The question is confused, since it assumes that things being wrong is something extra on top of the rest of the world and what happens in it.
Such an assumption not only begs the question, but profoundly misunderstands morality, which is concerned with things being wrong due to the way they are (in the world, where else). — The Great Whatever
So it seems to me that obligations, if anything, are something "extra". — Michael
The point I'm making is that these supposed obligations have no practical relevance. The physical world would still behave the same in their absence — Michael
The question isn't "why ought I to do what I ought to do?". The question is just "why do what I ought to do?" It's a question of motivation. I don't think the existence of some claimed obligation is sufficient. If it could be shown that I was obligated to kill babies, I still wouldn't. — Michael
I can't distinguish between those two questions. How do they differ? — The Great Whatever
So you are assuming that obligations are something extra added to the world, and then puzzling over what the difference between a world with obligations and without it is.
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Again, it's not as if there's a physical world 'first,' and then obligations get layered on top of it like an invisible blanket. If there are obligations, it's presumably precisely because of the way the world itself is.
So to answer your question, I might say: if killing kids weren't wrong, the world might be such that people were immediately resurrected on dying with no ill effects. Or you can imagine some other such scenario.
And it's pretty ridiculous to say that obligations have no practical relevance – that's precisely the sort of relevance they have.
I think you have a very strange understanding of obligations. It's like you think they're some kind of physical fact that has no physical implications.
"So if it could be shown that I was obligated to kill babies, I still wouldn't" – it's as if you found some thing under a microscope saying "kill babies!" and you kept your old moral convictions intact, and decided to disobey it. But that second decision as to whether you ought to kill babies isn't something in response to a priori physical "discovery" of an obligation – that is itself simply sorting out one's obligations.
Your title does not describe your OP, as Pneumenon points out. Why be moral? Because it's the right thing to do. It's that easy, and by definition. — noAxioms
Because presumably there are non-duty reasons to behave a certain way. It's certainly not the case that every decision I make is made on the grounds that I (believe that I) ought do it. So assuming that I have a duty to behave a certain, what is my motivation to behave in this way? Perhaps I don't care that it's my duty and decide to do the opposite.
Or would you argue that it's impossible to do something that one believes is wrong? — Michael
That strangling a baby will result in a loss of brain function and so biological death isn't a priori that one ought not strangle a baby. — Michael
They're certainly not identical things. So the wrongness of that act isn't identical to the physical event of the act. Therefore the wrongness must be something else. — Michael
No, it's exactly because I don't think that obligations are physical facts that I believe that they're of no practical relevance. Whatever an obligation to not kill children is, it's something other than the physical fact of children being killed (and not being resurrected). — Michael
It's not a second decision as to whether or not I ought kill babies. It's a decision as to whether or not I will or want to kill babies. — Michael
I think it's not possible both to do something you think is wrong and not be committed to the claim that you ought not to have done it. And I can't see how you can think you ought not to have done something and think you had reasons for doing it more powerful than not. You might have had motivations, sure – but if you think you oughtn't to have done it, then you're admitting those motivations weren't sufficient reason to do it.
So to ask 'what reason do I have to do what I ought to do / to do what's right?' seems to me grammatically confused in some way, though it's hard to pin down exactly why. — The Great Whatever
OK, but who said anything about a priori? It may very well be that strangling a baby results in such and such does mean that one oughtn't to do it – in fact this is the ordinary way of thinking about it, that things are bad for reasons. There's no appeal to the a priori.
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That the two are not identical does not mean that they're freely separable. I don't think, for example, that you can have two worlds identical except for the obligations in them. That doesn't make sense – and your question seems to be positioned in a weird limbo, in which you want to insist such a thing is possible, but then notice that this very insistence makes obligations seem like nothing at all.
In other words, you cannot insist that obligations are distinct from the world by fiat and then complain that you can't tell the difference between worlds in which they hold and don't. Your own stipulations are causing the problem.
