Moral Subjectism Is Internally Inconsistent
Introduction:
I have been on a long journey, that will probably never end, into the study of ethics; and my thoughts, naturally, continually evolve. I believe it is imperative that one share not just what they currently believe or are contemplating but also share what antique ideas may be lying in their minds that they have overcome: we are all at different stages in our development, and it can be quite useful to visit the past's of others to avoid their mistakes.
I, thusly, find myself writing a brief OP on a moral anti-realist positioncalled moral subjectivismthat I used to believe, to shed some light on its weaknesses (which I previously was so blind to). I know there are a lot of anti-realists in this forum, and so I hope that this argument, although it may not convince them to disband their ties to moral subjectivism, presents a challenge to them that they, in turn, must overcome (one way or another).
Thesis:
My thesis is simple: moral subjectivism is internally inconsistent. Lets dive into the argument.
Argument:
Under moral subjectivism, the following is true:
1. A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the trueness or falseness of a proposition; and
2. Beliefs make moral propositions true or false.
These two statements are inconsistent with each other, and heres a quick syllogistic demonstration of why:
P1: A stance taken on the trueness or falseness of something, is independent of the trueness or falseness of that something.
P2: A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the trueness or falseness of a proposition.
C1: Therefore, a belief about a proposition cannot make that proposition true or false.
P3: Beliefs make moral propositions true or false.
P4: C1 and P3 being true are logically contradictory.
C2: Therefore, moral subjectivism is internally inconsistent.
In short, if a belief is a (cognitive) disposition towards whether or not a proposition is true or false; then it plainly follows that beliefs do not make propositions true or false. Thusly, moral propositions cannot be true or false relative to cognitive dispositions.
Rectifying the Internal Inconsistency
Heres what a moral subjectivist could offer as a rejoinder: the proposition contains a reference to a belief and therefore, although the belief about the proposition is not true or false relative to beliefs, the proposition cannot be evaluated as true or false without taking into account which specific subjects belief is being analyzed. For example, I believe 2 + 2 = 4 (1) is a valid proposition and (2) it cannot be evaluated without reference to a subject (since I believe is indexical) and, in this sense, is what the moral subjectivist means by moral judgments are made true or false in virtue of beliefs.
Rejoinder to the Rectification
The problem with this sort of rectification, is that the moral judgment is no longer a proposition: the indexical statement is the proposition. Therefore, the moral subjectivist is no longer accepting (implicitly) moral cognitivism.
Going back to the example, 2 + 2 = 4 is a mathematical proposition. Imagine that one held that (1) mathematical propositions exist, (2) they are true or false relative to beliefs, and (3) the belief is contained in the mathematical proposition (as described in the rectification section for moral propositions): it is clear that by accepting #3 (which is the rectification to the internal inconsistency) the original mathematical proposition must be transformed into I believe 2 + 2 = 4 and that this proposition is not mathematical. In fact, since every mathematical proposition would have to be transformed in this manner, there would be no mathematical propositions anymorethey would get transformed away.
What Do You Think?
I will attach a poll to this post, but, beyond that, I would like to ask the moral anti-realists: where do you disagree with my assessment here?
I have been on a long journey, that will probably never end, into the study of ethics; and my thoughts, naturally, continually evolve. I believe it is imperative that one share not just what they currently believe or are contemplating but also share what antique ideas may be lying in their minds that they have overcome: we are all at different stages in our development, and it can be quite useful to visit the past's of others to avoid their mistakes.
I, thusly, find myself writing a brief OP on a moral anti-realist positioncalled moral subjectivismthat I used to believe, to shed some light on its weaknesses (which I previously was so blind to). I know there are a lot of anti-realists in this forum, and so I hope that this argument, although it may not convince them to disband their ties to moral subjectivism, presents a challenge to them that they, in turn, must overcome (one way or another).
Thesis:
My thesis is simple: moral subjectivism is internally inconsistent. Lets dive into the argument.
Argument:
Under moral subjectivism, the following is true:
1. A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the trueness or falseness of a proposition; and
2. Beliefs make moral propositions true or false.
These two statements are inconsistent with each other, and heres a quick syllogistic demonstration of why:
P1: A stance taken on the trueness or falseness of something, is independent of the trueness or falseness of that something.
P2: A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the trueness or falseness of a proposition.
C1: Therefore, a belief about a proposition cannot make that proposition true or false.
P3: Beliefs make moral propositions true or false.
P4: C1 and P3 being true are logically contradictory.
C2: Therefore, moral subjectivism is internally inconsistent.
In short, if a belief is a (cognitive) disposition towards whether or not a proposition is true or false; then it plainly follows that beliefs do not make propositions true or false. Thusly, moral propositions cannot be true or false relative to cognitive dispositions.
Rectifying the Internal Inconsistency
Heres what a moral subjectivist could offer as a rejoinder: the proposition contains a reference to a belief and therefore, although the belief about the proposition is not true or false relative to beliefs, the proposition cannot be evaluated as true or false without taking into account which specific subjects belief is being analyzed. For example, I believe 2 + 2 = 4 (1) is a valid proposition and (2) it cannot be evaluated without reference to a subject (since I believe is indexical) and, in this sense, is what the moral subjectivist means by moral judgments are made true or false in virtue of beliefs.
Rejoinder to the Rectification
The problem with this sort of rectification, is that the moral judgment is no longer a proposition: the indexical statement is the proposition. Therefore, the moral subjectivist is no longer accepting (implicitly) moral cognitivism.
Going back to the example, 2 + 2 = 4 is a mathematical proposition. Imagine that one held that (1) mathematical propositions exist, (2) they are true or false relative to beliefs, and (3) the belief is contained in the mathematical proposition (as described in the rectification section for moral propositions): it is clear that by accepting #3 (which is the rectification to the internal inconsistency) the original mathematical proposition must be transformed into I believe 2 + 2 = 4 and that this proposition is not mathematical. In fact, since every mathematical proposition would have to be transformed in this manner, there would be no mathematical propositions anymorethey would get transformed away.
What Do You Think?
I will attach a poll to this post, but, beyond that, I would like to ask the moral anti-realists: where do you disagree with my assessment here?
Comments (230)
Quoting Bob Ross
I think the moral subjectivism will outright reject that very first premise. The truth of something will be dependent on the stance taken on its truth. So it seems to me the argument begs the question by rejecting the challenged view from the start.
However I think a potential jab at the rejection of that claim is criticising that the person assigns truth-value to something that starts as either non-existent or false.
I think that this set of conditions can give some grounding to an accusation that moral subjectivism is arbitrary and/or random especially if we accept the requirement that a belief is motivated by evidence and evidence is causally connected to the matter of fact of the belief. But I welcome others to verify or refute the suggestion.
When it comes to the rejoinder, I am not sure, I haven't wrapped my hand around it yet. A rewording in simpler terms would be welcome.
I would agree with Lionino here, that this isn't capturing the position very well.
The concept of truth is not veridicality here, so the same types of objections don't hold. I've not thought long on this though. I think there is a much stronger problem with these arguments though:
Moral facts are 'truths about what we Ought to do'. These exist solely in the minds of those who can choose to act (ignoring determinism). One's belief in what one 'ought' to do is true in vitue of the fact that one believes it. This does, as Lionino point out, make it entirely arbitrary. I don't think many people would moral anti-realists would have much problem with this. The motivation to hold beliefs can be explained many ways that aren't veridicality (or expected veridicality anyway). If someone holds moral belief X about what one ought to do, then that is a true statement. They do believe that. That 'one' very much 'ought' do what they believe to be moral seems true too. This argument would work on any subjective-type theory, including mind (emotivism - though, I've added this where I do not think the position itself holds it). In this way, I just don't see any inconsistency. It's just somewhat unattractive to try to claim 'truths' which are literally about your beliefs, but somehow make your belief true. That certainly seems wrong - but I don't think that's what's being said. The 'truths' are not considerd 'objective' so its hard to note where the failure could be for those facts to then not obtain.
I think it does though. My criticism is that P1 begs the question.
Quoting AmadeusD
This however is accurate.
Rephrasing what I said, we could accuse moral subjectivists of, by consequences of their beliefs, having beliefs popping up ex nihilo.
Quoting Lionino
Quoting Lionino
Taking these, I would rearrange it almost-syllogistically:
P1: A belief is motivated by evidence.
P2: A piece of evidence is causally connected to the matter of fact of the proposition (that it is true).
Example of P2: I believe a cow was roaming the streets because there is cow dung on my front door.
C1: A belief is causally connected to the fact of the proposition.
P3 (C1): A belief is causally connected to the fact of the proposition.
P4: I believe a set of moral propositions to be true.
C2: My belief in that set of moral propositions is causally connected to the fact of the proposition.
P5 (C2): My belief in that set of moral propositions is causally connected to the fact of the proposition.
P6: The fact of the moral propositions only comes to be once I start believing them (seems to follow from MS).
C3: My belief in that set of moral propositions only comes to be once I start believing in them.
So here we have a paradox, beliefs causing themselves, or arising from nothing.
The objection to my P2 will be that some pieces of evidence are not necessary from the fact but contingent (someone could have brought fresh cow dung from a farm). But I think that is tangential, I just can't point out why right now.
Making the objection that a moral belief is causally connected to some individual aesthetic preference is already contrary to moral subjectivism strictly defined (believing moral proposition X makes it true) as it could be reduced to facts (neurology and psychology) though not to the claim that morality is not objective.
"I believe that aliens exist" is true iff I believe that aliens exist
Beliefs can make moral propositions true or false, but are not necessary to morality, you either are or are not moral - whether you believe that you are or aren't, or not.
The following is just a long technical metaphor to explain a point:
Morality could be split into 4 odd categories: 1 including 1 thing, 1 including 3 things, 1 including 5 things, 1 including 7 things.
1. Morality.
2. Calmness/Coolness/Cuteness
3. Hardness/Softness/Wiseness/Kindness/Meanness
4. Smartness/Sternness/Cleverness/Greatness/Swiftness/Clearness/Lightness
And these were hypothetically 'Hexagons of high morals' - morality - is a pure hexagon. It is the root of morals - it is the element of morals. There's just one high good to live in accordance with, it means you're either with it or against it.
Truthity is whether or not something has truth, and not that it has truth.
P1 is not the claim that beliefs cannot make something true or false (which would beg the question): it is an uncontroversial claim that the stance taken on something is distinct from that something.
If I take a stance of how delicious pineapples are, then my stance about it is distinct from the deliciousness of the pineapples...thats what makes it a stance about the deliciousness of pineapples. Otherwise, one is making no distinction between a stance about something and that something itself. Along the same lines, the truthity is separate.
This is internally inconsistent, unless you deny the basic nature of a belief: to make it consistent, you would have to transform moral judgments from one ought to X to I believe one ought to X.
Then you end up in the rejoinder section (in terms of issues with that kind of transformation).
A moral judgment is of the form one ought to X, one should do X, etc. and NOT I believe one ought to X, I believe one should do X, etc.; but this sort of transformation is required in order to avoid the original concern of the position being inconsistent: one has to say that the moral judgment is enveloped in an indexical statement. BUT THEN, the indexical statement is the proposition, and not the moral judgment.
See above.
Then, there are no moral judgments which are propositional: all you noted is that our beliefs about, according to you, NONEXISTENT moral propositions are made true by our beliefs...of course! Thats a tautology.
"I believe one ought not torture babies" is NOT a moral proposition: the moral proposition is that "one ought not torture babies". All you have noted is that one can take a stance on the truthity of a proposition, while simultaneously rejecting that there actually is a proposition to take a stance on.
In your example, it would be like denying that "aliens exist" is propositional in its own right while claiming that "I believe aliens exist" somehow makes "aliens exist" true or false.
Unfortunately, I did not understand this at all: can you please try to elaborate in a manner that ties it to the OP's thesis?
I was addressing this conclusion:
Nowhere in this conclusion is the term "moral" used.
My example of "I believe that aliens exist" being true iff I believe that aliens exist is proof that a belief can make a proposition true or false.
As such you are left with this:
P1: A stance taken on the truthity of something, is independent of the truthity of that something.
P2: A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the truthity of a proposition.
[s]C1: Therefore, a belief cannot make a proposition true or false.[/s]
P3: Beliefs make moral propositions true or false.
[s]P4: C1 and P3 being true are logically contradictory.[/s]
[s]C2: Therefore, moral subjectivism is internally inconsistent.[/s]
Youve stipulated conditions under moral subjectivism, but you havent stipulated moral subjectivism itself. What if moral subjectivism, as a self-consistent doctrine, has nothing to do with mere belief?
How does the internal inconsistency of moral subjectivism fare under the auspices of, i.e., a deontological moral doctrine predicated on necessity of law alone, which makes the contingency of mere belief irrelevant?
What makes subjectivism moral anyway? What it is that makes subjectivism in general reducible to a particular instance of it?
Would any of that matter with respect to your thesis? I think it does regarding when subjectivism is adjoined to moral predicates, but ..maybe not.
The issue is more that "truthity" is a word that quite literally doesn't exist.
Quoting Bob Ross
You have changed your claim then. P1 says:
P1: A stance taken on the truth-value of something is independent of the truth-value of that something.
The moral subjectivist will reject that.
A moral proposition is true if and only if I believe it is true.
By that much we see that it is not independent.
Quoting Bob Ross
That is the case you are trying to prove.
I'm not that familiar with moral subjectivism, but with this you've given me something to react to. Let me try to make sense of this.
Here you use the word "distinct", but in your opening post you used the word "independent". The two words are significantly different:
If A is distinct from B, then B is distinct from A. But if A is independent from B, it does not follow that B is independent from A.
So a subjectivist might agree that the stance on the truthiness of something is independent of the truthiness of something with little ill effect. If moral believes make moral statements true, what they'd need to argue is that "The truthiness of something is independent from the stance of the truthiness of that something." Your P1 doen't seem to address that at all.
They're both still "distinct", though.
***
As I said I'm not very knoledgable about what moral subjectivists are saying. But what's missing in this thread, I feel, is the acknowledgment of the social aspect of moral statements.
So "Torturing babies is wrong," is a moral statement with a truth value. I assume you believe this to be true. I certainly believe this to be true. It comes up a lot in discussions like this, precisely because a lot of people believe this is true, AND because they believe it's uncontroversial. There seems to be a desire to go from uncontroversial to "absolutely true" or "objectively true"?
There's something odd going on with belief in social situations, as it's two-pronged: it's on the one hand, looking backwards as a hypothesis what you can expect others to agree with, but it's also - looking forward - the source of action - i.e. part of future data sets of what future people might expect. If suddenly a significant number of people were to pop up who genuinely believe (and express that believe) that "torturing babies is not wrong" than we'd be looking at moral change.
In effect, every moral proposition is both a guess and a bid. And it's all in flux. (I'm really not sure how to work this into meta-ethics, though.)
I think it may be better if you elaborated on which premise you disagree with, because this is false and I demonstrated it in the proof.
I believe that aliens exist is NOT a proposition that has its truthity relative to a belief: irregardless of what you believe about your beliefs, if you have the belief then the proposition is true. The proposition itself is objective and absolute.
The conflation you are making is that the proposition containing a reference to a belief DOES NOT make the proposition true or false relative to a belief. I would challenge you to explicate what the proposition is in your claim that a belief can make a proposition true or false: I can guarantee you that you think it is I believe that aliens exist while implicitly assuming it is aliens exist.
In the more abstract, I believe X is a valid proposition and is NOT relative to a belief; whereas claiming X is true because I believe it is true is incoherent. See my section on the rejoinder to the moral subjectivists response for more details.
You cannot just cross out a conclusion in a syllogism without crossing out a premise; unless you are noting something illogical with its form.
Your argument is:
P1: A stance taken on the truthity of something, is independent of the truthity of that something.
P2: A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the truthity of a proposition.
C1: Therefore, a belief cannot make a proposition true or false.
However:
P3: "I believe that aliens exist" is true iff I believe that aliens exist
P3 contradicts C1, therefore at least one of P3 and C1 is false. P3 is true. Therefore, C1 is false. Therefore, either C1 does not follow from P1 and P2 or at least one of P1 and P2 is false.
I don't really care what the answer is; I only care that P3 is true and so that C1 is false.
Correct. I was contending with the prominent understanding of moral subjectivismof course there may be nuanced versions.
I would say, though, that there is no other foreseeable way that a moral judgment could express (1) something subjective AND (2) be cognitive if one is not grounding the moral judgment in beliefs. Humans dont have any other aspect of cognition that is subjective (stance-dependent) that could make moral judgments true or false.
How is that not a form of moral realism?
It merely denotes a metaethical position: thats all.
Again, I cant think of a single version of moral subjectivism that contends with the idea that beliefs make moral propositions true or false: thats a core aspect of the theory. If not, then perhaps the view is a form of moral non-cognitivism or something...not sure but I would be interested to hear it.
It is definitely relevant, but my focus in the OP is the contemporary, standard view called moral subjectivism; and I wholly concede that there may be a very nuanced version of it that escapes these issues...but I have never heard of it (yet) and it seems pretty conclusive that it will have to revolve around beliefs.
Thats fair. I could have sworn it was a technical term for it but, upon re-searching, I do not find it anywhere. All I mean by it, is the trueness or falseness of something (and not necessarily that it is true).
I see you used truth-value, which is fine as well.
I interpret these to mean the same exact thing: am I missing something you are trying to convey? How have I changed it?
If the stance is distinct from what the stance is about, then the truth-value of what its is about is independent of the stance itselfthats what makes it a stance.
