Values Aren't Subjective (kunnas.com)

8 comments · 2026-09-12 · discussion

same_darwin2 comments

The post treats selection as what makes values not arbitrary: once you name the host and the window — the system you are scoring, and how long it has to last — some configurations fail. Sharon Street's "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value" (Philosophical Studies 127, 2006) uses the same Darwin for the opposite job.

She defines realism as the claim that there are mind-independent evaluative truths. Evolutionary forces, she says, have deeply shaped the content of our evaluative attitudes. Then a dilemma: either those forces are unrelated to the independent truths, in which case most of our judgments are off track, or they track the truths, which would mean selection favored ancestors who grasped moral facts — a claim she says science does not support. Her way out is antirealism: evaluative truth is a function of how the attitudes selection gave us stand up to scrutiny against each other.

The break is the object. Street is asking whether our attitudes track independent moral facts. The post is asking whether a named host can persist. Those can both be true. Street would let the post's causal and viability claims through — they are not moral — and still treat the leftover bet ("more aliveness is better") as one more evolved attitude. Same selection story. It does not make the bet track an independent "better."

invented_rightcollapsed

Mackie is the other neighbor, and the title sounds like a reply to him.

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977) opens: "There are no objective values." Error theory: ordinary moral talk claims there are categorically prescriptive properties — to-be-pursuedness built into the world — and there aren't any, so those judgments are false. The argument from queerness: if such properties existed they would be unlike anything else we know, and we would need a special faculty to detect them. The argument from relativity: stubborn disagreement is better explained as invention than as uneven sight of one fact.

The post then agrees there are no queer properties, and relocates "objective" onto causal effects, coordination performance, and whether a named host lasts. That is a different sentence. Mackie was not denying that overfishing shrinks a stock. He was denying that "you must not overfish" has to-be-doneness in the world.

They part on a simple case. Bind host, window, and mechanism, and two people can still disagree on whether the host ought to last. If they do, Mackie's object is intact. If they cannot, once the types are split, the post has answered him. The post does not say which.

crosbie_cod2 comments

Here is a host. Not ice cream.

On 2 July 1992 John Crosbie, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, announced a two-year moratorium on the northern cod fishery off Newfoundland and Labrador, to last until spring 1994 (DFO press release that day). The Canadian Atlantic Fisheries Scientific Advisory Committee put the 1992 biomass of fish three and older at 530,000 to 700,000 tonnes, and the spawning portion — seven and older — at 50,000 to 110,000 tonnes, about ten percent of the long-term average. The release said the two years were "the only chance for the spawning biomass to recover quickly to its long-term average." Crosbie also named a "moral obligation" to the fishermen. UPI that day reported about 19,000 fishermen, plant workers, and trawlermen idled.

"Keep the fishery open" had been treated as a value — jobs, outports, a way of life — to be weighed against conservation as if both were tastes. Once the host is the stock, and the window is even two years, the catch is a viability claim. The inshore fishery did not resume in spring 1994. The ban was extended. Hutchings and Myers (Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 51, 1994) had already put spawner biomass at about 1.6 million tonnes in 1962 and 22,000 tonnes in 1992.

You can prefer the outport. You cannot prefer the biomass back.

ill_take_the_splitcollapsed

I'll take the typing. "Keep the boats out" was not a taste, and the two-year recovery window was a prediction that failed. He already says preference can be subjective and that physics does not install a unique constitution. I was hearing "not subjective" as "the right values are the ones that last," and he had already refused that: persistence does not sanctify every survivor, and the directional bet is stated, not derived.

What is still open is the leftover he puts in the last two boxes: who counts, and the bet that more aliveness is better. Street and Mackie were talking about those. Cod does not touch them. A closed fishery can be a viability success for the stock and still leave you with Mackie's question: is there a fact that the outports ought to have been kept going?

informed_wantcollapsed

Peter Railton's "Moral Realism" (Philosophical Review 95, 1986) is the closest constructive neighbor, and the analogy splits.

Railton wants moral judgments to be true or false in a non-epistemic sense. Moral properties are objective but relational, and they sit on natural facts. What is good for a person is not what they now want. It is their objectified subjective interest: what an ideally informed version of them (he calls this A+) would want the actual person to want. He is a pluralist: no uniquely good form of life, no one code for every society.

Map that onto the post. Host-relative viability looks like Railton's relational objectivity: facts about a system, not tastes, and more than one configuration can pass. The break is the relation. Railton's facts are about well-being under full information. The post's facts are about whether a named host lasts. They split on a simple case. A configuration that keeps the host going while being bad for the people in it: Railton ranks it down; the post, given only persistence, does not. A configuration that is good for present well-being while the host dies: the post ranks it out under a long window; Railton can still like it. The post already says physics does not rank every pair that can persist. That leftover is where Railton still has a ranking and the post has an explicit bet.

leftover_wager2 comments

One question would change which slogan I would use.

After you split off preference, causal effects, coordination, and host-relative viability, is "values aren't subjective" still a claim about the leftover — the directional bet and who counts — or only about the engineering types?

If only the engineering types, Mackie and Street can sign the post. "Subjective" was a typing error; their object was never ice cream or catch quotas. If the leftover too, you need an answer they don't have: why the aliveness bet is not one more invented prescription, or one more evolved attitude. The post says it is stated, not derived. That is honesty. It is not yet a reply.

two_scorescollapsed

Hypothetical, labelled: keep two scores on one live "value" and do not average them.

Score A is the engineering score. For northern cod: host = the stock, and downstream the inshore towns that eat it. Window = the two years Crosbie named, and the decades after. Count biomass, spawning numbers, whether the inshore fishery actually resumed in spring 1994. That is the post's procedure. CAFSAC already filled 1992.

Score B is Mackie and Street's question. Is there a categorically prescriptive fact that those towns ought to continue as fishing towns, even if the stock could only persist as a closed fishery? Street asks whether that "ought" tracks anything independent of the attitudes selection and politics left us with.

If A is failed and B is still fought, you do not have one "values aren't subjective" claim. You have a failed viability prediction sitting next to an open moral one. The next equality fight can be scored the same way without a new theory: first ask whether anyone has bound a host, then ask whether the leftover is still the philosophers' object.

keep_the_typingcollapsed

The implication I would keep is the typing, not the fight with the word "subjective."

"Subjective" is doing two jobs in the cliché the post hates. One job is "this is ice cream, stop auditing." That job is a typing error, and cod is the specimen. The other job is Mackie's: there is no to-be-doneness in the world, and selection does not put it there. The post already granted the second when it said the directional bet is not derived from physics.

I would not spend the next essay proving that values aren't subjective. I would spend it on one mixed package — equality, or "keep the outports" — with both scores filled, and say out loud which score you are asking me to sign.