So you agree with me that your theory of emotion-subjectivism is not a (cognitive) science? — Leontiskos

Yes. I'd say that one can be a cognitivist without thinking that ethics is a cognitive science. I don't think ethics is a science.

To lay my cards on the table, I don't really want to argue over a thesis that you don't hold, especially when that thesis has no authorities to legitimate it. It doesn't seem to me that it will be fruitful. I would rather talk about a thesis that you actually hold, such as error theory or a theory of emotion or a theory of moral 'oughts', etc. It would be different if the thesis had philosophical authorities behind it, but I don't see that moral subjectivism does. — Leontiskos

Heh, fair. I'll stick to that then. Though it started to feel like I'd be veering off too far from the OP, so now I have ideas for threads. (being a lazy sort, we'll see how long it takes before one gets posted ;) )

(Sticking here to the bits where I have sincere commitments)

Have you given examples? I searched for "wants to be" on the first five pages on the thread and didn't find any occurrences. — Leontiskos

Not with those words, no -- to be fair to you I'm trying to make a position mostly to understand the idea, so I'm changing my position as I go along; I'm engaged in a creative endeavor. I don't have some firmly worked out idea here, though through the game we have managed to touch upon some possible interesting avenues of conversation.

The examples I have in mind are the angry man with his friend who he pushes aside, the guilty man apologizing, and the penitent man.

a person who is surrounded by people who shame them can feel guilt for that particular thing and want to change, or they can feel anger and define themselves against that group, and perhaps they can feel both at the same time in roughly similar proportion (and this is where the sense of free will comes from). Each leads to a kind of articulatable ethic that justifies the choice

at least in the sense of using "wants to be". In the scenario where he acts on anger "X wants to be alpha", or perhaps something more personal like the person insulted his wife: "X wants to be defender"

Where he backs down "X wants to be friend" -- he's promised, and friends keep promises.

Where he's guilty "X wants to be accepted"

Either the choice leads to the ethic or attachment to the ethic leads to the choice. It can't be both, because two things cannot simultaneously cause each other. — Leontiskos

Why not?

Gravitation works that way. The earth pulls on the apple, and the apple pulls on the earth -- it's just the earth is bigger so it's a more noticeable pull, but they simultaneously cause each other to meet.

But you aren't appealing to his anger, you are appealing to the justification of his anger, like I said <here>. This is not appeal to emotion; it is appeal to something which justifies an emotion. — Leontiskos

I'm appealing to his anger. It's the right kind of anger. The words we make up after the fact notice the distinction between the right kind and the wrong kind, but the words aren't the appeal.

But this might be back to philosophy of emotions.

Yes. I'd say that one can be a cognitivist without thinking that ethics is a cognitive science. I don't think ethics is a science. — Moliere

Okay, interesting.

Not with those words, no -- to be fair to you I'm trying to make a position mostly to understand the idea, so I'm changing my position as I go along; I'm engaged in a creative endeavor. I don't have some firmly worked out idea here, though through the game we have managed to touch upon some possible interesting avenues of conversation. — Moliere

Okay.

at least in the sense of using "wants to be". In the scenario where he acts on anger "X wants to be alpha", or perhaps something more personal like the person insulted his wife: "X wants to be defender"

Where he backs down "X wants to be friend" -- he's promised, and friends keep promises.

Where he's guilty "X wants to be accepted" — Moliere

Okay, in my last I set out different senses of such desires. Are you saying they are a sort of retrospective motive for an action that has already occurred?

Why not? — Moliere

It's just how reality works. If your mother gives birth to you, then you don't give birth to your mother.

Gravitation works that way. The earth pulls on the apple, and the apple pulls on the earth -- it's just the earth is bigger so it's a more noticeable pull, but they simultaneously cause each other to meet. — Moliere

Yes, but the motion is caused by the body, not by the motion of the body. There is no circular causality here, no more than if, sitting across from each other foot to foot, we grasp hands and pull each other up.

I'm appealing to his anger. It's the right kind of anger. The words we make up after the fact notice the distinction between the right kind and the wrong kind, but the words aren't the appeal. — Moliere

An appeal to the right kind of anger is not an appeal to anger itself. Else, if you think there is an emotion called good-anger and a different emotion called bad-anger, and these are two different things with no essential relation to one another, then you would still need to say what you mean by good-anger, and I say this description will always appeal to a rational justification for the appropriateness of good-anger.

But this might be back to philosophy of emotions. — Moliere

If you are interested, one of Aquinas' central writings on the passions occurs in questions 22-48 of the Prima Secundae.

Edit: Some old threads on emotion:

• Are emotions rational or irrational?
• How voluntary are emotions?
• Difference between thoughts and emotions?
• Does the West educate about emotions?
• How May the Nature and Experience of Emotions Be Considered Philosophically?

's thread is perhaps par for the course in that it conceives of emotions as separate from the self. I'm starting to wonder if this is just how modern people think.

