Break down

It just feels like philosophy is the study of where our regular ways of justifying and understanding the world simply break down. At a sufficiently fundamental level, we no longer are able to use our normal methods for figuring out what's true and what's not. So we have to take linguistic frameworks for granted, be pragmatic, appeal to the inescapable, or refer to fundamental beliefs that we are stuck with. One of the things that philosophy is, is the attempt to figure out what the hell to do when our normal ways of dealing with problems implode.

Inescapability

I think the language of inescapability is a very good one for considering these issues. I'm just going to do an intuition dump here. Don't expect arguments. But then again, I don't expect any readers, so it's all good!

Why is it that we think that epistemology is real, factual? Cuneo draws three undesirable conclusions from Epistemic Nihlism, and then claims that anything besides Epistemic Realism succumbs to these undesirable results. Let me focus on the last two: if epistemic nihlism is right and it's not self-defeating, then no entity can display an epistemic merit or dismerit and there can be no arguments for anything. But this doesn't seem to follow through all the way (though he comes closer when he talks about epistemology being indispensable for theorizing). Enoch's analysis is a good one for this, it seems. Epistemology is inescapable, because the evaluation of beliefs, evidence, arguments and reasons to believe as better and worse is an inescapable one for a human being. And Enoch analyzes this into two parts: that epistemology is indispensable to some project, and that project is itself inescapable. Put most strongly, the issues with epistemology not being real is that epistemology seems indispensable to every rational project, and rationality itself is inescapable. Epistemology goes very deep to human psychology, that's the real source of our confidence in its reality. Without it we're lost.

Logic is similar. Just as every cognitive adventure requires our ability to evaluate some evidence, justifications, beliefs as better and others as worse at depicting reality, every cognitive adventure seems to require our ability to deduce valid conclusions from statements, to understand what is entailed by various propositions. (Inasmuch as much of math is logic, much of math is normative in this sense.) So in a similar sense, if logic is a myth then so are all of our cognitive efforts. We're left drowning, with no where to go and we'd just have to give up. So logic is inescapable.

How does this count in favor of epistemology and logic? I don't know. Maybe Enoch's right. Maybe Plantinga's right. Maybe William James is right. Maybe they're all wrong. I dunno.

But what about ethics, then? Enoch argued that ethics is inescapable in the same way that epistemology is. The point is that ethics is inescapable for our cognitive adventures as well, because how can we embark on our projects without the ability to deliberate between choices of action? But this seems troubling to me. The intuition is clear, I think--if ethics is false we still know how to do science, we still know how to know things, and maybe that's enough for us to be justified in. Maybe well be OK knowing that as far as deliberation goes, we're irrational. We're more deeply committed to the cognitive adventures that require epistemology and logic than we are to those efforts that require us to deliberate (and I wonder if the way the debate has gone in philosophy is evidence of this claim). That seems to be psychologically true.

So, why isn't ethics as inescapable as epistemology or logic? Because it doesn't invade the rest of our intellectual efforts the way epistemology and logic do. It does invade our everyday living and decisions. I don't think it just comes down to preferring the explanatory project over the deliberative one. If epistemology and logic aren't true, then that's a threat to ethics as well, we're lost in deliberation too. Epistemology and logic are just BIGGER, and WIDER than ethics in this sense. They invade more stuff. And the failure to have ethical obligations wouldn't threaten our scientific practice, for example.

So ethics is more like biology than epistemology in this picture, which is exactly why it's not inescapable. If biology is false, we don't feel lost, we feel as if we've gained some insight.

There a only a few ways, then, to argue for ethics being real on the model of epistemology or logic. First, you could argue that ethics is as inescapable as epistemology or logic is. This is, in short, what Enoch tried to do. I argue that he didn't succeed, and that this is a hard way to go because epistemology does seem more difficult to resist than ethics. Enoch tried to show that ethics is indispensable to deliberation, and that this makes ethics sufficiently "Too Large to Fail." Is there a way to make ethics any bigger? So that it invades the rest of our lives the same way that epistemology does? This is one way to proceed. The other way to proceed is to argue that even if ethics isn't inescapable the way that epistemology is, it is dragged along by epistemology. This, in short, is what Cuneo tried to argue. And how can you do this? You can argue that commitment to episteomlogy (which is inescapable) commits you to certain views that will vindicate ethics. For example, epistemology is normative, so if you thought that there was no normative knowledge you'd be in trouble. And Sayre-McCord made this point too. I've argued that this argument is unsatisfying unless you identify where the arguments against moral realism went wrong, because otherwise we can just shrug our shoulders and say that the inescapability of epistemology made us do it.

So where to go from here? Either find a problem with one of the arguments against moral realism, or show that moral realism is inescapable by puffing it up until it's too big to fail. Or find parts of ethics that are inescapable. Or (as Cuneo's backup argument does) try to claim that ethics just is epistemology (at least sometimes). Or, claim that epistemology just is ethics, all the time.

Questions I want to know the answers to

1. If epistemology is normative (as it seems to be), and if many of the arguments against moral realism can plausibly be extended to epistemic realism (as Cuneo argues), how can we explain the common sense belief that epistemic realism is more secure than ethical realism? Are we just making a gross error?

2. If epistemic and mathematical entities are indispensable to science (as realists in both camps claim), then how come our access to scientific facts is generally taken to be more evident than our access to epistemic and mathematical facts? Are we just making a gross error?

3. Cuneo claims that "some moral and epistemic facts are mutually implicative" (79). Is this because for any discourse X, X facts and epistemic facts are mutually implicative?

4. Is there any interesting sense in which mathematical and highly theoretical facts are normative? (I should add: probably not.)

The Argument from Queerness and Epistemic Norms

Scanlon, "What We Owe to Each Other", p.59

"Accepting a judgment that X is a reason for doing A seems to involve an element of normative commitment to, or endorsement of, a normative conclusion, an element that may be thought to be missing from the acceptance of a mere judgment of fact...[further:] such an account will construe 'taking something to be a reason' as a belief in a kind of non-natural fact that many regard as metaphysically odd...it may help to diminish this tendency toward skepticism to emphasize that the considerations I have just been discussing apply to reasons of all kinds--to reasons for belief as well as to reasons for action...so what we are concerned with here is not a distinction between facts and values, or between theoretical and practical reason, as these dichotomies are normally understood."

