Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

[Peter Holmes]

1 The claim 'murder is morally wrong' expresses an opinion, not a factual assertion about reality, with a truth-value independent from opinion. And defining murder as 'illegal killing' has no moral implication or entailment. The legal isn't necessarily moral, nor the illegal immoral.

2 Claim: murder is morally wrong; so if the only way to stop abortionists (murderers) is to murder them, then murdering them is not morally wrong. (Some anti=abortionists have used this argument.)

3 The claim that moral change has always been in one direction - meaning 'improvement' - is a matter of opinion. Many people see moral degeneration. The delusion that our own moral opinions are facts has often been an impediment to moral progress. In my opinion.

[henry quirk]

you're the tops, pete...here, have a

[Skepdick]

1 The claim 'murder is morally wrong' expresses an opinion, not a factual assertion about reality, with a truth-value independent from opinion.

You should try explain that to:
1. The arresting officers
2. The prosecutors.
3. The penitentiary officers

All murderers are in prison because of mere opinions.

And defining murder as 'illegal killing' has no moral implication or entailment. The legal isn't necessarily moral, nor the illegal immoral.

Necessity and entailment are red herrings. All definitions are contingent. Linguistic expressions don't entail anything.

2 Claim: murder is morally wrong; so if the only way to stop abortionists (murderers) is to murder them, then murdering them is not morally wrong. (Some anti=abortionists have used this argument.)

The only way to stop abortion is to kill the baby-carrier? Yep! That'll have PRECISELY the desired effect.

3 The claim that moral change has always been in one direction - meaning 'improvement' - is a matter of opinion.

The claim is that moral change has been only in one direction - meaning murder and slavery are objectively decreasing (not increasing).

What makes it objective is that you recognise the fact that "decreasing slavery" is an "improvement".

Well done. You are a moral objectivist!

The delusion that our own moral opinions are facts has often been an impediment to moral progress. In my opinion.

Moral progress?

If morality is subjective then there can be no such thing as moral progress!
There can only ever be moral change!

Moral progress entails improvement.
Moral change entails a difference.
Moral regress entails degeneration.

Your language gives you away again! You faux moral subjectivist !!!

[odysseus]

so: man is nuthin' but programmed response...man, the bio-robot

I, of course, disagree

No, not nuthin like dat.

I think you need to think. You think decision making is made just like that? Ex nihilo? I mean the magnitude of that not making sense is on a par with that of my cat winning s Nobel prize for physics. You have to think: Where did you get that language, your values, your social abilities? You were made by society, and all the choices you have issue from this matrix. You may decide, choose, but WHAT you choose is limited to what you think, feel, admire, detest, and so on. Do you detest 蛇羹? Of course, you have no idea what this is. The reason for this is you cannot spontaneously will understanding of things into being. You have to learn, assimilate, and thereby become a person. You are not Chinese, I hazard, thus, your "choice" in this is meaningless. So it is with getting a fine education after sixteen years of counter educational experiences.

oh, I've done that for you already: a man is his own, no one is obligated to provide for him beyond what they choose, takin' what's his to give to another without his sanction is not compassion or servicin' the greater good: it's just theft...compassion is an individual matter, an idiosyncratic matter: who is deservin' and who is not is assessed by the one who has and who is lookin' to share

government has no place in this

Choice? see the above. "What is his" assumes ownership. What the hell is this? I steal your car. It's mine. But you will say, no, this is not permitted, stealing. Oh, so you DO have principles in place. How about fairness? I am born into abject misery, you are born into billions of dollars. Just let the this roll, you say? But how do you justify the billions? You don't care to think this hard? I'll help you: There IS NO justification. The concept of ownership you would apply to "what's his" is is a complete moral vacuity. How about a King who owns 90 percent of the wealth, and 90 percent of property? Just let it roll? It is, after all. HIS????????? Has the King not stolen this wealth? After all, who produced it? Not this lazy, stupid parasite. But he keeps it, you see; and he doesn't want people to get too educated, because they might start thinking in terms of dessert and ownership, so he keeps education minimal, invests little, wants to invest nothing. Meanwhile, the undereducated masses go nowhere, live on a pittance. This sounds ok to you? No? Then you're a Marxist to this extent.

