Rather, both sources are saying that knowledge constitutes a a subset of ones beliefs. — Relativist

Well that's a rather different claim, isn't it? "X is Y" is not the same as "Some X is Y." Philosophical discussion requires linguistic precision. That sort of conflation, over and over, is unphilosophical.

The separation of practical and theoretical reason was centuries old. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, indeed - even millennia old. So why do you think that the fact/value distinction is a distinctive error of empiricism - or even an error at all?
(As I remember it, Aristotle even asserts that "Reason, by itself, moves nothing". That's what motivates his construction of the practical syllogism.)

It's precisely the assumption that there are no final causes (and perhaps, no facts about goodness) that allows for a novel move here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you are over-simplifying here. That decision was a re-configuration of the distinction between theoretical and practical reason, not, or at least not necessarily, an abandonment of the ideas of purposes and values. Oversimplifying again, final causes are not the province of science, that's all.

Prior thinkers hadn't missed the difference between "ought" and "is;" yet they thought there could be descriptive statements about the good and beautiful (just as we can speak about what "ought to happen" given purely descriptive predictive models"). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is true that the interface between fact and value, or between theoretical and practical reason, is more complicated than is usually recognized. We do not always draw a clear distinction between the two, so one can always turn an evaluative statement into a factual statement - and there are many concepts that combine the two. Yet we can also to disentangle them. "Murder" combines fact and value, but I think everyone understands how to distinguish between the two aspects. "Abortion is illegal" is, in one way, a statement of fact and not of value (unless one is arguing that one ought to obey the law). But we can also ask whether abortion ought to be illegal. We can also, I think, see the difference between "ought" of expectation and prediction ("we ought to get home in three hours") and "ought" of moral or ethical principles ("you ought to be on time for this appointment"). The factor that can create confusion is that we usually expect people to meet their moral and ethical obligations.

You can see this in the fact that if you replace "good" in the second statement with "common" you get a straightforwardly descriptive statement: "It is common for people to be kind to their mothers." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Surely you can see that those two statements have very different force? One implies an instruction or command, or recommendation. The other doesn't. "`It is common for people to take a summer vacation" is an observation which does not have the force of a recommendation or instruction, while "It is good for people to take a summer vacation" does not imply that it is common and is compatible with it being rare to do so, but it does imply that one should. When the surgeon holds out his hand and calls "scalpel", it's an instruction and the surgeon expects the nurse to put one in his hand; when the nurse holds up a scalpel and asks what it is, the same word is a description - there is no expectation that the nurse will put it in his hand.

It seems to me to be akin to demanding that every logical argument include the additional premise that: "we ought affirm the true over the false" tacked on to it. Granted, I see no problem in adding either since they seem obviously true. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, a logical argument does not require that premiss. If the argument is sound, it is sound whether or not people affirm the conclusion. It is true that when we are trying to explain the force of these arguments, we try to explain that, and why, we ought to affirm the conclusion. It's a knotty problem.

Surely you can see that those two statements have very different force? One implies an instruction or command, or recommendation. The other doesn't. "`It is common for people to take a summer vacation" is an observation which does not have the force of a recommendation or instruction, while "It is good for people to take a summer vacation" does not imply that it is common and is compatible with it being rare to do so, but it does imply that one should. When the surgeon holds out his hand and calls "scalpel", it's an instruction and the surgeon expects the nurse to put one in his hand; when the nurse holds up a scalpel and asks what it is, the same word is a description - there is no expectation that the nurse will put it in his hand.

I'm not denying a difference between commands and recommendations and descriptions, just the idea that so descriptions involving values are actually commands or expressions of emotion. Such theories do violence to language.

The idea that "good" always refers to something like "thou shalt" is a product of Reformation volanturist theology, the tradition that shapes Hume. To say that all value claims are about "thou shalt" isn't to observer an ironclad law of philosophy or language. It's just the (originally explicitly theological) premise that shaped Hume's context, i.e., "there is no intrinsic value (teloi) because intrinsic value would be a constraint on the divine will. Thus, value must be about divine command."

"This is a great car," does not mean "thou shalt drive my car," or even "I should drive my car," just as "this is good (healthy) food" does not directly convert to "thou shalt eat this food," or even "you ought to eat this food." This is even more obvious when we move to the beings that most properly possess goodness. "Peter is a good man," need not mean "thou shalt choose Peter," or "I recommend Peter." It can, but it needn't; it can be merely descriptive.

Centuries of war waged against intrinsic value in the language haven't been able to paper over these issues. While "that's a good tiger," might seem a bit odd in English, descriptive value statements made in a slightly different ways are still common and natural. Hence, "that tiger is a perfect specimen," or "that is a perfect tiger," is generally about the tiger as tiger, not recommending the tiger or commanding us to do anything vis-á-vis the tiger. So too, "that is a pathetic, miserable bush," isn't telling us to do anything vis-á-vis the bush, but is normally telling us something about the bush as a bush.


So let me ask a pointed question: does the descriptive statement "x is y" essentially mean "you ought to affirm that x is y is true?" If not, then why, if y is "good" would it automatically change to "you ought to do y." To be sure, we ought to choose the good and avoid the bad. But we also want to affirm truth and reject falsity. And yet we don't say that "x is true" becomes equivalent with "affirm x," and so "x is good" shouldn't be subject to this sort of transformation either.

