This is a chapter from Nathan Nobis’s Ph.D. dissertation Truth in Ethics and Epistemology: A Defense of Normative Realism.

CHAPTER 1: Moral & Epistemic Realisms.

1.1. Introduction.

In this work I defend moral and epistemic “realisms,” according to which there are objective, stance-independent, moral and epistemic facts or properties that make some moral and epistemic judgments literally true and others literally false.[1]

Epistemic realism is, simply put, the thesis that epistemic judgments – e.g., judgments that some belief is epistemically reasonable, or justified, or should be held, and so on – are beliefs (not another, non-representational, state of mind), and that some of these beliefs are true, and made true, because there are epistemic properties and facts. It thus concerns the semantic, metaphysical, psychological, and logical “foundations” of epistemic judgments.

Moral realism is a view on the analogous foundations of ethical judgments; it is, simply put, the analogous thesis that moral judgments are beliefs and that some are true because of stance-independent moral facts and properties: when a moral judgment is true, it is not made true by anyone’s attitude towards that moral proposition; rather it is made true by facts other than anyone’s stance toward it.

I defend moral and epistemic realisms from arguments against them Some of these arguments are against realisms and for views that there are no stance-independent moral or epistemic facts or properties to serve as truth-makers for these kinds of judgments. Other arguments are given to think that such judgments are neither true nor false, and so that moral or epistemic judgments are never literally true.

My defense of these two realisms depends on similarities between moral and epistemic judgments. The crucial similarity is that these two kinds of judgments are sufficiently similar in their features such that an objection to understanding one kind of judgment in a realistic manner is also an objection to understanding the other in a realistic manner. Put another way, my arguments depend on these two kinds of judgments being sufficiently similar so that this claim is true: an objection to understanding one kind of claim realistically is also a plausible, if not equally strong, objection to the other kind.

Critics of moral realisms claim that moral judgments have various specified features and so moral irrealism is true (or likely true). I respond that it is as plausible to think that epistemic judgments also have these features and ask whether we should think that epistemic irrealism is true (or likely true) also, since having these features seems to be the basis for accepting some kind of moral irrealism. I argue that since we should not accept a version of epistemic irrealism, we should not think that moral judgments’ having these features provides good reason to reject moral realism. This, I argue, shows that the standard arguments against moral realism have at least one premise that we should not accept.

In this chapter I make a prima facie case for the similarity of these two kinds of judgments in terms of their semantic, metaphysical, logical, epistemic, and psychological features. This case is developed throughout this work as I examine the particular objections philosophers have given to understanding moral judgments in a realistic manner.

Whether moral realism should be accepted or rejected is a controversial issue. The status of epistemic realism is far less controversial (it is accepted by most moral irrealists), so if it can used to defend moral realism, then moral realism can be defended from assumptions that even most moral irrealists accept. If this can be done, this is surely an ideal basis to defend moral realism from, since it’s generally preferable to defend a view using premises its critics accept. I intend to do just this.

1.2. Epistemic Realism: A Sketch.

Since I use epistemic realism to defend moral realism, I will say more about what epistemic realism is. It is a view on the “foundations” of epistemology and reasoning, although in a sense different from which most epistemologists typically think of in terms of “foundations.” It pertains to the semantic, metaphysical, psychological, and epistemic bases of epistemic judgments. It includes the view there are epistemic propositions and an epistemic “way the world is” that we try to represent in our making epistemic evaluations, and that we sometimes represent this reality successfully. Epistemic realists believe that epistemic judgments are beliefs, i.e., attempts to represent information about the world, or propositional attitudes, and that these beliefs are sometimes true. They also believe that that other epistemic attitudes (e.g., suspending judgment) can be objectively fitting also: it can be true that someone rationally ought to suspend judgment regarding a proposition.

While the foundations of moral judgments have been much explored, these foundations of epistemic judgments are a largely neglected topic. One might think that this neglect is justified because, as a general view on the foundations of epistemic judgments, epistemic realism needs no defense. Many might think this because they think that epistemic realism is obviously true and nearly universally accepted: they might think that nearly everyone believes that epistemic judgments are beliefs that are sometimes true and, when true, true because of stance-independent epistemic facts and properties. They might think that since everyone thinks this, there’s no need to defend the view.

While epistemic realism is nearly universally accepted and few have felt the need to explicitly defend it, some philosophers reject moral realism, which is the analogous claim about the nature of moral judgments. Moral realists think that moral judgments are beliefs that attempt to represent moral reality, that these beliefs are sometimes true, and that they are made true by objective or stance-independent moral properties.

Moral irrealists deny these claims in a number of ways, for a variety of semantic, metaphysical, epistemic and psychological reasons. Some moral irrealists argue that moral judgments aren’t even, strictly speaking, beliefs. On these kinds of views, moral judgments are expressions of emotion, or commands, or some other non-representational mental state that admits neither of truth or falsity. Other moral irrealists argue that moral judgments are beliefs but that they that are never true because there is nothing to make them true; these is no metaphysical foundation for morals. Other moral irrealists argue that there are moral truths but that their truth is not stance-independent, but “relative,” i.e., dependent on factors such as which moral principles are accepted in a community or by the attitudes some contingent being(s) take towards the moral judgments in question. And there are other, subtler, ways to deny moral realism also.

There is some lively debate concerning the status of moral realism, so the issue is deemed worthy of conversation. But epistemic realism is analogous to moral realism: epistemic realists understand the epistemic in ways comparable to how moral realists understand the moral. So if there is debate concerning foundational questions about the nature of moral judgments, then perhaps there should be more debate about the foundational questions about the nature of epistemic judgments. This debate might be especially called for if moral and epistemic judgments share many of the properties which moral irrealists point to in making their cases for moral irrealisms. If moral irrealists argue that since moral judgments are like that, and therefore we should understand them irrealistically, then if epistemic judgments are often like that too, then comparable cases can be made for understanding both kinds of judgments in irrealistic manners.

This is, in fact, how most moral irrealists argue for the positions: they identify features of moral judgments and then argue that these features support an irrealistic understanding, or are better understood on a version of moral irrealism. The motivating thought behind these various arguments for moral irrealism, a thought that is often left unstated, seems to be that any judgment having some specified features should be understood in an irrealistic manner; of course, the exact manner will depend on the particular irrealist theory in question.

Here I present and examine the more commonly arguments for moral-realisms. In the process, I develop a parallel case against epistemic realism. My strategy is to identify the major premises of the more common and historically influential arguments against moral realism. I argue that when moral judgments have these features, epistemic judgments also have these features, or that many epistemic judgments have them to the extent that a variety of moral judgments have them.[2] Thus, many commons reasons given to reject moral realism seem to be comparable reasons to reject epistemic realism.

Moral irrealists claim that moral judgments have some specified feature and that, therefore, they should be understood irrealistically. Sometimes their initial claim about moral judgments having this feature is quite plausible: e.g., as logical positivists argued, moral judgments are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable. If it were true that judgments that are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable are never true, then this might very well be a sound argument for moral irrealism, if were plausible to think that both these premises are true.

Other times, moral irrealists’ claims about what moral judgments are like are highly dubious: e.g., the claim that moral judgments have an essentially motivational component. Any argument based on this premise is doubtful. For these latter kinds of arguments for moral irrealism, I grant the irrealist her controversial and dubious claim, but argue that it’s as plausible to think that epistemic judgments also have this feature that they point to. After either establishing these common features of moral and epistemic judgments (or, in some cases, accepting them for the sake of argument), I argue that premises used in arguments for moral irrealisms have implications for how epistemic judgments should be understood, given these common features.

