Objectivism and Subjectivism Revisited: a Neutral Analysis

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  • objectivism The metaethical theory that statements about what’s ethically good, bad, right, wrong, obligatory, permissible and so on are statements about mind-independent properties.
  • subjectivism The opposing theory that ethical statements are about people’s attitudes (desires, preferences, requirements, etc.).

A few months ago (see this thread) I took what I considered to be the most important intuitions that draw people to objectivism and tried to produce a subjectivist analysis of ethical statements that was consistent with those intuitions. However, it was soon made clear to me not only that the intuitions in question are not shared by many who are already convinced by subjectivism, but also that my version of subjectivism would be unlikely to satisfy the majority of objectivists anyway.

Towards the end of a more recent discussion about objectivism and relativism (see this thread), something dawned on me that seems to have been blindingly obvious to everyone else who has considered the issue, namely that the divergence between objectivism and subjectivism needn’t be at the analytic level. In other words, objectivists and subjectivists needn’t disagree about the meaning of ethical statements, but might simply disagree about the nature of the facts that make them true or false. Indeed, given that objectivists and subjectivists seem to be able to engage in first-order ethical discussions without talking past each other, it seems unlikely that they mean different things by ethical statements at all.

So is it possible to analyse ethical statements in a way that’s consistent with both objectivism and subjectivism? I believe it is, and that’s what I want to be the subject-matter of this thread.

According to the analysis in question, ethical statements of the form ‘X is good’ are logically equivalent to ‘X satisfies requirements’ or close variants of this. Variants will include ‘X doesn’t satisfy requirements’, ‘X uniquely satisfies requirements’, and ‘X would satisfy requirements if X were to occur’. In this context, ‘requirements’ uniformly denotes whatever is the source of the ‘requiredness’ (Mackie’s term) that we apprehend in moments of ethical cognition. But the analysis leaves it open whether these requirements are, as the objectivist would have it, features of the mind-independent world, or, as the subjectivist would have it, the judge’s attitudes of requiring.

Now I’ve presented the analysis, I’d like to say something on the subject of ethical agreement and disagreement. It’s often claimed by critics of subjectivism that if ethical statements were about the judge’s attitudes, genuine ethical agreement and disagreement would be impossible. The argument goes that since one judge’s ethical statements would be about his attitudes and another judge’s about hers, they’d never be talking about the same thing. Hence if both said ‘X is good’ they wouldn’t be agreeing with each other, and if he said ‘X is good’ and she said ‘X is bad’ they wouldn’t be disagreeing with each other. Taking it to be intuitively obvious that there are genuine ethical agreement and disagreement, the critics conclude that this kind of subjectivism must be false.

I think the appropriate response to this criticism is to note the variety of ways in which it’s possible for two people to agree (or disagree) with each other. First, there’s a distinction between agreement in belief and agreement in attitude: if John believes that the world is round and Jane also believes that the world is round, they have an agreement in belief; if John wishes that there were world peace and Jane also wishes that there were world peace, they have an agreement in attitude. Second, there’s a distinction between agreement in absolute content and agreement in relative content: in the first example just given, John and Jane have an agreement in absolute content (the proposition that the world is round is an absolute proposition); if John thinks that England is home and Jane thinks that England is home, they have an agreement in relative content (the proposition that England is home is a relative proposition, in the sense that its truth-value depends on who entertains it). So as well as agreement in belief with absolute content, which is the only kind of agreement the critics of subjectivism consider, there are agreement in belief with relative content, agreement in attitude with absolute content, and agreement in attitude with relative content.

What does this mean for the analysis that’s the subject-matter of this thread? It means that even if there are no objective requirements, genuine ethical agreement and disagreement are still possible. If two people require the same things, they have an agreement in attitude; if they require different things, they have a disagreement in attitude. If they both believe that X satisfies requirements (i.e. their respective attitudes of requiring), they have an agreement in belief with relative content; if one of them believes that X satisfies requirements and the other that X doesn’t satisfy requirements, they have a disagreement in belief with relative content. I think this is as much agreement and disagreement as we need to make sense of ethical discourse.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning a consequence of this that some may find a little odd. Where two people have different requirements (or requirements that aren’t at the very least materially equivalent), it will be possible for one of them to say ‘X is good’ truly while the other says ‘X is bad’ truly, or for one of them to say ‘X is good’ truly while the other says ‘X is good’ falsely. However, as was made abundantly clear to me in the thread I mentioned at the start of this post, this appearance of oddity lasts only as long as we’re thinking like objectivists. Once we’re out of the objectivist mindset, this consequence should seem no more odd than the possibility that someone in Brazil says ‘It’s hot’ truly while someone in Scotland says ‘It’s cold’ truly, or that someone in Brazil says ‘It’s hot’ truly while someone in Scotland says ‘It’s hot’ falsely. And there’s nothing at all odd about that.

