Like many here, I don't find the argument that convincing.

The original argument is:

(1) If there are no objective values then there are no facts (since there’s nothing that we ought to believe).

(2) There are facts.

(C) Therefore there are objective values.

(2) seems just fine, and most folk who deny the existence of objective values will accept (2), so probably not much need for an argument there. The trouble all starts with (1). What exactly is the argument for (1)?

I think the argument for (1) is meant to be the part in the brackets. Looking through your discussion with Terrapin, I guess you had this in mind:

(3) Facts are things we ought to believe.
(4) If there are no objective values then there is nothing we ought to believe.
(C2) If there are no objective values then there are no facts.

And (C2) here is identical with (1), giving us an argument for (1). But there are problems with this argument. The inference from (3) and (4) to (C2) is only valid if (3) is meant as a definition of "facts". If "fact" is defined as "something we ought to believe", it then follows that if there are no objective values there are no facts. But if (3) is instead taken to mean "we ought to believe facts", where "fact" means something like "propositions stating how things are", the argument will be fallacious. In that case, that there are no objective values and nothing we ought to believe will not entail that there are no propositions stating how things are (facts), since (and this was pointed out by others) it might be that there is a way things are without there being any rules about how we should/should-not believe.

So we must take (3) as a definition of "fact". The problem is, if we take (3) as a definition, no one who denies or is agnostic about the existence of objective values will accept your (2) without argument. That is, they will not accept that there are facts, because they will not accept that there are things we ought to believe. And all this is just to say that the argument will not convince anyone who doesn't already agree that there are objective values, making it a poor argument indeed.

Now, you did offer a different argument, which was to claim that denying that there are things we ought to believe is "absurd". You look to prove that it is absurd by this argument:

Any claim that there are no facts (nothing that we ought to believe) can be met with the questions, “Is that a fact? Ought we to believe that?” and so on to infinity. — AJJ

and again in talking with Wayfarer:

It is absurd to say facts are not things we ought to believe. Because every denial invites the question, “Well ought we to believe that? Ought we to believe that facts are not things we ought to believe? If the answer is no, well ought we to believe that? And so on. It’s really just this I’m appealing to to demonstrate that facts definitely are things we ought to believe, because we ought to believe true things, which are facts. — AJJ

So any person who denies that there are things we ought to believe can be asked "well, ought we believe that there is nothing we ought to believe?", and the sceptic will have to reply "no, there is nothing we ought to believe", which puts him, according to you, in an absurd position. I don't see why it is absurd. He denies that there is anything which we ought to believe, and, consistently, holds that even his own assertions are not such that we ought to believe them. We may choose to believe his claims or not, as we please. This seems a perfectly coherent position. I can describe my own beliefs without insisting that others ought to have those beliefs, and so can the sceptic. He can say that there is nothing we ought to believe, without insisting that this is something we ought to believe. He might nevertheless be correct. I don't see why the mere fact that you could ask him the question again does anything to hurt his position. It doesn't show that his position is false or contradictory, nor is there any barrier to understanding his position. The regress doesn't seem to be vicious.

PA

All I’ll say is the statement, “it is true that true things are not things we ought to believe, and so we’re not obliged to believe that either”, seems obviously absurd to me, especially considering that the statement itself is supposed to be a statement of truth, which we’re not obliged to believe (so why even say it?)

Maybe that absurdity really is the fact of the matter (that we’re not obliged to believe), but I wonder if that is sincerely believed by anyone.

Last thing: If you say that someone can know the truth yet still do wrong, then I’d say they’re justifying that wrong to themselves with something they believe is true, but is actually a lie. — AJJ

That's clearly not the case, because the person would believe contradictory things as true, I ought to do this (being the real truth), and I ought not do this (being the rationalized justification for doing wrong).. The person would believe both of these as true at the same time.

