Paul Horwich: Truth, Realism, and Moral Facts | Robinson's Podcast #78

[@ericd9827]

Holy cow, this podcast is ❤‍🔥❤‍🔥❤‍🔥 lately!

[@robinsonerhardt]

That makes me so happy to hear! Paul was a wonderful guest.

[@lanceindependent]

I’m really happy to see Horwich here. Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy is by far my favorite recent book, and I keep recommending it. I do have some disagreements with Horwich, however. Around 42:15 Horwich seems to indicate that most people are moral realists. Horwich uses explicitly psychological language about what people think. However, questions about what people think are empirical, and I find it strange that philosophers will make empirical claims like this without much if any empirical evidence to support those claims. There is, at present, very little in the way of evidence to support the notion that most people think like moral realists. The best available studies have found that a significant majority of respondents consistently favored moral antirealism. See e.g.: Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11, 53-82. P&W found that about 75% of their participants consistently favored moral antirealism across a range of distinct paradigms. I don’t take these findings to be definitive by any means, but we have little in the way of comparable rigorous findings suggest that most people are realists. However, there is little empirical evidence to support the notion that most people are moral realists. I would also dispute whether any reasonable analysis of ordinary language would provide strong evidence that people speak or think like moral realists, implicitly or otherwise. The discussion about moral facts also seems disengaged from contemporary metaethical disputes. Those of us who call ourselves moral antirealists deny that there are stance-independent moral facts. The notion that if we have moral beliefs that therefore we believe there are “moral facts” seems remarkably unhelpful. What, exactly, is meant by a “moral fact”? I have “moral beliefs” after a fashion. My “moral beliefs” reflect my personal moral standards, though. So if I say that I think something is wrong, it means that it’s inconsistent with my values. It would bel to say that this commits me to the existence of “moral facts.” My moral discourse doesn’t reflect a belief in a distinctive domain, “morality,” about which there are facts. It’s just a way to convey my preferences. I don’t need moral language to convey those preferences. I’m no more committed in any nontrivial way to the existence of “moral facts” than I am to facts about what’s “awesome” or “cool.” At the same time, however, I do not think that the way I use moral claims reflects how others use moral claims. Facts about how people use moral language are empirical questions, and they cannot be resolved from the armchair. People making moral claims may use them from a variety of distinct purposes, some of which might conform to one metaethical view in some cases but a different one in others. Or they might use moral language with no determinate metaethical position at all. Gill (2009) raises both points here: Gill, M. B. (2009). Indeterminacy and variability in meta-ethics. Philosophical studies, 145, 215-234.

[@exalted_kitharode]

Great podcast, hope you'll continue your work!

[@robinsonerhardt]

I’m so glad you’re enjoying it!

[@DigitalGnosis]

Any source for the claim that the realism/antirealism distinction is due to Dummett?

[@markett7159]

Interview Frances Kamm while you still can. She never cared about decorum, she is a truth hound. They don't make them like that any more.