I think it is unfair to claim that these cases are facts that can be discovered through empirical sciences. While they strike us as merely descriptive propositions, there are implicit value prescriptions in the presumption of each case. For example, let us take the case that 'it is bad for the fox to have its leg mangled in a trap.' The truly descriptive proposition is 'having its leg mangled in a trap decreases the fox's probability of survival.' To say that this is 'bad' for the fox presumes that survival is something worth pursuing. The same presumption about the value of survival is present in the case of 'it is bad for people to be kidnapped, tortured and enslaved,' because these conditions increase the likelihood of death. So if one is to claim these as facts, then one must first accept certain presumed values, such as that survival is worth pursuing. Therefore, to merely use the words "good" or "bad" is to presume that they are meaningful terms and that they refer to some definition. Even in philosophical discussions, when we say an argument is "bad", what we really want to say is that this argument does not meet the criteria of logical coherence, which is already something we think worth pursuing (I will expand a bit on this later).

First, those examples don't rely on the goodness of survival per se. Presumably, even people who want to die don't want to be tortured and to undergo gratuitous suffering (leaving aside that people also don't generally want to die unless there is some other evil they consider worse than death, which they hope to avoid through death, or some good they hope to attain through their death, e.g. self-sacrifice.) We don't have to "assume" suffering is bad. Experiencing it is enough. But I also don't see how you get around simply assuming it isn't bad. Why preference one assumption over the other?

It seems pretty obvious that being maimed and extreme suffering is, at least ceteris paribus, bad for animals. I can think of few things more obvious, and aside from being "common sense," it's also something confirmed by medicine, veterinary science, zoology, psychology, etc. And it's certainly something known empirically, i.e., through the senses. One experiences suffering, and learns to recognize suffering in others (men and beasts), and, ceteris paribus, it is bad to suffer, no?

I am not sure if you avoid begging the question here in assuming that it is "unfair" to call these facts. Prima facie, they appear to be facts. That is, it seems like one of your initial premises in calling these "unfair" is: "there are no facts about values, so even facts that seem obvious, such as 'it is bad for school children to have lead dumped in their lunches,' (i.e. things virtually every competent adult recognizes and acts as if they were true) are not *really* facts because they involve value judgements. Indeed, you make this question begging explicit below:

is not valid on the ground that P1 is not true (at least without first examining the implicit value prescription i.e. avoid pain is good), and thus cannot be used to construct a valid argument.

First, this wouldn't make it invalid, but rather unsound.

But this isn't really so much a counter argument against the obviousness of the factual status of at least some value claims, so much as it is simply assuming axiomatically that these examples could not constitute facts because they are value claims (because there are not facts about values), or that they must face some arbitrarily high standard of evidence to be justified, which would of course be assuming the very thing in question. That is: "anti-realism re values is true because anti-realism re values is true."

Prima facie, "gratuitous suffering is bad for us" seems as obvious as, "water is wet," and your response is akin to: "you cannot just assume that water is wet." But we're not assuming, we've experienced water and suffering. We're talking about things where almost everyone says it is so, and essentially everyone acts as if it is so. The burden of proof then, should go in the opposite direction, just as it would for the person who denies that the external world or other people exist. In which case, what is the positive case for: "even ceteris paribus, it isn't true that being burnt alive is bad for men, dogs, etc. Rather, everyone (including the dogs, who try to avoid burning) has simply been deceived by an illusion?"

Yet just consider this: knowing what every competent adult, or even healthy children (even toddlers), know about man, allows them to know that absolutely no one is going to want you to slam their hand in a door repeatedly until all their bones are broken. That seems to be a rather obvious connection between what man is and what he thinks is good for him. And then we might consider the question: "do we really think man is so wholly ignorant about what is good for him that even these very obvious judgements are actually illusory?"

Lastly, you might consider that being committed to such a rejection of values means rejecting a great deal of medicine, psychology, economics, etc. as not actually dealing with facts. Indeed, even the more theoretical sciences are still firmly grounded in value judgements, because they rest on standards of "good" evidence, "good" faith, and a preference for truth over falsity.

I don't think you can just assume that there are things that are choice-worthy, and by observing that empirical sciences can be used as a tool to direct us towards these "things," conclude that empirical sciences discover moral facts. I'm not saying that these choice-worthy things are purely subjective. Take survival, for instance: it is something deemed worth pursuing by all humans, if not all animals. But just because we have the intuition and desire to survive does not mean "one must pursue survival" is a fact.

Is your claim that nothing is more or less choiceworthy or that it is impossible for us to ever know what is more or less choiceworthy? Doesn't that strike you as an extremely radical claim? No one ever knows what is better or worse for them (because nothing is really better or worse for them?)? Medicine can never inform us as to what is truly better or worse for us? Focusing on "survival" is a red herring. The point is merely that man can discover things about what is choiceworthy.

If man cannot discover what is choiceworthy, what exactly is the point of philosophy? Surely it could not possibly help us to live better were this true, as we could never discover what is to be preferred.

I see no problem with saying that the entirety of philosophy is based on the assumption that truth is worth pursuing (if I had to). The fact that the pursuit of truth is a subjective desire has no bearing on the validity of a person’s arguments. Ultimately, pursuing truth could just be simply an activity people choose to engage in, regardless of its deeper meaning. I take the same view with respect to morality: if morality is something inherent to human nature, then I will practice it (which I do, just fyi). But that does not automatically make morality a fact, and to claim that it is already presupposes that truth is worth pursuing. Therefore, I believe one can practice morality without regarding it as objective truth, just as one can practice philosophy without viewing it as objectively superior.

So even if you have good arguments here, it cannot possibly be "better" for me to agree with you here, right? One should only agree with you if they just so happen to prefer to agree with you. Otherwise, there is no reason to prefer truth over falsity. It's an arbitrary preference.

If that's the case, then validity is only tangentially relevant. A "good argument" is just whatever argument gets you what you currently want. It might be valid, it might not be. There are actually no facts about what is better or worse, so we should just pursue whatever feels best.

Are there facts about what we will prefer to have chosen in the future though? It seems there are. Do these facts seem to tie to human nature, medicine, the sciences, etc? They certainly seem to. Hence, the denial of facts about what is better or worse actually seems to be itself arbitrary. It can be a fact that smoking will give me lung disease, and that I will greatly dislike having chosen to smoke, and a fact that, ceteris paribus, lung disease makes people claim to be unhappy, and yet there will be no fact of the matter as to whether this choice was truly better or worse for me? That's an odd proposition, and I'm not sure how it is maintained without simply assuming that there aren't *real* facts about values.

This is, to say the least, problematic, and also prima facie hard to believe.

You might also consider that the anti-realists' game can be successfully duplicated with truth as easily as goodness. "Prove, without any appeal to truth, and without assuming truth exists, that anything is really true." It will prove extremely difficult. Yet that's hardly an argument against truth. It could just as well be taken as a reductio in favor of it, because its denial leads to absurdity (and continual backdoor moves to bring it back in disguise).

There seem to be religious yearnings in the frame you have presented. In relation to Caputo one might hold that his weaving of postmodern ideas back into the religion of his upbringing has an inevitability about it. Is his experince similar to yours? It often seems to me that people assiduously look for new (or perhaps less familiar) reasons to believe old ideas. — Tom Storm

Religion as such is just the metaphysics of affectivity, value, ethics, aesthetics, the good, the bad. What it is that makes importance important, the residuum of a long reduction that cancels language impositions on interpretations of existence. Good metaphysics, what is there, not language but in the world, and because it is there apodictically, of certainty (putting aside the way language philosophers and logicians can undermine certainty. They are right! And if it were a matter of anything else, I'm afraid it would thrown to contingency and relativism. For a look at how value is NOT like this, see Max Scheler's refutation of Kant in his Formalism in Ethics and Nonformalism in Value and Ethics): the knife wound that penetrates the liver causes pain that is inherently ethical: the pain as such should not exist, and this is not a contingent "should not" as if it were about contextually grounded do's and don't's of driving or child care. It has no context; all it has to be is itself, and this has its evidential ground in the reduction: remove all that would claim to say what the prime facie ethical injunction against shoving daggers into kidneys IS, and what remains is a nonlinguistic (non cognitive) pure phenomenon. Here one has discovered the metaphysics of metaethics. As well as the metaphysical ground for religion itself, for religion IS metaethics at the rock bottom level of analysis.

