Objections To Subjectivism Are Terrible

Some might say stance-independently terrible...

Subjectivism is the meta-ethical view that when people make moral statements, they’re expressing propositions about their attitudes.¹

On a simple version of this view, “X is wrong” would translate to “I disapprove of X”, however there are other variations as well. On some subjectivist views, moral statements may instead refer to what attitudes you would have if you met some specified condition (like knowing all the relevant non-moral facts) or specifically about your higher-order attitudes.

Among certain circles, subjectivism is a quite maligned view, being viewed as obviously absurd. I routinely see philosophical opponents of subjectivism throw out the same handful of objections to the view - acting as if these decisively refute subjectivism.

I have to admit - I’m quite perplexed by this attitude. By my lights, not only are these objections not decisive, but they aren’t remotely compelling at all. Actually they’re pretty bad!

In this article, I will be compiling a list of various objections I’ve seen made toward subjectivism and responding to them. Note that I don’t claim to debunk literally every single objection to subjectivism in this article. There may be some objections I’ve missed. Indeed, perhaps there are some objections that I haven’t even heard of - and upon being made aware of them, I will immediately awaken from my subjectivist slumber and start viewing the world with a clear-eyed objectivist lens. Until then, it’s nihilism with sprinkles for me.

For the sake of simplicity, I will mostly talk of the simple version of subjectivism where to say “X is wrong” is to say “I disapprove of X”, but most of the objections and the responses I provide will apply to other forms of subjectivism as well. Where I think it’s relevant, I will occasionally bring up the other forms of subjectivism - such as if I think simple subjectivism uniquely falls prey to an objection but I think other forms manage to avoid it.

If Someone Approves Of A Bad Thing, It’s Good For Them To Do It!

This objection is shockingly common. I’m truly in awe at how often I come across this objection given how terrible it is. It’s just a completely confused remark - yet people routinely continue to make it anyway!

This wouldn’t be so surprising if we were just talking about random laypeople. Across the board, laypeople do a pretty bad job when it comes to attacking rival philosophical views or defending their own beliefs. Oftentimes they’ll just spit out attack lines without taking the time to first think whether the line of attack actually makes sense.

For instance, laypeople that are moral anti-realists routinely make terrible and confused objections to realism. They’ll say things like moral disagreement proves morality must be subjective², the fact that something isn’t always wrong proves it’s not objectively wrong, and that the existence of the is-ought gap proves moral anti-realism.

So if it were just random realists online³ making this objection, that wouldn’t be so remarkable. What makes it remarkable is that this objection isn’t just restricted to random laypeople. It’s one routinely made by professional philosophers as well.

For example, in the paper God and Moral Knowledge, Dustin Crummett and Philip Swenson say the following:

For instance, individual moral relativism, in its simplest form, says that which actions are right or wrong is relative to individuals: the morality of my actions is determined by my own moral standards, and the morality of yours by yours. But this is clearly false, too. It implies that the actions of a racist are right, as long as the racist is living up to their own standards.

But this is not an implication of individual moral relativism. It is only an implication of a particular form of individual moral relativism, namely agent relativism. But it is not an implication of appraiser relativism.

As the Moral Relativism entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says:

Appraiser relativism suggests that we do or should make moral judgments on the basis of our own standards, while agent relativism implies that the relevant standards are those of the persons we are judging (of course, in some cases these may coincide). Appraiser relativism is the more common position, and it will usually be assumed in the discussion that follows.

As I’ve said before, many of the objections to subjectivism seem to just amount to mistakenly treating it as a normative ethical theory that says X is right as long as someone approves of it rather than a meta-ethical theory that says when people say “X is right” they just mean “I approve of X”.

But speaker subjectivism has no first-order normative implications whatsoever. Agent relativism has normative implications (quite implausible ones at that). But speaker subjectivism is not a form of agent relativism! It’s an appraiser relativist view.

Subjectivism is compatible with literally any normative view. Subjectivism is not in the business of telling you what sorts of things are right or wrong. It’s in the business of telling you what people are doing when they say things are right or wrong.

Unfortunately this misconception leads to people making all sorts of confused remarks about subjectivism. I routinely see people, including professional philosophers, claim that “no one acts like a relativist”. The implication is that if you’re any type of relativist - including a subjectivist - you need to have an unmoving attitude of tolerance toward any and all actions.

So if someone walks up to you with a flamethrower and plans to light you on fire, you better just stand there and take it! If you don’t instantaneously agree to being burnt alive, you’re just showing yourself to not really be a relativist. To remain alive would be to engage in a performative contradiction.