On the same point, "ought" is often taken to imply duty, and I think this is the same sort of deficient theological extension. "This food is good, you ought to try it," and "she likes you, you should ask her out," do not imply "you have a duty to eat this food," or "you have a duty to ask her out."

So why do you think that the fact/value distinction is a distinctive error of empiricism - or even an error at all?
(As I remember it, Aristotle even asserts that "Reason, by itself, moves nothing". That's what motivates his construction of the practical syllogism.)

I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before. Hume's variant would be something like saying only the animal (sensible) and vegetative soul ever move the body. The rational soul (or at least a fractured part of it) is acknowledged, but powerless. Hume doesn't argue for this position in Book II though, he just stipulates this as a definition. He does not take up the influential arguments for the appetites associated with reason, but simply declares they cannot exist. But I consider the phenomenological and psychological arguments made for such appetites to be quite strong, and Hume's declarations to be quite destructive, so I have no idea why we should take them seriously.

The fact/value distinction in Hume (see Book II) is justified in a circular fashion from this premise. Reason only ever deals with facts. It can never motivate action (stipulated, not argued). Value must motivate action. Therefore, value is not a fact. He will use this in Book III to claim that when we investigate "vice" (disvalue) or presumably "virtue," we can never actually experience them anywhere. I can only say here that this seems obviously false and that millennia of thinkers disagreed. We live in a world shot through with value. We experience obscenity, depravity, cruelty, etc.

Hume's argument, that "virtue and vice" don't show up in our "sense data" is extended into the seeming reductio claims of later empiricists and phenomenologists, that we also don't experience cats, trees, the sun, etc., but only an inchoate sense stream, and so that these too are less real abstractions. If the one argument from abstraction is valid, I don't see why the other isn't, although the conclusions seem absurd. They suppose that the healthy man is surrounded by unreal abstractions and that the person having a stroke and the infant "see reality as it is" by experiencing it in an inchoate fashion. The sage is most deluded and the infant and victim of brain damage lifted up, just as the earlier argument makes the psychopath, the damaged and malformed soul, into the measure of the moral truth of the world. But as Hegel points out in the chapter on sense certainty in the Phenomenology, this process bottoms out in the completely contentless.

Here's a classic syllogism in philosophy:
1. All men are moral
2. Socrates is a man
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal

The conclusion does not establish an equivalence between Socrates and being mortal. Neither does the statement "knowledge is belief" entail an equivalence between knowledge and belief. Regardless, it appears we've gotten through this misunderstanding.

So your argument here is, "I believe X is true and I have strong justification to believe it, therefore it is true [or, therefore I know it]." But why do you think those two conditions are sufficient?

Those conditions obviously fail to generate knowledge in certain circumstances. And this idea of "strong" or "adequate" justification is not even in keeping with that broad sort of Gettier epistemology. It looks like a subset, something like probabilistic internalism. — Leontiskos

I agree that "Strong" justification, per se, is not sufficient for knowledge. But if one believes that knowledge is possible, one would then have to agree that there are SOME justifications are sufficient for knowledge. Does "my name is Fred" qualify for knowledge? It doesn't really matter, because I was simply trying to illustrate the relation between knowledge and belief.

But again, rather than falling into the rabbit hole of contemporary epistemology, my claim is that the traditional epistemic opinion is that knowledge is possible - that I can know and know that I know certain things. I don't see how you would be able to accept such a view.

I do believe knowledge is possible (analytic truths, for example), but I also believe it is rare - because Gettier conditions are nearly always present. If one chooses to define knowledge more loosely, with somewhat less deference to Gettier conditions, then he would consider knowledge to be more common. But whether or not the term (knowledge) can be applied to some specific belief seems to me to be of no practical significance.

What is of practical siginficance (IMO) is the importance of making an effort to seek truth through good epistemological practices. What I've been arguing is that inference to best explanation (IBE) is usually the best we can do. I doubt that any IBEs can constitute knowledge, but that doesn't mean we should treat all inferences as equally credible. Conspiracy theorists draw inferences from data, but they tend to cherry pick data to fit a prior prejudice, while ignoring or rationalizing data that is inconsistent with the theory. They are not applying good epistemological practices.

I'm not denying a difference between commands and recommendations and descriptions, just the idea that so descriptions involving values are actually commands or expressions of emotion. Such theories do violence to language. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wasn’t suggesting that descriptions involving values are actually commands. I was pointing out that descriptions involving values are also commands, or, more accurately, have the force of commands, etc.

The idea that "good" always refers to something like "thou shalt" is a product of Reformation volanturist theology, the tradition that shapes Hume. To say that all value claims are about "thou shalt" isn't to observer an ironclad law of philosophy or language. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn’t limit that list to commands, or recommendations, but was gesturing towards a connection between certain descriptions and action (or inaction).

It's just the (originally explicitly theological) premise that shaped Hume's context, i.e., "there is no intrinsic value (teloi) because intrinsic value would be a constraint on the divine will. Thus, value must be about divine command." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The theological premiss may have been the first version of the idea. But, given that he does not mention it, I think we can be reasonably sure that it was not Hume’s premiss.

