Some Moral Claims Could be Correct
I have come across the claim in another thread that no moral claims are true because all extrinsic moral claims rely on unverifiable or untrue moral axioms and, thus, that the only truth moral claims are subject to is relational to other claims and the axioms those claims are based on; extrinsic justifications for moral claims just pass the buck until a(n) (incorrect) moral axiom is reached.
Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims.
However, there is something implicit in this assertion; there could be multiple reasons we cannot produce correct moral axioms:
(1) It is impossible for any moral axioms to be true.
(2) We cannot prove if any moral axioms are true.
(3) All proposed moral axioms are not true.
(1) and (2) sound like axioms themselves, and (3) is probably unverifiable if (2) is true: if we cannot prove that any moral axioms are true, we cannot know if none are true, even if we can show that some are false, as the ones that cannot be demonstrated to be false could be true. We would have to be able to demonstrate that all moral axioms (not just the ones proposed) are false for (2) and (3) to be compatible, and that sounds impossible to me, as we can come up with nearly limitless axioms.
Note that demonstrating that no moral axioms are true is different from (1): (1) says that it is impossible for any conceived moral axioms to be true, and the other says that no existing moral axioms are true. It could be hypothetically possible for moral axioms to be correct, but also possible for none of them to actually be correct because they do not represent reality accurately. (1) seems impossible to demonstrate, unless we could somehow evaluate the character of moral statements such that we could determine if they actually are capable of representing reality.
So, if one wishes to assert that (3) is true, one must take heed of (2), or prove that one cannot represent reality with moral claims; it is totally arbitrary to assert that (3) is true without (1), and (2) bungles (3). Ultimately, it seems to me that it cannot be verified that (3) is true, so it is incorrect to assume that no moral claims can be objectively true merely because they cannot be verified. In fact, the alternative to (3), that some moral axioms could be correct, seems to be a more reasonable position than (3).
Of course, there is also the whole is/ought thing which no one can address adequately.
Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims.
However, there is something implicit in this assertion; there could be multiple reasons we cannot produce correct moral axioms:
(1) It is impossible for any moral axioms to be true.
(2) We cannot prove if any moral axioms are true.
(3) All proposed moral axioms are not true.
(1) and (2) sound like axioms themselves, and (3) is probably unverifiable if (2) is true: if we cannot prove that any moral axioms are true, we cannot know if none are true, even if we can show that some are false, as the ones that cannot be demonstrated to be false could be true. We would have to be able to demonstrate that all moral axioms (not just the ones proposed) are false for (2) and (3) to be compatible, and that sounds impossible to me, as we can come up with nearly limitless axioms.
Note that demonstrating that no moral axioms are true is different from (1): (1) says that it is impossible for any conceived moral axioms to be true, and the other says that no existing moral axioms are true. It could be hypothetically possible for moral axioms to be correct, but also possible for none of them to actually be correct because they do not represent reality accurately. (1) seems impossible to demonstrate, unless we could somehow evaluate the character of moral statements such that we could determine if they actually are capable of representing reality.
So, if one wishes to assert that (3) is true, one must take heed of (2), or prove that one cannot represent reality with moral claims; it is totally arbitrary to assert that (3) is true without (1), and (2) bungles (3). Ultimately, it seems to me that it cannot be verified that (3) is true, so it is incorrect to assume that no moral claims can be objectively true merely because they cannot be verified. In fact, the alternative to (3), that some moral axioms could be correct, seems to be a more reasonable position than (3).
Of course, there is also the whole is/ought thing which no one can address adequately.
Comments (167)
I definitely agree with Prinz and the other people who believe that certain moral positions are better than others based on empirical ("meta-empirical") values, but I fail to see how moral-sense theory, or more specifically sentimentalism, rules out realism, even if it does provide a plausible account of how we discover what is moral or immoral; just because we draw on emotion to form our beliefs about right and wrong does not necessarily mean that moral realism is impossible. Moral sense theory is, however, definitely right, imo, about the fact that "moral facts and how one comes to be justified in believing them are necessarily bound up with human emotions."
I mean, just because I hate rats because a rat bit me once doesn't mean that I cannot be empirically correct when I claim that rats are found to be, largely, annoying pests.
Furthermore, it sounds like sentimentalism would have to assume (2) to support the claim that moral claims are only subjective and relative. The sentimentalist would have to demonstrate why (2) is a reasonable assumption, and "because emotional reactions to experience" doesn't seem to me to be enough.
Quoting ToothyMaw
And if rats are found to be ideal pets within another culture is that culture empirically incorrect?
Quoting ToothyMaw
Prinz argues that the basis of our moral values are not in fact propositional beliefs but pre-cognitive preferences.
Note that I amended myself to "are, largely, found to be", not "are".
Quoting Joshs
How does he support the assertion that they cannot be propositional in addition to being pre-cognitive preferences?
btw I love rats
I wonder what you make of this contrarian view from an old thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/573153
Quoting ToothyMaw
I suppose they could be articulated propositionally. But in order for rats are pests to be a proposition with a truth value it would have to be possible to ground it in an objective state of affairs. A common understanding of what makes a pest is a consensual understanding of the meaning of the word pest, but this is not the same thing as a consensual experience of the feelings of revulsion, disgust, etc that make rats a pest for some people and not others.
Dude, I can't understand shit that you write. Your writing is not bad by any means, but your style is difficult for me.
My argument would not be that moral claims must be both emotional responses to experience and also propositions, but rather that both can exist and are tied up, and that (2), an assumption you and Prinz seem to make on the grounds that emotional reaction to experience forms morals, is not reasonable, as it is conceivable that there could be an objective grounding for a moral claim if it can be expressed in a way such that it could be true or false. So maybe it is a proposition, or maybe it isn't. One cannot claim then that (3), a refutation of us knowing any moral facts, follows from whatever version of (2) one subscribes to.
If I make a genuine moral claim like: "sand-bagging is despicable and ought be punished", then this is indisputably a proposition, and to dismiss it would require some justification - if it is being dismissed on the grounds of (2). It seems you and Prinz take (2) to be true because we cannot evaluate moral axioms to be true, to which I would respond that (2) is itself an axiom in need of some justification.
Furthermore, I think claims should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, as some morals are definitely formed from emotional responses to experience, yet others are the result of careful thought.
A baby cries until it is nourished or cared for. Simple hunger or not.
Normal children don't cry when they get what they want. Normal children don't laugh when they are physically punished or harmed.
You don't smile when you're excluded or singled out or scammed, robbed, injured, or lied to.
Any response that starts with "a psychopath" or along the lines of "well what if I like being injured" is not applicable as yes, sometimes the human body and components can be "broken" or made to become so.
The only thing is "the lesser of two evils" ie. "the trolley problem". We don't know the consequences of our actions. The degenerate who picks a fight with you at a bar might go on to save the president of the country or cure cancer- somehow. Or he might go on to ruin or take the lives of more people than you can count. Who's to say what would or would not have happened by choosing to walk away from it, resulting in him continuing to live, and more specifically whether or not it was "moral" or "immoral".
Note this does not include cognitive bias hypocrisy ie. a child being raised to kill others because they're "bad" and so "it's good" and knows only praise and reaffirmation in doing so or social norms with said hypocrisy ie. slavery.
I think this is overstating the case. There is evidence there is a gene-based tendency to make judgements about people, but there is a lot of morality that is learned.
