymakers at the issue, one side’s argument prevails or is meshed with the other side. Spare me.
Before we fly off half-cocked, it’s important to non-argumentatively gne’s bearings by deciding what prompted the topic in the first place, and ask questions of one another and get clear on what’s being said. You showed up making very sweeping demands and proclamations.
Now, even Wes decided to intervene on behalf of decent philosophical conversation, and that apparently gassed you up a little bit, because then you started going on about how I wasn’t more sophisticated, but instead there was a real disagreement. But see, the only reason I even hinted around at that before is that you didn’t demonstrate that you understood anything I was getting at in my attempts to usher in the semantic/epistemological side of the argument. You kept plugging away at your preoccupation with your side of the issue (again, I can’t judge your insides, only what you said). But see, it’s not my job to redeem the way you came out (I find it completely ironic that *you* warn *me* about coming out with “guns blazing”). And it’s not my job to demonstrate my familiarity with all the thinkers you listed. This isn’t a confessional where we all just toss around our feelings about the issue, particularly if you start with very bold propositions about what the issue is and isn’t about, challenging anyone around to demonstrate the mere distinction between is and ought. So, you see, it’s not on me to patiently pat you on the head about your neat insights that you’re preoccupied with, it’s your job to demonstrate that your suspicions of all aspects of the is/ought distinction are misguided or unimportant. When I started to outline the issue for you, you *kept right on* talking about your previous preoccupation. I suppose at that point I suppose you expect me to beg you to consider (which I practically did) that something else might be going on and for you to consider it. But see, you have to at first even ACT like you’re involved in the listening part of the discussion. If you expect me to provide arguments elaborating on my issues, saying you wholeheartedly believe the issue is what *you’ve* *already said it’s about* is not going to engender more collegial conversation.
Now,
For the record, it might just be that the sense of goodness that we’re discussing relates back to what Sam Harris hopes to accomplish with his book, whether he succeeds, whether he succeeds on his own terms, etc. But again this is a part of the discussion that we didn’t get to, because as soon as I would bring up another shade of the issue, you would talk *as if* you understood it by reemphasizing your commitment to your preoccupation with the issue. I actually imagine that Wes’ intervention was mostly aimed at Anthony Draper, whose contribution was as crude as a bull in a china shop, but that he didn’t single him out leads me to believe that your dialectical methods were frustrating to not only me.
Imagine a thread going back to the post on this blog, and to your opening comments, and to your first few treatments of the issue. Now, the issue has parameters because of that origin. The parameters mean that it’s on me only to motivate sympathy for the shade that important enough to count as relevant to Sam Harris’ thesis. You dismissed it, and when you think you acknowledged it, you didn’t, but merely reemphasized your own preoccupation. At no point did you say, “Oh OK, I see that I overshot my target there at the beginning. So, let me back up and say there is a large issue that I do have a strong view on.” Had you done that, things would have sailed much more smoothly. But you charged ahead. So, I am emphatic about this conversation has gone, even if you’re John McDowell’s mentor. Wes’ intervention doesn’t disprove your views, and I know you’re very very preoccupied with getting the bottom of the big huge history of the matter. But I only put forward his intervention as further evidence, since he explicitly excepted my contributions from correction (he may feel differently after all this) that it was about how the conversation was going, rather than you being wrong about the particular piece of the issue you’re convinced on.
The blog post started and ended in reference to Sam Harris, and even linked to the Sam Harris is/ought issue. So while the happiness thrust of the post has been swept aside, perhaps unfortunately, I think I’ve been paying sufficiently close attention to watching the thread of the conversation, tracing it back both to comments that prompted responses, and to the original post that prompted the entire comment section.
