I would be more interested in this conversation if you actually stated a clear argument rather than smirkly saying "I am getting it" by my obviously comedic statement of throwing out philosophy. — Lionino

You are under no obligation to participate.

I cannot doubt that it appears to me that I am reading the question. — Lionino

Good. So, contrary to what you said before, there are things that it makes no sense to doubt.

...you might as well throw out most of philosophy. — Lionino

Good idea. Now you are getting it.

You hardly need grounds to doubt anything — Lionino

In what way can you doubt that you are reading this question?

Notice that your reply puts the lie to that doubt.

Not the case. — AmadeusD

Oh, my bad. That should have read "physical", not "moral".

My intention was never to give a distinct account of subjective vs objective — AmadeusD

I know. But I'm attempting to have you do so, so as to show that the distinction cannot be made do the work you set for it.

I concede the 'table' element is not at all objective... — AmadeusD

Ok, why is "This is a table" not objective? Seems to me that its being a table is at least as clear as its being made of wood.

It is quite the recurrent question in the history of philosophy. — Lionino

Have you ever wondered why it is so intractable?

Some great philosophy was done in the middle of last century, when Austin and Wittgenstein and others, instead of looking for the answers to such questions, looked at the background against which they were being asked.

What grounds do you have to doubt that you are now reading this post? How could such a doubt make any sense?

I don't understand how that description provides an escape from being subjective? Wide-spread acceptance of a custom doesn't make it an objective fact about the state of affairs underlying it, does it? — AmadeusD

I don't want moral statements to "escape from being subjective", any more than I want them to escape from being green. I'm saying that the framing of the issue in terms of "objective" and "subjective" is misleading.

I was unable to follow you here. That we happen to use the phrase "that table" for that table is a question of convention, nothing to do with subjective or objective truth.

Let's reset that discussion. I have taken you to be arguing that the distinction between ethical and physical sentences is that ethical sentences are subjective and moral sentences are objective. I've been following up on that by trying to have you give a clear account of the difference between "subjective" and "objective". Your first try had "London is in England" as being subjective, while I argued that it's not subjective but conventional, and that hence you had not provided an adequate account of "subjective".

Ok. What is it that makes "This table is made of wood" an objective sentence?

What do you mean? I feel like you just sidestepped the questions I asked. It still stands: how do we "discover", "figure out", "decipher", etc. which moral propositions are true (under your view)? — Bob Ross

Ok. Have you been following the discussion here about direction of fit? If not, have a read of .

To "discover" something, it has to already be there to be uncovered. So the direction of fit for making a discovery is that one produces sentences that set out what it is that has been discovered.

But this is not what we do when we talk of ethics. We reverse the process, setting out how the world ought to be, then hopefully implementing our words.

You asked:

So, for your view, how do we discover the moral facts? — Bob Ross

We don't discover them.

...how do we evaluate which moral propositions are actually true? — Bob Ross

There can be no algorithmic process here, that sets out which moral propositions are true and which are not.

It's subjective in the sense that it's people who are talking about its existence. — baker

So what is there that is the opposite of "subjective", if we take this as a definition? What could be objective? Because there is nothing we could list here that is not by the very fact that we list it being talked about by people. And that would make everything subjective.

Can you give a better explanation of the distinction between subjective and objective?

London is a piece of naming, not a piece of land. As is table viz. Table is what we call certain bits of wood, used via custom for certain purposes. — AmadeusD

Just to be sure, the concern here is not "table", the type, but "That table", with the definite pronoun. It's an individual table.

What I want to show is that the conventional nature of much of our language is much broader than might casually be thought. In our example, you are supposing that "London" refers only by some convention, and so is subjective; but that "that table" has something that makes it objective. My strategy is to take each definition you give of the difference between the two, and swap tham to show that the difference does not hold.

So here you claim that "'London' is what we call a certain bit of land which, via custom for certain purposes, has been called 'London'". and I'll reply "'That table' is what we call a certain bit of the room, which, via custom for certain purposes, has been called 'that table'".

And again I will suggest that these are issues of convention, which have broad agreement across speakers of English, and so are not, as you suggested, subjective.

and again, the point here is to have you question whether the distinction between "subjective" and "objective" works in the way you suppose; providing a clear segregation of the ethical from the physical.

And again, the alternative on offer is the notion of direction of fit.
______________

I assume on this front you accept there are no 'facts of the matter' beyond impression? — AmadeusD

If you flick back through my comments in this thread, I hope it will be clear that I've argued for there being true "ought" statements, and that I would count these as "facts of the matter".

the conclusion was pretty obvious from the OP.


It’s a silly question.

...discover... — Bob Ross

That presumes a word-to-world direction of fit.

Yes, god explains everything: God did it. Hence god explains nothing.

If, theoretically, there were facts embedded into God's will such that "one ought not torture puppies for fun", then it would be a moral fact and meet your criteria — Bob Ross

This is where I disagree with Abraham. I don't see that "god wills it" is the same as "It is good" or "one ought do it".

In addition, it remains open as to whether we ought follow god's will.

