Debating Moral Realism (apparently) on Embrace the Void
Added 2024-03-04 05:18:23 +0000 UTCSome of you might 'enjoy' this recent discussion I (Chris) had with Aaron on his philosophy podcast Embrace the Void. This was partly a response to our Yuval Harari episode and Aaron's desire to explain why we had got things wrong in our analysis. In any case I enjoyed myself, even if we did have to talk about philosophy... a bit.
Comments
Great discussion, Chris.
Shane Partington
2024-04-19 01:45:19 +0000 UTCThanks for the Shafer-Landau reference. That led me into a rabbit hole of the (wonderfully named!) Hallvard Lillehammer's review of said book and an introduction to the "companions in guilt strategy" which Aaron did use more than once in that episode, in fact. Specifically, if memory serves, on the existence of epistemic norms (or "oughts"). That is, science is based on the idea that we ought to accept the position for which there is the most evidence. That's an epistemic norm. The "companion in guilt" idea - AFAICS - is that if you accept epistemic norms then you have to accept moral norms (in a philosophically realist way), because if the latter is false then so is the former. Which, I do not buy at all, ovs. But I still think there's a big difference between the defences of, or arguments for a belief system like moral realism, and the actual real underlying motives of the believers for holding that belief. So even if the proffered defences are silly and easily deconstructed, it doesn't necessarily get us any closer to the real reasons for such a strange belief
Paul Bowman
2024-03-05 12:31:17 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed this. I didn't know Chris was into this kind of thing and he should actually maybe consider talking about philosophy a little more? The weird sci-fi territory combined with the serious consideration of how different non-human ethics could get is fascinating. Kudos to Aaron, too. Really great stuff.
Harold Chalmers
2024-03-05 05:19:38 +0000 UTCI'm sure there is a way to formulate the math analogy that's not naive Platonism, however I doubt his argument could survive a brief stroll through the wiki pages for philosophy of mathematics/foundations of mathematics.
rooftowel
2024-03-04 22:26:22 +0000 UTCHe mentioned on a previous episode that his cosmic moral realism (my label) was inspired by Russ Schafer-Landau's book on moral realism which, according to a reviewer quoted in his Wiki article "defends an unorthodox combination of claims, including anti-Humeanism about reasons for action, mind-independent moral realism, moral non-naturalism, moral rationalism, and reliabilist moral epistemology." Aaron then framed the discussion around evolutionary debunking arguments made by Sharon Street against moral realism where it might have been nice to hear common criticisms of Aaron's and/or Schafer-Landau's view. My sense after spending a few hours I can't get back looking into it is that if you recursively follow the academic discussion that this is a pseudo debate that collapses into the question "what is the nature of morality?" where a common criticism of both the super duper (mind and stance independent) and truth tracking moral realism is that they haven't adequately specified the properties of moral factuality/objectivity in a way that is not question begging (assuming parts of the conclusion in the argument).
rooftowel
2024-03-04 22:16:43 +0000 UTCLots of fun! I fall more on your side of this discussion, Chris. I do love how philosophical explorations venture into imaginary territories, such as what would the jellyfish 🪼 beings find to be moral?
Linda Sears
2024-03-04 21:08:01 +0000 UTCLike Abraham discovered there was one God? It seems more likely that, as with personality traits, some of us are born with a sense of fairness or unfairness. Dogs, or the other hand, very much believe in finders keepers - even if they found it in your pocket. I can see both these traits as the beginning of an ethical code which does not require a moral universe.
Nina Davies
2024-03-04 20:13:40 +0000 UTCRe "what assumptions you must hold first in order to arrive at moral realism", like I say, I don't know generally. The hunch I got from listening to Aaron on this episode that he might say that you can't actually have a reasoned discussion about normative ethics unless moral realism is true. Which seems to me to be a bit like those religious people who think that atheists can't have any ethical basis. Like I say, I'm speculating a bit. But his assertion that moral truths are not socially-constructed but "discovered", in an analogous way to how human knowledge has discovered pi and Planck's constant, points me in that direction
Paul Bowman
2024-03-04 14:37:00 +0000 UTCWhat is and what is not liberal seems very much dependant on what a given set of people believes to be acceptable and unacceptable. Ditto those institutions or ideas or organisations or versions of capitalism currently seen as threats to liberalism. There are climate change activists who believe benign dictatorship could be the only way forward in terms of meeting global targets. If this were to be achievable, it would be a long way from democracy and individual rights and much more in line with Kingship and obligations towards and from subjects. I am really interested in what assumptions you must hold first in order to arrive at moral realism. And why doesn't Anthropology and History and archaeology and the physical sciences disprove it?
