Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[EricPH]

"Treat others as an end in themselves" does not impose some sort of duty to help everyone in need (which would be absurd).

Millions are allowed to die yearly as a result of grinding poverty, and preventable disease. Pretty much a Holocaust every year. Billions are spent in the affluent west on dieting, wars and toys for the billionaires.

It seems pretty pointless talking about moral laws, because we ignore them.

[snt]

Yes, we feel things like guilt, shame, outrage, shock, etc. when it comes to our moral statements. So, I don't think that moral preferences are the same as food or color preferences. Yet, I do still think our moral feelings are a kind of preference. I think they're preferences that we feel strongly about and which involve concepts like suffering and altruism; whereas other preferences do not. Sort of like an "all rectangles are squares but not all squares are rectangles" sort of situation: moral preferences are (maybe) preferences, but not all preferences are moral preferences.

What does one expect when one applies reason, one's only ability to conceive the world meaningfully, to one's moral feelings or intuitions? A retro-perspective (an empirically justifiable perspective) can only perceive of preferences as they appear to be when one looks at other's subjective choices relative to one's own subjectivity. That is at most what it - moral feelings or intuition - can be.

If one would argue that morality is otherwise than a preference, then it becomes tricky. What can potentially be meant by that? ...

A door to 'beyond logic and knowledge'
mystical-door-beyond-knowledge.jpg (20.73 KiB) Viewed 1202 times

[snt]

What is the origin of moral feelings or intuition? Can it be said that those feeling originate from reason? If not, then ...?

🕮 Immanuel Kant argued the following with regard the origin of morality:

"We cannot too much or too often repeat our warning against this lax and even mean habit of thought which seeks for its principle amongst empirical motives and laws; for human reason in its weariness is glad to rest on this pillow, and in a dream of sweet illusions (in which, instead of Juno, it embraces a cloud) it [empirical] substitutes for morality a bastard patched up from limbs of various derivation, which looks like anything one chooses to see in it, only not like virtue to one who has once beheld her in her true form."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/

[Pattern-chaser]

What is the origin of moral feelings or intuition? Can it be said that those feeling originate from reason? If not, then...

...emotion, or something similar or related? What else?

[snt]

Morality as I perceive it would concern an everlasting quest into good in the face of an unknown future. The result of that quest is a sort of intellectual light into the world (from the inside out) that empirically can be described as the potential for reason-ableness.

I'm fond of a JTB (justified true belief) definition of knowledge, and correspondence theory of truth. I don't know what you mean when you say truth can't be defined: something is true if it corresponds to mind-independent reality.

I'm less sure about what an "ought" is outside of the context of a hypothetical imperative (of the form "if I value x, then I ought to do y") though.

What does it mean to judge? What does it mean to believe anything? Doesn't it directly imply dependence, on repeatability of science in time for example. Doesn't it indicate something more primary to have preceded the potential of judging and believing?

What is more primary then "If I value" is the nature and origin of that value itself. What can explain the potential of value?

[snt]

What is the origin of moral feelings or intuition? Can it be said that those feeling originate from reason? If not, then...

...emotion, or something similar or related? What else?

Yes, but the meaning of that emotion? Can it stem from (or be explained by) reason alone?

It is the 'meaning' of that emotion that forms the basis. If it cannot be explained by reason, then...

[Leontiskos]

Thanks, and welcome to the forum. That was the most cogent presentation of moral non-cognitivism that I have seen on this forum (which incidentally is a forum full of moral non-cognitivists).

Let me just poke at two things:

I think that moral beliefs behave philosophically a lot like preferences. So let me talk about preferences for a moment. When we make a preference statement, it's usually non-controversial to say that the preference statement isn't propositional (it doesn't have a truth value). If I snack on a string cheese and say "String cheese is tasty*," I haven't said something that corresponds to mind-independent reality; it's neither true nor false. It's a preference statement. After all, what corresponds to reality about "being tasty," and how does the string cheese do it? How do we check reality for it even in principle?

(*-by this I mean it tastes good, not just that it has physical properties that activate taste buds)

I am trying to understand your argument here. I have a few options:

• Moral beliefs are non-propositional because moral beliefs are preferences, and all preferences are non-propositional.
• "String cheese is tasty" is non-propositional because it does not correspond to mind-independent reality, and all propositional statements correspond to mind-independent reality.
• There is no conceivable object of correspondence for the assertion, "String cheese is tasty," therefore it cannot be propositional.

