Sharon Street claims that quasi-realism is no better off
epistemologically than something she calls realism.[1]
This is not in itself surprising: for many years it has been a fine question
whether quasi-realism would better be called queasy realism. But Street thinks
it is no better off than a particularly traffic-stopping, extreme and sceptical version of realism, which I shall eventually call
Cartesian realism. And this I deny. But I shall conclude by showing that her
paper is not really about quasi-realism at all, but about constraints she would
impose on any moral philosophy.[2]
Her
argument is as follows. On p. 9 she has two
protagonists, Ann and Ben, who have different moral or normative standards, but
who both say Òthere are independent normative truthsÓ. It is the fact that they
agree on something that is the lynchpin of her assault. Once she has
Ôindependence as suchÕ as a piece of realism that quasi-realism must
imitate she can then wheel up the Darwinian considerations, that, she has
argued, tip other forms of realism into skepticism. Hence, she argues that
epistemological scepticism affects quasi just as much
as real realism.
Street quotes and agrees with GibbardÕs account of what Benn and Ann agree upon. I shall
put it not in the terms Gibbard uses
(of plans for contingencies in which one plans something) but in my own
terms, which I regard as equivalent, although I find it easier to work with
them in some respects. Consider then the schema Ôp would have been wrong
even had I/my group not believed it to be wrongÕ. In spite of their different
standards, each of Ann and Ben assents to there being instances of this schema.
So each believes in what Street calls Ôindependence as suchÕ. If you
want to know how they might each believe that there are instances of this
schema, then we go back to what I have often said about examples like kicking
dogs for fun. Maybe softie Ben thinks that it would have been wrong to kick
dogs, even had we thought it was right, while flinty Ann, brought up in a less
sentimental culture, thinks it would have been OK to kick dogs even if we had
thought it was wrong. But that doesnÕt prevent there being a commonality when
we quantify, and in any event it is common to all such cases. Two deflationists
can each believe that John said something true at breakfast, although having
different substitutions in mind for ÔJohn said that p & pÕ — which is what the
deflationist will offer as the fundamental schema enabling us to understand
this use of the notion of truth.
So
far so good. Street then reminds us of our evolved natures.
She is certainly right that any sensible theorist, quasi-realist or not, must
recognize that evolutionary forces, perhaps alongside other local and cultural
forces, will have shaped and directed our sentiments, including our moral
sentiments. Hume himself said that:
All
the sentiments of the human mind, gratitude, resentment, love,
friendship, approbation, blame, pity, emulation, envy, have a plain reference
to the state and situation of man, and are calculated for preserving the
existence and promoting the activity of such a being in such circumstances.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), part 3, ¤13)
So it is not as if we are unfamiliar with the thought that
various contingencies are responsible for our moral sentiments as well.
But
Street takes this combination to introduce a problem. She takes the account of
the commonality between Ben and Ann to license what she calls Ôthe independent
normative truth as suchÕ. And, she
continues:
The
following possibilities are exhaustive: either the evolutionary influence
tended to push our normative judgments toward the independent normative truth,
or else it tended to push them away from or in ways that bear no
relation to that truth
This is the basis from which she argues that quasi-realism
is no better off than realism full and proper when it comes to moral
epistemology. For she thinks that without some story about how we ÔtrackÕ
independent normative truth as such, the quasi-realist, just like the genuine
realist, will be left with no defenses against either the second or third alternative,
and thence scepticism assails him: Ôthe quasi-realist
is thus forced to conclude that due to evolutionary influences, we are in all
likelihood hopeless at recognizing the independent normative truthÕ
The
structure of this argument is certainly bold. It is boldly reminiscent of the
more ambitious, and discredited, forms of the Ôargument from illusionÕ in
general epistemology. That argument, in its least likeable but most ambitious
form, tried to derive the possibility of global, Cartesian error, from the fact
of individual, local, cases of fallibility and illusion. It too would have
anyone capable of thinking that they might be wrong, on an individual occasion,
pulled willy-nilly into a conception of Ôthe truthÕ which, for all we can every
know, might lie completely outside our purview. I mention this parallel not to
dismiss StreetÕs argument as identical, but to warn us of the need to analyse it sufficiently to ensure that it is not.
Like
other arguments announced as applying to quasi-realism, this one also affects a
rather wider class of theories—in fact I shall eventually show that it
affects all moral theories. But to begin with any theory that insists
that we have to work from within a framework of values as we discuss values, or
in other words denies that the view of the exile from all values is either
obtainable or represents any kind of ideal, seems equally in the target area.
