does the Evaluria hypothesis suffer the same fate as relativism?

In class the other day Charlotte asked a profound question and I didn’t have time to give an answer.  So I wanted to say a bit more about it here. 

I don’t recall the exact question, but it pertained to a part of the “Evaluria” hypothesis.  According to that hypothesis there is a non-coincidental correlation between, roughly, our strongly disliking actions of a certain sort and their being morally wrong (e.g., brutality, betrayal, neglect, hogging, and shirking).  When actions are targeted by the relevant attitudes and practices, they are morally wrong, and vice-versa.  But this seems to open up the hypothesis to the sort of objection faced by relativism.  For if the theory is committed to a correlation between actions being targeted by con-attitudes and their being morally wrong, isn’t it committed to saying that if we have con-attitudes to certain actions, then they are morally wrong, but if we don’t have con-attitudes to those actions then they aren’t morally wrong, even if they are otherwise exactly the same?  And that seems problematic: the mere fact that we feel a certain way about actions can’t itself make the difference between their being morally wrong and not (this is what is meant by the attitude- and practice-independence of morality).  So isn’t the Evaluria hypothesis undercut by just what undercut relativism?  I believe that Charlotte’s question was something like this.

I will reply in two stages. 

First, let’s consider this question: does the Evaluria hypothesis imply that if our con-attitudes were differently directed – if we disliked different actions in the way that we actually dislike brutality, betrayal, etc. – then those other actions would be morally wrong?  For instance, if we had disliked (and opposed in a socially coordinated way) finger-snapping or nose-scratching or dancing as such – not because we think they lead to death or pain or some recognizable bad but just in themselves – would those actions have been wrong? 

The answer is that the Evaluria hypothesis denies this.  It says that even if we had disliked those other things, the familiar wrongs – brutality, etc. – would still have been wrong.  (I take the fact that it has this implication to be a good feature of the theory; if a theory didn’t have this implication – like the version of relativism we considered – it would thus be problematic.)  This was the point of contrasting two things the word “Evaluria” might mean.  It could be the name of a location, like “San Francisco” or “Olduvai Gorge”.  Or it could be shorthand for a description, like “the place which makes us feel bad” or something like that (is “the North Pole” the name of a location?  Or is it shorthand for a description?  I think it’s the latter but I’m not sure what the description is exactly.)  If it meant the latter, then had different locations made them feel bad, those different places would have been Evaluria (just in virtue of their being the places that make them feel bad).  So if “morally wrong” meant something like “action of a sort we dislike and oppose” then if we had disliked and opposed different actions, different actions would have been wrong.  That’s the relativist idea, and it has an embarrassing result: it means that moral statuses turn out to depend on our attitudes and practices, which means that the mere fact that we're all against some kind of action -- even charity, rescue, etc. -- makes it wrong, even if nothing else is different about it.  That's implausible.

The Evaluria hypothesis is that moral terms like “morally wrong” are like "Evaluria" in having the former kind of meaning.  That is, just as “Evaluria” is simply the name of a location, “morally wrong” is just a term for a way of behaving; a way exemplified by such things as brutality, betrayal, and so on.  (Think of "doing wrong" or "wrongdoing", on this view, as like "dancing" or "repairing", the name of a type of behavior.  Which?  At very least we can suggest that it's what brutality, betrayal, hogging, and shirking have in common.  It takes work to give a more precise account.  Notice that it's also not easy to give an account of "dancing"; just try; or try "playing" or "joking".)  Given this, the implication is that, even if different places had made them feel bad, Evaluria would still be in the same place; and even if we had disliked different behaviors, the same old behaviors would have been wrong (because being morally wrong just is being behavior like that).  Olduvai Gorge is where the Leakeys made major discoveries, but “Olduvai Gorge” doesn’t mean “the place where the Leakeys made their discoveries”, and if they had made those discoveries elsewhere, Olduvai Gorge would have been exactly where it is, not where they made those discoveries.) 

I should add that if we had disliked different behaviors, then although those behaviors wouldn’t therefore have been wrong, we would have talked about them as if they are.  That is, we would have called them “wrong”, or used some word for them, and the word would have taken on the social function of “wrong”: we would have used it to display, guide, and mobilize our dislike of the actions to which we apply it.  But the fact that we would have called those actions “wrong” doesn’t mean they would have been; it just means we would have used “wrong” with a somewhat different meaning, even if it played the same social role.  (Trick question: if we had called tails “legs”, how many legs would horses have had?  Possible answers: one, four, or five.  The correct answer is four: our calling tails “legs” would not make tails legs, it would make us be using “legs” with a different meaning.  Likewise, just because we would have called finger-snapping “wrong” it would not have been wrong.)

It may be that Charlotte had in mind a different and somewhat deeper worry, to which I haven’t yet spoken.  And that brings us to the second stage.

Above I asked whether the hypothesis implies that if we had disliked different actions than those we do, whether it implies that those other actions would then have been wrong.  I said that it doesn’t.  But now let us consider – not counterfactual scenarios in which our feelings are different than our actual feelings – but the possibility that our actual feelings are quite different than we take them to be.  For it is possible that they are.  For an extreme example, we might imagine that you and I are utterly deluded – we are the only ones who dislike things like brutality, betrayal, hogging, etc. Everyone else really dislikes finger-snapping and such.  We’ve just been deluded, maybe by aliens conducting an experiment on us, manipulating our perceptions so that we seem to experience other people disapproving of murder when they really disapprove of dancing, and so on.  If that is so, then the hypothesis does seem to imply that, in fact, murder isn’t wrong, and finger-snapping and dancing is wrong, etc.  And that seems problematic. 

