Moral Foundherentism
inspired by Susan Haack
In the following short essay, I’ll be hashing out my up-to-date moral theory. For a brief synopsis I hold to a subjectivist theory in which justification comes for moral propositions via intuition and rationality. This could well indeed be considered a form of moral intuitionism with some taking from moral rationalism. I’ll be explicating the theses of my position plainly, and diving into as much detail as I can. I’ll be attempting to explain why I believe such a theory is favorable, and hopefully motivate people to, if not take up on the theory, go in the general direction of such. Down below are the theses explicated:
Metaphysical Thesis - Moral facts are mind-dependent states of affairs
Semantic Thesis - Moral propositions convey attitudes of approval and disapproval
Alethic Thesis - Moral propositions are true in virtue of accurately describing one’s approval and disapproval
Epistemological Thesis - Moral facts are justified in virtue of intuition giving us epistemic access
Moral Facts
When it comes to moral facts I invoke a form of correspondence theory. I won’t be doing into too much depth of such, given I’m still inquiring on the view. I take a fact to be a state of affairs, whether it be nonexistent, fictional, real, mind-dependent, transcendent, etc. States of affairs would just be entities, relations, properties, or a combination of some or all of them. Following this, I take truth to be a property of a proposition which interacts with facts (states of affairs). When it comes to true propositions, I do invoke a ‘notion of intent’, that is to say, the context of a proposition depends on what the ‘proposer’ or speaker is aiming to describe/talk about.
Very reductively, a proposition in this view is true if and only if it accurately describes a state of affairs the proposer aims to describe. I choose this approach because I find it as parsimoniously favorable as some deflationary accounts of truth. Truth in this view works quite simply. Take the proposition “the cat is on the mat” for example. This proposition is true if the proposer aims to describe the particular state of affairs of the cat being on the mat whilst the cat shares a spatial-relation to the mat (on top of). To be reductive, ‘the cat is on the mat’ is true because the cat being on the mat.
This maps onto moral facts in so far as moral facts are simply nothing more than ‘moral states of affairs’. In other words, a moral proposition is true if and only if it accurately describes one’s own moral states of affairs. Given that a state of affairs is just entities, relations, and properties, a moral state of affair would just be one’s own moral evaluative attitude toward a particular thing (can be an event). A moral proposition is false if and only if it fails to describe one’s moral state of affairs. I do believe that these moral facts are of course mind-dependent because in this view, morality is just the evaluation of rightness and wrongness. Following from this, morality would seemingly be ontically mind-dependent as I don’t know of moral properties (such as moral good and moral bad) that exist innately and mind-independently in objects. What appears to be the case is that moral rightness and wrongness are things that we mind-dependently project onto objects.
Moral Justification
When it comes to moral justification, or rather, the moral epistemology of the system, I rely favorably on Susan Haack’s Foundherentism. Foundherentism is an epistemological compromise position between foundationalism and coherentism; foundherentism serves as a theory of justification. When it comes to moral intuitionism, lots of people think that its solely feeling based and rooted in ‘deep gut instincts’. I think that this only has to be the case at the axiomatic level of moral justification. As foundherentism would allow it, I’d believe that there are foundational moral principles that needn’t justification in moral systems. Combined with this would be the coherence justification that one finds in coherentism. Because of how efficient but basic these theories work together, I was tempted to nickname the framework ‘commonsensicalism’ or something akin.
To circle back, when it comes to axioms (foundational principles) of the system, I think that these require no justification. There are however, beliefs that aren’t foundational that require some type of justification. This is where I like to take a bit from moral rationalism and coherentism, combined with with a revisionary approach. I believe that moral propositions that aren’t justified foundationally, are justified by how much they cohere with other beliefs, even if those beliefs aren’t moral beliefs. To put this into practice, it would be an unjustified moral belief if you believed that its right to genocide one race whilst believing in a principle of fairness among humans. It would also be unjustified to uphold the moral belief that killing is wrong whilst advocating for killing. When it comes to revision of beliefs, this is an invoking of reflective equilibrium. With this theory, justification can range from good to bad in credences. I’d say a belief becomes more justified the more it goes through revision. Here’s the steps of revision I’d take:
Establish a foundational belief supported by pragmatics
Build supporting beliefs
Question the coherence of beliefs
Update & Revise
Wash, Rinse, Repeat
The revisionary function of the framework aids in making sure beliefs don’t go out of date, don’t overlap with one another, and gives them logical backing. The ‘revisionary function’ is mainly inspired by Susan Haack’s foundherentism. In foundherentism, she likes to use the crossword puzzle analogy for how beliefs should be. Envision a crossword puzzle. Words must fit with one another coherently and there must be foundational (first) words. Overlap in words or contradiction makes it such that they don’t fit one another. In moral foundherentism, this is to be applied to morals.
Theoretical Virtues
When it comes to the framework, it prioritizes coherence, unification, explanatory economy and ontological parsimony. To give a brief rundown of what these virtues posit:
Ontological Parsimony - Preference for theories that posit the least amount of unnecessary entities
Unification - The ability of a framework to integrate different theories and or phenomena into a single unified framework
Coherence - Internal logical consistency within a theory; void of contradictions
Explanatory Economy - A principle that a preferable philosophical theory should explain the max amount of phenomena whilst using the minimum number of independent assumptions
In so far as the framework endorsing parsimony, it avoids positing mind-independent moral properties/entities to explain phenomena. Instead it uses entities that are already trivially accepted such as minds, attitudes, and mental processes. When it comes to explanatory economy, the framework can explain moral phenomena, disagreement, intuition, language, and beliefs. This is especially the case when the theory is grounded in or ‘used alongside’ a moral psychological framework; there’d be even more explanatory power, explanatory depth, and scientific evidence. I can explain a decent amount of entities and phenomena without requiring that many independent principles.
Pertaining to coherence and unification, the framework has no contradictions and is extremely compatible with other theories such as moral rationalism, moral sentimentalism, moral psychological frameworks, and more. This will probably be updated a bit routinely given I still have some gaps in this theory to fill. For the most part I’m logically satisfied with it, but not explanatorily satisfied.