And the moral realist will say that it is a fact that one ought not harm another because what the proposition is referencing about reality is that one ought not harm another, and this is true. — Michael

I think what you need to carry this through to what is commonly imagined as moral realism is the correspondence theory of truth. Attempts to bypass that with talk of the T-sentence rule or directions of fit only obscure the issue because the T-sentence rule accommodates both realists and anti realists.

If you want to argue that because moral statement M is true, then moral realism, go ahead and advocate correspondence. That position has weaknesses, though

That sounds really interesting. It'll be cool to see what they come up with.

Engineering is not necessarily good preparation for such conceptual work. — Banno

I think the philosophy bug is something you're born with anyway. There are a number of philosophical problems in the realm of engineering. If engineers were prone to becoming stumped by them they wouldn't be able to work.

Interesting how much angst this simply issue causes folk. I supose it shows how deeply logical empiricism has seeped into the thinking of our engineers. — Banno

It sounds like you have an inferiority complex about engineering.

Or we could teach the new generation of palestinians how Israel is illegitimate — BitconnectCarlos

I think it's a sure bet that this will happen, and it doesn't appear that the US is going to tolerate Israeli occupation of Gaza. I don't believe Israel's position is as strong as you seem to think.

Yet as you said, usually there's that one disaster coordinator, and likely he or she has some other admin work too. — ssu

You shouldn't have more than one disaster coordinator. You need one voice in command.

But you did mention quite a lot of issues that make our society far more prepared to any other era. — ssu

Absolutely.

100% agree, but Banno thinks that moral facts do have a world-to-word direction of fit, and I am having a hard time getting them to explain (or perhaps I am just not grasping their explanation of) what that would even mean. — Bob Ross

I guess they're saying moral ought statements are true because we say they're true.

So has your hospital learnt as an organization something when the next lethal pandemic hits? — ssu

I don't think so. With this one, the pathogen was airborne. They gave maintenance the job of making every ICU room a negative-pressure room (to vent the virus out the window through a hepa filter.) This daunting job was done, and done really well, practically overnight. That demonstrates that the maintenance people had capable leadership and the commitment to excellence.

On the other hand, when it came time to start vaccinating the staff, I had to stand in line for four freakin' hours to get my dose. That shows that whoever was in charge of vaccinating was a moron, which was eventually admitted. It's not like War and Peace where no one is allowed to point out fuck-ups.

With Covid19 there was a huge amount that we learned in the first month. We radically changed strategies as people from around the world put their heads together about what worked and what didn't. It will be the same thing the next time around. We don't know exactly which supplies we'll need, what kind of transmission to plan for, and so on.

But it's not true that healthcare can't respond to emergencies. Every American hospital has a disaster coordinator and everybody knows what they're supposed to do if there's an industrial or weather disaster, or the ubiquitous mass shooting.

A true sentence is a statement that corresponds to reality: that’s a word-to-world direction of fit, not world-to-word — Bob Ross

Right. And word-to-world is what we'd need for moral realism. World-to-word moral truth would just be saying X is wrong because we say it's wrong. That's moral nihilism in a nutshell.

Unfortunately that may be or become too political. — ssu

I wasn't being political. I work in a hospital. I saw what happened.

Yes, Americans with their high hopes of being so independent and free will have debate long afterwards about this. — ssu

Probably not. Americans don't give a flip.

You see, even if covid would be as deadly as spanish flu, medicine has improved quite a lot in hundred years. — ssu

Covid pushed the American healthcare system a little beyond its capacity, in some places worse than in others, but everywhere, hospitals converted to focus almost exclusively on covid. There were supply shortages that affected every hospital, but in Texas, for instance, it was insane. Without the lockdowns, there just wouldn't have been any healthcare for a section of the sick population. They probably would have come to the emergency room and died in tents. So there probably wouldn't have been a whole lot of people dead in their front yards, but there would have been some.

