Well Bob, I've been holding onto a moral theory I've had for a while, I guess its time to get cracking on it! Give me a week and I should have something.

SHOW ME WHAT YOU'VE GOT! — Bob Ross

Well Bob, the way to understand moral realism is to first go an account of what it is for anything to be real. I ask: is the pain you feel when someone deposits a spear into your kidney real? I argue that not only is it real, but value events, call them, like this are more real than any of your factual reals, which is something found on Wittgenstein's logical grid in his Tractatus. There is a reason Witt wouldn't talk about ethics, which is not so much that such statements are nonsense, which he famously holds to be the case, and more at the depth of their importance that would be trivialized by theory. He called value transcendental. Anyway, if that pain in your kidney is real, then pain qua pain, not as a concept, and not the "essence" of the pain, as when we would find license to "speak" what it is, which Witt denies is speakable, would have to be examined. So: apart from all that could be said of the pain, is there an existential residuum that remains after a reduction that suspends all that can be said? You see where this goes? Once all that can be said about this pain is removed from our consideration, and this includes everything Mill or Kant said, or evolution or a neurologist, and so on, is there something that remains standing, once these contingencies are removed, is there anything that is NOT a contingency, something stand alone about pain which is not reducible?
I argue that there is such a thing, which lies with Moore's claim that a moral Good or Bad is inherently a matter of a "non natural property." Of course, this is the very talk prohibited by Witt. But why did Witt write the Tractatus knowing full well he was speaking about the unspeakable? There are those that say it is meant to be a ladder to be used as a means to abandon all bad metaphysics. But he took ethics very seriously, saying the importance of the Tractatus lies in what is NOT said, and herein lies the case for moral realism: more real than real, this pain in the kidney; a Real that is in the "fabric of existence" itself, which is why it is both irreducible and and unspeakable.
And so, the moral prohibition against stabbing people with spears has this dimension of the real at its very core. And since all moral claims are essentially of the same nature, this example pf the spear in the kidney being only a radical example of what lies behind ALL moral issues.

Absolutely no rush! You always have thought-provoking positions; and, if I remember correctly, you hold some sort of moral realist position and thought it would be good to dive into it (and see if I am convinced by it).

Interesting. So, let me see if I am understanding you correctly. It seems as though you are advocating that either (1) moral facts are ingrained in or (2) inextricably tied to our primitive, basic biology (akin to feeling pain when getting stabbed in the kidney).

Would this be kind of like a hedonist view that the moral facts are identified with the primitive notions of pleasure and pain (or happiness and suffering)?

Am I on the right track?

With regards to my previous positive argument for moral anti-realism, I no longer accept it (thanks to the useful critiques by fellow moral realist members). — Bob Ross

It is a rare and beautiful thing when a chap changes his mind even a little as a result of discussion. I am inclined to say it is also a good thing to be swayed by cogent argument and to seek the truth. Truth is better than falsehood. and this is necessarily the case because a community of habitual falsehood speakers would have no use for each other's speech, and meaning and language would be lost entirely.
Now life can manage perfectly well without language, but whenever the question is raised, the question itself presumes that a truthful response will be forthcoming - whether it is raised in a philosophy forum or scrawled on a toilet wall.

So in general, I would suggest that morality is social value, and the sense of unreality arises because social value and personal value can and do conflict at times. No one complains that their own desires are unreal, it's always those values that conflict with them that might not be real...

Interesting. So, let me see if I am understanding you correctly. It seems as though you are advocating that either (1) moral facts are ingrained in or (2) inextricably tied to our primitive, basic biology (akin to feeling pain when getting stabbed in the kidney).

Would this be kind of like a hedonist view that the moral facts are identified with the primitive notions of pleasure and pain (or happiness and suffering)?

Am I on the right track? — Bob Ross

I think close, yes, but the devil is in the terminology. When I observe the pain, it is not a biological description I am observing. Nor a moral fact. These are accounts that presuppose the pain actuality that presents itself for analysis in the first place.

As to hedonism, primitive notions of pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, these terms are at least delivered from extraneous explanations, but once there, attending to the pain in the kidney, that is, literally IN screaming agony, one then asks then asks the question, how is it that this is NOT real? One needs a reality test, and this would require a nonproblematic example of what is real to be able to answer it, and what, in the matter of the real, is nonproblematic? and this is a hard question for the obvious reason that the real deeply ambiguous.

