Moral Realism and Moral Error

This video outlines a new argument from moral disagreement, which challenges moral realists to provide a theory of error: an explanation of why so many people have been so mistaken about the moral facts. This is based on Nicolas Smyth's article "Moral Knowledge and the Genealogy of Error"

The earlier video on moral disagreement:

0:00 - Introduction
0:39 - The reliability challenge
9:43 - Denying disagreement
16:01 - Non-moral error
28:08 - Distorting factors
34:36 - Consistency reasoning
40:57 - Intuitionism

[chazman]

Would love to see you get Graham Oppy (moral and scientific realist) on the channel for a discussion

[CasualPhilosophy]

I find the "widespread moral disagreement" claim to be overstated. While there is widespread disagreement, relative to the past there ALSO seems to be widespread convergance on a whole range of issues AND this state of affairs (both the persistent disagreement and convergence) looks analogous to the distribution/process of belief and progress in other epistemic areas, like the natural sciences and math.

[Krusader-]

Your philosophy videos are really helpful to me. Keep up the good work 👍

[adriansantba]

Hi, Kane! First of all, i'd like to say that you're doing a very god job with this channel. I discovered you just a few weeks ago and i'm learning a lot with your videos. Second: do you have any interest in the relation between faith and epistemology? I found a philosopher called Lara Buchak who makes a very good case for the faith as a rational method. What's your take on it?

(** I apologize for my bad grammar. I'm not a native speaker)

[avaevathornton]

I don't have the intuition that Julie and Mark did anything wrong.

[shannon]

I don't think everyone in 'western culture' hold that slavery is wrong. I have seen Christians argue that slavery is not actually wrong in some circumstances. While I don't buy that 'western culture' is Christian and only Christian, it would seem odd to exclude them as part of "western culture". Personally I am unsure if slavery is wrong in all cases, I don't think we currently live in a time where slavery should be legal though. I am very certain that I am part of my culture, which could vaguely be referred to as "western culture".

I use quotes around western culture as I find this idea of culture being this one thing kind of odd, it seems to me that culture is multiple and conflicted. I don't think when I refer to 'western culture' that I am actually referring to Western Culture singular but this vague collection of cultures plural that have some historical connection from their intellectual and geographic locations. This kind of argument seems to be taking culture as a singular which I find hard to wrap my head around.

This does not seem like a new argument, this seems like something that has been argued against in "the Challenge of Cultural Relativism" by James Rachels. I could be missing the distinction here.

The argument presented seems to hold that the moral realist is committed to the idea at this point in time we have the Truth with a capital T, I don't really see why that would be the case. Other thing that we believe we have access to Truth of, we are happy to accept that our current understanding is wrong in some way but we just don't know which parts. It seems odd that morality has this special requirement that all people in all times have perfect access to the Truth of the matter. Perhaps I am missing something, I think I need to watch this video again and write down some notes.

[e]

Regarding what moral realists claim: How about absolute rights irrespective of context compared to, I don’t know, vague rights where context matters?

[RoryT]

Ok you didn't like the previous argument. Well try this one on for size.
Why would a cultural practice that we find immoral, which continues to the present, persist even though the "truth" of the matter has been shown buy "us"?
One strong driver of behaviour is group cohesion. (Sorry for the assertion but I contend that that is well grounded). Innate morality, as driven by evolutionary factors, would put a strong emphasis on the maintenance of a strong group dynamic. It's obviously no stretch of the imagination that it could include FGM etc etc. In face, the gladiatorial games mentioned in the video we're explicitly performed for this purpose, 'bread and circuses'.
The realist need only to appeal to the 'fact' that the moral truth of group cohesion (or something similar) is being realised to a certain degree just that other moral truths are falling by the wayside because of it. Error born of ignorance and shortsightedness, two very human traits indeed
For the anti-realist, this argument can be easily countered by an appeal to moral intuitions, whatever they may be, that come about through natural means, as discussed before, and that the extent cultures can be manipulated by factors like propaganda or class interests or religion etc etc is evident in the range of moral positions we see in the world.
Whether or not we are acting morally or not depends on our values, culture of philosophy/rational discussion etc.
Unfortunately, in the anti realist camp, talking about innate moral intuitions is verboten.... So we are ideologically trapped.
Thanks for reading

