I'm not sure about the spinach case vs the slavery and racism case. I think the point Enoch is making (although he doesnt seem to word it that well) is that people would interpret the statement about spinach as a joke (funny or not) because people dont tend to think there is a fact of the matter about how people should feel about the taste of spinach, but the statement implies that there is.
If you wouldn't interpet the slavery/racism statement as a joke, one explanation for this is that it is because you do think that there is a fact of the matter about how people should feel about slavery/racism.
Enoch would probably claim that people who disapprove of slavery also tend to believe that everyone should disapprove of slavery, but people who dislike spinach would not tend to think that everyone should dislike spinach.
Now I think that's plausible and to me suggests a qualitative difference between moral judgments and personal preferences.
If I'm morally opposed to a practice, I think everyone should oppose that practice. But if I dislike a food, I don't think everyone should dislike that food, sure.
I don't take this to be an indication that moral judgements aren't preferences though. To me, this just indicates that the scope of the preference is different.
In the case of foods I dislike, the scope of my preference is limited to myself. *I* don't want to eat foods I dislike. I don't care if anyone else eats foods I dislike though. In the case of practices I morally oppose, the scope applies to everyone. I don't want *anyone* to enslave others. I still take the moral judgement to be reporting a preference I have though.
Ah yes fair enough. So because you think and speak as a subjectivist, when you claim that everyone should oppose a practice, you are reporting your own desire that people oppose that practice.
I guess I would find thinking and speaking as a moral subjectivist weird but I get how you can accomodate what I mentioned in my previous comment.
I think this is a great response to Enoch's point, but I still think it misses the mark on exactly what the issue is when people bring up the idea of stances other than the ones we actually have. All moral realists should definitely affirm that relativists can consistently say some bad thing would be wrong even if, counterfactually, the relativist thought it was right. But the real issue, at least to me, is that the relativist would have no way of privileging their actual stance over that of their morally depraved counterpart; even if you can blanket all possible worlds with a condemnation of (using this example) sexism, they can blanket all possible worlds with an approval of it, and they would be right in their judgment in exactly the same way you're right in yours. What the realist really wants is some way to say, "I think X is wrong, and someone who believes that X is right is making an error that I am not making" - that is, that person must be wrong about their view for a distinct reason than why I would be wrong to hold my view in their eyes.
If that is the intended point, I find it a bit strange that one would bring up a possible world where everyone approves of sexism when just bringing up a single individual in the actual world who approves of sexism would suffice to make the point.
It's less clear if Enoch is guilty of this, but I sometimes get the impression from realists that they think it somehow carries additional weight if it's specified that the person in question approving of the bad thing is yourself. I remember watching a video with Michael Huemer where he went through his objections to anti-realist views and his objection to individual subjectivism was that if you approved of the Holocaust, then you'd have to say it was good.
Of course, there are many people in the actual world who approve of the Holocaust and an individual subjectivist would similarly have to say that relative to these people's standards, the Holocaust was good. There's not really any relevant difference between some random person on the street holding a rancid moral view and some hypothetical version of me from another possible world holding it.
But in terms of the objection that relativists can't privilege their moral views over that of others - if all saying a moral view is privileged over another amounts to is just saying that it's objectively superior, then I agree relativists can't say that. I suppose I just don't see what is supposed to be troubling about such an implication.
It seems like the realist expects us to just take for granted that this is some radically counterintuitive result, but it doesn't seem remotely counterintuitive to me. As early as I can recall reflecting on the topic, it's always seemed obvious to me that there are no stance-independent moral facts - no perspective-transcendent way of deeming one moral view superior to another. My evaluation has stayed more or less the same since reflecting on the topic in more detail.
If anything, the fact that relativist views deliver this result seems more like a point in their favor than a mark against them to me.
