Some Moral Claims Could be Correct

ToothyMaw

I have come across the claim in another thread that no moral claims are true because all extrinsic moral claims rely on unverifiable or untrue moral axioms and, thus, that the only truth moral claims are subject to is relational to other claims and the axioms those claims are based on; extrinsic justifications for moral claims just pass the buck until a(n) (incorrect) moral axiom is reached.

Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims.

However, there is something implicit in this assertion; there could be multiple reasons we cannot produce correct moral axioms:

(1) It is impossible for any moral axioms to be true.
(2) We cannot prove if any moral axioms are true.
(3) All proposed moral axioms are not true.

(1) and (2) sound like axioms themselves, and (3) is probably unverifiable if (2) is true: if we cannot prove that any moral axioms are true, we cannot know if none are true, even if we can show that some are false, as the ones that cannot be demonstrated to be false could be true. We would have to be able to demonstrate that all moral axioms (not just the ones proposed) are false for (2) and (3) to be compatible, and that sounds impossible to me, as we can come up with nearly limitless axioms.

Note that demonstrating that no moral axioms are true is different from (1): (1) says that it is impossible for any conceived moral axioms to be true, and the other says that no existing moral axioms are true. It could be hypothetically possible for moral axioms to be correct, but also possible for none of them to actually be correct because they do not represent reality accurately. (1) seems impossible to demonstrate, unless we could somehow evaluate the character of moral statements such that we could determine if they actually are capable of representing reality.

So, if one wishes to assert that (3) is true, one must take heed of (2), or prove that one cannot represent reality with moral claims; it is totally arbitrary to assert that (3) is true without (1), and (2) bungles (3). Ultimately, it seems to me that it cannot be verified that (3) is true, so it is incorrect to assume that no moral claims can be objectively true merely because they cannot be verified. In fact, the alternative to (3), that some moral axioms could be correct, seems to be a more reasonable position than (3).

Of course, there is also the whole is/ought thing which no one can address adequately.

Joshs

↪ToothyMaw

Jesse Prinz argues that all moral values depend on emotional dispositions , and these are subjective and relative. Therefore, moral realism is impossible. He does, however, believe it is possible to determine one moral position as being objectively better than another on the basis of non-moral meta-empirical values such as consistency, universalizability and effects on well-being.

ToothyMaw

↪Joshs

I definitely agree with Prinz and the other people who believe that certain moral positions are better than others based on empirical ("meta-empirical") values, but I fail to see how moral-sense theory, or more specifically sentimentalism, rules out realism, even if it does provide a plausible account of how we discover what is moral or immoral; just because we draw on emotion to form our beliefs about right and wrong does not necessarily mean that moral realism is impossible. Moral sense theory is, however, definitely right, imo, about the fact that "moral facts and how one comes to be justified in believing them are necessarily bound up with human emotions."

I mean, just because I hate rats because a rat bit me once doesn't mean that I cannot be empirically correct when I claim that rats are found to be, largely, annoying pests.

ToothyMaw

↪Joshs

Furthermore, it sounds like sentimentalism would have to assume (2) to support the claim that moral claims are only subjective and relative. The sentimentalist would have to demonstrate why (2) is a reasonable assumption, and "because emotional reactions to experience" doesn't seem to me to be enough.

ToothyMaw

I should amend my OP: when I mention (2), I realize that axioms in logic and math do not need proving, but a moral axiom would need some sort of self-evident reason or means of being evaluated for truth, as we are not building a logical system, but rather discussing a first principle for an ethic. (2) could mean that axioms merely cannot be evaluated for correctness, that no axioms are reasonable, or that the conditions under which axioms could be correct don't really exist.

