Can any realist name any nonmoral proposition, that is neither logically derivable nor in principle empirically verifiable, that you nonetheless are certain is true?

Does that matter? Does something need to be empirically verifiable for it to be true? Are you an antirealist about truth in general? — Michael

No, I don't think I am. But it is an awfully weak "axiom" that is neither empirically testable nor intuitively clear. I suppose something can be true in spite of these lacks, though one would never learn of it. But in this case, the question is "true of what"?

1 + 1 = 2. — Michael

In a universe consisting of nothing, would 1 + 1 = 2? It would not be empirically verifiable. It would not be intuitively obvious, since the notion of any one thing would be incomprehensible, assuming there was anything around to have notions.

Much like the counterfactual sentence "if the Tyrannosaurus rex still lived then it would be the largest living land animal on Earth" is true.

There can be objective truths about things that don't exist. — Michael

But this is merely a logical relationship.

Tyrannosaurus rex were the largest living land animals to ever exist.
Therefore, if the Tyrannosaurus rex still lived then it would be the largest living land animal on Earth.

But moral facts, to you, are special "brute facts" which cannot be derived logically. Can you name any other such brute fact about something that doesn't exist?

Okay, but I think it is somewhat confusing to call that which follows from a system "true." It is simply not the case that things are true insofar as they follow from any arbitrary system. — Leontiskos

Oh? I thought you just clarified a few days ago that claims about chess, the most arbitrary sort of system, were true?

"Do not execute that innocent man," is much like, "I have an apple in my pocket." — Leontiskos

They are not alike. The truth of the apple claim depends on knowing what the words mean, and access to my pocket. Sure, language is a system, but not the sort we are discussing here. Every proposition depends on language, so considering it as a "system" akin to a moral system just confuses the discussion.

"Do not execute that innocent man" is a command, and has no truth value. Consider rather "Innocent men ought not be executed". I know what the words mean. But to know whether it is true, I have to know: According to whom, or what? Without the implicit moral system which makes the sentence seem obvious to us, it is no more comprehensible than "Innocent eggplants ought not to be eaten." Why not? I'm hungry.

The simpler point is that everyone on this forum did get out of bed this morning, therefore everyone on this forum does make moral claims or judgments. — Leontiskos

Stop right there. We cannot expect a productive discussion if you abuse language that way. You cannot presume your own eccentric usage will be adopted by anyone else, offhand reference to the categorical imperative, or no. Moral claims, commonly understood, are about moral right and wrong. Not about surgical technique. Not generally about getting out of bed. The word "ought" is not sufficient to make a claim moral. We're not discussing claims such as "I ought to get two cheeseburgers today".

I think anyone who claims that those who intend to make a truth claim are not doing so has a very odd notion of truth, propositionality, and intention. The claim that most everyone, including some of the most competent philosophers who have ever lived, have been plagued by first-order deception at the level of their very intention, is just a weak theory. It reads like a conspiracy theory. I'm not even sure it is coherent to claim that one can be deceived about their intention. — Leontiskos

When people make moral claims, these are truth claims about actions or characters, whose truthmakers are the systems of moral values they grew up immersed in, or adoped, systems likely shared by their moral community. For most people, this is enough. Values are real, but they are mind dependent, and they cannot be true independently of those who hold them.

It is no conspiracy to point out people mistake their values for reality. It is the same error, the same parochialism that regards one's own culture as "true" and absolutely "real". Cultures are real, their artifacts are physically real, but cultures, like values (which are culturally bound) are not mind independent, and are not "true" in an absolute sense.

But as I pointed out to you early on, discursive reason/justification must end at some point. The same holds of the epistemology of natural science. — Leontiskos

There is no limit in principle where scientific explanation ends. Researchers push it as far as they can take it. By contrast, it's frankly quite pathetic to throw up one's hands at "mustn't hurt kitties".

Well, what is the notion of "true" that we are discussing? — Leontiskos

"True" as in factual. Not likeness. Not the alignment of wheels.

No, because moral claims are about the behavior of "minds" (to use your word). Similarly, a world without traffic would have no traffic laws. — Leontiskos

Presumably if traffic laws were "brute facts" they would exist with or without traffic.

Well that’s just where moral realists disagree. — Michael

So in a world without minds, would a complete taxonomy of this world included oughts and values?

I wouldn’t say that it’s internally contradictory, just that it’s factually incorrect. — Michael

:chin:
Yeah, I think you're right.

