Philosophy Now Forum

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 7:58 pm There are many atheists in this world, and we don't seem to notice any trend where the older an atheist is, the more likely they are to commit crime. In fact, consider the US, where ~1 in 100 people identify as atheists; yet data from the Bureau of Prisons shows that only 1 in 1,000 violent criminals identify as atheists.

You're too impatient. Nietzsche knew this would take longer that that.

The kinds of Atheists we have around today might be regarded as only one generation away from the Hitchens-Dawkins type Atheist, who may theoretically disbelieve in God but who are so grilled in Judeo-Christian morality through their cultures that they scarce look much different. Give it a few generations, though, and we'll see if Nietzsche was right. It has not been very long since, culturally speaking, we "stopped believing in God" altogether. Many of our institutions still hold the echoes and residues of the past.

Wait until they don't.

I was more complacent as a theist.

I can't help but be curious: what kind of "Theist" were you, actually? What was your background?

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:So I think that "oughts" are only sensible in the form of hypothetical imperatives (if I value x, then I ought to do/not to do y). When we make moral statements, we're building hypothetical imperatives based off of our values: "If I value altruism, then I ought to consider signing up for that charity run." We don't choose the values we build moral beliefs from, they exist as some combination of nature and nurture. They get revised over time as we are exposed to new information, new perspectives, etc.; but when they do change, it's not because we're deciding them to.

Here's the problem with that theory: "hypothetical imperatives" are only instrumentally useful. They tell me, as you say, what I "should" do, if I want X to happen. But it's not hard to come up with totally immoral imperatives from an instrumental basis.

For example, "If I want my race to dominate, I ought to exterminate the Jews." Or "If I want to control the political landscape, I should have all my opponents shot." Or "If I want to own Cat's television set, I should break in and steal it on a day when I know she's at work." Or, "If a woman refuses my advances, and there's nobody around, and I'm stronger..."

Yes, I wasn't saying anything otherwise. Someone could indeed form those hypothetical imperatives if that is what their values lead to. Correct.

I am describing reality, not prescribing it.

But "ought" has to be prescriptive, or it has nothing to do with the moral uses of "ought." The merely instrumental or mechanical uses are not, in themselves, bad or wrong, of course; there's nothing evil about saying, "The sun ought to come up at 7 tomorrow." But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the sun's morality.

Not so with the human moral "ought." It is either prescriptive, or it's empty.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote: So why did I lose the value leading to "I ought to go to Church on Sundays" but kept values leading to "I ought to care about other people?" I think because I held these values for different reasons: I only valued church contingently on my belief that specifically Christian theism was true, whereas my valuing other people is more primal, more core to my being. It was possible for the the first set of values to change because it was contingent on something being true which was possible to become convinced otherwise. I don't think it's possible for the second set of values to change (barring brain damage or something) because it's a set of values based solely on feeling a certain way: it's not contingent on something else being true*.

Harbal and I were talking about that.

From a Christian perspective, we would say that human beings were "created in the image of God," and thus have an innate awareness of objective morality. This is called "conscience," of course. And everybody has one. Even people in whom it functions less well have one. Perhaps only outright psychopaths don't -- but we can't say for sure, in their case. We just know they don't respond to it; but maybe they still have a conscience.

By contrast, church on Sundays is merely a cultural form. There's no reason it would be embedded in the innate conscience, though it might well be embedded in habits acquired through socialization.

An alternative explanation is that evolutionary history accounts for some common human traits (altruism is a fantastic survival trait, for instance), so we find some commonalities in moral structures around the world.

That won't do, of course.

It might be a fact, let us say, that ancient human beings once believed in the moral precept, "Thou shalt not kill thy neighbour." But as Hume saw, that's just a statement of fact...it carries no "oughtness" with it. Just because, say, ancient druids didn't kill their neighbours does not give me any reason to think I shouldn't.

That doesn't make these things objective truths; it could be that "I ought not to murder" is a common moral belief without making it a true moral belief (which may be noncognitive, that latter utterance).

