Intuitions of objectivity

1. Intuitions of objectivity David Rose

2. 1. The belief in objectivity

3. A. In moral philosophy

4. Philosophy • “The ordinary user of moral language means to say something about whatever it is that he characterizes morally, for example a possible action, as it is in itself, or would be if it were realized, and not about, or even simply expressive of, his, or anyone else's, attitude or relation to it.” (Mackie 1977, 33)

5. “Moral values are exactly those values which are not relative: they are the ones that apply to an agent regardless of that agent's desires or cultural placement.” (Joyce 2002, 97).

6. B. In Moral psychology

7. Characterizing “objective” • The truth conditions for objective claims are independent of the attitudes and feelings people have toward the claim (see Shafer-Landau 2003) • Opposed to relativism.

8. Characterizing “objective” • Exemplars: • matters of fact (e.g. a chlorine atom has 17 protons) • matters of logic or math (e.g., 2*7 =14). • Indicator: if two individuals disagree about some objective statement, then at least one of them must be wrong. • If an alien thinks that chlorine has 12 protons or that 2*7=13, we can’t both be right.

9. Measuring belief in objectivity • Anti-relativism: “To what degree is the behavior morally wrong regardless of the culture in which it is practiced?” (Cameron et al 2013) • Disagreement: e.g., “Since your classmate and Sam have different judgments about this case, at least one of them must be wrong.” (Sarkissian et al. 2011; Nichols 2004)

10. Goodwin & Darley 2008 Robbing a bank in order to pay for an expensive holiday is a morally bad action 1. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 Strongly agree 2*. According to you, can there be a correct answer as to whether this statement is true? Yes/No Another respondents sharply disagrees with you. 3*. What would you conclude about this disagreement? • the other person is surely mistaken • it is possible that neither you nor the other person is mistaken • it could be that you are mistaken and the other person is correct • other

11. Factual: The earth is not at the center of the known universe Frequent aerobic exercising (i.e., running, swimming, cycling) usually helps people to lose weight. Ethical: Consciously discriminating against someone on the basis of race is morally wrong Providing false testimony in court about the whereabouts of a friend who is being charged with murder (i.e., to protect that friend by offering an alibi) is morally wrong behavior Social convention: Calling teachers by their first name, without being given permission to do so, in a school that calls them ‘‘Mr.’’ or ‘‘Mrs.’’ is wrong behavior Wearing pajamas and bath robe to a seminar meeting is wrong behavior Taste: Shakespeare was a better writer than is Dan Brown (author of ‘‘The Da Vinci Code’’) Frank Sinatra was a better singer than is Michael Bolton

13. Goodwin & Darley 2008 Within-ethics variation (by content)

14. Wright et al. forthcoming

15. Why do people believe in objectivity?

16. Motivating the question

17. Explanatory burden • One philosophical motivation for exploring this question is an explanatory burden that accrues to error theorists. • As Mackie puts it, the error theorist “must give some account of how other people have fallen into what he regards as an error, and this account will have to include some positive suggestions … about what has been mistaken for, or has led to false beliefs about, objective values” (17-18).

18. Mackie presents this as incumbent on error theorists, but really this charge needs to be met by all anti-objectivists who also think that commonsense is committed to moral objectivity. • Indeed, even objectivists might be interested – they might like to learn that the commonsense belief comes about through rational inference

19. Extant explanations

20. Explanation 1 • Affect (Nichols 2004; Prinz 2007; Cameron et al. 2013).

21. Induction of incidental disgust • Best evidence comes from Cameron, Payne & Doris (2013) • “To what degree is the behavior morally wrong regardless of the culture in which it is practiced?” • 1=Not at all to 5=Extremely

24. Cameron et al. study 2

25. The full scale

26. Explanation 2 • Mackie suggests a motivational explanation: • There are motives that would support objectification. We need morality to regulate interpersonal relations, to control some of the ways in which people behave towards one another, often in opposition to contrary inclinations. We therefore want our moral judgments to be authoritative for other agents as well as for ourselves: objective validity would give them the authority required (43).

27. debunking

28. Determining the cause(s) of the belief in objectivity might provide the basis for a debunking argument • The canonical debunking argument is Freud on religion. The basic idea is that religious belief is a product of wishful thinking, and in most cases, wishful thinking is a bad basis for belief about things in the world.

29. People believe that God exists because of wishful thinking. • Wishful thinking is an epistemically defective basis for coming to believe that God exists. • People are not justified in believing that God exists.

