I am sympathetic to Nietzsche's adage 'There are no facts, only interpretations', which might suggest believing that mathematical facts are no less substantial than moral ones.Is the question of moral facts, and where they "come from" or what they might be, really any more odd than any other facts? What about if you think there are facts about math? How weird — anonymous66
because purported mathematical facts are testable, whereas purported moral facts are not. — andrewk
Commonly, if something is claimed to be objectively so, that is to be a fact, this means that it is inter-subjectively verifiable, most satisfactorily by direct observation. — John
a major issue in modern ethical discourse is based on the 'is/ought' distinction. — Wayfarer
I think you know me well enough by now to not be surprised that I don't believe that that, or anything else, can be proven beyond doubt. All of everybody's beliefs rest on assumptions, so it adds no information to say that any particular statement rests on assumptions. One has to either challenge the assumptions by asserting that one considers them to be false, or provisionally accept them.I suppose you could assume that [mathematical facts are testable]. But, how to prove it's anything more than an assumption on your part? — anonymous66
Did Hume say it 'ought to be slave'? I thought he just observed that it is - or at least appears to be - a slave.How did Hume get us to believe reason Ought to be slave to the passions? Because he says so? — anonymous66
How did Hume get us to believe reason Ought to be slave to the passions? Because he says so?
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last [i.e. most important] consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason. — David Hume
Ethical naturalists contend that moral truths exist, and that their truth value relates to facts about physical reality. Many modern naturalistic philosophers see no impenetrable barrier in deriving "ought" from "is", believing it can be done whenever we analyze goal-directed behavior. They suggest that a statement of the form "In order for agent A to achieve goal B, A reasonably ought to do C" exhibits no category error and may be factually verified or refuted. "Oughts" exist, then, in light of the existence of goals. A counterargument to this response is that it merely pushes back the 'ought' to the subjectively valued 'goal' and thus provides no fundamentally objective basis to one's goals which, consequentially, provides no basis of distinguishing moral value of fundamentally different goals. A possible basis for an objective, moral realist, morality might be an appeal to teleonomy.
David HumeReason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
As vacuous as saying you know that 2+2=4? — anonymous66
You're making assumptions. You're claiming to know that there is nor will there ever be any way to falsify a moral claim.
Maybe there is/will be, maybe not.... I'm saying, "consider the possibility". I don't buy the argument, "we know it's not possible."
No, because we have a means to test the truth of the claim. — Michael
Awareness of the distinction between objective and subjective is very much bound up with the rise of modernism — Wayfarer
Whether it be odd or not would just depend on our expectations. So if we live in a universe which has moral facts, but believe that there are no moral facts, then it would be odd to find a moral fact. — Moliere
For the middle ages mechanisms were efficient causes in a world to be comprehended ultimately in terms of final causes. Every species has a natural end, and to explain the movements and changes in an individual is to explain how that individual moves toward the end appropriate to members of that particular species. The ends to which men as members of such a species move are conceived by them as goods, and their movement towards or away from various goods are to be explained with reference to the virtues and vices which they have learned or failed to learn and the forms of practical reasoning which they employ. Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics (together of course with the De Anima) are as much treatises concerned with how human action is to be explained and understood as with what acts are to be done. Indeed within the Aristotelian framework the one task cannot be discharged without discharging the other. The modern contrast between the sphere of morality on the one hand and the sphere of the human sciences on the other is quite alien to Aristotelianism because, as we have already seen, the modern fact-value distinction is also alien to it. — MacIntyre, After Virtue
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