Metaethics is an incredibly broad topic about which literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of pages have been written. We cannot tackle it comprehensively here or anywhere. But it is possible to know enough about it to make reasonable metaethical judgements. I’ve thought for quite some time about putting down some of my metaethical thoughts here and have ultimately decided to do so in the hope that this may help either of my readers to make those more reasonable judgements.
Today is a day for axiomata (for axioms if you’re not a philosophy nerd) relating to systems of metaethics. It is the most basic beginnings of metaethical systems where we attempt to spell out just a few things which are essential features of the largest percentage of such systems. (It is unfortunately true that none are uncontested, though I believe at least some should be.) Note that there are other topics in metaethics (such as epistemology) which are not directly engaged below.
The first axiom is that any metaethics must be a system which guides the behavior of moral agents by providing a method or methods to answer to the question, “What ought I to do?” in various, widely divergent circumstances as well as providing justifications for considering the methodology favorable and the resulting answers correct, or else it must be a system by which one can arrive at the conclusion that there is no answer to the question “What ought I to do?” In other words, if a system exists that does provides the answer, “I don’t know,” or “there is no relevant guidance in this circumstance,” that can still be considered a metaethial system. Of course it a system consistently returns this same, unhelpful answer it might be metaethical only in a sense relative to philosophers. In common behavior one does not ask questions to which one does not want an answer. Such systems are ignored in practical ethics and by the vast majority of people since they actually do want help in deciding what they ought to do in various circumstances.
Second, the actual answers to the question, “What ought I to do?” are considered ethics and not metaethics. Metaethics (in this context) is limited to methodology and justification.
Third, for a potential answer to the question “What ought I to do?” to have moral import, it must be possible to act out that answer. It makes no moral sense to say that I “ought” to revive the ancient dead. All metaethical systems, therefore, address only the possible. To the extent that the impossible is addressed, it cannot properly be said to be related to metaethics.
Fourth, a system for answering “What ought I to do?” is only metaethical to the extent that the question is asked in a context of relationships. If a course of action has no potential to affect others, it has no moral import. Definitions of “others” may be contested (e.g. animal rights or animal welfare movements often encounter resistance to the idea that non-human animals can be considered morally relevant others, questions of abortion rights sometimes encounter similar points of contention) and some of the others alleged to be involved may not have evidence for their existence (e.g. moral systems that presume a god or gods who can be pleased, injured, angered, disappointed, satisfied, or otherwise affected by the actions of the moral agent). Notwithstanding these arguments about who or what might count as an other, metaethics concerns itself only with social or relational questions.
Fifth and perhaps most controversial, any metaethics must sustain itself. This is not to say that any system must justify itself in order to qualify as metaethics (although this is a requirement for any metaethical system to have coherence and is something I demand of my own metaethics). Rather it is to say that if an inevitable result of embracing a metaethics is either the extinction of a population or the abandonment of that metaethics, then I contend that it is not a metaethical system in the first place. I’ll be returning to this fifth point and the related question of justification in a later post.
To sum up, a metaethical system is a justification for a sustainable methodology, and the sustainable methodology itself, for providing answers to socially and/or relationally significant forms of the question, “What ought I to do?” that are possible to act out.
As always, critiques and comments are welcome below. If there are necessary features of any system of metaethics which you believe I’ve neglected here, please leave a comment. I’m especially curious to see how many of you consider sustainability as necessary to any system of metaethics and how many consider it merely desirable (or, perhaps, neither necessary nor desirable if anyone holds that position).
Are you saying that it doesn’t engage with questions that are also metaphysical ones in some sense, about what (for example) values and goals and moral agents and so forth are? I wouldn’t classify that type of thing as “methodology” or “justification.”
Maybe an analogy will help. People like to evaluate music, and so they engage in different forms of music criticism, using different methods and justifications and so on. But there’s also a whole world of music theory and history, diving into a subjects like math and physics and sociology and psychology and philosophy and on and on, which is at least sitting somewhere in the background and gesturing provocatively in the direction of this criticism. Whatever else you want to say about it, that type of stuff is very often used in the service of music criticism.
