Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Don't dodge. How do we empirically verify that X (eg, humans killing humans) is or isn't morally wrong?

Non-answer: there are loads of moral facts and each must be verified and justified empirically and philosophically.
Non-answer: there are moral facts related to humans killing humans.
Non-answer: a decrease in humans killing humans is moral progress.

Note my response to the above in this post,
viewtopic.php?p=484392#p484392

Note my question.

How can we empirically verify or falsify a moral assertion, such as 'humans killing humans is morally wrong'?

Answer: the question is incoherent, because a moral assertion doesn't make a factual claim about reality with a truth-value independent from opinion.

So a moral assertion can't be verified or falsified. All we can do is agree or disagree with it. And whatever facts we deploy to justify a moral opinion, it remains an opinion and can never be a fact.

There are no moral facts, but only moral opinions held by people, some of whom think their own moral opinions are facts. And that's our inescapable moral predicament. Moral realists and objectivists are simply deluded.

I have explained extensively on the following;

• 1. What is fact and what is moral fact.
  2. The concept of FSK and FSR, thus moral FSK/FSR.
  3. Justified Moral Standards and thus variation from the standard as a moral variance or is 'morally-wrong'.

You are trapped in your own 'silo' of dogmatism as to fact in the linguistic perspective, a bastardized version inherited from the LPs.

Analogically you are like a Newtonian who is trapped within the Newtonian FSR, thus would never be above to agree with Einstein's or QM's claims within their specific FSR.
It is the same with Einstein who was trapped within his own FSR, thus unable to agree with the facts of QM from the QM FSR.

Note the "HINT" 56% of philosophers in a survey are moral realists who believe in moral facts, only 28% are moral-anti-realists.

[Veritas Aequitas]

I agree it's rational to appeal to facts when we make moral assertions.
But that doesn't mean those moral assertions are facts, or that facts can entail moral conclusions. And that's why morality isn't and can't be objective.

Yes, moral assertions are merely assertions [thoughts, talks, description, expressions] related to moral facts [intuited or justified as real].

But claims of Moral facts must be justified and verified within a moral FSK/FSR, thus moral facts has their corresponding real referent.
These Justified True Moral facts are adopted as moral standards within the Moral Framework and System.
Where moral assertions or actual acts do not conform to the moral standard, there are variances/ deviations from the moral standard, which can be regarded as morally wrong.

What is critical is not on the term 'morally wrong' but the force that the variance [moral gap] from the moral standard must trigger one to strive for moral progress towards the moral standard i.e. the moral fact.

[Peter Holmes]

I agree it's rational to appeal to facts when we make moral assertions.
But that doesn't mean those moral assertions are facts, or that facts can entail moral conclusions. And that's why morality isn't and can't be objective.

Yes, moral assertions are merely assertions [thoughts, talks, description, expressions] related to moral facts [intuited or justified as real].

But claims of Moral facts must be justified and verified within a moral FSK/FSR, thus moral facts has their corresponding real referent.
These Justified True Moral facts are adopted as moral standards within the Moral Framework and System.
Where moral assertions or actual acts do not conform to the moral standard, there are variances/ deviations from the moral standard, which can be regarded as morally wrong.

What is critical is not on the term 'morally wrong' but the force that the variance [moral gap] from the moral standard must trigger one to strive for moral progress towards the moral standard i.e. the moral fact.

But a moral standard isn't a moral fact. The only fact of the matter is that we can adopt a moral standard, such as 'ought-not-to-kill', and then behave in accordance with or contrary to that standard. That the standard is 'programmed' into us is morally irrelevant, just as it would be if we were 'programmed' with ought-to-kill.

If all you mean by morality is empirically verifiable consistency of behaviour with a goal or standard, then that has nothing to do with moral rightness and wrongness - propriety and impropriety - which is what most of us refer to when we talk about morality. So you're arguing for moral objectivity by excluding morality from the discussion. Congratulations.

[Skepdick]

If all you mean by morality is empirically verifiable consistency of behaviour with a goal or standard, then that has nothing to do with moral rightness and wrongness - propriety and impropriety - which is what most of us refer to when we talk about morality.

But you keep telling us that "rightness" and "wrongness" have no referents!
And you keep telling us that metaphysical objects do not exist.

A word which refers to nothing has no meaning.