These premises tend to suggest that epistemic judgments are never true. These include those mentioned above (e.g., concerning what’s epistemically reasonable, or justified, or should be believed), evaluative judgments pertaining to inferences (e.g., what one should believe, given, among other considerations, the other things one believes), as well as “epistemic platitudes” like “justified beliefs are better than unjustified beliefs” and “one ought to believe only what one has good evidence for.”[3] That is, these kinds of claims should be understood not as epistemic propositions that might be believed, or as epistemic facts or descriptions, or as attempts to attribute epistemic properties. Rather, they should be interpreted in some emotivist, expressivist, prescriptivist, error-theoretical, relativistic,[4] or other non-standard way.

Thus, I argue that reasoning parallel to that given in defense of non-realistic meta-ethics often suggests analogous non-realistic meta-epistemologies as well. This parallel has been observed before, but has rarely been developed in great detail. Other philosophers have suggested that parallel cases for and against realisms in ethics and epistemology can be made. For example, after noting some similarities between ethical and epistemic judgments, William Lycan writes:

It’s interesting that this parallel [between ethics and epistemology] goes generally unremarked. Moral subjectivism, relativism, emotivism, etc. are rife among both philosophers and ordinary people, yet very few of these same people would think even for a moment of denying the objectivity of epistemic value; that is, of attacking the reality of the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable belief. I wonder why that is?[5]

His suspicion is that, given the similarities between the two kinds of judgments, we would expect that there be more meta-epistemological positions analogous to those found in meta-ethics: there should be more epistemic nihilists, relativists, emotivists and so on. Here I develop these possible positions and critique them. I then use this critique to defend moral realism.

Epistemic irrealisms are, at least, at odds with common epistemic and intellectual assumptions, including those made by most moral irrealists and used by them in their making their cases for moral irrealisms. Nearly all philosophers presume that their own epistemic judgments are beliefs and, presumably, that their epistemic beliefs are sometimes true, and made true by something “in” or “about” the stance-independent world: it’s not the case that our epistemic attitudes, when true, are true because we have them, or because of our attitudes toward the epistemic propositions under consideration.

And philosophers tend to accept the following epistemic platitudes as beliefs and, perhaps, beliefs that must be presumed for philosophical, or generally rational, thinking: “It’s good to have evidence for one’s beliefs,” “All else being equal, it's better to have consistent beliefs than inconsistent beliefs”, “It’s bad to be unreasonable,” “You shouldn’t believe something unless you have good reasons to believe it,” “The strength of one’s belief ought to be proportional to the strength of the evidence.”[6] Most philosophers think that, at least sometimes, when one sees that some proposition is a consequence of one’s beliefs, one should accept that consequence, and it is as justified as the initial beliefs. These kinds of intellectual evaluations are often presumed to be sometimes true; I aim to argue that common reasons given to think that moral evaluations are never true suggest that these intellectual evaluations are not true either. Insofar as this as a surprising suggested implication, this might contribute to reasons to reconsider these arguments against moral realism.

Although analogous views are common about moral evaluations, few philosophers think that epistemically or intellectual evaluative claims like these above are mere expressions of emotion, or disguised commands, or relative in their truth conditions, or some other linguistic expression or mental state that does not admit of literal truth and falsity. Again, even moral irrealists who accept these understandings of morality tend to reject these understandings of reasoning and epistemic evaluation: they typically do not think that their claim that they, or anyone, should accept their arguments about moral realism is merely an expression of emotion, or a command, or, of course, a claim that is, literally, false.[7] And they typically think their rejections of epistemic irrealisms are reasonable and justified and that, again, that this evaluation is not an expression of emotion.

Of course, a view’s being unpopular does not entail that it is false or that it ought not to be believed. So, if epistemic irrealism is not popular, that’s not necessary a strike against it. And that an unpopular view follows from some premises does not entail that any of those premises should be rejected. That most philosophers accept epistemic realism might not be much in its favor: perhaps nearly all philosophers have assumed a view that is, ultimately, indefensible. Also, if some defenders of moral irrealisms have an inconsistent overall position, this does not mean that moral irrealism is false or their arguments for it weak.

But perhaps those who think that they are justified in rejecting epistemic irrealism are mistaken: perhaps the entire common picture on the foundations of epistemic judgments is false. There seems to be no reason why epistemic irrealism must be false or why it must be unreasonable or unjustified for every person who considers it. Few, if any, views are essentially such that they ought to be rejected, and epistemic irrealism does not seem to be a contender for that possible class of views. Maybe some kind of epistemic irrealism is true: maybe there are no epistemic properties, maybe there are no epistemic truths, or maybe epistemic discourse is only expressive.

I concede that this is possible, in a broadly logical sense. But do I intend to argue that irrealist meta-epistemologies are rationally unacceptable for most, if not all, actual believers who carefully consider the issues.[8] I argue that critical reflection on that which seems true about epistemic evaluation reveals that the premises that support epistemic irrealisms, which also support moral non-realisms, should be rejected. Thus, I will argue that nearly anyone who reasons through this issue should reject the common arguments against moral irrealism.

This claim about how we ought to reason itself is an epistemic judgment; I will argue this claim itself is true; it is not an expression of emotion, or a command, or anything that an epistemic irrealist might say it is. I argue that there is better reason to accept epistemic realism than reject it.

Thus, I defend moral realism by undercutting the cases against it. I do this by arguing that the premises given against it have unacceptable implications in that, in conjunction with premises describing the features of epistemic judgments, they entail or (for non-deductive arguments) make likely various kinds of epistemic irrealisms. I defend epistemic realism by, first, showing that it is need of defense: there are many plausible cases to be made against it since most things that have been said against moral properties and a cognitive understanding of moral language can be said against the notion of epistemic properties and a cognitivist understanding of epistemic language. Second, I argue that these meta-epistemologies are false and have other rationally unacceptable consequences. My arguments that both these various irrealisms should be rejected yield defenses of both kinds of realism.

My organization is historical and cumulative. I begin with A.J. Ayer and work towards the present, discussing C.L. Stevenson’s, R.M. Hare’s, J.L. Mackie’s, Gilbert Harman’s, and more recent arguments against moral realism. I also occasionally note David Hume’s empiricist influence on some of these philosophers’ positions and arguments.

I apply their reasoning in meta-ethics to epistemology (and reasoning itself), find unacceptable implications, and bring these results back to meta-ethics to re-evaluate their arguments. For each figure I press similar kinds of objections. I observe that their major premises given in defense of their moral irrealisms – in conjunction with premises describing features of epistemic judgments – either entail or suggest that epistemic judgments are never objectively true. I then argue that this is a false and rationally unacceptable consequence, which provides reason to reject the initial major premise. This effectively undercuts their cases against moral realism.

I also observe that epistemic irrealisms seem to yield bizarre consequences for argumentation: for one, if an epistemic irrealism is true, then it’s not literally true that it (or any other view, including an irrealistic meta-ethical view) should be accepted or is reasonable or justified. This might undercut the epistemic support for these kinds of views: at least, it renders a highly non-standard view about the nature of epistemic evaluations, one which few moral irrealists accept, and one that I argue should not be accepted because there are better reasons to reject it than accept it.

For an example of this perhaps undercutting consequence, if an epistemic relativism is true, then although believing that “epistemic relativism is true” might be reasonable relative to the epistemic standards accepted by some epistemic relativist, I suspect it is not likely to be reasonable relative to the epistemic standards accepted by an epistemic realist. Thus, for the realist it will not be reasonable and it will is not true for them that they should change their minds and accept some kind of epistemic relativism. If this is so, this at least puts an epistemic relativist in an odd dialectal position since few (if any) non-epistemic-relativists will have reason to accept their view.