Joshs

↪ToothyMaw

just because I hate rats because a rat bit me once doesn't mean that I cannot be empirically correct when I claim that rats are found to be, largely, annoying pests. — ToothyMaw

And if rats are found to be ideal pets within another culture is that culture empirically incorrect?

just because we draw on emotion to form our beliefs about right and wrong does not necessarily mean that moral realism is impossible. Moral sense theory is, however, definitely right, imo, about the fact that "moral facts and how one comes to be justified in believing them are necessarily bound up with human emotions." — ToothyMaw

Prinz argues that the basis of our moral values are not in fact propositional beliefs but pre-cognitive preferences.

ToothyMaw

And if rats are found to be ideal pets within another culture is that culture empirically incorrect? — Joshs

Note that I amended myself to "are, largely, found to be", not "are".

Prinz argues that the basis of our moral values are not in fact propositional beliefs but pre-cognitive preferences. — Joshs

How does he support the assertion that they cannot be propositional in addition to being pre-cognitive preferences?

ToothyMaw

Also: I could list the many characteristics of rats - dirty, vicious, etc. - and use this as a basis for the belief that rats should be considered pests, and this would be empirical based upon the common understanding of what makes a pest. You might disagree, but you cannot argue that my foundation for believing they should be considered pests is not empirical, even if I am deriving an ought - "rats ought be considered pests" - from an is - "rats are dirty, vicious, etc." You might say this jump is unjustified, but "rats are pests" is a proposition regardless of anyone's opinions.

btw I love rats

180 Proof

Of course, there is also the whole is/ought thing which no one can address adequately. — ToothyMaw

I wonder what you make of this contrarian view from an old thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/573153

Joshs

↪ToothyMaw

How does he support the assertion that they cannot be propositional in addition to being pre-cognitive preferences? — ToothyMaw

I suppose they could be articulated propositionally. But in order for ‘rats are pests’ to be a proposition with a truth value it would have to be possible to ground it in an objective state of affairs. A common understanding of what makes a pest is a consensual understanding of the meaning of the word pest, but this is not the same thing as a consensual experience of the feelings of revulsion, disgust, etc that make rats a pest for some people and not others.

ToothyMaw

↪180 Proof

Dude, I can't understand shit that you write. Your writing is not bad by any means, but your style is difficult for me.

ToothyMaw

A common understanding of what makes a pest is a consensual understanding of the meaning of the word pest, but this is not the same thing as a consensual experience of the feelings of revulsion, disgust, etc that make rats a pest for some people and not others. — Joshs

My argument would not be that moral claims must be both emotional responses to experience and also propositions, but rather that both can exist and are tied up, and that (2), an assumption you and Prinz seem to make on the grounds that emotional reaction to experience forms morals, is not reasonable, as it is conceivable that there could be an objective grounding for a moral claim if it can be expressed in a way such that it could be true or false. So maybe it is a proposition, or maybe it isn't. One cannot claim then that (3), a refutation of us knowing any moral facts, follows from whatever version of (2) one subscribes to.

If I make a genuine moral claim like: "sand-bagging is despicable and ought be punished", then this is indisputably a proposition, and to dismiss it would require some justification - if it is being dismissed on the grounds of (2). It seems you and Prinz take (2) to be true because we cannot evaluate moral axioms to be true, to which I would respond that (2) is itself an axiom in need of some justification.

Furthermore, I think claims should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, as some morals are definitely formed from emotional responses to experience, yet others are the result of careful thought.

Outlander

A functional human brain free of disease knows what is moral and immoral long before it is fully developed. It is ingrained and hard coded.

A baby cries until it is nourished or cared for. Simple hunger or not.

Normal children don't cry when they get what they want. Normal children don't laugh when they are physically punished or harmed.

You don't smile when you're excluded or singled out or scammed, robbed, injured, or lied to.

Any response that starts with "a psychopath" or along the lines of "well what if I like being injured" is not applicable as yes, sometimes the human body and components can be "broken" or made to become so.

The only thing is "the lesser of two evils" ie. "the trolley problem". We don't know the consequences of our actions. The degenerate who picks a fight with you at a bar might go on to save the president of the country or cure cancer- somehow. Or he might go on to ruin or take the lives of more people than you can count. Who's to say what would or would not have happened by choosing to walk away from it, resulting in him continuing to live, and more specifically whether or not it was "moral" or "immoral".

