Reasons and Moral Anti-Realism
A brief note: I recently debated about AI doom. I thought it was a very good discussion. Video of the debate is linked below.
Okay, back to your regularly scheduled program.
Here is something that seems obvious to me: sometimes, I have a reason to perform an act. I have a reason not to stab myself in the eye for no reason. I have a reason to eat when I am hungry. I have a reason to eat healthy foods. Can anti-realism accommodate this datum?
I believe that the answer is no. As Parfit suggested, if moral anti-realism is true, all our reasons to act are built on sand. No action is more worth taking than any other. There might be actions that we are, in fact, psychologically disposed to take. But there are none that we have genuine reason to take.
The anti-realist presumption is generally that one’s reasons to behave in some way are given by their desires. This is supposed to be the default. Yet I do not see why the mere fact that one wishes to perform some act gives them a reason to do it. Why do my reasons come from my desires and not from, say, my neighbor’s desires? What is it that makes it so that the wise and sensible action to perform is whichever one accords with my aims?
This becomes clearer when one considers more vividly cases where a person has a desire to perform an act but no reason to perform it otherwise. Suppose that a person has a strong desire to throw their mug across the room or smash their hand against the table. Do they really have any reason to do so? Or suppose a person has a strong desire to consume a drug, even though doing so would give them no pleasure. Do they have any reason to consume it? I believe the answer is no.
Now, my sense is anti-realists often think it is an analytic truth that your reasons are given your desires. It is, they
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