As for your Johnny come lately sophisticated discussion of the issue, I suppose I should thank you for sharing your reasons with me. Suffice it to say, though, that there’s more beyond the semantic issue you cite. There’s also an issue how we talk in everyday contexts, and whether there’s a split between the kinds of reasons we give. I suggest you read, “Was Moore a Moorean” by Jamie Drier, and “The Open Question as a Linguistic Test” by Frank Snare.” After that, read Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape (actually I do assume you already have, but you may want to skim again) realizing the book was written for laypeople (therefore what our common moral language aspires to is very important). Then think about whether Sam Harris side steps the most robust ways our moral language functions without telling us he was doing it (by, say, either explicitly admitting that our moral realism needs to be less robust than many hope for and that certain shades of moral relativism are actually live options even with our latest science). And think about whether the whole issue gives Harris so little trouble that he’s warranted in dismissing it as a “verbal trap” in his introduction.
Now, you say that the is/ought, fact/value distinction has never been demonstrated conclusively but that’s AFTER you acknowledge the shades of it and that you may not be up on the latest work on it. But see that’s backwards. What you should want to do is to get very clear on the issue and its shades first, before you brashly talk about the big huge issue that someone in Barnes and Noble would know of. Now, the shade may not interest you, but it does interest many people who have studied the issue closely, and the claim on the table that is relevant to the blog post is that this sense gives Sam Harris more trouble than he imagines in his latest book.
Moving on from dismissing it as “superfluous” and “anemic” you’ve said,
“Tom,
My last post actually expressed regret at the intemperate comments in my last few posts. That you’ve decided to skip over that and go back to the pissy part of the conversation is disappointing, but so be it.
I can’t deal with the book you’ve just written, so suffice it to say, picking off a few of your points:
As for mangling your arguments, I can only deal with what you’ve said. It’s your job to say stuff, and mine to respond. My issue this whole time is that you actually didn’t demarcate your position on the is/ought issue from the beginning, but talked in very sweeping ways (starting with your original challenge “what is it you people find so compelling about the is/ought distinction?”) about what the entire issue was about. When I tried to introduce an aspect of the issue, the fact/value distinction (a mere distinction, mind you, involving the epistemological terms “fact” “is” etc) you said that you do entertain that there’s some superfluous side issue. And you continue to hold that perhaps I am right about something, but only something very “anemic” or “superfluous.”
So, to summarize, you speak of the whole issue as if it’s one thing. So my *only* argumentative responsibility is to motivate concern for one shade of the issue that stands and is relevant to the string of posts on this blog dealing with the issue as it relates to Sam Harris. You allowed my shade of the issue but only as a “superfluous” possibility.
I can’t expected to carry on normally when you show up doing a cannon ball into the conversation challenging anyone and everyone to justify the is/ought distinction, then dismiss as superfluous and anemic attempts to do so, because you can tell the actually important historical issues.
I think next time you want to cannon ball into the conversation on a philosophy blog, you should pause to realize that there may be people that believe that the big historical issue you’re concerned about not only has spawned more subtle shades, but that the reason that the subtle shades have emerged is in part due to re-thinking key parts of the *original* literature. And this subtle shade *may still* be relevant to the issue that’s being discussed in the post that prompts the comment section.
But we never got that far, and I know why. As for me being on call to give reasons, well, when I talk to people about interesting topics, I expect that we’ll ask each other questions, we’ll clarify our stances around the edges, and responsibly wrap our minds around what’s going on, keeping track of the issue and how it got started. I suppose you want to use a sort of high school debate dialectic, arguing your stance back and forth without being careful about what the issue was about at the beginning so as to put parameters around the conversation. After an extended period of time with the interlocutors throwing rhetorical haymakers at the issue, one side’s argument prevails or is meshed with the other side. Spare me.
Before we fly off half-cocked, it’s important to non-argumentatively gne’s bearings by deciding what prompted the topic in the first place, and ask questions of one another and get clear on what’s being said. You showed up making very sweeping demands and proclamations.
