Hier, wenn wir kämpfen! Hier, wenn sie sterben!
Modeling Presentism in Four Dimensions
An intrinsic part of special relativity is the Minkowski Spacetime model, which has built into it compelling reasons for an entire continuum of temporal events to exist in static, yet relative relationships with each other. This is prima facie opposed to Presentism, and leaves the Presentist with two options: abandon SR, and look for another scientific theory more amiable to Presentism, or show how Presentism and SR aren’t mutually exclusive. Given the high level of acceptance of SR in physics and its strength as a theory, it would be in the Presentist’s best interest to seek a theory that puts his views within SR, rather than opposed to it. Unfortunately, the consequent of this approach is a view of the universe that is ill defined at best, and requires huge revisions to our concepts of existence and reality.
The argument against Presentism from the standpoint of SR comes as an immediate consequence of the idea of motion and time being relative to one’s frame of reference. Presentism dictates that only present events are real. If we were to draw out the universe’s entire history as a line, with every event as a point, only a single point would actually exist; the points before and after it merely are descriptions of things that used to exist, but do not any longer. The present, according to SR, are all the things that are simultaneous with you relative to the frame at which you are at rest. But imagine this: two bursts of light are emitted from two satellites, which are not geosynchronous in their orbits. These bursts are equal-distant from a spaceship that isn’t moving relative to these satellites, and from a corresponding observatory on Earth. The person manning the spaceship would see the bursts of light at the same time and, knowing that light travels at a constant speed, would reason, correctly, that the bursts were emitted simultaneously. This is the correct judgement because, from his frame of reference, he isn’t in motion. But the observatory on Earth would see the bursts happening at different times, receiving one burst before the other. The person on Earth, knowing that he was equal-distant between the two satellites at the time the burst were admitted, and that light travels at a constant speed, would conclude that the events happened at different times. To the astronaut, it would look like the observatory was moving eastward, towards one burst and away from another. By contrast, the observatory would see the spaceship slipping westward, away from one burst and towards another, thus offsetting the difference in their burst times. What this means, according to SR, is the astronaut is seeing what are a past event (the burst east of the observatory) and a future event (the western burst) for the observatory as both as present relative to his frame of reference. If Presentism is correct, the bursts both do exist (they’re present for the astronaut) and do not exist (they are not present for the Earth). Reductio ad absurdum, Presentism is false.
The Presentist, rather than denying SR, could offer an alternate account of what Presentism posits in the first place. In order to revise Presentism, while still keeping out past and future as existent entities, he needs to embrace a relativistic existence. Under relativistic Presentism, our present events are real relative to our FoR, but they are not real relative to some others. In the previous example, the burst events would be real for the astronaut at the moment they were emitted relative to him, but not for the observatory on Earth. This essay is real now, relative to the Earth’s FoR, but it still isn’t real for those in a different galaxy. Frames of reference could be found, or at least plausibly imagined, where all of human history isn’t real at all, still having yet to happen. In this way, a dedicated Presentist could escape the problems posed by SR.
This is an unappealing revision to Presentism for several reasons, but the most damning objection is not the nigh-incomprehensible concept of relative reality. Any Presentist who accepts this position is abandoning all the philosophical reasons and arguments to accept Presentism in the first place. The major draw was the ontological parsimony that Presentism advocated. With this revision, the philosopher, in return for preserving something like Presentism, has demolished the positive qualities that make it a theory worth examining. Instead of past and future events, we have an explosion of present events; for every single thing there is a separate and unique present. This erases the simplicity upon which Presentism depends on to be an attractive theory. Common sense was also supposed to be an appealing part of Presentism, but this revision takes it much farther away from common sense than static time theories. Providing a definition of terms like “real” or “exist” in relative terms will cause bewildered looks from all sides of this debate. The common sense view of reality is as one whole that different people share, not this picture of different realities for everything. Those drawn to Presentism because of a worry that existence of the future contradicts free will can also find no appeal in this revision. Because what is a future event for us is already unfolding in a different present. Anything we consider in the future has already happened in some FoR, and so we find this new Presentism to have the same problems avoiding determinism as theories that posit the existence of future events. On all sides, Presentism has become an ugly and implausible theory with no philosophic reasoning left to support it.
