Is morality objective or subjective?

[Atla]

Oh my, you weren't kidding.

You've misunderstood. Under a non-cog description, you still get to use all the moral words you are used to using, none of that goes away at all. And you are still expressing approval, and disapproval exactly as before. But it's not considered cognisable, which means that strictly in terms of what they communicate, they are on a par with a grunt or a frown.

The non cognitivist doesn't expect you to give up any of your daily life activities for the sake of this theory, he believes he is adequately describing what you experience as morality in your everyday life and that you don't need any extra assumptions about assertibiity of moral truth to have your daily moral activities and arguments.

When he says that 'killing is wrong' is the same as 'killing' while frowning, the frown completely, fully, and interchangeably expresses exactly the same content as the 'is wrong' part, not the 'killing' part.

I still don't get it. It says

Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world".[1] If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.[1]

but you seem to be saying that we've just transformed moral knowledge into another form.

The non-cog says there is no moral knowledge, but that's just an aside, plenty of people who aren't non-cog also say there is no moral knowledge. That's been one of the persistent failings of this whole F-G thing, that both VA and IC seem to have got it into their heads that all moral antirealism is non-cognitivism because they've misread that exact thing you quote there.

You have to remember those non-cog guys (overwhelmingly Logical Positivists) were on a bit of a tear and were doing away with all sorts of other types of 'synthetic proposition'. The most influential argument for moral non-cog is from AJ Ayer, it's tobe found in chapter 6 of his book Langauge, Truth, and Logic. It's in Ch 6 because he had other shit to do that day. His real target was metaphysics and ethics was just the bystander that gets shot at the driveby.

So it's never been a question about whether there is moral knowledge, but why there isn't. Nonetheless, the moral language remains undisturbed and the ways you put the moral words together don't change, not for any of these theories.

Did they really know what "no moral knowledge" means, or did they just think they knew..
Ok this is all too alien to me, I'll stop trying to comment about noncognitivism now.

[FlashDangerpants]

No, we cannot. Because the second statement is about whether or not you do something, and the second is whether or not you get somebody else(i.e. your brother) to do the same action. One is about you killing, the other about you inducing people to kill. So without that bridging premise, the conclusion simply doesn't automatically follow.

Of course it follows, we are talking about morality. How to behave, and how to behave towards others. If killing is wrong, then behaving in a way towards your brother that produces killing, is wrong.

But that's not made explicit, unless you include the middle premise.

One of the values of logic is that it makes things we forget to mention explicit. It exposes our assumptions. In this case, the assumption that killing and inducing to kill are equivalent needs to be made explicit; or it leaves the argument possible that since you didn't do the deed personally, you aren't culpable, or not as culpable as the doer.

That's not at all what it's about. It's about the differences in content types permissable for a simple statement with only one element (boo stealing) versus a complex statement that requires the composable/compositional aspect of the concept (a mere grunt not being composable in the same way that the conceptual content of 'is wrong' is typically considered to be). Compositionality is the way we can place multiple concepts into one statement and have it mean more than the sum of the parts, or vice versa we could take a complex statement that expresses ideas we've never heard of before and decompose it into the constituent parts (assuming you understand the words the statement is made out of) and thereby understand it.

Here's a 10 minute video that will teach you Frege-Geach any time you are curious to learn properly.
The Frege-Geach Problem Explained and Debated

HJowever, because people seem to be having issues with the basis of this all, and a large part of the issue I think lies in trying to learn about Frege from the F-G problem.... here's a video about Frege specifically that covers the Frege end of this thing a bit less casually. Get about midway and he starts talking about "Joe Biden is the US President" and "Joe Biden is Joe Biden" not quite being the same sentence. That's the Frege bit of Frege Geach.
FREGE: Sense and Reference Explained

Here's Jeffry Kaplan explaining compositionality, this appears to be a new video teasing a new series, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes in a a familiar direction (familiar for me anyway), this one isn't even three minutes.
The Compositionality of Language explained
The thing to really note is where he points out the way animal grunts aren't composable into complex compositions. THat's why I think he's probably going to Frege-Geach that thing at some point.





I'm not endorsing Frege any more than I am endorsing non cognitivism here btw.

[Immanuel Can]

What bogeymen. The human conscience and its pathologies are perfectly well-established in psychology, it's been studied a lot and is in the textbooks.

The fact of human conscience has been studied. The justification of the content of that conscience is understudied. And the reasons for that are simple: socological facts, like the fact of social phenomena, can be studied by ordinary scientific methods. But the justifications of the content of the beliefs involved cannot be studied in the same way.

It is easy to say, for example, through ordinary historical and archaeological methods, that Aztecs sacrificed captives on their altars. It's quite another thing to show that they were right to do it.

In the same way, it's not hard to show that a majority in our society are against killing. What's harder to show is that a majority is against killing babies, because we do that all the time. It's even harder to show whether or not them killing their babies is wrong. And I know of no way to show that what the majority wants is inevitably right. These are different levels of question, each pushing us further into the meta-ethics of the situation.

Yes, the conscience works subjectively.

"Works subjectively" to do what, though? To point us to nothing objectively true, or to point us to a reality about morality?

[Immanuel Can]

Without any further details, "killing is wrong" counts universally.

So you're opposed to abortion, then? And euthanasia? And war? And self-defense, if you have a home invasion? And killing chickens and cows? And mosquitoes? And all that is unproblematically universal, you say?

Just asking.

You're the one who used a universal "killing is wrong" in an example.

I got it from the article in PN, actually...but I also invited anyone who preferred a different value to substitute that value for "killing."

So find something you think is morally bad...like "rape," or "slavery," instead. Or, if you prefer, put in some positive value, like "rescuing orphans," and make a syllogism that should induce us to start doing it. All of those tasks are equally difficult to a subjectivist.