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I definitely agree with you.

If it is agreeable that ethical logic exist beyond the selfish kind, then we have to consider that if an action is based on these ethical reasons, no matter what follows, it was indeed ‘meta ethical.’ Proving this notion is difficult, but consider the following:

To say that all ethical statements are based on desires, preferences, requirements, would mean that all of the biological functions of the body that cause this specific action ‘expressing an ethical statement’ would need to be based on these attributes. We have identified some of these functions and so far, none of them show anything that says they could be ‘meta ethical.’ Still many functions lye shrouded in mystery. These biological functions are here because of a process known as evolution. In order to say that all ethical statements are based on desires, preferences, requirements, you would need to show that evolution only gives rise to such functions. However, the opposite is more the case. People forget that evolution isn’t based on the survival of the selfish, it’s based on the demise of the weak. functions which can give rise to what we view as an ethical statement have to exists, because these statements exist. So in order to say that these statements are impossible, you would have to show by idea that the functions that cause an ethical statement can not provide the being with any survival. This can also not be proven, because these statements exist. You would need to show the function that creates these statements, and show that they are in fact not based on ethical logic, but desires, preferences, requirements.

Of course you can speculate. and this is a philosophical forum, so speculation is encouraged. unfortunately that leaves us at a standstill. If both sides can provide a function that would give rise to the statement as ‘truth,’ (Objectivist side) ‘false,’ (subjectivist side) and still both show how that function has allowed the being to survive, than neither side can do much about the other.

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Thanks for your reply, TheBerto. I can’t pretend to understand all of it, but it’s reassuring to know that someone definitely agrees with me.

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I think such things emerge from the dynamics of human interaction and neither originate nor are maintained in any single individual nor exist independent of minds.
The more people around you think something is wrong or bad, the more difficult it will be for you to maintain the feeling that it is not… for example.

The problem, as I see it, is that many of the terms don’t really refer to any singular thing, but rather a complex interaction of things rolled up into one for the pruposes of communicating their final result at a given moment.
“Adam thinks X is good” dosn’t necessarily mean that X really IS good… nor does it necessarily mean that Adam could not at a later date, through interaction with the objective world think that he was wrong and that X was bad.

We have to step away from the classic notions to adress these issues with a modern understanding of the mind, my interpretation of which utterly destroys any distinction we might have made between “mind” and “matter”. The mind is not some magical thing with a fixed will and wants nor some free and uninflunced “choice” machine; it’s a complicated mess of interactions between the internal processes of our brain and outside influences… As such, “what is good” is not determined by the conditions of the objective world, nor determined by the processes of any singlular mind… it’s an interaction, and so it is ultimately an ongoing process, like any other, existing objectively, but dependent on the machinery which sets it in motion.

Given your definitions of objective and subjective, my reaction would be to say “neither”…

Does that make sense?

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Yes, I think so. Indeed, the notion that values are akin to secondary qualities is well known. But all that follows in the context of this thread is that the analysis (‘X satisfies requirements’) needs to be neutral between objectivism, subjectivism and whatever you call your position — which it is.

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Remmie - can you analysis be seen in this way? That you are talking about a standard, or rule, and that two individuals may agree about that rule, regardless of their reasons why or the teleology of that rule?

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Remster

Has the feeling, that there might be something wrong with you, ever occurred to you? Not due to some outside judgment, but from inside.

Have you ever thought there’s something more interesting, meaningful or purposeful to do than what you’re doing?

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That’s where society steps in and tells you what.

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So, what, we’re supposed to do society’s wishes and then break away and become a neutral individual? Become two things?

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Faust

Lovely to see you!

Absolutely, though I analyse standards/rules in terms of attitudes and not vice versa. At the risk of getting into another barney about the word ‘opinion’, I recall that you do too.

I think I’d say yes to this, though I don’t understand the purport of the question.

Remster

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Well yes, and those are the things I spend the other 98% of my time doing.

Of course, though not in this context. Have you an aversion to analytic philosophy? If so, should I or anyone else who’s interested in the subject be concerned?

Who are you addressing?

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I’m not sure that I’d analyse standards or rules in terms of anything, in the end. I don;t recall much about our barney, but I’m not sure that for present purposes it makes much difference. Somewhere along the line, we discover moral standards, or moral rules.