Now, even Wes decided to intervene on behalf of decent philosophical conversation, and that apparently gassed you up a little bit, because then you started going on about how I wasn’t more sophisticated, but instead there was a real disagreement. But see, the only reason I even hinted around at that before is that you didn’t demonstrate that you understood anything I was getting at in my attempts to usher in the semantic/epistemological side of the argument. You kept plugging away at your preoccupation with your side of the issue (again, I can’t judge your insides, only what you said). But see, it’s not my job to redeem the way you came out (I find it completely ironic that *you* warn *me* about coming out with “guns blazing”). And it’s not my job to demonstrate my familiarity with all the thinkers you listed. This isn’t a confessional where we all just toss around our feelings about the issue, particularly if you start with very bold propositions about what the issue is and isn’t about, challenging anyone around to demonstrate the mere distinction between is and ought. So, you see, it’s not on me to patiently pat you on the head about your neat insights that you’re preoccupied with, it’s your job to demonstrate that your suspicions of all aspects of the is/ought distinction are misguided or unimportant. When I started to outline the issue for you, you *kept right on* talking about your previous preoccupation. I suppose at that point I suppose you expect me to beg you to consider (which I practically did) that something else might be going on and for you to consider it. But see, you have to at first even ACT like you’re involved in the listening part of the discussion. If you expect me to provide arguments elaborating on my issues, saying you wholeheartedly believe the issue is what *you’ve* *already said it’s about* is not going to engender more collegial conversation.
Now,
For the record, it might just be that the sense of goodness that we’re discussing relates back to what Sam Harris hopes to accomplish with his book, whether he succeeds, whether he succeeds on his own terms, etc. But again this is a part of the discussion that we didn’t get to, because as soon as I would bring up another shade of the issue, you would talk *as if* you understood it by reemphasizing your commitment to your preoccupation with the issue. I actually imagine that Wes’ intervention was mostly aimed at Anthony Draper, whose contribution was as crude as a bull in a china shop, but that he didn’t single him out leads me to believe that your dialectical methods were frustrating to not only me.
Imagine a thread going back to the post on this blog, and to your opening comments, and to your first few treatments of the issue. Now, the issue has parameters because of that origin. The parameters mean that it’s on me only to motivate sympathy for the shade that important enough to count as relevant to Sam Harris’ thesis. You dismissed it, and when you think you acknowledged it, you didn’t, but merely reemphasized your own preoccupation. At no point did you say, “Oh OK, I see that I overshot my target there at the beginning. So, let me back up and say there is a large issue that I do have a strong view on.” Had you done that, things would have sailed much more smoothly. But you charged ahead. So, I am emphatic about this conversation has gone, even if you’re John McDowell’s mentor. Wes’ intervention doesn’t disprove your views, and I know you’re very very preoccupied with getting the bottom of the big huge history of the matter. But I only put forward his intervention as further evidence, since he explicitly excepted my contributions from correction (he may feel differently after all this) that it was about how the conversation was going, rather than you being wrong about the particular piece of the issue you’re convinced on.
The blog post started and ended in reference to Sam Harris, and even linked to the Sam Harris is/ought issue. So while the happiness thrust of the post has been swept aside, perhaps unfortunately, I think I’ve been paying sufficiently close attention to watching the thread of the conversation, tracing it back both to comments that prompted responses, and to the original post that prompted the entire comment section.
As for your Johnny come lately sophisticated discussion of the issue, I suppose I should thank you for sharing your reasons with me. Suffice it to say, though, that there’s more beyond the semantic issue you cite. There’s also an issue how we talk in everyday contexts, and whether there’s a split between the kinds of reasons we give. I suggest you read, “Was Moore a Moorean” by Jamie Drier, and “The Open Question as a Linguistic Test” by Frank Snare.” After that, read Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape (actually I do assume you already have, but you may want to skim again) realizing the book was written for laypeople (therefore what our common moral language aspires to is very important). Then think about whether Sam Harris side steps the most robust ways our moral language functions without telling us he was doing it (by, say, either explicitly admitting that our moral realism needs to be less robust than many hope for and that certain shades of moral relativism are actually live options even with our latest science). And think about whether the whole issue gives Harris so little trouble that he’s warranted in dismissing it as a “verbal trap” in his introduction.
