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'. — mcdoodle

That would work fine for which side of the road to drive on, and result in some aphorism like "When in Rome, drive according to the rules the Romans follow."

But ... "Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases." ... is patent nonsense, and incompatible with human flourishing, which is not infinitely adaptable, but finds some social environments inimical.

I am still not quite following where the moral facts come into play with your view. It seems like you are saying the moral facts are tied to the "Real" where the "Real" is pleasure and pain--but where exactly are these factually moral claims in reality? You said they aren't the pleasure and pain, but they are tied to them.

I see. So the problem I have is that promises are not normative statements which exist mind-independently, so I wouldn't say they are even normative facts: it is a hypothetical imperative--i.e., it is a subjectively utterance of obligation. Moral facts are about obligations which are true independently of what a subject obligates themselves to do (viz., independently of what they decide to promise or not). What do you think?

So the question becomes: is there any measure of quality? (Robert Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance comes to mind.)

Interesting, I would have thought it would be "is there any measure of obligation?"--but this doesn't preclude subjective obligations.

Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with "moral irrealism", but I am all ears if you would like to advocate for it.

I appreciate your argument! Let me see if I can adequately respond.

I think I disagree with premise 2: just because "one ought..." is usually linguistically interpreted as a fact of the matter, it does not follow that they actually are. So I think moral subjectivism hasn't been adequately refuted, and its refutation is wholly contingent on that premise being true.

Likewise, the general problem I have with this sort of argument, which is really an intuition based off of ordinary language (that moral realism is true) is that it doesn't sufficiently explain what moral facts actually are nor where they subsist in or of. Without that, I think it is fairly simple to undercut this argument by noting that all of this linguistic moral realism can be reduced to moral subjectivism--viz., that it is just an illusion because there's no actual moral facts one can point to or even, in principle, explain how we would discover them.

just because "one ought..." is usually linguistically interpreted as a fact of the matter, it does not follow that they actually are. — Bob Ross

The meaning of a word is its linguistic use. That's what Wittgenstein tries to show in his Philosophical Investigations. How can meaning be anything else?

As I said, the argument depends on an acceptance of ordinary language philosophy. If you reject ordinary language philosophy then the argument is going to be unconvincing.

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 are facts about our psychology, but those aren’t normative facts. Reducing “one ought to...” to “I believe one ought to...” does not produce a normative nor moral fact, because it is purely subjective.

I can see why you would say this if by ‘moral’ you are just talking about ‘obligatory behavior’ and then it seems to follow that societies have implemented obligatory behaviors and those are facts—but I would say that there is a fact that societies have certain norms, but that doesn’t entail the norm itself is a fact: those are two different things. I would say that societal norms are inter-subjective.

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?

So, I would say these are normative facts, but not moral facts; because these type of normative facts do not, in-themselves, reference the subject (as opposed to the body) and thusly do not dictate what one ought to be doing. My body can have an ingrained normative fact such that ‘my body must eat’, but that doesn’t tell me, as the subject, as a mind, what I ought to be doing—it is entirely possible that the morally evil thing to do, for the sake of the argument here, is to eat.

which is really an intuition based off of ordinary language (that moral realism is true) — Bob Ross

That's not quite correct. The premise is that non-cognitivism and moral subjectivism are inconsistent with ordinary language use, and so that if ordinary language philosophy is correct then either moral realism or error theory is correct.

We then have to decide which of moral realism or error theory is the better "default" position.

Either moral realism, or it is not the case that we ought not eat babies.

Yes, but, as I said, I don't think it is a strong argument when it depends on ordinary language. It doesn't actually negate moral subjectivism, it just states "ordinary language is used in accordance with moral realism, regardless of whether moral realism is true or not"--and the italicized is what is missing in premise 2. I can agree with the fact that ordinary language aligns with moral realist positions while refraining judgment or even negating that moral realism is true.

My point in what you quoted was just a general worry I have, not with premise 2 but with the whole argument. It depends on accepting as true whatever is implied by ordinary language, and it provides absolutely no clarification on what the moral facts subsist in or of nor how we discover them. It just basically states that 'it seems as though moral realism is true based off of ordinary language, therefore it is true'.

Yes, but, as I said, I don't think it is a strong argument when it depends on ordinary language. It doesn't actually negate moral subjectivism, it just states "ordinary language is used in accordance with moral realism, regardless of whether moral realism is true or not"--and the italicized is what is missing in premise 2. I can agree with the fact that ordinary language aligns with moral realist positions while refraining judgment or even negating that moral realism is true. — Bob Ross

To be clear, I'm saying:

1. Ordinary language philosophy is correct.
2. Moral non-cognitivism and moral subjectivism are inconsistent with ordinary language use.
3. Therefore, moral non-cognitivism and moral subjectivism are incorrect.
4. Therefore, either moral realism or error theory is correct.

I am then saying that if there is no positive evidence in favour of either moral realism or error theory, and if we refuse to remain agnostic, then we must either assume moral realism or assume that it is not the case that one ought not eat babies.