It seems to be pointless discussing this with you, but if you've read some Plato, you might recognize that this is the issue that Socrates had with some sophists. These sophists claimed to teach virtue. They put forth the principle "virtue is knowledge", and charged lots of money to teach virtue. By questioning whether virtue was the type of thing which could be taught, Socrates discovered a hole, a gap between knowing ethical principles, and behaving accordingly. He discovered a defect in the principle "virtue is knowledge", because knowing what one ought to do does not necessitate the person to do it.

This gap becomes very evident when we consider immoral people, who study the law to find loopholes so that they can get away with their immoral tendencies. I wouldn't say that these people believe that the law is the truth, and they justify disobeying the law with something else which they believe as the truth, or that they believe what they are doing is supported by truth, and the law is not, they simply do not believe in truth. There are people who just do not believe in truth (president Trump for example), and this belief is well grounded in science based ontology like model-dependent realism.

There is no point to insisting that these people believe it is true that there is no truth, because this just demonstrates that you misunderstand the nature of belief. Belief is based in faith and confidence, and believing that something is true is a type of belief. It is to add an extra layer of confidence to a specified belief, to attribute truth to it. So you have two distinct beliefs, the belief in X, and the belief that X is true. To say that this is redundancy is to demonstrate a misunderstanding of the nature of belief. To believe in something (such as I believe in myself) does not necessarily imply that one thinks the thing believed in is true.

I said “Last thing” and you write a bloody essay at me.

I skimmed it and it seems to me you’ve not properly considered what I’ve been saying again, or you’re just failing to understand. Others can judge, so let’s call it a day.

Maybe that absurdity really is the fact of the matter (that we’re not obliged to believe), but I wonder if that is sincerely believed by anyone. — AJJ

It's certainly believed by me that it's neither a fact nor true that there are things we ought/ought not believe.

I have a disposition that there are some things we ought/ought not believe, but that's different than saying that it's a fact or true that there are things we ought/ought not believe.

If I feel you ought to believe what I'm saying here that's an opinion or disposition I have. It's not a fact or true independent of me.

You seem to have difficulty accepting the truth. Is that evidence against your own premise?

Let's go back to the op:

Any claim that there are no facts (nothing that we ought to believe) can be met with the questions, “Is that a fact? Ought we to believe that?” and so on to infinity. — AJJ

How would you deal with an ontology like pragmatism? Assume a process ontology which declares that there is no such thing as facts because all of reality is in motion and relative. You ought to believe such and such because it is a useful principle. So, for instance, science doesn't deal with facts, it operates with principles which are useful for prediction, therefore they ought to be believed.. And, 2+2=4 is not a fact, it is a useful principle, therefore it ought to be believed. There is no point to your question "is that a fact?", because you must establish first that the idea of "a fact" is an acceptable idea, within this belief structure which already rejects the idea of "facts" as useless.

The question is not “are we allowed to dispute facts!” as if that word stands for everything everywhere that are facts. The question is “how do we determine what counts as facts?” And that will always be contextual. We also cannot choose to believe some facts because we “assume” some things at a preconceptual or prefactual level. These are sometimes called basic beliefs or hinge propositions though they are neither because they are preconceptual. They are the things that make it possible to believe or doubt because they determine what belief or doubt amounts to. One can not ask “should we believe these things because they are facts” but rather based on “facts” we live out in life what other things ought we to believe. The OP presents this question as though facts present themselves to us as a monolithic thing. Is it a fact that 7 is a prime number that we ought to believe? Well, if we are engaged in mathematics then we have to so regard it or we will not be doing something that we call mathematics. On the other hand, if it appears on a bingo card it is not only not a prime number, but not even a number because you are not using it mathematically. An image of an animal would work just as well. To ask if we ought to believe facts is similar to asking ought we to use our legs for running? We do “believe” and that is what makes facts and fictions possible. Can one always ask “is that a fact?” Sure, but not in a meaningful way. Take the question, “are you trying?” That can be asked infinitely of any endeavor but that does not mean that you were trying any particular endeavor. It is an illusion of a meaningful question because one can put the words together.

