This is just one of those trivial things that somehow a lot of smart people believe, truly baffling that this sort of argument is still taken seriously out there. Thx for writing this article, will be sure to link it when someone brings it up to me again
There's one straightforward way of responding to these arguments: simply grant that "error theory" as such is "self-defeating," (whatever that means), but just don't endorse error theory. Instead, endorse "error theory 2.0" which is error theory but also denies that one needs stance-independent normative reasons to avoid self-defeat.
Problem solved.
I'll have more to say about this later, but the short version of the way I think it's best to react to these self-defeat arguments is to point out that either
(a) they only work if they stipulate that by "self-defeat" that they just mean failing to be a realist about one's reasons for being an antirealist, which of course is true of any antirealist or
(b) simply rejecting the criteria for "self-defeat" outright. I don't grant that I require stance-independent normative reasons for my beliefs. So there's no respect in which, as an antirealist, my views are *self*-defeating.
With respect to (b), the general problem is that realists seem to set the debate up as one in which you can deny that there are stance-independent normative reasons for beliefs, but you must nevertheless grant that one would have to have stance-independent normative reasons to "have a reason" for one's beliefs.
This is just playing with words. I can have reasons other than stance-independent normative reasons for my beliefs, and I consider such reasons perfectly adequate. If the realist is going to insist that this isn't adequate *because* one requires stance-independent normative reasons, well, too bad: I not only deny there are such reasons, I also deny they're required for beliefs to avoid self-defeat.
Objections to antirealist hinge almost entirely on baking one's presuppositions into one's use of terms like "reason" and "self-defeat" to give the false impression that the antirealist is blatantly contradicting themselves or saying something stupid. The realist will say:
"This person agrees they're an antirealist, and that they have no reason to believe this."
It sounds like the person they're describing is a moron who holds beliefse without any reason at all. But actually all this person is saying is:
"I don't think there are stance-independent normative reasons, and I have no stance-independent normative reasons to believe this."
That's all an antirealist is really committed to, it's not obviously self-defeating (that would require showing that the person saying this is committed to the requirement that one have stance-independent normative reasons to believe something), and once it's made explicit, the characterization loses all or most of its force.
Like many objections to antirealism, self-defeat objections rely on something akin to normative entanglement: they toy with language to give the false impression that antirealists hold stupid, repugnant, or self-contradictory beliefs.
The rest isn't relevant enough for me to address but I'm not sure I understand this point:
"maybe this subset is agnostics who hold what he asserts, perhaps falsely, are the argumentative conventions of his field. Spencer's claim would then be an empirical claim that violating what he considers "self-defeat" would also violate argumentative convention in philosophy." Wdym? Could you reword?
I would like this article, but after reading it I’m left with the same disappointed frustration you must have felt reading all those papers. Not your fault, at least.
Can you disambiguate "dialetically inert"? I suspect we'll run into a similar dilemma here. It's not clear that it matters whether it's "dialetically inert", or it does matter but it's not clear that that it is "dialetically inert". Mattering relative to the various desires of the person forwarding the argument, of course.
To say that the argument is dialectically inert is essentially just to say that it's not presenting any new considerations which are likely to persuade anybody who doesn't already agree with the view being argued for. As I've mentioned, the self defeat argument, once you've dug through the misleading rhetoric, is just a repackaging of the standard argument against error theory, but with an even weaker reductio at the helm than is typical.
It's true that an argument's "success" is in a sense relative to what the person who made the argument wanted to achieve. On that note, if what Spencer wanted to do is basically generate confusion and misleadingly imply things that make his view seem more supported than it actually is, then I'd agree that the argument is successful. But I am not cynical enough to have such a view of Spencer's intentions. I generally take it that when philosophers publish a new argument in a journal, their intent is to make a meaningful contribution to the discourse, to provide some new considerations that might change some people's minds about some position. By that standard, Spencer's argument is an abject failure by my lights.