Is there one of these that you are more committed to defending than the others?

Thanks for the welcome!

Ok, thank you for making me do this. I feel like this helps me understand my own thoughts as much as it might help you understand what I'm even trying to say.

You're welcome, and thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I don't like the first one because it feels really bold. I feel like all preferences are probably non-propositional but it feels like I'd have to do a lot more work to do that one.

I agree.

I want to agree with the second one, but it contains the issue that's being disputed below, so I'll skip that one for now too. It also feels like there would have to be a lot of work to support the second half. Off the top of my head I feel like I can introspect things about my mind that would be true, then I would have to really nail down what's meant by "mind-independent reality" if I want to be able to say things like "I experience happiness," which feels propositional. So, I'll shy away from that one too.

I agree.

I think I like this third one best. I should clarify that my non-cognitivism is more provisional, and so I'm making a weaker claim: I have yet to encounter a convincing argument there is an object of correspondence is closer to my position than "there is no..." (e.g., I am unconvinced there is one rather than affirming the negative).

Okay, fair enough. I will come back to this.

Sure - and similarly there are vegetarians who think everybody should be vegetarian and there are vegetarians who are content that it is a good choice for themselves.

But if that's a meaningful distinction, as it seems we both think it is, then how can you think that an ought-statement is identical to or nothing but a statement of personal preference ?

I don't think that moral statements are exactly like preference statements: I have only argued that they behave similarly philosophically.

As we know, we care more about or moral statements than we do our preference statements. I care more about feeding the hungry than I do about string cheese tasting good. I believe you bring this up yourself down below, so I will speak more on it there.

[...]

Yes, we feel things like guilt, shame, outrage, shock, etc. when it comes to our moral statements. So, I don't think that moral preferences are the same as food or color preferences. Yet, I do still think our moral feelings are a kind of preference. I think they're preferences that we feel strongly about and which involve concepts like suffering and altruism; whereas other preferences do not. Sort of like an "all rectangles are squares but not all squares are rectangles" sort of situation: moral preferences are (maybe) preferences, but not all preferences are moral preferences.

It is true that some preferences are more strongly held and some preferences are more weakly held, but it seems to me that the difference between Good_Egg's two vegetarians is not merely a matter of preference-strength. Crucially, it is also a matter of intent. Their claims about vegetarianism will differ vis-à-vis intent, and the most proximate difference of intent is whether the prohibition applies only to themselves. Yet this matter of intent strikes me as being more fundamental than strength, for the greater strength of the one vegetarian's prohibition is presumably derived from the different quality of intent with which they give voice to their prohibition (and this would mean that intent is the more fundamental aspect). Granted, one might think that many vegetarians have conflated the strength of their prohibition with the scope of their prohibition, but I see no reason to assume that all vegetarians have made such a mistake.

Ok. So, I agree that there's a difference between the strength of a held preference and the breadth of a held preference (e.g., "this is my preference" and "this ought to be others' preference, or even if it's not, they ought to do it anyway"). The intents behind these are different, and important. I agree.

I was primarily interested in intent, but we can look at breadth as well.

I think regardless of the breadth (whether I believe "I ought not to eat meat" or "Nobody ought to eat meat"), the same sort of thing is going on, so I didn't think it was important to focus on that difference.

What I think is going on is that people have values from which they build oughts out of hypothetical imperatives: if I value x, then I ought to do y. In the case of breadth, the "y" that we do just includes "I ought to tell that guy over there to stop doing that." I think that we're only in charge of our own oughts, but the oughts we can come up with can include feeling like we ought to get others to go with our point of view (I can object to murder not because there's something about the universe that says murder is wrong, but because I value life, and since I value life, I ought to try to preserve it, and that includes telling someone else to knock off that murdering stuff they're trying to do; or putting them in prison so they can't do it any more!)

So we might say that, "If I value X, and someone is harming X, then I should impede them." There are two different ways someone can be impeded: coercion or persuasion. You seem to have drawn the conclusion that the moralist is irrational and unpersuasive, and therefore must resort to some form of coercion. That is, since there are no sound arguments for "ought claims," persuasion is not possible. The only exception would be cases where the moralist fortuitously encounters someone who holds the same axiomatic values that he does; but the values themselves are not susceptible to scrutiny or argument (or truth and falsity).