While I concede that this might be the way the epistemic world is, I argue that we have little reason to accept this picture. I argue that it is more reasonable to believe that epistemic judgments are sometimes true than that they are never true, and more reasonable to believe that there are ways we ought to reason than it is to believe that there are no ways we ought to reason. I argue that it is reasonable to believe that the major premises of common arguments for epistemic irrealisms have false implications, and so these premises are false. Since the cases against moral realism rest on these premises, I effectively undercut them in light of their false epistemic implications. Thus, both moral and epistemic realism are defended.

I focus on Ayer, Stevenson, Hare, Mackie and Harman’s objections to moral realism. I focus on them because most contemporary work on moral realism and irrealism is done in reference to these positions and the kinds of arguments these philosophers originally developed in favor of these views. Despite the fact that Harman is still our contemporary, we might call these figures “classical” moral irrealists insofar as contemporary irrealists are indebted to them for many of the basic arguments that they have refined, developed and defended with increasing sophistication (or sophistry and evasion, depending on one’s point of view).

For example, Simon Blackburn and Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have developed arguments against moral realism based in concerns about supervenience; earlier expressions of this concern, which contemporary authors build on, are found in Mackie.[9] Allan Gibbard and Crispin Wright have attempted to dispense with moral properties because of their alleged causal impotence, a worry which Harman first developed.[10] Timmon’s and Horgan’s “Moral Twin Earth” arguments against moral naturalism are descendents of Hare’s arguments against naturalism.[11] And contemporary expressivists, like Gibbard and others, are much indebted to the work of Ayer and Stevenson in developing their versions of emotivism.

I discuss some of these contemporary positions, especially in my final chapter that addresses Gibbard’s and Field’s epistemic irrealisms, but my focus here are these classical moral irrealists. They provide the roots of the contemporary scene, and my aim is to “weed out” contemporary moral irrealisms at the root. I attempt to develop a kind of objection that shows that the basic standard arguments against moral realism are weak. And these basic arguments are not made stronger by the contemporary bells and whistles that more recent philosophers have attached to them.

In my final chapter, I note how a number of contemporary philosophers have come to that conclusion about these arguments, based on arguments similar to mine. But my focus is on arguments for moral irrealism that have, thus far, remained of interest over much of the history of twentieth century meta-ethical thought.

1.3. Characterizing Moral Realisms & Irrealisms.

Before surveying the considerations offered against moral realism, which I will argue are also often considerations against epistemic realism, it will be useful to briefly characterize moral realism in even greater detail. Statements from contemporary defenders and critics reveal its central features. Since there are few explicit critics or defenders of epistemic realism, that kind of view should be understood as analogous to kinds of meta-ethical views that are realistic.

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord understands realism about any domain to simply involve just two theses, that “(1) the claims in question, when literally construed, are literally true or false (cognitivism), and (2) some are literarily true.”[12] He understands ‘literal’ truth in terms of correspondence.[13] So, on his view moral realism is simply the view that some moral claims are literally true in virtue of their correspondence to moral facts or properties or in virtue of their being warranted assertions.

All moral realists agree that some moral claims are literally true: although there are disagreements about their nature, they all accept the existence of moral properties. But many moral realists consider a meta-ethical position’s meeting Sayre-McCord’s two conditions to be necessary, but insufficient, for it to be realistic. This is because his conditions imply that subjectivisms, relativisms, constructivisms and ideal-observer theories – cognitivist theories that hold that a moral proposition’s truth value logically depends on an individual’s, society’s, hypothetical agent’s or someone else’s beliefs and/or attitudes towards that proposition – are realistic theories.

There is no point in arguing whether these theories are really versions of moral realism or not, but few moral realists accept theories that make moral truth dependent on the attitudes taken towards moral propositions. The most obvious explanation why there are strong arguments that these kinds of views are false and/or explanatorily inferior to other theories that don’t make moral truth dependent on attitudes toward moral propositions: these arguments might take the form of Euthyphro-type dilemmas with the suggestion that it’s more plausible to think that some agent would have the moral views he or she (or it) does because there are objective moral truths and the agent accurately perceive them, instead of the moral truth being created by the agent’s attitudes.

These theories might be also objected to with the observation that they make even core moral beliefs merely contingent truths, dependent on the agent’s whims and nothing more. There are other arguments against these kinds of views, so realists tend to reject them not merely because they don’t fit into the “realistic” category of theories.

Realists tend to think that the truth of a moral proposition depends on “objective” factors, not the attitudes anyone (or any group) takes (or might take) towards it.[14] This objectivity will be characterized in greater detail later, and I should note that there are important disagreement among realists on what this objectivity depends. That is, realists disagree on the ontology of moral truth-makers or facts. Some realists argue that they are identical to “natural” facts, facts discoverable by empirical science. Other realists argue that moral facts supervene on natural facts but aren’t identical to them. Still others argue that they are “non-natural” facts, facts not discoverable by scientific means.[15] But most realists agree that meeting Sayre-McCord’s conditions is insufficient for a meta-ethical position’s being in the neighborhood of a plausible (and, hence, realistic) view.

Other statements of moral realism give more details on the kind of view realists tend to accept, or the kind of position I aim to defend. Realists David Brink and Nicholas Sturgeon all defend similar positions. Brink briefly states the position in this manner:

[M]oral realism claims that there are moral facts and true moral propositions whose existence and nature are independent of our beliefs about right and wrong. Moral realism's metaphysical claim suggests the semantic claim that moral judgments and terms typically refer to moral facts and properties.[16]

Sturgeon’s characterization is quite similar. He explains that moral realists believe that:

[O]ur moral terms typically refer to real properties; that moral statements typically express propositions capable of truth or falsity; . . [. . and . .] these moral truths are in some interesting sense independent of the subjective indicators—our moral beliefs and moral feelings, as well as moral conventions constituted by coordinated individual intentions—that we take as guides to them. [17]

These positions meet Sayre-McCord’s criteria of cognitivism and literal truth, but impose the additional constraint, that moral truth is not dependent on our moral evaluations, that is more characteristic of typical realist positions.

Michael Smith notes a realist strand in most people’s thinking about morality. He observes that:

[W]e seem to think that moral questions have correct answers; that the correct answers are made correct by objective moral facts; that moral facts are wholly determined by circumstances; and that, by engaging in moral conversation and argument, we can discover what these objective moral facts determined by the circumstances are.[18]

Russell Shafer Landau understands realism this way:

Moral realism is the theory that moral judgments enjoy a special sort of objectivity: such judgments, when true, are so independent of what any human being, anywhere, in any circumstance whatever, thinks of them . . . At the simplest level, all realists endorse the idea that there is a moral reality that people are trying to represent when they issue judgments about what is right and wrong.[19]

Mark Timmons, a moral “irrealist,” offers a statement of the kind of view he argues against:

Moral realism . . is the view that there are moral facts—facts concerning goodness and rightness—and that they exist objectively. . . . Moral realists . . hold that moral properties and facts exist and that their existence and nature are conceptually and metaphysically independent of our moral beliefs and theories, including our warranted or even ideally warranted moral beliefs and theories.[20]

Gilbert Harman, a moral relativist, claims that “moral absolutists” hold that “there is a single true morality.”[21] And Judith Thomson defends a thesis of “moral objectivity,” viz., that it is possible to find out about some moral sentences that they are true.[22] Since absolutism and objectivism are their names for morally realistic positions, Harman’s and Thomson’s brief characterizations provide some further insight into the kind of view I will defend.

Perhaps it is due to its completeness, in terms of the breadth of considerations that he addresses, that Peter Railton claims that his position “might well be described as ‘stark, raving moral realism.’” The view that he has defended is that:

[M]oral judgments can bear truth in a fundamentally non-epistemic sense of truth; . . moral properties are objective, though relational; . . moral properties supervene on natural properties, and may be reducible to them; . . moral inquiry is of a piece with empirical inquiry; . . it cannot be known a priori whether bivalence holds for moral judgments or how determinately such judgments can be assessed; . . there is reason to think we know a fair amount about morality, but also reason to think that current moralities are wrong in certain ways and could be wrong in quite general ways; . . a rational agent may fail to have a reason for obeying moral imperatives, although they may nonetheless be applicable to him.[23]

Railton articulates many dimensions on which a theory can be assessed as realistic or not. I will not discuss all these dimensions, but some of the themes he mentions are those that other authors have focused on in characterizing realism; these are the ones I will focus on also.

Thus, to summarize, moral realists believe that moral judgments are beliefs: they are not other states of mind such as, e.g., expressions of desires, emotions, commands or attitudes that lack a truth-value. So, realism concerns what is going on in people’s minds when they make moral judgments: it is a psychological thesis and a thesis concerning philosophy of mind. Since to have a belief is to have an attitude toward a proposition, there are moral propositions. Propositions are, of course, either true or false, although realism is consistent with the possibility of some truth-value gaps due to vague moral sentences. Thus, moral realism is a thesis concerning philosophy of language as well.

Realists think that some moral propositions are true: they are accurate representations of a moral reality, and moral reality includes moral facts or properties that are not constituted by the attitudes taken towards them. Thus, realism is a metaphysical thesis, although, as mentioned above, realists disagree on the preferred ontology. But, whatever moral facts and properties are like, realists agree that their existence is conceptually[24] and metaphysically independent of anyone’s beliefs and thoughts about them. Realists reject that believing something to have a moral property or having certain attitudes toward it constitutes the moral property or, in itself, entails something having that property.

Of course, whether moral claims are true will often very much depend on mental states; e.g., whether it was wrong for Billy to say what he did to Sally might depend on whether it upset Sally and caused her pain, and whether pain is bad will depend on what pain is like. So mental states are highly relevant to the truth of moral judgments, but, according to moral realism, the truth of a moral proposition is not determined by anyone’s attitudes toward it.

Finally, although I will not discuss this in detail, I should mention that realists typically reject epistemological skepticism about morality: they typically think that some people have some justified, reasonable beliefs, if not knowledge, about what’s moral. But they can differ on their preferred epistemology: among realists we find foundationalists, coherentists, reliablists, and defenders of other epistemological positions. One could accept moral realism but be a complete moral (or even global) skeptic, but this is not common.

1.4. The Meaning and Use of Moral Terms.

This provides a basic overview of some of the most important features of a morally realistic position. But an especially important issue that isn’t mentioned in any of our characterizations above concerns the meanings of moral terms. This issue has important psychological and metaphysical implications, which will be explored below.

Moral realists accept a particular kind of view about the meanings of moral terms: they think moral terms’ meanings are “cognitive” or “descriptive.” On this kind of view, to make a moral judgment is to attempt to describe something, to say that something has some property; it’s to try to convey some information about the world or represent the world has having some features.

Thus moral realisms are also semantic theses. What are these cognitive or descriptive meanings, i.e., what do various moral terms like “right” and “good” mean? Different realists have different answers, depending largely on which (if any) substantive moral theory they accept. But it is important to note that realists, at least, are united in rejecting a kind of view about the meanings of moral terms. Explaining this contrast provides some understanding of how realists of all stripes understand the meanings of moral terms. And this understanding has implications for the psychological and metaphysical aspects of the position.

The nature of “meanings” is controversial: the meaning of “meaning” is less than clear. I do not hope to resolve the question of what meanings are here. Therefore, I hope to remain as intuitive or theoretically neutral as possible on the issue, ‘naïve’ in the truly naïve and non-technical sense of the term. So, when asking what some term means, my methodology is to speculate on what someone would say if asked, “I don’t quite understand what you are saying; could you say more about what you mean by that?” Insofar as, from a naïve point of view, how someone uses a term is a consequence of its meaning (or meanings), I will investigate how moral and epistemic terms are used.

To understand some views about the meanings of moral terms that some moral irrealists are fond of but realists typically reject, it is useful to think about the meanings of some non-moral terms. An important observation is that it seems that some words’ meanings are such that, if someone, in an ordinary context and using the term in an ordinary sense, sincerely utters a grammatical sentence using these terms, she must be expressing some emotion or revealing how she feels. If she sincerely utters one of these sentences, she could not be affectively indifferent to the subject matter of her sentence. This affective response might be indicative of the kind of meaning a term has.

One example of this phenomenon about meaning might be the use of the term “bozo” or a “total, complete bozo.” It seems plausible that one could not sincerely call someone a total bozo and yet be completely without any negative feelings about him. These feelings might fade and change over time, but if at the initial time of making the statement there are no feelings, then we might doubt that the assertion was sincere, or if the words “total bozo” were being used in an ordinary sense. This is because to say that someone is a total bozo is not merely to describe him (and, in absence, of contextual clues, just calling someone a bozo only gives a rather non-specific ideas about what he’s like), but it’s also to express one’s dislike of him, to vent one’s emotions.

A more vivid example of this phenomenon might be a long hyphenated series of swear words. Were someone to sincerely say (or even think) of someone, “That guy is a total-God-#&*$^-mother--@-son-of-a-(&^%$%-er!!”, she would have to be angry about him: she couldn’t have this thought but have no negative feelings about him.

On a more positive (but, hopefully, non-sexist) note, perhaps it’s impossible for someone to sincerely judge a woman to be a “hot, bodacious babe” without having any positive feelings or desires for her. Some evidence for this might be that were someone to make this judgment but then add that he would have no interest or desire whatsoever in meeting her under any circumstance (including, perhaps, one where he was less shy, more confident and a snappier dresser), we might doubt the sincerity of his initial assertion. We might think he didn’t really mean what he said: he was just mouthing the words but not saying what they ordinarily mean.

The point of these examples is to show that it seems, for some words, an affective, emotion and desire-oriented component is part of their meaning: their sincere use necessitates this kind of emotional involvement. Some philosophers claim that the meanings of moral terms are like this. They argue that moral terms’ meanings are such that, if someone sincerely uses them in a sentence in an ordinary context, that person must be expressing feelings or desires.

On these views to sincerely claim that something is, e.g., morally right or good is, necessarily, to have and express some positive feeling about it: the judgment is the expression of that feeling. And just as one cannot sincerely judge someone to be a bozo and be without feeling, these philosophers claim that one cannot judge something to be right or good and be without feeling towards that act being done, or some state affairs being brought about. If one said that something is wrong, but lacked any feeling about it, then the judgment is not sincere: it’s not even a real judgment; it’s just a mouthing of the words.

Sometimes this (alleged) emotional phenomenon is described in terms of moral “motivation,” or explained using the term. The claim is that moral judgments necessarily involve these feelings that provide motivation towards bringing about some end.[25] It seems possible that someone could be quite emotionally invested her moral judgments and so her emotions are always “moved” whenever she judges something to be right or wrong – she is always quite “worked up” – it also seems that this person could not be at all “motivated” to do much about anything: all worked up, but no action.

But those who claim that moral judgments have this motivational influence usually claim that these emotions always, or perhaps even necessarily, influence one’s motivation; their claim is that “motivating” feelings, desires, and/or affective “oomph” are “internal” to sincere moral judgments: there is a necessary connection between the two. So, Michael Smith claims, “all else being equal, to have a moral opinion simply is to find yourself with a motivation to act.”[26]

This thesis isn’t that someone necessarily acts or behaves as her moral judgment dictates: it typically allows for competing motives to override, weakness of will and, of course, the possibility that one is paralyzed or in a full body cast and so is unable to physically act as one’s moral judgments would require. And, presumably, this sort of view would allow for the fact that, for some moral judgments, there are no obvious corresponding actions.

