II. Two Conceptions of Strong Moral Objectivity

In metaethical discussion, there are two main conceptions of objectivity: one ontological, the other rationalist. Both, in their own way, represent what we shall call “strong” conceptions—conceptions that are (respectively) featured in versions of moral realism and Kantian rationalism. Let us take these in order.

The ontological conception: This conception of moral objectivity is an instance of the sort of objectivity often associated with ordinary physical-object thought and discourse, according to which (roughly) there is an “objectively existing” world of objects and instantiated properties (including relations) possessed by (or obtaining among) those objects. Often, this conception of “objective existence” is expressed in terms of “mind-independence.”Footnote ⁷ But thinking of ontological objectivity in terms of mind-independence is arguably too strong for our present purposes, because, on some views, secondary qualities are response-dependent, and hence are not mind-independent, but nevertheless such properties are objective.

Indeed, in metaethics, the thesis that moral properties (instantiations of them) are on an ontological par with response-dependent color properties—that a property like intrinsic value is as much “out there to be experienced” as are instantiations of color properties, even if both are response-dependent—would seemingly secure enough ontological objectivity for morality to combat various forms of metaethical noncognitivism, relativism, and subjectivism. So, following contemporary metaethical fashion, we can distinguish two forms or grades of ontological moral objectivism (“realism,” if you like). According to robust versions, moral properties are a kind of, or analogous to, prototypical primary qualities in that their nature and existence (i.e., whether or not they are instantiated in the world) are not mind- (including human response-) dependent. But according to more modest versions, moral properties are a kind of, or at least have the same sort of ontological status as, secondary qualities—color properties in particular. Their being response-dependent in a way analogous to color properties (when colors are construed as “secondary qualities”) is still sufficient to say of them that, when instantiated, moral properties are “there to be experienced.”Footnote ⁸

It is worth emphasizing, too, that the ontological conception of objectivity not only claims that moral judgments have descriptive content (i.e., purport to represent facts consisting of the instantiation of moral properties that are “there to be experienced”) but also claims that such facts are not about certain idiosyncratic psychological states of the agent making the moral judgment (states such as preferences or attitudes of approval/disapproval). Ontological objectivism is a form of metaethical descriptivism, certainly; but it is to be distinguished from the kind of descriptivism that earlier in the century was called “subjective naturalism,” which construed moral facts as facts about the psychology of the morally judging agent.

The rationalist conception: Speaking very generally and somewhat loosely, a realm of thought and discourse is objective, according to this conception, if there is a method of thinking or reasoning whose use would yield (under proper conditions of application) convergence in belief about the subject matter in question. The primary examples here are mathematics and logic.Footnote ⁹ In metaethics, this view is clearly exemplified by Roderick Firth's ideal observer theory and Michael Smith's metaethical rationalism.Footnote ¹⁰ According to these views, there is a nonmoral conception of rational choice involving norms of practical reasoning whose proper application is sufficient to yield a set of richly determinate moral norms or principles. This form of metaethical objectivity, then, is meant to capture the idea, famously expressed by Immanuel Kant, that “a law, if it is to hold morally, that is as a ground of obligation, must carry with it absolute necessity; that, for example, the command ‘thou shalt not lie’ does not hold only for human beings, as if other rational beings did not have to heed it….”Footnote ¹¹ This idea of requirements holding necessarily for all rational beings is Kant's idea of those requirements being categorical.

Even though these two conceptions of moral objectivity differ in important ways, they do share a uniting theme: they both try to capture a strong conception of objectivity according to which some realm of thought and discourse is objective only when there is some “reality”—some ontology or method—that “backs up” or “stands behind” such thought and discourse and serves to “make true” certain claims in the discourse and “make false” other claims.

Before moving on, we make three observations about the relationship between these two conceptions. First, one might hold that the idea of moral objectivity involves a blend or combination of both kinds of objectivity. J. L. Mackie seemed to think so.Footnote ¹² He held that moral thought and discourse are committed to the idea that moral requirements are categorical (in the sense just indicated) and to the idea that there are instantiated moral properties (including moral requiredness) that are strongly objective and thus on a metaphysical par with primary qualities.Footnote ¹³ But a secondary quality–like account of moral realism is also (perhaps) likely to attempt a combination: moral properties are “there to be experienced” (ontological claim), and their nature is best captured by a dispositional (response-dependent) account that is basically rationalist.Footnote ¹⁴

Second, it is possible to hold that there are objective moral properties in the ontological sense and yet deny, or be neutral with respect to, the idea that morality is also objective in the rationalist sense. Suppose, for instance, that moral properties are like secondary qualities in that a proper understanding of them requires referring to how human beings in certain circumstances would respond—without supposing that such properties are there to be experienced by all rational beings. Perhaps one could wax Humean on this particular matter: we humans have a certain constitution—maybe a “moral sense” (in a loose sense of the term)—through which we are able to perceive or respond to values that have an ontological status similar to that of colors. The idea would be to combine the claim that there are moral properties possessed by items of evaluation with a rejection of a strong rationalist commitment to claims about all rational beings.

