moral relativism

[Walker]

Yes. When I was younger the no abortions ever group was also pretty pro-nuke. So, it's a question I toss out, since I think that's a problematic combination. Not impossible, but expect some gymnastics at least in the presentation. I want to be entertained when rebuffed at least.

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

Answer: Obviously …

Historic rationale for the nuker, is when the nuking ends conflict, and ends non-enemy deaths.
Historic rationale for the nuked, is never.

It's nice to see such enthusiastic moral relativism from one of your little clique. I only hope Henry and IC don't stomp you for it.

I think you'll find that historic rationale is always made morally relativistic by both the winners, and the losers.
Whining about whether or not that's okay is the emotional approach that guides the rationale.

It's nice to see you beginning to venture into the realm of independent thought.

[henry quirk]

Historic rationale for the nuker, is when the nuking ends conflict, and ends non-enemy deaths.

In other words: it's okay to end innocents today if, mebbe, it saves innocents tomorrow.

I shall murder 1000 today so, mebbe, 10,000 will live tomorrow.

I will steal from you and feed a poor person with the loot.

I will lie to you to get you to do what, I believe, is in your best interest.

I will straightjacket you, lock you down, to protect you.

I'll sew your mouth up so you don't say sumthin' that may harm you.

I'll lobotomize you to save you from thinkin' wrongly.

[Walker]

Historic rationale for the nuker, is when the nuking ends conflict, and ends non-enemy deaths.

In other words: it's okay to end innocents today if, mebbe, it saves innocents tomorrow.

I shall murder 1000 today so, mebbe, 10,000 will live tomorrow.

I do my best to be careful with words, although my typesetting skills have deteriorated. To do so is the same as being careful with thought. Your other words are not so careful with my thought, nor should they be. Thus, I shall amend your words, to reflect my thought.

In other words: it's okay to end innocents today if, mebbe, it saves innocents tomorrow.
amended
In other words: history shows that the rationale to justify nuking is that it will end war. Ending war stops future killing.

I shall murder 1000 today so, mebbe, 10,000 will live tomorrow.
amended
History shows that bombing Hiroshima did not convince the Japanese elites to surrender. Bombing Nagasaki, did. Such acts of war are not considered murder, in order to absolve the individual killers, as much as possible. History shows that the American action of fire bombing a civilian population in this new way, as opposed to the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, did end the war, whereas doing the same thing over and over did not. In the rationale of the nukers, this make it "okay" for the decision makers whose job, and sworn duty, was to protect their nuking country and their nuking citizens from enemies who were doing their best to kill Americans the old fashioned ways, and who had already displayed the guts to fight to the last woman and child, not to mention the warrior men.

[Iwannaplato]

Yes. When I was younger the no abortions ever group was also pretty pro-nuke. So, it's a question I toss out, since I think that's a problematic combination. Not impossible, but expect some gymnastics at least in the presentation. I want to be entertained when rebuffed at least.

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

Answer: Obviously …

Historic rationale for the nuker, is when the nuking ends conflict, and ends non-enemy deaths.
Historic rationale for the nuked, is never.

It's nice to see such enthusiastic moral relativism from one of your little clique. I only hope Henry and IC don't stomp you for it.

It (Walker's argument or really assessment) doesn't work as a response to my post because the people involved were not consequentialists, they were deontologists. If abortion is wrong, period, because the fetus/baby is innocent, then greater good arguments should not work, period. If they were consequentialists ok, you can mount that kind of argument. It's not a great consequentialist argument, since we haven't worked out how we determine such things and what the criteria would be for deciding, yes, our analysis, we are confident in it, so we can kill a million today to save more of ours tomorrow. But regardless that's not a deontologist take on moral choices.

[Walker]

...

Well, I think the relevant objective point is, why is all the rationalizing for the nuker even necessary?
Why does the warrior who kills in war need absolution as a murderer, by society?

Answer: The rationalizing and the societal absolution is for the benefit of the nuker, should he ever realize, in the future: My God! What have I done!

It's the secular way to lighten the load, to being forgiven by the society of civilized human beings, for not knowing what they do ... just in case they don't know.

Just imagine what it was like for those soldiers when they realized they had tormented and killed the son of God.