It is also odd when applied toward moral judgments about the actions of others, especially in the very distant past or future, or with rather unspecific moral judgments. Say we judge that Socrates was treated wrongly; it’s clear we can’t do anything about that now, so it’s not clear what we might be moved to do or how any of our motivations would, or should, change. Also, say we expect that in a few hundred years that someone will do something horribly evil. It seems we can have that thought but, again, it’s not clear how it might motivate us to do anything, since we would have no idea what to do.

So this sort of “motivationally internalist” view is probably most plausible when applied to judgments about one’s own activities at the present time. Ignoring the complication about other moral judgments about other kinds of cases, the idea is that moral judgment entails some motivation, and this is, at root, a feeling or a desire. Thus, if there is no feeling or desire, then a sincere moral judgment was not made.

This is a psychological thesis again in that it pertains to how moral judgment relates to our psychologies. But it is a consequence of a semantic thesis since the meanings of the moral terms are taken to explain the affective phenomena: it’s because the terms have these meanings that they have these psychological consequences. This has the consequence that, insofar as these affective states are not, strictly speaking, beliefs, moral judgments are also not beliefs either; they are another, non-representational, state of mind.

The view is that, when used sincerely, moral terms necessarily express feelings because of their meanings. Perspectives that claim there is this necessary connection between moral judgment and affect describe the meaning of moral terms as emotive, non-cognitive, expressive, or non-descriptive. These characterizations often differ in meaning only slightly, if at all, so for now I will take them as equivalent and take “emotive meaning” as shorthand for the other terms that might describe the view.

“Emotive meaning” contrasts with “cognitive” or “descriptive meaning.” A term’s meaning is purely cognitive or descriptive perhaps if it can be sincerely used without the speaker (or, perhaps, thinker or author) expressing any feelings. Some philosophers who believe that moral terms have emotive meaning think that their meaning is purely emotive: they have no descriptive meaning and so to sincerely use such a moral term is never to state (or imply) a sentence that has a truth value. As we shall soon see in subsequent chapters, A.J. Ayer’s view was like this. C.L. Stevenson’s final view was like this also.[27]

Moral realists needn’t deny that emotions sometimes run high when making moral judgments: that’s just an empirical truth. And realists needn’t think that’s a bad thing, in any sense of bad: they needn’t advocate a Mr. Spock-like, emotion-free existence. They can think that having a rich emotional life is morally valuable and important.

“Important for what?” one might ask. At this point an answer in the negative might be best: the emotions can be important for things other than there being moral judgments. Emotions can motivate, and perhaps they sometimes contribute to epistemic insight, but they can motivate us towards, and help inform us of, doing the right thing that exists independently of our motivations toward doing that right thing. Emotivists deny this: recall that motivational internalists think that moral terms have emotive meaning because they think that moral judgments are necessarily motivating. They claim if there were no such feelings, there could be no such judgments: they claim that’s impossible.

Realists deny this impossibility: they think it is possible that someone could make a moral judgment and lack corresponding motivation altogether. They might plausibly think that in a world with no beings that have an experiential welfare, nothing would have any moral qualities since nothing could go better or worse for anyone, but this is not the issue.

Again, realists believe that moral judgments’ truth depends on objective moral facts or properties, and that to make a moral judgment is to say that something has some moral property. But on the standard, Humean view of motivation, affect, or “oomph,” believing that something has some property is never, in itself, sufficient to motivate someone or rouse someone’s feelings. Motivation comes from other sources, e.g., desires. But what someone’s desires are is, presumably, a contingent matter, and it seems at least possible that someone could lack any desires to do the right thing.

While this affective and motivational phenomenon is not easy to pin down in a highly concrete manner, it is useful to classify theories of the nature of moral judgment along these dividing lines. For each theory, in addition to the more straightforward desiderata discussed above, we might ask if it implies that there are any kinds of moral judgments that are necessarily motivating or necessarily influence the emotions. If it does, that reveals important interrelated semantic and psychological features of the view that will, in turn, likely have important metaphysical and epistemic implications.

Two important implications are that if moral judgments necessarily motivate, this would, at least, suggest that moral judgments are not (or not merely) the apprehension of properties and so not merely beliefs. These results would have important implications for moral epistemology. If there are no moral properties, then there are no moral truths, and so no true moral beliefs. And, obviously, if moral judgments are not beliefs, then, strictly speaking, there are no justified moral beliefs or moral knowledge, strictly speaking. Moral realists resist all these implications.

Some more recent theorists – realists and not – have challenged the standard Humean assumptions about motivation and have argued that beliefs can motivate in themselves, or motivate without any related desires.[28] But these views are controversial and will not be discussed here, as I will be working with the standard assumptions about belief and motivation.

On the more standard conception of moral realism, motivation and affect are contingent features of making moral judgments; they are explained by psychological factors, not the semantics of moral terms. Thus, any view that claims an essential motivating feature to moral judgments is likely unacceptable from the assumptions most moral realists are apt to accept and traditionally have accepted.

Although moral irrealisms can be easily understood as denials of moral realisms, there are many ways that one can deny moral realisms. One can deny that there are moral beliefs, objective truths, propositions, properties or facts. Starting with any of these will often lead to many of the others, as the concepts within the cluster are often related.

For example, if one denies that there are moral beliefs because one thinks that moral judgments are purely expressive, one will (and should, I will argue) also deny moral propositions and, of course, true moral propositions.[29] One might also deny moral facts and properties and, while this might eventually lead one to some kind of expressivism, it needn’t; one could think that there are moral beliefs, but that they are no facts or properties to make any of them true, as J.L. Mackie did.

Most generally, moral irrealists all agree that there are no positive objective moral truths, either because moral language just isn’t the kind of discourse that admits of truth and falsity, or there are no moral truth-makers (or they understand these truth-makers as a function of the attitudes toward the propositions, a position that realists deny).

Some recent irrealists have attempted to buck this trend by using the predicates “is true,” “is a fact,” “is known” in various “minimalist” senses; these views exploit the fact that sometimes these phrases are used to affirm various claims and express one’s agreements. These newer positions will be briefly discussed in my final chapter, but it is sufficient here to note that they differ significantly from realisms given that realists understand these locutions in non-minimalist terms. While minimalists sometimes wish to say everything realists say about the nature of morality, if these minimalists did that, then there would be nothing to distinguish their position from the realists’ position. I will argue that once these differences are revealed, minimalisms are not attractive positions.

1.5. Epistemic Realisms and Irrealisms.

This concludes my brief characterization of the kind of position moral realism is.

In light of this characterization, I will again summarize the nature of an analogous kind of view, epistemic realism.

By analogy, epistemic realisms are views that hold that epistemic judgments are beliefs and other doxastic attitudes, such as suspensions of judgment. Epistemic realists hold that while one might express strong emotions in making an epistemic judgment, these emotions are not essential to the judgment. Strong emotions might arise in the context of making epistemic evaluations, but these emotions are only contingently related to the evaluations: emotion and motivation-free epistemic evaluations are possible and, seemingly, actual.

Since there are beliefs about epistemic matters, there are epistemic propositions. And some of these beliefs are true because there are objective, stance-independent epistemic truths, facts and properties. They are “objective” in the sense that they are not constituted, or determined by, our beliefs and attitudes toward epistemic propositions. There are disputes among realists as to the preferred epistemic ontology, i.e. whether epistemic properties or facts are identical to “natural” facts, supervene on them, or are some kind of non-natural facts. Regardless, on all epistemically realistic views there is an epistemic reality that can be, and sometimes is, represented and that epistemic terms have descriptive or cognitive meaning: their meanings are not expressive or emotive.

Thus, epistemic realism is a position on the semantics, metaphysics and psychology of epistemic judgments. Although epistemic realists typically are not epistemological skeptics, they could be: a skeptical epistemology of epistemic judgments is possible. Here I will not focus on epistemic epistemology, although much of my discussion suggests that we can have rational, a priori insight into the realm of the epistemic and that this kind of view is unavoidable; someone could argue against this sort of view only by presupposing it.

Epistemic realism seems the standard position among philosophers, especially epistemologists. Few have denied it. But if anyone denied it, what would his or her view be? Irrealisms in epistemology are analogous to non-realisms about morality. Irrealists about epistemic judgments would, for the most part, think that no epistemic judgments are true.

Again, the basic division is to think that no positive epistemic judgments are true either because epistemic discourse is, in some manner, expressive or non-descriptive and so does not admit of truth and falsity, or because there are no epistemic properties or facts to make any epistemic judgments true. “Relativistic” perspectives that allow epistemic truths are possible, and on these views the truth-value of an epistemic proposition depends on the attitudes taken toward that proposition or the believer’s epistemic principles seem possible as well. Standard possible forms of epistemic irrealism take either of these options; other possible epistemic irrealisms could be modeled after more recent moral irrealists that are subtler in their development of alternatives to the standard, realistic view.

Epistemic irrealisms are rather striking views. Epistemic expressivism, one kind of epistemic irrealism, implies that epistemic judgments or evaluations are not, strictly speaking, beliefs; rather, they are expressions of approval or desire that something be believed or disbelieved. This is a radical implication. Some global skeptics believe that we don’t know anything or are justified in believing anything, but if an expressivist epistemic realism is true, then the claim, “We don’t know anything and we are not justified in believing anything,” is not even a belief; rather, it is a non-cognitive expression that is neither true nor false. That is an interesting consequence.

Other epistemic irrealisms allow that an epistemic judgment like this is a belief, but that there are no properties or facts to serve as epistemic truth-makers so it, or any other positive epistemic evaluation is never true. On this view, non-skeptics can never truthfully insist that some of our beliefs are justified or known, and skeptics can never truthfully assert that our beliefs are unjustified (they might be not justified, but this is not the same as them being unjustified). While skeptics typically argue that our beliefs don’t meet what they regard as the high standards for knowledge, many epistemic irrealists are more radical in arguing that there are no truthful epistemic standards at all, and that is why we don’t know or have any beliefs that are reasonable. These are uncommon views, with surprising consequences. More specific formulations of this kind of view and its many rivals will be explained and discussed in greater detail later. I will argue that we have better reason to reject these views than accept them.

Although some might take these views as a reductio of the premises given against moral realism, I see no reason to think that epistemic judgments must be descriptive and sometimes true (and true because of stance-independent epistemic properties): the world isn’t such that epistemic realism has to be true. But I suspect that most of us – given what we believe now – could develop better arguments against epistemic expressivism than for it: all things considered, we have better reason to think epistemic judgments are sometimes literally true and we can see that this implies that epistemic expressivism is false. These arguments, however, will typically imply that various premises in arguments for moral irrealisms have at least one false premise and so are unsound. This, of course, undercuts many of the cases for moral irrealisms. If we see this, we see that, perhaps, there’s little reason to accept ethical expressivisms in the first place.

1.6. Moral and Epistemic Judgments: Some Similarities.

Before I turn to the case against moral realism, which I will use to make a case against epistemic realism, I should note that premises offered as reasons to reject moral realism might be reasons to reject to epistemological realism only if epistemic language, and its metaphysical presuppositions, is sufficiently similar to that of moral language. While epistemic and moral discourse is, of course, different, the success of my case depends mainly on epistemic judgments being similar to moral judgments in ways that moral irrealists point to in support of their moral irrealisms.

My target moral irrealists generally aren’t global irrealists: they don’t think that all language should be interpreted irrealistically. But they do think that moral discourse and practice has features that are better understood on an irrealistic model and so moral realism’s semantic, metaphysical, psychological and/or epistemic presumptions are likely mistaken. I will argue that epistemic discourse shares these features. This is necessary to argue that if moral irrealists think the presence of these features is sufficient to warrant an irrealistic understanding of morality then, to be consistent, they should also think that an irrealistic understanding of epistemic matters is warranted as well.

An interesting aspect of my discussion is that I focus on this “should” in the previous sentence and its semantic and metaphysical status. Moral irrealists think that moral “shoulds” should be understood irrealistically, but they think that what might be called logical, or epistemic, “shoulds” – “shoulds” about how one ought to reason, or what we should conclude given various premises – should be understood realistically. I aim to argue that this is, ultimately, an inconsistent position, in terms of the reasons moral irrealists give in favor of their moral irrealism. They tend to accept the assumptions, shared by moral realists and irrealists alike, that one’s beliefs should be consistent and that there is something bad or disingenuous about having inconsistent beliefs, especially if they are recognized as such. This might seem to especially be the case if one is a professional philosopher since, one might think, philosophers either should just recognize the value of consistency or, at least, because that concern just goes with the job: it’s some kind of role or occupational obligation.

These claims above all sound like epistemic or intellectual value judgments. I will argue that they are and that moral irrealists are inconsistent in accepting them: their own views imply that such intellectual value judgments are false, or merely “relative” truths, or expressive and so neither true nor false. So moral irrealists tend to believe something, and base their cases for moral irrealism, on assumptions that a premise in their case against moral irrealism suggest are not true. This is an inconsistency.

If they are inconsistent, is it a bad thing? And were this recognized, should moral irrealists change their views? I will argue that these questions should be answered in the affirmative but that that it is very difficult to answer them affirmatively from a vivid awareness of the bases of morally irrealistic positions. I hope this reinforces the presumption in favor of epistemic and logical realism and that this presumption can be shown to imply that the arguments for moral irrealism should not be accepted, and that judgment – that moral irrealism should not be accepted – is true in a robust, realistic sense.

As a brief start to highlight some similarities between moral and epistemic judgment, it is often said both moral and epistemic judgments are “normative.” Exactly what this means is not entirely clear, but it seems, at least, that normative judgments concern what ought and ought not, or should and should not, be the case.

This description is not perfect, since it seems to be true that, e.g., it is the case that good ought to be promoted, but it seems appropriate since epistemic evaluation concerns what one ought to believe, how one should reason and even what kind of intellectual or cognitive character traits one ought to have. Ethics concerns how one ought to behave, what states of affairs ought to be brought about, what attitudes and feelings one should have, and what kind of character one ought to cultivate. So there are both moral and epistemic “oughts” and “shoulds.”

A related idea is that moral and epistemic judgments are also often described as prescriptive and evaluative. Since both seem to concern value or goodness (although likely of different kinds) this latter label seems appropriate. And it is commonly supposed that are both moral virtues and epistemic virtues, and that some virtues that have both moral and epistemic aspects.

Moral and epistemic judgments also have both seemed subject to “deontic” understandings (and there are deontic logics of each kind). These are analyses or definitions in terms of what is permitted, required and forbidden from their respective perspectives, what is a duty or obligation, what is be deserving or praise and blame, and so forth. Many terms like this are common to both moral and epistemic discourse.

In epistemology, claims like this are associated with a much-discussed notion of a “deontic conception of justification.” Objections have been raised to a deontic understanding of epistemic terms, mostly along the lines that these conceptions of justification falsely presuppose that we are able to decide what to believe, but I will defend some versions of this understanding of epistemic terms. In fact, I will argue that, in a clear and important sense, we are all epistemic deontologists and that some versions of epistemic deontology cannot plausibly be denied. Since much of this dissertation concerns the propriety of epistemic “ought” and “should” judgments, addressing some common objections to these judgments shall be the focus on my second chapter.