Now, you say that the is/ought, fact/value distinction has never been demonstrated conclusively but that’s AFTER you acknowledge the shades of it and that you may not be up on the latest work on it. But see that’s backwards. What you should want to do is to get very clear on the issue and its shades first, before you brashly talk about the big huge issue that someone in Barnes and Noble would know of. Now, the shade may not interest you, but it does interest many people who have studied the issue closely, and the claim on the table that is relevant to the blog post is that this sense gives Sam Harris more trouble than he imagines in his latest book.
Moving on from dismissing it as “superfluous” and “anemic” you’ve said,
“Let me see if I’ve got this right then. A group of popular analytic philosophers come along and presents us with a seemingly innocuous logical and semantic claim. We say, ‘No problem, Mr. Analytic Philosopher, that sounds reasonable enough. We sure do have trouble capturing these enormously complex human values in language…’ But, this concession isn’t enough for our crafty interlocutor. Now he goes on to expand the weak sense of his logical and semantic thesis into the strong sense of a categorical disjunction. Great, the stage is now set to claim the same implications as the onlogical argument. If it’s not clear to you, what’s going on here is intellectual obfuscation; It’s a veiled attempt to insulate clearly indefensible moral values from rational criticism. At the moment, I’m undecide whether this is politically motivated or not, but it’s definitely not good philosophy. Alright, fine, so I take it you’re still not convinced with my portrayal of the issues. No problem, I’ll provide a more systematic critique as I go on. ”
So this is the dialectic, eh? Again, spare me. You’re undecided on whether a perfectly straight-forward argument is “politically motivated?” Then why bring it up? Consider that question rhetorical.
Look, I’m sorry some analytic people were mean to you at some conference or something, but I can’t be held responsible for that. It might also be true that as the issue relates to Sam Harris’ thesis and as that thesis relates to the way this blog has treated it (including in the blog post that prompted every response in this comment section) is unrelated to how upset you are at analytic philosophy and skepticism and what not.
And admittedly, we would have gone further down the road, and I can’t promise you would have liked the view. But you took a short cut and told me not to go down that road, that it only lead to a superfluous dead end. Now that you grace me with your impressions of the view of that road, I’m supposed to believe you’ve got the whole analytic/semantic/epistemological issues figured out.
This not how conversation goes between equal peers, whether you want to call that dialectic, eristic, or whatever.
Now, Sam Harris and his book and what he says about what he hoped to accomplish with his book and whether this is consistent with his whole movement and how is/ought relates to all that is what’s important here. It’s not that the is/ought issue needs to be proven, it’s that Sam Harris needs to demonstrate his thesis. Many of us believe moral reasons are more aspirational than other kinds of reasons. If a sufficiently large portion of laypeople think the same thing, even implicitly, then Harris has given the subject of “morality” short shrift indeed. This is not merely about philosophy in general. Had we started out in neutral conversational territory about philosophy in general, we could have had a different conversation. One less, “dialectic.” But we did have a topic we should have been circling around to, and I think you never fully appreciated that.
Darn it all. A copy and paste effort or two went wrong. Back to my original view on editing. Here’s the post as it should be read.. Whatever, I may miss a paragraph or two.. I really don’t even care anymore. But there’s the gist:
Tom,
My last post actually expressed regret at the intemperate comments in my last few posts. That you’ve decided to skip over that and go back to the pissy part of the conversation is disappointing, but so be it.
I can’t deal with the book you’ve just written, so suffice it to say, picking off a few of your points:
As for mangling your arguments, I can only deal with what you’ve said. It’s your job to say stuff, and mine to respond. My issue this whole time is that you actually didn’t demarcate your position on the is/ought issue from the beginning, but talked in very sweeping ways (starting with your original challenge “what is it you people find so compelling about the is/ought distinction?”) about what the entire issue was about. When I tried to introduce an aspect of the issue, the fact/value distinction (a mere distinction, mind you, involving the epistemological terms “fact” “is” etc) you said that you do entertain that there’s some superfluous side issue. And you continue to hold that perhaps I am right about something, but only something very “anemic” or “superfluous.”
So, to summarize, you speak of the whole issue as if it’s one thing. So my *only* argumentative responsibility is to motivate concern for one shade of the issue that stands and is relevant to the string of posts on this blog dealing with the issue as it relates to Sam Harris. You allowed my shade of the issue but only as a “superfluous” possibility.
