We haven't reached peak knowledge. Your trust in human creativity is pessimistic. I trust our continued adaption as wells begin to dry. — Hanover

Adaption and survival I can grant. But that transition will not be kind, merciful, or peaceful if we just carry on -- or, given that my crystal ball broke a long time ago, we are running a very serious risk that resource wars are on the horizon.

I'd just say it's something of an outdated model to call the world external, and the mind internal. But I can go along with it. Isn't processing external information a mental activity, on your view?

I mean, even by your own notions of subjectivity, it's not like I can observe your perception.

And so, given that meaning happens in the brain, and perception happens in the brain, and meaning does not require language, it would seem -- at first blush, though I am open to being corrected by you in understanding your position -- that dog perception has meaning.

I think it's appropriate. I had actually began going through the P.I. to reply, to be honest. :D

The best outcome is the one which best reflects reality. It's counterintuitive that all of our moral statements are false. That doesn't seem to best reflect reality. So I think that reaching the conclusion of an error theorist is a sign that we need to go back and change something or construct something new. It's like the error theorist only does half a job. He stops before the project has been completed and throws his hands up in the air, saying "This is just how it is". But it doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to live in a state of disrepair, stuck under a malfunctioning model. This is a decision that's for us to make. — S

So this standards approach seems like a better alternative, since it avoids these big problems you get with the absolutist approach. — S

I'm not faced with the problem of struggling to explain why our moral statements seem to reflect truths in some way. They do reflect truths if you look at it in the right way. It seems fallacious to set the bar impossibly high for moral truth when you don't have to. — S

There is truth in our moral judgement, and that seems to be good enough to make morality work. It also sits better with people than trying to persuade them that it's all a sham and we just have to act as though it were otherwise. Throw 'em a bone! So there's no objective morality, that doesn't have to mean that there's no morality, and it doesn't have to mean that there's no truth in it. — S

Cool. So let's go into this account that you have. I'm afraid I do not understand it, or at least that my understanding is minimal.

As I get you you're saying that there is not absolute truth in ethics, but there is relative truth in ethics. As I said earlier I don't think that truth is the sort of thing which is relative to the standards we use to determine truth -- or as @Banno put it above, that belief differs from truth.

I used the case of a bolt to highlight how we normally talk about facts. We might say, using this definition of absolute, that the bolts length of 20 millimeters is an absolute truth, because its length does not vary with the standard we use -- imperial or metric units.

I fully grant that ethics and matters of fact are not exactly the same. In fact, by my account, the difference lies in that in one case there are facts, but in the other case there are no facts.

But you are saying there is some relative sense of truth which makes moral statements true. Now if you agree with me that matters of fact are not standard-relative, then there must be something else going on when we're talking about relative truth aside from the standards that we use. What is this difference that makes moral propositions relatively true, while they are absolutely false, if it is not facts? And in what sense is that truth?

Or, more generally if you feel these questions are leading -- what is your account of ethical statements such that it is not emotivist in the usual sense of that word, and not absolutist in the sense we were discussing, but relativist and yet true?

EDIT -- or, in afterthought if that is still just misunderstanding your position, could you just explain your position?

You do need to interpret meaning for it to have meaning and the loop this creates is no different than asking "why" to every answer a person gives.

If I say "X means Y" and "Y means Z" and "Z means X" this creates a loop. You can do this with many things in language.

If I define a chair and define the words I used to define a chair and define the words I used to define the words I used to define a chair and then define those words and define those words then we create a loop. The loop only stops when you stop asking for new definitions because you think you understand what I mean.

Call that what you want but it's just how language works. — Judaka

I grant that we do this operation. But the operation eventually terminates. If meaning were identical to other words then there would never be a terminus -- we'd just continue to iterate the process. But, in fact, we do terminate said operation. So we can conclude that meaning is not identical to words. There must be some other aspect to language aside from words, some nugget we call "meaning" in order for us to stop infinite regress -- because we do, in fact, actually stop iterating and come to know what words mean.

