The moral grandstander seeks to appear morally respectable to others but in doing so she makes public moral discourse less effective and harms other participants of public moral discourse.
It’s needless to say that public moral discourse is important. Without first discussing the moral issues of our time, how else can we expect moral improvement in the society or community we live in?
Interestingly enough, Tosi & Warmke don’t like the term “virtue signaling.” See their reason here. They link to this article from their Aeon article. However, as Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke argue, moral grandstanding or what might be more familiarly known as virtue signaling threatens to undermine our public moral discourse.1
What is moral grandstanding and why exactly is it bad? Tosi & Warmke offer their own account of moral grandstanding, but disappointingly don’t also offer a solution (this is not the main topic of their paper). But fear not! To defeat the enemy, you must first understand her.
For the sake of brevity, when I say grandstander, I mean moral grandstander. When I say grandstanding, I mean moral grandstanding. The moral grandstander is someone who seeks to satisfy her recognition desire—the desire to appear morally respectable to others.
I might want others to think I hold “respectable moral beliefs” or that I make respectable moral judgments (p.201). This recognition desire is the driving motivation for grandstanders, and I think it’s an understandable motivation.2 Let me clarify here that I don’t torture puppies for fun, and I would never want someone to think that I do. This is not a case where I do torture puppies for fun and don’t want others to think that I do (though this does get into interesting philosophical territory…). I don’t want other people to think that I torture puppies for fun.
The grandstander uses public moral discourse to show others that she is morally respectable. Public moral discourse (as Tosi & Warmke seem to use it) is an umbrella term for any public talk about moral issues. This includes the comments you see on Facebook or the debates between pundits on news networks.
The grandstander may contribute to this sort of public moral discourse in 5 ways:
Piling on is repeating what has already been said to “register” yourself on one side of a moral issue (p.204).
Imagine a situation where three friends—Jocko, Xena, and Trevor—are discussing the recent actions of their city’s mayor. Trevor says at some point, “I really don’t think that was okay to do.” If Jocko and Xena pile on, they might say something like, “Yeah, I agree!” or “Definitely!”
Notice that Jocko and Xena’s statements don’t actually add anything to the discussion (harsh, but true!). Instead, they are just broadcasting their position to everyone else. Now, everyone knows where Jocko and Xena stand, but nothing more of substance has been added. Why might Jocko and Xena do this? They do this because they want others to think that they also see the moral issue or that they also hold respectable moral beliefs like Trevor. In other words, they want to appear morally respectable to others.
Tosi & Warmke also cite the phenomenon of social comparison from social psychology to explain piling on. People want to appear favorably to others so in group deliberation they will agree with the dominant position. In the example above, Jocko and Xena might want to appear favorably to everyone else and one way of doing this is to register their position with the group.
Ramping up is making increasingly more dramatic claims about how to respond to a moral issue. Imagine back to the discussion that Jocko, Xena, and Trevor were having. Trevor might say, “I think we should create a petition for this.” Then, if Jocko and Xena ramp up, Xena might say, “No, what we should really be doing is asking for his resignation” and then Jocko might say, “No, if we’re taking this seriously we should be seeking criminal charges. Okay, maybe Jocko won’t actually say that last bit. I’ll go call my lawyer right now.”
In this situation, Jocko and Xena are contributing to the discussion, but something seems to have gone terribly wrong. Tosi & Warmke think that Jocko and Xena are trying to show that they are more morally respectable than the others. They’re one-upping each other in terms of moral respectability.
Social psychology can also explain what’s happening here. Jocko and Xena believe themselves (as do we) to hold some relative position of moral respectability in the group. Jocko might think that on the totem pole of moral respectability he’s at the top and Xena and Trevor are below him. To preserve this world view, Jocko needs to outdo the others by ramping up their claims. If Xena says they need to seek the mayor’s resignation, Jocko needs to do better than this to maintain his moral superiority.
