Do moral truths exist independently of our attitudes, and if they don’t, why should moral reasoning and disagreement still seem so substantive?
My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.
1. Guest
Don Loeb is professor of philosophy at the University of Vermont, and his work has focused primarily on metaethical issues, including moral language, methodology, debating moral realism, and more.
2. Interview Summary
The interview starts by getting clear on what ‘moral realism’ amounts to: the host sketches it as (roughly) cognitivism + stance-independence + truth (and maybe an epistemic component), and Don Loeb pushes on what should count as definitional—especially whether “we know some moral facts” belongs in the definition rather than being a common realist commitment. From there, they use the “now what?” problem for error theory as a bridge to practice: even if metaethical theories differ, Loeb suggests that normative ethical deliberation can often proceed without much changing, because moral talk can serve familiar social and practical functions regardless of deep metaphysical disagreement. He illustrates this with an analogy: two people can participate in the same ritual (like saying grace) while privately attaching different theological interpretations to what they’re “doing,” and the shared activity still works for its purposes.
Building on that, Loeb defends the idea that an anti-realist can engage in ordinary moral discussion “just like anybody else,” while declining the realist’s ontological commitments—so the real action, for many everyday and philosophical purposes, is in the normative attitudes, deliberations, and patterns of responsiveness people share. The interview then digs into how we should understand reasons—especially the contrast between instrumental reasons and reasons that might apply even when you don’t antecedently have the relevant goal. That debate leads into side-discussion of broader views in contemporary ethics (including moral particularism-style disputes), with the participants noting that some influential ways of writing about reasons can feel much clearer in conversation than on the page.
A major theme of the second half is pressure-testing realism with “companion in guilt” style worries. One focal example is “gastronomic realism”: if the usual motivations for moral realism also seem to support objective facts about what foods are really good, that starts to look implausible—so the challenge is to say why moral value is importantly different. Loeb suggests there may be differences (including differences in how moral vs. gastronomic value show up in ordinary experience), even while emphasizing how the setup is meant to make the similarity feel uncomfortably close. They also discuss the “moral experience” argument for realism—roughly, the thought that moral experience presents morality as a realm of fact, and that we should accept that unless we have strong counterevidence—where Loeb is skeptical of both the experiential presumption and the inference to realism, comparing the structure to familiar arguments from religious experience and insisting that what’s needed is evidence, not just reports that “it seems that way to me (and my friends).”
3. Interview Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:40 - Moral realism
04:39 - Anti-realism and anti-factualism
08:18 - Concern for non-factualism
11:19 - Normative vs. metaethical attitudes
12:25 - Is moral realism intelligible?
24:34 - Reasons for belief
26:20 - Gastronomic realism
29:09 - Moral realism inert?
31:07 - Moral naturalism
34:32 - Non-naturalist realism
37:13 - Reasons
38:51 - Jonathan Dancy and reasons
41:16 - Asymmetry with gastronomic realism
43:03 - Moral experience
50:00 - Philosophical and common use
57:37 - Best explanation
59:39 - Burden of proof
1:02:14 - Evidence and theory selection
1:05:04 - Strong seemings?
1:06:56 - Descartes and studying philosophy
1:10:16 - Moral disagreement
1:11:55 - Eric Sampson and responses to disagreement
1:18:24 - Realist response
1:21:11 - Michael Huemer and phenomenal conservatism
1:23:59 - Moorean shifts
1:29:04 - Argument from moral experience
1:30:50 - What is a good argument?
1:32:17 - Companions in guilt
1:37:41 - Epistemic reasons
1:40:31 - Aesthetic value and value generally
1:44:09 - Relativism and toleration
1:45:24 - Other problems for realism
1:47:29 - Moral facts vs. preferences
1:55:02 - Folk usage
2:03:19 - Value of philosophy
2:05:57 - Conclusion