As I see it, morals mostly express human values, not facts. Morals are not true or false, they work or they don't. Where do those values come from? I think some are inborn and some are learned.
Your statement reminds me of an explanation of "ignorance of law is no excuse". That ancient consideration was about being a decent person and if someone did something really terrible, ignorance of a law did not excuse what the person did. It was an unforgivable violation of decent behavior that everyone should know.
Morality limited to "the law" is a very low morality. A higher morality is a good understanding of virtuous thinking and action. A moral is a matter of cause and effect and when a person does not have such reasoning, the person's mind is inadequate and the person needs to be under the authority of someone with better reasoning. Our liberty is protected with education to develop virtuous people with good reasoning.
Speaking against such education is immoral because there is a bad effect when such education is neglected.
You are conflating specific moral beliefs with logical truth of a claim. Take for example Mill's explanation of offense-- freedom from assault, the right to ban intoxication in public, the right to ban smoking inside buildings, etc. -- the Harm Principle.
When philosophers say that animal abuse is unethical, they are not necessarily invoking some axioms that have already been proven to be logically true. But they make sense in saying, and rightly so, that animals feel pain, loneliness, hunger, and fear and animals desire social interaction and protection by using various evidence from science, the anatomy, and the relationship they observe between animals and between people and animals. The distress felt by people when witnessing the abuse is real, and pain is real, and so are hunger, loneliness, fear. The philosophers, and their adherents, are using reasoning or a reasonable explanation of why something is harmful or offensive.
Now of course, the philosophers are also aware of the universal implication of individual experiences -- so they come up with universal claims such as the golden rule, veil of ignorance, the harm principle, categorical imperative, etc.
If you take that all together, a moral axiom can be formulated, and they have already been formulated, so that we couldn't deny its truth without also imploding internally due to the difficulty of reconciling what our mind tells us and what we write for the sake of discussion, like this.
That morals must work is indisputable, but that some are inborn, or tied to human nature, and others learned, says little about whether or not those morals are justified. That is mostly what I am concerned with. I appreciate what you are saying, but it is somewhat irrelevant, unless you are trying to demonstrate that morals cannot be justified.
You don't really seem to be saying that, but rather that it doesn't matter if morals are justified via reasoning - they only matter insofar as they are functional. If that is a misrepresentation, please correct me.
Quoting Athena
Agreed - I think that just because something is illegal doesn't mean it cannot be moral in certain circumstances, and that some things that are legal can be immoral in certain circumstances.
But it is different when considering the existence of moral facts. Moral facts could be vague, or very specific, and could be applied by a virtuous person in novel ways. There would be room for creativity, even, when considering the application of moral facts in a way that we don't have when considering the application of some of the very specific laws we have.
Extrinsic moral claims, such as that animal abuse is wrong, must always eventually be traced to an axiom, and for that extrinsic moral claim to be true one must have a true axiom - which doesn't really have to be proven logically, but must be reasonable or capable of being evaluated for truth, or have plausible conditions that exist under which it could be true. That is, if we are expressing those moral claims in the form of propositions and not "rats are gross" or something.
Quoting L'éléphant
That animal abuse is objectively wrong requires that its harm is not just undesirable, but provably wrong. Many things are undesirable, such as going to the dentist, but we wouldn't say that one is doing oneself a wrong by going to the dentist, or that the dentist is evil for drilling your teeth. Your examples of universalizations are, of course, reasonable, but we cannot say that they represent anything objectively correct.
I get what you are saying - that we can decide that something is wrong if it can be tied to measurable negative outcomes, and that these moral claims do not reference moral facts, but rather have their base in universalizations formed from the collation of individual experiences.
But that doesn't give us logically true moral claims that express whether or not something is objectively right or wrong.
Again, I said there have been moral axioms written that if denied the truth, we would implode internally. True and not-true cannot logically exist.
Ah. Okay. My bad. I didn't understand you.
In my OP I do at least recognize that some moral axioms could be true, and that some (many?) attempts to refute them don't make sense.
I'm not saying true and not-true can logically exist, but rather that an injunction against something like murder could be true and represent a statement claiming something is immoral.
Think: "murder is wrong".
Jonathan Haidt argues that our moral values are the product of inborn evolutionary adaptations. He lists the following 5 innate moral foundations:
Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation
These intuitions are the tail that wags the dog of the reasoned propositions that you are counting on to give us objectively true moral axioms. They are present in all of us but occur in proportions that vary from individual to individual. For instance , in Haidts model, conservatives may emphasize authority and loyalty over care and fairness.
While it is apparent that Haidt's views might be compelling, they don't seem to address justifications for morals, although he addresses why we have the morals we have. It is like using a scientific conclusion to support a policy decision: science might provide the facts necessary for a decision to be made, but these facts have to be interpreted such that a conclusion about what is best to do can be reached.
But yeah, many of our moral beliefs could have been reached via "inborn evolutionary adaptations". To say, however, that our moral beliefs are correct because they are adaptations is fallacious, obviously, and to say that they are objectively incorrect, or that (2) follows, because they are adaptations, is also fallacious or unfounded.
I know very little about Haidt, so if he does address justifications for morals, please link me something.
You could make an argument from unlikeliness that it is unlikely that our morals - obviously the result of many different things - are true, but that does not mean (1), (2), (3), or any combination thereof, is true.
To introduce some Buddhist-like thought, which of any can occur independently of a qualitative metric consisting of conscious beings suffering?
Im so far concluding that none can, in so far as all possibilities are either favored to not favored in relation to the appraised conscious suffering that would be incurred or avoided were the possibility enacted or pursued.
If so, then it could be concluded that it is an objective truth that all conscious beings seek optimal freedom from conscious suffering - this despite complexities such as weighing short-term suffering against long-term suffering.
If objectively true that we all seek optimal freedom from suffering - what in western thought could be termed the search for optimal eudemonia - then that means which in fact best liberates us from suffering will be the objectively true goal relative to all conscious beings, irrespective of (or else, in manners independent of) ones beliefs on the matter.
Since this objectively true goal would in principle satisfy that which all yearn for, it would then be an objective good - a good that so remains independently of individuals subjective fancies.
Since this good would be objectively real to one and all, a proposition regarding it could then be conformant to its reality and, thereby, true.
Were this goal to be objectively real, then it would be that reality which just is via which what ought to be can be judged. Thereby potentially resolving the is/ought problem.
Of course, all this is contingent on there being a) a universal, foundational, (one could add, metaphysically real) drive to all conscious beings in everything we do and b) some means of satisfying it in principle. Yet, if (a) and (b), one could then well make sense of objective ethics and morality in so far as there being an objective good to pursue by which all actions can be judged as either better or worse.
A lack of disagreement doesn't mean that something is objectively true, merely that everyone agrees on it. You could indeed fashion propositions after this common goal of reducing conscious suffering, but it remains that these propositions would be only correct with regard to something subjective: everyone's common desire to not suffer.
Yes, one could make moral claims that would be correct, but these claims would still be relative. What difference is there in what you propose and proposing that female genital mutilation is okay relative to those in your culture if everyone in your culture agrees it is okay?
I know this is a brief summary but this seems similar to my position. This latter point also resembles Sam Harris on morality.