I hold that the only way to address the question of what is real, is to witness what is clearly free of ambiguity regarding its ontological status. We find Descartes useful, for his method was to do just this: discover what cold not be doubted and entirely beyond ambiguity. Though Descartes made the mistake of affirming the cogito as this, failing to first define being. I think, therefore I am? Well, what do you mean by the verb "am"? The Being question is begged, but the method sustains: what is absolutely beyond doubt? How about this agony in my kidney? I CAN certainly doubt the multitude of prepositions one can make about the pain dealing with categorical knowledge claims (the pain is really this or that or some other reference to a science category), for these are constructs ABOUT the pain; not the pain itself.

This is where Moore comes in. Pain, the qualia of pain, if you will, or the pure phenomenon of pain, does not belong to interpretative error because it is not an interpretation. It, if you will, screams reality!

And once again, the extreme example is only to make for poignancy. Ethics is at its core, about value, and value is the general term for this dimension of reality, only made clear by example--you know, fall in love, stick a needle in your eye, ice cream and ice picks to the groin, and everything else one can have amoral issue about. Something has to be at stake like this, or no ethics. And things "like this" are as real as it gets.

Sorry, dumb it down further. :wink:

Are you saying?

People may experince pain and suffering. We ought not do anything which deliberately causes pain and suffering to others. Doing so is morally wrong and is thereby an objective moral fact?

Is that an ought from an is?

I agree re Descartes - I have generally held that 'I feel pain therefore I am' is a lot more explicit than thinking and 'aming'.

Are you saying?

People may experince pain and suffering. We ought not do anything which deliberately cases pain and suffering to others. Doing so is morally wrong and thereby an objective moral fact?

Is that an ought from an is?

I agree re Descartes - I have generally held that 'I feel pain therefore I am' is a lot more explicit than thinking and 'aming'. — Tom Storm

Right, and I think you get the idea. "I think" is frankly vacuous if plain thinking is going to be the ground for existence, because thought's purest form is logic, and logic is only about the form of propositions, not the content, making "I am" merely a formal concept. (I picked this insight up from Michel Henry's Essence of Manifestation.)

But this is/ought issue: It is quite right to insist that an "ought" requires and ought already in the "is" but this makes the is/ought a tautology, saying the ought itself is logically embedded in the is, thus, the moral insistence not to smash another's knee caps is part of the essence of the pain of having one's knee caps smashed. Pain entails the prohibition against causing pain. This is right.

However, this does not generate unproblematic conditions for moral decision making, for out moral affairs are entangled in complicated ways contextually with other facts, and this holds for our attitudes and predilections and beliefs in the world. The idea here is that there is this dimension of morality that grounds such things in the real, making our ethics real, if contextually ambiguous.

Sensible assessment. :up:

Hi Bob.

Facts are what has already happened and/or what is currently happening. Sometimes people speak in terms of states of affairs, the way things were/are, the case at hand, etc. Moral facts, states of affairs, cases, etc. are events involving situations where we judge whether or not someone should or should not do something or another, given some specific set of circumstances. That someone can and often does include ourselves. These are moral facts, state of affairs, cases, situations, etc..

Note here that I'm not using the term "moral" as a synonym for what counts as acceptable or as a means of assent or acceptance, so its compliment is not "immoral" but amoral... meaning not moral in kind. "Right" and "wrong" are the terms are used to express assent/dissent(moral judgment).

When promises are made, at least one person voluntarily enters into and/or creates a moral scenario, situation, case, etc. Solely by virtue of meaning alone, if I promise to plant you a rose garden tomorrow, then you ought have a rose garden tomorrow. That last statement is true because it corresponds to the fact that I promised to plant you a rose garden, and that's exactly what my doing so means. When we make a promise, we voluntarily enter into an obligation to make the world match our words.

There are moral facts as well as true moral statements and sound moral judgments.

I think that qualifies me as a moral realist.

It is a rare and beautiful thing when a chap changes his mind even a little as a result of discussion. I am inclined to say it is also a good thing to be swayed by cogent argument and to seek the truth. Truth is better than falsehood. and this is necessarily the case because a community of habitual falsehood speakers would have no use for each other's speech, and meaning and language would be lost entirely.

:up:

So in general, I would suggest that morality is social value, and the sense of unreality arises because social value and personal value can and do conflict at times. No one complains that their own desires are unreal, it's always those values that conflict with them that might not be real...