I’m reminded of theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart who writes that when consciousness is freed from ego, distraction, and fragmentation, it encounters reality as inherently good and radiant. Bliss isn’t something added to existence, it is woven into its very nature. Hart often stresses that the fact anything exists rather than nothing is a kind of metaphysical astonishment, something so basic we usually miss the strangeness of it. Are you sympathetic to this, or is it straying too far into specific religious mystical tradition? — Tom Storm

Let's say it is not straying, but is yielding. But yielding to what? An intuition, the res ingrata among analytic philosophers because it suggests non propositional knowledge, and so has no formal justification that can be made public and argued about. Just as the soul is absent from conversation, as it should be, simply because of its connotative density, like love: try to talk about the metaphysics of love, and you are instantly surrounded. I read a bit of Hart to know what you are talking about, and I do agree the way you put it, meaning I len toward approval. And if discovery is a matter of revelation, that is, acknowledging the "inherently good and radiant" IN the preacknowledged world, then those who do not see this are left out, and this is the problem, for cognitive mentalities dominate philosophy, not affective ones, and to make the way through to affirmation, one has to make an "objective" argument, one that doesn't draw upon what some have only, but is rather universal, as universal as modus ponens. This requires philosophical disillusionment, which is why I stand with difficult reads like Michel Henry, because there already exists a body of thought that massively disillusions, phenomenology. Still, I cannot understand why the likes of Critchley and Rorty remain metaphysical nihilists, while someone like Hart, profoundly well read, makes the Kierkegaardian "movement" of affirmation. I guess the distance between us is too great.

But I do find Hart affirming what I affirm. He is a mystic (keeping in mind that Russell once called Wittgenstein a mystic)....with an argument!

I take it this is at the heart of your thinking - this and the notion that whatever is transcendent is found in the immediate experince of being - that which seeks, wonders, hopes, dreams, desires... — Tom Storm

Cognition as such has NO value. What puzzles me entirely is the failure to see simple things, like: We are thrown into a world, a culture, language, existence, and we are tortured, not to put too fine a point on it. Some are thrown into Perilaus' Brazen Bull, others choke on their prime rib, far few died quietly in their sleep, historically, at any rate. To understand this, one has to identify with suffering, not merely wave it off in ironic dismissiveness, and suffering has be brought before Husserl's epoche to divest it of intruding discussions that mask its essence, that is, acknowledging suffering in contexts that undo its pure meaning, which is why I invite inquirers to stick their hand in boiling water and the like. Read Mackie's great book (really well done, helpful for seeing what is both right and wrong about analytic thinking), Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, which is ALL about this grand distraction away from the actuality of the world. Anyway, there you are, about to be burned alive at the stake: NOW you know, and are about to know with a magnitude of certainty that makes logic seen ridiculous. the gravitas of the human condition. It lies here, not in some idiot thesis about the nonobjectivity of ethics. Just how nonobjective IS the Malum of being burned alive? Interesting question. On the other side, the bliss of Hart and Buddhists and Hindus: is this so far fetched? Listen to Ravel's Mother Goose Suite, number 2: Petit Poucet. Absolutely sublime, otherworldly. Or his Le Tombeau de Couperin, Menuet ("à la mémoire de Jean Dreyfus"). This is an intimation of immortality, to borrow Wordsworth's words. Philosophers argue only. They do not yield enough to listen, understand, because this is mostly not publishable.

This also seems to be heading toward mysticism and non-dualism, with the notion that the self (understood misleadingly as a product of culture, language, and upbringing) can be stripped of conceptual overlays and ego to realize true freedom. Or at least a new starting point. What is the next step, I wonder? — Tom Storm

What is next is Michel Henry's Essence of Manifestation. It is unfortunate that this thought is buried in Fichte, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, but it rests on a foundational premise that ALL existence that has ever been received, every iota, is received in consciousness, and the two cannot be parted no matter what. And consciousness is NOT a mirror. It is an event, impossible to see "outside" this event. As I see it, the next step is understanding that one's individual consciousness is not a localized event only, though. Take Kant's noumena: infinite, but Kant was wrong to think this metaphysical True Reality could stand apart from anything. Phenomena ARE noumena, and noumena are phenomena. This is where this goes. The world is metaphysics, AS WELL AS physics. This cup on the table is something else entirely, and this something else is there in one's midst, waiting to be acknowledged.

It seems pretty obvious that being maimed and extreme suffering is, at least ceteris paribus, bad for animals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Many things seem certain ways, but when you press, they aren't that way.

This, for instance, entirely begs the question of what 'bad' is, and how to put things in that box. It presumes plenty of things. This might be taken as some kind of entire scepticism, but it's really not - there are no facts about good and bad. Just intersubjective agreements. And these regularly butt into each other. There is also the fact that most people have a 'bad for me' and a different 'bad for you' set of beliefs. The murder, if tortured, isn't undergoing something 'bad' even though it is 'bad' for them.

This should be fairly clear now, that 'obviousness' isn't a good way to run this particular issue's arguments. Unless we want to invoke either relativity, or emotivism (both seems reasonable to me). But i take it those making this argument are wanting to escape them.

Philosophers argue only. They do not yield enough to listen, understand, because this is mostly not publishable. — Astrophel

This may be part of the reason I was never much fascinated by philosophy. Arguments don't excite me much, and the experience of living teaches us enough, if we pay attention.

Still, I cannot understand why the likes of Critchley and Rorty remain metaphysical nihilists, while someone like Hart, profoundly well read, makes the Kierkegaardian "movement" of affirmation. I guess the distance between us is too great. — Astrophel

I think it's dispositional. As much as I find Hart fascinating and intelligent, I find his beliefs to be cloying and unsatisfying. The notion of the metaphysical God of classical theism doesn't engage me. When it comes to beliefs, like the people we love, we can’t help what we’re attracted to.

. As I see it, the next step is understanding that one's individual consciousness is not a localized event only, though. — Astrophel

Are you suggesting idealism?

What is next is Michel Henry's Essence of Manifestation. — Astrophel

Our inner experience is the ground of reality. On this point, from what little I’ve gleaned, I see no reason to disagree. It’s easy to argue that modern life reduces everything to consumerism, surface values, and the grey managerial-technocratic lens through which most Western governments operate. But I’m curious: what practical steps might this way of thinking actually lead to? Life is more than sitting in a room reading and pondering ineffables. What does one do?

Many things seem certain ways, but when you press, they aren't that way.

This, for instance, entirely begs the question of what 'bad' is, and how to put things in that box. It presumes plenty of things. This might be taken as some kind of entire scepticism, but it's really not - there are no facts about good and bad. Just intersubjective agreements. And these regularly butt into each other. There is also the fact that most people have a 'bad for me' and a different 'bad for you' set of beliefs. The murder, if tortured, isn't undergoing something 'bad' even though it is 'bad' for them.

This should be fairly clear now, that 'obviousness' isn't a good way to run this particular issue's arguments. Unless we want to invoke either relativity, or emotivism (both seems reasonable to me). But i take it those making this argument are wanting to escape them. — AmadeusD

Odd things you say, I think. Are their facts about logical principles? Is it a fact the sun shines today, when it does?

Not having read all said here, how is it that pain as such is not bad? Just asking how you get by on this. Note that even in the variations of the way pain is acknowledged, the matter is not about how agreements differ, but of the pain as it IS in privately experienced, as only pain can be. This question is logically PRIOR to anything that can occur in Intersubjective agreement, for such agreement begs the question, agreement about what? Then the matter has to be made public for others to agree, and agreement simply means there is shared content, but it being shared begs the same question, what is shared? and agreement rests with whether or not one's descriptive account aligns with others, for if it does not, others can disagree: disagree that, say, cigars are disgusting. And so there is variable accounts to cigars being disgusting or not, undermining any attempt universalize the status of cigars taste, but note, what does one do with MY disgust for cigars? Is it therefore tossed into indetermiancy? Because there is nothing at all indeterminate about my getting nauseous; but then. what makes being nausea bad? Perhaps another enjoys it. Could be. But this says nothing about my experience. We don't agree on how nausea stands vis a vis desirability, but so what? My end stands unrefuted, because the bad is as clear as day, more clear than the principle of the excluded middle or De Morgan's theorem. It locality doesn't enter into it, nor does agreement.

Approaching ethics from my own perspective, I find the field deeply problematic. Unlike other branches of philosophy, a systematic and formal treatment of ethics seems impossible. — Showmee

Agreed. In principle the possibility of there being an underlying objective morality is neither here nor there as we would likely never come to realise it fully. If you really think about it if you reduce all moral dilemmas into formulaic structures then you are not doing anything moral, merely you are calculating the 'good' in any given action.

