The action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: I eat meat. The outcome of the action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: my hunger is sated.

Whether I ought or ought not eat meat does not affect the choice and it does not affect the outcome of that choice.

So, in my view, it just doesn't matter. I want to know why ethical non-naturalists believe that it does. As I asked on the second page 7 years ago, "is it just a matter of principle; that we can (unbeknownst to us) be right in our moral convictions?"

The outcome of the action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: my hunger is sated. — Michael

But there is a difference. In one you have performed an immoral act.

Whether I ought or ought not eat meat does not affect the choice — Michael

Well, yes, it does. That's the point.

it just doesn't matter. — Michael

...because you refuse to recognise the ethical import of "ought".

That you ought not eat meat does have a direct consequence on the outcome of your eating meat. You have done something you ought not have.

I think I can rest my case here. There's no need for you to repeat yourself yet again.

In one you have performed an immoral act. — Banno

I'm asking why that matters. What is the motivation to be moral?

I think I can rest my case here. There's no need for you to repeat yourself yet again. — Banno

It matters that you have performed an immoral act because the act was immoral.

That's what "immoral" does.

Whether I ought or ought not eat meat does not affect the choice
— Michael
Well, yes, it does. That's the point. — Banno

Does it make a difference to the choice as to whether or not to eat meat? For example, does the fact that Michael ought not to eat meat make it more likely that he won't?

What do you think?

What do you think? — Banno

What do you think? I'm actually interested in your view.

EDIT: there is mutual incomprehension here. I understand what Michael is getting at, but that's because I already agree with him and have thought along these lines myself. And no doubt your own view seems the height of common sense to you, but I don't get it.

I think you need to fill the question out. That's why I returned it to you. Generally, I don't see that your last few posts show much at all. It looks to me like you are fishing. So I've thrown it back to you, to see if you have a point to make.

I think you need to fill the question out. That's why I returned it to you. Generally, I don't see that your last few posts show much at all. It looks to me like you are fishing. So I've thrown it back to you, to see if you have a point to make. — Banno

OK, it's the same as Michael's point. It's belief in what is right that affects what we do. What is actually right doesn't. I don't see how it possibly could. However, I think you have already rejected this. So I'm interested, how does what is actually right, sans belief, actually affect our choices?

This is like puling teeth. Let's see if I can articulate your argument for you. Your intuition is that there is a problem with the symmetry of belief and truth against is and ought.

It is not true that John can walk through walls.

Even if John believes that he can walk through walls, he will not be able to. Regardless of John's belief, he will not be able to walk through walls.

The broken symmetry in your intuition is something like this:

Grant me for the sake of the discussion that it is true that we ought not eat meat. Put this in the place of "John can walk through walls" above.

It is not true that John ought eat meat.

The intuition is something like that if John believes he ought eat meat, he will still be able to - unlike walking through the wall. The symmetry is supposedly broken, and hence your claim that it's the belief, not the truth, that makes the difference.

I hope you can see that the substitution here is incomplete. It's not "if John believes he ought eat meat, he will be able to" that results, but "If John believes he ought eat meat, he still ought not"

Anyway, that's were charity leads me in attempting to understand you.

Can you have or hold morals that may not ever be seen in action? perhaps morals are justification itself.
what if, intentions are a/the gateway to potentially lead to one participating in questionable behavior and ,by justifying ONLY planned actions as they play the role as "the excuse to act". despite the outcome that was bound to occur...no matter what, for better or worse.
***an excuse to act = tricking the brain into planning a justified NOT BELIEF, but idea with reason TO MAKE BELIEF through others perceptions without the true action explained aloud, despite the facts of matter being known or knowable, only interally between self and mind, know the true reason/s for hiding a "truth" thanks to privacy within us and our wants needs goals desires that we allow permit tolerate accept and all its opposites and vice versas equally considered and accounted for....the space for thought is and is found when and in using the brain silently within the minds limits, which the self can control as boundaries contrstraints etc for what it really is thats happening..e.g. daydreaming, multitasking, texting and in a meeting on zoom, other examples exist