While it might be tempting to redefine existence to allow Presentism to make sense in a universe of special relativity, in the end one must do away with all the advantages of Presentism to accommodate this. Much as the Presentist might be loathe to admit it, he cannot reconcile his theory with Einstein’s, without ruining the former in the process.
Do We Need Ethical Facts To Disagree?
One of the great benefits of analyzing ethics and devising ethical theories is the potential to solve ethical disagreement. Therefore, one of the most important facets of any meta-ethical theory is its account and explanation of ethical disagreements. This is an especially tricky area for any Non-Cognitivist; if ethical facts don’t exist, then what is being argued in these cases? On the other hand, what can ethical facts explain about these disagreements that other theories cannot? These questions prompt us to take a close look at a modern Naturalist and Non-Cognitivist theory, and weigh their relative merits when dealing with ethical debate. For the sake of charity, I have selected the best theory from each side of the issue to be analyzed next to each other. Railton’s Synthetic Naturalism is a new, promising avenue for the Naturalist that does not fall prey to the traditional arguments leveled at Naturalism. And for Non-Cognitivism, Hare’s Prescriptivism provides the clearest account of ethical disagreement. Though these are both formidable and well-developed theories, Hare’s theory has several attractive aspects that Railton’s lacks, while Railton’s meta-ethical account of disagreement seem to not do a better job than Hare’s, but with more ontological complication. If there is something Railton’s theory can do better than Hare’s, it does not concern ethical disagreement.
Before examining any philosopher in detail, we must first understand what qualifies as a genuine ethical disagreement. It firstly is a dispute between two (or more) sides over an ethical claim in normative ethics. An example would be the statement “There are situations in which starting a war is morally permissible.” It must also be assumed that both parties are well informed, and are not mistaken about relevant information concerning the issue at hand. Finally, the concerned parties are using their terms in the same way; that is, they cannot be having a genuine ethical disagreement over war if the two sides are denoting different things when they use the term “war”. One might mean aggressive wars, while the other may mean war in a more general sense. Given these qualifiers, it is very much the case that people have genuine ethical disagreements, so any meta-ethical theory must have within in it an adequate account of the nature and meaning of genuine ethical disagreement.
Railton is a moral realist, and as such, his views are fairly in-step with most of the philosophical community. Railton’s system advocates a reform of the term “good”; to give it a new definition that will be clearer and more disposed to analysis and discussion of ethical facts. His inquiry starts with an account of what the personal good is; personal good is simply put, that which is in an individual’s interest. This is not the same as that which an individual wants for himself, although the two can coincide. A person can desire something not in their interest for two reasons: incomplete information or poor reasoning. A person’s wants are called his subjective interests. Now, imagine if that person did have complete information and sufficiently strong rational faculties. What this new, more aware person (person+) desires will always be in his self-interest, because he is devoid of the things that impede sound judgement. The desires a person+ has are called the objective interests of that person.
We have not yet arrived at Railton’s account of what moral facts consist in, but the groundwork has been laid. The answer to the question “is X morally good” follows a simple formula. First, an impartial, social point of view must be our frame of reference for moral judgement. To make correct judgements about whether X is morally good, we have to look at all people affected by X (social) but not favor anyone over anyone else (impartial). From this frame of reference, if X maximally promotes the objective interests of all concerned individuals, then X is morally good. And this, according to Railton, is how we can come to know the facts about moral good.
With this laid out, we can now make sense of genuine ethical disagreements under Railton. Genuine ethical disagreement can arise from two things; disagreement about the non-moral value of the issue at hand or disagreement on whether the issue maximally promotes the objective interests of all concerned parties. For example, abortion is a highly contentious issue right now. A person against abortion may argue that it is in no one’s objective interest to get an abortion, except for very special cases. In which case, no one outside of these special cases should get abortions, as it goes against the objective interests of all concerned parties. One could also argue that while abortion is sometimes in the objective interest for a person, the consequences of widely permitting abortion are very much against the other objective interests of all the concerned parties. So much so that it would better serve everyone’s overall objective interests to not have abortions, or at least to significantly restrict them. It is important to see that under Railton, there is a fact as to which view is correct for each genuine moral disagreement. It is worth noting that in cases of intense or common ethical disagreement, the cause is a clash between different people’s subjective and quite possibly objective interests. Railton’s theory predicts that if two groups of people have different, mutually exclusive interests, this will naturally lead to genuine moral disagreement. There is still a fact as to which side of the debate is right, but it is much harder to determine which is right than cases where agreement is much more common (e.g. murder is wrong). Remember that for Railton, there is one correct answer for any normative ethical claim, as there are facts about what our objective interests entail. So for any genuine ethical disagreement, one side will always be right, with contradicting positions being false.