After thinking some more, here is a formulation of the problem I have with "ultimate" moral propositions:

Every "should", "ought", and value proposition, may be perfectly truth-apt, but it must explicitly or implicitly include an "according to" clause, just to be structurally correct. Because "according to" is a part of the notion of ought or values. There is just no such thing as an imperative or value according to nothing.

But an "ultimate" should, ought, or value proposition necessarily lacks an "according to", because it is ultimate. Therefore, it is necessarily ill-formed, and so is not truth-apt.

"According to Sam, ham tastes better than chicken": truth apt.
"(According to me) Ham tastes better than chicken": implicit according to, perfectly truth apt.
"Ham objectively and absolutely tastes better than chicken": taste is subjective and provisional by nature, the statement is internally contradictory and therefore not truth-apt. Or, self-falsifying.

@Leontiskos
@Michael

Do you have examples of non-moral truth claims that are true in a supra-systematic way? Is any system true or false? Does your argument prove too much? Namely, that truth itself is always system-constrained? (This is the question that my initial responses have addressed.) — Leontiskos

Fair enough.

Mundane claims: It would be too much of a stretch to claim that "I have an apple in my pocket" depends on this or that system. For our purpose lets say these are system-free claims.

Scientific claims: While this is apparently controversial, I think scientific claims offer a reasonable model of what systematic claims, where the system itself is true or truth-apt, can look like. Suppose I make a claim, say a calculation, that falls under the province of special relativity. That calculation may be true or false according to the systematic rules of special relativity. These systematic rules themselves may be true or false, to the degree that they accurately predict all the parts of empirical reality that they ought to.

Earlier I gave you an account of moral judgment, "To judge an action is to hold that it should have occurred or should not have occurred, with reference to the person acting." This can be pragmatic or psychological, but it is still moral. — Leontiskos

So a surgeon learning how she ought and ought not to wield a knife, is learning "morality"? This is not the "morality" I am familiar with.

Is "The player with the white pieces commences the game" true, false, or not truth apt? — Banno

It is true of chess. It is part of the definition of chess. But there is no sense that it is true beyond chess. Outside of chess it is false, or nonsensical/ not truth apt .

The rules of chess are not inherently propositional, though you can communicate them propositionally. You can also learn them by watching people play. Computers play perfect , rule abiding chess, knowing nothing of propositions. There the logic of the rules is encoded non-propositionally.

Are you pretending that propositions about X are the same as X?

"Moby Dick is an American novel consisting of the text 'Call me Ishmael. Some years ago...' "

Is a true proposition about Moby Dick. Moby Dick itself is neither true nor false, it is not truth apt.

This thread has degenerated to imbecility. Have fun. :roll: — Banno

Ok dude see ya

I don't look at the world in a binary way, everything is a form of gradient, statistical, or a matter of probability. You cannot be only honest or only not honest. — Christoffer

:up:

If it’s false then it’s not a brute fact. If it’s a brute fact then it’s true. — Michael

Call it a "brute proposition", then.

The point is that everyday moral propositions seeming to be truth apt carries no evidentiary weight whatsoever. They may be perfectly truth apt, and even true, in that they perfectly follow from say the categorical imperatives.

I made the earlier comparison to Catholic doctrine. Statements about Catholic doctrine seem to be truth apt, and they certainly are, in that they are doctrinally correct, or not. At the same time, you might believe that Catholic doctrine itself is false, necessarily false, or just not truth apt.

Yes, that would be moral subjectivism.

Although I would argue against moral subjectivism on the grounds that when we make moral claims we don't usually think of ourselves to be just expressing a subjective opinion. This is why there is such a strong disagreement. — Michael

There is a difference. Suppose that Kant was ultimately successful and the categorical imperative was the moral lodestone of the world. Everyday moral claims would seem to be truth-apt, and indeed they would be, as they would either follow from the categorical imperative, or not. And yet, it still may be the categorical imperative itself is false, or not truth apt. And indeed any such "brute moral fact" might necessarily be false, or not truth apt.

I agree with that. It could be that error theory of moral subjectivism are correct. — Michael

Or there could be no such true brute facts such as the categorical imperative. Or, such ultimate moral propositions may not be truth-apt, while everyday moral claims, being claims about such ultimate propositions, are perfectly truth apt.

For example, you got out of bed this morning because you believed that the proposition, "I ought to get out of bed," was true. On my reckoning that is a moral judgment, pertaining to your own behavior. — Leontiskos

Generally not. "I ought to get out of bed because otherwise I will be late for work" is not a moral judgement, it is purely pragmatic. Only something like "I ought to get out of bed because I shouldn't be lazy" approaches a moral claim.