Third, at least prima facie it is possible to embrace the idea that morality is objective in a distinctively rationalist way without supposing that there are moral properties possessed by items of evaluation in the way that an ontological moral realist might suppose.Footnote ¹⁵ Suppose there are rational norms of obligation that hold for all rational agents. If so, then one can say of some action that it is obligatory, but in saying this one does not have to suppose that in addition to the natural features of the action it has some further property, obligatoriness, that is either identical to, constituted exhaustively by (but not type-identical to), or otherwise something “over and above” the natural properties on which this special property supervenes. One example is R. M. Hare's metaethical view, according to which moral judgments are “objective prescriptions.”Footnote ¹⁶ Hare denied that his view involving objective prescriptions committed him to a moral ontology of the sort that would involve moral properties, though he defended the claim that certain features of moral language together with (nonmoral) constraints on rational choice yield an essentially utilitarian moral theory.Footnote ¹⁷ Indeed, contemporary Kantians tout rationalist objectivity as a way of avoiding metaphysical moral realism. Christine Korsgaard writes: “If ethically good action is simply rational action, we do not need to postulate special ethical properties in the world or faculties in the mind in order to provide ethics with a foundation.”Footnote ¹⁸

In sum, (1) there are two main conceptions of strong metaethical objectivity: ontological and rationalist; (2) the ontological conception covers both robust and modest conceptions of what can count as an objective property; (3) it is at least prima facie possible for a metaethical view to combine either form of ontological objectivity with the rationalist conception of objectivity; however, (4) it is also possible (again prima facie) to embrace the rationalist conception without also embracing the ontological conception (in either of its versions), and the other way around.

Thus, in light of these conceptions of moral objectivity and their interconnections, one main question about moral phenomenology is whether it embodies or “carries” the pretensions of either sort of objectivity. Before responding to this question, there is preliminary work to be done which will occupy us in the next three sections.

III. Phenomenology: Subject Matter and Method

In recent philosophy of mind, the term “phenomenology” is used sometimes to refer to a type of subject matter, comprising certain aspects of one's mental life that are available to introspection in a distinctive way. But the term is also used to refer to a method of first-person introspection that allegedly carries with it a special first-person warrant attaching to one's first-person judgments about one's own experiences.Footnote ¹⁹ We think of phenomenology as involving both the subject matter and the method just mentioned. However, in order to make ourselves clear as we proceed, we will use the term “phenomenology” mainly to refer to subject matter, and we will generally use the term “introspection” for the associated method.

In this section, we will make some clarificatory remarks about both the subject matter and the method. Part of our purpose is to situate moral phenomenology, as we understand it, within the context of various ongoing debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. As we will make clear, phenomenology generally, and moral phenomenology in particular, can be characterized in a way that is noncommittal about competing positions in several of those debates. Having a characterization of moral phenomenology that is noncommittal in the ways we will proceed to explain is important for our purposes; we want to work with a characterization of this area of inquiry that does not beg any questions about potential subject matter and methodology that might taint our investigation of the argument from phenomenological introspection.

IV. The Argument from Phenomenological Introspection

As we have said, a main task of this essay is to zero in on a kind of metaethical argument that appeals to an alleged fact about moral phenomenology that allegedly is introspectively accessible (namely, that moral phenomenology carries ontological objective purport), as a basis for concluding that the phenomenology of moral experiences provides a pro tanto reason to favor an objectivist metaethics. More precisely, we are interested in a species of phenomenological argument that has the following features.

1. 1. The sort of strong objectivity being argued for is ontological. However, it does not matter for our present purposes whether the argument is being made in favor of robust ontological moral objectivity or for a more modest, sensibility form of such objectivity.

2. 2. The argument is supposed to be a distinctive form of metaethical argument, one that is different from arguments appealing to considerations that concern theoretical semantic issues, or to metaphysical and epistemological issues concerning moral thought and discourse.Footnote ³²

3. 3. Part of what makes the argument distinctive is that it relies crucially on an appeal to introspection: the argument appeals to putative features of one's own moral experience that one allegedly can detect by turning one's attention inward and focusing on the relevant kind of experience. Those who appeal to matters of moral phenomenology as a basis for defending ontological moral objectivism seem to think that whether or not the phenomenology carries ontological objective purport is something that is introspectively accessible. This entails the denial of the Neutrality thesis. But suppose that the Neutrality thesis is correct. Presumably, then, mere appeal to introspective awareness will not be sufficient in arguing the pro tanto caseFootnote ³³ for ontological moral objectivism; rather, the objectivist will need to bring to bear other, nonphenomenological considerations (e.g., theoretical questions about moral semantics and about moral metaphysics) to make her case. Once this happens, however, the supposed distinctiveness of the argument from phenomenological introspection is lost.