[theraylee]

Make a vid on whether financial abortion should be legalised.
There should be two cases for financial abortion first that a featus is a person from conception.second the featus beacomes a person after 24 weeks.in which case should it be legalised and in which it should not

[dominiks]

Obviously the moral realist should mainly appeal to option 3) distorting factors and then should just deny the claim that the symmetry objection obtains. There are numerous reasons to think that nowadays we are influenced significantly less by those distorting factors - one of the main reasons for this is that we have improved our education system, which teaches students how to think critically and evaluate their beliefs. We also know significantly more about human psychology, which allows us to question our own beliefs even further. Sure, we are still influenced by self-interested motifs, but as we have become more aware of our biases, surely we are now in a better position to keep those self-interested motifs in check.
Overall I would say that the symmetry objection is pretty ridiculous, given what I wrote above. Surely no one *truly* believes that educated people in the 21st century have a thought process which is just as distorted as the thought process of peasants 500 years ago, that´s ludicrous.

[principleshipcoleoid]

Excuses for FGm are the wame as for MGM

[unknownknownsphilosophy]

You gotta stop hitting home runs with all these killer videos Kane.. you're making everyone else on the internet look bad. We should do a John Cage talk that'll put everyone to sleep.. nice nap material for everyone.. everybody could use a nice nap

[AlonzoFyfe]

Concerning "denying disagreement". Your response seemed to be challenging the realist to explain how different moral practices are actually justified. The realist has the option of responding that this disagreement is grounded on mistakes. Different theories of disease, thunder and lightning, planets, motion, etc. persisted through centuries as well. This is different from the "non-moral error" response you discussed later. Just as humans can be mistaken about the non-moral facts for millennia, they can be mistaken about moral facts for millennia. To expect all cultures to hit upon all of the correct moral facts immediately after agriculture was invented is as unreasonable as expecting them to hit upon atomic theory, heliocentrism, evolution, and tectonic plate theory the instant agriculture was invented.

Concerning "non-moral error". In this section, you seem to be suggesting that the moral realist must somehow explain how practices such as slavery and infanticide would be justified if their non-moral errors were corrected. Which assumes that cultures cannot, at the same time, also have some of the moral facts wrong. You never consider the possibility that mistakes can be a combination of false non-moral beliefs and false moral beliefs happening at the same time.

Yes, we find rationalization and dumbfounding with respect to moral beliefs. We also find rationalization and dumb-founding with respect to non-moral beliefs. People make mistakes regarding the scientific facts concerning the efficacy of vaccines, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and evolution. When presented with counter-evidence, they come up with rationalizations and assert (other) false beliefs that they accept only because it reinforces the (false) beliefs they already have. This phenomenon does not discredit the claim that there are scientific facts. People do not immediately change their beliefs regarding the wrongness of incest when given evidence, but they do not change their beliefs regarding evolution when given evidence either.

You mention that learning moral attitudes may be like learning a language. I think that this is correct. However, one of the tools we use to learn a moral language is a presumption of truth in the propositions of a language. Without a presumption of truth, we could never interpret sounds into a language. There may be multiple ways to express a true proposition, but this does not imply that the same proposition can be both true and false.

We must also consider the distinction between knowing how and knowing that. People know how to do morality, but they cannot explain how they do it. Like people know how to ride a bike, but cannot explain how they do it. If asked how they keep their balance while riding a bike, most will assert the false theory that they do so by shifting their weight. In fact, people maintain their balance by slightly turning the front wheel and allowing inertia to carry their center of balance back and forth. When they give their weight-shifting theory, we can discredit this by providing evidence against it. The fact that they cannot explain how they keep their balance does not prove that, therefore, they cannot actually keep their balance and cannot effectively ride a bike. The fact that they cannot explain how they make moral judgments does not prove that they cannot effectively make moral judgments.