Another similarity is that what the metaphysical foundations, or the truth makers, of both kinds of judgments are not clear. For many, what the moral components of a moral fact are not obvious: many are puzzled by what would make a moral judgment true. Similarly, what the epistemic components of an epistemic fact are not obvious either. At least from many common perspectives, these kinds of facts seem quite different from more mundane, empirical facts; it’s not uncommon for people to be mystified by what in the world could make something morally right, or good, or such that it ought to be done.[30]

Comparable curiosity and puzzlement is understandable for alleged epistemic facts: what in the world could make it such that I ought to believe some proposition, or that it’s good to have evidence, and so forth? If one is puzzled about how and where one would find the moral facts, one should be equally puzzled about the epistemic facts. If this puzzlement leads one to reject moral facts or properties, then comparable puzzlement perhaps would lead one to reject epistemic facts or properties also, and perhaps it should.

Many realists in both ethics and epistemology have argued that supervenience is involved in there being truth-makers for such judgments: moral truths supervene, or depend on, natural features; it is these natural features that, ultimately, make a moral or epistemic judgment true (or false). But critics have argued that supervenience is excessively mysterious and so have focused an attack on moral realism for its dependence on it. But if epistemic properties are also supervenient, then epistemic realism is subject to the same kind of attack leveled against moral realism.

There seem to be related metaphysical concerns about whether moral and epistemic properties possess causal powers, as well as how epistemic access to each might be achieved. Some have argued that we should not believe in properties that lack causal influence: if this is true, then perhaps we should not believe there are moral properties, but we should not believe in epistemic properties either. Some philosophers, especially those who call themselves “naturalists,” might be equally puzzled about where each kind of property is found in “nature.”

And we also might wonder whether moral and epistemic facts need to be appealed to in order to explain our moral and epistemic experiences. Some have argued that we needn’t think that there are moral properties in order to explain our moral beliefs: these can be explained by our upbringing and background beliefs, not by our detecting moral properties. Perhaps there are comparable epistemic concerns: e.g., when it seems that a belief is justified to someone, do we need to posit a property ‘justified’ in order to account for that experience, or can that phenomenon be adequately accounted for without such a property?

In the moral case, some have argued that the experience can be explained without positing the property. Perhaps the analogous conclusion is plausible about epistemic properties also. This conclusion, unlike the moral one, has the consequence that if it is true, and there is no need to posit epistemic properties, then it’s not true that we should not believe that they exist or that our belief would be unjustified: this is because there are no such properties. This would surely be a surprising consequence, and one that might lead us to rethink this test for which properties we should acknowledge. This result might even give good reason to reject these arguments against moral realism.

A further similarity between moral and epistemic judgments is that it is plausible to think that they at least sometimes have a motivational quality: they impact our emotions and what we are motivated toward bringing about. So, sometimes, so it would often be odd to make such a judgment without having some correlated desires. This phenomenon is more discussed in the context of moral judgment, but it seems that comparable claims can be made for some epistemic judgments having the same kind of motivational and connotative influence.

For example, it does seem that it would be odd for someone to judge one of her beliefs unjustified or irrational, but for her to have no desire to be rid of that belief. And people tend to think that if we convince someone that she has good reasons to believe some proposition, she will then desire to believe that proposition and this will change her belief set (or it should).

Although epistemologists rarely investigate the possible emotional and motivational qualities of epistemic judgments, it seems at least prima facie plausible to think that epistemic judgments have these features. If their association with moral judgments is suggestive of moral irrealism, then perhaps their association with epistemic judgments is suggestive of an epistemic irrealism also. This is, at least, an under explored commonality between moral and epistemic judgments.

A further possible similarity between moral and epistemic judgments includes the sense that they apply to us irrespective of our wishes and desires. Perhaps this is controversial, but few people believe that one can “get out of morality” by, e.g., ceasing to care about anyone’s well being besides one’s own. Were someone to not at all care about anyone else, that wouldn’t make it the case that, were they in a position to easily and safely prevent some innocent from enduring horrendous suffering, he or she is no longer under any obligation to do so. Ceasing to care about others does not preclude one from moral obligations and being subject to moral evaluation: some might express this idea by saying that morality (or some aspects of it) is “categorical.”

But epistemic evaluation is comparably categorical: ceasing to care about reasons, evidence and clear and critical thinking wouldn’t make it the case that one’s epistemic situation cannot be truthfully evaluated; ceasing to care about having evidence wouldn’t make a belief that “Starbucks’ has become a famous store for selling grape Kool-Aid” not unjustified, were the typical person to find herself with that belief.

Another common, related, yet not optimally clear, way to express this idea is that there are moral and epistemic reasons, and their existence is not dependent on our desires for our moral and epistemic lives. So, we might say that there are always reasons to prevent horrendous suffering when we can easily do so, and reasons to believe what we have evidence for, even if we don’t care about or value either of these things.

A final similarity is that there seem to be widespread disagreements about which moral evaluations are correct, and there seem to be widespread disagreements about which epistemic evaluations are correct. These disagreements concern both particular moral and epistemic judgments, as well as disagreements about more basic, general principles. Moral irrealists have appealed to these disagreements in making a case for their moral irrealism. If a case for the existence of epistemic disagreements can be made that is comparable in strength to the case for moral disagreements, then this might suggest analogous arguments for epistemic irrealism.

If the cases are not very comparable, however, an issue remains: why should we accept what we regard as the best explanation of some phenomenon? Answers here might point to facts about objective intellectual and epistemic values, the existence of which might be hard to reconcile with the premises of arguments against the existence of objective moral values.

These are just a few of the similarities between moral and epistemic judgments. To sum them up, both kinds of judgments evaluative and are often made using deontic language. The nature of the truth-makers for both kinds of judgments is less than clear, and both typically presuppose supervenience on natural features. Both kinds of judgments, and the properties commonly presupposed in making them, do not obviously seem necessary to explain facts that are clearly “natural” facts. Both kinds of evaluations and requirements seem categorical: their application to us does not depend on our desires. A final similarity is that there are disagreements about which particular moral and epistemic evaluations are true, and disagreements about the philosophical natures of such judgments. More similarities will be noted as I survey the various particular arguments given against the morally realist presumption that there are some objectively true moral beliefs.

Since many objections to moral realism appeal to some feature of moral judgments or theorizing that the objector claims is best understood on a denial of realist presuppositions, I will argue that epistemic judgments share many of these features so that the moral irrealist’s premises apply to both. I will then argue that that since this feature does not show that epistemic discourse should be interpreted irrealistically, it does not show that moral discourse should be interpreted irrealistically either.

Of course, there are many differences between moral and epistemic evaluation: like everything else, moral and epistemic judgments are similar in some ways and different in others. In fact, the more the differences are developed, the more it might seem that the comparison is strained. This seems especially the case given the extremely diverse range of perspectives on morality and moral thinking.

However, to prevent the comparison from slipping through our fingers, my approach is, again, to focus on the fact that epistemic judgments are comparable to moral judgments in the way irrealists use to make their cases for moral irrealism. With this focus, differences between moral and epistemic judgments will be irrelevant: if epistemic judgments have the features that moral irrealists find, what we might call, “objectionable” about moral judgments, then it does not straightforwardly matter that epistemic judgments have additional features also, since epistemic judgments will still be caught up in the net of premises moral irrealists use to try to make their case. If having feature A is thought to be a sufficient reason for understanding a judgment irrealistically, that principle applies to judgments that have feature A, even if they also have features B and C.