Well, that's an additional problem, of course. And you're right: that "I ought not to murder" was once somebody's belief doesn't mean their belief was true, just as it doesn't mean I have to think it's binding on me.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:If "oughts" have some correspondence to reality outside of hypothetical imperatives as per the moral realists, it seems as though the onus is on them to explain how that is even cognitive, because to me it looks like such statements are a reference without a referent. What is an "ought" and where does it correspond to reality?

Now you're at the core question. But it's a very serious one. If "ought" does not correspond to anything in reality, then what is its force? Why should you or I be concerned about it at all?

But that is the very world that Atheism posits as the real world. That's the point.

Per Atheism, there is no fact in reality that can be tied to an "ought," as Hume said -- at least, not to an "ought" that is more than instrumental or mechanical, as in "If you don't want to burn, you ought to get out of the sun now," or "Once we've hit the air filter three times with a wrench, this car ought to start." Those "oughts" however, have no hint of moral content in them. They don't pass a value judgment on the rightness of tanning, or say that a car is immoral if it does not start on cue.

But let's take one that does. "People ought to be able to love whom they want."

That is presented as a moral claim, is it not? It's clearly not merely mechanical (as in, if the parts fit), or instrumental (as in, if we want to avoid marches and demonstrations that are inconvenient). The force that such an axiom wants is objective and moral (as in, if you don't allow this, you people are tyrants and haters, and those are bad things to be).

But what validity can a claim made on objective moral basis be, if we live in a world with no objective morality? Then the claim thins out considerably, amounting to no more than an "I want."

And who needs to care what you and I might want?

But this describes the world that we see. Yes, our moral beliefs are similar to preferences, and I don't see how the realist can get around this in a cognitive way. That's the point.

Yes. And if Atheism is true, the realist cannot get around it. "Morals" are just preferences; and they are doomed by the next person who happens to "prefer" something different.

People do hurtful things because they don't value not hurting, people do charitable things because they value charity, and so on. This is the world that we live in.

Some people like hurting others. Some find great advantage in it. That others value harmlessness or charity does not disturb them. Nor does it mean that charity and harmlessness are "morally better" than killing and rape, since nothing is actually, objectively "morally better" than anything else, then.

...most humans happen to value things like altruism...

Is that so? I'm not so sure. I think some people value it. Others don't. But still, both our consciences and our Judeo-Christian cultural baggage tell us we ought to.

For how long?

It does come down to numbers and power, yes, that's exactly it.

Nietzsche said that was going to be inevitably true.

I think you find that uncomfortable, but I think that describes the reality that we see, does it not?

The secular world? Yes, yes, it's pretty descriptive of that. And I think maybe we all ought to be quite uncomfortable with the prospect of losing any moral compass to a world so pragmatic, amoral and power-driven. I don't think any of us is going to end up doing particularly well in such a world. Because what happens is that the powerful rise to the top, and the powerless cannot compete with them.

But consider Social Justice. Does not Social Justice, in its various guises, tell us that "oppressing" is wrong? I don't mean it's impractical -- clearly it's not -- nor that it is going to be visited with some sort of karmic redress -- Atheism cannot support such a faith anymore than it can support Theism. But why should we think oppressing is wrong, or that it is even "oppressing", if we are the winners and somebody else is the losers? Could we not as easily say we, the top dogs, are history's winners, the leaders of human Evolution? Nietzsche thought that was true. So did Rand, and so did Spencer, and so do Marxists, who think they're the vanguard of history, and capitalists and counter-revolutionaries can all be simply taken out in a field and shot.

What makes them wrong? In an Atheist world, they're no more wrong than they are right. The terms simply aren't applicable, because there is no such thing as an objective moral condemnation or approbation.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 1:54 am You're too impatient. Nietzsche knew this would take longer that that.