That strikes me as an overly broad understanding of "dialetically inert". Surely you'd agree there are at least some dim witted agnostics who are likely to get duped by the argument. So your qualifier "not likely to persuade anybody who doesn't agree with the view" doesn't apply.
Hell, if random toddlers likely got convinced via indoctrination, that falsifies being "dialetically inert".
I agree with your second point, that would be cynical & incorrect. I like your suggestion
"when philosophers publish a new argument in a journal, their intent is to make a meaningful contribution to the discourse, to provide some new considerations that might change some people's minds about some position."
My speculation would be he's interested in convincing a subset of people who don't already agree. You'll never get everyone agreeing with you - motivated reasoners, ultimate skeptics, etc.
Being overly charitable, maybe this subset is agnostics who hold what he asserts, perhaps falsely, are the argumentative conventions of his field. Spencer's claim would then be an empirical claim that violating what he considers "self-defeat" would also violate argumentative convention in philosophy. An empirical claim we'd deny, of course.
So the debate would shift away from semantics & to arguing this empirical claim.
I think it would have been good to start off with a quick review of what you take normative error theory to be. :-) In particular, it'd be nice to know how broad your error theory is -- what different topics does it cover?
I take normative error theorists (NETs) to be those who hold that normative claims require certain normative facts and properties to exist in order to be true, but that no such facts and properties do exist (and thus all positive normative claims are false). Normative claims include all "should" claims, and may include many more. If that's right, then it's clear that any NET would have to deny that anyone **should** believe in normative error theory. (Also that anyone should disbelieve normative error theory, BTW.) The claim that anyone should (dis)believe normative error theory requires the existence of a normative fact about/property of normative error theory that simply does not exist.
I wouldn't call that self-defeating so much as self-undermining. Like saying that you believe that it's raining but also that you have no reason to believe that it's raining. Umm, OK. You do you. I'm going to see if I can't find someone who does have a reason to believe one way or the other. (Then possibly ask about their reasons, because, you know, you.)
But OK, you would deny that last analogy. Clearly you would not say that you have no reason to believe it's raining, even tho' you would deny that you or I should believe that it's raining. Your reasons are epistemic reasons and merely require the existence of some kind of evidential support relationship between those reasons and your belief (or possibly the object of your belief). Such evidential relations are not normative at all -- either you are aware of them and you do believe based on them, or you are not aware of them and you do not believe based on them. If what I cite as my reasons for belief do not cause you to believe what I do, then I simply have not convinced you of the existence of such a relation (perhaps, but not necessarily, because I am mistaken about its existence). In any case, I'll never say that you **should** have been convinced.
But I'm not sure that this part is true: "either you are aware of them and you do believe based on them, or you are not aware of them and you do not believe based on them." It seems to me that someone could hear your arguments (on moral error theory or on the raining theory) and see that there's a strong evidential relationship between your arguments and your conclusion, but refuse to accept the conclusion regardless. For whatever reasons.
> A normative error theorist could, upon being met with bad faith argumentation, point out that their interlocutor’s conduct precludes truth conducive dialogue and inquiry, and condemn them as pernicious for engaging in such conduct.
Condemn? Really? Why **should** they stick to truth-conducive dialogue and inquiry? Why condemn them for doing something that you admit it's not the case that they **should** do. Why not just shrug your shoulders and say "Oh, well"?
Hmpf. I guess the answer to that is "It's not true that I should not condemn them." I guess a NET can consistently condemn whoever they want for whatever reason they want. But it doesn't follow from such condemnation that anyone should respond in any particular way. Makes me wonder why a NET would bother.
I think I read the whole thing. Did you actually say what you take normative error theory to be? Or how broad your normative error theory is? That'd be embarrassing!
Did you disagree with my statement of what normative error theory is?
Did you think the fourth paragraph was not a good synopsis of your position?
Are you asking me for a summary of **my** response?