"This is a great car," does not mean "thou shalt drive my car," or even "I should drive my car," just as "this is good (healthy) food" does not directly convert to "thou shalt eat this food," or even "you ought to eat this food." This is even more obvious when we move to the beings that most properly possess goodness. "Peter is a good man," need not mean "thou shalt choose Peter," or "I recommend Peter." It can, but it needn't; it can be merely descriptive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m sorry, I seem to have misled you. I was not saying that any description was synonymous with any command, in the sense that one “directly converts” to the other. I was saying that many descriptions have the force of commands, or recommendations, or (Hume’s favourite) approbations or even expressions of emotion. (I’m assuming that you are reasonably familiar with the concept of speech acts.)

Centuries of war waged against intrinsic value in the language haven't been able to paper over these issues. While "that's a good tiger," might seem a bit odd in English, descriptive value statements made in a slightly different ways are still common and natural. Hence, "that tiger is a perfect specimen," or "that is a perfect tiger," is generally about the tiger as tiger, not recommending the tiger or commanding us to do anything vis-á-vis the tiger. So too, "that is a pathetic, miserable bush," isn't telling us to do anything vis-á-vis the bush, but is normally telling us something about the bush as a bush. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are cases where it doesn’t make sense to describe them as “good”, such as, “This is a good disease”. I surmise that’s because their badness is built in to the concept. In other cases, like “tiger”, it may be because they have been known to kill us, and are dangerous. They are very good at hunting; the catch is that they are perfectly capable of applying those skills to hunting human beings. In yet other cases, the oddity may be because there are no criteria for evaluating them. I suspect “planet” may be such a concept; “oxygen” may be another.
Let’s think about dog shows. The rules for these competitions include descriptions of the various breeds. The rules for a Shih Tzu and for an Old English Sheep Dog are different, but they specify what makes one competitor better than another in each class. To evaluate a Shih Tzu by the criteria for an Old English sheep dog is a solecism or a misunderstanding or nonsense.
The project here is to specify criteria for the evaluation of each competitor. Identifying a dog as a Shih Tzu tells us that specimen conforms to the criteria, to a greater or lesser extent, and so justifies the classification; but the rules also justify evaluating specimen as better or worse than another. It is essential to the project that description and evaluation are distinct activities, linked by the rules. This is a formalization of a conceptual structure that is very common in our language, and which presupposes that description and evaluation are distinct. Another field with a similar, but different, structure is the legal definition of a crime – murder, say, or theft.

So let me ask a pointed question: does the descriptive statement "x is y" essentially mean "you ought to affirm that x is y is true?" If not, then why, if y is "good" would it automatically change to "you ought to do y." — Count Timothy von Icarus

1) No. 2) Because “good” is an evaluation and “x is y” is a description.

To be sure, we ought to choose the good and avoid the bad. But we also want to affirm truth and reject falsity. And yet we don't say that "x is true" becomes equivalent with "affirm x," and so "x is good" shouldn't be subject to this sort of transformation either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The whole point of the distinction is that a (pure) description is not equivalent to an evaluation. But some concepts have both descriptive and evaluative components; sometimes, in specific context, a description may be treated as an evaluation.
I don’t think that “x is y”, of itself, suggests that we should affirm it or should not affirm it, except in specific contexts. Sometimes we should and sometimes we should not. (Cf. Kant on truth-telling)

More later…

He does not take up the influential arguments for the appetites associated with reason, but simply declares they cannot exist. But I consider the phenomenological and psychological arguments made for such appetites to be quite strong, and Hume's declarations to be quite destructive, so I have no idea why we should take them seriously. — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK. Would you mind explaining what the arguments are that you consider to be quite strong? I’m intrigued by the idea of appetites associated with reason.

The fact/value distinction in Hume (see Book II) is justified in a circular fashion from this premise. — "Count

Hume’s wraps up his premiss in some rather confusing flourishes, but he realizes that no set of facts can provide a deductive proof of any statement of value and sets out to provide an alternative explanation. Are you saying that he is wrong about that?

We experience obscenity, depravity, cruelty, etc. — "Count

Hume doesn’t disagree with you. On the contrary, he argues that morality is based on our responses to those experiences – on how we feel about them. He realizes that those responses can’t be validated by deductive reasoning, but believes that, nonetheless, they are the basis of morality. I think that’s an over-simplification, but not unreasonable as part of a more comprehensive theory.
The biggest weakness in his argument, in my view, is that he seems to think of experience and our reactions to it as something given. He doesn’t distinguish between what our experience is and how we have learnt to interpret it. That knocks a big hole in the idea that experience is the foundation of knowledge – and, indeed, or morality. That doesn’t rule it out as a contribution to or a factor in our knowledge and morality.

Hume's argument, that "virtue and vice" don't show up in our "sense data" is extended into the seeming reductio claims of later empiricists and phenomenologists, that we also don't experience cats, trees, the sun, etc., — "Count

`
Yes. Actually, it was Berkeley that first articulated that argument and critics made the same criticism. It didn’t impress Berkeley and it doesn’t seem to impress modern idealists either. I don’t know why Hume is not also subjected to it.

I'll respond to the rest later but I wanted to point out a potential miscommunication:

1) No. 2) Because “good” is an evaluation and “x is y” is a description.

Right, I am aware of the distinction. But it isn't a "logical distinction" in the sense that it is something that is discovered about how logic works or syntax works. It is a distinction made based on a certain metaphysical theory (generally, anti-realism). It's akin to how emotivism claims that the logical function of "good" is equivalent to "hooray for." The distinction follows from the metaphysics in the same way that someone who accepts the Doctrine of Transcendentals will acknowledge a distinctive logical function for One, Good, and True and their derivatives (Something, Thing, Beautiful, etc.), in that they are transcategorical and that they are conceptual/logical (as opposed to real) distinctions that add nothing to Being but which are coextensive with it.

