What? I didn't charge you with anything. — AmadeusD

An appeal to authority is a fallacy. You charged me with exactly that.

And what contradiction, sorry? I'm trying to have a discussion not a pissing match. — AmadeusD

Performative contradiction.

You first claimed that it is not the case that one ought not kick puppies. You then went on and realized that sometimes kicking puppies is forbidden and accused me of 'appealing to authority'.

What is the what is going on with respect to the obligation not to kick puppies? — Michael

I used the phrase to reference reality. There are many such linguistic tools. None of which are capable of effectively capturing everything that has ever happened. So, the phrases "the way things are", "the way things were", "the case at hand", "what's going on", "what went on", "events", etc. are all rightfully employed when the appropriate situations/circumstances need discussed.

If it is the case that kicking puppies is forbidden, then it is the case that one ought not kick puppies, and hence "one ought not kick puppies" is true.

I don't think so no. It can be the case that a code of conduct exists, and that a group or society accept, and live by, a code of conduct. So you could say, "In this quite particular scenario, it is the case that one ought not kick puppies" but that's just an appeal to authority... so, I suppose in some sense i have to concede here but it's not a concession on my position, just on the way it applies. — AmadeusD

That's odd. While contradicting yourself out loud you (inaccurately)charge me with a fallacy?

Are you questioning whether or not it is the case that we ought not kick puppies?
— creativesoul

Realise you didn't ask me, but it's apt to my considerations of the discussion - I don't think it could be the case, as it's a judgement, not a state of affairs with with one's opinion could correspond. — AmadeusD

As if codes of conduct cannot be considered as an elemental constituent within a state of affairs? As if it is never the case that kicking puppies is forbidden?

:brow:

A correspondence theorist might well be rightly puzzled as to what it is to which an ought statements corresponds. But to my eye this is not a reason to think there are no true ought statements, but instead to question if truth is always correspondence. — Banno

Hey my friend. I think perhaps correspondence and coherence combined.

I've been mulling over promises...

When the direction of fit is such that keeping one's word confirms one's sincerity, it is certainly the case that if one is sincere, then one will keep one's word. Hence, when a promise is made to do something, it is always the case that one ought do it. If it is not the case, then it is not a promise.

Correspondence is an emergent relation between what is thought and/or believed about what is going on and what is going on. When what is thought about what's going on is 'equivalent' enough, or close enough to what is going on, then truth emerges. That is how meaningful true belief become real/actual/manifest/formed. That's what it takes. That's how correspondence 'between' belief about reality and reality(hence, meaningful true belief) emerges onto the world stage.

If it is the case that we ought not kick puppies, then "we ought not kick puppies" is true.

Are you questioning whether or not it is the case that we ought not kick puppies?

So by what means are moral claims made true? What sort of things (if any) do they “correspond” to? — Michael

Those are good questions.

I find it a bit amusing that you're insisting that I'm not doing metaethics while I'm doing nothing but thinking about morality and ethics as a subject matter in its own right. As if the only thing that counts as "metaethics" is discourse about what it means for a moral judgment/statement to be true.

I'm attempting to openly consider many different takes/positions on the matter at hand.

So, I do not care what label/name you give it... I'm interested in discussing what it takes for some utterances of ought to be true.

It’s about not understanding what it means for a moral sentence to be true and not understanding how to verify or falsify a moral sentence. — Michael

Those could be perplexing considerations if we work from the conventional notions of truth as in using one and one only. Perhaps different sorts of claims are true by virtue of different means, or by virtue of corresponding to different sorts of things.

There is more to the issue than you and some others seem willing to admit. — Michael

Well, in my own defense, I was simply working from exactly what you boiled the dissonance down to.

It doesn't resolve it because I don't know which side to take. Do I accept that, as a categorical imperative, I ought not kick puppies, or do I accept that categorical imperatives make no sense? You might be able to pick a side without justification but I can't.

Hence why I remain a skeptic. — Michael

Hence, from that I offered...

Divorce the utterance from the label and walk away a free man. "One ought not kick puppies" is both sensible and true. It's definitely sensible, and that's enough, if you'd like to set the truth issue aside. If categorical imperatives make no sense, and "one ought not kick puppies" makes perfect sense, then "one ought not kick puppies" cannot count as a "categorical imperative", for the claim cannot do both, make perfect sense and make no sense..

Time to choose between the archaic taxonomy(categorical imperatives) and what you know is true despite not fully understanding how and/or why it is.