I have no problem with this...except I don’t see how it is a moral realist position: morality can have social value (and can conflict with personal value) without there being moral facts. Are you also arguing that those social values are moral facts?

I hold that the only way to address the question of what is real, is to witness what is clearly free of ambiguity regarding its ontological status. We find Descartes useful, for his method was to do just this: discover what cold not be doubted and entirely beyond ambiguity.
…
I CAN certainly doubt the multitude of prepositions one can make about the pain dealing with categorical knowledge claims (the pain is really this or that or some other reference to a science category), for these are constructs ABOUT the pain; not the pain itself.

I am with you here (or at least I think I am)! We cannot doubt our immediate experience, although we can certainly doubt conceptually what it truly exists in or of: I can doubt whether I am in a simulation or not, but either way I cannot doubt that I am seeing something right now.

But…

This is where Moore comes in. Pain, the qualia of pain, if you will, or the pure phenomenon of pain, does not belong to interpretative error because it is not an interpretation. It, if you will, screams reality!
…
Ethics is at its core, about value, and value is the general term for this dimension of reality, only made clear by example
…
Something has to be at stake like this, or no ethics. And things "like this" are as real as it gets.

I do not understand why the better explanation would be “these are moral facts” than “these are deeply rooted sentiments, which are presumably biological, that can have heavy impact on our behavior”. I don’t see how these tell me what I ought to be doing as the subject: just because my body is biologically wired to enjoy falling in love and not sticking a needle in my eye it does not follow that those are morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ things to be doing.

For example, imagine, that we discover that human beings on average, along with not liking being stabbed in the eye, really love torturing animals for fun: this seems to meet your criteria of something that would be factual morally good...but I am not seeing how it would be factual nor moral.

Let me explain it back to you and see if I am on the right track.

I think you are saying that state-of-affairs about promises made by persons (or organisms or subjects or something along those lines) are moral facts, because the promise is an obligation that is also a fact (a state-of-affairs)...am I on the right track?

I do not understand why the better explanation would be “these are moral facts” than “these are deeply rooted sentiments, which are presumably biological, that can have heavy impact on our behavior”. I don’t see how these tell me what I ought to be doing as the subject: just because my body is biologically wired to enjoy falling in love and not sticking a needle in my eye it does not follow that those are morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ things to be doing.

For example, imagine, that we discover that human beings on average, along with not liking being stabbed in the eye, really love torturing animals for fun: this seems to meet your criteria of something that would be factual morally good...but I am not seeing how it would be factual nor moral. — Bob Ross

Hard to remove one's perspective from scientific orientation that is ingrained in us through our education. Not many out there telling us how to analyze the world from a philosophical pov.

I did say that there are many explanatory contexts that can be brought to bear on bringing to light what pain and joy are. But a biological analysis doesn't rise to join with the experience and its content. The absurdity of attempting to do this, and in general to reduce experience to ready to hand paradigms, is clear if we let the matter itself make the case: stick my hand in a pot of boiling water and while the evidence is made clear to me regarding what pain is, proceed to tell me that how my biological wiring is producing this, or how pain was "selected" in the evolution of our bodies because it was conducive to reproduction and survival. You do see the radical incongruity of "reducing" what lies before me to an explanation like this.

Biological accounts and the like work, of course, in explaining common matters of contingency, I mean, ask me what a dentist is or a bank teller, and consulting a text would be entirely appropriate. But talk about ethics and pain is about what is Real, and reality is not something exhausted by references to something else. Biologists cannot talk about what is real because this is no more up their alley than knitting wool sweaters is, so I am not going to ask them what pain is AS SUCH, and this is where this is going. I look at pain as a geologist would observe a mineral deposit. What IS it? One has to first look and register its properties. A experience the pain and observe the prohibition to be at one with it.

And then, no one is saying there is a one to one correspondence between what one should and should not do and the realities of pain and pleasure (not to put too fine a point on it). This is a very important point: We are examining a dimension of our existence, NOT matching the chaos of our affairs to their Real counterparts that existentially address the each occasion of moral indeterminacy. That is absurd. The prohibition that is apriori joined at hip with our moral obligations does not sort out the massive oddities of our lives as some kind of metaphysical counterpart to whatever comes up. Again, pain, joy and all of the ooo's and ah's and ughs of our existence have this moral dimension such that when such a value is in play, we are not dealing with mere social constructs.