This is obviously absurd - and not at all entailed by the view. If I’m a speaker subjectivist and someone points a flamethrower at me while shouting from the rooftops “BURNING YOU ALIVE IS MY MORAL DUTY, TRAVIS TALKS! YOUR SUBSTACK SUCKS!” - all that I’m committed to is thinking when this crazy person says this, they’re saying that they approve of lighting me on fire (and that they disapprove of my Substack).

This doesn’t entail that I approve of them approving of that. When they make moral statements, sure they’re talking about their attitudes. But when I make moral statements, I’m talking about my attitudes and I might very well have a negative attitude toward being lit on fire!⁴ It’s perfectly consistent with subjectivism for me to both say that they’re acting wrongly and to intervene to stop them.

I like this passage from the SEP on the matter:

Furthermore (as has been noted on numerous occasions), there is no obvious route from relativism—no matter how rampant—to an attitude of tolerance. If relativism is true, then the value of tolerance is no more absolute than any other. Consider a kind of tolerance we think desirable: say, allowing other adults to decide what clothes they will wear. If I happen to find myself with sentiments in favor of this kind of tolerance, then, according to naive⁵ individualistic moral relativism, it is true (relative to me) that choosing one's own clothes is permissible. Were I, however, to find myself with vehemently intolerant attitudes toward other people's clothing autonomy, an individualistic moral relativism would be no less supportive of my values. (Indeed, if someone were to say to me “You should be more tolerant of people's choice of dress; don't you know that moral relativism is true?”, relativism would provide me with the resources to counter “But my perspective happens to be an intolerant one, and there is no perspective-transcendent viewpoint from which this point of view may be legitimately criticized.”)

Alternatively, consider a kind of tolerance we think undesirable: say, that of feeling no compulsion to take action against Nazi genocide. If I happen to find myself with sentiments opposed to this kind of tolerance—if I think that Nazi savagery is a crime that must be prevented by extreme intervention—then, according to naive individualistic moral relativism, it is true (relative to me) that an indifferent attitude toward Nazism is unacceptable. Were I, however, to find myself unresponsive when confronted with Nazi genocidal programs—were I, indeed, to find myself with sympathetic leanings—an individualistic moral relativism would be no less supportive of my values. In short, whether we are drawn to relativism in the hope that it will encourage desirable kinds of tolerance, or we are repelled by relativism for fear that it will promote undesirable kinds of tolerance, both the hope and the fear are misplaced.

Your Preferences Are Arbitrary Though!

At this point, the realist might acknowledge that the subjectivist doesn’t act inconsistently in pursuing and prioritizing their goals over those of others.

The realist might still object though: Why would you prioritize your preferences over those of other people? To favor your own preferences over that of others, while not inconsistent, is arbitrary.

First off, I’m not even sure what realists mean when they say this would be “arbitrary”. Does saying my decision to prioritize my goals over other goals just amount to saying there’s no stance-independent moral fact that I should prioritize my goals over others? If so, why would I care about that?

I see some realists point to the fact that my goals are contingent - they could have easily been otherwise. Right now I care a lot about reducing suffering. However if I was raised differently, I could have easily not cared that much about suffering. In fact, I could have even been pro-suffering. But why would I care about this either?

Perhaps one of the best things that man has invented in all of world history.

I quite like this vegan pesto I get from Trader Joe’s. I routinely get it and put it over pasta. My brother, on the other hand, is not a big fan. Is it “arbitrary” of me to prioritize my own taste preference over his when making food for myself? If so, why would that concern me?

At the same time, it could have easily been the case that I didn’t like this pesto. Is the fact that there are demented Travises who dislike Trader Joe’s vegan pesto running around in other possible worlds supposed to stop me from getting and enjoying pesto in this world?

Now you may object: sure, Travis, you may prioritize your own taste preferences when deciding what food you make for yourself. But you don’t impose your taste preferences on others: you’re not taking spoonfuls of pesto pasta and forcing them down your brother’s throat (or so you think).

But this misses the point.

The point is that I’m motivated to act in accord with my preferences - regardless of whether those preferences are “arbitrary” or contingent or whatever. The reason I don’t seek to force other people to eat pesto pasta but I do seek to prevent others from causing suffering isn’t because I think there’s a stance-independent fact that causing suffering is bad but no stance-independent fact that pesto pasta is tasty.

