Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

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Peter Holmes
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Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Peter Holmes »

Advocate wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 5:31 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Dec 14, 2020 8:24 pm
Advocate wrote: Mon Dec 14, 2020 6:41 pm

Where are you grounding morality if not in persons desiring to make the world behave a certain way? What people want explicitly doesn't necessarily represent morality, but what we collectively and intrinsically need to get our individual wants must. If people can be wrong about Why they value what they value, then the fact that they disagree says nothing about morality. And people usually are. Those who can express a reasonable understanding of why they value what they value in relation to other things can help us narrow down which of the implicit requirements are most helpful for universal prerequisites, and that's the functional root of what we use the words moral and ethical to do.
I'm saying that no fact entails or induces a moral conclusion, so that negating the conclusion never produces a contradiction. For example: 'people want this; therefore this is morally right / wrong' is not a contradiction. And that's because there are no moral facts, but only moral opinions. The 'grounding' you want - something that makes moral assertions true or false - is a realist and objectivist delusion.
All words have meaning. They refer to sets of attributes and boundary conditions. Morality is a word that has deep meaning in that it does deeply useful work for us, and therefore, any idea of what it is that deconstructs to pure subjectivity must be discarded immediately. Morality MUST be defined in such a way that we can get a handle on it, and i offer an answer (framework of understanding) which does that work effectively.
Yes, words mean what we use them to mean, and those meanings are social and conventional. And what we call morality refers to what we consider right and wrong, or proper and improper behaviour. Your description of how we arrive at moral values and rules is reasonable, but my objection is to the objectivist claim that there are moral facts - because there aren't. If you think there are, please produce one and show why it's a fact.
Advocate
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Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Advocate »

[quote="Peter Holmes" post_id=484984 time=1608055925 user_id=15099]
[quote=Advocate post_id=484970 time=1608049897 user_id=15238]
[quote="Peter Holmes" post_id=484848 time=1607973855 user_id=15099]

I'm saying that no fact entails or induces a moral conclusion, so that negating the conclusion never produces a contradiction. For example: 'people want this; therefore this is morally right / wrong' is not a contradiction. And that's because there are no moral facts, but only moral opinions. The 'grounding' you want - something that makes moral assertions true or false - is a realist and objectivist delusion.
[/quote]

All words have meaning. They refer to sets of attributes and boundary conditions. Morality is a word that has deep meaning in that it does deeply useful work for us, and therefore, any idea of what it is that deconstructs to pure subjectivity must be discarded immediately. Morality MUST be defined in such a way that we can get a handle on it, and i offer an answer (framework of understanding) which does that work effectively.
[/quote]
Yes, words mean what we use them to mean, and those meanings are social and conventional. And what we call morality refers to what we consider right and wrong, or proper and improper behaviour. Your description of how we arrive at moral values and rules is reasonable, but my objection is to the objectivist claim that there are moral facts - because there aren't. If you think there are, please produce one and show why it's a fact.
[/quote]

OK then, to the meaning of fact - that which is best supported by the evidence, so long as it is sufficient to the purpose it is used for.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:48 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:07 am
Belinda wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:53 am
I am sorry to say, despite all your efforts, I don't understand any further than what you say is moral intuitionism. I wish I could. I present my excuse that much of what you write is to rebut Peter, and I have not extracted the kernel from the husk.
In a way it is to expose Peter's ignorance.
If you have the time to research on
Moral Intuitionism
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29996
you may get an idea of what it represents.
So, we can have an intuition that there's a high probability that moral facts exist. But just to be sure, we can empirically test and verify - and so falsify - a moral assertion, such as 'humans ought not to kill humans'. And we can calculate its probability.

What complete and utter bollocks.

Now, that Trump won the election - well, that's a plain, unadulterated fact.
Once verified and justified as a moral fact within the Moral FSK or FSR, there is no need to calculate its probability.

Your dogmatic and bigoted stance is constraining you to be more ignorant and stupid on this point.

Note,
most verified and justified scientific facts and truths started off intuitively as a hunch based on what is experienced and other sources of knowledge, then formulated as a hypothesis and subsequently are verified and justified within the Scientific FSK as a theory.

