I am only going to argue it out with people who will accept that if the law is wrong then it needs changing — unenlightened

But literally no one either here or in the entire moral philosophy canon is arguing that a law which is 'wrong' is best left unchanged. I can't think of a single person whom your caveat rules out.

In order to know that we do not know how things are, we must already know both... how things are and what we believe about how things are. We must perform a comparative analysis between the way things are and what we believe about the way things are. — creativesoul

No. If we have no reasonable grounds or mechanism by which the two could be assumed to be the same then we must conclude that they would only be so by chance. A perfectly reasonable default hypothesis therefore, is that they aren't. Put that to some experimental testing showing overwhelmingly the extent to which our experience of the same object differs and you have, what is currently the leading theory on perception. We do not perceive reality directly. Not even close.

She says that if the law is wrong then the man is innocent and it is wrong to say that he is not innocent. — unenlightened

How do we establish if the law is indeed wrong? That's the point. All Along you're using these terms 'just', 'injust', 'innocent'... As if they had clear universal meanings. The briefest glance at history will show they most assuredly do not.

So when you say...

Injustice cannot be justified, ever. Disagree all you like, but not on the grounds that she is justifying injustice. — unenlightened

...what's really being said is "(what I consider) injustice cannot be justified (by you)." Your version of what is unjust can very much be justified by my view of what is just. By saying that this cannot even be discussed, you're saying that some people's versions of what is just cannot be challenged by another's.

If you try to keep the terms within a person's singular viewpoint, the position breaks down. The association she makes between 'just' and 'wrong' means that no person could even think, on pain of incoherence, of doing something which is both 'unjust' and yet 'right' because she makes the terms synonymous.

Unlike sexuality, where one cannot choose which side find attractive and no one is harmed if it is not the side they want it to be. — unenlightened

A matter which has only come to light as a result of people considering that it merits investigation. At one time forced heterosexuality was like driving on the right side of the road "reasonable and necessary, and we know what is just." That's literally what people thought about it. The only reason anything got changed is because people questioned what was (at the time) considered so obvious and reasonable that it was beyond doubt, that even entertaining the alternative was the sign of a corrupt mind.

we cannot have that debate about justice v injustice itself, only about whether this law or that behaviour is just or unjust. — unenlightened

I understand that, but it's not the terms themselves which are relevant. You might as well say we can debate whether it is right to do 'right' and wrong to do 'wrong'. No one (not even the dreaded consequentialists) are suggesting that an unjust act might be 'right' and by that meaning 'justice' in the sense Anscombe is later using it. To do so would be incoherent and there are (to my knowledge) no examples of this in the canon of moral philosophy. If this is what Anscombe is concerned about, her fears are unfounded.

No, the consequentialist is saying that a situation may arise where some act against common justice (unfair punishment) may need to be done for the greater good. Well. That time is now. If we want our children's children to have a fighting chance, we must unjustly be deprived of our goods and services. No justice system in any country would make it law that a person must give up their legal property to save an as yet unborn generation. It is fundamentally unjust. Yet it is exactly what we ought to do.

if there is a philosophy that says that wrong law or wrongful conviction are good things in principle if they make things better for other people, then there is nothing more to be said. — unenlightened

Right, but we seem to be back to the beginning again. Say I'm in a society fundamentally opposed to homosexuality, so much so that it is illegal. You're using innocent here in the sense of someone who has done no wrong, not someone who has broken no law, right? So I campaign to have this 'wrong law' overturned so that 'innocent' people are not convicted (innocent according to your definition). I campaign to get a law which protects their rights. I do so by showing that tolerance of sexuality is better for society.

Then this hypothetical society's version of Anscombe comes along and says "this man is not innocent, he is guilty, homosexuality is wrong, everyone knows that (and indeed in this hypothetical society everyone does 'know' that). A law protecting their rights would be a wrong law - we all know that if there is a philosophy that says that wrong law or wrongful conviction are good things in principle if they make things better for other people, then there is nothing more to be said."

