I mean that when we justify a mathematical statement that it is more persuasive than when we justify a moral statement, and I also mean that when we justify a mathematical statement that people change their beliefs about math whereas when we justify a moral statement people do not change their beliefs about morality. They continue to believe what they thought before. — Moliere

Doesn't this presuppose that everyone is convinced by mathematical statements? And even if convinced, what's to prevent someone from refusing to understand, or even being contrary and spiteful in math? You may laugh, but I have seen examples of both.

I suppose it may be true that everyone who is subjected to a correct mathematical statement IS convinced... and suggest that if objective morality, then all who are subjected to a correct moral statement would be just as convinced. But, it doesn't follow that they would have to follow through and act accordingly. Knowledge of the correct math or morals, doesn't mean a person will choose to follow through with that knowledge in a way that changes their actions. Is that really all that surprising?

I don't know where you got the idea that if objective morality, and if people know what is moral, then they WILL act morally. What gave you that idea?

But, I think we can say when someone is bad at math, and if objective morality, we can say when they are bad at morals. I think I said as much earlier in the thread.

Is it common sense to treat moral statements as if they are truth-apt, or is it common to perceive people to be treating moral statements as truth-apt when we believe they are truth-apt? — Moliere

I tell you that eating sugar cubes is immoral.

1. You can agree or disagree, in which case, you treated my assertion as if it's truth apt.

2. You can tell me that assertions of that kind can't meaningfully be said to be true or false. So I'll assume you're a moral nihilist.

1. is pretty common. In my experience, it's more common that 2.

Surely not. Suppose astrology. A reasonable person could simultaneously believe that there are, say, statements about plumbing, some of which are true and some of which are not, while simultaneously believing that all statements about astrology (or, perhaps, within astrology, just to be careful about self-reference) are all false without falling into global skepticism.

We can treat whole classes of statements as false without thereby being a global skeptic. — Moliere

I think you said something like: assuming that moral statements are truth-apt, how do we know if any of them are true?

We basically make it up as we go.... with various fears and biases thrown in. If you want more than that, as I said... you'll have to lay out a theory of truth to work with. If you don't want to do that, I think you're stuck with the above answer.

I think you said something like: assuming that moral statements are truth-apt, how do we know if any of them are true?

We basically make it up as we go.... with various fears and biases thrown in. If you want more than that, as I said... you'll have to lay out a theory of truth to work with. If you don't want to do that, I think you're stuck with the above answer. — Mongrel

If morality is objective, then we definitely don't make it up as we go. We are discovering or beginnig to understand what is the case about morality, in a way that is similar to the way man gradually began to understand math- that is my theory. Not sure if it holds water.

I still get the sense that the general feeling is "morality can't be objective, so we Must be making it up"

And that's what this thread is about. Can we know that morality Can't be objective? Is the entire argument really, "it's just too weird an idea to consider?"

If morality is objective, then we definitely don't make it up as we go. We are discovering or beginnig to understand what is the case about morality, in a way that is similar to the way man gradually began to understand math- that is my theory. Not sure if it holds water. — anonymous66

Sorry, I didn't mean that morality is something we make up as we go. It's that question, "How do we know what is true?" There's a lot of on-going negotiating there no matter what sort of assertion we're struggling with.

The court of law could be seen as a symbol of the attempt to know truth in regard to morality.

There's a prosecutor and a defendant. They make their cases. The judge is a symbol of the heart, or emotion, which, having been stalled by the trial, makes a judgment tempered by the calm of that closed sanctum and informed by the facts, and guided by the Law.

In a real court room, the law is a constitution or some statutes. What is the Law symbolically? Don't know.

I'm inclined to say morality is objective and made as we go along. The significance of morality is always tied to the world. It's about how the world matters. We can't set pre-set an objective rule which is going to work in all situations no matter what's going on. With each moment the world is made and moral value is it's expression.