So what is Peter Holmes referring to when Peter Holmes uses the words "rightness" and "wrongness"?

Or is Peter Holmes trying to tell us that the words he is using are meaningless?

[Advocate]

Morality is subjective in that everyone has their own priorities, and ethics is objective in that some priorities are prerequisites for others and more universally shared.

[Belinda]

Peter Holmes wrote:

I agree it's rational to appeal to facts when we make moral assertions. But that doesn't mean those moral assertions are facts, or that facts can entail moral conclusions. And that's why morality isn't and can't be objective.

All conditional propositions are probabilistic, including propositions that contain 'should', 'have a duty to' and 'ought to'. Plus of course translations of 'should', 'ought to' , and 'have a duty to' into languages other than English.

A proposition of the form “if p then q” or “p implies q”, represented “p → q” is called a conditional proposition. For instance: “if John is from Chicago then John is from Illinois”. The proposition p is called hypothesis or antecedent, and the proposition q is the conclusion or consequent.

E.g." If you are a good boy and work hard at school then you can go to Disneyland".

E.g. " If little Tommy Thin put poor Pussy in the well then he is a naughty boy to try to drown poor PussyCat. "

E.g. " If you kill people then you are a wicked murderer , unless you are a fighting soldier on the battlefield".

E.g. "If you steal Jack's property then Jack will not be happy".

All of those examples of conditional propositions are exactly the same form as

"If you plant the potatoes in good time then you will have a decent crop"
Each of the examples implies effect from antecedent cause.

NB Not to plant in time with the season is a sin against your family who depend for their lives on your labour.

1 I think you're wrong about conditional premises. 'If A, then B' need not be porbabilistic. For example, 'If John is from Chicago, then John is from Illinois' doesn't express a probability. It's categorically true - given suitable definitions.

2 A moral assertion is never probabilistic, because it doesn't make a factual claim that's true or false or probably one or the other. What is the probability that, say, abortion is morally wrong, and how could it be calculated? The question is incoherent.

1 is not probabilistic because
Illinois and Chicago are not caused one by the other but because both are caused by the geography of the USA.

2.If your criterion is to increase or sustain population numbers then the more births the better.Therefore elective abortions are wrong.

[Peter Holmes]

Peter Holmes wrote:



All conditional propositions are probabilistic, including propositions that contain 'should', 'have a duty to' and 'ought to'. Plus of course translations of 'should', 'ought to' , and 'have a duty to' into languages other than English.



E.g." If you are a good boy and work hard at school then you can go to Disneyland".

E.g. " If little Tommy Thin put poor Pussy in the well then he is a naughty boy to try to drown poor PussyCat. "

E.g. " If you kill people then you are a wicked murderer , unless you are a fighting soldier on the battlefield".

E.g. "If you steal Jack's property then Jack will not be happy".

All of those examples of conditional propositions are exactly the same form as

"If you plant the potatoes in good time then you will have a decent crop"
Each of the examples implies effect from antecedent cause.

NB Not to plant in time with the season is a sin against your family who depend for their lives on your labour.

1 I think you're wrong about conditional premises. 'If A, then B' need not be porbabilistic. For example, 'If John is from Chicago, then John is from Illinois' doesn't express a probability. It's categorically true - given suitable definitions.

2 A moral assertion is never probabilistic, because it doesn't make a factual claim that's true or false or probably one or the other. What is the probability that, say, abortion is morally wrong, and how could it be calculated? The question is incoherent.

1 is not probabilistic because
Illinois and Chicago are not caused one by the other but because both are caused by the geography of the USA.

2.If your criterion is to increase or sustain population numbers then the more births the better.Therefore elective abortions are wrong.

1 But you said all conditional (if-then) propositions are probabilistic, which is false. And none of your proposals is probabilistic anyway. Sorry, but you seem to be confused. A probability is a calculation of how likely an event is to occur. If any premise, including a conditional, is to express a probability, then it must do so explicitly. If you're alluding to the probabilistic nature of an inductive conclusion, that's a different matter.

2 This conditional premise about population is not probabilistic at all. And the moral conclusion isn't probabilistic, and doesn't follow anyway. All that can be said is that elective abortions are inconsistent with the goal of increasing or sustaining population, which anyway is false, and anyway has no moral implication. The 'wrong' in your conclusion isn't 'morally wrong'. It just mean 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.