I can’t expected to carry on normally when you show up doing a cannon ball into the conversation challenging anyone and everyone to justify the is/ought distinction, then dismiss as superfluous and anemic attempts to do so, because you can tell the actually important historical issues.
I think next time you want to cannon ball into the conversation on a philosophy blog, you should pause to realize that there may be people that believe that the big historical issue you’re concerned about not only has spawned more subtle shades, but that the reason that the subtle shades have emerged is in part due to re-thinking key parts of the *original* literature (that means we believe we have a better handle on the issues that were going on *even then* not just that we’ve pulled a side issue out of our butts). And this subtle shade *may still* be relevant to the issue that’s being discussed in the post that prompts the comment section.
But we never got that far, and I know why. As for me being on call to give arguments, well, when I talk to people about interesting topics, I expect that we’ll ask each other questions, we’ll clarify our stances around the edges, and responsibly wrap our minds around what’s going on, keeping track of the issue and how it got started. I suppose you want to use a sort of high school debate dialectic, (I guess you can get credit for rising above eristic argument, but just barely) arguing your stance back and forth without being careful about what the issue was about at the beginning so as to put parameters around the conversation. After an extended period of time with the interlocutors throwing rhetorical haymakers at the issue, one side’s argument prevails or is meshed with the other side. Spare me.
Before we fly off half-cocked, it’s important to non-argumentatively get one’s bearings by deciding what prompted the topic in the first place, and ask questions of one another and get clear on what’s being said. You showed up making very sweeping demands and proclamations.
Now, even Wes decided to intervene on behalf of decent philosophical conversation, and that apparently gassed you up a little bit, because then you started going on about how I wasn’t more sophisticated, but instead there was a real disagreement (I admit that I lectured Anthony Draper, but not you, at least not then). But see, the only reason I even hinted around at my frustration before that is that you didn’t demonstrate that you understood anything I was getting at in my attempts to usher in the semantic/epistemological side of the argument. You kept plugging away at your preoccupation with your side of the issue (again, I can’t judge your insides, only what you said). But see, it’s not my job to redeem the way you came out (I find it completely ironic that *you* warn *me* about coming out with “guns blazing”). And it’s not my job to demonstrate my familiarity with all the thinkers you listed. This isn’t a confessional where we all just toss around our feelings about the issue, particularly if you start with very bold propositions about what the issue is and isn’t about, challenging anyone around to demonstrate the mere distinction between is and ought, completely unhinged from the topic in the post. So, you see, it’s not on me to patiently pat you on the head about your neat insights that you’re preoccupied with, it’s your job to demonstrate that your suspicions of all aspects of the is/ought distinction are misguided or unimportant (and if you don’t suspect all aspect, then you should start out so sweeping). When I started to outline the issue for you, you *kept right on* talking about your previous preoccupation. I suppose at that point I suppose you expect me to beg you to consider (which I practically did) that something else might be going on. But see, you have to at first ACT like you’re involved in the listening part of the discussion. If you expect me to provide arguments elaborating on my issues, saying you wholeheartedly believe the issue is what *you’ve* *already said it’s about* is not going to engender more collegial conversation.
Now,
For the record, it might just be that the sense of goodness that we’re discussing relates back to what Sam Harris hopes to accomplish with his book, whether he succeeds, whether he succeeds on his own terms, etc. But again this is a part of the discussion that we didn’t get to, because as soon as I would bring up another shade of the issue, you would talk *as if* you understood it by reemphasizing your commitment to your preoccupation with the issue. I actually imagine that Wes’ intervention was mostly aimed at Anthony Draper, whose contribution was as crude as a bull in a china shop, but that he didn’t single him out leads me to believe that your dialectical and borderline off-topic argumentative methods were frustrating to not only me.