4. 4. Finally, the argument presupposes that people by and large do share a common moral phenomenology whose elements provide a suitably pretheoretical basis to which the metaethicist can appeal in making a case for some form of objectivist metaethics. The idea here is that if the argument in question is to have any evidential weight with respect to the pro tanto plausibility of competing metaethical views, there must be some metaethical theory-independent facts about the phenomenology to which an appeal can be made and which clearly are fully compatible with some but not all existing metaethical theories. Furthermore, for purposes of the phenomenological argument for ontological moral objectivism, there must be some pretheoretical elements of moral experience that specifically favor an ontological-objectivist metaethical view, rather than, for instance, simply ruling out (say) crude emotivist views.

To sum up, then, the phenomenological argument we wish to consider is properly understood as an argument from introspection that attempts to pick out commonly shared pretheoretical elements of moral experiences whose ontological objective purport is introspectively accessible.

V. A Taxonomy of Moral Experience

Unfortunately, the term “moral phenomenology,” at least as used by philosophers, is accordion-like in its usage. Sometimes, it is used very broadly to refer to any and all of what are considered to be deeply embedded features of moral thought and discourse including: (a) its grammar and logic; (b) people's “critical practices” regarding such thought and discourse (including, for example, the assumption that genuine moral disagreements are possible); and (c) the what-it-is-likeness of various moral experiences, including, but not restricted to, occurrent concrete experiences of morally judging some action, person, institution, or other item of moral evaluation. Used very narrowly, the term refers to what we might call “raw affective feeling states” comprising only a proper subset of what-it-is-likeness elements in moral experience. As we explained above in Section III, we construe the scope of phenomenology to range over sensory, cognitive, desiderative, as well as affective experiences. So we do plan to use the term neither very narrowly, nor very broadly, but as referring to occurrent mental phenomena that seem constitutive of a broad range of everyday moral experience.

Nonetheless, we need to be more explicit about the kind of moral experience we wish to consider. To do so, we offer a taxonomy of types of moral experience so that we may triangulate a proper part of moral phenomenology that will be the focus later in this essay. To anticipate: we are particularly interested in the what-it-is-likeness of (1) judgment-involving (2) first-order (3) experiences of moral obligation that are (4) direct and (5) intuitive. We now proceed to briefly explain these five characteristics.

Judgment-involving moral experiences. Many moral experiences involve as a component coming to have or form a moral judgment. For instance, after thinking it over for a while, one comes to think that the United States ought not to have invaded Iraq. Part of one's overall experience here is the coming to have or make a moral judgment. Some moral phenomenologists claim that an important variety of moral experience does not involve having or making moral judgments. According to Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, there are cases of what they call “ethical comportment” in which a morally skilled individual spontaneously performs some morally appropriate action in some circumstance without making or having a moral judgment.Footnote ³⁴ Spontaneously reaching out a helping hand to someone about to slip and fall is perhaps an example. We do not take a stand on whether such cases are properly described as not involving moral judgment (although frankly we doubt it, because we believe that such spontaneous actions are more plausibly construed as the unhesitant effects of moral judgments that are themselves spontaneous rather than deliberative). But in case such actions do meet that description, our focus is properly characterized as being on judgment-involving moral experiences.

First-order and second-order. Certainly experiences of guilt, shame, indignation, and moral anger are important in the study of moral phenomenology. But these moral emotions are typically second-order moral experiences, since they are directed toward actions and other items of moral evaluation that are judged to be morally wrong or bad. One judges, for instance, that Tracy has benefited from her moral wrongdoing, which arouses in one the moral emotion of indignation. What we are calling first-order moral judgments, then, are those more basic judgments of obligation and value that may prompt some particular moral emotion of the sort just mentioned.Footnote ³⁵

Judgments of obligation and judgments of value. It is common to distinguish judgments of moral obligation from judgments of moral value. One might suppose that the phenomenologies involving judgments of one type are much the same as the phenomenologies involving the other type. But Maurice Mandelbaum, in his overlooked 1955 treatise on moral phenomenology, made a further distinction that challenges this supposition.