Sayre-McCord, "Moral Theory and Explanatory Impotence": "Once it has been granted that some explanations are better than others, many obstacles to a defense of moral values disappear. In fact, all general objections to the existence of value must be rejected as too strong. Moreover, whatever ontological niche and epistemological credentials we find for explanatory values will presumably serve equally well for moral values. (Of course, this leaves open the possibility that more specific attacks may be leveled at moral values; the point is just that once epistemic values are allowed, no general arguments against the existence of values can work."

Terence Cuneo, "The Normative Web": "Let's suppose for the moment that moral realists really are committed to the claim that moral facts are intrinsically motivating. Do we have any reason to think that epistemic facts are different in this respect?"

Reading Nagel Part I

"Just as their are rational requirements on thought, there are rational requirements on action, and altruism is one of them."

I suppose that he's referring to epistemology and ethics for this analogy. (I originally wrote something stupid here, but i deleted it!)

"just as the capacity to accept certain theoretical arguments is a condition of rationality" there's the ethics/epistemology comparison again.

"Something beyond justificaiton is needed." I didn't read this carefully enough, but I'm moving slowly and have to go on. But I think he just gave a version of the regress argument against foundationalism in epistemology? Or not?

The way he frames things reminds me of Smith: on the hand desires can't seem to provide the categorical normativity that we're looking for; what we're really looking for is a way to say that one who denies ethics is going against reason. On the other hand, the psychological picture of desires underwriting motivations is a very attractive one.

"I believe that an explanation can be discovered for the basic prinicples of ethics, but not a justification."

"Philosophers who believe that there is no room for rational assessment of the basic springs of motivation will tend to be internalists, but at the cost of abandoning claims to moral objectivity. One way to do this is to build motivatoinal content into the meanign of ethical assertions by turning them into expressions of a special sort of inclination..." Expressivism. "A stronger position one which ties the movitation to the cognitive content of ethical calims requires the postulatoin of motivational influences which one cannot reject once one becomes aware of them."

He claims Moore's intuitionism is a result of recognizing the distance between natural facts and evaluative ones, but failing to produce an internalist position, th erelevent inclinatoin or attitude.

Hume: "Among the conditions for the presence of a reason for action there must always be a deirse or inclination capable ofmotivating one to act accordingly...given Hume's famous restirctions on rational assessment of the passions and of preferences, the possibility of justifying morality is strictly limited. Any justificaiton ends finallywith the rationally gratuitous presence of theemotion of sympathy; if that condition were not met, one would simply have no reason to be moral."

"But still, the motivational basis is prior to and independent of the ethical system which derives from it. A quite different sort of theory would be necessary to alter that relation of priority. Plato and Aristotle constitute examples of such a rebillion against the priority of psychology...Fortunately, we have a far etter example in th eperson of Kant, who is explicitly and consciously driven by the demand for an ethical system whose motivaitonal grip is not dependent on desires which must simply be taken for granted... A hypothetical imperative is the only kind which Hume regards as possible. It states what a given desire provides one with a motivation to do, and it applies only if one is subject to that desire. The desire itself is not comanded by the imperative. Consequently no hypothetical imperative can state an uncondiationl requirement on action."

Just thinking about the thesis again: a really cool result would be to show that realism of all sorts is tied to each other. Scientific realism and ethical realism rise and fall together. This could show that epistemic realism isn't really getting its force from anything but the assumption that our science is true in a real sense. Tie all the realisms together, rather than all the normative stuff together (but really this is the same thing). Another really cool result would be to reveal how exactly the objections go wrong, if they're originally made in the strong way as opposed to the weaker one.

III. The Solution

"The issue of priority between ethics and motivaiton theory is for an internalist of crucial importance. The position which I shall defend resembles that ofKant in two repsects: first ir ptovides an account of ethical motivation which doesn't rely on the assumption that motivatoinal factor is already present among the conditions of any moral requirement...there are reasons for action which are specifically moral; it is because they represent moral requirements that they can motivate, and not vice versa...Certain ethical principles are themselves propositions of motivatoin theory so fundamental tha tthey cannot be derived from or defined in terms of previously understood motivations..thus they define motivational possibilities, rather than presupposing them...The second way in which my position resembles Kant's is that it assigns a central role in the operation of ethical motives to a certain feature of the agent's metaphysical conception of himself. On Kant's view the conception is that of freedom whereas on my view it is the conceptio nof oneself as merely a person among others equally real."

We are not fuly free to be amoral, or insusceptible to moral claims. That is what makes us men.

So according to this way of viewing things, Hume is right about motivations and desires, but there's just a desire that is so inescapable it might as well be objective. It can't be resisted, so neither can morality.

This strikes me as suprising: "This solutoin may appear to involve an ellegitimate conflation of explanatory and normative inquiries. But a close connection between the two is already embodied in the orindary concept of a reason, for we can adduce reasons either to explain or to justify action." Hmm...I wonder if we could escape the muck of trying to explain explanation by providing a reason-based, normative account. For later.

IV. "Interpretation is not a species of justification. A justificaiton must proceed within the context of a system of reasons, by showing that certain conditions are met which provide sufficient reason for hat which is being justified. Since my claims concern the formal character of any system of reasons (explanatory of normative) which can provide the context for particular rational justificaions,there can be nothing more fundamental to appeal to in the way of reasons for adhering to the specific conditions. They lie beyond the range of justification."

This would seem important for epistemology as well, and defending foundationalism against the regress argument.

"Moral and other practical requirements are grounded in a metaphysics of action, and finally in a metaphysics of the person. The more central and unavoidable is the conception of oneself on which the possibility ofmoral motivation can be shown to depend the closer we will have come to demonstrating that the demands of ethics are inescapable."

What I love about Korsgaard is the deep account she gives of action, motivation, reasons, and ethics, and this is what it's like to read Nagel too. And Scanlon. These guys are great.

"I have no confidence that it is a necessary truth that we are constituted as we are, inthe fundamental respects whic hgive rise to our susceptibility to moral considerations. But if we were not so constituted, we should be unrecognizably diffeernt, and tha tmay be enough for the purpose of the argumen."

"There are parallels here to the requiements on theoretical reasoning."

Failing to live up to anti-realism

"Moral antirealists such as Timmons, Horgan, and Richard Joyce agree that a moral antirealist position should not be so revisionary as to recommend that we cease to engage in moral discourse. According to these philosophers, such a recommendation would be fruitless, for moral concepts are so deeply entrenched in ordinary discourse that we couldn't jettison them even if we tried." (Cuneo 106)

Hogwash. Right now there are buses and billboards advertising against the once deeply entrenched philosophical position that God exists. If you're an antirealist you can't wuss out at the last step. Belief that some people are evil leads to an untold amount of death every year. How many wars have been fought over the mistaken belief that the enemy was evil? Why, think of all the German lives that could have been saved in World War II if people didn't believe that there was an objective good and evil!