Why ought we do as god says?

One cannot avoid having to make choices.

London is analogous to table. — AmadeusD

Why is London analogous to table, but wood isn't? London is also what it is - and that can also be boiled down to atoms, quarks etc... And the high-level organisation of those things is London.

Just repeating, my purpose here is to put the doubt to there being a decisive separation between "objective" and "subjective".

And the reason for doing so is to show that the difference between scientific and ethical statements is not that the one is objective, the other subjective.

it's about what one is doing with each - direction of fit.

...standard... — Bob Ross

Often the conversation degenerates into arguments about the "true" nature of this or that "ism". Better to keep to the basics. So in this thread, the interesting bit is not who is or is not an antirealist, but whether there are moral truths.

In this second case, I would say yes. 'wood' is merely a symbol for a state of affairs (that being liganous plant matter existing). The table part, could certainly be considered subjective - but that's a known issue (what makes a table, such as it is?). So, the statement (taking the identity of a table for granted) is objectively true. — AmadeusD

You are saying "yes", it is subjective, then concluding that it is objectively true? I don't follow this at all.

It represents teh subjective demarcation of certain of that land, — AmadeusD

But isn't the table also a subjective demarcation?

Wood exists as an abstract concept applied by custom to certain materials. Chemistry is just persistent opinions of the majority.

So again, what does "subjective" add to "I don't understand this to be a 'feature' of anything, but a subjective judgement"?

Is there a difference between reality, dreams, and hallucinations? — Patterner

Well, if here were not, why would we have three distinct terms for them?

And that pretty much sums up this thread: failure to pay attention to how words function.

The question was:

why "subjective"? What does that word add? — Banno

The first answer:

It strikes me that the claim could not be made, but for a subject perceiving it's value. — AmadeusD

London does't work.

Let's try "The table is made of wood". It strikes me that the claim "The table is made of wood" could not be made, but for a subject perceiving it's value.

So is "The table is made of wood" subjective?

If your conclusion is that London does not exist, it seems you have gone amiss somewhere in your argument.

Folk hereabouts seem to confuse "subjective" and "conventional".

Does the project of "logical positivism" or "empiricism" in general rest solely on Ayer's idea of sense data? — schopenhauer1

Check out the SEP article.

For the rest, yes, all good questions, which add to the puzzle of why Ayer limited his verification only to sense data. Austin's observation, that this is far too limited, is supported by your comment.

Those are subjective terms for subjective demarcations within actual states of affairs — AmadeusD

"London" is a subjective term?

Sure, the boundary of the city is a convention... but that does not make it subjective.

And that's actually why I chose that example.

Again, your point, if there is one, is obtuse.

Deflationists agree. — frank

Good for them.

again, the difference between "ought' and "is" is direction of fit rather than the ambiguity of states of affairs.

Nor further away. There are moral truths.

It strikes me that the claim could not be made, but for a subject perceiving it's value. — AmadeusD

Well, the claim that London is in England could not be made without a subject to make the claim. Is it subjective, too?

You will have real trouble attempting to show a distinct division between subjective and objective statements. Folk assume the distinction is clear. It isn't.

I'd say that it means the speaker believes it ought to be true, in the case of moral propositions. So "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true means that I believe one ought not kick puppies for fun. — Moliere

Too strong. It's not that the believing makes it so. If it's true, it's true regardless of the belief.

Nice summation.

I don't understand this to be a 'feature' of anything, but a subjective judgement. — AmadeusD

A judgement, perhaps, but why "subjective"? What does that word add?

Is there supposed to be come correspondence between the so called true statement and the world? Or does truth just have a social function, as a deflationist might say? — frank

Do we have to choose? Why not both, or either depending on what you are doing?

Dostoevsky's three questions — Moliere

He wrote one as well? I'll have to look for it...

:wink:

It seems right, though. — Moliere

There seems to be an advantage in keeping our ought statements small. Burying children under buildings is wrong, even if it helps one meet the Grand Strategy.

I recently finished reading some Kripke and he used "fact" to refer to some detectable feature of the world. — frank

Well, why not. There's more than one way to use the word, sometimes folk use it to refer to any truth, sometimes, and especially sometimes when doing philosophy, only to those truths that have a direction of fit of word-to-world; the speaker is attempting to match there words to the way things are.

Having two differing senses is fine, provided they are used consistently.

What would be an error, and I think we can see this in the OP, would be to mix the two uses and think one had found an argument. To say that "facts" are only sentences about the material world, and that only facts are true, and therefore only sentences about the material world are true.

I have a feeling that there's no reason not to proceed to lecture XI, — Ludwig V

Please do.

Something has to be said about Carnap and Ayer, as seen by Austin. Carnap had the idea that it didn't much matter which sentences were held to be true, so long as they were consistent with each other.

principle of tolerance: we are not in the business of setting up prohibitions but of arriving at conventions… In logic there are no morals. — SEP:Carnap

So one could have a linguistic pluralism in which one person spoke of rabbits being leporidae, and another a system in which gavagai are, maybe gavaidea... and the two schemes would in the end say much the same thing. For Carnap the touchstone was consistency, not correspondence. Ayer and Austin on the other hand opted for correspondence.