Of course, a moral subjectivist will disagree with this; but it is the root of the issue with their position.
If it is truly a proposition, then your belief that it is true is independent of the truth-value of the proposition itself; otherwise, you have to concede that the proposition is not distinct from the belief.
This seems to be the crux of your argument, and I am not following this distinction you are making.
All I meant, was that the truth-value of something is completely independent of any stance taken on it.
This is a non-sequitur: although I agree that most people are inclined to do so.
If torturing babies is wrong is propositional, then it is true or false independently of what anyone believes about it. For a moral subjectivist, they would have to rephrase it to I believe torturing babies is wrong and evaluate that instead.
I believe I may have confused myself here, or missed something. Let me go through this step by step with "Torturing babies is wrong."
1. "Torturing babies is wrong," is propisitional. It has "truthity"; i.e. it is either true or false. (Do I understand your use of "truthity" correctly here?)
2. I can believe the proposition to be false or true.
3. That I believe the proposition to be true (or false) is distnict the proposition's being true (or false).
4. Because of (3), I can evaluate the dependency structure of the believe that a proposition is true and the truth of a proposition. This leads me to two questions:
5. a) Is that I believe torturing babies is wrong dependent on torturing babies being wrong?
5. b) Is torturing babies being wrong dependent on me believing that torturing babies is wrong?
To me, your syllogism seems to show 5.a) not 5.b).:
Quoting Bob Ross
Applied to the current example: I can believe that torturing babies is not wrong, even if it is.
Yes.
How do you arrive at that conclusion? You have shown that the belief is independent of the truth(ity). You have not shown that the truthity is independent of the belief. Now this clearly leads me into into a muddle:
Given that truth is dependent on belief (but not the other way round), I'd get a truth table like the following:
"Killing babies is Wrong." Believe, Truth, allowed under dependency structure
B --> independent of T
B: Yes. T: Yes (allowed)
[b]B: No T: Yes (allowed)
B: Yes: T: No (allowed)[/b]
B: No T: No (allowed)
T --> dependent on B
B: Yes: T: Yes (allowed)
[b]B: No T: Yes (not allowed)
B: Yes T: No (not allowed)[/b]
B: No T: No (allowed)
Logically, that believe is independent of truth does not necessitate that truth be indepenent of believe. It's possible for believe to be the independent variable, and truth the dependent one. This leads us into a contradiction (bolded above): I can be wrong about a truth I'm setting by believing in it.
I think that this problem might come out clearer if we investigate the social aspect of morals. Beliefs set morals in aggregate via a complicate process; thus any single belief is both a hypothesis and a bid.
Moral truth is iterative through belief. (What the role of a proposition is in all this, I don't know, but it would have to play some role.)
I think you are on the right track. Subjectivism tends to entail problems with dualism akin to Kant's two "stances/worlds" (noumenal/phenomenal). Yet, so long as it is not possible to give a reductive/mechanical explanation of subjectivity, I think this problem will remain. I don't think most "subjectivism," would like to say that moral beliefs are essentially uncaused, but neither does it seem that they are willing to embrace eliminitivism.
So, on this point:
Only provided that the reasons determining [I]why[/I] people hold the moral beliefs they do is itself "entirely arbitrary." I think many moral anti-realists would probably disagree with this though, particularly those of a naturalist persuasion. The problem wouldn't be that these beliefs are arbitrary, but rather that they are determined by a biology, social and personal history, etc. that can be completely explained without any reference to "goodness," e.g., for the eliminitivist/epiphenomenalism, an explanation entirely in mechanical terms.
However, folks like Harris have turned these highly naturalistic/mechanistic accounts into moral realist accounts without changing too much, so I think this is an issue people will still quibble over. Likewise, in the classical or Thomistic view point, it's going to be goodness itself that is determining beliefs and actions in the first place, and so what is at issue is the ontic status of goodness, i.e., realism re universals, the convertibility of being and goodness, etc.
I think you've both highlighted the initial problem though, which is P1 here. It seems entirely possible that a belief could be related to the truth value of some proposition. This is exactly what we see with cognitive dissonance or "self-fulfilling prophecies." For example, Toyota's might last longer because they are more durable vehicles, but part of the reason they tend to last longer almost certainly has to do with the fact that people are more willing to shell out cash to repair them because they see a high milage Toyota as still having "plenty of life left" (and because they have a higher resale value because people believe this). But then the car stays on the road longer, making the belief true, precisely because the belief was held.
When it comes the sort of self-reference at work in the OP though, this problem seems particularly acute. So, it seems that the truth value of a proposition can be more or less independent of beliefs about it. In some cases, they seem like there will be quite a bit of interdependence.
Your definition of moral subjectivism misses the mark because it rests on two questionable assumptions:
1. That moral beliefs are adequately addressed in terms of propositions.
2. What makes a moral claim true or false is whether or not it is believed.
1. This marks a wrong turn in the history of philosophy that fails to strike us as odd and out of touch because we have become so accustomed to philosophers making such claims, as if thinking and feeling are two separate, independent things. Rather than an analysis in propositional terms, we need to begin with what is more fundamental and primal. A baby will smile in response to a smile and become distraught when the face in front of them is sad. That others seem happy or troubled matters to them. The roots of morality lie here, in our nature as social beings who care.
2. What this criticism of subjectivism fails to to into account is the difference between the belief in an objective morality and our failure to identify what that might be. Without such knowledge some form of subjectivism is the inescapable default position. Moral reasoning is deliberative not deductive. It begins with a critical examination of opinions. It does not end with indisputable, apodictic universal moral truths, but with beliefs and practices accepted by some or many but perhaps not by others. At best in our ignorance we settle on what seems best, and this may be subject to change.
This is just a re-iteration of your previous post, which does not address which premise you disagree with.
In terms of your P3, I responded here.
I don't disagree with a premise. I simply prove the conclusion false, and therefore prove that one of the premises is false or that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. I'll leave it to you to determine where you've gone wrong.
Quoting Bob Ross
"I believe that aliens exist" is a proposition that is made true by my belief that aliens exist. Therefore your conclusion that "a belief cannot make a proposition true or false" is false.
Yes, by truthity I just mean the trueness of falseness of something. torturing babies is wrong is truth-apt.
5A is about whether or not your belief was in any way constructed based off of the fact that torturing babies are wrong; whereas 5B is about whether it is fact, or even capable of being a fact, that torturing babies are wrong. It is in the 5B sense that my OP is addressing.
It is entirely possible that you arrived at the belief that torturing babies are wrong without ever even contemplating the possibility of it being morally factually wrong.
Those are both the same. If a belief is independent of the trueness or falseness of a proposition; then the propositions trueness or falseness is independent of the belief: those are two ways of saying the same thing.
Do you think that a stance about the trueness or falseness of something, is independent of the trueness or falseness of something?
I think we have to be very careful here, because I dont disagree that a belief could be related to the truth-value of a proposition in the sense that I think you mean it. I believe tacos taste good is a proposition and part of what it references relates to a belief (in this case, a belief about tacos), but this is not the same thing as saying that a propositions truth-value is relative to a belief.
For example, 1 + 1 = 2 is a mathematical proposition of which its truth-value is clearly not relative to a belief; however, the same is the case for the non-mathematical proposition I believe 1 + 1 = 2...it is just harder to spot. The truth-value of I believe 1 + 1 = 2 is not relative to any stance: either the subject believes it or they do notirregardless of their stance on the proposition I believe 1 + 1 = 2. The truthity of I believe 1 + 1 = 2 is stance-independent.
Why, then, do so many people, including yourself, say it is not? Because, of course, to evaluate the truth-value of the proposition I believe 1 + 1 = 2 one must evaluate the belief of some subject; and, in this sense, one wants to say the truthity of <...> is stance-dependent.
It is imperative, then, to pinpoint what the proposition is: when someone, like yourself, says the above, they are thinking of the truth of whether or not what the belief references is true or false (e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, tacos taste good, etc.) and not the actual proposition at-hand (e.g., I believe 1 + 1 = 2, I believe tacos taste good, etc.). They then conflate them, and say that the proposition at-hand is stance-dependent (in terms of its truthity) when, really, the part of the content, which may or may not itself be a proposition, has its truthity relative to a stance.
We have to dissect this with razor-sharp knives and as elegantly and precisely as a surgeon to avoid this conflation (which I think you are making).
Why is this a big deal, you may say? Because what was originally being accounted for as propositional by way of relativity to beliefs dissipates with this transformatione.g., one that argues that 1 + 1 = 2 does not express something objective but is propositional because it is relative to a belief, will have to transform it into I believe 1 + 1 = 2 which loses its original meaning (viz., it is no longer the same proposition, and the one which was denied as objective is not actually propositional: it is, rather, the indexical statement that is).
See what I mean?
What self-reference? A stance about something is independent of that something; which does not negate, to your point, that some statements reference subjective dispositions which, in turn, require one to evaluate to determine the truth-value of it (which, again, is not the same thing as the truth-value itself being relative to a subjective disposition: I am cutting ever-so precisely here, or at least trying to, in order to convey the point).
That I have to evaluate the subjective dispositions of a person to determine the truth of something, does not entail that the truth of that something is subjectively determined.
If you assume that that "someting" is unlike the stance, a thing so called "out there" in the real world independent of Mind.
If you assume the stance and the something and the truthity are mechanisms in one dynamic process...
And, yet, I settle at the same conclusion. I believe it, not because it is true, it is true because the mechanism of belief was triggered at the end of the (dialectical) process leading to it: belief, or the so called stance on truthity, and on "something."
First, I apologize for not responding in one post. Secondly, your logic seems (to me, not a technician) very tight and I cannot at my skill level, navigate my answer through your logic. Which, Prima facie might indicate I have no business responding at all, to which I apologize in advance.
My current understanding is that your conclusion that moral subjectivism fails the test of logic seems to imply that moral realism is the truthity of this thing morality, and the stance one ought to take.
But perhaps morality is neither "subjective" nor "real". It is not "subjective" in the sense that it follows a unique process (even if that process applies reason and facts) leading to an independent choice for each
individual. It is not Real or "objective" in the sense that it is informed by (pre)existing Laws independent of the individual's choice.
Perhaps it is a process which has evolved in human History, input into each of us since childhood, and operating autonomously in accordance with evolved mechanisms, having evolved to "trigger" "beliefs" which happen to be most suitable for any given moment and locus/individual in History.
So, now, subject is not deciding what is true, nor drawing upon what is True, but over and over again settling upon a temporary but intricately fitting "conclusion."
When it comes to the mechanisms conventionally triggering belief in the truthity of not killing, these are well structured paths, well tread, and thus very commonly, and without apparent dialectic, we arrive and settle there. It neatly falls within the structures of Univeral and Absolute. It may be "really true" somewhere in ultimate reality. But we do not access that reality at all when we construct it and settle there. By the same token, it seems like the choice not to kill is subjective, and based upon weighing relative pros and cons. But it is neither. Morality is the result of dynamics and mechanisms, functions and relations of Signifiers moving us to a conclusion from time to time and based upon the intersection of multiple minds and circumstances having met there.
Like I said, the well tread moral issues amenable to deontology for e.g. like don't kill, don't rape, make it seem like these
are Natural, the conditioning is so quick it seems organic.
The dilemmas are what make us wonder. Press the button and kill one baby to save a million. Here the path to belief is not so well tread, we watch the Dialectical process taking place and assume subjectivity. But the problem is, even the very Subject to whom we designate the final belief, is just a mechanism in that system.
Again, if I have crossed the boundaries of your interest, sincere apologies. I recognize I have not provided enough details, nor framed it in precisely logical terms.
My understanding, which I will confirm in advance, won't be presented through syllogism (though I admire and respect that process).
The point you--in my opinion, correctly observed--supports, for me, the conclusion that the "reality" we are trying to decipher, is as it turns out, "causily connected to itself," a "loop," all of it, the "thing," the proposition (about thing)and the belief, taking place as a single process "appearing" as separate, giving rise to more propositions about subjects, objects, Beings and Truths.
Though you are far from the point I'm about to make, and I apologize for "mishandling" yours. But for me, you have illustrated exactly the way I believe morality moves (the "stances" we take on "truthity") a thing is a well tread path and we believe
habitually. Morality is a conditioned response triggered by the habitual paths "words" take.
Your challenge does not demonstrate a unique uncovering of real truth; nor does it demonstrate the sole individual rising up against conditioning. It is just another conditioned path which surfaced because multiple "words" moving in your locus of history triggered the beliefs you are espousing.
Both do not kill and don't eat meat follow that process and are neither relative to subjective choice, nor grounded in Natural Law.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. Maybe an example would help:
I go for a job interview. For whatever reason, I am confident that I am going to get the job. As a result, I am very relaxed and personable, and this in turn is what helps me beat out another candidate. But suppose that if I thought I was unlikely to get the job I would have been much more nervous and flubbed the interview, in which case I wouldn't have gotten the job.
In this case, my belief that I would get the job is not independent of my getting the job. It is a determinate factor.
These sorts of situations come up all the time. I am not saying that the truth values of [I]all[/I] propositions is dependant on beliefs about the truth values of those propositions. However, when it comes to propositions involving human behavior it seems like it will often be the case that beliefs about propositions will not be independent of the truth value of those propositions. Many events happen precisely because people believe they will happen.
Arms races would be a good example vis-á-vis aggregate behavior. For example, say the Soviets don't think the US will slow down their production of nuclear weapons. Then [I]because[/I] the Soviets have this belief, they don't slow down their own production. Yet this decision in turn ensures that the US doesn't slow down either (self-fulfilling prophecy). But in this example, it is not the case that the truth value of "the US will not slow down weapons production," is independent of the Soviet belief about this proposition.
In this case, we would be working already outside the scope of moral subjectivism¹.
1 Not the view that morals are subjective (as the name would suggest), but that what makes a moral proposition true is whether we believe in it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, they mean the same thing, I rephrased it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Does it follow from A not being dependent on B, that A is not distinct from B?
Quoting ENOAH
The issue is not that the belief circles back to itself, but that it is caused by itself. So we have that A?A. In logic, this is tautological. In metaphysics, this either implies creation from nothing or causa suis (pantheistic god). Obviously, in either case it becomes nonsense when we are talking of beliefs.
Certainly not unique but it does point to something that has been covered. Whatever the "real truth" might be, it is not something we possess and not something we can come to know through a misguided model of reason based on the success of mathematics.
Quoting ENOAH
"Words" can have multiple paths that can be traced by their history. To do so may require desedimentation. Doing so can open paths that have been closed, leading us away from our conditioning. Paths can be walked and paths can be made.
Quoting ENOAH
What these prohibitions mean is subject to interpretation. Is killing an enemy in war prohibited? Is killing an animal to eat it prohibited? Do fish and fowl count as meat? The process by which such determinations have been made is not always a process that already exists to be followed. At some point it had to be established. Exceptions had and in some cases still have to be dealt with.
I understood better what you meant when you explained it -- I'd have called the concept https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803105953845", which is a term I've come across in the literature that means a sentence is able to be true or false (Unlike sentences like "How are you today?")
I didn't want to interrupt the flow of things for something so minor, but since it came up I thought I'd offer a possible word to use.
I gave examples and an elaboration here, which you seem to have ignored. If there is anything in there that requires further elaboration or clarification, then please let me know!
I have no problem with this; again, I refer you back to my response: a proposition referencing something about a belief does not make the proposition itself true or false relative to a belief I cannot stress this enough. It is the difference between, e.g., saying that 1 + 1 = 2 is true because one believes it and saying that I believe 1 + 1 = 2 is true because they do, in fact, have that belief (that 1 + 1 = 2). This is the distinction which you are currently overlooking.
The only thing I can say, that is not a reiteration of my response (linked above), is that this is a bad example, although I understand why you would use it, to give to counter my points in the response; because you didnt specify what the proposition is that you are claiming has a truth-value relative to a belief. I am assuming you dont mean to say that the proposition I got the job is relative to a belief (even if your subjective disposition contributed to you getting the job) (:
That doesnt help at all: I provided an argument, which outlines a certain way of thinking about it, to demonstrate the conclusion; and all you have done is taking a claim that I am obviously going to deny, which is the very thing under contention, and posited it as true to negate my conclusion.
#1 sounds like this form of moral subjectivism denies moral cognitivism; which is a contradiction in terms.
#2 is absolutely a required, essential aspect of moral subjectivism. By moral subjectivism, I am not merely referring to any subjective morality: I am referring to a specific moral anti-realist position.
I apologize: I was using distinct and independent interchangeably: reread my response as using independent instead of distinct.
Fair enough! However, I do not mean truth-aptness by truthity: I to the assessment of the truth of the thing or lack thereof and not its capacity for truth---it is the 'lack thereof' that disbars me from simply saying 'truth' instead of 'truthity'. I went ahead and changed the OP to use 'trueness or falseness' instead of 'truthity'.
So you deny that I believe that aliens exist is a proposition?
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, good.
Although (1) and (2) are quite different, folk on this forum like to equivocate between (1) and (2). When we do philosophy we are usually concerned with statements of type (1), not of type (2). (2) represents a more specialized inquiry which should not be conflated with (1). Nevertheless, (2) is a proposition, it is just an unusual proposition because it depends on beliefs. The question is whether ethics concerns statements of type (1) or type (2). When we engage in ethical reasoning, are we inquiring into whether people believe something, or whether something is right or wrong? I take it that it is obvious that ethical reasoning pertains to the latter, and is not about peoples beliefs. An ethical proposition is no more made true by beliefs than a mathematical proposition is made true by beliefs.
