Month: November 2025

People understand “getting comfortable with ambiguity” in different ways. That is, the phrase is ambiguous. And I’m not entirely comfortable with that, since on some readings of the phrase “getting comfortable with ambiguity” it isn’t always a good thing. For instance, sometimes what people mean by getting comfortable with ambiguity is just accepting that people understand things in different ways and being OK with that. Of course, people do understand things differently. This much is an inevitable consequence of people having their own minds. This much is fine. But in order to understand each other, we often have to disambiguate ambiguous language by clarifying and tracking our various usages. We don’t want to get too comfortable here, since tracking the various senses of ambiguous language is real work.

Simply being comfortable with ambiguity doesn’t move the needle on the sometimes-challenging project of clarifying and sharing our various ways of understanding words or phrases. So, there is a sense of “being comfortable with ambiguity” that can be a barrier to understanding others. If you and I understand expression in differing ways, I don’t understand you until I’ve inquired into how you understand that expression and tried to get clear on how my own understanding differs. So, ambiguity calls for inquisitive sharing.

Here we can see a sense of “getting comfortable with ambiguity” that is intellectually healthy and plays an integral part in shared inquiry. The way to get comfortable with ambiguity is to develop some skill at disambiguation. But the process of getting comfortable with ambiguity in this sense is not all that comfortable. It’s rather a hard-earned achievement that involves a fair amount of skill. We need to get in the habit of recognizing ambiguities that can be easily glossed over. Then we need to engage in some analysis of the different meanings that might be expressed by a word or a phrase. And then we need to track these in context.

For example, critical thinking students often struggle with the word “valid.” In everyday language, we often use this word to mean something like true. But even this is not so clear. If we are debating the fate of Palestinians in Gaza and your friend remarks out of the blue that the weather is beautiful today, it would be sarcastic to reply that he has a valid point. This reveals that everyday usage also carries some implication of relevance. But then we probably mean something different when we assure our upset friend that his feelings are valid. Feelings themselves aren’t true or false since they aren’t representations of the world one way or another. Here, “valid” means something more like appropriate. And then in critical thinking, we use the term “valid” to refer to a specific property of arguments. An argument is valid when its conclusion would have to be true if its premises are true. It’s often a bit of work to get a clear understanding of this definition of “valid.” One of the obstacles students often face is just tracking this usage and bearing in mind that “valid” in the context of logic and critical thinking has its own specific definition that isn’t the same as “valid” in everyday language.

Similar effort goes into achieving conceptual clarity throughout philosophical inquiry. We are often aiming for a better understanding of concepts we loosely appeal to in everyday life. Concepts like belief, rational, good, person, love, meaning, knowledge, justice, agency, free will. . . . The list is long. Philosophers become very adept at tracking clear analytic definitions of terms, understanding that many different definitions of the same word may be considered, tested, rejected, amended, or endorsed even in a single article. This is how conceptual analysis often goes. We try out, clarify, reject or revise many proposed definitions along the way to developing a clearer understanding of an interesting concept. Getting comfortable with ambiguity in ways that facilitate this process takes a good deal of critical thinking skill and attention.

Fortunately, it isn’t always important that we understand each other in precise detail. Everyday language carries lots of vagueness and ambiguity for a reason. A dash of vagueness and ambiguity lubricates many social interactions. In everyday life we require just enough clarity and precision to solve everyday problems, signal our objectives, and come to agreement about what to do. Seeking more clarity than needed for these purposes would be tedious. We are generally complacently comfortable with ambiguity when it doesn’t matter so much. However, it is also worth learning how to get comfortable with ambiguity through disambiguation and clarification when greater precision does matter. This is important for inquiry, including the sort of inquiry that leads to better understanding our friends and loved ones.

1.

We used to practice slavery, and many people thought this was OK. Doesn’t this case tell us that people can get morality wrong? If so, then morality is not subjective. 

Of course, our moral opinions are influenced by culture and societal norms. This is part of the explanation for what people think about morality.

People can, and often do, get things wrong. This is basic human fallibility. We recognize this clearly in cases like where everybody used to think the earth was flat, or cases we can recall in our own personal history where we just had a false belief about something (where you left your keys, etc.) So why would we make a special carve out for morality and take morality to be determined by opinion and people to be infallible? Why do we rush to abandon fallibilism in the case of morality?

Something being objective doesn’t mean that everyone will agree about it. Consider whether the Earth is flat, whether vaccines cause autism, or whether burning fossil fuels is causing climate change. There are objective answers to each of these questions and yet people do not agree. People used to disagree about slavery, that didn’t make this moral matter subjective. It just indicated that some people had a bit to learn. As soon as we take morality to be subjective, we give up on the idea of moral growth or having something yet to learn about what is right or wrong. I’d hope we’d begin to see by now that when this happens, it’s a holiday for bullies.