The emphasis on correspondence was a large part of the criticism of Austin by Strawson.

But the main criticism Austin levels against Ayer here is to reject the idea that there are a particular class of sentences which are apt to verification. For Ayer these are sentences about sense data. Austin, again by numerous examples, shows that this is not so, that is anything what is verifiable and what not is dependent on the circumstances - on what needs hedging.

, , I'm not keen on Abraham, sacrificing others at the behest of a voice in his head. I'd rather Tolstoy's three questions.

Well, if I have any opinion it's that assigning names to positions doesn't work, and doesn't help.

it's all in the detail.

I'd taken a bit of a hiatus these last few days, distracted by a couple of other threads. That and that your comment needed some digesting. I gather that you are pointing out that the sense-data language is a hedge on the object language; an unnecessary one since "we don't begin to hedge unless there is some special reason for doing so". I think this a fine point.

I supose Ayer might reply that there is good reason - the lack of incorrigibility...

But object-language is not derived from sense-data language. It's the other way round. (I'm hedging about "entailment", of course.) — Ludwig V

For now, I'm going to go with Ayer as arguing that language about material objects is entailed (for some unspecified notion of entailment...) by sense-data, and that sense data are a hedge on our ordinary talk about objects. Then Austin's reply is that there is no reason for such a hedge, especially since the unspecified nature of the entailment does not provide the sort-after incorrigibility.

Sure. Understood.

Banno’s biggest problem is that we thinks moral cognitivism is equivalent to moral realism; which makes no sense, especially since I happen to be a moral cognitivist that is a moral anti-realist. — Bob Ross

Moral cognitivism: Ethical statements may have a truth value. They may be true, they may be false. Moral cognitivism does not rule out assigning some third or even no, truth value to some Ethical statements. Hence a moral cognitivist may adopt, say, Kripke's theory of truth and assign no truth value to some ethical statements. Such a one would be a non-cognitive antirealist. But keep in mind that this term only has standing in contrast to moral non-cognitivism; we would not use "non-cognitivism" if it were not for "cognitivism"

Moral realism is sometimes understood as claiming that moral statements have the same sort of standing as other statements about how things are; a cognate of moral objectivism. It is also sometimes understood as asserting that moral statements are all either true or they are false, a notion which is very nearly the same. Again, moral realism is set up as against moral antirealism; we would not use "realism" if it were not for "antirealism"

If there is a point to be made about "-ism"s, it is that no such nomenclature can ever be finalised, nor even agreed on. The mere act of setting out a nomenclature invites folk to contradict it or invent novelties that do not fit in. Arguing in terms of "-ism"s is fraught with ambiguity. Best avoided.

But honour is due to you for reconsidering your position.

That doesn't mean that language entails behaviour. It doesn't. — Pantagruel

The point here is to show how an ought statement follows from an is statement. That's what Searle does.

It would be no defence, on being accused of reneging on a promise, to say "Oh, yes, I made a promise, but I did not undertake an obligation!"

Languge does entail behaviour, because language is behaviour.

You made the claim, of the central figure of Ordinary Language Philosophy, that he is not an Ordinary Language Philosopher. This is the person for whom the term was coined.

The only conclusion is that you have not read Sense and Sensibilia, but have instead made up your own version both of what Austin said and what Ordinary Language Philosophy is.

I'm glad you appreciate the efforts of @Antony Nickles and @Ludwig V, but our previous experience tells me that they are attempting to sow on barren ground.

Of course, you might improve. There can be no substitute a detailed, comprehensive engagement with the material.

Read the damn book. Or bugger off.

Tomasello himself was very influenced by philosophers such as John Searle with their idea of "social facts". But he did not stop at just going off on a mind-journey. He actually experimented and observed. — schopenhauer1

On Searle, I wrote:

Collective intentionality

You can't play football on your own.

And if you send 36 players onto a field, with each trying to kick the ball between the goal posts, but that does not amount to a game of football.

But 18 people trying together to kick the ball between the posts, with another 18 trying together to stop them - there's the makings of a game.

So it is clear that there is a difference between "I am trying to kick a goal" and "We are trying to kick a goal". Collective intent is not simply the concatenation or addition of individual intents. Collective intent is shared; collective intentionality is shared.

Searle introduced the term in his paper "Collective intentions and actions". The argument there is that collective intentions are not reducible to individual intentions and beliefs, and yet happen in an individual's mind. There is no supernatural linking of minds here, just the intent to work as a group.

Briefly and dogmatically, Searle contends that
We-intentions do not reduce to I-intentions; they are basic,
We-intentions happen in individuals
We-intentions have as a background that there are others who may engage in the collective exercise
We-intentions have an intent and a propositional content, S(p), that aligns with the force and propositional content of speech acts, F(p). — Banno

So where does Tomasello differ to Searle, what sort of evidence is there, as opposed to hypothesising, and how does that fit in with this thread?