I think with breadth (when the ought "feels" like it applies to others and not just us), that is where the illusion of moral realism comes from. People feel like the ought is "out there" in the universe, and that the other people are subject to this ought "out there." But really, when we feel moral outrage, we are feeling our own hypothetical imperative to stop them from harming or interfering with what we value. If I value altruism and someone disgustingly rich doesn't even lift a finger to help the less fortunate, I feel outrage because they're harming my value...

To be clear, I am a moral realist and I think much of your analysis of moral realists is mistaken, and I think it is mistaken in ways that are transparent to reason. That is, I think you are likely to eventually agree that some of your own analysis is mistaken. There are some rough areas in your theory. The first is the matter of intent, a second is the "axiomaticity" of value, and a third is this matter of moral outrage.

With regard to the third area and the text from your quote which I bolded, it seems to me that moral outrage is altogether different than the defense of a value. If I value my house and termites invade then I will call Orkin, and if I value my wife and she is diagnosed with cancer, then I will consult an oncologist, but I do not express moral outrage at the termites or the cancerous cells. Moral outrage is rather a response to the culpably bad behavior of an agent who has free will (and is therefore responsible for their behavior).

Let's take hypocrisy rather than altruism, because it is an easier case. Now if hypocrisy is a vice, then the corresponding virtue must be something like integrity. When someone rebukes a hypocrite we might provide an analysis which says that the one rebuking holds a value (integrity); the one being rebuked has harmed or interfered with her value (hypocrisy); and therefore in order to defend her value she must rebuke the hypocrite. That is an interesting analysis, but it feels a bit clumsy to me. It feels clumsy because it gives the impression that some object is valued which must then be defended from those who would harm or dishonor it. But is that really what is happening when we form moral judgments? It seems to me that what is valued is rather some norm of behavior and little else. The hypocrite has not transgressed a valued object; he has acted badly, in a way unbecoming of human beings. We might say that he is "Behaving like a brute," or that, "He should know better."

Whether or not you agree that the value-object approach is clumsy, all of this runs right into the second question of the axiomaticity of value. Presumably if you ask someone why they value X, they will tell you that they value X because it is (objectively) valuable. This moves us back to intent, for it leads us to the idea that the interpretation of the moral realist's locution is at variance with the intent of their locution. To say that the moral realist is merely talking about preferences or axiomatic values when they themselves clearly deny this interpretation is to "put words in their mouth" (or more precisely, "intentions in their minds"). ...And it may be that we are in agreement here, and the only question is where the supposed error of the moral realist lies.

So an implication of Good_Egg's observation seems to be that you are imputing an intent to the speaker of S1 that contradicts his own intent. That is, when he says that string cheese is tasty he is intending to speak about something beyond his preferences, and yet you have strangely circumscribed his speech to speech about preferences. If you agree with my analysis, then what do you think is going on here? Is the speaker of S1 hopelessly confused?

What I'm saying is more like this. I have seen people somewhat jokingly say about this or that thing, "I don't care what anyone says, [some subjective thing] is objectively good." Maybe it's a song, a show, a piece of art, whatever. I get that most of the time people are joking. But I think that sometimes people make S1-type statements without irony because they're not paying attention to the philosophical ramifications of what it would mean. So in a sense, I think it is somewhat hopelessly confused if someone utters an S1-like statement. But my point isn't whether everybody does this or whether anybody does it often. My point is that we can probably all agree that S1 isn't propositional, yet it has the same form as S1a, which some people claim is propositional, often without being able to elucidate why S1a is propositional yet S1 is not.

You may have intuited by now that I am a moral realist who believes practical knowledge is propositional. I think S1a, the claim about the piece of art, and even S1 are propositional (although whether the speaker intended it to be propositional must be assessed on a case by case basis).

The key for S1 is understanding what is meant by "tasty" and the key for S1a is understanding what is meant by "good". The colloquial object of correspondence for S1 is whether string cheese satisfies, in general, human desires for taste. If I have never encountered string cheese, then when my friend offers me some and tells me it is tasty, I will know exactly what he is claiming. In curiosity I may well go on to ask myself whether his claim is true or false, and I will verify the claim by tasting the cheese. (I will leave it there for now because I feel like I've already written enough or too much. )

Here is an excerpt from earlier in the thread that touches on a similar topic:

I think the current orthodox view is that ‘good’ is a ‘thin’ evaluative term without descriptive content, rather than a ‘thick’ term such as ‘courageous’ or ‘generous’, which both evaluates and describes (https://iep.utm.edu/thick-co/). This sounds right to me. If you can think of an example of ‘good’ being used not merely to evaluate but also to describe, perhaps you could post it, together with an explanation of what you consider the descriptive content to be.

