This is true only if you assume that people's beliefs about morality have nothing to do moral facts. But if people have the moral beliefs they do because of moral facts (at least in part)... — Count Timothy von Icarus

This isn't relevant to the argument I am making. Let's take this example:

Half of everyone believes that it is moral to eat meat and half of everyone believes that it is immoral to eat meat.

If it is a fact that it is moral to eat meat then those who believe that it is moral to eat meat do so because it is moral to eat meat, and those who believe that it is immoral to eat meat are, in some sense, delusional.

If it is a fact that it is immoral to eat meat then those who believe that it is immoral to eat meat do so because it is immoral to eat meat, and those who believe that it is moral to eat meat are, in some sense, delusional.

So this grants that moral facts can influence moral beliefs.

Now let's assume that everyone who believes that eating meat is moral eats meat and that everyone who believes that eating meat is immoral doesn't eat meat.

Half of everyone eats meat and half of everyone doesn't eat meat. Why does it matter if eating meat is immoral or not?

It's not the case that if it's immoral to eat meat then those who eat meat are going to suffer from some unwanted consequence as a result of their meat eating (or at least not any consequence that wouldn't also be a consequence even if it is moral to eat meat).

So why the motivation to be moral? There are no practical benefits, either for ourselves or for others. Is it entirely a matter of principle?

As long as a hedonist does not purport to derive his 'ought' from natural science, he is not a naturalist. He could do this in two ways: he could argue that pleasure is good, but that its goodness is not an object of natural science, or else he could independently claim that the oughtness that attaches to pleasure is not an object of natural science. In either case he is not a naturalist, and all hedonists I have encountered deny that their valuative/obligatory premises are the product of natural science.

I think you are misreading Moore's argument as overdetermined. The so-called "naturalistic fallacy" depends on his Open Question about the ambiguity of goodness. If that ambiguity fails then the fallacy charge also fails. — Leontiskos

There's an ambiguity in your proposition that "he could argue that pleasure is good". Are you saying that "this is good" means "this is pleasurable" or are you saying that pleasure happens to have the property of goodness? The former is naturalism, the latter is non-naturalism. I think it important not to get too caught up in the particular labels used. If you prefer, rather than use the labels "naturalism" and "non-naturalism" we can use the labels "Type X" and "Type Y".

The reason this distinction is important can be shown with the question I asked earlier:

Given that I believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if suffering is immoral and what follows if suffering is not immoral?

If "this is immoral" means "this causes suffering" then part of my question would contain a logical contradiction: my belief that it is immoral to cause suffering would be true by definition, and so we cannot even ask what would follow if that belief was false.

But if "this is immoral" doesn't mean "this causes suffering" then there is no such contradiction and so the question is coherent.

So for the sake of this discussion I am assuming non-naturalism (or if you prefer, "Type Y" moral theories): the propositions "this is immoral" and "this causes suffering" do not mean the same thing and the propositions "this is moral" and "this causes pleasure" do not mean the same thing.

Now given the assumption that "this is immoral" doesn't mean "this causes suffering", what does it mean to say that it is immoral to cause suffering? On some accounts we cannot define the proposition "it is immoral" in any simpler terms. However, given that such claims are intended to be normative, I am assuming that "this is immoral" just means "one ought not do this". At the very least this definition allows us to avoid having to explain why we ought not be immoral.

This then entails that the proposition "it is immoral to cause suffering" means "one ought not cause suffering" (and the proposition "it is moral to seek pleasure" means "one ought seek pleasure").

My question, then, is:

Given that I believe that one ought not cause suffering, what follows if it is a fact that one ought not cause suffering and what follows if it is not a fact that one ought not cause suffering?

The problem I see is that nothing follows in either case. The existence or non-existence of such obligations is inconsequential. It is true that if one ought not cause suffering and I cause suffering then I have done something I ought not, but so what? What is my motivation to obey obligations?

Well, the non-natural moral facts would be involved in the consequences of your actions to the extent that your family won't come to see you because they think you acted immorally. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a consequence of acting contrary to moral beliefs. They won't come to see me because they believe I acted immorally. They might be wrong.

That's a question that would seem to deal with causality, which would tend to require a naturalistic answer.

The difference for someone like Moore would seem to be precisely that you have acted immorally versus morally in any situation, independent of any causation downstream of your actions. As I understand him, which isn't very well, moral facts aren't reducible to natural facts, and so asking about what changes "in the world," outside of your having acted rightly or wrongly doesn't make sense given his premises. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's precisely my point. If ethical non-naturalism is correct then moral facts entail no consequential outcomes. Suffering is still suffering, so why does it matter if it's moral or not? Would you really seek suffering if it could be proved that suffering is moral? Or, like me, is your visceral aversion to pain and empathy of others all that matters?

