What does any of this have to do with morality and moral obligation? — Michael

In all the theorising in this thread we may lose track of the purpose of ethical thinking: to decide what to do. Ethics has to be about the relation between belief and action.

Yep.

You choose for yourself what to believe. You choose whether to laugh with them or to stop them.

But outside of this debate, you would not kick the puppy. That's not who you are. That's the point.

Is this the third, our fourth, change of guard on this thread...

But why must it end there? — goremand

Because at some stage one must act.

...as if, upon coming across a puppy-kicker, you would be able to convince them of the error of their ways by your brilliant philosophical argumentation. No, you get the bugger arrested. — Banno

@Leontiskos might find the puppy-kicker culpable for going against the will of god, @Michael can't make a case that kicking puppies is culpable, but we might agree that the act is blameworthy.

...appeals to the stone... — Michael

One demonstrates the reality of the world by interacting with it, hence the reality of ethical statements by enacting them.

is partly right, but perhaps has too sharp a distinction between thought and act. and act. Next he can't decide if doubt is worthy, or a sign of weakness.

Nice catch on the SEP archive.

The Argument from Queerness suggests that moral stuff presents us with “qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe”. Why can't a realist simply agree with this and say that these qualities and relations are indeed different, precisely because these are the characteristics of moral qualities...

Perhaps the supposed "queerness" is a consequence of their direction of fit being world to word.

We're just not morally obligated to not harm. — Michael

There it is again.

I'm reading Lecture 2 but have been distracted in my posts. I'll make some greater effort.

if there's no practical difference between being morally obligated to harm and being morally obligated to not harm — Michael

Did you really mean to write that?

In the first case, there is harm; in the second, no harm - what greater "practical" difference do you want?

Which brings us back to the titular question - the answer to which is"because it is the right thing to do".

As if it could make sense to say one ought not do what one ought do.

Well that's just begging the question. — Michael

Exactly!

What relevance is that? Is liking or not liking to be around folk the measure of obligation? — Michael

Not at all. But this is where Wittgenstein was heading - that at some stage the justifications have to end, and we say: "This is what we do!"

You are bothered by "categorical imperatives", by authority, both looking for some way to ground your imperatives, to provide certainty. I don't see a need for that. You both agree that we ought not kick puppies, but want something more... as if, upon coming across a puppy-kicker, you would be able to convince them of the error of their ways by your brilliant philosophical argumentation. No, you get the bugger arrested.

Ethics is about what we do, and so it does not rest on argument but on action.

Hello, . You beat me to it.

That's the very thing being discussed.

1. A categorical imperative is just "one ought not X".
2. A hypothetical imperative is "according to Y, one ought not X" or "one ought not X or Z will happen."

I cannot rationally justify the truth of any (1), and yet many seem to be true. It's something of a cognitive dissonance. — Michael

One ought keep one's promises.

And this because a promise just it the sort of thing one ought to keep.

And again, I don't see that "one ought not kick puppies for fun" needs any further justification. I would not like to be around folk who do that shit.

Ok. That all makes sense. It's sounds like more of a long term project than a thread, hence the large bibliography.

↪Banno You're too obsessed with "isms". — Michael

Needs must. It's a response to my interlocutors.

I'll make this easy for you. From the form of the words, one would expect that realism were the negation of antirealism. It isn't. Dealing with this nuance is presumably why it was necessary to have two articles in the SEP. Antirealist attacks on realism target the subsidiary issues.

In the OP @Bob Ross argued that there were no moral truths. Setting aside the "isms", my aim has been to show that there are moral truths.

Putting you at odds with the use in the SEP article, and missing the central tenant of moral realism.

What the various versions of moral realism have in common, in opposition to other views, is that there are true moral statements. — Banno

Sigh.

Here's were we came in. Two arguments for moral realism:
(1) There are statements that at the least are prima facie both moral and true.
(2) We use moral statements in reasoning, which we could not do unless they are truth-apt.

What the various versions of moral realism have in common, in opposition to other views, is that there are true moral statements.

This thread is fast becoming inane. I suggest you take your recent, thoughtful post and start a new thread, perhaps setting out your thesis in a bit more detail.

Ok. That was not clear. So would you agree those sentences are incompatible? That one could not coherently assert that "'One ought do X' is true when everyone believes it's true" and not "You ought to do what everyone believes you should"

I haven't said this. — Michael

You appeared to agreed with Hyp, in his asserting those incompatible ideas. Here:

I'm just not at all sure what it is you are doing. Think I mentioned that.

The SEP citation put the lie to that.