Obviously if you reject the premise that ordinary language philosophy is correct then the argument will fail, but then what better theory of meaning do you have?

The meaning of a word is its linguistic use. That's what Wittgenstein tries to show in his Philosophical Investigations. How can meaning be anything else? — Michael

Easily. If I promise you something but don’t mean it – that is, I’m lying – this use is indiscernible (in that moment, and assuming a talented liar) from a sincere promise. So what makes the difference in meaning? Indeed, our aggrieved “ordinary language” response to such a situation, if it's revealed, is, “You didn’t mean it!” So what’s going on here?

Is there any kind of fact that doesn't suffer the kinds of ambiguities that moral facts do? The notion of a 'fact' is a cognitive tool. Language is idealization. We can plausibly partition the world in any number of ways so that objective facts are underdetermined and how we do it is conntected to prior assumptions too. Even our notions of truth is underdetermined by various competing stances. Even the notion that one 'ought' to belueve in some objective fact is undermined by epistemic indeterminacy because if the evidence we use to asses facts is consistent with many different kinds of facts then how do we choose between them and what standard or cutting off point decides when we should turn that evidence into belief in a fact (e.g. how many white swans before we conclude all swans are white - there is determined point to make the decision) ? Such things are underdetermined. Even when realists try to amend things with notions of "approximately true" ... well that is arbitrary too and has to make use of constructed heuristics to decide. Its almost always possible to construe similar things as different or different things as similar depending on how much you want to ignore the noise, ignore the errors.

You can say it is difficult to imagine what makes a moral fact true but arguably similar might be said for modal facts about possibility and necessity which do not seem to be about actual events in a way that is not totally disimilar to moral facts.

Can we make sense of regular facts when ultimately these might be made meaningful by perceptions? Phenomenal experiences are completely ineffable, immediate, incommunicable. Neither is there any clear, determinate, linear relationship between experiences and facts about the world. Their status isn't any better than the difficulty in characterizing 'should-ness'. Ultimately, because these things don't have clear, articulable foundations it makes it difficult for these things to be much more than about agreement. Moral realists happen to agree with each othet about this intuitive notion of shouldness which is either objective or we have some perception of which is about something objective. Is this much different from perception where we just have this immediate uncharacterizable information put before us and everyone just happens to agree about it? When we establish a fact that some people like schizophrenics are wrong about their perceptions, we can only do this because there is some agreement amongst many other people that those schizophrenics are wrong. But then what happens when the whole tribe is deluded? Everyone then suggests that magic, god, reptilian aliens are facts and the perceptual events underlying them are valid. All is this to say that facts about the world which we look at through perception ultimately come to the same difficulties of substantiation as moral facts do.

So what does this all come down to? Just scrap it all. If you want to scrap moral realism, scrap all realism. Objective "Truth" and "facts" in its entirety is a biological artifact that is constructed and enacted. These are essentially a product of a biological organism's metacognitive or perhaps metaperceptual abilities in the sense of being able to track its own predictions generated from its own biological architecture / functioning. The workings of these predictions are irreducibly complex as would be expected of a brain with trillions of degrees if freedom. That is not to say that there isn't a world that exists and has some structure, but its absolutely impossible to talk about this in a way that is objective. I have appealed to biology here but I am not pretending that what I say also isn't just articulating models which are idealized, depend on prior assumptions, depend on a mind, a brain. Nothing is to say that I cannot organize the world and predict things about it, just that it is not objective.

Obviously, this clearly isn't an argument for moral realism but it is an argument against the case that moral realism is inherently different to any other kind of realism. If you drop moral realism you should drop all of it. And most people are unwilling to do that it seems.

Indeed, our aggrieved “ordinary language” response to such a situation, if it's revealed, is, “You didn’t mean it!” So what’s going on here? — J

You're equivocating. When we say "you didn't mean it" we're not saying something like "the words you used didn't mean what they (ordinarily) mean". Instead we're saying something like "you weren't being honest."

Okay, forget the OL response, which isn’t really important. The question remains, ”If I promise you something but have no intention of delivering – that is, I’m lying – this use is indiscernible from a sincere promise. So what makes the difference in meaning?” Unless you’re wanting to say that there is no difference in meaning? So what would be the relevant difference between the truthteller and the liar, on this view? I’m not sure myself; I think appealing to “meaning” makes more sense; but I’m willing to be convinced.

The meaning of a word is its linguistic use. That's what Wittgenstein tries to show in his Philosophical Investigations. How can meaning be anything else?
— Michael

Easily. If I promise you something but don’t mean it – that is, I’m lying – this use is indiscernible (in that moment, and assuming a talented liar) from a sincere promise. So what makes the difference in meaning? Indeed, our aggrieved “ordinary language” response to such a situation, if it's revealed, is, “You didn’t mean it!” So what’s going on here? — J

My intention to lie is different from the use of my words in discourse. In the moment of my promise to you , I express my intention to lie, but the specific meaning of my lying words only emerges for me in the actual interaction with you as you respond to my words. It doesn’t matter that you take my words differently than I do. For both of us, the interaction determines the use of our words.

