Cognitive Prerequisite Bating - Some more mental trickery behind moralism
Actually written JUNE 6, 2023
In this writing I will show an example of one of the failed arguments for morality, the one where a base-level moral ought extends a meta-level moral ought. [See my catalogue of failed arguments for morality, wherein levels of "ought" are discussed - in "Premise 3".] The meta-level extension is clever sophistry to disguise an equivocation of musts. [I recommend you read my previous writing on The Equivocation of Musts - explaining explicable versus inexplicable musts.]
I’ve come up with a more elucidating name for this particular kind of meta-level extending sophistry. I call it “cognitive prerequisite bating”.
It works like this:
1. Point out that in order to discover whether moral realism is true, one must use reason. We acknowledge that reason is a cognitive prerequisite for discovering whether moral realism is true.
2. Equivocate this explicable cognitive prerequisite “must” with the inexplicable moral “must”. The fact that we must use reason to investigate whether moral realism is true supposedly demonstrates that moral “musts” do exist – therefore moral realism is true. (The technique can also be extended to any prerequisite of reason, such as being alive and whatever supports being alive.)
Once the equivocation is spotted and rejected, the argument shows itself to be yet another instance of circular bold assertion.
Even if the equivocation is an error, it can still tempt us. I myself was recently tempted by it (briefly) as I watched a video lecture of Jeffrey Kaplan explaining Russ Shafer-Landau’s defense of moral realism in his book, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?, chapter 17. (Jeffrey Kaplan, “Does Occam’s Razor rule out Objective Morality?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEh_qCApvGY )
There’s a rule of using reason called “Occam’s razor”. (Other Kaplan videos do a decent job explaining Occam’s razor.) But the idea here is that Occam’s razor represents reason generally. Shafer-Landau acknowledges that Occam’s razor (reason generally) proves that moral realism is inexplicable. But then Shafer-Landau tugs on our intuition that we morally must use reason. The sophistry presents as a paradox: reason defeats any argument for moral realism, but using reason presupposes that we morally must use reason. It’s as if we only ever use reason for no other possible cause but that we morally must use reason. For example, we can never use reason merely because we desire to. Desire, by itself, can never explain why we use reason, apparently. Finally, he cashes in on all this intuition to conclude that, since we morally must use reason, moral realism is true.
I refute Shafer-Landau by using reason to think about this whole topic, but for no other cause than my desiring to.
Otherwise, I admit the intuition is powerful [(just watch Kaplan’s video. It starts with whether you morally should believe 2 + 2 = 4. (16:50) And again I refute Shafer-Landau by desiring to know what 2 + 2 equals.] But here’s what the intuition is hiding:
The fact that we must use reason to even think about the issue is an explicable must that Shafer-Landau equivocates with the inexplicable moral type of must. It is cognitive prerequisite bating obfuscating the equivocation of musts.
And I also suspect the intuition rests partly on yet another equivocation between desire and moral must or, as I called it previously, “projected disowned desire”. We fear the consequences of rejecting reason. Let’s acknowledge that rejecting reason will likely lead to an increase in suffering and a much earlier death, for both the unreasonable folk themselves and for other folk interdependent with them. That is certainly scary, if you desire less death and suffering, as most of us do. So we strongly desire to use reason. And I think many people readily equivocate strong desire with inexplicable moral “must” – selectively, when it serves them to do so, such as when it helps them defend moral realism.
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