EPISTEMIC & MORAL IRREALISMS:
ON GIBBARD & FIELD
3000 WORDS; 11 PAGES
Abstract (90 words):
While moral irrealisms are common, epistemic irrealisms are rare. Allen Gibbard and Hartry
Field, however, are self-proclaimed epistemic irrealists: Gibbard is an epistemic expressivist and
Field a kind of epistemic relativist. They both hold that epistemic judgments – about what’s
epistemically (ir)rational, or (un)justified, or ought (not) to be believed, and so on – are never
literally, stance-independently true. I argue that their positions are false and their arguments
unsound. This importantly implies that their arguments for moral irrealism are unsound also; a
similar objection applies to all other common arguments for moral irrealism.
Introduction
Most arguments for moral irrealisms can be presented as instances of a schema like this:
(1) Moral judgments have features Φ.
(2) Any judgments with features Φ are never true.
(3) Therefore, moral judgments are never true.1
These arguments’ advocates typically presume that an appreciation of their premises and their
relation to the conclusion can provide epistemic reason to accept moral irrealism: this
understanding can justify someone in accepting a morally irrealistic conclusion, make it
reasonable or rational, and such that it should be believed and its negation denied.
Call these kinds of judgments epistemic or intellectual judgments. Most philosophers,
including most moral irrealists and even traditional epistemological skeptics, think that such
judgments are sometimes true, and true literally and stance-independently.2
This presumption, however, suggests meta-epistemological implications. First, a semantic
presumption that epistemic judgments are descriptive, truth-apt, and propositional. Second, a
metaphysical or ontological presumption that there are truth-makers for epistemic judgments,
i.e., epistemic properties or facts, that typically carries with it the presumption that these truth-
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makers are “stance independent” or “objective”: epistemic judgments, when true, are not made
true by anyone’s (or any community’s) attitudes toward them.3 Third, that there are (not
surprisingly) epistemic beliefs and other attitudes towards epistemic propositions (and so an
epistemic psychology). And the presumption raises the related question an epistemic
epistemology.
Call this set of meta-epistemological presumptions “epistemic realism,” as they are
analogous to the set of meta-ethical presumptions called “moral realism.” Although it seems that
most philosophers are epistemic realists, Allen Gibbard and Hartry Field, however, are not. As
self-proclaimed epistemic expressivists and relativists, they deny that epistemic judgments are
ever literally or stance-independently true.
Here I argue that their epistemic irrealisms are false and that the arguments for their
positions unsound. These results are important not so much because it’s worthwhile to criticize
rare views like epistemic irrealisms (although that can be worthwhile), but because of the morepressing consequences for moral realism: if Gibbard’s and Field’s arguments for epistemic
irrealism are unsound, then their analogous arguments for moral irrealism are also unsound. This
because, for Gibbard and Field, their arguments against both kinds of realism share a major
premise, viz. instances of premise (2) in the schema above, that I argue is false and unreasonable
to accept.
Thus, undercutting arguments for epistemic irrealism has the important consequence that
arguments for moral irrealism are undercut. This is true not just for Gibbard’s and Field’s
arguments for moral irrealism, but, I suggest, for all the common arguments for moral irrealisms.
This is because these arguments’ major premises – instances of (2) – also suggest epistemic
irrealisms (although, unlike Gibbard and Field, their advocates did not recognize this). Thus, I
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aim to raise a general, but powerful, objection to all common arguments against moral realism:
each has a premise that we have good reason to regard as false.
1. Brief Statements of Gibbard’s and Field’s Views
Let us first understand the views in question, before we consider the arguments in their favor.
Gibbard has a general theory of what it is to judge or consider something to be “rational”
that has implications for both moral and epistemic evaluations. On his view, the notion of
“rationality” is a part of a cluster of what he calls “normative” notions, and a “notion is
normative if we can paraphrase it in terms of what it makes sense to do, to think, or to feel.”4 His
sense of “rationality” pertains to moral evaluations (he relates moral evaluations to the
“rationality” of various sentiments, like guilt and resentment in response to an act5), to beliefs,
and to other items of evaluation. For belief, the notion of rationality has close connection to the
epistemic notions that a belief “ought” to be held, is “warranted, and is “well grounded,” and is
“justified.”6
Gibbard calls his theory the “norm expressivist analysis,” and according to it “to call
something rational is to express one’s acceptance of norms that permit it.”7 He explains that a
norm is a “rule or prescription, expressible by an imperative,”8 which is neither true nor false.
