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?

I thought that opposites attract — Agree-to-Disagree

I guess it's you and your shadow.

after all, the question of how we experience the world at the most basic level might be an empirical one, best answered through scientific research. — J

I was thinking of this lately in terms of the residents of the two-dimensional world. If they ask about the nature of their world, they might be

1. Asking from a vantage point outside their world, which they can't have due to conceptual limitations, or
2. Asking from within their world, looking for signs, such as when a spoon passes through their world, they see a dot which gets wider and then shorter, then disappears into a dot again.

I actually don't think either 1 or 2 works. They can't know things about their world. As for whether there's an outer world, maybe that's a different question. Did you see Chalmers' book Constructing the World? He goes on and on about Laplace's Demon. I'm not sure he really establishes anything though.

Love is the recognition of yourself in the other.

That is true. If you prefer, he says that it is only sense-data that we see directly, and that "material objects" are "constructions" out of sense-data. So material objects, according to Ayer are not what we think they are. — Ludwig V

But I think we all know that observers who are looking at the same object each see a different scene. Each one could draw out what they see and we could compare, and note differences. No one concludes from this that the observers aren't seeing a material object. I think Ayers was fully up to speed on how this is playing out in language.

I think Austin's criticisms aren't toward Ayers. They're toward a version of sense-data theory that does say we don't see the world around us.

That's interesting. I spent a while reading about the Franciscans. They became sharply apocalyptic for a while.

OK. But the argument in question here is the argument that we never perceive reality, only sense-data. — Ludwig V

Ayers doesn't present that view. There may be advocates of sense data who do believe that, but Ayers agrees with the view that what we see is real, whether it's sense data that we see, or material objects.

Russia is invincible and will never fall out. — javi2541997

I agree. A million years from now the surface of the earth will be covered in a swirling mist that is basically Russia waiting for some aliens to visit so it can morph itself into their form and confuse the hell out of everybody.

:up:

see Russia as a failed state now — Punshhh

But hasn't it been failing off and on for like 800 years?

I expect it would be Washington versus Beijing. In which case I don’t see it happening. — Punshhh

That would be cool if they avoided war and just had the occasional cold war.

Maybe they expected Zelensky to flee. I was a little surprised he didn't. Maybe he turned out to be the wildcard the Russians weren't expecting.

:grin:

I'm the kind of soil that likes to know if the seeds are for plants worth growing. — Tom Storm

You're rocky soil.

I was going to say Naughtius Maximus or Biggus Dickus, but don't want to be offensive. — Ciceronianus

Incontinentia Buttocks.

I imagine the literature appropriated and adapted this, like it did with many other items. — Tom Storm

Indeed. Let me tell you a parable. A farmer went around throwing seeds. Some of the seeds fell on rocky soil and did nothing. Some fell on crappy soil and sprouted, but then died. Some of the seeds fell on fertile soil and gave birth to a forest.

It's not who said it. It's where the seed fell. The question is: what kind of soil are you?

Ta da!!!

It wasn't Jesus. It may have been no guy at all. Or Guys. Or someone called Frankus. — Tom Storm

Nobody said the meek shall inherit the earth? Was it computer generated?

We have no independent evidence of a Jesus, — Tom Storm

It wasn't Jesus. It was some other guy named Jesus.

War, or perhaps we should be more neutral and call it direct military action, has worked for Putin. — Echarmion

Yep.