[Immanuel Can]

The bolded section seems like Pete's point doesn't it?

...no, actually.

But it is very much like you to miss the point, so go back and reread my original exchange with Peter, and see if you can catch up.

[promethean75]

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

wait a minute you put me in the penalty box? i can't believe this. after all the philosophy we've done together you put me in the penalty box?

i want you to know you forced my hand here, Henry Quirk... forced my hand into posting the dreaded billy madison link, something i never thought i have to do to you, Henry.

[FlashDangerpants]

The bolded section seems like Pete's point doesn't it?

...no, actually.

But it is very much like you to miss the point, so go back and reread my original exchange with Peter, and see if you can catch up.

Pete: Non-moral premises can't produce moral conclusions.
Bolded Bit: no deduction about morality being a real thing can be drawn from the observation ....

Pete's point clearly entails that deductions about moral morality being real can't be made out of non moral observations.

[Walker]

Historic rationale for the nuker, is when the nuking ends conflict, and ends non-enemy deaths.

In other words: it's okay to end innocents today if, mebbe, it saves innocents tomorrow.

I shall murder 1000 today so, mebbe, 10,000 will live tomorrow.

I will steal from you and feed a poor person with the loot.

I will lie to you to get you to do what, I believe, is in your best interest.

I will straightjacket you, lock you down, to protect you.

I'll sew your mouth up so you don't say sumthin' that may harm you.

I'll lobotomize you to save you from thinkin' wrongly.

[Peter Holmes]

My detailed response to IC's recent post seems to have disappeared. At least, I can't find it - or be bothered to do it all again.

Just one thing though. Here's a definition of 'premise': a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion.

Notice, there's no requirement that a premise be true, or even have a truth-value at all. A premise is just a declarative sentence - an assertion with the general form: X is/was the case. So there can be moral premises from which moral conclusions follow.

But that doesn't mean there are moral facts. Validity and soundness are completely different things. And my point is about validity: non-moral premises can't entail (or just produce) moral conclusions. Whether moral assertions have truth-value at all - so that soundness becomes an issue - is a separate matter.

For example, here are two moral assertions: capital punishment is morally wrong; capital punishment is not morally wrong. Moral objectivists claim there is a moral fact of the matter, so that these assertions have truth-value, and one must be false. And that is patent nonsense. No fact - no feature of reality, expressed in a non-moral assertion - can entail either moral assertion about capital punishment.

And that's why disagreement about important moral issues is rational. It's not irrational - flying in the face of the facts - to hold either moral position on capital punishment - because there's no fact of the matter. And people who claim there are moral facts - which, unsurprisingly, just happen to coincide with their own moral opinions - are deluded - and, quite often, dangerous.

[promethean75]

Skep, i prefer to take an anti-essentialistic pseudo-wittgensteinian position and dissolve these problems with a meaning-as-use theory of language - thereby avoiding the problem of grounding meaning (as your link explains).

the color red example wasn't the best example because of color blindness. but essentially, the state(s) of the sensory data and the sensory organs of the seer are objective facts in that they are certain physical properties. redness is a property of something then. but 'wrongness'? if that too is a property of something, why have philosophers been arguing about it for two thousand years?

okay fuck it let's even grant that you are right, that there are moral facts and that 'murder is wrong' and 'this is red' are the same kind of fact statements. I'd like to point out that what distinguishes the two types of statements more than anything is the margin of error granted for any effective misunderstanding. in so many more ways could i misunderstand, or understand and disagree with, what you call 'wrong'... but in very few ways if at all could i misunderstand or disagree with what you call 'red' or 'oklahoma' or 'heavy' or 'round' or 'late', etc.

when a non-cognitivist or positivist says moral value statements have no content, he/she means something like that. that the descriptors 'right' and 'wrong' have nothing but emotive content and express only an attitude, preference or prejudice.