Quoting T Clark
I think this is reasonable.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Isn't the point that TC is arguing there are no moral facts, just ideas which work or don't in context? This means justification is moot and context dependent, for we do not have access to some transcendental realm of moral truths.
I agree that we don't have access to transcendental moral truths, but we cannot rule them out, which is the point of my OP. Many arguments that are not as cogent as TC's misfire because they argue some newfangled combination of (1), (2), and (3). TC's argument is honest, simple, and makes sense.
Btw, javra basically just plagiarized Sam Harris as far as I can tell. Maybe unintentionally.
This sounds like a version of the utilitarian claim that the pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of pain is the universal motivator of human behavior. John Dewey had a rebuttal to this notion, as explained by Putnam. Just substitute avoidance of suffering for pleasure.
If agreeableness is precisely the agreeableness or congruence of some objective condition with some impulse, habit, or tendency of the agent,"
then
"of course, pure pleasure is a myth. Any pleasure is qualitatively unique, being precisely the harmony of one set of conditions with its appropriate activity. The pleasure of eating is one thing; the pleasure of hearing music, another; the pleasure of an amiable act, another; the pleasure of drunkenness or of anger is still another."
Dewey continues,
"Hence the possibility of absolutely different moral values attaching to pleasures, according to the type or aspect of character which they express. But if the good is only a sum of pleasures, any pleasure, so far as it goes, is as good as any other-the pleasure of malignity as good as the pleasure of kindness, simply as pleasure.
I wasn't addressing lack of disagreement. I was addressing the possibility of an objectively true psychological reality that universally applies to all psyches. If it were to be somehow discovered, all would have it, true. But it's objective truth wouldn't be a product of agreements.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Would this analogy help?: In parallel, all analytical judgments of correctness will always be relative to those particulars address, yet the notion of correctness remains constant.
Then what would make it right or wrong to reduce conscious suffering? What would tie a shared psychological state to objectively true moral claims about reducing suffering? It would remain that suffering would have to be wrong, or we are just forming propositions based on a shared understanding of something objective that doesn't directly inform morality. That doesn't resolve is/ought.
Quoting javra
I don't know what this means. Not even a little.
This to me gets into the issue of universals. One could also stipulate that since each and every apple is unique no such thing as the concept of apple can be real or have any import in what we do. This being a different issue to me.
Besides, my principle claim was the following only:
Quoting javra
Quoting ToothyMaw
Here's a broader perspective I find convincing. First, you'll have to put up with another quote from Lao Tzu. This from Derek Lin's translation of Verse 38 of the Tao Te Ching:
[i]Therefore, the Tao is lost, and then virtue
Virtue is lost, and then benevolence
Benevolence is lost, and then righteousness
Righteousness is lost, and then etiquette
Those who have etiquette
Are a thin shell of loyalty and sincerity
And the beginning of chaos[/i]
To me this means we know the right thing to do from our hearts, from inside. When people lose touch with their authentic selves, they start to depend on more and more rigid customs, rules, and laws. Somewhere along the path down this ladder of increasing artificiality, the need for rationality, justification comes into play.
I don't want to distract from the questions you want to discuss, so I won't take this any further.
I have determined that that means that if something is true it is true only with respect to a certain object if it is not related to other things. And things can still be correct.
edit: or maybe it doesn't mean anything
I actually appreciated your contributions. That verse is apt, although I appear to be on the wrong side of it.
I hear you, but I rule them out anyway since there is no way we can demonstrate 1) what they are or 2) if they exist. We have no choice but to be pragmatic - for me humans create morality to facilitate social cooperation in order to achieve our preferred forms of order.
Quoting T Clark
Sounds similar to Christianity where preachers will often say that morality is 'written on the human heart' by god. In other words, we already know what is right and wrong. I've worked with too many hard core criminals to accept this, but I do think in general people inherit moral tendencies - and we are certainly immersed in a moral culture from birth, so it may be hard to escape that process of socialization or even be aware that it exists.
In simplistic terms, when one appraises if 1 + 1 = 2 is correct, one's judgment will be fully relative to that concerned in one's appraisal (differing from, say, if it is correct that 236 - 45 = 6) but in all such cases the notion of correctness remains constant irrespective of that addressed. We furthermore universally deem correct answers good - so that we all seek correct answers to questions, irrespective of what we may deem to be the correct answer in concrete terms (e.g., if we deem it the correct answer that 1 +1 = 1 we will then abide by that answer on account of deeming it correct).
I'm not here arguing that they are; I'm only suggesting that it is possible for ethical judgments to hold the same roundabout property. Always relative to context and it's particulars. Yet always holding a universal and constant good that is universally pursued irrespective of concrete particulars and our biased judgments.
Honestly, Sam Harris is the best on this one, imo. If we do what Javra says and try to form some sort of Frankenstein's monster of psychology, ethics, and neuroscience, we could come the closest to having some sort of objective moral project short of throwing our lot in with God.
Ha. Is this fear before rationality? If converging psychology, ethics, and neuroscience is off-putting to you, then by all means proceed otherwise. Good luck to you.
The problem with theistic morality is that it provides no objective basis for right and wrong. Religious people find it almost impossible to agree with each other about morality. Take abortion; the role of women; stem cell research, homosexuality; capital punishment; participation in wars; taxation - you name the issue, they disagree about it - often within the same sect of a given religion. Because in the end, all morality, whether theistic or secular is based on the subjective preferences of the person, their interpretation of scripture or philosophy.
Yes, your phrasing was so confusing I couldn't even comprehend what I was writing as I was writing it.
Quoting javra
Yes, I am a simpleton.
Quoting javra
So I was right: if something is correct it is correct only with respect to a certain object if it is not related to other things. And things can still be correct despite this.
Quoting javra
So, we blindly pursue correct answers because they are considered "good", and we may not reach correct answers but still call them correct, and also inevitably go with our account of what is correct because we deem it correct (and, thus, "good").
That doesn't seem circular to you? And that seems as much a sociological claim as a philosophical one.
I wasn't speaking ill of such a project.
It could if God made himself apparent. But that probably won't happen.
Perhaps god needs to host a show on Fox News.
Not necessarily. We perpetually verify and, where possible, falsify: one apple and one apple indeed equate to two apples and not one.
All the same, do you find that appraisal discordant to the way thing are in the world?
Quoting ToothyMaw
We likely then have different sentiments toward Frankenstein's monster. Ok, then.
I have some sympathy for Frankenstein's monster, even if he was grotesque. Kind of relatable, I think.
Quoting javra
Yes, I think people pursue correct answers and acknowledge when they don't find them. And no one just equates "good" and "correct". That would be like saying that 2 + 2 = 4 could be a moral principle because it is correct.
I would hang on every word.
As do I, as I believe I previously expressed via "verification and falsification".
Quoting ToothyMaw
The good, goodness, expands far beyond morality. "That was a good movie / book" isn't about morality. But it yet addresses that which is good. Same with correctness in non-ethical judgments.
Point being, despite all the relative issues involved with correctness, it as thing to be striven for is not relative to the whim of cultures or individuals but, rather, is a universal to all individuals and cultures regardless of whims. Hoping that makes sense.
You shoe-horned that in. Your claims about the reality of people equating good and correct mentioned nothing about people falsifying things. I don't see how your statement about an apple being added to an apple constitutes any serious account of the fact that people often times recognize that they are wrong, and do not just assume that anything they have determined to be correct (whether or not it is actually correct) is good.