Nobody, it seems, could have an account of how our contingent natures line us
up with Ôthe independent moral truth as suchÕ. So, for example, moral sense
theories, or theories deploying an analogy with secondary qualities, will be
equally vulnerable. For Street insists that a NeurathÕs
boat-inspired epistemology is no help against her argument. If we started our
evolutionary journey badly off moral track then : Ôa
process of holding some values up for examination in the light of others holds
little hope of bringing those values into accord with independent normative
truths. A badly mistaken set of ultimate values brought into greater coherence
is still badly mistaken.Õ
There
is a question mark over some aspects of the way this is put: NeurathÕs boat is an analogy that does away with a category
of ÔultimateÕ values, if that means values that serve as an undiscussable
foundation for all others, and I for one have denied that greater coherence is
the only path towards moral improvement. There are other virtues than
coherence. But these are incidental to the fundamental problem.
For
by this stage the Ôindependent normative truth as suchÕ has become a strange
object. Unique, apparently, to justify the definite description, and not to be
found by creatures with contingently shaped psychologies (for details of
evolutionary history do not matter to StreetÕs argument, which is entirely
abstract in structure).[3]
No such creatures can be confident that their histories have pushed them
towards recognizing the Ôindependent normative truth as suchÕ. It is natural to
say that this represents a kind of Platonism, but even Plato thought there was
an epistemology of a kind for approaching the form of the good —many
years studying mathematics, for a start. It is bettter
descibed as a conception that puts the equivalent of
Cartesian scepticism firmly on the moral map. So the malin genie of evolution and culture steers
our little boat, and its compass would only accidentally be orientated towards
the truth. The truth is inaccessible, unrecognizable, lying over the rainbow.
Gibbard calls this vast realism; I shall call it Cartesian realism, to remind
us that its job is to soften us up for global moral scepticism.
Is
Cartesian realism legitimately introduced on the back of the commonality
which obtains between Ben and Ann? Each of Benn and Ann contemplates a
hypothetical but possible scenario in which they feel differently about
something, and each sticks with their actual sentiments as they do so. This is
the quasi-realist parsing of the phenomenon on which the talk of ÔindependenceÕ
that he is prepared to justify is built. But is what is thereby built a
Cartesian realism, bringing scepticism, and the
inadequacy of a NeurathÕs boat-inspired epistemology,
with it?
No.
What one says about a scenario in which one feels differently about some
specific subject, and what one legitimately admits by way of practical
certainty are two different things. I am substantially certain, let us say,
that happiness is better than misery (if we want a ÔnormativeÕ proposition,
that one ought to value happiness more than misery). I suppose that evolutionary forces or other contingencies made me such
as to value happiness more than misery, and good for them, since at least in
this instance they have pushed me towards a truth. If I contemplate a scenario
in which I value misery more than happiness—an almost unimaginable reversal,
but I suppose I can just about make sense of the degree of misanthropy
involved—itÕs pretty awful, and it is pretty painful even to imagine the
deterioration or turning away from the good that it represents. What
catastrophes there must be in a life to cause someone really, across the board,
to be like that!
Is
Ôthe normative truth as suchÕ a concept that somehow deprives me of the right
to the last paragraph? Not if it came in as a phrase distilled from the
commonality between Benn and Ann. For how did the fact that Ben and Ann, like
me, could each stick by their current sentiments as they contemplated the
scenarios in which they felt differently, possibly legitimize something only
recognizable, if at all, from some cosmically exiled, Archimedean standpoint
achievable by a non-evolved creature with no determinate sentiments of its own
to deploy?
In
other words Street is trying to show that by accommodating everyday admissions
of independence we are thereby pitched onto a road that can stop nowhere short
of unadulterated Cartesian realism. And this is parallel to what I called the
discredited version of the argument from illusion. And like ordinary
epistemologists, the quasi-realist can perfectly well refuse to travel that
road. Quasi realism was never proposed as a way of legitimately earning everything
the most rabid Cartesian realist might say. It was only proposed as a way of
legitimately earning everything we want to preserve in everyday thought, and
that includes aspects that might, mistakenly, push people towards such an
extravagance. ÔThe independent normative truth as suchÕ conceived
as a piece of metaphysical fact which we may or may not be aligned with in any
way whatsoever, is just such a danger.
Street
recognizes the complaint that her argument is parallel to what I called the
discredited version of the argument to illusion in non-normative contexts. But,
she believes, there is a crucial asymmetry. She compares two people, one of
whom tries to show that we are not hopeless at tracking truths about the
presence of midsized objects in our immediate environments, while the other
tries to show that we are not hopeless at tracking normative truths. The first
offers an evolutionary story about how creatures that tended to run into and be
injured by midsized objects in their environment come off worse. Asked how she
knows that and the answer is that we can cite endless instances: Ôfor starters
think of that log I tripped over yesterdayÕ. The second can only cite the way
in which people who have some value (such as that of staying alive) do better
and leave more descendants. And, she says, there is a crucial disanalogy between these two explanations. The first
depends upon midsized objects in our environment being the kinds of thing it is
useful to track, and it tells us why this is so: it is injurious to bump into
them. The second does not depend upon survival being a true value: it only
depends upon it being adaptive to hold that survival is a value, and
this may be so whether or not survival is an actual value. It is
independent, therefore of whether survival being a value belongs to Ôthe
independent moral truth as suchÕ —and therefore cannot be used to
increase our confidence that evolution would have put us in touch with such a
fact.
