Uh oh, I have a post scheduled for release in an hour that is less than charitable to this view, lol.
Unfortunately I just think the question “Would you rather pet a cat or stab the eyes of 1,000 humans” has an objective moral answer. I think any attempts to say one is not a bad person for choosing the latter would be difficult, and it does probably imply corrective action if you choose the latter. It’s really hard to say that this has an answer, and the question “would you rather save $10, or torture 1,000 chickens” doesn’t have an answer.
I don’t think you’re a bad person for not donating to shrimp, I think *we’re all* bad people with good intentions, myself included. I detachedly agree we’re all causing an inordinate amount of suffering every day, while living a happy life. I spent more on rent in the past year than I’ve ever donated, to anywhere, for anything. I can do the math on that, it probably means I’ve killed millions. Honestly, I think Scott Alexander’s reasoning to why 10% donating is enough is weak, and that’s the only thing I can think of that we disagree on.
I think the difficulty of moral actions is not a strike against the truth of moral facts about the world. If I lived in a world where I had to dedicate 18 hours a day to save a trillion people from torture, the horribleness of the world I live in does not mean I’m spared from thinking about morality. The unreasonableness of being a truly, efficiently good person is a TERRIBLE fact about earth, but that doesn’t make the suffering not real.
Aha! But my next post will be a follow up answer to this objection! I think you've defined morality in such a way that it's a dead word, totally void of meaning.
I'll tease a little bit of the argument here. We consider my cousin Lebron James a world class athlete. But in many ways, you can nitpick that he's not athletic in many ways (he can't swim as fast as Michael phelps or run as fast as Usain Bolt). Under this guise, you can say no human is truly athletic, including Lebron.
But this is silly! If Lebron isn't athletic, no one is! The same goes for morality and being good or bad. I think many EA/objectivists do this language game where we basically have to say our intuitions and direct experience of this thing we call good isn't good.
I will point out that I have not conceded that some moral actions are not better than others, just that the glimmering “optimal moral behavior” is extremely difficult and unintuitive, so most people end up doing very, very many bad things. I think morality is a sliding scale, and some are better and some are worse.
“LeBron James is athletic, but he’s not the best athlete who could ever live in history” isn’t an unreasonable statement
But the last part is the problem. When we use moral language, it's pretty cut and dry. "If we said Lebron James is good, but he's not the best person who ever lived in history," that may sound mundanely true, but applying this logic we're also saying "the best person who ever lived in history was also bad or not-good," Which I think is absurd. The whole idea of using superlatives in moral language in an absolute sense creates such absurdities. Normal language anchors superlative language in subjectivity (hence Lebron is a great athlete) which we all understand intuitively. If we discovered Kryptonians tomorrow, Lebron would still be a great athlete.
I agree with this full comment with absolutely no notes, but I worry this is using semantics to dismiss trying to improve peoples’ moral behavior. You believe some people are more moral than others, I believe some people are more moral than others. I’m sure we also both accept there’s some horrible stuff going on in the world which should hopefully be solved, and solving it is good.
So when you dismiss comparing the harm of the actions we do, and trying to choose the best course of action on the grounds that the optimal is too difficult, we’re skipping over the real good that can be done. Your position seems like it’s only tenable if you really believe that no one should be morally obligated to do anything, no matter how much suffering or joy it would cause, because if the weight of suffering is super inconvenient it would ask too much of us. But we’re all good people who want to do good!
But seriously, I'm a moral non-realist. I prefer some people's behavior more than others. Some people's behavior absolutely offends me and gets me mad. We call that a moral objection, but I don't think there's any "truth" underlying that. It's just a reaction.
I'd say my point here is not to say that people can't act better or do better or even talk about morality better, but that the language of moral objectivity poisons the conversation. It leads us into absurd directions (which I talked about in the post), but it also makes people go a little crazy. A moralizing society is not necessarily a healthy one!
What's more, I think there are limits on the good moral conversations create. People overrate morality. The economy crashing in burning in the 20s probably had more to do with the Nazis gaining power than the median German's moral understanding of the world, at least causally. And when the Nazis were in power, they weren't cold and moral-less. They were moral fanatics! It's just that their morality was awful and against our own.
All to say, one can have "good reasons" to do "good" things in the world. They contextually make sense given how our brains work, the culture we inhabit, etc. It doesn't need to be deeper than that. Moral objectivity tries to make it deeper, and the costs offset the benefits IMO.
This was an intriguing piece. I genuinely enjoyed reading it. I've been following your recent posts on morality, so I was especially eager to read this one. I do think moral objectivity exists, and I think you nailed a key point of my philosophy: error correction is essential to any objective improvement in morality. I had a few thoughts I wanted to share:
You’re absolutely right about the necessity of corrections in this framework you're criticizing. But one thing I want to push back on is the assumption that all corrective actions are themselves moral. I don’t think that holds up. It’s entirely possible to be morally right in principle but wrong in the way you try to correct that view—especially if it involves coercing others into compliance. Seems to be a kind of paternalism, and I don't think that's necessary or desired here.
I also agree with your point about the language we 'realists' use implying moral superiority, or suggesting that those who disagree should feel guilt or shame. I’m not entirely sure if this was your intent, but I do think there’s value in self-directed guilt—that is, feeling guilt as a result of one's own moral reflection, which can then lead to meaningful corrective action. That seems very different from imposed shame though, which only on rare occasions do I think warranted LOL.
Regarding thought experiments like the Trolley Problem, I think one of their major flaws--and one moral relativists, subjectivists, etc. have--is that they frame the situation as a strict binary. But in reality, people often have more than just two options—they just have to imagine or create them. The dichotomy isn't based in reality.
A similar point I’d challenge is the idea that there’s a single moral answer and a single immoral one. I don’t think morality is that tidy. There are infinite moral and immoral options. Even if someone is doing something you view as immoral, that doesn’t necessarily make your view moral—or more moral—or mean both positions can't have moral merit.
Take your example of saving your child versus saving 100 strangers. It’s not necessarily about one choice being right or wrong, but rather about the reasons behind each choice. Maybe I have stronger reasons for saving the 100 people—but we’d need to work that out through criticism and discussion. Prioritizing your child over others isn’t necessarily immoral; it just might not be the best moral option available. And perhaps a better option could be created—one that allows you to save both your child and more people.
