Below is a transcript of an episode of “Vatsal’s Podcast”. You can listen to it using the player above or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Vatsal: Welcome to Vatsal's Podcast, part of a philosophy newsletter where I share original essays and conversations with leading thinkers. You can subscribe for free at readvatsal.com to get new episodes and posts delivered straight to your inbox.
My guest today is Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. His books include The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, and The Case Against Education.
We discussed ethical intuitionism, the view that some moral truths can be known intuitively, without relying on sense experience.
Here’s my conversation with Bryan Caplan.
Bryan Caplan, thank you so much for being here. It’s great to see you.
Bryan Caplan: Great to see you too, Vatsal.
Vatsal: I wanted to talk about meta-ethics and specifically ethical intuitionism. But let me begin with a question on common sense realism. What is the material difference between common sense realism and someone who is more skeptical like Hume if they make the same predictions about the world?
Bryan Caplan: I would start by saying that even to go and claim someone is making predictions, you really are talking about a prediction about what really happens. If you follow Hume strictly, then you’ve also got no knowledge that anyone else in the world even exists. So all you’re really doing is making predictions about your own experience, not what really happens.
And if you remember what Hume says about memory knowledge, you’re not even doing that because you don’t actually have reliable memory knowledge. You may say, oh, this is exactly what I predicted. Well, how do you know that what you predicted is, in fact, what you think that you predicted? It could just as well be that the universe just burst into existence this very second with false memories that you previously existed. So, I would say it is the difference between a normal view of the world and a totally bizarre one.
Vatsal: Would you say that your opposition to skepticism is consequentialist, like you are worried that it’ll lead to bad outcomes?
Bryan Caplan: No, I just think it’s false. I mean, if it’s true, if one were in fact actually sincerely skeptical, then it would definitely make sense to change your behavior in the same way it makes sense to act differently in a dream than in reality. If you knew for sure you were in a dream and you want to punch someone, why not punch someone in the dream? They’re not real. You’re not hurting anybody. On the other hand, if you know that it’s a real person, then it does change what would be proper behavior, of course.
And then if you’re in the position of, I don’t know, is it a dream or not. If it’s like a one in a million chance it’s real, then yeah, sure, why not punch the person? Who knows? They almost certainly are just a product of your imagination, anyway.
Vatsal: One objection that can be raised against intuitionism is that it doesn’t add anything. What problem does it solve, whether in epistemology or ethics, that couldn’t be solved without it?
Bryan Caplan: What I would say is that’s basically this fundamental anti-intellectualism of saying, I don’t care whether anything is right or wrong, so it doesn’t add anything. It’s like, well, the fact that you don’t care doesn’t matter. Is it true or not? And if it’s true, it adds something because it’s an additional fact. That’s the whole answer. If that’s not enough, say, like, was Hitler really evil? Or is it just society’s opinion that he was evil? What difference does it make? If a person is there, then it’s like, all right, look, why talk to a person like that? They’re not interested in the question.
Vatsal: No, I meant against naturalism. Naturalistic worldview has specific criteria like pain and pleasure. Intuitionism relies on something that is self-evident and that is in a sense vague. So, the question is, does it actually add anything to rely on intuition rather than just naturalistic, pain, pleasure, or egoism like Rand?
Bryan Caplan: Well, right. As G.E. Moore pointed out, it is a meaningful question to ask, “Is pleasure good?” And that’s his refutation and the whole basis of the naturalistic fallacy. It is a meaningful question. If someone just says, “no, that is not true, pleasure equals good by definition”, it’s like, okay, you’re not speaking English. And again, what’s the point of continuing the conversation if you’re going to be like that.
Vatsal: And you wrote that Ayn Rand’s ethical egoism is anti-realist. Could you elaborate on that?
Bryan Caplan: I honestly don’t remember specifically saying that, but I think that she is presenting it as a moral realist theory, but what she winds up doing is, in terms of constructing her argument, it does come down to, okay, well, this is what living things do, and it is the nature of a living thing in order to go and pursue its nature and to seek happiness if it’s a living being. And again, there is the question, all right, fine, suppose that’s true. Does that show it’s good? Does it show it’s right? And once again, it is a meaningful question.