The problem I have with people who say nothing matters (nihilists, moral anti-realists, literal institutionalized persons, etc) is that the majority of them are functional "hypocrites" (I use the word 'hypocrite' in place of a vulgar term for the severely mentally deficient).

Nothing matters? That's great. Go live in a pile of sand away from society and the goods and services it produced by people who live and die every day for the opposite belief. Who also, as a matter of fact, maintain for you.

Got a phone or internet connection? Someone who believed in moral realism made that.

A car or drive on public roads? Someone who believed in moral realism made that.

Ever used a band-aid? Been to public school? Read a book? Watch a YouTube video? Eat anything beyond a poorly cooked hunk of raw animal flesh? Yup. Provided by a moral realist.

Every breath you take using our inventions is already a disqualification of your attempt at an argument. As far as rational minds should be concerned, it's a non-starter until you live as you believe.

Now, if right now you abandoned every modern invention and went to go live in the woods (not here btw- somewhere undeveloped) and live your truth, then, that's a starting position for an argument. Perhaps someone will find your bones next to a tree with a carving of your attempted non-philosophy and be in a compassionate enough state to take it as serious content. Not here.

Got a phone or internet connection? Someone who believed in moral realism made that.

A car or drive on public roads? Someone who believed in moral realism made that.

Ever used a band-aid? Been to public school? Read a book? Watch a YouTube video? Eat anything beyond a poorly cooked hunk of raw animal flesh? Yup. Provided by a moral realist. — Outlander

You’re conflating nihilism and ‘nothing matters’ sentiments with moral relativism. I’m not a moral realist, and yet I believe strongly in moral progress. In fact I dont think it’s possible to achieve optimum social harmony until we jettison moral realism in favor of ways of ethical thinking that aren’t dependent on blame and culpability, which are presupposed by moral realism.

All your concerns target moral nihilism, not moral anti-realism. The former is a subspecies of the latter.

As a moral subjectivist, I have no problem valuing things and having adhering to moral principles and codes--they just don't correspond to moral facts.

Again, pain, joy and all of the ooo's and ah's and ughs of our existence have this moral dimension such that when such a value is in play, we are not dealing with mere social constructs. — Astrophel

No, we’re dealing with personal constructs, which to say that emotional pain and pleasure are inextricably bound up with the breakdown of our constructs to make sense out of the chaos of events. Moral emotions like anger and guilt express our struggles to cope with the changes in others and ourselves which take us by surprise, which force us to choose between a sweeping overhaul of our ways of understanding them and trying to put the genie back in the bottle by demanding conformity to our original expectations. Unfortunately most approaches to morality take the latter route.

Close. Promises are moral facts.

No, we’re dealing with personal constructs, which to say that emotional pain and pleasure are inextricably bound up with the breakdown of our constructs to make sense out of the chaos of events. Moral emotions like anger and guilt express our struggles to cope with the changes in others and ourselves which take us by surprise, which force us to choose between a sweeping overhaul of our ways of understanding them and trying to put the genie back in the bottle by demanding conformity to our original expectations. Unfortunately most approaches to morality take the latter route. — Joshs

Can't argue with that.

But this goes to the very point I am trying to make: This embeddedness of our affairs in complexities that defy categorical answers makes the value dimension of our lives seem chaotic, and I agree that this is so. But this does not undo the nature of what is IN these entangled affairs. What is painful can be ambiguous, which is why the strong examples are revealing: there is no ambiguity in a sprained ankle qua outrageously painful event. That is no construct to work out in one's entangled affairs. The world "does" this to us.

Nothing matters? That's great. Go live in a pile of sand away from society and the goods and services it produced by people who live and die every day for the opposite belief. Who also, as a matter of fact, maintain for you. — Outlander

This seems an odd argument. I don’t have to believe in anything transcendent or foundational in order to appreciate comfort. Nihilism doesn’t choose chaos and hardship, it merely accepts that there is no intrinsic meaning available to us. There’s a significant difference between 'there is no inherent meaning' and ‘nothing matters’.

