Metaethics
Over a year ago, I wrote an article on Moral Nihilism and Mature Hedonism and wow, is it awful. Why am I talking about a first-order ethical position alongside a metaethical position? Why did I give a name to this malformed first-order position and describe it so poorly to the point that it basically says nothing?
I was only barely scratching the surface of metaethics at the time, and I didn’t really understand the long history of metaethics, so I felt cool for having (what I thought to be) a radical position. To be fair, I didn’t hold that position just because I thought it was edgy. I’ve had strong inclinations to antirealism for many, many years and when I discovered metaethical discussions, I thought I would finally be able to articulate it. These days, I actually still mostly agree with what I said before, but I’d like to give some clarifications.
For those unfamiliar in the metaethical dialectic, we should first separate normative ethics and metaethics. Normative ethics (or first-order ethics) asks questions like “is abortion morally permissible?” while metaethics asks questions like “what is the nature of morality?” and “how do we come to know about it?”. In the words of Alexander Miller in An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics, 2003, “normative ethics thus seeks to discover the general principles underlying moral practice, and in this way potentially impacts upon practical moral problems” while metaethics asks questions about normative ethics.
Metaethical views can be completely divorced from first-order ethical views. I’m not sure I consciously made that distinction in the previous article. Even as an antirealist, I can make statements like “Slavery is wrong” or “Torturing babies for fun is wrong”. Of course I can, and I do! What the antirealist position says is how one should interpret the statements. Under a (cognitivist) realist view, those statements are interpreted as propositions that can be evaluated as true or false and there is a mind independent fact of the matter on whether it is true or false. Under the noncognitivist antirealist view that I hold, those statements aren’t even propositions and there isn’t a mind independent fact of the matter on whether it’s true or false. Those statements would be more akin to “Yummy!” in response to eating something, or “Ow!” in response to stubbing a toe as opposed to “Grass is green” or “Snow is white”.
These days, I’m not sure if I still hold the noncognitivist position. I feel little need to give a semantic account of first-order ethics. I just deny that there are any mind independent facts of the matter when it comes to morality, which makes me a general moral antirealist, I suppose. Moral discourse is too complicated to give a universal semantics, but this in no way detracts from the antirealist position.
In regards to first-order ethics, the “mature hedonism” I described says basically nothing. If it says anything beyond descriptive facts, it just says “I should do what I am inclined to do”. I guess this was somewhat indicative of the fact that I don’t feel a need to give an account of my first-order ethical views. Of course I hold first-order ethical views, but I don’t know how to or feel a need to systematize them. “Mature Hedonism” is certainly not a systemization by any measure and I feel embarrassed for even publicizing such an uninformed position.
Scientism
On the topic of antirealism, I’ve found myself drawn to antirealist views about other things: scientific antirealism, for example. Prior to philosophical scrutiny, I found myself holding the naive realist position that likely most hold, especially those in the Western educated society. This change was brought along with a change in attitude towards science. I previously held science in the utmost regard with respect to epistemological status. I was the type of person that lived by the words of Richard Dawkins, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, etc. I thought that everything could be discovered by science and that the scientific method could not fail. I’m not sure if sociologists have identified the relatively new cultural phenomena around this type of thinking that I’ve been calling scientism. I believed in scientism and reflecting on that horrifying period fills me with more disdain than if I had formed my current views independent of scientism. Scientism seems to be related to the new atheism movement and some of its basic tenets are the infallibility of science, the high regard to the strength of pure reason, and resistance or ignorance to philosophy. Those who subscribe to scientism may hold that, with no a priori assumptions and with only pure reason and access to empirical data, we would deduce all of science in basically the same way.
There are several glaring issues in such a view. Firstly, we can’t get anywhere without assumptions. And these assumptions are numbered. We have to assume, for example, that the universe has regularities, that the regularities are amenable to scientific inquiry, and if we want to be a realist about science, that skeptical arguments are false (i.e. brain in a vat is false, simulation hypothesis is false, etc.). By no means are these examples exhaustive.
