So, for myself, it seems to me that if meaning is a property of language, and we are competent language speakers, then we should all be able to tell -- perhaps only in a rough and proximate sense, but still truthfully -- what the meaning of moral statements are.

I think I'd describe my beliefs about meaning in analogue with intuitionists on moral matters or mathematics, minus some tendencies in intuitionism to believe in stability -- since clearly words do change their meaning with time and usage.

And if that were true then it would follow that we'd all be able to pinpoint the meaning of words, moral or otherwise.

Where I think I agree with you, @andrewk, is in looking at usage to determine meaning -- I'd just say that meaning exists, and it is not identical to usage. Looking at usage in context is the method for determining meaning. And there are shades of meaning, too, in most phrases -- so you might focus on how the meaning of a moral phrase is meant to influence others, and someone else might focus on another aspect like how a moral phrase expresses one's sentiments about some action or another, and I'd just insist that some moral phrases are also -- not opposed to either of these previous theories but in addition to them -- truth-apt, because of the way some moral phrases are said are said in a descriptive sense.

More or less, yes. Something along those lines, regardless of whether said meaning attaches "in the mind" or "on the waves" or what-not, that gets at the gist of how I think of the matter. And, as with anything, open to revision insofar that some other way of thinking can account for just how successful we are in understanding language -- and how meaning is a public entity, in spite of needing a mind (which I would say is an interior space that isn't exactly shared, though can partially be so through language) in order to speak.

"with an implication of understanding"? What's that?

I'd just say that there's not much more to knowing the meaning than exactly what's said -- if I talk to a dog using English then the dog does not know the meaning of my sentences. If I talk to someone who doesn't know English they, too, do not know the meaning of my sentences.

But if a person speaks within said conventions, seems to respond to statements, questions, commands, and so forth in the manner I'd expect a person who knows English to speak -- and to act, more widely -- then they know what I mean.

And that we do this very successfully.

If that's all you mean by meaning, then I don't think I'd disagree that we all associate things differently. We all have different pasts, different feelings, different ways.

But I'd also say that you and I know the meaning of all the sentences we have thus far used in spite of that.

Do you agree with me?

Sure. I agree that's the end state. But that's not the same thing as associating, yes?

Okay, so it's the relation that's within the fridge, so to speak. We all relate things differently. And this activity is what you call meaning.

So how do we go from this activity -- which I'd say is common to many cognitive systems, which is evidenced by Pavlov's dog -- to knowing English? Since it is this sort of meaning that is of interest here, given that we're building towards moral statements.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is how we bootstrap from no understanding of language to an understanding of a language. Associating seems to me the sort of thing that a lot of cognitive systems can accomplish, and we could call that meaningful mental activity but I wouldn't call it meaning in the sense of the English language.

And so while we would call these associations meaning, what then would we call the meaning when we're talking about the English language? How does that relate to this associating?

So I am keeping scribbles within my fridge?

First, I'm not a realist on mathematics, and especially not on sets.

Relations are simply any way that two things are related to each other. "To the left of (from perspective x)" is a relation. "Cause" a la "x caused y" is a relation. "Is the parent of" is a relation. "Is located on the same planet as" is a relation. Etc.

The relation in question with respect to meaning is that some individual is performing the act of making an association between x and y, where the association isn't just arbitrary for them, but is at least periodically, in particular contexts, brought to mind for them when they think about x and/or y. — Terrapin Station

That's fine. Then we have xRy, where y is the phonic substance or scribbles on a paper or digital shapes. x is whatever is in the fridge.

Can you specify what x or R are?

It seems to me, then, that you think moral statements are primarily tools for influencing the actions of others. Yes?

Alright I think I'm beginning to get a picture of what you're talking about, and I'm ready for more chocolate cake. Plus I feel like I'm getting close to the original topic now.

So my understanding of a relation is derived namely from ordered pairs, where you have two sets and some kind of operation from one set to the other that gives you an element in the other set.

So my thought here is that we have two sets -- and because this is language that we probably don't want to use the relation of a strict ordered pair, but it gets the idea across of what we might mean by a relation -- a sort of table where things are grouped together. The elements of one set are the phonic substance, as Saussure called it -- or the digital shapes that we are using now. I imagine that we must be going from the phonic substance to something in the refridgerator. Now, meaning is just this association, so my question is -- what are the elements of the set within the refridgerator to which the phonic substance, scribbles, or digital shapes are relating to?

TO be candid, I would drop "meaning" from most philosophical conversation. It's far more productive to talk about what we do with words, how they interact with the world, and such, than to get bogged down in esoteric waffle about concepts and such — Banno

There is wisdom to that.

But it's so much fun. ;) :D

Thanks for the clarification, I wasn't sure which way. Meaning is the act of associating. Associating is putting . . . well, what? into a relation? Or not a relation?

And is language somehow then outside of meaning?

So it's important to understand that meaning is an activity that we perform. It's not something that external things have or not.

Can we perform that activity (the meaning activity) in response to our perceptions, sure. But it's not identical to the perceptions. It's something additional to them. — Terrapin Station

And that activity is mental association, right?

So if I associate tea with crumpets then I have a meaning, let's just say that I put them in any relation together (be it in space, as a meal, or within time) then that is the meaning-activity.


Where does language enter in this picture?

So you are saying perception is reserved for the processing of information that is outside of the mind.

Let's go with it. Does that perception have a meaning, or not? That, after all, is what I'm trying to understand -- your boundaries for the usage of the term "meaning".

Yes.

Of course, in a relative sense. The puppy kicker's feelings are wrong relative to my standard of judgement, and probably your standard of judgement, and probably Banno's standard of judgement.