The same processes from Science applies to the verification and justification of moral facts from a moral FSK.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Peter Holmes »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:12 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:48 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:07 am
In a way it is to expose Peter's ignorance.
If you have the time to research on
Moral Intuitionism
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29996
you may get an idea of what it represents.
So, we can have an intuition that there's a high probability that moral facts exist. But just to be sure, we can empirically test and verify - and so falsify - a moral assertion, such as 'humans ought not to kill humans'. And we can calculate its probability.

What complete and utter bollocks.

Now, that Trump won the election - well, that's a plain, unadulterated fact.
Once verified and justified as a moral fact within the Moral FSK or FSR, there is no need to calculate its probability.

Your dogmatic and bigoted stance is constraining you to be more ignorant and stupid on this point.

Note,
most verified and justified scientific facts and truths started off intuitively as a hunch based on what is experienced and other sources of knowledge, then formulated as a hypothesis and subsequently are verified and justified within the Scientific FSK as a theory.

The same processes from Science applies to the verification and justification of moral facts from a moral FSK.
All truth-claims are contextual, so you needn't keep adding your condition that what you call a moral fact is 'within the moral FSK or FSR'. Fot example, that what we call a chemical fact is 'within the chemistry FSK' is trivially true and inconsequential. That you keep feeling the need to say it about what you call moral facts indicates a revealing anxiety.

Your problem is demonstrating the existence of a moral FSK within which there can be moral facts. If it exists, at the moment it's empty, because there's no evidence for the existence of moral facts. And what could comprise a framework and system of knowledge if there's nothing to be known?

Argument: all facts are within FSKs; therefore there's a moral FSK. (Nope.)
Premise: if there's a moral FSK, then there are moral facts. (Which comes first?)
Premise: if there are moral facts, then there's a moral FSK. (Task: show the existence of moral facts.)

Oh, and your 'all knowledge begins as intuition' argument is as fatuous as your 'all knowledge is intersubjective consensus' argument. Both confuse how we arrive at a conclusion with the nature of the conclusion.
Belinda
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Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Belinda »

Peter Holmes wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:51 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:12 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:48 am

So, we can have an intuition that there's a high probability that moral facts exist. But just to be sure, we can empirically test and verify - and so falsify - a moral assertion, such as 'humans ought not to kill humans'. And we can calculate its probability.

What complete and utter bollocks.

Now, that Trump won the election - well, that's a plain, unadulterated fact.
Once verified and justified as a moral fact within the Moral FSK or FSR, there is no need to calculate its probability.

Your dogmatic and bigoted stance is constraining you to be more ignorant and stupid on this point.

Note,
most verified and justified scientific facts and truths started off intuitively as a hunch based on what is experienced and other sources of knowledge, then formulated as a hypothesis and subsequently are verified and justified within the Scientific FSK as a theory.

The same processes from Science applies to the verification and justification of moral facts from a moral FSK.
All truth-claims are contextual, so you needn't keep adding your condition that what you call a moral fact is 'within the moral FSK or FSR'. Fot example, that what we call a chemical fact is 'within the chemistry FSK' is trivially true and inconsequential. That you keep feeling the need to say it about what you call moral facts indicates a revealing anxiety.

Your problem is demonstrating the existence of a moral FSK within which there can be moral facts. If it exists, at the moment it's empty, because there's no evidence for the existence of moral facts. And what could comprise a framework and system of knowledge if there's nothing to be known?

Argument: all facts are within FSKs; therefore there's a moral FSK. (Nope.)
Premise: if there's a moral FSK, then there are moral facts. (Which comes first?)
Premise: if there are moral facts, then there's a moral FSK. (Task: show the existence of moral facts.)

Oh, and your 'all knowledge begins as intuition' argument is as fatuous as your 'all knowledge is intersubjective consensus' argument. Both confuse how we arrive at a conclusion with the nature of the conclusion.
Re your last paragraph, Peter. I am presuming what Veritas Aequitas means by intuition is not some mysterious mystical insight, but on the contrary is a short cut of the reasoning process, used to calculate risks when there is not time to focus on all the details of the problem at hand.
Peter Holmes
Posts: 4134
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:53 pm

Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Peter Holmes »

Belinda wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 11:42 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:51 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:12 am
Once verified and justified as a moral fact within the Moral FSK or FSR, there is no need to calculate its probability.

