Evaluative objectivism (EO) is the view that there are evaluative facts (EFs), which are facts that involve values. The denial of EO is evaluative subjectivism (ES). Moral objectivism (MO) is the view that some EFs are moral facts (MFs), which are facts that involve moral values. In this post I shall defend EO unconditionally, but I shall only defend MO conditionally; I shall explain why towards the end of the post.
In a post in another thread (viewtopic.php?t=24601&start=6611 ), I presented an argument which at the time I believed supported MO. I no longer believe that this argument supports MO, but it can, with corrections, support EO.
Here is the corrected version of the argument:
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EVALUATIVE FACTS (TO BE PROVED)
A1) Any action that causes pleasantness is, to that extent, a good action.
A2) Any action that causes unpleasantness is, to that extent, a bad action.
PREAMBLE
A central concern of ethics is the question: what is good (or bad)? To answer this question, we first need to work out what the words 'good' and 'bad' actually mean, otherwise we don't know what the question itself means. Once we've worked out what 'good' and 'bad' mean, we can then ask if there are any things that are actually good and bad.
THE ARGUMENT
Step 1. When used evaluatively:
- ' intrinsically good' means 'such that a pro-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or anti-response is not', and 'intrinsically bad' means 'such that an anti-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or pro-response is not'
- 'instrumentally good' means 'instrumental towards something intrinsically good' and 'instrumentally bad' means 'instrumental towards something intrinsically bad'
- 'good' may mean either 'intrinsically good' or 'instrumentally good', and 'bad' may mean either 'intrinsically bad' or 'instrumentally bad'.
(This is my version of fitting attitude theory - see further below.)
Step 2a. Pleasantness is such that a pro-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or anti-response is not. There is strong empirical evidence for this. Non-human animals tend to seek out experiences that are pleasant, e.g. eating and sex, and seeking out is a pro-response. This behaviour can hardly be due to evaluative opinions held by non-human animals; it can only be due to a property of pleasantness itself. I have identified this property as 'such that a pro-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or anti-response is not', and since pleasantness is an end that is pursued for its own sake and not as a means to some other end, pleasantness has this property intrinsically.
Step 2b. Unpleasantness is such that an anti-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or pro-response is not. There is strong empirical evidence for this. Non-human animals tend to avoid experiences that are unpleasant, e.g. getting into fights with larger animals and getting hurt, and avoidance is an anti-response. This behaviour can hardly be due to evaluative opinions held by non-human animals; it can only be due to a property of unpleasantness itself. I have identified this property as 'such that an anti-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or pro-response is not,' and since unpleasantness is an end that is avoided for its own sake and not as a means to some other end, unpleasantness has this property intrinsically.
Step 3a. It follows from steps 1 and 2a that pleasantness is intrinsically good.
Step 3b. It follows from steps 1 and 2b that unpleasantness is intrinsically bad.
Step 4a. Since pleasantness is intrinsically good, any action which produces pleasantness must to that extent be (instrumentally) good.
Step 4b. Since unpleasantness is intrinsically bad, any action which produces unpleasantness must to that extent be (instrumentally) bad.
QED
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I have made four corrections to the original argument:
i) At the start of the original argument I presented two facts which I said were MFs. I now realise that they are EFs but not MFs.
ii) I am dissatisfied with the form of words I used in the original argument for the meanings of 'good' and 'bad', and I think the form of words I am now using makes my meaning clearer.
iii) I have replaced 'pleasure' and 'pain' with 'pleasantness' and 'unpleasantness'. This was triggered by my discovery that there are apparently people who have a condition known as pain asymbolia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_asymbolia), which means that they do not find pain unpleasant. I hold that unpleasantness is intrinsically bad, but that if pain is not unpleasant, then it is not intrinsically bad.
iv) I've added the rider 'when used evaluatively', to exclude uses of 'good' where 'good' is not being used evaluatively. (I am grateful to Peter Holmes for making me see that this is needed.) For example, in 'goods and services' (to use Peter's example), 'goods' is not evaluative, it is taxonomic, i.e. it assigns an object to some class of objects. Thus, if my fridge breaks down irreparably, it is no longer good (in the evaluative sense), but it still falls into the class 'white goods'. I imagine that goods were originally so called because they were evaluated as good, but the evaluative meaning has been lost.