Maybe you think I was being rude at the end? I can see that. But honestly, why would a NET condemn anybody for anything? People get condemned for violating norms, and as a FET you don't think there are any norms. (An expressivist could claim to merely be expressing displeasure, but the FET holds that all normative statements presuppose norms, which don't exist -- right?)
Ah. OK. NET = Normative Error Theor(y|ist), a.r.b.c.
Summary: you make some good points, but I still think your defence fails.
Outline:
* request for your interpretation of NET.
* my interpretation of NET (informs rest of post): all claims of form "A should X" are propositions and are false.
* note that that entails that NET judges claims of the form "A should believe in NET" to be false.
* scenario to the effect that "normal" English (pun added) takes claims of the form "Y is a reason to believe X" to entail claims of the form "Y is evidence that A should believe X."
* acknowledgement that NET can reject that, using the weaker notion of an evidential relationship holding between Y and X.
* attempt to state how that would work: ((believe Y) & (believe Y is evidence for X)) if and only if ((believe X) because of Y).
* attempt to explain why I think that fails (bad/strong faith opponent).
* quote of you saying the NET would condemn the bad faith opponent.
* expression of surprise at that (condemnation is for norm-breakers!)
* acknowledgement that NET can consistently say "It's not the case that I shouldn't condemn them."
* note that no NET would accept any normative consequences for such a condemnation, so why would they bother?
These kinds of responses are why I think antirealists should just drop error theory. I'm not sure I'd dispute much of what you say here since I'm not an error theorist and don't care to defend the view; what I don't get is why error theorists buy into the realist's framing and terms.
I'm perfectly happy to say there are no stance-independent normative facts, and that you should believe this; I see no reason why "should" or any other normative language should be treated as presupposing realism. I just don't grant that realists "own" normative language in the first place.
Antirealists will be on the dialectical backfoot so long as they concede so much ground to realists in the first place. What I think we should be saying in response to realists like Case is that antirealism isn't self-defeating. Who cares if "error theory" is.
This is just one of those trivial things that somehow a lot of smart people believe, truly baffling that this sort of argument is still taken seriously out there. Thx for writing this article, will be sure to link it when someone brings it up to me again
There's one straightforward way of responding to these arguments: simply grant that "error theory" as such is "self-defeating," (whatever that means), but just don't endorse error theory. Instead, endorse "error theory 2.0" which is error theory but also denies that one needs stance-independent normative reasons to avoid self-defeat.
Problem solved.
I'll have more to say about this later, but the short version of the way I think it's best to react to these self-defeat arguments is to point out that either
(a) they only work if they stipulate that by "self-defeat" that they just mean failing to be a realist about one's reasons for being an antirealist, which of course is true of any antirealist or
(b) simply rejecting the criteria for "self-defeat" outright. I don't grant that I require stance-independent normative reasons for my beliefs. So there's no respect in which, as an antirealist, my views are *self*-defeating.
With respect to (b), the general problem is that realists seem to set the debate up as one in which you can deny that there are stance-independent normative reasons for beliefs, but you must nevertheless grant that one would have to have stance-independent normative reasons to "have a reason" for one's beliefs.
This is just playing with words. I can have reasons other than stance-independent normative reasons for my beliefs, and I consider such reasons perfectly adequate. If the realist is going to insist that this isn't adequate *because* one requires stance-independent normative reasons, well, too bad: I not only deny there are such reasons, I also deny they're required for beliefs to avoid self-defeat.
Objections to antirealist hinge almost entirely on baking one's presuppositions into one's use of terms like "reason" and "self-defeat" to give the false impression that the antirealist is blatantly contradicting themselves or saying something stupid. The realist will say:
"This person agrees they're an antirealist, and that they have no reason to believe this."
It sounds like the person they're describing is a moron who holds beliefse without any reason at all. But actually all this person is saying is:
"I don't think there are stance-independent normative reasons, and I have no stance-independent normative reasons to believe this."