Hare has a very different approach to ethics; his main thesis is that moral terms have two aspects: the descriptive and the prescriptive. The descriptive aspect is that which Naturalists like to bring forward: that moral terms act as a descriptor. Part of the nature of descriptive terms, including ethical terms, is that they entail universalizability. What that means is that when a person makes a statement “X is good” he is constrained to saying that things similar to X in the relevant respects (those respects that lead this person to call X good) are also good, lest he contradict himself. The other aspect of ethical terms is the prescriptive; this is the aspect commonly emphasized by Non-Cognitivists. For a term to be prescriptive is for it to convey preference. In this way, to say “X is P”, where P is a purely prescriptive term, is to say “I have a preference toward X”. There is nothing constrictively rational about purely prescriptive terms; our preferences and opinions can be formed in any way we please, as long as descriptive evaluations do not come into play. Hare claims that by only emphasizing either the descriptive (rational) or the prescriptive (free), meta-ethicists produce incomplete, one-sided accounts of our ethical terms. The only complete way to understand ethical terms is to embrace both aspects of these terms, and come to conclusions based on them.
This view leads to some interesting ideas about the nature of ethics. First of all, because of their prescriptive meaning, we are not forced to change our moral views solely based on facts and the meaning of moral terms. This is what makes Hare a Non-Cognitivist. But we can still engage in moral reasoning, because whenever we morally evaluate something, we are committed to making the same evaluation in relevantly similar cases. For example, if I say “it is good for me to eat meat”, I must approve of meat eating in relevantly similar cases. The unique facet of Hare is the idea that a given person’s moral system has to be rational and internally consistent, even though ethics are not based on facts.
Hare’s account of moral disagreement is radically different, of course, from Railton’s. The claim here is that since ethics are akin to opinions, genuine ethical disagreement is simply a case where one person prefers some moral judgement and another person prefers an opposing judgement. But that does not mean ethical debate is fruitless; one side can persuade another through showing how their stance on an issue is contrary to other principles they hold. For example, a person arguing against abortion could try and convince others that there is no relevant difference between the abortion of a fetus and infanticide. This person is making an educated guess that most people, even those who are for abortion, have very strong anti-infanticide sentiments, and if he is correct, they must change their stance on either abortion or infanticide. So when we engage in ethical debate with someone with whom we have a genuine ethical disagreement, we are trying to convince someone that an ethical position they hold is contrary to another ethical position they also hold, in order to make them revise their ethical system on pain of contradiction.
Both of these accounts give adequate explanations about the nature of genuine ethical disagreement, but Hare’s account has several advantages over Railton’s. Firstly, there is an attractive freedom in Hare’s accounting of ethical disagreements, but paired with the ability to meaningfully discuss and argue about ethics. Hare avoids the trap of the Emotivists, who have a problem explaining why ethical disagreement seems different from cases of divergent opinions. At the same time, anyone that is fond of a normative ethical theory can continue to employ it, as long as it is internally consistent. If an individual has a strong like of Utilitarianism as a way of deciding on ethical judgement, he can continue to employ it to form ethical judgements. Hare also has an appeal to the metaphysically inclined, as it is committed to the existence of fewer entities, and is more in keeping with the principle of ontological parsimony (Occam’s Razor). This amounts to a need by those inclined toward Railton and Synthetic Naturalism what his theory does better than Hare’s in explaining genuine ethical disagreement; if not, then both these theories explain equally well.