*reason=goal or desire? i think they exists with and without a belief system but im looking at linking goals or desires to ones purpose in life, the one that exists despite knowing it. Though knowable. Morals are justification itself.

you can have intention without a goal, i say yes..but can you without a desire? i say no..for now at least. Your intent though doesnt need its own purpose, because it doesnt mean you act on it according to how you imagined you would act...Once the act occurs, your purpose could be repurposed successfully... but how much it was planned, thought of or out vs imagined or believed .[ex. my intention was/is to have fun tonight-8.20.23 522pm]] AND without parameters or constraints OR GOALS, intentions can change in decision making moments through that experience of choosing to act/acting on those intentions and how what you imagined vs what reality played out was very different

Intentions show that the individual has thought.
What happens when you bypass your intentions? COULD INTENSIONS COULD BE THE BRAIN TRICKING ITS SELF OR BODY? WHETHER WE ACT ON THEM OR NOT..PLANNED OR RANDOM, COMPLETE ATTEMPT AND FAIL, OR SUCCESS OF WHAT FROM ACTION IS JUSTIFIED? IS IT STILL WITHOUT ACTION?

I'm not saying that the natural sciences study the normative value of pain and pleasure. I'm saying that pain and pleasure are natural properties. — Michael

According to basic ethical theories, such as hedonism, they have normative value. Given that the normative value of pain and pleasure are not the object of natural science, basic ethical theories are not naturalistic according to your definition of natural.

And it's not even clear what it means to call them "natural properties." As far as I'm concerned the natural sciences cannot even demonstrate that qualia like pain and pleasure exist. Moore was never able to define what he meant by "natural," so these problems are not surprising.

Moore, as explained in that quote in my previous comment, and also from his open-question argument: — Michael

The aspect of Moore that you are honing in on was rejected, even in English-speaking moral philosophy. Hare showed this most clearly. Thus we can all agree that Moore was wrong about this:

Thirdly, Moore held good to be an independent property that stood on its own, like the property yellow or red, and that was identifiable as such. But this could not be the case. A comparison between good and yellow showed that good was always dependent on other properties by reference to which it had to be understood. For instance, it is clearly legitimate to say that x and y are exactly alike save that x is yellow and y is not. It is not legitimate to say that x and y are exactly alike save that x is good and y is not. If x really is good while y is not, this can only be because x and y differ in some other respect. If x is a strawberry it will be good, say, because it is red and juicy, and y will be bad because it is not. — Peter L. P. Simpson, On the Naturalistic Fallacy and St. Thomas, p. 4

Hedonism is an example of ethical naturalism. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.
Richard Hare is a non-cognitivist. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.
Peter Simpson is an ethical naturalist. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.

And as per the SEP article:

In particular, there is widespread agreement that G.E. Moore’s account of goodness in Principia Ethica is a paradigmatically non-naturalist account. Indeed, if a representative sample of contemporary philosophers were asked to name a non-naturalist in meta-ethics then Moore’s name almost certainly would predominate. For better or worse, Moore’s discussion of non-naturalism profoundly shaped 20th century meta-ethics. Thomas Baldwin was not exaggerating much when he claimed that, “twentieth century British ethical theory is unintelligible without reference to Principia Ethica..."

Can we now agree that I'm accurately presenting the ethical non-naturalist view?

It's belief in what is right that affects what we do. What is actually right doesn't. I don't see how it possibly could.

This objection seems applicable to almost all actions. If my car won't start and I attach jumper cables to it, it's my belief that the battery is dead, not the battery's being dead, that is the proximate cause of my actions. The battery might actually not be dead at all, and I could just have a blown fuse or a bad starter, so it's clearly the belief doing the lifting here vis-á-vis my actions.

That said, my belief that the battery is dead doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the fact that my car won't start. Maybe the battery isn't really dead, in which case, jumping the car won't help. This will in turn force me to investigate deeper into what has gone wrong with my car, and my beliefs will be shaped by the actual condition of my car.

