moral relativism

[promethean75]

"Even if I can't produce a sound and valid argument which can persuade you, murder is still wrong."

You'd need to explain what 'wrong' meant, but you'd not need to explain what 'redness' meant. It may be a fact that people call x 'wrong' and believe x is 'wrong', but so far it's just a fact that they do so, and still nothing is known about what wrongness is.

On the other hand, if whatever is 'wrong' is wrong just because people believe and call it such, then we have a circular argument based on an informal authority/consensus fallacy; x is wrong because a majority believe so, etc.

[FlashDangerpants]

But it's not "bad" for me to be an objective moral realist, if you're an antirealist.

Obviously. That an antirealist could hate you and your moral positions (not because they are objective, but because of their effects on the world, is of course possible. They can struggle just like the objectivists for a world they prefer and dislike many positions and behaviors, etc.

Some might blame the objectivists for the worlds problems or some of the worlds problems. But that's not a necessary part being a moral antirealist.

Is Immanuel Can actually a moral realist? As far as I can see he holds that....

• Our moral language and activities are by definition aimed at securing moral truth (to the extent IC seems quite incapable of even understanding any position which casts doubt on it)

• That without the aid of God we are not able to determine any moral fact, and that in absence of thereof we have only mere intuitions upon which to base our guesses.

That's moral error theory. It tallies with Mackie (who agrees both sentiments explicitly), but it conflicts with Henry and VA both of whom insist that moral fact is discoverable through human effort without dependence on the divine.

[Skepdick]

"Even if I can't produce a sound and valid argument which can persuade you, murder is still wrong."

You'd need to explain what 'wrong' meant, but you'd not need to explain what 'redness' meant.

Why the double standard?

It may be a fact that people call x 'wrong' and believe x is 'wrong', but so far it's just a fact that they do so, and still nothing is known about what wrongness is.

It may be a fact that people call this color "red" and believe this color is "red", but so far it's just a fact that they do so, and still nothing is known about what redness is.

On the other hand, if whatever is 'wrong' is wrong just because people believe and call it such, then we have a circular argument based on an informal authority/consensus fallacy; x is wrong because a majority believe so, etc.

Why? That's how language works. What makes Earth oblate? What makes Hydrogen the first element in the periodic table?

How else do you propose we solve the symbol-grounding problem?

[promethean75]

"Abortion is morally wrong.

Abortion is not morally wrong.

If there are moral facts, then one of these assertions must be false. Which is it, and how can we know?"

indeed, the million dollar question. I'll tell ya how it can be done. you treat the statement as a hypothetical imperative, a prescription for how and what to do to achieve a desired end. so for example, if mary wishes to avoid shame and humiliation before her family for getting an abortion, it would be the right action, the right thing to do, to not get an abortion. ergo, abortion can be wrong.

but these hypothetical imperative chains have no terminus. you'd never get to a categorical imperative... you'd never be able to show or prove that murder wuz wrong outside of the context of the above hypothetical circumstances, i.e., murder gets you into prison and hurts people emotionally... getting into prison and hurting people emotionally are undesirable things. actions that result in undesirable things are wrong. Murder is such an action, therefore it is wrong.

but murder is wrong 'just becuz'? that's no argument. that's a bumper sticker or something.

[henry quirk]

Abortion is morally wrong.

Yes, Pete. As you know: murder (an unjust killing; a unjust taking of a person's life) is wrong.

But: as you know, not every killing, not every taking of a person's life, is unjust. Killing in self-defense, killing in defense of another, these are just.

So: when abortion is performed simply to end a baby's life, for convenience, it's unjust (murder). And when abortion is performed to self-defend, it's just; a life is taken, yes, but only to save a life.

And why is murder wrong? Becuz, as you know, the life taken belongs to the person it's stolen from. It's his, and it's his whether he's walkin' around or still inside his mama.

But you know this.

[FlashDangerpants]

I ain't wastin' time on you, flash...not again.

Age, Big Mike, biggy, prometh, veg: say hello to your new roomie in the penalty box.

Let's think about this. To the best of my knowledge, neither age, Big Mike, prometh, veg nor I are arguing that henry's soul will burn in Hell for all of eternity if he refuses to dump the Deist God and accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior.