(Or else, isn't morality a companion in guilt to religion?)

Hypothetical and Categorical Reasons

The distinction seems right to me: there are some reasons--like sports reasons--that provide reasons to act but only if you care about them--only if you care about playing football well. There are other things--such as ethical reasons--that apply to a person even if he doesn't care about them. We would probably agree that someone who doesn't care about the outcome of a sports game doesn't have much of a good reason to follow the rules of football during a certain time, but we wouldn't agree that someone who doesn't care about ethics has no reason not to kill! So the distinction makes sense to me.

But for a while I've been puzzled about how a realist could explain this. Doesn't this seem like an odd feature of the world, that you have all these norms that are hypothetical, and they (we surely agree) are not objective features of the world, but then you have one sort of norm that is objective and an actual feature of the world? Isn't this something that the realist needs to explain? Or am I missing something. If anything pushes me to constructivism, this is it. But does this make any sense? Do I have any readers? If I have any readers, could you explain this to me?

Something I've learned about the writing process

Strike while the iron is hot, and not necessarily on a blog.

I'm finding as I'm trying to actually write down some of the ideas that developed on the blog a week or two ago, that it's really boring to revisit some of these arguments. Yes, craft is important. But getting a draft can be excruciating, especially when I just feel like I'm rehashing boring ideas that are just waiting to be written again. So in the future if I write a blog post I'll attempt to make it crisper and closer, if I think I have something that will become part of the larger project.

The next 20 pages or so

If all goes well, much of this week will be spent writing 20 pages or so of material, focusing on Cuneo's work. Unless I lose faith in these arguments between now and then, here's a first outline of what I hope to do:

I. Cuneo's Core Argument
A. Limitations of Companions in Guilt style arguments
B. Doubts about explanatory argument
C. Doubts about argument from disagreement
D. Diagnose his successes--normativity of epistemology

II. Cuneo's Backup Argument (The Normative Web)
A. Reconstruct (Chap 2 and Chap 8)
B. Proves too much? Other hybrid statements from science
C. Does epistemology hybridize with many other discourses?
D. Differences between ethics and epistemology
E. I do see what he's saying though, and it is attractive. It does work nicely, so maybe I could patch up these arguments and defend Cuneo's web.

Then, my hope is to have a brilliant insight that allows me to write a third part:

III. My brilliant insight on Ethics, Epistemology, and Everything
A. Hmmm...what could this brilliant insight be?
B. What would it mean if epistemology is normative but unlike ethics in other ways?
C. Like an existence theorem in math, you really wanna be able to construct the object whose existence you've proven. Likewise, this sort of argument shows that there is a flaw in our arguments that poke holes in normative existants, and we have to figure out where that went wrong. Maybe?
D. Maybe there's another way to argue for Cuneo's Normative Web?

Companions in Guilt

Let there be two discourses, A and B, and we're trying to figure out whether A is real or not.

Here's an abstraction of a companions in guilt argument:

(1) If A isn't real, then B isn't real. (Premise) (So it follows that B isn't real)
(2) But B is real. (Premise)
(3) A is real. (1-2)

How do we know (1) and (2) are true?

(1): Suppose that there were a reason to think that B is real that is not also a reason to believe that A is real. Then would (1) still be plausible? No, because it could be that A isn't real because it doesn't have B's good feature. So the plausibility of (1) depends on there being no reason to believe that B is real that isn't also a reason to believe that A is real.

(2): We have some reason for thinking that B is real. Suppose that this reason for thinking B is real is also a reason for thinking that A is real. Then we wouldn't need the above argument at all, rather, we would be able to argue that: B is real, and if B is real then it follows that A is real, so A is real by a simple modus ponens. So either the above argument is unnecessary, or there is a reason to believe that B is real that is not also a reason to believe that A is real.

But now (1) and (2) seem to stand in tension. What makes (1) plausible is that there's no good reason to believe that B is real that isn't also a reason to believe that A is real. But what we saw was that either the above argument isn't really necessary (since our reason for thinking B is real is just as good for thinking A is real) or the reason for thinking that B is real is not also a reason for thinking that A is real. So if the companions in guilt style argument I presented above is necessary to prove the reality of A, then it seems to be struck with internal tension.

Now, Cuneo's core argument is:

(1) If moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts do not exist.
(2) Epistemic facts exist.
(3) Moral facts exist.

Why should we believe (1)? Only if there is no reason to think that epistemic facts exist that isn't also a reason to think that moral facts exist. Why should we believe (2)? Because we have reason to believe that epistemic facts exist. Do these reason(s) also apply to moral facts? If they do, then we don't need the companion in guilt argument, so if we do need the above argument, then there's a reason to believe that epistemic facts exist that isn't a reason to think that moral facts exist. And so we have no good reason to believe (1) anymore.

In chapter 8 Cuneo recognizes this as a possible objection to his argument, but all I'm trying to say here is that it's not just a possible interpretation of the data, but rather that the tension is an inevitable feature of these sorts of arguments.

Now, what can one respond to this? It seems clear that we have a reason to believe in epistemology that isn't a reason to believe in ethics. Is there any reason to believe (1) under these circumstances? Yes, if you think that the following is true: if the features that ethics and epistemology share are not just problematic, but they're REALLY problematic, and would overpower whatever reason we have to think that epistemology is real. In other words, having that good feature would not be sufficient to override the bad features.

So here’s a fuller version of the argument:

(A) Moral facts do not exist only if [For any discourse, if a discourse has the "problematic features" then the discourse is not real even if it is indispensable for theorizing.]
(B) Epistemic facts have these same set of “problematic features.”
(C) Epistemic facts do not exist, even if they are indispensable for theorizing.
(1) So, if moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts do not exist. (A-C)
(2) Epistemic facts exist, because they are indispensable for theorizing.
(3) Moral facts exist.

So now we have a contradiction, so what went wrong? The problem can't be (1) or (C), and so (A) and (B) are suspect. Cuneo argues that (B) is true, so let’s give him that. And I guess what we’re supposed to see is the falsity of (A). So if (A) is false, then the following conditional is false:

(A’) If [For any discourse, if a discourse has the “problematic features” then the discourse is not real even if it is indispensable for theorizing] then moral facts do not exist.