If you left most or all of it out of the picture, you could (arguably) still do something that’s vaguely like music criticism in the traditional sense, but you wouldn’t be engaging with the subject matter in the same ways. You’d be neglecting a lot of evidence, analysis, etc., that would (at least sometimes) be very useful.
I don’t know about that. I think I’ve made bad choices for myself before, which have negatively affected me. That’s where the harm is, and that still counts, doesn’t it? It seems like the only thing that should matter in that kind of case is that, as a person I can suffer, just like these “others” you talk about. It would be a pretty empty claim to contend that I have a “relationship with myself,” although you could try to take that route if you feel it’s necessary for something….
But I don’t get why it would be necessary for anything. Can you think of any reason why you would need this claim to be true, in order to sustain some other claim/argument that you also consider true? Above, I only took it to be the case that I’m able to experience suffering: bad things can happen to me. Not a controversial premise. I can also be at least partly responsible for those bad things. Also not controversial. With basically just that, I think we’re off to the races.
Does that kind of thing affect others? Well, maybe it does, but I can’t see why the effect on me all by myself shouldn’t be among the things that matter. Another easy way to get there is the premise that we’re all equals — that implies that if others matter, then so do I.
Coherence and self-justification are two different things, aren’t they? I have a coherent system of arithmetic for you. I have a coherent story to tell you. I have a coherent set of evidence that you should consider. I have a coherent argument to make. Did any of those things “justify themselves,” however that’s supposed to work and whatever that’s supposed to mean? I doubt it.
I’ll be covering this more in a later post, but for now consider the possibility that following your metaethics leads you to conclude that the metaethics one ought to adopt is a different metaethics than that with which you started.
In this case, the failure of the system to self-justify also results in a failure of coherence.
I argue that no, it doesn’t. Imagine if you’re the last thinking being on earth. You can make choices that make you happy or sad, that improve or harm your health, but these don’t have moral import.
This is consistent with the earliest accounts of metaethics in Plato’s dialogues and continues to be true throughout the history of formal efforts at metaethics. While there are people who have said that this or that action which appears to affect only the self is un/ethical, these arguments run up against a number of problems including whether or not you have a moral system without moral accountability. You cannot have moral accountability without relationships.
The inherently social nature of morality is also something I intend to talk more about in future posts.
Sure, but in that case those things are affecting how you do music criticism, therefore the methodology of criticism. Speculating on whether one should engage those topics in the process of criticism is justification – or, rather, the process of asking questions about whether we should or shouldn’t use a particular critical tool becomes an exercise in justification as soon as you determine that a tool should be used. There are some senses in which it is not justification when you decide not to use a tool, but I think there are reasonable meanings of the word which allow me to say that even those reasons for excluding a tool are justifications for your meta-critical process.
This is attempting to distinguish a particular answer of music criticism (say, giving a specific album 7 stars out of 10) from the process of music criticism. Saying that we should examine music theory or examine the mathematics of a song’s harmonics is meta-criticism. Saying the album gets 7/10 is the criticism itself.
Hm. You would argue that there can be no relationships between your past, current, and future selves?
I’m picking at this because I recently saw a tweet that made me think about it.
I have more, possibly less coherent, thoughts on metaethics/ethics.
Since we are a social species can my unhappiness or injury really not effect others?
@robertbaden:
Yes, your unhappiness or injury absolutely can affect others. This is the second most common way for something that appears superficially as a purely personal question where autonomy should reign to be moved into the category of questions with moral import. (The most common is to simply invent an undetectable omniscient being that cares about that action.)
For example, while ultimately I come down on the side of autonomy in choosing suicide, it is undeniable that this choice both affects others and has moral important. Almost all of our actions either affect others in some way (as small or indirect as that may be) and/or have a chance of affecting others that we cannot reduce to zero. This is the nature of being a member of a species that is both ubiquitous and social. As a result, even though the ethical does not reach the purely personal, morality properly concerns itself with seemingly personal decisions all the time.
