Some features of English best accord with a subjectivist interpretation of ordinary moral language. I discuss this with Nils Franzen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUfH...

New post on why I don't think there are irreducibly normative reasons: www.lanceindependent.com/p/there-are-...

W00t!

Really enjoyed talking to @lanceindependent.bsky.social face to face. My first philosophy stream! Lance was a great host, my apologies for the poor audio on my end, especially the first half. www.youtube.com/live/z6OFkWz...

Lance Bush @lanceindependent.bsky.social and I wrote a takedown of "intuitions" as a normatively-laden concept deserving justificatory weight out of the gate. It's past time to give that notion the heave-ho. open.substack.com/pub/lanceind...

Congratulations to @simine.com well deserved winner of the Einstein Foundation Individual Award for Promoting Quality in Research 2025 🎉 www.einsteinfoundation.de/en/media/pre...

Hahahahaha we’re fucked.

My blog is back! Stan Patton and I wrote our most recent piece on intuitions, which may put an end to the intuition wars on Substack for good (they won't, but one can dream): www.lanceindependent.com/p/the-intuit... Stan did the bulk of the work here, as well as creating all the images.

There was this old suggestion from the rationality community from back in the day where you “taboo” a word (and any obvious synonym). This can put pressure on you to get clear about what you mean.

Congrats!!!

Correct.

One of the weirder reactions to people endorsing moral antirealism or moral relativism is the moralization of their adoption of these views. That is, critics seem to think that if you endorse these views, this reflects poorly on your moral values and your character.

I didn't find the case convincing. First, while you do make several clear assertions, I didn't see much in the way of arguments for those claims. Second, I think there are some issues with the reasoning at the end of the post (see my comment on substack where I explain what I take the issues to be).

Unfortunately. Moral realism is one of least defensible positions in analytic philosophy, and that's saying a lot. It's popularity and even its apparent resurgence is a testament to the persistence of bad methods. I'm still hoping one day that the dissident metaphilosophies will triumph.

More like the former. But it’s less about reading the wrong philosophers more about failing to read the right ones. Untutored introspection is otherwise silent on the relevant issues.

🔪Contra those who want the cake (hardnosed Darwinism) and to eat it, too (salvage some kind of moral realism): "minimal moral realism, based on cognitivism and the rejection of error theory, [...] faces a fundamental challenge from nonobjective relativism"

I like the moral realism debate but ultimately it doesn't matter. People just do what they do. #philosophy

@lanceindependent.bsky.social is one of the people I really like to listen to even though I strongly disagree with everything they say. @randalrauser.bsky.social is someone I like to listen to and tend to agree with. Double the fun! www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UcS...

From its description, "1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology is a constantly growing collection of over 200 original essays on important philosophical topics. These essays are introductions rather than argumentative articles." However, Nathan Nobis recently wrote this article:

Check out my interview with moral antirealist @lanceindependent.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UcS...

See my latest Blog Post, "Do Philosophers Need Intuitions?": www.lanceindependent.com/p/do-philoso...

Going live in a couple of minutes with DOCTOR Lance Bush, What's Wrong with Annaka Harris's Philosophy of Mind www.youtube.com/live/L3GuX3b...

🔪"Ultimately, perhaps, the error at the heart of morality is that we take the metaphysics of the external world and the agency of humans to 'fit together' in a way that cannot be accommodated within a naturalistic worldview."

"a certain pay-off in seeing these skeptical arguments piled up and jostling for attention, for it underscores the fact that moral responsibility is *fishy all over the place*"

I don't know of any good reason to associate psychopathy with a deficit in the ability to perceive objective moral truths; there's never been any compelling demonstrate anyone can detect moral truth in this way. I see little reason to associate psychopathy with highly contentious metaethical claims.

Love @lanceindependent.bsky.social, love Henry Shevlin, love videogames, what's not to love? Really enjoyed the enthusiasm of this concersation. youtube.com/live/MttmPst...

Who will be at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP) meeting this week?