I don't follow your point. Making moral claims seems voluntary, one is under no obligation to make them. And I don't see why voluntary/necessary is an important distinction in this discussion.

That is the key question that moral realists need to answer. Kant, for example, believed that this could be done using what he called pure practical reason, leading him to the categorical imperative. — Michael

But then it is no longer a brute fact, no? The categorical imperative explains why one ought not to X. Or are you saying the categorical imperative itself is the brute fact, for Kant.

One wins if one places one's opponents King is checkmate — Banno

Propositions about the rules of chess may be true or false. The rules of chess may not be. Try harder.

I suspect neither of our interlocutors have the background to follow this discussion. — Banno

:roll: Supercilious blowhard.

We are apt to speak about the truth of an artifact according to the goal of the artist. So if there is a horse drawing competition, the drawing that most resembles a real horse will be the winner, and will be deemed truest. Or a carpenter's square is true when it achieves an exact 90° angle. — Leontiskos

You are just playing with words. This is not the same meaning as the "true" we are discussing.

This is really the whole of your argument, and it is nothing more than an assertion. Moreover, it is an assertion I have already addressed (↪Leontiskos). Feel free to engage that post. — Leontiskos

H If moral claims aren't true by virtue of moral rules/systems/etc, what are they true by virtue of? Is "one mustn't hurt cats" a brute fact, just as "one mustn't hurt dogs"? Or is there some rule they flow from?

And is everything that follows rules a tautology? The world, being orderly, must seem be a very tautological place to you.

You are saying that all truth is formal, deriving from axioms, and where axioms are not truth-apt so conclusions are not truth-apt (in the strong sense). — Leontiskos

I never said that. Moral claims may indeed be true, but only in that they are true representations of the moral system within which they operate. Just as propositions about chess may be true representations of the rules of chess, or not.

At the end of the day you just think prescriptions cannot be true or false, no? It is not that R is systematic/doctrinal/axiomatic, but rather that it is prescriptive. If all you are saying is that prescriptions are not truth-apt, then all that talk about systems and axioms led me to misunderstand your position. — Leontiskos

My point is to challenge the idea that

* people make moral propositional claims
- therefore
*moral propositional claims are truth-apt
- or
*everyone is running around making mistakes.

My argument is that there is a third way: people make propositional moral claims, but they are claims within systems of ideas, not claims about the world. And that you can make true or false, therefore truth-apt claims within systems of ideas which themselves may be true, false, not truth apt at all, or nonsensical.

The moral rules/systems I have in mind aren't necessarily prescriptions. They may be something like, "all sentient life has value". Indeed, I believe this. But, how do I know it? What tells me it is true? If it were false, how would I know it? How do I reality test it? How did I or anyone discover this fact? These are the questions that seem to bedevil any moral proposition, and it is in this sense that they aren't truth-apt: not only do we not know they are true, we don't even know what knowing they are true, or knowing they are false, looks like.

This is about the "doctrine" of chess, which is itself a part of reality, and it is true.

So then you agree, the rules of chess themselves cannot be "true".

What would it mean for the claim "You cannot move a pawn backward" to be true "in reality"?

Either, the claim would be true without the rules of chess. This is false.
Or, the rules of chess themselves would have to be true. This is nonsensical. (this is the case where you X'ed/?. How do you make the check/X icon, btw?).

The claim, therefore, "You cannot move a pawn backward", in reality, outside the rules of chess, is false or nonsensical.

Precisely the same holds of moral claims.

A moral claim C is true, or false, in virtue of moral rules, R. (doctrines, axioms, etc.)
What would it take for C to be true in reality?
Either, it is true without R. But we just said, C is true in virtue of R. This is therefore false.
Or, R itself is true. I contend, R can no more be true than the rules of chess. You can follow R, or not, like R, or not, find R useful, and virtuous, or not. But R by its nature, cannot be true, it is not truth-apt.

What does it mean for the rules of chess to be "true"? Can a games rules be "false"?

The rules exist. The may be followed, broken, or ignored. But how exactly are they "true"?

I am simply saying that moral realists believe that there is some X such that "one ought not X" is a brute fact. — Michael

How does one discover and verify such brute facts?

(Sorry for butting in, feel free to quote if this has already been gone over, I certainly haven't read the whole thread)

If all you want to say is that moral realists haven't proven that there is something that one ought not do then I won't object. — Michael

Presumably you meant "...why there is something..."