Your line—“Sure, there are probably better ways to initiate moral change than obnoxious corrective actions like shaming, guilting, or inflicting the law on someone, but failing to exhibit the willingness to use these tools implies a lack of authentic moral seriousness”—was probably my favorite part of the piece. It’s a compelling insight for me personally. I agree that guilt and shame can be part of the process, but they’re not always necessary. What matters most is constructive criticism—and for that to work, someone has to be willing to reflect and change. If you’re not open to that, you won’t feel guilt in the first place because you think you're already right.
Your line—“The objective moralists want to take away your freedom because they disagree with you”—made me think of an extreme case, like owning slaves. Isn’t that exactly the kind of freedom we should take away? One of the issues I have with moral relativism (not trying to label your position, just responding to the concept) is that it seems to offer no solid argument against things we know are wrong. It is moral to stop people from owning others, and immoral to allow it. So yes, it restricts one kind of freedom, but only to preserve a far more essential one for everyone.
I also disagree with the idea that objective morality requires abandoning individuality. On the contrary—I think individualism is essential. There are infinite possible moral explanations, and it’s through individual reasoning and freedom of thought that we discover better ones. Individual moral reflection is often what leads to institutional progress—like the abolition of slavery.
Lastly, and sorry it's been a long comment, if morality doesn’t require corrective action, I struggle to see how it could exist meaningfully at all. If everyone is fallible, and it’s always possible to act better than we did before, then moral progress must involve ongoing correction. Without that, what’s left?
Keep up the great work. I know this took some real contemplation and reading. It can get overwhelming so I applaud it.
There's a lot here! All I will say is that a lot of what you say here turns objectivism into subjectivism. Like the idea that "it depends" wrt the 100 vs the child (I know I'm oversimplifying here). If it is truly the case that there is a right answer, *there is a right answer.* And because non-moral actions intersect with moral actions all the time, it basically makes everything moralized. So for example, there's nothing inherently good or bad or moral about the government giving a state $100m (or withholding those funds). But if that funding is traditionally used for healthcare, it takes on a moral character. The same can be said about a lot of our mundane actions (such as the job example). I don't think you can run from it.
What's more, I don't think anyone can run from the shame/guilt aspects of morality. So much so that if your morality demands us shake these instincts to make a bigger picture morality, you're doing a disservice to morality in general. Put another way, pretending that we care as much about starving children 10,000 miles away as much as the drowning child in front of us will hurt our ability to actually care for the one in front of us. That's not to say that we shouldn't care at all, but that pretending that there's an equivalence is just silly to me.
Yeah, understood. I think we disagree on the more fundamental epistemology here, so I won't get into those aspects or we'd be here all day LOL.
But I will say I do find your point on the guilt and shaming quite true, and though have quibbles, I will be contemplating that for some weeks to come. Appreciate the insights and your response! Keep it up!
I’m a non-realist. I think morality is like aesthetics. There’s something real about it (we have biological biases toward certain things), but that’s different than saying it’s real or objective independent of us.
So i think it’s even simpler than that. We can’t get an ought from an is. But as humans we are *programmed* to “ought.” The ought-ness is what makes us human. We’ll disagree on the ought-ness, but only sociopaths and psychopaths don’t experience it.
That would make sense. I’ve talked about how even rhesus monkeys have a really strong sense of fairness, and you can see so many of our other traits in our relatives. So to say we have a genetic propensity for moralization doesn’t sound in accurate. But even there, you can’t say universally human, because as you a psychopath seems to born without that program. So do you consider psychopaths to be morally culpable for their behavior? I don’t believe in free will, so I view them sort of like a bear that got in and wrecked your house. You wouldn’t say the bear is evil, it’s just being a bear, but you still have to kill or at very least get it the fuck out of your house.
I’d say they are responsible, but only because responsibility is a construct. I think we’re allowed to hate monsters who do bad things and also that we would definitely incarcerate or terminate community threats. Given these 2 reactions are inevitable, idk what an alternative form of “being held responsible” would look like from a bird’s eye view.
I guess it depends on what we mean by responsible. If it means that we are within our rights as a society to enact consequences upon them for engaging in anti-social behavior then I would say yes, we should “hold them responsible” for pragmatic reasons. I also don’t begrudge anyone hating them who’s been hurt by them, because it’s completely natural to do so. However, if we’re talking about actual moral culpability and resenting them for being “evil”, I don’t think it makes sense, because that implies they could be something other than what they are. And I think the evidence would suggest that they can’t.
i go back and forth on that last part. Like I try to look at it in a deterministic way, but at the same time if a serial killer murdered my fiancee, I’d hope we were in a state with a firing squad DP and I’d do the shooting.
I think that’s just part of being human. Someone who abuses a child I view as a broken machine essentially. But emotionally I still want to flay them. Kind of like you said in the beginning about the moral thing being a part of our nature in a way, no matter my intellectual views, I’m still Homo sapiens sapiens with millennia of ingrained shit to process. It’s a package deal.
I don't mean to offend, but I think basically everything in this post is fundamentally misguided. None of the problems you mention are implied or even suggested by the idea of objective morality, and even if they were, they would all be problems with the idea of morality itself, whether or not it's objective.
Objective morality definitely does not mean that some things are always more valuable than others (except for tautological cases like, "Whatever is more valuable is always more valuable"). That's moral absolutism, which is orthogonal to meta-ethics and which most moral realists reject. All that moral realism says is that there are moral truths that are true independently of what anyone thinks of them, not that what is better or worse doesn't depend on the circumstances.