To repeat, a moral assertion isn't and can't be probabilistic - can't express a probability - because it makes no factual claim at all. Talk about the probability of X being morally right or wrong is completely incoherent. Surely you can see that?

[Veritas Aequitas]

I agree it's rational to appeal to facts when we make moral assertions.
But that doesn't mean those moral assertions are facts, or that facts can entail moral conclusions. And that's why morality isn't and can't be objective.

Yes, moral assertions are merely assertions [thoughts, talks, description, expressions] related to moral facts [intuited or justified as real].

But claims of Moral facts must be justified and verified within a moral FSK/FSR, thus moral facts has their corresponding real referent.
These Justified True Moral facts are adopted as moral standards within the Moral Framework and System.
Where moral assertions or actual acts do not conform to the moral standard, there are variances/ deviations from the moral standard, which can be regarded as morally wrong.

What is critical is not on the term 'morally wrong' but the force that the variance [moral gap] from the moral standard must trigger one to strive for moral progress towards the moral standard i.e. the moral fact.

But a moral standard isn't a moral fact. The only fact of the matter is that we can adopt a moral standard, such as 'ought-not-to-kill', and then behave in accordance with or contrary to that standard. That the standard is 'programmed' into us is morally irrelevant, just as it would be if we were 'programmed' with ought-to-kill.

All you can do is insist on "IF" we were 'programmed' with ought-to-kill {humans} without any justifications that it is even possible at all.

I have given loads of justifications from many perspectives [there are many more I have not disclosed] that ALL humans are programmed with 'ought-not-to-kill-humans'.

Here is one mere hint that we can abduce with abductive reasoning why my hypothesis is very plausible.

• That is a fact that the human population had increased from say 7+ at one time millions of years ago to 7+ billion in 2020.

If you have sufficient intelligence that should stir you to ask, what are the facts that enable humans to increase to such a large number, in addition to why the killing of humans by humans [even by beasts and viruses] is so abhorrent and detestable to normal humans.

Warning: Don't jump to think [which you usually do] the above is my ace card premise. As I had stated it is a mere hint, there are loads of others justifications I have on hand an up my sleeve.

If all you mean by morality is empirically verifiable consistency of behaviour with a goal or standard, then that has nothing to do with moral rightness and wrongness - propriety and impropriety - which is what most of us refer to when we talk about morality. So you're arguing for moral objectivity by excluding morality from the discussion. Congratulations.

As I had stated I do not prefer the terms moral rightness or wrongness.

What I am interested are the variances from the JUSTIFIED standards which will drive moral improvements.
The objective is to induce the drive and striving to reduce as many killing of humans by humans to the justified moral fact/standard, i.e. toward ZERO killings of humans by humans.

The general principles and techniques of problem solving via the system approach is that there must be a standard or objective to drive the system activities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
The elements of the standard must obviously be justified empirically and philosophically, e.g. in this case of morality, the 'ought-not-to-kill-humans.'

Since my approach in resolving humanity moral [as defined] is via the framework and system approach, it has to comply the general principles of the system approach, i.e. the need for a standard/objective to lead the moral system.
The standard must be based on justified facts, thus the justified true moral facts.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Morality is subjective in that everyone has their own priorities, and ethics is objective in that some priorities are prerequisites for others and more universally shared.

There is a need to define what is morality and ethics precisely.

The supposedly moral views, opinions, assertions, statements, judgement by individual subject[s] are subjective.

But the moral function within ALL humans, i.e. the psychological and mental state supported by set of neural algorithms, neurons and brain parts with the brain and body is objective which should be able to be verified and justified empirically and philosophically.
Once Justified as moral facts within a moral framework and system, the moral function and its elements are independent of individuals opinions and beliefs, thus is objective.

'Ethics' is a very loose term.
Ethics when defined as applied moral principles within a specific framework and system are objective as agreed within the framework.

For example the medical community would adopt certain moral principles as ethical rules which are defined within their constitution.
In this case, ethics is objective as ethical rules which are independent of the individual doctors' opinions and beliefs and they must comply with this ethical rules, thus objective.

The above is why we have specific professional ethics for doctors, psychologist, business organizations, social organizations, sports organization, etc. which are deemed to be objective as conditioned by their respective constitution.