For example, we can call the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity a tautology (“truth” in the formal systems sense), but that is not how Catholics mean it. We do not mean, “If you accept our axioms then this follows tautologically.” We mean, “This is true, it correctly describes reality.” — Leontiskos

I agree. People don't go around thinking they are making tautological claims. They generally think they are making claims about reality.

Which of these don't you agree with:
(By "Doctrine", I mean any doctrine, system of thought or belief, ideology, etc. )

Claims can be about doctrine, or about reality, or both.
Doctrinal truth is independent of truth in reality.
Claims can therefore be:
Doctrinally true, but false in reality.
Doctrinally false, but true in reality.
Doctrinally true or false, but have no truth value at all in reality.
Doctrinally empty, and true or false in reality.

The form in English of doctrinal and reality claims is identical.
Therefore, people are apt to get all this wrong. They may confuse doctrinal claims with claims about reality, or mistake doctrinal truth with truth in reality.

I'm not convinced that "being honest" can't be considered a verb phrase that takes the grammatical place of a verb, and functions in every way like a verb. — flannel jesus

Exactly. Subjectively, we don't think, "Jack was being, in an honest way." Rather, "being honest" is a unit of meaning, that happens to be expressed in two words, no different than if the proper English was "Jack was honesting." That just sounds really bad, because it is ungrammatical, but not because it is semantically nonsensical.

Never "Jack honested to Jill about his gambling addiction.", — Vera Mont

Again, the English is "Jack was being honest to Jill about his gambling addiction".

Honesting is not something one can do — Vera Mont

Actually it is, as was pointed out, the form is "being honest"; when "Jack was being honest", "being honest" was what Jack was doing. On the other hand, this seems equivalent to "Jack was acting honestly", that is, Jack's actions had an honest quality.

I think this gets at the deeper question: the English form can be of action, quality of action, quality of agent. Which one is it? Or can the same concept encompass all three? Or are these related but distinct concepts?

Are these not just modes of touch? The sensations are all physically derived. If not, how do you separate 'touch' from these? — AmadeusD

I can definitely see how you might be tempted to think that. But I think there is a strong distinction: touch informs about the external world, while bodily sensations inform about the internal body state.

Since we are so sight oriented, its easy to overlook how sophisticated touch is, and how integral it is. Try closing your eyes and feeling whatever object is at hand. It's remarkable how much touch can actually tell us about our environment.

While, the body sense lacks this sophistication. Your body feels good here, it is hot there, the stomach feels queasy. That's about the extent of its precision. Because, the precise state of our body just isn't all that important.

Yes, they both ultimately arise from changes in body state, but so does every sense.

I guess one way in which I could phrase a specific question would be what are emotions made of? — Jack Cummins

Personally I view emotions as akin to the other senses. In my count, there are 7 senses: the 5 traditional senses, the bodily sensations (pain, pleasure, heat, thirst, etc), and emotions. Notice that each is a phenomenal dimension orthogonal to all the others: content in one is incommunicable in terms of content in another.

All the senses fundamentally tell you information. The 5 about the world, and bodily about the state of your bod. Emotions serve to inform you, the forebrain decision maker, of the instinctive state of your own brain. Your (the forebrain) job is to integrate all the information provided by all the senses, weight it appropriately, and act to your overall best interest.

You disagree, and think that offhand comments in a rando student essay and an open source British high school textbook are strong sources? Or that they are strong because they support your contentions? Or that the wiki supports your contentions? How so?

Your google-sourced sources are... weak. What do you think of the wiki?

And others...

I doubt the OP is asking about English grammar.

Rather, she is asking of this something, "honesty"

* Is it fundamentally a thing? Something you literally possess, like you possess objects?
* Is it fundamentally an action? Something you do, or don't do?
* Is it fundamentally a quality? Which an agent may or may not possess?

The grammar is not important. English accommodates all three modes. Though perhaps it is telling that the root "honest" is an adjective, that is to say a quality. But it is probably an error to read too much into that.

As outlined by Michael and others in the other thread (link), moral truth claims adhere to a basic sort of correspondence theory of truth. At least this is how I mean them. You are thinking in terms of a formal systems notion of truth. It’s an equivocation on what “truth” means. For example, we can call the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity a tautology (“truth” in the formal systems sense), but that is not how Catholics mean it. — Leontiskos

Hi Leontiskos, thanks for making this point, it is crucial. It is precisely here that I am an error theorist. People go around all the time making doctrinal claims as if they were correspondence to reality claims. Pick any ideology, religion, political system, etc., you want, and you will find people talking about it as if they were claiming things about reality. When in fact, they are making doctrinal claims about and within a certain framework of beliefs. This is in fact a basic cognitive error, and it is for the clarification of errors of this sort that philosophy exists in the first place.