If, in a branch of knowledge, being intuitive is more significant than being logical, then such a branch is substantially flawed, especially if it seeks to describe objective facts. Quantum physics is unimaginably more counterintuitive than Newtonian physics; this does not affect the former’s dominance over the latter. Similarly, in the field of mathematics, Gabriel’s Horn, which states that a shape (formed by rotating y = 1/x, for all x≥1, around the x-axis) could have infinite area yet finite volume, is not rendered invalid due to its counterintuitive nature. — Showmee

I am not really sure we can really think about ethics in terms of a kind of Knowledge. Certainly, knowledge can alter our ethical stance in this or that situation but at the end of the day the choice remains a burden on us not on some formula we use to avoid responsibility for the actions we take.

This is primarily where I see the meaning of Ethics being rooted in conscious authorship, in claiming responsibility for actions, rather than absconding from such by relying only on a logical map. That said, what makes this harder to appreciate is just how logical knowledge can influence how we shape our decisions.

Note: Newtonian Mechanics works perfectly well when applied to certain scenarios. It is not a defunct method of calculating.

Establishing a robust non-cognitivist stance requires not only destructive arguments, but also constructive ones—something current accounts fail to deliver satisfactorily. — Showmee

Well, not really. This is like saying neither Newton nor Einstein explained what gravity is fundamentally. It seems to me that infinite reductionism is not particularly handy when it comes to broadening our understanding of the human condition. This is something Ian McGilchrist articulates well in his work.

@Showmee I should also add that Error Theory is only negative (destructive), yet you move away from non-cognitivism because you claim it is also only capable of negation. Can you explain why or is it just a case of having to choose one to write about over the other?

But I also don’t see how you get around simply assuming it isn’t bad. Why preference one assumption over the other?

It seems pretty obvious that being maimed and extreme suffering is, at least ceteris paribus, bad for animals. — “Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that when suffering occurs, our direct conscious experience is pain, which is immediately followed by a strong desire to avoid that pain. Or perhaps we could give ethics its own category of mental state. But if one identifies such desire (or ethical mental state) with the term “bad,” then the syllogism you previously provided would take the following form:

P1. I want to avoid the effects of burning (i.e., burning is not choice-worthy).
P2. If I throw myself into the fire, I shall burn.
C. Therefore, I don’t want to throw myself into the fire.

But by defining “bad” in this way, one is essentially equating moral terms with desires or emotions. That leads to non-cognitivism—a position that comes with many of its own issues.

Tracing this back to the source of the problem: you suggest there are some moral facts that can be empirically discovered, such as “x is bad.” I think it’s now a good time to ask what we mean by a fact. Perhaps this is the real point of contention—maybe we don’t share the same understanding of the term. For me, a fact is an aspect of the world, and statements that reflect facts must be descriptive in nature. The key word here is descriptive—that is, concerned with how the world is. So if we are to give morality the status of facthood, then a clear metaphysical and epistemological account must be provided.

To be clear, I don’t want to reduce all facts to physicalism—that seems a bit reckless. After all, the ontology of conscious states seems different from that of biochemical processes. But when you mention medicine, veterinary science, zoology, psychology, etc., these are all disciplines that deal with the physical aspects of the world. These empirical sciences do not lose their predictive power—their “dealing-with-facthood”—if one rejects ethics or value as you mentioned.

Lastly, you might consider that being committed to such a rejection of values means rejecting a great deal of medicine, psychology, economics, etc. as not actually dealing with facts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Even if I deny that “taking vitamin B is good for me” is a moral fact, vitamin B doesn’t stop helping to form red blood cells. Note how the latter part about vitamin B is solely descriptive. This points back to the original question posed by my essay: how do we define morality and moral terms, and what properties do they have (i.e. real or unreal)? This is the most fundamental question—one that must be addressed before we can meaningfully interpret, evaluate, or debate any moral propositions.

Prima facie, "gratuitous suffering is bad for us" seems as obvious as, "water is wet," and your response is akin to: "you cannot just assume that water is wet." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is interesting. I think my starting point for anything is logic, and I assume that nothing exists until it is proven. Are you taking a phenomenological stance, beginning instead with consciousness?

For me, "water is wet" is a perception of mind (what Locke calls a secondary quality). While the existence of such mental state may be a factual statement (i.e. "the feeling that water is wet exists as an idea in my mind"), the content is not necessarily so (i.e. "wetness is a real property of water"). Perhaps similarly in ethics, when we proclaim "x is bad", badness is not an inherent aspect of the world. But all these, again, follow from my understanding of the term "fact," maybe it helps to put out your view on this.

So even if you have good arguments here, it cannot possibly be "better" for me to agree with you here, right? One should only agree with you if they just so happen to prefer to agree with you. Otherwise, there is no reason to prefer truth over falsity. It's an arbitrary preference. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the distinction between two dualisms must be made clear here: objectivity vs. subjectivity, and mind-dependent vs. mind-independent. Things can be mind-dependent without being subjective. Instincts, for example, are mind-dependent, but they are also shared among all humans. So the preference for truth over falsity is not merely an arbitrary choice, but an objective tendency rooted in our shared cognitive nature. It may be arbitrary in a metaphysical sense—there is no necessity that the universe values truth—but this is not the case in a social or cultural sense, where the preference for truth is stable, widespread, and normatively reinforced.

Just think how and why the following two statements differ:

i) Regular exercise is good for me
ii) Regular exercise helps prevent various diseases, aids in maintaining body weight, and increases serotonin levels in the brain.

To say that both sentences are true means to make the following conclusion:

C: preventing various diseases, aiding in maintaining body weight, and increasing serotonin levels in the brain are good for me

But why is this the case? Does that mean "preventing various diseases...increasing serotonin levels" is the very definition of "goodness"? If not, don't we need to keep substituting "preventing various diseases...increasing serotonin levels" with other terms until hopefully an eventual fundamental definition can be found.

This is why I don't want to right away treat these "obvious" cases as facts or true right away. I think they deserve further and prior investigation—i.e. subtitling terms—until we have a clear definition (e.g. maximum happiness is good). Then we may proceed to examine morality more carefully.

I should also add that Error Theory is only negative (destructive), yet you move away from non-cognitivism because you claim it is also only capable of negation. Can you explain why or is it just a case of having to choose one to write about over the other? — I like sushi

It is partially because I didn't had the time to thoroughly go over non-cognitivism and intuitionism. But you can see "the road to error theory" as a stream of reductio ad absurdum. Here is the roadmap:

i) we establishing realism vs anti-realism as a binary system
ii) by rejecting realism, we are left with anti-realism
iii) anti-realism includes 2 views: noncognitivism and error theory
iv) noncognitivism not well supported, so it is diched
v) So the final conclusion on ethics is any anti-realism that is not non-cognitive
vi) The only such view is error theory in this context
vii) Therefore error theory is the least refutable position (not THE position).

I guess you may disagree with iv)?

But by defining “bad” in this way, one is essentially equating moral terms with desires or emotions. That leads to non-cognitivism—a position that comes with many of its own issues.

Let's start here. I don't see how you're getting that. If some emotions are sensations are, ceteris paribus, bad, how does it follow that anything that is bad must only involve those emotions and sensations?

What's the actual argument that this follows.

P1. Pain is bad.
P2. ???
C: All value reduces to pain and sentiment.

For me, a fact is an aspect of the world, and statements that reflect facts must be descriptive in nature. The key word here is descriptive—that is, concerned with how the world is. So if we are to give morality the status of facthood, then a clear metaphysical and epistemological account must be provided.

Sure, and many are. I think Aristotle is a fine place to start, but you could look at Boethius, Dante, or even much Eastern thought for good examples. There is a very robust metaphysics of goodness in the Aristotlian, Neoplatonic, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Millbank's Social Theory and Theology is pretty good on how the tradition you are advocating itself emerged from a very particular theological position, as well as the need for liberalism to privatize most questions of value (this was originally justified as pragmatic bracketing, but was later absolutized into a metaphysical denial of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty).

But I think the tendency in Anglo-empiricist thought towards simply begging the question is floating about here too. You say "descriptive" as if saying something is descriptive somehow suggests that it doesn't relate to value. That is only true if one has already accepted that there aren't truths/facts about value. Saying facts are about "how the world is," and then expecting this to somehow make the case for anti-realism only works if you already assume anti-realism is true. Otherwise, there are simply facts about what is good or bad for different creatures (which, prima facie, seems to have strong support). In what way is stomping on an infant, or a any baby mammal, obviously not bad for it? That seems to be a hard case to make.