Note this does not include cognitive bias hypocrisy ie. a child being raised to kill others because they're "bad" and so "it's good" and knows only praise and reaffirmation in doing so or social norms with said hypocrisy ie. slavery.

T Clark

A functional human brain free of disease knows what is moral and immoral long before it is fully developed. It is ingrained and hard coded. — Outlander

I think this is overstating the case. There is evidence there is a gene-based tendency to make judgements about people, but there is a lot of morality that is learned.

T Clark

I have come across the claim in another thread that no moral claims are true because all extrinsic moral claims rely on unverifiable or untrue moral axioms and, thus, that the only truth moral claims are subject to is relational to other claims and the axioms those claims are based on; extrinsic justifications for moral claims just pass the buck until a(n) (incorrect) moral axiom is reached.

Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims. — ToothyMaw

As I see it, morals mostly express human values, not facts. Morals are not true or false, they work or they don't. Where do those values come from? I think some are inborn and some are learned.

Athena

I have come across the claim in another thread that no moral claims are true because all extrinsic moral claims rely on unverifiable or untrue moral axioms and, thus, that the only truth moral claims are subject to is relational to other claims and the axioms those claims are based on; extrinsic justifications for moral claims just pass the buck until a(n) (incorrect) moral axiom is reached.

Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims. — ToothyMaw

Your statement reminds me of an explanation of "ignorance of law is no excuse". That ancient consideration was about being a decent person and if someone did something really terrible, ignorance of a law did not excuse what the person did. It was an unforgivable violation of decent behavior that everyone should know.

Morality limited to "the law" is a very low morality. A higher morality is a good understanding of virtuous thinking and action. A moral is a matter of cause and effect and when a person does not have such reasoning, the person's mind is inadequate and the person needs to be under the authority of someone with better reasoning. Our liberty is protected with education to develop virtuous people with good reasoning.

Speaking against such education is immoral because there is a bad effect when such education is neglected.

L'éléphant

Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims.

However, there is something implicit in this assertion; there could be multiple reasons we cannot produce correct moral axioms: — ToothyMaw

You are conflating specific moral beliefs with logical truth of a claim. Take for example Mill's explanation of offense-- freedom from assault, the right to ban intoxication in public, the right to ban smoking inside buildings, etc. -- the Harm Principle.

When philosophers say that animal abuse is unethical, they are not necessarily invoking some axioms that have already been proven to be logically true. But they make sense in saying, and rightly so, that animals feel pain, loneliness, hunger, and fear and animals desire social interaction and protection by using various evidence from science, the anatomy, and the relationship they observe between animals and between people and animals. The distress felt by people when witnessing the abuse is real, and pain is real, and so are hunger, loneliness, fear. The philosophers, and their adherents, are using reasoning or a reasonable explanation of why something is harmful or offensive.

Now of course, the philosophers are also aware of the universal implication of individual experiences -- so they come up with universal claims such as the golden rule, veil of ignorance, the harm principle, categorical imperative, etc.

If you take that all together, a moral axiom can be formulated, and they have already been formulated, so that we couldn't deny its truth without also imploding internally due to the difficulty of reconciling what our mind tells us and what we write for the sake of discussion, like this.

ToothyMaw

As I see it, morals mostly express human values, not facts. Morals are not true or false, they work or they don't. Where do those values come from? I think some are inborn and some are learned. — T Clark

That morals must work is indisputable, but that some are inborn, or tied to human nature, and others learned, says little about whether or not those morals are justified. That is mostly what I am concerned with. I appreciate what you are saying, but it is somewhat irrelevant, unless you are trying to demonstrate that morals cannot be justified.

You don't really seem to be saying that, but rather that it doesn't matter if morals are justified via reasoning - they only matter insofar as they are functional. If that is a misrepresentation, please correct me.

