JDN 2456451 EDT 14:00.
This is vaguely embarrassing, since logical positivism is a discredited position that is not at all necessary for scientific realism.
But from this blog post on Why Evolution is True, it's clear that all the following are believed by Coyne:
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Science is based upon verifiable evidence.
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Logic, mathematics, and philosophy are not about the external world.
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Morality is subjective.
This is pretty much classic logical positivism. Proposition 1, about verifiable evidence, isn't quite right—Popper proposed falsifiable evidence, and a more modern concept is of Bayesian evidence in a holistic theory (like Quine, or Less Wrong)—but it's actually close enough, I would say. We definitely do care about independent corroboration of observations and consilience between different lines of inquiry.
I might even be able to forgive the idea that mathematics is not about the external world; I'm a realist, but not a Platonist (though as I understand it, most mathematicians are Platonists). I read Coyne as saying he is a logicist, which is a respectable position. He could also be a nominalist, which is another respectable position. Honestly I'm not even sure what it means to say that mathematical concepts "exist"; it seems too petty a concept for that which had to be so in any possible universe. To me, Platonists sound like they are saying that triangles could have failed to be, are things in this contingent way that trees and rocks and people are things. Perhaps what we are debating is pointless, just how an algorithm feels from inside. Where Coyne begins to lose me is when he says "within an accepted system of logic"; so, are we free to choose any logic we like?
And then of course he jumps the shark completely with "morality is subjective". He doesn't understand what the word "objective" means, and claims to be a consequentialist without realizing that consequentialists by definition are not subjectivists. (Most consequentialists are realists, though a few, like John Rawls, are constructivists, and some are also sophisticated expressivists, like Allan Gibbard. These hair-splitting differences are not important for most purposes.) Here's what he says, so it's clear I'm not misrepresenting his position:
It is similar with morality. Are there really “objective” moral truths, as Sam Harris seems to feel, or are there only dicta that conform to a subjective set of criteria about what is good? “Killing is wrong”, for instance, is not something I see as a “moral truth”, because in some circumstances it may be good for society (i.e., killing a terrorist about to kill others). (Note: I am a moral consequentialist.) Even things that seem more obvious, like “don’t harm innocent children” are not accepted as truths by some people, like those odious members of the Taliban who think it’s okay—indeed, good for society—to throw acid on schoolgirls who seek an education. The point is that while many of us can agree on such things, there is no universal and objective standard to appeal to, in cases involving morality and aesthetics, where everyone can agree. (If, however, you think morality consists of actions that are “good for society,” then one can in principle test moral judgments empirically. But not everyone accepts that kind of consequentialism.) There is a subjectivity in morality that does not, for instance, apply when we’re trying to find out the molecular structure of water.
So here's what "objective" means: Something is objective if it is independent of what we believe about it; in short, it is possible to be wrong.
The opposite is "subjective": Something is subjective if whatever you believe about it is true in your case; you cannot be wrong, and you also cannot apply it to others.
Coyne seems to think that "objective" means something like absolute or even simplistic; his example of an "objective" moral rule is "killing is wrong", and he offers us an exception, "killing a terrorist about to kill others".
There are a couple things very odd about that example:
First of all, it's clear that Sam Harris, a dyed-in-the-wool realist consequentialist who Coyne acknowledges believes in objective moral rules, would in no way disagree. Indeed, Harris has made it quite clear that he supports the targeted killing of terrorists, and even potentially the torturing of terrorists if it secures intelligence that saves the lives of civilians or allied soldiers. It's hard to get a whole lot more in favor of killing terrorists than Sam Harris is; maybe someone like Satoshi Kanazawa, who thinks killing terrorists is worth committing genocide? I'm pretty sure you can't get any more gung-ho against terrorism than Sam Harris without ceasing to be a reasonable human being.
Secondly, that "exception" is almost a corollary in some sense: Yes, if applied literally, "killing is wrong" would mean we shouldn't kill terrorists, because killing terrorists is an instance of killing. But really what I think we mean to say is that killing is bad, which is the whole reason why we'd kill terrorists. We are actually trying to minimize the amount of killing that goes on, which is ultimately consonant with the idea that killing is bad.
His next example is better: Yes, things that we would consider obviously wrong, such as the genital mutilation of children (female children, at any rate; most Americans have no problem with the genital mutilation of male children), are nonetheless practices in other cultures. This is the descriptive form of cultural relativism, which is pretty much undisputed. The only disputes I've ever seen over it are as to how deep the differences run; are they different applications of the same basic principles, or do they reflect fundamentally different understandings of morality?
But that doesn't get you far at all (I'm tempted to say it gets you nowhere, in fact) toward the normative form of cultural relativism, the notion that acts are moral or immoral only in context of a particular society. In fact, even this sort of relativism is a form of objectivism: It is an objective fact, for instance, that theft is illegal and considered wrong by American society. If we use a sort of constructivism to say that this makes theft wrong in American society, we are still making an objective claim, something one could be wrong about.
An aside: Constructivism sounds weird in morality—and it is, it's wrong—but don't give up on the idea of constructivism in general. $20,000 US dollars is worth a new car, because we made it so as a society, with our market economy, Federal Reserve, and so on. $20,000 Monopoly dollars is not worth a new car, because we have not constructed it as such. There's nothing inherently different about the two currencies; both are marks of ink on paper. But one set of marks has the social construction to make it economically useful. You might think that this makes money a fiction; but no, money is real. (If you think it's fake, can I have all of yours?) It's a reality that we create by collective action. That's constructivism; it also works well in terms of laws, governments, cultures, organizations, and institutions. Congress really exists, because our social action creates it. In a sense, it's real because we believe in it.