If someone broke into your house, stole all you owned, and tortured you, would you accept: "there is no possible way to prove that anything I did was bad for you," as a response? Sure, you can appeal to such acts as violating norms or laws. But why have norms and laws if nothing is good or bad for anyone?

Odd things you say, I think. Are their facts about logical principles? Is it a fact the sun shines today, when it does? — Astrophel

Yes.

how is it that pain as such is not bad? — Astrophel

Pain 'as such' is simply a sensation. There is no moral valence without human deliberative judgement going on. PLenty of examples, but one I gave elsewhere was the pain I put my body through each morning to achieve a better body. I enjoy this (mostly).

the matter is not about how agreements differ, but of the pain as it IS in privately experienced, as only pain can be. — Astrophel

I agree. But we all agree about pain without a moral claim. When moral claims come in, we start having to 'make points'.

This question is logically PRIOR to anything that can occur in Intersubjective agreement — Astrophel

Perhaps. But it is not about good or bad. It is quite hard to see that you've tried to tie them together here, even, beyond hte initial (lets call it incredulous) question.

Then the matter has to be made public for others to agree, and agreement simply means there is shared content, but it being shared begs the same question, what is shared? — Astrophel

Descriptions (though, it may be more 'accurate' to say 'sense of sensation' which is awkward, but hopefully makes the point hehe). Then we intersubjectively agree that our descriptions match. That is what we then label pain. Again, no moral claim to be made (though, i understand most will want to make one here if asked).

agreement rests with whether or not one's descriptive account aligns with others — Astrophel

And that is all that constitutes 'pain' to a human. Otherwise, we wouldn't know what to call it when we feel pain. Again, 'obviousness' is a truly terrible line to take here.

My end stands unrefuted, because the bad is as clear as day, more clear than the principle of the excluded middle or De Morgan's theorem. It locality doesn't enter into it, nor does agreement. — Astrophel

This is just patently false, and supported by nothing that you've said. I'm unsure what to do with that... You have an emotional reaction to cigars. That's up to you. That doesn't make it 'bad'. I can think it's bad that you don't like cigars, if I were disposed to. I don't, though. It would have been more interesting to bring forth the question whether you think your disgust is bad or not. But in every one of these cases, it is just your personal thoughts involved and nothing more. There is no fact other than about your reaction or disposition depending on how you approach it - and these are empirical, post-hoc considerations. They tell us nothing.

PLenty of examples, but one I gave elsewhere was the pain I put my body through each morning to achieve a better body. I enjoy this (mostly). — AmadeusD

Are you sure it's the pain you're enjoying, and not the feeling that the pain is doing you good?

Wouldn't you enjoy your workout more if there was no pain? Because if so, one might argue that the workout is good but the pain is bad, and the workout would be even better without the pain.

Its better to answer this in reverse:

No, it wouldn't be better. I would have no reason to expect a positive outcome, as to my goals.

It is the pain i enjoy. I am also an old-school self-harmer. I enjoyed the pain.

- So would you still work out if in return you received nothing more than the pain? Even if it did not help you "achieve a better body"?

Your first reference at the end is a link to the stanford article about meta-ethical constructivism, but you don't actually talk about it in the essay as far as I can tell.

You could categorise constructivism in the same bracket as error theory, i.e. anti-realist but cognitivist, but it does come at the whole issue from another direction.

Error theory would say moral statements are meant to be truth-apt (cognitivism), but can't be objectively true because they cannot be found in the world (anti-realism), coming to the somewhat unsatisfying conclusion that all moral claims are false.

Constructivism kindof bypasses the whole issue by allowing moral claims to be true eventhough they aren't "objectively" true... because they are conventionally true. For a constructivist "killing is wrong" means "it is true that in this community of people it is agreed upon that killing is wrong". It isn't objectively true, but it isn't just a matter of individual subjective opinion either...

As someone partial to constructivism, this whole exercise of categorising ethical theories in categories of realism/anti-realism, cognitivism/non-cognitivism and relativism/absolutism seems fundamentally misguided, and it is probably one of the reasons why the whole field seems so problematic.

Before that there is an issue with naturalism. We do not know what Gravity is, yet we have become able to measure its effects overtime. Morality is much more difficult but, nevertheless, we can see the effects actions that are deemed 'good' and 'bad' and adjust our positions as experience dictates.

So while our current understanding of morality seems absent of naturalistic causes presently it need not be so in the future.

As for branches of Emotivism we see no denial of morality only a reframing of what is actually going on. It explains the subjective nature of 'good' and 'bad' and it is reasonable that communities will come to common understandings of what is good on an evolutionary trajectory too.

I agree. But we all agree about pain without a moral claim. When moral claims come in, we start having to 'make points'. — AmadeusD

Pain without a moral claim: change this to pain without a moral dimension or possibility, and now you have a contradiction. Claims can be made or not, and they are often complicated, but what it is for something to BE pain at all, that is, IN the analytic unpacking of the term, carries in it the moral possibility, and since it is impossible to conceive of pain without agency, any pain at all is a moral actuality, putting aside the ambiguity of what pain IS in entanglements and involvements, for pain, it has to be kept in mind, as a concept is an abstraction from actuality.

Perhaps. But it is not about good or bad. It is quite hard to see that you've tried to tie them together here, even, beyond hte initial (lets call it incredulous) question. — AmadeusD

That does cut to the chase. You see, we are not talking about different things, but the same things. I bring up an assault on the kidney with a spear, and we are not descriptively at odds, that is, I say it hurts and you say I'm sure it does, and we share a common understanding of what this all about. And when I say that there is a prime facie injunction prohibiting committing such a thing, you likely will still agree that there is, and for good reason. And further, when language like saying, "the pain in question is awful, dreadful, can't imagine," comes into play, you will not disagree, I don't think. And even if I say it is a moral outrage that this was done out of purely cruel intent, I am guessing you will agree as well, seeing that this kind of talk is in the everyday language of our culture, and has nothing to do with the ontology of pain as a philosophical issue; we talk like this all the time.

Where we come to a disagreement is when analysis moves to the existential core of that which all the fuss is being made about: the "badness" of the pain. An awkward term, but so what. You take issue with pain as bad as such, for surely you are not objecting to calling pain bad, because this is so common, too often to mention. No, it is the "as such" that seems to be at issue. It would be the claim that, when someone is in the throes of agony, and you ask, How bad is it? she screams bloody murder in your face for asking such a silly question. You are saying, with Mackie, that yes, you understand all of this, but in a very special analytic of pain, a philosophical analytic, the term "bad" has no place at all, for it carries with it a moral dimension that cannot be evidentially grounded in actual conditions like screaming agony ( I am assuming you are willing to allow there to be screaming agony). But what is evidentially absent from the agony, which is so profoundly manifest? This IS the question. If you think it is a fact that the sun is shining when it truly is, and it shining is not just an intersubjective agreement, but an actuality; but you think being in agony is not bad when it truly is agony, then this calls for an inquiry as to what separates the two. I think you want to regard the agony just what you would regard the sun shining: a simple fact with no additional moral essence, for, if I understand you right, you think there are no such things as moral essences, and when we use this term, it is simply classificatory for things that are intersubjectively "taken as" good and bad. Facts are facts, and moral affairs are really just facts, called moral affairs in preanalytical contexts

But are moral events no more than mere factual events like the sun shining? Is it that to be in agony has no distinguishing features not found in facts like dinner being ready or moon light being reflected sun light or this cup being larger than a thimble? I think here you would have to say they are equal in what they ARE. I mean, obviously it is things like agony that make something moral what it is, and this is different from distances and comparative sizes, but the "distinguishing features" I have in mind have to do with how facts are what they ARE, and moral facts being what they are. When you isolate the agony from "straight factuality," or, say, reduce factuality of an agonizing affair down to where the agony itself presents itself, to see if there is a residuum of something not merely factual, I do believe you are bound to agree that there is, and to ignore this is like ignoring the broad side of a barn.

This is to me quite clear. Call them moral facts, if you like: Moral facts are qualitatively distinct from "mere" facts.

Simple, really: facts have no value dimension. What is this value dimension? The good and the bad.