if he played square, by the rules: leave him be

'we'll change the rules, then!'

no...end the rules, remove his purchased favor by the government, strip away his insulations...let his wealth and his capacity to generate wealth assume natural places accordin' to supply & demand

then, hat in hand, you can go plead for donations to address all that institutional equality that doesn't exist cept as folks are willin' to pretend it does

btw: envy is an ugly thing...just sayin'

By the rules??? The rules say, s/he pays low enough taxes to accrue 100 billion dollars. Who says THIS set of rules is right? As I said earlier, It is a system that YIELDS this kind of wealth distribution. There is nothing natural about it. No more natural than a monarchy or a communist regime. It is certainly NOT envy. It is an analysis of who makes the wealth and who gets it; of wealth distribution and the implicit concept of desert, ownership, fairness, and so on.

did that already: a man belongs to himself (fact), it's wrong to use him as property or resource (moral fact)

all of this, every iota, is question begging. Blatantly so. Belonging to oneself implies making decisions of one's own, acting independently, not submitting to what some other party would have you do or think, and so on. But all of this says NOTHING about what it is a person HAS to be so independent about. If you say this doesn't matter, you find yourself defending systems of societal economics that produce the most profound ignorance and poverty imaginable. After all, all you have to do is keep people stupid enough not to know how bad off they are, that abject misery and poverty are simply their lot, and you can live in uncontested extreme wealth in the clear.

This is exactly what is happening in the US, though people aren't quite that stupid. But, as Marco Rubio once put it, we need plumbers, not philosophers. Plumbers know their place, and put billionaires office that make themselves richer by, a libertarians dream, reducing taxes.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Claim: a woman belongs to herself (fact)...

{False, because it's an opinion, not a fact.]

... so it's wrong to use her as property or resource (moral fact).

[Invalid, because it doesn't follow from the premise. And false, because it's an opinion, not a fact, let alone a moral fact.]

Interesting implication: a woman belongs to herself, so it's wrong for anyone to use her body as property or resource without her consent.

To repeat: whatever facts or opinions we use to justify a moral opinion, it remains an opinion; and others can use the same facts differently, or different facts, to justify a different moral opinion. That's our inescapable moral predicament. And it's why our moral values and rules can and sometimes do change over time - examples being our attitude towards slavery, racism, sexism, sexuality and gender difference, and so on.

You are very deceptive and rhetorical.
The argument here is specific to slavery.

The moral fact is
'no human ought to own another human as a chattel slave',

In the case of chattel slavery, an enslaved person is deprived of his/her basic rights and freedom.

The proof is inferred inductively that no normal person would want to be enslaved as a chattel slavery i.e. as property at the full disposal of the slave owner.

This is not individual[s]' opinion nor beliefs but it is inherent in the nature of any human being just like any scientific facts about human nature.

[Veritas Aequitas]

1 The claim 'murder is morally wrong' expresses an opinion, not a factual assertion about reality, with a truth-value independent from opinion. And defining murder as 'illegal killing' has no moral implication or entailment. The legal isn't necessarily moral, nor the illegal immoral.

The claim 'murder is morally wrong' is an opinion if and only if the claim is made by an individual or individual[s] without any reference to the justified moral fact.
But where the moral claim 'no human ought-to kill another human' is justified empirically and philosophically to be true, then that is a justified moral fact.

Yes, the crime of murder is not morality per se because I as have asserted many times, morality is independent of politics [legislature, judiciary and policing].
But the fact that 'murder is a crime' that is accepted by all sovereign nation give it a parallel reality with morality.

The difference is in politics and criminal law which is enforced, killing of humans are permitted in certain circumstances. While in Morality, killing another human is absolute without exceptions, but the difference in morality, this absolute is non enforced but act only as a Guide.
In a way, this moral fact as a guide is adopted intuitively in politics but with exceptions.

2 Claim: murder is morally wrong; so if the only way to stop abortionists (murderers) is to murder them, then murdering them is not morally wrong. (Some anti=abortionists have used this argument.)