That (A’) is false means that it could be true that in general the “problematic features” kill a discourse, but that moral facts exist nonetheless. This means that moral facts must be missing the problematic features.

I still feel really uneasy with this argument, because the contradiction doesn't seem surprising at all. If we think that being indispensable to theorizing (or whatever reasons we have for thinking that epistemic facts exist) are really knock down considerations, then why on earth would we think that the problematic features could override them? In general, I just have no good reason to believe (A), especially given the fact that the considerations in favor of believing the reality of epistemology are supposed to be so very strong. So I'm inclined to doubt (A).

So here's what I'm going to do now. First, I'm going to try to look at the rest of the arguments that support (B), specifically the argument from disagreement (an argument that Cuneo marks as being the one that perhaps favor epistemology over ethics). At this point I'm willing to concede the first four arguments. I've expressed a bit of skepticism already about the explanatory requirement being a problem equally for epistemology as it is for ethics--though I should probably make sure that I'm not failing to think of epistemology in a sufficiently normative way.

After that, though, I'll just give Cuneo (B). And I think this point is why I'm not sure that there's much of a good reason to believe the core argument.

But Cuneo's got one more argument, and that's presented rather quickly in Chapter 8 in response to this argument.

Then I've got to figure out what can be taken from this. I think that the idea there is going to be that we need to figure out how to make sense of the queerness of normativity, because Cuneo has successfully shown that epistemic facts exist and that they would be normative and so queer. Maybe we can distinguish between the normativity/queerness of ethics and epistemology, or maybe we can focus on one of these first four arguments to try and figure out why those problematic features are not problematic.

Cuneo's 6 Arguments against Realism: III

I'm a bit confused by Wright's version of the explanatory requirement, and so I think that I probably chase down "Truth and Objectivity" at some point and take a look. But Wright says, according to Cuneo, that "were moral facts to exist, at least the following must be true: Such facts would have to explain the existence of non-moral facts of a sufficiently wide array of types." This is slightly different from Harman's requirement, which (as far as I could tell) was that "such facts would have to explain some non-moral observations." For Harman the concern was that experiment and testing need to be relevant for these facts, and seemingly observation is irrelevant for ethics. Sayre-McCord had a modified version of Harman's requirement that shares the spirit of it. In a certain sense, does this mean that Wright's requirement is more restrictive than Harman's? If so, this could be cheating a bit, since on a less restrictive version of the argument epistemology might be able to get in.

Under the explanatory requirement, ethics is (seemingly) out. This is because ethical facts, if they exist, don't explain any non-moral facts, it seems. And then he quickly moves to "consider a putative epistemic fact... a fact of this sort appears..to no more explain phenomena in nature such as that which biologists and physicists study than does the putative fact "that an act is wrong."" So epistemic facts would also fail the explanatory principle, and wouldn't exist.

Now, I'm not going to hold Cuneo responsible for ignoring the possibility of a potential indispensability argument in support of epistemic realism. He brings this up in Chapter 8. I think it's a serious concern for him. The entire companion in guilt style argument seems flawed, to me, for the following reason. It also starts with two similar areas of discourse, one of which we're much more confident about it being real (for instance). Do we have a good reason to believe that this discourse is real? Yes? Does that reason exist in the other discourse? No? Then isn't this THE important disanalogy between the two areas of discourse?! Am I missing something here? So we should hardly be surprised that there is an important disanalogy that can be used to argue for the reality of one rather than the other. That important difference between ethics and epistemology is exactly the one employed in chapters 4-7, namely, the indispensability of epistemology to theorizing, and hence, to science and the project of explaining our observations. I think that this is an important concern for the defense of moral realism, and a more general concern about what we aim to get out of companion in guilt style arguments.

For now, I just want to express my genuine confusion for why this isn't brought up in Chapter 3. In Harman's chapter in "Ethics and Observation" he brings the indispensability argument for mathematics as a way to account for mathematics relationship with observation. In Quine, the indispensability argument works because mathematics is empirical knowledge since epistemic holism is the case. So evidence for any thing to which math is indispensable is indirect evidence for the truth of math. It is in this way that observation is relevant to mathematical knowledge, and fulfills the spirit of the explanatory requirement.

I wonder if the indispensability argument has been transformed in the hands of Enoch and Cuneo. Both talk more about pragmatic indispensability, as if the strength of the argument is just that we can't blame folks for doing what they have to do. As far as I can tell, that's not quite the way the argument looks in the hands of a Quine or Putnam or a Colyvan. For them, the strength of the argument comes from the fact that any part of a theory is as good as any other part, and if mathematics weren't true then observation wouldn't confirm science, but observation clearly does. Enoch is rather explicit about this, because the Q-P indispensability argument, in his view, is a particular instance of a more general valid family of indispensability arguments, where various things are indispensable to various projects. I suppose that's good as far as it goes, but we should then be rather clear about when we're invoking the particular indispensability argument and when we're talking about the more generic famliy of indispensability arguments.

It seems to me that epistemology is a good candidate for a Quine-Putnam indispensability argument. Though, I probably HAVE to be wrong because Quine himself didn't think so, because he thought that epistemology should be neutered of normativity. But our epistemic beliefs seem to be indispensable for the practice of science and the expression of our scientific theories. Could we do science, or even express our theories, without talking about what constitutes good evidence and bad evidence for a theory? How could we explain any observation at all if there aren't some features that are more relevant--that is, our understanding of what is a natural kind depends, eventually, on some sort of epistemic fact about what constitutes justification for that belief. And so why not say that the very fact that observation and science is possible is good evidence that epistemic realism is true? In other words, does the scientific realist have to accept epistemic realism?

If so, then I think that epistemology fails the explanatory requirement in the same way that math does; by being indirectly relevant for the explanation of observations.

Congrats to Cuneo!

http://www.apaonline.org/opportunities/prizes/book.aspx

Congrats to Terence Cuneo for receiving an Honorable Mention from the APA's Book Prize for "The Normative Web." I've enjoyed reading his work tremendously, and I'm glad to see that it's getting the respect it deserves!

Looking at the list of previous awardees of the book prize, it reminds me how much good work in meta-ethics has come out in the past decade or two. The field is really exciting and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Thought I'm only a college senior, I'm excited by the idea that I can participate in this exciting field in even an extremely minor, insignificant way.