Before replying, I want to point out that there are possible cases of this sort, where our actual feelings about things may not to match up with morality in the way the theory suggests.  Let me give two examples, both controversial (for different reasons). 

First, consider adult, consensual, genuinely enjoyable, mutally beneficial-over-the-long-run incest (e.g., adult siblings falling in love and living a happy life together).  Perhaps you can’t believe in such a thing, but I think it’s possible, although common psychological processes make it unlikely.  Very many people think that incest is wrong no matter what.  And they have negative feelings about it.  I myself have had those feelings.  However, on reflection, it seems to me that there is nothing wrong with incest as such.  This is to say that it is not itself a normative factor, and so if cases of incest are wrong, it’s not ultimately because they’re incest but because they make the world a worse place, or involve doing or intending harm, failures to fulfill special obligations, etc.  So it seems to me possible that from the standpoint of our attitudes and practices, incest is on the side of brutality, betrayal, etc., and not on the side of finger-snapping, etc. So if it isn’t morally wrong, the case is a counterexample to the posited correlation between our strongly disliking actions of a certain sort and their being morally wrong.  (this is controversial, mostly because I’m assuming there’s nothing morally wrong with incest as such.  bear in mind that by “incest” I mean sex among the closely consanguineous (blood-related) as well as among those who lived together for extensive periods during at least one of their developmental stages – one or both of them became an adult in the presence of the other, basically.  When I say incest isn’t wrong as such, I mean the mere fact of one of these.  I’m not at all discounting the wrongness of rape, undue pressure, toxic secrets, subtle threats, or other ways real-life cases of incest can be morally terrible.)   

Second, consider homosexuality.  It seems that quite a few people seem to have feelings about it similar to those they have about paradigmatically wrong actions like brutality, etc.  Some suggest that this may largely be a disgust reaction due to things like imagining anal penetration – more like the disgust we might feel witnessing extensive rectal surgery than indignation at murder.  (The theory doesn’t posit a correlation between every negative feeling and wrongness, just moral feelings like indignation and guilt.)  Some suggest that negative feelings about homosexuality are just cultural by-products of outdated supernaturalistic assumptions.  However, suppose these and similar ideas are mistaken and that there really are negative moral feelings about homosexuality which are a natural human (robustly cross-cultural) tendency.  If so, then assuming that homosexuality isn’t itself wrong, here too would be a counterexample to the posited correlation between negative moral feelings and wrongness.  (this is controversial, mostly because i'm assuming it might turn out that homosexuality is disliked nearly as much as brutality, betrayal, and other paradigmatic wrongs)

These are interesting examples.  Ultimately I think there are differences between our feelings and practices regarding incest and homosexuality and those about brutality, betrayal, and so on.  The latter are in certain ways deeper, stronger, and more pervasive.  The differences, I say, makes it possible to simultaneously hold on to the hypothesis and think that there’s nothing remotely morally problematic about incest or homosexuality as such.  The fact that they aren’t morally wrong (as such) isn’t a counterexample to the correlation posited by the hypothesis. It’s only the brutality, betrayal, etc. feelings which are so correlated.  However, that’s a significant empirical guess which I’m not in a position to document – it would require major social scientific work, involving cross-cultural observations, experiments, and consideration of complex explanatory hypotheses. 

So for all I’ve said, the hypothesis might be refuted by these sorts of cases.  But let me just point out that the possibility of that sort of refutation is very different than the worry that the hypothesis implies that moral statuses are influenced by our feelings in ways which conflict with the attitude- and practice-independence of morality.  If it turns out that our feelings are very different than I think they are – that we actually really morally hate incest, homosexuality or even finger-snapping, dancing, and such – the conclusion I would draw is not that those things are wrong but that the hypothesis is mistaken.  I don’t arrive at my moral views by applying the hypothesis – it’s way too speculative for that.  Rather, I start with certain moral views – like that brutality, betrayal, hogging, and shirking are morally wrong – and I try to understand why we think, talk, and care about those behaviors in those ways -- and what those behaviors and ways really involve.  Part of my current hypothesis is the correlation we’ve been discussing – that, between our disliking and opposing behaviors in certain moralistic ways and their being wrong, when one exists, so does the other.  If I find counterexamples to that correlation, I won’t therefore change my moral views (though I’ll re-think them).  Rather, I’ll conclude that the hypothesis is incorrect as it stands. 

(Two final clarificatory comments.  First, when I say there’s a correlation between dislike and wrongness, I do mean a certain kind of dislike.  In particular, it’s widespread, strong, underwrites oppositional practices, is non-ulterior; and last but not least it is negative, paradigmatically, forms of anger, revulsion, aversion, self-dislike on performance, and so on.  And of course I talk of wrongness to illustrate but the hypothesis generalizes to all moral statuses, with relevant shifts in the accounts of the correlated feelings; e.g., pro-attitudes for judgments of rightness, goodness, virtuousness, and so on.  Second, I don’t think every wrong act is widely disliked; many aren’t widely known; for some, everyone who will ever know about them doesn’t dislike them at all (e.g., murderers who get away with it are glad they did it).  However, I do say that these actions will all be of some type which is correlated with dislike, at least in the sense that if we were to become aware of it, we’d dislike it.  It might help to think of these as the sorts of properties which might be normative factors, like making the world a better or worse place, or doing or intending harm, or brutality, betrayal, neglect, hogging, shirking, perhaps.)