End of campaign.

Only the society I just described isn't quite so hypothetical, is it?

My argument was that you simply cannot explain all from the stucturalist point of view. You need also the historical narrative, what people did and what events happened. You need to use both. — ssu

Yeah, fair enough. Although I would say that historicism has the equal and opposite problem. If we say some state of affairs was the result of some leader's decision we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that is the case. We have only one version of history so we can't do any kind of control trial. Basically it's nothing but guesswork. Maybe Europe would have gone to war without Hitler, maybe not. We can't possibly know because we can't run the whole thing again without Hitler. All we can see is that a cause and effect chain is linked to Hitler. But that's just inevitable, the alternative is that events transpire without causes, which would be ridiculous. What we'd need, to count as evidence of necessity, is the same environment with only Hitler missing. We can't ever have that.

So the difference between structuralism and historicism is that we can feasibly gather a sample (and controls) for a structural theory. We cannot possibly do that for a theory about the influence of a particular decision.

I simply do not know how to talk to people about innocent bad people. — unenlightened

Really? Innocent just means 'has committed no crime', right? So if there's a state where certain bad acts are nonetheless not illegal, you have an innocent bad person.

If you're taking innocent to mean 'committed no wrong', then your example of the guilty homosexual makes no sense, they have done nothing wrong, the law is wrong, not them.

So what am I missing in a definition of 'innocent' which makes an innocent bad person an incoherent object, yet a homosexual can be rightly labelled 'guilty' depending on the law of the land?

Whatever. People slinking off in a huff is about as close as I ever get to a polite "I see your point", round here so, I'll take your umbridge.

a decision of one leader to do something foolish that makes all the World go haywire. You simply cannot avoid it if the question is why West Rome perished, why was Islam so successful? Why China didn't conquer the World? You can give all the structural reasons starting from weather, geography etc. as reason for a civilization to fall, but you simply cannot avoid the historical narrative on how it just happened. — ssu

I don't think Diamond is guilty of that though. The question he set out to answer was why the modern white western civilisations dominate the world and the (predominantly) non-white, southern and eastern civilisations don't. Unless you're suggesting that those civilisations just happened to have an unfortunate 10,000 year tun of bad decisions, then I think his overall point still stands.

Oh, and on the subject of elephants, Diamond talks about Hannibal in the same paragraph as the one about the rhinos. Elephants were never domesticated (too long to maturity), that made them useful, but nowhere near the utility of the horse.

I don't know what any of your rant has to do with my comment. I said that I doubt "Shirk is the only sin that will not be forgiven on the Day of the Last Judgment, for which the person will always be refused access to Paradise, and for which he will always burn in hell."

I said nothing about corporate oligarchies.

we convince ourselves that the innocent can be found guilty, then whatever our opinion of homosexuality, we can find people guilty or innocent regardless. I'm shocked to find that this needs so much labour to explain - the difference seems vast and obvious. — unenlightened

Innocent and guilty are nothing more than labels for what those in power intend to do. If I was part of a community for whom being 'guilty' of something meant nothing more than a point on my driving license then I'd care very little whether I was innocent or guilty (see how much it's going to matter to Stone).

Homosexuals should not be put in prison just because of their sexuality. Whether they're put in prison because they're guilty of breaking some law, or because they're innocent (yet imprisoned because false imprisonment of homosexuals is legal), makes not one jot of difference.

So no. The whole thing thing does not fall apart if we start imprisoning the innocent. If the innocent (in this hypothetical society) happen to be bad people for whatever reason, then it is good that they are imprisoned. The rational structure does not have precedent over the reality it creates. That really would be perverse.

I do have a long-winded explanation, but it's way off topic. — unenlightened

Fair enough.

if you have a theory that says it is good in certain circumstances to pervert the course of justice, then you have a perverted ethic. You cannot usefully argue with someone who claims that black is white. — unenlightened

That sounds the same as "don't question this one" to me. What's the difference? You seem to be saying nothing more than "don't question that 'the course of justice' is morally right". How does that immunise society from "don't question that homosexuality is morally wrong". If we're not questioning either, then how do we know to ignore one and attack the other?