There is a serious objection that might be raised by a defender of Railton, or any form of Ethical Realism, against Hare’s account of genuine ethical disagreement. Namely, it is the overall trend toward consensus we see on normative ethical issues. Most of the contentious debates of the past, such as slavery, segregation, child labor have been settled and now, people’s ethical assertions seem overwhelmingly one-sided, where not a century ago it was much more divided. Railton has his naturalist explanation for this; with critical ethical discourse, as well as our progress in areas of learning (genetics, for example, sheds a lot of light on ethical issues involving race), we are getting closer to the actual moral facts. That is, the facts about what are in people’s objective interests, and what kinds of actions will maximally promote that. But there’s no real reason for ethical issues to ever get resolved under Hare’s theory. After all, Hare himself admits that people rationally continue to hold a single ethical judgement, even if it means abandoning all his other judgements. There is nothing in Hare that predicts or explains a trend toward consensus, and that may be the way in for Railton.
It is true that Hare has no direct response to this accusation, but there is a clear way out for the Prescriptivist, and it lies mostly in an increase in ability to understand relevant differences. This has been facilitated through progress in the sciences. Much in the same way that more knowledge helps us to determine what the objective interest of a person is under Railton, it can help Hare’s case too. One who favors Hare could quite rightly claim that the main reason we, as a society, seem to be arriving at consensus where once there was genuine ethical disagreement is that in days past, we were not as informed as to the relevant differences for a given issue. For example, to a slave trader in the 17th Century, people in Africa are primitives with dark skin; that seems very different from a European. But we now know that these differences are arbitrary at best, through advances in evolution, genetics, and sociology, and we have come to realize that if we commit ourselves to “slavery of Africans by Europeans is good”, we would have to consent to being in turn enslaved by another culture. This is, of course, not at all desirable, and so people began to disapprove of slavery until this judgement was the only mainstream view about slavery. Something very similar is happening right now in the abortion debate; almost all the genuine ethical disagreement is focused on whether there is a relevant difference between a fetus and a person. Given that humans overall desire very similar things (e.g. life, security, shelter and more) it should be as no surprise we are learning what moral judgements work counter to these desires, and coming to overall consensus on which ones are most advantageous for these ends.
Hare and Railton’s theories both have fairly equal explanatory power in regards to genuine ethical disagreement. But Hare doesn’t rely on questionable entities like ethical facts, and in addition provides much more freedom to the normative ethicist to keep evaluating and arguing much as they have been. Whereas Railton has no such advantages other than perhaps a false sense of certainty. Railton’s theory might explain something that Hare can’t, but whatever that may be, it is not concerning ethical disagreement.
An intrinsic part of special relativity is the Minkowski Spacetime model, which has built into it compelling reasons for an entire continuum of temporal events to exist in static, yet relative relationships with each other. This is prima facie opposed to Presentism, and leaves the Presentist with two options: abandon SR, and look for another scientific theory more amiable to Presentism, or show how Presentism and SR aren’t mutually exclusive. Given the high level of acceptance of SR in physics and its strength as a theory, it would be in the Presentist’s best interest to seek a theory that puts his views within SR, rather than opposed to it. Unfortunately, the consequent of this approach is a view of the universe that is ill defined at best, and requires huge revisions to our concepts of existence and reality.
The argument against Presentism from the standpoint of SR comes as an immediate consequence of the idea of motion and time being relative to one’s frame of reference. Presentism dictates that only present events are real. If we were to draw out the universe’s entire history as a line, with every event as a point, only a single point would actually exist; the points before and after it merely are descriptions of things that used to exist, but do not any longer. The present, according to SR, are all the things that are simultaneous with you relative to the frame at which you are at rest. But imagine this: two bursts of light are emitted from two satellites, which are not geosynchronous in their orbits. These bursts are equal-distant from a spaceship that isn’t moving relative to these satellites, and from a corresponding observatory on Earth. The person manning the spaceship would see the bursts of light at the same time and, knowing that light travels at a constant speed, would reason, correctly, that the bursts were emitted simultaneously. This is the correct judgement because, from his frame of reference, he isn’t in motion. But the observatory on Earth would see the bursts happening at different times, receiving one burst before the other. The person on Earth, knowing that he was equal-distant between the two satellites at the time the burst were admitted, and that light travels at a constant speed, would conclude that the events happened at different times. To the astronaut, it would look like the observatory was moving eastward, towards one burst and away from another. By contrast, the observatory would see the spaceship slipping westward, away from one burst and towards another, thus offsetting the difference in their burst times. What this means, according to SR, is the astronaut is seeing what are a past event (the burst east of the observatory) and a future event (the western burst) for the observatory as both as present relative to his frame of reference. If Presentism is correct, the bursts both do exist (they’re present for the astronaut) and do not exist (they are not present for the Earth). Reductio ad absurdum, Presentism is false.