They are binding socially (normatively) only insofar as most normal people hold to them. So, I am not advocating moral subjectivism or skepticism, but rather a kind of moral inter-subjectivism. What is morally wrong is what most people would find to be so. Of course, I don't deny that this position has its weaknesses, and I think these show up in the case of social mores, like sex before marriage, but when it comes to significant moral issues like murder, rape, child abuse, theft, and so on I think it works well enough. — Janus

The first sentence seems to rely on peer pressure for bindingness; the third sentence seems to rely on the idea that the consensus of a large enough sample of human opinion will tend to be correct (I forget the name which is often given to this idea). The problem with consensus-based views is that consensus is not in itself a truthmaker. The claim that consensus is a truthmaker for moral propositions therefore requires additional explanation.

If you want to say that moral proposition P is probably true if most people believe it, then you still need to explain why this makes it probably true.

Many years ago I argued with an atheist skeptic that a general consensus is rationally inclining: that it counts as evidence in favor of the thesis (and therefore global skepticism fails). I did not commit myself to the consensus constituting anything more than a piece of evidence, for he would not even accept this. I am inclined to agree with my former self, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that the rational inclination is strong enough to bind or obligate one to accept the opinion of the consensus. So what I said seems to apply to your theory as well:

I think the reason moral subjectivism is basically non-existent in professional philosophy is because it is recognized that even if nothing supports moral propositions better than attitudes, it remains the case that attitudes are insufficient to support moral propositions. — Leontiskos

Ergo: The attitude of belief that a consensus of people have towards a moral proposition is not sufficient to support that moral proposition. Unlike the subjectivist, I think your methodology contains a certain degree of validity, and mere consensus may even be sufficient for a child or an unreflective person, but beyond that I do not think it manages to properly ground moral propositions. Still, a lot of the ethical silliness on these boards would be improved by adopting your position (e.g. ).

:up:

It seems that if the subjectivist is a correspondence theorist, and they accept P2, then they have an inconsistency. But is that inconsistency fatal to the overall idea?

Yes, this OP presupposes correspondence theory of truth; which is widely accepted. A moral subjectivism could, prima facie, sidestep this (potentially) with another theory of truth; but I think, in the end, it will fall prey to this same issue.

Taking coherentism, for example, there isn't a really coherent way to account for the difference between a belief and a proposition; so sidestepping the issue by subscribing to that theory just creates a deeper issue.

The first sentence seems to rely on peer pressure for bindingness; the third sentence seems to rely on the idea that the consensus of a large enough sample of human opinion will tend to be correct (I forget the name which is often given to this idea). The problem with consensus-based views is that consensus is not in itself a truthmaker. The claim that consensus is a truthmaker for moral propositions therefore requires additional explanation. — Leontiskos

I don't believe there are any truthmakers for moral thoughts or dispositions, in the kind of sense that there are truthmakers for empirical, mathematical and logical propositions. That most humans have moral feelings or intuitions, when it comes to significant issues like murder, rape, theft, assault, child abuse, cruelty to animals and so on creates a kind of normative force in itself.

But obviously, if people have those moral feelings, then they alone would (or at least should in the absence of perversity) also be motivating. One might question something they understood to be a moral feeling in themselves if it ran counter to the normal view. The normal view is the foundation of normativity and indeed sociality itself, it is more than mere consensus in the sense of being more than mere opinion; it is deeply felt in the normal, non-criminally minded individual and deeply entrenched in our social practices. But it still does not constitute an absolute imperative, because an individual is free to act counter to the general feeling and even counter to their own moral intuitions in perverse cases.

Subjective, or intersubjective (which it always really is since we are socialized beings) morality is generally workable, but it is also a somewhat messy business, and I think the attempt to make it cut and dried, codified in a hard and fast set of rules, in other words to objectify it, is a lost cause. That's my take anyway.

You're not really addressing the issue in any clear or straightforward way.

1. Is a moral consensus in any way binding, yes or no?
2. If yes, then in virtue of what is it binding?

Do you have clear answers to either question?

I've already said that individual moral feeling is motivating, and that communally shared moral feeling is doubly so. The latter is, in that sense, normative, but not "binding". We are bound by law, if by anything, and even there we are not really bound.

As I say, I have already written earlier in this thread things which should indicate that I don't believe there are binding moral injunctions. I have certainly implied, if not explicitly stated, that.

For example,

Normative does not equate to imperative. — Janus

I've already said that individual moral feeling is motivating, and that communally shared moral feeling is doubly so. — Janus

So you want to say, "If you are positively disposed towards doing or not doing something, then you are in some sense motivated to do or not do it. And if you and a large group of other people are all positively disposed towards doing or not doing something, then you are even more motivated to do or not do it."

These are just tautologies, are they not? I don't see anything substantial being said.

