The question isn't odd, but there being objective moral facts might be odd, depending on what moral facts actually are.

I think naturalistic moral realism isn't very convincing. And I'm not a theist or mystic. So I'm not too sure about moral realism in general. But what I am leaning towards is aesthetic realism, or the reality of perfection. And I think morality shares some things with this aesthetic realism.

Well we could start by saying that facts about the empirical world are contingent and facts about the mathematical world are necessary.

It's an odd way of putting what is usually presented as the 'fact/value distinction'. Putnam criticized the distinction, claiming that it is not as clear cut as some (Hume for example) would like to have it, so you might want to take a look at some of his work.

Commonly, if something is claimed to be objectively so, that is to be a fact, this means that it is inter-subjectively verifiable, most satisfactorily by direct observation. But a claim such as 'the majority of people are social creatures' is not so easily corroborated inter-subjectively; even though everyone knows from personal experience that it is right. The claim that everyone knows this from personal experience is itself a similar case. And yet these, and many like examples, are generally thought to be facts.

So, a moral fact could be, for example, an extension of these kinds of facts coupled with some kind of logic; a logic of practical wisdom, for example. If we accept that (almost) all people are social creatures, and that most of them wish to live in harmony with others, and that it it does not contribute, and in fact works against, the harmonious functioning of societies (the harmonious functioning which we have accepted is what we all want) to have people in that society who want to live with others solely for their own purposes and who have no concern for those others: if we accept that such exploitative-minded people will work against social harmony even if unintentionally, then we might be able to claim that it is a moral fact that we should treat others as we honestly believe they wish to be treated, and that we should expect others to think and behave likewise, and that we should not tolerate flagrant transgressions against this principle (in the pacific sense that we should have nothing to do with such people, buy their products. promote or elect them to positions of power, and so on).

Awareness of the distinction between objective and subjective is very much bound up with the rise of modernism; I don't think that the medievals or earlier cultures were aware of the distinction in the same way that we are. I recall reading somewhere that Heidegger wrote about the development of 'objective consciousness' as a kind of phase in civilisation (others would know that better.) But nowadays, it is significant that we regard the terms 'objective' and 'real' as virtually synonymous; that what is real, is also objective, and is 'out there somewhere'.

In respect of Cavacava's observation above: there are contingent facts, and a priori truths of logic and mathematics; but is there any ground for 'necessary moral truths'?

As John points out, a major issue in modern ethical discourse is based on the 'is/ought' distinction. This is: that is straightforward enough to make normative statements about matters that can be measured and quantified; in such matters, objective measurement is the basis of objective judgement. As Brian Cox said on Sydney radio last week 'we know, we have a ruler and we measured it'. But what are the norms about 'what is good' or 'what is right?' On what basis are claims of reality or 'objectivity' made in respect to them?

Some will respond: there are countless opinions and schools of thought about those questions, they all seem at loggerheads; it's all too hard to adjudicate or judge. So it's easiest just to default to an 'each to his own' view, which generally tends towards subjectivism and relativism; what is 'right for me', is as far as we can go and the best we can hope for. If you want more than that, you're evangelising!

But I think I could tentatively respond: a necessary moral truth is clearly that all beings wish to avoid suffering, and seek happiness, fulfilment, desireable companionship, and a modicum of physical comfort. Clearly there are behaviours that facilitate those things, and others that undermine them. So the question might be posed in those terms: what kind of attitudes, ways of life, and ethical behaviours, are the most conducive to right living? When put in those terms, you can see a convergence with stoicism and other traditional philosophies.

However I think this approach is undermined by many elements of 'liberal individualism', wherein self-determination, the 'politics of identity' and an emphasis on individual rights undermines many of the tenets of traditional ethical systems.

(Such questions are the the subject of a landmark book, After Virtue, which I have discovered through forums and am in the process of reading. They're very complex questions. )

Is the question of moral facts, and where they "come from" or what they might be, really any more odd than any other facts? What about if you think there are facts about math? How weird — anonymous66

I am sympathetic to Nietzsche's adage 'There are no facts, only interpretations', which might suggest believing that mathematical facts are no less substantial than moral ones.

But even though I don't find the notion of 'fact' useful, I think there is more substance to the notion of mathematical facts than moral ones, because purported mathematical facts are testable, whereas purported moral facts are not.

because purported mathematical facts are testable, whereas purported moral facts are not. — andrewk

I suppose you could assume that. But, how to prove it's anything more than an assumption on your part?

Commonly, if something is claimed to be objectively so, that is to be a fact, this means that it is inter-subjectively verifiable, most satisfactorily by direct observation. — John

And math fits that paradigm? And you know morality doesn't? It seems to me that just as other facts are not decided by consensus, they are objective in that way, then morality could also be universal, and discovered, not created. I'm not sure how to prove it either way, though.. I'm just pointing out that all facts seem odd. Math certainly has an oddness about it . Numbers not even existing in the real world, and all.

Facts about math are pretty weird really. As one moves away from applications, it's arguably not so different than changing mores. Are numbers sets? Does it matter when it's time to pay the rent?

I don't see how objectivity-in-itself can matter much. We have things like consensus and power. Slavery was legal once. Now racism is bad and will perhaps become illegal. It was bad to be gay. Now it is bad to think that it is bad to be gay.

I had this thought about history recently. Are we taught what really happened, more or less? Then it occurred to me that it was at least as important that we have (or have not) been taught what everyone else has been taught. In short, awareness of the consensus is arguably more important than awareness of what really happened, especially if one could not win over the consensus thereby (had no proof of the time-machine adventure or whatever).

Excepting something like a sacred feeling towards Truth, it's hard to see how objectivity isn't generally boiled down to relationship with others and the power to shape nature according to our desires.

a major issue in modern ethical discourse is based on the 'is/ought' distinction. — Wayfarer

Funny thing about that. I came across John Holbo of the National University of Singapore, who points out that Hume doesn't quite follow his own rules. How did Hume get us to believe reason Ought to be slave to the passions? Because he says so?

To me that's a central question. Why ought we follow this "reason" thing? We have to be "unreasonably" invested in Reason to get the game going. Reason does make sense however as a tool for pleasure, as filthy as that may sound. "Pleasure" admittedly remains elusive, but we stop asking questions as the bliss rises.

I suppose you could assume that [mathematical facts are testable]. But, how to prove it's anything more than an assumption on your part? — anonymous66

I think you know me well enough by now to not be surprised that I don't believe that that, or anything else, can be proven beyond doubt. All of everybody's beliefs rest on assumptions, so it adds no information to say that any particular statement rests on assumptions. One has to either challenge the assumptions by asserting that one considers them to be false, or provisionally accept them.

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

Whereas with a purported moral fact, we couldn't even find a way to try to demonstrate it.

Unless of course, we want to take a very heuristic definition of 'moral fact', such as 'something that most people in this society would agree is immoral'.

How did Hume get us to believe reason Ought to be slave to the passions? Because he says so? — anonymous66

Did Hume say it 'ought to be slave'? I thought he just observed that it is - or at least appears to be - a slave.
I'd be surprised if he said 'ought to be' but will accept correction if precise references are given. I'd look it up myself (in the Treatise, I'd imagine) but I'm a bit distracted this morning so maybe somebody else will do that.

Whether it be odd or not would just depend on our expectations. So if we live in a universe which has moral facts, but believe that there are no moral facts, then it would be odd to find a moral fact.

Similarly so for the reverse.

So it's quite possible to accept mathematical facts without oddity while finding moral facts odd. One might say that in the former case we are all already familiar with facts. Facts are known to us. But in the latter case, with moral facts, we can't say the same thing. People dispute even the most basic precepts and prescriptions -- and not just to be an odd duck, but on a regular basis. Where I can settle how many bottles of beer I have in the fridge by opening the fridge and counting the number of bottles of beer that I have, and similarly so with many other actions which I perform on a daily basis with others, I can do no such thing with moral principles. There are those who will agree with my moral principles, but it would not be strange to find those who disagree with them.

What would be strange would be if there was something we could all point to to settle this dispute. One might even say that we would have to have another perceptive power to perceive such things, and so it's like positing the possibility of a demon or other such extra-real entities; in some sense possible but in no sense worth taking seriously until some sort of demonstration has been performed, ala mathematics.

At least, in the world we happen to live in.

Even math can at least be demonstrated. Though I would agree that mathematics is an ontological oddity, at least with respect to some metaphysical presuppositions (and in the sense that I don't quite know how to place it), it would still differ in that math can be demonstrated -- where moral principles can't. There is no calculus where we can prove this or that moral precept as of yet, at least, which holds the same force as mathematics.

So even by that analogy it seems like one could consistently hold that mathematical facts are not odd, while moral facts are odd, since the force of demonstration of math is stronger than the force of demonstration for morals -- at least, while that still remains to be the case.

How did Hume get us to believe reason Ought to be slave to the passions? Because he says so?

The 'slave to the passions' is a different subject. The passage I was referring to is this one:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last [i.e. most important] consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason. — David Hume

Emphasis added. The underlined phrases are the key to the argument as they point out that the relation implied by 'ought' is of a different kind to the relation implied by 'is'. Whereas statements about 'what is' can be justified by reason and logic, or by observation about relations of particulars, the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded on either.

That is the 'is/ought' problem in a nutshell.

From the Wikipedia article on the subject

Ethical naturalists contend that moral truths exist, and that their truth value relates to facts about physical reality. Many modern naturalistic philosophers see no impenetrable barrier in deriving "ought" from "is", believing it can be done whenever we analyze goal-directed behavior. They suggest that a statement of the form "In order for agent A to achieve goal B, A reasonably ought to do C" exhibits no category error and may be factually verified or refuted. "Oughts" exist, then, in light of the existence of goals. A counterargument to this response is that it merely pushes back the 'ought' to the subjectively valued 'goal' and thus provides no fundamentally objective basis to one's goals which, consequentially, provides no basis of distinguishing moral value of fundamentally different goals. A possible basis for an objective, moral realist, morality might be an appeal to teleonomy.

Whereas with a purported moral fact, we couldn't even find a way to try to demonstrate it. — andrewk

I think that's the key point. Unless you can explain what sort of thing would verify or falsify a moral claim such as "X is immoral" then the very notion of a moral fact is vacuous.

As vacuous as saying you know that 2+2=4? Is it true because we all believe it, or do we all believe it because it is objectively true? (can we even falsify any mathematical claim?)

You're making assumptions. You're claiming to know that there is nor will there ever be any way to falsify a moral claim.

Maybe there is/will be, maybe not.... I'm saying, "consider the possibility". I don't buy the argument, "we know it's not possible." Especially given the oddness of all facts. Given what I know about the world, the possibility of moral facts doesn't look all that odd.

The point is that Hume says, "you can't get an Ought from an is". Then he breaks his own rule by saying, "reason Ought to be the slave of the passions."

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

David Hume

As vacuous as saying you know that 2+2=4? — anonymous66

No, because we have a means to test the truth of the claim.

You're making assumptions. You're claiming to know that there is nor will there ever be any way to falsify a moral claim.

Where did I claim that?

Maybe there is/will be, maybe not.... I'm saying, "consider the possibility". I don't buy the argument, "we know it's not possible."

I didn't make such an argument.

These are two different arguments. I was referring to Hume's articulation of the is/ought problem, not his assertion that reason is the slave of the passions.

Fair enough. I thought that was where you were going. Glad to hear one other person agrees that the existence of moral facts are a real possibility... or at least not inconceivable.

And I'm saying Hume can't have it both ways.... either you can get an Ought from an is, or you can't.

No, because we have a means to test the truth of the claim. — Michael

Are you sure? How would you falsify the claim that 2+2=4? Is it true because everyone accepts it, or do we all accept it because it is objectively true?

By counting.

It is true a priori.

Well I made my claim "you can't falsify math" before I checked to see if I was right. Apparently it is a controversial issue, with many philosophers saying you can't, and a few saying you can.
So, right now, I don't know if I believe mathematics is actually falsifiable, or not. But, regardless, there are issues with the entire idea of falsification/verification in the first place. For instance, how do you falsify/verify the claim, "all claims must be falsifiable?" Looks to me like someone snuck in another Ought.

In the end, all we do all seem to assume that "all _____ Ought to be falsifiable." Why do we assume that? Or do we know it? How do we know? How could we know?

Maybe we "know" that all ____ Ought to be falsifiable like we "know" there are moral facts.

Hume is known for making two important distinctions; the fact-value distinction, and the fact-prediction distinction. Yet no one seems to have much of a problem with the problem that reason alone, which is to say logical argument, cannot derive a will be from a has been. Will be's are predictions not facts.

It is significant that the ten commandments are couched as future tensed - 'thou shalt...'.

'Thou shalt bring thy wife a coffee in bed in the morning' is a predictive commandment that becomes a fact if and when it is done, in the same way that 'the sun will rise tomorrow' becomes a fact if and when it does rise.

All of which is also closely connected to his claim that reason is the slave of passion, because what he is attacking is not morality or prediction as such, but the attempt to rationalise everything, to derive the world from argumentation alone.

One might say that the world of mathematics is just such a world of pure argumentation, and Hume has no problem with that either; but he points out that one has to add the real world to the mathematical world to arrive at a fact. Thus given the facts that I have £2 in my pocket, and £2 in my piggy bank, pure reason tells me that I have £4.

So, is the concept of a moral fact any more odd than the concept of any fact? For me, @Wayfarer and @Moliere are looking at this the right way:

Awareness of the distinction between objective and subjective is very much bound up with the rise of modernism — Wayfarer

Whether it be odd or not would just depend on our expectations. So if we live in a universe which has moral facts, but believe that there are no moral facts, then it would be odd to find a moral fact. — Moliere

The idea of moral facts does seem a bit odd, but rather than supporting the case for a moral subjectivism or emotivism, it might rather be evidence that the idea of a fact in general already carries with it an implicit exclusion of morality and the human attitudes and language relevant to it.

We can understand this historically and sociologically, and the imperative to take this approach is supplied by the history of philosophy. In Aristotle, meta-ethics and normative ethics, fact and value, are integrated; but in the twentieth century meta-ethics and normative ethics became separated, and fact and value got divorced some time earlier. So I don't see how one can address the question of moral facts without paying attention to how the question came up in the first place, and like MacIntyre, I think this is a properly philosophical endeavour (it's not so much that philosophy is necessarily secondary to and derivative of history and society, but that philosophy is too rarely historical and sociological).

For the middle ages mechanisms were efficient causes in a world to be comprehended ultimately in terms of final causes. Every species has a natural end, and to explain the movements and changes in an individual is to explain how that individual moves toward the end appropriate to members of that particular species. The ends to which men as members of such a species move are conceived by them as goods, and their movement towards or away from various goods are to be explained with reference to the virtues and vices which they have learned or failed to learn and the forms of practical reasoning which they employ. Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics (together of course with the De Anima) are as much treatises concerned with how human action is to be explained and understood as with what acts are to be done. Indeed within the Aristotelian framework the one task cannot be discharged without discharging the other. The modern contrast between the sphere of morality on the one hand and the sphere of the human sciences on the other is quite alien to Aristotelianism because, as we have already seen, the modern fact-value distinction is also alien to it. — MacIntyre, After Virtue

Aristotle had a teleological view of human beings (and of the other things in nature). For him, it is essential to what a human being is (so we seem to be talking about facts) that it has certain characteristic goals and thus values.

But the Enlightenment rejected teleology to produce a mechanistic understanding of nature and increasingly of human beings as well. This annexed the realm of facts. To take the mechanistic stance on human behaviour is to remove any talk of reasons and purposes, which means that insofar as there are facts about human beings, they cannot involve reasons and purposes, thus they cannot be about morality as traditionally understood. Which leaves the idea of moral facts looking rather...odd.

Thus the alienation of morality from what it is to be human, of values from facts, makes it almost inevitable that morality will then be seen as either eternal, like mathematics, or else illusory or subjective.

The radical upshot is that most modern moral philosophers, paying no attention to this history, don't know what they're talking about. And this is not just about the history of philosophy; it is about the changing meaning of morality in changing historical and social circumstances.

So my answer is: yes and no. On the one hand, moral facts do seem a bit odd to us moderns, but given a different way of living, they need not.

l'd say that misunderstands the shift in moral philosophy significantly. The removal of telos moves understanding of morality from ideal to worldly-- moral value becomes understood not as a fact that rules what we ought to do, but an expression of states of the world. We see this unconsciously manifest "subjective" accounts. A turn away from an ideal morality when which rules from outside our lives, to one which is an expression of the living world.

Aristotle's ethics are ideal. The logical rule of telos governs what ought to done. Despite being virtue ethics, they are backwards-- the moral significance is thought an application of logic to the world, rather than the world expressing a logic(moral) significance. Aristotle is part of the pre-modern view of ethics as alien to the world.

Looks backwards to me Willow.