…as I was saying, subjectivism and relativism are normative ethical theories, just like utilitarianism. You could add all of these meta-ethical bells and whistles, but you could do that with utilitarianism too! And judged as normative ethical theories, subjectivism and relativism absolutely suck, basically.

Like, imagine a theory that said that whether tarring and feathering loyalists was justified depends on the air speed of an unladen swallow. This swallow-fact just seems wholly irrelevant to the justice of TF-ing, which would seem to depend rather on things like the justice of the revolutionary cause, the efficacy of TF-ing in advancing that cause, the guilty or innocence of the loyalists, the pain and humiliation etc. of TF-ing, and so on. Well, it does not strike me as any more plausible that the justice of TF-ing depends on the desires or pro-attitudes or whatever, of, e.g., some random-ass middle-aged dude 250 years later.

By what principle do I consign stuff like the swallow-fact and the fact about my pro-attitudes to the “irrelevant” pile? Well, the idea is that when an agent does something that implicates a bunch of patients, what might matter is stuff about the agent qua agent (e.g. his quality of will, intentions, etc.), and stuff about what befalls the patients. This is captured in Kurt Gray and his collaborators’ hypothesis that moral thinking is essentially “dyadic”.

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I see all of the major ethical theories as attempts at precisifying or distilling this basic, almost too-obvious-to-mention truth about morality. And I see this basic truth as immanent within even the way of framing moral questions. We ask “Was it wrong for Alvin Bragg to prosecute Donald Trump for directing hush money payments to Stormy Daniels?” or “Is it okay for a victim of bullying to retaliate when the bully is unprepared?” with the idea that it’s the facts mentioned in these descriptions that bear on the rightness or wrongness of these acts. In other words, something like dyadic morality is presupposed in the very way we tee up actions for evaluation.

So yeah, part of the problem with stance-dependent moral views is that they’re, if you will, “extra-dyadic”, just like a view that assigned significance to the swallow-fact would be. There are implications that can be drawn from this that may make it really hit home for certain readers, but to my mind, these are kind of a sidelight.

Additionally, stance-dependent views are implausible for reasons other than their extra-dyadicity. As Chris Peacocke has noted (although I would formulate it just a bit differently than he did), such views are incompatible with what seems to be the contribution of a priori ways of knowing to our overall moral knowledge. They also commit those who hold them to a strange moral psychology — one on which one’s approval of, e.g. TF-ing depends on the pain of the procedure and the antecedent behaviour of loyalists, and our judgment that TF-ing was justified depends on (“Same thing?” “Same thing right?” asks Padme; but no, rather on…) one’s own approval. But that’s odd, it seems to me — that I approve on, basically, world-involving grounds, and judge permissible on, basically, Andrew’s-mind-involving grounds.

Okay, let’s wrap up:

1) I threw out a quick first-order moral case against stance-dependence. I don’t think this is the deepest, most brilliant moral philosophy ever, but I will write up a more extended defence in the future! And of course, many others have advanced this sort of case.

2) My view is that this is really the only kind, or at least the primary kind, of argument that one can make against stance-dependence in morality — and indeed, the only kind of argument one can make for stance-dependence as well (although my argument for that will come in a future note). Like, the battlefield here is exhausted by the first-order ethical domain.

3) “But what do you say to those who don’t share intuitions like the aforementioned?” Well, what I say is that they’re epistemically worse than I am, at least in this domain. That sounds like something you shouldn’t say without at least some argument, and without buying them a pint. So I will provide this argument in a future note, and yeah, stance-dependence people, hit my up for a pint if you see me at a conference. I’m serious. Moral objectivism pays well! $$$$$$

4) “So are there any arguments for stance-dependence that really worry you, or is it all just sunshine and rainbows?” Debunking arguments — that’s it. And again, more about these in a future note.

5) If you have other* arguments against the foregoing, holla at me, and I’d love to mix it up! (*Other than debunking args [bc I’ll talk about them later], other than “what about the fact that good, smart people disagree with you” [bc I’ll talk about that later], other than shit about metaphyics and semantics [since I’ve addressed that in other notes already].