Your dogmatic and bigoted stance is constraining you to be more ignorant and stupid on this point.

Note,
most verified and justified scientific facts and truths started off intuitively as a hunch based on what is experienced and other sources of knowledge, then formulated as a hypothesis and subsequently are verified and justified within the Scientific FSK as a theory.

The same processes from Science applies to the verification and justification of moral facts from a moral FSK.
All truth-claims are contextual, so you needn't keep adding your condition that what you call a moral fact is 'within the moral FSK or FSR'. Fot example, that what we call a chemical fact is 'within the chemistry FSK' is trivially true and inconsequential. That you keep feeling the need to say it about what you call moral facts indicates a revealing anxiety.

Your problem is demonstrating the existence of a moral FSK within which there can be moral facts. If it exists, at the moment it's empty, because there's no evidence for the existence of moral facts. And what could comprise a framework and system of knowledge if there's nothing to be known?

Argument: all facts are within FSKs; therefore there's a moral FSK. (Nope.)
Premise: if there's a moral FSK, then there are moral facts. (Which comes first?)
Premise: if there are moral facts, then there's a moral FSK. (Task: show the existence of moral facts.)

Oh, and your 'all knowledge begins as intuition' argument is as fatuous as your 'all knowledge is intersubjective consensus' argument. Both confuse how we arrive at a conclusion with the nature of the conclusion.
Re your last paragraph, Peter. I am presuming what Veritas Aequitas means by intuition is not some mysterious mystical insight, but on the contrary is a short cut of the reasoning process, used to calculate risks when there is not time to focus on all the details of the problem at hand.
I think that's a reasonable way to describe what we call intuition. My objection is to the idea of intuitive knowledge, as in VA's claim that we can know intuitively that there are moral facts.
Advocate
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Contact:

Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Advocate »

[quote="Peter Holmes" post_id=485057 time=1608115825 user_id=15099]
[quote=Belinda post_id=485055 time=1608115361 user_id=12709]
[quote="Peter Holmes" post_id=485044 time=1608105103 user_id=15099]

All truth-claims are contextual, so you needn't keep adding your condition that what you call a moral fact is 'within the moral FSK or FSR'. Fot example, that what we call a chemical fact is 'within the chemistry FSK' is trivially true and inconsequential. That you keep feeling the need to say it about what you call moral facts indicates a revealing anxiety.

Your problem is demonstrating the existence of a moral FSK within which there can be moral facts. If it exists, at the moment it's empty, because there's no evidence for the existence of moral facts. And what could comprise a framework and system of knowledge if there's nothing to be known?

Argument: all facts are within FSKs; therefore there's a moral FSK. (Nope.)
Premise: if there's a moral FSK, then there are moral facts. (Which comes first?)
Premise: if there are moral facts, then there's a moral FSK. (Task: show the existence of moral facts.)

Oh, and your 'all knowledge begins as intuition' argument is as fatuous as your 'all knowledge is intersubjective consensus' argument. Both confuse how we arrive at a conclusion with the nature of the conclusion.
[/quote]

Re your last paragraph, Peter. I am presuming what Veritas Aequitas means by intuition is not some mysterious mystical insight, but on the contrary is a short cut of the reasoning process, used to calculate risks when there is not time to focus on all the details of the problem at hand.
[/quote]
I think that's a reasonable way to describe what we call intuition. My objection is to the idea of intuitive knowledge, as in VA's claim that we can know intuitively that there are moral facts.
[/quote]

Intuition is typically understand as both a) belief without reason or b) understanding so deeply that answers pop forth as if by magic. They must not be conflated as they usually are.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 15722
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:51 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:12 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:48 am

So, we can have an intuition that there's a high probability that moral facts exist. But just to be sure, we can empirically test and verify - and so falsify - a moral assertion, such as 'humans ought not to kill humans'. And we can calculate its probability.