Imagine a cloth thread going back to the post on this blog, and to your opening comments, and to your first few treatments of the issue. Now, the issue has parameters because of that origin. The parameters mean that it’s on me only to motivate sympathy for the shade that’s merely important enough to count as relevant to Sam Harris’ thesis. You dismissed it, and when you think you acknowledged it, you didn’t, but merely reemphasized your own preoccupation. At no point did you say, “Oh OK, I see that I overshot my target there at the beginning. So, let me back up and say there is a large issue that I do have a strong view on.” Had you done that, things would have sailed much more smoothly. But you charged ahead. So, I am emphatic about how this conversation has gone, even if you’re John McDowell’s effin mentor. Wes’ intervention doesn’t disprove your views, and I know you’re very very preoccupied with getting the bottom of the big huge topic and not particularly interested in my pesky side topics. But I only put forward his intervention as further evidence, since he explicitly excepted my contributions from correction (he may feel differently after all this) that it was about how the conversation was going, rather than you being wrong about the particular piece of the issue you were and are convinced on.
The blog post started and ended in reference to Sam Harris, and even linked to the Sam Harris is/ought issue. So while the happiness thrust of the post has been swept aside, perhaps unfortunately, I think I’ve been paying sufficiently close attention to watching the thread of the conversation, tracing it back both to comments that prompted responses, and to the original post that prompted the entire comment section.
As for your Johnny come lately sophisticated discussion of the issue, I suppose I should thank you for sharing your reasons with me. Suffice it to say, though, that there’s more beyond the semantic issue you cite. There’s also an issue how we talk in everyday contexts, and whether there’s a split between the kinds of reasons we give. I suggest you read, “Was Moore a Moorean” by Jamie Drier, and “The Open Question as a Linguistic Test” by Frank Snare.” After that, read Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape (actually I do assume you already have, but you may want to skim again) realizing the book was written for laypeople (therefore what our common moral language aspires to is very important) and was accompanied by the bravado of his media tour and introduction to the book. Then think about whether Sam Harris side steps the most robust ways our moral language functions without telling us he was doing it (by, say, either explicitly admitting that our moral realism needs to be less robust than many hope for and that certain shades of moral relativism are actually live options even with our latest science). And think about whether the whole issue gives Harris so little trouble that he’s warranted in dismissing it as a “verbal trap” in his introduction.
Now, you say that the is/ought, fact/value distinction has never been demonstrated conclusively but that’s AFTER you acknowledge the shades of it and that you may not be up on the latest work on it. But see that’s backwards. What you should want to do is to get very clear on the issue and its shades first, before you brashly talk about the big huge issue that someone in Barnes and Noble would know of. Now, the shade may not interest you, but it does interest many people who have studied the issue closely, and the claim on the table that is relevant to the blog post is that this sense gives Sam Harris more trouble than he imagines in his latest book.
Moving on from dismissing it as “superfluous” and “anemic” you’ve said,
“Let me see if I’ve got this right then. A group of popular analytic philosophers come along and presents us with a seemingly innocuous logical and semantic claim. We say, ‘No problem, Mr. Analytic Philosopher, that sounds reasonable enough. We sure do have trouble capturing these enormously complex human values in language…’ But, this concession isn’t enough for our crafty interlocutor. Now he goes on to expand the weak sense of his logical and semantic thesis into the strong sense of a categorical disjunction. Great, the stage is now set to claim the same implications as the onlogical argument. If it’s not clear to you, what’s going on here is intellectual obfuscation; It’s a veiled attempt to insulate clearly indefensible moral values from rational criticism. At the moment, I’m undecide whether this is politically motivated or not, but it’s definitely not good philosophy. Alright, fine, so I take it you’re still not convinced with my portrayal of the issues. No problem, I’ll provide a more systematic critique as I go on. ”
So this is the dialectic, eh? Again, spare me. You’re undecided on whether a perfectly straight-forward argument is “politically motivated?” Then why bring it up? Consider that question rhetorical.
Look, I’m sorry some analytic people were mean to you at some conference or something, but I can’t be held responsible for that. It might also be true that as the issue relates to Sam Harris’ thesis and as that thesis relates to the way this blog has treated it (including in the blog post that prompted every response in this comment section) is unrelated to how upset you are at analytic philosophy and skepticism and what not.