Now, certainly that distinction is very helpful, if you accept the metaphysics. But it's the metaphysics driving the recognition of the logical distinction (in each case).

As noted earlier, I don't think "good" always indicates or approves of an action. On something like an Aristotleian account, the goodness of actions is always parasitic. Goodness is primarily descriptive there and grounded in final causes, and particularly in beings (organisms). Even in common language today though, "good" often seems to be used in strictly descriptive ways. Nor do I think that what makes a claim "evaluative" is generally clear.

"That's hot" can be a claim recommending action. It can also be merely descriptive. "That's too big," is often a claim recommending action, but it can also be descriptive. Context determines if it is taken to recommend action or not. But more to the point, no one thinks that because "that's too big," or "that will break it" might recommend action, that they are not also, and often simultaneously fact claims and descriptions. Their being evaluative in one context doesn't remove their descriptive nature.

Anyhow, perhaps I interpreted this wrong, but you seemed to be supporting the general fact/value distinction in light of the logical distinction. If so, I would say this argument is circular. It would be like arguing for moral realism on the grounds that the Doctrine of Transcendentals makes a different logical distinction re "Good."

Note that the move to subjectivize value here could just as well he made for all descriptions. We could reinterpret all descriptive claims to the effect that "x is y" as "I believe/feel that x is y" (indeed, some have recommended this). This would, IMO, do violence to natural language in the same way that it does violence to natural language to assume that if "y = good" a claim always ceases to be a fact claim, or to assume that if "y = good" the *real* meaning is "hooray for x." Some people make a differentiation between first person declarative and third person informational statements. I find this distinction more useful, but it cuts across claims of value and "facts" and does not presuppose the two are exclusive.

I don’t think that “x is y”, of itself, suggests that we should affirm it or should not affirm it, except in specific contexts

Sure, there isn't always assertoric force. But in every language I am aware of, assertoric force is the default. In any case, there obviously often is assertoric force. If there is, then "x is y" is equivalent with "it is true that x is y." Now, we might not believe that "x is y," but surely if it is really true we ought to affirm it, right?

Although, I suppose it's true that for the values anti-realist "y is true" never implies "affirm y," and the move to affirm y must always come from irrational, inchoate sentiment. I am not convinced that this doesn't result in nihilism and misology if taken to its logical conclusion however. Whereas the counter to the effect that we have a "sentimental" desire for truth qua truth ("all men desire to know") is just reintroducing the rational appetites with the adjective "sentimental" tacked on.

Hume doesn’t disagree with you.

I might have been unclear. I am referring to the section in Book III where he says that we never sense (touch, smell, see, etc.) vice or badness.

"Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. … The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object."


This is very similar to his claim that we never sense causes. But, prima facie, a valid response is to say that when one sees a ball smash a window one has just seen a ball cause a window to shatter. I am not sure what Hume expects a cause or badness to "look like" or "feel like" or whatever. We certainly do directly experience the appetites (pain, revulsion/nausea, beauty, craving) and on many accounts of goodness it is being qua desirable. Under that view, this division seems bizarre. The appetites are part of sensous experience and relate to what is sensed directly and immediately. I am aware that Hume's empiricism denies this by claiming all of these are "impressions of reflection," and thus, by definition, internal, private, and subjective. But this is another case of an argument from mere stipulation. In reality, touch is continuous with pain, we don't cross a threshold that neatly divides them for instance.

Obviously, Hume is writing to his own context. In that context, morality tended to be thought of in terms of rules (which shows up in all the examples he uses). When I say Hume is being influenced by theology, I don't mean that Hume adopts this framing because of his personal theology. He might have been an atheist. I mean that he is going with the ideas dominant in the Reformed/Calvinists context he lived in. I bring it up because if one rejects that source for the framing, one might question if it is worth sticking with its categories. The idea that "good" involves something like "thou shalt" or that "ought" primarily denotes duty or obligation (or even action), is a product of that context.

Likewise, one need not suppose that Hume rejects final and formal causality on theological grounds to accept that he is writing in a context where final and formal causality have already been excised from "scientific/philosophical discourse" primarily on theological grounds. Obviously, athiests sometimes defend mechanistic causality with religious zeal, but they often do so because they see it as a historical product of science. My only point is that it wasn't. It's a genealogical argument. Of course mechanism might be justified on other grounds; this only attacks the claim that it is primarily "scientific." There weren't experiments run to "rule out final causes" (indeed, biology, medicine, the social sciences, all still rely on them); it was a theological/philosophical position to exclude them from consideration. This sort of thing still comes up in stuff like the Libet experiments.

I'll respond to the rest later but I wanted to point out a potential miscommunication: — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this discussion is getting too complicated. I would like to set aside the historical debate. However, I can’t resist two observations – I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I think we can make more progress by focusing on the core issues. This post is about sorting out the focus, setting aside debates, not because they are not worth while, but because one cannot deal with everything at once.

1.Likewise, one need not suppose that Hume rejects final and formal causality on theological grounds to accept that he is writing in a context where final and formal causality have already been excised from "scientific/philosophical discourse" primarily on theological grounds. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s true that Hume was not involved in the ejection of final and formal causality from physics but that he was writing in the context of that decision. Whether that decision was made primarily on theological grounds is another question. I don’t have the expertise whether that was so or not, so I won’t argue the point.