But then, at least if by "interpret" we mean use more words to explain words, there must be more to meaning than interpretation.

I am classifying perception as a mental association -- that is, the sort of thing that has meaning. I am not saying the world makes associations.

Hrrmm, you run the risk of this problem then --

If interpretation is the act of explaining what something means, and the explanation of what something means requires words, then we need an interpretation of the interpretation in order to have meaning.

But if we need an interpretation of the interpretation to know what the interpretation means, then we need and interpretation of the interpretation of the interpretation . . .


You get the idea. If the words require more words in order to have meaning, then by the fact that the "more words" are also words you basically get an infinite regress.

What is interpretation?

Yes, definitely. I do this as a musician all the time, for example.

"When I associate a spout with its vase and see a teapot, is that perception"--that's not a perception, by the way. Perception refers to you taking in data about things external to you. Your association isn't that. It's an activity your brain is performing, and activity that isn't performed by the outside world. So you're conceiving it, not perceiving it.

Anyway, sure, you could do this without any linguistic capabilities. — Terrapin Station

Well, perception requires a brain -- a sort of association but one which is being applied to what you call the outside world. It's not so much "taking in data" as it is applying conceptual content to the abundant wash of experiential chaos. Even things so basic as object permanence are developed and learned.

So, alright. Meaning occurs within the brain, and does not require language. Any old mental association will do -- and, as I understand perception at least, that would include perception.

So what is language, then? Obviously language is not meaning, because we can certainly share a language. What we usually call meaning, the sort of thing that language does -- what would you call that?

A thought, though -- it's interesting to contrast Moore with moral error theory. If I remember correctly, at least, he argued in favor of non-natural moral facts, which would seem to undermine my objection that facts are empirical, at least on its surface.

Well, I did say previously that you can always bite the bullet. :D

For myself, at least, any theory which would say "There ought to be a dead family because the head of household did not pay a debt back to a loneshark" is true -- is a theory which is false.

If Shady Shim the Loan Shark promises to murder your family if you don't pay 50 percent interest, though . . .

Ah, so you're an error theorist? But that's a pretty useless outcome, isn't it? Don't you think that it would be better to move on to better ways of getting truth and falsity out of morality? — S

It's the idea I keep coming back to and I'm playing with in this thread, at least. It makes a lot of sense.

But what would a better way of getting truth mean? Truth is truth, as far as I see it -- at least of this plain sort where I'm talking about truth-aptness, and what-not. It's not something we squeeze out of the fruit of knowledge. And if the statements be false, then that's the end of it.

I don't deny that they're truth-apt. And other statements are truth-apt, too. So they're not special in that one respect. But they might well be special in other respects. — S

Cool.

Because you're working under a malfunctioning model. These results that you're getting should be a sign that you need to switch to a model which works bette — S

What's malfunctioning, precisely? I don't see anything malfunctioning.

One of the results of there being no moral truths is that what we care about is up to us.

The downside, of course, is that the language just looks like something which we actually do treat as if it were true, so the theory seems a little outlandish. But at least it accounts for the semantics of moral statements.

Then we either change the way we speak or we interpret the way we speak in a way which results in a more sensible outcome. — S

I guess I'd have to see what it is that's more sensible, and under what basis.

No worries. But I'm not an emotivist if an emotivist does not accept that any moral statements are truth-apt. — S

That's my understanding of the position at least -- emotivism is one end of the pole of the cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate on meta-ethics. Moral error theory, at least as I understand it right now, is a cognitivist account which denies the reality of moral facts.

The standards obviously do not make the statement true or false in an absolutist sense, only in a relative or conditional sense. But this absolutist sense which you're suggesting seems like a misguided way of looking at it. How can you justify an absolute truth or falsity in relation to morality? — S

Well, I don't know if I'd use the word absolutist, but let's just say that absolutist is any position which believes that truth is not relative to standards, except in a trivial sense where, say, two different standards express the very same length.