Of the five commonly used ethical words — 'good', 'bad', 'right', 'wrong', and 'ought' — my argument only makes use of 'good' and bad'. I have nothing to say in this post about 'right', 'wrong', or 'ought'.
I make no use of any of the following ideas:
- Platonic forms and universals
- other kinds of abstracta
- the supernatural (e.g. God)
- non-natural properties
- a supposed faculty of moral intuition.
In my opinion all of these are woo-woo. If EO is to be successfully defended, it must be solely on the basis of what we have reason to believe exists, i.e. the natural world.
B. Further preliminary remarks
I think we can divide EFs into three types, as follows:
1) EFs involving intrinsic values: an example might be that the unpleasantness of the pain in my hand is bad
2) Non-moral EFs involving instrumental values: an example might be that you did a bad thing* when you accidentally shut my hand in the door, because that was instrumental towards me having an unpleasant pain in my hand
3) Moral facts (MFs): an example might be that you did a morally bad thing* when you deliberately smashed my fingers with a cricket bat, causing me (as you knew it would) considerable unpleasantness. However, as I shall explain later, there are problems with the suggestion that there are MFs.
* It might just possibly turn out that you did not do a bad thing, because the goodness or badness of an action depends on all of the consequences of an action, not just the immediate consequences. (Deontologists would of course disagree with my consequentialism. However, once an action has occurred, all we are left with are the consequences of the action; other features of the action, such as its conformity or lack of conformity to some supposed moral rule, disappear, along with the action itself, when the action ceases. Since this conformity is only momentary and the consequences of some actions can last for many years, I think it is implausible to suppose that conformity to a rule could be more important than consequences. And of course, if deontologists are going to claim that the evaluative or moral character of an action depends on whether it follows or breaks some rule, they must provide reasons to think that this is true.)
The structure of the remainder of this post is as follows:
- first I shall mount an informal attack on ES, claiming that it is implausible
- next, I shall provide support for each of the steps of the argument
- then I shall briefly explain why I do not wish to defend the view that there are MFs, but suggest that even so, EFs logically can guide our actions
- finally I shall answer some objections raised by Peter Holmes to my original argument.
Throughout, I shall pay more attention to badness than goodness. I think all the arguments I offer concerning badness apply equally to goodness, but it is simpler to just deal with one of the two.
C. Why ES must be wrong
Suppose someone starts sawing your leg off, without giving you anaesthetic. If you find physical pain unpleasant, as everyone does except true masochists (if such people exist) and people with pain asymbolia (who presumably do exist), pretty soon you are going to be begging them to stop. If someone asks you, 'is the pain bad?', you are likely to say (or more likely scream), 'yes, it's bad!' You have just evaluated the pain. If ES is true, the pain has no value of its own, i.e. is neither good nor bad, and when you say it is bad, you are merely attributing a value to it for some reason to do with yourself, and not because of any properties of the pain itself.
This is not plausible. The reason you say it is bad is that it is unpleasant — it hurts. This suggests that either unpleasantness is the same thing as badness, or unpleasantness has the property of badness. My view is the latter.
If ES is true, then the unpleasantness of physical pain is evaluatively neutral; but how can it be evaluatively neutral when it pressures you to describe it as bad? It doesn't make sense. The pressure to describe it as bad doesn't come from your personal tastes, beliefs or opinions, it comes from the pain itself — or, more accurately, from the unpleasantness of the pain. If you were just as likely to describe it as good, then there might be some truth in ES; but who would do that? You are only likely to describe the pain as good if your torturer has told you that he'll stop the pain if you say it's good: and you would know, while you were screaming 'yes, it's good!', that you were lying, that the pain is actually bad, and you're only saying it's good to get it to stop.