That would be Immanuel Can.

But no penalty box for that?

Come on, how can it not be a "condition"?!!!

The fun thing there is that Henry has two basic "allies" in all this moral fact stuff (IC and VA), and neither of them shows his theory as much respect as I do. Seriously, look for any hint that they agree with Henry's theory and all you will find is some patronising congratulations for his good moral intuition - because they won't touch his big theory of justice with a shitty stick. But Henry is a huge fan of loyalty, so he takes those belly rubs with full gratitude no matter how fundamentally disrespectuful they actually are.

I've never seen anybody except me ask Henry questions that are actually specific to that big moral theory of which he is so proud. He gets thrown trivial generic stuff about the social benefits of cooperation all the time, but nobody cares enough about his theory to discuss its inner workings, not even Henry now.

That was the entire subtext of that weird thread cycle he went through of boasting how flexible he is and how much he change his mind, but he never even noticed because he just isn't very insightful as a rule.

[Iwannaplato]

But it's not "bad" for me to be an objective moral realist, if you're an antirealist.

Obviously. That an antirealist could hate you and your moral positions (not because they are objective, but because of their effects on the world, is of course possible. They can struggle just like the objectivists for a world they prefer and dislike many positions and behaviors, etc.

Some might blame the objectivists for the worlds problems or some of the worlds problems. But that's not a necessary part being a moral antirealist.

Is Immanuel Can actually a moral realist? As far as I can see he holds that....

• Our moral language and activities are by definition aimed at securing moral truth (to the extent IC seems quite incapable of even understanding any position which casts doubt on it)

• That without the aid of God we are not able to determine any moral fact, and that in absence of thereof we have only mere intuitions upon which to base our guesses.

That's moral error theory. It tallies with Mackie (who agrees both sentiments explicitly), but it conflicts with Henry and VA both of whom insist that moral fact is discoverable through human effort without dependence on the divine.

I would come at it from a different angle. He assumes that slavery, pedophilia, etc. are ok with a moral relativist/moral antirealist. That is bizarre. Empathy is a part of human nature and while some humans are not against those things, empathy certainly can (and does) lead others to dislike/hate those things. But, more important, what is implicit. It is only knowing God's laws that keep someone from approving or finding those things ok. If he didn't believe in God or didn't know what God wanted, he would think those things were ok. Since he assumes anyone not believing in objective morals would find those things ok. Which feels repulsive to me. I feel real disgust with that sort of person.

It's like saying, if it wasn't against the rule, I'd be out there raping kids and enslaving. OK, well, thanks for the insight into you. I'll keep my family away from you in case you go through a period of doubt or dark night of the soul.

[Iwannaplato]

Abortion is morally wrong.

Yes, Pete. As you know: murder (an unjust killing; a unjust taking of a person's life) is wrong.

But: as you know, not every killing, not every taking of a person's life, is unjust. Killing in self-defense, killing in defense of another, these are just.

So: when abortion is performed simply to end a baby's life, for convenience, it's unjust (murder). And when abortion is performed to self-defend, it's just; a life is taken, yes, but only to save a life.

And why is murder wrong? Becuz, as you know, the life taken belongs to the person it's stolen from. It's his, and it's his whether he's walkin' around or still inside his mama.

But you know this.

When is it ok to nuke a city or a military base near a city?

[Skepdick]

but murder is wrong 'just becuz'? that's no argument. that's a bumper sticker or something.

But if I told you that this color is red that's not a bumper sticker or something?

What argument do you need?

[henry quirk]

When is it ok to nuke a city or a military base near a city?

Never. Only way such a thing is just is if you're defending self or other from every person in that city or base, a silly notion.

[Skepdick]

When is it ok to nuke a city or a military base near a city?

Never. Only way such a thing is just is if you're defending self or other from every person in that city or base, a silly notion.

So, not never.

[henry quirk]

When is it ok to nuke a city or a military base near a city?

Never. Only way such a thing is just is if you're defending self or other from every person in that city or base, a silly notion.

So, not never.

Never.

Be careful. You're a hair's width away from joinin' age, big mike, flash, biggy, pro, and veg in the penalty box.

If you have a point, make it. If you're just lookin' to argue for the sake of it, you'll be gone.