Trumping up is pointing out a moral problem when there is, in fact, none. This can be explained by the fact that the grandstander wants to show others that she has a keener eye for moral problems. The grandstander believes that if she is successful she will appear more morally respectable than others. The rationale is something like this: because other people think I see the moral problems that others are blind to, I am better than others (great reasoning right?).
Excessive emotional displays are self-explanatory. By displaying my emotional outrage at a moral issue, I am showing others the strength of my moral conviction. This show of outrage helps me appear morally respectable to others by showing others that I care about the issue this much.
Claims of self-evidence are statements like “Of course this is wrong!” and “How could you think this is alright?” By themselves, these claims don’t seem entirely malicious, but when asserted in discussions on a moral issue where it’s not obvious which side is right, it quickly becomes problematic. By claiming one side of a moral issue is obviously right, the grandstander tries to show that her “moral sensibilities are more finely tuned than those of others” (p.208). The grandstander wants others to think that she is better at figuring out what is moral and what is not. This is just another way of the grandstander trying to show that she is more morally respectable than others.
Tosi & Warmke seem to be assuming something like “If an account of a phenomenon explains all aspects of that phenomenon, the account is true.” But what guarantees the account is true just because it explains a phenomenon? What if the account doesn’t line up with reality? And that wraps up all 5 things the grandstander may do. Tosi & Warmke argue that their account is correct because their account can explain all 5 ways that grandstanders contribute to public moral discourse.
Tosi & Warmke discuss a variety of problems, but I’ll focus on four problems the grandstander creates for moral discourse and its participants.
The first is that we might become more cynical about public moral discourse because we start to think that everyone is just grandstanding. No one sincerely means what they are saying. It’s all just a narcissistic act to improve your moral reputation.
The second problem is that we might also be less inclined to express emotional outrage because the act is cheapened by the grandstanders who also display outrage. Our emotional outrage doesn’t seem as significant if everyone else is doing the same.
Piling on and ramping up lead us to the third problem of group polarization. A group might start its moral deliberation with some moderate claims only to end up with radical claims that few people would actually be on board with. Polarization lends to the view that moral discourse “consists primarily of extreme and implausible claims,” discouraging people from participating (p.212).
Lastly, Tosi & Warmke think that the grandstander free rides off of the work done by participants of public moral discourse. The grandstander makes loud claims about some moral issue to raise awareness and then the participants of public moral discourse who become aware of this issue may work to solve it. My worry here is that Tosi & Warmke seem to think that it’s wrong for the grandstander to get public recognition for solving a moral issue when the grandstander might not have done anything to help. I’m thinking specifically about how it seems right to praise journalists or whistleblowers for raising the alarm on important moral issues. Their solution might be to organize protests to increase social pressure for reform. But in the end, Tosi & Warmke think that the grandstander unfairly gets public recognition for solving the moral issue while not actually working to solve the issue.
Having said all this, Tosi & Warmke don’t think that all grandstanding is bad. There may be cases where not grandstanding is worse.
I think the most interesting qualification Tosi & Warmke make is that it doesn’t follow from their account that we should discourage or blame people for grandstanding. Their reasoning for this claim doesn’t seem to appear in the paper, but it does appear in the Aeon article they wrote.
Their reasoning goes like this. Tosi & Warmke think that trying to find the grandstanders shouldn’t be a priority. Our priority should be to contribute to public moral discourse in a way that improves our society or community.
Furthermore, it’s impossible for us to identify grandstanders unless we have access to their thoughts. Instead of focusing on the difficult task of identifying the grandstanders, what we should do is consider whether we are a grandstander. After all, we have access to our own thoughts. In the end, the enemy we should first look to defeat is not one of the other possible grandstanders but ourselves.3
“Moral Grandstanding,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 44:3 (2016):p.197-217. Tosi & Warmke have also written a layman explanation of their paper here. ↩
Tosi and Warmke admit that this recognition desire may not be present at all in some cases of grandstanding so they focus on the paradigmatic cases of grandstanding. ↩
Many thanks to DS for taking the time to give feedback on this post. ↩