Moral claims absolutely do not escape this, as much as it might hurt the feelings of those making them. Moral claims are simply impossible without a moral doctrine within which they exist. And this moral doctrine itself, unlike the claims made within it, is not truth apt.

The larger philosophical question is, what claims do escape this?

There is a core confusion which I think is making progress on this topic impossible.

The question is not whether moral statements are truth-apt. They clearly are.

The problem is, are the moral systems against which moral statements are true or false themselves truth-apt? Here I think not.

In real world propositions, there are generally two levels of truth: truth against the operating framework, and the truth of the framework itself.

For example:

"The Triune God is one being which is simultaneously three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"

Is a true statement within the framework of Catholic doctrine. This is entirely independent of the truth of the framework itself.

You can see this with the proposition:

"The Triune God is one being which is simultaneously three: Frogger, Sonic, and Holy Spyro"

Doubter of Catholic orthodoxy or not, you must concede that the second statement is doctrinally false in a way that the first is not.

Moral statements are just as truth apt as the two above. Moral Antirealsm doesn't really challenge this. What it challenges are the truth-aptness of the moral frameworks under which moral claims may be true or false.

I think moral frameworks can be many things:

Useful, or useless.
Virtuous, or vicious.
Agreeable, or disagreeable.
Desirable, or undesirable.

But true or false? I don't think so. I just can't see how they are the sort of things that might be true or false.

My understanding is that as lying perverts communication, a deontologist cannot, ever, lie, to be consistent. — AmadeusD

Deontology merely means a rules-based ethical system. The word itself does not imply a specific set of rules. A ruleset which included "Above everything else, do not lie", would be flawed. Kant, for instance, was more sophisticated than to include such things in his deontology.

Yes. To lie would be to disrespect yourself to a degree that is unacceptable to a deontologist (is my understanding) — AmadeusD

Someone who values their own self-perceived "respect" so much that would condemn an innocent to a terrible death for its sake, operates under a deeply flawed moral system, I think most would agree.

What characterizes the mindset associated with honesty? — YiRu Li

I would say there is not one universal "honest mindset". People are honest for various reasons:

* A sense of moral obligation to be honest
* A sense of dignity in being honest
* A fear of the consequence of being caught in a lie
* A desire to connect genuinely with the other person
* A pragmatic desire to forgo maintaining a web of lies

And so on. Each might have a characteristic mindset. I don't know if there is a unifying state of mind that unites them all.

Is 'honest' a noun or a verb? — YiRu Li

I always thought the tendency to nounify something which seems more of an attribute, and adjective/adverb, was a little strange. Due to this nounifying tendency of English, honesty becomes something you can "have" or "not have", an object you carry around with you, and may lose one day. Due to this linguistic quirk, one may wonder, what is the "essence" of this honesty? What is it made of?

Can one still be deemed an honest person if they occasionally engage in deception? — YiRu Li

Honesty, like most things in life, is not a black and white quality. One may be more or less honest. Even if you occasionally lie, you may still be considered basically honest. I would suspect that there might be something mentally wrong with a person who literally never lied.

Welcome, YiRu!

Stupidity is just poor functioning, compared to a perceived norm, of one or several components of the voluntary portion of the central nervous system.

The best definition I have heard is someone doing the exact same thing in identical circumstances and expecting a different outcome.

This is why human stupidity has its benefits. Sometimes something different does happen. — I like sushi

This is the worst definition (though commonly, this formulation supposedly defines insanity), followed by the reason why it is the worst definition.

:up:

Can you give an example that comports with what humans envisage morality to be viz. contemplated outcomes resulting in a judgement informing the decision to act with regard to other sentient beings? — AmadeusD

This is a "philosophical" account of morality whose connection to lived reality is dubious at best. For a more reasonable approach see here

. I would say that to ask Israelis to behave like "civilized" westerners is about as sensible as asking why you personally aren't white. — tim wood

What a monumentally inept analogy, it doesn't begin to make any sense.


Israel's special and exclusive history of grievance gives it special and exclusive license to behave as it likes. And how dare you suggest they should behave in a more civilized manner. Yes yes, we're heard it before.