Direct and removed judgments of obligation. According to Mandelbaum, there is an important phenomenological difference between what he called “direct” and “removed” moral experience. Direct moral experiences are those in which one is presently confronted with a set of circumstances which one experiences as “calling for” one to either act or refrain from acting in a particular way on that occasion, and in response to which one comes to have or make a moral judgment about what one ought or ought not do. By contrast, removed moral experiences include those which involve the making or the having of an ought-judgment about one's past self or about someone else, as well as all judgments about the moral goodness or badness of the specific character traits and overall character of oneself and others. Mandelbaum claims that one phenomenological difference between such types of experience is the fact that a direct moral experience

For purposes of this essay, we adopt Mandelbaum's direct/removed distinction. Our focus will be on experiences of the former type, about which we will say more in later sections.

Intuitive and deliberative moral judgments. Intuitive judgments are psychologically spontaneous in that they occur “without a conscious awareness of having gone through steps of searching, weighing evidence, or inferring a conclusion.”Footnote ³⁷ Earlier, we mentioned Harman's example where you round a corner and see a group of hoodlums pore gasoline on a cat and set it on fire. As Harman says, “you do not need to conclude that what they are doing is wrong; you do not need to figure anything out; you can see that it is wrong.”Footnote ³⁸ By contrast, deliberative moral judgments result from such activities as consciously searching, weighing evidence, and then inferring a moral conclusion.Footnote ³⁹

Figure 1 presents a “set-aside” sequence that summarizes the various distinctions we have been making. As one moves down levels, the arrows pointing to the right point to a category of experience that is being distinguished and set aside from the type of experience under the vertical arrow.

Figure 1.

Taxonomy of Moral Experience

Besides allowing us to specify the type of moral experience that will be the focus of our investigation, the taxonomy in figure 1 is a reminder that one should not assume that moral experiences of all types exhibit some core phenomenological elements that unify these experiences as being distinctively moral.Footnote ⁴⁰ This is important for questions about moral objectivity, because it is possible that some types of moral experience include elements that support one conception of moral objectivity, while other moral experiences support a different conception, and perhaps still others support neither conception. Still, it bears emphasis that philosophers who want to argue that moral experience carries ontological objective purport tend to focus on intuitive moral experiences, while those who are primarily interested in defending the rationalist conception tend to focus instead on the phenomenology of moral deliberation.

Furthermore, and most importantly for our present concerns, there is the question of whether some type of moral experience—whether intuitive or deliberative—is neutral with regard to such metaphysical matters and, in particular, whether by introspection alone one can determine whether the experiences in question carry ontological objective purport.

As we have noted, our focus will be on the what-it-is-likeness of those moral experiences that combine all of the elements in the left-hand column of figure 1. Henceforth, we will refer to such experiences simply as direct experiences of moral obligation, even though we mean only to be focusing primarily on direct and intuitive moral experiences. And, as we have been saying, our main question about such experiences is whether it is introspectively accessible that such experiences carry ontological objective purport.

VI. Two Examples of Direct Moral Experience

As we have just explained, “direct” moral experience refers to those experiences in which one presently encounters what one takes to be a morally significant situation, a situation that seems to “call for” one to act or refrain from acting and which involves as a constituent an all-in judgment of obligation about what one ought or ought not do in the present circumstances. Here are two examples.

VII. Mandelbaum's Phenomenology of Direct Moral Experiences

According to Mandelbaum, the sorts of direct moral experiences had by Sophie and Rashid involve two “levels”:Footnote ⁴¹ (1) a “felt demand” which is, as Mandelbaum says, “phenomenologically grounded in” (2) an apprehension of a contemplated action being unfitting (relaying her good news in Sophie's case, not keeping his appointment in Rashid's case). Let us consider these levels in order. Mandelbaum writes:

Three exegetical and interpretative comments are in order here. First, in further explaining the “external” source of moral demands, Mandelbaum contrasts them with nonmoral demands such as those associated with hunger, desire for attention, and sexual arousal, which we experience as being “within us.”Footnote ⁴³ Second, according to Mandelbaum, this sort of desire/urge–independence grounds the sense of “objectivity” one takes one's direct moral experiences to have. In her conversation, Sophie is aware of various features of her present circumstances that she experiences as “calling for” or demanding that she refrain from saying anything to Audrey about her job advancement. Similarly, Rashid's present circumstances (including considerations about his promise to a student, the student's circumstances, and so forth) are experienced by him as placing a demand on his current behavior “emanating from” the desire-independent facts of the case. Third, in this phenomenological description, one can distinguish three elements: (1) the raw affective element, which Mandelbaum describes as a felt “pressure” or “tension”;Footnote ⁴⁴ (2) the vector-like force aspect of the experience, involving, as we have seen, a sense of its origin and direction (which, being directed against the one making the judgment, is “reflexive”);Footnote ⁴⁵ and (3) the overall motivational pull that the contemplated action or omission (in the circumstances) seems to exert.