If my arguments are successful they will at least show– if the common presumption is correct and epistemic discourse should be interpreted realistically – that many morally irrealists’ criteria for when a kind of discourse should be interpreted irrealistically are logically insufficient for a discipline or field not having any objective truths in its domain. Thus, that a discourse meets these conditions is not enough to warrant an irrealistic understanding of it since epistemic discourse meets it and, I will argue, it shouldn’t be understood irrealistically. This result should, at least, force moral irrealists back to the drawing board to produce tighter arguments. Ideally, it will lead them to reject their cases for moral realism, and it truthfully should.

However, I should note that if any moral irrealists perceive a need to revise their arguments, then this will only feed back into my defense of moral and epistemic realism. For if they think that moral-antirealists who understand these arguments should change their arguments or position, or ought to respond in any way, we can ask if this is true or why should accept this claim instead of, say, its negation. I suspect that affirmative answers to these questions will ultimately be based on evaluative assumptions that are inconsistent with premises of arguments given against moral realism. The sense that, from an intellectual point of view, we ought to think in certain ways raises many of the same philosophical problems that the sense that we ought to act, or change our character, in certain ways does also. I will argue that this sense can be developed into provide powerful reasons to reject arguments for moral irrealisms.

1.7. Conclusion.

In this chapter I have done three things. First, I characterized the main meta-epistemological issue that I will address in my dissertation and laid out the basic strategy of my argument. Second, I characterized the kinds of moral and epistemic realisms I aim to defend, and I have explained my strategy to defend them. Finally, I surveyed some similarities and differences between moral and epistemic judgments. Further chapters will involve the development of these positions and careful examinations of the arguments for moral irrealisms with an eye towards showing that they suggest analogous arguments for epistemic irrealisms. I then argue that these epistemic arguments are unsound, and so are the analogous moral arguments, thereby defending both moral and epistemic realism.

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[1] To cast my metaphysical net as wide as acceptably possible, I speak of both facts and properties. For anyone who sees this as redundant excess (e.g., thinks that if one posits facts, there is no need to posit properties, or vice-versa), he or she can adjust my claims accordingly. What is important, for my position, is that there are truth-makers for moral and epistemically evaluative claims and that their existence is not dependent on attitudes towards these evaluations: they are, what might be called, “objective,” or better (since the obvious contrast to “objective,” viz. “subjective,” is not ideal), “stance independent,” since their existence does not depend on anyone’s attitudes, or stance, towards them.

[2] Moral judgments about goodness and rightness, although both moral judgments, might differ in important ways such that an argument against moral realism might have, e.g., stronger claim against judgments of rightness than against judgments of goodness. E.g., it might be more plausible to think that judgments about what ought to be done have a motivational quality than it is to think this about judgments about what’s good. Similarly, judgments that something ought to be believed and something is known are both epistemic judgments, but there might be important differences between them such that an argument for epistemic irrealism might be stronger for one kind of judgment.

[3] If any of these are intended to be moral evaluations, then moral irrealists readily would agree. However, I suspect that most moral irrealists do not see these kinds of intellectual platitudes as moral evaluations: they are evaluations of a distinctly intellectual kind.

[4] Moral and epistemic relativists allow for “relative” truth, i.e., that some moral or epistemic proposition is true, but only “relative to” a set of other propositions (which themselves are either not true or are true “relative” to themselves). There are no just plain true moral or epistemic judgments. Some might think that allowing some kind of truth make a position “realist.” While views can be categorized in any manner and using any label one likes, on most self-proclaimed realists’ understandings of realism, a meta-ethical positions countenancing relative truths is insufficient for that position being genuinely realistic: on most realist’s views, non-relative truth-makers are needed for genuine realism. I discuss and criticize relativisms in later chapters.

[5] See Lycan (“Epistemic Value” 137).

[6] What exactly an epistemic judgment is is not entirely clear. Perhaps some of these are not epistemic judgments, especially the various intellectual platitudes I mention. But they are evaluative judgments of some kind, and they are not intended to be moral judgments. My basic argument would seem to apply to them, whatever evaluative category they fall into: reasons to think that no moral evaluations are true would often apply to these intellectually evaluative judgments or assumptions also.

[7] Allen Gibbard (see Gibbard Thinking How To Live) and Hartry Field (“Apriority as an Evaluative Notion” and “Disquotational Truth and Factually Defective Discourse”) might be exceptions to this claim. I discuss their views and their arguments they offer in their favor in my final chapter.

[8] I do not argue that epistemic irrealisms are unjustified for every actual, much less possible, thinker. If epistemic realism is true, then, perhaps, there are some people who have very good evidence to think that, e.g., there is no good evidence for anything and there is nothing anyone should believe. While I think these people are mistaken, their view cannot be judged unreasonable for them out of hand, apart from an appreciation of their evidence.

[9] See Blackburn (Essays in Quasi-Realism), Horgan and Timmons (“Troubles on Moral Twin Earth”), Blackburn (Essays in Quasi-Realism) and Mackie (Ethics).

[10] See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings), Wright (Truth and Objectivity), and Harman (The Nature of Morality).

[11] See Timmons (Morality Without Foundations) and Hare (The Language of Morals).

[12] See Sayre-McCord (“Introduction” 5).

[13] See Sayre-McCord (“Introduction” 6). He also suggests understanding truth in terms of warranted assertibility, but I will not discuss this notion since, for one, it seems to have difficulty making sense of the notion of a justified false belief.

[14] Realists needn’t reject as false a claim like “Acts are right if, and only if, an all-knowing agent approves (or would) approve of them.” Realists might accept this logical equivalence but argue that the claim that, ‘acts are right because the agent’s approves of them’ is false: the agent approves because of objective features of the act, not because of the agent’s attitude toward the act or the proposition describing it.

[15] This is the approach I favor. Just as science cannot tell us what we morally ought to do and what is morally good, science also cannot tell us what we ought to believe, what knowledge is, and how we should reason. The practice of science presupposes that there are truths here, but they are not determined scientifically, in any ordinary sense of “scientific.”

[16] See Brink (“Externalist Moral Realism” 24).

[17] See Sturgeon (“What Difference Does it Make” 116-117).

[18] See Smith (The Moral Problem 6).

[19] See Shafer Landau (Moral Realism: A Defence 2).

[20] See Timmons (Morality Without Foundations 35).

[21] See Harman (Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity 5).

[22] See Thomson (Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity 68).

[23] See Railton (“Moral Realism” 165).

[24] Someone who might deny this might say, e.g., “The concept of ‘being bad’ is that of ‘being disapproved of by God.’” On this sort of view, moral concepts are understood in terms of the preferences of, on many views, a necessarily existent being. Whether this sort of view should count as a version of realism is debatable. Resolving this controversy is not needed for my purposes here.

[25] Difficulties in formulating and defending this kind of view will be discussed below and in later chapters.

[26] See Smith (“Realism” 400).

[27] Stevenson originally (in “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms”) offered a mixed theory on which to make a moral judgment is both to (a) express one’s approval (or disapproval) and (b) to report one’s believe that one approves (or disapproves). He later came to see that his view was more plausible without (b), the reporting function, and thus advocated a pure expressivism. See Stevenson (“Retrospective Comments” 210-214).

[28] See Shafer-Landau (Moral Realism: A Defence).

[29] On could think that there are (true) moral propositions but that moral discourse is always and only expressive and so no one ever states a true moral proposition. On this view, we are prevented from stating (true) moral propositions. It’s unclear what the motivations or advantages for this view would be, however, and I don’t think it has ever been advocated.

[30] Our beliefs and attitudes are, of course, “in the world,” but having these serve as truth-makers for judgments will, at least, present a challenge for making sense of moral and epistemic error, among other difficulties.