Settle down. I’ve told you three times now that I’ve had enough.

Where are the objective facts which indicate to me that I ought to stop writing?

I've just come across this thread and entirely agree with you.

The substantive issue to me is that no metaphysical debate can rely on classical (binary) logic, because set membership (properties) of 'focal concepts' is contextually transient. That point is of course highlighted by the pragmatists and the post modernists, and receives a hostile reception from traditionalists who are the target of such iconoclasm.

Under the presumption that a traditionalist stands for those practicing philosophy before pragmatists and post-modernists, who would you consider a currently practicing traditionalist?

Anyone arguing from the pov of traditional dichotomies such as 'realism - idealism', 'subjective -objective', 'fact - conjecture' etc.

OK.

The substantive issue to me is that no metaphysical debate can rely on classical (binary) logic, because set membership (properties) of 'focal concepts' is contextually transient. — fresco

Confusing ideas and epistemology with ontology. How novel. :roll:

As a matter of interest, of your 9000 or so posts here, how many of them are negative ?:smile:

(3) Facts are things we ought to believe. — PossibleAaran

there's many problems with this, most typically, the Santa Claus problem. There are many cases where facts do not define what we ought to believe. And the problem goes deeper, as I just found in an argument with Terrapin about Anaximander.

As a matter of interest, of your 9000 or so posts here, how many of them are negative ?:smile: — fresco

Probably not much more than a handful--definitely less than 10. I don't know if any would remain/not be deleted. Usually if you're just insulting someone or whatever it gets deleted.

If you're instead referring to critical posts, probably all of them are. We're supposed to be more or less doing philosophy here. You can't do that non-critically. Part of your responsibility in taking part is being able to defend claims against critical challenges.

The substantive issue to me is that no metaphysical debate can rely on classical (binary) logic, because set membership (properties) of 'focal concepts' is contextually transient. — fresco

I haven't been able to figure out what you mean by "focal concept". Care to explain?

By 'focal concept' I mean the cognitive focussing on one part of an interaction and assigniing 'thinghood' to it, aka 'naming'. Perception is active not passive and our receptive states are in continuous transition, and influenced by 'pay off' factors.
The well known 'ambiguous picture' which is interpreted as either 'two profiles' or 'one candlestick' exemplifies an extreme of the potential shifting of 'focal concepts'. More gradual transitions seem to be the norm are the interaction progresses, sometimes analysed using 'fuzzy logic'. Derrida's term 'privileging' is perhaps illustrative of this process at a more abstract level.

These points also indirectly refer to the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, ....'that thinking is determined by language'.....(Whorf was originally an insurance assessor who noticed that explosions kept occurring at 'empty gasoline drum' dumps. It turned out that the drums were empty of liquid, but not of vapour. i.e. the expectancies associated with the focal concept 'empty' were ill founded)

I think I get it. "The drum is empty of liquid", and "the drum is full of vapour", are two distinct focal concepts, referring to the same thing. I think my point was that before we can proceed in an ontological discussion we need to establish our starting point. What are we talking about, liquid or gas? From one perspective the drum is empty, and from the other it is full. I think AJJ was tying to mix them up, is and ought.

There are objective conditions of reality.

Facts are falsifiable human descriptions of those objective conditions. To that extent, they are objective descriptions of those objective conditions. Or, as objective as it is possible to be without being those objective conditions.

If humans cease to exist, such falsifiable descriptions of the objective conditions of reality also cease to exist.

However, the objective conditions of reality themselves do not cease to exist if humans and their descriptions of them cease to exist.

Moral norms are IMO neither subjective nor objective; they are inter-subjective (or simply "social") phenomena:
An *objective* phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs. Radioactivity, for example, is not a myth.
The *subjective* is something that exists depending on the consciousness and beliefs of a single individual.
The *inter-subjective* is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. Inter-subjective phenomena are neither malevolent frauds nor insignificant charades. They exist in a different way from physical phenomena such as radioactivity, but their impact on the world may still be enormous. Many of history’s most important drivers are inter-subjective: law, money, gods, nations.