So, you acknowledge that people falsify things. But what value does a false thing have if not wrong if good is assumed if a thing is correct?
You wanted things simple, so I expressed a simple example. That adults take the example for granted does not imply that so do young enough children first learning their maths.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Could you clarify this question?
If one says that good is to be associated with correct, then wouldn't wrong be associated with false? And if that is so, then how does falsifying things tie into your assertion that we consider correct answers to be good regardless of their actual correctness? You could have a claim that is believed to be true that may actually be false, and then the values "wrong" and "good" are assigned to the same answer, even if it is unbeknownst to the people reaching the answer. That is, if you believe that perceived correctness actually makes something good.
edit: and even if you don't believe that perceived correctness makes something good, there could still be a contradiction if two or more people disagree on the correctness of an answer.
I'd rephrase it: correct (what is right) is good; incorrect (what is wrong) is bad. Don't know, but am thinking this might make significant differences to your question.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I'm working with the presumption, if one can call it that, that everyone is fallible. If one wants to assume some infallible proclamation of truth, correct proposition, etc., then this departs from my own point of view. I do place a strong emphasis on verification and falsification of all beliefs. This though might end up heading toward epistemology. A different topic than that of this thread.
It makes no difference.
Quoting javra
Yes, but it remains that if correct means good and incorrect means bad, there would be contradictions, even if people are fallible.
Quoting javra
I don't see anything outlandish about "correct propositions" existing.
edit: you literally just based your entire thing on correct propositions existing
I think there are two ways of looking at morality 1) As a set of rules that we can apply fairly rigidly to other people to judge them or 2) As a set of principles we can apply to ourselves to guide our lives. I've never really felt the need for the first of these. I try not to judge people. I've never found it a very useful way of seeing things.
Yes, you did. And I don't disagree with you.
Quoting ToothyMaw
This is where one might be mistaking an axiom with reasonableness. An injunction against murder is reasonable and ethical, though we might find that there is not an axiom that specifically calls out that murder is false.
Quoting ToothyMaw
This is not an axiom. This is an example of harm principle. Oh yeah, Mill's harm principle is not an axiom -- it is a moral assumption with strong, reasonable backing such as the golden rule.
If the subjugation of a minority resulted in a preferred form of order, would you declare it moral?
If, on the other hand, you under-analyzed this question, and the achievement of a "preferred order" is not the ultimate objective, but it is instead X (whatever that might be), is not X the holy law of morality which you seem to deny existing?
That is, we seem to have 2 options here: (1) admit to no true morality, but to just a code of etiquette unique to our fleeting time and place, or (2) proclaim there is a true morality, elusive to our exact detection as it might be, that applies always and to all.
#1 denies us the right to condemn the seemingly atrocious, but demands we just recognize that some play by different rules than us. Where we draw our boundaries creates further ambiguity in that it's hard to know who I have the right to claim must play by my rules and who gets the pass to do as he chooses.
#2 invokes a transcendent good, which is a difficult leap for those mired in naturalistic and scientific worldviews.
I prefer to say that rape in wrong, regardless of whether it advances or falls to advance some social objective. I also unapologetically judge the rapist, and find those who fail to offer their condemning judgment immoral themselves. The sort of immorality that arises from those who refuse to judge from a sense of misplaced empathy or tortured intellectual nuance is some of the least admiral behavior we endure. There are perhaps some so unsophisticated and limited that they might be excused for not recognizing evil among us, but there is no excuse for those who have actively suppressed their intellectual and moral abilities to allow that which shouldn't be allowed.
This old thing? :wink: No I wouldn't, but I am the product of values and presuppositions associated with Christianity, liberalism and assorted Western enculturations. My moral views would be not much different to the average Anglican here in Australia, despite my not being a Christian. I doubt most of us ever travel far from our cultural, familial roots.
But, and this is the real point, I can well imagine a culture that does regularly kill children for sport and people think it enjoyable or good. Ditto for almost any unspeakable act - slavery being a good example. And I can well imagine a culture that has set itself up around values and concomitant practices you and I find abhorrent. There are small examples all over the world, in history and now, from child soldiers to child labor. We can argue against such things and hope to end them, but what we are doing is advocating for our values as superior, based on a set of principles or rules. And sure, I believe I can defend my values against others, but I would, wouldn't I? Wouldn't you?
Quoting ToothyMaw
I like Clark's statement that a moral statement expresses a value, not a fact, but our moral judgment is better with science. Time and again civilizations have fallen because they could not provide enough for their unnaturally large populations, usually, the final blow being a climate change that led to famine. I think somewhere in that statement of fact there is a moral but the moral is something we can learn from history, not an inborn morality. I think our destruction of rivers, lakes, and now the oceans, and other environments, is very immoral. The harm we have done to our planet is causing conditions that are deadly and should we be held accountable for that, given we were ignorant of the damage we were causing?
I think much of our behavior is controlled the same as other animals' behaviors are controlled by hormones and survival needs. Native Americans are known to learn what we might call morals from animals. The book "The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, explains why people cheat, gossip, care, share, and follow the golden rule by explaining animal behaviors. That is in agreement with Clark and the notion of inborn morality. But I have read taking care of children for 20 years is not normal and in one tribe 3-year-old children were left to fend for themselves when there was a serious food scarcity. We know today that in places like Afghanistan daughters can be sold, and in England, at the beginning of industrialization, starving people sold their children to factories. What we think of as only decent human behavior is the luxury of having full stomachs. I don't know how to word that moral but we would be very foolish to ignore the importance of feeling physically and emotionally safe. Hunger can revert us back to a less kind, less civilized struggle for survival.
I don't disagree with this, although I have a somewhat different perspective. For me, the purpose of social control; including enforcement of rules, laws, customs, and etiquette; is to prevent people from causing avoidable and undeserved harm and seeing to it they face the consequences of their actions. If you want to call social control "morality," that's fine, but making moral judgements about people isn't an effective way to protect others. That's the important point for me - moral judgement leads to ineffective social control. Is righteousness and retribution more important to you than a peaceful, safe society? Not for me.
Quoting Tom Storm
This is the part of morality that interests me. The rest is just engineering, or at least it should be.
God no! This is atrocious, Tom. Sorry, but putting it the way you wrote it sets us back 200 years. There is nothing in moral discourse that draws the boundary on where we can and cannot judge moral actions. Just because a society in this or that peninsula practices and legalizes human sacrifice does not mean we can't judge such behavior in our own turf. Yes, we might not be able to stop that society from committing human sacrifice except through invasion/war, but it doesn't mean our own discourse must preclude it from our judgment.
I don't think we all realize the fundamental assumptions guiding our moral beliefs:
1. we are humans.
2. as such, we have emotions, beliefs, desires, fears, etc.
3. from this, we know we have a common ground upon which a moral discourse can succeed.
That a society is stupid, ignorant, low IQ, backward mentally, uneducated, brainwashed, and just plain sociopath is not an excuse to promote relativism as an acceptable moral principle. Relativism is a dangerous moral view.
Not wanting to promote relativism. :wink: As I said - I think my morality is better than theirs and would argue this based on the notion of the wellbeing or flourishing of conscious creatures. The point I am making is that we can imagine a culture that disagrees and chooses differently.