It’s because I simply have no desire for others to eat pesto pasta in the first place. I do have a desire for others not to cause suffering though.

I find the idea that my goals must somehow be ordained by the universe in order to act on them profoundly bizarre. When I see animals being tortured in factory farms by the billions, what I’m bothered by is not the fact that it’s “objectively wrong”. What I’m bothered by is the suffering!

To my mind realists have a very strange psychology. It’s as if they don’t intrinsically disvalue suffering itself - rather they only instrumentally disvalue it insofar as it’s out of accord with the stance-independent moral facts.

Otherwise their remarks make no sense - why are they perplexed by the fact that I as an anti-realist want others to refrain from funding the mass animal torture industry unless their opposition to it hinges on it being objectively wrong?

Note furthermore that that an attitude of intolerance is no more “arbitrary” than an attitude of tolerance. After all, if in saying an attitude is arbitrary is just to say that it’s contingent or to say that there’s no stance-independent normative fact dictating that attitude is objectively better than an opposing one, then both attitudes of tolerance and intolerance are equal in this regard! That’s why it’s so bizarre that realists assume that the natural consequence of accepting anti-realism is to adopt an attitude of tolerance. No matter what attitude I take - one of tolerance or one of intolerance - I’m acting just as “arbitrarily”.

You Actually Agree With Murderers

This is probably one of the most common objections I come across. According to this objection, subjectivism rules out the possibility of moral disagreement (excluding cases where someone is lying or mistaken about their attitudes). As long as someone is accurately reporting their attitudes, you can’t disagree with any of their moral claims (or so this objection goes).

Suppose two people are having a discussion about an important moral matter:

Tom says: “Not subscribing to Travis Talks’ Substack is a moral abomination.”

Sally says: “I think it’s morally acceptable to refrain from subscribing to Travis Talks’ Substack.”

Putting aside Sally’s deeply implausible moral views, this seems like a clear-cut case of moral disagreement. But according to subjectivism, there is no such disagreement. Why? Well, let’s translate Tom and Sally’s moral proclamations:

Tom says: “I disapprove of not subscribing to Travis Talks’ Substack.”

Sally says: “I don’t disapprove of not subscribing to Travis Talks’ Substack.”

Notice that these two claims are compatible with each other - it’s obviously possible for it to both be the case that Tom disapproves of not subscribing to my Substack and that Sally doesn’t disapprove of not subscribing to my Substack. Hence - there’s no disagreement. In fact, Tom and Sally actively agree with each other!

But isn’t this just obviously absurd? It’s clear that Tom and Sally don’t agree with each other - just as it’s clear that a committed pro-choicer and pro-lifer don’t agree with each other, that an animal rights activist and a factory farm CEO don’t agree, etc.

I agree it sounds strange to say these people all agree with each other. But note something: Suppose Tom thought Jack and Jill was a cinematic masterpiece - whereas Sally thought it was one of the worst films ever produced. It would sound similarly strange to say they agree in this case.

It also would sound strange to say that someone who thinks pineapple on pizza is a culinary abomination agrees with someone who thinks it’s one of the tastiest foods on the planet.

Why is this? Because our usage of the term “disagreement” isn’t solely limited to cases in which people have contradictory beliefs about some proposition in contention. That’s one type of disagreement - which we can call propositional disagreement - but there’s another type of disagreement as well - what some philosophers have termed disagreement in attitude. This latter form of disagreement consists not in differing beliefs, but in clashing attitudes.⁶

If you say “Avril Lavigne sucks” and I reply “I disagree”, I’m not disputing your distaste for her music - I’m simply sharing that I have a different attitude toward her music.

In fact, just recently me and a friend were having a conversation about pasta. I stated “I personally prefer smaller noodlers”. In response, he stated “I agree, that’s why I like rotini”.

Now note something about this interaction. My comment was phrased specifically as a remark about my own preferences. Yet my friend still responded with “I agree”. In saying this, was he intending to communicate that he also thinks that Travis Talks prefers smaller noodles? No, of course not. Obviously he was intending to communicate that he shares my preference for smaller noodles!

(I’ll also note that the friend in question is a moral non-naturalist. I have other non-naturalist friends as well who have made similar comments. Using the language of agreement and disagreement to communicate one’s shared/differing preferences is very natural, even for moral realists!)

Opponents of subjectivism have constructed an artificially narrow conception of disagreement - and then used this conception to claim that subjectivism rules out moral disagreement. But there’s no reason to accept their conception - which is obviously out of accord with ordinary usage of the term.