My line of reasoning so far has been to say that moral statements are true or false, thereby making them propositions, and what makes a statement true is some fact or state of affairs. "Fact" can be a funny word, but let's just say for purposes of this discussion we just settle on something that can, at least in principle, be checked empirically.

Now in the case of moral propositions there are no facts that can be checked empirically. So regardless of the standard we might use to judge a moral statement true or false, they are all false -- thereby making mine a sort of absolutist position, by the above definition.

What makes you think that that's an appropriate analogy in the context of meta-ethics? My feelings about the size in millimetres of the bolt are irrelevant. That's not the case with morality. Or, if it is, then the burden lies with you to successfully argue in support of an objective standard of morality, where our feelings are completely irrelevant. — S

Namely because moral propositions are not special with respect to the fact that they are propositions -- so, among other components of meaning, one of their shades of meaning is their truth-aptness. They are either true or false.

Deciding which moral propositions I treat as true is certainly dependent upon feelings. But my feelings don't change whether such a proposition is true or false.

Is that what you're going to argue in relation to morality? That there are independent properties of rightness and wrongness out there in the world? — S

A little bit different from that -- only that we state things, in a moral context, in the exact same way that we state things in the context of matters of fact. Not always, of course -- we can use a sentence about moral matters as a means to express some emotion about an action. But there are times that we also state a matter descriptively. And so the best interpretation, absent some other reason to do differently, is to say that such statements are truth-apt, in the exact same way that statements of fact are truth-apt.

We speak as if there are moral facts, even if we believe there are none.

It's not like I haven't thought about this — S

I hope I'm not coming across as condescending or like I am treating you like someone who hasn't thought about the issue. But to be sure let me say here I believe you have thought about it.

Though it might be interesting to pursue further the rest of what you say with respect to the denial of absolutism leading you to believe that emotivism is the best meta-ethical position, I kind of want to hear your response to me here first.

Whatever the meaning of "good", a moral subjectivist who is a moral relativist avoids contradiction by having relative standards of judgement which correspond to separate and distinguishable statements, such that, for example, it's good in accordance with Banno's standard but not good in accordance with my standard. Those statements can both be true without contradition. It's about the standard of judgement, not the meaning of "good", hence why you bringing this up in the other discussion about moral feeling missed the point. — S

"Giving 5 dollars to a homeless man is good" is true -- we might judge such a statement to be true because we believe that it is always good to give to those in need, or something like that.

"Giving 5 dollars to a homeless man is good" is false -- we might judge such a statement to be false in light of the fact that we are enabling them to hurt themselves, and it would be better to give said 5 dollars to some organization which helps the homeless, or something like that.

Two standards. Two different judgments.

But I don't think that the standards make the statement true or false. They are our means of judging something true or false, but that is not what true or false mean. Except in a superficial sense It's not the ruler which makes the bolt 20 millimeters long -- the bolt is 20 millimeters long regardless of the device we use to measure said bolt. It is also, rounding up, 0.8 inches long. And though we can be more precise if needs be and specify the exact length in inches, we can say roughly 0.8 inches if all that is required is an example for philosophy.

Now if the ruler -- the standard -- does not make the bolt such and such a length, but is rather a property of the bolt, then statements about the bolt are true or false regardless of the standard we happen to use in judging it.

Of course this is an analogy, and our means of judging ethical statements are not exactly identical to rulers and what-not. But I hope that I at least communicated what I mean when I say that standards do not dictate truth or falsity, though they do dictate our judgments about the truth or falsity of such and such statements.

What is it about ethics that makes statements true or false in accord with such and such standards?

I wasn't saying anything unique about moral utterances re meaning. My comments about meaning applied to all meaning, in general. — Terrapin Station

Cool. I'm just making sure I'm covering my bases.

Meaning is subjective. It's something that occurs in individuals' heads. It's the inherently mental act of making associations. It can't be literally shared, but we can tell others what we're associating in many cases. You can't know how an individual is doing this without asking them. — Terrapin Station

So, on your view, can meaning occur without language?

When I associate a spout with its vase and see a teapot, is that perception a meaning even if I do not have any linguistic capabilities (like, say, a dog)?