Descriptions (though, it may be more 'accurate' to say 'sense of sensation' which is awkward, but hopefully makes the point hehe). Then we intersubjectively agree that our descriptions match. That is what we then label pain. Again, no moral claim to be made (though, i understand most will want to make one here if asked). — AmadeusD

But most want to make judgments in what Mackie calls a first order moral view. The issue here is a second order moral view: the ontology of morals. We may intersubjectively agree that, yes, there is agony, and we have a good idea what it is. But what happened to the second order analysis? The "essence" of agony?

Sense of sensation? Well, in one classificatory designation, this is true, for this amazing Hagan Dasz certainly is a sensation, just as a tickle or an itch. But calling something a sensation binds it to a deflationary account, one that deals with non value issues. This makes for an error in category for this discussion.

And that is all that constitutes 'pain' to a human. Otherwise, we wouldn't know what to call it when we feel pain. Again, 'obviousness' is a truly terrible line to take here. — AmadeusD

Just to be clear, you did say agreement is all that constitutes pain?; "otherwise, we wouldn't know what to call it when we feel pain."?? Only true if the language conditions of agreement constituted the essence of agony (our current example). So, are you saying screaming agony in its essence is entirely exhaustible in the analysis of what is SAID about it?

This is just patently false, and supported by nothing that you've said. I'm unsure what to do with that... — AmadeusD

It stands unrefuted because it stands unrefutable, and this is because the essence of ethics is not a proposition.

This may be part of the reason I was never much fascinated by philosophy. Arguments don't excite me much, and the experience of living teaches us enough, if we pay attention. — Tom Storm

OTOH, Heidegger's Being and Time must be read. Just saying. It is frankly profound and opens the door to all later Heidegger, and post Heideggerian/neo Husserlian responses. Not just arguments.

I think it's dispositional. As much as I find Hart fascinating and intelligent, I find his beliefs to be cloying and unsatisfying. The notion of the metaphysical God of classical theism doesn't engage me. When it comes to beliefs, like the people we love, we can’t help what we’re attracted to. — Tom Storm

Not that I am going to go out and read all of his works, but I suspect the ground of his thinking goes much deeper this classical theism. Someone like Karl Rahner, a Heideggerian Jesuit priest (weird as it sounds), takes ALL of the beliefs, rituals, hymns, sacraments, and so on, to be cognitively empty: "...so always let our statements also fall into that inconceivability of God that remains silent." This goes for Christ the redeemer and son of God, the trinity, original sin, and so on. None of these are "true" but stand in "analogous" relation to the radically Other of divinity. Now, this kind of thinking exceeds something Heidegger would allow, for any analogy one can imagine for H is conceived out of the totality of ontic-historical possibilities, that is, familiar language and culture wrought out of historical settings, and cannot be conceived beyond this (though, his gelassenheit in A Conversation on a Country Path makes reference to Eckhart, and Eckhart's great virtue lies in the absence, mostly, of Biblical references. His was a mystical exegesis). Anyway, I would have to read him further.

Reading Husserl's Ideas after Heidegger made AMNY things clear that were frustratingly confused about the world. The world was not the world anymore.

Are you suggesting idealism? — Tom Storm

Not really. The world is disclosed IN "idea" but clearly clouds and cups and cell phones are not ideas. They ARE, and they're there. The term "idea" muddles the issue for me, notwithstanding Husserl.

Are there things that are not possessed by our comprehension? Of course; but one would have to leave disclosure to encounter them, and since this would be leaving comprehension as well, then there is nothing to talk about. You can see why Rorty thought Heidegger so important: talk about other things only makes sense in sense making contexts. But, and this is most extraordinary to my thinking, What do we do with Being as such, thta strange, alien experience of not being at home, a "nothing" that doesn't "show" itself, but only apprears as an uncanniness of all things. I say, this is the self's projection of its existence on to things encountered. This cup I am familiar with in all the usual ways, but ask me if it is real, and you are asking a very different kind of question, for how does one discover its reality, given that "all the usual ways" say nothing about this? Heidegger makes his pivotal move on the verb 'to be' (see the youtube interview with William Richardson), but he retains the need to include the otherworldliness of our existence. I side with Husserl on this, but it is a very long story.

Our inner experience is the ground of reality. On this point, from what little I’ve gleaned, I see no reason to disagree. It’s easy to argue that modern life reduces everything to consumerism, surface values, and the grey managerial-technocratic lens through which most Western governments operate. But I’m curious: what practical steps might this way of thinking actually lead to? Life is more than sitting in a room reading and pondering ineffables. What does one do? — Tom Storm

My take is, it depends on the ineffables you are pondering, and, when is pondering not pondering, but "listening". What IS divinity? This means putting time itself aside, sequential time such that one sees cups and hills and fence posts, and there is no past to make into a future in the process of one's existing? How is it possible to acknowledge what is not language if language is presupposed in acknowledging? But this matter really is not an argument in the usual sense. Phenomenology begins with description of the phenomenological "world" that is presupposed by ordinary existence, and the former is not the familiar world, and so one has to make the move to phenomenological discovery, but what this IS depends on the individual. Some find this the philosophical medium of religious affirmation, while others like Heidegger, see it as an analysis of the finitude of our being (though Heidegger said he never really left the church).

I think very highly of Emily Dickinson, her life, attitude, and her daring threshold poetry. When asked why she was such a recluse, she said for her, just being here is enough. I know exactly what she meant. No greater adventure.

Pain without a moral claim: change this to pain without a moral dimension or possibility, and now you have a contradiction. Claims can be made or not, and they are often complicated, but what it is for something to BE pain at all, that is, IN the analytic unpacking of the term, carries in it the moral possibility, and since it is impossible to conceive of pain without agency, any pain at all is a moral actuality, putting aside the ambiguity of what pain IS in entanglements and involvements, for pain, it has to be kept in mind, as a concept is an abstraction from actuality. — Astrophel

Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems a perfect "non-sense" paragraph. It says nothing to me at all. What I can respond to is the bolded. There are plenty of scenarios without this, like random bodily malfunction or pain from sources unknown. The facts are that there is pain. That's all. The person can then react how they react and that has a moral dimension to it, i suppose (though, realistically, if the person isn't affecting anyone else there's an argument that's till not a moral dimension).

Does much pain have a moral aspect? Yep. But its not in the pain. Other than these comments, I do not think the above says much that can be talked about. The point I made, and i still make, is that pain is a sensation which we can all agree is "x" when described adequately. It involves (or need not involve) any claim to good bad, moral immoral or anything of the kind. Causing pain would fall into your bucket, at any time.

That does cut to the chase. — Astrophel

You seem to have now moved into the causing pain discussion. Unfair play, but I agree with your points. They say nothing for the above, though.

for surely you are not objecting to calling pain bad — Astrophel

That is precisely what I am saying. Some kind of pain can be bad. "Pain" is just a thing that can obtain. It isn't moral. It is just is. I cannot see that you're addressing this beyond trying to curtail the discussion into human reactions to pain - but even there, you're on shaky ground as plenty of pain is not considered bad.

How bad is it? she screams bloody murder in your face for asking such a silly question. You are saying, with Mackie, that yes, you understand all of this, but in a very special analytic of pain, a philosophical analytic, the term "bad" has no place at all, for it carries with it a moral dimension that cannot be evidentially grounded in actual conditions like screaming agony ( I am assuming you are willing to allow there to be screaming agony). — Astrophel

You are very, very much not talking about the right things here. Pain isn't agential. It has no moral valence (take this, just for now). "she" being in pain is bad, because I dislike seeing people in pain (usually). The pain itself is the cause of her behaviour which is bad, to me (awkward wording, but yeah). The pain, itself, is bad to her in this instance. There will have been plenty of pains she did not consider bad in her past. You cannot design scenarios which are emotionally bad and claim we are talking about 'pain'. We are not. We are talking about human reactions to pain, as above noted. If you feel these cannot be extricated, so be it. I do, and I cannot see why not.

But what is evidentially absent from the agony, which is so profoundly manifest? — Astrophel

This is not the question. You're talking about agony - a human emotion - not pain, a physical sensation presumably felt by all sufficiently ccomplex conscious entities.

I think you want to regard the agony just what you would regard the sun shining — Astrophel

As above, exactly not what is being said. Please take heed.

it is simply classificatory for things that are intersubjectively "taken as" good and bad. — Astrophel

This is precisely what labeling things good and bad is. It isn't referring to any higher order reasoning, it doesn't draw on some objective measure, it simply tells me what you think. You've done quite a bit of it here, without giving me anything more than exactly that.