What metaphysical process do you have access to that can demonstrate why my values are better than theirs, other than already agreeing to my suppositions about wellbeing? As @Hanover says you need to believe in some transcendent guarantor of morality to do this definitively and then you also need to demonstrate that your version of transcendent is in agreement with your version of morality. How is that done?
That they chose differently is not an indication that their moral choice is reasonable or ethical . Remember, we win by rationality, not necessarily by changing the actual behavior of a society. In other words, we can't force them to be wise in mind and in action.
If murder is bad - as the very meaning of murder is that of a certain kind of killing that is bad - then murder is bad.
Examples where murder can be misconstrued as good/better does not disassociate the term from its use as something bad in general. Given that circumstances may vary in innumerable ways when we are talking about someones death there is quite obviously going to be areas of contention about what is or is not considered murder. Euthanasia to some people is murder and to others it is merely assisting someone to die.
Nuance in language and interpretations of events and circumstances does not take away from the general meaning of the term murder being bad.
Not everyone likes the taste of strawberries but that does not mean that strawberries are considered to taste bad, yet no doubt there is someone out there who thinks something most consider to taste awful to taste bad. The experience of tasting something nice and something bad exists. The variance of experiences does not detract from the existence of such experiences.
Morality is as meaningless as ethics. There is meta ethics and we are never within its reach yet constantly craving its presumed judgement our lives even if that means said craving is non-existent. What we do is what we do. How we interpret what we do is merely that an interpretation of NOT a complete understanding of.
Of something. It is not a resolution just a statement that there is a directedness towards something (the existent or non-existent is a mirage of a dichotomy).
I think the easiest justification is that rational compassion harms no one, but lack of any rational compassion harms all by direct and indirect negligence.
I think the point is not that morals need or don't need justifications, but instead that humans animals and agents, whomever can't thrive properly or healthily under extreme negligence and continuance of this negligence whether intentional or not eventually leads to inevitable demise.
Does this have anything to do with Hume's objection to ethics?
It seems to me that morality develops out of conflicts between social and personal advantage, and represents the social advantage in the first instance. But this becomes complicated immediately by the fact that social and individual advantage are closely intertwined. Other things being equal, the group is advantaged by the individual being advantaged - just not at the expense of the baby. But the group functions as a group by means of convention. Language is a convention that allows coordination between members, and established habitual behaviour also allows coordination.
Anything that undermines the cohesion and coordination of the group for individual advantage we can call treachery, and the punishment of treachery is advantageous to the group.
Et voila, we have a naturalistic account of both crime and punishment, that sets out the difference between individual preference and social mores, such that torture can be possibly defended as beneficial to social cohesion under certain circumstances, but never normalised as everyday social interaction. In the first video, the beginning of lying as the undermining of communication for individual benefit; in the second, ritual ordeal as initiation into the group and demonstration of the ability to sacrifice personal advantage for the group.
Quoting L'éléphant
I'm using it as an example of something that could be logically true based on some axiom, not claiming that it is axiomatic that murder is wrong. Reasonableness doesn't enter.
And yes, the moral claim "murder is wrong" has a strong backing in reason, but you acknowledge that that which justifies the claim is an assumption. Honestly, I think you and I agree more than we disagree on this: morals are possible and can be reached via reason and minimal assumptions.
The "is" of morality doesn't address justifications for morality, which is the point of this thread. I know evolutionary psychology is great and all, but it is kind of irrelevant to this discussion.
The monkey video is great, though.
Murder is bad because it is defined as bad? Really? I guess on a local level it is bad, but something doesn't become objectively true just because it is defined as bad, and I'm concerned with objectively true claims.
I could define the sky as being turquoise, but that doesn't mean the sky isn't still blue.
Quoting I like sushi
I would not argue against that.
Quoting I like sushi
The important point is not that variance of experience does or does not exist and does or does not detract from the existence of experience, but rather that emotional responses to experience are subjective.
Quoting I like sushi
I agree, we don't entirely understand what we do, but that doesn't mean we can't be doing something right.
I haven't read any Hume. I know of his fork, however.
Morality and ethics are social apparatus. We are not bound by pure subjectivity yet we are enchanted by the idea that we choose as an individual for ourselves and independent of others views.
It is a sea of hidden nuances and dead ends. I this respect it has more in common with the general outline of science being a constant riling against convention for the sake of seeking better pathways to fuller understanding.
Would antisemites be doing a good thing if they refused to bow to the will of people who aren't assholes?
Quoting I like sushi
Okay, you seem to be assuming (2), which would need some sort of justification.
Quoting I like sushi
That morality can be viewed as a social apparatus relates not a bit to whether or not we can justify our morals. And yes, people largely operate under the illusion that they are coming up with original, carefully considered positions, that might not actually be so original and carefully considered.
Quoting I like sushi
Finding better ways of applying our morals does not concern whether or not those morals are justified, and I don't think anyone has really physically verified that any morals are true, even if it is possible to do so. So, you seem to claim (2) is true, yet that we verify and falsify our morals in a scientific manner.
What's his fork? Can you edify me ... please?
Would you rather throw your lot in with an ethic reached with reason and some basic assumptions that reduces suffering, or one that could allow all of the worst things imaginable? It seems likely that logic and reason will get us closer to said transcendental good than a denial of moral facts gets us to truth. Not to mention, many relativistic arguments are confused because they make multiple claims including (1), (2), and (3), which are not always compatible.
look up "Hume's Fork"
Ok!
I don't think it's irrelevant. It explains that, and why, murder is wrong but war is right, why there are the moral strictures there are and how they are not arbitrary in the main but sometimes they are, and why different environments produce different moralities in the same species. The justification of any morality is 'group interest' - nature demands it, the ancestors say it, God says it, everyone says it except the individual, who insists on asking "why should I?" as though they are not part of a larger whole. What other question are you considering?
Quoting ToothyMaw
Dilemma questions such as this (if I understood you) arise out of consideration of group conflict - ie conflict of scale. Family, tribe, nation, species, ecosystem, all have a claim on the individual's loyalty and self-sacrifice. We are seeing the result of the failure of traditional moralities to consider the interests of the environment. We have not been taught to make that identification in particular by Capitalist economics, which is founded on the merciless exploitation of environmental resources as slaves, as ancestor fossils, and as the living environment. 'Why should I not burn fossil fuels?' has a very clear, very cogent answer, that we need to learn to internalise as a species. Antisemitism, racism, the persecution of any sub-group, corrodes the cooperative functioning of society and prevents us from acting together to address global issues.
Incidentally, my good friend Hume did not deny morality, He merely denied the authority of reason. Thus you cannot get an ought from an is, nor a will be from a has been, nor an object from a sensation by any reasoned argument. But he was no more against morality than he was against science.
It addresses why people believe those things are wrong and right but doesn't address at all whether or not moral claims can be objectively true. I have made this argument about ten times in this thread.
Quoting unenlightened
That is a practical justification, not a moral justification. You are committing a fallacy - that something is right because it is natural. Again, group interest might give rise to morality but that doesn't tell us if something is objectively right or wrong.
Quoting unenlightened
I agree with this, but my point was more so that not bowing to the will of others doesn't make right.
Quoting unenlightened
You have either read a lot of Hume or are really old.
Quoting unenlightened
I didn't say Hume was against morality, but rather that the is/ought issue is unresolved as far as I can tell.
It is nothing more than pretending actions and reasons for actions are not preluded by opinions of, and impositions of, social convention.