I find the focus on what counts as normativity as irrelevant to whether or not some utterances of ought are true. I'm open to be persuaded otherwise.

It doesn't resolve it because I don't know which side to take. Do I accept that, as a categorical imperative, I ought not kick puppies, or do I accept that categorical imperatives make no sense? — Michael

Divorce the utterance from the label and walk away a free man. "One ought not kick puppies" is both sensible and true. It's definitely sensible, and that's enough, if you'd like to set the truth issue aside. If categorical imperatives make no sense, and "one ought not kick puppies" makes perfect sense, then "one ought not kick puppies" cannot count as a "categorical imperative", for the claim cannot do both, make perfect sense and make no sense..

Time to choose between the archaic taxonomy(categorical imperatives) and what you know is true despite not fully understanding how and/or why it is.

The end.

When person A says to person B "I promise, I'll make sure you have a rose garden on Sunday", then come Monday person B ought have a rose garden. That is true because it corresponds to what A was doing when making the promise. That's what promising means.

There's your resolution regarding the dissonance.

As an aside, Proust caused a severe case of cognitive dissonance within me after following his logic as he set out Gettier during a lengthy conversation he and I had over a decade ago. That was my first full fledged experience regarding deep considerations of the Gettier problem. That resolution wasn't nearly as neat or as tidy as this one.

:wink:

Does it? I mean justificatory regress has to stop somewhere, right? Why not right there?

it hasn't been proven that the categorical imperative "one ought not kick puppies" is true. — Michael

Need it be 'proven' in order for you to know it?

Ah... sorry, I'm a bit late to the discussion and I did not perform the due diligence of reading enough to know that...

Perhaps dropping the notions of categorical and hypothetical imperatives would help?

Ah I see. So that serves as a clear cut counterexample to the notion that all claims in the form of "One ought not X" imply conditionals.

What I was getting at is that the unconditional phrase "one ought not X" being true is vacuous. It is only meaningfully true if implying something like "according to Y, one ought not X" or "one ought not X or Y will happen". — Michael

"One ought not kick puppies."

How do your claims quoted above cover that one? Seems perfectly meaningful and true from where I sit despite not needing to be bolstered by what you suggest all such claims require.

Drawing and maintaining a distinction between reward/punishment and causality is not unnecessary regarding (2).

Your rendering makes (2) true. Mine does not.

So, (1) and (3) but not (2) on my rendering and all three on yours.

Here, we look at the consequences of drawing the distinction or not, and we can all see that it is not an unnecessarily pedantic endeavor.

My use of the phrase "reward and punishment" was an inclusive phrase to account for any desirable or undesirable consequence. — Michael

Unnecessarily multiplying entities. Reward and punishment requires a judge. Causality does not.

So, (1) and (3) but not (2) as written???

Because there is no need for a rule giver(God) or reward/punishment but rather just good ole knowledge of causality. Hence, it is not the case that obligation is vacuous sans a rule giver and/or reward/punishment.

b) (as mentioned by Anscombe, Wittgenstein, and Schopenhauer) the very concept of obligations sans a rule-giver or punishment and reward is vacuous, and — Michael

That may not be true.

Seems like the demonstrably provable negative affects/effects stemming from not honoring one's voluntarily obligations(promises) should work just fine in lieu of a rule-giver and/or reward/punishment. Look no further than the sheer numbers of Americans who rightly do not trust politicians as proof of the vital importance of all that. Knowledge of inevitable consequences seems to me to do a better job than God or reward/punishment when it comes to knowledge of how keeping one's word is imperative to a successful society of self-governing interdependent people. I think that that is true regardless of what anyone thinks about it.

This, in summary, is where the confusion lay: I was thinking you were saying us contemplating what is acceptable/unacceptable counts as moral facts when, if I am understanding you correctly now, you are not saying that. — Bob Ross

Not what I said then or now.

It's not that simplistic. I have no "access" to your parents and yet I know that they're different. — Michael

Are you claiming my mom is to my dad as perception is to reality(as Kant's Noumena/phenomena distinction)?

Which one is the parent in itself?

:wink:

Ok, but, like I said before, someone being in the event of making moral judgments (“considering what counts as acceptable or unacceptable behavior”) is not a moral fact in any meaningful sense. — Bob Ross

Where do I start? Sigh...



All practiced usage of a term, any term, counts as a 'meaningful' sense(scarequotes intentional) of that particular term. Oddly enough, the term "meaningful" is superfluous here. All senses of all terms are meaningful to the practitioners.

