The title of this note: “Why I am so wise, why I am so clever” (apologies to Nietzsche)

So I’d argued that subjectivism and relativism are inconsistent with what seem to be the most obvious, ground-level moral truths there are — that morality is fundamentally entirely about the will and intentions of agents, and what befalls patients whose fortunes are somehow implicated by the agents’ actions; we can understand all plausible ethical theories as attempts to precisify that. Subjectivism and relativism say that morality is fundamentally about other shit, and so they’re wrong. I don’t deny that that these views can accommodate data like “It was wrong when Pete Hegseth initiated a war against Iran” and “It was wrong when Pete Hegseth repeatedly cheated on his many wives” and “It was wrong when Pete Hegseth ordered a double-tap strike on survivors of a wrecked boat”. But if anything, these judgments about cases are less obvious than the general theoretical judgment above.

But now we face the rejoinder: “Okay, but I don’t have that judgment/intuition/whatchamacallit.”

Now, the mere fact of disagreement shouldn’t trouble us all that much. I don’t expect a top VC firm to reconsider its investment decisions because some random schlub disagrees. I don’t expect Counsellor Troi to meet Lt. Worf halfway on the matter of whether the new ensign is secretly afraid of something.

“Yes, but those are cases of epistemic asymmetry,” one might reply. “These ground-level disagreements about stance-independence etc. are cases of epistemic symmetry.”

And I say, Danecookishly: “Nay!” But by what right? Well, as they say on Bluesky, buckle up buttercup…

(1) Not to be an imperious dickhead, but there’s a certain sense in which you probably do not disagree with me. Forget about moral judgment for a second, and just think about preferences, pro-attitudes, etc. I disapprove of bullying because it’s harmful; I take it that you also disapprove of it because it’s harmful. (If that’s not more-or-less true of you, then please skip ahead!) And I say that if these are my grounds for disapproval, there is no reason why these should not also be my grounds for judging bullying to be wrong, at least prima facie. You might resist that move, thinking “Oh, but judging something to be wrong on world-involving, stance-independent grounds raises META-ETHICAL PROBLEMS (TM) that disapproving of it on world-involving, stance-independent grounds does not.” In which case I’d say:

(2) All of these purported “problems” are illusory. [Warning: snootery ahead]. I say that on the basis of arguments collected in my 2022 book that I turned over in my head day after day for at least a decade, and ran past the absolute best people working in the field prior to publication. Things would be different if I’d concluded the problems were illusory on the basis of reading like one chapter of Enoch or McDowell that you’d also read and that neither of us had thought any more about the matter; then we’d be more symmetrical. But this is one thing that I think it’s fair to claim when you’ve devoted a long fucking time developing novel arguments for a conclusion — the right to not regard people who’ve never or barely engaged with these arguments as epistemic peers re: their conclusions.

(3) [Continuing with the snootery] One thing that I see a lot in people discussing meta-ethics on Substack — and that also see when I look back at my younger self — is that their conceptual picture is really blurry. They don’t distinguish clearly between different grounds for doubt about objective morality; or they say they doubt it for this reason, but then you push a little bit, it turns out that some other ground for doubt is doing the work. It’s like they have this intimation that there is a PROBLEM WITH ETHICS (TM) and then they’re kinda fumbling around for ways to articulate it. Well, think that I see the conceptual picture more clearly. If decades of training and work under and alongside the best people in the field give you anything, it gives you that. And I do attribute a good deal of this difference in the tendency to accept stance-independent ethical truths is attributable to this different in conceptual clarity.

(4) To be a little more specific: Chapter 2 of my book is an explanation of why there seems to be a problem with ethics — it’s long and complicated and I summarize it elsewhere; it’s followed up for a few chapters’ worth of argument that this explanation is not, at the same time, an explanation of why there really is a problem with ethics. So when I come upon someone who accepts subjectivism or relativism for “meta-ethical” reasons, my response, understandably, is to think “Yeah, so I have a theory about why they think this, and then an argument for why they do not therethrough have a good reason for thinking this”; so I don’t consider them my peers…on this matter at least!

(5) Okay, I’ve been talking a lot about people who are led astray by what I consider bad meta-ethical considerations. But what about those who just flat-out don’t have the ground-level moral intuition I have in mind? (Although again, I’d want to ask them why their grounds for disapproval of a thing are not also their prima facie grounds for thinking that thing is morally wrong!) Well, some of them might be downgraded on grounds like psychopathy, or on some other deeper ground that makes me think that they’re worse judges wrt. basic, pre-theoretical morality than I am. But (a) what about people who can’t be downgraded on such grounds?, and (b) isn’t such down-grading also done on first-order moral grounds? (answer: yep!), and what if your opponent/interlocutor disagrees with those too? What if there really is no common ground that you could use to adjudicate the dispute?

(6) Well now we’re up here at 30,000 ft, aren’t we? Suppose our principle is: "Any time there is no common ground with a real or imagined interlocutor, you must suspend judgment or treat your would-be starting points as illegitimate”? Then this seems like a recipe for universal skepticism. Suppose it is instead: “Suppose there’s no common ground…when it comes to first-order morality — then suspend judgment”? Then I’d say “Why is morality different than ‘Here’s a hand, here’s another hand’”? I’m happy to consider answers, although for reasons I’ve adumbrated above, I’m not optimistic that any will succeed. I’m more inclined to accept the view that, in the extreme case that there is nothing independent of our disputes that we can appeal to to settle it by argument or through calibration of our faculties, I am entitled to a modest level of self-trust as a default.

CODA: This was supposed to be a shorter note, and now I realize that it is not nearly long enough to do justice to the issue. But maybe it’s worth just letting people pummel me with objections, and I’ll try to bring out my approach a little more in response! I should also say that there was, indeed, a lot of “why I am so wise, why I am so clever” here; there’s no way to talk in an open, honest way about epistemic peerhood and shit without doing some of this; also, feel free to tell me that YOU are cleverer than ME — so long as you are willing to say at least a little something about why. As Bernie Mac once said, “I ain’t afraid…”