There's an article on moral realism in SEP as well (as on moral anti-realism), the one from which my quote came. It does not use "objective" in the definition, but notes
" ...although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way."

I've said before I don't really care what you call it. the interesting bit is that moral statements have a truth value. — Banno

I don't think so. — frank

Good for you.

Moral realists are those who think that... moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. — SEP

Others differ.

Odd, again.

You have
"One ought do X" is true when everyone believes it's true.
And yet you seem to deny
"You ought to do what everyone believes you should"

As if these were not contrary.

Human psychology isn't a slave to some supposed duty. — Michael

I entirely agree.

Again, for the third or fourth time, your purpose here is obscure. It's not clear where your reasoning leads, or where it comes from. What's your point? Are you supporting subjectivism, or just positing it for the sake of discussion?

You seem to have some very particular use of "ought" in mind, perhaps relating to deontology.

X is immoral for us. The challenge to moral realism is in asking about what's moral for homo habilis, or homo erectus. They're human. Are they us? Or not? The answer is going to be somewhat artificial, which means morality is artificial. — frank

Oh, I see. You're asking about the scope of moral statements. Interesting.

Ok, so let's suppose that moral statements are "artificial". Does it follow that they are not true? Because moral realism is the contention that there are true moral statements.

Trace Neanderthal DNA remains in modern humans, so there seems no reason not to include them in our moral discourse. Eventually one might ask how worthwhile it is to consider a behaviour immoral. While it isn't a pressing issue, there has been some recent work on the moral culpability of animals.

So if Neanderthals engaged in cannibalism, you would say that was immoral? — frank

:smile: You are asking for a friend?

Your article continues "The usual explanations of reductio fail to acknowledge the full extent of its range of application.'

You said

If it could be proved that I ought eat babies I still wouldn't. — Michael

with which I was agreeing.

So we apparently take as true that one ought not eat babies. And we suppose there is some theory T such that T⊢ (one ought eat babies). The we are entitles to conclude ~T.

Seems pretty straight forward.

:wink:

has learned a new term: "Metaethical". And of course, a few hours after learning it, he is an expert.

Well, the way we think about stuff has a background in our myths.

But the consequence, and the take away from Anscombe, is that the only workable option is to improve where on can. I'm working on being kind to fools. It's not easy.

Protestants would be likely to disagree. — Leontiskos

With each other as well as the Papists.

This is the reason for my discomfort with the idea of moral truth. — AmadeusD

I wondered about that.

There's a difference between some moral statements being true and there being some incontestable moral laws. Realism does not imply that there are moral principles carved in stone. It's just that morality is open to rational discussion, that it's more than just competing preferences.

Huh...the buggers have updated the SEP page since then.

Then you would go along with the modus tollens reading...?
(1) If religiously based ethics is false, then virtue ethics is the way moral philosophy ought to be developed.
(2b) It is not the case that virtue ethics is the way to develop moral philosophy
(3b) Therefore, it is not the case that religiously based ethics is false. — Banno

Here's the archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190311014303/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anscombe/#VirEth

Now I'll have to re-read the SEP article.

I'm assuming you take on the modus tollens reading, with god on your side - or you on his.

I'll join Philippa Foot in changing my mind every couple of years.

Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy"


This remains for me the central and most troubling article in Ethics. It's what drove me to virtue ethics.

Well, you did make a series of silly mistakes. And it is quite plainly right, that "that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate."

Good. And here we might start to differentiate morality from ethics, or expectation from obligation.

Apart from , so far in this thread we haven't treated of the existential break, the actuality of choice. And it's this that in the end breaks the rule of law. We each still must act.

We ought to obey the law — Michael

And yet sometimes we ought not obey the law. It's never simple.

No, if you would play chess. Yes, if you would be an arsehole.

Again, it's not clear to me what it is you are suggesting, both in that post and in your recent line of thought.

Ethics is difficult - intractable - to the point of there perhaps being no solution; after all, why must there be an answer to "what should we do"?

:gasp:

There are many apologies for Abraham's behaviour. Seen at face value, he was morally culpable.

See my second paragraph above. — Michael

Sure. We do cooperate. Yet it remains open as to whether we ought cooperate. There are moral issues unaddressed by naturalism.

The naturalistic fallacy is a response to ethical naturalism, how does it even apply to moral anti-realism, or subjective realism? — hypericin

I didn't introduce naturalism in to the conversation - you did in the example you borrowed. So if it's irrelevant, that's down to you.

I think you're a rude troll that isn't a fraction as clever or knowledgeable as you pretend. Kindly "piss off". — hypericin

Cheers. You'll be sending me the hemlock, then?

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