What complete and utter bollocks.

Now, that Trump won the election - well, that's a plain, unadulterated fact.
Once verified and justified as a moral fact within the Moral FSK or FSR, there is no need to calculate its probability.

Your dogmatic and bigoted stance is constraining you to be more ignorant and stupid on this point.

Note,
most verified and justified scientific facts and truths started off intuitively as a hunch based on what is experienced and other sources of knowledge, then formulated as a hypothesis and subsequently are verified and justified within the Scientific FSK as a theory.

The same processes from Science applies to the verification and justification of moral facts from a moral FSK.
All truth-claims are contextual, so you needn't keep adding your condition that what you call a moral fact is 'within the moral FSK or FSR'. Fot example, that what we call a chemical fact is 'within the chemistry FSK' is trivially true and inconsequential. That you keep feeling the need to say it about what you call moral facts indicates a revealing anxiety.

Your problem is demonstrating the existence of a moral FSK within which there can be moral facts. If it exists, at the moment it's empty, because there's no evidence for the existence of moral facts. And what could comprise a framework and system of knowledge if there's nothing to be known?

Argument: all facts are within FSKs; therefore there's a moral FSK. (Nope.)
Premise: if there's a moral FSK, then there are moral facts. (Which comes first?)
Premise: if there are moral facts, then there's a moral FSK. (Task: show the existence of moral facts.)

Oh, and your 'all knowledge begins as intuition' argument is as fatuous as your 'all knowledge is intersubjective consensus' argument. Both confuse how we arrive at a conclusion with the nature of the conclusion.
How come you are so dumb?
Didn't you read my point above, there is a moral FSK/FSR just as there is a scientific FSK/FSR.
Do you deny there is a scientific FSR/FSK that confirms facts that are scientific?

I have quote the following a 1000 times and yet your skull is so thick you cannot cognize the implied FSK/FSR I postulated therefrom;
  • A fact is an occurrence in the real world.[1] The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability—that is whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts.

    Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.
    For example, "This sentence contains words." is a linguistic fact, and
    "The sun is a star." is an astronomical fact.
    Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States." and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated." are both historical facts. Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief and of knowledge.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact
Question, how are the above scientific, linguistic, astronomical, and historical facts verified, justified and confirmed without their respective framework and system of reality and knowledge?

Obviously facts are not confined to only the above examples. There are as many FSKs as the many aspects and perspectives of reality and sources of 'knowledge'.

Morality is one aspect of reality, thus has its specific FSR/FSK.

You are merely bigoted thus dogmatically and blindly deny the above aspect of reality, i.e. the moral FSK.

Here is one definition of 'what is a moral system'
SEP wrote:Haidt claims that
moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible. (2011: 270)
A Moral Framework and System cover a wider perspective than the above and include that verification, justification and confirmation of the existence of Justified True Moral Facts.
I think that's a reasonable way to describe what we call intuition.
My objection is to the idea of intuitive knowledge, as in VA's claim that we can know intuitively that there are moral facts.
You are putting words into my mouth.

As Belinda had alluded, we can, with our intuition [competent with moral experiences and elements] generate a personal belief with high confidence level [high probability] that moral facts exist.

I did not state we can intuitively 'know' [re knowledge - JTB] there are moral facts.

We can only 'know' [JTB] moral facts when they are verified, justified and confirmed within a credible Moral Framework and System.
Last edited by Veritas Aequitas on Thu Dec 17, 2020 5:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 15722
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Advocate wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 3:24 pm Intuition is typically understand as both a) belief without reason or b) understanding so deeply that answers pop forth as if by magic. They must not be conflated as they usually are.
Additional point;

What is 'belief without reason' is generally term "faith".

However we need to differentiate between,

What is 'belief without reason' without empirical possibility, e.g. blind-faith-God
and
What is 'belief without reason' with empirical possibility - via abduction

I believe, what is intuitive relates to 'beliefs that has empirical possibility, are reasonable and realistic but insufficient verification and justification to confirm it as knowledge of what is really-real.
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