The kinds of Atheists we have around today might be regarded as only one generation away from the Hitchens-Dawkins type Atheist, who may theoretically disbelieve in God but who are so grilled in Judeo-Christian morality through their cultures that they scarce look much different. Give it a few generations, though, and we'll see if Nietzsche was right. It has not been very long since, culturally speaking, we "stopped believing in God" altogether. Many of our institutions still hold the echoes and residues of the past.

Wait until they don't.

Well, I'm skeptical of that. Sweden has been a consistently de jure majority secular state for a very long time (and a de facto secular state for a while as a result) and they don't seem to be descending into chaos or anything so concerning. Your hypothesis requires that the data we have right now to be incorrect and essentially shoves the question into the unknown by positing we couldn't know until some unknown point in the future. I can safely just shrug and say that I doubt it.

Immanuel Can wrote:I can't help but be curious: what kind of "Theist" were you, actually? What was your background?

I went to a joint Presbyterian/Baptist church.

Immanuel Can wrote: But "ought" has to be prescriptive, or it has nothing to do with the moral uses of "ought." The merely instrumental or mechanical uses are not, in themselves, bad or wrong, of course; there's nothing evil about saying, "The sun ought to come up at 7 tomorrow." But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the sun's morality.

Not so with the human moral "ought." It is either prescriptive, or it's empty.

It is prescriptive in the sense of hypothetical imperatives, but indeed probably empty outside of that, yes.

Immanuel Can wrote: That won't do, of course.

It might be a fact, let us say, that ancient human beings once believed in the moral precept, "Thou shalt not kill thy neighbour." But as Hume saw, that's just a statement of fact...it carries no "oughtness" with it. Just because, say, ancient druids didn't kill their neighbours does not give me any reason to think I shouldn't.

I didn't say that it would. What I was suggesting is that the nurture aspect of your value hierarchy is influenced by your culture. If your ancestors thought murder shouldn't be done and you grew up in the same culture, chances are that you would hold the same values leading to that belief.

Immanuel Can wrote: Yes. And if Atheism is true, the realist cannot get around it. "Morals" are just preferences; and they are doomed by the next person who happens to "prefer" something different.

Yes, that's what I've been saying. Sometimes people do prefer different things than altruism, life, liberty, etc. This is exactly why we see things like human-caused suffering in the world. So, indeed. This state of affairs describes reality.

Immanuel Can wrote: Some people like hurting others. Some find great advantage in it. That others value harmlessness or charity does not disturb them. Nor does it mean that charity and harmlessness are "morally better" than killing and rape, since nothing is actually, objectively "morally better" than anything else, then.

Correct. I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding my position as it seems like you're drawing conclusions that I've already stated are the case. Yes, some people don't value not harming other people (or value harming other people). Correct. That happens. There is not a truth statement about whether that is "better" or "worse" than valuing altruism, correct. We can only judge things from our set of values. It goes against my values to hurt people, so obviously I will frown on people that hurt other people. They might frown at me for helping other people. There is nothing about reality that makes either one of us (the hypothetical sadist and the altruist) "correct" and the other one "not correct.”

Those of us that value things like altruism, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness must depend on outnumbering and outpowering those that don't. That is the reality.

Immanuel Can wrote: The secular world? Yes, yes, it's pretty descriptive of that. And I think maybe we all ought to be quite uncomfortable with the prospect of losing any moral compass to a world so pragmatic, amoral and power-driven. I don't think any of us is going to end up doing particularly well in such a world. Because what happens is that the powerful rise to the top, and the powerless cannot compete with them.

That is exactly what we see in the world, and that is exactly what we have always seen in the world. Religiosity didn't help, it just came with its own brand of problems and its own type of elite. People generally don't do particularly well in the world. People that share values about building societies instead of tearing them down have had to work hard and exercise a lot of power to get a mostly pleasant existence, and even that depends on where and when we are born.