We all (except, presumably, true masochists and people with pain asymbolia) describe pain as 'bad'. We all say we have a bad headache, or bad backache, or bad stomach pains; I've never heard anyone describe their various aches and pains as good, or even neutral. The closest we get is to say, when someone asks if the pain is bad, 'No, it's not bad.' But what we actually mean by this is that it isn't bad enough to make a fuss about — which implies that it is bad, though it could be worse. We say other feelings than pain are bad, too: 'Dad's depression is bad today', 'I'm feeling bad because I lost my job,' and so on. If ES is true, these feelings have no value of their own, i.e. they are neither good nor bad, and when you say they are bad, this is merely your subjective attitude or opinion. But it's absurd to suppose that when someone says, 'I have a bad headache,' this is merely their subjective opinion; and it would only be plausible to hold that it was merely their subjective attitude if there were people who said 'I have a good headache'; and no-one ever says this.
ES can look very plausible, as long as we are only thinking about external objects. If I say 'that was a good meal', it does look as if all I am doing is expressing my own subjective feelings about the meal. If I say 'Beethoven is good, and current pop music is bad', these appear to be just my subjective opinions. But ES is not plausible in the case of pleasantness and unpleasantness. It is a subjective matter that I found the meal pleasant to eat, and that I find Beethoven's music pleasant to listen to and current pop music unpleasant to listen to; but it does not follow that my thinking the meal good, and my thinking Beethoven good and current pop music bad, are just my subjective opinions. The fact that I thought the meal good can be unpacked into two things: the fact that I found the meal pleasant, and the fact that if something is pleasant, then it is good. The first of these is subjective, but the second is not.
I think subjectivists have been misled by the way people habitually talk. If A says 'modern pop music is good', and B says 'modern pop music is bad', then since there is no obvious way of settling this apparent disagreement, subjectivists have inferred that there can be no fact either that modern pop music is good or that modern pop music is bad. But if the only problem is this apparent disagreement, it can be solved in a way that is consistent with objectivism. What if people are simply being inaccurate or lazy when they apply the predicates 'good' and 'bad' without qualification? What if A should really have said, 'modern pop music is good as far as I am concerned', and B should really have said, 'modern pop music is bad as far as I am concerned'? Both of these can report facts. It can be a fact that modern pop music is good as far as A is concerned if this fact is the conjunction of the facts that A finds modern pop music pleasant and that pleasantness is good; and it can be a fact that modern pop music is bad as far as B is concerned if this fact is the conjunction of the facts that B finds modern pop music unpleasant and that unpleasantness is bad. That is my solution.
D. Support for step 1: the meaning of '(intrinsically) good' and '(intrinsically) bad'
What does it mean to describe something as bad? Consider some cases:
D1. A maths teacher says to a student 'this is a bad answer'. The reason the teacher says this is that the answer is incorrect.
D2. Someone cuts into a potato and says 'this potato is bad'. The reason they say this is that the potato is black inside.
D3. Someone says 'bad dog' to their dog. The reason they say this is that the dog has stolen their dinner.
In each case, an object is described as bad because it has some property or other. The property is different in each case (being incorrect, being black inside, being a thief).
A possible inference here is that 'bad' means something different in each case. Since there are thousands, if not millions, of properties whose possession could be the reason why something is described as bad, this would imply that 'bad' has thousands if not millions of different meanings. (This was actually suggested to me a while ago by someone in another forum. He claimed that, for example, when we say 'a good bridge', 'good' means something like 'gets you from A to B and doesn't wobble'. I think he was mistaking the reasons why we might call a bridge 'good' for the meaning of the word 'good'.)
The view that 'bad' means something different for each object we apply it to is implausible, for two reasons:
1. It offends against the principle of parsimony; 'bad' looks like a simple word, and a theory that gives it a simple meaning is to be preferred to one that gives it a huge number of different meanings.