Developing an argument against Cuneo

I intend to continue writing about Cuneo's specific arguments--right now I'm 1/3 of the way done evaluating his extension of arguments against moral realism to arguments against epistemic realism. But I want to jump the gun, because I'm am impatient man. I want to put down on electronic paper what I think the difficulties facing Cuneo are. As always, this is intended with a sense of modesty that comes from knowing that I'm probably wrong, but here we go anyway.

What's the deal with companion in guilt style arguments? They seem to be very difficult to make. Say that we suspect A of something bad, and we wish to vindicate it by comparing it to B, which we don't suspect of something bad. This comparison has to be based on some shared features, and so A and B share a great many features. However there is at least some features that they don't share. How do we know this? From the very fact that our belief in the goodness of B. If B isn't bad, there must be some features that are keeping it from being bad. And that means that B is different from A in some regard. So what good is the argument, then? The argument can show that the bad features aren't that bad, that they don't settle the question of whether A is bad or not. But we can't actually vindicate A, because A is lacking the features that made us secure in B in the first place.

Let's bring this back to ethics and epistemology. What is an companion in guilt style argument going to be able to show? Ethics and Epistemology, arguably, share certain features. These features are bad features, insofar as its been argued that possession of these features makes a ethics less like to be real. These features include metaphysical queerness, queer supervenience relations, lack of access (or some stronger version of that argument, following Enoch). And if Epistemology has them, then the argument goes to show that these features aren't killers, they don't settle the question of whether a discourse is real or not. This works because we're sure (let's say) that epistemology is real, and epistemology has these features.

But why are we sure that epistemology is real? We must have a good reason--otherwise, maybe epistemology has these features because it isn't real! No, we do have good reason to think that epistemology is real. This is because if epistemology isn't real, then we have no reason to believe anything. But we do have reason to believe things! Specifically, there's a big difference between the good ways of knowing things and the bad ways of knowing things. The good ways of knowing things are called science. And so epistemology is real because it has a close connection, and helps to support, science.

(And doesn't this mean that, according to Harman, epistemology should have a place in our world, because if epistemology was wrong then there wouldn't be a difference between our good methods of knowing things and our bad ones. But experiment can confirm that the good ways of knowing things can correctly predict more observations than the bad ones, and our observation that certain methods are better than others needs to be explained. Isn't the most plausible explanation that epistemology is real, and that some methods of investigation really are better than others? Am I missing something--why does Cuneo think that he is right that epistemology plays no explanatory role? I'll deal with this in a post analyzing the explanatory requirement again, but I guess it's because this is just a case of epistemology explaining an epistemic observation. But wouldn't the foundational role that epistemology plays in justifying our ordinary observations make epistemology relevant for ultimately explaining ALL of our observations? I need to think this mess of thoughts through more carefully.)

Ethics, on the other hand, doesn't have this close connection to science, it doesn't help to support science in this way. And it's not surprising to us--or at least, it shouldn't be--that there's an important difference between ethics and epistemology. In fact, the entire companion in guilt argument depends on there being an important difference that is relevant to the realness of a discourse. If there were not such an important difference, then ethics and epistemology would be on the same level.

Now, what I just said isn't necessarily true. It's possible that there could've been an argument whose aim is to reveal that ethics and epistemology are really on the same grounds, and that's because the good feature (what Cuneo calls a redeemer) isn't only present in epistemology, but also in ethics. In other words, maybe ethics also has the nice feature that epistemology does, the feature of supporting science and the possibility of some arguments or theories being better than others. But does ethics really play that role? Probably not. In which case the companion in guilt style argument starts seeming a bit misguided. What were we trying to show, anyway?

Well, here's what Cuneo definitely does show: that epistemic facts would be queer too, and that's because queerness arguments trade on the normativity of ethics, and epistemology is just as normative as ethics is. But how can he manage to show that ethics and epistemology are on the same grounds, as far as realism goes, when that argument seems to depend on there being an important difference between ethics and epistemology that stands in favor of the realism of epistemology?

Cuneo's response, if I understand him correctly, is to suggest that ethics and epistemology are really the same thing. Or that they're close enough that if you've accepted epistemic facts then you've also accepted ethical facts. I think that there are problems with this argument, a lot of them actually, and that leads me to wonder what else Cuneo could be saying, wondering if I've got him right. I need to read him more carefully, and this post is long enough. But I wonder: how exactly are companion in guilt style arguments supposed to work at all? I think I'll start reading the book "Companions in Guilt" to try and change my perspective.

Pet Peeve: Evolutionary Arguments

Whenever I read an evolutionary argument in a philosophy paper--either to defend moral realism, moral anti-realism, to defend epistemic realism or whatever, I basically roll my eyes and say "Evidence, please!" Evolutionary arguments seem to me like one of those "proofs that p":

It's plausible that P being true would confer on humans some sort of evolutionary advantage.
Therefore P.

Sometimes, if the reader is lucky, we get some sort of acknowledgment that phenomena such as genetic drift and the linking of non-adaptive phenotypes with advantageous phenotypes can lead to the former being selected for. Having acknowledged that, the author then has full intellectual permission to wildly speculate over empirical reality.

Unless I'm missing something, this seems grossly unscientific. We need evidence for claims, folks! Especially since we have evidence that just because we can imagine something being advantageous/not advantageous has no bearing on what occurs in reality. In 50 years, won't people be laughing at our evolutionary arguments the way students now laugh at Descartes' speculations about the pineal gland?

Another possibility in logical space

One could reject moral/epistemic realism while maintaining realism about a subclass of morality or epistemology.

Differences between ethic and epistemology

Cuneo emphasizes certain similarities between ethics and epistemology, features that they share. There are also, without a doubt, differences between the two, and Cuneo mentions some of them.

It doesn't matter, for his core argument, if there are differences between ethics and epistemology as long as these differences are irrelevant. What do I mean be irrelevant? Two things. First, the differences can't play a role in any of the anti-realist arguments. It can't be that a difference between ethics and epistemology can explain why we would make an anti-realist argument in ethics but not in epistemology. That would sink the ship. Second, it can't be that a difference between ethics and epistemology overrides the anti-realist concerns, such that it's a positive reason to believe in epistemic realism.

