Abstract
Many philosophers have argued that moral disagreement raises metaphysical and/or epistemological challenges for moral realism. In this paper, I consider whether widespread moral disagreement raises a different sort of challenge by threatening the semantic commitments of moral realism. In particular, I suggest that the character of many moral disagreements gives us reason to suspect that not all competent moral speakers pick out the same properties as one another when they use moral terms. If this is so, both sides of a moral dispute may speak truly, and the standard realist diagnosis of such disputes—that at most one party can be correct—is mistaken. My argumentative strategy is to first isolate some features of linguistic exchanges that provide evidence of a lack of co-reference, and then argue that many moral disputes have these features. I conclude by suggesting that there are plausible accounts of moral disputes that do not require co-reference.
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Notes
As is common in the literature, I employ property talk for ease of exposition, but I want to respect the right of realists to maintain a general metaphysical nonchalance. What is essential to the realist position is that moral truths are every bit as stance-independent as truths in other robustly objective domains (such as truths about our immediate physical surroundings). If one has quite general reservations about properties, my arguments in this paper may be translated into the terms of one’s favored ontology.
I leave open the possibility that the issue is indeterminate, so that neither speaker has spoken truly. See Shafer-Landau (1994).
This assumes, of course, that “morally right” picks out a property in the first place. If one takes an expressivist view of moral language, one would likely deny that moral disagreement involves shared reference to properties, understanding such disagreements instead as disagreements in attitude.
The use/mention distinction will be important in what follows. Notation is slightly awkward because, of course, “T” is intended as a variable, rather than an actual term. Nonetheless, for purposes of notation, I will proceed as though “T” were an actual term in our language. Thus, “T” will appear in quotation marks when I am mentioning it, and without when I am using it.
On these two conceptions of disagreement, see Plunkett and Sundell (2013).
Plunkett and Sundell (2013), p. 10.
Tersman (2006).
Conservative theists are not the only ones who find claims of this form attractive. I once had a conversation with several economists who all agreed that if moral claims were anything other than claims about what would bring about the most good, they simply didn’t know what we’re talking about when we talk about morality.
Of course, for most people, these metaethical views are more or less inchoate. Nonetheless, in my experience, a number of ordinary people do have strong pre-theoretical metaethical leanings, and that these vary widely from person to person.
Huemer (2005)
One might deny that Ferguson is denying invariantism by arguing that he is simply advocating for a version of ethical relativism. But there are two common ways of understanding such a view. One interpretation holds, roughly, that an agent’s action is morally right if and only if (and because) the agent approves of the action. But on this interpretation, Ferguson’s question about definitions would be rather strange; on this view, any particular action will be right or wrong simpliciter, rather than right or wrong by someone’s definition. The other way to understand the relativist view is to view each speaker’s use of “morally right” as roughly equivalent to “approved by me” or “approved by my culture.” This view is not an invariantist view—the property of being approved by me is a different property from that of being approved by you—so the point in the text holds.
Plunkett and Sundell (2013).
Ibid., p. 15.
Perhaps this strikes the reader as counter-intuitive, so let me say a bit more. Consider, for starters, the odd fact that “What is love?” was the most searched query on Google in 2012. (http://www.itv.com/news/2012-12-11/web-users-search-for-meaning-of-love-online-in-2012/) This might suggest that despite the common knowledge that there are many different conceptions of love, many people are genuinely concerned with settling on a particular relation to denote with the word. Second, consider how common claims about “true love” are in our popular culture. Talk of “true love” suggests that many putative cases of love are mere pretenders. This doesn’t entail, of course, that speakers often fail to co-refer with their use of the word “love.” But I think that attention to this usage does suggest that many speakers would reject an agent’s claim to be truly in love—even if the agent were reflective and informed of the underlying facts—if the agent did not meet the speaker’s criteria for being in love.
For a similar point, see Plunkett and Sundell (2013), p. 24.
I want to thank an anonymous referee for pushing me on this point.
Again, I use property talk for ease of exposition. See fn. 1.
See, for example, Gibbard (1990).
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Horn, J. Does Moral Disagreement Pose a Semantic Challenge to Moral Realism?. Philosophia 48, 1059–1073 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00142-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00142-z