[Veritas Aequitas]

2 This conditional premise about population is not probabilistic at all. And the moral conclusion isn't probabilistic, and doesn't follow anyway. All that can be said is that elective abortions are inconsistent with the goal of increasing or sustaining population, which anyway is false, and anyway has no moral implication. The 'wrong' in your conclusion isn't 'morally wrong'.

It just mean 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.

I am not into arguing re abortion in this case but on the principle in general.

Re your last statement,
'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.

Within a moral framework and system, in principle it meant,
'this moral behavior won't achieve the moral goal'.

For the above to be effective, we will need to establish a Moral Framework and System.
The moral goal must be supported by Justified True Moral Facts within the moral framework and system.

[Belinda]

1 I think you're wrong about conditional premises. 'If A, then B' need not be porbabilistic. For example, 'If John is from Chicago, then John is from Illinois' doesn't express a probability. It's categorically true - given suitable definitions.

2 A moral assertion is never probabilistic, because it doesn't make a factual claim that's true or false or probably one or the other. What is the probability that, say, abortion is morally wrong, and how could it be calculated? The question is incoherent.

1 is not probabilistic because
Illinois and Chicago are not caused one by the other but because both are caused by the geography of the USA.

2.If your criterion is to increase or sustain population numbers then the more births the better.Therefore elective abortions are wrong.

1 But you said all conditional (if-then) propositions are probabilistic, which is false. And none of your proposals is probabilistic anyway. Sorry, but you seem to be confused. A probability is a calculation of how likely an event is to occur. If any premise, including a conditional, is to express a probability, then it must do so explicitly. If you're alluding to the probabilistic nature of an inductive conclusion, that's a different matter.

2 This conditional premise about population is not probabilistic at all. And the moral conclusion isn't probabilistic, and doesn't follow anyway. All that can be said is that elective abortions are inconsistent with the goal of increasing or sustaining population, which anyway is false, and anyway has no moral implication. The 'wrong' in your conclusion isn't 'morally wrong'. It just mean 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.

To repeat, a moral assertion isn't and can't be probabilistic - can't express a probability - because it makes no factual claim at all. Talk about the probability of X being morally right or wrong is completely incoherent. Surely you can see that?

All what people claim are facts are probably true, unless the facts are tautologies.

Probability is sometimes intuitive and sometimes statistical. There are people who cannot think of any justification for a right or wrong claim however this does no imply there is no possible justification for their claim. I challenge you to name a moral (right or wrong, good or evil) claim that nobody can trace to an inductive i.e. probilistic claim.

[Peter Holmes]

2 This conditional premise about population is not probabilistic at all. And the moral conclusion isn't probabilistic, and doesn't follow anyway. All that can be said is that elective abortions are inconsistent with the goal of increasing or sustaining population, which anyway is false, and anyway has no moral implication. The 'wrong' in your conclusion isn't 'morally wrong'.

It just mean 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.

I am not into arguing re abortion in this case but on the principle in general.

Re your last statement,
'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.

Within a moral framework and system, in principle it meant,
'this moral behavior won't achieve the moral goal'.

For the above to be effective, we will need to establish a Moral Framework and System.
The moral goal must be supported by Justified True Moral Facts within the moral framework and system.

You keep making the same mistake. There's no such thing as a 'moral behaviour'. There's only behaviour that we judge morally rignt or wrong, proper or improper. The expression 'moral behaviour' is a grammatical misattribution. And the expression 'moral goal' just means a goal adopted because it's believed to be morally right. It's another, though more disguised, misattribution. Your confusion is linguistic.

In itself, the claim 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal' may be empirically verifiable. But it has no moral implication - it makes no moral claim. For example, the claim 'elective abortion is inconsistent with the goal of maximum population increase' says nothing about morality.

The assertion 'maximum population increase is morally right' is completely separate and, anyway, non-factual - like all moral assertions, such as 'elective abortion is morally wrong'. Those assertions don't magically become factual just because 'elective abortion is inconsistent with the goal of maximum population increase'.

Moral realists and objectivists obtusely miss out a step, how ever clearly and repeatedly the step is explained to them.

[Peter Holmes]

1 is not probabilistic because
Illinois and Chicago are not caused one by the other but because both are caused by the geography of the USA.