Facts are facts, and moral affairs are really just facts, called moral affairs in preanalytical contexts — Astrophel

This seems totally senseless. Facts are facts. "moral affairs" doesn't really mean anything. Morality is literally the dispositions of humans about facts (including what to do about them). You haven't presented anything to the contrary.

Call them moral facts, if you like: Moral facts are qualitatively distinct from "mere" facts. — Astrophel

They don't even obtain, so no (on my view. They aren't even distinct from nonsense.

e may intersubjectively agree that, yes, there is agony, and we have a good idea what it is. — Astrophel

Again, you are not talking about pain. You are talking about agony. They are without doubt different things which come apart. I cannot understand most of what you're saying because of this confusion.

This makes for an error in category for this discussion. — Astrophel

The irony is quite strong here, and I am having an extremely hard time not quipping becuase of how intensely obviously, from line one, the reverse of this was. You have made the category error, and consistently interchanged "agony" for "pain". Agony is pain with a negative moral valence. You have baked in a winning argument, but about somehting I am not talking.

ust to be clear, you did say agreement is all that constitutes pain? — Astrophel

Nope. I said agreement leads to us labeling pain. The agreement is about a description, which we can all recognize. It does not constitute anything but the narrative under the word 'pain' which (as clearly noted, and is not really in question) does not require any moral evaluation at all (beside, perhaps, mentioning that sometimes pain causes suffering, and sometimes it does not where suffering is clear a moral term). This, again, seems a total misunderstanding of what's going on both in this discussion and with "pain" in general. The reason I've used to the term "constitutes pain to a human" is because the word "pain" must be constituted by something, and its construction involves only that agreement aforementioned. I should have scare-quoted the word 'pain' there, but hopefully you now understand what you've missed: We wouldn't know how to use the word 'pain' or what to apply it to unless we had that agreement underling it. To be brutally clear: The use of the word pain, and what pain is are clearly different things which require different treatments in discussion. You have picked up two separate points and run them together - reasonable, as I was imprecise, but please understand it is not what was being said.

So, are you saying screaming agony in its essence is entirely exhaustible in the analysis of what is SAID about it? — Astrophel

To some degree, but that's far less interesting and nuanced that what I'm getting at. Various descriptions of pain (not our reactions to it, but it - stinging, dull, major, minor, niggling and them comparisons with other sensations (too hot, v just hot enough)) can be amalgamated to represent a category of sensation which includes much variation, but generally speaking (with grey areas) distinguishes it from other sensations. Is it the case that these sensations have a tendency to cause certain reactions in us? Yep. And those reactions are moral. The pain (inarguably, now) is not the same and (almost inarguably) is not liable to those same considerations without adding the reactions.

It stands unrefuted — Astrophel

If this is your position, I cannot understand why you're here doing this, or the vast majority of what you've said in this reply. It is, as best I can tell, patently, obviously and demonstrably (as I feel I have done) wrong. "the bad" is nothing more than something you think everyone else agrees on, apparently. They don't and there is no criteria for "the bad". Even if there were, "pain" would not be liable to it's confines. So, yeah. I shall leave htis here given that response.

I don't know, because that's not the case. Almost impossible to know if I would 'love the burn' as they say, if it lead nowhere but its certainly plausible. It's a fun type of pain. I just cannot tell whether its fun because of some underlying expectation.

Very interesting observations. Thanks.

When asked why she was such a recluse, she said for her, just being here is enough. — Astrophel

Nice. I wish more people felt similarly - we wouldn't have a world ruined by tourism. A crass interpretation of her words but there it is...

Not that I am going to go out and read all of his works, but I suspect the ground of his thinking goes much deeper this classical theism — Astrophel

I'm sure of that. Hart is an insatiable reader (which seems to match his seemingly insatiable intake of food). What is he missing, I wonder?

OTOH, Heidegger's Being and Time must be read. Just saying. It is frankly profound and opens the door to all later Heidegger, and post Heideggerian/neo Husserlian responses. Not just arguments. — Astrophel

Yes, you're not the only person to suggest this. I doubt I'd be able to get a useful reading of Heidegger, even if I could endure the dense and technical language. I simply don't have the passion or ability to pursue such literature.

Phenomenology begins with description of the phenomenological "world" that is presupposed by ordinary existence, and the former is not the familiar world, and so one has to make the move to phenomenological discovery, but what this IS depends on the individual. Some find this the philosophical medium of religious affirmation, while others like Heidegger, see it as an analysis of the finitude of our being (though Heidegger said he never really left the church). — Astrophel

The finitude of human life occurred to me when I was a child, and a sense of its evanescence has never really left me.

Not wanting to start anything crass, but on the subject of moral clarity, what do you make of Heidegger's interest in Nazism - did his philosophy not assist him is seeing this clearly?

Thanks again.

You say "descriptive" as if saying something is descriptive somehow suggests that it doesn't relate to value. That is only true if one has already accepted that there aren't truths/facts about value. Saying facts are about "how the world is," and then expecting this to somehow make the case for anti-realism only works if you already assume anti-realism is true. — Count Timothy von Icarus

When we pursue “truth,” we typically mean aspects of the world that exist independently of the mind. By independent, I mean it is possible for their truthfulness to be perceivable from a third-person perspective apart from human consciousness. Of course, it seems implausible to access anything that is absolutely independent, but generally, the more mind-independent something is, the more “true” it seems to be. Yet values, prima facie, appear to be completely mind-dependent—especially ethics, whose existence seems to rely heavily on the presence of agency and consciousness.

Now, I don’t think adopting a descriptive definition of fact necessarily entails moral antirealism. One could, for instance, ground normative beliefs in naturalistic explanations, such as evolutionary ethics. Alternatively, one might appeal to a Platonic Form of the Good, treating ethics as an objectively existing idea. Perhaps even if-theism (if I may call it that) could offer a foundation for ethics.

These are all forms of moral realism that could, in principle, be successful—if adequately defended. However, each faces significant challenges: naturalism confronts Moore’s Open Question Argument, Platonism must account for its obscure metaphysics and epistemology, and I haven’t yet explored moral intuitionism in depth, so I can’t speak to it with confidence. But perhaps that is your position—or at least one you sympathize with.

So, when you say that “stomping on a baby is bad,” do you mean that this is so obviously and intuitively true that it makes no sense to further analyze the sentence? And with what level of certainty are you proclaiming it, that of logic or physics?

When we pursue “truth,” we typically mean aspects of the world that exist independently of the mind. By independent, I mean it is possible for their truthfulness to be perceivable from a third-person perspective apart from human consciousness. Of course, it seems implausible to access anything that is absolutely independent, but generally, the more mind-independent something is, the more “true” it seems to be. Yet values, prima facie, appear to be completely mind-dependent—especially ethics, whose existence seems to rely heavily on the presence of agency and consciousness.

This definition requires certain metaphysical assumptions. It's worth noting that the classical definition of truth is something like: "the adequacy of the intellect to being," which doesn't suggest anything about "mind independence." Quite the opposite. So, to return to my original comment, it seems like the assumptions of Anglo-empiricist philosophy, which is a pretty small silo, are just being assumed as absolute here.

So, when you say that “stomping on a baby is bad,” do you mean that this is so obviously and intuitively true that it makes no sense to further analyze the sentence? And with what level of certainty are you proclaiming it, that of logic or physics?

I said it was bad for the baby. But look, most people would say they know at least something about what is good or bad for them. Are they all completely wrong, delusional? If man can be this fundamentally delusional, how can you be sure you and the one tradition you're raising up has it right? For one, it seems to me that you cannot possibly know that it is good for you to prefer this tradition. It surely cannot be "better" than Eastern thought, Aristotleianism, etc., since nothing is truly better or worse. So, what exactly is the point of arguing over which illusion is "better?"

And yes, I think "things can be better or worse for us," is as obvious as, "things can be true or false," and that denying it is absurd. Again, show me how you show that there is truth, without assuming truth. I don't think you can. Does that mean truth doesn't exist? I am not sure if that's a fair demand, and it seems to be the same sort of maneuver being used on goodness here.

Or consider the extreme eliminativist when they say: "prove to me that anyone is conscious, instead of their bodies simply producing behavioral outputs, all while keeping to my standards of 'empiricism.'" I think it's obvious that, if the extreme eliminativist/behavioralist is granted their epistemic presuppositions, it will prove quite impossible to "prove anyone or anything is conscious." But surely that doesn't mean they have just proved we don't exist, it simply proves that their starting point results in absurdity. Yet value is an intrinsic part of consciousness, and so I think a denial of value is not unlike this case. It one's starting points lead to absurdities like: "I am not conscious," or "nothing is ever better or worse for me," they are bad starting points.