The moral subjectivist is liable to redefine ethics such that it is about statements of type (2) rather than statements of type (1); they wish to talk about B rather than A. The first problem with this is that it is simply not what ethics is, historically speaking. The second problem is that if ethics were only about things like B and in no way about things like A, then ethics would not be a science or field of inquiry except in the most insubstantial sense. Ethics would then reduce to irrational claims like, "I believe it is wrong to torture babies, and I have no rational grounds for so believing."
Yes that is a proposition, and whether or not it is true or false is independent of any belief about it: that's what you keep missing, because you keep conflating a proposition referencing something about a belief with a proposition having its trueness or falseness being relative to a belief (e.g., the difference between claiming "aliens exist" is true relative to a belief one has and "I believe aliens exist" being true).
I would add, that a proposition can never actually be true or false relative to a belief; and this is the real, underlying problem.
Many people are inclined to say "it is wrong to torture babies" is a (1) proposition and (2) its truth is relative to beliefs; however, they then proceed to re-write it, to make it valid, as "I believe it is wrong to torture babies" which is not the original proposition. What they have done is NOT the demonstration of a proposition that has its trueness or falseness relative to beliefs but, rather, have demonstrated that there are certain kinds of propositions, of which their truth is still not relative to beliefs, that is about beliefs.
(@Michael, @Count Timothy von Icarus) The proposition "I believe <...>" is NOT true or false relative to a belief. I can't say "oh, well, 'I believe X' is true because I believe that 'I believe X' is true".
As per Tarskis T-schema, P is true iff P. As such, I believe that aliens exist is true iff I believe that aliens exist.
Then I don't think I understand after all.
What does "The assessment of the truth of the thing or lack thereof" mean? That it has been judged or justified, or that it can be judged or justified?
Yes, exactly.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would say that the truth of P is relative to a belief, namely my belief regarding aliens. However, I think you are right in saying that it is not necessarily relative to the belief expressed by P2.
The main point is that even though some propositions depend on beliefs, ethical propositions such as
(@Count Timothy von Icarus)
Correct, but no need for Tarskis T-schema: it plainly and obviously follows that p ? p.
You are also correct that I believe that aliens exist is true iff I believe that aliens exist. However, this does not entail that the truth of the proposition is contingent on beliefs.
Theres a couple ways to explicate this to you, which I have done already (but let me try again).
The first way, is to note that if I believe that aliens exist has its truth-value relative to a belief, then it is true iff I believe that I believe that aliens exist. This plainly follows, because one would be literally evaluating whether or not the proposition, which is I believe that aliens exist, is true or false relative to another belief.
The second way, is to abstract it out: lets call the proposition I believe X Y. If Ys truth-value is relative to a belief, then Y is true iff I, or some group of people, believe, or believes, that Y is true. Y is, though, NOT X. So lets apply this to your example. If you were to argue that aliens exist has a truth-value that is relative to beliefs, then aliens exist is true iff I believe aliens exist. What you are trying to do, is express this with I believe aliens exist; but this is not the same proposition: you have went from X to Y in an equivocating fashion. If aliens exist is true iff I believe aliens exist, it does NOT follow that I believe aliens exist is true iff I believe that I believe aliens exist: the latter is a separate proposition, which does not have its truth-value necessarily relative to beliefs. I merely recognize, in my argument, that, in fact, propositions cannot be true or false relative to a belief: I believe aliens exist, like any other proposition, is true or false irregardless of what you or I believe about I believe aliens exist.
What you are doing, is confusing X with Y: you are thinking that "aliens exist" is true or false relative to a belief when really you are working with the separate proposition "I believe aliens exist". You have to re-write it this way for your idea to be a valid proposition, but that contradicts your idea: it transforms it into a different proposition that does not demonstrate that "aliens exist" is true or false relative to a belief.
I just meant that whether or not a thing is true or false, is independent of the stance one has of whether it is true or false. That's all.
The answer is "yes".
But, I'm asking genuinely, if something is impossible in logic, can it not be possible "outside" of logic? Is there no outside? Who says? Logic? Is that tautological?
You might choose to stop here, and just answer.
If your answer is yes, logic precludes it, you might not want to read further. Understandably, it may frustrate.
And I respect that. But what Im about to ask, I ask sincerely, and neither to disrespect nor challenge well supported thinking. Plus I'm eager to be corrected let alone challenged because my thoughts have never been just my own. Are anyone's?
Can it be that belief does come back to itself, in the sense that "belief" is not what the word conventionally signifies; (or is that but is also) a mechanism within a perpetual loop, a process becoming out of and back to itself. Not just belief; everything.
And talk about A --> A, what if even logic proceeds from itself within that process? Hence, the loop (which) defies logic.
The "reality" we're "writing" about precisely here is morality (for e.g.), and we think we are discerning the "real" of it. But we are nowhere near the real of it, "trapped" within the loop holding and forming our inquiries and their emissions. We search for the real of morality in subject or object for e.g.. The loop constructed "difference". The loop constructed Subjective/objective both writing themselves into the narratives moving everything in becoming, changing as we go albeit to us, slowly. Our resistance to change another mechanism having evolved to ensure that slow and complex dialectic functionsoptimally for the survival and prosperity of the loop. Logic evolved, a "tool" in the dialectic; a "successful" mechanism to expedite a settlement/belief. And from belief proceeds the Dialectical process settling at a new belief, and so on, and so on, becoming belief, never being True or Real.
The loop never uncovers any independently existing Reality. There might be a Natural Law of "morality," we might naturraly live by it, but we're not going to uncover it with our constructions, fantasy or logic. We are in a loop "constructions" proceeding from a constructed system of construction; affecting our bodies to act and feel; but displacing all of our natural attention with experience in narrative form, all of it fleeting and empty of any of that "the real of it" which we will always endlessly pursue. Illustrating yet again illogicality even of this hypothesis bothering to express itself. Unless expression is the only point. It dresses itself up with logic and poetry to give it the maximum chance for survival and with the hope of its prosperity, that is, settlement by others.
You seem to misunderstand moral subjectivism. Beliefs do not make moral, or any other, propositions true or false per se, but moral subjectivists may assert that their believing what they understand to be a moral proposition makes it true for them. It doesn't follow that the propositions they hold to be true are truth aptpropositions may or may not be truth apt, regardless of whether or not they are believed to be true or false.
Quoting Fooloso4
I'm with you there.
Quoting Fooloso4
Almost shocking how much I see it that way too. Funny how it takes me a few "call-and-responses" to start to understand another's narration.
Quoting Fooloso4
Right. If it appeared otherwise, pardon my unwieldiness. I was saying both moral issues are similarly the product of and resolved by and as language (and not by reference to some eternal law accessible to Language and its multiform projections). But don't kill, being a path well tread seems like it comes to us from nature; more than don't eat meat which requires a dialectic on the surface to take place first but they are both similarly projections of Language and its autonomous processes
No I'm not.
I'm only saying that "I believe that aliens exist" is true iff I believe that aliens exist. Therefore your conclusion that "a belief cannot make a proposition true or false" is false.
Quoting Michael
I think you're missing Bob Ross's point.
A belief that "aliens exist" is not the same as a belief about the proposition "I believe that aliens exist"
I haven't claimed otherwise.
I have only claimed this:
"I believe that aliens exist" is true iff I believe that aliens exist. Therefore his conclusion that "a belief cannot make a proposition true or false" is false.
Apologies, you're right - It's Bob who's missing your point.
Quoting Michael
Yes, but a belief about a proposition cannot make that proposition true or false (which is maybe what Bob is claiming)
In that case I agree with:
Quoting Lionino
I don't think so. I think we are historically/culturally/linguistically situated but not thereby determined.
Yes. The moral subjectivist will concede that because that is their view.
This is correct.
This is false; and does not follow from the former claim you made. I already explained this in great detail, so let's try a different way.
I would ask you: "what belief makes the proposition 'I believe that aliens exist' true or false?"
You would say: "that I believe that aliens exist".
I would say: "that you believe that aliens exist, is not a belief about the proposition: that "I believe that aliens exist" is not dependent on what we believe about it, so you have failed to demonstrate what belief makes the proposition true or false."
I am (obviously) not denying that a proposition can be about a belief but, rather, am denying that a proposition is true or false relative to a belief. That a proposition cannot be evaluated as true or false without determining a belief (or lack thereof) that one has, it does not follow that the proposition's truth is relative to that belief. E.g., I believe "aliens exist" != "I believe aliens exist": the former is invalid and a proposition that has its truth relative to a belief, the latter is valid and a proposition that is about a belief.
Well, the whole idea behind moral subjectivism being internally inconsistent is that they take (1) beliefs (which are stances) to make propositions true or false, while conceding, in their own rewriting of the propositions, that (2) propositions cannot be made true or false by beliefs; which is self-evident when they rewrite "one ought not torture babies" as "I believe one ought not torture babies".
I don't think that begs the question, but I see why you would think that.
That is fair: a moral subjectivist could get out of this internal inconsistency by positing that moral judgments are propositions because they are just propositions about beliefs; but then moral propositions do not exist, which seems pretty absurd.
Likewise, in this version of the position, one can't say that the moral proposition "one ought not torture babies" is true for them: they would have to say that "I believe one ought not torture babies" is true for them. I think most moral subjectivists do not realize this, and fall into the (internally inconsistent) trap that I outlined in the OP.
They would no longer be discussing ethics, essentially.
It does follow. My belief that aliens exist makes the proposition "I believe that aliens exist" true. Therefore, your claim that "a belief cannot make a proposition true or false" is false.
:roll:
Repeating yourself three times, while ignoring my responses, does not help further the conversation.
Your responses do not address my claim hence why I have to repeat it.
It has been addressed at length, but you refuse to engage in the conversation:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/903115
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/903011
Do they though?
?: Within MS, the first seems to be the moral proposition and the second the justification, to me therefore they seem distinct but dependent.
?: But let's say they do rewrite it, to mean that "one ought not torture babies" is "I believe one ought not torture babies" and it might as well be, as it is a A?B relationship.
Being that "I believe one ought not torture babies" is "one ought not torture babies", "I believe one ought not torture babies" is a moral proposition (if it is not, there is no such thing as moral propositions, the moral nihilist position) this is the matter you were approaching in the rejoinder. That being the case, what justifies "I believe one ought not torture babies" is that I believe in it. As you can see, that would end up in an infinite regress. By itself, that doesn't entail logical contradiction of the belief, but it is untenable and the MS will want to simply default back to ?.
I don't think Michael is saying that the the truth of the proposition is dependent on what "we" believe. He is saying that the truth is dependent on what the person referenced by "I" believes in that proposition.
"?" is an inconsistent position for a moral subjectivist to hold (and this is the main point of the OP): a proposition cannot be made true or false relative to a belief, and this is why they have to rewrite it as "I believe <...>" as they can't evaluate coherently "<...>" relative to a belief.
For a moral subjectivist to be consistent, they will have to deny that "<...>" is a moral proposition and hold, instead, that "I believe <...>" is the moral proposition. At this point, "?", they have defeated their own position: they were supposed to demonstrating that "<...>" is true relative to a belief and NOT "I believe <...>".
Those can't be equal: they are obviously not the same proposition. A person who holds this, does not understand what propositions are. "1 + 1 = 2" != "I believe 1 + 1 = 2".
Yes, if they do this, then, like I stated above, they have defeated they own position: they were supposed to be arguing that "one ought not torture babies" is a moral proposition and NOT "I believe <...>".
See:
Quoting Leontiskos
More simply:
Quoting Leontiskos
(2) is a proposition about a belief about proposition (1). (2) is not a proposition about a belief about proposition (2). You and Michael seem to have been talking past one another on this point for the entire thread. I think you have the better part of this sub-argument, because Michael's point does not interact with C1 of your OP (although it does pretend to interact with it). On the other hand, C1 would have been more accurately written, "Therefore, a belief about [s]the[/s] a proposition cannot make [s]a[/s] that proposition true or false." The question is about whether a belief about (1) can make (1) true or false, not whether a belief about (1) can make (2) true or false. More generally, C1 asks whether a belief about a proposition can make that same proposition true or false.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, what he is noting is that "I believe <...>" is true or false depending on whether or not the person, being referenced by "I", has the belief. This is NOT the same thing as claiming that the proposition "I believe <...>" is true or false depending on our beliefs about it: this is the difference between a proposition being about a belief, and a proposition's truth being relative to a belief.
I admit it can be confusing, and this is why we have to be very careful: the proposition "I believe <...>" is about a belief of the subject-at-hand, but whether or not it is true is not dependent on any beliefs about it.
@Michael keeps overlooking this point I am making, and reverts back to insisting on a point that I agree with---i.e., that some propositions are about beliefs.
I completely agree with your assessment, and I think you understand what I am trying to convey. I have been trying to explain this to @Michael, but they seem to keep overlooking this point: I am not denying that a proposition be about a belief, and this can, thusly, require one to evaluate it relative to the subject-at-hand.
However, to be fair, I see how C1 was worded in a way that did provide the ambiguity necessary to birth this dispute; so I just re-worded it in the OP to better reflect what I am saying (and what I am not saying).
:up:
Quoting Bob Ross
Fair enough. I will say that an attentive reader of P1 would have been able to understand C1, because P1 is clear about the self-same identity of the two propositions, and the meaning of C1 derives from P1.
The only dispute we may have, is:
I would be wary to say that P has its truth relative to a belief; because this would mean that "I believe that aliens exist", P, is true or false depending on if I believe "I believe that aliens exist", P.
I understand what you are conveying and agree with it, but I think describing it as "truth relative to a belief" contributes to the confusion people are having: propositions that take the form "I believe <...>" are not "special" when it comes to the truth about them---truth is objective. This is what causes, in my opinion, people, including my past self, to conflate "aliens exist" being true or false relative to a belief with "I believe aliens exist" being true or false not relative to a belief.
Suppose someone believes that it's their disposition about a belief that makes a proposition true or false. In that case, it's akin to what I often say about convictions, viz., just because one holds to the conviction the X is true, that in itself means very little in terms of what's morally true or false. The difference is between knowledge (JTB) and mere opinion, or more precisely the difference is between using know as the expression of a conviction and using know as an epistemological point, i.e., being properly justified in one's moral belief.
Your point is an important epistemological statement, and I agree. It's not a matter of pointing to my inner subjectivity that makes a statement true or false, at least not in this example. There may be certain propositions that are dependent on our feelings or intuitions, but moral propositions are not of that ilk.
So if we look at these two propositions:
Quoting Leontiskos
I would say that the veracity of (2) is relative to my belief regarding the existence of aliens, and the veracity of (1) is not relative to that belief. Namely, if I believe (1) then (2) is true, and if I do not believe (1) then (2) is false. It seems to me that this "relativity to belief" is one of the primary differences between (1) and (2). Crucially, I want to say that if a proposition is not relative to beliefs or dependent upon beliefs, then we do not need to examine any beliefs in order to assess the veracity of that proposition. Because we do need to examine beliefs in order to assess the veracity of (2), it must therefore be relative to beliefs. Yet one does not need to examine beliefs in order to assess a moral proposition.
(@Michael,@Count Timothy von Icarus,@ChrisH)
I don't mind the underlying meaning you are referring to by "relativity to belief"; so here's a way I can express my view without getting into semantics.
A belief about a proposition cannot make it true or false (e.g., "aliens exist" cannot be made true or false relative to any belief formulated about it); but a proposition can be made true or false relative to a belief which it is about.
Put that way, the mistake a moral subjectivist makes is NOT the idea that a proposition can be made true or false relative to a belief which is contained in it; but that a belief about a proposition can make it true or false.
The internally inconsistent part, is that, in a nutshell, a moral subjectivist claims that moral propositions in the traditional sense (e.g., "one ought not torture babies for fun") can be true or false relative to a belief about it; and results in an inconsistent view[s], for the vast majority of moral subjectivists, [/s] of the nature of a belief and a proposition. The inconsistency is exemplified easily in the way that moral subjectivists readily convert moral propositions into propositions about beliefs while incoherently maintaining that the original moral proposition has been preserved.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think Michael's making a distinction between "beliefs about it" and "beliefs".
A claim that "john "believes X" is not dependent on any belief about John' s beliefs (your point) but it is dependent on John's beliefs (Michael's point). In other words the truth of the proposition is clearly dependent on an actual belief - something you appeared to deny when you wrote.
Quoting Bob Ross
I changed the OP to help dissolve this dispute:
That is all I need to convey the original point.
I disagree with your characterization of it as "truth of a proposition is clearly dependent on an actual belief": truth is objective. Again, this is a rather moot point with respect to the OP, though.
What you are really saying, is that the truth of the proposition is dependent on whether or not someone has the belief; and not that it is dependent on a belief.
E.g.,
I think the below hammers it home.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am on board with that part.
Quoting Fooloso4
Then--unless I misunderstanding--
1. Whence history/culture/language?
2. What/what process/who situate(s)/(d) us "there"?
Are these "things" H/C/L, at least at "source", immutable, preexisting, inevitable? By design?
And note, while I recognize our real beings, our bodies, are not directly determined by HCL, our Minds, are both the source of and determined by HCL.
However, no need to debate this further unless you feel it compelling. I'm already enriched by your comments, comfortable with what I view as minor divergence in our paths, and look forward to the next time they cross.
:up:
Quoting Bob Ross
Can you explain?
If torturing babies is morally repugnant to me, then why can I not say that it is truly morally wrong for me? I may feel that others should also see it as morally wrong, but if I am a consistent moral subjectivist I cannot justify that feeling. Does that matter?