I'm not alone in holding that events are facts. You insist that in order for me to be arguing in the affirmative for moral realism I must use the subjective/objective dichotomy as well as the mind dependent/independent dichotomy. That's not true.

"Being in the event of making moral judgements" is not something I would condone writing. That just IS categorizing thought, belief and/or behaviour as acceptable/unacceptable in some set of specific circumstances. It just IS practicing the application of one's moral belief/code. Moral judgments are not equivalent to moral facts. All moral judgments are acts. Not all moral events/facts are acts of moral judgment.

Hence, in short summary, the quote directly above contains a non sequitur followed by a textbook demonstrable falsehood.



True to a strong methodological naturalist bent, on my view, the simplest moral facts existed in their entirety - they emerged onto the world stage - long before our picking them out to the exclusion of all else with our naming and descriptive practices. They do not consist of language use.

Some events count as moral because they share the same basic common denominator that all moral things include. Morality, after all, boils down to coded of conduct. Ethical considerations, after all, are always about what counts as acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. All things moral include that. There are no exceptions. There is no stronger justificatory ground. That all serves as more than adequate ground to discriminate between facts. Moral facts involve what I've been setting out. Non moral ones do not. That commonality makes all ethical considerations and all moral discourse count as moral.

What grounds your rejection of using the same common denominator to discriminate between kinds of events/facts/states of affairs/happenings?

Literally every moral anti-realist position agrees that there are people “considering what counts as acceptable or unacceptable behavior”--the disagreement is about whether those considerations are about mind(stance)-independently existing morals. Your view, I think, just completely sidesteps the actual metaethical discussion....

I get that you define ‘moral fact’ in a way such that a promise is one, being an event which has to do with “considering what counts as acceptable or unacceptable behavior”, but that, again, is just sidestepping the issue... is that promise, or that “considering what counts as acceptable or unacceptable behavior”, about something objective? It seems as though your use of ‘moral facticity’ just doesn’t find this question relevant...

It's irrelevant for different reasons. I've not used "moral fscticity". May I suggest you reread our exchange?

What you characterize as "sidesteps the actual metaethical discussion" I see as dissolving the issue by virtue of realizing that the problem is and always was the language use itself. The inherent inadequacy of the objective/subjective distinction seems like a novel consideration here.

You seem to find considerable difficulty accepting the facts for what they are when I'm saying stuff that you agree with. That's quite strange to me. What's the title of the thread again? What would a solution be like if not at least somewhat agreeable?

If moral facts are just events where someone is considering what is acceptable/unacceptable to do, then it isn’t necessarily the case that their judgment (conclusion they make) about what is acceptable/unacceptable corresponds to what mind(stance)-independently exists. Hence, it is not necessarily the case that ‘moral facts’ exist in any metaethically meaningful sense of the term.

The last statement is phrased as though it is a conclusion. It does not follow what preceded it. It does not follow from the fact that I'm not using your preferred terminological framework that what I'm arguing does not make sense.

↪hypericin Good article. You should consider starting a thread specifically on it. It might be fun. — Banno

I agree.

I, too, strongly suspect that morality is inevitable as an evolutionary feature/consequence of our being interdependent social creatures.

Don't thank me, thank the one I adopted that from... probably A.J. Ayer.

Seems to me that such positions are inherently flawed in that they are untenable and/or self-defeating.
— creativesoul

Sorry, just to be clear, you're indicating a Kantian "We know we don't see things as they are" position is untenable? — AmadeusD

Yes. In order to know that there is a difference between two things, one must have access to both in order to compare them.

i will explore every alcove on the way down haha — AmadeusD

That's up... out of the bottle. Not down.

:wink:

Well, I reject Kant's Noumena as well as phenomenalist approaches on the obvious grounds that drawing the distinction between the world and perception of it requires a comparitive analysis of both. By definition, we have no access to Noumena. By definition, all we have are our perceptions(Stove's gem). Hence, if that is the case, there is no way to know that our perceptions do not match up to the world, so...

Seems to me that such positions are inherently flawed in that they are untenable and/or self-defeating.

Interesting. As you'll have seen, It appears i must necessarily be heading toward that conclusion. But i will explore every alcove on the way down haha — AmadeusD

Strictly speaking, everything ever thought, believed, and/or uttered comes through a subject, so in that sense, nothing thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise expressed/uttered is strictly objective. The dichotomy also fails in all the same ways as the internal/external dichotomy fails. That is, they are both inherently incapable of taking account of that which consists of both, and thus is neither one or the other. Truth, thought, belief, and meaning are all precisely such things. But I digress... that's another topic altogether.