Someone acting as they wish to act, does so genuinely, irrespective of social conventions. Non of are genuine and therefore none of have an inkling of some higher morality other than by-way-of playing for or against ideas of what is or is not justified.
I can justify killing someone but justification is just as likely an excuse as a reason. Given that we are bound by societal mechanisms we cannot escape them and cannot ever really lay claim to some pure reason because of this.
Meta ethics has supplanted Ethics it is just that people are slow to realise this. In a few hundred years it will likely be viewed as laughable ad phrenology is.
Note: Obviously Im not saying this from a moral high ground :D
I think the vast majority of people have no idea what meta-ethics is, and I have honestly never heard any regular people talk about anything even related to meta-ethics.
Quoting I like sushi
I have no emotional attachment to meta-ethics and wouldn't really care if that were to happen.
Quoting I like sushi
I'm not sure why you think this is relevant. Yes, people sometimes retroactively justify their shitty actions, but that's not really salient.
Honestly, I'm not sure if you are being serious here.
I am deadly serious but understand that I am somewhat on the fringes. Ethics is too wrapped up in a death spiral of convoluted lies, misconceptions and band-wagoning.
No one cares what they mean by ethics only what use they can make to impose their will on others or deflect the will of others. Pointless masturbation and ironically it is more than likely detrimental to their own being and everyone elses.
I'd have to go back and re-read it, but I didn't consider the significance of Haidt's book to be so much as providing evidence of the source of our moral value systems, but more in trying to understand why there was such a divide between the political right and the political left. He identified drivers for each side in what they considered important in determining right from wrong, and hypothesized the foundational basis of those disagreements. That is, the right holds certain things to be more important than the left (and vice versa), and therefore the disagreement.
It would seem to be a truism to argue that any human trait arose from evolution, given the theory of evolution posits all traits arose from evolution.
Moral condemnation versus punishments aimed a deterring future antisocial behavior are not mutually exclusive. That is, it is possible that the condemnation will result in deterrence and it is also possible that we can both morally condemn and additionally offer pragmatic solutions to deter the behavior.
If we do believe certain acts are immoral (and you indicate you do, in particular those that do not lead to a safe peaceful society), I don't see why it would be inappropriate to call it immoral, condemn it, and declare it bad if it in fact is. From there, I would agree, we now need to decide how to resolve the issue, but I don't see why identifying it and calling it what it is is a incorrect first step.
Moral condemnation is easy and cheap, but I don't think it has any significant role in achieving the practical goals I identified. I would go further - I think it distracts from effective action. In order to effectively deter and prevent the harmful actions we want to address, it's necessary to come to an imaginative understanding of our enemies. In practice, that can come dangerously close to empathy. We have to be able to see our adversaries as people in order to combat them.
I don't have any criticism of people who judge and condemn those who have harmed them. I just don't think it does anything productive beyond helping them deal with the situation emotionally. There's nothing wrong with that, although I don't personally find any satisfaction in it.
:100:
Quoting Cobra
:up: :up:
You jettison emotion as if it were not a critical component here. Emotion is is that which moves and motivates, the word itself referencing motion. That is to say, if you don't care, you won't do anything about it. It's not about offering a therapeutic remedy to the traumatized. It's about expressing outrage at the outrageous in order to bring about change.
If we are speaking of therapeutic responses to victimization, I'd suggest forgiveness over bitterness and anger.
If people I care about are hurt, what difference does it make whether it was something evil or just unfortunate? If a tornado kills 10 people, I care enough to act without blaming anyone. Why is 10 people being killed by a terrorist bomb different, at least in terms of the proper attitude required to make an effective response?
Quoting Hanover
I agree.
So a car slides off the road and injures the passenger, the cause being low tire tread, a truly unfortunate event.
A mile away a speeding drunk driver injures another passenger to the same extent.
Do you not see how the first instance will not be reduced from societal anger and outrage but the second will?
Hume was onto something, eh?
What needs to be added, assuming I'm on the right track, to
1. People kill
2. X
Ergo,
3. Killing is bad [ex 1, 2]
4. Y
Ergo,
5. We ought not kill [ex 3, 4]
X = ?
Y = ?
?
You're making a classic error if you hold that that reason only supports views you like. :wink: Reason has been used to support views dreadful and good, from eugenics to concentration camps. And the choice is rarely between reducing suffering and the 'worst things'. The difference in ethical systems is in values, which are arrived at from a whole different vantage point. People seem to hold their values as self-evident.
Makes a big difference to me. Specific details aside - one's an act of nature which could not be prevented. The other was a cruel and deliberate act by a human, designed to harm others and therefore, for me, more difficult to come to terms with because of its malicious intent and the possibility of its prevention.
Those are not adequate answers, as they just assume things. And while those assumptions are commonly held, and perhaps even reasonable, they do not address the claims in the OP.
Btw, I don't see why you added in the criticism of relativity. I criticize relativity in the OP. And I also agree that morality doesn't need justifications to exist. But assuming some - admittedly - basic things about morality, while practical, doesn't get us true moral claims.
It generally supports things I find much less problematic than those things that would be allowed under relativism. Selective infanticide for babies that will live short lives in agony? Unpleasant. But the systematic mutilation and oppression of millions of women in the Middle East? Evil.
Sometimes intuition has to take a hit for the team. And yes, no matter how much you reason you still derive your ethics from values. I state as much in the OP. But some values make more or less sense when evaluating if they will cause or reduce suffering.
Are you going to capitulate to your self-doubt, or will you at least try to support something that makes sense given some common goals?
Not sure if that's for me or a rhetorical question. My position is very clear from my previous posts.
You advocated for relativism, even if you said that you would argue your ethics are superior, which makes no sense.
What benefit is derived from endorsing societal anger and outrage? On the other hand, it seems reasonable to me that the negative consequences for an action should be proportional to the responsibility of a person for the results of their actions. You and I would probably agree that the drunk guy is more responsible for the accident than the other driver, so their punishment should be more severe.
Quoting T Clark
This quote from Jesse Prinz comes to mind. He is among those who defend the value of righteous anger against writers like Martha Nussbaum who has written that anger is an irrational , backward-looking emotion that encourages only revenge and retribution rather than productive action.
we have strictures against killing innocent people; and we have strictures prescribing equal opportunity. These principles are grounded in reason and subject to rational debate. . But justice also requires passion. We dont coolly tabulate inequitieswe feel outraged or indignant when they are discovered. Such angry feelings are essential; without anger, we would not be motivated to act....Rage can misdirect us when it comes unyoked from good reasoning, but together they are a potent pair. Reason is the rudder; rage propels us forward.
They are norms or rules not propositions, so what do you propose any such "true moral claims" would even be like? :chin:
I disagree with this.
I recognize many people feel the way you do, but all I really care about is what we have to do to keep people safe.
"Murder is wrong" would be an example of a moral claim that could be objectively true (a proposition). "You shouldn't murder" would be normative. "Don't murder" would be a rule.
Do you know what meta-ethics is?
And what's the truth-maker? It's a statement like 'I'm sexy' that has a sense (in some contexts and not in some others) but does not convey either a formal or factual truth-value.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I know enough now to know that you don't.