The Presentist, rather than denying SR, could offer an alternate account of what Presentism posits in the first place. In order to revise Presentism, while still keeping out past and future as existent entities, he needs to embrace a relativistic existence. Under relativistic Presentism, our present events are real relative to our FoR, but they are not real relative to some others. In the previous example, the burst events would be real for the astronaut at the moment they were emitted relative to him, but not for the observatory on Earth. This essay is real now, relative to the Earth’s FoR, but it still isn’t real for those in a different galaxy. Frames of reference could be found, or at least plausibly imagined, where all of human history isn’t real at all, still having yet to happen. In this way, a dedicated Presentist could escape the problems posed by SR.
This is an unappealing revision to Presentism for several reasons, but the most damning objection is not the nigh-incomprehensible concept of relative reality. Any Presentist who accepts this position is abandoning all the philosophical reasons and arguments to accept Presentism in the first place. The major draw was the ontological parsimony that Presentism advocated. With this revision, the philosopher, in return for preserving something like Presentism, has demolished the positive qualities that make it a theory worth examining. Instead of past and future events, we have an explosion of present events; for every single thing there is a separate and unique present. This erases the simplicity upon which Presentism depends on to be an attractive theory. Common sense was also supposed to be an appealing part of Presentism, but this revision takes it much farther away from common sense than static time theories. Providing a definition of terms like “real” or “exist” in relative terms will cause bewildered looks from all sides of this debate. The common sense view of reality is as one whole that different people share, not this picture of different realities for everything. Those drawn to Presentism because of a worry that existence of the future contradicts free will can also find no appeal in this revision. Because what is a future event for us is already unfolding in a different present. Anything we consider in the future has already happened in some FoR, and so we find this new Presentism to have the same problems avoiding determinism as theories that posit the existence of future events. On all sides, Presentism has become an ugly and implausible theory with no philosophic reasoning left to support it.
While it might be tempting to redefine existence to allow Presentism to make sense in a universe of special relativity, in the end one must do away with all the advantages of Presentism to accommodate this. Much as the Presentist might be loathe to admit it, he cannot reconcile his theory with Einstein’s, without ruining the former in the process.
Do We Need Ethical Facts To Disagree?
One of the great benefits of analyzing ethics and devising ethical theories is the potential to solve ethical disagreement. Therefore, one of the most important facets of any meta-ethical theory is its account and explanation of ethical disagreements. This is an especially tricky area for any Non-Cognitivist; if ethical facts don’t exist, then what is being argued in these cases? On the other hand, what can ethical facts explain about these disagreements that other theories cannot? These questions prompt us to take a close look at a modern Naturalist and Non-Cognitivist theory, and weigh their relative merits when dealing with ethical debate. For the sake of charity, I have selected the best theory from each side of the issue to be analyzed next to each other. Railton’s Synthetic Naturalism is a new, promising avenue for the Naturalist that does not fall prey to the traditional arguments leveled at Naturalism. And for Non-Cognitivism, Hare’s Prescriptivism provides the clearest account of ethical disagreement. Though these are both formidable and well-developed theories, Hare’s theory has several attractive aspects that Railton’s lacks, while Railton’s meta-ethical account of disagreement seem to not do a better job than Hare’s, but with more ontological complication. If there is something Railton’s theory can do better than Hare’s, it does not concern ethical disagreement.
Before examining any philosopher in detail, we must first understand what qualifies as a genuine ethical disagreement. It firstly is a dispute between two (or more) sides over an ethical claim in normative ethics. An example would be the statement “There are situations in which starting a war is morally permissible.” It must also be assumed that both parties are well informed, and are not mistaken about relevant information concerning the issue at hand. Finally, the concerned parties are using their terms in the same way; that is, they cannot be having a genuine ethical disagreement over war if the two sides are denoting different things when they use the term “war”. One might mean aggressive wars, while the other may mean war in a more general sense. Given these qualifiers, it is very much the case that people have genuine ethical disagreements, so any meta-ethical theory must have within in it an adequate account of the nature and meaning of genuine ethical disagreement.