Not all moral issues demand corrective action. You bring up atrocities like slavery and genocide and suggest that because we feel the need to correct those, we would need to micromanage people's lives if we believed there were objective moral facts about all of their decisions. But the reason we need to correct those is because they are horrendously evil. Whatever costs there are to correcting their immoral behavior are far outweighed by the benefits of stopping such grievous harms. If somebody commits a very minor error, and it would cause more harm than good to correct their mistake, then no objective moral theory is going to say that you ought to correct their mistake. Why on Earth would you have to? Like, seriously, what is the reasoning supposed to be? The fact that people often discuss morality in the context of moral failures that are serious enough to be worth correction has nothing to do with the question of whether all moral failures are similarly serious. This fact about ordinary moral discourse has an obvious pragmatic explanation - if some moral failure is not even serious enough to warrant correction, it probably doesn't warrant discussion either. And even if you think some sort of correction is always required, clearly that doesn't imply that corrections so intrusive that they obliterate individuality and create a dystopia are required. A "correction" could be something as mild as gently encouraging that someone do good, not constantly shaming them or forcing them to do good.
Furthermore, the idea that corrective action would intrude on every part of our lives only makes sense if you assume that every decision we face has only one morally permissible option, or at least a small enough set of permissible options that we are constantly behaving immorally. But moral realists are in no way committed to this. The only moral theory I know of that is committed to this is maximizing utilitarianism, but that's fairly unpopular even among utilitarians for this exact reason, and maximizing utilitarians definitely aren't committed to morality requiring corrective action - their theory actually forbids corrective action in many circumstances. And the same moral language that you think shows that morality requires corrective action also makes it pretty clear that there are lots of choices for which any option is permissible - that's why we have words like "obligation" to point out situations where this is not the case and you actually are morally required to perform one option.
The objectivity of morality also doesn't do any heavy lifting here. Even if I accepted all your reasoning about morality requiring corrective action and corrective action leading to a dystopia, how would that be a problem for moral realism specifically? The exact same problem would apply to subjective views of morality. You could get out of this if you claimed that only objective morality requires corrective action, but you surely agree that anti-realists should stop slavery and genocide, so subjective morality still involves corrective action. (Also, it would be special pleading). Why doesn't subjective morality commit you to micromanaging everyone else's lives to fit with your subjective views, thus creating a dystopia where individuality is annihilated? Whatever answer you give to this can also be used by a moral realist.
It is absolutely false that the reason you're wrong to save your child in the trolley problem, according to views that say you shouldn't, is because you should care about your child less. Rather, it's because you should care about the other 100 children more. So nothing about accepting those views requires reducing your love for your child. And even if it did, well, that would just be an argument against those particular views, not against objective morality as a whole. Those views also do not claim that disagreeing with their judgement on the trolley problem is the same as walking around saying murder is okay. That's just a wild non-sequitur! It's like saying, "According to views that there's an objective fact about the shape of the Earth, anyone who believes that the Earth is a sphere is just as crazy as someone who thinks it's flat!"
It's false that incorrect beliefs about morality always require correction for the same reason it's false that immoral actions always require correction. Except in this, the attempt to say that objective morality requires it is even more tenuous. There's not even an attempted justification in terms of moral language. You are just assuming that objective morality requires authoritarian policing of people's moral beliefs without any justification, when most objective moral theories actually forbid that kind of policing.
It's false that communism and theocracies are just the natural result of institutionalized objective morality. I don't think most communists even believe in objective morality, but even if they did, what they're institutionalizing is a moral system that places little to no weight on human freedom, and that's why their ideology has authoritarian consequences. There is no reason whatsoever why objective morality can't consider human freedom to be a moral good, and thus no reason to say that objective morality necessarily justifies authoritarianism.
It's false that objective morality requires excessive scrupulosity. Even if you think morality requires you to feel bad about doing bad things, it doesn't require you to constantly feel extreme shame. If you think that saying this is somehow redefining morality, I would respond that no, you are the one redefining it, because no one else, except the most extremely scrupulous religious zealots, uses moral vocabulary that way. The idea of supererogatory goods, actions that are morally good but not required, and which you shouldn't feel bad about not doing, goes back centuries. You are failing to distinguish between not being maximally moral and being positively immoral. And if you think that this is a general problem for objective morality, you'll have to do better to show that than point to two examples that aren't really examples at all (most Christians don't endorse the extremely scrupulous version of Christianity you laid out, nor do most EAs endorse the extremely scrupulous version of EA you laid out).
Also, the "objectivity has nothing to do with it," problem applies to all of these points as well. Positing that morality is subjective wouldn't get you out of any of these problems if they existed.
i will save us a lot of time here and just say everything you say here is wrong. Everything. If you want me to respond, write a post. I’m not arguing with comments this long, especially when they are this long and mistaken. I think you’ve misread parts of this post, misunderstood others, missed footnotes and pedantically drawn distinctions that I actually drew (the absolutism vs objectivism one is silly). Please note that the whole time I’m talking about moral “values” (that which we should orient ourselves and determine our morality, not morality). Obviously objective morality flows from objective values, but saying values don’t exist is different and fundamentally alters the criticism.
I don't think you are required to respond to long comments - you can just ignore them if you don't think it's worth your time to respond, and I wouldn't take this as some sort of slight. But if you're going to complain about me posting it and say that I have misread you, you should at least have some explanation of why. I spent a lot of time extensively detailing what I think you misunderstood about objective morality, and it is kind of frustrating to have you respond by just saying I'm hopelessly wrong and scolding me for disagreeing with your points (at least that's what it feels like when I read it - correct me if I am misinterpreting your tone). I think it's pretty clear that your post would only work against a strawman of the views of moral realists, as evidenced by the fact that lots of realists (basically all of them) have consistent views that don't have any of the implications you draw from realism.
The distinction between absolutism and objectivism is not pedantic - there's a massive difference between the two. I'm an objectivist, but not an absolutist, and that's the usual position for objectivists to take. On the other hand, the distinction you just made between "objective morality" and "objective values" does seem clearly pedantic. I think it’s a distinction without a difference. Nothing that I said in my criticism of your post changes if you replace every instance of the word morality with values.
Okay fair enough, I wrote that comment when I first got up this morning and wasn’t fully awake, and looked back and it wasn’t exactly clarifying. Sorry! I think moral objectivism *because of the reality of human corrective instinct* necessarily leads to moral absolutism (of a kind). But I think 2/3 of the distinctions between absolutism and objectivism is pedantic, because to say something is absolute or objective is pretty much synonymous to most ears. If I say you are absolutely or objectively wrong, it means the same thing. Meanwhile, with morality vs moral values, morality is the entire system of morals and ethics, whereas values are the things that agents orient themselves around. My whole point is that if you have objective values, it necessarily creates an objective morality that would be bad for various reasons.