Morality limited to "the law" is a very low morality. A higher morality is a good understanding of virtuous thinking and action. — Athena

Agreed - I think that just because something is illegal doesn't mean it cannot be moral in certain circumstances, and that some things that are legal can be immoral in certain circumstances.

But it is different when considering the existence of moral facts. Moral facts could be vague, or very specific, and could be applied by a virtuous person in novel ways. There would be room for creativity, even, when considering the application of moral facts in a way that we don't have when considering the application of some of the very specific laws we have.

ToothyMaw

You are conflating specific moral beliefs with logical truth of a claim. — L'éléphant

Extrinsic moral claims, such as that animal abuse is wrong, must always eventually be traced to an axiom, and for that extrinsic moral claim to be true one must have a true axiom - which doesn't really have to be proven logically, but must be reasonable or capable of being evaluated for truth, or have plausible conditions that exist under which it could be true. That is, if we are expressing those moral claims in the form of propositions and not "rats are gross" or something.

philosophers are also aware of the universal implication of individual experiences -- so they come up with universal claims such as the golden rule, veil of ignorance, the harm principle, categorical imperative, etc. — L'éléphant

That animal abuse is objectively wrong requires that its harm is not just undesirable, but provably wrong. Many things are undesirable, such as going to the dentist, but we wouldn't say that one is doing oneself a wrong by going to the dentist, or that the dentist is evil for drilling your teeth. Your examples of universalizations are, of course, reasonable, but we cannot say that they represent anything objectively correct.

I get what you are saying - that we can decide that something is wrong if it can be tied to measurable negative outcomes, and that these moral claims do not reference moral facts, but rather have their base in universalizations formed from the collation of individual experiences.

But that doesn't give us logically true moral claims that express whether or not something is objectively right or wrong.

L'éléphant

But that doesn't give us logically true moral claims that express whether or not something is objectively right or wrong. — ToothyMaw

Again, I said there have been moral axioms written that if denied the truth, we would implode internally. True and not-true cannot logically exist.

ToothyMaw

↪L'éléphant

Ah. Okay. My bad. I didn't understand you.

ToothyMaw

↪L'éléphant

In my OP I do at least recognize that some moral axioms could be true, and that some (many?) attempts to refute them don't make sense.

ToothyMaw

↪L'éléphant

I'm not saying true and not-true can logically exist, but rather that an injunction against something like murder could be true and represent a statement claiming something is immoral.

ToothyMaw

↪L'éléphant

Think: "murder is wrong".

Joshs

↪ToothyMaw

I think claims should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, as some morals are definitely formed from emotional responses to experience, yet others are the result of careful thought. — ToothyMaw

Jonathan Haidt argues that our moral values are the product of inborn evolutionary adaptations. He lists the following 5 innate moral foundations:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

These intuitions are the tail that wags the dog of the reasoned propositions that you are counting on to give us objectively true moral axioms. They are present in all of us but occur in proportions that vary from individual to individual. For instance , in Haidt’s model, conservatives may emphasize authority and loyalty over care and fairness.

ToothyMaw

↪Joshs

While it is apparent that Haidt's views might be compelling, they don't seem to address justifications for morals, although he addresses why we have the morals we have. It is like using a scientific conclusion to support a policy decision: science might provide the facts necessary for a decision to be made, but these facts have to be interpreted such that a conclusion about what is best to do can be reached.

But yeah, many of our moral beliefs could have been reached via "inborn evolutionary adaptations". To say, however, that our moral beliefs are correct because they are adaptations is fallacious, obviously, and to say that they are objectively incorrect, or that (2) follows, because they are adaptations, is also fallacious or unfounded.

I know very little about Haidt, so if he does address justifications for morals, please link me something.

