In After Virtue, which is dedicated to a modern revival of virtue ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre discusses the issue of disagreement. In particular, in a selection from the book he documents the claims that:
- “There are just too many different and incompatible conceptions of a virtue”, both if one examines the “relatively coherent tradition of thought” that he has sketched out (likely his examination of the western tradition of virtue ethics that comes before his era of its revival) or expands towards a greater list of writers of different cultures, eras, or traditions (This I shall denote as “Claim 1”, or “the first claim”)
- Therefore, it may seem easy to conclude that there are, even within the tradition MacIntyre discusses, no single core conception of a virtue. (This I shall denote as “Claim 2”, or “the second claim”)
MacIntyre here is mostly focusing on the disagreement over the ultimate conception or conceptions of virtue. We may interpret him as not believing in Claim 2, for he says that it would be “all too easy” to claim it from the noted disagreement in the history of thought, these words signaling an attitude showing both understanding and dismissiveness (that is understandable, but I don’t agree). However, his claim goes beyond his setting as a modern virtue ethicist. We may note such a difference in many other histories of different schools of thought, especially when these schools tend to recognize rules or conceptions that work similarly to virtues when discussed under a practical context. For instance, different rule consequentialists or even different rule utilitarians may take on different versions of these rules; while Mill clearly believes that intellectual pleasures are higher, we may find others who argue that certain physical pleasures are of equal weight. Therefore, MacIntyre’s discussion, though centered on virtue ethics, is fundamentally about the issue of disagreement and how it influences the possibility of a “core conception”, i.e. an objectively better list of virtues, or otherwise an objectively better moral philosophy.
In this essay, I expand MacIntyre’s discussion towards the issue of moral objectivity. I argue, contrary to Claim 2, that there can be in some sense an objectively better moral philosophy or judgment, situating myself in an intersubjective stance that I coin mind-dependent objectivity, the idea that they can coexist. Instead of arguing constructively before addressing counterarguments, I first discuss my stance in brief, before directly discussing the two essential subjectivist objections, namely the Argument From Queerness, raised by J.L. Mackie, and the Argument from Evolution, by Sharon Street. That reversed order, where counterarguments come first, is designed to help in logically constructing my view and in making it more accessible and justified. I argue that the Argument from Queerness is ineffective by making a distinction between what I coin metaphysical correspondence and metaphysical connection, in the process drawing from Thomas Nagel. I concede partly to the Argument from Evolution, but then quickly I show how mind-dependency can coexist with objectivity. Finally, I return to MacIntyre’s quote, explain the instance of disagreement, and show how it does not lead to any form of subjectivism, whether expressivist or dispositionalist. Notaby, Claim 1 is more of a historical thesis, centered on the history of western thought, and given how commonsensical it is, I will take its soundness for granted for the sake of focus and clarity.
I. The Tension And Mind-Dependent Objectivity As A Solution
We may see ourselves faced with a tension, which is partly revealed by MacIntyre’s discussion of disagreement. On the one hand, we face disagreement, a powerful argument that motivates us towards moral subjectivism, especially since disagreement adds to the queerness of referring to an “objective” moral judgment or conception. On the other hand, there seems to be, in our daily discussions of morality, a degree of objectivity that traditional subjectivism cannot capture.
I believe that both traditional subjectivism (expressivism, sentimentalism, dispositionalism, etc) and the so called “robust” model of moral objectivism and realism (a definition that subscribes to the metaphysical thesis) are unsatisfactory. The key term I will be devising here, as a third stance, is mind-dependent objectivity – or mind-dependent intersubjectivity, depending on wording preferences. The core idea of mind-dependent objectivity is that mind-dependency coexists with some form of non-robust moral objectivity. By mind-dependent objectivity, I do not refer to a fully constructed view; though it may seem to share similarities with Christine Korsgaard’s constructivism or perhaps Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism, building the stance or choosing a specific version of intersubjectivism is not my major intention. I intend to describe this state of coexistence between mind-dependency and some sort of objectivity, using the name rather as a concept, or perhaps as a label for any intersubjective view that exhibits such a co-existence. I will show, as I synthesize old arguments to build novel ones, how metaphysical connection sets the ground for objectivity, while what I call baseline attitudes, starting attitudes from which humanity builds its moral structures, serve as the roots for any framework.