As for the rest of your comments, I appreciate yours! But the fact is that it takes me a while to write posts and orient them to where they are coherent, good, etc. Comments are great, but when they are long, they take up a different character, and can take lots of time to go back and forth. I prefer not to go back forth (like this) on deep substance because it takes a lot of time when a comment is supposed to be quick and easy. And it doesn’t necessarily bring clarity. What’s more, substack’s comment interface kinda sucks! So again, if you write what you have written as a post, I will give it the attention it deserves in respect of what you have produced. But I honestly honestly honestly cannot create a substantive response via comment section! I hope that clarifies things a bit!
Okay, thank you for clarifying, and yes, I agree that the comment interface is not super well-suited for discussion with overly long comments. They usually happen when I don't realize when I start writing my comment how long it will be.
When I refer to moral absolutism, I'm referring to the idea that some things are right or wrong regardless of circumstances, which is definitely not a requirement of objective morality. The reason I mentioned it was because of your first comment that objectivists must think that some things are *always* more valuable than others. But they don't have to think that - they can think that what is more valuable depends on the circumstances.
This is why the distinction is important for objective moral values vs objective morality. Because what I’m saying is that objective moral values will tautologically have you thinking some things are more valuable than others. the other side of the coin is, okay, let’s say at first you don’t believe there are objective moral values, but you believe that there are objective moral actions or decisions, given certain circumstances (let’s ignore that that last clause makes it somewhat subjective). To bring about humans to be more able to mkae those objectively correct actions and decisions, you need them to hold some values more valuable than others to create that end. Put another way, you need objective values, and you need them instilled within those people to create those ends, and you need morally serious people to want to do that. that’s the problem I’m highlighting. I just don’t see how anything “good” (or preferable) comes from this kind of thinking!
Sure, objective morality means that you should want people to have values that align with what is objectively good, but that doesn't mean you should do whatever it takes to bring about people like that. Objective morality is generally going to put restrictions on what things are okay to do for the ends of bringing about morally good people, and things like, "Create a dystopia where the slightest moral error is always corrected," are going to run afoul of those restrictions.
Plenty of good comes from this kind of thinking. Parents want to instill good values in their kids, societies pass laws to prevent people from doing severely harmful things, etc. Moral subjectivists agree with objectivists that it's good to instill good values in this way - they just disagree on whether the basis for this is objective or subjective. Likewise, we both agree that it would be bad to take this to the extreme and unconditionally try to make people follow good values, regardless of the harm we would do by attempting this - we just disagree on whether the reason not to do this is objective or subjective.
As a sanity check for whether any of your claims about objective morality hold water, you can see whether they're actually true of any of the common moral theories believed to be true by moral realists. If all of your claims about what objective morality requires are false according to just about every possible theory of what objective morality is, then clearly denying those claims does not require redefining morality, as you think it does. On the contrary, it implies that you are redefining morality when you claim that all these things are true by definition. So let's see how they hold up against the three most popular normative theories - deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics - as well as against common-sense objective morality.
Does objective morality require that some things are always more valuable than others? Absolute deontology says yes, but most deontologists are not absolutists but moderate deontologists, and they say no. Utilitarianism definitely says no. Most forms of virtue ethics will say no. And common sense morality says no.
Does objective morality require corrective action so intrusive that it creates a dystopia? Deontology says absolutely not - that would violate people's rights, thus breaking the deontological rules. Utilitarianism says absolutely not - that would make people worse off. Virtue ethics says absolutely not - micromanaging people's lives is not a sign of virtue but a sign of being overly controlling. It certain doesn't fit with the "everything in moderation" approach typical of virtue ethics. Common-sense morality says absolutely not - it might be good to voluntarily choose to be more moral even in the little things, but micromanaging people's actions is not necessary.
Does objective morality imply that you should love your kids less, and that failing to reduce your love is like advocating for murder? Deontology says no - it would violate a moral duty. Utilitarianism says no - loving your kids generally has good consequences. There are, of course, more drastic consequences that outweigh it in the particular trolley problem you presented, but that doesn't mean love is bad, and it certainly doesn't mean people who disagree with utilitarianism should be treated the same as people who are pro-murder. Virtue ethics says no - loving your kids is a virtue. Common-sense morality says no - you should love your kids.
Does objective morality imply that we should police people's moral beliefs in an authoritarian manner? All theories say no for the same reason as the corrective action problem. Of course, it's good to correct people's moral beliefs through thoughtful argumentation, but that's completely unobjectionable and says nothing about whether we should correct them in the manner you described.
Does objective morality require that we should create an authoritarian state to enforce it? All theories say no - again this is the same as the corrective action question.
Does objective morality say we should constantly feel guilt and shame for our moral failings? Most forms of deontology will say no because they imply that we're *not* constantly failing in our moral duties. Utilitarianism says no - that would just cause us unnecessary suffering. Virtue ethics says no because it would not be conducive to cultivating virtues - we should only feel whatever amount of shame is optimal for living the most virtuous life. Common-sense morality says no, there's no need to get worked up about little failings, and in most everyday decisions, any option you want to pick is permissible.
So not a single one of your claims about what is required by objective morality are actually endorsed by the three biggest philosophical theories of what objective morality is, nor are they endorsed by the common-sense understanding of objective morality. In fact, the common sense understanding is that all of the things you suggest would be immoral or at least unwise - if it wasn't, you wouldn't even be able to use their obvious badness in an argument against objective morality. So any claim that they are somehow inherent to the definition of morality cannot be true. That's only possible if you think there is some sort of objective, "true meaning" of words that is independent from common usage or philosophical usage, and that the true meaning of "morality" is completely divorced from how people actually use it.
Uh oh, I have a post scheduled for release in an hour that is less than charitable to this view, lol.
Unfortunately I just think the question “Would you rather pet a cat or stab the eyes of 1,000 humans” has an objective moral answer. I think any attempts to say one is not a bad person for choosing the latter would be difficult, and it does probably imply corrective action if you choose the latter. It’s really hard to say that this has an answer, and the question “would you rather save $10, or torture 1,000 chickens” doesn’t have an answer.