This sort of contemporary philosophy strikes me as an inheritance from Hume, and I doubt I will agree with much of it. I see the difference between 'good' and 'courageous' as a matter of degree and abstraction, but not kind. As an example, a civil engineer might go around the country inspecting bridges for possible repairs. He may well call the bridges that require no repairs "good bridges." It seems to me that such a use is descriptive (as well as evaluative). To give a parallel, an army recruiter might go around the country searching for courageous men and women, and he would be wielding that quality in much the same way that the civil engineer wields 'good'.

On reflection, I am going to distance myself from the thin/thick distinction, but in the opposite direction from you. I now think that 'courageous' is not evaluative, but merely descriptive; any evaluative content it may seem to have is the result of a shared background assumption by the speaker and his audience that courage is good, an assumption which does not find its way into the words uttered.

Again, I don't think these Humean inheritances are helpful or accurate, but courage is good qua military and structurally sound bridges are good qua the definition of bridge. These are not extrinsic considerations, they are built into the nature of a military or the nature of a bridge. And again I would say that good is an abstract concept insofar as one must designate the object of goodness before knowing the precise meaning of goodness in some particular utterance, but there is also a common meaning across objects.

[Gertie]

This topic asks "are there eternal moral truths?", to which my answer is "no". Others will feel differently, of course. But if there are no such truths, one reason for it might be "we just do". It might be that there is no "fundamental explanation for morality", as the topic title allows-for.

Can it be said that a moral feeling is not true? Most people will argue that moral feelings are plausible based on common sense truth.

When the argument is made that something is 'just done' and that it involves moral feelings, then that is an indication that a truth is involved. The method for determining quality of the nature of feelings would be a different matter, but with moral feelings, most people will consider such feelings plausible based on common sense truth.

Truth, like good, cannot be defined (cannot be Said) but it also cannot be denied to be real. As an example, it is impossible to know the intrinsic nature of things.

Good and truth are equal. One can at most quest into truth with the practice of science and philosophy being examples. Similarly, with morality one can at most quest into good.

There is a slight difference between good and truth in human practice. With science one seeks a 'good of what has become' (intended good) while with morality one seeks 'good that ought to become'.

Because the future is unknown and because good (like truth) cannot be defined, morality concerns an eternal quest into good (a quest for moral truths) in the face of an unknown future.

Morality as I perceive it would concern an everlasting quest into good in the face of an unknown future. The result of that quest is a sort of intellectual light into the world (from the inside out) that empirically can be described as the potential for reason-ableness.

I take a different approach. Trying to address morality (the concept of right and wrong and prescriptive oughts) in terms of objective facts or falsifiable truths seems to me to be a category error. But morality carries different inferences to mere matters of subjective taste too.

So I think we have to think about what morality is and what it's for, on its own terms. What, if anything, makes something right or wrong, what could justify oughts? If we exclude gods, and take as read that there are evolutionary reasons for human 'moral intuitions' and environmental/cultural reasons for how those intuitions play out in different scenarios - what is left? Why would morality still matter or be justifiable?


I think what makes morality still matter and have value is the fact that experiencing subjects have a quality of life which matters to us (Goldstein calls it 'the mattering instinct'). The qualiative nature of conscious experience means there is 'something it is like' to be a human or cow or mouse (probably), which subjects value. That experience can be awful or wonderful and everything in between. Physical pain, emotional distress, not having the resources to flourish, these things matter.


Hence we ought to treat each other with consideration which recognises this mattering, try to be kind rather than cruel, be prepared to help sometimes even at a cost to ourselves.


You could say why should your welfare matter to me, simply abandon the idea of morality. But even then there are plenty of selfish/practical reasons to be kind and cooperative towards people in your life who you might in turn need to rely on, and to participate in a society which values its members' wellbeing.

[Good_Egg]

Seems to me that there are preferences that are idiosyncratic, that relate only to what's going on in one person's mind. And there are preferences that are part of shared culture, and preferences that relate to the nature of humans. (For example, humans tend to find horse droppings distasteful, unlike dogs who, from my experience, relish them).

I'm inclining to the view that a statement of the form "X tastes/sounds/looks better than Y" is intended either as an expression of one's personal preference, or a judgment rooted in one's own culture ( that one does not expect strange foreign people from far-off lands to share), or as a statement that one expects all persons to agree with - possibly because X (cheese/music/whatever) seems to have been so perfectly crafted to appeal to human nature.