You don’t have to take my word for it: available empirical evidence supports the notion that people don’t see disagreement as necessitating that there be a proposition in contention:

In recent work, however, John Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018) have cast doubt on this assumption; their experiments indicate that subjects do not see disagreement as requiring exclusionary content—a single proposition that one party accepts and the other rejects.

I want to be clear about something. In stating this, I am not claiming that subjectivism has the best account of moral disagreement. It may well be the case that people engaged in moral disagreement don’t take themselves to be engaged in an attitudinal disagreement. If you asked two people who disagree about the moral status of abortion whether at least one of them must have a false belief, they very may well say yes. If so, that would indeed be a cause for concern for subjectivism.

My point simply is that subjectivism can offer an account of moral disagreement - one that is analogous to cases of disagreement we see in other normative domains such aesthetics. The notion that a subjectivist is committed to denying that a vegan and carnivore disagree is totally nonsensical.

You Have To Say *Insert Offensive Statement Here* Is True!

Another common objection to subjectivism proceeds by reciting some offensive statement and then insisting that we have to say it’s true. For example, a critic of subjectivism might bring up the statement “The Holocaust was good” and insist that we have to say it’s true if uttered by someone with a positive attitude toward the Holocaust.

I am unsure why critics of subjectivism are under the impression that this is the killshot they seem to think it is. Yes, it’s true that a subjectivist would be dedicated to saying that the statement “The Holocaust was good” is true in this case. But let’s be clear about what the subjectivist is actually committed to in saying this.

All they are committed to is affirming that a person who approves of the Holocaust approves of the Holocaust.

This is because according to subjectivism, when a person makes the statement “The Holocaust is good” they’re simply stating the same proposition as “I approve of the Holocaust”. If we stipulate that the person voicing this utterance does indeed approve of the Holocaust, then of course this proposition is true.

I’ll note a few things.

First of all, critics of subjectivism, including moral realists, are also committed to some instances of the utterance “The Holocaust is good” being true. For example, suppose that someone personally uses moral language in a subjectivist manner and then proceeds to assert that the Holocaust was good.

Even a strident moral realist would have to admit that this person is saying something true: After all, the proposition they express when they say “The Holocaust was good” just is “I approve of the Holocaust”.

A moral realist can say all sorts of things about this. They can say that they’re using language in a non-standard way. They can say that the Holocaust is objectively wrong. But they can’t say that this person is saying something false.⁷

Additionally, I’ll note that a similar critique can be leveled against non-ethical forms of subjectivism, but it seems like an obviously bad objection in those cases. Take the following statement “Toddlers are hot”.

Similar to “The Holocaust was good”, this is a highly offensive statement. And similar to ethical subjectivists with the aforementioned Holocaust statement, aesthetic subjectivists would have to admit that there are contexts where this statement would be true.

After all, if to say something is hot is just to say one has an attitude of attraction or arousal toward that thing, then someone who has these attitudes toward toddlers would be saying something true.

Is this a good reason to reject aesthetic subjectivism? Of course not.

But if this isn’t a good reason to reject aesthetic subjectivism, why is the aforementioned Holocaust example a good reason to reject ethical subjectivism?

Perhaps critics of ethical subjectivism would say this: Given the way that ordinary aesthetic discourse functions, it’s plausible that some utterances of “Toddlers are hot” would come out as true on those semantics. But it’s implausible given the way that ordinary ethical discourse works that some utterances of “The Holocaust was good” would come out as true on those semantics.

While I do think aesthetic subjectivism is more plausible than ethical subjectivism as a theory about what ordinary people are doing when they make these sorts of normative statements, I don’t share the intuition that ethical subjectivism is just crazy implausible that many of its critics seem to.

One thing I’ll also say about this is that even if critics of ethical subjectivism are not intending to do this, I do suspect that much of the force of this objection rests on normative entanglement. I think that lots of people hear “this offensive statement is true in some contexts” and just have a knee-jerk negative reaction to that.

Part of the problem is I think that people’s reactions to these statements are tainted by the pragmatic implications they would hold if uttered in ordinary contexts - and people have difficulty decoupling their reactions to such statements from these contexts.

If you heard some random person on the street insist that Nazis say something true when they say the Holocaust was good or that pedophiles say something true when they say toddlers are hot, you would probably be justified in assuming that person was a Nazi or pedophile.

This assumption would be not reasonable to make of a subjectivist making such statements. But I think many will harbor a leftover negative reaction anyway.

