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Attributing error without taking a stand

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Abstract

Moral error theory is the doctrine that our first-order moral commitments are pervaded by systematic error. It has been objected that this makes the error theory itself a position in first-order moral theory that should be judged by the standards of competing first-order moral theories (Here we are thinking, for example, of Dworkin (Philos Public Aff 25(2):87–139, 1996) and Kramer (Moral realism as a moral doctrine. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Kramer: “the objectivity of ethics is itself an ethical matter that rests primarily on ethical considerations. It is not something that can adequately be contested or confirmed through non-ethical reasoning” [2009, 1]). This paper shows that error theorists can resist this charge if they adopt a particular understanding of the presuppositions of moral discourse.

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Notes

  1. Here we are thinking, for example, of Dworkin (1996) and Kramer (2009). Kramer: “the objectivity of ethics is itself an ethical matter that rests primarily on ethical considerations. It is not something that can adequately be contested or confirmed through non-ethical reasoning” [2009, 1].

  2. Again, this is suggested by much of the language in Dworkin (1996).

  3. Parfit (2011, volume 2, p. 6).

  4. Note that we have said nothing about which claims you must think are in error in order to count as an error theorist, but paradigmatically, error theorists do tend to think that positive assertions that some particular action is wrong count as being in such error, and we could change the example to accommodate some other kind of error theory.

  5. On Dworkin’s (1996) reading, as we understand him, Mackie (1977) straightforwardly accepts this conclusion. Dworkin (1996, 113): “John Mackie […] was an Archimedean who rejected neutrality: he insisted, as I have, that the face value view is part and parcel of ordinary morality. But he concluded that ordinary morality is therefore false.”

  6. Compare Olson (2014, 14, 15), who denies it.

  7. The same suggestion is made by Pigden (2007: 452–454) and Bart Streumer [2017: 124–128]; for related discussion, see Boghossian [2006: 27, 28], Sinnott-Armstrong (2006: 32–37], and Dworkin [2006: 42–44].

  8. Kouf also cites only Joyce (2002) and Finlay (2008) for discussion of presupposition in the context of the error theory. And the only reason Joyce (2002) mentions the possibility of presupposition-carrying moral language is in order to explain why it would be uncareful to describe the error theory as the view that all moral claims are false, since he is assuming Strawson’s view that claims which carry presuppositions are neither true nor false, and some moral claims, like, ‘the present king of France is evil’, might carry presuppositions.

  9. See Heim (1983) for an influential early discussion of local accommodation.

  10. In rejecting Premise 1, is the error theorist also committed to claiming that the sentence is false? We do not like to talk about sentences being true or false. We prefer to talk about the propositions associated with those sentences being true or false, and of refusing to use a sentence because it carries a commitment that is false. We can say that a (use of a) sentence is true if all the commitments it carries are true, and we can say that it’s false if all the commitments it carries are false. But in the cases where the sentence is associated with a false proposition and a true one, sentential truth is not an interesting or well-behaved notion.

  11. For an alternative approach to these issues, see Streumer (2017: 173–176).

  12. Though compare Hazlett (2010).

  13. In addition to Stalnaker (1973, 1974, 1984, 1999, 1999), this principle is also accepted by, for example, Atlas (2005), Boer and Lycan (1976), Levinson (1983), Kempson (1975), Schlenker (2010), Simons (2001), Tonhauser et al. (2013) and Wilson (1975).

  14. We are joined in rejecting the orthodox assumption by Comesaña and McGrath (2014), though we don’t accept their main argument.

  15. In using (a) in that way, you’re also accepting that ∃x: x is objectively prescriptive.

  16. Doesn’t this account preclude the other reading, the one where (a) is used to assert that there’s good evidence for the at-issue and not-at-issue commitments both? It seems to claim that uses of (a) can’t be used to assert that there’s good evidence for the not-at-issue commitment. Not at all. Its only claim is that (a) can be used to communicate only that there is good evidence for the at-issue commitment. This claim is compatible with the further claim that (a) can be used to communicate about the evidence for the at-issue and not-at-issue commitment. And in fact it would be implausible to deny that further claim, because that’s the reading where the presupposition is locally accommodated – the sort of reading that we would expect to hear.

  17. So our picture also predicts that there are two readings of ‘it is true that gratuitous infliction of pain is wrong’: the one where ‘true’ just operates on the at-issue content, and the one where it operates on both the at-issue content and the not-at-issue content. But this point is much less interesting, since both readings carry commitments that are trivially equivalent. The two readings of (a), by contrast, are not trivially equivalent. That’s the reason why we’re focusing on it in the main text.

  18. There is a large literature to explore here; representative accounts include those of Dekker (2008), Elbourne (2005), Geurts (1998), Geurts (1999), Dekker (2008), Elbourne (2005), Geurts (1998, 1999), Karttunen and Peters (1979), Oshima (2006), Roberts et al. (2009), Sperber and Wilson (1986), Sudo (2012), van der Sandt (1992), van Rooij (2005, 2010),  and Villalta (2000). One of us—Caleb Perl—now has different views on the best explanations of the data in this section, as described in Perl (forthcoming).

  19. Potts (2005, 35, 36) argues for this point in illuminating detail.

  20. See Thomason (1972).

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the audience at the 2017 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy and to Bart Streumer for very helpful comments and questions. We are especially grateful to our commentator, David Copp, for several rounds of incisive comments on the paper that led to dramatic improvements.

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  1. Shandong University, Jinan, People’s Republic of China

    Caleb Perl

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    Mark Schroeder

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Correspondence to Caleb Perl.

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Perl, C., Schroeder, M. Attributing error without taking a stand. Philos Stud 176, 1453–1471 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01248-6

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