Only minds can have preferences or hold values; although bodies have something to do with it. Hard for the tone-deaf to value good music...

Once it is clear which mind(s) is being referenced, one has a propositional statement. But a value isn't true in the abstract.

Whilst people can and do confuse these, it's a mistake to treat all values and preferences as being merely idiosyncratic.

Not sure that gets us very far - maybe I'll come back to this when it's not so late at night.

Seems to me that to say that feeding the hungry or keeping promises is morally good is not to say that anyone does value these things, but rather that they ought to. Which is something different from a preference.

[Astro Cat]

What does one expect when one applies reason, one's only ability to conceive the world meaningfully, to one's moral feelings or intuitions? A retro-perspective (an empirically justifiable perspective) can only perceive of preferences as they appear to be when one looks at other's subjective choices relative to one's own subjectivity. That is at most what it - moral feelings or intuition - can be.

If one would argue that morality is otherwise than a preference, then it becomes tricky. What can potentially be meant by that? ...


mystical-door-beyond-knowledge.jpg

There are times when I try to reason through things as impassively as I can. I am reminded of vulcans from Star Trek: there are times that the Vulcans are probably right and a little more reason would be helpful in a given situation. There are other times where vulcans' approach seems sad an clownish (ironic, considering this is how Brent Spiner described his acting approach to Data, who very much desired to be human and to express emotions. I think it was his (Data's) inability to process these that Spiner called clownish).

I don't know where I'm going with this, only that I think there's a good mix of using reasoning and intuition. I try to find that balance like anyone else, but I suppose like anyone else we humans are apt to fall too far on one side of that duplicitous edge.

[Astro Cat]

I think regardless of the breadth (whether I believe "I ought not to eat meat" or "Nobody ought to eat meat"), the same sort of thing is going on, so I didn't think it was important to focus on that difference.

What I think is going on is that people have values from which they build oughts out of hypothetical imperatives: if I value x, then I ought to do y. In the case of breadth, the "y" that we do just includes "I ought to tell that guy over there to stop doing that." I think that we're only in charge of our own oughts, but the oughts we can come up with can include feeling like we ought to get others to go with our point of view (I can object to murder not because there's something about the universe that says murder is wrong, but because I value life, and since I value life, I ought to try to preserve it, and that includes telling someone else to knock off that murdering stuff they're trying to do; or putting them in prison so they can't do it any more!)

So we might say that, "If I value X, and someone is harming X, then I should impede them." There are two different ways someone can be impeded: coercion or persuasion. You seem to have drawn the conclusion that the moralist is irrational and unpersuasive, and therefore must resort to some form of coercion. That is, since there are no sound arguments for "ought claims," persuasion is not possible. The only exception would be cases where the moralist fortuitously encounters someone who holds the same axiomatic values that he does; but the values themselves are not susceptible to scrutiny or argument (or truth and falsity).

Yes, I think that's the case; but with caveats. I think it is the case that a person needs to hold the same axiomatic values in order to affirm that they ought to comply. I don't think it's hopeless or impossible to persuade, though.

Despite thinking doxastic voluntarism is false, I think that we do go through belief revision in the face of new facts and perspectives (I just don't think we control whether we are persuaded or not consciously). So I think a person can be persuaded over to agree about some moral statement that they might not have before: perhaps because they never thought about it from the perspective you just gave them with your argument before, perhaps because you provided a new fact that entered their value hierarchical calculus upon receiving it that changed the outcome of their moral hypothetical imperatives*, etc.

(* -- I feel like this sentence wasn't clear but I don't want to delete it. I mean that I think we have values, those values are hierarchical as in the example I gave where I value life and property, but value life more, so I might look the other way if a starving person steals bread. What I mean to say is someone might be persuaded by learning a new fact that changes how their value calculus leads to a moral belief. For instance, a person might believe that an electric vehicle is such an overwhelming environmental good that they ought to have one, but suppose they learn a new fact that the production and maintenance of such vehicles damages the environment more: they undergo belief revision. In this case they may still have the same axiomatic values, but they do their moral calculations differently thanks to the new fact they learned. BTW, I don't know whether or not that example fact is true, just giving an example).

Likewise since I think our moral beliefs are effectively arguments (we build them from our value axioms), it's possible for us to do that "wrong," inconsistently, inefficiently, etc, and we can learn new perspectives and facts that will persuade us.