There is also a parallel to radical skepticism here, where, despite many people pronouncing that "nothing is better or worse," absolutely none of them act like they actually believe this is true—just as radical skeptics don't actually act like they cannot know that walking off a precipice would lead to their falling. Both still take the road to where they want to go. The skeptic doesn't randomly select a road, "because I cannot know where any lead," and the skeptic re values doesn't randomly select a road on the assumption that ending up in one place cannot be better or worse than any other. People are incapable of living with the courage of their convictions vis-á-vis these ideas.

This is also wholly consistent with the idea that the senses 'inform' the intellect in this regard, such that one cannot simply choose "one's own" truth or values. Indeed, if we could choose such things, if, as Milton's Satan puts it, the "mind can make a Heaven of Hell or a Hell of Heaven," or as Hamlet says "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so," then the obvious solution to cancer, AIDS, war, hunger, etc. would just be to choose to think of them as great goods. Problem solved.

Isn’t gravity defined as a force of attraction between masses in Newtonian physics, and the curvature of space-time in general relativity? Why is it not defined?

Naturalism and emotivism also have their own problems.

Against naturalism:

Moore’s argument takes the following form:

Let goodness be equivalent to some complex idea X (e.g. the pursuit of the desire as desired by all humans)

Then goodness = X, just as saying a triangle is a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles

This means that asking whether goodness is really X should yield no meaningful and substantial answer, just as asking whether a triangle is a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles

However, it seems that asking whether goodness is really X do yield meaningful and substantial answer (consider the case of Utilitarianism and Organ Donor Trolley Problem)

Therefore, goodness cannot be equivalent to some complex idea X

In this way, Moore refutes any attempt to define goodness in terms of anything other than itself. He concludes: “Good is a simple notion, just as yellow is a simple notion… We know what ‘yellow’ means, and can recognize it wherever it is seen, but we cannot actually define it. Similarly, we know what ‘good’ means, but we cannot define it” (Principia Ethica, §10). Therefore, any moral realist position that aims to define moral concepts in a synthetic or a posterior way render themselves susceptible to Moore’s Open Question Argument. — Showmee

Against emotivism:

One of the most well-known objections is the Frege–Geach problem. If moral statements like "stealing is wrong" are indeed senseless or not truth-apt propositions, then how is it that we can still use them in semantically appropriate contexts where they serve as components of valid logical inferences? For instance, it makes perfect semantic sense to say:

Stealing is wrong,
and Johnny is stealing,
So Johnny is doing something wrong.

We know that for a conclusion to be valid, its premises must also be truth. But if we assume that "stealing is wrong" is not even a truth-apt statement, why does the conclusion still seem logically valid in the above argument? On the other hand, if we treat moral propositions as mere expressions of emotion, it wouldn’t make for a valid argument to say something like:

Boo to stealing!
Johnny is stealing,
So Johnny is doing something wrong. — Showmee

Additionally, another problem with ethical naturalism is its non-deterministic nature. In any natural science, the laws or theories established are deterministic. The effects of gravity, for example, will always be measured regardless of the number of trials. However, not everyone adheres to ethics, and there’s always a significant number of people doing immoral things. The predictive power of any ethical theory is not satisfactory. I guess you could say ethics is not measured in terms of behaviors but rather by a sense of approval. But a measurement of “approval” is far from “empirical.”

The effects of gravity, for example, will always be measured regardless of the number of trials. — Showmee

I think you are misunderstanding my point here. I am saying that Gravity is a placeholder for a phenomenon observed. As you noted there are two distinct ways of expressing how Gravity appears to us through two entirely different perspectives (Newton and Einstein).

What I am doing is equating this to the phenomenon of Ethics. There are differing view points that align in some way with what is observed (be this in language for ethics or phsyically for gravity).

Error Theory can then be taken to state that Gravity does not exist. All we know of are some perspectives that provide an illusion of Gravity being a thing, but really it is nothing.

Non-cognitivism does not have to necessarily dismiss the existence of Ethics it can simply reframe it, take an alternative perspective. If such a perspective functions better than the previous iterations of how we look at the phenomenon of ethics (as objective, subjective, mislabelled, etc.,.) then we are exploring and discovering more about the phenomenon at hand.

The basis upon which Error Theory rests comes under its own scrutiny. To look upon the logical basis of Error Theory as not-being-a-thing, meaning framed in idealised abstractions, show just as much the item under consideration to be in error as it does error theory itself. A metaphysical rug has been pulled out from beneath us and then its existence has been denied.

Additionally, another problem with ethical naturalism is its non-deterministic nature. In any natural science, the laws or theories established are deterministic. — Showmee

Well, not really. I was not arguing for naturalism anyway. Nothing is completely deterministic. The logical premises you use are abstractions-of and do not exist (hence what I say above). Logic only works within very specific bounds, and life easily overflows these bounds at every point of the rim of reality we know of.

[

Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems a perfect "non-sense" paragraph. It says nothing to me at all. What I can respond to is the bolded. There are plenty of scenarios without this, like random bodily malfunction or pain from sources unknown. The facts are that there is pain. That's all. The person can then react how they react and that has a moral dimension to it, i suppose (though, realistically, if the person isn't affecting anyone else there's an argument that's till not a moral dimension).

Does much pain have a moral aspect? Yep. But its not in the pain. Other than these comments, I do not think the above says much that can be talked about. The point I made, and i still make, is that pain is a sensation which we can all agree is "x" when described adequately. It involves (or need not involve) any claim to good bad, moral immoral or anything of the kind. Causing pain would fall into your bucket, at any time. — AmadeusD

It "seems" nonsense, but is it? You think like this because you don't understand ethics. Take the idea that it is impossible to conceive pain without agency. Think it through. Ask what it would be for searing pain to be without agency, so absent of perception, awareness; a bit like asking what lunar moon light would be without sun light: the former IS the latter, so they are conceptually bound (notwithstanding Quine's Two Dogmas, if you've read it), and so the matter is analytic. Pain IS a constitutive feature of a consciousness that experiences it, when it is experienced. So then, if there is pain, there is agency. What makes pain inherently moral? Well, this is what pain IS, that is, moral affairs are literally "made of" pain, in the broad sense.

It is not conceivable for there to be pain, and there being no moral issue. Note that this claim has no interest the way pain varies in the objects of its affections or the way pain and pleasure become entangled and ambiguous. These incidentals are suspended, just as Kant suspended all but logic to talk about pure reason. (Of course, he was deeply in the woods regarding ethics.) Such entanglements brings analysis to a hopeless mess, which is responsible for, partly, for philosophical talk to be lost in the contingencies of ethics, which is preanalytic (prephenomenological) and this confuses as to the "essence" of ethics, and so philosophy finds itself locked into the absurd thesis that there "really" are no "ethics" to ethics, borrowing from early Wittgensteins' no value to value (keeping in mind that as he wrote this he likely had a copy of Tolstoy's Gospels in Brief in his pocket. Russell called him a mystic, yet he, like Heidegger, was bound to a philosophy of finitude), and this the ground of your thinking. This thinking is mistaken: value is not "observed" in the usual way; it is apriori, yet existential! The good and the bad are indeed metaphysical ideas, but this is because the world is metaphysical; and metaphysics' centuries of imaginative theology must be suspended to see this.

You see, it is not true that, as you say, there is nothing to talk about. And calling pain a sensation is simply deflationary, and patently absurd. Certainly, all pains are sensations, but sensations often belong to non value contexts, as in references to sensory motor skills, or Kant's sensory intuitions, or in any a number of technical references, and it belongs to casual talk that has not made the transition into an analytical setting. Philosphy brings out what is undisclosed in such settings as it asks themost basic questions, like metaethical questions.

That is precisely what I am saying. Some kind of pain can be bad. "Pain" is just a thing that can obtain. It isn't moral. It is just is. I cannot see that you're addressing this beyond trying to curtail the discussion into human reactions to pain - but even there, you're on shaky ground as plenty of pain is not considered bad. — AmadeusD

But this is the rub of it all: You want to reduce the world to what "just is" and yet you dismiss what IS in doing so in an ad hoc attempt to bring the world to heel in a reduction to mundane clarity. What IS it that you are dismissing? The metaphysics of metaethics, for one.

That dagger in my kidney is NOT my reaction to pain. Such an odd locution.