Nina Davies
2024-03-04 14:11:01 +0000 UTCI’m interested in what form of moral realism he embraces. I don’t see how one escapes moral realism (which I’m taking to mean moral statements can have truth value, even if they are contingent, and therefore moral facts exist even if they are contingent on the types of beings that exist). But any strict moral realism that is not pluralist and does not allow for changing moral truths seems doomed to fail. I’ll update after the episode!
Zack Katopodis
2024-03-04 13:51:18 +0000 UTCI really was happy to hear Chris give me a better foundation for thinking that both there is no objective morality and that there are objectively better and worse ones for Humans, at least if you think the point of morality is how things seem from the evolving point of view of humans. Though I also tend to think things like wronging or hurting another falls under morality whereas modes of dress or which animal you eat do not(I allow vegetarian vs not is a moral question perhaps, but pork vs beef seems the same valence to me). Preference in dress or sorts of cooking seem completely relative to me. And culturally subjective. I still can't understand why it seems like to Chris(and Kevin from previous pod) that effectively random events equal will of any sense, or that something like the 2 face from batman flip of a coin and doing what it says would make that specific choice free either. Or, absent substrate chauvinism, a computer(well, technically the complex operating system) has free will by how they seemed to define it.
James Pulver
2024-03-04 13:41:04 +0000 UTCAaron's a lovely guy, but his faith in moral realism is baffling to me. I was hoping to finally hear a worked out argument that might help me understand, but it didn't happen. Towards the end of the interview he was resorting to mere assertion "Causing unnecessary suffering just IS objectively wrong". Like many otherwise intelligent thinkers, Aaron appears trapped within his liberal modernist ideology - one of the self-contradictory aspects of which is the "ideology of non-ideology", i.e. that your normative positions are not ideological choices but objective truths. It's the persistent refusal of the fact/value distinction. That said, even if I don't accept liberal universalism is a law of the universe, like the speed of light, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a pragmatic valence, related to real problems of current human development. Having reached a level of technological and social development where warfare can now threaten species-level extinction, then there is a real stake in finding universal agreement on shared values, norms and principles (legal or otherwise) that might avert global nuclear war or similar. So applying reason to arguing about normative ethics at societal and international level has a pragmatic reality - its not the kind of nihilistic relativism of extreme kinds of cultural relativism, for e.g. But I agree with Chris that our framework for making those rationales is relative to our synchronous existence as pro-social primates, and our diachronic situation of technological and cultural development.
Paul Bowman
2024-03-04 13:06:13 +0000 UTCYeah, I did enjoy that already last week 😃 I'm supporting ETV as well, after listening to your previous occurrences there. Also, Helen Lewis and C Thi Nguyen. 😃
Roland Weber
2024-03-04 11:29:12 +0000 UTCAm I being dim, or isn't belief in a cosmological moral law very similar to a belief in God? No wonder Aaron hates the Stoics. My favourite Douglas Adams quote - and one I very much live by, as it turns out, is: Sir,' I said to the universe, 'I exist.' 'That,' said the universe, 'creates no sense of obligation in me whatsoever.' I also now understand why 'moral relativism' is seen as a winning card for philosophers. I really did loose the will to listen with the assertion that democracy was somehow floating out there in the moral universe. A paradigm too far for me. I am definitely a moral flat earther.
Nina Davies
2024-03-04 09:52:36 +0000 UTCIt depends on your mileage for philosophers. I don’t know that I am saying anything that insightful but it is my view on morality.
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-03-04 09:44:48 +0000 UTCNah I like the taste too much but I know I’m a monsterz
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-03-04 09:44:14 +0000 UTCAh, I saw that notification come up… three?… days ago and was going to ask whether it was worth listening to, in your opinion… thank you for making me type this replacement message instead 🤓
Empty_Cognizance
2024-03-04 05:21:42 +0000 UTCAre you really a moral monster Chris? Sounds like you are ready to go vegan/vegetarian
Joshua McMonagle-Ihasz
2024-03-04 05:20:33 +0000 UTC