If the question is whether you will kill babies, then that is answered only by seeing whether you actually do – there's no philosophical question there, and no reason to be given, since it's just a fact whether you will or not. The same for whether you want to. That's just a fact about your psychology.
Presumably "I believe that I ought not X" does not just mean "I don't want to do X"? So "I believe that I ought not X and I want to do X" isn't a contradiction.
And if it isn't a contradiction then I don't see the problem with my question. — Michael
I'm not saying that obligations are distinct from the world. — Michael
And if they're distinct from physical facts then there's a possible world which has the same physical facts but doesn't have the associated obligations. — Michael
The only thing that is of practical relevance is whether or not we actually will kill babies (which is influenced by whether or not we want to kill babies). — Michael
Sorry, I think I've lost the thread. No it's not a contradiction, but I don't see how that's related to your question. Is it now about wants? Can you rephrase it in terms of wants? — The Great Whatever
This is contradictory, if physical facts are exhaustive, which I'm not sure if you're assuming. If you assume there are other relevant sorts of facts, then I'm not sure what the problem is. For example, if you think there are moral facts, then you have your answer – in one world the moral fact obtains, in the other it doesn't. If you protest that this is no difference at all, then you've reneged on your thinking that things other than physical facts make a difference – so I'm not sure how to make sense of the position.
But that's not right. We might decide to kill babies based on deliberating, for example – and in deliberation we can bring concerns to bear other than what we want to do. There's no contradiction in supposing I want to do something, but don't, because I realize I shouldn't. There may be some underlying assumption here that only on'e desires can be reasons to do or not do something, or some such, which isn't right.
I'm asking for a reason to be moral. That it's moral isn't sufficient motivation, as it is possible that one doesn't want to be moral, given that "X is immoral and I want to do X" isn't a contradiction. — Michael
I'm saying that if moral facts are not the same thing as physical facts then there's no practical difference between a world with moral facts and a world without them. In terms of how we actually live our lives, whether or not there are moral facts is irrelevant, as their (non-)existence has no bearing on how we actually behave. — Michael
Then the influencing factor here is our reasoning and beliefs, not the (non-)existence of some actual obligation. — Michael
Of course there's a practical difference. For example, in deliberating whether one will do something, we might consider these moral facts, and choose what to do or not based on them.
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The two aren't somehow in contradiction. In reasoning, we appeal to obligations – in fact in such a case our reasoning only influences our action because of the obligation. If we had no such obligation, or didn't think we did, then we wouldn't bring it up in reasoning. — The Great Whatever
I'm not sure I follow what the significance of this is supposed to be. I agree that "X is immoral and I want to do X" isn't a contradiction. Are you worried that something being immoral won't in fact make you not do it? If so, I agree – but I don't agree that it doesn't give sufficient reason not to do it. To ask for additional reason is to ask "Why should one do what's right?" which seems to harbor some grammatical confusion, like "Why ought one to do what one ought?"
And as a related question, in what practical sense does it matter if someone does the right thing or not? If I'm right in arguing that a world physically identical to ours but without any obligations (or different obligations) is possible then there's no practical difference between a world in which I kill children and killing children is wrong, a world in which I kill children and killing children is right, and a world in which I kill children and there are no moral facts at all. — Michael
Perhaps I should have said that it isn't necessarily a sufficient reason. If I were to somehow know that I have an obligation to kill children, I would need a more convincing reason to carry it out. That I am obligated isn't reason enough for me. — Michael
We consider what we believe to be moral facts/obligations. Whether or not they are moral facts/obligations has no practical relevance. — Michael
The only thing of practical relevance is whether or not I kill children. The morality of the act seems practically irrelevant. — Michael
Perhaps I should have said that it isn't necessarily a sufficient reason. If I were to somehow know that I have an obligation to kill children, I would need a more convincing reason to carry it out. That I am obligated isn't reason enough for me. — Michael
I can't make sense of this. How can you claim you're obligated to do it but that there's not sufficient reason to? To claim the latter seems to me just to say that you aren't obligated to do it. — The Great Whatever
Of course it does. We aren't motivated because we take things to be believed to be obligations, but because we take them to be obligations. Thus in deliberating, the question 'is X an obligation?' is important, not just the question 'does Y believe X is an obligation?' But if decisions turn on the question of whether something is an obligation, then whether it is an obligation has practical importance.