2. On this view, if someone points to an object with which I am completely unfamiliar and asserts 'that's bad', then since I don't know what the object is and therefore what properties it must have for it to be called 'bad', I can have no idea at all what the speaker's sentence means. Yet clearly the speaker has communicated something to me by calling the object 'bad'. He seems to be doing something like disapproving of the object, or classifying it negatively in some way. I may not be quite sure exactly what he means, but I don't get no idea at all of what he means, as I would if he'd pointed to the object and said something incomprehensible, e.g. 'that's gefluntish'. So the theory that 'bad' means something different for every object can't be right.
What is this something that the speaker is managing to communicate to me?
A reasonable first guess, following R.M.Hare, is that in all of the above cases, the speaker is discommending the object, even though the properties that lead him or her to do so are different in each case. However, I think we can do better than Hare. To begin with, in each of the three cases above, the speaker appears to be attributing the property of badness to the object, and not merely, as Hare would have us believe, expressing their own attitude to it. So rather than saying that the speaker is simply discommending the object, it's more plausible to hold that what they are really saying is that it is fitting to discommend the object, or that the object deserves discommendation, and at the same time they are discommending the object by implication.
But now, what about this:
D4. A patient says 'the pain in my leg is bad'. The reason he or she says this is that the pain is very unpleasant.
The patient can hardly be discommending the pain. A list of synonyms for 'discommend' would include such words as blame, censure, disparage, condemn, denigrate.... These words refer to damaging the reputation of something. But when a patient says that his pain is bad, he isn't trying to damage the pain's reputation. So not all ascriptions of badness can be to do with discommendation.
We can improve on Hare with help from A.C.Ewing:
'We may... define "good" as "fitting object of a pro attitude"... it will [then] be easy enough to analyse bad as "fitting object of an anti attitude", this term covering dislike, disapproval, avoidance, etc.' (The Definition of Good, pp. 152 and 168)
The term would also cover discommendation. So, from Ewing, we get this thesis:
'bad' means 'fitting object of an anti attitude', where 'anti attitude' covers all negative responses, including dislike, disapproval, avoidance, discommendation, censure....
Ewing's idea has given rise to fitting attitude theories, which propose to define 'good' and 'bad' in terms of our attitudes. I think Ewing is nearly right, but I think he got it the wrong way round: 'fitting object of a pro attitude' implies that the attitude logically comes first and the object is fitted to it, whereas I think the object logically must come first. I therefore prefer 'response' to 'attitude', because it seems to me that in evaluating objects, we are dealing with what is essentially a stimulus-response situation: the object is the stimulus, and our evaluation of it is the response.
This is my solution:
- when used evaluatively, 'intrinsically good' means 'such that a pro-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or anti-response is not'
- when used evaluatively, 'intrinsically bad' means 'such that an anti-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or pro-response is not.'
(As regards 'instrumentally good' and 'instrumentally bad', I think step 1 is self-explanatory.)
So, to defend the suggestion that there are type 1 EFs, I need to show that there are (in the natural world, since I hold that this is the only place where anything actual could be found) actual cases of some relation that can justifiably be considered a fittingness relation between some object and either a pro- or anti-response. If there are, then it will be a fact that such an object is good or bad.
E. Support for steps 2a and 2b: two actual fittingness relations
'Anti-response' and 'fitting' are imprecise. There are lots of anti-responses, such as dislike, disapproval, discommendation, avoidance, etc.; and while 'fitting' tells us that an anti-response to some object is appropriate in some way, it does not tell us in what way it is appropriate, or what makes it appropriate. However, this imprecision is only to be expected when we consider that 'good' and 'bad' themselves have to be extremely imprecise in order to do the job we expect them to do, which is to be predicated of pretty much any object we choose, whether anything justifies the predication or not.
What this imprecision suggests, though, is that any actual fittingness relation between an object and an anti-response will do for it to be a fact that an object is bad. The material question, then, is whether there is ever an actual fittingness relation of some kind between some object and some kind of anti-response to the object. If there is, then whenever we get these three things together — an object, an anti-response of some kind to the object, and an actual fittingness relation of some kind between the object and the anti-response — then it will be a fact — an EF — that the object is bad.