Immanuel Can wrote:But consider Social Justice. Does not Social Justice, in its various guises, tell us that "oppressing" is wrong? I don't mean it's impractical -- clearly it's not -- nor that it is going to be visited with some sort of karmic redress -- Atheism cannot support such a faith anymore than it can support Theism. But why should we think oppressing is wrong, or that it is even "oppressing", if we are the winners and somebody else is the losers? Could we not as easily say we, the top dogs, are history's winners, the leaders of human Evolution? Nietzsche thought that was true. So did Rand, and so did Spencer, and so do Marxists, who think they're the vanguard of history, and capitalists and counter-revolutionaries can all be simply taken out in a field and shot.

What makes them wrong? In an Atheist world, they're no more wrong than they are right. The terms simply aren't applicable, because there is no such thing as an objective moral condemnation or approbation.

It's still about having values. If someone values equality, equity, or any other such terms among people, and they value activism, then they're going to be activists about it. When humans make utterances such as "that is right" or "that is wrong," they're essentially saying "I prefer that" or "I prefer not-that" whether they know it or not. The noncognitivist like myself submits that the moral realist isn't saying anything with cognitive substance when they say there is a moral truth. We spoke in another thread about how humans are really good about convincing themselves some string of utterances has a referent when sometimes it actually doesn't (I used the example "the set of all sets which do not contain themselves"), and I think this is what's happening to the moral realist.

For moral realists' position to be cognitive, they're going to have to give some theory for how oughts correspond to reality. The noncognitivist will just say that the ought only makes sense within a hypothetical imperative, that they aren't truths without that structure.

Edit: we may not have spoken about that, I might be confusing threads. But, I think people are capable of saying things and thinking they mean something when they actually don’t, and an example is when Frege and Whitehead operated under the assumption there could be “a set of all sets which do not contain themselves,” which seems to form a meaningful reference to some referent at first glance — until Russell came along and showed that it’s nonsense: it’s a reference without a referent despite us having the illusion that it’s communicative!

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:42 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 1:54 am But "ought" has to be prescriptive, or it has nothing to do with the moral uses of "ought." The merely instrumental or mechanical uses are not, in themselves, bad or wrong, of course; there's nothing evil about saying, "The sun ought to come up at 7 tomorrow." But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the sun's morality.

Not so with the human moral "ought." It is either prescriptive, or it's empty.

It is prescriptive in the sense of hypothetical imperatives, but indeed probably empty outside of that, yes.

He's pulling an is from an ought on you there.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:33 am

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:42 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 1:54 am But "ought" has to be prescriptive, or it has nothing to do with the moral uses of "ought." The merely instrumental or mechanical uses are not, in themselves, bad or wrong, of course; there's nothing evil about saying, "The sun ought to come up at 7 tomorrow." But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the sun's morality.

Not so with the human moral "ought." It is either prescriptive, or it's empty.

It is prescriptive in the sense of hypothetical imperatives, but indeed probably empty outside of that, yes.

He's pulling an is from an ought on you there.

Yes, I think that’s fundamentally the moral realist’s mistake.

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 10:46 am Yes, I think that’s fundamentally the moral realist’s mistake.

IC doesn't make mistakes, if he does it, he knows he's doing it.

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:42 am Sweden has been a consistently de jure majority secular state for a very long time (and a de facto secular state for a while as a result) and they don't seem to be descending into chaos or anything so concerning.

Chaos? Hmmm. That depends on what you are prepared to accept. Their policies have certainly led them into some profound social problems, with gangs now roving Malmo and Stockholm, and areas of both cities where it's simply not safe to go, at any time. Something's hugely wrong there, and very likely to get worse. It's no paradise now, if it ever was.

But just look around you. Look at LA or San Fran, for instance. And ask yourself, have mores changed in the US or UK in the last half century? But half a century ago, a nominal religiosity characterized most of public life in both countries. It hasn't taken long, and we're seeing profound social decay going on.

Total chaos it may not yet be: but it's clear what direction we're now moving.

Immanuel Can wrote:I can't help but be curious: what kind of "Theist" were you, actually? What was your background?

I went to a joint Presbyterian/Baptist church.