Your thinking is too impulsive, hasty and lack depth in taking 'SOME' anti-abortionist as the general views.
So far the discussion is 'no human ought to kill another human being'.
Whether the unborn [especially in the mid and later stages] is regarded as a normal human being is still debated.

Personally I believe morally, no human ought to perform any abortion of the unborn in whatever stages.
But as usual this moral fact is only a guide to be used as an ideal standard.

To meet this ideal standard, the preventive steps should start at the roots, i.e. the inability of men and women in controlling their primal and animalistic sexual lusts within humans.
Therefore humanity must find fool proof ways to modulate the inherent primal sexual lusts so that there are no unwanted sex, therefore no need for abortion.
I have done a lot of research into sex. Mindful sex with precautions to avoid unwanted pregnancy produce greater sexual satisfaction.

There will be exceptions where abortion is necessary in critical situations but the moral fact will still be fact and is intact.
In any case, humanity must trace the critical root causes of whatever the exceptions and take steps to prevent it as root level.
I am very optimistic there will be no unplanned abortions in the future [next 100 years?] because the current exponential expansion of knowledge and technology, e.g. in genomic and the neuroscience [Human Connectome Project] etc.

3 The claim that moral change has always been in one direction - meaning 'improvement' - is a matter of opinion. Many people see moral degeneration. The delusion that our own moral opinions are facts has often been an impediment to moral progress. In my opinion.

Most of the moral facts are 'permanent' features of human nature at least for the next 100,000 or 1 million years of evolution.
e.g. "no human ought to kill another human" is more likely an 'eternal' maxim as long as there are humans.

Where there is "progress" in moral terms, it is only the individual improving his/her moral competence [moral quotient] towards the moral fact as THE standard.
There can be moral degeneration in an individual or group when the neural moral algorithm is weaken, e.g. if someone's neurons are damage and s/he become a psychopath or in circumstances where the killing instinct is triggered, e.g. in passion-killing.

Regardless of any one's opinion, beliefs are even solid justifications/proofs, all humans will be driven naturally and spontaneously in a progressive trend toward the moral ideals.
Note the trend of moral progress in chattel-slavery from >50,000 years ago to the present and the potential in the future.

[Peter Holmes]

Claim: a woman belongs to herself (fact)...

{False, because it's an opinion, not a fact.]

... so it's wrong to use her as property or resource (moral fact).

[Invalid, because it doesn't follow from the premise. And false, because it's an opinion, not a fact, let alone a moral fact.]

Interesting implication: a woman belongs to herself, so it's wrong for anyone to use her body as property or resource without her consent.

To repeat: whatever facts or opinions we use to justify a moral opinion, it remains an opinion; and others can use the same facts differently, or different facts, to justify a different moral opinion. That's our inescapable moral predicament. And it's why our moral values and rules can and sometimes do change over time - examples being our attitude towards slavery, racism, sexism, sexuality and gender difference, and so on.

You are very deceptive and rhetorical.
The argument here is specific to slavery.

The moral fact is
'no human ought to own another human as a chattel slave',

This is NOT a fact. It's an opinion. And for most of human history, we had the opposite opinion.

In the case of chattel slavery, an enslaved person is deprived of his/her basic rights and freedom.

That 'no person ought to be deprived of her basic rights and freedom' is also NOT a fact. It's an opinion.

The proof is inferred inductively that no normal person would want to be enslaved as a chattel slavery i.e. as property at the full disposal of the slave owner.

This is your original mistake. It may be an inductively inferred fact that no normal person would want to be enslaved. But that fact doesn't and can't entail the conclusion that slavery is morally wrong. That DOESN'T FOLLOW, deductively or inductively. And I and others have explained this to you countless times.

This is not individual[s]' opinion nor beliefs but it is inherent in the nature of any human being just like any scientific facts about human nature.

Again. It may be a fact of human nature that we don't normally want to be enslaved. But so what? Suppose we normally DID want to be enslaved. By your criterion, that would mean slavery is not morally wrong. Just to be clear - is that your argument?