I distinguish ethics from moral philosophy as I see it as being concerned with the question as to how I should live. It doesn't necessarily concern how others should live although whether it does or not might depend on one's starting assumptions. Moral philosophy concerns how I think I should treat others and perhaps also how I think others should treat others,
Yes that more accurately reflects what you're attempting to say. The original was open to Michael's criticism.
I think that within these constraints there is still some degree of play and freedom. There are from time to time those who are able to see beyond the limits of their time. Those who are not products of their time but who influence how those who follow will see and think.
Agreed. Time will tell is almost always a reliable proposition.
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
Quoting Bob Ross
OK, I have a better idea of what you're saying now -- it's not begging the question, but this is your explicit interpretation of Moral Subjectivism, and you are drawing out implications of these two beliefs which Moral Subjectivists hold to show how they are contradictory.
I think the easier rejoinder might be to let go of one or the other belief, if they agree with the argument, but redefine Moral Subjectivism in a palatable way -- for instance, a Moral Subjectivist will often say that it's not beliefs about the Moral Proposition which make it true, but our sentiments which make it true -- there's not a cognitive justification so much as a cognitive expression of feeling. What makes "One ought not murder the innocent" true is that when a person says
(1) "One ought not murder the innocent",
that statements means
(2) "I feel like murdering the innocent is abhorrent"
where the cognitivist is being confused by the shape of the sentence being in subject-predicate form, the non-cognitivist will insist that these sentences, though they look like statements about oughts, they are statements about feelings, and so the feelings -- the subjectivism -- are what make morals true.
According to Wikipedia ethical subjectivism is cognitive-propositional, and I have found this to be the case among self-professed subjectivists. I don't think you are disputing this even though your thesis draws near to emotivism, but here is the problem I see with subjectivism and emotivism:
(I.e. Subjectivism and emotivism are therefore not moral theories, because they fail to achieve normativity.)
"I feel like murdering is abhorrent" (subjectivism) and "Boo murder!" (emotivism) are in no way binding on others, and they are arguably not even binding on oneself. Feelings do not seem to be adequate to justify moral propositions. Going back to the OP, I would say that it is not only beliefs that are inadequate to justify moral propositions, but that feelings are also inadequate.
I think the problem is that those who attempt to reduce moral deliberation to some set of self consistent propositions forget that what is at issue is not an abstracted analysis of the truth of moral propositions, but how our lives and those of others are benefited and harmed by what we say and do and think.
Should the moral proposition, 'you must not abort a fetus but carry it to term' be binding? What makes this proposition either true or false? By what moral authority can this be determined and by what force is it made binding?
A moral proposition is any proposition which is normative that pertains to what is morally good. Propositions like I believe <...> are NOT normative and do not pertain to what is morally good: they are non-normative facts about ones psychology.
The moral statements, of which the moral subjectivist was supposed to be arguing is still propositional, are like one ought not torture babies; but re-writing them like I believe one ought not torture babies transforms the statement into a proposition about ones psychology and NOT about the original moral statement.
There is nothing about I believe torturing babies is wrong being true that obligates you not to torture babies: it is a non-normative statement about your belief about babies being tortured. It isnt expressing that I shouldnt torture babies.
What you just described is moral non-cognitivism (e.g., emotivism); and NOT moral subjectivism. You have abandoned moral subjectivism for a different position; which, prima facie, is fine but does not contend with my OP.
I think I would conclude that this can be distilled into 'arbitrary'. We use that term in reference to basically 'unchangeable' characteristics elsewhere, so it seems apt here to me.I think that even on what you quoted, this still fits if you insert your description in place of arbitrary, and the flavour, for me, remains the same. But, this is all to say i more-or-less agree intuitively ..just in this context, anything but some external moral influence of some objective nature (whcih, I don't believe exists) is required to defeat the arbitrary label.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree with this. This might be what you're, in general, outlining, but it seems to me nothing moral at all to accept this.
Quoting Lionino
Quoting Lionino
The discontinuity here is what I was 'agreeing' with. Not many subjectivists would accept that premise. This, to me, indicates it doesn't capture the position well. Perhaps this is just bad wording.
Quoting Bob Ross
This appears to be the only rational case in terms of encapsulating moral claims. I think it is simply ignoring, for convenience, the first two words, that has caused much of the debates. Obviously, to me, this precludes any moral realism, but that's by the by in terms of discussing this point.
But, even if some moral P is true in virtue of it being veridical in some weird, unascertainable metaphysical way, one's belief simply has no connection with that fact (by definition, here). The belief is still essentially a best-guess guised as a belief.
EDITED IN THE NEXT DAY: I see you, Bob, have noted this elsewhere. Sorry for repeating.
What I am questioning is the claim that some as yet unspecified set of obligations are binding. I am also asking how it is determined that these moral propositions are objective and true?
Quoting Leontiskos
To not say more is to skirt the issue at hand. If you are claiming that there are objective moral truths then you must not simply assert that they exist, but provide and defend at least some of them.
Quoting Leontiskos
There are significant differences that render the comparison problematic and questionable.
There is a generally accepted distinction between killing and murder. Murder is by definition wrong, killing is not. There are cases where killing is regarded as acceptable.
The point is not to argue the morality of abortion but rather to point to the fact that it is arguable moral issue. Rational people are unable to agree. That should not be the case with propositions that are objectively true.
Quoting Leontiskos
The relation between morality or ethics and political philosophy is important but is not what I am aiming at.
Thanks for the correction. So a subjectivist must be cognitivist. I didn't understand that.
EDIT: Oh, regarding the end -- what makes feelings inadequate? And what if they aren't justifiers so much as truth-makers?
Quoting Bob Ross
Got it.
Then consider this rendition that's not quite emotivism, but is an attempt at reformulating the thesis to avoid your contradiction.
The cognitive aspect is the truth of moral propositions.
Truth isn't a truth-maker, though. In the same way that states of affairs make statements true (but the state of affairs isn't truth) so goes it that the sentiments make moral propositions true.
The moral proposition is still true, but truth is not an emotion, and so it's perfectly fine to claim that emotions are the truth-makers of moral propositions.
How our lives and those of others are benefited and harmed by what we say and do and think is certainly more important to my mind than these exercises in categorization.
But we don't need to be too serious all the time, and there's something fun in the exercise, I think
I don't know that you deviated from cognitivism. You spoke of "a cognitive expression of feeling," which is a bit opaque but still prima facie cognitive. My point was that whether we are talking about subjectivism (cognitivism) or emotivism (non-cognitivism), they both seem to fail for the same reason.
Quoting Moliere
I don't think they are truth-makers either. I just don't see how feelings confer moral obligations. I think the burden of proof is on the person who claims that their mere feelings establish moral obligations of some kind.
Quoting Moliere
Are you just playing devil's advocate, or do you actually believe that feelings can make moral propositions true? I mean, I don't usually say, "I wonder if I have an obligation to do such-and-such? Let me check in with Moliere's feelings to know for sure..." :razz:
True, but I could see how I slipped from cognitivism at the beginning into emotivism at the end when going back and re-reading, so it was muddled and confusing. I think I'm being clear now.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm playing with the idea, yeah, but I also genuinely doubt that the position must be internally inconsistent -- usually there's a way to accommodate criticism.
I think people take up duties out of emotional commitments to something or someone, and if they cease to have that emotional tie then the duty loses its appeal and what was a commitment becomes an ideal.
So, in a practical sense at least, our feelings are very important when it comes to moral propositions and maintaining duty.
Fair enough, although I think subjectivism easily falls into all of these ruts.
Quoting Moliere
I think it's mistaken but not necessarily inconsistent.
Quoting Moliere
I would want to say that emotion often reinforces duty, but does not cause duty. For example, a friendship implies duties to the friend, and there will be an emotional reinforcement of this reality, but it does not follow that the duty derives from the emotion. In this case you have a rational emotion, because it is reinforcing a true duty. But given that there are also irrational emotions, emotion is not the per se thing that informs practical reason. We legitimately act from emotion-as-a-sign, but not from emotion-as-a-cause. We should say, "This emotion probably signifies that I have a good reason to do such-and-such," not, "This emotion proves that I should do such-and-such." A key problem with emotion-based moral theories is that they fail to make sense of the fact that moral obligations sometimes require us to ignore the emotions at play. Going back to Plato, the passions are not primary; they should not constitute the charioteer. They are secondary, and as such can be well-formed or malformed.
Edit: I actually think subjectivism is a cultural phenomenon, deriving from the you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do culture. Peter Simpson has a nice excursus on this in his, On Doing Wrong, Modern-Style, in Vices, Virtues, and Consequences. Subjectivist claims are not meant to be "binding upon oneself and others" (). Instead they are rooted in a defensive posture which wishes to safeguard personal autonomy. Emotion-based claims dovetail well with this, for they are not binding on anyone, and therefore infringe on personal autonomy in no way at all. But my initial point holds, for what is at stake is more of a teenager's attitude than an ethical theory. Of course, as Simpson points out, there is one traditional moral proposition present in the you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do attitude, namely the absolute prohibition against autonomy infringement.
Quoting Aquinas, ST I-II.24.1
The quote from Augustine in the sed contra is actually very interesting as far as Thomistic moral philosophy goes. For Thomas all of the passions (emotions) are rooted in natural love. For example, fear is aversion to future evil, and because aversion to evil is always rooted in love of that which the evil destroys, fear is rooted in (natural) love. So if my dog develops a lump and I fearfully take him to the vet, I possess an aversion to a possible future evil (harm to my dog) which derives from my love for my dog. Following Augustine, if my love for my dog is properly ordered, then the fear I experience will be good. For example, even the simple fact that I took him to the vet is fear-induced, and it is presumably a good act, motivated by good fear. Yet if my love for my dog is disordered/evil, then the fear that I experience will be disordered/evil. For example, it may be out of proportion, tending to imbalance me in an undue manner.
There is nothing about any moral proposition that obligates anyone to adhere to it. If torturing babies is morally repugnant to me, I am unlikely to torture babies,
If I say, "I believe torturing babies is wrong" then that amounts to saying, "I believe no one should torture babies". It follows that I believe it to be a normative claim. Saying Torturing babies is wrong" is really just shorthand for the former "I believe......"
How do moral propositions become normative under your view? Does it require that they be believed by many people? How many people would be sufficient or insufficient?
The first part of the above quoted is what you are setting out to prove, the second part I can't figure out what it means. What is the part that can't be coherently evaluated? "One ought not to kill"? All the parts of the phrase are well-defined and refer to outside things, even "ought", which is that a course of action is preferrable over another. Janus expressed the same feeling above. The MS evaluates the proposition according to whether he believes it or not. Yes, the belief includes the proposition, is your argument that this goes in a circle?
I tried reading 's post to understand but, unless you are referring to MSs that do explicitly convert moral propositions X to «I believe X», I don't see how the view is inconsistent, and P1 will still beg the question.
This is what a moral subjectivist would be inclined to say; but it isnt a rejoinder to my OP: as far as I can tell, you just explicated the position that I was arguing is internally inconsistent. What you described, is that a belief about a proposition can make that proposition true or false.
If I should not torture babies is true, then you are obligated to not torture babies. You cant affirm that it is true that I should not torture babies without conceding it is true that I shouldnt torture babies: thats incoherent.
But it wouldnt be a normative claim, and thats the point.
If the proposition expresses something about how something ought to be. Saying I believe one ought to ... is not a proposition about what ought to be: it is about what one believes ought to be.
The proposition is "One ought X"
The feeling is not a proposition, and since all beliefs are propositional, the proposition is not being justified by a belief -- the justification is non-cognitive, but the belief, that one ought X, is cognitive.
In that quote of me, I was presupposing that one understands the nature of a proposition: they are always objective and absolute. If one wants to deny that, then they are not talking about propositions in the traditional sense of the word. I have never met a moral subjectivist that would deny this point.
Propositions are not made true or false relative to beliefs about them; and this is why the moral subjectivist wants to rewrite one ought ... to I believe one ought .... Saying one ought ... is true or false relative to a belief is incoherent with the nature of a proposition: it would no longer be truth-apt.
If you think that X, which is a proposition, is true or false relative to a belief about it; then you dont understand what a proposition is. Propositions are truth-apt, and they can only be truth-apt if they express something objective. Thats why a moral subjectivist has to rewrite them.
Another way to think about it, is that if a belief about X made X true or false; then X is just the belief. You cant have a separate claim which is being verified by a belief about it. Thats patently incoherent.
I am not following, I guess. Are you saying that moral judgments are propositional, but that they are made true by desires? E.g., "one ought not X" is true or false relative to whether or not "I desire one ought not X"?
If so, then that is plagued by the same issue: a desire about a proposition cannot make it true; and that's why emotivists reject that moral judgments are propositional---they have to.
Yes.
I don't think the desire is about the proposition, though. In the abstract it's just a desire -- but the object of desire is not the proposition, but rather what the proposition is about. What justifies "One ought X" is that the speaker is sincerely committed to what the proposition is about -- it's the emotional commitment that makes it true, under this rendition.
So what say you?
You are just saying "an emotional commitment makes the proposition true or false" with different words; and that is incoherent.
The only other thing I could envision you saying here, is that you are not commenting on whether or not the proposition is true or not with desires; instead, the desires just tell us whether or not a person behaves as though it were true. That would provide a gap between the proposition and the desire that isn't incoherent; but, then, it becomes an open-question what your position is on the actual moral proposition (judgment). The original question you are supposed to be addressing is whether or not moral judgements are propositional, true, and objective; and not whether or not people treat moral judgments as if they are propositional based off of their desires.
I took the tone of the thread to be serious. I find any serious attempt to think about ethics in terms of the construction and assault on categories comical.
I am reminded of Arthur Koestler's definition of philosophy:
(The Act of Creation)
And, for good measure, from Wittgenstein:
(CV, p. 47)
I don't know if you are trying to avoid addressing the problems raised by declaring them out of bounds or if you are simply unable to see what is at issue. What is at issue is the claim that moral subjectism (sic) is internally inconsistent. In support of that claim you say:
Quoting Leontiskos
but when I question what it means to be binding you complain it is a derailment.
You claim that:
Quoting Leontiskos
and:
Quoting Leontiskos
The type 1 proposition you cite is: 2+2=4. If ethics and more generally philosophy is concerned with this type of proposition then the problem of agreement with some propositions of this type such as 2+2=4 and disagreement with others of this type such as abortion needs to be explained. Once again, what is at issue is not abortion but the lack of agreement regarding moral propositions. When I point to this problem you complain it is a derailment.
You say "the epistemology of moral obligation" is a derailment and yet you ask:
Quoting Leontiskos
If we are inquiring into whether something is right or wrong then the question of how we know that something is right or wrong is not a derailment. If it is of the indisputable, demonstrable, objective type 1 then it is not a derailment to point out that moral propositions are not true to type.
I'd say the position I'm forging here believes that moral judgments are propositional, true, and subjective.
"One ought X" means "I feel commitment to Y" (be it due to disgust or love, it doesn't matter, it only matters that there's an attachment).
So "One ought X" can be true or false on the basis of whether or not the speaker feels commitment to Y because that's all that "One ought X" means -- it may look like it's talking about these objective oughts, and due to being in the form of a statement it's true or false, but the statement is actually about feelings of commitment, and it also acts as a sort of imperative: Not only I feel, but because "One ought..." I also feel others should too.
The feeling isn't a proposition, but neither are red cups propositions -- red cups make "The cup is red" true, and likewise, under this rendition, feelings make "One ought X" true, so it fulfills the requirements of being propositional and true, just not being objective -- hence Subjectivism.
Fair, I could be the one being too insulting here -- I like these exercizes, but I don't think the categorization of ethical stances is really too serious. Just kind of fun to think through.
Though every once and again I think the categorical exercise can help you trip across something you didn't think of. In a sense the "lightness" allows one to look at what we tend to think of in too serious a manner and look for its flaws more easily.
I'm less certain about it being mistaken, though that does not in turn mean I'm attracted to it either.
I'm still in the "playing around" phase.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't like to separate reason from emotion in such a hard-and-fast manner. There's a difference, but it's more of a difference because we've marked it in English -- the Subjective and the Objective -- but I think there's too much philosophical hay made out of the distinction.
Neither the passions nor the mind are primary -- they form a unity that is the judger.
Quoting Bob Ross
P1 isn't begging the question as much as it's how MS is being rendered -- the MS under attack believes that beliefs are true or false, and the value of T/F is not dependent upon another belief (or itself).
It's 2 that's inconsistent with 1, by the setup. The MS holds that beliefs can and cannot make moral propositions true. But it can be modified pretty easily by noting that 2 can be changed to "feelings/the world make moral propositions true or false", and then there's no contradiction -- at least as I'm seeing it now.
I don't hold that reason and emotion map to the objective and the subjective. One way to access Plato's point is to note that an agent can marshal and include emotions within their agency, but someone who is dominated by their emotions is to that extent not an agent at all. They are a patient (hence, "passions"). To grant emotions autonomy in themselves is to have cut oneself off from the ability to distinguish a proper relation to emotion from an improper relation to emotion, and it strikes me as self-evident that there are proper and improper ways to relate to emotion. More generally: we are simultaneously agents and patients; the emotivist excludes the former and the rationalist excludes the latter.
Quoting Fooloso4
If you think that ethical reasoning as I have defined it is not possible, that's fine. Maybe the subjectivist also holds that it is not possible. In that case I think they should say, "I don't think ethics is possible, therefore I do this other thing instead."