This phenomenon is a bigger problem - not limited to just the meta-ethical realm. Take the statement “The Nazis were right about some things”. This statement is certainly true - surely the Nazis believed at least some true propositions! - but uttering a statement like this will make people view you as a Holocaust apologist - even though strictly speaking the claim entails no particular attitude about the Holocaust.

Even though the statement is obviously true, I suspect many would be hesitant to affirm such a claim - because of the negative connotations they associate with such a claim.

Likewise, I suspect that the reason many would be reluctant to affirm that Nazis say something true when they claim the Holocaust was good is because they don’t want to be seen as signaling support for the Nazi genocide - even though the view doesn’t actually entail that.

And I think that if you went around asking people whether pedophiles say something true when they say toddlers are hot, many would absolutely not want to say yes to this - even if they otherwise expressed sympathies with aesthetic subjectivism - for similar reasons.

But There Are Things We Disapprove Of That Aren’t Immoral!

One criticism I’ve seen quite a few people make toward individual subjectivism is this: ascriptions of moral wrongness can’t just be boiled down to statements asserting that we disapprove of something - since there are some things that we disapprove of that we wouldn’t deem wrong.

Most people probably have some sort of negative attitude toward the idea of their family members having sex. They find the very thought of it to be repugnant. However, most people probably wouldn’t affirm that it’s morally impermissible for their family members to have sex.

Likewise, if you ask someone out on a date, you probably prefer that they say yes. And prefer that they don’t say no! However, you probably wouldn’t say that them declining your offer to go out with them constitutes a moral transgression.

Is this a good reason to think subjectivism is false? No.

Critics of subjectivism who engage in this line of attack simply misunderstand what we mean when we say that moral propositions amount to propositions about our attitudes. To be more precise, moral propositions amount to propositions about a subset of our attitudes.

So yes, there are some things I have a negative attitude toward that I don’t deem immoral. But this doesn’t mean that when I say something is immoral, I’m not saying that I have some sort of negative attitude toward that thing.

Critics of subjectivism may respond to this point by asking us how we differentiate our moral attitudes from our non-moral attitudes.

What I’ve said about this previously is that my view on what constitutes a moral attitude is similar to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about what constitutes hardcore pornography:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.

Perhaps some are unsatisfied by this answer. I’ll say a few things about this:

First of all, I’ll note that I similarly struggle to describe my other attitudes. I don’t know exactly how I’d go about describing what constitutes an aesthetic attitude and what differentiates them from non-aesthetic attitudes. But none of this precludes me from saying that my aesthetic statements refer to my statements about my attitudes.

It wouldn’t be a good objection to aesthetic subjectivism to say that “X is aesthetically bad” can’t refer to some sort of negative attitude I have toward X because I can have negative attitudes toward something without deeming that thing aesthetically bad. The fact that I struggle to fully explain what constitutes an aesthetic attitude doesn’t change this.

I’ll also note that moral realists face the same problem:

Suppose that a moral realist says that for X to be morally wrong means that you shouldn’t do X.

One might object to this by saying that there are things you shouldn’t do for prudential reasons but that this doesn’t make those things morally wrong. This I don’t think would be a very good objection.

How do moral realists differentiate moral norms from non-moral norms? As you can see, this issue is by no means unique to subjectivists.

If Everyone Approved Of Torture…

What a beautiful world indeed…

Oftentimes moral realists will ask us to imagine a world in which all of its inhabitants approve of something horrible: say recreational baby torture. Next they’ll invite us to consider whether torturing babies for fun would remain wrong in this world.

If you say that it would still be wrong, realists will act like you’ve just confessed where your true allegiances lie: you’ve just EXPOSED yourself as a covert realist!

Nope.

The problem with asking with whether torture would still be wrong even if everyone approved of it is that it’s ambiguous what’s actually being asked. There are at least two different interpretations of what’s being asked here - on one of which an answer in the affirmative would clearly be consistent with subjectivism.

One way to interpret the question would be as a question about one’s first-order ethical views. If you ask me whether abortion would still be permissible if it was performed in the late term, you’re probably asking me a question about my first-order moral views, not my view on moral semantics.

Another way of interpreting the question would as a question about what propositions are true in the aforementioned possible world. I’ve spoken to some realists about this critique - and they’ve confirmed that the latter interpretation is the intended one.