Similarly, the dollar, human rights and the United States of America exist in the shared imagination of billions, and no single individual can threaten their existence. If I alone were to stop believing in the dollar, in human rights, or in the United States, it wouldn’t much matter. These imagined orders are *inter-subjective*, so in order to change them we must simultaneously change the consciousness of billions of people, which is not easy.

The *inter-subjective* is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. — Matias

You can't have a judgment anywhere but in an individual's mind.

True, but when the minds of many individuals are linked, their judgments converge and create intersubjective entities that are neither subjective nor objective.
Just think of the meaning of a word like "awesome": is this meaning objective or subjective? Neither, it is intersubjective, because one individual cannot change its meaning (that would be the case if the meaning was subjective), and it is not "out there" as an objective entity that could be studied by science.

It is absurd to say facts are not things we ought to believe. Because every denial invites the question, “Well ought we to believe that? Ought we to believe that facts are not things we ought to believe? If the answer is no, well ought we to believe that? And so on. It’s really just this I’m appealing to to demonstrate that facts definitely are things we ought to believe, because we ought to believe true things, which are facts. — AJJ

The problem with your argument is you use "we".

You are lack the imagination in your argument to understand that other people can, in a very strange and roundabout way, believe they ought to believe non-truths. If you said "I should believe facts", then sure, you should believe facts if you value truth.

However, one is not obliged to value truth, and insofar as that is the case, then even if it's true that you should believe, it's not an objective truth.

This is what is trying to say.

Not by his words in this debate -- which is just foolishness that you have identified as much -- but his goals for debating on this forum to begin with, as he tells us in the "Why is Ayn Rand not Accepted Academically?"

I enjoy going back and forth with people who act like as much of an unjustifiably arrogant asshole as you do, especially when I can goad you into typing so much in response to short answers. — Terrapin Station

If Terrapin's goal is to goad you into wasting your time, then he ought to not only deny any obviously true statement you make but also genuinely believe it's not true, for with genuine belief comes much more effective goading.

Now, can he defend this goal in any rational way? No. But by simply claiming his goal is rational he attains it: for people will waste yet more time trying to convince him that goading people rather than engaging in constructive debate is harming mostly himself. "Aha!" He will say to himself, "I have succeeded once again, they have wasted more of their time". So, not only should he believe lies to attain his goal, he should never question internally if his goal is worthwhile as that would divert effort away from his goal and stand in his way of attaining it.

And, should goals be attained? Of course. How truer a statement could ever be made, and so from a much clearer and more abstract perspective, the truth does come to his aid for indeed the definition of goals is that which you want to attain, he has a goal and therefore wants to attain it and if he needs to believe lies to attain it, so be it; it's a noble sacrifice to forego what would otherwise be useful, as presumably the truth would otherwise be useful, in striving to achieve a higher objective.

For, if I ought to believe lies, I ought to believe the lie that I ought to believe lies. This is were you argument fails in terms of objectivity: people can choose to value lies over truth and simply deny any true statement that would lead them to believe otherwise. Therefore, it is not the case we would all agree that we ought to believe the truth, for some people can prefer lies as well as prefer to simply deny the possibility of any understanding that undermine their own belief in their project.

This is similar reasoning the Randians use. They both assert that their self interested actions achieve the social good, and deny any social good exists apart from self interest. They both assert self interest is rational because everyone wants to achieve their goals, whatever they are (don't judge me bro), and deny that socialists or communists or anarchists or trade unionists or collectivists are rational in trying to achieve whatever their goal is (they are vile Stalinists that will bring back the gulag). both is and is not defending Rand, both is and is not interested in the debate at all.