The only way to really be a subjectivist about morality, you'd need to think that moral truths are like direct experiences or aesthetic preferences. If morality were like direct experiences, murder would be wrong to you in the same sense that an apple looks red to you, or a room feels cold to you. Others might agree, but only because they happen to have similar sensory organs. A polar bear, being dichromatic (unable to see red) and accustomed to cold climates, probably sees the apple as green and thinks the room is hot. The reflection spectrum of the apple and the temperature of the room are objective facts, but your experience of them is subjective, relative to your own senses. It's important to see here that you can't be wrong about your own sensory experiences. You could lie about them (say you see it as red when you don't), or you could be mistaken in what you infer about the outside world based upon them (maybe you think the apple is itself red, when in fact the apple is white and lit by a red floodlight); but you can't be wrong about the fact that you are experiencing the sensation. This is really the difference between sensation and perception; sensation is about what you experience, while perception is about what you think the outside world is like as a result of that experience. If morality were subjective in this sense, it would mean that murder somehow is wrong in your mind, as a sensory experience you have; I can't even make sense of this, it seems like a category error.
Alternatively, if Coyne thinks morality is like aesthetic preference, then he would be saying basically that "murder is wrong" means I find murder personally distasteful; it's not something I would do because it's so ugly and unappealing. Of course, there are lots of things I find personally distasteful that I don't think are immoral (certain sexual fetishes, say), and some things I think are immoral that I don't find personally distasteful (using a drone to bomb someone would probably be fun, actually; it certainly is in video games). An aesthetic or quasi-aesthetic theory of morality needs to account for this somehow.
If morality is subjective in the way sensory experiences are subjective, it's strongly dependent upon our senses, and hence on our evolution. Coyne has previously talked about how morality is a result of our evolution as a species; so he might mean to imply something like this. But what he doesn't seem to realize is that there are objective facts that are also a result of our evolution as a species. The fact that the polar bear feels warm is subjective; but the fact that polar bears cannot survive at temperatures above 40 Celsius is objective. Likewise, it is an objective fact that human beings, once murdered, stay that way. It is also an objective fact that most people strongly don't want to be murdered. Are these results of our evolutionary history? Yes, I suppose they are. Maybe we could have been auto-reviving entities that don't care about their own survival, but we're not. And if you believe we are, you're wrong. That's objectivity.
Perhaps Coyne would want to say that to the polar bear, murdering humans isn't wrong. But he's relativizing to the wrong entity; it's the victim of the murder that matters, not the perpetrator. Of course the perpetrator doesn't think it's wrong, or they wouldn't be doing it! (Some psychopaths do say things like "I know it's wrong, but I do it anyway"; but psychopaths are a weird case, and they honestly don't seem to understand what we mean by our moral language. Psychopaths cannot reliably distinguish moral rules like "don't hurt people" from social conventions like "raise your hand in class".)
Now, I suppose Coyne could stick to his guns and say that he really thinks morality is subjective in this way. Murder feels wrong to me, maybe it doesn't feel wrong to you, and there's nothing more to be said about the matter. Neither of us is wrong, as long as we're only describing our own experiences.
This of course immediately leads to the problem of coordinating different moral opinions; we have to run a society somehow, and we can't make murder both illegal and legal at the same time. Maybe we could find some sort of coordination mechanism like voting or randomization; but then, how do we choose which mechanism? This seems to be a moral question, which you just said are subjective.
And let me repeat: If you're a consequentialist, you can't be a subjectivist. Consequences are objective. Someone is either dead or alive; they aren't alive if you believe they're alive. You might think that suffering is subjective, but that's only true in a sense: You can't be wrong about your own pain, but you can be wrong about someone else's. Punching someone in the face still hurts them even if you don't believe it does.
This is, frankly, pretty obvious. Every time you make a moral argument based on consequences (which Coyne does frequently), you're assuming that morality means something more than your own subjective experiences. Why would Coyne think otherwise?
I think it's because Coyne, like many others, doesn't understand what the word "objective" means. I remember having an argument with someone at a Skeptics in the Pub, which I allowed to get more heated than I should have. "Tell me one moral rule that's objective, and has no exceptions." I couldn't, but I tried to explain why I shouldn't have to—because "objective" simply does not mean "without exceptions". It means real. It means universal. It means you can be wrong about it.
And it also doesn't mean "everyone agrees". Coyne of all people should realize this; his whole blog is about convincing people that evolution is true. All scientists know that evolution is an objective fact, but over 40% of Americans don't believe it. They're wrong. It's bad that they're wrong; it scares me that they're so wrong. But it casts no doubt whatsoever on the objectivity of evolution.
Why should morality be different? Why should the fact that lots of people think gay sex is wrong even tempt you to think so? I guess in the absence of any other data whatsoever, the opinions of others can be used as a better guide than chance; but once you have data, you should definitely use that. And of course, we do: Controlling for the bigotry imposed upon them, gay people are just as happy, productive, and good at raising their children as straight people—and actually a bit more intelligent and creative. So why would you ever think it was wrong to be gay? It makes no sense at all.
If you have some other reason to think that morality is subjective, let's hear it. Because to me, the very notion that morality could be subjective seems like a fundamental category error. You clearly don't mean the same thing when you say "wrong" that I do, if you think "wrong" can be subjective.
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