Your obsession with objective and subjective. I don't think these terms work as well as you suggest. — Banno
So it's like "The cat is on the mat". I show Fred the cat on the mat, and he yet insists that the cat is not on the mat. I bring in a panel of experts, and do various tests to check his language use, things like washing the mat, patting the cat, and so on, and find no obvious difference. I put the cat back on the mat, and yet Fred still insists that it is not the case that the cat is on the mat. I conclude that there is something wrong with Fred. — Banno
So it's like "The cat is on the mat". I show Fred the cat on the mat, and he yet insists that the cat is not on the mat. I bring in a panel of experts, and do various tests to check his language use, things like washing the mat, patting the cat, and so on, and find no obvious difference. I put the cat back on the mat, and yet Fred still insists that it is not the case that the cat is on the mat. I conclude that there is something wrong with Fred.
— Banno
You can't just go by other people's views. That would be an argumentum ad populum. — Terrapin Station
Read the eyesore. — creativesoul
You don't want an ethical system that is concerned with people and what they like or dislike, enjoy or not enjoy, desire or don't desire? You just want to base it on facts, — Terrapin Station
In my view they clearly are identical. — Terrapin Station
I'm saying that the idea, the concept of nonphysical things is literally incoherent. So if we're going to posit them and take the notion seriously, we need to be able to characterize what nonphysical things would even be, in terms of any positive properties, so that we could make some sense out of them, in general ontological terms. — Terrapin Station
The best outcome is the one which best reflects reality. It's counterintuitive that all of our moral statements are false. That doesn't seem to best reflect reality. So I think that reaching the conclusion of an error theorist is a sign that we need to go back and change something or construct something new. It's like the error theorist only does half a job. He stops before the project has been completed and throws his hands up in the air, saying "This is just how it is". But it doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to live in a state of disrepair, stuck under a malfunctioning model. This is a decision that's for us to make. — S
So this standards approach seems like a better alternative, since it avoids these big problems you get with the absolutist approach. — S
I'm not faced with the problem of struggling to explain why our moral statements seem to reflect truths in some way. They do reflect truths if you look at it in the right way. It seems fallacious to set the bar impossibly high for moral truth when you don't have to. — S
There is truth in our moral judgement, and that seems to be good enough to make morality work. It also sits better with people than trying to persuade them that it's all a sham and we just have to act as though it were otherwise. Throw 'em a bone! So there's no objective morality, that doesn't have to mean that there's no morality, and it doesn't have to mean that there's no truth in it. — S
Read the eyesore.
— creativesoul
Cut down the eyesore, and I'll read it. I'm not in the mood for a word search. — S
How's that? — Banno
a valid appeal to authority, — S
A property (whether color or toxicity) need not be universal to be real.
— Andrew M
I'm not sure how you're using "universal" there, and I haven't at all been saying anything about that. I wasn't making a point about whether anything is "universal" or not. — Terrapin Station
Re the rest of the post, if you have a suggestion about how how we could have a "realist" ethics, I'll take a critical look at it and comment. — Terrapin Station
. It can be a fact that I believe the earth is flat. — Andrew4Handel
If someone is psychologically harmed because they are prevented from beating their girlfriend — Andrew4Handel
An apple is considered to be made up of atoms but an atom is not identical to an apple. — Andrew4Handel
However my original point was that people do not accept your physicalist premise which seems to underlie your belief that morality isn't objective. — Andrew4Handel
According to Patricia Churchland (see this review of her book Touching a Nerve), a mammal's care for its young is the biological root of morality. And over time that has evolved into more universal principles.
Conceptually, we make the distinction between morally good and bad actions in observation. Compare, for example, Alice saving a person from falling off a cliff versus Bob pushing a person over a cliff. We might want to avoid being around Bob (at least near cliffs). That's the kind of pragmatic distinction that creates the use for realist moral language. — Andrew M
So I'm confused how you're using "realist" and "real" then. — Terrapin Station
Bob's opinion or approval of it isn't relevant. — Andrew M
How did you get to this claim. It's coming out of nowhere. — Terrapin Station
If you're not using "real" in an unusual way, you did zero work above to support the idea. — Terrapin Station
That Bob's action is moral if he approves of it. Or have I misunderstood your view? — Andrew M
I'm describing a conventional use which is based in observation. What work are you looking for? — Andrew M
Bob's action is moral to Bob if he approves of it. X is always moral or immoral (or whatever else on the spectrum, including morally neutral) to someone, to some individual. — Terrapin Station
What I had said was "if you have a suggestion about how how we could have a 'realist' ethics, I'll take a critical look at it and comment." In other words, some sort of support for how a realist ethics could be possible, ontologically. I was looking for what you took to be a support, and then I would critically assess it. That people think of ethics as something real ontologically (and it's a dubious claim that most people think of it that way) isn't a support for it being real. People can have misconceptions, false beliefs, etc. — Terrapin Station
No thanks Sapientia. You've already made up your mind. — creativesoul
Yes, so we have two different models for using moral terms. On my model, whether or not Bob's action is moral is independent of whether anyone approves of it or thinks it is moral - which is what makes it a realist model. — Andrew M
Facts are what has happened. — creativesoul
I'm contrasting it with what I understand your view to be. That Bob's action is moral if he approves of it. Or have I misunderstood your view? — Andrew M
Facts are not standard-relative because they're determined by what's the case, unless that's a standard, in which case it would be the only standard, and it would be objective and universal. Morality is standard-relative because it's determined primarily by how we feel, and how we feel varies, and it is subjective and relative. The truth in morality consists in how we truly feel about moral issues. We both agree that seeking moral truth in the objective sense is a wild goose chase. — S
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