II. Addressing Challenges To My Thesis
There are two highly intuitive arguments, both of which may explain why moral subjectivism sits so intuitively. The first, raised by Sharon Street, centers on evolution. Naturally, we know that we came from apes millions of years ago, gradually evolving ourselves bit by bit, variation by variation, to what we are today. But then, Street notes, this origin also explains our morality. Historically, we judged that it is best not to kill a companion for no reason because the tribe that murders each other all day long are left with little population; we believed that it is correct not to eat our young because the groups that hold the opposite view would quickly find themselves extinct after a few generations. Why then, asks Street, do we assume that morality, having evolved not on the basis of “correctness” but rather evolutionary success, could also simultaneously hit the right mark and find itself objectively correct?
A response would be to deny evolution. That I do not explore; I would take evolution for granted, so that we may avoid discussions of evolutionary biology that floats away from the focus of this essay. I instead dicuss Street’s own consideration of her argument, and quote her conceptions of vindicating genealogies and undermining genealogies. Street herself argues that certain genealogies may indeed be undermining, for instance learning that (to use her own example) Rutherford B. Hayes is the 20th president of the United States of America from a hypnotist who planted the thought as part of an experiment. It is not a good reason to believe what a hypnotist planted, since she may not be an expert, and may not intend that you know the right answer. However, Street also points out that certain genealogies are vindicating; if I learned that same history from my excellent AP United States History teacher, who is an expert and wishes that I know the right history, that is an excellent reason to keep the belief.
Is evolution, then, vindicating or undermining? Street argues that depends on whether values are mind-dependent or mind-independent. If values are mind-independent, then surely it is not a good reason to believe that the correct moral values are evolutionarily successful – that is by no means guaranteed – nor is it reasonable to argue that our evolved moral judgments or values somehow had or will have (in the future) coincidentally collided with the correct values. On the other hand, if values are mind-dependent, then Street would argue that evolution as a genealogy would only be neither undermining nor vindicating. It does not matter where our values come from, especially if they are not supposed to exist beyond our existence and be mind-independent, as long as we keep reflecting and improving them. Referring to these alternate possibilities, Street concludes that out of the inference to the best explanation, we ought to accept the second conception, that values are mind-dependent, because it is more plausible to think that we could be, in some day, right in our frameworks of morality, than to think that our morality is (not just wrong, but) always wrong.
However, if we assume that evolution is correct and concede that the argument seems valid (and thus also sound), then there indeed seems to be a threat to objectivity – values must be mind-dependent. But eventually, despite Street’s argument, mind-dependency can coexist with a non-robust form of moral objectivity, or intersubjectivity at least. But to understand that better, we ought to first consider the second argument made by subjectivists.
The second argument, raised by Mackie, is that moral judgments do not correspond to any metaphysical property. Indeed, moral judgments are not like infared or ultraviolet, corresponding to an actual wavelength from the spectrum of light, nor like hardness, coming from the structures of solids themselves. Why then, asks Mackie, could there be any basis in arguing that moral judgments (or frameworks, in extension) could be objectively correct, if there is no basis to that correctness?
To understand Mackie’s arguments, we may examine how traditionally metaphysical correspondence has influenced moral objectivity. For instance, Plato argued that there is an objective moral evil, since there is an objective “Form”. Once humans deviate from our form, or our “essence”, we may be said, from a teleological and an essentialist perspective, to be morally evil and blameworthy, or to have done evil and blameworthy actions.