If you want to appeal to common humanity to tell the difference, I'm 100% behind you. But... If you want to appeal to common humanity without any rational investigation to back you up, then you've just left yourself open to exactly the same problem. A charismatic figure comes along and appeals to 'common humanity' mostly agreeing that races shouldn't mix (this has actually been done, not even making this up). What are you going to appeal to now?

I can cite a dozen or more studies on racial segregation which provide a good body of justification for the fact that it's not beneficial to the society it's in. But if you don't want to even question the idea that it might be, then what are you going to fling against the leader who says it is?

Any religious connection is a degenerate religion of convenience. — unenlightened

That's exactly the point I'm making. The moment you say "don't question this one, it's just a basic moral fact" you can slip in just about anything else you like under the same guise. If you've got enough charisma people will swallow it because they've been primed not to question what's right and what's wrong.

How do you explain the strong link between support for Trump and the religious right then? Or the link more generally between religion and social conservatism. If Trump stands for entrepreneurs (by which we mean trample on anyone in the way), race-preferences and nationalistic jingoism, who is more associated with those things in America, the religious right or the secular left?

I don't have anyone in particular in mind — Echarmion

OK. I was just interested in any critiques you may have come across. No problem if you don't have any to hand.

Psychologically, the position is psychopathic, and psychopaths are more and more being voted into power. — unenlightened

I think it's far more complicated than that, and I think there's a good argument for the "I just won't countenance that" position being to blame as much, if not more, than the consequentialists.

The 'psychopaths' we have in power right now were voted in on relatively popular support (or at least not widespread rejection). Not wanting to sound too elitist, but how many Trump supporters do you seriously think are moral relativists? I'd place my bet on 'none whstsoever'. They're social conservatives.

The problem, I think, is very much attached to the motive behind Anscombe's refusal to countenance. We all agree that, say, murder, is wrong - so instead of treating that with any degree of honest investigation, we treat it as a fact which doesn't require justification. Fine, thus far - until the charismatic figure comes along and says "you know that thing which we all know is wrong and doesn't require any justification? Well, homosexuality is one of those things. It's just wrong, and we all know it. Don't ask me to justify why it's wrong, we've all just agreed some things are wrong and don't require justification. Don't argue against me, I refuse to countenance such arguments ". Sound at all familiar?

It's a common trend to deal with grounded facts that are simply undoubtable and I'm on board with the principle, but if left without any analysis at all, all sorts of premises we definitely should be doubting get smuggled in with the bedrock.

Though it has also been criticized a lot. It's conclusion are very controversial. — Echarmion

I wasn't aware that it had been criticised a lot. I'm aware of one or two points of dispute, but I always thought it was quite well regarded. Who are the main critics you're thinking of?

Jared Diamond "Guns, Germs and Steel", I think pretty much answers your question. It's well referenced and there's lots of research avenues to go off if you disagree with his conclusions.

I don't think Anscombe is that concerned about committing atrocities (in the article, I mean, not on a personal level). I think you're adding undue weight to her 'corrupt mind' phrase, which doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on the rest of the argument.

I take it to be more simply "philosophy does not have the foundations to do morality without external law".

Whether she's advising we therefore get the foundations, or whether she's advising we therefore get the external law is moot. Probably the latter considering her religion.

In terms of what that means for modern morality, the biggest problem is that we do nonetheless continue to advise, proscibe, admonish and even punish people on the grounds that they 'ought' to have done otherwise. Unless we're going to abandon everything from etiquette to Human Rights legislation, then we'd better had get a handle on what our 'oughts' ought to be.

So we either return to religious law, fight it out regardless of rational argument, or work on improving those foundations. Personally I'm for the latter, but there doesn't seem to be a great deal of support for it in philosophical circles.