And admittedly, we would have gone further down the road, and I can’t promise you would have liked the view. But you took a short cut and told me not to go down that road, that it only lead to a superfluous dead end. Now that you grace me with your impressions of the view of that road, I’m supposed to believe you’ve got the whole analytic/semantic/epistemological issues figured out.
This not how conversation goes between equal peers, whether you want to call that dialectic, eristic, or whatever.
Now, Sam Harris and his book and what he says about what he hoped to accomplish with his book and whether this is consistent with his whole movement and how is/ought relates to all that is what’s important here. It’s not that the is/ought issue needs to be proven, it’s that Sam Harris needs to demonstrate his thesis. Many of us believe moral reasons are more aspirational than other kinds of reasons. If a sufficiently large portion of laypeople think the same thing, even implicitly, then Harris has given the subject of “morality” short shrift indeed. This is not merely about philosophy in general. Had we started out in neutral conversational territory about philosophy in general, we could have had a different conversation. One less, “dialectic.” But we did have a topic we should have been circling around to, and I think you never fully appreciated that.
Jay,
I have to hand it you. That’s one finely-crafted post-hoc rationalization of this entire conversation. Well done. After all, you wouldn’t want to lose face in front of your philosophy buddies, now would you? Far be it for me to use my brash tactics and enormous cannon balls to direct you attention to the underlying issues in this debate. I’ll let you tackle all that interesting stuff with your interminable *side issue*. No doubt, Sam Harris and the general public is sleepless thinking through the infinite complexities of Moore’s Open Question argument… I do apologize, I must have forgotten my manners with all that highschool debate training. I meant to say, you’ve captured to issue brilliantly! Thanks Jay, for opening my eyes with your illuminating analysis of a truly important problem…
Tom,
This comment section is a response to a post about the is/ought problem and Sam Harris (among other things which probably got swept aside in the hoopla). As for me being worried about losing face and crafting a post-hoc rationalization, well admittedly this is embarrassing. But on the post-hoc rationalization thing, you obviously don’t believe I’m sincere or perhaps correct in my claim that there was an actual direction provided from the original post and that you set your own parameters as well by demanding an argument on how “you people” could be impressed by “is/ought” (and here you don’t allow that an issue not highly like the one you were preoccupied with could count as being part of the important “is/ought” issue unless you acknowledge that you overreached). On top of it all, you refuse to use Wes’ intervention (and his excepting of my arguments, which he may wish to take back now that this conversation has hit this new low) as evidence of anything related to this dispute, so, I can’t get through your impenetrable wall; I’m not superman.
You were upset because you felt like your view got short shrift. You said so yourself. Well, for future reference, when the topic of conversation is about say, something to do with Marxism, or Republicanism, or Keynesianism, or The Shakers, or The Enlightenment, or what have you, don’t expect that you can just drop down into any of these conversations and say, for example, “The Enlightenment was wrong because the Enlightenment is______, and ______ is wrong. Why are you people impressed with the Enlightenment?”
When you make such a broad claim, the only thing your interlocutors will be charged with is defending one part of the movement you tarnish, and then it will be on you to demonstrate how that’s a trivial part. What will be particularly problematic for you is if that part traces back to the conversation on the particular subtopic you are cannon-balling into. This was not a big, “let’s all get together and discuss the historical is/ought and see what comes out of it.” I know you wanted to use it that way, but it wasn’t. Not only was there a background you cared little about, but you essentially swept all the issues into one pile and challenged anyone to justify anything in the pile. I know you think the pieces I’m defending are silly, but we never even got to talk about that because you were so busy defending your big important passion rather than getting your bearings.