Metaphysical correspondence indeed plays a certain role in both the traditional literature, as we have seen in the case of Plato, and in the laypeople’s commonsense understanding of moral objectivism. Returning to Mackie’s argument, I do agree that it has its merits, and I concede: there is no metaphysical correspondence or grounding in moral philosophy. But drawing on Nagel, I do not think that this matters. In The Last Word, Nagel makes an analogy comparing the case of moral judgments to science. He argues that science, despite certainly corresponding to metaphysical properties, does not rely on that correspondence or grounding for its objectivity. Scientific arguments are not objectively correct because red is actual, or because heat is evident in the vibration of particles observable via Brownian motion, but because active scientific reasoning pushes us to that point where we can make an objectively valid argument. That metaphysical grounding only helps us better understand and observe the argument, but it is not the fundamental root of the objectivity. Similarly, Nagel believes that the same works for moral objectivity; objectivity comes from powerful reasoning, not metaphysical correspondence. Mackie’s argument, despite having a true premise, is neither valid nor sound.
Critics, however, would not find that satisfactory. They may naturally doubt the validity of such an analogy, especially given how vastly different morality is from science. I too am unsatisfied with Nagel’s account, but not because it is wrong; rather, I think Nagel had made implicit what should have been explicit, and making it explicit could help avoid his analogy. I draw this distinction between metaphysical correspondence and connection, the latter of which is essential for objectivity, but the former not. Metaphysical correspondence, as we have seen, is as simple as the evaporation of water being based on the escape of molecules. Metaphysical connection, by contrast, is not that obvious; it is when we draw the link between a metaphysical fact, which by itself has nothing to do with the judgment, and utilize the judgment as proof. We may illustrate how this works with the example I shall discuss in the following section, in order to show how we may still disprove Claim 2 that MacIntyre discussed.
III. The Coexistence Between Mind-Dependency and Some Form of Objectivism
Having explored how mind-dependency seems so inevitable and having explored the independency on metaphysical correspondence, I now utilize what I have discussed above in a small thought experiment that illustrates this coexistence that I seek to prove, formulating a new stance that goes beyond the traditional literature.
Consider two agents, A and B, both performing the exact same act Z for the exact same purpose X in the exact same method M. Let us assume that A and B are both humans with some differences; A may have blue pupils while B has black ones, or A may be darker in skin color and B more yellowish. Regardless of their differences, let us assume that their properties are, in terms of evolution, equally successful. They may have different mental characteristics, but let us assume that they are equally evolutionarily successful as well, and let us say that all of these characteristics are morally irrelevant (for instance, A might be more speedy, while B could be living on slower paces). Let us take it further and argue that we have a sound argument justifying moral blame for A’s action. We may then ask, what moral judgment would B receive?
I think in this case there is no dispute in that B must receive moral blame. B had done the same act for the same purpose (whether mental or in terms of the action itself, as in Anscombe’s definition) and utilizing the same method. Having removed evolutionary success, there is no other non-arbitrary difference that would justify giving B a different moral judgment.
But here I am not stressing that B must receive blame, but rather that there is some sort of objectivity in here that no moral expressivism, dispositionalism, or sentimentalism can possibly describe. It is not an utterance of sentiment or disposition when I argue that “B must receive the same moral judgment as A”; I am not simply uttering a feeling of agreement. It simply has to be so, otherwise forcing a fall into arbitrariness. The very reason that this objectivity may exist is that here, despite lacking metaphysical grounding, we have an instance of metaphysical connection, as I coined. This equality between the moral value of A’s act and B’s act lies in a metaphysically existing property, namely a lack of any non-arbitrary, morally relevant property that could justify a discriminated judgment. That is clearly a “core conception” (although not of virtue ethics necessarily), in MacIntyre’s words, since it has to be right. Therein I justify how metaphysical connection, even if without metaphysical correspondence or grounding, may provide ground for moral objectivity, thus arguing that Claim 2 as discussed by MacIntyre is not valid.