Yet, to be coherent, morality must be objective. The world can't have a significant which is true and false at the same time, in the same context. If the value of the world is such I ought not kill random strangers on the street, it does not work to then say "it's only an opinion" and that such killing is morally fine for someone else who think so.

I think that disagreements about good will come about precisely in designating what is "fucked up", psychologically.

These are very broad strokes to be talking in, and I don't think I'd attribute the desire to live in harmony with others as a universal desire, even though it is a plausible desire for some people to have. Exploitation is just too common to believe that this is an underlying, universal desire of human beings. — Moliere

Isn't it an empirical matter as to what is natural to humans, even if it is difficult, or even impossible to establish what it is precisely? Social animals are observed to live in far greater harmony than humans; but, of course this doesn't mean perfection; conflict is not entirely ruled out; its elimination is perhaps not possible, or even desirable. But the basic thing for humans is to possess good will, and I take that to mean a grounding desire to live in harmony with others, and to the best of one's ability not to exploit them. I can't see what 'the moral good" could possibly be for human beings other than something like this.

Which isn't to speak against goodness, per se -- only the formulation that goodness should rest on empirical psychology. This is to confuse what is the case with what ought to be the case, I would say. People should want to live in harmony with others, but they do not as we can see from their behavior. While I sometimes wonder if the fact/value distinction holds water at the ontological level, I believe that we should not lose sight of its strengths (namely, to guard against the belief that because things are the way they are, they are also the way they should be) -- which, perhaps there is a way I'm just not seeing, but it seems to me that if we ground morality in empirical psychology that we are at least in danger of committing the naturalistic fallacy.

This is where I tend towards the idea of human flourishing that underpins virtue ethics. If it is a psychological fact that people cannot be genuinely happy unless they are able to live in healthy relationship with others, then it must be that fact that determines what is good for people, at least in regards to relationships with others.

Also, I am not as convinced as you seem to be that people's behavior shows that they do not want to live in harmony. I think it is more likely the case that everyone tries to live in harmony with others, but for various reasons some people are not able to achieve even a modicum of success at it, and psychological factors probably determine what each persons different notion of harmony is. Some people, for instance, entirely lack an ability to empathize with others, to imagine how they may be feeling; so their version of harmonious living is not likely to be the same as that of others who can empathize to varying degrees.

I don't think the fact/value distinction holds water at all; except as a useful epistemological distinction between modalities of knowing. Phenomenologically speaking, the world is always already suffused with value for humans, as I think Heidegger has convincingly shown.

I don't this musical analogy is so apt; and it isn't true of musical harmony in any case. There is no perfect harmony, and there is no interesting harmony, either musical or otherwise. that does not incorporate some dissonance.

I'm not too sure what you are driving at here 66. I haven't said that morality is subjective. I think there are objective facts about humans' moral natures; it's just that it is not something that can be so easily definitively established.

Would you say that it is an objective fact that social animals other than humans generally live in a more harmonious state than humans do? I do tend to think of morality in terms of something like "healthy functioning" and I do think that healthy functioning requires a robust moral intuition. Objective morality cannot be a matter of any set of rules, because all sets of rules cannot but be arbitrary.

The only thing I'm driving at is continuing to consider the question, "what if there were moral facts"? Would that be so strange? (I may have misread what you wrote- edited). And I suppose I'm asking: what would it be like, if moral facts?

Regarding rules. I suppose it depends on what you mean by rules. Are there mathematical rules? If so, they're definitely not arbitrary.

I doubt there is an agreed on terminology, but I know Pojman suggests a set of objective moral principals that are not arbitrary.

Doesn't this presuppose that everyone is convinced by mathematical statements? And even if convinced, what's to prevent someone from refusing to understand, or even being contrary and spiteful in math? You may laugh, but I have seen examples of both. — anonymous66

Of course not. It would only have to be the case most of the time to show how one could simultaneously believe that mathematics is factual, while morality is not. It would be reasonable to maintain.