For moral realists, moral propositions are something we can ascertain they truth or falsity of, at least to some extent. Presumably, if "one ought not eat meat," is true, this moral fact is relevant to beliefs because someone's beliefs about whether or not they ought to eat meat are going to be shaped by this fact. That moral facts are more difficult to ascertain than the status of a car battery doesn't really matter here. It's still the case that, given moral realism and given we have the belief that we have some ability to develop beliefs that are more likely to be true than false, our beliefs should tend towards moral realities. This might only be true on historical time scales, which has tended to be true for objective facts in the sciences at any rate.

Granted, it may be quite impossible, given our evidence, to tell "what the right thing to do," was in any specific case. But this tends to be true of history as well, and yet this paucity of evidence is normally not grounds for dismissing the existence of historical facts. Incomplete moral knowledge might still allow us to rule out some things. Just like a doctor might not know how to cure a specific cancer, but knows lighting the patient on fire won't do it.

Moral facts are only unable to affect beliefs (and thus action) if they either don't exist or are impossible to discover. I don't see how moral facts could exist and be discoverable and not effect the world.

Hedonism is an example of ethical naturalism. — Michael

No it's not, and I just gave you an argument for why. Are you able to address arguments?

1. According to Hedonism one ought pursue pleasure and avoid pain.
2. That one ought or ought not do such a thing is not accessible to natural science.
3. Therefore, Hedonism is not naturalistic.

The more relevant question is:

Given that I already believe that this is immoral, what follows if my belief is true and what follows if my belief is false?

In the case of the dead battery, if I believe that the battery is dead then if my belief is true then the car won't run and if my belief is false then the car will run.

Is there anything like this for the case that I believe that eating meat is immoral? Are there consequences to eating meat that occur only if eating meat is immoral, or only if it's not?

No it's not, and I just gave you an argument for why. Are you able to address arguments? — Leontiskos

Ethical naturalism

Ethical naturalism encompasses any reduction of ethical properties, such as 'goodness', to non-ethical properties; there are many different examples of such reductions, and thus many different varieties of ethical naturalism. Hedonism, for example, is the view that goodness is ultimately just pleasure.

Hedonism

One scientific naturalist argument for hedonism is this: in the value domain we should be scientific naturalists in our methods of inquiry; hedonism is the best option in respect of scientific naturalism; therefore, we should be hedonists about value.

Moral naturalism

Another view that is often closely associated with naturalism is “reductivism.” The reductivist says that moral properties reduce to some other kind of property.

...

We should note at the outset that there is a paradigm example of a reductive view, which is used almost every time a metaethicist discussing reductivism needs a toy example to play with. That paradigm is the hedonic reduction: that goodness is pleasure and therefore reduces to pleasure.

- You remind me of a Biblical fundamentalist who only accepts the KJV. You have your sacred Wikipedia and SEP along with your idiosyncratic interpretations, and you refuse to consider any other source, even the primary sources for your sacred document. You may have never read an actual philosopher in your life.

You may have never read an actual philosopher in your life. — Leontiskos

That would make my degree in Philosophy all the more impressive.

That would make my degree in Philosophy all the more impressive. — Michael

Good one.

Make me up a non-naturalst ethical theory.

Would an example be ethical itemizationism? That's the belief that something is bad if it appears on a random list of things we've itemized as bad.
This List of High Truths is accepted implicilitely.
There are no reasons why something is or isn't on the list and you can't determine any sort of consistency among the rules where you could figure out what additional rules may follow. It has no overriding theme either.

You can Google "ethical itemizationism" for more information on it, but you'll likely only pull up this post because this is its first appearance.

If this is a good example of ethical non-naturalism, and all other examples would follow similar trends, then I'd agree, ethical non-naturalism offers no reason to follow it.

Given that I already believe that this is immoral, what follows if my belief is true and what follows if my belief is false?

In the case of the dead battery, if I believe that the battery is dead then if my belief is true then the car won't run and if my belief is false then the car will run.

Is there anything like this for the case that I believe that eating meat is immoral? Are there consequences to eating meat that

There might not be any immediately discernible difference. This can be true in the case of the car battery as well. You might actually have a live battery with a broken terminal, and simply attaching the cables is what is allowing the car to start, no actual "jumping," with another vehicle required. Or you can completely erroneous beliefs about how a car battery actually functions and still successfully jump start it.