I don’t think you’re a bad person for not donating to shrimp, I think *we’re all* bad people with good intentions, myself included. I detachedly agree we’re all causing an inordinate amount of suffering every day, while living a happy life. I spent more on rent in the past year than I’ve ever donated, to anywhere, for anything. I can do the math on that, it probably means I’ve killed millions. Honestly, I think Scott Alexander’s reasoning to why 10% donating is enough is weak, and that’s the only thing I can think of that we disagree on.
I think the difficulty of moral actions is not a strike against the truth of moral facts about the world. If I lived in a world where I had to dedicate 18 hours a day to save a trillion people from torture, the horribleness of the world I live in does not mean I’m spared from thinking about morality. The unreasonableness of being a truly, efficiently good person is a TERRIBLE fact about earth, but that doesn’t make the suffering not real.
Aha! But my next post will be a follow up answer to this objection! I think you've defined morality in such a way that it's a dead word, totally void of meaning.
I'll tease a little bit of the argument here. We consider my cousin Lebron James a world class athlete. But in many ways, you can nitpick that he's not athletic in many ways (he can't swim as fast as Michael phelps or run as fast as Usain Bolt). Under this guise, you can say no human is truly athletic, including Lebron.
But this is silly! If Lebron isn't athletic, no one is! The same goes for morality and being good or bad. I think many EA/objectivists do this language game where we basically have to say our intuitions and direct experience of this thing we call good isn't good.
Excited to read the post!
I will point out that I have not conceded that some moral actions are not better than others, just that the glimmering “optimal moral behavior” is extremely difficult and unintuitive, so most people end up doing very, very many bad things. I think morality is a sliding scale, and some are better and some are worse.
“LeBron James is athletic, but he’s not the best athlete who could ever live in history” isn’t an unreasonable statement
But the last part is the problem. When we use moral language, it's pretty cut and dry. "If we said Lebron James is good, but he's not the best person who ever lived in history," that may sound mundanely true, but applying this logic we're also saying "the best person who ever lived in history was also bad or not-good," Which I think is absurd. The whole idea of using superlatives in moral language in an absolute sense creates such absurdities. Normal language anchors superlative language in subjectivity (hence Lebron is a great athlete) which we all understand intuitively. If we discovered Kryptonians tomorrow, Lebron would still be a great athlete.
I agree with this full comment with absolutely no notes, but I worry this is using semantics to dismiss trying to improve peoples’ moral behavior. You believe some people are more moral than others, I believe some people are more moral than others. I’m sure we also both accept there’s some horrible stuff going on in the world which should hopefully be solved, and solving it is good.
So when you dismiss comparing the harm of the actions we do, and trying to choose the best course of action on the grounds that the optimal is too difficult, we’re skipping over the real good that can be done. Your position seems like it’s only tenable if you really believe that no one should be morally obligated to do anything, no matter how much suffering or joy it would cause, because if the weight of suffering is super inconvenient it would ask too much of us. But we’re all good people who want to do good!
>agrees with no notes
>adds notes
But seriously, I'm a moral non-realist. I prefer some people's behavior more than others. Some people's behavior absolutely offends me and gets me mad. We call that a moral objection, but I don't think there's any "truth" underlying that. It's just a reaction.
I'd say my point here is not to say that people can't act better or do better or even talk about morality better, but that the language of moral objectivity poisons the conversation. It leads us into absurd directions (which I talked about in the post), but it also makes people go a little crazy. A moralizing society is not necessarily a healthy one!
What's more, I think there are limits on the good moral conversations create. People overrate morality. The economy crashing in burning in the 20s probably had more to do with the Nazis gaining power than the median German's moral understanding of the world, at least causally. And when the Nazis were in power, they weren't cold and moral-less. They were moral fanatics! It's just that their morality was awful and against our own.
All to say, one can have "good reasons" to do "good" things in the world. They contextually make sense given how our brains work, the culture we inhabit, etc. It doesn't need to be deeper than that. Moral objectivity tries to make it deeper, and the costs offset the benefits IMO.
“>agrees with no notes
>adds notes”
lol you got me
Good discussion, I think I have a better idea of your beliefs now.
This was an intriguing piece. I genuinely enjoyed reading it. I've been following your recent posts on morality, so I was especially eager to read this one. I do think moral objectivity exists, and I think you nailed a key point of my philosophy: error correction is essential to any objective improvement in morality. I had a few thoughts I wanted to share:
You’re absolutely right about the necessity of corrections in this framework you're criticizing. But one thing I want to push back on is the assumption that all corrective actions are themselves moral. I don’t think that holds up. It’s entirely possible to be morally right in principle but wrong in the way you try to correct that view—especially if it involves coercing others into compliance. Seems to be a kind of paternalism, and I don't think that's necessary or desired here.
I also agree with your point about the language we 'realists' use implying moral superiority, or suggesting that those who disagree should feel guilt or shame. I’m not entirely sure if this was your intent, but I do think there’s value in self-directed guilt—that is, feeling guilt as a result of one's own moral reflection, which can then lead to meaningful corrective action. That seems very different from imposed shame though, which only on rare occasions do I think warranted LOL.
Regarding thought experiments like the Trolley Problem, I think one of their major flaws--and one moral relativists, subjectivists, etc. have--is that they frame the situation as a strict binary. But in reality, people often have more than just two options—they just have to imagine or create them. The dichotomy isn't based in reality.
A similar point I’d challenge is the idea that there’s a single moral answer and a single immoral one. I don’t think morality is that tidy. There are infinite moral and immoral options. Even if someone is doing something you view as immoral, that doesn’t necessarily make your view moral—or more moral—or mean both positions can't have moral merit.
Take your example of saving your child versus saving 100 strangers. It’s not necessarily about one choice being right or wrong, but rather about the reasons behind each choice. Maybe I have stronger reasons for saving the 100 people—but we’d need to work that out through criticism and discussion. Prioritizing your child over others isn’t necessarily immoral; it just might not be the best moral option available. And perhaps a better option could be created—one that allows you to save both your child and more people.