Here we are also beginning to see how mind-dependency, as justified by Street, also comes into play. One might deny the value of rationality entirely, such that if rationality had no value, then non-arbitrariness would not be demanded as well. Even in my case, values had to be fundamentally mind-dependent; without that baseline attitude, we would not have our judgments. As Street had written, it is not that things mattered without us beings, but as beings evolved and begun to think, we made things matter.
IV. Explaining Disagreement And How It Does Not Disprove Mind-Dependent Objectivism
Returning to MacIntyre’s case on disagreement, the traditional usage of disagreement in using it as an argument for subjectivism, as Mackie did, seems to very much fail. Mackie once argued that disagreement in morality is so different and persisting across different cultures, traditions, or even individuals such that we cannot say that morality is objective. Despite science also having some sort of disagreement, Mackie argues that it is vastly different from disagreement found in morality, and that we may not appeal to disagreement in science as an analogy. Given what we have discussed, what becomes of this view?
We may first characterize disagreement into various different kinds. On the practical level, we know of the fact that, at least in modern humanity, there are several shared baseline attitudes that we are certain of. For instance, should we speak in a Rossian manner, we have a prima facie duty towards human life, the duty of which obligates us not to kill any random stranger we see walking past us. We also have a prima facie duty to our and others’ autonomy, such that we may not simply disrespect autonomy and take someone as slave or chattel. Regardless of how laypeople think, it is undeniable that at the practical level, there are such de facto prima facie duties that most or even all of humanity agrees with. Therefore, at the practical, laypeople level, common moral disagreement may simply come from an error in reasoning itself, given how I‘ve shown that there is an objectivity in morality that no traditional subjectivism can account.
However, we do see ourselves with the brightest minds on Earth disagreeing with each other. There are philosophers who do not stop at the practical, de facto level, but rather approach the depth of the theories, arguing for different moral frameworks that may variate vastly. How are we then to explain this difference? Does that disagreement not rest fundamentally on brute differences in sentiments, those sentiments being the “axioms” of moral frameworks?
I see two ways, both of which justifies mind-dependent objectivism as intact from the event of disagreement. The first stance, as supported by Elizabeth Harman, is the view that disagreement, even if among so-called epistemic peers, does not show anything. Indeed, following her thinking we may argue that such disagreement is analogous to a neither-vindicating-nor-undermining genealogy, except that it categorizes as a reason. For instance, the disagreement between the different philosophers from Homer to Aristotle on the ultimate conception of virtues, as discussed by MacIntyre, says nothing about whether Aristotle is right or wrong. Aristotle should only examine Homer’s differences and how he justifies them before returning to his theory, make amendments if necessary, and keep the rest of his beliefs should he think that Homer’s arguments are not sufficient enough. In Harman’s stance, disagreement is either completely irrelevant or hardly influential (she made a small retreat here, as to avoid being too extreme). It is about arguments, not peers.
Harman’s stance is a powerful rebuttal towards Claim 2 or towards Mackie’s employment of disagreement as a subjectivist argument. However, objections may utilize other stances where disagreement with epistemic peers can be said to largely influence or even overturn current beliefs. Thus, to avoid drifting away towards epistemology, I shall not discuss Harman’s view in depth, nor endorse it as part of the commitments of mind-dependent objectivity. Instead, I provide an exploration and an extension of Nagel’s arguments, the second way of understanding and addressing the objection from disagreement.
Nagel, again in The Last Word, made a powerful response towards Mackie’s Argument from Disagreement. Nagel argued that disagreement is a descriptive fact, and descriptive facts do not answer normative questions about the objectivity of morality. He writes, brilliantly, and beautifully, that even after understanding the disagreement, one may ask, “given this, what should I do?”