2. Go back and re-respond to this here and explain why my response doesn't now apply, particularly to (b). Just plug in Moore's definition of morality into (b), and that offers a reason why it matters what you think is moral for a non-naturalist. — Hanover

Moore doesn't have a definition. As he says in the Principia Ethica:

‘Good,’ then, if we mean by it that quality which we assert to belong to a thing, when we say that the thing is good, is incapable of any definition, in the most important sense of that word.

And as I mentioned before, the way you've worded your examples doesn't reflect the argument I'm making. You are comparing the case where I believe something is moral with a case where I believe that same thing to not be immoral. I'm considering two cases where I believe that something is immoral (or two cases where I believe that something is not immoral), but where in one case the belief is true and in the other case that same belief is false. This is perhaps clearest when phrased like this:

Given that I believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if suffering is immoral and what follows if suffering is not immoral?

The consequences of acting immorally would tend to be to make the world shittier, to put it in the simplist terms possible. Because your ordered a veal parm the restaurant is going to order more veal. In the aggregate, the sort of behavior you engage in will lead to many more veal calves leading lives of atrocious suffering, while also contributing to ocean acidification and global warming. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is the connection between acting immorally and causing suffering? Remember that I'm arguing about the implications of ethical non-naturalism.

I'll ask the previous question a different way:

Given that I already believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if my belief is true and what follows if my belief is false?

When it comes down to it all you are able to provide are arguments from authority, and this is a problem even ignoring the fact that you are misreading the authorities. — Leontiskos

I'll quote Moore's Principia Ethica:

The name then is perfectly general; for, no matter what the something is that good is held to mean, the theory is still Naturalism. Whether good be defined as yellow or green or blue, as loud or soft, as round or square, as sweet or bitter, as productive of life or productive of pleasure, as willed or desired or felt: whichever of these or of any other object in the world, good may be held to mean, the theory, which holds it to mean them, will be a naturalistic theory. I have called such theories naturalistic because all of these terms denote properties, simple or complex, of some simple or complex natural object.

---

According to Hedonism one ought pursue pleasure and avoid pain.
That one ought or ought not do such a thing is not accessible to natural science.
Therefore, Hedonism is not naturalistic. — Leontiskos

Hedonism is the theory that we ought pursue pleasure because pleasure is good. I'll quote Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:

Now, pleasure is in itself a good; indeed it’s the only good if we set aside immunity from pain; and pain is in itself an evil, and without exception the only evil; or else ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have no meaning!

It is in defining goodness in terms of some natural property – in this case, pleasure – that makes it an ethical naturalist theory. And then, according to Moore, deriving the normative claim that we ought pursue pleasure commits the naturalistic fallacy.

Make me up a non-naturalst ethical theory. — Hanover

There's Moore's impersonal consequentialism.

You may have never read an actual philosopher in your life. — Leontiskos

That would make my degree in Philosophy all the more impressive.

No it's not, and I just gave you an argument for why. Are you able to address arguments? — Leontiskos

Ethical naturalism

Ethical naturalism encompasses any reduction of ethical properties, such as 'goodness', to non-ethical properties; there are many different examples of such reductions, and thus many different varieties of ethical naturalism. Hedonism, for example, is the view that goodness is ultimately just pleasure.

Hedonism

One scientific naturalist argument for hedonism is this: in the value domain we should be scientific naturalists in our methods of inquiry; hedonism is the best option in respect of scientific naturalism; therefore, we should be hedonists about value.

Moral naturalism

Another view that is often closely associated with naturalism is “reductivism.” The reductivist says that moral properties reduce to some other kind of property.

...

We should note at the outset that there is a paradigm example of a reductive view, which is used almost every time a metaethicist discussing reductivism needs a toy example to play with. That paradigm is the hedonic reduction: that goodness is pleasure and therefore reduces to pleasure.

The more relevant question is:

Given that I already believe that this is immoral, what follows if my belief is true and what follows if my belief is false?

In the case of the dead battery, if I believe that the battery is dead then if my belief is true then the car won't run and if my belief is false then the car will run.

Is there anything like this for the case that I believe that eating meat is immoral? Are there consequences to eating meat that occur only if eating meat is immoral, or only if it's not?

Hedonism is an example of ethical naturalism. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.
Richard Hare is a non-cognitivist. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.
Peter Simpson is an ethical naturalist. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.