On the strength of what would I be obligated? And what would it mean for such a claim to be true beyond my feeling or thinking it to be so? Would there need to be a lawgiver who would punish me if I transgressed.
Quoting Bob Ross
What makes a normative claim a normative claim other than people believing it to be so. You didn't answer my question: if it is people believing it, then how many would be needed? If it is something else, then what is that "something else"? Are you invoking God?
Quoting Bob Ross
You continue to leave out the critical part. If a proposition expresses how something ought to be for some individual, then it is the fact that the individual believes that proposition that "supports the ought", so to speak. If you want to go beyond that you need to discover what "supports the ought"you need to address that question.
As the thread has taken some pains to indicate, (1) and (2) are not the same thing. (1) is not shorthand for (2), just as "Aliens exist" is not shorthand for "I believe aliens exist" (). Claims about what is true are not shorthand for claims about what one believes to be true. Your idea here is a fantastic variety of relativism.
Now, occasionally in everyday speech we assert in the form, "I believe such-and-such" (i.e. "Such-and-such is true"). But in this informal speech what is being asserted is such-and-such, not the note of belief. Or else what this indicates is that one thinks such-and-such is probably true.
You literally claimed that one is shorthand for the other. :roll:
Yes you did:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
And that is exactly why Ross is distinguishing (1) from (2):
The point is that (2) does not entail (1).
Quoting Janus
No one is asserting that something is wrong tout court. That's not what this thread is about. You haven't understood the OP. I would suggest finding one of the many threads on moral realism and asking your questions there. This thread is about claims of the sort, < 2 [math]\to[/math] 1 >. See P1 of the OP.
The obligation towards a moral proposition, is its truth-binding nature. If you deny this, then you are saying that you can affirm that it is true that you should not torture babies without affirming that it is true that you should not torture babies.
Thats it: there nothing more that needs to be said.
It would mean that propositions like one should not torture babies for fun can be evaluated as true or false; just like how propositions like 1 + 1 = 2 can be evaluated as true or false.
PS: again, one should not torture babies for fun cannot be true or false relative to a belief. See the OP for more on that.
This is a completely separate question from what you were asking: an investigation of the nature of normativity does not require anyone to answer what exactly is (objectively) morally good.
A normative proposition is any proposition about what ought to be: that answers your original question.
Now, if you want, I can delve into what I think is (objectively) morally good; but I will refrain for now. I dont think it involves God, and I dont think moral obligation has anything to do with a law giver.
I have no clue what you mean by support here: a belief an individual may have about a proposition which references themselves certainly does not make that proposition true or false.
I can think of two ways of interpreting this statement: either what you are asking about is what is morally good? or what makes a moral proposition binding?. I cannot tell which one you are intending to ask.
The same sort of inconsistency would arise as follows:
P2 would be "A belief is a cognitive stance taken..."
and P3 would be "Feelings make moral propositions true or false"
The feeling is the non-cognitive truth-maker of the cognitive belief.
Cool. I should have said that I don't think of reason and emotion in opposition -- I don't see reason or emotion as primary with the other secondary, although where you end that seems like we might agree there.
I would think that the Moral Subjectivist could agree that being dominated by emotions is a bad thing, though.
Rendering Plato's point in MS for someone who struggles with temper, say: The MS beleives "One ought not act on anger" which means "I feel disgust with myself when I act angry, and I want to be a better person", and if they do, in fact, feel disgust with themselves in that moment and want to be a better person then "One ought not act on anger" is true when that speaker says it.
Given that it's an ought-statement usually the implication is that the speaker holds this advice for others as well, though I don't think that part is truth-apt since it seems to be more of an imperitive than a statement; but I see the rendition of ought-statements as statements about one's feelings about oneself and what they like to be as being plausible interpretations of moral statements, so it seems like I can see a plausible version of MS.
(EDIT: Comically, this reducing ought-statements to the conjunction of an is-statement of a specific domain and an imperative means that while we cannot get an ought from an is, we can get an is from an ought)
I like your general statement. It seems to get along with the notion that reason and emotion aren't at odds, except you'd say that agents and patients aren't at odds.
I think we only become patients upon seeking a cure. Before that we may be sick, but we're not patients -- and I think that desire for a cure is an important part of any rational path to self-improvement. At the very least in terms of actually being successful in changing rather than listing things that we should be doing (but won't).
Quoting Leontiskos
Could you maybe elucidate this? I think this is a completely wrong statement. I see nothing in it.
Emotivists (to my knowledge) don't claim that you are beholden to your emotions to act. Just that emotions inform moral proclamations. One can simply act against their emotions. I do this constantly. To me, one of the biggest benefits of emotivism is that it explains moral disagreement, even intrapersonally. I can have conflicted moral standpoints, because the views done rest of logical predicates (i.e confirming/disconfirming conclusions regardless of their valence).
Okay, I thought you were classing your form of feeling-subjectivism as a variety of cognitivism. Regardless, the point is that P1 is not restricted to beliefs. Presumably the feeling-subjectivist is saddled with the same tension that feelings both can and cannot act as truth-makers for (moral) propositions. So we could rewrite P2 as something like, "P2: A feeling is a non-cognitive stance taken towards the trueness or falseness of a proposition." Again, I don't see how feelings have any more power to make moral propositions true or false than beliefs have.
I think that tracks what I said in the edit <here>. In the quote you gave I was admittedly using "emotivist" in a looser sense to capture the family of views to which Moliere has been speaking. On this view one is justified in acting on the basis of emotion, even to the point where "The feeling is the non-cognitive truth-maker of the cognitive belief" ().
A feeling isn't a non-cognitive stance taken towards the trueness or falseness of a proposition. I think the concrete example I gave showed that -- since we're speaking in terms of meta-ethics "Feelings" can take on many interpretations within a particular ethic.
So an attachment to duty, for instance, may cultivate a desire to restrain oneself, or an attachment to family may cultivate a desire to be loyal and fulfill your family role. In each of these scenarios feelings will come into conflict with these moral feelings, but that doesn't change the meta-ethical frame -- any meta-ethical frame worth considering should be able to consider persons who are less inclined to be dutiful and persons who are more inclined to be dutiful, and everything else that's out there in the wild world of humanity.
The Moral Subjectivist would just claim that the truth of the moral statements will come from those who speak those statements and their truth or falsity of their various commitments: you can spot rational inconsistencies in any creed (the cognitive part), but the reason people enact them is due to some attachment, which can include a moral attachment like the example of the person who wants to get over his anger to become better. These sorts of feelings are just as much feelings as the ones which are more commonly named, in this broad use of "Feelings"
At this point I disagree. Let me continue to class your variety of subjectivism as feeling-subjectivism (or emotion-subjectivism). Now if the emotion-subjectivist is to temper emotion, then they will need some non-emotion-based authority to step in to do that tempering. One cannot rely solely on emotions to underwrite the prohibition against being dominated by emotions. I can expand on this, but let's look at your example:
Quoting Moliere
The premise here is an implicit emotion hierarchy, where disgust is worse than anger (or some level of disgust is worse than some level of anger). What establishes the hierarchy? What determines when the level of disgust is too high to be tolerated? If what are at stake are truly cognitive truths, then emotion itself cannot establish hierarchies or determine thresholds. It is reason which does all of this, and therefore reason is implicitly assumed in the background. The person who has a hierarchy of emotions has already gone beyond appeal to emotions.
Quoting Moliere
Ah, let me clarify. I am using the term "patient" in a more classical-etymological sense. An agent is one who acts. A patient is one who is acted upon. The opposite of an action is a passion, for an action is something that we do and a passion is something that we undergo (or something that is done to us). The points in my last post were presupposing this definition. Colloquially we have phrases to represent this, such as, "Do not be carried away by your emotions!" When we become pure patients, at the whim of our emotions, something has gone wrong. E-motions are moving forces which are meant to coordinate with our agency, not to override and destroy our agency.
Well I tend to agree, but you are the one claiming that feelings are truth-makers for moral propositions. :wink:
Quoting Moliere
I don't really know what a sentence like this means, and because of that I dislike the word "just." :razz:
Quoting Moliere
I would say that to judge something good or worth doing is not a feeling. Adverting to my thread, a feeling is analogous to a hypothetical 'ought', and rendering a non-hypothetical ought-judgment requires taking into account the various hypothetical 'oughts' (including feelings) and then rendering a judgment. That judgment is not a feeling; it is the thing that takes feelings into account.
More simply, I don't think feelings are truth-makers for moral propositions. "I should smash this guy across the face." "Why?" "Because I have a feeling of anger." This is incomplete. The feeling of anger does not in itself make the moral proposition true. It may be true, and the anger may signal its truth, but it may also be false, and the anger may be a consequence of stupidity or error. The anger itself is not a truthmaker.
I don't think we know that -- if so the statements would belike Hume's passions which come across as a sort of calculus.
But we don't have the calculus of attachment just yet. Your question is like asking people before Newton "What makes the planets turn like that?", where I'd be totally unqualified to even guess at it :D
Some people want to be better, some don't, some ethics don't even talk in terms of these hierarchies of disgust. In terms of meta-ethics I think that the particular articulation of an ethic is what will determine the hierarchy, though in reality I think the hierarchies are established by the clash of attachments, however that cashes out.
As a kind of story-example to get a gist across:
a person who is surrounded by people who shame them can feel guilt for that particular thing and want to change, or they can feel anger and define themselves against that group, and perhaps they can feel both at the same time in roughly similar proportion (and this is where the sense of free will comes from). Each leads to a kind of articulatable ethic that justifies the choice, so it really would depend upon whether or not the person is attached to this or that ethic if they speak the truth (under the rendition that ought-statements are nothing more than this reduction to an is-statement of attachment, and an imperative, which is what my next chunk is on) -- the MS would only have to find some way to attach any ethical statement's truth or false value necessarily to the attitudes of people.
That depends upon what truly cognitive truths are.
If the truth of all moral language just is the day-to-day operations of living, though, then I think emotions are exactly how hierarchies are established. Fear, guilt, and shame are powerful motivators in moral codes, and they are reinforced by social hierarchies established by emotional attachments.
In our example the man wouldn't say "One ought not lose their temper" -- that's goofy as hell for someone to say when they are contrite or angry or whatever genuine expression towards an ethic, and a real person's utterance would express this proposition differently. "One ought not lose their temper" is the proposition which the utterance can be reduced to, for the purposes of making the MS position philosophically palatable, "I feel disgust when I lose my temper and I want to be a better person and everyone else shouldn't either" -- the creed after this can include things like "Because anger hurts others, and we are commanded to love others"
The redemption story is one of recognition, shame, anger, and relief. The cognitive part is all the philosophy, but the reason people seek redemption isn't because of the cognitive part.
How do you know?
Quoting Leontiskos
Sorry.
Looking at the wiki definition ---
Ethical subjectivism (also known as moral subjectivism and moral non-objectivism)[1] is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
(1) Ethical sentences express propositions.
(2) Some such propositions are true.
(3) The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the (actual or hypothetical) attitudes of people.[2][3]
3's the proposition under dispute for you, I believe.
So for any true ethical proposition the MS would try to demonstrate that its truth is dependent upon the attitudes of people, and the same with any false ethical proposition.
I think that the dependency could even include communal dependency -- resolving conflict would be an interesting place to explore for counter-examples of 3. I think the plausible part of the meta-ethic is that statements of ethics have practical, relational components when they are being followed so there is a sense, if all ethical statements are social creeds and nothing else, then the truth of them, if ethical statements are cognitive, would have to depend upon the attitudes of people because what else is there?
Quoting Leontiskos
I think any particular ethic can parse attachments into the good ones and the bad ones, and can parse any emotion into the positive and the negative. So in order for "Because I have a feeling of anger" to be judged as incomplete we have to have some basis of evaluation (which could be a system, or a creed, or a vague desire to be something else, or...)
But most ethics don't justify violence on the basis of anger at an individual. The attachments preached are love, loyalty, and so forth. Striking out of anger is usually shamed, unless there is some justification for the anger, so of course -- due to our attachment to "One ought not strike out of anger" we will follow that to its logical implication and also say to our risible friend "That's not a good reason, let's go cool off outside"
Quoting Moliere
I don't think the a priori guarantee that, "any particular ethic can parse attachments into the good ones and the bad ones," is redeemable, and this is especially true if moral subjectivism doesn't add up to a bona fide moral theory. (I don't think it does, in part because it doesn't seem to possess representation at a professional level.)
For example, "striking out of anger is usually shamed," but it does not follow that emotion-subjectivism is capable of such a prohibition. We can't assume that emotion-subjectivism will be able to do all of the things that normal ethical theories are able to do. If we assumed that then we could never make a case against emotion-subjectivism.
The interesting thing about, "One ought not strike out of anger," is that it is purely negative. "If this emotion tells you to strike, don't do it." If emotions are the things by which we are to know what to do, then what is the thing that tells us to not act on an emotion? It's not an emotion, because emotions don't persuade, they overpower or incline. What I am assuming here is that the experience of the emotion is what constitutes the truth-maker. Of course the emotion-subjectivist could draw up an extrinsic map about which truths are "made" by which emotions, and that map might include, "Anger [math]\to[/math] do not strike," but this is pretty weird given the fact that the experience of anger tells us to strike. Such a map apparently cannot be emotion-based if it is telling us to act contrary to emotion. (Anger is relevant because I do not think an emotion-based ethic would be able to restrain anger nearly as much as our common, rational ethics do.)
But I will come back to the rest...
I'm saying that for me to say torturing babies is wrong is equivalent to me saying I believe torturing babies is wrong. Og course the two sentences are not semantically equivalent, what I'm talking about is my own intentions my own meaning when I say that.
It's like if I say to you "Your wife is having an affair" when I don't have hard evidence for it but I believe it very strongly for whatever reason; what I'm really saying is I beleive your wife is having an affair if I am honest,
I can't make sense of the claim "torturing babies is wrong" if I take that to be saying it is wrong tout court, because I can't imagine anything that could make that true, apart from what most people would feel and believe. Which means that the proposition is inextricably tied to belief, mine, someone else's, even most peoples'.
Quoting Leontiskos
As I explained in the absence of any other truthmaker belief is all we've got. I'm opting for intellectual honesty.
Quoting Bob Ross
You are talking about committing a semantic contradiction. That has nothing to do with what may or may not be morally binding. Really nothing is morally binding: people can believe something is wrong, even feel terrible shame in doing it, and yet do it, nonetheless.
In general, when I say I believe something is morally wrong I mean that it is morally repugnant to me, it feels wrong because I don't want to hurt another or whatever.
.
"Meant to" by whom?
It looks to me like evolution resulted in us having emotions which act as 'interrupts' to our rational consideration, and which tend to redirect our thinking.
1 is your bias of the word belief, and certainly not mine, nor does it account for the history of the word, merely your own understanding of it.
Your premise that the activity of ethical reasoning is like mathematical reasoning is an opinion, a belief. It is shared by some but rejected by others. The term 'subjectivism' is used in different ways. To pick one from Wikipedia and treat it as if this is the only thing that those who defend some form of subjectivism must mean goes against the idea of free and open inquiry and discussion.
The irony is that you use own beliefs regarding morality to argue that morality is not about beliefs.
Quoting Leontiskos
After responding to this several times it now looks as if you are no longer arguing in good faith. I have not asked you to prove that abortion is wrong or right. Abortion is a clear example of what is at issue, namely, the claim that ethics like mathematics is objective. The unresolved moral controversies surrounding abortion clearly demonstrates that ethical deliberation is not like adding 2 plus 2.
If you really think that I am asking you to prove anything then you have not understood what I am saying. Moral problems are not like mathematical problems. They are not subject to proof.
Thats fine; but it makes no comment on whether or not torturing babies is wrong is (1) propositional nor (2) true: you would need to abandon moral subjectivism to get there.
The difference is that you agree that your wife is having an affair is (1) propositional and (2) expressing something objective; and your belief is, thusly, formulated as best you can to the facts. All you are noting, is that someone can have varying credence levels about whether or not a proposition is true.
If you make it so that your wife is having an affair is true relative to your belief about it, then you have committed something patently incoherent: now you have stripped out the original proposition, replaced it with I believe your wife is having an affair, and conflated the two.
Then you cant say torturing babies is wrong
All you can say is that you believe that torturing babies is wrong; and this is not normatively binding nor is it a moral proposition.
NO. You cannot deny that torturing babies is wrong can be evaluated as true or false (which can only be done objectively) and then turn around and say it can be if we just evaluate peoples beliefs about it. You have now transformed the propositions into ones about belief...which are not the original propositions nor are they normatively binding.
Belief is not a truth-maker: the facts that demonstrate that the statement corresponds with reality is the truth-maker.
It is nonsensical to think a belief makes statements true.
Me: cucumbers are yellow is true.
You: Why? It seems quite false.
Me: Because I believe cucumbers are yellow, and beliefs are truth-makers.
Please see my OP: it is not a semantic contradictionit is a conceptual contradiction that arises out of a gross misunderstanding of the nature of a belief and proposition.
That something is morally binding, has absolutely nothing to do with how motivated a person is in abiding by it.
That is the standard way of thinking about a belief, see:
SEP Entry
Wiki Entry
Britannica Entry
I see no meaning in this phrase.
Quoting Moliere
The MS under attack seems to be the one that thinks «I believe one ought X» and «one ought X» are the same thing. I am not sure that follows from MS. Being so, the inconsistency is avoided by not equating the two.
Quoting Moliere
That would no longer be MS, would it?