again tho, hypothetically such qualities and properties 'right' and 'wrong' can be objective. I'm meaning the Kantian distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperative statements. if you set the reason for murder being wrong as 'because it takes a life and hurts others', and claim that taking a life and hurting others is bad, you can say that murder is wrong because it is bad. you can totally do that. but remember the hypothetical imperatives have no terminus; I'd simply aks why murder is bad, and you'd say 'because it's not virtuous'... and then I'd aks 'why should one be virtuous' and you'd say 'because it is noble, or in obedience to god, or a compassionate, humanist secular thing to do'... and then I'd be like 'yo but what is noble and why is ignoble 'bad', why should one be obedient to god, and why should one be a humanist'... and you'd be all like 'becuz to have good will one must be noble, and for obedience to god see pascal's wager, and secular atheism is the way to go'... but then I'd be like 'what is a good will and why should i have it, why should i want to go to heaven, and what if i insist on being a baptist and say screw your richard Dawkins.

there's no terminus bro. we are stuck in an infinitely pro-regressive re-progressing aporiatic derridean loop... and believe me that's not where we want to be.

[Immanuel Can]

Pete's point ...

I'll wait for him to make it.

I'm certain he doesn't need you to try to make for him any point he doesn't want to make.

[Immanuel Can]

Here's a definition of 'premise': a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion.

Notice, there's no requirement that a premise be true, or even have a truth-value at all. A premise is just a declarative sentence - an assertion with the general form: X is/was the case. So there can be moral premises from which moral conclusions follow.

That's only speaking of the logical form of an argument, Peter. And you are quite right about that. We call an argument with the correct form, "formally valid." But you're also right: we don't necessarily call it "true." There are false arguments that are formally valid.

As you also rightly say, an argument that is both valid and truthful is called "sound." And only sound arguments have implications for the real world. Merely "valid" arguments that are false have none: they're merely formally elegant but devoid of truth value. And false arguments, of course, have no binding implications for the real world because they get the facts wrong.

But then your conclusion, after all this, has to be not that there are merely moral premises that can form part of a valid (but false) argument (which is a trivial thing to say, since ANY subject matter can form a premise in a formally valid argument that's false), but rather that there are simply no true premises that can depend on moral premises. For all moral premises are false.

That means we don't need to do any moral thinking at all, and any attempt to invoke a moral claim is simply an attempt to deceive, through the specious generating of formally-valid-but-factually-false arguments.

Is that how you think it is?

And that's why disagreement about important moral issues is rational.

Non-sequitur. That does not follow.

If all arguments about morality are factually false, then the arguments you generate about them become formal-logical, but not rational tio generate (i.e. valid, but not sound, and not relevant to the real world). Replace the word "morals" with the word "unicorns," and you'll get exactly the same thing: arguments that are perhaps formally valid, but entail nothing in the real world.

Only unicorns have two tails.
This horse-creature has two tails.
This is a unicorn.

Formally valid, factually false. There are no unicorns. They don't have any tails at all, let alone two. They are mythical only.

Again, I have to ask: is this what morality is to you?

But if it is, what is the value of making any moral premise? None can be true, so there can no longer be any rational moral arguments. They turn out to be as stupid as arguing about how many tails unicorns have. They're arguments about nothing: and no matter how formally elegant, they add up to nothing legit.

[FlashDangerpants]

It's quite obviously formally invalid to attempt to disprove an antirealist position on grounds not being realist enough.

[FlashDangerpants]

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.

You see the thing is that in his responses to Pete, Mister Can is broadcasting large chunks of a distinctly Mackie flavoured Moral Error Theory, you can see it a couple posts above this one where he is saying that if moral arguments cannot be sound then they must be false. That's Moral Error Theory.

Now obviously he is arguing against that, so he cannot be actively espousing MET, however he is doing so with a circular argument that simply assumes MET must be wrong for no reason other than that such propositions must be capable of validity otherwise they would be necessarily erroneous....

He isn't doing that out of intent to sabotage himself, it's because he's got an argument that depends on God. But somewhere right at the start of Mackie's Ethics he says that the hypothesis of god would invalidate his arguments, but in the absence of resolution of that God question .... and then the next 3 or 4 chapters reads an awful lot like what Mannie has written there.

Thus I submit that Mannie is actually a confused Moral Error Theorist in disguise, he just happens to be one who believes in the Deus Ex Machina escape. Perversely, I vaguely assume Pete is a not-confused Moral Error Theorist of one description or another, if not that, he seems to be something adjacent.