I'm sorry if that was long winded. I think people can be persuaded even if moral realism is non-cognitive, but at any point in time they're affirming some moral statement, it's because at that point in time they hold the requisite axiomatic value (whether they were recently converted to having that value, or placing it with a different importance in their hierarchy, or whether they already luckily [as you say] had the value) and not because of some "external" ought.

I feel it necessary to point out that I believe we still can't answer the question, "ought they change their value in the face of new perspectives/evidence/etc.?" Well, that depends on if they value doing that

I think with breadth (when the ought "feels" like it applies to others and not just us), that is where the illusion of moral realism comes from. People feel like the ought is "out there" in the universe, and that the other people are subject to this ought "out there." But really, when we feel moral outrage, we are feeling our own hypothetical imperative to stop them from harming or interfering with what we value. If I value altruism and someone disgustingly rich doesn't even lift a finger to help the less fortunate, I feel outrage because they're harming my value...

To be clear, I am a moral realist and I think much of your analysis of moral realists is mistaken, and I think it is mistaken in ways that are transparent to reason. That is, I think you are likely to eventually agree that some of your own analysis is mistaken. There are some rough areas in your theory. The first is the matter of intent, a second is the "axiomaticity" of value, and a third is this matter of moral outrage.

I'm willing to be wrong if I must (as in, to admit it and change; not to cling onto it). Sometimes it's fun. I don't think I'm there quite yet though. We will see. And I'll readily admit that my lack of formal philosophy training leads to some rough edges, though I have confidence in my ability to do some things right.

With regard to the third area and the text from your quote which I bolded, it seems to me that moral outrage is altogether different than the defense of a value. If I value my house and termites invade then I will call Orkin, and if I value my wife and she is diagnosed with cancer, then I will consult an oncologist, but I do not express moral outrage at the termites or the cancerous cells. Moral outrage is rather a response to the culpably bad behavior of an agent who has free will (and is therefore responsible for their behavior).

Ok, I agree. This just means I wasn't careful enough when trying to pin down what I mean the difference between a "moral preference" and something like a color preference. I'm reminded of a story about Diogenes responding to the definition of a human as a "featherless biped" by bringing forth a plucked chicken. It's one of those things where yes, it's important to be as exhaustive as possible with definitions to avoid counterexamples and wrinkles, but sometimes the question becomes "does this wrinkle damage the idea being presented?"

In this case, I think all I have to do is acknowledge that moral outrage is a response to the culpable behavior of a free agent that could have done otherwise; but point out that this still only exists if we hold a value about that. The vegetarian example works nicely. Vegetarian A may believe in not eating meat for themselves, but they don't mind when their friend orders a steak. Vegetarian B gets morally outraged if their friend orders the steak. I think this is explainable under the non-cognitivist picture as easily as it's explained under the realist picture: in the non-cog picture, Vegetarian B has a value to enforce another value, whereas Vegetarian A does not.

If I think about it, some people have values about enforcing things like their color preferences, too: while not a color, I think it's the same sort of thing, but I'm reminded of the controversy over changing the name of the Washington Redskins team. A great many people wanted to enforce their preference, and interestingly, some of those people wanted to enforce a change for moral preference reasons while many on the opposing side seemed to have a preference for what I'd find hard to call moral reasons to keep the name.

Let's take hypocrisy rather than altruism, because it is an easier case. Now if hypocrisy is a vice, then the corresponding virtue must be something like integrity. When someone rebukes a hypocrite we might provide an analysis which says that the one rebuking holds a value (integrity); the one being rebuked has harmed or interfered with her value (hypocrisy); and therefore in order to defend her value she must rebuke the hypocrite. That is an interesting analysis, but it feels a bit clumsy to me. It feels clumsy because it gives the impression that some object is valued which must then be defended from those who would harm or dishonor it. But is that really what is happening when we form moral judgments? It seems to me that what is valued is rather some norm of behavior and little else. The hypocrite has not transgressed a valued object; he has acted badly, in a way unbecoming of human beings. We might say that he is "Behaving like a brute," or that, "He should know better."

I do disagree that it's clumsy, because it seems to me that we do check our values in relation to others' behavior. For some on this planet, it's unimaginable to dance or to sing in public, while many people don't have a value regarding that so they don't bat an eye. I think it does get clouded by the fact that valuing the cultural (or subcultural!) norm is a value that a person either has or doesn't in itself.