[odysseus]

Peter Holmes wrote

This is NOT a fact. It's an opinion. And for most of human history, we had the opposite opinion.

I haven't read all in this tread, but a couple of things come to mind.

Regarding matters of slavery, things get muddled in contingencies. Institutions like (chattel or otherwise) slavery are notoriously cruel, but what if slavery is kind? Then we don't call it slavery. But what if the slave doesn't know better and resists ownership, wrong about her own best interests? This is how we treat children and and mad people, but the who of it doesn't matter: would such a condition be morally defensible? For in this latter case, it would be as in the novel/movie (Asimov's novel) I Robot, and VICKIE was actually right!

Value judgments, says Wittgenstein, are not factual, and this kind of discussion clearly falls under opinion: Not settled like my shoe being untied is settled, it either is or it isn't and its plain to see. Witt said value is never present to observation, the "goodness" of something is never "seen". So technically, talk about slavery is up there with talk about murder and torture: not facts in the technical, Wittgensteinian (or Humean) sense. This is a philosophical and technical "fact". Outside of this (and it is NOT that Wittgenstein is necessarily right about this. I frankly think not) there is our everyday use and here we take value statements as factual all the time. It is a fact that torturing young children is wrong! Note that such a thing is SO wrong that it makes Witt look silly. Clearly the fact that my shoe is untied is, in a very real sense, not even in the same galaxy as torturing young children being wrong. And yet the former gets called a fact, the latter does not.

There is something very wrong with this Witt concept of a fact and his account of what is and is not nonsense. This technical division between fact and opinion is simply wrong, I conclude. Value statements like "slavery is bad" possess underlying concepts that defy analysis, like human dignity and freedom, for their importance is bound up in other things. Freedom is something greatly curtailed when it comes to children, and clearly it is not an absolute; and dignity is equally in play. AS ARE FACTS: Who is the better player, A or B? One certainly IS the better, but the case is, say, too complex to determine. Who is right more often, you or your spouse. If you're close, it would be just a matter of opinion as, while the fact is there, but underdetermined.

Chattel slavery certainly IS a matter underdetermined compared to an untied shoe, but the "wrongness" of the moral issue tells us there is something greater, not less, than the injunction against it. Why would this be discounted an no factual?

[henry quirk]

...I know it grinds your gears that I won't abandon my wacky, immoral, natural rights libertariaism

I'd love to accommodate you

but you gotta give me sumthin' more than you have so far

your objections are old news

here, let me lend you hand...

choice, choosing, the capacity for, to, choose, undergirds a lot of my thinkin'

to be clear: I subscribe to the quaint idea that a man is an agent, not an event, that he is autonomous, a free will

oh no! now I've done it! I've outed myself as a proponent of that most pernicious, atavistic notion: libertarian agent causation (the only free will worth havin')...I'm utterly irrational! free will? free will! you're mad, Henry, stark-ravin'!

incidentally: it's my crazy, wackadoodle ideas about free will that led me to become a deist

so: let's start there...I say I have, am, a free will

what say you?

[Peter Holmes]

Peter Holmes wrote

This is NOT a fact. It's an opinion. And for most of human history, we had the opposite opinion.

I haven't read all in this tread, but a couple of things come to mind.

Regarding matters of slavery, things get muddled in contingencies. Institutions like (chattel or otherwise) slavery are notoriously cruel, but what if slavery is kind? Then we don't call it slavery. But what if the slave doesn't know better and resists ownership, wrong about her own best interests? This is how we treat children and and mad people, but the who of it doesn't matter: would such a condition be morally defensible? For in this latter case, it would be as in the novel/movie (Asimov's novel) I Robot, and VICKIE was actually right!