Your line—“Sure, there are probably better ways to initiate moral change than obnoxious corrective actions like shaming, guilting, or inflicting the law on someone, but failing to exhibit the willingness to use these tools implies a lack of authentic moral seriousness”—was probably my favorite part of the piece. It’s a compelling insight for me personally. I agree that guilt and shame can be part of the process, but they’re not always necessary. What matters most is constructive criticism—and for that to work, someone has to be willing to reflect and change. If you’re not open to that, you won’t feel guilt in the first place because you think you're already right.
Your line—“The objective moralists want to take away your freedom because they disagree with you”—made me think of an extreme case, like owning slaves. Isn’t that exactly the kind of freedom we should take away? One of the issues I have with moral relativism (not trying to label your position, just responding to the concept) is that it seems to offer no solid argument against things we know are wrong. It is moral to stop people from owning others, and immoral to allow it. So yes, it restricts one kind of freedom, but only to preserve a far more essential one for everyone.
I also disagree with the idea that objective morality requires abandoning individuality. On the contrary—I think individualism is essential. There are infinite possible moral explanations, and it’s through individual reasoning and freedom of thought that we discover better ones. Individual moral reflection is often what leads to institutional progress—like the abolition of slavery.
Lastly, and sorry it's been a long comment, if morality doesn’t require corrective action, I struggle to see how it could exist meaningfully at all. If everyone is fallible, and it’s always possible to act better than we did before, then moral progress must involve ongoing correction. Without that, what’s left?
Keep up the great work. I know this took some real contemplation and reading. It can get overwhelming so I applaud it.
There's a lot here! All I will say is that a lot of what you say here turns objectivism into subjectivism. Like the idea that "it depends" wrt the 100 vs the child (I know I'm oversimplifying here). If it is truly the case that there is a right answer, *there is a right answer.* And because non-moral actions intersect with moral actions all the time, it basically makes everything moralized. So for example, there's nothing inherently good or bad or moral about the government giving a state $100m (or withholding those funds). But if that funding is traditionally used for healthcare, it takes on a moral character. The same can be said about a lot of our mundane actions (such as the job example). I don't think you can run from it.
What's more, I don't think anyone can run from the shame/guilt aspects of morality. So much so that if your morality demands us shake these instincts to make a bigger picture morality, you're doing a disservice to morality in general. Put another way, pretending that we care as much about starving children 10,000 miles away as much as the drowning child in front of us will hurt our ability to actually care for the one in front of us. That's not to say that we shouldn't care at all, but that pretending that there's an equivalence is just silly to me.
Yeah, understood. I think we disagree on the more fundamental epistemology here, so I won't get into those aspects or we'd be here all day LOL.
But I will say I do find your point on the guilt and shaming quite true, and though have quibbles, I will be contemplating that for some weeks to come. Appreciate the insights and your response! Keep it up!
So where do you land? Are you an emotivist? That’s sort of where I find myself at the moment.
I’m a non-realist. I think morality is like aesthetics. There’s something real about it (we have biological biases toward certain things), but that’s different than saying it’s real or objective independent of us.
I wrote this as a summation of my current ideas on morals, probably gunna post it in Notes, curious on your thoughts-
You cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”.
However, to do anything humans require an ought.
So we make up an “ought” based on subjective aversion to suffering and affinity for lack of suffering.
“Humans are largely similar to each other, so there exists much commonality in the suffering they seek to avoid.
These similarities manifest as mental “principles” I.e. “everyone knows that…”
The ubiquity of these broadly shared principles leads to the illusion of objective morality. “
So i think it’s even simpler than that. We can’t get an ought from an is. But as humans we are *programmed* to “ought.” The ought-ness is what makes us human. We’ll disagree on the ought-ness, but only sociopaths and psychopaths don’t experience it.
That would make sense. I’ve talked about how even rhesus monkeys have a really strong sense of fairness, and you can see so many of our other traits in our relatives. So to say we have a genetic propensity for moralization doesn’t sound in accurate. But even there, you can’t say universally human, because as you a psychopath seems to born without that program. So do you consider psychopaths to be morally culpable for their behavior? I don’t believe in free will, so I view them sort of like a bear that got in and wrecked your house. You wouldn’t say the bear is evil, it’s just being a bear, but you still have to kill or at very least get it the fuck out of your house.
I’d say they are responsible, but only because responsibility is a construct. I think we’re allowed to hate monsters who do bad things and also that we would definitely incarcerate or terminate community threats. Given these 2 reactions are inevitable, idk what an alternative form of “being held responsible” would look like from a bird’s eye view.
I just realized I left out a couple words. Hopefully you can still parse what I was saying.
I guess it depends on what we mean by responsible. If it means that we are within our rights as a society to enact consequences upon them for engaging in anti-social behavior then I would say yes, we should “hold them responsible” for pragmatic reasons. I also don’t begrudge anyone hating them who’s been hurt by them, because it’s completely natural to do so. However, if we’re talking about actual moral culpability and resenting them for being “evil”, I don’t think it makes sense, because that implies they could be something other than what they are. And I think the evidence would suggest that they can’t.
i go back and forth on that last part. Like I try to look at it in a deterministic way, but at the same time if a serial killer murdered my fiancee, I’d hope we were in a state with a firing squad DP and I’d do the shooting.
I think that’s just part of being human. Someone who abuses a child I view as a broken machine essentially. But emotionally I still want to flay them. Kind of like you said in the beginning about the moral thing being a part of our nature in a way, no matter my intellectual views, I’m still Homo sapiens sapiens with millennia of ingrained shit to process. It’s a package deal.
I don't mean to offend, but I think basically everything in this post is fundamentally misguided. None of the problems you mention are implied or even suggested by the idea of objective morality, and even if they were, they would all be problems with the idea of morality itself, whether or not it's objective.
Objective morality definitely does not mean that some things are always more valuable than others (except for tautological cases like, "Whatever is more valuable is always more valuable"). That's moral absolutism, which is orthogonal to meta-ethics and which most moral realists reject. All that moral realism says is that there are moral truths that are true independently of what anyone thinks of them, not that what is better or worse doesn't depend on the circumstances.