I don't know where you got the idea that if objective morality, and if people know what is moral, then they WILL act morally. What gave you that idea? — anonymous66

I'm not talking about, in your case, how people behave, but what they believe. Also, just to note again, I'm more attacking moral facts than I am attacking objective morality.

I am presupposing, at least for the purposes this thread, that objective morality and moral facts are synonymous.

I think you said something like: assuming that moral statements are truth-apt, how do we know if any of them are true? — Mongrel

Not exactly.

Using mathematics is the basis of comparison, since that was brought up prior as a point of comparison for queerness, I maintain that it is reasonable for a person to maintain that mathematical facts are not queer, while rejecting moral facts because they are queer. One need not accept the existence of moral facts simply because they accept mathematical facts, and they can still be rational while both believing this to be the case, and believing this to be the case because of the argument from queerness of moral facts.

OK, cool. Then I'll just keep that as a side-note then.

Using mathematics is the basis of comparison, since that was brought up prior as a point of comparison for queerness, I maintain that it is reasonable for a person to maintain that mathematical facts are not queer, while rejecting moral facts because they are queer. One need not accept the existence of moral facts simply because they accept mathematical facts, and they can still be rational while both believing this to be the case, and believing this to be the case because of the argument from queerness of moral facts. — Moliere

Sure, I can accept that. I suppose you could consider that I'm suggesting a premise: Moral facts, if true, would be just as weird as mathematical facts. It's not exactly something I could prove. But there are responses to the argument from queerness.

I maintain that it is reasonable for a person to maintain that mathematical facts are not queer, — Moliere

I assume you don't mean that they're straight. But... philosophy of math is most definitely queer... I mean... really bizarre.

I assume you don't mean that they're straight. But... philosophy of math is most definitely queer... I mean... really bizarre — Mongrel

Well, queerness is in the eye of the beholder, 8-) Quantum mechanics is pretty weird, too.

I was just using the terminology that was evoked by anon66 using the word "strange" -- the argument from queerness is the name of one of the arguments for moral anti-realism

Very well we could restate the tautology.
"Being moral is moral."

My main point was that moral facts, relative to syntax, may be said to exist.

But upon reflection I realize that this would simply mean that moral tautologies would be facts sure, but what people debate is moral semantics.

If there are moral facts the implication of moral facts would simply mean that tautologies are equally valid not mutually exclusive.

Say for example we state the moral fact.
"Being good is good"
It is good to be good no matter what we decide the term good ought to mean.

Try this for a moral fact:

"You ought to do good, but you will not."

What we can do is demonstrate a test of a purported mathematical fact, that almost everybody will agree is a valid test, and that it confirms or denies the purported fact. That would satisfy most people's definition of 'testable'. — andrewk

I drop an apple into an empty barrel. I then drop another apple into that same barrel. If you look into the barrel immediately afterward, you will see two apples, which, I gather, would confirm that 1+1=2.

I wait a month and then looked into the same barrel. Both apples have rotted away. There are zero apples there. 1+1 is not 0, so we say that two apples have been subtracted in the meantime. But why did we decide to interpret the rotting away of the two apples as "subtraction?" Beforehand, I would have assumed that "subtraction" meant "taking apples out of the barrel." Presumably, we interpret it that way because, if we did not interpret it that way, then 1+1 would be 0, and we all know that that isn't true.

There's also the neat fact that, in sub-atomic physics, you can collide two things and end up with more than two, as the energy of the collision gets converted into more objects than you started with.

I don't this musical analogy [i.e. of singing in the same key] is so apt; ...There is no perfect harmony, and there is no interesting harmony, either musical or otherwise. that does not incorporate some dissonance. — John

It was an attempted reference to the notion that due to the 'hyper-subjectivity' of modern ethical discourse, we can't even agree on which key to sing in. And surely, whilst harmony involves dissonance, dissonance can only be effective if it resolves into consonance, unless you're into abstract modernism, which is just noise - and hence my point!