And as per the SEP article:

In particular, there is widespread agreement that G.E. Moore’s account of goodness in Principia Ethica is a paradigmatically non-naturalist account. Indeed, if a representative sample of contemporary philosophers were asked to name a non-naturalist in meta-ethics then Moore’s name almost certainly would predominate. For better or worse, Moore’s discussion of non-naturalism profoundly shaped 20th century meta-ethics. Thomas Baldwin was not exaggerating much when he claimed that, “twentieth century British ethical theory is unintelligible without reference to Principia Ethica..."

Can we now agree that I'm accurately presenting the ethical non-naturalist view?

In one you have performed an immoral act. — Banno

I'm asking why that matters. What is the motivation to be moral?

The action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: I eat meat. The outcome of the action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: my hunger is sated.

Whether I ought or ought not eat meat does not affect the choice and it does not affect the outcome of that choice.

So, in my view, it just doesn't matter. I want to know why ethical non-naturalists believe that it does. As I asked on the second page 7 years ago, "is it just a matter of principle; that we can (unbeknownst to us) be right in our moral convictions?"

practical
adjective
1. of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas

You see, that we must make choices is what ethics is about. On your account, either we do not make choices, doing only what we would always have done, or the choice makes no difference to the world - has no practical significance. — Banno

1. If a) eating meat is immoral and b) I believe that eating meat is immoral then c) I won't eat meat.

2. If a) eating meat is not immoral but b) I believe that eating meat is immoral then c) I won't eat meat.

In both cases I make a choice and in both cases my choice makes a difference to the world. And in both cases the (a)s have no practical relevance. The choice is the same either way and the outcome of that choice is the same either way.

Indeed, that appears to be a consequence of the path he is adopting in this thread: that we never make choices. — Banno

I haven't said that.

We do make choices. But there are no practical implications of making a moral choice and no practical implications of making an immoral choice. If I choose to eat meat then I eat meat, and whether I ought or ought not eat meat makes no difference to either my choice or the outcome of that choice.

This is unlike, say, whether or not the meat is poisoned. That has practical relevance. If it's poisoned and I eat it then I'm likely to get sick and possibly die.

The Colorado Supreme Court is wrong. — NOS4A2

Possibly, and that will be for the Supreme Court to decide. It certainly hasn't already been decided by a Senate minority.

The 14th amendment applies to those listed who engaged in insurrection, neither of which is true in Trump's case. — NOS4A2

The Colorado Supreme Court disagrees.

He was acquitted of insurrection by the Senate, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. He cannot be removed from office and disqualified to enjoy any Office of Honor. You and the Dems in the Supreme Court are denying this…for what reasons again? — NOS4A2

Being acquitted under Article 1 Section 2 Clause 7 doesn't entail that the 14th Amendment no longer applies. You're reading something into it that just isn't there.

As per the 14th Amendment it takes "a vote of two-thirds of each House" to revoke its imposed ineligibility.

You're denying the antecedent.

Also see https://www.justice.gov/file/19386/download

The Constitution permits a former President to be indicted and tried for the same offenses for which he was impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted by the Senate.

It says right there in the constitution. — NOS4A2

They are the ultimate authority and final arbiter on whether or not a President is to be removed from office. They are not the ultimate authority and final arbiter on whether or not someone committed a crime or on whether or not someone is eligible to be President.

The Colorado Supreme Court is under no constitutional or legal obligation to accept the outcome of an impeachment trial as binding precedent.

Michael seems to think there is something more here. — Banno

That facts about how the world ought to be have no practical relevance. The world is what it is and will be what it will be and that's that.

It just doesn't matter if we ought or ought not avoid suffering. All that matters is that we want to avoid it, and not because we believe we ought to, but because it's a viscerally horrible thing to experience. We're motivated by pragmatism and empathy.

I don't understand any supposed motivation to obey a moral obligation for its own sake.

There is no indication the president is considered an Officer in the constitution. — NOS4A2

The Colorado Supreme Court disagrees.

Then they do so against the constitution. Senate has already acquitted him of such charges. — NOS4A2

I didn't realise that the Senate was the ultimate authority and final arbiter on the matter.

She's following her own process — NOS4A2

They're not her own processes. They're Maine state law:

1. Review. When presented with a primary petition, the Secretary of State shall review it and, if the petition contains the required number of certified names and is properly completed, shall accept and file it.

2. Challenges. The procedure for challenging the validity of a primary petition or of names upon a petition is as follows.

A. Only a registered voter residing in the electoral division of the candidate concerned may file a challenge. The challenge must be in writing and must set forth the reasons for the challenge. The challenge must be filed in the office of the Secretary of State before 5 p.m. on the 5th business day after the final date for filing petitions under section 335, subsection 8.