They are not tautologies; people don't have to be thus motivated. What I'm getting through to you is that I don't think moral decisions are a matter of being "bound". Even when people are bound by for example religious proscriptions, they choose that path, and anyway the injunctions, at least in relation to what are generally considered to be crimes, are usually in line with what people think and feel anyway..

They are not tautologies; people don't have to be thus motivated. — Janus

I never said they did. The statements remain tautological. They are tautological conditionals (if/then statements).

I was interpreting this statement charitably, but I think that interpretation was incorrect:

They are binding socially (normatively) only insofar as most normal people hold to them. — Janus

What you mean to say is—simplifying even further to highlight the tautology—people do (moral) things because they believe they should do (moral) things. This doesn't say anything at all. It certainly doesn't amount to a moral theory.

I cannot remember a single time in Nietzsche's work where he references a pluralist idea or notion of truth. Not a single time; in fact, he thought it was nonsense (just like pretty much every other philosopher out there). — Bob Ross

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but here, allow me to demonstrate a few times that he does:

Ecce Homo;

first section of Why I Write Such Excellent Books:

I am one thing, my creations are another... But I should regard it as a complete contradiction of myself, if I expected to find ears and eyes for my truths to-day: the fact that no one listens to me, that no one knows how to receive at my hands to-day, is not only comprehensible, it seems to me quite the proper thing. I do not wish to be mistaken for another—and to this end I must not mistake myself. — Nietzsche

first section of Why I am a Fatality:

I refuse to be a saint; ... But my truth is terrible: for hitherto lies have been called truth. The Transvaluation of all Values, this is my formula for mankind's greatest step towards coming to its senses—a step which in me became flesh and genius... — Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil section 231:

In view of this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself, permission will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about "woman as she is," provided that it is known at the outset how literally they are merely—MY truths. — Nietzsche

I like to use the metaphor "everyone dies alone" as a thought experiment that can aid in the clarity, and it informs upon Amor Fati too. The metaphor "everyone dies alone," implies that dying, despite any physical presence of others, is an inherently solitary experience. Noone can truly share or fully partake and understand another person's death experience. The metaphor emphasizes the idea of existential isolation, which reflects a broader existential reality of our individual lives: that we too are truly isolated, no matter how close we may feel to another, we can never truly understand all of another's life experiences that has lead them to who they are at a given moment in time.

This is one of the reasons why Nietzsche says "what is great in man is that he is a bridge."

And since Existential Isolation is a topic spoken about by several philosophers, I'm doubtful that you're capable of seeing beyond your bias without someone prying it open. So I bid you and your objective world good day for I've not come here to suffer from THAT old wives' tale.

What you mean to say is—simplifying even further to highlight the tautology—people do (moral) things because they believe they should do (moral) things. This doesn't say anything at all. It certainly doesn't amount to a moral theory. — Leontiskos

I haven't purported to be presenting a moral theory, but rather just a description of how people are and what they do. People have moral feelings and intuitions, which become moral thoughts. Some of those thoughts may be introjected in the process of socialization, but it is also fairly normal for people to feel empathy and compassion for others.

People are motivated by their moral feelings and thoughts, but they may not always follow them. There is nothing tautologous in any of that. It is implicit in what I've been arguing that a moral theory is not possible. A theory should be able to make predictions and be testable, as just as scientific and mathematical theories are. Anyway, since you have offered no substantive critique of what I've said, I think we are done.

People are motivated by their moral feelings and thoughts, but they may not always follow them. There is nothing tautologous in any of that. — Janus

It's little more than a barebones tautology. People are motivated by feelings and thoughts, obviously. Anyone who understands what feelings and thoughts are understands this.

Anyone who understands what feelings and thoughts are understands this. — Leontiskos

Then you should realize there is no objective morality and stop pretending you have a theory or could have a theory of objective moral truth.

Then you should realize there is no objective morality and stop pretending you have a theory or could have a theory of objective moral truth. — Janus

Your tautology has no relation to these other claims you are making. It's not clear you realize this, either.

It's a simple description of human behavior, and since morality has everything to do with human behavior it is of course relevant. If you can't see that due to your objectivist presuppositions, then that's not my problem. You can have the last word, I'm done "conversing" with you.

- "People do things because they believe they should do things; therefore moral realism is false." Good stuff, Janus, good stuff. :roll:

Premise 3 does not accurately portray moral subjectivism. Moral subjectivists have moral preferences, not beliefs. Morality concerns these preferences, not a true or false proposition about reality. The claim of a subjectivist lies in the belief that moral propositions are neither true nor false, the terms themselves do not apply as they do not refer directly to reality.

People can also take issue with the concept of "true" or "false" being applied to reality in the first place, as it implies the idea that abstract objects can exist in a way which subjectivists are typically against.

[Perhaps there are sub-categories of subjectivist/anti-realism types, some say neither true nor false, some say all false, all true, whatever. Its all the same general idea to me, with only a semantic distinction.]