Street
admits that her story about the value of tracking middle sized dry goods Ôworks
from withinÕ. It is not Ôoffered from an Archimedean point outside everythingÕ.
In other words it is no use against the Cartesian sceptic
(unless we play fast and loose with question begging as a category). But she
thinks that does not affect the argument: she thinks it still remains that the
one argument gives us good reason to think that weÕre not hopeless at
recognizing midsized objects in our immediate environment, whereas in the
normative case Ôwe have been given no such reasonÕ.
Indeed
not, but then we were not looking in the right place, and StreetÕs argument is
a testimony to the need to understand why this is so. For it
does not recognize the power of the idea that we have to work from within.
Consider
then the thought that evolution has pushed us towards moral truth. Again, I
would prefer to say evolution together with other contingent cultural forces,
since I do not see any reason to doubt the influence of other contingencies
than those covered under the idea of biological adaptation. If I think that
this has happened do I have to posit some unscientific, non-causal, shadowy
ghost of a notion of ÔtrackingÕ, as if these contingent forces are
surreptitiously tracking The Good, or perhaps as a matter of Hegelian axiology
inevitably pushing us towards alignment with Ôthe independent normative truth
as suchÕ?
Of course not. We see what to think about whether evolution
has guided us towards ethics by judging individual truths, and seeing if we can
get a story about how evolution might have adapted us to appreciate those
truths. For the quasi-realist, this can be pursued , by
seeing how evolution might have adapted us to have those sentiments of which we
are reasonably proud: the ones that form the keel or fuselage (for we should
avoid the metaphor of foundations) or structural skeleton of our more subtle
practical stances. The skeleton might include altruism, a capacity for
fairness, for prudence, and an ability to make and keep promises, make and keep
laws, and so on. I stand by those—I might even say I am quite proud of
them, especially when they are unusually fully developed. So suppose I say that
sympathy with others is good, as I do. I am proud of
such sympathy with others as I feel, deplore its absence in others, recommend it to my children or pupils. My pride and the rest
are themselves sentiments, of course. But pride or self-esteem does not
necessarily spring up when we think of other sentiments to which we are prone.
One is not proud of oneÕs regrettable side, and most of us admit that we have
one. But other things stand fast,
and if you do not value those on my list, you will value others. In other
words, we stand within and think of cases that our substantial certainties
allow us to discriminate. I already thanked evolution for one success, namely
my valuing of happiness above misery. Here is sympathy joining it. There are
many others.
My
sentiments are evolutionarily or culturally formed: let us say contingently
formed. So contingency has brought me to appreciate a moral truth. Might I be
wrong about one of these elements in my skeleton? Hard to imagine, but letÕs
try: Nietzsche seems to have thought that sympathy was a bad thing, so what do
we make of that? Well, first of all did he really, or what is some idealized verson of ordinary sympathy which he disliked, and secondly
if he did can I do anything other than regard him as a bit of a weirdo, a
monster, or perhaps a poser? Not much. But I can walk around and worry about it
for a while.
If
the equivalent of Cartesian skepticism is a trouble for someone it is not
me—any more than Ôresponse-dependencyÕ theorists about colour are troubled by the ÒthoughtÓ that perhaps we are
adapted to see colours wrongly, or that it is favouritism, as Russell once said, to think that what we
see as blue really is blue.
It is not clear what Street herself thinks
of moral epistemology. She favours a kind of
ÔconstructivismÕ, reminiscent of John MarckieÕs view
that we ÔinventÕ right and wrong. Our standards are our own constructions. So
what is she to say about Ann and Ben? It seems that to be consistent she must deny
that when I contemplate a world in which I or we enjoy cruelty to animals, I am
contemplating a nasty world or a world in which I or we have deteriorated.
