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john smith's avatar

What do you think about Moore's open question? Given any ought "out there", one can non trivially ask if it ought to be the case that they follow the ought "out there"

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Lance S. Bush's avatar

Part 4 of 4:

//Just Questions further misses the point with his remarks about gastronomic realism and suggesting that realists are mistaken to think anti-realists can’t use terms like good or better, etc. But I’m not aware of moral realists saying that. Of course realists note that anti-realists can use terms like good (as in, I desire something) or better (as in, I prefer something) in a sense that doesn’t commit them to moral realism. But that was not the context of Gil’s comment.//

It wasn’t Gil’s comment, it was yours. You said this at 47:30:

“Right, but notice, notice right there there’s an assumption of a better in the background of that. Right? [...] This is what you have to be so careful of in these types of conversations, there’s moral realism right in the background of that counter.”

If you weren’t suggesting that my use of moral language somehow implied moral realism, then what did you mean? Because that sure looks like what you said.

//Rather, Gil’s comment was like a common atheist attack you hear against Christianity: “See, my moral code is better because I can do the right thing just because it’s the right thing, not because I’m afraid God will send me to hell.”//

No, you are mistaken. Gil was describing my views, not a common atheist attack against Christianity. So the context of Gil’s remark was an attempt to paraphrase my own views, not someone else’s. I don’t know if this needs to be said, but I have a better understanding of what I said and what I meant than you or Gil, and what you describe here doesn’t reflect the point I was making, and that Gil was describing. I do not think it’s the case that my moral code is “better” than a Christian’s because I do the right thing “because it’s the right thing.”

//Clearly, the above is an assumption of realism: that it is objectively (stance-independently, if you like) better to do the right thing because you recognize it is the right thing and desire to pursue it for the sake of it itself rather than fear of punishment.//

Even if that were true, that’s nothing like what I said or what I meant, so no, nothing I said committed me to realism. If you’d like to hear what my point was straight from me, I’d be happy to explain what my point was. It in no way presupposes realism.

//Gil’s comment — which should have been obvious from his hypothetically alternatively moral fact scenario — is parallel to that, so Just Questions response fails.//

Were you not aware that the entire context of that part of the discussion was Gil describing my views? I am the Lance he was referring to. It’s incredibly bizarre to have you try to explain to me why I misinterpreted the context, when the context is effectively a discussion of what I myself had said. What I said isn’t parallel to the scenario you describe, and nothing I said presumes realism. I don’t know where, exactly, Gil is paraphrasing me from, but we can try to find what I said, we can quote it verbatim, and you could explain to me how what I said presumes realism.

References

Mandik, P. (2016). Meta-illusionism and qualia quietism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 140-148.

Pölzler, T. (2017). Revisiting folk moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(2), 455-476.

Pölzler, T. (2018). How to measure moral realism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(3), 647-670.

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2019). Empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Philosophy Compass, 14(5), e12589. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12589.

Pölzler, T., & Cole Wright, J. C. (2020a). An empirical argument against moral non-cognitivism. Inquiry, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2020.1798280

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020b). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 53-82.

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