Also, I also think "the ontology of utterances" is a bit funny. What I had said is "what's going on ontologically with utterances (such as 'x is good (morally).')" In other words, what's "functionally" going on, or what's going on in terms of real, or practical, or observable things, which can be quite different than beliefs that people have about what they're saying, what they're doing, etc. — Terrapin Station

Alright. I had done my best to parse what you meant. But now it is clarified.

All morally permissible actions are not immoral.
Abortion is morally permissible
Therefore, abortion is not immoral.

A desire that's bound to result in frustration, I might warn. But if you want to continue this line of thinking I'd suggest a new thread on meaning, so as not to get too off-base for @Banno's topic of inquiry. I think that another tangeant on meaning would detract from the overall discussion on Moore, "... is good", and so forth -- even if other views, such as beliefs about meaning, surely will influence the way we think through a problem.

Well, that's pretty far astray from here, I must say. :D I can agree to disagree. But you can see, I think, where my line of reasoning is going, yes?

I'm not ignoring meaning. In fact you could say my entire objection to emotivism hinges on meaning -- since I'm claiming that moral statements are meaningful, that that meaning is derived from their form as a proposition, and so they have the meaning of being true or being false (Regardless of whatever other meaning they may also have).

"It is raining" has the same truth-aptness as "It is good", and "I think it is raining" 's meaning is different from "It is raining".

Well, I've been restricting myself to the nature of moral language -- namely that moral statements are not special with respect to other statements. So a convention with respect to language would effect on the ontology of language, naturally enough, though we are beginning to run around in circles since usually we don't take language as an object of some sorts.

So in saying that moral statements are truth-apt, the phenomena under consideration is moral language -- whether or not moral statements have a semantics or no. By analogy I'd say something like "All people born under the sign of cancer are moody and perceptive", or other astrologicial statements have meaning, are truth-apt, because of the form they take. The statement itself, of course, is false, and may even include names without an existing referent -- such as the case with Zeus.

But the statements still have meaning. I understand what they are saying, and they are true or they are false.


A bit long winded, but the point here is that in the sense of the wider world I wouldn't say my position commits me to the notion that linguistic convention commits me to the ontological reality of moral facts, or some such. It just accounts for the apparent fact (though it can be explained away) that moral statements are propositions.

I did misunderstand you, but I don't think this follows. It's not because it's a widely held belief that I say moral statements are truth-apt. It's because of the form that they take -- they are of the same form as any other proposition.

What's not appealing in the sense that you're using that term is the suggestion that beliefs must have some merit just because they're strong beliefs or common beliefs. That approach would suggest that we should still be performing rituals, making sacrifices, etc. to ensure a good harvest, to stave off natural disasters, etc. — Terrapin Station

But I did not say that beliefs must have merit because they are strongly held beliefs. I said that emotivism does not account for the phenomena under consideration -- and in particular, that it sort of just ignores or explains away the fact that moral statements are of the form of propositions, and propositions are truth-apt.

From where I stand the usual explanation for this is that moral statements are only apparently truth-apt, but not really truth-apt -- they are expressions of emotion like "boo" or "hurrah", or some such. It saves the theory, but from my perspective it's a convenient just-so story.



EDIT: I'd also just like to note that the line of thought I've been pursuing here is error theory, which is just a little funny to categorize as a strongly held belief that is some kind of sacrosanct tradition.

When I say "It is raining" does that, on your view, mean the very same thing as "I think it is raining"?

Besides neglecting statements and all this above, emotivism cannot take account of conflicting wants/preferences and moral duty. — creativesoul

I think the line of thinking would be to say that we have conflicting emotions, and moral duty is just another emotion, a sort of pleasure, that some people have.

But I agree that "Boo" and "Hurrah" don't quite capture the emotions, even if they are the logical equivalent.

The spirit in which it's forwarded is akin to a scientific examination. It's not based on whether anyone finds it appealing or not. We want to know what the phenomenon really is. — Terrapin Station

By appealing I mean that the account is convincing, explains all the phenomena under consideration, or some such -- it makes an appeal to our rational judgment, not that the conclusion is unsavory or unwanted.