I express my intention to lie, — Joshs

Well, but that's just it -- you don't. We stipulate that your listener can't tell the difference. You may have the intention, but it's not expressed. BTW, I agree that we're going to need some appeal to intention as a way of explaining what's going on, but I'm not sure a hardcore OL proponent would.

Well, but that's just it -- you don't. We stipulate that your listener can't tell the difference. You may have the intention, but it's not expressed. BTW, I agree that we're going to need some appeal to intention as a way of explaining what's going on, but I'm not sure a hardcore OL proponent would — J

Is the issue here that if we stipulate word use as strictly shared , then we have no way to explain hidden meaning and personal point of view? Wittgenstein certainly wouldn’t claim that word use is identically shared meaning.

Let’s take Ken Gergen’s social constructionist take on Wittgenstein:

“Each of the numerous ways in which I may respond will attribute or lend to your utterance a specific kind of meaning. The utterance has no commanding presence in itself. Its meaning is revealed only in the manner of my response--in the coordination between my response and your utterance. Still, we should not conclude that I create your meaning. For my responses are not in themselves meaningful or, rather, they are not full of meaning ready for transfer. Absent the utterance of your proposals, my seeming acts of disagreement lapse into nonsense.”

Gergen makes room for lying by arguing that the liar is trying to navigate between two disparate discursive communities. The lie results from their being alienated from one community. The above quote, however, still is true of the liar’s words even though their interlocutor understands their sense differently than the liar intends them.

I'd rather not divert this discussion into one on the merits of ordinary language philosophy.

If one accepts ordinary language philosophy then the argument I presented might be used to support moral realism. A moral realist who doesn't accept ordinary language philosophy will offer a different argument.

I don't see how one can get from pain to objective morality. Perhaps someone can lay this out in an argument with premises leading to a conclusion. I can accept the reality of pain, and the immediacy of it, and how central it is to our existence, but a lot of what has been stated looks like a Wittgensteinian word salad that I cannot follow to a conclusion of moral reality.

The way I see it is that morality is real in the sense that once we create it -- or as it emerges organically from our social interactions -- it moderates our behavior as it is intended to. But it is real in an abstract sense, the way laws or speed limits are real. These things exist through a sort of consensus, or consensual understanding, and they aren't simply arbitrary as they have some kind of foundation in our nervous systems. When you feel shame, for example, you blush and you can feel it right down to your bones, it affects you physically. This isn't simply an imaginary or arbitrary phenonemon, and it's not merely about preferences or an intellectual exercise. We can't refrain from creating morality, and it is seemingly necessary to our existence and an unavoidable pursuit. Still, I'm not sure I'm able to make an argument for moral realism or how to get from an is to an ought.

or how to get from an is to an ought. — GRWelsh

There need not be an ought from an is. There need only be an ought.

These things exist through a sort of consensus, or consensual understanding, and they aren't simply arbitrary as they have some kind of foundation in our nervous systems. When you feel shame, for example, you blush and you can feel it right down to your bones, it affects you physically. This isn't simply an imaginary or arbitrary phenonemon, and it's not merely about preferences or an intellectual exercise — GRWelsh

Don’t imaginary phenomena and fictive stories express themselves in terms of bodily feelings? Are you saying we are pre-wired physiologically for the reinforcement of certain moral attitudes? Or is it rather that such somatic manifestations are merely expressions of socially constituted preferences? ( We blush because we are embarrassed, we are embarrassed because we construe situations in a certain culturally and personally contingent way so as to feel shame) . Is there an intellectual
exercise which is not accompanied by appropriate affective tonality?

just because "one ought..." is usually linguistically interpreted as a fact of the matter, it does not follow that they actually are — Bob Ross

My problem with almost all attempts to establish moral facts.

That one believes in a state of affairs as such, doesn't make it the case. Flat Earthers be damned!

There need not be an ought from an is. There need only be an ought. — Michael

Are you suggesting that what is necessarily an opinion, not universally held, is a brute fact, with this statement?

Are you suggesting that what is necessarily an opinion, not universally held, is a brute fact, with this statement? — AmadeusD

No.

But the statement is an opinion, not universally held.

But the statement is an opinion, not universally held. — AmadeusD

What statement?

What statement? — Michael

"One ought not harm others". Its a judgment, not a state of affairs. But i've just realised we've been over this :cry:

"One ought not harm others". Its a judgment, not a state of affairs. But i've just realised we've been over this — AmadeusD

Yes, we have. The moral realist will say that that one ought not harm another is a state of affairs.

Yes, we have. The moral realist will say that that one ought not harm another is a state of affairs. — Michael

I think we can make some ground between us here - I've never seen a similar claim. Granted, i'm likely far less experienced in exploring academic positions than you are - Can you outline how this claim is made?

I.e, what's the source of the state of affairs? I can only imagine (as previously mentioned) a supernatural origin for such a brute claim.

Additionally, what's your personal position on that claim (that it is a state of affairs)?