That's all an antirealist is really committed to, it's not obviously self-defeating (that would require showing that the person saying this is committed to the requirement that one have stance-independent normative reasons to believe something), and once it's made explicit, the characterization loses all or most of its force.
Like many objections to antirealism, self-defeat objections rely on something akin to normative entanglement: they toy with language to give the false impression that antirealists hold stupid, repugnant, or self-contradictory beliefs.
The rest isn't relevant enough for me to address but I'm not sure I understand this point:
"maybe this subset is agnostics who hold what he asserts, perhaps falsely, are the argumentative conventions of his field. Spencer's claim would then be an empirical claim that violating what he considers "self-defeat" would also violate argumentative convention in philosophy." Wdym? Could you reword?
I would like this article, but after reading it I’m left with the same disappointed frustration you must have felt reading all those papers. Not your fault, at least.
Mid ass article, try again dawg.
Can you disambiguate "dialetically inert"? I suspect we'll run into a similar dilemma here. It's not clear that it matters whether it's "dialetically inert", or it does matter but it's not clear that that it is "dialetically inert". Mattering relative to the various desires of the person forwarding the argument, of course.
To say that the argument is dialectically inert is essentially just to say that it's not presenting any new considerations which are likely to persuade anybody who doesn't already agree with the view being argued for. As I've mentioned, the self defeat argument, once you've dug through the misleading rhetoric, is just a repackaging of the standard argument against error theory, but with an even weaker reductio at the helm than is typical.
It's true that an argument's "success" is in a sense relative to what the person who made the argument wanted to achieve. On that note, if what Spencer wanted to do is basically generate confusion and misleadingly imply things that make his view seem more supported than it actually is, then I'd agree that the argument is successful. But I am not cynical enough to have such a view of Spencer's intentions. I generally take it that when philosophers publish a new argument in a journal, their intent is to make a meaningful contribution to the discourse, to provide some new considerations that might change some people's minds about some position. By that standard, Spencer's argument is an abject failure by my lights.
That strikes me as an overly broad understanding of "dialetically inert". Surely you'd agree there are at least some dim witted agnostics who are likely to get duped by the argument. So your qualifier "not likely to persuade anybody who doesn't agree with the view" doesn't apply.
Hell, if random toddlers likely got convinced via indoctrination, that falsifies being "dialetically inert".
I agree with your second point, that would be cynical & incorrect. I like your suggestion
"when philosophers publish a new argument in a journal, their intent is to make a meaningful contribution to the discourse, to provide some new considerations that might change some people's minds about some position."
My speculation would be he's interested in convincing a subset of people who don't already agree. You'll never get everyone agreeing with you - motivated reasoners, ultimate skeptics, etc.
Being overly charitable, maybe this subset is agnostics who hold what he asserts, perhaps falsely, are the argumentative conventions of his field. Spencer's claim would then be an empirical claim that violating what he considers "self-defeat" would also violate argumentative convention in philosophy. An empirical claim we'd deny, of course.
So the debate would shift away from semantics & to arguing this empirical claim.
I think it would have been good to start off with a quick review of what you take normative error theory to be. :-) In particular, it'd be nice to know how broad your error theory is -- what different topics does it cover?
I take normative error theorists (NETs) to be those who hold that normative claims require certain normative facts and properties to exist in order to be true, but that no such facts and properties do exist (and thus all positive normative claims are false). Normative claims include all "should" claims, and may include many more. If that's right, then it's clear that any NET would have to deny that anyone **should** believe in normative error theory. (Also that anyone should disbelieve normative error theory, BTW.) The claim that anyone should (dis)believe normative error theory requires the existence of a normative fact about/property of normative error theory that simply does not exist.
I wouldn't call that self-defeating so much as self-undermining. Like saying that you believe that it's raining but also that you have no reason to believe that it's raining. Umm, OK. You do you. I'm going to see if I can't find someone who does have a reason to believe one way or the other. (Then possibly ask about their reasons, because, you know, you.)