If this weren't something we were checking against our internal values every time, then there would be some universal idea of "behaving like a brute." We have things that are close, like admonitions against murder, but isn't it interesting that the things that are the most nearly universal probably have evolutionary explanations? (I think the reason many of us agree on many values is a combination of evolutionary history/nature and culture/nurture!)

Whether or not you agree that the value-object approach is clumsy, all of this runs right into the second question of the axiomaticity of value. Presumably if you ask someone why they value X, they will tell you that they value X because it is (objectively) valuable. This moves us back to intent, for it leads us to the idea that the interpretation of the moral realist's locution is at variance with the intent of their locution. To say that the moral realist is merely talking about preferences or axiomatic values when they themselves clearly deny this interpretation is to "put words in their mouth" (or more precisely, "intentions in their minds"). ...And it may be that we are in agreement here, and the only question is where the supposed error of the moral realist lies.

I see! I didn't consider this objection. I suppose it is putting words in their mouth. So let me try to clarify.

I think if someone responds, "because value X is objectively valuable," they are uttering something non-cognitive. I think they might as well be saying "t'was brillig, and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe." So I shouldn't say that I'm denying they think something -- I won't put words in their mouth. This may be a different topic, but I think it's possible for people to think something non-cognitive has meaning, behave as if it does, when it in fact does not. This is where I think the realist makes a mistake. I don't think they form a real cognizable picture of what they mean when they say "X is objectively valuable."

For instance, for a long time Frege and Whitehead were perfectly fine under the illusion that it's meaningful to talk about "sets of all sets which do not contain themselves." One could ostensibly have conversations with this phrase and feel like something cognizable is being expressed. There's an illusion of cognizability (that's a word now, I've decided), shattered by Russel. I think something like this is happening with moral realists. I won't put words in their mouth, but I think the words coming out of their mouth are non-cognitive, and I think that applies to them as well, just unbeknownst to them.

You may have intuited by now that I am a moral realist who believes practical knowledge is propositional. I think S1a, the claim about the piece of art, and even S1 are propositional (although whether the speaker intended it to be propositional must be assessed on a case by case basis).

Admission of practical knowledge may come back to haunt you in the PoE thread ;P (but I tease, I have nothing specific in mind, just feels like it could be a thing over there).

The key for S1 is understanding what is meant by "tasty" and the key for S1a is understanding what is meant by "good". The colloquial object of correspondence for S1 is whether string cheese satisfies, in general, human desires for taste. If I have never encountered string cheese, then when my friend offers me some and tells me it is tasty, I will know exactly what he is claiming. In curiosity I may well go on to ask myself whether his claim is true or false, and I will verify the claim by tasting the cheese. (I will leave it there for now because I feel like I've already written enough or too much. )

What if I made things less ambiguous, if I'm trying to form a subjective example, if I were to make a new S1:
S1: Gouda tastes better than string cheese.

What if I insist that by S1, I don't mean S2: Cat thinks gouda tastes better than string cheese.

Would S1 be non-propositional if we insist it's not a truncated S2?

Here is an excerpt from earlier in the thread that touches on a similar topic:

...

Again, I don't think these Humean inheritances are helpful or accurate, but courage is good qua military and structurally sound bridges are good qua the definition of bridge. These are not extrinsic considerations, they are built into the nature of a military or the nature of a bridge. And again I would say that good is an abstract concept insofar as one must designate the object of goodness before knowing the precise meaning of goodness in some particular utterance, but there is also a common meaning across objects.

[/quote]

(Emphasis added)

I think I agree. But I'm struck by something here: there seems to be resistance from people to allow S1 to be completely subjective. Some suggest that it must be a truncated S2, some suggest that it becomes propositional when we know who is doing the defining because it satisfies some property of that person, and so on. I am told basically that it makes no or little sense for S1 to be non-propositional. But isn't that my point? That it does make little sense, but that people do this anyway? This is more of what I was talking about above where I said I think people talk about non-cognizable things all the time without realizing it.

[snt]

The argument "We just do" (have values based preferences) would be similar to the argument "God did it" in my opinion. It doesn't provide a fundamental explanation for morality (the mentioned 'ought').

Indeed it doesn't, but it's not what I set out to do. I set out to question whether the phrase "moral truth" is cognizable. In essence, my thinking was that I don't have to give an explanation for where our preferences come from in order to poke holes in moral realism.