Nonetheless, if one wishes to declare another person’s behavior immoral, that behavior must have at least a chance of affecting other morally relevant beings. If it could not possibly affect any other morally relevant being, then the behavior falls outside the realm of moral investigation.
Pardon me if I’m sounding ignorant here, but does metaethics concern itself with addressing internal contradictions in ethical frameworks?
@Susan Montgomery:
Yes. It concerns itself with how to construct ethical frameworks, therefore metaethics definitely include identifying weaknesses of different frameworks and then using information about those weaknesses to correct or to justify abandoning those frameworks.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a problem if your system is incoherent or leads to a contradiction. Instead, the fact that you have something internally consistent doesn’t mean you have something which is self-justifying. You can have something unjustified, or flat-out wrong, which nonetheless satisfies this requirement of coherence/consistency. It’s easy to come up with examples – among others, all sorts of religious believers and conspiracy theorists and such have been doing that sort of thing for ages.
They could have some story that aliens abducted them and took them on a fantastical journey, in which they met Elvis, who revealed that Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer. It could all hang together without collapsing under its own weight, so to speak, but that’s saying very little. And it doesn’t constitute justification, as far as I’m concerned.
No, that doesn’t follow. You can just engage with those other topics like math or history or whatever, if you simply want to understand/explain all sorts of music-related stuff, which is of interest all on its own, independently of whether it’s ever going to be applied in a critical setting. Knowing about that stuff may sometimes affect your critical methods, if and when you’re doing criticism, but that’s as far as it goes. They can be connected in some sense, but that doesn’t imply that they’re the same thing. They’re two (or more) things which have a connection.
No, I don’t think so. You can have something incoherent while self-justified, but if, having decided up on a particular methodology for making ethical decisions, you inevitably come to believe that you must use a different methodology for making moral decisions, you will also inevitably come up with two different answers to at least some questions – the first answer when using your methodology, the second answer using the new methodology you adopt when your original methodology forces you to abandon it and adopt another.
The failure of self-justification thus leads inevitably to incoherence on at least some moral questions.
Ah, yes. Now I understand. Sure, this is true, but I’m not claiming that all math is meta-music criticism. I’m only saying that the use of math in producing music criticism is a meta-music criticism use of math.
Likewise, not all epistemology is part of metaethics. Yet epistemology has a role to play in metaethics. When it plays that role, we call it “moral epistemology” and it is considered a valid metaethical topic so long as it has any bearing on constructing or using moral frameworks.
Just hold on here. You say you “don’t think so,” but then you immediately agree with me by saying exactly what you don’t think.
The only thing I was trying to address is that C and J aren’t identical or equivalent. You and I both seem to agree now that (~C & J) is possible. That’s possible if and only if ~(C = J). Because (P & ~P) is pretty much the definition of “impossible.”
If you want to make some other kind of point about something else, okay … make that other kind of point about something else. I just hope it’s clear that I wasn’t disagreeing about that.
I didn’t mention epistemology. That would actually be something that could reasonably be characterized as having to do with “methodology” and “justification.” But that’s not what I was talking about.
I mentioned metaphysical questions, like what is a value, what is a moral agent, etc. Those are a core part of metaethics, and they are not “methodology” or “justification.” Those issues just concern the objects and relations and so forth that form the subject matter itself.
If this were biology, it would be like saying it’s all “methods,” with not a word about organisms or genes or ecosystems or any other natural object. Nobody could or would do biology that way. (Another analogy, I know, but hopefully that one is simple enough that it won’t be misinterpreted.)
I was actually saying (C & ~ J), but the conclusion follows either way, so I don’t need to argue for it again.
The “possible to act out” seems to me to be a way of lifting in existing value-systems. I.e.: It’s probably not possible to operate a plantation staffed by slaves, anymore, so does that mean I can’t ask “what should I do?” regarding a possible decision to attempt to operate a plantation?
That does seem to address one of what I see as problems in consequentialism, namely that if I can determine X is wrong, now, why couldn’t I determine it was wrong before now and, if I can determine X is wrong, now, why can I change my mind in the future? After all, Romans had access to all the ethical tools and observations necessary to determine that slavery was immoral in 59BC (to pick a random date) it seems to be a failure of our ability to engage in moral calculus that there are people who have just recently caught up to that idea.