But OK, you would deny that last analogy. Clearly you would not say that you have no reason to believe it's raining, even tho' you would deny that you or I should believe that it's raining. Your reasons are epistemic reasons and merely require the existence of some kind of evidential support relationship between those reasons and your belief (or possibly the object of your belief). Such evidential relations are not normative at all -- either you are aware of them and you do believe based on them, or you are not aware of them and you do not believe based on them. If what I cite as my reasons for belief do not cause you to believe what I do, then I simply have not convinced you of the existence of such a relation (perhaps, but not necessarily, because I am mistaken about its existence). In any case, I'll never say that you **should** have been convinced.
But I'm not sure that this part is true: "either you are aware of them and you do believe based on them, or you are not aware of them and you do not believe based on them." It seems to me that someone could hear your arguments (on moral error theory or on the raining theory) and see that there's a strong evidential relationship between your arguments and your conclusion, but refuse to accept the conclusion regardless. For whatever reasons.
> A normative error theorist could, upon being met with bad faith argumentation, point out that their interlocutor’s conduct precludes truth conducive dialogue and inquiry, and condemn them as pernicious for engaging in such conduct.
Condemn? Really? Why **should** they stick to truth-conducive dialogue and inquiry? Why condemn them for doing something that you admit it's not the case that they **should** do. Why not just shrug your shoulders and say "Oh, well"?
Hmpf. I guess the answer to that is "It's not true that I should not condemn them." I guess a NET can consistently condemn whoever they want for whatever reason they want. But it doesn't follow from such condemnation that anyone should respond in any particular way. Makes me wonder why a NET would bother.
tldr?
I think I read the whole thing. Did you actually say what you take normative error theory to be? Or how broad your normative error theory is? That'd be embarrassing!
Did you disagree with my statement of what normative error theory is?
Did you think the fourth paragraph was not a good synopsis of your position?
Are you asking me for a summary of **my** response?
Maybe you think I was being rude at the end? I can see that. But honestly, why would a NET condemn anybody for anything? People get condemned for violating norms, and as a FET you don't think there are any norms. (An expressivist could claim to merely be expressing displeasure, but the FET holds that all normative statements presuppose norms, which don't exist -- right?)
I'm just asking for a summary of your response
Ah. OK. NET = Normative Error Theor(y|ist), a.r.b.c.
Summary: you make some good points, but I still think your defence fails.
Outline:
* request for your interpretation of NET.
* my interpretation of NET (informs rest of post): all claims of form "A should X" are propositions and are false.
* note that that entails that NET judges claims of the form "A should believe in NET" to be false.
* scenario to the effect that "normal" English (pun added) takes claims of the form "Y is a reason to believe X" to entail claims of the form "Y is evidence that A should believe X."
* acknowledgement that NET can reject that, using the weaker notion of an evidential relationship holding between Y and X.
* attempt to state how that would work: ((believe Y) & (believe Y is evidence for X)) if and only if ((believe X) because of Y).
* attempt to explain why I think that fails (bad/strong faith opponent).
* quote of you saying the NET would condemn the bad faith opponent.
* expression of surprise at that (condemnation is for norm-breakers!)
* acknowledgement that NET can consistently say "It's not the case that I shouldn't condemn them."
* note that no NET would accept any normative consequences for such a condemnation, so why would they bother?
These kinds of responses are why I think antirealists should just drop error theory. I'm not sure I'd dispute much of what you say here since I'm not an error theorist and don't care to defend the view; what I don't get is why error theorists buy into the realist's framing and terms.
I'm perfectly happy to say there are no stance-independent normative facts, and that you should believe this; I see no reason why "should" or any other normative language should be treated as presupposing realism. I just don't grant that realists "own" normative language in the first place.
Antirealists will be on the dialectical backfoot so long as they concede so much ground to realists in the first place. What I think we should be saying in response to realists like Case is that antirealism isn't self-defeating. Who cares if "error theory" is.