There are two such actual fittingness relations: the relation between experienced pleasantness (the object), and liking this experienced unpleasantness while it is happening (the pro-response), and the relation between experienced unpleasantness (the object), and disliking this experienced unpleasantness while it is happening (the anti-response). What makes it fitting to dislike experienced unpleasantness while it is happening is that dislike is unavoidable because of what unpleasantness is like to experience. As Irwin Goldstein says, in his paper Why People Prefer Pleasure to Pain:
"It is by feeling the way it does, i.e. awful and bad, that pain justifies our aversion of it... Meriting aversion must be some fact about pain. That pain merits our dislike could not give us a reason for disliking pain without being a fact about pain." (p.361)
(Goldstein's paper is essential reading for anyone interested in ethics. It can be found at https://www.jstor.org/stable/3750816, and also at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... 8BBADCBBF3.)
No being can do other than dislike unpleasantness while they are experiencing it. Of course there may be other things about the entire experience that they don't dislike, e.g. the being who is doing it to them, or the music they are listening to while it is happening, but they can't help disliking the unpleasantness itself. We know this partly from our own responses to pleasantness and unpleasantness (we like the first and dislike the second), partly from the way we see other people and animals behaving (they tend to behave much the same way we do, which suggests that they have the same pro- and anti-responses to pleasantness and unpleasantness that we do), and we also know because of how evolution by natural selection works.
Behaviour that confers a selective advantage (sex, eating healthy food) is generally pleasant. Behaviour that confers a selective disadvantage (getting injured by bigger animals, eating unhealthy food) is generally unpleasant. There's an obvious reason for this: animals are motivated to seek things out if they lead to experienced pleasantness, and to avoid them if they lead to experienced unpleasantness, so animals that find selectively advantageous behaviour pleasant and selectively disadvantageous behaviour unpleasant are more likely to survive to pass on their genes than animals that have some other behaviour, such as finding sex unpleasant, or enjoying unhealthy food. (Of course humans have now messed up this natural arrangement by creating foods that are pleasant and unhealthy, but that wasn't the case before we came along.)
All of this can only work if pleasantness generally causes seeking out, which is a pro-response, and unpleasantness generally causes avoidance, which is an anti-response. If there wasn't this link between pleasantness and seeking out, and between unpleasantness and avoidance, animals would be no more likely to seek out the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant than the reverse; and in that case, there would be no reason for selectively advantageous behaviour to be pleasant and selectively disadvantageous behaviour to be unpleasant. The fact that pleasantness-seeking and unpleasantness-avoiding behaviour is virtually universal in the animal kingdom is further strong evidence that a pro-response is fitting for pleasantness, and an anti-response is fitting for unpleasantness. As Irwin Goldstein says:
"Nature, through evolutionary forces, chose pain over pleasant or tingling sensations to be correlated with harm because pain, being bad and worth avoiding on its own account, is something creatures have reason to avoid on its own merit." (p.361)
F. Support for steps 3a and 3b: there are type 1 EFs
When I say that the pain in my hand is intrinsically bad, what I am in effect claiming is that the unpleasantness of the pain in my hand is such that an anti-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or pro-response is not actually fitting. This is true, because (a) disliking is an anti-response, and (b) it is fitting that I dislike the unpleasantness of the pain, because of what it feels like. The unpleasantness of the pain in my hand, therefore, is intrinsically bad. Therefore there are type 1 EFs.
G. Support for steps 4a and 4b: there are type 2 EFs
If an anti-response to immediate unpleasantness is fitting, then an anti-response to whatever causes the immediate unpleasantness must, to the extent that it causes it, also be fitting. For example, if something is to be avoided, then, other things being equal, whatever will cause it should also be avoided. If catching Covid is to be avoided, then mixing with people who have Covid is to be avoided. If burning our fingers is to be avoided, then sticking our fingers into the fire is to be avoided. And so on.