What I find troubling about the implication that no stance can be objectively privileged over another is that I see that sort of privileging as being very valuable in other domains where objectivity is acknowledged, like the sciences. That's sorta Enoch's point, in my mind: We have *some* examples of views made objectively correct by external facts, and *some* examples of views that are based only on subjective stances, and it feels like the former are both more significant and rationally license a greater range of responses. I don't know about your views on things like instrumentalism or normative realism more broadly, so it could be that you don't think that privileged position ever exists. But if someone recognizes that *some* statements of the form "X is Y" are objective, and from that derive qualities that are lacking in other statements without that sort of grounding, then I do feel like they should be able to understand why you'd want your moral beliefs to have those qualities. And of course that doesn't rule out the idea that they *don't* have those qualities - we could just be out of luck, unfortunately - but it seems like you would at least hope they did.
I consider myself a normative anti-realist but I do think there are stance-independently true statements - like that the Earth is not flat.
Do I find the fact that this is the case valuable or am I glad about it in some way? I wouldn't say that, I suppose because I'm not sure what it would even mean to insist that a statement like "Earth is not flat" is stance-dependent. I struggle to even conceptualize that.
I have to say I struggle to conceptualize what the notion of stance-independent wrongness in some robust sense would refer to as well. To me, saying that sexism is stance-independently wrong comes off as similar to insisting that mushrooms are tasty independent of how they taste to anyone. It's just baked into my notion of wrongness that it consists in some sort of stance, so claims of that sort don't really register with me.
In terms of stance-independent facts rationally licensing a greater range of responses, it seems to me that the only additional response that would be rationally licensed is just believing that someone is stance-independently wrong.
I don't think it's any more rational to admonish someone for being a climate change denier than to admonish them for not being a vegan - even though I think there's something they're stance-independently wrong in the former case but not the latter case.
I'm inclined to think preferences aren't even the sort of thing that are subject to rational constraint in the first place. I saw your interaction with Lance about my article - there you bring up punishing people for enjoying Nickelback. I don't think there would be anything irrational about that.
Even if we think about a really extreme case - suppose someone desires to assassinate and torture people for enjoying pineapple on pizza - I fail to see what rational constraint is being violated here. We can say a lot of things about such a person - that they're cruel, monstrous, morally depraved - but I don't think being evil makes you irrational.
Ultimately I don't think someone having differing goals, even ones that are wildly divergent from my own, is the sort of thing that can make them irrational.
Great article and some good responses to Enoch.
I'm not sure about the spinach case vs the slavery and racism case. I think the point Enoch is making (although he doesnt seem to word it that well) is that people would interpret the statement about spinach as a joke (funny or not) because people dont tend to think there is a fact of the matter about how people should feel about the taste of spinach, but the statement implies that there is.
If you wouldn't interpet the slavery/racism statement as a joke, one explanation for this is that it is because you do think that there is a fact of the matter about how people should feel about slavery/racism.
Enoch would probably claim that people who disapprove of slavery also tend to believe that everyone should disapprove of slavery, but people who dislike spinach would not tend to think that everyone should dislike spinach.
Now I think that's plausible and to me suggests a qualitative difference between moral judgments and personal preferences.
If I'm morally opposed to a practice, I think everyone should oppose that practice. But if I dislike a food, I don't think everyone should dislike that food, sure.
I don't take this to be an indication that moral judgements aren't preferences though. To me, this just indicates that the scope of the preference is different.
In the case of foods I dislike, the scope of my preference is limited to myself. *I* don't want to eat foods I dislike. I don't care if anyone else eats foods I dislike though. In the case of practices I morally oppose, the scope applies to everyone. I don't want *anyone* to enslave others. I still take the moral judgement to be reporting a preference I have though.
Ah yes fair enough. So because you think and speak as a subjectivist, when you claim that everyone should oppose a practice, you are reporting your own desire that people oppose that practice.
I guess I would find thinking and speaking as a moral subjectivist weird but I get how you can accomodate what I mentioned in my previous comment.
I think this is a great response to Enoch's point, but I still think it misses the mark on exactly what the issue is when people bring up the idea of stances other than the ones we actually have. All moral realists should definitely affirm that relativists can consistently say some bad thing would be wrong even if, counterfactually, the relativist thought it was right. But the real issue, at least to me, is that the relativist would have no way of privileging their actual stance over that of their morally depraved counterpart; even if you can blanket all possible worlds with a condemnation of (using this example) sexism, they can blanket all possible worlds with an approval of it, and they would be right in their judgment in exactly the same way you're right in yours. What the realist really wants is some way to say, "I think X is wrong, and someone who believes that X is right is making an error that I am not making" - that is, that person must be wrong about their view for a distinct reason than why I would be wrong to hold my view in their eyes.