30. Process debunking • If process Q is an epistemically defective basis for coming to believe that P, then insofar as people believe that P as a result of process Q, their belief that P is unjustified. That conditional licenses the following schema for debunking arguments: • S believes that P because of process Q. • Process Q is an epistemically defective basis for coming to believe that P. • S is not justified in believing P.

31. This schema is framed in an unqualified fashion, but such arguments can obviously be developed in more qualified ways as well. So, if we know that S’s belief that P depends to some extent on defective process Q, then we can conclude that S’s belief that P is unjustified to the extent that it depends on process Q.

32. The motivational hypothesis suggested by Mackie might form the basis for a debunking argument, but the details matter. And Mackie doesn’t give a very clear proposal. • If we believe in objectivity because we want it to be true, that looks a lot like the situation Freud presents for religious belief • Now, there are a number of possible replies available to Freud on religion, and rather more for a debunking argument based on Mackie’s underdescribed motivational hypothesis. • But before considering replies , we want to present a somewhat more specific version of the motivational hypothesis:

33. The punishment thesis: • The desire to punish wrongdoers inflates judgments of moral objectivity

34. We suggest that judgments of punishment will have a causal influence on judgments of objectivity. Thus, we endorse: CasePunishmentObjectivity

35. Two causal Models CasePunishObjetivity CaseObjectivityPunish

36. Accounts of causal processes commonly evaluated by finding the best fitting causal model of the data

37. Study 1 Case 2 Case 1 Don consciously discriminated against someone on the basis of race. Keith ethically assisted in the death of a terminally ill friend who wanted to die.

38. Study 1 Punishment How much should Don/Keith be punished? (1-7 scale with 1=not at all, 7=very much) Objectivity Suppose that one day your classmate said “X is morally wrong." But, another classmate, Mark, said “X not morally wrong.“ Given that these individuals have different judgments about this case, we would like to know whether you think at least one of them must be wrong, or whether you think both of them could actually be correct. In other words, to what extent would you agree or disagree with the following statement concerning such a case: "Since your classmate and Mark have different judgments about this case, at least one of them must be wrong.“ (1-6 scale with 1=completely disagree, 6=completely agree)

39. Study 1: punishment F(1, 72)=83.173, p<001

40. Study 1: objectivity F(1, 72)=4.587, p=.036

41. Study 1 Objectivity Punish Case X2(1)=.4965, p=.4810, BIC=-3.7801 Punish Objectivity Case X2(1)=51.5884, p<00001, BIC=47.3117 GES returns our model as the best fitting model of the data (and the model fits the data very well); the other model, when fit, gets rejected. Thus, we find unique support for the hypothesis that the desire to punish plays a causal role in beliefs about objectivity

42. Study 2 • We have some support for the view that punishment has a causal effect on judgments of objectivity

43. Study 2 • If the desire to punish has an effect on judgments of objectivity, then this raises the intriguing possibility that if we intervene directly on the desire to punish, then we should be able to see differences in objectivity

44. Study 2 • The basic idea is that if an individual is severely punished, then this should reduce our desire to punish and thus our tendency to treat the behavior as objectively wrong • But if an individual is not punished at all, we’ll be left with the desire to punish, and express this in judgments of objectivity

45. Study 2 No Punishment Severe Punishment In May of 2011, Don, who was the manager of LLC Inc, consciously discriminated against Alvin on the basis of race and refused to hire him. The incident was reported and Don was arrested. There was no evidence that Don had discriminated in any other cases, but the evidence on this case was extremely clear. The state law allowed for punishments from probation up to lengthy prison term. The judge sentenced Don to 20 years to life in prison. In May of 2011, Don, who was the manager of LLC Inc, consciously discriminated against Alvin on the basis of race and refused to hire him. However, the incident was never reported and so Don never got caught.

46. Study 2 Objectivity Suppose that one day your classmate said “X is morally wrong." But, another classmate, Mark, said “X not morally wrong.“ Given that these individuals have different judgments about this case, we would like to know whether you think at least one of them must be wrong, or whether you think both of them could actually be correct. In other words, to what extent would you agree or disagree with the following statement concerning such a case: "Since your classmate and Mark have different judgments about this case, at least one of them must be wrong.“ (1-6 scale with 1=completely disagree, 6=completely agree)

47. Study 2 t(77)=-2.415, p=.018

48. Process debunking

49. 1. The desire to punish causes the lay belief in objectivity, to some extent.2. The desire to punish is an epistemically defective basis for coming to believe in objectivity.3. To the extent that people believe in objectivity because of their desire to punish, their belief is unjustified.

50. objections