An objection is that Nagel here appeals to the Is-Ought Gap, and in order to use his argument, we must provide arguments as to our resolution of the Is-Ought Gap. However, upon careful inspection, we may note that this does connect to the Is-Ought Gap, but the argument is made without any need for a resolution. Nagel here is not arguing for the disjunction between “is” and “ought”; rather, he only relies on the argument that a specific “is” of the existence of disagreement, all alone by itself, cannot resolve the “ought” of moral objectivity. Perhaps disagreement can connect to the normative question of moral objectivity, perhaps it cannot; even if it can, disagreement itself does no work without supplements. Thus, without relying on epistemological debates or the Is-Ought Gap, we can draw on Nagel’s thinking and justify how disagreement does not reduce morality to subjectivism, but rather opens up new grounds and new evidence that needs examination.
Again, however, I do not feel that Nagel’s account is satisfactory. I think the he had made implicit what should have gone explicit again, and I find it necessary to expand his arguments, in case more demanding critics may ask for further justifications. I argue that this kind of disagreement, where epistemic peers hold conflicting views, could fundamentally be about a difference in certain baseline attitudes, but this does not render mind-dependent objectivity impossible. That is not necessary; bright minds can make mistakes. But if it was the case, it would still be possible for us to reflect and improve on these baseline attitudes.
The objection that I address, by utilizing and expanding Nagel’s arguments, is that fundamentally the disagreement would be simply brute and based on differences in sentiments, rendering agreement impossible and thus objectivity susceptible. Here, I will be charitable to the objections and assume that bruteness can indeed never be eliminated, especially since mind-dependency, which we have justified, seems to intuitively lead to some degree of bruteness. Nevertheless, even under that, we may still ask the same old question raised by Nagel: “given that, what should I do?” It is possible for us to examine our baseline attitudes and attempt to reduce the amount of bruteness to it. We may, for instance, instead of saying “X is good, brutely”, argue that “X is good, because Y is necessary; Y is necessary, because having Z is best; Having Z is best, brutely” (assuming that bruteness must exist).
To see how that process of reducing bruteness fosters in real-world situations, we may consider the baseline attitude over equality. Three hundred years ago, a vast majority of individuals, for instance in Europe, America, and China, believed that different people are not equal. Using the United States of America as an example, white southern farmers largely believed that the Africans abducted from Africa were simply slaves and chattel, “moving properties”. This may see very fundamental an attitude, and also an attitude of sentiment. However, over the course of three hundred years, we have now been able to generally recognize equality not as a fundamental attitude based on sentiment, but as an objectively correct moral judgment, especially if we base it on our current shared baseline attitudes. We have reduced the bruteness in providing arguments such as the one implied by my thought experiment in Section 3, allowing equality not to be justified by sentiment as a baseline attitude but rather by further baseline attitudes, such as rationality being of some value. This may not always happen, as sometimes the arc of history may not bend towards justice, but the possibility exists significantly, that disagreement can be resolved.
V. Conclusion
In this essay, I follow the discussions of Alasdair MacIntyre on disagreement and discuss the second claim that he documented in After Virtue. I argue that Claim 2 is incorrect, in that it is possible to find what MacIntyred denoted as a “core conception”. I argue for this thesis by justifying mind-dependent objectivity, a coexistence of mind-dependency and some form of objectivity. I then address Mackie’s Argument from Queerness and Street’s Argument from Evolution as apparent objections towards my thesis (and supporting Claim 2), using Nagel’s arguments and a distinction I draw between metaphysical connection and metaphysical correspondence (or grounding). I put the discussions of counterarguments first, such as we may use what we learn from addressing them to help build this intersubjectivist concept. I do not construct mind-dependent objectivity into a full view, but rather locate this as a concept or a type of view that shares similarities with other intersubjectivist stances, such as Korsgaard’s constructivism and Blackburn’s quasi-realism. All of this is then used to justify my thesis, that Claim 2 is wrong, and that despite long, everlasting disagreement, we still locate some form of objectivity in morality, and we may still work so that humanity may find its common grounds.