Okay, you obviously didn't bother to read and understand the OP. "Torture is wrong because it harms", for example, is an extrinsic moral claim that could be true or false based on a moral axiom such as "it is wrong to harm sentient creatures". The extrinsic moral claim is true if the axiom it is tied to is correct. The correctness of the axiom is the "truth-maker" for the moral claim.
I hope that is clear.
Quoting 180 Proof
:100: :up:
Look up "moral realism" and "error theory".
I believe you're correct. The notion norm is self-explanatory as far as I can tell. The heart of the matter is but the question "What the f**k am I doing here?"
Once again, familiarize yourself with the relevant literature - something I should have done a while ago. And I don't know why you are here either, Smith.
Sound advice. Danke!
Well, truth is norms like "we should/shouldn't torture" can be true/false, but not in the same sense as say the statement "snow is white".
Logic agrees with you mon ami, but the problem, for me at least, is in what sense are norms meaningful if not by being "true"?
"Taking candy from a baby is wrong." has the grammar of a proposition, but it does not have the meaning of a proposition. It has the meaning of a command: 'don't do it!' Commands are not true or false, they are obeyed or disobeyed.
Morality is not made of claims of fact but commands, demands, exhortations, pleas, advice to act thus and not so. It is not 'truth apt'. But to conclude that, if something is not truth apt it is false, would be a serious mistake; commands are not falsity apt either. The justification for 'tell the truth' is that lies are worthless talk, no one wants to listen to lies.
Quoting ToothyMaw A mistake. The very same mistake that is made by those that try to make the world conform to reason and logic instead of conforming their reason to the world - metaphysicians.
"Look both ways before crossing the road." "Don't eat the yellow snow." I am not offering any proof, but try the experiment if you are sceptical and get someone to report the results in your obituary. "Honour thy father and mother, that they leave not the estate to the cat's home and that thine own children learn what is expected of them." Some ways of life are better than others, and one of the worst for humans is a life that concerns itself entirely with its own benefit - the proof is in the joy and misery of life, not in the pontifications of logicians.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting unenlightened
:100:
That assumption does not lead to incoherence. You might argue, however, that we cannot verify if moral statements are true, as we have no effective means of discovering if they are true. This is a problem for moral realists.
But incoherence does not follow. Is the fact that biology is invented by people, is useful, and is used to certain ends, a reason to doubt the truth-aptness of biological facts? Biology is an edifice like morality, even if biological facts exist independent of the mind. Moral realists and error-theorists say that morality functions like that. No incoherence whatsoever.
edit: not saying morality functions exactly like biology, but rather that it has the similarities mentioned and reports facts like biology, even if not naturalistic ones
How is "taking candy from a baby is wrong" a command? It is implicit in such a statement that one shouldn't do it ("you shouldn't take candy from a baby because it is wrong"), which is a command, but if the proposition isn't true, why ought we obey the command at all (disregarding that we would additionally have to derive an "ought" from an "is", something you would have to do to have a command that ought be obeyed)?
If the command has reason to be obeyed, the proposition "taking candy from a baby is wrong" would have to be true. You purport that it is impossible for the proposition to true. Well, then, we don't have a true proposition and thus no reason to obey the extrinsic moral claim "you shouldn't take candy from a baby because it is wrong". You are committing to (1) from the OP, and that results in an implosion of morality, as there are no longer any grounds for disagreement to be resolved.
Meta-ethics is definitely an unlikely mistake, yes.
I didn't know logicians were telling people how to live their lives.
:roll: :shade: :point:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/759498
Is this correct? Is it a moral claim? Seems to me that the answer is clearly yes to both questions, so some moral claims can be correct.
Would you like to address the points I am making? Or are you going to continue to stick your head in the sand?
How are moral realism and error-theory incoherent in the way they treat moral claims as propositions? Yes, such a claim about the truth-aptness of moral statements is incompatible with your extraneous assumptions, but moral realism and error-theory are internally coherent, nonetheless.
That usage of "ought" is not the same as the usage of "ought" people incorporate into moral claims. Your usage is vaguely justified because it predicts what is going to happen. The way it is used in morality is to represent a command or instruction, even if the statement into which the "ought" is incorporated can be true or false. You are deriving a "this will probably happen" from a promise. To move from an "is" to an "ought" in terms of moral claims is to derive moral instructions from an "is".
So, that isn't a moral claim, but I agree that moral claims are propositions.
You could say: "if I promise to plant you a rose garden, I ought plant you a rose garden, because people ought follow through on their promises", which would definitely be a moral claim and a proposition.
What, then, is the claim "one ought not double down on shitty arguments"? It is structured in such a way that it could be true or false, and to say that it is merely a command, and that all moral claims like it are merely commands, is to commit to the claim that it is impossible for any moral claims to be true. As I pointed out to unenlightened, this results in a summary implosion of morality, as there are no grounds for resolving disagreements. Furthermore, if moral commands cannot be true or false, we have no real reason to follow any commands.
Would you like it if someone disregarded the commonly held injunction against harming others that one ought not do it and kneecapped you? I mean, we have no reason to believe that the man who disagrees with such a command is wrong, according to you, or that he ought obey any such commands we might impose on him at all. Is that really what you want to commit to?
I think I overcomplicated this. Semantically it could be amended to being a moral claim, but it is too simplistic in its current form as it cuts out the necessary step of justifying the claim that one ought actually plant the rose garden.
I have. Derived from incoherent assumptions, your "points" lack merit. Now deal with my counterpoints if you can.
:eyes: More empty rhetoric.
You haven't made any points. You just assert that moral facts don't exist because they just don't.
And what, exactly, is incoherent about my assumptions? Can you actually explain how, without resorting to "because morals are norms"? My only assumption is that moral claims report facts about reality. I'm not even committing to the idea that any of them have to be correct.
So, I ask again: If morality is only a useful set of norms, what reason does anyone have to obey said norms other than because they are useful - "useful" being something that is entirely subjective?
This is the way of facts. My keys are in my pocket. This is a true fact because my keys are in fact in my pocket, and that is the truth. It is self-evident to anyone who examines my pocket and unprovable to anyone else. If you have some moral facts in your pocket, you can describe them and we might believe you, or we might think you are describing unicorns. I have no argument that unicorns do not exist - they just don't.
However, I am definitely a moral realist. Humans will not long survive without attending to the moral world. You might think of morals as analogous to laws of physics. they do not exist as facts about the world, but describe the way the facts work - ethics as social physics.
{Promises are rather popular with moral realists: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/promises/ }
First off, the statement you quoted was directed at 180.
Parsing whether or not non-moral claims are or are not facts is to change the subject, as I'm not making a statement about the qualities of truth and falsity in general (or how we know facts to be true). I'm also not claiming I have knowledge of any actual moral facts, but rather that the alternatives and the assumptions they make aren't sound, and that is more reasonable to think that they might exist.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't have to produce moral facts for them to exist, and I'm not even claiming they necessarily do exist. But I am claiming now, in light of yours and 180's comments, that there is nothing incoherent about moral realism and error-theory's treatment of moral statements as facts. Incidentally, there is also nothing incoherent about the claim that unicorns exist.
Doubting the existence of moral facts, as well as unicorns, is of course reasonable, but to rule them out (the moral facts) is not, imo.
Were we not discussing together? My apologies for interrupting.
No, we are, I'm just saying the thing you quoted doesn't apply to you, because you didn't claim that moral realism and error-theory are incoherent. Please continue to speak your mind!