I don’t see how it is a moral realist position: morality can have social value (and can conflict with personal value) without there being moral facts. — Bob Ross

Perhaps something unsaid in your question is that facts rely upon measurement in order to ascertain objectivity. After all, if we all agree that a thermometer measures temperature, and agree by observation on what that measure comprises, then we can arrive at an objective measure of the fact of, say, the boiling temperature of water. But then, what is objective also depends on what can be measured, and what can be measured depends at least on the act of measurement. And that is the basis of scientific realism, wholly quantitative in nature. So the question becomes: is there any measure of quality? (Robert Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance comes to mind.)

Nihilism doesn’t choose chaos and hardship, it merely accepts that there is no intrinsic meaning available to us. There’s a significant difference between 'there is no inherent meaning' and ‘nothing matters’. — Tom Storm

:up: :up:

Facts can be measured whereas principles can only be observed.

Facts can be measured whereas principles can only be observed. — Wayfarer

Is this objectively true?

Decide for yourself.

All your concerns target moral nihilism, not moral anti-realism. The former is a subspecies of the latter.

As a moral subjectivist, I have no problem valuing things and having adhering to moral principles and codes--they just don't correspond to moral facts. — Bob Ross

Maybe we should listen to the ghost of Nelson Goodman and argue for moral irrealism: that there are incompatible different versions of value systems, and in any given context at least one of them needs to be taken so seriously as to be called 'moral'.

The general premises are something like:

1. The meaning of the word "ought" is such that the statement "one ought not X" is truth-apt (cognitivism).

We can defend this with reference to Wittgenstein. In our ordinary language use, as understood by any competent speaker, we agree or disagree with the claim that one ought not X, and agreement and disagreement only makes sense if the claim is truth-apt.

2. The meaning of the word "ought" is such that if the statement "one ought not X" is truth-apt then either a) for every X the statement "one ought not X" is false (error theory) or b) there is at least one X such that the statement "one ought not X" is objectively true (moral realism)

We can also defend this with reference to Wittgenstein. In our ordinary language use, as understood by any competent speaker, when someone claims that one ought not X we understand them as attempting to express an objective fact. As such, moral subjectivism is inconsistent with ordinary language use, and so it must be that if moral statements are truth-apt then either moral realism or error theory is correct.

3. It is not the case that for every X the statement "one ought not X" is false

We can defend this by arguing that there is insufficient evidence or reasoning to support the claim that for every X the statement "one ought not X" is false, and that if there is insufficient evidence or reasoning to support this claim then we are justified in rejecting it.

It would then follow that there is at least one X such that the statement "one ought not X" is objectively true.

I think 3) is the weakest premise as any opponent could instead replace it with:

4. It is not the case that there is at least one X such that the statement "one ought not X" is objectively true

And, like above, they can defend this by arguing that there is insufficient evidence or reasoning to support the claim that there is at least one X such that the statement "one ought not X" is objectively true, and that if there is insufficient evidence or reasoning to support this claim then they are justified in rejecting it.

So if we accept an ordinary language approach that suggests that either moral realism or error theory is correct then we must decide which of the two is the "default" position absent any positive evidence or reasoning in either's favour.

Either it is the case that one ought not eat babies or it is not the case that one ought not eat babies. If you agree with the former then you're a moral realist; if you're an error theorist then you agree with the latter. Pick your poison.

I have no problem with this...except I don’t see how it is a moral realist position: morality can have social value (and can conflict with personal value) without there being moral facts. Are you also arguing that those social values are moral facts? — Bob Ross

Are there personal desire facts? "I like to breathe." sort of thing?
To the same extent there can be moral facts. "Societies like truthful communication."

There is a real difference between a pile of car components and an assembled car. A big difference and a vital difference, that we use words like 'structure' and 'function' and 'interaction' to get at.

At the level of living things, there is the same kind of structural interacting of parts that make a functional whole, but in addition, this functioning is reproductive; that is an organism has a functional relation to itself, and hence to the environment such that some environments are good for it and others are inimical. This is a differential self preserving relationship with the environment that is the root of what we experience as desire or need. Yeast needs sugar, and chooses to ingest it.

Humans need social nurturing as well as food and shelter. Parents need to love and nurture their children, and children need to be nurtured. Are you having any difficulty with the reality of these things I am saying?

There is a game babies play of throwing their toys out of the pram. This is a non-verbal behavioural negotiation. For a while, the attentive parent will play along, but eventually will get bored. Learn the limits of parental responsibility with your baby! This is morality before language – social regulation being enacted. Of course it's real; without such learning through negotiated relationship you will die.