Since goodness and badness are to do with pro- and anti-responses, what this amounts to is that if X is good or bad, then whatever causes X must to that extent also be good or bad. If the stomach pain I get from eating too many cream cakes is bad, then my eating too many cream cakes in the first place must also be bad (unless it has other consequences which are good enough to outweigh the badness of the unpleasantness of my stomach pain; for example, it might teach me not to eat so unhealthily in future). If it is good for me to be able to drive safely, it is good for me to learn to drive safely, which is instrumental towards me driving safely. If you give money to someone who can't afford to buy food, and someone says, 'You did a good deed,' the reason they describe the deed as 'good' is because it is instrumental towards that person getting food, which we would regard as a good thing. And so on, and so on, in thousands of different situations. If X is instrumental towards something that is good or bad, then, other things being equal, X must itself be good or bad to the extent that it causes it.
When I argued on these lines in the other thread, Peter Holmes raised the following objection:
(my italics)Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 10:14 am The introduction of instrumentality here is revealing, because it's definitely morally neutral. It refers to something being fit-for-purpose or goal-consistent.... Being fit-for-purpose or goal-consistent are morally neutral precisely because they apply to any goal.... Both a goal and an action consistent with that goal can be judged to be morally right or wrong. And that's why instrumentality itself - this action is consistent with this goal - is morally neutral. A morally good goal doesn't make an action consistent with that goal necessarily morally good.
The view of Peter's that I have italicised would have rather odd consequences:
i) It would mean that when six million Jews died in the gas chambers, which I should think Peter would agree was a bad thing, the actions of the Nazis in putting them into the gas chambers and then turning the gas on, being instrumental towards their deaths, were not bad actions, but were evaluatively and morally neutral — and so was Hitler's action in ordering the killings. Is this really what Peter thinks?
ii) It would also mean that, while my dog presumably has a reason to try to avoid the unpleasantness of being beaten (because the unpleasantness is bad), I have no reason not to beat him, because my beating him, being instrumental towards his unpleasantness, according to Peter is not bad but neutral. Again, does Peter really think this?
iii) In fact if all instrumental actions are neutral, which is what Peter's comment implies, that would mean that while my dog has reason to avoid the unpleasantness of the pain, because unpleasantness is bad, he has no reason to do any of the things that could constitute that avoidance, such as running away from me, because all such things, being instrumental to avoiding the pain, on Peter's view are not good things to do, but are neutral.
I think i) and ii) are implausible, and I think iii) is incoherent.
It's not difficult to see where Peter goes wrong. He starts off by saying that instrumentality is neutral, which is true (in a way); but he infers from this that instrumental actions are neutral, which is false. It's a bad inference, because he starts off talking about instrumentality, which is a concept, and ends up talking about actions, which are not. Yes, instrumentality as a concept is neutral, in the sense that it does not favour either good or bad until it is instantiated in something, such as an action; but when the concept is instantantiated in an action, the action takes its value not from the concept's neutrality, but from what the action is instrumental towards.
Pending further objections, I'm going to take it that an action which is instrumental to something good or bad is to that extent itself good or bad. And since in the previous section I established that pleasantness and unpleasantness are actually good and bad, it follows that actions that are instrumental to pleasantness and unpleasantness are themselves to that extent actually good and bad. Since we're dealing here with actuality, it is a fact that such actions are good and bad, and so there are EFs that involve instrumental values, i.e. type 2 EFs. So EO is true.
That concludes my defence of EO.
H. Why I can only defend MO conditionally
What distinguishes an EF that is also an MF from an EF that is not? I think this is effectively the same question as: what makes an action a moral action, i.e. either morally good or morally bad?
I think an action has to have four features for it to be either morally good or morally bad:
i) it must be instrumentally good or instrumentally bad
ii) it must be intentional
iii) the agent must know what the consequences of the action would be
iv) the agent could have acted otherwise.