Value judgments, says Wittgenstein, are not factual, and this kind of discussion clearly falls under opinion: Not settled like my shoe being untied is settled, it either is or it isn't and its plain to see. Witt said value is never present to observation, the "goodness" of something is never "seen". So technically, talk about slavery is up there with talk about murder and torture: not facts in the technical, Wittgensteinian (or Humean) sense. This is a philosophical and technical "fact". Outside of this (and it is NOT that Wittgenstein is necessarily right about this. I frankly think not) there is our everyday use and here we take value statements as factual all the time. It is a fact that torturing young children is wrong! Note that such a thing is SO wrong that it makes Witt look silly. Clearly the fact that my shoe is untied is, in a very real sense, not even in the same galaxy as torturing young children being wrong. And yet the former gets called a fact, the latter does not.

There is something very wrong with this Witt concept of a fact and his account of what is and is not nonsense. This technical division between fact and opinion is simply wrong, I conclude. Value statements like "slavery is bad" possess underlying concepts that defy analysis, like human dignity and freedom, for their importance is bound up in other things. Freedom is something greatly curtailed when it comes to children, and clearly it is not an absolute; and dignity is equally in play. AS ARE FACTS: Who is the better player, A or B? One certainly IS the better, but the case is, say, too complex to determine. Who is right more often, you or your spouse. If you're close, it would be just a matter of opinion as, while the fact is there, but underdetermined.

Chattel slavery certainly IS a matter underdetermined compared to an untied shoe, but the "wrongness" of the moral issue tells us there is something greater, not less, than the injunction against it. Why would this be discounted an no factual?

Thanks, but I disagree with much of what you say here.

1 You seem to be criticising the early Wittgenstein, for reasons that he later recognised himself. His realisation that meaning is use meant the redemption of value-assertions from the non-sense bin. But that doesn't mean there's no difference between assertions of value and of fact - between their functions, which means their uses.

2 Your talk of 'underlying concepts' is, in my opinion, mystical nonsense. What and where are concepts, and in what way do they exist? In minds - more abstract fictions? The claim that an abstract noun is the name of a concept has no explanatory value whatsoever. So apply Occam's razor. The analysis of concepts is nothing more than the explanation of how we use or could use words or other signs. If you disagree, please provide an example of conceptual analysis that isn't precisely that.

3 Your claim - 'It is a fact that torturing children is wrong' - is precisely the issue we've been discussing at enormous length in this and other threads. Just stating it is pointless.

[Advocate]

[quote="Peter Holmes" post_id=479447 time=1605108525 user_id=15099]
3 Your claim - 'It is a fact that torturing children is wrong' - is precisely the issue we've been discussing at enormous length in this and other threads. Just stating it is pointless.
[/quote]

The idea that torturing children is wrong is a) compatible with the broadest range of past and present understandings of what ethics is b) inherent in any version of society that can be sustainable (psychologically as well as pragmatically). For practical reasons, "torturing children is wrong" is as close to a 100% "true" statement as we can have in ethics. If you reject even the most agreed version of an "ought" statement, you're essentially saying ethics is meaningless and that makes your dismissal meaningless because ethics obviously does real-world work in positive ways according to almost everyone.

[Peter Holmes]

3 Your claim - 'It is a fact that torturing children is wrong' - is precisely the issue we've been discussing at enormous length in this and other threads. Just stating it is pointless.

The idea that torturing children is wrong is a) compatible with the broadest range of past and present understandings of what ethics is b) inherent in any version of society that can be sustainable (psychologically as well as pragmatically). For practical reasons, "torturing children is wrong" is as close to a 100% "true" statement as we can have in ethics. If you reject even the most agreed version of an "ought" statement, you're essentially saying ethics is meaningless and that makes your dismissal meaningless because ethics obviously does real-world work in positive ways according to almost everyone.

But what we're arguing about is what kind of assertion can be true or false. (Why do you put "true" in speech marks?)

A factual assertion is one that can be true or false. Do you think the assertion 'torturing children is wrong' could be false? And if so, how? What would have to be different in reality for it to be false?

If, as I think, it couldn't be false, then there's no reason to call it true. But that's because it doesn't make a factual claim about reality that may or may not be true. The moral wrongness of torturing children isn't a feature of reality that may or may not exist. That's the category error that moral realists and objectivists persist in making.