Looking for philosophers to follow on Bluesky? Here are over 2,000 of them on my #philosophy (bsky.app/profile/did:...) and philosophy organisations (bsky.app/profile/did:...) lists! #PhilSky

Learned something new today: Zotero has a feature where it informs you if an article in your reference library has been retracted. Very cool!

"Is not the whole history of philosophy one long illustration of philosophic audacity in manipulating language, and does not experience show that philosophers frequently get away with their arbitrary modifications of '*the*' meaning of words and 'propositions'?" - FCS Schiller

Goodhart's Law is one of the most important forces in the world and it's incredible how little attention it gets.

A question for moral realists: Is it logically possible for the moral facts to be different from what you think they are? For instance, is it logically possible that it is morally obligatory to torture babies for fun, or to lie indiscriminately?

This is bleak reading

Academic philosophy is currently facing a challenge: there don't seem to be enough people available to review papers submitted to journals. Some people have proposed some ways to improve the situation. I think the problems in the field are more fundamental...

Moral antirealism is not the view that morality isn't real.

My god. Why are videos on moral relativism reliably so awful? This person makes an absolutely ridiculous objection to moral relativism. These aren’t legitimate objections. These are literally just people not understanding what the position is: www.youtube.com/shorts/DWdrT...

"It has been noted that much of philosophy of religion serves the function of an apologetics for religious belief. We can probably likewise say that much work in metaethics is a kind of apologetics for moral realism."

Is anyone else going to the 5th European Experimental Philosophy Conference this year in Norwich? x-phi.uea.ac.uk/EuroX-Phi202...

I am exhausted with people just declaring “this is the commonsense view,” when there is little or no evidence to support such claims, and often evidence to the contrary. Then I am supposed to respect that a given view is not controversial among philosophers.

Most of my formative experiences in philosophy were conversations, not reading essays. Yet most conversations are lost forever, since nobody bothers to record them. I think this should change. I had a second exchange with Dr. McAllister on metaethics. Check it out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya02...

I asked ChatGPT what my catchphrase was and I got "Philosophy isn't about philosophy," which I believe is a phrasing (X isn't about X) I got from Robin Hanson's ideas about signaling, so it's not even original. It also picked up on the pineapple on pizza stuff, but mangled the remark.

I'm not on Twitter, but that doesn't stop me from commenting on the metaethics discussions that go on there. See my recent Twitter Tuesday where I evaluate several ongoing discussions about moral realism over on Twitter: www.lanceindependent.com/p/nobis-on-a...

I don't think critiques of the reliability of intuitions, or their prominence in philosophy (e.g. Cappelen's Philosophy Without Intuitions) go far enough. I am inclined to think that there is no distinctive phenomena of "intuitions" at all. Some uses are reducible to mundane psychological phenomena

Unfortunately I think this has happened in contemporary analytic philosophy. Generations have been inducted into thinking in accord with a host of dogmas and presumptions about how to do philosophy. People who would take different approaches are selected out of the field...

Some people claim that they have a special intuitive faculty that allows them to gain insight into fundamental philosophical truths. Some people claim that they have the capacity to sense, detect, or communicate with God or supernatural entities. How do these claims differ? Is one more justified?

Hey y'all bout to go live with @lanceindependent.bsky.social talking about moral realism. Come hang out! www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bx...

This sounds great. I've been moving in the direction of thinking this is an important approach to take for empirical approaches to philosophy for some time. I mostly focus on problems with survey methods rather than actively advocating for something positive like this, so this is great to see!

Critiquing moral realism and defending antirealism is my thing. Unfortunately, when the topic comes up on Twitter, I'm not there, so I can't engage. To get around this, I've taken to writing articles criticizing popular discussion of metaethics on Twitter (often from philosophers). Here is one case:

Paper after paper after paper in philosophy includes remarks like: "We think that ..." With absolutely no specification about who "we" is. Why did philosophers start doing this? Just speaking on behalf of everyone (maybe? who knows! They're not clear!) in a super vague way.