Think about math. Where did it come from? Is it present in the "real" world — Anonymous66

It structures the way we understand - that is why it is an a priori discipline. We see the world through reason, maths, and language - it provides the structure through which we organise our thoughts and actions. So it is neither in the world, or solely in the mind - it is in some sense prior to that division of 'mind and world'.

I know that is a very hard idea get, but it has to do with naturalism and representative realism. Most people nowadays - western culture in general - are naturalistic and assume a stance of representative realism, deeply influenced by John Locke (even people who have never heard of Locke). This worldview comprises a mental model built around 'intelligent subject in domain of objects'. Within that worldview, reality is (roughly) divided up into the mental (in the mind, mental operations, ideas) and the external (in the world, 'out there', objective.)

The point is, this whole model is also in the mind! But it is in the mind in such a way that we can't get outside of it. (This is, in general terms, the basis of Kant's analysis of reason.) So in this understanding, maths is neither purely 'in the mind' or 'in the real world' - it structures the nature of our understanding of the world in such a way that we see the world through it.

It was an attempted reference to the notion that due to the 'hyper-subjectivity' of modern ethical discourse, we can't even agree on which key to sing in. And surely, whilst harmony involves dissonance, dissonance can only be effective if it resolves into consonance, unless you're into abstract modernism, which is just noise - and hence my point! — Wayfarer

Some modern ethical views are subjectivist and others are objectivity; so I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here. I would agree with you that modern ethical discourse is mostly rationalistic, and that whether that rationalism is inclined towards logical or empirical analysis it is exclusive, and does not take serious account of, intuition. What is given in intuition has come to be almost universally seen as consisting in nothing more than the socially constructed reifications of linguistically or discursively generated concepts. I do think that is a one-sided view.

I don't agree with you about dissonance and modern music though; I think there is some wonderful modern music, and the idea that dissonance must resolve into consonance is a very Eurocentric view that comes from the structure of the major and minor scales. If you play the same notes of C Major on the piano, for example, but starting on different degrees of the scale you will be exploring the Modes ( Ionian (I) 5.1.2 Dorian (II) 5.1.3 Phrygian (III) 5.1.4 Lydian (IV) 5.1.5 Mixolydian (V) 5.1.6 Aeolian (VI) 5.1.7 Locrian (VII)) and you can here that they do not "resolve into consonance" in anything like what we are used to with most modern popular music. ( there is also a whole other set of modes that can be derived form the harmonic and melodic minor scales). Some of Bach's and Beethoven's, to take just two prominent examples, most harmonically adventurous music (listen, for example to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations) is not characterized by the kinds of resolution I think you are referring to. For another example, there is Debussy's music which uses, among other things harmonies derived form whole-tone scales wherein there is never any resolution of the kind that is so familiar to most people's ears, which is dependent on half-tones.

Also what you say about resolution does not apply to traditional Indian or Middle Eastern music or modern Jazz ( which among other 'Blues' methodologies, explores the modes to find new harmonic ideas). On the other hand, in all good music there is some kind of an overall unity; but I would say that unity consists precisely not in resolution, but in the interplay, which does not necessarily have to resolve in any particular way, or at all, between dissonance and consonance.

My initial thought was that, supposing this true, it would fit snugly into the category of facts which morality is concerned about, but wouldn't fit the category of moral fact -- because it wouldn't prove that I should do this or that.

Maybe that's some of my hesitancy with the tautological approach that mars is aiming at, too. Even if true, it leaves much to be desired because it doesn't get at (what seems to me, at least) to be the point.



But maybe you had a further thought that I'm not really hearing? Or perhaps my initial thought strikes you as being too dismissive?

It's not that far out an idea - 'being able to agree on a key signature' being an analogy for a common framework. If you don't even have a key signature, or harmony, then what you're producing isn't music. (I know a thing or two about modes. Have a listen to some of my tracks .)

