All moral statements are false. — Moliere
The categorical imperative that I long considered as true was "Thou shalt not kill" -- but reality woke me up from that one. Clearly the societies which are very efficient at assigning the best people to killing are the ones which thrive. At which point -- what is moral realism anymore? — Moliere
They are only false if you misinterpret them to be statements of fact. — unenlightened
You ought to do good, but you will not.
The moral conflict arises from identification, which is separation. I want versus we want, and then we want, versus they want.
What moral realism is not is either that the good works or is rewarded. So societies can 'thrive', just as individuals can 'thrive', by identifying self -interest as the individual against the rest, or the tribe against the enemy. In the latter case, the selfish individual is subsumed into a selfish society. A religious sect typically makes this identification, and strengthens it with supernatural threats and promises, and pretends it is not all a mafia.
Being moral will not save you. It was always an empty promise, because if it would save you, it would be mere expediency, and even arseholes would find it expedient to be good. But it is the only end to the internal conflict, to end the identification. Than one is, ahem, beyond good and evil. In the meantime, it is a commonplace that God favours the big battalions, and therefore being good is costly and painful. — unenlightened
There's no fact to the matter. — Moliere
The inversion would be -- I can only pretend that killing is bad, given my reliance upon those who are willing to kill to preserve our societies. — Moliere
As much as I respect Nietzsche as a philosopher a lot of my beliefs can be read contra his entire project. Him and Aristotle are the usual suspects I have in mind when I think "Who is it I just basically disagree with on everything when I finally piece it all together into something coherent?" — Moliere
I'm not saying that. "Come buy my snake oil, it will make you immune from snake bites." Some people do lie all the time.
It is corrosive to society. I'm saying that one cannot in good faith say say it is good to lie. One cannot found a society on the practice of lies, because lies only work at all in a social context of trust and honesty
It is an argument against subjectivism and against error theory.
I suppose I'd take the pragmatic approach here and ask the question, what practical differences in our conception (and action) of morality follows from one being either a moral realist or an anti-realist?
I mean, one can claim that they don't believe that murder is a crime. But rarely do such views lead to such acts. On the other hand, those who are serial killers, may actually believe this, and act according to this belief.
for me the morality/ethics of a phenomenon is dependent on the entity/being or even system to which we concentricise/centralise the moral question.
Realists say that all statements, even those about things we we don't believe, know, perceive or whatever, are either true or false. Antirealists say that at least some statements either do not have a truth value at all, neither true nor false, or have some third truth value that is neither true nor false.
The subjective/objective discussion remains mired in imprecision, sometimes being about the difference between public and supposedly private statements, sometimes being about distinguishing the world from supposed mental states, and sometimes being about grammatical differences between first and third person accounts.
It seems to me that you might have inadvertently carried the ambiguity of the subject/object discussion into the realist/antirealist discussion.
But, imagine that someone does sincerely believe it is right to kill an innocent person as they take a walk passed their house: are there any absolutely obligatory judgments that you can point to to condemn their behavior? That would be a metaethical question. — Bob Ross
2. They are objective. — Bob Ross
I am understanding this analogy to be agreeing that your moral system doesn’t purport to have objective moral judgments, is that correct? — Bob Ross
In this example, I think so. To kill an innocent person for no reason, is not only irrational but outright evil.
I mean, it's even a bit embarrassing to spell out why killing an innocent person is evil.
Having said that, I think it's important to realize that, at a certain point, it boils down to this is wrong (or this is good), without any further understanding of what this wrongness entails, beyond it being wrong.
I suspect that our understandings aren't elaborate enough to explore this topic with much more depth. If an alien species exited that had a higher overall intelligence, they would know significantly more about these topics.
An antirealist will say that there are moral statements that are not either true nor false
And not being statements, they may not have a truth value.
Whereas deontology and consequentialism may say that there are moral statements, and that these are either true or they are false, and thereby take a realist stance, what you might call an objective approach.
I wasn't able to follow your "fixated" and "implicit" account. It looked a bit like Anscombe's direction of fit.
So, you think the origin of morals is indeterminate? — Bob Ross
I don’t think I quite understood this part: why? — Bob Ross
Are you just trying to note that your attitude is that of a moral realist in the sense that there are things which must be done societally to preserve the nation, which have very minimal concern for any particular individual’s wants? — Bob Ross
I think this is incorrect — Bob Ross
It's a bit tricky. It's species-dependent in so far as evidence pertaining to other animals being moral is shaky, some apes show the first glimmerings of such a capacity, but it's nowhere near the level of sophistication we show when we make moral judgments.
So, it's "objective" in the sense that human beings tend to agree on moral judgments, much more frequently that is otherwise stated
but we do not know if hypothetical alien species would necessarily have the exact same morality we have. It doesn't have the same level of objectivity physics has, for instance.
At bottom of these judgments, there's a feeling of repulsion or wrongness that is hard to verbalize./quote]
Why is a conscience a good indicator of what is right and wrong? A human can be bread to do the ‘wrong’ thing and feel good about it, just as much as the can not do the ‘right’ thing because it would bother them to do it.
Bob
This means we are already in a social relationship and already necessarily committed to a common purpose that involves truth and not falsehood
In your terms, there can be no intersubjectivity that is not committed to truth
This is very different from, say, establishing intersubjectively a rule for driving on one side of the road and not the other, which is necessary but arbitrary.
Truth, honesty, care for each other.
Don't misunderstand: I'm offering this as a clarification, a proscription, of the use of "antirealist", by way of bypassing the "contentious and unsettled nature of the topic". I'm basically stealing the use made of it by logicians such as Kripke.
Otherwise we will be prone to an unhelpful, even tedious, diversion into the many and various "..ism"s.
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