For this is the single phenomenon that allegedly leads to Cartesian realism and
consequent scepticism, and it would engulf her own
position just as effectively as it engulfs any other. So her constructivism
must have her say—what, exactly? That a world in which we enjoy cruelty
to animals is as good as this? That there has been no moral progress since the
days of bear-baiting and legal dog-fights? If this is
constructivism, then heaven help us. In fact, it is worse than this. For in ÔA
Darwinian DilemmaÕ Street emphasizes that she takes her constructivism to be
quite hospitable to the admission of processes of correcting error, by means of
the Neurathian procedure of using some values to criticize
others—a procedure of obtaining a reflective equilibrium.[4]
This implies that on her own account Ann and Ben can each contemplate positions
in which people hold opinions but are mistaken in doing so. But that in turn
implies that they are open to the possibility of they or their group having
believed, or coming to believe, or even currently believing that something is
wrong although it is not. They would be in this state if they had not reflected
sufficiently. So by her own lights, they each accept propositions of the crucial
form: Ôsuch-and-such might have been wrong, even had I or we thought otherwiseÕ.
So each believes in ÔÔthe independent normative truth as suchÕ and ought to be
as squarely in her sights. So in fact her own moral theory is hanged on the
same petard as others.
In ÔA Darwinian DilemmaÕ Street characterized
the realism(s) she opposed in several ways. One was that they Ôunderstand
evaluative truths as holding, in a fully robust way, independently of all our
evaluationsÕ (p. 136). This suggests that they put truth outside the reach of
any process of working from within. Another way of characterizing them is as
holding that the evaluative truth explains the way we make evaluative judgments,
since those judgments ÔtrackÕ moral truth (e.g. p. 129). Quasi-realism holds
neither of these things, as any part of its philosophical package. [5]
But neither should we lurch away from these ideas to fall into the opposite
trap of a relativism or constructivism that cannot even parse the agreement
between Ann and Ben.
This brings us to the crux, and the
reason why I say the argument is not really about quasi-realism, but about all
moral theories. The structure of StreetÕs argument implies that all moral
theorists—intuitionists, constructivists, quasi-realists, response
dependency theorists, Aristotelians, Platonists, and any others face a choice:
(1)
Deny that our moral reactions and judgements are
shaped by contingent factors, whether evolutionary or anything else.
(2)
Assert that a world in which we enjoy cruelty to animals—or put in any
other example—is as good as this; that there has been no moral progress
since the days of bear-baiting and legal dog fights.
(3)
Be a complete moral sceptic.
I
doubt whether many people are happy with that choice, and I hope they are not.
But it is the choice she offers, because her argument hinges on supposing that
the independence that Ann and Ben countenance leads straight to Cartesian
realism, and that is simply the metaphysical face of global scepticism.
In this it is one degree worse than other realisms, including those sublimated
in religious traditions. In the Christian tradition, for instance, while, as in
Platonism, we are mostly full of sin and ignorance, bent and misshapen, prisoners
in the Cave or victims of the Fall, there is
nevertheless a way to align ourselves with the Good. There is some inner spark
left which did not get corrupted by the Fall—the
one that illuminates the excellence of loving your neighbour
and turning the other cheek, for example. StreetÕs progress to Cartesian
Realism would devour that too: if the Christians are capable of thinking that
there are possible scenarios in which they admire things that do not deserve
admiration, which they surely do, then given their contingent natures, there
will be no guarantee that loving your neighbour and
turning the other cheek represents an improvement over doing your neighbour down and enthusiastically taking revenge for
injuries received. Revelation is no help, for why should evolution have adapted
us to listen only to the right revelations?
In
her earlier paper Street had one good target. What is sometimes called Ôreasons
fundamentalismÕ is a descendant of MooreÕs anti-naturalism. It holds that there
are distinct, irreducible normative facts, outside the causal order of nature,
and that our moral opinions seek to respond to those facts and to describe
their layout. Street is right that this view has no epistemological
credentials, but leaves us with a picture in which for all we know our moral sentiments
are quite orthogonal to the moral facts. Seeing our sentiments as Darwinian in
origin is a vivid way of making this clear. But her attempt to widen her target
to include moral theories in the sentimentalist tradition backfires
spectacularly.
Aristotle
taught us that the right method for epistemology is not to wipe the slate
clean, and then ask what we know in abstraction from anything that could count
as a way of knowing. It is to trust the endoxa
sufficiently to gain a picture of who and what we are that we have managed to
achieve beliefs that have every chance of being true. That is how the
quasi-realist works, and how anyone ought to work.
[1] ÔMind-Independence Without the Mystery: Why Quasi-Realists CanÕt Have It Both Ways,Õ Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 6, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011)
[2] I shall talk indifferently of moral values, values, and normativity: nothing here hangs on fine differences between them.
[3] Street emphasizes this in her paper ÔA Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of ValueÕ, Philosophical Studies, V. 127, 1. (2006), p. 155.
[4] See ÔDarwinian DilemmasÕ e.g. pp. 123–4
[5] By that I mean that it need not remain resolutely hostile either to the idea of a progress of sentiments that eventually modifies all of them, one by one as it were. Nor to using evaluative terms in everyday explanations, of the kind that Nick Sturgeon emphasized.