B. Within 7 days after the final date for filing challenges and after due notice of the hearing to the candidate and to the challenger, the Secretary of State shall hold a public hearing on any challenge properly filed. The challenger has the burden of providing sufficient evidence to invalidate the petitions or any names upon the petitions.

C. The Secretary of State shall rule on the validity of any challenge within 5 days after the completion of the hearing described in paragraph B.

D. A challenger or a candidate may appeal the decision of the Secretary of State by commencing an action in the Superior Court. This action must be conducted in accordance with the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 80C, except as modified by this section. This action must be commenced within 5 days of the date of the decision of the Secretary of State. Upon timely application, anyone may intervene in this action when the applicant claims an interest relating to the subject matter of the petitions, unless the applicant's interest is adequately represented by existing parties. The court shall issue a written decision containing its findings of fact and conclusions of law and setting forth the reasons for its decision within 20 days of the date of the decision of the Secretary of State.

E. Any aggrieved party may appeal the decision of the Superior Court, on questions of law, by filing a notice of appeal within 3 days of that decision. The record on appeal must be transmitted to the Law Court within 3 days after notice of appeal is filed. After filing notice of appeal, the parties have 4 days to file briefs and appendices with the clerk of courts. As soon as the record and briefs have been filed, the court shall immediately consider the case. The court shall issue its decision within 14 days of the date of the decision of the Superior Court.

The 14th doesn't mention presidents. — NOS4A2

It mentions "officer of the United States" and the President is an officer of the United States.

Second, there is no indication of any insurrection, or that he engaged in it. — NOS4A2

The Colorado Supreme Court disagrees.

Lastly, this lady isn't a lawyer and used youtube videos for her case. — NOS4A2

Under Maine law it is the Secretary of State who must make any initial rulings on a candidate's eligibility. She is simply following the established legal process. The next step is for an appeal to be made to the Superior Court.

But they aren't. The natural sciences do not study pain and pleasure in themselves, and they certainly do not study pain and pleasure as normative realities. For example, the claim that suffering should be avoided is not within the domain of the natural sciences. Your article hedges precisely where you are begging the question, "Assuming that being pleasant is a natural property..."

In all probability you will be as unwilling to define "natural" as you are unwilling to define "moral," but the notion that the natural sciences study the normative value of pain and pleasure seems highly unlikely. If this is right then the many counterarguments in this thread which you unaccountably label "naturalistic," are in fact not naturalistic. — Leontiskos

I'm not saying that the natural sciences study the normative value of pain and pleasure. I'm saying that pain and pleasure are natural properties.

You seem to have skimmed some Wikipedia and SEP articles, constructed a position in your mind, and then constructed arguments against that position. But given that no one holds this constructed position, it seems that all you've done is erected a strawman. Do you know of any philosophers who hold this position you've constructed? — Leontiskos

Moore, as explained in that quote in my previous comment, and also from his open-question argument:

Moore’s “Open Question Argument” for the conclusion that goodness is a non-natural property is closely related to his worries about the naturalistic fallacy. Consider any proposed naturalistic analysis N of a moral predicate M. The Open Question Argument maintains that it will always be possible for someone competent with moral discourse without conceptual confusion to grant that something is N but still wonder whether it is really M. Whether goodness is co-instantiated with any natural property or set of natural properties is in this sense always a conceptually open question. If, however, N really was an accurate analysis of M then the question, “I know it is N but is it M?” would not be open in this way for a conceptually competent judge any more than the question, “I know he is a bachelor but is he unmarried?” can be an open one.

they illegally prevent a legitimate campaign — NOS4A2

If he's ineligible under the 14th Amendment then it isn't illegal and isn't a legitimate campaign.

They don't like that Trump contested the election — NOS4A2

They don't like that he tried to illegally prevent the legitimate transfer of power.

Pretzel logic. — NOS4A2

Again, it was tongue-in-cheek. Do you honestly not understand this? Are you that incapable of inferring the intention behind someone's words? Can you only ever take words at literal, face value?

Trump claims he won all 50 states in the 2020 election

I’m afraid Trump was not sworn in... — NOS4A2

The 22nd Amendment says "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice". It doesn't say "No person shall be sworn in to the office of the President more than twice".

... so the notion is ridiculous

...

It just goes to show the lengths they are willing to go and the contortions they are willing to commit themselves to in order to disguise their malfeasance. — NOS4A2

Yes it's ridiculous. Do you honestly not recognize it as being tongue-in-cheek?

continuous 24/7 morphine drip — 180 Proof

Sign me up.

