The 'Now What' Problem for Error Theory

What should you do if there's nothing that you should do?

In this post, I continue to summarize my published philosophical works. This paper, “The ‘Now What’ Problem for Error Theory,” is the second paper I published, and it is (at this point) my most popular and most cited.

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As readers of my book will know, I am a moral error theorist. That means that I don’t think that there are any objective moral facts; nothing is good or bad, right or wrong. There’s nothing that you morally ought to do. I’ve come to this conclusion on the basis of rather abstract philosophical arguments. I think that the existence of objective moral facts has very strange implications which I’m very reluctant to accept. And I think that we don’t have any evidence for the existence of anything like objective moral truths. So I don’t think that objective moral facts exist.

So… now what?

This is a practical problem that confronts all moral error theorists. If you think that there’s no fact of the matter about how you should life your life, how should you live your life? If there’s nothing really wrong with killing babies, why not go around killing babies?

There are actually a few different questions we can ask here. First: what should we believe, morally speaking? Second, what should we say when engaged in morally-engaged conversations? And third, what should we do when practical problems confront us?

To answer these questions, we can’t look to what morality tells us to do. Because, if you’re an error theorist, there is no morality to tell us what to do. Instead, we have to answer these questions from our own perspectives, taking into account our own values. Different people will have different values, so different people will answer these questions differently. But here’s what normal people with normal values should do. If you are like the kind of person I describe here - and you probably are! - then you should do what I recommend.

First: what should you believe? Should you believe there are objective moral facts? Well, if you’re an error theorist, then: no! The arguments that lead to error theory show that there are no objective moral facts. If you accept those arguments, you shouldn’t think there are objective moral facts. Forming beliefs contrary to your evidence is irrational, and most people don’t want to be irrational in this way. So you reject your moral beliefs.

This brings us to the second question: How do you speak? You don’t believe that anything is really good or bad, right or wrong. But if someone shows you some horrible thing on the news — a serial killer, or a war with extreme civilian casualties — and asks you, “What do you think about this?” then how do you respond? An obvious answer, given that you’ve discarded your moral beliefs, would be to say “Actually, that thing you’re so worked up about isn’t bad at all. That’s because I’ve become convinced that nothing is really bad.” But while that’s the obvious thing to say from a certain perspective, if you think about it for a moment, that’s a crazy thing to say. If you said that, everyone would think you’re a psycho. So, really, what should you do? You should lie. You should tell everyone you think it’s bad, even if you don’t.

Is this being dishonest? Well, in a way, yes. Obviously. If you say “Killing is wrong” and you don’t think that killing is wrong, you’re straightforwardly lying. But in another way, no, you’re not lying. After all, if you’re a normal person, the thought of killing innocent people fills you with a particular kind of horror and loathing. You would never kill someone! That would be entirely contrary to your values. Those values aren’t objective, they’re subjective. But they’re your subjective values, and that matters quite a bit. So if you say “Killing is wrong,” then, in a way, you’ll mislead the person you’re talking to. But you’ll also be expressing your deepest (subjective) moral commitments, and so, in another way, you won’t.

This brings us to our third question: How should you act if you’re an error theorist? Should you go around killing people even if there’s nothing wrong with killing? No! Of course not! Again, as with language: the question of what your moral commitments are is distinct from the question of whether or not those commitments are reflections of some objective fact. Error theorists think that their commitments aren’t reflections of objective fact, but that doesn’t mean that you should give up your commitments! And so long as you maintain your moral commitments, you should act in accordance with those moral commitments. After all, if there are no objective moral facts, there’s nothing for you to act in accordance with but your deepest commitments!

In the paper, I call this idea “Substitutionism.” (I no longer like that label; oh well.) Use of moral language, beliefs about morality, and action on the basis of those beliefs are all important parts of our lives. Being an error theorist commits us to removing the moral beliefs that are at the center of those practices. But we can substitute our beliefs in our own moral commitments for the role that moral beliefs played in our life before becoming error theorists. And because our personal moral commitments are basically the same as our moral beliefs, this won’t amount to a major practical change in our lives. We’re simply shedding the illusion of objectivity in favor of a redoubled commitment to what we care about the most.

That’s the main idea.

In the paper itself, I spend a lot of time engaging with other error theorists who have given different answers to the ‘Now What’ Problem, and showing why these other answers are bad. You can read the whole thing here. I also revisit this idea in Chapter 8 of my book. And I discussed this point in depth on a recent episode of the Brain in a Vat podcast.