Shirk is the only sin that will not be forgiven on the Day of the Last Judgment, for which the person will always be refused access to Paradise, and for which he will always burn in hell. — alcontali

I doubt that. It sounds completely implausible to me.

I think there is enough evidence and legal and moral philosophy indicating that, at least some, would potentially act immoraliy in an anarchist scenario in which there was no centralized legal system — IvoryBlackBishop

Well, that would be the place to start then wouldn't it? Why don't you lay out a little of that evidence?

the overly "rosy" view of human nature which some anarchists and libertarians hold seems to be false — IvoryBlackBishop

This would be a good place to start with that 'evidence'...

The level of moral judgement a person attains depends on the person's belief system and education — Athena

Again some evidence would be useful to go on...

For the level of moral judgement to increase, there must be education for higher order thinking. — Athena

and again...

is possible to use education to manifest a culture that promotes morality and decreases social problems. — Athena

...once more, any evidence for this?

Certainly if we look at the Sapolsky's baboon group, which has already been mentioned, the results of their follow up study would suggest the exact opposite. That pedagogic education played absolutely no part whatsoever in maintaining the more egalitarian society created by the sudden removal of the alpha males.

I am not sure if I agree with Kohlberg or not, but I will certainly admit it is likely much more complicated than one of Kohlberg's charts would suggest. — ZhouBoTong

I applaud your sense that it's probably more complicated. A quick run down of the issues with Kohlberg.

The biggest, for me, attributable largely to Dennis Krebs, is that he does not distinguish between moral judgement and moral behaviour and yet the work by Krebs and his colleagues has shown that there is a strong disconnect between making culturally appropriate moral judgements and behaving in a manner consistent with those judgements. As people like Jonathon Haidt have said, much of this moral judgement is post hoc rationalisation for actions which we took for more basic behavioural reasons anyway.

As Hyunjoo Baek Showed with Korean children, and Anisha Lakhani with adolescents in Mumbai, Kohlberg's stages are not cross-cultural. They basically reflect Western modern cultural institutions in various forms, and as Joanna Fleming demonstrated people operate at different levels in different circumstances, it's not necessarily about developmental stages as it is is about an assessment of the appropriate moral codes to apply in different circumstances. As a child grows up in a culture their circumstances change and different moral approaches become more suitable to their situation.

when we say a proposition is true we are saying that it accords with reality, not merely that we believe it accords with reality. — Janus

Interesting. So you're saying that 'believing' is one attitude we can have toward a proposition's content, but there's some other attitude we can have toward it which you're saying is the one we use to apply the label 'true'? Do you have a name for this other attitude? When does it kick in?

Let's take your example of a 'truth',"Donald Trump is POTUS". If, after the election, a friend tells you that "Donald Trump is POTUS", do you merely believe that this accords with reality, or do you have this other attitude yet? If not yet then maybe you read it in the paper. Do you now have this attitude. I'm intrigued as to what point a mere belief transitions into this other attitude, but more importantly, I'm intrigued as to how you distinguish between the two.

It's possible the answer to all these questions is actually in your last paragraph, but if so, I'm afraid I couldn't make any sense of it, so I'd be grateful for a re-wording.

Would you classify imitating others as a form of pretending? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I think what's meant by 'pretending' seems to require a concious deceit. With morality, there doesn't appear to be anything to be a deceitful version of. There's no 'true' moral judgement which copying others is only a pretense of. How others behave just is one of the drives which determine our decisions sometimes.

Aren't we taught that good moral standards involve thinking things out for ourselves, and not to simply imitate others? — Metaphysician Undercover

We might be taught it, and in this day and age, probably with good reason, but the teaching is just post hoc rationalisation of what's already going on. After all, why would we trust the teacher? Our sense of trustworthiness, rightful authority, duty... All must be in place already just to accept the teacher telling us to work it out for ourselves. Not to mention the fact we still need an objective against which to measure the options. If we do the calculations ourselves (which course of action is best) we have to already have in place what constitutes the 'best' we're aiming for, and the idea that us using our own rational capabilities to work this out is itself the best course of action.