[Immanuel Can]

Of course it follows, we are talking about morality. How to behave, and how to behave towards others. If killing is wrong, then behaving in a way towards your brother that produces killing, is wrong.

But that's not made explicit, unless you include the middle premise.

One of the values of logic is that it makes things we forget to mention explicit. It exposes our assumptions. In this case, the assumption that killing and inducing to kill are equivalent needs to be made explicit; or it leaves the argument possible that since you didn't do the deed personally, you aren't culpable, or not as culpable as the doer.

That's not at all what it's about.

Read again: I wrote, "one of the values of logic is..." See above.

[Harbal]

Yes, the conscience works subjectively.

"Works subjectively" to do what, though?

It works to remove the need to ask someone who isn't there (God ) what our moral stance should be.

[Immanuel Can]

Yes, the conscience works subjectively.

"Works subjectively" to do what, though?

It works to remove the need to ask someone who isn't there (God ) what our moral stance should be.

Show that. Show how subjectivism makes morality stand up all by itself. Try the syllogism.

You can't. It won't work.

[Harbal]

"Works subjectively" to do what, though?

It works to remove the need to ask someone who isn't there (God ) what our moral stance should be.

Show that. Show how subjectivism makes morality stand up all by itself. Try the syllogism.

Show me God.

[Immanuel Can]

Show me God.

I promise you, if he does tricks on demand to please cynics, then whatever you're looking at ain't God.

But a Theist can do the syllogism for a moral prohibition or endorsement. Why can't you?

[Harbal]

Show me God.

I promise you, if he does tricks on demand to please cynics, then whatever you're looking at ain't God.

I know I'm not looking at God, because he ain't there.

But a Theist can do the syllogism for a moral prohibition or endorsement. Why can't you?

How much longer are you going to rattle on about your silly syllogism?

[Immanuel Can]

How much longer are you going to rattle on about your silly syllogism?

Not much longer. It's pretty clear none of these brave proponents of subjectivism can tell anybody even the first thing about a single moral precept, logically speaking.

I was really hoping to see somebody try, though.

[Harbal]

How much longer are you going to rattle on about your silly syllogism?

Not much longer. It's pretty clear none of these brave proponents of subjectivism can tell anybody even the first thing about a single moral precept, logically speaking.

I was really hoping to see somebody try, though.

Yes, I think people underestimate the importance of syllogisms, you know.

[FlashDangerpants]

How much longer are you going to rattle on about your silly syllogism?

You can do the syllogism any time, it's a piece of piss.

P1: Ice cream is delicious.
P2: If ice cream is delicious, then eating ice cream with a spoon is delicious.
C: Therefore, eating ice cream with a spoon is delicious.

Suppose we assume a non-cog, non composable version of 'is delicious'....
P1: Ice cream yum-yum-yummy.
P2: If ice cream yum-yum-yummy, then eating ice cream with a spoon yum-yum-yummy.
C: Therefore, eating ice cream with a spoon yum-yum-yummy.

But we aren't non cognitivists about flavour, so we don't equivocate 'ice cream is delicious' to 'Ice cream yum-yum-yummy'. And thus, we don't have the problem of trying to force an entirely simple P1 into a complex P2 situation where the linguistics breeak down over compositionality issues.

With a basic grasp of how this works, you can do these all day. It's just that IC will never understand ... even if it dawned uoopn him now, with his sin-of-pride he would for certain just lie about it.

[Atla]

The fact of human conscience has been studied. The justification of the content of that conscience is understudied. And the reasons for that are simple: socological facts, like the fact of social phenomena, can be studied by ordinary scientific methods. But the justifications of the content of the beliefs involved cannot be studied in the same way.

It is easy to say, for example, through ordinary historical and archaeological methods, that Aztecs sacrificed captives on their altars. It's quite another thing to show that they were right to do it.

In the same way, it's not hard to show that a majority in our society are against killing. What's harder to show is that a majority is against killing babies, because we do that all the time. It's even harder to show whether or not them killing their babies is wrong. And I know of no way to show that what the majority wants is inevitably right. These are different levels of question, each pushing us further into the meta-ethics of the situation.

Yes, the conscience works subjectively.

"Works subjectively" to do what, though? To point us to nothing objectively true, or to point us to a reality about morality?

It doesn't "point", it "is" subjective moral right and moral wrong.

[Atla]

So you're opposed to abortion, then? And euthanasia? And war? And self-defense, if you have a home invasion? And killing chickens and cows? And mosquitoes? And all that is unproblematically universal, you say?

Just asking.

You're the one who used a universal "killing is wrong" in an example.

I got it from the article in PN, actually...but I also invited anyone who preferred a different value to substitute that value for "killing."

So find something you think is morally bad...like "rape," or "slavery," instead. Or, if you prefer, put in some positive value, like "rescuing orphans," and make a syllogism that should induce us to start doing it. All of those tasks are equally difficult to a subjectivist.

? I can't think of any moral value that holds under any circumstance. Your example was just to demonstrate how subjective (cognitivist) morality can work with no circumstances added. I also could have done "killing is right" as a universal btw, just as an example.

I mean it was taken from some non-cognitivist article which neither you nor I understand and I suspect now that non-cognitivists themselves don't understand it either, as moral knowledge is visceral first, and then is expressed in language, and they seem to be both using and denying moral knowledge. But we just used it now to explain to you how subjective morality works.

This looks more like a syllogism to me, looks somewhat less redundant, but P2 is still unnecessary:

P1. Killing is wrong
P2. You are able to get your brother to kill
C. Therefore it's wrong for you to act in a way that gets your brother to kill