Thus, to put these notions together, to call something rational to express one’s acceptance of
rules, prescriptions, or imperatives that permit that thing, e.g., doing some action, holding some
belief, and so on.
Gibbard elaborates on what it is to express a norm:
Normative talk is part of nature, but it does not describe nature. In particular, a person
who calls something rational or irrational is not describing his own state of mind; he is
expressing it. To call something rational is not to attribute some kind of particular
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property to that thing—not even the property of being permitted by accepted norms. . . .
The analysis is non-cognitivist in the narrow sense that, according to it, to call a thing
rational is not to state a matter of fact, either truly or falsely.9
Thus, Gibbard advocates an expressivism or non-cognitivism about both moral and epistemic
judgments: none are literally true (although we might say they are, but only in a “minimalist”
sense of “true”). 10
Now let us briefly try to understand Field’s view. Although he claims to take inspiration
from Gibbard’s norm expressivism in developing his own ethical and epistemological
“evaluationism” or “non-factualism,”11 his view is actually quite similar to later versions of
Harman’s moral relativism.12
Consider two sentences that Field considers “evaluative”: first, that “voting for the lesser
of two evils is a bad idea,” and, second, that “belief in quarks is justified on current evidence.”13
He claims that these claims have a “not-fully-factual” status; he thinks they are true, but that
they are true or factual only relative to a “norm,”14 not true norm- or stance-independently. And
these particular judgments will be true relative to some norms, but false on other norms.
This idea is common for moral judgments (it’s just moral relativism), but it’s less
common for epistemic judgments. Field gives scientific example – that “belief in quarks is
justified on current evidence” – but any epistemic judgment can be used to illustrate the theory.
Here’s one, that, “My belief that I have hands is justified or reasonable.” On some theories, yes,
the proposition that “my belief that I have hands is justified or reasonable” is true. But on other
theories – more demanding, often skepticism-inducing ones – that proposition is not true.
This much everyone should agree with: different principles can have different
implications for cases. Field adds to this the further, more controversial, claim that no evaluative
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norms are true or correct, what he calls “objectively correct,” or true in a non-relative manner.15
A consequence of this is that there are no (particular or general) moral or epistemic truths,
norms, or principles that are true necessarily.
For Field, moral or epistemic judgments are never just plain true. However, he suggests
that, “we can say that an evaluative utterance is disquotationally true for me iff it is true relative
to the norms I regard appropriate to associate with the evaluative terms.”16 On this view two
believers who accept different norms can disagree about, e.g., particular evaluative judgments,
even when they accept differing norms (and even when these norms imply that each of their
judgments are “true for them”), but this is a disagreement in “attitude,” not a factual
disagreement.17
Thus, it should be clear why Field’s views are well described as relativistic. A token
evaluative (moral or epistemic) judgment’s truth-value is determined by, or relative to, the
speaker’s norms. This contrasts with more common, and evaluatively realistic, views on which,
e.g., someone’s accepting Nazi moral norms would not make that person’s anti-Semitic moral
judgments “true for her,” or an epistemological skeptics’ accepting very high standards for
justification would not, in itself, make her belief that her beliefs are unjustified “true for her.” So,
Field denies that there are epistemic and moral properties in an ordinary sense (in his view,
“reasonableness” is not a “factual property”18) and goes well beyond what even contextualists
typically maintain about how one’s epistemic principles can influence the epistemic status of
one’s beliefs.
2. The Arguments for Gibbard’s and Field’s Views
Gibbard and Field accept these epistemological irrealisms because of the arguments that they
accept for their moral irrealisms. They accept moral irrealisms because they accepting a version
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of the argument above: they think moral judgments have various features (e.g., Φ) and that
judgments with these features Φ are never literally true, so moral judgments are never true.
Unlike nearly all other moral irrealists, they just simply make the further observation that
epistemic judgments have these features Φ also, so they come to the same conclusions about
their nature and, thus, an irrealist meta-epistemology.
A concise statement of the arguments given for norm expressivism is not easy to provide.
Gibbard’s discussion is dense and the considerations for his position and against others are
developed in subtle, not very explicit, ways. But Gibbard thinks his norm-expressive analysis of
what it is to call something rational “strains the concept less than do the alternatives:”19 evidently
thinking that we should accept understandings of concepts that are “less straining.” He thinks
that to call something rational is to “endorse” it, but to say that something has some natural
property is not to endorse it, so naturalisms are mistaken in their understanding of the notion of
rationality.20 This seems true for both ethical and epistemological naturalisms and related notions
of rationality: e.g., saying of some action will produce the most pleasure, or saying that some
belief is produced by a mechanism belief-forming reliable is does not seem to be the same as
saying that an action is right or that the belief is justified. The later seem to have an endorsing
function that the natural description lacks.