The problem is that if the latter is what we’re talking about - the objection just loses all force. If I take the proposition “Torturing babies for fun is wrong” to be semantically equivalent to “I disapprove of torturing babies for fun”, then of course that proposition isn’t going to be true in a world where I don’t disapprove of torturing babies for fun. This basically just amounts to saying that I wouldn’t disapprove of torturing babies if I didn’t disapprove of torturing babies.

I suppose the point of this thought experiment is to push us into thinking that when we make these kinds of statements, we’re not actually reporting something about our attitudes. If that is the intended effect, then the thought experiment completely fails. I have no such reaction at all.

I find it intuitive that torturing babies for fun would be wrong if everyone approved of it. I don’t find it intuitive that the proposition “Torturing babies for fun is wrong” would be true in a world where everyone approved of it.

When I say that torture would be wrong even if everyone approved of it, I am not claiming that the version of me in the possible world where everyone approves of torture would disapprove of it. I am claiming that the actual me’s negative evaluation of torture applies in scope to all possible worlds. I do not find myself with pro-torture sentiments when those acts of torture are performed in possible worlds where all residents support torture.

Pain Was Still Bad Before There Were Moral Observers

The next objection I will consider suffers from similar issues. Matthew Adelstein, in his article Moral realism is true, says the following:

This first case is the thing that convinced me of moral realism originally. Consider the world as it was at the time of the dinosaurs before anyone had any moral beliefs. Think about scenarios in which dinosaurs experienced immense agony, having their throats ripped out by other dinosaurs. It seems really, really obvious that that was bad.

The thing that’s bad about having one’s throat ripped out has nothing to do with the opinions of moral observers. Rather, it has to do with the actual badness of having one’s throat ripped out by a T-Rex. When we think about what’s bad about pain, anti-realists get the order of explanation wrong. We think that pain is bad because it is — it’s not bad merely because we think it is.

Like the last objection, this one also faces the problem of ambiguity. What are we talking about when we say it seems (really, really!) obvious that dinosaur suffering was bad?

Are we talking about a first-order normative view? If so, the subjectivist can easily agree that dinosaur suffering was bad - and that it is obviously so.

Or are we talking about whether the proposition “Dinosaur suffering is bad” was true at the specific point in time at which dinosaurs were experiencing pain? If this is what we’re talking about, then perhaps the subjectivist can’t say this was the case, but we’re no longer talking about something obvious.

Let me give an analogy:

Suppose I have a friend who I met while we were both adults. One day, they end up showing me a picture of them as a baby. I react by saying “Awww, you were so cute back then!”

Now, I use aesthetic language in a subjectivist manner. Obviously what I’m not doing when I make this remark is insisting that at the point in time when my friend was a baby, the proposition “I find you cute” was true. At that point of time, I had no idea what my friend looked like, so obviously I could not have found them cute.

Instead, I’m making a statement about what my current aesthetic attitudes are about their appearance at that point in time. Likewise, when I say that dinosaur suffering was bad, I’m not saying it was true when the dinosaurs were suffering that I had a negative moral attitude toward it. Nor am I saying that there was some sort of stance-independent fact at the time that dinosaur suffering was bad. I’m saying that in the present day, I have a negative moral attitude toward that past event. Nothing about this is unintuitive in the slightest.

Deliberation Makes No Sense On Subjectivism

But Matthew has another objection. He says the following:

This becomes especially clear when we consider moral questions that we’re not sure about. When we try to make a decision about whether abortion is wrong, or eating meat, we’re trying to discover, not invent, the answer. If the answer were just whatever we or someone else said it was — or if there was no answer — then it would make no sense to deliberate about whether or not it was wrong.

I don’t know why critics of subjectivism say things like this. The fact that something is a matter of preference doesn’t preclude us from deliberating about it. In fact, we routinely do this as it is. Say I’m trying to decide what to have for dinner. In doing so, I’m deliberating about my preferences - I’m trying to determine what it is that I feel like for dinner. I’m not deliberating about what food I stance-independently ought eat.

Sometimes what exactly are our values are or what would be conducive to achieving our goals is opaque to us. Thus it makes sense to engage in moral deliberation - even if you believe morality is subjective.

As I said in my response to David Enoch:

Of course stance-independent facts are relevant to my evaluation of the permissibility of abortion - at what point the fetus develops the ability to feel pain, how painful abortion would be for a sentient fetus, etc. are all morally relevant considerations - but ultimately the moral status of abortion is a question about my values.

What kind of beings do I care about? How do I prioritize the bodily autonomy of the mother vs. the life of the fetus? These are the kinds of questions that I think determine whether abortion is permissible or not.