Okay, I see. You are proposing a kind of moral subjectivism derived from (attenuated) moral skepticism. "Because moral truth is not knowable we just have to go on a best guess or a feeling, but these are not firm or binding." I think this is a live view. I think it still has to contend with the OP. Here is what I have said:
Quoting Leontiskos
That could be, and @Bob Ross would be a better adjudicator since I clearly didn't understand the distinction up front -- I've tried to make the case to him that this would still count on the basis of the wiki articles criteria for MS since the truth of these propositions is still dependent upon the person's attitude in some necessary way while maintaining some cognitive component. Here thinking "feelings/world" is that our feelings being a part of us, and us being a part of the world makes the feelings, in some sense, a world-reference, though not in the usual straightforward way.
Reducing "oughts" to an is-statement about the speakers moral feelings, however their genuine ethic would define it, and an imperative, so that there is a "binding" part seems to cover the basis of true moral statements, cognitive, and subjective in that it depends upon attitudes (personal, legal, tribal...)
Yeah. The only place I found a coherent definition with the OP is Wiki which is not a source , other places say stuff like:
Quoting Moliere
Quoting Moliere
The point here is that whatever it is that establishes the hierarchy, it isn't emotion. Emotion does not do calculus. I am convinced that reason establishes the hierarchy, but I am content with the claim that whatever it is, it isn't emotion. This reduced claim seems sufficient to overcome emotion-subjectivism.
Quoting Moliere
I think this misses the point I have already made about emotion-as-sign vs. emotion-as-cause. To claim that ethics is just emotion-conditioning would be to reject ethics as a cognitive science. "I act this way because my emotions determine me, and my emotions are determined by the conditioning that my parents and society imposed, and their emotions were determined by the conditioning that was imposed upon them, ad infinitum." This is more a theory of emotional determinism than a theory of ethics, and as such it destroys the agency of the human being (as already noted). Ethics involves making choices, not just being pulled around by emotions.
Quoting Moliere
There is causal confusion at play, here. Does the choice lead to the ethic, or does attachment to the ethic lead to the choice? I think the cognitive aspect of ethics is again being trampled, especially if the attachment leads to the choice. Plato would say that reason (choice, deliberation) can be subordinated to the passions, but that this is a form of passion-tyranny.
Quoting Moliere
But what is the "utterance" which can be reduced to, "One ought not lose their temper"? On your theory of emotion-subjectivism an emotion is supposedly translated into moral propositions of this sort, but I'm still waiting for you to cash out this claim that the emotion is the truth-maker for the moral proposition. Prima facie, the claim doesn't make any sense. What is the emotion that translates into the moral proposition, "One ought not lose their temper"?
Quoting Moliere
You worried that I am divorcing reason from emotion, but here it seems that you are the one doing that. You contrast four things with philosophy/the cognitive part and assume that they are devoid of reason: recognition, shame, anger, and relief. I don't think emotions are separable from reason in this way. See for example my analysis of fear <here>.
Quoting Moliere
Yep. :up:
Quoting Moliere
Yes, or that given the attitude we are to infer the truth of the proposition.
Quoting Moliere
I think a shift is occurring here. Instead of trying to support moral propositions in the way that standard ethics does, the moral subjectivist turns to abductive ethical reasoning and combines it with the assumption that whatever best supports moral propositions, sufficiently supports moral propositions. I think the reason moral subjectivism is basically non-existent in professional philosophy is because it is recognized that even if nothing supports moral propositions better than attitudes, it remains the case that attitudes are insufficient to support moral propositions. In that case one turns away from moral cognitivism and classical ethics. (Cf. @Janus)
(Out for a few days)
'Never said it was. :roll:
Now that you have abandoned your first refutation, please elaborate on where in the OP I make any such conflation?
If you are just noting that some people hold truth as subjective, then that is true; but it is a minority position, certainly is not the majority position for moral subjectivists (nor classical moral subjectivism), and is absurd. There's nothing biased about it.
:brow:
If you are not talking about a position which holds that moral judgments (1) are propositional, (2) express something subjective, and (3) at least one is true; then you are not talking about moral subjectivism.
(@Lionino)
Moral subjectivism is a three-pronged thesis:
1. Moral judgments are proposition (i.e., moral cognitivism).
2. Moral judgments express something subjective (i.e., moral non-objectivism).
3. At least one moral judgment is true (i.e., moral non-nihilism).
@Molieres attempted solution, if I remember correctly, denied prong-1 (at best); so it is not a form of moral subjectivism. I think their view is probably a form of emotivism. Moral cognitivism is about cognitive attitudes.
Again you're not explicitly framing the statements in the context of moral subjectivism. Moral subjectivism holds that moral propositions have no objective truth values independent of individual belief. So my subjective belief doesn't mean I believe it's a universal value. You see you're stuck in this objective "True" or "False" mode. There isn't a "True" or "False" to a subjective moralist. You have your way I have my way, but as for the right and correct way, that does not exist.
They're all the same argument, or it seems that way to me, and that's why I was getting at your bias definition for belief and truth. I'm not suggesting that having a bias is bad, but there's not an inconsistency in moral subjectivism once you get beyond the notion of "True" and "False." If I came to you and said your belief is false because it's not my truth, then I'm being objective.
What you said is:
Quoting Leontiskos
By the latter you are referring to what you call "type 1" propositions and give 2+2=4 as the paradigm example. You go on to say:
Quoting Leontiskos
The latter being these type 1 propositions. If ethical reasoning concerns and pertains to type 1 propositions then ethical reasoning is like mathematical reasoning.
That ethical reasoning is "type 1" reasoning is your belief not an established and uncontested truth.
In another post from today you say:
Quoting Leontiskos
Evidently you are unaware and uninformed about the current literature. You will find not only a rejection of moral objectivism, but that the concept of reason itself is once again changing. See, for example, the work of Richard Bernstein or Joseph Margolis.
Nah, and it's hard to believe that you are even trying to interpret me correctly. The post is <here>. I was obviously using the example of 2+2=4 because Bob Ross had already been using it, not because I think ethics is the same as mathematics. The rather obvious point of that post is that ethical claims are about ethical truths, not beliefs (or beliefs about ethical truths). To read that post and assume that I think ethics is like mathematics is bizarre, and lazy.
Moral judgments can be stated in propositional form, but this does not mean that they are propositions. We do not regard something as right or wrong or good or bad as the result of propositional acceptance or analysis.
You are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Moral philosophy should not begin with some set of contested definitions.
Am I wrong to assume you are using it because you agree with it?
You say:
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a belief about ethical claims. While it is clear that the truth of 2+2=4 can be demonstrated, it is not clear that an ethical proposition can be demonstrated to be true. So in what way are they of the same type?
If torturing babies is wrong because normal people think it is wrong then it is true that it is wrong for most people, I have not claimed anything beyond that. The very idea of objective wrongness of a moral proposition in some kind of imagined quasi-empirical or objective sense seems to be incoherent. And normative does not mean objective. Unless you take objective to mean nothing beyond 'intersubjectively agreed'.
If it is the case that eating some food is wrong (harmful) for the human body, it does not necessarily follow that it is normatively binding not to eat that food. Note the semantic relation between "normative" and 'normal'. If we say that because it is normal to find torturing babies repugnant, then there is some normative force in saying it is generally wrong for people to do it.Normative does not equate to imperative.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think you have it backwards; moral principles cannot be objectively evaluated. The only such evaluations are empirical or logical, and moral beliefs cannot be evaluated in either way. Beliefs can only be evaluated normatively, that is whether or not it is normal to hold them. If someone thinks torturing babies is OK, most people will conclude there must be something wrong with them, that is normativity at work. Chasing moral objectivity beyond this kind of inter-subjective agreement amounts to chasing a chimera.
Quoting Leontiskos
They are binding socially (normatively) only insofar as most normal people hold to them. So, I am not advocating moral subjectivism or skepticism, but rather a kind of moral inter-subjectivism. What is morally wrong is what most people would find to be so. Of course, I don't deny that this position has its weaknesses, and I think these show up in the case of social mores, like sex before marriage, but when it comes to significant moral issues like murder, rape, child abuse, theft, and so on I think it works well enough.
Correct. That is why a moral subjectivist will deny that, strictly speaking, one ought not torture babies for fun is propositional; instead, they will say it needs to be rewritten as I believe one ought not torture babies for fun.
I never claimed to the contrary. Moral subjectivists do not contend that propositions are made true relative to beliefs about them
I am open to there being an incredibly rare, perhaps nuanced, moral subjectivist view that is not incoherent and does not fall prey to the issue expounded in the OP...I have never heard of any.
Trying to get around the OP by claiming beliefs about a proposition make them true (i.e., that truth itself is subjective) is not going to work: it explodes into triviality. We would not be able to coherently determine what is true or falsei.e., any proposition, P, would be true or false relative to beliefs about them and, therefore, P cannot be valuated as true or false other than trivially in terms of whether or not a person believes it is true. Truth would collapse into belief; and we would have to come up with a new word for truth proper.
my truth, your truth, their truth, etc. is patently incoherent; and no legitimate philosopher will back that kind of idea because they know it is nonsense.
If you want, we can dive more into the nature of truth; but I will leave it there for now. Truth being subjective holds no water, is not a respectable position, and is not a required position for moral subjectivism...and I dont say that lightly.
Then you are denying that moral subjectivism is true at best; saying word-salad at worst (e.g., how can something be stated in propositional form, yet not be a valid proposition?).
Everything starts with concepts: theres no way around that.
You keep resorting to reverting back to your initial claims, without engaging in my responses. Whether or not you claim moral propositions are true or false relative to one or a several beliefs about them does not get around the issue expounded in the OP. Your moral inter-subjectivism falls prey to the same internal inconsistencies.
Theres a difference between a proposition being binding, and people being forced to honor something: the former is binding purely in virtue of the truth-value of the proposition, whereas the latter is binding insofar as one wants to avoid the consequences of not obeying it.
In your sense of moral obligation, its just the avoidance of consequences of not obeying what people think or desire that obligates; which isnt real obligation in the moral sense.
What you have described, is the irrational position that we should impose beliefs which do not even attempt, in principle, to correspond with the truth on other people. Do you see how irrational that is?
Thats like me forcing you to drink gasoline because I (1) believe that you should although I (2) know that my belief (that you should) doesnt correspond to anything true. Thats just masked psychopathy and narcissism.
If truth is objective, then propositions are true or false stance-independently.
If propositions are true or false stance-independently, then a proposition, X, cannot be true or false relative to a belief about it.
If a proposition, X, cannot be true or false relative to a belief about it, then the only way one can express X in a way that would be true or false relative to a belief about it is by writing a new proposition, Y, that is "I believe X".
I don't understand what you are missing: the only way to evaluate statements that are truth-apt which have their truth-value relative to a belief is to write it is a valid proposition.
I don't think so. Make your argument and we'll see how it stands up.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, most people hold to finding murder, rape, etc., morally wrong because they feel compassion for the victim, and that is normal. You keep talking about truth being binding, but it's not. There is no reason other than a love for truth that would bind someone to accepting a true claim, and even then, they may not act on it. And there I am talking about logical and/ or empirical truths.
The "objective" truth of moral beliefs cannot even be established let alone made binding. You seem to have some kind of idealized notion of human morals. The only fact that could be established regarding attitudes to carious moral issues would be surveying people to see what they think and/ or feel about those issues. What other imaginable criterion could there be?
Quoting Bob Ross
That is nothing like anything I've been saying. You need to read more closely. I have nowhere spoken about forcing anyone to do or not to do anything. In any case the most significant moral prescriptions, those regarding what are considered to be serious crimes, are codified in law, and those laws would not hold if most people didn't agree with them. That's normativity at work, not some kind of nebulous notion of being bound to imagined "objective" moral truths which can never be established as such.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is classic! People can propose whatever they like, valid or not. It's the soundness, not the validity of moral "propositions: which cannot be established. I think you need to ask yourself whether you can imagine any kind of truth maker for such "propositions".
I already did, and I will, at this point, refer you to the OP. You are still fundamentally claiming that propositions can be made true or false relative to beliefs about them which is quite obviously the issue I was expounding in the OP.
Even if this is true, it doesnt have anything to do with whether or not they are right. They are, in fact, in this case, being irrational and holding an internally inconsistent metaethical theory (without realizing it). Feelings about a proposition cannot make it true or false.
What part of the following do you not understand?:
If I should not torture babies is true, then I should not torture babies.
If I should not torture babies, then I am obligated not to torture babies.
I should not torture babies is true.
Therefore, I should not torture babies.
Therefore, I am obligated not to torture babies.
You are confused about how moral propositions, beliefs, and truth work: if they are true, then they are binding irregardless if the subject-at-hand realizes it or is motivated by it.
As seen above, this is obviously false: love for truth assumes that it is something beyond truth that binds us to the moral propositions when that is clearly not the case. Again, by binding, I am not commenting on what convinces people to care about what is morally (factually) true.
Lol. You denied my claim and then immediately affirmed it. If laws are merely determined by what most people belief is wrong and those beliefs do not get at what is actually true (which you are affirming because you deny that moral propositions exist like one ought not <...>), then you are advocating to impose beliefs that people have which, by your own concession, do not, even in principle, attempt to correspond to the truth.
Janus, you dont believe that there is a truth of the matter about moral judgments; so I dont see how you are confused about this: the moral judgments you are advocating for are not even attempting to get at the truth because there is no truth of the matter. This plainly follows from what you are saying.
It is patently incoherent to think that a statement can and cannot be propositional; which is what you just said (with word-salad).
This is an entirely separate question: I am just trying to get you to see the implications of your moral anti-realism; because you dont see it yet.
I would say that the truth-makers for moral propositions is whatever in reality would make it true (by way of the proposition corresponding to reality)...no differently than any other proposition. I am a moral naturalist: I dont think there is anything special about moral propositions when it comes to how to evaluate them (as true or false). Ultimately, it will boil down to what is morally good, and what is the highest moral good.
What I am denying is that thinking constricted by select definition of terms leads to what is true at best. Rather than appeal to a definition we should determine what someone means when they use a term. It is foolish and wrongheaded to insist that what someone means is not what they say they mean but rather what you found in a definition.
Quoting Bob Ross
Morality is rooted in our immediate visceral response to what happens to us or others. My suffering does not begin with the concept of suffering. I do not need to form a concept to know that it is bad. Most of us are capable of empathy and do not first develop or appeal to a concept of empathy in order to be able to empathize. We do not need a concept of care in order to care. We do not need a concept of something mattering in order for something to matter to us.
The problem is you are treating moral "propositions" as though they are empirical, logical or mathematical propositions. You can't or won't say what kind of imaginable truth makers apart from people believing them there could be for the former.
Quoting Bob Ross
You just keep claiming this. You need to give an argument for why moral propositions, if they could be known to be true, would be binding. What happens if someone refuses or fails to be bound by a moral proposition even when they believe it to be true, let alone when they don't believe it to be true?
The other point is that you apparently cannot explain how a moral proposition could ever be known to be true. If they cannot (unlike empirical, logical or mathematical propositions) be known to be true, then how could they possibly be binding (assuming that they would be binding even if they were known to be true)?
Quoting Bob Ross
No, you are not listening. The only truth of moral beliefs, the only normative force they could possess, the only bindingness, lies in the fact that most normal people believe them, think and/or feel them to be true.
Quoting Bob Ross
Because moral statements are not truth-apt, beyond the empirical facts of whether people believe them, I don't see how they qualify as propositions in the sense that empirical, logical or mathematical do, so I see the incoherence as being yours.
Quoting Bob Ross
It's not an entirely separate question because the very coherence of your reference to moral beliefs, feelings, thoughts or statements as "propositions" hinges on it. This is, ironically, something you don't see, while accusing me of not seeing something which you apparently cannot identify or are at least yet to identify. If there is something you think I don't see, then spell it out; I'm listening.
What I was saying, is that, at best, what you were conveying (viz., the underlying meaning of which you were speaking) was denying moral subjectivism.
What I meant to say is: every analysis starts with concepts. I have no problem with the idea that we start with notions and not ideas; but a proper analysis starts and ends with ideas (i.e., concepts). You cannot analyze X if you do not have an idea about what X is.
I'm claiming that MS is consistent, at least, and making a steel-man attempt at making it plausible to its detractors. My pet theory is error theory just to put my cards out there, but I'm trying to think through the position and see if there's some way to render it coherent, and palatable to those on the other side as an example of the meta-ethic.
Capital-F Feelings are the truth-makers in this hypothetical meta-ethic. The sorts of examples I've given here are "X wants to be Y" -- the emotions arise because of the Feelings, to think of "emotions" as you do here:
Quoting Leontiskos
Feelings are attachments to people, things, ideals, propositions, states of mind, patterns, and, in some cases, morals. And I've also allowed that "Feelings" may be collective, in some sense, to accommodate things like legal and collective -- not just individual -- moral rules. It seems to me that this must be the motivation for the MS position because they want to retain that some moral propositions are true in the way that it's intuitively felt, but don't believe there is an objective science or something along those lines.
Mostly I'll be content with finding a coherent rendition, if there is one, that is accepted as an example by the OP.
Quoting Leontiskos
Another emotion. Anger can arise from an attachment to a self-image as one who doesn't take any guff and being insulted. When a friend intervenes it can remind you of times you've felt guilt when losing your temper and help one to regain control.
Far from being separate from rationality I'd say emotions are part of rationality, so MS doesn't strike me as apparently incoherent. I'd claim that when Jesus expels the money-changers from the temple that he is enacting a rationality because his anger is justified.