She might actually bite the bullet and just say, in the same aspie voice I was just doing, “no, by definition, whatever maximizes an entity’s self-regarding happiness is it’s good”. And it’s like, okay, if you’re going to be that way, I don’t know what the point is of talking. You’re not speaking English and you’re not going and addressing the issues that seem perfectly normal to other people. But that’s where I would go with that.
Vatsal: Your blog post, it’s called “From Intuition to Contrarianism: A Case Study”. In that blog post, you discussed how employees can discriminate against employers, and you asked whether employers can also discriminate against employees the same way. Tyler Cowen disagreed with you on this and he’s also an intuitionist. So suppose a disagreement like this occurs between two intuitionists, how do you resolve that?
Bryan Caplan: First of all, I would say Tyler isn’t really intuitionist at all. I don’t really understand what he is, but he has not endorsed intuitionism as far as I know, except maybe to say, yes, well, of course, but it doesn’t matter. And all right, that’s a strange kind of intuitionism. In terms of this meta question, if there’s two people who share the same methodology, but they disagree, what can they do? All right. You might say, well, aren’t you just in an impasse then? No. So what is it that two people who are both empiricists can do if they disagree? They may say, let’s go, let’s review the empirical evidence more carefully. Let’s go and see if there’s some other evidence that I haven’t heard of. Similarly, if you have two intuitionists who disagree, one step is let’s go through the alleged intuitions more carefully and make sure that we even actually disagree. Second of all, so do you have any other intuitions that I might share? I think you’ve been talking a lot about intuition, but unless there’s some world community of intuitionists that I’m unaware of, I think that most people listening will have very little idea what we’re talking about. What I would say is my view of intuition just comes down to, you’ve got to start somewhere, with something that’s obvious. And if someone disagrees with something you consider obvious, what can you do? You’ve got to find something that’s even more obvious to them. And what if you can’t? They reject the thing that you find obvious, you can’t come up with anything that they find more obvious. Then you really are at an impasse. But there’s nothing special about intuitionism for that. If you’re an empiricist and you say, look, I say that the Rock of Gibraltar exists, and you take them there and you see there it is, and the other person says, I’m an empiricist, but I don’t see a rock. It’s like, hmm. You are sure you don’t see a rock? I see a rock. And it’s the same kind of thing, right? Again, you might say, well, empiricists don’t disagree with each other in that way. And like, well, I know a lot of empirical researchers who do have very deep, deep disagreements with each other. So, I don’t think so.
Vatsal: What is your main objection against naturalism, moral naturalism?
Bryan Caplan: Right. So G.E. Moore said it very well, and I’m happy to repeat what he said. For any natural property, which allegedly is the same thing as a moral property, you can always say, “yes, but is X good?” Someone says, you know, good means pleasure. Good means happiness. Good means longevity. Good means the survival of the community. You can say, yeah, well, but is the survival of the community good? And if you just say, “that is a meaningless question. By definition, the answer is of course, yes”. Then the conversation’s over, the person doesn’t really understand English. Or, if the person says, “hmm, interesting question”. Well, the point of this question wasn’t really even to answer that question. It was just to show that you’re committing the naturalistic fallacy and it’s always a meaningful question to say is a given descriptive situation, one that possesses a certain moral property.
Vatsal: How do you deal with the question of motivation? Suppose someone agrees that some moral facts, like murder is wrong, is self-evident, but he lacks the motivation. In that case, what can be done?
Bryan Caplan: There’s a classic list of how to motivate other people. There’s giving them an inspiring speech. There’s, well, look at this poor little person. Wouldn’t it be wrong to do that? There’s telling stories. There is the stoic one of “Your motivations do not matter, Sophocles, all that matters is the right, do the right”. You can try all these things and then, in the end, if the person says, I’m still not motivated, then it’s like, all right, well. I guess you’re just an immoral person. Nothing more I can do about it. The last thing is “hopefully you will mature over time and see the error of your ways”. Alright, that’s, you’re left with that. And it’s, that seems pretty lame. It’s like, that’s life. Life does not give anyone the superpower of motivating other people. If someone just says, yes, I don’t care whether anyone else lives or dies. And it’s like, well, really? If they’re, they’re firm on that, then it’s like, yeah, well I don’t see how I’m going to motivate you then.
Vatsal: Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I really appreciate it.
Bryan Caplan: Totally happy to do it.
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