Who here amongst us judges it to be morally acceptable to kick a puppy? Hanover, put your hand down.

In hindsight, some of my past feelings on matters relevant to ethics are wrong relative to how I now feel about it. — S

I just meant that we can make true statements about how we feel. — S

It's a misunderstanding of moral relativism because it leaves out the relativism part! Approval relative to who or what? I don't approve. He does. I don't approve of his approval. Approval in this context comes under the broader category of moral feeling. Here are some more examples of words which can indicate moral feeling: disapproval, guilt, shame, outrage, condemnation, righteousness, vindication, and forgiveness. — S

Hrmm, well for me at least, then, this still leaves out the sorts of sentences we say that are ethical, yet mean there is a fact to the matter in the sense that an action has the property of wrongness or something along those lines.

I wouldn't dispute that we can say true statements about our feelings. But I wouldn't say that a speaker who says:

"Kicking a puppy is wrong" is true

means

In accord with my feelings, "kicking a puppy is wrong" is true

If they wanted to say that they'd just say "I feel that kicking a puppy is wrong" -- but, instead, they use the gerund and form what appears to be a proposition.

And what they mean is that this statement about goodness is true.

Cool.

So rather than "Thou shalt not kill" you might say "Killing is wrong"? And the same sort of analysis should then apply?

Heh. I hope I don't come across as too funny. I really don't mean to be. I'm just trying to grapple with the ideas and see where they lead more than anything. If there is no difference then maybe we just think of language differently, but that's alright -- @Terrapin Station would certainly not be alone in thinking that human language is basically equivalent to a series of barks dictated by our evolutionary heritage and continued because of said heritage, to reproduce, ultimately signifying nothing.

Yeah, I see language as attaching to the world in some way. It's not all in our head; so to speak is to speak in a world, of a world, and about a world and not about belief.

A sincere speaking saying "It is raining" implies that said speaker believes it is raining -- but they are talking about the rain, and not their belief.

Would it be outdated to talk about internal and external to something like a refrigerator? Because that's more or less similar to the distinction. It's a locational distinction primarily. — Terrapin Station

It just has a Cartesian ring to it -- but It's not like I am in here and the world I experience is out there. I am a part of the world. Further, it's not like the world is composed of sense-data.

But if you're being more literal, as in, inside the space within my skull is where the perception is, then OK.

I think I can get along well enough with the terminology that it shouldn't be a problem.

Mentally processing it, you mean? Obviously that's a mental activity. — Terrapin Station

Sure.

Sure, and the relevance of that is? — Terrapin Station

That perception is mental -- since I thought subjectivity and mental were pretty well linked for you.

I'm mostly just trying to get a hold of your terminology here. So when you say --

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

That makes me think that perception is also meaningful, since perception requires the mental act of making associations, which seems different than what I'd say but I can go along with it. Also I'd say that meaning is tied to language, but you say it is not -- that it is something primarily mental, and not necessarily linked to language.

Dogs and many other animals may have very similar mental phenomena to us, and there's no reason to believe that we're the only animals with language.

The closer other animals' brains are to our own the more reason we have to believe they experience similar mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station

I'd say that this is language in the broad sense, but not in the narrow sense -- dogs do not speak English. We speak English. English is just one type of language, as there are many languages, but it doesn't matter which (human) language you choose a dog will not learn how to speak it.

Perhaps dogs speak dog. But even if that is so surely you can see the difference between dog and human language? Or is there none?

Facts are not standard-relative because they're determined by what's the case, unless that's a standard, in which case it would be the only standard, and it would be objective and universal. Morality is standard-relative because it's determined primarily by how we feel, and how we feel varies, and it is subjective and relative. The truth in morality consists in how we truly feel about moral issues. We both agree that seeking moral truth in the objective sense is a wild goose chase. — S

Could it not be the case that we truly feel wrongly about a moral issue, though? Or no?

What is truly feeling, as opposed to feeling? Or do you mean that we can be deceptive to what we feel, and thus there is what we truly feel and what is only ephemeral or false?

In what way does that differ from approval? As you say just above I am misunderstanding you when I say that Bob's action is moral because he approves of it, so truly feeling cannot be the same thing as approval.

What is truly feeling?

Not to just bombard you with questions @Banno I'll write what thoughts came to me after you brought up direction-of-fit:

So, we could say that the meaning of moral statements lies in their direction-of-fit, and in their truth-aptness. And, perhaps some notion of universality that includes all responsible moral actors, or something along those lines, if our notion of truth doesn't happen to include some requirement of aiming at what everyone should do in a specifically moral sense.

Then we might say something like -- "Though shall not kill" is true

And we might say that all true statements are facts -- redefining what I had said a fact was in my attempt at defending moral error theory.

SO rather than there being some empirical element to facts we are just relying upon the notion that facts are true statements -- and we are being liberal enough with the notion of statement to include commands as statements.

This is the part that gets kind of funny, I think. We are no longer correspondence theorists at this point, at least -- which might be too much for some people, though I'm willing to go along with it because I take it that correspondence theory is not a universal theory of truth, but an apt description of how we commonly think of truth. It's just worth noting that here.

At which point I might ask -- is naturalism preservable under other notions of truth? I suppose if by naturalism we mean something along the lines that statements like "Everything that exists is a part of nature" are true then, sure, naturalism is preserved.

But is that was naturalists actually mean, or are they correspondence theorists? I guess that would depend upon the naturalist.


But, to bring this back to Moore, there might be something to his notion of non-natural facts after all.

That's a good point. Though would we call commands moral? I suppose some commands are moral commands, so I can go with it.

Can such statements be true?

And, if true, do they or do they not have a fact? (Or is a fact just a true sentence?)

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.