Seems like an explicit thread on meta-ethics or the philosophy of emotion might be fun.
Quoting Leontiskos
We've identified a point of explicit divergence! :D
I see no problem in emotions establishing hierarchies on the basis of their intensity.
"Calculus" is confusing on my part -- I just meant in the generic sense where logical symbol manipulation or the operations of a computer are also calculus -- so it need not even be numeric, and can even be a philosophical calculus rather than something truly mathematical. Spinoza's Ethics comes to mind here.
Quoting Leontiskos
Isn't the MS doing that?
Though I wouldn't do it for the MS position, I don't think ethics is a cognitive science either. Another reason a meta-ethics thread might be interesting.
Quoting Leontiskos
And another reason for a thread on the philosophy of emotion.
I don't believe emotion eliminates choice, for instance, so that'd be another reason I don't see the MS position as necessarily wrong.
Quoting Leontiskos
Couldn't it be both? Even for Plato -- if one is ruled by Passion then one would choose a Passionate ethic, just as the one who is ruled by Reason chooses the rational ethic, yes?
Quoting Leontiskos
"I'm sorry, I won't do it again" or something like that works. The emotion would be guilt. The Feeling would be "I want to be accepted by my friends".
Quoting Leontiskos
If they aren't separable, which I agree with, then in speaking about the emotions I am also speaking about reason. They come as a pair.
Recognition requires reason -- I have to see myself, and I have to know what sort of person I want to be, and I have to see that I am not that.
Shame requires reason -- I have to want to please someone(even if that someone is only myself), I have to be able to perceive "good" and "bad" actions
Anger -- I have to be able to recognize a before-and-after of myself. The anger arises because you no longer feel the shame due to forgiveness, but it's a conflict between the old and the new self. One must be able to determine what that old and new self is, which requires a fairly robust set of moral beliefs with emotional attachments.
Relief -- The trial is over and I'll remember the guilt so as to not have to go through it again. This requires memory, a knowledge of narrative, and the idea that one can undergo some kind of change from the act to a person who is forgiven.
The reason all that requires reason is that a person can also, in the same situation, see themselves as justified in their anger, and the person who gets in the way is only an obstacle in the way of what's fair. That's not a friend anymore, that's a pesky and ignorant person getting in the way of what's fair!
Do you see how this isn't a divorce of reason from emotion?
Also... another thread here lol.
Quoting Leontiskos
Oh, it could also just be the hot new thing. You never know.
I just like to explore ideas, be they professional or not, though.
They would have to be, or they arent propositions at all. Thats the mistake you keep making: you think there are types of propositions.
I already did: I said it would be what is morally good (which is not dependent on beliefs). A moral proposition is not special with regard to the overall form: it is a proposition, afterall.
If you want more details, then I am a moral naturalist and neo-aristotelian. I think that what is intrinsically valuable are various states of being which living beings are capable of havingthe highest, or most intrinsically valuable, of which is eudaimonia. To be a eudaimon is the highest moral good of them all, and to reach it one must fulfill their nature.
Janus...I did and you ignored it!!!
Lets try again:
It can be known to be true, if what the proposition refers to corresponds to reality. It terms of what about reality they correspond to, besides noting it is what is morally good, one would have to delve into a specific moral realist position.
Then, that is not truth, nor are they normatively binding (in the strict, traditional sense). You cannot have the cake and eat it too (;
Then they dont have the form of a proposition.
Then, you dont think they are propositions; and should abandon your view that beliefs make moral propositions true or false. You cant just ad hoc change what a proposition is because you dont believe moral statements fit the standard description.
I have never invoked any moral beliefs, feelings, or thoughts that are propositions; but, yes, a statement can be one...thats just the nature of propositions 101: a proposition is a truth-apt statement.
Rereading this argument -- your P1 doesn't match 1 from above it:
Quoting Bob Ross
"Cognitive" doesn't necessitate truth-independence. The Liar's sentence, for instance: we can think "This sentence is false", meaning we can cognize it, but the truth, or falsity, of the Liar's sentence is wholly dependent upon how we interpret the sentence.
That we can cognize fantasy and falsity is part of the difficulty with realism.
Also, another thought: What if the MS was a coherentist on truth? In that case beliefs fit within an inferential web, and that web just is what truth is, so they'd claim to be a cognitivist while stating that they do believe that beliefs depend upon one another for their truth or falsity.
The mistake you are making is believing that I think there are moral propositions, when I think I have made it quite clear that I don't think there are.
Quoting Bob Ross
Unfortunately for your argument you are depending on something which either doesn't exist or is unknowable. It is nothing more than an empty tautology to say that what is morally good is a truth maker for what is morally good.
Quoting Bob Ross
How would we know if it corresponded to reality? What kind of reality? Certainly not an empirical reality. So, it's of no help to us.
Quoting Bob Ross
You're really not paying attention. I've already said I don't think anything is "morally binding". The very idea is incoherent, meaningless as far as I can tell. Even if there were a God, a lawgiver of objective moral truths, that would not be "binding", it certainly isn't for those who profess to be believers, even priests. As I said before the normative is what is normal, not what is imperative.
Quoting Bob Ross
Now you're starting to get it.
Quoting Bob Ross
I said that what people believe, morally speaking, makes it true for themselves, in the sense of being "true to themselves". I said that if all normal people believe in some moral principle, or to feeling something is right or wrong, then it makes it true, makes it right or wrong, for all those normal people. Those normal people make up the largest part of the communities we live in, and the fact that they all agree on moral issues constitutes normativity, not some abstract principle or some purported objective moral imperative, the guarantor for which can bever be found.
Quoting Bob Ross
People stating their feelings or beliefs does not necessarily qualify as propositional..
The mistake you are making is believing that I think there are moral propositions, when I think I have made it quite clear that I don't think there are.
Quoting Bob Ross
Unfortunately for your argument you are depending on something which either doesn't exist or is unknowable. It is nothing more than an empty tautology to say that what is morally good is a truth maker for what is morally good.
Quoting Bob Ross
How would we know if it corresponded to reality? What kind of reality? Certainly not an empirical reality. So, it's of no help to us.
Quoting Bob Ross
You're really not paying attention. I've already said I don't think anything is "morally binding". The very idea is incoherent, meaningless as far as I can tell. Even if there were a God, a lawgiver of objective moral truths, that would not be "binding", it certainly isn't for those who profess to be believers, even priests. As I said before the normative is what is normal, not what is imperative.
Quoting Bob Ross
Now you're starting to get it.
Quoting Bob Ross
I said that what people believe, morally speaking, makes it true for themselves, in the sense of being "true to themselves". I said that if all normal people believe in some moral principle, or in feeling something to be right or wrong, then it makes it true, makes it right or wrong, not in some imaginary "objective" sense, but for all those normal people.
Those normal people make up the largest part of the communities we live in, and the fact that they all agree on moral issues constitutes normativity, normativity is not some abstract principle or some purported objective moral imperative, the guarantor for which can bever be found.
Quoting Bob Ross
People stating their feelings or beliefs does not necessarily qualify as propositional..
What I am conveying and what you take it to mean are not the same. I am not denying moral subjectivism. I am questioning the value of the terminology. I reject claims that morality is objective. The problem is, if I reject that morality is objective, you might conclude that I must therefore be a moral subjectivist, and if I am a moral subjectivist I must believe whatever Wiki says I do.
Quoting Bob Ross
I agree with the importance of a proper analysis. For you this means an analysis of concepts. For me it is first and foremost an analysis of deeds and the practice of the examined life.
Quoting Bob Ross
As I see it, moral deliberation has its roots in the world of opinion, in the world at large rather than in the cloistered world of concept formation and analysis shaped by argumentative strategies.
It is not supposed to: 1 matches P2. P1 is more general: it is the major premise.
All I was claiming is the that the cognitive stance about something is independent of the truth about that something. This doesnt require that all cognitive stances necessitate that they are about something...although I happen to believe that as a well. I think a belief always latches onto a proposition, and if there isnt a proposition then one will pretend, implicitly, if there is and latch onto that. But this is not a required position for the OP.
The liars sentence is non-cognitive: just because you can try to interpret what the sentence means does not mean you can evaluate it as true or false.
Thats an interesting point: I am not sure how that would workmy OP is directed as correspondance theorists. The problem with taking the coherentist theory of truth, is that truth is reduced to beliefs (which is convenient for a moral subjectivist) but just pushes the issue back further. If a moral subjectivist came around and objected to the theory of truth presupposed in the OP, then I would have to take a step back and demonstrate why their coherentist (or whatever) theory is nonsense (; before getting into the OP.
100 :up:
delete
Are you serious, Janus?!? Your whole position here has been moral (inter-)subjectivism from the start. Youve admitted implicitly and explicitly to moral judgments being propositional countless times:
here you did:
You cannot use an if conditional if torturing babies is wrong is non-propositional. This implies that torturing babies is wrong is a proposition; and you are claiming that it is true relative to beliefs people have about it.
here as well:
You literally called it a proposition in this one, so ..
here as well:
:yawn: Need I go on?
Your position obviously has been holding that moral judgments are propositional but that they are true or false relative to beliefs about them...and thats called moral subjectivism.
Whether or not you think that we can adequately account for moral propositions or not, is independent of whether your ad hoc fix is internally coherent. It isnt. If you really believe this, then you should abandon the idea that there are moral propositions and, thusly, abandon moral subjectivism. Become a non-cognitivist or nihilist.
The only reality there is, and we can absolutely investigate what is right and wrong naturalistically (and empirically). Like I said, I take a neo-aristotelian view that eudamonia is the highest moral good.
Thank you for finally admitting this. You need to take more care in the words you use to express your views. Youve been speaking as if you do believe there is moral bindingness and it is essentially peer-pressure (in the form of laws):
The problem is not me failing to pay attention; its your failure to coherently explain your position.
You keep flip-flopping as we go. One minute you argue against what I am saying and then, once you realize it doesnt work, you switch while admitting no fault. You were literally arguing that moral statements have the form of a proposition but are not proper propositions (like mathematical ones). Now you just act like you were denying this all along.
If you dont believe moral judgments are propositional, then this is incoherent; the only way it can be true for themselves is if it is propositional: propositions are the only kind of statements which can be true.
You should just abandon moral subjectivism and go for something like emotivism.
I never implied or said this. Moral subjectivism is a specific moral anti-realist position; and is not merely the negation of moral objectivism. There are other forms of moral anti-realism (e.g., non-cognitivism, nihilism, etc.).
OK, then maybe I'm back to saying it's an instance of begging the question, after all. :rofl: @Lionino
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm (clearly) finding the argument hard to understand.
P1 reads like a definition to me. It defines that a stance-taken within the domain of true/false somethings has the property of independence with respect to that same something (be it propositions or objects, it doesn't matter -- just some true something and stance-taken)
P2 also reads like a definition to me. So in some sense it seems that the concepts, by definition, and through an informal logic, leads to C1. But what if we formalized a bit? How would it read? Syllogistically starting with "A" in P1 and "A" in P2 suggests that the major premise is "Some P" and the minor "Some Q", which is an invalid form.
How would you render it formally? Any logic works for me.
I'll keep it to this because it seems I'm not understanding so I don't want to go off on yet another tangent before I understand.
You just said it! The problem is that moral subjectivism is not a specific position.
Here is a current overview of the literature.
Here different types of moral subjectivism are listed.
Quoting Bob Ross
Your attempt to clarify compounds the problem by dragging in additional contested terminology.
This argument seems to be: truth-apt propositions are stance-independent, the MS claims that moral propositions are stance-dependent, so for the MS moral propositions are not truth-apt, thus they are not propositions at all unless the MS rewrites it as "I believe X", which is not moral anymore. Is that right?
We are just different, you and I, I find Nietzsche to be a legitimate philosopher. Though he is quite a complexity I suppose.
P1: ¬?sp (Stance
P2: ?bp ( Belief
C1: ¬?bp (Belief
Couple things to note:
1. The only part that isnt just standard predicate logic, is that I am representing the predicate stance with two typename arguments: position 1 is what is the stance and position 2 is what the stance is about (e.g., if s is a stance about p, then it is true that Stance
2. The transition, in sentential form, from a something to a proposition is implicit. As can be seen in the logic, it doesnt matter if one sticks with something or refers to specifically a proposition.
P2 is a definition; P1 is an assertion about the nature of a stance and how it relates to what it is about.
Moral subjectivism is standardly, in the literature, a family of moral anti-realist theories that posit:
1. Moral judgements are propositional (i.e., moral cognitivism).
2. Moral judgements express something subjective (i.e., moral non-objectivism).
3. At least one moral judgement is true (i.e., moral non-nihilism).
This is standard: I would suggest, as a good entry article, to look at SEP. No serious philosopher is going to disagree with this, although they may have more to add.
this link, without elaboration, was not helpful. Some of it, wasn't even about moral subjectivism (e.g., ethical relativism is NOT a form of moral subjectivism, let alone a form of moral anti-realism).
this one is an article states nothing that helps your case. I think you just linked these half-lazily thinking I would do your argumentation for you...which I am not going to do (:
Not quite: that would beg the question and would be false. As painfully noted in this thread, a proposition can be true or false relative to a belief, but that is not what the OP is saying is inconsistent: instead, it is that a belief about a proposition cannot make that proposition true or false.
It is stance-independent, only insofar as the proposition-at-hand cannot be true or false relative to a belief about it.
I cannot remember a single time in Nietzsche's work where he references a pluralist idea or notion of truth. Not a single time; in fact, he thought it was nonsense (just like pretty much every other philosopher out there).
There is no agreed upon standard as to what moral subjectivism means. From the article you cited on moral anti-realism, (another term without an agreed on definition):
It goes on to say that it is:
Quoting Bob Ross
It supports the claim that there is no single agreed upon definition of terms.
Some authors do treat ethical relativism as a form of moral subjectivism. From the IEP article on moral relativism:
Moral relativism is also a contested concept. It can refer either to a culture, a group, or an individual.
Quoting Bob Ross
Of course it does! There are various forms of moral or ethical subjectivism. The article cites some of them that can be found in the literature. The first is under the heading of "Old Fashioned Subjectivism and Relativism, which according to the article are:
An attitude is not a proposition, but can be expressed as a proposition. Using an example from the text, if my attitude is that eating meat is wrong, it is my attitude toward eating meat that makes it wrong. This is not some grand, universal, apodictic moral claim that must be either true or false for all human beings for all time. Attitudes toward such things change. This change should be acknowledged as a condition under which moral claims are made and discussed rather than a defect to be remedied by attempting to universalize such claims.
Under "New Wave Subjectivism and Relativism" he says:
In other words, moral propositions do not stand on their own in some world of eternal verities.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think it clear that you are not sufficiently acquainted with the literature and will not, as you admit here, do the research to become better informed. What I cited should be enough to show that there are terminological differences. They cannot be waved away. Once again, what this means is that you cannot start with your preferred definitions and proceed from there as if what these terms mean is settled and moral discourse is an analysis of these settled terms.
How do you feel about this rendition:
All stances are independent
All beliefs are stances
All beliefs are independent
?
That makes sense to me.
I'm not sure what the rule of inference you're using in the formalization. It doesn't appear to follow to me.
The notes help though.
EDIT: Another thought I have is with respect to the domain. P1 seems generally uncontroversial -- our stances towards some proposition don't imply whether that proposition is true or false (although I think I'd carve out the weird sentences for other topics, like the Liar's). So a subjectivist could deny 2 on the basis that beliefs don't imply stances with respect to P -- the belief could be "Everyone deserves q", and the stance could be "As a member of Everyone, John deserves q"
The belief, in this case, while being clearly related to the stance, is different from the stance and so would not fall to the criticism that there's a contradiction.
I have explicitly stated that several times as well, saying that no truth makers can be found for such expressions of moral thought and feeling. So, you are now, it seems, resorting to the practice of uncharitable reading, on account of which I now have no interest in conversing with you further.
Did you read the moral subjectivism section?
No. SEP is just being very careful to include the nuances of the topic. There is a generally agreed upon definition, that I already outlined.
You are misunderstanding: moral relativism stands opposed to moral absolutism. Generally speaking, moral relativists are moral realists. Of course, since relativism vs. absolutism is a different debate than objectivism vs. non-objectivism, some moral relativists are moral subjectivists; but moral relativism IS NOT the same as moral subjectivism.
You are trying to hide behind some nuanced disagreements philosophers have, as if there is a gulf of disagreements about these terms.
Of course! This doesnt help your point at all. Moral anti-realism is the negation of moral realism, and is defined as such: theres no controversy to that definition.
That the definition encompasses many positions in a broad fashion, does not mean its definition is contested. Moral relativism is any cognitivist view that holds that the truth of moral judgments have an indexical element. This is uncontroversial, and I suggest you read up on the literature more.
I never said that there arent various forms of moral subjectivism: that doesnt negate the fact that there is an uncontroversial definition of moral subjectivism. Each form of moral subjectivism, meets the basic criteria of moral subjectivism. It is a family of theories, and not one particular theory.
It seems incomplete: independent...of what?
I can write it out in sentential form (if that helps):
P1: ¬?sp (Stance
{ There does not exist any s and p, such that s is a stance about p and s entails that p is true; and there does not exist any s and p, such that s is a stance about p and s entails that p is false }
P2: ?bp ( Belief
{ For every b and p such that b is a belief about p, b is a stance about p. }
C1: ¬?bp (Belief
{ There does not exist any b and p, such that b is a belief about p and b entails that p is true; and there does not exist any b and p, such that b is a belief about p and b entails that p is false }
The rule of inference is from the existential and universal quantifiers: in short, if there cannot exist some relation for Xs and Ys and all Bs are Xs, then the same relation cannot exist for Bs and Ys.