Thanks for the link. Looks interesting. I'll check it out. Their article on moral realism is particularly well-written, btw, so I'd advise people to check it out if they haven't already.
If you think this conversation is a waste of time, then why bother? I'm sure your insights would be appreciated elsewhere.
Okay, so you must have done some reading. I don't think that that is the kind of claim a moral realist would make, but intriguing, nonetheless. They say that moral claims do indeed report facts about the world, which is not merely a claim about how moral facts would work.
What is the standard or criterion you're using in order to say that something counts as a "moral fact?"
It is a fact that if I promise to plant you a rose garden on Sunday, then on Monday there ought be a rose garden. It is a fact because that's exactly what those words mean. They have no other meaningful use. When making such a claim the speaker is voluntarily entering into a commitment to make the world match their words.
That's just what promises are.
What does your last reply have to do with any of that? I do not understand how your response was relevant/valid.
I didn't mention moral facts, but rather that moral claims are propositions, and that the way you used "ought" wasn't the way it is typically used in moral claims. In a moral claim, the object of the "ought" or "ought not" is typically not an inanimate thing, but rather a behavior or action.
If you are saying one has a moral obligation to follow through on a promise, then it could be a moral claim. But you didn't mention that. As it turns out, moral realists actually value promises quite a bit, so you are definitely right to frame promises such that we ought follow through on them.
Quoting creativesoul
Once again, you have to stipulate that following through on promises is the moral thing to do. If you consider this putative fact to be true, then you could be making a moral claim.
I'm not following this. Do you take issue with how I used the term "ought"? Is that the basis of your objection?
Yes.
Insofar as we humans are a eusocial species, it seems to me that implicit promises e.g. (a) not to harm one another, (b) not to burden-shift / free ride and (c) to help one another constitute our eusociality in practice and that these implicit promises entail that we ought to behave in ways which fulfill them; thus, they are moral facts because, unlike institutional facts (e.g. money, citizenship, marriage) which are explicit constructs (e.g. contracts), these promises are implicit to habits for adaptively cohabitating with others in a shared/conflicted commons.
Contrary to the typical conception of "moral realism" which @ToothyMaw is incorrigibly fixated on, isn't it more reasonable to conceive of moral facts as performances, or practices, (i.e. norms / grammars) instead of the objects of propositions (i.e. "claims")? If not, where does my thinking (here) go wrong?
Are you saying that promises are implicit in the claims that we ought not harm one another and those other things? Because those things you listed are not themselves implicit promises.
It is an actual thing. You don't need to put it in quotes.
edit: Thanks, btw, for posting something substantive that lays out your position
No. :roll:
I'm quoting you (re: OP) as the rest of the sentence suggests.
This seems severely reductive. We also have billionaires exploiting their wealth and that contributes to the structure and arrangement of our society, but I wouldn't say that even implicit promises and wealth distribution account for everything.
Quoting 180 Proof
Then what are the promises implicit in if not our moral statements? As stated, they are quite explicit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
Okay, I understand what you are saying now. And I don't like it. Give me a moment.
You are claiming that the implicit promises somehow entail that we ought behave in ways that fulfill them. In what way do these implicit promises entail within themselves that we ought follow them, exactly? Because it is natural, given we are eusocial? That is both circular and fallacious - to assume that we ought, in a moral sense, follow through on these promises merely because our eusociality is predicated on such implicit promises is to claim that what is natural is right. That is a mistake.
Quoting 180 Proof
These implicit promises might result in a reasonably structured society, but it doesn't follow that these are moral facts merely because they are not explicit like institutional facts. There is nothing that says that moral facts need be implicit. You also conflate moral facts with useful norms of behavior here.
Quoting 180 Proof
If you make the claim that no moral propositions exist, you are committed to the claim that no moral claims can be true. This, for the third time, leads to no grounds for resolving moral disagreements. If that is okay with you, then more power to you, 180.
But don't think you have any moral grounds for objecting to being slapped with a fish.
By the way, I think promises are incredibly important and provide traction for a reasonable morality.
And you jerk yourself off every time you write a post, you sad little man.
I'm not familiar enough with Searle's notion to know whether or not I agree with it. I've been watching Searle's lectures though.
My own personal notion of what counts as a moral fact is different. Moral things can be talked about in two very distinct ways. The most common one is that "moral" is equivalent to good, so it's used as a means for assent or to condone behaviour whereas immoral is used to condemn some behaviour or another.
Another use of "moral" is as a means to discriminate between kinds of things, whereas all moral situations/circumstances/facts involve what counts as acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. That approach is riddled with difficulty, but it seems worth the effort.
So, because you cannot charge me with violating Hume's guillotine, it is somehow a problem?
Now your projection is showing ...
No, I'm saying that saying that if you promise to do something, and then say that there ought be a phenomenal manifestation of that promise being followed through on, isn't so much a moral fact in itself but rather a claim about whether or not there should be a manifestation of what a promise entails if a promise is made. You are only making a descriptive claim about the consequences of a promise followed through on; furthermore, it doesn't report a moral fact in the sense of a normative statement or more abstract moral claim like "torture is wrong" - the latter of which doesn't offend Hume's Guillotine. What other form could moral facts take?
Maybe a promise creates an obligation, but that also doesn't propel it into facthood.
edit: going to resolve this elsewhere than the actual thread
I'm not a philosopher but this seems reasonable. I'm interested to understand (in theory) how would a moral fact ever be identified? Would it need to have a transcendent source?
Quoting ToothyMaw
Really? Perhaps it's no different to having a view on the merits of a novel. There is no 'correct' assessment of any book, but some assessments are better argued, are more illuminating and make more sense. All humans can do is try things and argue their merits. There's no foundational guarantee for anything I am aware of unless you happen to be some kind of fundamentalist or Platonist.
If we take a goal we can all or mostly agree upon - say the flourishing of conscious creatures - we can make assessments about morality - what we ought or ought not to do. I would argue this is superior to consulting gods, say.
lmao, neither am I
Quoting Tom Storm
Given a basic text to interpret, yes. But the only objective common ground we seem to have is some putative universalized claims and human nature to work with.
Quoting Tom Storm
Agreed. That would be a good goal to converge on, but, again, there is so much seemingly intractable disagreement. Look at my discussion with 180.
Quoting Tom Storm
Maybe. Moral realists are split on this. Moore's Open Question argument seemed to indicate moral facts would be transcendent, but some advances have shown that it might not have to be that way.
As for identifying them, I don't know. Maybe science will eventually give us some answers on that one, as philosophy doesn't seem up to the task.
edit: what I am saying here is that I don't think we can come to an understanding of moral facts merely through thinking about them, and that rather science, which often seems to be the first mover of our understanding of truth, might stand a chance of revealing some sort of fact about morality. Not claiming we can get an "ought" from an "is".
Definitely.
Indeed. We can leave that task to Sam Harris. :razz:
I have mixed feelings about that man.
edit: he is right about free-will and on religion, that is true, so I think he has been a force for good. But I know he has made some mistakes here and there on philosophy.
That skirts the key question here, does it not? Before we can make any sense of what counts as a moral fact, we must already have some criterion for what counts as a fact, for a moral fact is a kind/species of fact.
What do all facts have in common - if anything - such that having it is what makes them count as a fact, rather than not?
It seems to me that your standard amounts to all facts are true statements. Is that right?