Interesting. I'm familiar with them. I'm tempted to ask more, but will restrain my curiousity.

What I was suggesting is that the nurture aspect of your value hierarchy is influenced by your culture.

Oh, that seems so obvious as to be a truism. But it's not a very telling statement.

If your ancestors thought murder shouldn't be done and you grew up in the same culture, chances are that you would hold the same values leading to that belief.

Indeed so. But would those belief be justified? That's the key question. And would they prove durable? For how long, especially once people started to realize they were totally arbitrary?

Immanuel Can wrote: Some people like hurting others. Some find great advantage in it. That others value harmlessness or charity does not disturb them. Nor does it mean that charity and harmlessness are "morally better" than killing and rape, since nothing is actually, objectively "morally better" than anything else, then.

Correct.

Wow. That's one heck of a pill to swallow. Are you sure you want to do that? It has awfully unsavoury implications.

We can only judge things from our set of values.

But are those values objective or merely subjective, one might ask? For it makes a world of difference which one thinks it is.

If what our "values" are telling us is simply what I feel I prefer at a given moment, or what my arbitrary society indoctrinated me into supposing, then there's nothing defensible about any value I have...including, "You should love whom you want."

When the Southern Democrats had slaves, that wasn't wrong, because Southern culture gave them that value. And freeing the slaves wasn't "right," because nothing is. And in the Palestinian territories or Saudi, homosexuals are thrown off rooftops or set on fire. But that isn't "bad," per se, because nothing is actually "bad." And when rapes or pedophile assaults take place, they aren't "bad" either...because nothing is. And if our own society, in future, should for some reason become more conservative on these issues, it won't be wrong if they do such things again...

Is that the pill you'll be willing to swallow? That's the full implication, after all.

Those of us that value things like altruism, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness must depend on outnumbering and outpowering those that don't. That is the reality.

But for most of history, and in most of the world today, we have not succeeded in that. Those who believe as you do have been in the vast minority. And history, being indifferent to such things, will not guarantee us that the future will be more American than the past.

For most of history, and in most of the world, women have been significantly less important and more powerless than men...and children, lower still on the chain. Blacks have been captured and sold to Arab traders across the Sahara, or to other traders in places like Brazil, and even a lesser number to the US, of course, as you know. For most of history, barbarities of all kinds have been perpetrated, and few so common as war. But none of these is wrong, so long as the perpetrator has more power?

Power is a dangerous ally. It can turn on you in very short order. And those who live by that sword have a tendency also to die by it.

Immanuel Can wrote: The secular world? Yes, yes, it's pretty descriptive of that. And I think maybe we all ought to be quite uncomfortable with the prospect of losing any moral compass to a world so pragmatic, amoral and power-driven. I don't think any of us is going to end up doing particularly well in such a world. Because what happens is that the powerful rise to the top, and the powerless cannot compete with them.

That is exactly what we see in the world, and that is exactly what we have always seen in the world. [/quote]
And yet, by the lights you suggest, that's not wrong. Subjectively, that's what the people with power happened to value.

Immanuel Can wrote:But consider Social Justice. Does not Social Justice, in its various guises, tell us that "oppressing" is wrong? I don't mean it's impractical -- clearly it's not -- nor that it is going to be visited with some sort of karmic redress -- Atheism cannot support such a faith anymore than it can support Theism. But why should we think oppressing is wrong, or that it is even "oppressing", if we are the winners and somebody else is the losers? Could we not as easily say we, the top dogs, are history's winners, the leaders of human Evolution? Nietzsche thought that was true. So did Rand, and so did Spencer, and so do Marxists, who think they're the vanguard of history, and capitalists and counter-revolutionaries can all be simply taken out in a field and shot.

What makes them wrong? In an Atheist world, they're no more wrong than they are right. The terms simply aren't applicable, because there is no such thing as an objective moral condemnation or approbation.

It's still about having values.

And yet, the perpetrators of these frauds, like all the perpetrators of historical oppression and exploitation, had values. That's one thing you could say about them. But can we say their values were "wrong"?