Not all moral issues demand corrective action. You bring up atrocities like slavery and genocide and suggest that because we feel the need to correct those, we would need to micromanage people's lives if we believed there were objective moral facts about all of their decisions. But the reason we need to correct those is because they are horrendously evil. Whatever costs there are to correcting their immoral behavior are far outweighed by the benefits of stopping such grievous harms. If somebody commits a very minor error, and it would cause more harm than good to correct their mistake, then no objective moral theory is going to say that you ought to correct their mistake. Why on Earth would you have to? Like, seriously, what is the reasoning supposed to be? The fact that people often discuss morality in the context of moral failures that are serious enough to be worth correction has nothing to do with the question of whether all moral failures are similarly serious. This fact about ordinary moral discourse has an obvious pragmatic explanation - if some moral failure is not even serious enough to warrant correction, it probably doesn't warrant discussion either. And even if you think some sort of correction is always required, clearly that doesn't imply that corrections so intrusive that they obliterate individuality and create a dystopia are required. A "correction" could be something as mild as gently encouraging that someone do good, not constantly shaming them or forcing them to do good.
Furthermore, the idea that corrective action would intrude on every part of our lives only makes sense if you assume that every decision we face has only one morally permissible option, or at least a small enough set of permissible options that we are constantly behaving immorally. But moral realists are in no way committed to this. The only moral theory I know of that is committed to this is maximizing utilitarianism, but that's fairly unpopular even among utilitarians for this exact reason, and maximizing utilitarians definitely aren't committed to morality requiring corrective action - their theory actually forbids corrective action in many circumstances. And the same moral language that you think shows that morality requires corrective action also makes it pretty clear that there are lots of choices for which any option is permissible - that's why we have words like "obligation" to point out situations where this is not the case and you actually are morally required to perform one option.
The objectivity of morality also doesn't do any heavy lifting here. Even if I accepted all your reasoning about morality requiring corrective action and corrective action leading to a dystopia, how would that be a problem for moral realism specifically? The exact same problem would apply to subjective views of morality. You could get out of this if you claimed that only objective morality requires corrective action, but you surely agree that anti-realists should stop slavery and genocide, so subjective morality still involves corrective action. (Also, it would be special pleading). Why doesn't subjective morality commit you to micromanaging everyone else's lives to fit with your subjective views, thus creating a dystopia where individuality is annihilated? Whatever answer you give to this can also be used by a moral realist.
It is absolutely false that the reason you're wrong to save your child in the trolley problem, according to views that say you shouldn't, is because you should care about your child less. Rather, it's because you should care about the other 100 children more. So nothing about accepting those views requires reducing your love for your child. And even if it did, well, that would just be an argument against those particular views, not against objective morality as a whole. Those views also do not claim that disagreeing with their judgement on the trolley problem is the same as walking around saying murder is okay. That's just a wild non-sequitur! It's like saying, "According to views that there's an objective fact about the shape of the Earth, anyone who believes that the Earth is a sphere is just as crazy as someone who thinks it's flat!"
It's false that incorrect beliefs about morality always require correction for the same reason it's false that immoral actions always require correction. Except in this, the attempt to say that objective morality requires it is even more tenuous. There's not even an attempted justification in terms of moral language. You are just assuming that objective morality requires authoritarian policing of people's moral beliefs without any justification, when most objective moral theories actually forbid that kind of policing.
It's false that communism and theocracies are just the natural result of institutionalized objective morality. I don't think most communists even believe in objective morality, but even if they did, what they're institutionalizing is a moral system that places little to no weight on human freedom, and that's why their ideology has authoritarian consequences. There is no reason whatsoever why objective morality can't consider human freedom to be a moral good, and thus no reason to say that objective morality necessarily justifies authoritarianism.
It's false that objective morality requires excessive scrupulosity. Even if you think morality requires you to feel bad about doing bad things, it doesn't require you to constantly feel extreme shame. If you think that saying this is somehow redefining morality, I would respond that no, you are the one redefining it, because no one else, except the most extremely scrupulous religious zealots, uses moral vocabulary that way. The idea of supererogatory goods, actions that are morally good but not required, and which you shouldn't feel bad about not doing, goes back centuries. You are failing to distinguish between not being maximally moral and being positively immoral. And if you think that this is a general problem for objective morality, you'll have to do better to show that than point to two examples that aren't really examples at all (most Christians don't endorse the extremely scrupulous version of Christianity you laid out, nor do most EAs endorse the extremely scrupulous version of EA you laid out).
Also, the "objectivity has nothing to do with it," problem applies to all of these points as well. Positing that morality is subjective wouldn't get you out of any of these problems if they existed.
(1/2)
i will save us a lot of time here and just say everything you say here is wrong. Everything. If you want me to respond, write a post. I’m not arguing with comments this long, especially when they are this long and mistaken. I think you’ve misread parts of this post, misunderstood others, missed footnotes and pedantically drawn distinctions that I actually drew (the absolutism vs objectivism one is silly). Please note that the whole time I’m talking about moral “values” (that which we should orient ourselves and determine our morality, not morality). Obviously objective morality flows from objective values, but saying values don’t exist is different and fundamentally alters the criticism.
I don't think you are required to respond to long comments - you can just ignore them if you don't think it's worth your time to respond, and I wouldn't take this as some sort of slight. But if you're going to complain about me posting it and say that I have misread you, you should at least have some explanation of why. I spent a lot of time extensively detailing what I think you misunderstood about objective morality, and it is kind of frustrating to have you respond by just saying I'm hopelessly wrong and scolding me for disagreeing with your points (at least that's what it feels like when I read it - correct me if I am misinterpreting your tone). I think it's pretty clear that your post would only work against a strawman of the views of moral realists, as evidenced by the fact that lots of realists (basically all of them) have consistent views that don't have any of the implications you draw from realism.
The distinction between absolutism and objectivism is not pedantic - there's a massive difference between the two. I'm an objectivist, but not an absolutist, and that's the usual position for objectivists to take. On the other hand, the distinction you just made between "objective morality" and "objective values" does seem clearly pedantic. I think it’s a distinction without a difference. Nothing that I said in my criticism of your post changes if you replace every instance of the word morality with values.