@consciousness razor:
It seems you didn’t read this paragraph from the OP:
Bolding added.
When the topic of today’s biology class is explicitly announced to be methods, then it’s unsurprising that we’re only talking about methods.
Is it OK to suggest hypotheticals, though? I mean, a lot of ethical/moral analysis seems to include thought experiments and dilemmas to determine actual values and reasoning, like, famously, the trolley problem.
So, if we had time machines and brain scanner/recorders and a system of cloning vats, and a post-scarcity habitat that could support trillions of humans, such that it was technically possible to revive the ancient dead without harming anyone in the present, would it make moral sense to ask if we ought to revive the ancient dead?
Or should we stick to questions of what is technically feasible in the foreseeable future?
Maybe a meta-ethical discussion should include how technology affects ethical decisions and systems. And how putative violators of ethical systems ought to be treated withing the ethical framework.
I’m thinking about labor and slavery, as Marcus brings up @#12.
(1) Labor needs to be done to make life easier for those who benefit from the labor.
(2) Historically, it has been pragmatically easier for one group of people to bully another (smaller/weaker) group of people into performing labor (slavery) than to do it all themselves.
(3) However, any ethical framework that exists should ¹ apply equally to all agents ¹, and therefore, such bullying should be understood to be unethical/wrong to everyone. Yet slavery persisted, and still persists, and has often been transformed to other exploitative systems (US prison system; other labor/capital/resource extraction systems; private equity; late-stage capitalism). What does this say about general ethical understanding?
(3a) Prisoners are seen as being those who have violated legal codes, and potentially ethical codes as well. How much punishment is too much? How does a meta-ethical system decide the proper level of punishment for ethical violations?
(4) One potential solution to the labor problem is the creation of labor-saving devices. Did the creation of less need for labor affect moral thinking among the populace?
(5) Returning to technology, we seem to want to create labor-saving devices that are intelligent enough to perform complicated tasks currently performed by people. But isn’t the creation of such devices also the creation of fellow agents, who ought to be treated ethically?
(6) Another thought relating to labor and slavery — should meta-ethics take into consideration ideas like debt, trust, and kinship as well? For example, did/does slavery persist among the slave-owning class/population because that class (eg: Spartans, Roman citizens, “white” US Southerners) feels more kinship/trust towards each other than towards the slave class/population (respective to the above: helots, Roman slaves, black slaves)? And does that affect how the labor is actually valued? How about debt?
(6a) Is it possible to discuss ethics without discussing debt? Does a debt imply an ethical imperative to reciprocate with whatever one is indebted for? If one can’t, what should be the punishment? How about overloads of debt — how much is too much being imposed? At what point should we say that usurious/loan shark loan rates, or exorbitant pricing of necessities are themselves unethical?
Sorry this is so haphazard and wandering all over the place.
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1: And this may need unpacking and analysis as well.
Well, surprising or not, we’ve both already pointed out (for different reasons) that this stuff can affect methodology. So this lesson in which you’re “only talking about methods” is not an adequate lesson about methods. It has tons of holes in it, even according to you.
Coincidentally, some of the issues raised by Owlmirror and Marcus seem to depend on how one should fill in those types of holes, with evidence or reasoning or at any rate something, if you’re going to allow that those things have any place in the discussion at all.
Here’s another quote from you:
I took that as a genuine invitation to comment about any necessary features of any system of metaethics which I believe you’ve neglected here. But if you’re also saying that the discussion has to be limited only to those features which you didn’t neglect to mention, then I don’t know anymore what kind of comment you expect to see.
With the other points I raised in #1, the situation is somewhat different. I just think you’re mistaken about what those features must be: the fourth isn’t necessary and the fifth is a bit confused.
I’m curious to see how you justify number 5. The idea of an ethical system that results in it’s own extinction seems fine to me.
Of course being in favour of voluntary human extinction I would say that