But this view is compatible with platonism: we intuit the moral facts which are platonic forms. — Bob Ross

I think with most Neoplatonism, the divine intellect (of which the human intellect is supposed to be a reflection) is associated with goodness. Evil is just separation or distance from the Nous, sinking into matter. Goodness and truth are essentially the same thing, with evil being a kind of illusion. So you're right that in Neoplatonism one intuits the Good by virtue of the intellect.

But morality is often defined as some sort of code of behavior. It's rules. The Christian take on Neoplatonism isn't about rules. It's about love. "Love and do what you will" as Augustine said.

And the true feature of the world in this case is that A society of murderers cannot exist. They die out. — unenlightened

Given the destructive nature of humans, it does seem to some that human extinction would be a great good.

Ethical intuitionism & neo-platonism. — Bob Ross

How would an ethical intuitionist say moral truths exist? I'm somewhat familiar with Neoplatonism. Christianity absorbed it.

but there are non-theistic views (albeit probably still religious) which equally purport such claims and (I would say) with equal (if not more) plausibility. — Bob Ross

Like what?

I disagree. Both anti-realists and realists can attempt to understand why they became cannibals, and a moral anti-realist can condemn them as evil (if they want). — Bob Ross

Imagine there's a spectrum. On one end is the extreme moral realist view. On the other is the extreme anti-realist. Most of us swing between the two. When we want to understand the criminal, we put aside judgment in order to see the facts. When judgment is important, we become blind to circumstances that formed the sinner and we just condemn.

If you look closely at anyone who strongly believes in moral realism, you'll find a bit of a misanthropist. They're stuck on the realism side because their psyche is full of hatred and condemnation. The compulsion to condemn is so strong that they can't tolerate any notion of relativity. Or so it seems to me. :razz:

So they did so much damage because it was a surprise attack.

Oh I see...just playing devil's advocate, eh? What did you think of my responses? — Bob Ross

I wasn't playing devil's advocate. I was just saying that religion is the only legit moral realism. I think what you're saying is that religion doesn't provide for moral realism either. My point was that it does if it's your worldview.

For example, say we discover that Neanderthals did a fair amount of cannibalism (which they did). A moral realist will say this was immoral and our cousins should be condemned. Damn the Neanderthals for eating babies. It's in the nature of the universe that it was wrong and they should have known better. In fact, they would have known better if they had accepted Jesus as their lord and savior.

A moral anti-realist says Neanderthals aren't evil. Let's see if we can understand why they became cannibals. Was it climate change? Was it encroachment by those Homo Sapiens? What happened? And this is the grand payoff for moral anti-realism. It gives you space to understand. Moral realism gives you no such space. Understanding is the beginning of mercy and compassion, both of which are anathema to moral realism.

Ethical intuitionism is a form of moral realism, just like your theological view. — Bob Ross

I'm a moral nihilist. I think moral realism is an aspect of our cultural heritage, specifically religion.

Firstly, if the moral facts are in and of God’s nature, then God didn’t create them.If God didn’t create them, then there is something which is greater than God—which defies the standard Leibnizian definition of God being that which there is no greater being. Perhaps, to be fair, by “no greater being”, we are strictly talking about persons—but then, even in the case Christianity (and the like) are false then the greatest person is now (by definition) God. Irregardless, it seems (to me) to undermine God’s existence. — Bob Ross

Is there an argument for the bolded part? It sounds like you're saying that part of God is greater than God. That doesn't make much sense.

Secondly, if the moral facts are in and of God’s nature, then that warrants a (conceptual) exposition of (1) how they exist and (2) what they exactly are. To say “the moral facts are derived from God’s nature” just doesn’t cut it for me: how do I know those normative facts are morally signified? Is there a normative fact that one can derive subject-referencing norms from God’s nature? It seems, when one is faced with actually giving an explanation (of those moral facts in God’s nature), that they warrant an existence of their own...such as Platonic Forms. — Bob Ross

The idea is that moral facts exist as an aspect of God. This isn't an argument, by the way. It's a worldview. God is a hinge proposition. If you reject it, you reject moral realism.

hirdly, I don’t believe that the Bible, if granted as true, gives us any insight into how those alleged ‘moral’ facts that exist in God’s nature: it just describes various derived ‘moral’ facts which are predicated with “God’s nature is such that He is omnibenevolent”. — Bob Ross

Christianity uses the Bible as a touchstone. It's a living religion, so it doesn't reduce to scripture. It's made of history, the human psyche, and the lives of millions of people for the last 1800 years.

