My impression (admittedly based on limited exposure and minimal formal study of Philosophy) is that moral anti-realists make the mistake of selectively applying scepticism a la Agrippa’s trilemma to moral claims that they don’t apply to non-moral claims.Â
A super brief summary of my reasoning is as follows:
-The only empirical information we have is qualia
-Qualia is often valenced as ‘good’ experience and ‘bad’ experience
-Therefore ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ exist and moral realism is true to the extent that we trust any form of empirical information whatsoever.
Important Clarification:
People asking to define terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ lexically (i.e. using a word-based definition rather than an experience) fall prey to Agrippa’s trilemma in the context of lexicography.Â
Every word can only be lexically defined by other words and so on until we get infinite regress or circular definitions unless we tilt at some point toward non-lexical definitions e.g. semantics inferred by context.Â
Learning semantics via context is how a baby first learns language. This empirical method of learning the meaning of words is how a definition can be obtained without making reference to other words.Â
Thus, it simply isn’t necessary to define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ solely in terms of words as long as we can use words to direct our interlocutors to experiences they’ve had of positively and negatively valenced qualia (i.e. pleasure and pain respectively).Â
We all have good and bad experiences and thus we have as much certainty that moral realism is true as we can about any empirical claim. Of course, Philosophical Zombies wouldn’t have access to that information so I’d forgive them for being moral sceptics…and philsophical zombies that mechanically act as if they know qualia are real are curious automata indeed!
My impression (admittedly based on limited exposure and minimal formal study of Philosophy) is that moral anti-realists make the mistake of selectively applying scepticism a la Agrippa’s trilemma to moral claims that they don’t apply to non-moral claims.Â
A super brief summary of my reasoning is as follows:
-The only empirical information we have is qualia
-Qualia is often valenced as ‘good’ experience and ‘bad’ experience
-Therefore ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ exist and moral realism is true to the extent that we trust any form of empirical information whatsoever.
Important Clarification:
People asking to define terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ lexically (i.e. using a word-based definition rather than an experience) fall prey to Agrippa’s trilemma in the context of lexicography.Â
Every word can only be lexically defined by other words and so on until we get infinite regress or circular definitions unless we tilt at some point toward non-lexical definitions e.g. semantics inferred by context.Â
Learning semantics via context is how a baby first learns language. This empirical method of learning the meaning of words is how a definition can be obtained without making reference to other words.Â
Thus, it simply isn’t necessary to define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ solely in terms of words as long as we can use words to direct our interlocutors to experiences they’ve had of positively and negatively valenced qualia (i.e. pleasure and pain respectively).Â
We all have good and bad experiences and thus we have as much certainty that moral realism is true as we can about any empirical claim. Of course, Philosophical Zombies wouldn’t have access to that information so I’d forgive them for being moral sceptics…and philsophical zombies that mechanically act as if they know qualia are real are curious automata indeed!