I think the reason is that it is important to acknowledge that there are actualities which are independent of human opinion. In some sense truth just is actuality. But we think of actuality as different to truth in the sense that truth consists in what can rightly be said about actuality. — Janus

Important or not, it simply cannot be done and, especially in philosophy, I'm just not seeing the merit in being inaccurate for the sake of...what, exactly?

When we say a proposition is 'true' we are saying that we believe it accords with reality. It is a statement about our judgement, not about the world. "the cat is on the mat" is a statement about the world. ""The cat is on the mat" is true", is a statement about how I feel about the statement "the cat is on the mat". I don't see how anyone can deny this is what's happening - "...is true" means "I believe it".

The objection that people can be wrong about what is true ""the earth is flat" is true", is no more troubling than that people can say " discos are fun". They're wrong, discos are not fun - except they are fun for them.

Now you can argue that 'fun' is subjective, but what evidence would you bring to bear to prove that? That people disagree about what's fun? Well they disagree about what's true too. That fun describes a state of mind? Well believing a statement to be true also describes a state of mind.

As Ramsey said "it is‘immediately obvious that if we have analysed judgment we have solved the problem of truth"

I get that a distinction is useful between those things only a few crackpots believe and those things which the vast majority of well-educated people believe. I'm perfectly happy that in general colloquial use 'true' is used to make that distinction . Here 'true' is used to mean "this proposition has a good standard of justification". I'm fine with that, but...

If we reject scepticism about actuality, then that might well serve the interests of philosophers who want to get get on with the business of telling people what's what, but it doesn't very well serve the interests of psychology or neuroscience. You may think that...

in countless ordinary cases we know what accords with actuality — Janus

... but you really don't. I could set up a situation in the space of a couple of hours wherein you'd be convinced the cat was on the mat when in fact there was no cat. Suggestion, priming, false memory creation...Give me a few years and I could have you seeing cats everywhere. The point is, this is not because of some psychological trick I could play on top of, or masking, your normal accurate methods of recognising reality, It's because your normal methods of recognising reality do all this fabrication anyway. You really don't see a cat (as in pick up all the light waves reflected from the shape of the object). You make up that a cat is probably there from a few sketchy outlines and a lot of prior expectation and then you don't even bother checking unless something gives you reason to. That is - by the best science we currently have - actually how your perception works.

Now that being the case, what are the psychologist and the neuroscientist supposed to do with a definition assuming what we perceive accords with what is actually the case? If we reject scepticism, how are we supposed to talk about the state of affairs scientific investigation of the brain is revealing to us?

I had a vague memory of someone mentioning that before, but just the last few days I've had four replies from @Janus, only one of which I was notified of, at least a couple more from other people (I wish I'd kept track of them now, that would have been helpful). It could just be a spate of people tagging me as an afterthought, but it just seemed odd.

A p-zombie could be an atomically and behaviorally perfect replica of you - acts, walks, talks, etc. just as you do, — Dunsy22

Right, for which it would have to both think and feel, otherwise it would neither have the data nor the processing power to act, walk or talk.

So what's missing is the very thing which has been assumed. P-zombies are incoherent, they say "imagine a thing like us in every way except self-awareness" and then, without any justification at all suggests that such a thing would be materially indistinguishable from us.

Like robots and zombies, with varying success. — Zelebg

You've measured the successes of zombies? Aren't you worried about the whole flesh-eating thing? You've seen the films, right? It rarely turns out well for the intrepid scientist.

It would feel nothing and think nothing. — Dunsy22

How would it walk if it thought nothing? How would it avoid damaging itself if it felt nothing?