Now you might say everyone is just deluded and think there are obligations but there really aren't any, and only this delusion of thought has practical implications. But that would be an odd opinion, since you'd commit yourself to thinking you have no obligations, which in practice you don't (and in practice you take those obligations to actually be incumbent upon you).
WikipediaAnthropologist Laila Williamson notes that "Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule."
This strikes me as deeply confused, but it's a little hard to tease out why. What I want to say, again, is that you're assuming morality is like an invisible blanket or something that goes on top of the act committed. But the act itself is wrong – it's not that there's the act and then 'wrong sprinkles' on top of it. — The Great Whatever
What I mean is that if we believe that we have an obligation to not kill then we may very well be motivated to not kill. But our belief may be wrong; perhaps we don't have an obligation to not kill. So whether or not we actually do have an obligation not to kill has no practical relevance.
For example, it's not the fact that there's a monster under the bed that motivates a child to not look under it (because there isn't one); it's the belief that there's a monster under the bed that motivates the child to not look under it. — Michael
My point is that that one ought not do [it] is an extraneous (non-physical) fact about that act, separate to any empirical fact about it. Only the empirical facts about the act have any practical relevance. — Michael
But suppose whether you ought to do something influences whether you think you ought to do it. Then, by your own admission, whether you ought to do it has practical relevance.
So you are in effect committed to claiming the following: whether or not you ought to do something cannot influence whether you think you ought to do it. Is that right? — The Great Whatever
To be a certain way (physical or otherwise) is to be right or wrong. — The Great Whatever
Yes. So one would either have to say that obligations are empirical facts or that non-empirical facts can be causally efficacious. — Michael
But to be wrong just is that one ought not do it. So you're saying that "this act has these particular physical properties" means the same thing as "one ought not perform this act". That doesn't seem right. — Michael
No, I'm not saying that "one ought not to perform this act" means that it has such-and-such physical properties.
But it can be that something is wrong in virtue of (and in virtue of nothing but!) those properties. — The Great Whatever
So, I think that the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 causes us to believe that 2 + 2 = 4, given that we're creatures that can realize mathematical truths. We don't have to think it, but its truth influences us to think it, because some of our inquiries tend toward truth.
Do you disagree with any of that?
Well, you did say that "X is wrong" means "one ought not X" and "to be a certain physical way is to be wrong". So you're saying that to be a certain physical way is to be something that one ought not do? The wording seems comparable to say that being a bachelor is to be an unmarried man, i.e. that "bachelor" means "unmarried man". — Michael
I think you're reading 'is' inappropriately, as some sort of modal equivalence. All I mean is that, relative to a world, there may be no other thing that needs to be added to the world over having those sorts of properties for it to be wrong. — The Great Whatever
The question isn't "why ought I to do what I ought to do?". The question is just "why do what I ought to do?" It's a question of motivation. I don't think the existence of some claimed obligation is sufficient. If it could be shown that I was obligated to kill babies, I still wouldn't. — Michael
I don't think it's the fact that causes us to believe it, any more than the fact that the root of 2 is 1.41421... is what causes us to believe that. Rather it's either the case that we've been told it and we trust the teacher (as is the case for me with root 2) or it's what we've concluded after performing our own calculation, and we believe that the calculation was performed correctly (as it the case for me with 2 + 2). — Michael
I don't know what you mean by this. If you accept that "X has these properties" and "X is wrong" mean different things then that X has these properties and that X is wrong are different facts. — Michael
It seems to me that the only difference is that in the second one we would be correct in believing that it is immoral to kill babies. But what difference would being correct make to being incorrect? — Michael
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