2.

Peoples’ moral beliefs and opinions are subjective. This much is just sociology. That’s not what is at issue in ethics. Ethics is about what moral opinions are most reasonable. Our beliefs and opinions about all sorts of things can get things wrong. We started the course with some observations about basic human fallibility. I still find it strange how quickly this is forgotten by many when the topic turns to morality. The view that morality is subjective makes every moral opinion as reasonable as the next. People may be attracted to this view for fear of being judged. But when fear of being judge drives our thinking, we ultimately undermine our own capacity for moral discernment. Inquiry can’t survive in this environment of fear. Critical thinking about morality gets muffled by the fear driven imperative to conform.

3.

It isn’t hard to find examples of where moral opinions seem to get morality wrong. Slavery is a stock example. Our government currently seems to think it is morally acceptable to blow up fishermen on the mere suspicion that they might be carrying drugs. These both look like clear cases of moral beliefs getting morality wrong. But for this to be possible there has to be some standard of what is and isn’t moral that isn’t subjective, just read off of people’s moral opinions.

There being objective moral truths doesn’t mean that everyone can (or even should) have the same view. This isn’t how inquiry works in any other realm. We hold diverse views about all sorts of things that are objective matters of fact. By sharing these views and taking critical feedback seriously we can often come to better views that get us closer to the truth. This is how science has worked, and it used to be how moral progressed worked as well. MLK was no moral relativist, he asked us to think critically and inquire into what is just and fair. When we stop doing this, everybody just agrees with themselves, and moral growth comes to a halt, or even backslides. I’d argue that we are witnessing this before our eyes. The white supremacists among us are perfectly happy with the idea that morality is subjective, so long as it works to empower them. And it’s doing just that.

If morality is objective, then it is possible for people’s subjective opinions to get morality wrong. If people disagree about what is moral, and they think there is some objective fact of the matter, this should lead them to think critically and learn from each other and from their mistakes. It is just the dogmatic view that morality is objectively what I think it is that leads people towards conflict and violence. This isn’t moral realism so much as dogmatism. We do see plenty of this kind of failure of critical thinking. But people being averse to thinking critically about morality doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. To the contrary, I think it is the morally right thing to do. Choosing conflict over critical thinking is a commonplace way of failing to respect people, and as Kant suggests, respect for persons is probably central to the moral truths we can discover. 

4.

I’m not sure how something can be both objective and subjective. The fact that people disagree doesn’t give us evidence that something is subjective. Is it even possible to disagree about something that is subjective (do we disagree about whether chocolate is better than vanilla? I think we all recognize that this is just a matter of taste). Generally, disagreement indicates that this issue is objective and someone just has the wrong view. It is only when we allow for this possibility that we stand a chance of learning from our mistakes.

5.

Lots of what is different among cultures isn’t really moral disagreement. For instance, I don’t think morality cuts one way or the other on the matter of burkas or bikinis. But then morality will indicate that women, like all people, should be treated with respect (and I’d submit that this remains a problem in both bikini cultures and burka cultures). But the more general point is that lots of cultural values are just that, cultural values. Sometimes these are connected in interesting ways to moral values (often underlying moral values that are broadly shared across cultures), but then sometimes not.

6.

Something being objective doesn’t mean that everyone will agree about it. Consider whether the Earth is flat, whether vaccines cause autism, when burning fossil fuels is causing climate change. There are objective answers to each of these questions and yet people do not agree. People used to disagree about slavery, that didn’t make this moral matter subjective. It just indicated that some people had a bit to learn. As soon as we take morality to be subjective, we give up on the idea of moral growth or having something yet to learn about what is right or wrong. I’d hope we’d begin to see by now that when this happens, it’s a holiday for bullies.

7.

That we use the words “right” and “wrong” not to refer to external realities or moral laws doesn’t mean that we are just creating moral values. A possibility you are overlooking here is that moral values are things we discover through reflecting on the kinds of being we are. This opens the door to a kind of moral realism where we can account for moral error and inquiry into morality and values. 

Subjectivism about morality leaves no room for taking the murderer’s values to be less reasonable than your own. I don’t think we are in such a desperate situation with morality. That the murderer extinguishes the life of a person and causes a great deal of suffering are factors that most of us take to be morally relevant. And not just because we have created anti-murder values for ourselves. Rather, I think most of us recognize our own moral worth and are keenly aware of the moral badness of causing suffering from our own experience as subjects. Moral values don’t have to be out there floating around in the universe for us to be able to discover (rather than create) them. We discover moral value within, as part of our nature as persons, and recognize moral obligations towards others in accordance with this.

Of course we form our own moral opinions. I’m not clear on how this amounts to forming moral values (any more than believing a wild-eyed conspiracy theory amounts to creating the facts that theory alleges, though I also worry lots of folks are losing track of the difference here as well).