As a self-proclaimed “naturalist,” Gibbard rejects non-naturalistic theories of rationality:
He writes, “Nothing in a plausible, naturalistic picture of our place in the universe requires these
non-natural facts and these powers of non-sensory apprehension.”21 If naturalistic and nonnaturalistic theories of what it is to judge or consider something to be rational are inadequate,
and yet the notion of rationality “makes sense,” as Gibbard puts it, we likely are left with some
kind of non-descriptivism, like his norm expressivism. This conclusion is especially plausible if
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judgments about rationality have this “endorsement” function that cannot be captured by mere
property attributions, whether natural or non-natural.
Field’s main argument for his view is that “we can accommodate all the [relevant moral
and epistemic] phenomena using only the norm-relative notions, together with both preference
among norms and norm-relative beliefs.”22 So, basically, Field argues that evaluationism is the
simpler hypothesis, simpler hypotheses ought to be accepted, and so evaluationism ought to be
accepted. And by denying that there are epistemic and moral properties he can also avoid
challenging epistemological questions for how we might detect them. In response, a factualist,
i.e., a moral and epistemic realist, claims that Field’s evaluationism yields an “impoverished
caricature of evaluative discourse,” but Field’s opinion is that “the nonfactualist will win” the
debate.23
Whatever the considerations Gibbard and Field offer in favor of their positions and
whatever their view’s exact nature, they clearly have epistemically irrealistic implications for
judgments about the rationality of beliefs: there are no epistemic truths, facts, propositions or
properties, and so no particular epistemic judgments are literally true or stance-independently
true.24
There are interesting consequences for this kind of position, including for the nature of
argumentation and reasoning. On Gibbard’s theory, when someone says that norm expressivism
is a reasonable view or one that ought to be held, that person is not saying something that’s true.
If they say that the arguments for norm expressivism are strong, or that they justify belief in the
theory, or that those who accept these premises ought to accept this conclusion (and people
ought to accept these premises) they are not saying something that’s true either. These are all
logical implications of the theory, and the theory also implies that any (refined) claim like this is
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not true either: if you see that something is a logical consequence of your theory, you should
accept that consequence. That is not true either.
For all these judgments, if Gibbard is right, only norms have been expressed; no truths
stated. For those who do not share Gibbard’s norms (and even for those who do, for this would
seem to be not true, if Gibbard is right: if you share Gibbard’s norms, then you ought to accept
Gibbard’s conclusions, once you understand and accept his case), it’s not at all clear how or
why we should respond to his expressions in any particular way, especially by agreeing with
him.
Similar epistemically non-standard consequences follow from Field’s theory, but on his
view an epistemic judgment is true when, and only when, one’s epistemic judgments jibe with
one’s own norms that are, at best, only “true for the speaker,” never true in relation to any
epistemic principles that are necessarily true. So, if we do not accept Field’s norms, or any other
norms that would make it such that we ought to accept evaluationism, it is not true that we ought
to accept it.
So not only do Gibbard and Field’s views have non-standard implications for a wide
range of epistemological judgments, they also have implications for whether one ought to
respond to their arguments and whether such a response would be justified or rational.
3. What To Make Of This?
At this point, Gibbard and Field might simply reply that I have accurately reported on their
theories’ implications and ask what the problem is.
While they might not see a problem, for most of the rest of us, however, their arguments
lead to something that we regard as false – viz. that epistemic judgments are never literally or
stance-independently true because they are either expressions or only relatively true – and we
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think have good reason to reject. We could develop these reasons; make a case for why it makes
most sense to think that epistemic judgments are, first, either true or false and, second, why they
are sometimes true and so why it makes most sense to think that judgments about what makes
sense are sometimes literally, stance-independently true.
Reasons can be developed from, among many other sources, the (a) that epistemic error
seems possible (if not actual), (b) that (to respond to norm-expressivism) a-epistemicists – people
who lack an emotional motivation or affective “oomph” regarding their epistemic judgments –
seem possible (if not actual), that (c) epistemic judgments seem descriptive, in light of their
logical behavior, as well as (d) that, to many, epistemic judgments just seem true: they don’t
seem neither true nor false, and they don’t seem always false either (and they also don’t seem to
be true only “relative” to norms that are themselves either not true or only “true” relative to
themselves).