Trump is so unhinged that he recently claimed winning all 50 states in the 2020 election. — GRWelsh

I don't think he actually believes that. It's all a grift to stoke up his delusional supporters.

The obvious defence is that "elected" in the context of the 22nd Amendment refers to being elected by the Electoral College, which he wasn't.

Funny all the same.

However, Mr. Trump may be able to remove this obstacle of his own creation. If he were to submit a letter sworn under penalty of perjury acknowledging that he lost the 2020 election and repudiating all previous statements undermining the integrity of that election, the question of the 22nd Amendment would no longer be relevant.

Brilliant.

It's almost as if we act on what we believe to be true, rather than on what is true independent of our beliefs. — Leontiskos

That's precisely my point. Moral beliefs matter. Moral facts don't. A moral belief being false has the same practical implications as that same moral belief being true (if ethical non-naturalism is correct).

You beg the question by assuming that these are non-moral features. — Leontiskos

See here:

Very roughly, non-naturalism in meta-ethics is the idea that moral philosophy is fundamentally autonomous from the natural sciences.

...

Most often, ‘non-naturalism’ denotes the metaphysical thesis that moral properties exist and are not identical with or reducible to any natural property or properties in some interesting sense of ‘natural’.

...

Moore famously claimed that naturalists were guilty of what he called the “naturalistic fallacy.” In particular, Moore accused anyone who infers that X is good from any proposition about X’s natural properties of having committed the naturalistic fallacy. Assuming that being pleasant is a natural property, for example, someone who infers that drinking beer is good from the premise that drinking beer is pleasant is supposed to have committed the naturalistic fallacy. The intuitive idea is that evaluative conclusions require at least one evaluative premise—purely factual premises about the naturalistic features of things do not entail or even support evaluative conclusions. Moore himself focused on goodness, but if the argument works for goodness then it seems likely to generalize to other moral properties.

Harm, suffering, and pain are natural properties. If moral properties are not natural properties then harm, suffering, and pain are not moral properties.

Perhaps this whole thread could be boiled down to a single question, "If you are an ethical non-naturalist, then what is the reason for your 'ought'?" "You say we ought to do such and such, but why ought we?" — Leontiskos

I'm asking about the ethical non-naturalist's moral motivation.

Maine secretary of state disqualifies Trump from primary ballot

Bellows said she received three challenges to Trump's primary nomination petition, two of which argued that the former president did not meet the qualifications for the presidency because he had engaged in insurrection and is therefore ineligible to hold public office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The third challenge argued that Trump should be found ineligible under the 22nd Amendment, which establishes that "no person should be elected to the office of president more than twice." Under this theory, the petitioner, Paul Gordon, said that Trump should be disqualified because he has long claimed to have won the 2020 election.

...

Bellows concluded that Trump had engaged in insurrection and that sufficient evidence had been provided to "demonstrate the falsity of Mr. Trump's declaration that he meets the qualifications of the office of the presidency."

That third challenge is hilarious.

I did say "if Englishness exists". — Janus

Well, there is such a thing as being English, but it's not a biological or behavioural feature of people; it's a legal status.

We know humans are biological organisms; do we have any evidence that they are more than that? — Janus

If humans are conscious and if consciousness is non-biological then consciousness is evidence that humans are more than biological organisms.

Of course whether or not consciousness is biological is the very thing being questioned, which is why it begs the question to argue that humans are just biological organisms.

We don't know whether or not consciousness is biological and so we don't know whether or not humans are just biological organisms.

I’m just asking what the word “consciousness” refers to. I have to Imagine a string going from the word to what it is in the world the word refers to. The dualist would have nowhere to put it because it would either attach to some biology, or nothing. Non-physical stuff is just a roundabout way of saying “nothing”, in my view, because nothing indicates such stuff exists. — NOS4A2

So this is just begging the question.

Maybe it’s an abstract term denoting abstract qualities of physical things, particularity conscious organisms. — NOS4A2

Are abstract qualities physical? If not, are they real?

No, that's right, it would be observed in behavior, also a physical phenomenon. — Janus

Because no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge?

But that aside, I'm questioning NOS's assertion that because the adjective "conscious" is used to describe biological organisms then consciousness must be biological. I don't think that at all follows. "English", "wet", and "stylish" are adjectives that are used to describe biological organisms, but it doesn't follow that Englishness, wetness, and style must be biological.

Consciousness may very well be physical, but this cannot be proved simply by looking at how adjectives are used.

And, of course, the assertion that humans are just biological organism begs the question.