2. I am referring to the section in Book III where he says that we never sense (touch, smell, see, etc.) vice or badness.
"Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. … The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a regular technique for the empiricists, isn’t it? There’s always a catch. Here, it is “as long as you consider the object” – our attention is directed away from the context. Certainly Berkeley is very fond of this move, though he doesn't let it get in the way of a good argument. I don’t set much store by it. But consider the end of that section.

Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of these be pleasure and uneasiness ; and if favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour. — Hume Treatise III. 1. i.

That doesn’t sound like moral anti-realism to me. On the contrary, what he seems to think he has found is a foundation for virtue and vice that is consonant with his methodology. There are problems with it, of course. First, there is the let-out clause “If favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice”. I’m sure many people would point out that our sentiments are often not particularly favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice. In addition, there is the Euthyphro question, whether the gods love piety because it is good or whether piety is good because the gods love it. On top of that, there is Moore’s fallacy.
Hume is more complicated, even slippery, than he is usually thought to be. I think standard representations of him are misrepresentations. But I don’t think it’s a black-and-white issue.

The distinction follows from the metaphysics in the same way that someone who accepts the Doctrine of Transcendentals will acknowledge a distinctive logical function for One, Good, and True and their derivatives (Something, Thing, Beautiful, etc.), in that they are trans-categorical and that they are conceptual/logical (as opposed to real) distinctions that add nothing to Being but which are coextensive with it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’ve never understood metaphysics and I don’t know enough about the doctrine to dissect this. But it looks as if metaphysics and logic reflect each other here and that someone who accepts the doctrine of transcendentals agrees that there is a distinction that is at least very similar to the modern fact/value distinction.

It would be like arguing for moral realism on the grounds that the Doctrine of Transcendentals makes a different logical distinction re "Good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So I guess you don’t buy the argument. So I won't let it distract me.

A theory is valid just within the precision of data. Given that the precision in data is limited, anything that one can imagine can happen beyond the limit of the data's precision, referred to as spiritual reality.

That doesn’t sound like moral anti-realism to me. — Ludwig V

It strikes me as a sop thrown to common moral sentiment in the context of his broader philosophy. Of course Hume doesn't deny the appearance of evaluative facts (sentiment), or that they seem important to us (indeed, nothing else could be "important"). Yet what his starting point has led to is a move the privatizes and subjectivizes value such that the distinction between reality and appearances collapses. On this view, what is "truly desirable" is just whatever happens to be desired. There are only appearances, so appearances just are the reality (for the person experiencing them). It leads to a sort of Protagorean relativism that he tries to paper over with an appeal to "common sentiment." But all desire ultimately bottoms out in inscrutable, irrational, and irreducibly private impulse. And if one differs from "common sentiment" there are no "reasons" to go along with it.

Obviously, the older ethics grounded in final causes also starts from the good as what is desired/sought. However, it says that there is a truth about what is actually "most desirable." If someone's highest desire (what they currently believe and feel, i.e., appearances) is to be a wastrel who drinks all day and scrounges off their parents, the older view would deny that this is what is actually "most desirable" given a true understanding of the good and healthy appetites. Hume has eliminated this distinction. He can appeal to the "general point of view," yet this is really just an appeal to "whatever people currently say is good." The "general point of view" in the context of "A Brave New World" sees that dystopia as eminently desirable, and so apparently it is. Slavery, child brides, etc. would be acceptable so long as general sentiment holds this to be so. Hume cannot claim that any socio-historical "general point of view" is better than any others without smuggling reason back into the picture (nor does he seem to have a strong argument for why this view should have any hold on the egoist).

This is what makes it an "anti-realism." Our desires (appearances) become the measure of goodness. Hume's change here is analogous to making "whatever we happen to believe" the measure of truth (for each individual), which is exactly what Protagoras does for truth tout court (as opposed to only practical reason).

Now, we might ask, on this view, are things we regret "bad?" I think an honest reading would have it that a late-night shot of tequila is "good for us when we want to drink it" and only becomes "bad" when we wake up hungover. Cheating is good when one does it, and becomes bad if we later regret it, etc. We may, of course, desire things based on how we think we will feel in the future (such a view doesn't preclude "thinking ahead"). However, if goodness just is sentiment then it must shift as our sentiment does. Otherwise, it would be the case that extra-subjective facts about what we will desire determines what is good (and so not sentiment and appetite, but facts as they relate to sentiment and appetite). That's a small but crucial distinction. We either go with the horn that makes "good" just "whatever is currently desired," or we start allowing goodness to rest in fact-related causes of sentiment/appetite (which presumably relate to "what man is" and "what rational creatures are," i.e. telos).