Likewise, in order to determine whether eating meat comports with my values, I need to know how much animals suffer in factory farms, whether an individual refraining from purchasing meat leads to less animals being factory farmed, etc. I also need to know how much I care about animals.

Just because the answer to a question is subjective doesn’t mean it’s immediately obvious. Lots of people are mistaken about what they value - just look at the number of people that defend the permissibility of meat eating by appealing to the fact that animals have lower cognitive capacities than us. Obviously this isn’t an accurate reflection of what these people value - if it was, they would also be okay with farming humans with equivalent cognitive capacities to farmed animals for food. But they’re not.

By the way, I find the insistence that the realist view is that we “discover” the answer to moral questions, whereas the subjectivist view is that we “invest” the answer very strange. I wouldn’t say that I “invent” the fact that pesto pasta is tasty. If anything, it sounds way more natural to say I “discovered” it.

Likewise with moral judgments. It sounds way more natural to say that I discovered that eating meat is out of accord with my values then that I invented that it’s out of accord with my values!

There Are Bad Things That You Don’t Know About

As I’m writing this, I’m sure that there are countless instances of atrocities occurring that I’m wholly unaware of. Indeed, every second of every day, instances of torture, rape, and murder occur entirely unbeknownst to me. Surely these acts are all wrong.

But hold on. If to say X is wrong means that you disapprove of X - and you don’t know about X (and thus can’t disapprove of it), surely it follows that X isn’t wrong. But this entails that tons of obviously wrong actions aren’t wrong! This is a wildly implausible result.

The problem with this objection is that at best it only applies to the simplistic form of subjectivism I mentioned at the beginning of the article. More complex formulations of subjectivism, on the other hand, easily avoid this problem:

Take idealized forms of subjectivism. On these sorts of subjectivism, moral propositions aren’t propositions about your actual attitudes, but rather propositions about what attitudes you would have under some specified condition - like knowing all the relevant non-moral facts.

On these sorts of views, it need not be the case that you actually disapprove of X in order for X to be wrong. As long as you would disapprove of X in some specified hypothetical condition, then X is wrong.

So even if I don’t know about some particular atrocity (and thus can’t disapprove of it), proponents of this form of subjectivism can still say it’s wrong since I would disapprove of it were I aware of it.

There are other forms of subjectivism that also avoid this implication. On the sort of subjectivism I’m most sympathetic to, to say “X is wrong” would amount to saying “X is out of accord with my values” (where “values” in this context refers to one’s terminal values).

For example, I have a terminal value against inflicting severe suffering on others. So if an action involves inflicting severe suffering on others, that action is out of accord with my values and thus wrong, regardless of whether I know about the action and have a present negative attitude against it.

Indexicals Violate The Law Of Non-Contradiction

This subtitle is cheeky, but this is basically what the objection amounts to. The objection goes as follows:

According to subjectivism, when Beth says “Abortion is wrong” and Jane says “Abortion is not wrong”, they can both be saying something true. Thus, subjectivism entails “Abortion is and is not wrong” - a contradiction - is true.

The obvious problem with this objection is that it just equivocates on “wrong”. When Beth says “Abortion is wrong”, this expresses the proposition “Beth disapproves of abortion”. When Jane says “Abortion is not wrong”, this expresses the proposition “Jane doesn’t disapprove of abortion”.

Obviously “Beth disapproves of abortion” and “Jane doesn’t disapprove abortion” are not contradictory.

This objection would be like saying it violates the law of non-contradiction to say we both say something true when I say “I am Travis” and you say “I am not Travis”. This is obviously absurd. “I” does not refer to the same thing when you say it as when I say it! Same thing with “wrong”.

I should note that there is another objection of the type that subjectivism entails true contradictions that doesn’t make reference to differing moral views across people.

For example, in the misleadingly titled video “3 Strong Arguments To Moral Subjectivism”, Cameron presents the example of a man named Frank who both thinks it is always wrong to eat meat and also prefers to not starve to death.

According to Cameron, subjectivism leads to claiming a contradiction - It is and is not always wrong to eat meat - being true.

There are a few problems with this objection.

First off, as I said earlier, on ethical subjectivism our moral statements refer to propositions about a subset of our attitudes. Frank may have a moral preference that no one ever meat - but a prudential preference that he eat meat if it means not starving to death. There is no logical contradiction here - just as there is no contradiction between me having a taste preference to eat a bunch of cookies but a health preference to not eat the cookies. Conflicting desires do not constitute logical contradictions.