Well, I didn't guess that you are a musician, but I take your point about key signature; there does usually need to be a kind of 'home' key from which to explore other usually more or less related keys, even in the most far out and experimental jazz and 'classical' music.

If you don't even have a key signature, or harmony, then what you're producing isn't music. — Wayfarer

This is probably irrelevant to the discussion, but what you say here is not true, unless you want to say that atonal music and unpitched percussion music are not music and that you cannot play music with an unaccompanied non-chordal instrument.

EDIT: I see that you described "abstract modernism" as "just noise", so I guess you would indeed say that atonal music is not music. I don't think that withstands scrutiny, but I won't pursue it.

"You ought to do good, but you will not." — unenlightened

My initial thought was that, supposing this true, it would fit snugly into the category of facts which morality is concerned about, but wouldn't fit the category of moral fact -- because it wouldn't prove that I should do this or that. — Moliere

I'm not one to defend the notion of moral facts, or of mathematical facts for that matter. (The latter because exceptions such as rotting apples and breeding rabbits "don't count".)

Nevertheless, I think moral talk is meaningful and connected to the world. After Hume, is is clear that one needs to start with one or more moral premise, just as mathematics begins with commands - "let x be... "

So one needs a starting premise that lays out the domain of discourse. So the domain is human conduct, you and I acting in the world, and it starts with the division of the individual. It is about intention (will) directed towards the future, and about the conflict of will that arises, such that morality is _ I hesitate because it is liable to drag us into a byway - unnatural.

Briefly, the nature of the beast is, for example, that it nurtures its young, or that it eats its young according to the sentiment of the moment, but does not seek to operate on itself to do one or the other as the good. Whatever a beast does is whatever it deems to be good. The human condition is that it is not good to eat your children, even if you are very hungry, and despite their nutritional value.

So one has to say that the nature of morality is unnatural in that it contradicts human nature - as a beast.

So this is how I start to unpack my statement of principle and set out the realm of discourse of morality, in a way that I think coincides with the way we generally moralise. In this sense, I am seeking to be descriptive and definitive rather than argumentative of moral discourse.

You are quite right though, that there is as yet no moral content, that informs or proves what is the good, it merely establishes that it is not what you want. It is, as it were, a preface to moral discourse that requires filling out with a positive content - that the good is what God wants, what nature as a whole wants, or humanity in general or in the particular other wants, or some other thing.

Surely it is a matter of opinion. So what would 'scrutiny' consist of?

Scrutiny here I guess would consist of looking at the practice and nature of atonal music to see if it has anything to do with that of music as such. And it obviously does. The only point of defining music more strictly that I can discern is to exclude music one doesn't like. The thing is, the concept of music will carry on regardless of personal pet definitions; it's not a matter of opinion.

It's a matter of opinion whether atonal music is good or bad music (I believe in objective standards), but to say that it is simply not music at all seems to be just a casual way of speaking. It's a figure of speech, as in, "Call that a sausage? No, this is a sausage."

One can exclude atonal music simply by defining music as 'a sequence of rythmic sounds that are centred on key'. Certainly you might disagree, but there is no way you can prove your case. I might start a social movement to advocate a traditionalist view and there would be no factual inhibition to that idea, notwithstanding what you think is 'obvious'. Indeed, googling the term, I come across this:

Swiss conductor, composer, and musical philosopher Ernest Ansermet, a critic of atonal music, wrote ...the book Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine (French for The foundations of music in human consciousness) (Ansermet 1961)), where he argued that the classical musical language was a precondition for musical expression with its clear, harmonious structures. Ansermet argued that a tone system can only lead to a uniform perception of music if it is deduced from just a single interval. For Ansermet this interval is the fifth (Mosch 2004, 96).

So, I could argue that atonal music is not music, in the same sense that thrashing about in the water is not swimming, and speaking in tongues is not discourse.