And the discussion here has nothing to do with the way complex human affairs confuse analytic concepts, like the good and the bad. There IS NO "the good" or "the bad" defended here. This point is critical. No one here arguing as if there were some platonic form called the good. It is not arguing that there isn't such a thing either, for this I leave to "bad metaphysics" somethign Wittgenstein rightly wanted philosophy its busy hands off of. Mine is simply a very straight forward position: in the analysis, and I keep strong examples in play because they are the most telling, of any ethical matter at all (and I use ethics and morality interchangeably. I simply don't care about this in a metaethical discussion, and distinctions are about just this "busyness" referred to) one MUST find value, not to put too find a point on it. No value, no ethics. Ethics is analytically bound to value, and value is the good and the bad of things. This can be understood congingently, as with good chairs, good knives--referring other language to explain what these are; or metaethically, which deals with the ontology of ethics: what it IS qua being value. Comprehension remains finite, but discovery indeterminate--but authentic, and not dismissive merely. What I call good metaphysics lies with disclosure of what is there, yet indeterminate. This IS the world.

You are very, very much not talking about the right things here. Pain isn't agential. It has no moral valence (take this, just for now). "she" being in pain is bad, because I dislike seeing people in pain (usually). The pain itself is the cause of her behaviour which is bad, to me (awkward wording, but yeah). The pain, itself, is bad to her in this instance. There will have been plenty of pains she did not consider bad in her past. You cannot design scenarios which are emotionally bad and claim we are talking about 'pain'. We are not. We are talking about human reactions to pain, as above noted. If you feel these cannot be extricated, so be it. I do, and I cannot see why not. — AmadeusD

Think of pain not as as a variable concept that accords with how people differ in their entanglements. It is an analytic concept, derived from apriori inquiry into the nature of pain. Analogous to Kant's reason as such: There is no such thing as pure reason that can be comprehended; it is rather an analytic concept only, meaning Kant can't tell you what things are in their essence, but he can give analysis of what is witnessed. The good is an analytic concept only; its meaning lies in there being IN the analysis of ethical matters, judgments, events, concretia, a transcendental element, witnessed but not understood in its ground (if there is one).

Disliking seeing people in pain goes to compassion and empathy. This is not on the table. Reactions to pain begs the question: what is pain at all?

This is not the question. You're talking about agony - a human emotion - not pain, a physical sensation presumably felt by all sufficiently ccomplex conscious entities. — AmadeusD

Agony is a human...what?" sorry, you took me aback. Are you saying that having my teeth drilled without novocain is an emotional experience? A seismic error in category.

This is precisely what labeling things good and bad is. It isn't referring to any higher order reasoning, it doesn't draw on some objective measure, it simply tells me what you think. You've done quite a bit of it here, without giving me anything more than exactly that. — AmadeusD

No. See the above. The good and the bad are not labels. Your misapprehensions rise out of invented issues, conceived by those who think too much about their own thinking, i.e., analytic philosophers. Higher order of reasoning, objective measures: these are terms discursively generated out of what you think the foundational analysis of ethics is. But you have a default critical mentality, likely conceived out of too much a nihilative thinking. Keep in mind that philosophy is mostly nihilative, in that it takes a thesis and tears it to shreds. This will get you published, NOT an analytic toward affirmation. All theses leads to aporia (see Derrida on this. Language is inherently self annihilating. But metaethics takes inquiry out of thetic delimitations because ethics is bound to value in an existential analytic, and value lies outside of language, is non cognitive.

This seems totally senseless. Facts are facts. "moral affairs" doesn't really mean anything. Morality is literally the dispositions of humans about facts (including what to do about them). You haven't presented anything to the contrary. — AmadeusD

Don't get lost in the ambiguity of a term. Facts--what is a fact? One doesn't want to posit something that is not a fact, or rather, justified in the positing. Facts depend on justification, unless you are in metaphysical la la land: no justification, no fact; so much for "facts are facts". Justifications are facts. Jutification is generally an objective matter, public, for all to see and think about, even if controversial, but when analysis gets technical, the public nature of justification is narrowed, and facts are narrowed. What is a moral fact? One can use this term like this in different contexts, but these are all preanalytic (preontological). What is a moral fact in the meta analysis? We do what scientists do: observe. Here is my friend wanting his ax back with rage and horrible intent, so it is HIS, and I should return it, yet clearly no good will come of it. Two conflicting obligations. A fact. Now we ask, like a scientist would ask, what IS it when the "parts" of this episode are laid bare? Like a geologist looking for quartz and felspar and mica, we look at what constitutes this matter, what makes it what it is. Essences for scientists are empirical and quantitative essences, and the analysis lies whatis always already there in the existing paradigms, but ethics is different: what is IN axes and murderous intent that gives pause to action? It is the harm that could be done. What IS harm? Here one stops in one's tracks: one has discovered something in the analytic that is IN the harm. It is not contingent harm, as in "this proposal could harm public image," for the harm of that could be done is not about other language that cold explain it. The harm is irreducible harm: the ax, breaking of bones, and so on, causes great suffering (agony, ofo you like), and the analytic of this lies in the term value (being an analytic term, and discovery being both true and right, yet indeterminate). You have discovered the essence of the whole affair. Were no suffering to be at stake, there would be no ethical dilemma. It would simply vanish. The "science" of this conclusion is unmistakable.

Now I have presented something "to the contrary" as you put it.

The irony is quite strong here, and I am having an extremely hard time not quipping becuase of how intensely obviously, from line one, the reverse of this was. You have made the category error, and consistently interchanged "agony" for "pain". Agony is pain with a negative moral valence. You have baked in a winning argument, but about somehting I am not talking. — AmadeusD

So you think agony is interchangeable with pain. Look to usage. Note all contexts in which you find the term agony and its "moral valance" and replace this term adjectivally qualified 'pain'. Nothing changes, for screaming agony is not screaming horrible pain.

You are inventing an issue. There is none. Half baked, I think is the expression.

The reason I've used to the term "constitutes pain to a human" is because the word "pain" must be constituted by something, and its construction involves only that agreement aforementioned. I should have scare-quoted the word 'pain' there, but hopefully you now understand what you've missed: We wouldn't know how to use the word 'pain' or what to apply it to unless we had that agreement underling it. To be brutally clear: The use of the word pain, and what pain is are clearly different things which require different treatments in discussion. You have picked up two separate points and run them together - reasonable, as I was imprecise, but please understand it is not what was being said. — AmadeusD

"The use of the word pain, and what pain is are clearly different things." Puzzling, given what you've said. So what is pain, then? A sensation, you say. But see the above.

To some degree, but that's far less interesting and nuanced that what I'm getting at. Various descriptions of pain (not our reactions to it, but it - stinging, dull, major, minor, niggling and them comparisons with other sensations (too hot, v just hot enough)) can be amalgamated to represent a category of sensation which includes much variation, but generally speaking (with grey areas) distinguishes it from other sensations. Is it the case that these sensations have a tendency to cause certain reactions in us? Yep. And those reactions are moral. The pain (inarguably, now) is not the same and (almost inarguably) is not liable to those same considerations without adding the reactions. — AmadeusD

Reactions are moral, and I see no reason to object with this. But here, this is a meta analysis of ethics, and reactions vary, but the pain does not, though it is indeterminate as are all things (the sun is an indeterminacy if you follow the ontological question down the rabbit hole long enough). You want to reduce morality to a "reaction" to pain, but reactions, the commendations, condemnations, approvals and disapprovals, the thumbs up or down, and the rest found in analytic thinking, are just ignoring foundational presence that makes morality what it is: pain. See the above: compare normal facts with moral "facts" and ask honetsly if there is no residua in the reductive comparison. Yours is a reductionist position, a deflationary position, following something irresponsibly said by Wittgenstein long ago.

If this is your position, I cannot understand why you're here doing this, or the vast majority of what you've said in this reply. It is, as best I can tell, patently, obviously and demonstrably (as I feel I have done) wrong. "the bad" is nothing more than something you think everyone else agrees on, apparently. They don't and there is no criteria for "the bad". Even if there were, "pain" would not be liable to it's confines. So, yeah. I shall leave htis here given that response. — AmadeusD

Patience. All is not said in a post. There is behind this much unsaid because you haven't read enough about it. I know you thinking pretty well, and it rather typifies the attempts to put clarity before actuality, thereby missing altogether what it means to be in a world, which is "really" what philosophy is about.

See above:" ....agony ISN"T interechangeable" it should read.