I’ve never understood metaphysics and I don’t know enough about the doctrine to dissect this. But it looks as if metaphysics and logic reflect each other here and that someone who accepts the doctrine of transcendentals agrees that there is a distinction that is at least very similar to the modern fact/value distinction. — Ludwig V

They are pretty similar. I'd say the later view is just the old one with the reality/appearances distinction collapsed, often paired with a denial that there can be any consistent relationships between how the world is and how man is, and what any individual man will find most fulfilling (i.e., a denial of human nature). I tend to find denials of human nature farcical, because they invariably have to be walked back with so many caveats as to simply reintroduce the idea of a nature in some modified form. It is clear that man is a certain sort of thing. We do not expect that our children might someday soon spin themselves into cocoons and emerge weeks later with wings, because this is not the sort of thing man does. We know that we will fall if we leap off a precipice, and we understand that we are at no risk of floating away into the sky when we step outdoors. Things possess stable natures; what they are determines how they interact with everything else. That doesn't wash out individuality, it allows it to have some sort of ordering so that it isn't arbitrary. But again, theology lurks in the background here. Man was seen as in the image of God, and a view of divine liberty had emerged where liberty is most fully revealed in inscrutable arbitrariness.

OK. Would you mind explaining what the arguments are that you consider to be quite strong? I’m intrigued by the idea of appetites associated with reason.

The desire to know truth for its own sake is the most obvious. The desire for truth over falsity, which is a desire and so evaluative, is IMO a prerequisite for any rationality at all. Elsewise, we ought only affirm what we otherwise feel like affirming. A "good argument" and "good evidence" would otherwise just mean "arguments and evidence that affirm what I am already predisposed (by whatever irrational sentiments I just so happen to have) to affirm." To have "good argument," "good reasoning," and "good evidenced" ordered to the end of truth/knowledge, and not only accidentally related to it, presupposes the appetite for truth qua truth. Otherwise, we ought only affirm truth over falsity whenever it just so happens to fulfill or leads towards an unrelated, irrational desire we happen to possess.

So too for practical reason:

Questioning and what’s really good

In the case of just and beautiful things, many people are content with what are believed to be so, even if they aren’t really so. [But] nobody is satisfied to acquire things that are merely believed to be good . . . everyone wants the things that really are good and disdains mere belief here. (Republic 505d)

Here Socrates is saying that regarding the things, experiences, relationships, and so forth, that we get for ourselves, we want to be sure that they really are good, rather than just being what we, or other people, think is good. We don’t want to live in a “fool’s paradise,” thinking that we’re experiencing what’s
really good, when in fact it isn’t really good.

Even if we could be sure that we would remain in this fool’s paradise for our entire lives, and never find out that we had been mistaken, we hate the thought that that might be the case—that what we take to be really good might not really be good. If that were the case, we feel, our lives would have been wasted, whether or not we ever found out that they were wasted. We can joke about how other people are “blissfully ignorant,” but I have yet to meet a person who says that she would choose to have less information about what’s really good, if by doing so she could be sure of getting lots of what she currently thinks is good. The notion of choice, itself, seems to be oriented toward finding out (if possible) what’s really good, rather than just being guided by one’s current desires or one’s current opinions about what’s good.

Robert M. Wallace - Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present

That is, it seems implausible that the nihilist/anti-realist would want to be ignorant of the Good if it truly exists. To be sure, it is often the case that we are unhappy about what we discover to be true. In some cases, we might even prefer not to be informed about the details of certain events. However, it does not seem plausible that a person would prefer to be deluded when it comes to the fundamental nature of the world and their relation to it. But this is of course, indicative of an appetite to know what is best itself, a sort of open-ended, rational appetite for knowledge and goodness as such.

It is also precisely this open-ended desire that makes it possible for us to transcend current beliefs and desires, to always question them. Likewise, it is what allows for any sort of coherent second-order volitions, such that we desire to have or not have certain other desires. Such a capacity is essential to any sort of rational freedom, since otherwise we would just be mechanically pursuing whatever desires we just so happen to have started out with (with reason as a wholly instrumental computational tool that simply tries to find its way towards these predetermined ends). Any sort of rational freedom requires an ability to judge which desires are worthy of pursuing, and also which should be uprooted (this is the whole idea of virtue being the development of habits of acting rightly, but also of desiring to act rightly, such that one enjoys what one does).

Now, the fact that a truly self-determining freedom requires rational appetites doesn't prove that such a thing must exist. Perhaps we lack it. However, the desire for freedom itself (freedom as good in itself) does suggest exactly this. No doubt, some men deny that they have any appetite for truth, what is "truly good," or freedom. Yet such an appetite surely exists in many. It's precisely what has motivated men across the ages to do things like to give up all their wealth, foreswear sex and children, and retreat into the desert to live as Sufi ascetics, or what motivates Marxist atheists who deny an afterlife to embrace suffering and anonymous deaths in order to further the struggle towards "what is truly best."

The distinction follows from the metaphysics in the same way that someone who accepts the Doctrine of Transcendentals will acknowledge a distinctive logical function for One, Good, and True and their derivatives (Something, Thing, Beautiful, etc.), in that they are transcategorical and that they are conceptual/logical (as opposed to real) distinctions that add nothing to Being but which are coextensive with it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’ve never understood metaphysics and I don’t know enough about the doctrine to dissect this. But it looks as if metaphysics and logic reflect each other here and that someone who accepts the doctrine of transcendentals agrees that there is a distinction that is at least very similar to the modern fact/value distinction.

It would be like arguing for moral realism on the grounds that the Doctrine of Transcendentals makes a different logical distinction re "Good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So I guess you don’t buy the argument. In that case, it is irrelevant.

As noted earlier, I don't think "good" always indicates or approves of an action. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m open to examples.

On something like an Aristotleian account, the goodness of actions is always parasitic. Goodness is primarily descriptive there and grounded in final causes, and particularly in beings (organisms). — Count Timothy von Icarus

A lot depends on the details. What is the goodness of actions parasitic on? If goodness is primarily descriptive, like theoretical statements, how come it can move us to action, as in his paradigm example, “Dry food is good”. But the key questions are 1) whether “good” is univocal, like “red” or changes its meaning according to context, like “real” or “exists” or “large” and 2) whether Aristotle (and Aristotelians) are right to posit a Single Supreme Good and 3) the role of those things (activities) that are “good in themselves” or “good for their own sakes”, like theoretical reason, music and friendship.
Now I’ve mentioned “real”, I need to say that I don’t feel a great need to answer the philosophical issue, in relation to values or anything else. There are certainly values of several sorts, moral values included; the questions are about their nature, their role in our lives. I don’t see that recognizing a distinction between facts (which also exist) and values brings that into question in any way.

Even in common language today though, "good" often seems to be used in strictly descriptive ways. — Count Timothy von Icarus

An explanation of what you mean by “in strictly descriptive ways”, possible including examples would help enormously.

Nor do I think that what makes a claim "evaluative" is generally clear. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with you. We’ve been using both “descriptive” and “evaluative”, not to mention “fact” and “value” and “is” and “ought” on the assumption that we have a common understanding. Which may well not be true. But the context of our discussion is morality and ethics, so that kind of evaluation is obviously the focus. That should help a bit.

"That's hot" can be a claim recommending action. It can also be merely descriptive. "That's too big," is often a claim recommending action, but it can also be descriptive. Context determines if it is taken to recommend action or not. But more to the point, no one thinks that because "that's too big," or "that will break it" might recommend action, that they are not also, and often simultaneously fact claims and descriptions. Their being evaluative in one context doesn't remove their descriptive nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is difficult. One could well say that the difference between description and evaluation is the use made by sentences in a context. Then we would need to say that descriptive statements are statements whose use in standard contexts is descriptive and similarly for evaluative statements.
But we need to think, for example, about what kind of arguments or evidence supports or undermines a descriptive vs an evaluative statement (use of a sentence), and what kinds of role they play in our language and life.

Anyhow, perhaps I interpreted this wrong, but you seemed to be supporting the general fact/value distinction in light of the logical distinction. If so, I would say this argument is circular. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I thought I was trying to articulate a logical distinction. What is the general fact/value distinction as distinct from the logical fact/value distinction?

Note that the move to subjectivize value here could just as well he made for all descriptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe so, but that’s a different issue, isn’t it?

Some people make a differentiation between first person declarative and third person informational statements. I find this distinction more useful, but it cuts across claims of value and "facts" and does not presuppose the two are exclusive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are certainly important differences between the two. But if they cut across the fact/value distinction, how are they helpful?

In any case, there obviously often is assertoric force. If there is, then "x is y" is equivalent with "it is true that x is y." Now, we might not believe that "x is y," but surely if it is really true we ought to affirm it, right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, if x is y, then you do well to answer the question “Is x y?” in the affirmative. But asserting that x is y just because you believe it is, well, a bit odd. Am I supposed to assert everything I believe. How often? What happens if I don’t?
Asserting what one believes is one activity that expresses one’s beliefs. But then, any action for which x being y is a good reason expresses one’s beliefs just as well. When x being y is not relevant, it doesn’t come up.

Although, I suppose it's true that for the values anti-realist "y is true" never implies "affirm y," and the move to affirm y must always come from irrational, inchoate sentiment. …. Whereas the counter to the effect that we have a "sentimental" desire for truth qua truth ("all men desire to know") is just reintroducing the rational appetites with the adjective "sentimental" tacked on. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, I see, this is about the rational appetites. Well, I’ll acknowledge a desire for truth. But I don’t think there is anything special about that desire. Like others, it can be excessive or deficient. Like others, it has to take its place among our other desires and values. A being that was devoted to truth and nothing else would not last long in this world; I don’t think I could recognize it as a human being.
But there’s another point about this. Like many others, I think that our emotions and feelings (sentiments) can be rational – that’s why they can be assessed as irrational. But their connection with actions mean that they are reasonable, as opposed to logical. It is reasonable to fear the lorry that is hurtling towards us and reasonable to get out of its way. In that context, the emotivist’s account of morality looks rather different, doesn’t it?

This is very similar to his claim that we never sense causes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps so, but how is it relevant?

The idea that "good" involves something like "thou shalt" or that "ought" primarily denotes duty or obligation (or even action), is a product of that context. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps so. But I think we should evaluate the idea for its own sake, in our context, rather than anyone else’s. Rejecting an idea just because of it’s original context seems a bit like prejudice to me. Actually, what I was trying to say was something vaguer, more like statements of value can be major premisses in a practical syllogism – or statements of value (and so of desire) explain the motivations for action in a way that statements of fact do not.

What is of practical siginficance (IMO) is the importance of making an effort to seek truth through good epistemological practices. What I've been arguing is that inference to best explanation (IBE) is usually the best we can do. I doubt that any IBEs can constitute knowledge, — Relativist

Right, and that's what I've been driving at: it seems that you think IBE's are the only option, and IBE's do not constitute knowledge.

but that doesn't mean we should treat all inferences as equally credible. — Relativist

If there is no pole of knowledge then I don't see how one IBE can be better than another (because no IBE can better approach that pole).

Similarly, if we know what ice is then we have a pole and a limit for the coldness of water. If we don't know what ice is, then the coldness of water is purely relative, and there is nothing to measure against. I would argue that knowledge is prior to IBE, and that IBE is parasitic upon knowledge. Thus if you make IBEs the only option, then there is nothing on which an IBE can be parasitic upon or subordinate to, and this undermines IBEs themselves.

The idea that "good" always refers to something like "thou shalt" is a product of Reformation volanturist theology, the tradition that shapes Hume. To say that all value claims are about "thou shalt" isn't to observer an ironclad law of philosophy or language. It's just the (originally explicitly theological) premise that shaped Hume's context, i.e., "there is no intrinsic value (teloi) because intrinsic value would be a constraint on the divine will. Thus, value must be about divine command." — Count Timothy von Icarus

(@Ludwig V)

This is a bit tangential, but John Henry Newman has some interesting argumentation vis-a-vis Hume, law, and will:

There are philosophers who go farther, and teach, not only a general, but an invariable, and inviolable, and necessary uniformity in the action of the laws of nature, holding that every thing is the result of some law or laws, and that exceptions are impossible; but I do not see on what ground of experience or reason they take up this position. Our experience rather is adverse to such a doctrine, for what concrete fact or phenomenon exactly repeats itself? Some abstract conception of it, more perfect than the recurrent phenomenon itself, is necessary, before we are able to say that it has happened even twice, and the variations which accompany the repetition are of the nature of exceptions. The earth, for instance, never moves exactly in the same orbit year by year, but is in perpetual vacillation. It will, indeed, be replied that this arises from the interaction of one law with another, of which the actual orbit is only the accidental issue, that the earth is under the influence of a variety of attractions from cosmical bodies, and that, if it is subject to continual aberrations in its course, these are accounted for accurately or sufficiently by the presence of those extraordinary and variable attractions:—science, then, by its analytical processes sets right the primâ facie confusion. Of course; still let us not by our words imply that we are appealing to experience, when really we are only accounting, and that by hypothesis, for the absence of experience. The confusion is a fact, the reasoning processes are not {71} facts. The extraordinary attractions assigned to account for our experience of that confusion are not themselves experienced phenomenal facts, but more or less probable hypotheses, argued out by means of an assumed analogy between the cosmical bodies to which those attractions are referred and falling bodies on the earth. I say "assumed," because that analogy (in other words, the unfailing uniformity of nature) is the very point which has to be proved. It is true, that we can make experiment of the law of attraction in the case of bodies on the earth; but, I repeat, to assume from analogy that, as stones do fall to the earth, so Jupiter, if let alone, would fall upon the earth and the earth upon Jupiter, and with certain peculiarities of velocity on either side, is to have recourse to an explanation which is not necessarily valid, unless nature is necessarily uniform. Nor, indeed, has it yet been proved, nor ought it to be assumed, even that the law of velocity of falling bodies on the earth is invariable in its operation; for that again is only an instance of the general proposition, which is the very thesis in debate. It seems safer then to hold that the order of nature is not necessary, but general in its manifestations.

But, it may be urged, if a thing happens once, it must happen always; for what is to hinder it? Nay, on the contrary, why, because one particle of matter has a certain property, should all particles have the same? Why, because particles have instanced the property a thousand times, should the thousand and first instance it also? It is primâ facie unaccountable that an accident should happen twice, not to speak of its happening always. If {72} we expect a thing to happen twice, it is because we think it is not an accident, but has a cause. What has brought about a thing once, may bring it about twice. What is to hinder its happening? rather, What is to make it happen? Here we are thrown back from the question of Order to that of Causation. A law is not a cause, but a fact; but when we come to the question of cause, then, as I have said, we have no experience of any cause but Will. If, then, I must answer the question, What is to alter the order of nature? I reply, That which willed it;—That which willed it, can unwill it; and the invariableness of law depends on the unchangeableness of that Will.

And here I am led to observe that, as a cause implies a will, so order implies a purpose. Did we see flint celts, in their various receptacles all over Europe, scored always with certain special and characteristic marks, even though those marks had no assignable meaning or final cause whatever, we should take that very repetition, which indeed is the principle of order, to be a proof of intelligence. The agency then which has kept up and keeps up the general laws of nature, energizing at once in Sirius and on the earth, and on the earth in its primary period as well as in the nineteenth century, must be Mind, and nothing else, and Mind at least as wide and as enduring in its living action, as the immeasurable ages and spaces of the universe on which that agency has left its traces.

In these remarks I have digressed from my immediate subject, but they have some bearing on points which will subsequently come into discussion. — Newman, Grammar of Assent, Chapter 4

Part of what Newman is doing here is arguing that, in the more primary epistemic sense, law has to do with will and not with nature. He is turning Hume on his head, and will continue to do so.

Part of what Newman is doing here is arguing that, in the more primary epistemic sense, law has to do with will and not with nature. He is turning Hume on his head, and will continue to do so. — Leontiskos

Thank you for that quotation.
I guess Hume will survive being turned on his head. It is no more than what he tried to do to the "Schoolmen". But Newman's argument is reminiscent of Berkeley's, and, presumably, gets to a very similar conclusion. I'm not greatly bothered by his argument about natural the uniformity of nature, since I don't consider it to be a truth, but a methodological presupposition. governing the search for order in the world.