Galuchat quoted a passage from a different author, Galuchat admitting to it later, but not attributing the words to the source when he first quoted it. — god must be atheist

Eh! The quote of yours I was responding to was

Descriptive ethics may deal with this, but only ineffectually. Morality is therefore not a FUNCTION of descriptive ethics, but a topic of it. — god must be atheist

No mention of quotes, sources or plagiarism. Just what seemed to be a complaint about the use of the term 'function'. Where's all this talk of plagiarism come from?

Enough said. — god must be atheist

Well no, not really. The term 'function' does in fact mean the job a thing is meant to do, it's function.

So to say ""what morality is" is a function of Descriptive Ethics", is just to say that "providing answers to the question" what morality is" is one of the tasks descriptive ethics is meant to do.

"A function of X", and "one of the things X is meant to do" are synonymous.

"A function of the police is to keep civil order"

"One of the things the police are meant to do is keep civil order"

It's perfectly proper English.

Enough said (now).

"The function of something or someone is the useful thing that they do or are intended to do" - Collins Dictionary.

I'm pretty sure @Galuchat just meant that it is the job of descriptive ethics to produce theories as to what kinds of proscription count as 'moral'. I was just trying to help you with another possible interpretation which I think is more charitable. Where's the harm in that?

So as to philosophers and the willing, the thesis is that we do not have a basis without religion on which to ground a discussion — unenlightened

Not quite. She says "that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology". Now depending on your approach, that it either a task for philosophical discussion, psychological investigation, or both. It doesn't imply we just stop talking about it, it suggests our discussions have strayed off track. It redirects.

Morality is therefore not a FUNCTION of descriptive ethics, but a topic of it. — god must be atheist

I'm pretty sure that's what's meant by being a function of. Theories about what types of proscription are classed as 'moral' are the product of descriptive ethics, hence the term 'function' - to be a product of.

The question might be asked, what is it, which persuades another to accept moral principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Usually the appeal of seeing someone else apply those principles and gaining some degree of success (however measured) in doing so. Thought is incredibly calorie intensive, we have a huge network of functions designed to select and imitate others, it's just massively more efficient than trying to work it out from scratch each time.

The interesting question, for me, is how people select who to imitate - but that's a completely different topic. Moral virtues and duties are usually adopted by imitation. Consequentialist moral decisions are obviously an exception, by their very nature, but the goals against which potential outcomes are measured are still virtues or duties determined by cultural inheritance.

@jamalrob
Notifications aren't working in the way I'd expect them to, I understand it might be a forum software thing, so I wonder if you could look into it.

I'm consistently not getting notifications from one member, and inconsistently not getting notifications from some others. I've also had some of my posts left without replies in conversations where I would have expected the person I've been talking to to have responded. Although in those cases I could have just stopped being interesting, of course (or started being right, it has the same effect)!

I seem to remember reading about this problem before, I may have even mentioned it, so apologies if this is a repeat, but the problem just seems to have gotten worse recently.

My position is that we create our culture, not the other way around. — Brett

I see. You'd said that...

Those are actions of free will, maybe imbedded in culture over time but not inherent in us, they’re learned. — Brett

... as a means of distinguishing anger (as an example of a 'natural tendency') from civility (which I introduced as a convenient catch-all term for what you were describing as choosing sometimes not to assert anger).

Since all intelligent animals have a culture, then all intelligent animals have the possibility that the behaviour they exhibit is 'learnt behaviour', yes?

So what I'm asking is - if any exhibited behaviour could be learned behaviour (including the behaviour of other animals), then how do you know that anger-associated behaviour is not learned (but rather is a 'natural tendency'), but civility is learned?

In other words - all you can see is behaviour, you are divining the origin of that behaviour (natural vs learned), I'm asking what features you're using to make that determination.

That’s where we’ll never agree.
— Brett

You don't think chimpanzees have a culture? — Isaac


Maybe you’re being amusing. But in any case I mean we’ll never agree over the whole nature/nurture thing. — Brett

There were only two parts to the post to which you responded. One was an assertion about animal culture...

"But all creatures like us are embedded in a culture"

The other was a question...

".. so how would you know that angry behaviour isn't also the product of culture, learned during childhood?"