Secondly, this view seems to assume a sort of linearity in scientific progress. Science can only progress in the single correct way. In other domains, this would be considered ridiculous: the Enlightenment was by no means the inevitable culmination of past history. The temptation to believe in the inevitability of science may be rooted in scientific realism. Even if realism is granted, an analysis in scientific history reveals the volatility of science (see Against Method by Feyerabend for example). We shouldn’t take it for granted that science isn’t swept along the same currents driving political, social, and economic forces.
I also want to address the point on the strength of reason. What’s considered reasonable? To me, I think it unreasonable to deny skeptical arguments. There isn’t good reason to believe that we aren’t brains in vats. In some sense, this alludes to how stringent I take reason to be. Reason, as I see it, has standards high enough that it’s immediately defeated by skeptical arguments. If reason is relaxed enough to defeat the skeptical argument, however, it seems to me that reason can be used to justify too much. That which makes it reasonable to believe in the external world seems to be some arbitration, which, when applied in other areas, seems to lead to questionable beliefs. Why should I believe in the external world? I find it difficult to accept except by aesthetics or psychological disposition. By the same terms, I can find it acceptable by aesthetics or psychological disposition to believe in ghosts or voodoo magic, yet such beliefs are widely taken to be unreasonable. This, to me, points to the deductive weakness in reason or the incoherence of reason. In any case, I find using reason unreasonable.
Truth
Other fundamental problems have bothered me recently, particularly on the subject of truth. I know little about the literature, and only on a very surface level. I have heard of correspondence theories of truth. I have also heard of some deflationary theories of truth, which I do not understand. Not that I find them unagreeable, but that I genuinely don’t understand what they’re trying to say. There is much to the literature I should accompany myself with on the search for truth. Nonetheless, I wish to make public where I am on my path and I hope the reader will take my neophytic musings in good faith.
What is truth? One may view it as a predicate of statements in a language along with relations from the language to reality for predicative evaluation. I can find this acceptable as a starting point, but let us explore it further. We should ask whether truth, “as a predicate of statements in a language along with relations from the language to reality for predicative evaluation”, latches onto reality. That is, what is truth’s connection to reality?
There is a trivial answer to the question in that the connection to reality is exactly that which is described by truth, but there is remaining a deeper mystery.
We may define soup as a liquid, often but not necessarily hot, and often but not necessarily with solid elements, in a container with an open top and consumed with a spoon. Chicken noodle soup, cream of mushroom soup, vegetable soup, and miso soup are all paradigmatic examples of soup, satisfying the above definition. Is cereal a soup? Certainly, it has a liquid portion and a solid portion, contained in a bowl with an open top and consumed with a spoon, but if you invite guests over for a soupy dinner and you serve them cereal, they would surely be taken aback.
We may go into further detail revising the definition, but I assume the reader has come across these mereological puzzles, be it with soup or sandwiches or the like, and has seen the difficulty, indeed impossibility, of neatly defining soup and I do not wish to belabor the point. These questions are usually investigated under a mereological context and I wish to extract from the mereological investigation the point that soup fails to carve nature at her joints. There is no structure in nature that definition of soup is latching onto, which is why it gives rise to these seeming soupy paradoxes. We simply distinguish one part of perception, and affirm or deny, to some degree, its soup-iness, but there is no soup structure out there, independent of mind to make the distinction and affirmation or denial.
This is the deeper mystery I alluded to earlier. Is there really some truth structure out there, independent of mind? When I speak of truth, my hope is that there is such a structure. What gives me this hope? Could truth not be as artificial as soup? Even if a truth structure exists, what makes me think that language is even capable of latching on to it?
These questions have disturbed me and I have yet to find reconciliation except in the province of Zen, of which I have recently been exploring. I have little to say of Zen as I am also a newcomer to these foreign lands, but I have found great comfort in Zen teachings. With great respect for Zen and yielding my ignorance to it, I’d like to offer a Zen-like solution in response to my questions on truth.
“There is no truth, and this is the only truth.”
Remarks
Whenever I begin to write on philosophy, I’m excited to expound on my seemingly profound and coherent thoughts. However, when the pen hits the paper (or the fingers hit the keyboard), it seems all the lucidity I believed I had vanishes. At the end of the post, I am left deeply disappointed at my inability to convey my thoughts, or at my lack of coherent thoughts in the first place. This post is no exception, and if the reader has made it this far, I thank the reader humbly for making through my incoherent ramblings.