Turning now to the second level of phenomenological description, experiences of felt moral demand, according to Mandelbaum, are phenomenologically grounded in the relational characteristics of fittingness and unfittingness. Mandelbaum writes:

Since the notion of unfittingness, unlike fittingness, seems intuitively to involve, or be closely related to, the idea of a demand, we take it to be the more basic notion here.Footnote ⁴⁷

Let us now put all of this together. Experiences of direct moral obligation (of the sort Mandelbaum is describing) have these three main features:

1. (1) They are ought-judgment involving: an agent having or undergoing such an experience judges of herself that in the present circumstances she ought or ought not perform some action.

2. (2) This ought-judgment is part of an overall moral experience in which one experiences a felt demand whose elements include (a) a feeling of pressure, (b) a sense of a vector-like force which has an “external” origin and is directed at oneself, and (c) an associated motivational pull toward either performing an action or refraining from performing an action.

3. (3) This felt demand is experienced as based on an “apprehension” of unfittingness—that is, of a contemplated action or omission's being unfittingly related to present circumstances (as one takes them to be).

We submit that Mandelbaum's phenomenological description accurately describes most, if not all, of the important elements of people's typical direct moral experiences (at least we can speak for ourselves). Thus, in examining this phenomenology for any objective pretensions it may involve, one can ask whether any of these elements carry ontological objective purport. Answering this question, we think, is delicate, which may explain why one finds disagreement among philosophers about how to properly answer the question. Our strategy in trying to answer it will involve two steps.

First, we will describe a metaethical view that denies ontological moral objectivity, and that we have elsewhere argued is theoretically attractive for various reasons over and above matters of moral phenomenology; we call it “cognitivist expressivism.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Second, we will consider the three main features of the phenomenology of direct moral experience, asking about each of them whether, alone or in combination, it is an introspectively accessible fact that they carry ontological objective purport. In each case, we argue that the answer is negative, on the grounds that cognitivist expressivism, despite repudiating ontological objectivity, can smoothly accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of the phenomenological features in question.

Note that this line of argument assumes only that cognitivist expressivism is a credible candidate for being the correct metaethical position—not that it is the correct position. If a credible candidate that eschews ontological objectivity can accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of the relevant phenomenology, then that is enough to show that introspection alone does not yield a positive answer to the question about whether moral phenomenology carries ontological objective purport.

These two principal steps in our argument will not quite establish the Neutrality thesis set out in Section I, because they do not preclude the possibility that introspection alone yields a negative answer to the question about ontological objective purport. Nonetheless, the Neutrality thesis does emerge as a corollary, given the very plausible claim (which we ourselves are happy to concede) that various ontological-objectivist metaethical positions can also accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of moral phenomenology. By executing our two-step argument, then, we will have provided a defense of the Neutrality thesis—the claim that introspectively accessible aspects of direct moral experiences do not themselves determine an answer to the question about whether such experiences carry ontological objective purport. And the Neutrality thesis undermines the argument from phenomenological introspection, since that argument rests on the contention that it is an introspectively accessible fact that direct moral experiences carry ontological objective purport. Thus, in order to ascertain whether or not experiences carry such purport, one must look to other considerations, including perhaps other types of moral experience and certain nonexperiential metaethical considerations.Footnote ⁴⁹

VIII. The Challenge

We think those who defend strong versions of moral objectivism, as well as those who hold error theories,Footnote ⁵⁰ tend to move too quickly from considerations of moral phenomenology to claims about the sort of objective pretensions allegedly possessed by the relevant phenomenology. We say this not only because philosophers have tended not to dwell on phenomenological detail, but also because there is one metaethical position, “cognitivist expressivism,” that (a) seems very promising in its capacity to accommodate the facts of moral phenomenology (without overlooking or distorting the facts in question) but (b) denies that moral judgments are robustly objective. The seeming promise of this view is the basis for raising a challenge to advocates of the phenomenological argument. We challenge them to point to those putative aspects or elements of the phenomenology of direct moral experience whose ontological objective purport is introspectively accessible. More specifically, we challenge them to point to putative phenomenological aspects or elements that arguably cannot be accommodated by cognitivist expressivism. To flesh out this challenge, we first present a few of the key elements of cognitivist expressivism, and we then explain why and how this position can smoothly accommodate the phenomenology of direct moral experience.

IX. The Phenomenology of Unfittingness

In addition to the belief-like aspects of ought-judgments that are part of direct moral experiences, we have identified two other general features of such experiences: (1) they involve a sense of felt demand whose origin is “external”; and (2) this felt demand is phenomenologically grounded in a sense (“apprehension”) of fittingness. Do either of these features, perhaps in combination, carry ontological objective purport of a sort that is introspectively accessible in direct moral experiences?