Second of all, Frank may simply be mistaken about his attitudes. Frank may believe that he opposes eating meat in all circumstances - but it may be the case that he actually just opposes eating meat in typical circumstances.

Finally, if we accept that there is a contradiction here - then the opponent of subjectivism has just presented us with a logically impossible scenario!

Let’s look at the translation.

On subjectivist semantics, “It’s never okay to eat meat and it’s sometimes okay to eat meat” amount to the same propositions as “Frank never approves of eating meat and Frank sometimes approves of eating meat”. But the critic of subjectivism just claimed themselves that these propositions are contradictory! So their objection rests on presenting with us with in a scenario in which two contradictory propositions are true.

The opponent of subjectivism who wishes to advance this objection thus finds themselves in a bind. Either the scenario provided is logically possible - in which it provides no basis for the claim that subjectivism entails true contradictions - or it’s logically impossible, in which case the hypothetical is illegitimate and can’t serve as a counterexample.

You Can’t Say There’s Been Moral Progress

Sometimes it’s claimed that subjectivism can’t account for moral progress.

Since on subjectivism there are no stance-independent moral facts, we can’t say that the moral views of society have actually gotten better over time - instead we’re relegated to simply saying that people’s attitudes have changed over time.

But this is clearly implausible! There has been moral progress! The fact that Germany is no longer run by Nazis is a good thing - Germany has massively morally improved since the days of Adolf Hitler! Bam! There you go! Subjectivism debunked! Moral realism PROVEN!

Now the thing about this objection - that there can’t be moral progress under subjectivism - is that it only works if you just bake into the notion of progress stance-independence. But why would we accept such a conception of progress?

There are many other normative domains which are not objective yet we can clearly still make progress in. Say I’m an aspiring painter. Whether a painting is good or bad is subjective - beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Yet we can still meaningfully say that I’ve made progress - that I’ve become better at painting.

Progress can simply be conceptualized as relative to some sort of goal. If I have the goal to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, then the abolition of slavery was in fact an instance of progress - abolishing slavery is more conducive to my goal than retaining it.

Of course, this means that if someone’s goal is to keep black people in chains, then society has morally regressed relative to their goals.

But then if that’s the objection, this just seems to collapse into the “You have to say *insert offensive thing here* is true” objection - which I have already addressed. Again, this is just to say that abolishing slavery isn’t conducive to the goal of retaining slavery - but obviously that’s true, no one would dispute that.

Conclusion (I Wanted To Title This With Something More Creative But I Couldn’t Think Of Anything)

Despite the popularity of these objections, I do not find a single one of them persuasive. In my view, objections to subjectivism are similar to objections to veganism - they’re swiftly refuted and in many cases, the objections seem to stem from a lack of understanding of the position they’re meant to be criticizing.

As I stated at the beginning of the article, I do not claim to have refuted all possible objections to subjectivism. If you think there are other objections to subjectivism more compelling than the ones I mentioned in this article, feel free to mention them in the replies and I’ll be happy to consider them.

Until then, I remain steadfast in my belief that it is not objectively wrong to torture babies for fun.

1. The term “subjectivism” is sometimes used to denote a view broader than this - one on which moral statements express propositions about attitudes - irrespective of whether these are the attitudes of the speaker or not. On this usage, views like cultural relativism, ideal observer theory, and some forms of divine command theory are all subjectivist. Sometimes it’s also used in an even broader sense than this - to refer to any view on which the moral facts are stance-dependent. For the purposes of this article, I am using the term “subjectivism” more narrowly.

2. I’m not talking about people who make the much more conservative claim that divergent moral values are evidence in favor of moral anti-realism. I’m talking about people who literally say that the fact that people don’t all agree on moral matters proves that it can’t be objective. And yes, I have seen people unironically say this.

3. The same could be said of random realists on the street, but I never go outside so I never encounter anyone on the street.

4. Readers might disagree.

5. I’m not really a fan of the “naive” modifier used here. It seems like inappropriate editorializing on the SEP’s part - I don’t think it’s really their place to be deciding what views are “naive” or not. If they were to describe classical utilitarianism as “naive'“, I would find that similarly objectionable. Nonetheless, I include this passage because I think overall the point it makes is a good and correct one.

6. Yes, I know that beliefs are attitudes as well - and so that differing beliefs could also said to be clashing attitudes. When I speak of “attitudes” in this context, I mean to refer to evaluative attitudes.

7. At least assuming one shares my view that what proposition a statement expresses is fixed by speaker intent.