Perhaps expressivism or relativism is true for epistemic judgments: it’s not obvious why
epistemic judgments must be descriptive and sometimes true because of stance-independent
epistemic properties. But I suspect that most of us – given what we believe now – could develop
better arguments against epistemic expressivism than for it. So, all things considered, we have
more evidence to think epistemic judgments are sometimes literally true and we can see that this
implies that epistemic expressivism and relativism is false.
These arguments, however, will typically imply that various premises in arguments for
moral irrealisms have at least one false premise – an instance of a general premise like the
instances of (2) above that Gibbard and Field appeal to in making their cases for their moral and
epistemic irrealisms – and so are unsound arguments. This, of course, undercuts many of the
cases for moral irrealisms, including expressivisms and relativisms. So, if it’s reasonable to reject
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Gibbard’s and Field’s epistemic “norm expressivism” and “evaluationisms,” then it’s reasonable
to reject at least one premise in their arguments. Since the ideal candidate is a general premise,
linking features of epistemic and moral judgments to their lack of literal truth, rejecting their
epistemic irrealisms gives reason to reject their moral irrealisms.
4. Lurking Epistemic Irrealists
Writings of more earlier moral nihilists, such as Ayer, Stevenson, Hare, Mackie, and Harman,
confirm this theme. They point to features of moral judgments but fail to observe are present in
epistemic judgments also, and fail to see that their major premises have irrealistic metaepistemological implications.
So, Ayer observes that moral judgments are neither empirically-verifiable nor analytic
and so concludes they are never true, but fails to notice that epistemic judgments have these
same features. Stevenson claims to find a motivational quality in many moral judgments that can
as plausibly be found in a variety of epistemic judgments.
Many moral irrealists note the existence of moral disagreements and argue that this is
best explained, in part, by the hypothesis that there are no moral facts: if there were such facts,
then more people would “see” them and there’d be less moral disagreement. They offer no
precise survey of the depth and breadth of moral disagreement (and moral agreement either), but
it seems clear that there’s quite a lot of intellectual and epistemic disagreement also.
Disagreements about what’s reasonable, rational, and known, and how we ought to reason, are
common. Is the best explanation of these facts that there are no intellectual facts? That’s
doubtful. But if it is, what, if anything, would make it true that anyone should accept the best
explanation (a claim which there is considerable disagreement about also)? On epistemic
irrealism, nothing makes that true, so it’s not true that we should believe what these irrealists say
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about what we should believe and how we ought to reason. Perhaps they have strong feelings
and desires that we agree with them, but that’s seems to be no good reason to agree.
Some moral irrealists argue that moral qualities – like rightness and goodness – do not
explain anything in the physical world, and so we should not believe in them. But intellectual
and epistemic qualities, if they exist, seem as unexplanatory, and uncausal, as moral ones. If this
is a reason to reject epistemic properties and facts, then that’s, perhaps paradoxically, a reason to
think that the claim that we should believe only in what helps explain the physical world is not
true either. Again, these arguments for moral irrealism have implications for epistemic
judgments that it seems we are truly reasonable in think that we have reason to reject at premise
of the argument.
This theme can be developed with all the common arguments for moral nihilisms. They
all have a premise that suggests epistemological (and more broadly intellectual) irrealisms that
conflicts with much of what reasonably believe. This kind of irrealism might be true: reasons
why it couldn’t be are not so clear that the positions can be dismissed immediately. But insofar
as we believe, and believe more reasonably than we might reasonably believe the denials of
these claims, that some of our epistemic evaluations (“positive” ones, e.g., about what’s
reasonable, and “negative” ones, about what’s unreasonable, etc.) and such epistemic platitudes
we should have evidence and reasons for our beliefs, we should be consistent in our beliefs, and
that we should change our views when pressed by the weight of the evidence, we have good
reason to reject these arguments and all else that we see that is implied for the nature of moral
and epistemic evaluation.
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References
Field, Hartry, “Apriority as an Evaluative Notion”, Truth and the Absence of Fact (Oxford:
Oxford University Press (2001), pp. 361-387.
Field, Hartry, “Disquotational Truth and Factually Defective Discourse”, Truth and the Absence
of Fact (Oxford: Oxford University Press (2001), pp. 222-258.
Gibbard, Allan, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP) 1990.
Gibbard, Allan, Thinking How To Live (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP) 2003.
Harman, Gilbert and Thomson, Judith, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Malden, MA:
Blackwell) 1996.
Shafer Landau, Russ, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 2003.