Railton is a moral realist, and as such, his views are fairly in-step with most of the philosophical community. Railton’s system advocates a reform of the term “good”; to give it a new definition that will be clearer and more disposed to analysis and discussion of ethical facts. His inquiry starts with an account of what the personal good is; personal good is simply put, that which is in an individual’s interest. This is not the same as that which an individual wants for himself, although the two can coincide. A person can desire something not in their interest for two reasons: incomplete information or poor reasoning. A person’s wants are called his subjective interests. Now, imagine if that person did have complete information and sufficiently strong rational faculties. What this new, more aware person (person+) desires will always be in his self-interest, because he is devoid of the things that impede sound judgement. The desires a person+ has are called the objective interests of that person.
We have not yet arrived at Railton’s account of what moral facts consist in, but the groundwork has been laid. The answer to the question “is X morally good” follows a simple formula. First, an impartial, social point of view must be our frame of reference for moral judgement. To make correct judgements about whether X is morally good, we have to look at all people affected by X (social) but not favor anyone over anyone else (impartial). From this frame of reference, if X maximally promotes the objective interests of all concerned individuals, then X is morally good. And this, according to Railton, is how we can come to know the facts about moral good.
With this laid out, we can now make sense of genuine ethical disagreements under Railton. Genuine ethical disagreement can arise from two things; disagreement about the non-moral value of the issue at hand or disagreement on whether the issue maximally promotes the objective interests of all concerned parties. For example, abortion is a highly contentious issue right now. A person against abortion may argue that it is in no one’s objective interest to get an abortion, except for very special cases. In which case, no one outside of these special cases should get abortions, as it goes against the objective interests of all concerned parties. One could also argue that while abortion is sometimes in the objective interest for a person, the consequences of widely permitting abortion are very much against the other objective interests of all the concerned parties. So much so that it would better serve everyone’s overall objective interests to not have abortions, or at least to significantly restrict them. It is important to see that under Railton, there is a fact as to which view is correct for each genuine moral disagreement. It is worth noting that in cases of intense or common ethical disagreement, the cause is a clash between different people’s subjective and quite possibly objective interests. Railton’s theory predicts that if two groups of people have different, mutually exclusive interests, this will naturally lead to genuine moral disagreement. There is still a fact as to which side of the debate is right, but it is much harder to determine which is right than cases where agreement is much more common (e.g. murder is wrong). Remember that for Railton, there is one correct answer for any normative ethical claim, as there are facts about what our objective interests entail. So for any genuine ethical disagreement, one side will always be right, with contradicting positions being false.
Hare has a very different approach to ethics; his main thesis is that moral terms have two aspects: the descriptive and the prescriptive. The descriptive aspect is that which Naturalists like to bring forward: that moral terms act as a descriptor. Part of the nature of descriptive terms, including ethical terms, is that they entail universalizability. What that means is that when a person makes a statement “X is good” he is constrained to saying that things similar to X in the relevant respects (those respects that lead this person to call X good) are also good, lest he contradict himself. The other aspect of ethical terms is the prescriptive; this is the aspect commonly emphasized by Non-Cognitivists. For a term to be prescriptive is for it to convey preference. In this way, to say “X is P”, where P is a purely prescriptive term, is to say “I have a preference toward X”. There is nothing constrictively rational about purely prescriptive terms; our preferences and opinions can be formed in any way we please, as long as descriptive evaluations do not come into play. Hare claims that by only emphasizing either the descriptive (rational) or the prescriptive (free), meta-ethicists produce incomplete, one-sided accounts of our ethical terms. The only complete way to understand ethical terms is to embrace both aspects of these terms, and come to conclusions based on them.
This view leads to some interesting ideas about the nature of ethics. First of all, because of their prescriptive meaning, we are not forced to change our moral views solely based on facts and the meaning of moral terms. This is what makes Hare a Non-Cognitivist. But we can still engage in moral reasoning, because whenever we morally evaluate something, we are committed to making the same evaluation in relevantly similar cases. For example, if I say “it is good for me to eat meat”, I must approve of meat eating in relevantly similar cases. The unique facet of Hare is the idea that a given person’s moral system has to be rational and internally consistent, even though ethics are not based on facts.