Your claims about the discrediting of slavery (your assertion that pro-slavery people would not become anti-slavery people when given reasons) is falsified by the huge number of pro-slavery people who became anti-slavery people in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Similarly, the philosophers of the enlightenment seemed to have had a very strong effect on beliefs about the divine right of kings. The fact that people do not respond to evidence in 10 minutes in a laboratory setting - particularly when it comes to core beliefs and attitudes - simply shows that these experiments do not properly model how people respond to evidence.

Your response to "distorting factors" has a similar problem. These "distorting factors" also impact a person's non-moral beliefs. Yet, we hold that there are non-moral facts. Even though the distorting factors are as true today as it has been in the past, this does not give us reason to deny the existence of scientific facts. We can know that those whose beliefs on vaccines, global warming, and evolution are subject to distorting factors that there are facts of the matter regarding the effects of vaccines, greenhouse gas emissions, and survival of the fittest. One could deny scientific realism, but it is sufficient for my purposes to argue that moral facts are equivalent to scientific facts.

NOTE: I am not an intuitionist. There is no direct perception of moral qualities. But, let us assume that color perception were malleable. By praising those who see things as one color and condemning those who see them as another, we could make it the case that people perceive things as yellow or red (like making it the case that we could cause people to perceive things as right or wrong). We would immediately use this power to ask, "What are the benefits of having people perceive these things as yellow?" We would promote as yellow-appearing those things that it benefits us to appear as yellow and as red-appearing where red appearance is useful. Morality is concerned with promoting useful value-appearances. This would be a matter of genuine debate. There would be a fact of the matter, supported by reasons, for one's conclusions. Having all street lights appear as green would be a genuinely bad idea. Given the fact that we cannot fine-tune our value appearances too precisely, giving all incest an appearance of bad is better than giving all incest an appearance of neutral.

(By the way, I deny the existence of objective, intrinsic prescriptivity. I believe that there are moral facts, but moral properties are not objectively intrinsic properties, they are relational properties. More specifically, they are relationships between actions and those desires and aversions people have reasons to promote universally using praise and condemnation. This is not an infinite regress, it is a coherentist system. What matters is how a web of malleable desires fit together - a harmony of desires. Even though relationships between actions and malleable desires, and between malleable desires (those that can be modified using praise and condemnation) and other desires (those desires that provide the reasons to praise and condemn), cannot exist without desires, the facts about those relationships are independent of anybody's beliefs about those facts.)

[DeadEndFrog]

'moral dumbfounding' does not seem to work for the religious, afterall its god who said its bad, therfor its bad by definition, they just don't know gods super special reasons as to why its wrong.

[Zagg]

You appear to be searching for a categorical imperative that will (finally) justify liberal, individualistic, egalitarian values. An eighteenth century East Prussian gave the strongest arguments that have ever been made for such an imperative. That attempt failed. That doesn’t imply that no such argument exists. But it sure sets the bar very high.

[InventiveHarvest]

Older civilizations based their moral beliefs mostly by religion; my moral beliefs are mathematically derived.

[jacklessa]

Most people want to be happy and don't like to make other people or animals suffer(if is not a punishment or revenge.). So when we find a way to get what we want without making other people or animals suffer, we consider the old way wrong.

Today, we don't need to rape woman to have sex, we don't need to slave people to have profit, we don't need to kill to have the basics for our survival...

I think when fake meat become as cheap and good as real meat, kill animals to eat will be considered wrong, saving tribal society's. Because it will be a unnecessary suffer to get the pleasure of eat meat.

So we become nicer people to others people and animals if this is easy, we become horrible people to others people and animals if it become hard to be nice. We are weak. So I think we will have different moral rules because do some actions in some places is easy and another places is hard, in some ages are hard and other easy, if become universally easy to not cause unnecessary suffer, it will be universally wrong cause unnecessary suffer.

So I think morality is intersubjective. Do not exist without us, but is not created by us, is created by evolution.