The consequences of acting immorally would tend to be to make the world shittier, to put it in the simplist terms possible. Because your ordered a veal parm the restaurant is going to order more veal. In the aggregate, the sort of behavior you engage in will lead to many more veal calves leading lives of atrocious suffering, while also contributing to ocean acidification and global warming.

Consider that most people have some public policies they would like to see implemented and some reformed or repealed. If we believe policy reform does any good at all, then we believe that human action, especially collective human action, can radically alter the degree to which humans (and other creatures) flourish during their lifetimes. We could consider dramatic success stories like the Republic of Korea, Iceland, or Finland, where a great deal of the population was lifted out of oppressive poverty in a relatively short period of time as evidence for the effectiveness of reforms in some cases.

The result of collective immoral action is more shitty lives with more suffering and less flourishing. I think we can think of plenty of cases where the aggregate effect of petty cruelty or callous indifference adds up to considerable consequences for a wide swath of people. Plus, plenty of utopian visions seem fairly feasible IF people would act according to certain standards (this of course doesn't preclude their being completely unrealistic, given how we are).

But I don't think you can generally tie minor moral infractions to specific consequences, just as smoking a single cigarette isn't going to be tied to developing lung disease.

(Note: I do not intend to imply that all theories will say something like: "acts that make the world shittier are immoral." The criteria for what makes an act good or bad might vary. However, in general, an observable effect of immoral acts will tend to be a shittier life/country/world.)

That would make my degree in Philosophy all the more impressive. — Michael

You can't manage to answer a three-step syllogism and you expect me to believe you have a degree in philosophy? When it comes down to it all you are able to provide are arguments from authority, and this is a problem even ignoring the fact that you are misreading the authorities.

Make me up a non-naturalst ethical theory. — Hanover

There's Moore's impersonal consequentialism.

When it comes down to it all you are able to provide are arguments from authority, and this is a problem even ignoring the fact that you are misreading the authorities. — Leontiskos

I'll quote Moore's Principia Ethica:

The name then is perfectly general; for, no matter what the something is that good is held to mean, the theory is still Naturalism. Whether good be defined as yellow or green or blue, as loud or soft, as round or square, as sweet or bitter, as productive of life or productive of pleasure, as willed or desired or felt: whichever of these or of any other object in the world, good may be held to mean, the theory, which holds it to mean them, will be a naturalistic theory. I have called such theories naturalistic because all of these terms denote properties, simple or complex, of some simple or complex natural object.

---

According to Hedonism one ought pursue pleasure and avoid pain.
That one ought or ought not do such a thing is not accessible to natural science.
Therefore, Hedonism is not naturalistic. — Leontiskos

Hedonism is the theory that we ought pursue pleasure because pleasure is good. I'll quote Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:

Now, pleasure is in itself a good; indeed it’s the only good if we set aside immunity from pain; and pain is in itself an evil, and without exception the only evil; or else ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have no meaning!

It is in defining goodness in terms of some natural property – in this case, pleasure – that makes it an ethical naturalist theory. And then, according to Moore, deriving the normative claim that we ought pursue pleasure commits the naturalistic fallacy.

The consequences of acting immorally would tend to be to make the world shittier, to put it in the simplist terms possible. Because your ordered a veal parm the restaurant is going to order more veal. In the aggregate, the sort of behavior you engage in will lead to many more veal calves leading lives of atrocious suffering, while also contributing to ocean acidification and global warming. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is the connection between acting immorally and causing suffering? Remember that I'm arguing about the implications of ethical non-naturalism.

I'll ask the previous question a different way:

Given that I already believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if my belief is true and what follows if my belief is false?

This is like puling teeth. Let's see if I can articulate your argument for you. Your intuition is that there is a problem with the symmetry of belief and truth against is and ought. — Banno

Maybe, not sure if I understand you there.

It is not true that John can walk through walls.

With you so far.

Even if John believes that he can walk through walls, he will not be able to. Regardless of John's belief, he will not be able to walk through walls.

Very good, still with you.