ToothyMaw

↪Joshs

You could make an argument from unlikeliness that it is unlikely that our morals - obviously the result of many different things - are true, but that does not mean (1), (2), (3), or any combination thereof, is true.

javra

Jonathan Haidt argues that our moral values are the product of inborn evolutionary adaptations. He lists the following 5 innate moral foundations:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

These intuitions are the tail that wags the dog of the reasoned propositions that you are counting on to give us objectively true moral axioms. — Joshs

To introduce some Buddhist-like thought, which of any can occur independently of a qualitative metric consisting of conscious being’s suffering?

I’m so far concluding that none can, in so far as all possibilities are either favored to not favored in relation to the appraised conscious suffering that would be incurred or avoided were the possibility enacted or pursued.

If so, then it could be concluded that it is an objective truth that all conscious beings seek optimal freedom from conscious suffering - this despite complexities such as weighing short-term suffering against long-term suffering.

If objectively true that we all seek optimal freedom from suffering - what in western thought could be termed the search for optimal eudemonia - then that means which in fact best liberates us from suffering will be the objectively true goal relative to all conscious beings, irrespective of (or else, in manners independent of) one’s beliefs on the matter.

Since this objectively true goal would in principle satisfy that which all yearn for, it would then be an objective good - a good that so remains independently of individuals’ subjective fancies.

Since this good would be objectively real to one and all, a proposition regarding it could then be conformant to its reality and, thereby, true.

Were this goal to be objectively real, then it would be that reality which “just is” via which what ought to be can be judged. Thereby potentially resolving the is/ought problem.

Of course, all this is contingent on there being a) a universal, foundational, (one could add, metaphysically real) drive to all conscious beings in everything we do and b) some means of satisfying it in principle. Yet, if (a) and (b), one could then well make sense of objective ethics and morality – in so far as there being an objective good to pursue by which all actions can be judged as either better or worse.

ToothyMaw

Since this objectively true goal would in principle satisfy that which all yearn for, it would then be an objective good - a good that so remains independently of individuals’ subjective fancies.

Since this good would be objectively real to one and all, a proposition regarding it could then be conformant to its reality and, thereby, true. — javra

A lack of disagreement doesn't mean that something is objectively true, merely that everyone agrees on it. You could indeed fashion propositions after this common goal of reducing conscious suffering, but it remains that these propositions would be only correct with regard to something subjective: everyone's common desire to not suffer.

Yes, one could make moral claims that would be correct, but these claims would still be relative. What difference is there in what you propose and proposing that female genital mutilation is okay relative to those in your culture if everyone in your culture agrees it is okay?

Tom Storm

Jesse Prinz argues that all moral values depend on emotional dispositions , and these are subjective and relative. Therefore, moral realism is impossible. He does, however, believe it is possible to determine one moral position as being objectively better than another on the basis of non-moral meta-empirical values such as consistency, universalizability and effects on well-being. — Joshs

I know this is a brief summary but this seems similar to my position. This latter point also resembles Sam Harris on morality.

As I see it, morals mostly express human values, not facts. Morals are not true or false, they work or they don't. Where do those values come from? I think some are inborn and some are learned. — T Clark

I think this is reasonable.

That morals must work is indisputable, but that some are inborn, or tied to human nature, and others learned, says little about whether or not those morals are justified. That is mostly what I am concerned with. — ToothyMaw

Isn't the point that TC is arguing there are no moral facts, just ideas which work or don't in context? This means justification is moot and context dependent, for we do not have access to some transcendental realm of moral truths.

ToothyMaw

Isn't the point that TC is arguing there are no moral facts, just ideas which work or don't in context? This means justification is moot and context dependent, for we do not have access to some transcendental realm of moral truths. — Tom Storm

I agree that we don't have access to transcendental moral truths, but we cannot rule them out, which is the point of my OP. Many arguments that are not as cogent as TC's misfire because they argue some newfangled combination of (1), (2), and (3). TC's argument is honest, simple, and makes sense.

Btw, javra basically just plagiarized Sam Harris as far as I can tell. Maybe unintentionally.

Some Moral Claims Could be Correct

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