The noncognitivist like myself submits that the moral realist isn't saying anything with cognitive substance when they say there is a moral truth.

Yes, I understand that's the supposition. And yet, so mamy who would, in theory, regard themselves as noncognitivists (if they could explain their view; many can't), also would be stridently convinced that, say, "oppression" is really wrong. In fact, if it's not, then what are they saying? Are they holding up signs we are to understand as meaning, "Oppression is okay, if you think it is?" Is the sign that says, "My body, my choice" meant only to convey, "I think it's my body, and I happen to be of the opinion it should be my choice -- but you don't have to be?" If so, why are they even holding the sign? To whom are they 'talking,' and what are they trying to convey, that the moral noncognitivist might not already believe?

If I can know, simply by valuing something, that it's okay, morally speaking, then what if I value the feeling of really grinding women's faces in the dirt, or I like the idea of my race's power ruling everything? Noncognitively, why shouldn't I?

Of course, this goes back to your earlier claim that the lack of objective morality might not be problematic. If it isn't, then what's the big deal with Social Justice? It's then not "problematic" if a power greater than the numbers of lesbians in an area wishes to see them abused or extinguished. That's just what happens to be their "values." And they have the power to do it. What grounds for any plea for "justice" do you have to offer to women who are faced with such oppression? There's no objectivity to "justice" itself, it seems.

For moral realists' position to be cognitive, they're going to have to give some theory for how oughts correspond to reality.

Of course. That's an epistemic problem, rather than a rational-ontological one. It's real enough, but it pertains to psychology, not truth.

The truth problem is prior. Whether or not any values are objective will not depend on the existence of such a theory. The theory will provide only justification or explanatory power; but the objective truth about morality will not change, of course. If it's (in truth) noncognitive, it will remain so, regardless of my attempts to justify objective morals. But likewise, if morals are actually objective, my wish that they were not, and all my efforts to convince others of the same, will change nothing.

So it's suppositional, at root. It depends on one's ontology, one's worldview, one might say. Whatever the objective truth is, some worldviews can rationalize an objective account of morality, and some never can. And I'm merely suggesting that rationally, Atheism is utterly incapable of offering any reason to believe morality is objective...leaving us with the unsavoury conclusions I have pointed out, above.

Edit: we may not have spoken about that, I might be confusing threads. But, I think people are capable of saying things and thinking they mean something when they actually don’t, and an example is when Frege and Whitehead operated under the assumption there could be “a set of all sets which do not contain themselves,” which seems to form a meaningful reference to some referent at first glance — until Russell came along and showed that it’s nonsense: it’s a reference without a referent despite us having the illusion that it’s communicative!

We haven't spoken about this so far, I think. But it's interesting.

Russell is, for one of the few times in his philosophical life, right about this one. It's like "married bachelor" or "square circle." We humans can form concepts for which there is no objective referent. Unicorns, for example. Or we can articulate paradoxes and self-contradictions and oxymorons.

"Subjective morality" is one of them. If it's "subjective," then it's not actually "moral": because "moral" implies "oughtness," and "subjectivity" implies the impossibility of moral "oughtness."

What we would have to say, to undo the oxymoronic implication there, is that the fact that people hold moral claims is objectively true; but this doesn't help us, because it just means, "Objectively, people happen to like to delude themselves about morality." It does not imply, "Objectively, what they happen to believe is also true."

Harbal wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:05 am

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 10:46 am Yes, I think that’s fundamentally the moral realist’s mistake.

IC doesn't make mistakes, if he does it, he knows he's doing it.

I never make mistrakes.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:33 am He's pulling an is from an ought on you there.

That would be backwards. It's "an OUGHT from an IS" there.

But no, I'm not. I'm just discussing the logical implications of the objectivist versus subjectivist view of morality.

If there is no "oughtness" implied in a moral claim, then it is not obligatory, binding, right or requirable from anybody. It's a completely empty utterance.