Sturgeon, Nicholas, “What Difference Does it Make Whether Moral Realism is True?” Southern
Journal of Philosophy 24, 1986, pp. 116-117.
1
These arguments might be deductive or non-deductive in form. This deductive schema above can be adjusted to
accommodate that fact by changing (2) to something like (2’) that, probably, any judgment with features Φ is never
literally true or, (2’’), that any judgment with features Φ is probably never literally true.
The relevant sense of probability here is best seen as some “objective” sense, not a subjective or epistemic
sense.
Also, “features Φ” might be a single property or a conjunction of properties. Some candidates for Φ are quite
plausible regarding moral judgments (e.g., that they are neither empirically verifiable nor analytic), while others are
doubtful (e.g., that they are necessarily motivational).
2
For discussion of “literal” versus non-literal truth in ethics, see Sturgeon’s “What Difference Does it Make
Whether Moral Realism is True?” For discussion of the nature of “stance-independence,” see Shafer-Landau’s
Moral Realism: A Defence.
Even traditional “global” epistemological skeptics agree: they typically think that for a person, S, in a context, many
judgments like these are sometimes (if not always) true, for any S and any (or almost any) p: ‘S is unreasonable in
believing p,’ ‘S ought not to believe q,’ ‘r is irrational for S to believe,’ ‘S is unjustified,” “S ought not to believe t.”
So, even global skeptics appear to accept the semantic and metaphysical presumptions of “epistemic realism,” as I
characterize it below.
3
The common presumption seems to be that epistemic judgments, when true, are made true not by anyone’s (or any
collective’s) attitudes toward that (or any other) epistemic proposition: this suggests the presumption that epistemic
facts or properties are “stance independent” or “objective.”
4
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 35).
5
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 6). He writes, “morality concerns moral sentiments: the sentiments of
guilt and resentment and their variants. Moral wrongs are to be avoided on pain of these sentiments.”
12
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 7, 49). He also relates “coherent” to this set of concepts (Wise Choices,
Apt Feelings 32). Gibbard is fond of the term “notion”, hence my use of the term.
7
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 7, 9).
8
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 46).
9
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 8). Gibbard spends much of his book attempting to explain what it is for
norms to permit things and what it is to express norms. Understanding these notions is a challenge. Even he states
that he suspects that “were all philosophers to turn to analyzing the ‘acceptance of norms,’ all would fail.” (55). That
he says this about his own theory is discouraging for those who would like to understand and evaluate it: if a
theory’s creator thinks that all will fail, including himself, in trying to analyze his concept, then pessimism about
understanding it in a satisfying manner might very well be warranted.
In his new book, Gibbard develops this theory by, among other things, incorporating “minimalism” and so
being willing to speak of moral (and rational) truths, facts and properties. See Gibbard (Thinking How To Live x).
10
Due to lack of space here I am unable to discuss recent ‘minimalist’ moves to attempt to secure moral truth and
truth-makers for moral irrealists.
11
See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 243) and Field (“Apriority as an Evaluative Notion” 370).
12
See Harman (Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity).
13
See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 242).
14
Field has a technical explanation of what a norm, a “complete,” and an “incomplete” norm are, but an intuitive
notion of a norm is adequate for my purposes here. See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 244).
15
See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 248). This is similar to Harman’s claim that, “There is no single true
morality. There are many different moral frameworks, none of which is more correct than the others” (Moral
Relativism 8).
16
See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 247).
17
See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 248)
18
See Field (“Apriority as an Evaluative Notion” 381).
19
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 32).
20
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 6). Gibbard thinks naturalism doesn’t capture the ordinary notion of
judging something to be rational, but, oddly, seems to think that maybe his theory doesn’t either. He sometimes
seems to say that he is merely stipulating a sense of the term that he find interesting and fruitful. He writes, “My real
claim is not for the word ‘rational’, but for a meaning I want to exploit” (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 49).
21
See Gibbard (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 154).
22
See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 249).
23
See Field (“Factually Defective Discourse” 250).
24
Although this is Gibbard’s received view, at times he might deny it: “Take the stock example of the man who has
evidence his wife is unfaithful. Whether it is still rational for him to believe her faithful—whether such a belief
would be warranted—depends on his evidence, and on his evidence alone [although it might be emotionally
desirable for him to believe otherwise] .. The rationality of belief and its desirability, then, are different, if ordinary
thought is to be trusted (Wise Choices, Apt Feelings 36-37). Perhaps Gibbard is also “expressing a norm” in this
case, so there is no tension between it and his main theory.
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