Clearly, the affective element involved in feeling a demand, which Mandelbaum describes as a pressure or tension, does not itself carry any sort of objective purport. Feeling a pull to perform an action or to refrain from performing one is something one often experiences without the experience carrying any presumption of objectivity. I feel tempted by the piece of chocolate cake on the table before me, and it is as if it were screaming “Eat me!!!” It seems to be tugging me in its direction.Footnote ⁵⁵ But here one experiences no objective purport.

Of course, the crucial element of felt demand is the “external” origin of the vector-like force—the fact that the demand is, as Mandelbaum says, “emanating from ‘outside’ us,” which he glosses as its being independent of one's desires. Moreover, this sort of demand is experienced as grounded in one's sense that a particular action is an unfitting response to those “external” circumstances. The notions of fittingness and unfittingness are, of course, relational. As Mandelbaum sometimes puts it, to say that an action is unfitting in relation to a particular set of circumstances is to say that features of those circumstances “call for” one's refraining from performing the action. So, if direct moral experiences carry ontological objective purport in a way that is introspectively manifest, then such purport would seem to be located in the following complex experience: a concrete action being called for by desire-independent features of one's present circumstances. As we explained earlier, if a view like cognitivist expressivism, which denies that moral experiences carry descriptive purport, can accommodate the introspectively manifest aspects in question (regardless of whether this type of view can fully accommodate the phenomenology), and can do so at least as well as a view that attributes to the phenomenology descriptive purport, then we will have secured the Neutrality thesis. To be clear, even if cognitivist expressivism can accommodate the introspectively accessible aspects of moral phenomenology as well as any competing ontological-objectivist metaethical view, this does not show that those aspects don't carry ontological objectivist purport. Rather, what it shows (we claim) is that whether or not the aspects in question do carry such purport is not something that is introspectively accessible, and that is enough to establish the Neutrality thesis. We now proceed to sketch two interpretations—a cognitivist-expressivist interpretation and an ontological-objectivist interpretation—to lay bare how they each purport to account for Mandelbaumian direct moral experiences.

We have lately called attention to how cognitivist expressivism understands direct moral ought-judgments as kinds of beliefs. What does the view say about direct moral experiences of being called upon by desire-independent considerations such that these experiences would have an objective feel to them? There are two essential ideas. First, direct moral experiences qua moral have to do with taking what we will rather vaguely call a “non-self-privileging” stance toward one's action and circumstances. Taking this sort of stance involves being open to being affected by desire-independent considerations that have largely to do with not harming others. Different normative moral theories spell out this vague notion of non-self-privileging in different ways.

Second, and most crucially, in coming to be and experience oneself as being ought-committed to some course of action (or inaction), one experiences oneself as (1) becoming ought-committed in a non-self-privileging way, and (2) as becoming so committed because of certain non-normative factual considerations. The idea is that such judgment-involving experiences of direct moral obligation possess a kind of phenomenological unity: not only is one aware of some objective, non-normative features of some object of evaluation (my having promised to take out the trash), and not only does one experience oneself as becoming ought-committed to a certain non-normative descriptive way-the-world-might-be (my taking out the trash), but one experiences oneself as becoming thus ought-committed because of those objective features one is aware of—and, moreover, as ought-committed in a non-self-privileging way. Direct experiences of moral unfittingness, then, are a matter of becoming ought-committed in a non-self-privileging way to a certain action, on the basis of (what one takes to be) objective in-the-world nonmoral features.Footnote ⁵⁶

It is worth emphasizing that this is a two-step construal of direct moral judgment. (The “steps” are conceptually-discernible aspects, which might or might not be sequential links in a causal sequence.) The crucial point to appreciate, in distinguishing this non-ontological picture from an ontological picture, is the second step—the becoming committed because step. Here it is important to notice that the “because” is not simply a causal “because.” To construe it this way would be to confuse matters of causal explanation with matters of normativity. What this picture holds, then, is that the second step involves what we may refer to as a reasonish-because way of coming to have an ought-commitment.

In illuminating this reasonish-because way of coming to be ought-committed, cognitivist expressivism will want to approach the state of mind corresponding to this way of coming to be ought-committed in a manner similar to the way the view approaches ought-judgments themselves. As we noted earlier, cognitivist expressivism understands an ought-judgment as a sui generis kind of commitment-state vis-à-vis a core descriptive content such as John's taking out the trash. Cognitivist expressivism approaches judgments of unfittingness and fittingness in the same way—as involving a kind of psychological commitment-state vis-à-vis a pair of core descriptive contents that is not an is-commitment with respect to a putative in-the-world unfittingness fact. Theoretical understanding of such states comes from what we call “triangulation”—illumination of such psychological states not via some reductive account of them but in terms of both their overall phenomenology and their constitutive role(s) in a morally-judging agent's overall psychological economy. This is a project that we have partially addressed elsewhere, and it represents a central task for the expressivist.Footnote ⁵⁷

