Ⅳ．The Argumentation Obligation of Brink's Realism

At present, Brink refutes the view of moral relativity in moral relativism at two levels of apparent disagreements and genuine disagreements, and further points out that moral relativism will lead to unacceptable results. However, does this mean that realism has been saved?No.

So far, realists have only shown that it is inappropriate for Mackie to regard morality as a completely opposite and incompatible social,cultural, and historical product. However, realists didn't really complete the argument: genuine disagreements can be solved, so people can grasp the moral truth. Brink fully admits this.

However, Brink points out that there are two exceptions that should not be included in the discussion: (1) Some interlocutors may have so systematically and completely wrong worldviews that we can't talk to them, (2) moral tie is possible, and some objective values may be incommensurable.

Brink therefore sums up the argument obligations of realists on moral disagreements as follows:

(P1): Moral disagreements in principle can be resolved, with the exceptions of systematic error and moral tie.

Both anti-realists and realists agree with the first part of the argument obligation, that is, moral realists should prove that moral disagreements in principle can be resolved. However, anti-realists can reject the latter two exceptions and think that realists must discuss how to form a moral agreement in these two situations.

With regard to the first exception (some interlocutors may have so systematically and completely wrong worldviews that we can't talk to them), I think it can be solved, so Brink doesn't need to shy away from relevant discussions. Suppose an interlocutor A tries to have a dialog with a specific moral belief holder B. A's conceptual scheme or way of looking at the world is completely different from B's. A's view of basic facts and the information held by B have nothing in common at all. For example, in B's eyes, an apple is an edible object, while for A, it is something that B can't understand through its information and conceptual scheme (figuratively speaking, in A's eyes, “apple” is flying octopus). Here, B doesn't think that A is really a normal human being, an interlocutor to talk to. We can express the objection to the first exception as:

Pi: If there are fundamentally incommensurable moral paradigms or conceptual schemes, then the language between each other's moral paradigms or conceptual schemes cannot be translated into each other.

Pii: The language between moral paradigms or conceptual schemes can be translated into each other.

Ci: There is no truly incommensurable moral paradigm or conceptual scheme.

Piii: “There is a truly incommensurable moral paradigm or conceptual scheme” is semantically equal to “there is the first exception.”

Piii: Ci

Cf: There is no first exception.

The most important premise in this argument is Pii. The reason why we can translate English into Chinese and Chinese into English is that we share the same way of looking at the world. This doesn't necessarily mean that the Americans and the Chinese are completely consistent in their specif ic beliefs, and this is not the case. To complete mutual translation, Americans and Chinese only need to enjoy the same or at least no fundamental difference in cognitive structure on the basic cognitive framework of conceptual scheme. On the contrary, if linguists try to translate the language system of bats, it is highly probable that they will not be able to establish the mutual translation between the human system and the bat system. Because bats know the world in an almost completely different way from humans. Perhaps bats have some subtle expressions about things beyond human knowledge (such as specific sound frequencies and wavelengths), which human linguists can't understand because of their different cognitive systems. If people don't share their reactions to common stimuli, thoughts and language will have no specific content, or even no content at all. Therefore, if the two languages can translate each other, then the two language users can at least understand each other's basic cognitive structure of the world. This mutual understanding is the premise of dialog.

If there really is an interlocutor whose information is systematically wrong, then there is no reason for people to regard him/her as a real interlocutor, because dialogue itself does not exist without a common conceptual scheme. Therefore, after proving that the first exception itself does not exist, Brink can modify his argumentation obligation and directly eliminate the first exception. Now, the argument obligation of the realists is:

(P2): Genuine disagreements in principle can be resolved unless there is a moral tie caused by incommensurable moral values.

For the second exception, I will challenge that it should be eliminated.

First, it damages the position of moral realism itself. This is not to say that moral realism and pluralistic truth are incompatible. In fact, moral realists don't need to assume that moral truth must be the absolute and unique truth required by Platonism. However, the path of moral realism should provide a way to solve the genuine moral disagreements, otherwise realism has no advantage compared with anti-realism. In fact, as Mackie pointed out, if moral realism is finally forced to admit that we can't reach agreements in some cases, it is more intuitive for anti-realism to explain that morality is the product of a specific social context.

Second, the epistemological requirement to identify some values as fundamentally incommensurable may be too high. In Kuhn's concept,incommensurability is a concept that acts on different paradigms. Kuhn believes that physicists in the quantum mechanics era can't really understand the physics paradigm in Galileo-Newton era, because the paradigm to which physicists are attached in the quantum mechanics era is fundamentally different from that in the Newton era. Therefore,incommensurability has two characteristics: 1) incommensurability is not a concept between specific beliefs, but a concept between two paradigms and two systems, 2) incommensurability is not only the inability to reach agreements, but the incomprehension of each other.

In other words, Brink needs to demonstrate that the two systems which differ in moral disagreements are incomprehensible to each other. This is obviously too harsh a requirement. Furthermore, according to Davidson's point of view, the fact that different languages can be translated into each other has shown that there is no incommensurable paradigm or conceptual scheme. English users can express Confucian collectivism, which means that at least the English translator can understand the basic semantics of collectivism. Again, this does not mean that westerners will necessarily agree on that, but at least that may be understandable.

Third, there are at least two possible responses. In his article “Non Relative Virtues”, Nussbaum discussed many ways to respond to the challenge of realism. Firstiy, the realists can argue that the seemingly irresolvable moral tie may be the result of not ref ining the problem.The question “What is ×××” can be refined to expand the scope of agreements. For example, instead of asking “what is justice”, people should ask what the universal principle of justice means in a specific social and cultural context, how to concretely realize it, and so on. By asking about these details, people can expand their consensus. Secondly, realists can argue that some moral agreements of people through moral discourse can always be revised constantly. This eternal revision process will bring people closer to moral truth.

To sum up, Brink should not and need not shy away from discussing the so-called “moral tie” scenario. However, through the second objection,the moral tie itself does not have any characteristics of independence and genuine moral disagreements (i.e. conceptual incomprehension), so it can be merged with it. It can be seen that Brink's realism has the following argumentation obligations in moral disagreements:

(P3): Moral disagreements in principle can be resolved.

As Rawls and Berlin pointed out, this will undoubtedly be very difficult, and it will be accompanied by extremely high argumentation obligations. In order to solve the problem of moral disagreements, realists not only need to point out that the genuine moral disagreements in metaethics can be eliminated, but also need to give a feasible methodology to realize this process.

Indeed, even the most optimistic realist has reason to question whether this picture can be realized when he/she sees the world in which people are now divided. Or, as Berlin said, this kind of attempt is only a beautiful fantasy in the end. Of course, the goal of this paper is only to distinguish the argumentation obligation of realism in moral disagreements and point out that it needs a strong argumentation obligation. Whether realists can put forward a theory to satisfy the argumentation obligation is another question.