Hare’s account of moral disagreement is radically different, of course, from Railton’s. The claim here is that since ethics are akin to opinions, genuine ethical disagreement is simply a case where one person prefers some moral judgement and another person prefers an opposing judgement. But that does not mean ethical debate is fruitless; one side can persuade another through showing how their stance on an issue is contrary to other principles they hold. For example, a person arguing against abortion could try and convince others that there is no relevant difference between the abortion of a fetus and infanticide. This person is making an educated guess that most people, even those who are for abortion, have very strong anti-infanticide sentiments, and if he is correct, they must change their stance on either abortion or infanticide. So when we engage in ethical debate with someone with whom we have a genuine ethical disagreement, we are trying to convince someone that an ethical position they hold is contrary to another ethical position they also hold, in order to make them revise their ethical system on pain of contradiction.
Both of these accounts give adequate explanations about the nature of genuine ethical disagreement, but Hare’s account has several advantages over Railton’s. Firstly, there is an attractive freedom in Hare’s accounting of ethical disagreements, but paired with the ability to meaningfully discuss and argue about ethics. Hare avoids the trap of the Emotivists, who have a problem explaining why ethical disagreement seems different from cases of divergent opinions. At the same time, anyone that is fond of a normative ethical theory can continue to employ it, as long as it is internally consistent. If an individual has a strong like of Utilitarianism as a way of deciding on ethical judgement, he can continue to employ it to form ethical judgements. Hare also has an appeal to the metaphysically inclined, as it is committed to the existence of fewer entities, and is more in keeping with the principle of ontological parsimony (Occam’s Razor). This amounts to a need by those inclined toward Railton and Synthetic Naturalism what his theory does better than Hare’s in explaining genuine ethical disagreement; if not, then both these theories explain equally well.
There is a serious objection that might be raised by a defender of Railton, or any form of Ethical Realism, against Hare’s account of genuine ethical disagreement. Namely, it is the overall trend toward consensus we see on normative ethical issues. Most of the contentious debates of the past, such as slavery, segregation, child labor have been settled and now, people’s ethical assertions seem overwhelmingly one-sided, where not a century ago it was much more divided. Railton has his naturalist explanation for this; with critical ethical discourse, as well as our progress in areas of learning (genetics, for example, sheds a lot of light on ethical issues involving race), we are getting closer to the actual moral facts. That is, the facts about what are in people’s objective interests, and what kinds of actions will maximally promote that. But there’s no real reason for ethical issues to ever get resolved under Hare’s theory. After all, Hare himself admits that people rationally continue to hold a single ethical judgement, even if it means abandoning all his other judgements. There is nothing in Hare that predicts or explains a trend toward consensus, and that may be the way in for Railton.
It is true that Hare has no direct response to this accusation, but there is a clear way out for the Prescriptivist, and it lies mostly in an increase in ability to understand relevant differences. This has been facilitated through progress in the sciences. Much in the same way that more knowledge helps us to determine what the objective interest of a person is under Railton, it can help Hare’s case too. One who favors Hare could quite rightly claim that the main reason we, as a society, seem to be arriving at consensus where once there was genuine ethical disagreement is that in days past, we were not as informed as to the relevant differences for a given issue. For example, to a slave trader in the 17th Century, people in Africa are primitives with dark skin; that seems very different from a European. But we now know that these differences are arbitrary at best, through advances in evolution, genetics, and sociology, and we have come to realize that if we commit ourselves to “slavery of Africans by Europeans is good”, we would have to consent to being in turn enslaved by another culture. This is, of course, not at all desirable, and so people began to disapprove of slavery until this judgement was the only mainstream view about slavery. Something very similar is happening right now in the abortion debate; almost all the genuine ethical disagreement is focused on whether there is a relevant difference between a fetus and a person. Given that humans overall desire very similar things (e.g. life, security, shelter and more) it should be as no surprise we are learning what moral judgements work counter to these desires, and coming to overall consensus on which ones are most advantageous for these ends.
Hare and Railton’s theories both have fairly equal explanatory power in regards to genuine ethical disagreement. But Hare doesn’t rely on questionable entities like ethical facts, and in addition provides much more freedom to the normative ethicist to keep evaluating and arguing much as they have been. Whereas Railton has no such advantages other than perhaps a false sense of certainty. Railton’s theory might explain something that Hare can’t, but whatever that may be, it is not concerning ethical disagreement.