The problem with emotivism is that it does not account for moral phenomena -- in particular, it does not explain why it is that people hold moral beliefs as if they are true or false. It misses out on the semantics of moral statements: they are true or false. Perhaps, in the end, moral phenomena are decided by emotions, and emotions are non-cognitive, so how people reason about moral phenomena is through non-cognitive means. But this still leaves out the fact that moral statements are of the form of propositions, and that people treat them as if they are true.

Even if we think there is no fact to the matter that seems to be a big flaw in what emotivism accounts for. You can append a theory that such statements are only apparently truth-apt, but in fact are not -- but that strikes me as too convenient.

Well, sure, you can double-down and bite the bullet. But can you see why someone might find the theory unappealing? It seems somewhat elaborate and unnecessary to claim its all emotion, on the face of things, and goes against what we mean by moral statements.

I agree with that.

Alright, then we are in agreement I think -- I'm only saying that when people say "It is good" that this is what they mean -- they do not mean "I think it is good", but rather "It is good" is true.

What distinguishes a moral fact from other facts is the implied act. Don't kick the pup. SO it is true that we do something more with moral statements than other statements. — Banno

Cool -- so I think we are pretty close save for my lack of understanding what a moral fact is. Perhaps it does not matter? But maybe it does too.

A moral fact is an implied act. So abstaining from kicking the pup, even though it pooped all over my nice shoes, is the implied act. I feel like kicking the pup, but I do not act on that feeling because it is a wrong thing to do.

What if I did act on the feeling? What is it about the implied act that makes the moral statement true? Surely this would not make the moral statement false, else whatever we did would just make moral statements true, and then they'd all be true -- which isn't exactly what we mean by saying such and such is good or bad. Quite the opposite.

But where is our implied act, then, if we do not do it? Maybe I'm just not following.

Yes, definitely.

If "It is good" means "I think it is good" why wouldn't you just say "I think it is good"?

In the case of facts we don't have a problem appending "I think" when we wish to describe our beliefs. And similarly so with moral statements -- "I think we should help the poor -- I think it is a good thing to do" works perfectly well to describe my beliefs. Why substitute beliefs as the referent when we are perfectly capable of stating our beliefs on the matter clearly?

Its only claim is it has a future much like ours, and exactly like ours at the same level of biological development and it is morally wrong to deprive a future like ours — Rank Amateur

I'd say that its claim is false. But furthermore, the falsity of this claim does not seem to matter for the argument. It's the future like ours that matters, not the biological description -- which is really only suited to species-level, rather than individual-level, description anyways. Biology doesn't make a descriptive claim on some individual about its status as an organism, but rather makes a claim based on the usual features of organisms generally -- and I suspect, like most scientific definitions, it is a working definition for the purposes of understanding life.

So we can put aside the biological description, I think. I'll ask again, though, just to be sure -- do you think this is true, or do you believe that biology is important to the future of such-and-such? Does the description matter at all?

To me it really doesn't seem to. I'd just say that such-and-such constitutes an organism some time after birth, so though the organ has a future like ours it still is not a unique human organism.

Well, now that I know the script I can at least rehearse :D

My initial temptation was to jump down the "biological unique human organism" rabbit hole. But upon reflection I don't think I will because I can't help but feel that we don't really care about the biological facts of what constitutes an organism. We care about human beings. We don't care if the scientific world classifies such and such as an organism or not, which surely does not have in mind debates about good or evil in their classifications. Whether such and such achieves homeostasis, reproduction, or what-not is of theoretical interest only, and not moral interest.

Would you agree with that? Or not?