[henry quirk]

A factual assertion is one that can be true or false. Do you think the assertion 'torturing children is wrong' could be false? And if so, how? What would have to be different in reality for it to be false?

let's test that standard...

do you think the assertion fire is hot could be false?

if so, how?

what would have to be different in reality for that assertion to be false?

pete sez If it couldn't be false, then there's no reason to call it true because it doesn't make a factual claim about reality that may or may not be true

[odysseus]

henry quirk wrote
choice, choosing, the capacity for, to, choose, undergirds a lot of my thinkin'

to be clear: I subscribe to the quaint idea that a man is an agent, not an event, that he is autonomous, a free will

oh no! now I've done it! I've outed myself as a proponent of that most pernicious, atavistic notion: libertarian agent causation (the only free will worth havin')...I'm utterly irrational! free will? free will! you're mad, Henry, stark-ravin'!

incidentally: it's my crazy, wackadoodle ideas about free will that led me to become a deist

so: let's start there...I say I have, am, a free will

what say you?

Hmmmm Unabashedly simple. But then, it depends on how reasonable you can be. One can insist doggedly and keep insisting till the cows and all the farm animals come home, but this is not an argument. It's right up there with the cow just mooing and mooing. At any rate, we'll continue

Freedom, a free will: There are many types, and I won't name drop as that can be off putting (unless you want to). Just the ideas. Freedom ex nihilo is an impossible idea to defend, so I have to assume you don't mean this. I may not subscribe a strict determinist position (what IS causality, strictly speaking, anyway?) but whatever is to be believed in has to stand up to, say, certain coercive intuitions, like things don't move by themselves. Apodictically impossible and I think you just have to abide by this. You can SAY you do not, but it would be the equivalent, (no, far worse) of saying Mars is made of gum drops or grass grows in liquid nitrogen. I mean, thinking has to make sense.

But freedom ex nihilo is also massively boring. I have always argued that pool ball mechanics in no way can apply to mental activity and its matrices of decision making. I think something extraordinary happens in this kind of organic complexity. So freedom is not dead, but it is qualified. One cannot simply dismiss environments of will and choice and the possibilities they are presented with. Put it like this: I can at this moment, jump out the window. I am free to do this, among countless other things. But this is not a "live option" for me. It could be if I were suicidally depressed, but I'm not. Live options for me are sitting at the computer arguing, going shopping, getting more coffee, and so on.

I wonder where you are in this so far.




Then their

[Advocate]

>But what we're arguing about is what kind of assertion can be true or false. (Why do you put "true" in speech marks?)

To acknowledge up front that what truth is may require elaboration in this context. I'm just jumping into this particular part of the thread. What is factually accurate is that which can best be justified by evidence. I try to use "true" to mean one's personal perspective on "reality" (consensus experience, as opposed to "actuality"), but the vernacular use of true or fact is normally sufficient to indicate "accuracy with regard to replicable experience", which is a good definition of either.

Since ethical questions are all contingent, the accuracy of an answer will need to start with understanding the desired outcome. What type of actions will best lead to the kind of society we want? is an empirical question that we can act on, but we've got to have the outcome in mind first. ...all of which is what ethics is.

>A factual assertion is one that can be true or false. Do you think the assertion 'torturing children is wrong' [i]could be false[/i]? And if so, how? What would have to be different in reality for it to be false?

Sure, but what degree of certainty we can know whether it's true or false is a different question.

Torturing children isn't wrong because it is possible that torturing one child would prevent the torture of two other children. We want to live in the kind of society where innocence is sufficient to prevent unaccidental suffering. In order to live in that sort of society we must prevent children from being tortured. Can i "prove" any of that? No, but it's logical.

>If, as I think, it couldn't be false, then there's no reason to call it true. But that's because it doesn't make a factual claim about reality that may or may not be true. The moral wrongness of torturing children isn't a feature of reality that may or may not exist. That's the category error that moral realists and objectivists persist in making.

That's basically the is/ought problem which is easily bridged by understanding a) meaning b) scale. IF we want society X, THEN it is a "fact" that certain activities will be more or less likely to lead to the desired conclusion. Individually, that's morality. Collectively, that's ethics.