If the background had set the stage you wanted, I would be charged with recognizing or refuting the parts of is/ought that bothers you. But you started with such an amazingly broad brush (in a conversation with parameters you paid no attention to) that it made your job much harder. What I tried to do the entire time is carve out space for a part that wasn’t as crude as the one you were concerned with, and motivate the view that this could trace back to Sam Harris, which is relevant to the original post. But now it appears that I was really up against this attitude the whole time,
“Let me see if I’ve got this right then. A group of popular analytic philosophers come along and presents us with a seemingly innocuous logical and semantic claim. We say, ‘No problem, Mr. Analytic Philosopher, that sounds reasonable enough. We sure do have trouble capturing these enormously complex human values in language…’ But, this concession isn’t enough for our crafty interlocutor. Now he goes on to expand the weak sense of his logical and semantic thesis into the strong sense of a categorical disjunction. Great, the stage is now set to claim the same implications as the onlogical argument. If it’s not clear to you, what’s going on here is intellectual obfuscation; It’s a veiled attempt to insulate clearly indefensible moral values from rational criticism. At the moment, I’m undecide whether this is politically motivated or not, but it’s definitely not good philosophy.”
Now, I have said a thing or two about *you* but I haven’t said anything about Continental Philosophy (I won’t hold it or the dialectic responsible for this conversation). But you, on the other hand, have issues with being dismissed by skeptics and about some insidious Analytic plan. So, whatever. For the record, non-reductive naturalism is a term that in meta-ethics refers to moral ***realists***. They’re not obviously or overtly involved in shielding any moral values from rational criticism, much less indefensible ones. So they must be dupes, if in fact the plan all along is to shield the indefensible (if there’s anyone that could crack such a highly interconnected and complex plan, it would be you, I suppose).
And anyway, even if you could show me that was the plan all along, it wouldn’t matter, mainly because intentions don’t matter and content does. But also because you ought to be able to stop it pretty easily, or at least it can’t be that the distinction the analytic wants to show you is so provisionally reasonable. It ought to be easy to show how it’s unreasonable even provisionally, and if it is that easy, there’s no reason to button down the hatches and cling.
As for the underlying issues in the debate, Wes said he was considering doing a podcast on is/ought, (as a general matter) so at that point your awaited soapbox will arrive. Even then, I would advise you to start by demarcating your first issue modestly , and then move gradually, (perhaps even one step at a time), building up to your more global claims about is/ought and fact/value.
Now, as for this conversation, you believe I was insensitive to what you have decided are the strongest forms of the issue. But see I didn’t show up and say, “Long live the is/ought dichotomy, and woe to all who try to cross these borders!” Rather, you barged on in to a conversation tracing to Sam Harris and challenged anyone to warrant a mere distinction! and started in with the form of argument “The Enlightenment is_____…” Then throughout you were preoccupied with what you’ve deemed most important.
Now, it’s true that I feel silly arguing this long on the internet, and on top of that my actual name is out there while I do this. But this embarrassment is a weird kind of guilt. I mean, you understand I’m sure, the distinction between feeling guilty because someone didn’t deserve your treatment on the one hand, and feeling guilty because you shouldn’t have acted a certain way regardless, on the other. My guilt is the latter kind.
I obviously lack the self-control to not respond to you, so I’m not going to look at this thread again, since my highest order desire is to not engage any further with you. So, you have a wide-open net. But before I take off I should say, That Guy Montag, is you’re reading, sorry I can’t continue, maybe we can pick back up if and when they do a podcast on is/ought. You may very well have schooled me on this round. Sorry you didn’t get the chance.
Now, Tom, I will say that I find my side of the issue more than anemic. But you’ve stated clearly and passionately that you disagree. So when or if that podcast on is/ought comes, we’ve covered this ground. Meaning, it can’t be that the is/ought or fact/value distinction has any important content aside from the content you’ve disagreed strongly with. Or if there is some important content aside from what you’ve dealt with, you’ve got some explaining to do. Suffice it to say for now, I think it has important content, and I think it relates to Sam Harris’ latest venture. You don’t think it has important content (aside from the part you’re preoccupied with defeating) and as far as I could tell couldn’t give a rip about Sam Harris. I actually hope for your sake they do that podcast, so you can talk about how awful the is/ought distinction is about how terrible analytic philosophy is for foisting it on all of us. I know you’ll relish that. Here’s hoping you’ll get the pleasure, if you want it so bad.