Those dichotomies as well as a few others add nothing but unnecessary confusion/overcomplication to philosophy.

...nothing is objective. — AmadeusD

If that's the case, then the term "subjective" loses all its meaning and use because it loses the ability to discriminate between different kinds of things. Hence, it is best to abandon the dichotomy altogether, which is what I've done...

My problem is that I don’t think there are any moral facts, period. — Bob Ross

Your problem just may be the terminological usage you've confined yourself with. Are you using the terms "moral" and "facts" consistently? If so, exactly what counts as "moral" and "fact"?

So, correct me if I am wrong, a moral fact is an event such that there is someone in that event that is considering what counts as acceptable or unacceptable behavior? Am I on the right track? If not, then please elaborate on that portion (of the quote above). — Bob Ross

Yes. The basic dichotomy I'm setting out and working from is moral and not.

Promising is voluntarily entering into an obligation to make the world match your words. Are you denying that much?

No, that’s fine; but I am only not going to break that obligation (when push comes to shove) if I have obligated myself to fulfilling my professed obligations (promises): are you denying that?

Yes, I am denying that.

By virtue of promising, one already obligates themselves to make the world match their words(keep their promise). That's the whole point of promise making. If one does not already obligate themselves to keep their word, then they do not intend to make the world match their words, and hence they've not made a promise at all, for they did not believe what they said. They've just plain lied. The moral obligation remains regardless. The moral fact is such that one made a promise. True statements about that moral fact will correspond to it.

Hence, if today you promise to plant me a rose garden on Monday, then come Tuesday I ought to have one. That's true by virtue of corresponding to the relevant moral fact of the matter at hand.

What are you saying you are setting out to do? Setting out to denote how hard it is to nail down what counts as morally factual?

No.

Either way, you should be able to give a definition of what is a moral fact, no?

Yes, and I have repeatedly done so from the very beginning of this exchange.

To satisfy a moral arealist such as Bob Ross I think they must be context independent. — hypericin

Moral facts, on Bob's view, cannot exist for they must be mind-independent(whatever they are), objective entities and given that all things moral directly involve unacceptable/acceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour and all unacceptable/acceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour is existentially dependent upon minds and contexts, then it only follows that there is no such thing as moral facts.

A large part of the problem involves the underlying dichotomies at work.

I have no problems with that SEP article: I think it is a good outline of the landscape. — Bob Ross

Okay. Good. Do you understand that I'm setting out the bit I bolded?

...you are trying to imply that there are moral facts simply because there are people engaging in morally signified events... — Bob Ross

No. I'm clearly delineating, not implying, that all facts are events(what happened or is happening) and that moral facts are distinct from all others in that they directly involve actively considering what counts as acceptable/unacceptable behaviour, whether that be our own or others'

Do you have an obligation to do X after you've made the promise?

No. I only have an obligation to do X upon promising X if I am equally obligated to fulfill my promises. — Bob Ross

Promising is voluntarily entering into an obligation to make the world match your words. Are you denying that much?

From the SEP's article on moral realism...

It is worth noting that, while moral realists are united in their cognitivism and in their rejection of error theories, they disagree among themselves not only about which moral claims are actually true but about what it is about the world that makes those claims true. Moral realism is not a particular substantive moral view nor does it carry a distinctive metaphysical commitment over and above the commitment that comes with thinking moral claims can be true or false and some are true. Still, much of the debate about moral realism revolves around either what it takes for claims to be true or false at all (with some arguing that moral claims do not have what it takes) or what it would take specifically for moral claims to be true (with some arguing that moral claims would require something the world does not provide).

The debate between moral realists and anti-realists assumes, though, that there is a shared object of inquiry—in this case, a range of claims all involved are willing to recognize as moral claims—about which two questions can be raised and answered: Do these claims purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false? Are some of them true? Moral realists answer ‘yes’ to both, non-cognitivists answer ‘no’ to the first (and, by default, ‘no’ to the second) while error theorists answer ‘yes’ to the first and ‘no’ to the second. (With the introduction of “minimalism” about truth and facts, things become a bit more complicated. See the section on semantics, below.) To note that some other, non-moral, claims do not (or do) purport to report facts or that none (or some) of them are true, is to change the subject. That said, it is strikingly hard to nail down with any accuracy just which claims count as moral and so are at issue in the debate....