Now that we have sketched this two-step picture, we can compare it to the three-step picture that is apparently favored by the ontological moral objectivist. On the three-step construal, the following discernible aspects are allegedly involved: (1) apprehending some objective, non-normative, fact(s) (my having promised to take out the trash); (2) apprehending an objective unfittingness fact (my not taking out the trash being unfitting in relation to my having promised to take out the trash); and (3) becoming ought-committed to some objective non-normative way-the-world-might-be (my taking out the trash) by virtue of step (2). On the cognitivist-expressivist picture we are urging, in contrast, there is no such step (2). Although I do indeed apprehend my having promised to take out the trash as a reason to take out the trash, such reason-apprehension is constituted by becoming ought-committed in the manner described in the preceding paragraph. And that is a two-step process (albeit a process involving substantial phenomenological unity): it involves (a) apprehending my having promised to take out the trash, and (b) becoming ought-committed to my taking out the trash in a way that is both non-self-privileging and based upon step (a) in a reasonish-because way.

Here, then, we have two pictures of the phenomenology of moral unfittingness, and the question is whether there is any introspectively accessible reason (in direct moral experience) to favor one over the other. Our main claim in this essay is that it is not introspectively obvious one way or the other—that, in order to decide the issue, one has to import nonphenomenological theoretical considerations into the metaethical debate between the two camps in question.

X. Moral Objectivity with a Small “O”

Let us return for a moment to Mandelbaum's claim that the phenomenology of direct moral experience has an “objective” feel to it. Presumably, the objective feel of direct moral experiences emerges from the aspects of phenomenology we have been describing. Can this sort of feel be accommodated by cognitivist expressivism? Indeed it can. In capturing the objective feel in question, there are two elements of such experiences that combine to carry a sort of non-ontological-objectivist feel. First, one experiences oneself as judging in a non-self-privileging way—taking, as it were, an impartial stance—and thus as less self-centered and more other-centered. Second, one experiences oneself as becoming committed to what one ought to do (or refrain from doing) in what we have called a “reasonish-because” way. Thus, one experiences oneself as judging in an impartial, nonarbitrary, reason-based manner. Call this conception of moral objectivity small “o” objectivity;Footnote ⁵⁸ we think it nicely captures the kind of objectivity that is available to introspection when reflecting on direct moral experiences. As we have said, it remains possible that direct moral experiences also carry commitment to a stronger form of objectivity; but, if so, this is not something that is introspectively accessible.

We claim, then, that cognitivist expressivism—which does not construe moral judgments (or the experiences that embed them) as carrying strong ontological objective purport (or rationalist objective purport, for that matter)—can capture a notion of moral objectivity that seems to be all that is needed to fully accommodate the introspectively manifest aspects of direct moral experiences.

XI. Objections and Replies

We anticipate various objections to the Neutrality thesis, at least as we have defended it. Here, in rapid-fire succession, are those objections with our replies.

Mistake: A critic might claim that our phenomenological description of direct moral experiences is mistaken, that we leave out or misdescribe some crucial, introspectively manifest element that carries ontological objective purport and that is introspectively accessible.

Reply: We think of our defense of the Neutrality thesis as one that shifts a burden onto the backs of ontological moral objectivists. Thus, our opponents need to point to those introspectively manifest features of direct moral experiences that cannot be accommodated by cognitivist expressivism as well as they can be accommodated by some form of ontological moral objectivism.

Misdescribe: A critic might claim that it is introspectively obvious that cognitivist expressivism itself just misdescribes the moral phenomenology in question, and that it is implausible for this reason. To be more precise, the claim might be that it is introspectively manifest that (a) moral judgments are beliefs, and (b) beliefs are descriptive in their overall content. (To say, for instance, that the belief that John ought to take out the trash is “descriptive in its overall content” is to say that the “that”-clause that John ought to take out the trash characterizes a descriptive way the world might be.)