Interesting. Honestly, I find ethical intuitionism much more plausible than the Biblical moral realist account. — Bob Ross

Are you saying that ethical intuitionism is moral realism?

Again, your point, if there is one, is obtuse. — Banno

If you accept moral realism, it's not because of any argument. It's just built in to your assumptions about the world. There is no good argument for moral realism. That there are moral truths does not show moral realism. How many more words are necessary? :confused:

Good for them. — Banno

They say the same thing about realists. I mentioned this earlier. It's a matter of taste.

There are moral truths. — Banno

Deflationists agree.

Do we have to choose? Why not both, or either depending on what you are doing? — Banno

Sure. I don't think that flexibility gets us any closer to an argument for moral realism, though.

Well, there's a subtly here that I'm now not certain about -- between truths and facts, to give a name to the distinction, where truths might include more than features of the world or how it is and so can include statements like "One ought such and such", which then can be true, and understanding the difference between them and facts is through its direction-of-fit. But that doesn't disqualify them from being real, per se, because surely our actions and volitions are real? It only disqualifies them from being facts to the extent that we understand facts to only include statements with word-to-world direction of fit. — Moliere

I recently finished reading some Kripke and he used "fact" to refer to some detectable feature of the world. Sentences and utterances are definitely detectable. That someone assigned the property of truth to an uttered sentence is detectable. What does that mean, though? Is there supposed to be come correspondence between the so called true statement and the world? Or does truth just have a social function, as a deflationist might say?

At this point there's just going to be a rift between deflationists and truth realists. One doesn't have any force over the other. It just comes down to how far out on a limb of realism one wants to go, you know what I mean? It's along the lines of a matter of taste.

I'm not keen on Abraham, sacrificing others at the behest of a voice in his head. I'd rather Tolstoy's three questions — Banno

Tolstoy was a giant Schopenhauer fan. He's awesome.

Oh. Well, now I see it. — Moliere

Weren't you agreeing that morality doesn't tell us anything about the way the world is? That's what Banno had said in the quote you posted. A fact is an aspect of the way the world is.

Which puts volition and action at the center, rather than the propositions in a book. — Moliere

I think you and Banno are agreeing that there are no moral facts. I love Fear and Trembling, btw.

I will entertain either of those. Preferably, I would like to hear (1) how we know there are moral facts, (2) where and what they subist/exist in or of, and (3) how we discover them. I think those are the key points I would question. — Bob Ross

The time honored perspective is that we know there are moral facts because of God, and they exist in God's nature, and we discover them in the Bible. I don't think there is any other commonly accepted framework for moral facts. I think that rejecting the above is to reject moral facts.

Please stop equating the state of Israel with the Jewish people. All that pattern of argument does is invite prejudice. Now you're arguing in a way that sounds like Jews Bad vs Jews Good. Be more careful or posts will start disappearing. — fdrake

I have no idea what you're talking about. We were talking about human shields.

Whether the 5000 missles alone would have raised security concerns high enough to necessitate the current invasion, I'm not sure. — Hanover

You're not? You're not sure 5000 missiles warrants military action, but you're sure rape does? I think you're just messing with me.

In any event, my statement that this invasion has much to do with the real security issue that needed to be resolved when the women were raped was hardly ridiculous. — Hanover

The rapes were cotemporaneous with the 5000 missiles, that's true. The rapes are not the reason Israel invaded Gaza, though. The rapes are the thing that upset you the most. They're the reason you cheer on the invasion and sanction the attack on civilian men, women, and children. Right?

f you were in charge of Israel, how would you have responded to Oct.7 attacks? — RogueAI

Can you give me all the data that was available to Israeli intelligence that day? I'll meet you in the war room and we'll figure it out.