I am more than happy to address any point in any argument I have made, but on such a long and scattered thread - if you could kind of clearly state the concept or issue you want me to address. With all the scattered words over all these pages - easy to find a few to highlight and argue. But I will do my best — Rank Amateur

Fair enough, and sorry for that. I wasn't reading closely enough. My thought was with respect to where I responded to you here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/250860

When I said --

I don't think I quite see how it avoids the personhood issue, though. That's at least my failing in reading you. If it does I'm not understanding how it does so -- when I read you saying "people like you and me have a future that we value" and "A significant harm of killing us is the loss of that future" I cannot help but think -- well, yes, people like you and me do value our future. This is true.

And then wonder how we count "People like you and me" -- and that's where it seems to me personhood is assumed by yourself, or I'm just not understanding what it is about the future that is not personhood that makes it valuable.

Others have said the same, like @Banno, so I don't think I'm alone in my beffudlement. I'm trying to read you as charitably as possible, but I can't see why your argument is something we should care about unless it is the future of people we care about.

Engaging in a bad habit of double-posting:

Also, that being said, I should say there is some sense in which it makes sense to say there is a fact to the matter -- that what is good is good, and what is evil is evil. Usually cases of conversion seem to fit that bill; we often do, through our mistakes, change our minds about what moral propositions are true (in that we believe them to be true, even if they are false). I'd say that's the strongest argument for there being true moral propositions. I just compare such cases to cases where I change my mind because I was mistaken about some fact, and that empirical element seems to not quite be there in the case of moral propositions so the rational conclusion is that they must all be false in spite of their apparent semantic content.

I agree that a proposition is true or false, and that moral statements are of the form of propositions.

However, given that there is no fact of the matter, they must then all be false.


That being said it seems to me that there is an extra-logical function which moral statements inhabit. Something like a promise or an admonition -- these aren't exactly truth-apt functions, but they are still things we are doing with words. In saying something is good we are still doing something in spite of the falsity of the statement. What is that, though? I don't know.

I gave up being amazed at our ability as humans to justify killing the people we want dead a very long time ago. — Rank Amateur

To justify the people we want dead? So the future value of people is what we care about, yes?

It seems to me that this point is still unaddressed by you. You claim academic authority to ignore the point about people, but even you use the plain language that makes the most sense of the arguments you're making -- that people's lives are at stake, according to yourself. So you skip the quagmire of personhood while still caring about future value in your argument because of the quagmire of personhood -- it's just unaddressed and assumed.

Do you have a simple counterexample? — ChrisH

Silentio?

I'm watching the news about the first conviction in the UK for female genital mutilation. It's not part of 'our' culture, but it is part of the culture of some parts of Africa. We don't put bones in our noses, but we do put silicone in our tits, and we do sanction male genital mutilation. We are a bit inconsistent, and in large part it is simple myopia, rathe than any lack of insight. — unenlightened

My immediate reaction was to think of the differences between these and other practices, but I think I would say that, hey, a solution of context-dependency doesn't always work.

I'm tempted to say myopia is a part of the human condition. When we set out to work out a broader vision we can do so in conversation or thought -- but we have yet to figure out how we can do so as a group. Has any culture really done so? Maybe, maybe not. But at least our collective culture has a problem planning for the long-term -- we are like an adolescent chasing after the ephemeral now without any effective means for self-control.

And we are defensive about this too. Hence the claims to cultural superiority -- "The greatest country on Earth"


But I believe I've started to grasp the knot you're pointing out, at least, so thanks for that. How to untie it? I don't know right now.

Because your usage simply does not reflect how words such as like and dislike are commonly used. — ChrisH

Oh? How is that determined?

And supposing it to be the case, then why does it matter?

I asked you earlier for an example of an indivisible aspect of an object of evalutaion which resulted in both a 'like' and 'dislike' response. Can you come up with anything? — ChrisH

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/252264
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/252348

Not that this is the only example ever or anything. From my perspective, at least, what I'm talking about is common knowledge -- and to try and make the human heart fit into some kind of rationalist mode is, at least by my lights, just an error born of a desire for rationalism rather than a desire to see how people actually are. Sometimes what you say is the case -- there are certain aspects that we have a different relationship to. But sometimes that's not what we mean or have -- we have different emotions towards the same person or aspect.