Since you can't very well disagree with a question, I could only presume that our disagreement was over the assertion - that animals have a culture.

If that's not what you disagree with, then I'm at a loss to understand your reply, I'm afraid.

this doesn't at all change the fact that truth, whatever it might be, whether known by us or not, is thought to accord with the way things really are. — Janus

'Truth', in the sense you're referring to it here, is a category in which we place certain propositions and from which we reject others. To say ""Paris is the capital of France" is true", is to say that the proposition "Paris is the capital of France" belongs in that category {propositions which are true}. Philosophically, I'm happywwith the deflationary position, the "is true" bit adds nothing ontologically. But as a linguistic expression, the above categorisation is what it's mostly doing. It's how we can use it even circumventing deflation in "everything he just said was true".

But in order to use a category, we must know what the criteria for membership are. If the criteria for membership were {things which really are true} then we should not be able to put anything in that category. At best it can be {things we're happy to assume are the case}. It can only ever be about belief/judgement because that's all we have, we cannot check with some higher authority.

Nor can we appeal, in claiming truth of our proposition "P" to an accord with the fact that P, because to say it is a fact that P is just to assert P.

I really don't understand whysso much mental effort is put into this convoluted project of trying to rescue the divinity of the term 'true' from the clutches of the evils of justified beliefs. Some leftover of religious certainty our secular culture is still trying to fill, I think.

The way 'truth' is most commonly used is simply that it consists in what says how things really are. — Janus

Well that can't possibly be the case because otherwise we'd never use it. We don't know how things really are, we only know how we believe them to be, so 'true' would correspond with our beliefs, not the world.

I guess the Bayesian-ness here gives me less confidence with this "inclination". — 180 Proof

Not sure what you mean here, could you expand a little?

So duty when higher confidence in social group and (fall back on) virtue when lower confidence in social group? Intuitively makes sense. — 180 Proof

Yeah, always bearing in mind of course, the massive caveat that it's more complicated in the real world than the broad trends identified by psychological research.

Clarification: Do you mean that consequentialism has higher confidence than virtue but lower confidence than deontology? so that deontology (highest), consequentialism (median) & virtue (lowest)? — 180 Proof

No. One scale is to do with confidence in the data, the other is confidence in ones social group. I don't intend that these two scales exhaust all possible scales either, they're just to serve as examples. All I'm saying there is that one might be more inclined to use consequentialist decision-making methods if one had a high degree of confidence in the data, like if you contemplated using live ammunition for your target practice, your formost consideration would be "what if I hit someone". Whereas if you owe the grocer five pounds, you'd be unlikely to think "there might be social repurcussions if I don't pay, let me just weigh them against the five pounds I'd gain...calculate net gain... extend hyperbolic discount rate...". No, you'd just think "dishonesty's not right, probably best just pay", if you thought anything at all.

The other scale is similar, but with duty and social groups. People tend to be more happy to use unquestioned duty to determine right actions in groups to which they are strongly attached. It's how soldiering works, for example. Those in less strong social groups tend to question duty (or rules) more and so may defer to virtue or consequences depending on the other factors.

Isn't that exactly how you use it when you speculate (with or without committing) as to the relative merits of competing (and perhaps currently unfalsified) theories? — bongo fury

I don't think anyone would use 'true' in that situation. 'Likely' maybe, or 'possible'. Either way, I'm not ruling out niche cases, only aiming at a summary of normal use.

I'm always surprised when anyone takes "what they do mean" to be a matter of fact. — bongo fury

Being interested in the question and presuming the answer is a matter of fact are not the same thing. I think we can say it's a matter of fact that 'game' does not mean [small bag for keeping a wallet in]. We can discover this 'fact' empirically. That doesn't mean we now know everything 'game' does mean, but our investigation has certainly given us something useful about the word. We can continue this way with any unfamiliar or troubling word in the hope that situations describing its normal use can help dissolve problems associated with its abnormal use.