[Immanuel Can]

Obdurate cynic? Perhaps you mean rational skeptic.

Perhaps not.

To repeat:

Even if true, non-moral premises can't entail a moral conclusion, such as: abortion is morally wrong.

I've heard your arguments, Peter. And if you believe them, you either have to become a complete amoralist or moral nihilist, or any appeal at all to moral standards coming from you will be rationally-inconsistent. I doubt you're personally amoral, so I must take you for somebody inconsistent.

We might add that the old line, which others, if not you often float, to the effect that they are "sociological phenomena" puts moral phenomena merely on par with all other such accidents of history; it fails to justify any moral assessment made therefrom.

For instance, it cannot be deduced from the fact that one person prefers no murder that I should prefer no murder. It cannnot be deduced from the agreement of two or three that I am obligated, either. So it cannot be deduced from a thousand, a million, or all the people currently on the face of the planet that I have moral obligations. All that can be concluded is that the most powerful persons or groups gets to force the others to do actions they prefer...but all are equally amoral.

Yet I have never met a single person who is able to live as if that's the truth. If you're an actually-consistent amoralist, you're the very first.

And all this dodges the question that the existence of any moral intuitions should compel us to ask: namely, if morality is all bunk, how has it come about that people have evolved an overwhelmingly strong belief that they are not? They may not agree on particular precepts, but it's a universal intuition that morality of some sort exists and is compulsory. How do we account for such a thing even existing, if we presuppose the world is nothing more than an accidental collocation of atoms propelled by some accidental original "bang" or "singularity"? What force, law or set of circumstances has created a universal belief in that which the amoralist has to believe is entirely a delusion?

The moralist may not be able to show the grounds of his moral precepts once the cynic cuts him off from appeals to God, to history, to human nature, to moral intuitions, to sociology, and so on. But that doesn't make the moralist wrong.

It just means the cynic is demanding the wrong type of evidence. He's looking for something strictly empirical, something deducible from facts-presumed-tio-be-accidental-themselves. In other words, his epistemic standard is incoherent. His demand that morality should have material grounds is no more sensible than the demand that physics should have music, or rocks should have minds. He's just looking in the wrong place, and saying, "I don't see anything."

Non-moral premises can't produce moral conclusions.

This is true. But the presumption of the cynic is that reality is composed of non-moral premises. He thinks creation "means" nothing; so not surprisingly, he simply obdurately refuses any arguments that are premised differently...such as that the creation IS a creation.

But he doesn't win much that way, because people don't have to start with his gratuitious premise. Most of us find it really compelling to think that there is meaning in things, and morals too; and that these things are not just inexplicably evolutionary patterns that "pop up" randomly in a mind severed from its evolutionary past.

Now, you don't find that. For you, Hume's argument is a complete closer. But Hume assumed there was no God, so there could be no meaning to natural facts. The only meaning, he thought, had to be an expression of the emotions of the speaker (he never even went so far as to explain why an evolved chimp would need moral emotions, nor did it seem to occur to him that emotions don't require any agreement from anybody else, and can't convey moral duty anymore than facts-detached-from-all-values can.

But if Christians are right, then abortion is wrong when nobody wants to say it is, even if the preponderance of a particular society were to say it's fine, or even if ever last human being in the world thought killing children was just jolly. It is wrong because God made parents to care for their children, and children to be cared for by their parents. That's in their design, empirically and actually. And the butchery of infants is not, under any circumstances, a neutral act. It is always a stark violation, a blasphemy, one might say, the wanton destruction of a creature made in the image of God Himself.

[FlashDangerpants]

But he doesn't win much that way, because people don't have to start with his gratuitious premise. Most of us find it really compelling to think that there is meaning in things, and morals too; and that these things are not just inexplicably evolutionary patterns that "pop up" randomly in a mind severed from its evolutionary past.

That's an ought-to-is argument you're making there. People can find mistakes "compelling" to believe, but they are still mistaken in those beliefs.

[Skepdick]

That's an ought-to-is argument you're making there. People can find mistakes "compelling" to believe, but they are still mistaken in those beliefs.

Asserting that others are "mistaken" in some course of action is an ought belief also.

The implication being that they ought NOT act in the way they acted; or they ought NOT believe what they believed.