That's just ridiculous.
— frank

That's not an argument. That's just a wrong evaluation. The invasion of Gaza absolutely had to do with the invasion by Hamas, which was, as I recall, the murder of children, raping of women, and the kidnapping of the elderly and the young. Had that not happened, today would be a normal Monday and not one with Gaza under heavy attack (although they are paused momentarily). — Hanover

I didn't think I needed an argument. Hamas fired 5000 missiles at Israel. That is why Israel retaliated. That is why the west, with Joe Biden in the lead, is supporting Israel's offensive. If it just been a few cases of rape, infanticide, and kidnapping, today would be a normal Monday.

The rape of a Jewish woman has nothing to do with the defense of Israel.
— frank

Of course it does. Israel doesn't want its citizens raped again, so they are dismantling their enemy's ability to do that. — Hanover

That's just ridiculous.

I get that Jeffrey Dahmer had his reasons for his vile acts and that he wasn't entirely irrational else he could not have carried them out. I do not think, however, that he had any valid ethical reasons for why he acted as he did. — Hanover

Sure. Hitler's Mein Kampf, on the other hand, is very well thought through and supremely reasonable. He was just trying to defend Germany. For real. Read it.

I still think you know what you saying is wrong, you just can't keep your from saying it.

I'm not interested in these meta-meta discussions that lead us to the place that none of us have a view from no where, so we all are biased and there is not such thing as objectivity. We function very well with all our baggage and are able to make decisions daily is the best I can say. — Hanover

We do. We're just sharing our views on ethics. One way we pick up on our own pathological biases is by listening to each other, for instance, I tell you that you put "rape" into every post you made about the recent attack on Israel, but then supported Israel's attack by referencing the defense of Israel. The rape of a Jewish woman has nothing to do with the defense of Israel. It looks like your ability to talk about morality might be sidelined by the desire for revenge. I'm guessing you already know that?

There are (1) ethical reasons and (2) pragmatic reasons. If I want to steal your belongings that you are not watching over and I can do this without any possibility of being caught, there are a variety of ethical reasons not to do that. For those reasons, I will not do that. — Hanover

The point was that reason is not the anchor of morality. It can support either moral or immoral behavior. Therefore, assuring yourself that you're reasonable is not the way to make sure you aren't about to become a Nazi.

I'd say the opposite and argue that usually the world is more complicated than black and white, particularly in situations involving war where there are many competing interests. We typically try to find our best and brightest to resolve our ethical and legal issues due to their complexity and nuance. — Hanover

You were earlier indicating that you reserve the right to work out the moral solution to a thought experiment, but now you say it's beyond you and we need to outsource these judgments to the special few? How do you choose these best and brightest if you don't know right from wrong yourself?

To be able to sustain your argument that the decision was based not upon ethical reasons but upon personal vendetta, you would have to show that the ethical basis provided for the decision was not reasonable, — Hanover

I would encourage you to rethink the link between morality and reasonableness. Look at this:

The world is usually more complicated than trolley-like thought experiments make it out to be Start with doing what's right and then you might see that there are alternative courses of action that weren't obvious at first.

You may also see that you wanted to simplify things because what you really wanted was revenge, not defense.

There are numerous threads on reddit which discuss this from various angles. Just search for things like: "are cells conscious."

It could be built in, as with the residents of the two dimensional world. We can see that they're conceptually limited, but they can't even see us.

You don't turn to the least objective to ask what is most objective. That is, a judge who has an interest in the outcome of the case cannot sit on that case. So, might I be irrational in that circumstance? Likely. — Hanover

I guess where we differ is that I don't think questions about morality can ever be answered objectively. It has to be about how you feel personally. It has to be based on love for life and love for humanity. To the extent that you act out of love, you're as moral as you can be. But I can see how if you do think in terms of an objective answer, you would put rational imperatives first?

@Hanover

Say there was a situation where one of your loved ones was being used as a human shield by villainous entities. Would you still say it's ok to blow the shields up for the purposes of defense?