When I tell them 'it is wrong to shoplift', I'm trying to say more than 'I feel the obligation not to shoplift so you should not do it'. The gap I am speaking about is moving from the moral experience to a true sentence which applies to others even if they don't have a moral experience with regards to the same issue. — shmik
I was addressing this sentence.Perhaps you are looking at the horizon, while I am looking at a bird, which is looking for grubs, and a cat which is looking at the bird with a view to lunch. Four very different views and significances. Each significance is a relation of a pov to a view. The horizon has no pov. — unenlightened
It's the 'is/ought' problem again. What is the warrant for 'it is wrong' beyond subjective opinion? This is what religion and social mores used to underwrite, but now they've either been 'internalised', 'relativized' or 'subjectivised'.
I think it is quite permissible to believe that stealing anything whatever is wrong. It doesn't mean you have to perform a citizens arrest over someone shoplifting, but if I noticed it I think I would tell the shopkeeper. — Wayfarer
It is as if you are a limb that is numb to me, and I am a limb that is numb to you, and morality is the truth that if you damage a limb, you are damaging yourself, for all that you do not feel anything. — unenlightened
Because I don't actually feel your pain, I don't tend to care about it as much as my own, but this is merely a limitation of my senses - shortsightedness. Morality simply reminds me that you are sensitive too. — unenlightened
Is ought problem has a different starting point. — shmik
The gap I am speaking about is moving from the moral experience to a true sentence which applies to others — shmik
If morality is part of your experience — shmik
My concern is with the transformation of this experiential morality into true sentences as I view it as a transformation into something different, rather than a way of expressing our experiential morality. — shmik
Something like this. I think morality as commitment is also a bit of an abstraction. I don't think the morality as part of your experience is a set of rules, just the way you are compelled to act. Once we move from moral experience to moral sentences we drastically change what we are referring to.is, again, 'subjectivism' - that is, morality is effective because it's 'part of your experience', it is under-written by individual commitment. So, you will respect that, because it represents the right of an individual to hold a view - but at the same time, you don't believe it amounts to anything 'objectively true'. — Wayfarer
Not really asking for it. There are plenty people that are moral realist that don't believe there is 'an objective domain of values' - sounds very platonic. I'm mostly interested in arguments for realism which don't require this 'objective domain' or something similar.I think what you're actually asking for is an 'objective domain of values' - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for - but in the context of a culture within which the traditional means of providing that, is absent — Wayfarer
I feel the obligation not to shoplift so you should not do it — shmik
Haha I'm quite comfortable with saying you are completely wrong about this. Not sure where u pulled it from.other words, it's unbearable to think that someone else might actually be wrong about something. We can only get along if we're all equally right - at least in our own minds. Thus is born Political Correctness. — Wayfarer
If significance is always related to a pov, then there must be a pov in which these 2 other povs both share equal significance. — shmik
The great news is that we have things like logic and science which can really help us begin to sort out the hard truth of whether or not our up and coming moral strategies are actually effectual — VagabondSpectre
...in a sense the thrust of evidence based science and logic in pursuit of truth and fact is antithetical to that instinctive bio-mechanical part of us which would see such emotions influence our decisions in ways that are to the detriment of ourselves and our own values — VagabondSpectre
And in traffic. I once witnessed the following situation on a highway where traffic is at 110 km/h: Road workers have just driven onto the highway, stopped and began to set up the signs that traffic must slow down and the outer right lane on a two-lane road was to be closed (this is in a country where traffic takes place on the right lane). The workers were already walking on the entry lane and the outer right lane. A car came onto the road just right after the workers. The driver of that car had to decide whether to risk forcing themselves into the traffic on the left lane, or run over some workers. They chose to risk forcing themselves into the left lane. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, but many drivers blew their horns.I am very dubious about 'the trolley problem' because of its artificiality. I suppose as a classroom exercise it's useful for focussing the mind on the issues involved. But in real life, again, we're not generally going to face anything like that choice.
— Wayfarer
I imagine situations of that kind crop up during war. Do we bomb the munitions factory even though civilians are working there? Should we sacrifice a few to save more? — Michael
The question is, how does one come to hold the position of moral fictionalism if one doesn't already hold it?Again, this doesn't have much to do with anything, since I already said that moral fictionalism is not only a rational position to hold but also a comfortable position to hold. Like how you can play a game while understanding it's not actually reality. — darthbarracuda
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