The broken symmetry in your intuition is something like this:

Grant me for the sake of the discussion that it is true that we ought not eat meat. Put this in the place of "John can walk through walls" above.

It is not true that John ought eat meat.

The intuition is something like that if John believes he ought eat meat, he will still be able to - unlike walking through the wall. The symmetry is supposedly broken, and hence your claim that it's the belief, not the truth, that makes the difference.

Yes, something like that.

I hope you can see that the substitution here is incomplete. It's not "if John believes he ought eat meat, he will be able to" that results, but "If John believes he ought eat meat, he still ought not"

Anyway, that's were charity leads me in attempting to understand you.

Not sure about that bit, but thanks anyway. I'll give it some thought. The idea is that the fact that John can't walk through a wall will affect his choices eventually - it is reality asserting itself. This doesn't happen with oughts. It may be that John out not eat meat, and he does wrong by doing so, even if he believes he is doing right, but nothing happens as a result. If an angel came down with a clip-board and informed John of his moral ineptitude, that would be like him banging his head on the wall, but presumably it doesn't. Unless you want to say we apprehend moral truths by a faculty such as conscience, perhaps. It just seems there is no role here for moral truths to play - all they do is confer an invisible label that no one can read on actions labelling them 'good' or 'bad'. But for you they are still of practical import, and that's where I am baffled.They play no role in deliberation, they confer no consequences, I'm not sure what function they have.

It is in defining goodness in terms of some natural property – in this case, pleasure – that makes it an ethical naturalist theory. And then, according to Moore, deriving the normative claim that we ought pursue pleasure commits the naturalistic fallacy. — Michael

Moore's view is this:

"In applying this view, Moore gave it the form of what today is called “indirect” or “two-level” (Hare 1981) consequentialism. In deciding how to act, we should not try to assess individual acts for their specific consequences; instead, we should follow certain general moral rules, such as “Do not kill” and “Keep promises,” which are such that adhering to them will most promote the good through time. This policy will sometimes lead us not to do the act with the best individual outcome, but given our general propensity to error the policy’s consequences will be better in the long run than trying to assess acts one by one; however well-meaning, the latter attempt will be counterproductive (1903: 149–70/1993: 198–219. This indirect consequentialism had again been defended earlier, by Sidgwick and John Stuart Mill, but Moore gave it a very conservative form, urging adherence to the rules even in the face of apparently compelling evidence that breaking them now would be optimific. Principia Ethica made the surprising claim that the relevant rules will be the same given any commonly accepted theory of the good, for example, given either hedonism or Moore’s own ideal theory (1903: 158/1993: 207). This claim of extensional equivalence for different consequentialist views was not new; T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley, and McTaggart had all suggested that hedonism and ideal consequentialism have similar practical implications. But Moore was surely expressing the more plausible view when in Ethics he doubted that pleasure and ideal values always go together (1912: 234–39/1947: 144–47/1965: 100–02), and even when he accepted the equivalence claim he remained intensely interested in what he called “the primary ethical question of what is good in itself” (1903: 158, 26, 77/1993: 207, 78, 128). Like Green, Bradley, and McTaggart, he thought the central philosophical question is what explains why good things are good, i.e., which of their properties make them good. That was the subject of his most brilliant piece of ethical writing, Chapter 6 of Principia Ethica on “The Ideal.”

So he is a consequentialist, just making clear though that he doesn't what to take a very simple reducible definition of "the good" to be immediate pleasure like Bentham. He then goes on to explain. "The Ideal" to mean that which should be promoted (i.e. "the good ") is a number of things, and since it's not monistic, he somehow avoids being naturalistic. It's explained as:

"One of this chapter’s larger aims was to defend value-pluralism, the view that there are many ultimate goods. Moore thought one bar to this view is the naturalistic fallacy. He assumed, plausibly, that philosophers who treat goodness as identical to some natural property will usually make this a simple property, such as just pleasure or just evolutionary fitness, rather than a disjunctive property such as pleasure-or-evolutionary-fitness-or-knowledge. But then any naturalist view pushes us toward value-monism, or toward the view that only one kind of state is good (1903: 20; 1993: 72). Once we reject naturalism, however, we can see what Moore thought is self-evident: that there are irreducibly many goods. Another bar to value-pluralism is excessive demands for unity or system in ethics. Sidgwick had used such demands to argue that only pleasure can be good, since no theory with a plurality of ultimate values can justify a determinate scheme for weighing them against each other (1907: 406). But Moore, agreeing here with Rashdall, Ross, and others, said that “to search for ‘unity’ and ‘system,’ at the expense of truth, is not, I take it, the proper business of philosophy” (1903: 222/1993: 270). If intuition reveals a plurality of ultimate goods, an adequate theory must recognize that plurality."

My responses are this:

1. I think this gives short shrift to Mill. Mill's reference to happiness as being the objective of "the good" didn't at all suggest it was a reducible concept, but he was clear that happiness arose from a variety of factors and it was a holistic state that could not be achieved from just finding physical pleasure. I don't follow why Mill is a naturalist but Moore not.

2. Go back and re-respond to this here and explain why my response doesn't now apply, particularly to (b). Just plug in Moore's definition of morality into (b), and that offers a reason why it matters what you think is moral for a non-naturalist.

What is the connection between acting immorally and causing suffering? Remember that I'm arguing about the implications of ethical non-naturalism.

That's a question that would seem to deal with causality, which would tend to require a naturalistic answer.

The difference for someone like Moore would seem to be precisely that you have acted immorally versus morally in any situation, independent of any causation downstream of your actions. As I understand him, which isn't very well, moral facts aren't reducible to natural facts, and so asking about what changes "in the world," outside of your having acted rightly or wrongly doesn't make sense given his premises.

I personally don't know if that premise makes any sense. The premise that right and wrong are simply irreducible (strongly emergent and thus fundemental) seems more defensible than a claim that includes their being "non-natural," especially in our modern context where "naturalism" has been bloated into a concept that seems to cover essentially everything that "is."

Unless you want to say we apprehend moral truths by a faculty such as conscience, perhaps. It just seems there is no role here for moral truths to play - all they do is confer an invisible label that no one can read on actions labelling them 'good' or 'bad'. But for you they are still of practical import, and that's where I am baffled.They play no role in deliberation, they confer no consequences, I'm not sure what function they have.

Don't people make decisions or prefer policies based on what they think is right or wrong all the time? For example, check out the Gaza thread. It seems like people can read the labels, and in turn the labels affect decision making.

You don't need an angle coming down. Treat your wife and kids terribly, only focusing on yourself and you'll end up divorced and no one will come visit you down at the retirement home, where you sit, quite likely tormented by the thoughts of how you could have done things differently. I mean, that scenerio isn't particularly out there, it plays out across the world everyday. You could also consider the drug addict who begins taking advantage of their friends and family, stealing from them, etc. and ends up completely estranged from them. Generally, doing things that people readily identify as evil is going to have very real consequences. People who "get away," with evil to some extent generally have to convince everyone around them that they aren't really being evil.

Treat your wife and kids terribly, only focusing on yourself and you'll end up divorced and no one will come visit you down at the retirement home, where you sit, quite likely tormented by the thoughts of how you could have done things differently. I mean, that scenerio isn't particularly out there, it plays out across the world everyday. You could also consider the drug addict who begins taking advantage of their friends and family, stealing from them, etc. and ends up completely estranged from them. Generally, doing things that people readily identify as evil is going to have very real consequences. People who "get away," with evil to some extent generally have to convince everyone around them that they aren't really being evil. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course, I agree with you. Remember, for the purposes of this thread we are assuming ethical non-naturalism. Simple summary here:

https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_ethical_nonnaturalism.html

All the bad consequences you list are natural ones. I, like you, think it makes sense to ask 'Why is such and such wrong?" ...and expect in the explanation some kind of reference to experience.

But for you they are still of practical import, and that's where I am baffled.They play no role in deliberation, they confer no consequences. — bert1

But you have been shown that this is not correct.

If you refuse to countenance their having a place in deliberation, or conferring a consequence, that's not reaching a conclusion so much as merely being peremptory.