If any of these fails, then the action may be good or bad, but it can't be morally good or bad. So if I kick my dog, for my action to be morally bad, it has to be the case that:
i) my kick caused him (and/or some other sentient being or beings) to experience unpleasantness
ii) I kicked him intentionally, and not by accident
iii) I knew that my kicking him would cause him (and/or some other sentient being or beings) to experience unpleasantness, and
iv) I could have not kicked him.
i), ii) and iii) are unproblematic: people obviously do often act intentionally so as to cause some being or beings to experience unpleasantness, knowing that this will be the effect of their action.
However, iv) is a different matter, because iv) requires the agent to have free will, where this means that the agent could have acted differently from the way he or she did in fact act. It is not clear to me whether humans have free will in this sense — or whether free will in this sense is even possible. This is why I said that I could only defend MO conditionally: if any beings have free will, then they can be morally responsible for some of their actions, and MO is true; but if no beings have free will, then no beings can be morally responsible, and so none of their actions can be morally good or bad. If no actions are morally good or bad, then there are no MFs (and, of course, vice-versa), so MO is false.
However, even if MO is false, all is not lost. If it is the case that actions can be actually good or bad, I think this gives us reason to perform the former and abstain from the latter. If avoiding X is an anti-response to X, and X is an action, then performing X, which necessarily involves not avoiding X, must imply no anti-response to X. So anyone who performs a bad action is behaving as if an anti-response were both fitting and not fitting at the same time, which is logically impossible. So performing a bad action implies a logical mistake. (And, of course, abstaining from a good action also implies a logical mistake. As Voltaire said, every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.) Of course this will not weigh with anyone who doesn't care if their actions imply a logical mistake, but for those of us who do, it gives us a reason to perform good actions and abstain from bad ones.
I. Further issues
1) It would be nice if I could work out whether humans have free will. (But don't anybody hold their breath.)
2) Flashdangerpants observed, after I had argued for MO in the other thread, that the ethical theory I was defending was, in effect, 'blunt utilitarianism.' He was right, and that is equally true of this post. However, as Flash also knows, I have a notion that perhaps the theory ought to include some mention of fairness. We debated this briefly, but at present I can't see my way clearly on this issue.
J. Answers to objections by Peter Holmes
Peter Holmes raised several objections to my argument in the other thread, and as there isn't much difference between that argument and the defence I have presented here, it seems appropriate that I devote the final part of this post to answering some of those objections. If Peter thinks I have overlooked an important objection, no doubt he will post it again in this thread. Peter's latest replies to me are here: viewtopic.php?t=24601&start=6625 and here: viewtopic.php?t=24601&start=6630.
1. In one or two places, Peter seems to attribute to me the view that goodness and badness are abstracta, similar to Plato's forms or universals. However, I've never said this, and as I said at the start of this post, I don't believe in abstracta. It's a fact of nature that an anti-response is fitting for unpleasantness, and since badness is the property that enables this fittingness, badness must be a natural property, and so must goodness.
2. Peter disagrees with my univocal analysis of 'good' when used evaluatively:
My view is still that in 'a good game' and 'good behaviour', 'good' means the same, i.e. 'such that a pro-response is actually fitting, and a neutral or anti-response is not'. If Peter thinks there are two different meanings, he needs to say what they are, i.e.:Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 10:14 amAnd in the expressions 'a good game' and 'good behaviour', the word 'good' is being used completely differently.
a) In 'a good game', 'good' means _______________
b) In 'good behaviour', 'good' means ________________
If Peter fills in the blanks, then we can all consider his suggestions. As long as he doesn't, his claim is empty.
3. Peter thinks that MO is morally pernicious. I don't know if he would say the same about EO, but in case he would (and because he's wrong anyway), I'll answer him here:
Firstly, Peter's view that moral realism and objectivism are morally pernicious is hardly consistent with his view that instrumental actions are morally neutral. If both of his views were correct, it would mean that a morally pernicious view could lead to a morally neutral action which is instrumental towards a morally bad result. Pernicious to neutral to bad makes no sense. This is a muddle, and Peter needs to rethink it.Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 10:14 am My aim is to demolish the arguments for moral realism and objectivism - for the existence of moral facts - because I think those positions are morally pernicious.
