Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:39 am
To clarify. A moral assertion is one that says something is morally right or wrong / good or bad, or that we should or shouldn't do something
because it's morally right or wrong, and so on.
Well, yes, but not just that.
A moral assertion is also one that says an action is praiseworthy or base, and even that it's useful or non-useful, or functional or non-functional, because even "function" and "use" are moral concepts. "Function" is always "function
for" something that has to be assessed morally, and "use" is always "use
for" a goal that needs to be assessed for its moral status or which has moral implications.
To say, "This knife functions to terminate Tom's life" is not the same as to say, "This knife functions to remove Tom's cancerour tumour." The relative moral statuses of taking Tom's life and of curing his cancer have to be included in the moral assessment. "Function" or "use," by themselves do not dignify an action morally.
So all value-laden language, of whatever kind it is, is also moral language. And that even includes pragmatic language, the language of use and function.
So your analysis in incorrect. 'Peter has murdered Tom' isn't a moral assertion, so it can't be a moral premise.
Actually, it is. Because Peter has undertaken a particular action that
already has moral status. And don't let the word "murder" become a distraction: we could equally say, "Peter has
terminated Tom's life by willful premeditation," and the willful premeditation of the taking of a life would still be an action with moral status.
As for "unlawfulness," all human laws, such as are legitimate, are mere attempts to approximate the Divine Law: as such, and as a collective, they are flawed and partial. They are not themselves capable of
making anything good or bad; they are capable only of being
attempts to describe the moral status that things already have. The moral truth exists prior to the making of the laws, and the moral truth itself judges the status of every particular law.
Of course - there are moral premises.
Interesting. You say "of course," as if we all know there are. But it's not obvious, on your account of things, that there are, at all.
So can you suggest one? What is a moral premise? I'm not asking for one that is merely premised on human law, because those are obviously contingent, socially-local and provisional. And as I pointed out above, they are flawed. Give me one that stands on its own. Give me one that's "obvious" as you put it, one we can't get away from by pleading temporary arrangment or local custom.
...the 'proto-morality' evident in many other species...
This asks us to assume that humans evolved from lower primates. I don't. So even if we did find what you call "proto-morality" among lower animals like chimps, that would not suggest continuity or analogy with human morality. And in fact, I think those studies are highly suspect. They ask us to interpret merely animal-instinctive behaviours (and you can tell they're instinctive, because they are passed genetically from generation to generation, regardless of all else) as if they were self-conscious social arrangements. It's argument from anthropomorphism, really, and as such, a fallacy.
But as I say, it wouldn't matter if that were the case. It still wouldn't let us say that evolved patterns of behaviour we had inherited from the past were morally legitimate. It would just tell us they were inherited from the past...like our penchant for theft, lying, prostitution, slavery and war, which are, I think, in any reasonable moral view, highly suspect but are also inherited from the past.
...an inconvenient fact obdurately ignored by supernaturalists.
Well, rightly so. As you see, it's premised on a false and contentious analogy that they have no reason to believe.
The existence and evolution of morality is explicable naturalistically.
It's not, actually.
We can explain-away morality by simply insisting that it's a product of the past plus evolution. But that's just instinct. And as I have pointed out above, instinct is a mixed bag of moral and immoral things. What it cannot do -- at all -- is
legitimize that "morality." That is, it cannot prove that slavery or prostitution is moral, just because each is one of our oldest institutions and is inherited from the past, by evolution or otherwise.
So it ends up being an "is" with no "oughtness." We might say, it IS the case that humans have a tradition of rape or infanticide. That doesn't mean we OUGHT to regard those traditions as moral. And if we got them from the chimps, that certainly doesn't dignify them more.
So back to your earlier claim, because it's the one I found most intriguing. You say there
are moral premises. Can you give one?