And crucially, it is against their self interest to believe anything that would undermine their current concept of what their self interest is. So, if concern for the environment would undermine the idea that they should seek to maximize resource consumption throughput, and this is only possible in a society that seeks to maximize resource consumption throughput at a macro level, and they can intuit that it is trivial to arrive at the conclusion that the very conditions that support society and make civilization possible are a social good apart from arbitrary self interest of individuals in that society: therefore, even if they are devoted to "being objective" and "empiricism" and "science" and "Aristotle", they must simply deny any environmental issue could ever cause a problem for society (that rich geniuses won't easily solve). If they promote what they know are lies for the purposes of confusing the public in order to support anti-environmental policy -- whether they really believe the concerns will be easily solved by technology we do not yet have or whether they intuit this "negative externality" thing is really a serious conceptual problem for them -- then they ought not only to spread those lies to attain their goals, as in the volcano example (but to avoid any action against the danger, rather than promote responsible action to verify, address and deal with the danger if it is present), but ought also to make whatever act of will required to really believe those lies, for true belief is more effective than doubt and so more valuable to attain their goals than whatever it is that is true: again a noble sacrifice.

For it is not a curiosity of philosophy that it is conceptually possible to value lies over truth, people really do it and work backwards from the lie to whatever statements they need to believe that supports it, changing to whatever seems the next convenient beliefs to support the lie when encountering criticism they can't deal with.

They are as devoted to the lie as you are to the truth, which of course they will tell you is a lie and make whatever further statements are needed to try to convince you, and themselves, that it is true.

I don’t want to discuss this with anyone who can’t see why the below statement makes no sense:

“there is nothing that we ought to believe, including the proposition that there is nothing we ought to believe.” — AJJ

I agree that the statement makes no sense, though others can simply disagree by believing they ought to disagree, so it's not objective.

The argument is the same structure as " 'no truth exist' cannot be true, as if it was true it would assert it was itself false". Likewise, "Something must exist, as if nothing existed this statement, and whoever is making it, wouldn't exist either".

If the book you refer to uses this argument to jump to the conclusion that Christianity is true, that leap doesn't work. We can use the above arguments only to refute arguments of the form "Christianity can't be true because nothing is true" or "Christian ethics can't be true because no ought statement is true" (it is as you suspect: someone advising you to "not believe A" cannot do so because "nothing should be believed to begin with" -- but, as discussed above, it does not prevent them from genuinely believing that they should make that statement and genuinely believe that "they have the truth that no ethic is true and that they and others ought to believe it").

Now, that "all statements are false" is false, and "facts should be believed" is a statement you should believe, does not do much, and may at first glance seem can't do anything, in pointing towards anything else that is true or things ought to be believed.

However, Kant does use this style argument to found his ethics, but in a slightly different form.

He argues in essence that to believe anything at all we must assign value to ourselves, our potential to believe anything in the first place must be a good potential and we must be good to have it, and that, therefore, the only coherent position is to not only value ourselves but assign the same value to others.

Terrapin Station
both is and is not defending Rand, both is and is not interested in the debate at all. — boethius

I think Rand blows. It's just that that's not the only reason she's not part of the academic philosophy canon. Tons of stuff in the canon blows.

their judgments converge and create intersubjective entities that are neither subjective nor objective. — Matias

How does this happen ontologically?

I think Rand blows. It's just that that's not the only reason she's not part of the academic philosophy canon. Tons of stuff in the canon blows. — Terrapin Station

Following from my premise here, which is your goal is to goad people into wasting time and you will work backwards to whatever statements and beliefs are necessary for that (which you have stated is your goal), then it follows you've just selected the belief that you believe will maximize your goading potential.

Perhaps you did believe "Rand blows", perhaps you didn't. Perhaps you did believe Rand was great, but now genuinely believe you previously believed she blows.

I have no problem accepting that you genuinely believe whatever is necessary to attain your goal of more goading.

I do not understand the question. What is the ontological status of words and their meanings? If you can answer that question, you'll have the answer to your question.