If that is the intended point, I find it a bit strange that one would bring up a possible world where everyone approves of sexism when just bringing up a single individual in the actual world who approves of sexism would suffice to make the point.
It's less clear if Enoch is guilty of this, but I sometimes get the impression from realists that they think it somehow carries additional weight if it's specified that the person in question approving of the bad thing is yourself. I remember watching a video with Michael Huemer where he went through his objections to anti-realist views and his objection to individual subjectivism was that if you approved of the Holocaust, then you'd have to say it was good.
Of course, there are many people in the actual world who approve of the Holocaust and an individual subjectivist would similarly have to say that relative to these people's standards, the Holocaust was good. There's not really any relevant difference between some random person on the street holding a rancid moral view and some hypothetical version of me from another possible world holding it.
But in terms of the objection that relativists can't privilege their moral views over that of others - if all saying a moral view is privileged over another amounts to is just saying that it's objectively superior, then I agree relativists can't say that. I suppose I just don't see what is supposed to be troubling about such an implication.
It seems like the realist expects us to just take for granted that this is some radically counterintuitive result, but it doesn't seem remotely counterintuitive to me. As early as I can recall reflecting on the topic, it's always seemed obvious to me that there are no stance-independent moral facts - no perspective-transcendent way of deeming one moral view superior to another. My evaluation has stayed more or less the same since reflecting on the topic in more detail.
If anything, the fact that relativist views deliver this result seems more like a point in their favor than a mark against them to me.
What I find troubling about the implication that no stance can be objectively privileged over another is that I see that sort of privileging as being very valuable in other domains where objectivity is acknowledged, like the sciences. That's sorta Enoch's point, in my mind: We have *some* examples of views made objectively correct by external facts, and *some* examples of views that are based only on subjective stances, and it feels like the former are both more significant and rationally license a greater range of responses. I don't know about your views on things like instrumentalism or normative realism more broadly, so it could be that you don't think that privileged position ever exists. But if someone recognizes that *some* statements of the form "X is Y" are objective, and from that derive qualities that are lacking in other statements without that sort of grounding, then I do feel like they should be able to understand why you'd want your moral beliefs to have those qualities. And of course that doesn't rule out the idea that they *don't* have those qualities - we could just be out of luck, unfortunately - but it seems like you would at least hope they did.
I consider myself a normative anti-realist but I do think there are stance-independently true statements - like that the Earth is not flat.
Do I find the fact that this is the case valuable or am I glad about it in some way? I wouldn't say that, I suppose because I'm not sure what it would even mean to insist that a statement like "Earth is not flat" is stance-dependent. I struggle to even conceptualize that.
I have to say I struggle to conceptualize what the notion of stance-independent wrongness in some robust sense would refer to as well. To me, saying that sexism is stance-independently wrong comes off as similar to insisting that mushrooms are tasty independent of how they taste to anyone. It's just baked into my notion of wrongness that it consists in some sort of stance, so claims of that sort don't really register with me.
In terms of stance-independent facts rationally licensing a greater range of responses, it seems to me that the only additional response that would be rationally licensed is just believing that someone is stance-independently wrong.
I don't think it's any more rational to admonish someone for being a climate change denier than to admonish them for not being a vegan - even though I think there's something they're stance-independently wrong in the former case but not the latter case.
I'm inclined to think preferences aren't even the sort of thing that are subject to rational constraint in the first place. I saw your interaction with Lance about my article - there you bring up punishing people for enjoying Nickelback. I don't think there would be anything irrational about that.
Even if we think about a really extreme case - suppose someone desires to assassinate and torture people for enjoying pineapple on pizza - I fail to see what rational constraint is being violated here. We can say a lot of things about such a person - that they're cruel, monstrous, morally depraved - but I don't think being evil makes you irrational.
Ultimately I don't think someone having differing goals, even ones that are wildly divergent from my own, is the sort of thing that can make them irrational.