"Take the whip to all women" may be a claim Nietzsche made (he did, by the way). It's not clear he could thereby oblige you to do it. It lacks "oughtness," unless he meant, "It's morally obligatory for you to beat women."

omg he wasn't implying that one should beat women man he was just fuckin with Lou in that picture. They had a kinky student-professor thing for a while that didn't work out in the end because Fritz had a dad bod and Lou was a hottie.

https://youtu.be/5gQUCqEQVLI

promethean75 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:05 pm omg he wasn't implying that one should beat women man he was just fuckin with Lou in that picture. They had a kinky student-professor thing for a while that didn't work out in the end because Fritz had a dad bod and Lou was a hottie.

Who cares, either way? Nietzsche's dead, and shall whip no more women.

Let that be. We need not argue, for either way, it makes no difference.

The challenge is simply this: to show, from some subjectivist-moralist point of view, that somebody could (morally) NOT indulge in the whipping of all women, if subjectively, he regarded that as a fun thing to do.

so you're aksing if someone who thought wipping women was fun would still be physically able to not whip women?

that's your question?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 2:22 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:33 am He's pulling an is from an ought on you there.

That would be backwards. It's "an OUGHT from an IS" there.

But no, I'm not. I'm just discussing the logical implications of the objectivist versus subjectivist view of morality.

If you form an argument that X must be true otherwise Y... if Y is an ought , then you have argued from an ought to an is.

The cat lady suggested that all imperatives are hypothecated on subjective values. You complained that this is not the case because then morality can't do what you think it ought to do.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:48 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 2:22 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:33 am He's pulling an is from an ought on you there.

That would be backwards. It's "an OUGHT from an IS" there.

But no, I'm not. I'm just discussing the logical implications of the objectivist versus subjectivist view of morality.

If you form an argument that X must be true otherwise Y... if Y is an ought , then you have argued from an ought to an is.

I haven't done that. I can't imagine why you think I have.

The cat lady suggested that all imperatives are hypothecated on subjective values. You complained that this is not the case because then morality can't do what you think it ought to do.

No, that's not my implication. You've misunderstood, or I haven't made it sufficiently explict.

I was saying that morality isn't what we call "moral" if it has no "oughtness" in it. Moral and "oughtness" are essentially synonyms, or at least sine qua nons.

Think it through carefully. You'll discover it's just definitionally right. "This is immoral" implies "You ought not to do this," and "This is moral" inevitably implies, "You ought to do this." That's what the speaker must intend, or the speaker is really saying nothing at all.

What else can it be saying?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:57 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:48 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 2:22 pm
That would be backwards. It's "an OUGHT from an IS" there.

But no, I'm not. I'm just discussing the logical implications of the objectivist versus subjectivist view of morality.

If you form an argument that X must be true otherwise Y... if Y is an ought , then you have argued from an ought to an is.

I haven't done that. I can't imagine why you think I have.

The cat lady suggested that all imperatives are hypothecated on subjective values. You complained that this is not the case because then morality can't do what you think it ought to do.

No, that's not my implication. You've misunderstood, or I haven't made it sufficiently explict.

I was saying that morality isn't what we call "moral" if it has no "oughtness" in it. Moral and "oughtness" are essentially synonyms, or at least sine qua nons.

Think it through carefully. You'll discover it's just definitionally right. "This is immoral" implies "You ought not to do this," and "This is moral" inevitably implies, "You ought to do this." That's what the speaker must intend, or the speaker is really saying nothing at all.

What else can it be saying?

Might need a little more clarifying then. Art isn't objective, I can describe a piece of music as beautiful, it's not saying nothing at all to do so.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 5:44 pm Might need a little more clarifying then. Art isn't objective, I can describe a piece of music as beautiful, it's not saying nothing at all to do so.

"Aesthetic" and "ethical" are different realms.

Something beautiful can be evil, or something very ugly can be moral. Think of Utopian Socialism and cancer surgery, respectively.