Secondly, it's impossible for moral objectivism to be morally pernicious. Moral objectivism is merely the view that there are moral facts. It doesn't say what these facts are. In particular, it doesn't say what types of behaviour are good or bad, or right or wrong, and so it can't influence people to believe any particular things are good or bad, or right or wrong, or to behave in any particular way: therefore moral objectivism can't do any harm to anyone. If Hitler believed that it was a moral fact that it was good to send the Jews to the gas chambers, then what made his view morally pernicious was his belief that sending them to the gas chambers was good, because that was the belief that led him to send them there, not his belief that it was a moral fact that it was good. In philosophers' jargon, it was Hitler's normative ethical views, not his meta-ethical views, that were morally pernicious.
However, it is quite possible that Peter's own anti-objectivism is pernicious. What is the likely effect of the general public coming to believe that there are no objective moral rules or standards? Fairly obviously, it could lead to an increase in selfishness and general lack of care for others. Imagine a father trying to teach his son that kicking the cat is a bad thing to do:
Father: You shouldn't kick the cat, it's wrong.
Son: Everyone knows that's just your opinion, Dad.
Father: But I have a strong feeling that it's wrong when I see you doing it.
Son: Yeah, Dad, but that's your feeling, not mine. So why should I take any notice of it?
And now the father has nothing left to say.
Thirdly, if Peter's anti-objectivism is correct, then nothing can be morally pernicious, because there are no values in the world outside our heads. When I pointed this out to Peter, his reply was, 'I'd like to think this is unworthy of you.' Well, Peter can think what he likes, but if he claims that this actually is unworthy of me, he'll be making the same mistake over again: if there are no objective values, then nothing can be either worthy or unworthy of anyone.
Either it is a fact that an action is bad or wrong, or it is not, and if it is not, then the only other option is that its supposed rightness or wrongness is just someone's unfounded opinion or attitude; and there is no reason why one person's unfounded opinion or attitude should be taken by anyone else as a guide for their behaviour. Why Peter cannot grasp this simple point is a mystery.
4. Peter claims that value judgements are never factual claims:
'This thing is ugly' can't be stating a fact. Ugliness, if it actually existed, would be a property of external objects, and external objects do not have this kind of property. However, it doesn't follow that 'this thing is ugly' isn't making a factual claim, because it could be a false factual claim. That's my position, and one piece of evidence that supports this position is the obvious similarity of 'this thing is ugly' to statements like 'this thing is made of wood', which obviously can make a factual claim. If Peter thinks 'this thing is ugly' is doing something different from making a factual claim, he needs to say what that something is; while he doesn't, his claim is empty.Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 10:14 am If I say something is ugly, I'm not saying it's a fact that it's ugly, that the assertion 'this thing is ugly' is factually true, nor that the assertion 'this thing is not ugly' is factually false.
A second piece of evidence that supports the idea that 'this thing is ugly' makes a false factual claim is that if we add 'as far as I'm concerned', 'this thing is ugly' can make a true factual claim. That's because 'this thing is ugly as far as I am concerned' means the same as 'I find this thing ugly', which can state a fact.
In another post, Peter says this:
Peter says 'if #1 is true'. But he provides no evidence or argument to show that #1 is true. So what on earth is the point of this post?Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:34 am Here are two assertions.
1 A moral assertion does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion.
2 Slavery is morally wrong.
Now, if #1 is true, then #2 does not make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion. Instead, it expresses a moral value-judgement, belief or opinion. And an opinion held by everyone is still an opinion.
The moral objectivist argument - that a moral assertion must make a factual claim with a truth-value independent from opinion - merely begs the question, by using the conclusion to support the premise.
That's it. I'll try to answer comments, but I apologise in advance if it takes a while, because I continue to be very busy.
Thank you for reading my post.
