the nature of a proposition: they are always objective and absolute — Bob Ross


I see no meaning in this phrase.

: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.

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.

That is the standard way of thinking about a belief, see:

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I'm saying that for me to say torturing babies is wrong is equivalent to me saying I believe torturing babies is wrong.

That’s 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.

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,

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.

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.

Then you can’t 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.

Which means that the proposition is inextricably tied to belief, mine, someone else's, even most peoples'.

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 people’s beliefs about it. You have now transformed the propositions into one’s about belief...which are not the original propositions nor are they normatively binding.

As I explained in the absence of any other truthmaker belief is all we've got.

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”.

You are talking about committing a semantic contradiction

Please see my OP: it is not a semantic contradiction—it is a conceptual contradiction that arises out of a gross misunderstanding of the nature of a belief and proposition.

Really nothing is morally binding: people can believe something is wrong, even feel terrible shame in doing it, and yet do it, nonetheless

That something is morally binding, has absolutely nothing to do with how motivated a person is in abiding by it.

This is true. Again, it seems I need to go into the second part where we actually measure what existence is and how we calculate it. For now as an intro, I'm not bothered by these issues. We'll see if they remain pertinent on the next drill down.

If this is true, as you have stated, then your concept of 'good' is incoherent; which will not get resolved by elaborating on what you think is good (i.e., this or that is good: existence is good). You are confusing an explication of the property of goodness with what can be predicated to have it.

On the strength of what would I be obligated?

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.

That’s it: there nothing more that needs to be said.

And what would it mean for such a claim to be true beyond my feeling or thinking it to be so?

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.

Would there need to be a lawgiver who would punish me if I transgressed.
…
Are you invoking God?

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 don’t think it involves God, and I don’t think moral obligation has anything to do with a law giver.

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

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.

If you want to go beyond that you need to discover what "supports the ought"—you need to address that question.

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.

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.

The problem is that you are using a concept of "good" that is incoherent; and it is the base of your entire theory. Without a proper concept of "good", I don't think one can delve into ethics.

For example, the title is " In any objective morality existence is inherently good". If "good" is "ought to exist", then "inherently good" is "inherently ought to exist": there is no such distinction between intrinsic (inherent) and extrinsic 'ought to exist". Either something ought to exist, or it shouldn't.

Also, you define "good", as a concept, in a moral sense when it should be being defined in its generic sense: otherwise, you have invalidly omitted goodness simpliciter.

These are just issues that your theory, to be complete and have a proper foundation, needs to address (I would say).

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.

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 — Bob Ross

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?

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.

unless you are referring to MSs that do explicitly convert moral propositions X to «I believe X»,

If you think that X, which is a proposition, is true or false relative to a belief about it; then you don’t understand what a proposition is. Propositions are truth-apt, and they can only be truth-apt if they express something objective. That’s 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 can’t have a separate claim which is being verified by a belief about it. That’s patently incoherent.

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 should not torture babies” is true, then you are obligated to not torture babies. You can’t affirm that it is true that “I should not torture babies” without conceding it is true that I shouldn’t torture babies: that’s incoherent.

It follows that I believe it to be a normative claim.

But it wouldn’t be a normative claim, and that’s the point.

How do moral propositions become normative under your view?

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.

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.

This is what a moral subjectivist would be inclined to say; but it isn’t 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.

I am glad to see you are more active again on the forum! I am guessing the new job has settle down a bit (:

We have discussed a lot of this in depth, so I just have one objection worth adding (that we didn't discuss):

Good - what should be

I don't think this is internally coherent for your position: you use the term 'good' to denote things which you do not thereby concede should exist. Let's take it by example.

Imagine you could combine two elements (in the periodic table) to formulate another element and, let's stipulate, this would produce "more existence" than if the combination were not done. This combination would be, then, "good".

Imagine, though, that you could combine those two elements with two other elements to formulate another element and, let's stipulate, that would produce "more existence" than if the combination were not done. This combination, likewise, would be, then, "good".

However, imagine that the first combination doesn't produce as much existence as the second combination: they are both "good", when considered in themselves, but the second one is more "good".

Let's say you can only perform one of the combinations (as performing one eliminates the possibility of performing the other): obviously, you would choose the second one (because it is more "good"). However, if you what you mean by "good" is merely "what should exist" then both combinations should exist; but it seems perfectly coherent for you to say "the first combination is good, but it should not exist because the second combination is better (i.e., 'more good')".

Gradations, or degrees, of goodness are eliminated if one accepts that goodness is identical to 'to ought to exist'.

As an external critique, the other issue is that defining goodness in this manner eliminates many commonly accepted usages of the concept; e.g., by saying that this clock is good for telling the time, one is not at all implying that the clock should exist.

Just food for thought (:

Bob

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"

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.

:up:

I don't understand what you mean by saying:
but then moral propositions do not exist, which seems pretty absurd. — Bob Ross

Can you explain?

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 one’s 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 one’s psychology and NOT about the original moral statement.

If torturing babies is morally repugnant to me, then why can I not say that it is truly morally wrong for me?

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 isn’t expressing that “I shouldn’t torture babies”.

:up:

I changed the OP to help dissolve this dispute:

C1: Therefore, a belief about a proposition cannot make that proposition true or false.

That is all I need to convey the original point.

In other words the truth of the proposition is clearly dependent on an actual belief - something you appeared to deny when you wrote.

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.,

A claim that "john "believes X" is not dependent on any belief about John' s beliefs (your point) but it is dependent on whether John's has that beliefs about X (Michael's point)

(@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, for the vast majority of moral subjectivists, 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.

:up:

The only dispute we may have, is:

P: "I believe that aliens exist"
P2: "I believe that I believe that aliens exist"

I would say that the truth of P is relative to a belief

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.

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).

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.

"α" 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, "β", they have defeated their own position: they were supposed to demonstrating that "<...>" is true relative to a belief and NOT "I believe <...>".

Being that "I believe one ought not torture babies" is "one ought not torture babies"

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".

"I believe one ought not torture babies" is a moral proposition

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 <...>".

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

:roll:

Repeating yourself three times, while ignoring my responses, does not help further the conversation.

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.

P1: A stance taken on the trueness or falseness of something, is independent of the trueness or falseness of that something.

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.

I'm only saying that "I believe that aliens exist" is true iff I believe that aliens exist.

This is correct.

Therefore your conclusion that "a belief cannot make a proposition true or false" is false.

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.

:up:

Does it follow from A not being dependent on B, that A is not distinctdependent fromon B?

The answer is "yes".

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.

(@Count Timothy von Icarus)

Correct, but no need for “Tarski’s 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.

There’s 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: let’s call the proposition “I believe X” Y. If Y’s 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 let’s 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.

:up:

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".

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).

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'.

Does it follow from A not being dependent on B, that A is not distinct from B?

I apologize: I was using “distinct” and “independent” interchangeably: reread my response as using “independent” instead of “distinct”.

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 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 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.

That doesn’t 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.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here

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 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.

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 didn’t specify what the proposition is that you are claiming has a truth-value relative to a belief. I am assuming you don’t 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) (: