Two poached eggs; not my own, but free range forma local farm. Still runny. Salt and olive oil, not butter. I find it more flavoursome.
Mediterranean coffee, pot-boiled. String and sweet, just like me.
Now these are issues of taste. They are about what I chose for me. — Banno
But morality, you see, is about what I, and others, ought do; indeed, about what every and each of us ought do. — Banno
Everywhere else, if you say one thing, and I say the other, one of us is wrong. — Banno
You agree with me that one ought not kick the puppy, but apparently lack the intestinal fortitude to apply this to those who come from some other moral background. — Banno
If folk ought not kick the pup, then folk ought not kick the pup, even if they think they ought. — Banno
Yet you deny this obvious bit of consistency. — Banno
Whatever the meaning of "good", a moral subjectivist who is a moral relativist avoids contradiction by having relative standards of judgement which correspond to separate and distinguishable statements, such that, for example, it's good in accordance with Banno's standard but not good in accordance with my standard. Those statements can both be true without contradition. It's about the standard of judgement, not the meaning of "good", hence why you bringing this up in the other discussion about moral feeling missed the point. — S
"Giving 5 dollars to a homeless man is good" is true -- we might judge such a statement to be true because we believe that it is always good to give to those in need, or something.
"Giving 5 dollars to a homeless man is good" is false -- we might judge such a statement to be false in light of the fact that we are enabling them to hurt themselves, and it would be better to give said 5 dollars to some organization which helps the homeless.
Two standards. Two different judgments.
But I don't think that the standards make the statement true or false. — Moliere
They are our means of judging something true or false, but that is not what true or false mean. — Moliere
It's not the ruler which makes the bolt 20 millimeters long -- the bolt is 20 millimeters long regardless of the device we use to measure said bolt. — Moliere
It is also, rounding up, 0.8 inches long. And though we can be more precise if needs be and specify the exact length in inches, we can say roughly 0.8 inches if all that is required is an example for philosophy. — Moliere
Now if the ruler -- the standard -- does not make the bolt such and such a length, but is rather a property of the bolt, then statements about the bolt are true or false regardless of the standard we happen to use in judging it. — Moliere
Of course this is an analogy, and our means of judging ethical statements are not exactly identical to rulers and what-not. But I hope that I at least communicated what I mean when I say that standards do not dictate truth or falsity, though they do dictate our judgments about the truth or falsity of such and such statements. — Moliere
What is it about ethics that makes statements true in accord with such and such standards? — Moliere
The standards obviously do not make the statement true or false in an absolutist sense, only in a relative or conditional sense. But this absolutist sense which you're suggesting seems like a misguided way of looking at it. How can you justify an absolute truth or falsity in relation to morality? — S
What makes you think that that's an appropriate analogy in the context of meta-ethics? My feelings about the size in millimetres of the bolt are irrelevant. That's not the case with morality. Or, if it is, then the burden lies with you to successfully argue in support of an objective standard of morality, where our feelings are completely irrelevant. — S
Is that what you're going to argue in relation to morality? That there are independent properties of rightness and wrongness out there in the world? — S
It's not like I haven't thought about this — S
Yes. Quality in this sense, any judgment whatsoever that anything is better or worse than something else, is about persons' preferences. The world outside of minds couldn't care less what the ingredients are, how old the ingredients are, whether the ingredients are going to make us sick or not, it has no "proper" versus "improper," etc. — Terrapin Station
Whatever else someone thinks about it, color is not at all similar to assessments/judgments like good/bad, better/worse, proper/improper, high quality/low quality, etc. — Terrapin Station
Tim Maudlin's comment reflected my concerns about this 'experiment':
What the philosophical debate is about is whether moral claims have objective truth conditions. What “the folk” think about the matter is neither here nor there. If one is interested in that sociological question, that’s fine, but presenting this issue as pertinent to the “long and complex philosophical debate” obscures the nature of the research being done.
— Tim Maudlin — ChrisH
Well, I don't know if I'd use the word absolutist, but let's just say that absolutist is any position which believes that truth is not relative to standards, except in a trivial sense where, say, two different standards express the very same length.
My line of reasoning so far has been to say that moral statements are true or false, thereby making them propositions, and what makes a statement true is some fact or state of affairs. "Fact" can be a funny word, but let's just say for purposes of this discussion we just settle on something that can, at least in principle, be checked empirically.
Now in the case of moral propositions there are no facts that can be checked empirically. So regardless of the standard we might use to judge a moral statement true or false, they are all false -- thereby making mine a sort of absolutist position, by the above definition. — Moliere
Namely because moral propositions are not special with respect to the fact that they are propositions -- so, among other components of meaning, one of their shades of meaning is their truth-aptness. They are either true or false. — Moliere
Deciding which moral propositions I treat as true is certainly dependent upon feelings. But my feelings don't change whether such a proposition is true or false. — Moliere
A little bit different from that -- only that we state things, in a moral context, in the exact same way that we state things in the context of matters of fact. — Moliere
Not always, of course -- we can use a sentence about moral matters as a means to express some emotion about an action. But there are times that we also state a matter descriptively. — Moliere
And so the best interpretation, absent some other reason to do differently, is to say that such statements are truth-apt, in the exact same way that statements of fact are truth-apt. — Moliere
We speak as if there are moral facts, even if we believe there are none. — Moliere
I hope I'm not coming across as condescending or like I am treating you like someone who hasn't thought about the issue. But to be sure let me say here I believe you have thought about it.
Though it might be interesting to pursue further the rest of what you say with respect to the denial of absolutism leading you to believe that emotivism is the best meta-ethical position, I kind of want to hear your response to me here first. — Moliere
If it is not objectively wrong to kick the puppy I don't see why it wold be subjectively wrong either. — Andrew4Handel
I would rather base a moral system around objective facts about harm then peoples feelings. — Andrew4Handel
I don't think a subjective system is more tenable than an objective one. — Andrew4Handel
Ah, so you're an error theorist? But that's a pretty useless outcome, isn't it? Don't you think that it would be better to move on to better ways of getting truth and falsity out of morality? — S
I don't deny that they're truth-apt. And other statements are truth-apt, too. So they're not special in that one respect. But they might well be special in other respects. — S
Because you're working under a malfunctioning model. These results that you're getting should be a sign that you need to switch to a model which works bette — S
Then we either change the way we speak or we interpret the way we speak in a way which results in a more sensible outcome. — S
No worries. But I'm not an emotivist if an emotivist does not accept that any moral statements are truth-apt. — S
"There ought be a rose garden" is true if one promised to plant a rose garden.
— creativesoul
That conditional is not true in and of itself. It would require one or more additional premises, premises which others might well have good reason to reject... — S
For myself, at least, any theory which would say "There ought to be a dead family because the head of household did not pay a debt back to a loneshark" is true -- is a theory which is false. — Moliere
Well, I did say previously that you can always bite the bullet. — Moliere
The truth conditions of "There ought be a rose garden on Monday" are that it was promised to be planted the day before. — creativesoul
I don't know what mental things are made of but I have compared them with things that are spatial temporal and have energy. — Andrew4Handel
You could also say things that are measurable directly. Just because someone cannot explain an experience to someone else does not mean it doesn't exist. The problem with the mental is that it defies our current methodologies of explanation and causality.
But indeterminism does not imply free will. — Andrew4Handel
I don't now what you mean then, because I have offered a framework for the explanation which is that if mental states are physical brain states then brain states explanations usurp subjective ones. — Andrew4Handel
This just means correlated with the brain because they are clearly not identical. — Andrew4Handel
Whether the ingredients are going to make us sick or not is not a matter of personal preference. It's a real state of affairs. — Andrew M
But what you said above would seem to apply here as well. The world outside minds couldn't care less how you perceive color. Yet the way in which you perceive an object is nonetheless real, and not a matter of personal preference. — Andrew M
A property (whether color or toxicity) need not be universal to be real. — Andrew M
It's the idea I keep coming back to and I'm playing with in this thread, at least. It makes a lot of sense.
But what would a better way of getting truth mean? Truth is truth, as far as I see it -- at least of this plain sort where I'm talking about truth-aptness, and what-not. It's not something we squeeze out of the fruit of knowledge. And if the statements be false, then that's the end of it. — Moliere
What's malfunctioning, precisely? I don't see anything malfunctioning. — Moliere
One of the results of there being no moral truths is that what we care about is up to us. — Moliere
The downside, of course, is that the language just looks like something which we actually do treat as if it were true, so the theory seems a little outlandish. But at least it accounts for the semantics of moral statements. — Moliere
I guess I'd have to see what it is that's more sensible, and under what basis. — Moliere
If it is not objectively wrong to kick the puppy I don't see why it wold be subjectively wrong either. — Andrew4Handel
I would rather base a moral system around objective facts about harm then peoples feelings. — Andrew4Handel
That would be a weird ethics. — Terrapin Station
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