Okay fair enough, I wrote that comment when I first got up this morning and wasn’t fully awake, and looked back and it wasn’t exactly clarifying. Sorry! I think moral objectivism *because of the reality of human corrective instinct* necessarily leads to moral absolutism (of a kind). But I think 2/3 of the distinctions between absolutism and objectivism is pedantic, because to say something is absolute or objective is pretty much synonymous to most ears. If I say you are absolutely or objectively wrong, it means the same thing. Meanwhile, with morality vs moral values, morality is the entire system of morals and ethics, whereas values are the things that agents orient themselves around. My whole point is that if you have objective values, it necessarily creates an objective morality that would be bad for various reasons.
As for the rest of your comments, I appreciate yours! But the fact is that it takes me a while to write posts and orient them to where they are coherent, good, etc. Comments are great, but when they are long, they take up a different character, and can take lots of time to go back and forth. I prefer not to go back forth (like this) on deep substance because it takes a lot of time when a comment is supposed to be quick and easy. And it doesn’t necessarily bring clarity. What’s more, substack’s comment interface kinda sucks! So again, if you write what you have written as a post, I will give it the attention it deserves in respect of what you have produced. But I honestly honestly honestly cannot create a substantive response via comment section! I hope that clarifies things a bit!
Okay, thank you for clarifying, and yes, I agree that the comment interface is not super well-suited for discussion with overly long comments. They usually happen when I don't realize when I start writing my comment how long it will be.
When I refer to moral absolutism, I'm referring to the idea that some things are right or wrong regardless of circumstances, which is definitely not a requirement of objective morality. The reason I mentioned it was because of your first comment that objectivists must think that some things are *always* more valuable than others. But they don't have to think that - they can think that what is more valuable depends on the circumstances.
This is why the distinction is important for objective moral values vs objective morality. Because what I’m saying is that objective moral values will tautologically have you thinking some things are more valuable than others. the other side of the coin is, okay, let’s say at first you don’t believe there are objective moral values, but you believe that there are objective moral actions or decisions, given certain circumstances (let’s ignore that that last clause makes it somewhat subjective). To bring about humans to be more able to mkae those objectively correct actions and decisions, you need them to hold some values more valuable than others to create that end. Put another way, you need objective values, and you need them instilled within those people to create those ends, and you need morally serious people to want to do that. that’s the problem I’m highlighting. I just don’t see how anything “good” (or preferable) comes from this kind of thinking!
Sure, objective morality means that you should want people to have values that align with what is objectively good, but that doesn't mean you should do whatever it takes to bring about people like that. Objective morality is generally going to put restrictions on what things are okay to do for the ends of bringing about morally good people, and things like, "Create a dystopia where the slightest moral error is always corrected," are going to run afoul of those restrictions.
Plenty of good comes from this kind of thinking. Parents want to instill good values in their kids, societies pass laws to prevent people from doing severely harmful things, etc. Moral subjectivists agree with objectivists that it's good to instill good values in this way - they just disagree on whether the basis for this is objective or subjective. Likewise, we both agree that it would be bad to take this to the extreme and unconditionally try to make people follow good values, regardless of the harm we would do by attempting this - we just disagree on whether the reason not to do this is objective or subjective.
As a sanity check for whether any of your claims about objective morality hold water, you can see whether they're actually true of any of the common moral theories believed to be true by moral realists. If all of your claims about what objective morality requires are false according to just about every possible theory of what objective morality is, then clearly denying those claims does not require redefining morality, as you think it does. On the contrary, it implies that you are redefining morality when you claim that all these things are true by definition. So let's see how they hold up against the three most popular normative theories - deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics - as well as against common-sense objective morality.
Does objective morality require that some things are always more valuable than others? Absolute deontology says yes, but most deontologists are not absolutists but moderate deontologists, and they say no. Utilitarianism definitely says no. Most forms of virtue ethics will say no. And common sense morality says no.
Does objective morality require corrective action so intrusive that it creates a dystopia? Deontology says absolutely not - that would violate people's rights, thus breaking the deontological rules. Utilitarianism says absolutely not - that would make people worse off. Virtue ethics says absolutely not - micromanaging people's lives is not a sign of virtue but a sign of being overly controlling. It certain doesn't fit with the "everything in moderation" approach typical of virtue ethics. Common-sense morality says absolutely not - it might be good to voluntarily choose to be more moral even in the little things, but micromanaging people's actions is not necessary.
Does objective morality imply that you should love your kids less, and that failing to reduce your love is like advocating for murder? Deontology says no - it would violate a moral duty. Utilitarianism says no - loving your kids generally has good consequences. There are, of course, more drastic consequences that outweigh it in the particular trolley problem you presented, but that doesn't mean love is bad, and it certainly doesn't mean people who disagree with utilitarianism should be treated the same as people who are pro-murder. Virtue ethics says no - loving your kids is a virtue. Common-sense morality says no - you should love your kids.
Does objective morality imply that we should police people's moral beliefs in an authoritarian manner? All theories say no for the same reason as the corrective action problem. Of course, it's good to correct people's moral beliefs through thoughtful argumentation, but that's completely unobjectionable and says nothing about whether we should correct them in the manner you described.
Does objective morality require that we should create an authoritarian state to enforce it? All theories say no - again this is the same as the corrective action question.
Does objective morality say we should constantly feel guilt and shame for our moral failings? Most forms of deontology will say no because they imply that we're *not* constantly failing in our moral duties. Utilitarianism says no - that would just cause us unnecessary suffering. Virtue ethics says no because it would not be conducive to cultivating virtues - we should only feel whatever amount of shame is optimal for living the most virtuous life. Common-sense morality says no, there's no need to get worked up about little failings, and in most everyday decisions, any option you want to pick is permissible.
So not a single one of your claims about what is required by objective morality are actually endorsed by the three biggest philosophical theories of what objective morality is, nor are they endorsed by the common-sense understanding of objective morality. In fact, the common sense understanding is that all of the things you suggest would be immoral or at least unwise - if it wasn't, you wouldn't even be able to use their obvious badness in an argument against objective morality. So any claim that they are somehow inherent to the definition of morality cannot be true. That's only possible if you think there is some sort of objective, "true meaning" of words that is independent from common usage or philosophical usage, and that the true meaning of "morality" is completely divorced from how people actually use it.
(2/2)