 Some philosophers have advanced arguments for moral non-cognitivism that I just don't understand. I've decided that I'm just not going to think too hard about it. So way back in episode 63, which is old enough for me to hate it, but not the worst thing I've ever made, I described a divide in the philosophical landscape between moral realists and moral anti-realists. Realists believe that moral facts exist, that when we say something like murdering people for no good reason is wrong, or that was a good thing you did. We're talking about real actual properties of wrongness or goodness, more or less the same as other properties things might have, like being heavy or carcinogenic. We can be right or wrong about those claims, but when we use moral terms to describe something, we're referring to features of the thing. Anti-realists, on the other hand, believe that there's something wrong or missing from that story. Some important way that moral facts aren't real in the strictest sense of the word. Maybe they're just expressions of someone's personal feelings about a situation. Maybe they're a made-up social game that we play out of convenience, like money. Maybe they can be fully reduced to something else, like evolutionary drives that will render them less mysterious. There are a number of ways that we might explain the appearance of moral phenomena in our lives without needing to say that moral facts are literally true statements about real properties. And if you've studied any philosophy, you can probably guess why that might be an attractive proposition. Ethics is complicated. Moral dilemmas and disagreements are numerous and hard to resolve. If these sorts of problems could be eliminated or reduced or simplified by saying moral truth is really more like pizza-topping preference, or Santa Claus, or a parent's protective instincts, we'd be able to wash our hands of some very inconvenient questions. And yet, if you ask most professional academic philosophers who are not known for shying away from biting the bullet on weird beliefs that resolve philosophical problems, most of them think that the moral realist account is most likely to be true, at about the same rate that they believe that gods don't exist, or that fish are conscious. To understand why these nerds are willing to wrestle with the many thorny issues posed by the existence of moral facts, we're going to look at a famous argument advanced by Terence Cuneo in his book The Normative Web, an argument for moral realism, sometimes known as the Companions in Guilt Argument, which has a real Mexican standoff kind of vibe. If I go down, I'm taking you all with me. Cuneo happily admits that moral facts, if they exist, are peculiar in numerous ways compared to normal descriptive statements about redness or weight. First, they're closely linked to certain facts about the world, but it's not really clear how they arise from those facts. How a descriptive statement like this inflicts needless suffering can somehow result in a moral fact like this is wrong. Second, unlike descriptive statements, they have some sort of behavioral mandate baked into them that doesn't depend on your desires. If something is heavy and you want to get swole, then there's an obvious way those facts coupled together result in an imperative to lift. But it's good to help those in need has a clear imperative regardless of your personal goals. Third, it's not entirely clear how we might come to know moral facts in the first place. The mechanism by which moral knowledge might interact with our minds and give us ideas about what we should or shouldn't do. And having that knowledge doesn't seem to explain any phenomenon beyond how people react to things. It's easy to see how someone might come to the conclusion that they're just kind of made up. But the thing is, moral facts aren't the only facts with these sorts of characteristics. Cuneo points out that epistemic facts, statements about what sorts of things are rational or irrational. Whether a particular person is insightful or clueless. Whether certain beliefs are warranted or unjustified. Any normative claims about what a reasonable, thoughtful person ought to do also suffer from all the same weirdness. All those problems of moral anti-realists might point to as evidence against the existence of moral facts. Descriptive facts seem to necessarily entail some epistemic facts. Like, Mary hasn't studied this subject at all, leading us to conclude Mary's judgments about this subject aren't well justified. But it's not perfectly clear how one leads to the other. They seem to have behavioral mandates baked into them. A statement like believing both A and not A at the same time would be irrational has an implicit imperative. Don't believe that, regardless of your personal goals. It's not entirely clear how we might come to know epistemic facts in the first place. The mechanism by which knowledge about rationality might interact with our minds and give us ideas about what we should or shouldn't do. And they don't seem to explain any phenomena beyond how people react to things. You can try it yourself. Any statement that you can come up with that seems to undermine moral realism can be pretty easily mapped to an identical statement about epistemic realism. Which is a real problem. Cuneo has placed us in a bit of a pickle here. We started off trying to get around the weirdness of moral facts by reducing or dismissing them. But it seems that facts about things like sound reasoning and rational argumentation are in the same boat. And if we sink one, the other goes down with it. Which would be much much more than we were bargaining for. A world without moral facts is bleak, maybe uncomfortable, but largely functional. We can grit our teeth imagining our horror at moral atrocity not being connected to anything that's actually real. But that world so more or less works. If we reject epistemic realism as part of the deal, if we say there's no such thing as a better or worse argument, that reasoning about the best course of action given certain goals is just an illusion, or that there's no actual grounds to prefer the opinion of a scientist in their field of expertise over a random five-year-old, the world as we understand it simply ceases to make sense. Which, I guess, sense-making is an epistemic norm. Cuneo suggests that the similarities in their structure aren't just an inconvenient coincidence either. There are numerous ways in which moral facts and epistemic facts can blur together and overlap, suggesting a continuum of normative principles, the titular normative web. Imagine someone who patiently listens to constructive criticism about their ideas instead of angrily dismissing any negative feedback. There's clearly a morally virtuous aspect to that sort of behavior, but also an epistemically virtuous one. And it's not immediately clear how they might be separated. Is hearing someone out regardless of whether you like what they have to say a good thing? A rational thing? Both? How could it be one and not the other? Epistemic facts aren't the only category of knowledge nominated to sink or swim alongside moral facts. Mathematics, qualia, all sorts of stuff can be shown to have at least some of the weird characteristics that are supposedly grounds for doubting the reality of morality. Cuneo has a deliciously passive-aggressive bit where he addresses philosophical naturalists, people who assert that only the material world exists. You can see how the weirdness of moral facts might lead an unsuspecting naturalist to say, well, they don't look material to me, so under naturalism they must not exist, only to hear a click behind them. It sure would be a shame if you were to prove that naturalism is false. You want to take a look? Punk. The Companions in Guilt argument has been fertile ground for philosophical discussion for many years now. Some philosophers find it to be a compelling defense for moral realism against a tide of skepticism. Others? Not so much. At the very minimum, it raises the stakes for the question of moral skepticism, potentially leaving moral anti-realists with more to answer for if they try to dismiss the weirdness of moral facts by saying they just don't exist. It's an interesting point that moral anti-realists ought to address in defense of their position, at least if they're being epistemically virtuous. How about you? Do moral and epistemic facts rise or fall together? Does that make you more or less inclined to engage with the hard problems of moral realism? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, and don't stop punking.