Agreed, and that is the point...that most of these moral subjectivists are missing in here (;
Hmmmm...I would need a rebust exposition of what a belief is then.
:kiss:
I think we by-at-large were talking passed each other. Take care, Janus!
I was thinking we can stuff all those details into the name "Independent" -- but I'm mostly just after the basic form because I've been missing it, which you provided in your follow up.
Quoting Bob Ross
OK so...
P1: All B's are X's
P2: X's ~Relate-to Y's
C: B's ~Relate-to Y's
So rather than
All P
All Q
it's
All P
Some Q
(with a middle term relating them)
That work?
(And yes, the sentential form helped a lot -- I was struggling from the plain-language to the logic, and then I was struggling with the predicates because that's all beyond my actual education and only "gleaned" at this point -- usually I just translate predicates into single-variables or bound sentences so it's still propositional just not predicate. And I wasn't see the All/Some or the All/there-exists-a structure until you explicitly pointed it out)
If you are talking about the SEP link to "Moral Anti-Realism", this is the whole of what is says about moral subjectivism:
This is a good example of the problem I have been pointing to. It is as if certain terms must be avoided and replaced to avoid confusion regarding terminology.
Quoting Bob Ross
Rather than there being general agreement there is, in his words, no general consensus of understanding about 'realism'.
Quoting Bob Ross
We are at an impasse. You treat this as if it were a terminological problem. My position is that treating ethics as if it is about terminology is the problem.
But, then, you are just muddying the waters in an attempt to clear them.
I am not following what you are trying to do
I am basically arguing:
P1: Ss relate to Ps in manner R.
P2: All Bs are Ss.
C: Bs relate to Ps in manner R.
Although, this isnt completely accurate...but the accurate version is what I gave.
If there cannot exist a relation between Ss & Ps and every B is an S, then it plainly follows that the same relation cannot exist between Bs & Ps.
Sorry, I thought there was a moral subjectivism section in there: it is actually here. It appears as though SEP has refurbished the term from subjectivism to non-objectivism in their newer articles. So let me address the quote you had:
Yes, this is accurate...but theres no need to get this far into the weeds for the OP. If we must, then there is a couple things worth noting:
1. Moral subjectivism is a form of moral non-objectivism: the former is the three-pronged thesis I already explicated, and the latter is a broader term for any view that holds moral judgments express something non-objective.
2. Moral non-objectivism includes only one other family of positions other than moral subjectivism: moral inter-subjectivism. They dont use the term inter-subjectivity, but it is clear that they are referring to this.
3. My OP addresses moral subjectivism, and technically NOT moral inter-subjectivism; but I think my line of reasoning plagues both.
4. None of this suggests that there are not generally understood definitions. All you are doing, is trying to explode the conversation into a who shot john situation: at this point, I think it may be a sophistical tactic you are trying to deploy. If it helps, just contend with the underlying meaning in the OP and not the semantics.
What terms should be avoided? They avoided using the term moral subjectivism because they were not just discussing, in that section, moral cognitivist and moral non-nihilist views that claim moral judgments are expressing something subjective. The OP is not discussing moral non-objectivism.
Realism is generally understood a three pronged thesis:
1. Moral judgments are propositional.
2. Moral judgments express something objective.
3. At least one moral judgment is true.
At this point I dont really care if you agree with the semantics: thats besides the point of the OP.
There is absolutely nothing in my OP that hinges on semantics, nor have I had to go into this painful, semantically discussion with anyone else in this thread. Somehow, no one else was worried about the terms .
Do you have anything to say about the actually ideas expressed in the OP?
Right, and the OP itself is clear that beliefs are one kind of stance (P2). My point to @Moliere earlier was that cognitive feelings of the sort he has in mind would seem to just be another kind of stance:
Quoting Leontiskos
Mkay, that makes sense to me now.
But then it seems to go back to whether or not the subjectivist would accept P1, or your rendition of P2. While P1 is uncontroversial in a common-sense way, a philosopher may have a reason to endorse truth-coherentism, or a difference in domain between stances and beliefs to claim that P2 is false, and yet All B's are still cognitive for all that.
It seems that if the subjectivist is a correspondence theorist, and they accept P2, then they have an inconsistency. But is that inconsistency fatal to the overall idea?
In my experience, usually not. Though it seems this idea is eluding me.
Okay.
Quoting Moliere
Have you given examples? I searched for "wants to be" on the first five pages on the thread and didn't find any occurrences.
Quoting Moliere
But you aren't appealing to his anger, you are appealing to the justification of his anger, like I said <here>. This is not appeal to emotion; it is appeal to something which justifies an emotion.
Quoting Moliere
Okay, but when I say "emotions don't do calculus" I am also saying that emotions don't do "logical symbol manipulation," or, "the operations of a computer," or, "philosophical calculus." Emotions don't do calculus in any of these senses.
Quoting Moliere
So you agree with me that your theory of emotion-subjectivism is not a (cognitive) science?
Quoting Moliere
Either the choice leads to the ethic or attachment to the ethic leads to the choice. It can't be both, because two things cannot simultaneously cause each other.
For Plato the one ruled by passion does not choose; passion is his master, and one enslaved to passion does not engage in rational choice (i.e. they do not engage in choice in obeying their master, only in carrying out his bidding). Contrariwise, the one who chooses is not "ruled by reason;" he is rational. Passion and reason are not for Plato parallel realities vis-a-vis enslavement or "rule." This is in line with common sense, for we do not say, "Don't get carried away by your reason!"
Quoting Moliere
I would say that neither of the quoted phrases are emotions or feelings. The first is a kind of promise and the second is the expression of a desire. But let's look at the latter quote:
Quoting Moliere
I don't quite know what you meant by this, because I think a self-provided imperative is sufficient for an 'ought', and I don't think "an is-statement of attachment" is sufficient for an 'ought'.
Suppose you need to start drinking alcohol to be accepted by your friends. In that case you might say, "I want to be accepted by my friends, therefore I will drink alcohol" (non-hypothetical ought-judgment). Or you might say, "If I want to be accepted by my friends, then I should drink alcohol" (hypothetical ought-judgment). More realistically, you might say, "My friends will only accept me if I drink alcohol, so perhaps I should start drinking alcohol." The problem here is that your "Feeling" is equivocal, and the various senses over which it sprawls are the very senses that the debate is about.
More generally, "I want to be accepted by my friends" either represents/justifies a bona fide choice or else it does not. Someone might have started drinking alcohol years ago, and when asked why they did so, they might say, retrospectively, "I suppose I wanted to be accepted by my friends." In this case their desire explains their behavior, and Aristotle would call their subsequent drinking volitional but not deliberate (i.e. not chosen). On the other hand, someone might have made a deliberate decision to start drinking in order to be accepted by their friends. The three cases I offered just above relate to this possibility. But when you want to talk about the 'Feeling' of "I want to be accepted by my friends," there are a large variety of things that you could be talking about.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, more or less, but I believe the initial reason you posited emotion-subjectivism is because you did not want to bear the burden of justification that rational approaches require. So if we talk about "emotion" then we don't need to rationally justify our emotion, but if that same emotion can be a truth-maker for moral propositions then we can have our cake and eat it, too. We can avoid the pesky problems of rational justification while simultaneously possessing good reasons for our truth-claims. By reintroducing reason you reintroduce the onus of justification.
To be frank, I think moral subjectivism is goofy. I don't think professional philosophers hold it. It is no coincidence that there is no SEP or IEP article on it. I won't name names, but there are a handful of people on this forum who try to hold it. Bob Ross gave it up: good for him. Janus is distancing himself from it: good for him. I don't think charity requires us to prop up a theory without legs, lol.
Quoting Moliere
I think moral subjectivists do not see any way that moral propositions can be true or false, but they find this result unintuitive and so they engage in hand-waving and end up abusing language in the process. For example, the moral subjectivist wishes to have a notion of "truth" that is unverifiable and is not averse to contradiction. Of course such a thing is not truth at all. To say that everyone has subjective states which adequately ground truth-claims, even when these truth-claims all contradict one another, is not to be speaking about truth in any legitimate sense.
Quoting Moliere
I think it would be a more interesting topic. :up:
To lay my cards on the table, I don't really want to argue over a thesis that you don't hold, especially when that thesis has no authorities to legitimate it. It doesn't seem to me that it will be fruitful. I would rather talk about a thesis that you actually hold, such as error theory or a theory of emotion or a theory of moral 'oughts', etc. It would be different if the thesis had philosophical authorities behind it, but I don't see that moral subjectivism does. Of course, your attempt to salvage moral subjectivism has been admirable in certain ways, but I don't think it is ultimately salvageable, and given that you don't actually hold to the theory, you must not think that the arguments you are giving are that good. :wink: Plus if I let you go on there is the dangerous possibility that you actually talk yourself into this thing. :joke:
Yes. I'd say that one can be a cognitivist without thinking that ethics is a cognitive science. I don't think ethics is a science.
Quoting Leontiskos
Heh, fair. I'll stick to that then. Though it started to feel like I'd be veering off too far from the OP, so now I have ideas for threads. (being a lazy sort, we'll see how long it takes before one gets posted ;) )
Quoting Leontiskos
Not with those words, no -- to be fair to you I'm trying to make a position mostly to understand the idea, so I'm changing my position as I go along; I'm engaged in a creative endeavor. I don't have some firmly worked out idea here, though through the game we have managed to touch upon some possible interesting avenues of conversation.
The examples I have in mind are the angry man with his friend who he pushes aside, the guilty man apologizing, and the penitent man.
at least in the sense of using "wants to be". In the scenario where he acts on anger "X wants to be alpha", or perhaps something more personal like the person insulted his wife: "X wants to be defender"
Where he backs down "X wants to be friend" -- he's promised, and friends keep promises.
Where he's guilty "X wants to be accepted"
Quoting Leontiskos
Why not?
Gravitation works that way. The earth pulls on the apple, and the apple pulls on the earth -- it's just the earth is bigger so it's a more noticeable pull, but they simultaneously cause each other to meet.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm appealing to his anger. It's the right kind of anger. The words we make up after the fact notice the distinction between the right kind and the wrong kind, but the words aren't the appeal.
But this might be back to philosophy of emotions.
Okay, interesting.
Quoting Moliere
Okay.
Quoting Moliere
Okay, in my last I set out different senses of such desires. Are you saying they are a sort of retrospective motive for an action that has already occurred?
Quoting Moliere
It's just how reality works. If your mother gives birth to you, then you don't give birth to your mother.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, but the motion is caused by the body, not by the motion of the body. There is no circular causality here, no more than if, sitting across from each other foot to foot, we grasp hands and pull each other up.
Quoting Moliere
An appeal to the right kind of anger is not an appeal to anger itself. Else, if you think there is an emotion called good-anger and a different emotion called bad-anger, and these are two different things with no essential relation to one another, then you would still need to say what you mean by good-anger, and I say this description will always appeal to a rational justification for the appropriateness of good-anger.
Quoting Moliere
If you are interested, one of Aquinas' central writings on the passions occurs in questions 22-48 of the Prima Secundae.
Edit: Some old threads on emotion:
's thread is perhaps par for the course in that it conceives of emotions as separate from the self. I'm starting to wonder if this is just how modern people think.
The first sentence seems to rely on peer pressure for bindingness; the third sentence seems to rely on the idea that the consensus of a large enough sample of human opinion will tend to be correct (I forget the name which is often given to this idea). The problem with consensus-based views is that consensus is not in itself a truthmaker. The claim that consensus is a truthmaker for moral propositions therefore requires additional explanation.
If you want to say that moral proposition P is probably true if most people believe it, then you still need to explain why this makes it probably true.
Many years ago I argued with an atheist skeptic that a general consensus is rationally inclining: that it counts as evidence in favor of the thesis (and therefore global skepticism fails). I did not commit myself to the consensus constituting anything more than a piece of evidence, for he would not even accept this. I am inclined to agree with my former self, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that the rational inclination is strong enough to bind or obligate one to accept the opinion of the consensus. So what I said seems to apply to your theory as well:
Quoting Leontiskos
Ergo: The attitude of belief that a consensus of people have towards a moral proposition is not sufficient to support that moral proposition. Unlike the subjectivist, I think your methodology contains a certain degree of validity, and mere consensus may even be sufficient for a child or an unreflective person, but beyond that I do not think it manages to properly ground moral propositions. Still, a lot of the ethical silliness on these boards would be improved by adopting your position (e.g. ).
Yes, this OP presupposes correspondence theory of truth; which is widely accepted. A moral subjectivism could, prima facie, sidestep this (potentially) with another theory of truth; but I think, in the end, it will fall prey to this same issue.
Taking coherentism, for example, there isn't a really coherent way to account for the difference between a belief and a proposition; so sidestepping the issue by subscribing to that theory just creates a deeper issue.
I don't believe there are any truthmakers for moral thoughts or dispositions, in the kind of sense that there are truthmakers for empirical, mathematical and logical propositions. That most humans have moral feelings or intuitions, when it comes to significant issues like murder, rape, theft, assault, child abuse, cruelty to animals and so on creates a kind of normative force in itself.
But obviously, if people have those moral feelings, then they alone would (or at least should in the absence of perversity) also be motivating. One might question something they understood to be a moral feeling in themselves if it ran counter to the normal view. The normal view is the foundation of normativity and indeed sociality itself, it is more than mere consensus in the sense of being more than mere opinion; it is deeply felt in the normal, non-criminally minded individual and deeply entrenched in our social practices. But it still does not constitute an absolute imperative, because an individual is free to act counter to the general feeling and even counter to their own moral intuitions in perverse cases.
Subjective, or intersubjective (which it always really is since we are socialized beings) morality is generally workable, but it is also a somewhat messy business, and I think the attempt to make it cut and dried, codified in a hard and fast set of rules, in other words to objectify it, is a lost cause. That's my take anyway.
You're not really addressing the issue in any clear or straightforward way.
Do you have clear answers to either question?
I've already said that individual moral feeling is motivating, and that communally shared moral feeling is doubly so. The latter is, in that sense, normative, but not "binding". We are bound by law, if by anything, and even there we are not really bound.
As I say, I have already written earlier in this thread things which should indicate that I don't believe there are binding moral injunctions. I have certainly implied, if not explicitly stated, that.
For example,
Quoting Janus
So you want to say, "If you are positively disposed towards doing or not doing something, then you are in some sense motivated to do or not do it. And if you and a large group of other people are all positively disposed towards doing or not doing something, then you are even more motivated to do or not do it."
These are just tautologies, are they not? I don't see anything substantial being said.
I never said they did. The statements remain tautological. They are tautological conditionals (if/then statements).
I was interpreting this statement charitably, but I think that interpretation was incorrect:
Quoting Janus
What you mean to say issimplifying even further to highlight the tautologypeople do (moral) things because they believe they should do (moral) things. This doesn't say anything at all. It certainly doesn't amount to a moral theory.
I'm sorry that you feel that way, but here, allow me to demonstrate a few times that he does:
Ecce Homo;
first section of Why I Write Such Excellent Books:
first section of Why I am a Fatality:
Beyond Good and Evil section 231:
I like to use the metaphor "everyone dies alone" as a thought experiment that can aid in the clarity, and it informs upon Amor Fati too. The metaphor "everyone dies alone," implies that dying, despite any physical presence of others, is an inherently solitary experience. Noone can truly share or fully partake and understand another person's death experience. The metaphor emphasizes the idea of existential isolation, which reflects a broader existential reality of our individual lives: that we too are truly isolated, no matter how close we may feel to another, we can never truly understand all of another's life experiences that has lead them to who they are at a given moment in time.
This is one of the reasons why Nietzsche says "what is great in man is that he is a bridge."
And since Existential Isolation is a topic spoken about by several philosophers, I'm doubtful that you're capable of seeing beyond your bias without someone prying it open. So I bid you and your objective world good day for I've not come here to suffer from THAT old wives' tale.
I haven't purported to be presenting a moral theory, but rather just a description of how people are and what they do. People have moral feelings and intuitions, which become moral thoughts. Some of those thoughts may be introjected in the process of socialization, but it is also fairly normal for people to feel empathy and compassion for others.
People are motivated by their moral feelings and thoughts, but they may not always follow them. There is nothing tautologous in any of that. It is implicit in what I've been arguing that a moral theory is not possible. A theory should be able to make predictions and be testable, as just as scientific and mathematical theories are. Anyway, since you have offered no substantive critique of what I've said, I think we are done.
It's little more than a barebones tautology. People are motivated by feelings and thoughts, obviously. Anyone who understands what feelings and thoughts are understands this.
Then you should realize there is no objective morality and stop pretending you have a theory or could have a theory of objective moral truth.
Your tautology has no relation to these other claims you are making. It's not clear you realize this, either.
Premise 3 does not accurately portray moral subjectivism. Moral subjectivists have moral preferences, not beliefs. Morality concerns these preferences, not a true or false proposition about reality. The claim of a subjectivist lies in the belief that moral propositions are neither true nor false, the terms themselves do not apply as they do not refer directly to reality.
People can also take issue with the concept of "true" or "false" being applied to reality in the first place, as it implies the idea that abstract objects can exist in a way which subjectivists are typically against.
[Perhaps there are sub-categories of subjectivist/anti-realism types, some say neither true nor false, some say all false, all true, whatever. Its all the same general idea to me, with only a semantic distinction.]