So let's start cataloging some of the differences. I think Cuneo, to his credit, gets a lot of them.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ETHICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY:

1. (Cuneo p.98) "Moral motivation is more intimately connected with feelings of guilt than epistemic ones" or along the same line of thought "We do not typically claim that epistemic obligations are overriding, nor do we claim that failing to conform to them warrants guilt."
2. (Cuneo p.106) "The type of argument under consideration is one that concerns the explanatory role of moral and epistemic facts. It does not, however, deny that there may be interesting differences between the explanatory roles of moral concepts, on the one hand, and epistemic concepts, on the other. It might be, for example, that epistemic concepts are more entrenched in our best science and metaphysics than moral ones."
3. Even if virtue ethics/epistemology is right and far more things are evaluated then it typically thought in each realm, ethics primarily evaluates actions. Epistemology, on the other hand, primarily evaluates beliefs. This evaluation of beliefs is second order in a way that typical ethics (evaluating ethics) is not.
4. Consequentialism is far less attractive in epistemology than it is in ethics. People argue for it, but it seems far less attractive to say that you're justified in believing one false thing in order to believe 5 true things, than it is to say that you're choosing the course that will cause you to save more lives. This is a matter of debate, though.
5. On a related note, ethics regularly evaluates states of affairs that have nothing to do with humans or actors. We might say that war is an evil, that an operation is a good thing or that a certain weapon is an evil thing, or that the current healthcare system is morally problematic because it causes suffering, though we blame no particular actor. All of these could probably be reduced to claims about actors (when we morally evaluate the country's healthcare situation negatively we're really evaluating the performance of the country as a corporate actor). I'm not sure if this is a real difference, or if all these cases can be eliminated without trouble. But consequentialists, apparently, don't think that these things can be eliminated. Because they analyze what it means for an actor to do the right or wrong thing in terms of whether a situation of state of affairs is a good or bad one. So apparently there are states of affairs that are good or bad independent of actors. But is there any way to think of evaluating a situation or a state of affairs in an epistemic way? I'm not sure. Would that be like saying that a historical method is unjustified? Is this not really a difference at all? Maybe not. Hermmm.

Not sure if any of these are relevent (the one about cloesness to science, I think, could probably be interesting when we start to talk about forming an indispensability argument for epistemology, which will be very soon). Need to add to the list, refine the list, think about what the list means.

Cuneo's 6 Arguments against realism: II

Now, onto the argument from queerness.

From Prof. Selim Berker's lecture notes on metaethics, I know that there are multiple versions of this argument. Following Prof Berker, here are two different ways to make the argument:

THE MOTIVATIONAL INTERPRETATION

1) If there are objective moral facts, then they are facts that motivate(/have to-be-done-ness built into them/reasons internalism is true)
2) No facts are motivating (Humean picture of motivation)
3) So there are no objective moral facts

THE DUTY INTERPRETATION

1) If there are objective moral facts, then they are facts that place upon us an obligation/restriction/duty/give us a reason to X
2) No facts are such
3) No objective moral facts

OK, OK, my premises 1) weren't really precise because I wasn't careful about what sort of thing brings upon the obligation. Is it knowledge of the fact? Something vaguer, like recognition? Mere belief (which is implausible in the reasons case but better in the motivational case)? I'm leaving that part out. Moving on,

So, Prof Berker, in his lecture, notes, makes a companion in guilt argument for both of these interpretations. For the first, he suggests that regular practical reasoning would be just as queer for the motivational interpretation. After all, we believe that there is a fact of the matter about what's in my best interest, and wouldn't that be just as queer? There's room to push back on Prof Berker. If one's unwilling to accept moral realism that makes best-interest realism unapealing. Say we were moral nihlists. When we consider what's in our best interest we usually discount options like "kill this guy and take his wallet" because doing so would be horribly wrong. Maybe morality is implicitly part of our consideration of what's in our best interests.

In any event, Prof Berker suggests that in the reasons interpretation of the argument epistemology will be a companion in guilt. Because, say what you will about epistemology, if you think it's a normative domain then it gives you reasons to believe (at the very least), and if it's queer that there are facts that give you reasons to act (at the very least) then how is that any less queer than a reason to believe? A reason's the weird thing, no?

Cuneo presents a motivational interpretation of the argument from queerness, but then suggests that epistemology is a proper companion in guilt to ethics. But since he's doing the motivational interpretation of the argument he can't simply appeal to the fact that epistemology gives one a reason to believe something. Motivation is motivation to act, and so he has to show that epistemology gives one a reason to act. He convinced me that earlier that virtue epistemology is right, that we evaluate actions epistemologically as well. Following that, he says "Consider the fact that Sam's maintaining a high level of confidence in a proposition is unwarranted because his doing so is intellectually foolish. If facts such as these were to exist, then they would seem to have a motivational magnetism simliar to that of moral facts."

What's wrong with this? Well, if we're simply talking about motivations (and not reasons) it seems that ethics has a much different claim on motivation than epistemology does. In Cuneo's terminology (which he has plenty of!) this is summed up by saying that morality has normative force, while epistemology doesn't. That is, "We do not typically claim that epistemic obligations are overriding, for example. Nor do we claim that failing to conform to them warrants guilt." Why is this a concern? Cuneo is attempting to say that the weirdness of ethics is shared by epistemology. But it seems that epistemology doesn't motivate quite in the way that ethics does. Perhaps we should say that epistemology isn't motivating, that the queerness belongs only to ethics. But I wonder if Cuneo isn't on better ground then this. Isn't epistemology motivating, even if it's not an overriding consideration, as it is with ethics? The objection only seems to stick if we think that epistemology doesn't motivate at all. Essentially, Cuneo's responses are ways of saying that ethics might be a stronger or different kind of motivation, but that doesn't mean that epistemology isn't motivating. But it is worth taking stock of an important difference between ethics and epistemology--the normative force of ethics is lacking in epistemology. Whether this pulls the two apart in any significant way is to be seen.

Personally, I'm feeling sympathetic to Brink's arguments that motivation internalism is right, in which case the better argument is the one presented by Garner, the reasons interpretation of the queerness argument. If that's the case though, as Prof Berker pointed out, epistemology seems like an even better companion in guilt since there are epistemic reasons as well.

In short: I'm sympathetic to Cuneo's first two arguments. The normative nature of ethics seems to be behind the supervenience objection, as well as the argument from queerness. Epistemology is also a normative domain, so I don't have any objections to Cuneo's claim of having found a companion in guilt.

Cuneo's 6 Arguments against realism: I

As far as I can tell, the heart of Cuneo's argument...well, that's not quite right. Let's try that again. As far as I can tell, Cuneo's argument has two hearts. One of the hearts is that anti-realism in epistemology is untenable. The second heart is that the arguments against realism in ethics apply just as well to realism in epistemology. He considers 6 arguments against moral realism, and shows how they extend into epistemology. I'll now write 6 posts, one going through each argument and trying to see how well it holds up. And, cuz I'm an undergrad and need practice with this sort of thing, I'll also recap the argument for antirealism Cuneo's dealing with. (I'm not sure I've got much interesting to say on all of them, including the first one below).

The first argument he considers is Blackburn's argument from supervenience. In short, Blackburn's argument is another way of trying to be precise about what's weird about ethical realism. It's generally believed that non-ethical propositions can't entail ethical ones, on the conceptual level. That is, is doesn't imply ought. Now that there is lack of entailment of ethical propositions from the plain old natural ones, does this mean that ethics is an independent realm of mysterious stuff that has nothing to do with the natural world? No, of course not. If two situations are identical naturally, then they are identical morally. And the only way for there to be a moral difference between two situations is if there is also some natural difference which underlies the moral difference. Let's call this relationship between ethics and the natural features of the world a supervenience relation. So ethics supervenes on the natural. Further, this supervenience relation seems to be a conceptual, analytic one: if somebody thought that you could get an ethical difference without some corresponding natural difference they would be simply misunderstanding what we mean by the ethical. (I guess that's true).

Blackburn argues that this supervenience relationship is odd. Note, for example, that it's quite unlike chemistry supervening on physics. Physics propositions can entail chemical ones, and this is what makes the supervenience relationship more easy to swallow. In a certain sense, chemistry propositions just are propositions about particles and atoms. That is, chemistry can be reduced to physics. But what we're claiming in ethics is that there is a supervenience relationship even though ethics cannot be reduced to the natural (unless you're a naturalist about ethics in which case they can be reduced!). This relationship seems mysterious. And if you want to cache out this mysterious relationship in a more precise way, we can talk about mixed worlds: since there's a supervenience relation, it's a necessary fact that in a universe, if the natural facts underly some ethical property for some object (they're hitting a baby makes them evil) then whenever any object has those natural properties in this universe they have that ethical property (ANYONE who hits a baby is evil). In addition, since there is lack of entailment on the conceptual level of ethical claims from natural ones, it's possible that in some alternate universe that set of natural properties won't underly an ethical property (in some universe hitting a baby doesn't make you evil). But how can we explain the fact that it's forbidden, by the supervenience relation, for there to be some universe where sometimes hitting a baby makes you evil, but sometimes it doesn't? Blackburn wants an explanation of this, and doesn't think it's possible for the realist to give a good one.

Now, what's doing the work in this argument? (Incidentally, "doing the work" is one of my least favorite philosophy phrases, though I have trouble dispensing with it). That is, in merit of what aspects of the nature of ethics does this argument work? What feature of ethics gets ethics into trouble? There's nothing too strange about a supervenience relation, but what is strange is the supervenience relation with the lack of entailment. So what is responsible for the lack of entailment? In short, it's the normative character of ethics; you can't get "ought" from "is."

So I don't have much to quibble with when Cuneo suggests that epistemology has the same problem. As long as epistemology is normative, then it too will have lack of entailment. And so it will suffer from the same problems that ethics does.

Of course, the problem for realism isn't just that something weird needs to be explained, but rather that no good explanation seems forthcoming for the realist. Is there any reason to suppose that there will be a difference for epistemic realism? The epistemic projectivist would still have available the answer that expressing an epistemic attitude is just expressing an attitude in response to natural features, and so I'm not sure I have much to add here. It's the bigness of the natural realm that makes it so hard to conceptually doubt the supervenience relation in ethics, and I think that as long as epistemology isn't natural then you have the same problem. I'm moving on, though I reserve the right to come back and update the post if I think of something better to say.

UPDATE: Well, I might as well add some stuff later about attempts to argue against the supervenience relation in epistemology by Lehrer (Cuneo writes "But if Lehrer is right, then it will also be true that moral facts do not supervene on non-moral facts"). Note also that we have to be careful here about whether we're talking about supervenience on non-moral/epistemic or on the non-normative/natural facts. There can be differences there. Also, Blackburn argues that the mental/physical and other supervenience relations don't supervene conceptually, and it's worth trying to explain more carefully why the epistemic will be conceptually supervening while the mental doesn't. I'll do that later.

Quick thoughts on why ethics and math would be difficult

I started this project looking at similarities between ethics and math, and now I'm looking at similarities between ethics and epistemology. Why the switch? I think I'm able to explain more clearly why I shifted focus.

Let's say you have some problematic discourse, X. It has problematic features and properties, and these problematic features have lead some folks to suggest that this discourse X is not real--doesn't describe or pick out anything out in the world. How can one respond to these concerns?

I can think of at least two ways (I'd be really excited if I could think of more). One way is to directly engage with the "problematic features" and attempt to show that they are not problematic, or that they are not features of X. For the latter you have to argue that X doesn't have the features ("There's no widespread disagreement in ethics"). For the former you could directly argue that these properties are simply unproblematic ("So what if there's widespread disagreement in ethics?! Who cares?"). But another way to answer in the former way is to cheat a bit. You can cheat by finding companions in guilt: "X may contain these features, but so do a bunch of other unproblematic, real discourses, and so these features are not problematic." Companion in guilt arguments can be convincing, but in order to be convincing eventually they have to come around to explaining why the features are not problematic. It's insufficient to simply find a companion in guilt--because maybe what we've learned is that this other discourse Y really should be problematic, just as X is. True, we're more confident in Y than we are in X, but in order to be really convincing we need to learn how come these features aren't problematic.

I want to make one more distinction. The following distinction isn't a really tight one, because you can easily collapse it, but I think what I mean will be clear. There's a distinction between finding a companion in guilt between two objects that shares a problematic feature, and two arguments that share a problematic feature. On the one hand we can try to find other objects that are queer in the sense that ethical objects are, but we can also try to find arguments that are problematic in the same way that arguments that justify ethics are problematic.

When I started, I was looking at math, and specifically the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument for mathematical realism. I was, essentially, doing the second of these two options, looking for a companion in guilt for an ethical argument in a mathematical argument. I wasn't looking for a companion in guilt for ethical objects in mathematical objects. I think the search for an analog of the indispensability argument for ethics didn't really go anywhere, and here's why. The indispensability argument in math is strong, if it is strong, because it stays close to something like IBE. The argument, in other words, is strong because it doesn't invoke much beyond IBE. This, however, means that if I'm looking for an argument in ethics that I can find a companion in guilt in math for, I need to restrict myself to IBE and not much more. This lead me to Sturgeon and Ethical Naturalism at first. That didn't seem interesting to me. Then it lead me to Enoch.