2.If your criterion is to increase or sustain population numbers then the more births the better.Therefore elective abortions are wrong.

1 But you said all conditional (if-then) propositions are probabilistic, which is false. And none of your proposals is probabilistic anyway. Sorry, but you seem to be confused. A probability is a calculation of how likely an event is to occur. If any premise, including a conditional, is to express a probability, then it must do so explicitly. If you're alluding to the probabilistic nature of an inductive conclusion, that's a different matter.

2 This conditional premise about population is not probabilistic at all. And the moral conclusion isn't probabilistic, and doesn't follow anyway. All that can be said is that elective abortions are inconsistent with the goal of increasing or sustaining population, which anyway is false, and anyway has no moral implication. The 'wrong' in your conclusion isn't 'morally wrong'. It just mean 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.

To repeat, a moral assertion isn't and can't be probabilistic - can't express a probability - because it makes no factual claim at all. Talk about the probability of X being morally right or wrong is completely incoherent. Surely you can see that?

All what people claim are facts are probably true, unless the facts are tautologies.

Probability is sometimes intuitive and sometimes statistical. There are people who cannot think of any justification for a right or wrong claim however this does no imply there is no possible justification for their claim. I challenge you to name a moral (right or wrong, good or evil) claim that nobody can trace to an inductive i.e. probilistic claim.

Sorry, but I think this is nonsense. How can a fact - a feature of reality - be a tautology, which is a linguistic expression?

I have no idea what intuitive probability could be. If you mean we can know by intuition that a probability claim is true, the case against intuition tout court applies. What we need is evidence and sound argument, not intuition, which is as useless as personal experience or revelation. Come to think of it, an appeal to intuition is the secular version of that irrationality.

I challenge you to produce a moral assertion that is induced probabilistically - without question-begging - from a factual premise. The burden of proof is yours.

[Skepdick]

I challenge you to produce a moral assertion that is induced probabilistically - without question-begging - from a factual premise.

ALL of them!

If you lived in a society where murder carried no consequences you would induce that murder is "right" in your society.
if you lived in a society where murder was punished you would induce that murder is "wrong" in your society.

That's literally how all epistemic particularism works!

You learn the meaning of words ostensively.

[Advocate]

[quote="Peter Holmes" post_id=484746 time=1607940907 user_id=15099]
[quote="Veritas Aequitas" post_id=484729 time=1607927334 user_id=7896]
[quote="Peter Holmes" post_id=484693 time=1607894718 user_id=15099]
2 This conditional premise about population is not probabilistic at all. And the moral conclusion isn't probabilistic, and doesn't follow anyway. All that can be said is that elective abortions are inconsistent with the goal of increasing or sustaining population, which anyway is false, and anyway has no moral implication. The 'wrong' in your conclusion isn't 'morally wrong'.

It just mean 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal'.
[/quote]
I am not into arguing re abortion in this case but on the principle in general.

Re your last statement,
'[i]this behaviour won't achieve this goal[/i]'.

Within a moral framework and system, in principle it meant,
'this [b]moral[/b] behavior won't achieve the [b]moral[/b] goal'.

For the above to be effective, we will need to establish a Moral Framework and System.
The moral goal must be supported by Justified True Moral Facts within the moral framework and system.
[/quote]
You keep making the same mistake. There's no such thing as a 'moral behaviour'. There's only behaviour that we judge morally rignt or wrong, proper or improper. The expression 'moral behaviour' is a grammatical misattribution. And the expression 'moral goal' just means a goal adopted because it's believed to be morally right. It's another, though more disguised, misattribution. Your confusion is linguistic.

In itself, the claim 'this behaviour won't achieve this goal' may be empirically verifiable. But it has no moral implication - it makes no moral claim. For example, the claim 'elective abortion is inconsistent with the goal of maximum population increase' says nothing about morality.

The assertion 'maximum population increase is morally right' is completely separate and, anyway, non-factual - like all moral assertions, such as 'elective abortion is morally wrong'. Those assertions don't magically become factual just because 'elective abortion is inconsistent with the goal of maximum population increase'.

Moral realists and objectivists obtusely miss out a step, how ever clearly and repeatedly the step is explained to them.
[/quote]

Morality is not an external thing to be referenced, the behavior IS the morality. If a type of behaviour tends to lead to acceptable results for all involved, it's moral behaviour.