Reply: Elsewhere, we argue against (b) partly on phenomenological grounds.Footnote ⁵⁹ We will not rehearse those grounds here. It is worth noting, however, that even if one insists that genuine beliefs must be descriptive, there is a position that is like cognitivist expressivism that construes ought-commitments as, say, quasi-beliefs, which would do the same work for us in defending the Neutrality thesis as does cognitivist expressivism. It is also worth pointing out here that those who just insist that it is introspectively evident to them that their phenomenology does carry objective purport may be guilty of introspective confabulation. Generally speaking, it is easy to “read into” one's phenomenology what is not really there. For instance, I see a saguaro cactus that strikes me (based on how it looks) as being about forty-five years old. I say, “Well, it looks about forty-five years old.” But here it would be implausible to suppose that the property of being roughly forty-five years old is something that is introspectively presented to me in my visual experience. Rather, the more intuitively plausible thing to say here is that, based on my cacti experience, I am able to reliably form beliefs about the age of cacti based on what is presented to me in my visual experience. Were I to introspect and conclude that my visual experience presents me with the property of being forty-five years old, I would be guilty of introspective confabulation. A similar point holds, we think, for those who would attend to their direct moral experiences and claim that it is introspectively obvious that they have a divine “stamp” upon them or are of divine origin. And the same sort of confabulation is going on (we would claim) when some folks claim that it is introspectively obvious that their own phenomenology of direct moral experience (and perhaps their concrete moral experience generally) has ontological objective purport. Making this case is (we admit) beyond the scope of this essay; it is something we plan to explore in our work in progress.

Denial: A critic might deny that cognitivist expressivism is an overall plausible metaethical view in ways other than not being able to accommodate the introspectively manifest features of direct moral experiences.

Reply: This objection is beside the point. It is enough for our purposes that cognitivist expressivism (assuming it is a coherent metaethical option) can accommodate the introspectively manifest phenomenology of direct moral experiences. In any case, this objection requires going beyond the phenomenology in question and bringing forth various additional theoretical considerations that are relevant for evaluating a metaethical theory. Elsewhere, we defend cognitivist expressivism as plausible on general philosophical grounds.Footnote ⁶⁰

Limit: A critic might claim that, for all we have said, the phenomenology in question may carry ontological objective purport, even if such purport is not introspectively accessible.

Reply: We completely agree that this is an option. Our only aim was to take on the argument from phenomenological introspection. So even if moral phenomenology does carry this kind of purport, we think it is important to point out that this putative fact about the phenomenology is not reliably introspectable. This may explain why moral philosophers disagree about the metaphysical purport of moral experiences of the sort we have considered.

Myopia: A critic might claim that there are other types of concrete moral experience and other deeply embedded features of moral thought and discourse (including logical embedding, our critical moral practices, and moral deliberation), and that some of these features (perhaps in combination) are best accommodated by an ontological-objectivist metaethics.

Reply: Perhaps so. But, as we have said, our aim in this essay has been narrowly focused in order to examine one specific phenomenological argument. We admit that there is more work to be done in defending a metaethical view. It may be, for all we have said, that other types of concrete moral experience involve introspectively manifest aspects that carry ontological objective purport, though we doubt it. Having made a case that one type of concrete moral experience is neutral on this issue, the burden is squarely on the shoulders of anyone who thinks that some other type of moral experience does carry such purport—all the more so because the kinds of moral judgment we have focused on here (namely, direct judgments of moral obligation) are typically the ones most cited by advocates of the phenomenological argument. As for the thought that one must look beyond concrete moral experience to other features of moral thought and discourse in order to make a pro tanto case for ontological objective purport, we note that this thought is one way of making our main point. As we explained in Section IV, the argument from phenomenological introspection rests on the assumption that ontological objective purport can be read off from the phenomenology of concrete moral experiences without appealing to other features of moral thought and discourse.

Variability: A critic might note that, arguably, moral phenomenology is theory-laden: theoretical assumptions, including metaethical ones, saturate moral experience. Thus, in all likelihood, the moral phenomenologies of different individuals will vary with respect to whether their moral experiences carry objective purport in general, and whether their direct moral experiences carry introspectively manifest ontological objective purport.

Reply: This raises large methodological issues that we cannot pursue here.Footnote ⁶¹ However, this objection is bad news for the argument from phenomenological introspection. As we explained in Section IV, the argument rests on the assumption that the phenomenology of moral experience involves aspects that are pretheoretically there in the phenomenology and are widely shared—aspects about which we can theorize. If this assumption is false, then this is a problem for the argument. Furthermore, even if there is such variability, there may still be a “core” phenomenological layer that is common. (We think there is.) If so, then this is where the present debate should be focused.

XII. Conclusion

We began with a commonly expressed appeal to moral experience and its phenomenology as a basis for favoring some form of ontological moral objectivism. We also began with the idea that this sort of argument, so far as we can tell, tends to focus on concrete moral experiences of obligation and value. We decided to focus on a very common sort of concrete moral experience—what Mandelbaum calls “direct moral experiences of obligation”—as a basis for exploring what we call the argument from phenomenological introspection. According to this argument, there are introspectively manifest aspects of direct moral experiences that have moral ontological objective purport. We have challenged this claim. We maintain that the introspectively manifest aspects of such moral experiences do not determine whether they have this kind of objective purport. This is our Neutrality thesis, which we defended by explaining how our version of cognitivist expressivism can fully accommodate the introspectively manifest data of direct moral experiences, including the objectivist character of such experiences.