Another way that I could've gone was to look at mathematical facts or statements and attempt to show that these objects are themselves companions in guilt to ethical statements. Justin Clarke-Doane has been working on this for disagreement, arguing that if disagreement is problematic than it's not just ethics, but (perhaps even more so) math that is problematic.

So how would I continue if I thought more about math? First would be to try to pivot off of IBE in some other way. Note, however, that thinking about IBE is no longer really thinking about math. But maybe IBE is rich enough a principle that it actually justifies ethics somehow, either directly or by some sort of reflection through what justifies IBE itself. So Enoch and Sturgeon are still possibilities, but they have nothing to do with math (not that there's anything wrong with that! but I'm explaining my change in focus). Rather, IBE is an epistemological principle and that means that if I'm going to evaluate these arguments I need to learn about epistemology.

I could also reexamine the Quine-Putnam argument and try to see if it reaches beyond IBE. Maybe the resources that it needs to justify the reality of mathematical discourse goes beyond IBE? The problem is that to argue in this way is actually to substantially weaken the indispensability argument. What makes the argument strong is that it doesn't reach beyond IBE, that someone who believes in electrons should believe in numbers. Of course, it's possible that belief in electrons reaches beyond IBE, but then this is to weaken scientific realism in order to find a companion in guilt for ethics. Possible, but not what I was trying to do, and not something I think would go over very well (but maybe necessary to try at some point, of course!).

Finally, I could try to look for problematic features that math shares with ethics. Disagreement was mentioned. What else? The thing is that mathematical statements and her putative facts are not normative, at least I don't think that they are. If they were, then that would be a significant insight and would make for interesting analogies with ethics. But that's certainly not obvious. Is math queer? Maybe, but not in the sense that ethics is, because the queerness of ethics comes from normativity. Is ethics irrelevant for explanations? Harman argues "no," and maybe we could contend with that. Does math supervene on natural facts, or any other facts? Presumably not. What ethics and math definitely have in common is that they are not traditionally empirical domains. That may or may not be a helpful connection. I need to think about this some more, maybe there are some similarities that I didn't think of, but I don't think that they share a lot of the problematic features.

Ethics and epistemology, on the other hand, share normativity, and that's really special and important, since a lot of the arguments against ethics become much weaker if there's nothing wrong wit normativity (Blackburn's supervenience argument, I think, takes advantage of a special feature of normativity, queerness more or less trades on that, etc.) This is why I shifted focus--becuase epistemology seems more promising than math in this regard. It's not an excuse for stopping to think about math, but it is an excuse for putting it on the back burner.

Cuneo on what makes ethics and epistemology similar

Cuneo spends some time drawing out the similarities between ethics and epistemology. Here are the similarities that he points to:

1) Moral and epistemic reasons are categorical
2) Moral and epistemic facts are structurally isomorphic
3) Moral and epistemic facts normatively appraise objects of the same type
4) It's often the case that it's difficult to disentangle the moral and epistemic parts.

1) means that both epistemic and ethical facts "are, imply, or indicate reasons for agents to behave in certain ways regardless of whether these agents care about conducting their behavior in a rational/moral way, whether they belong to a social group of a certain kind, of whether they have entered into social agreements with others." (59) I take it that this is an explication of what it means to say that epistemology is a normative domain.

2) means that facts of both kinds come in the same kinds. Some ethical statements are evaluative ("Xing is good"), while others are deontic ("You ought to perform X"). Likewise epistemic statements are either evaluative ("Believing X is rational") or deontic ("You ought to believe X"). Further, ethical facts are either particular ("That deed is evil") or general ("Murder is wrong"), and the same can be said for epistemic facts which are either particular or general.

3) expresses the idea that "institutions, persons, intentions, actions, propositional attitudes (beliefs, acceptances, inquiries and hopes), character traits, emotions, policies, ways of viewing things, ways of finding things out, and so forth, are all plausibly thought to be subject to moral and epistemic norms."

4) means that "in some cases there is no obvious way to disentangle (ontologically at least) their moral and epistemic dimensions; some failing...appear to be both moral and epistemic failings." For example, "failing to treat the testimony of another with sufficient care and attention."

Are these similarities impressive? Certainly I find the first impressive, but I consider it just an explication of what it means to say that ethics and epistemology are both normative discourses. The second doesn't seem so exciting to me, though I'm having trouble picking out exactly why. I think because it seems to me (WARNING: not an argument) very difficult to imagine a normative domain that could be either deontic but not evaluative, or the other way around. The fourth way I find very impressive, though I'm not sure what to make of it if moral and epistemic domains are quite distinct. After all, it's often difficult to separate the normative and descriptive dimensions of a term. For example, take the word "murder." It doesn't seem to be murder if you kill during war, or kill an evil perpetrator, etc. So part of what it means to murder someone is to do something wrong. So there is significant entanglement between the normative and descriptive domains in these terms. Nevertheless, it's unclear to me what this goes to show.

Let's look at the third similarity. Cuneo writes "it would be incorrect to say that moral and epistemic facts are interestingly disanalogous because epistemic facts concern only 'theoretical' reasons, while moral ones concern only 'practical' reasons." He argues, and I'm convinced, that some moral reasons are theoretical and some epistemic reasons are practical.

I might be missing something, but can there be epistemic evaluations of states of affairs beyond actors? Because there can be moral evaluations not just of actors, but of situations and states of affairs. Is it obvious that the same can be done in epistemology? What is an epistemically good outcome that doesn't have to do with the actor? We can morally evaluate, for example, the goodness of evil of a war. A tax can be bad. Can epistemology evaluate anything outside of an actor? Cuneo says that institutions and policies can be epistemically and morally evaluated. But these are tangled up with actors--institutions, such as countries, companies, boards or clubs, can work together and reach decisions and act as a corporate. And policies can be morally evaluated epistemically because they are the decisions of actors. But what about plain-old boring states of affairs. I think they can be morally evaluated but not epistemically evaluated (what would that even mean?).

Is this important at all? I'll see if I can make the case for this doing some work in the next post, unless I change my mind about the previous few paragraphs.