What I’m getting at is that we can agree on moral standards, specific ones or perhaps just that they somehow exist, without getting into their ultimate origin. For instance, let’s say that I claim that God created them and you say that some guy named Fred did. We can still agree that killing is wrong, or right, or whatever. Is that consistent with the paradigm you are presenting?

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Ah well, maybe I imagined it. I once spent some time considering the analogy (such as it is) between moral rules and rules in games, and it set me thinking about the ontological status of rules and, by extension, standards. But I shan’t push the question if you’re not interested in it.

Perfectly. The only restriction is that the rules or standards should be those by which we feel bound when we engage in moral deliberation (if they feel optional, they don’t count). Their origin doesn’t matter, since it isn’t built into the meaning of moral terms.

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Oh, I didn’t mean compared to this. I meant at any time wherever and whatever you’re doing at any moment. I’m sure all of us have.

What I’m trying to pinpoint is a kind of drive that pushes us to become something better with our lives, become somebody that takes part in the more valuable and meaningful things. I can sense in the world an element concerning what’s right, good, acceptable and so on in the different cultures. And how these influence us depends on how much we go along with what society expects us to reach at a certain time in our development. If we’re not up to the point or if we deviate ….

(I meant generally)

…. how much we feel that we should try to be conformed to society’s standards probably determines how much we deem as ‘good’ is something that has to be included along with what we deem worthy of consideration the standards to be. (don’t know if I worded that right). Anyway, we have to, at some point be guided. Even if one doesn’t know what is good per se, he should know what is good to him. I doubt that a person will fall apart and think that there is something totally wrong with him (yet some sometimes do when it’s hard to fit into the value system). Hopefully what ends up guiding us will take into consideration an element of cooperation amongst us. Selfishness is another monster to tackle.

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Yeah, well, we might have agreed about this in the past. it’s the position I have just about always had, at any rate.

This is pretty much where i think the Logical Positivists miss the boat, by the way, when they say that moral statements have no literal meaning. Moral statements can be verified against moral standards, which can be taken as “empirical”, no matter what their origin. This is a provisional position (to take them as empirical), of course, but they can be used as assumptions, and justified by the results they yield.

As to feeling bound - sure. And there is an analogy between moral rules and game rules. Rules are broken, but we can expect that they are meant as binding. And that there are ramification to breaking them.

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Finishedman

Sorry, I thought you were trying to be rude to me.

I suppose so, though I don’t know whether it has normative consequences. In other words, I don’t know whether I should be doing something more meaningful etc., only that I might be.

Can you elucidate how this and your elaboration of it relate to the central claim of this thread (that ethical statements can be given a neutral analysis)?

Remster

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We won’t have agreed about it in the past, because I didn’t agree with it myself until a few weeks ago!

I think the problem for Ayer at least was that he bought into some of the objectivist intuitions that you and Only Humean rejected in my earlier thread, so that if moral rules and standards were after all only subjective, they couldn’t be the subject-matter of moral statements. How he arrived at emotivism rather than an error theory, I’m not quite sure.

How do you mean?

As it happens, I contacted an academic called Bernard Suits from a Canadian university, who specialised in this sort of thing. The university sent me an essay he’d published on how far game rules can help in elucidating moral rules. He thought the disanalogy was too strong, but I can’t remember why. There’s a useless recollection for you.

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I mean that you can have the truth or you can have a set of assumptions that produce a desirable result. Morality, until Nietzsche, was thought of a being “true”. But more importantly, as an end in itself. Bit morality serves other purposes than…well, whatever purpose an “objectively true” morality is supposed to serve.

In general, in science, for instance, it serves our purposes quite well to simply assume an hypothesis and see if we can find data to support it. While this is often problematic, it also often works. Science is an ever more precise series of approximations (in the long run and with exceptions). Why can’t morality be, as well?

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Why do you see those purposes as external to morality rather than as telē within morality?

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I take the minimal case for morality, much as Nietzsche does. Life, social or otherwise, doesn’t spring from philosophy, but rather philosophy springs from life. The minimal case for morality - for what morality is - can be described in many ways. As a perspectivist, i tend to examine different aspects of this question in turn. So let me describe morality in one way here, allowing that there are other ways. A partial definition: Morality is a set of rules that governs social behaviors, by describing norms. Even if it comes from God.

Morality serves the purpose of social control. Even if it also something else.

But the minimal case is something like that it provides a controlling device for behavior. It serves a purpose external to morality itself. And is not an end in itself. A Kantian conception is that we perform our duty, no matter what. If it tears our society apart, then so be it. Presumably, a new social order would be born, subject to morality, rather than morality being dictated by other, broader social exigencies.