I did engage in some limited speculation: our preferences are probably a combination of nature and nurture, with some evolutionary background and our parental/societal/incidental upbringing as factors. So when I say "I don't know why I prefer x over y, I just do," where this preference came from might be irrelevant to the context at hand; what's more relevant is how that preference philosophically behaves. Where it comes from seems a separate issue.

The question is whether there are 'eternal moral truths' which would be of a different nature than empirical (subjective) truths (i.e. truths that can be said or 'defined').

When it concerns something that is eternal it equally implies an eternal fundamental concept to address it. In the case of morality - in my opinion - it concerns an 'eternal quest into good' in the face of an unknown future. That quest isn't insignificant and the eternal moral truths are sought in the quest aren't unreal. Therefore, from a philosophical perspective, the 'why' question is relevant and important.

While the basis for eternal moral truths might not be found in reason or logic alone, in my opinion it cannot be said that there is no basis, so it would be the task of philosophy to discover methods to explore the foundation for the concept eternal moral truths in order to secure quality and success in morality.

While it may be OK from a personal perspective to simply say "I just feel it (moral intuition)", when it concerns philosophy, one will be required to answer the question 'why'. Again, it shows a door to a different world than the world that can be encapsulated with reason and logic. A world that precedes 'the repeatable world' and a world that is of significance, for example when it concerns morality.

A door to 'beyond logic and knowledge'
mystical-door-beyond-knowledge.jpg (20.73 KiB) Viewed 1064 times

Your logical consideration of the apparent infinite regress in the attempt to escape 'ought' by depending on values based preferences indicates that the concept 'good' is applicable as an a priori factor.

When it concerns values, it equally involves the concept 'good' because valuing does not concern a choice between good and bad but a valuation on the basis of just good.

I understand every word in these sentences, but I'm not understanding the way you've put them together. Can you rephrase this for me possibly?

The origin of 'value' is the ability to value, which is an activity. That activity is not about making a choice between good and bad, which would only be possible in 'the repeatable world'. The activity of valuing (to determine values) involves a valuation on the basis of just good. The good that is required for the potential to value cannot be a posteriori (a part of the repeatable world).

As you mention yourself you 'Just feel it' but do not consider moral preferences to be the same as other preferences. The origin of those feelings lays within consciousness and that consciousness, which cannot be explained using repeatable science today, has an origin as well. Therefore, the conclusion is that a good is applicable that is a priori in the face of conscious experience, thus that it originates from a different world. (a relevant world that precedes the 'repeatable world').

Also, to be clear, I don't think the "ought" regress is infinite; rather that we eventually hit a foundation, and that foundation is just some kind of value that we have. The ultimate answer to "why ought we feed hungry people?" isn't "because if we don't feed them, they'll suffer" because there's a microcosm question: "why ought we care if they suffer?" We hit the end of the regress when we reach some value: "why ought we care if they suffer?" "Because I value altruism, I value preventing and alleviating suffering. So I ought to feed hungry people."

The infinite regress would lay in the fact that one is always able to ask the question: what is the origin of this or that value? Another value would not suffice.

The point was to point out that moral realism would have us believe that there's an answer to the question "why ought we value altruism?"

I don't think there's an answer to that question, because I don't think we "ought" to value altruism. I do value altruism, and I was saying that the reasons why are inconsequential, but the moral realist has some onus of evidence to show why we "ought" to. The noncognitivist is more concerned with whether the value is valued, and it's simply either true or false that it's valued. Their job is done. The realist has to go on and demonstrate why we "ought" to value it.

You mentioned yourself that you 'just feel it' and that it can be considered 'common sense' to feel that way.

Culture can be a powerful influence. Culture can drive people to be cannibals for example. However, in the same time the true foundation of morality provides a basis for moral advancement in which certain cultural evolution can be considered 'ought' to be (i.e. an improvement).

Cultural evolution in today's business science provides a good example. The focus today lays on 'empowerment', 'moral culture', purpose and meaning.

It is considered one of the highest moral goods to unlock the potential of other people. For example, the comprehensive moral philosophy of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas concludes with that moral value as part of this philosophical vision "Ethics as First Philosophy". In business science, among business leaders, it is also evidently one of the core principles for being a leader: unlocking the potential of others.

The true foundation of morality provides an explanation.

While the 'good' that lays at the foundation of morality (that precedes 'the repeatable world') cannot be defined, that same fact provides the basis for a demand of respect since it means that it is principally impossible to judge the 'good' of others in the face of the purpose of life. Therefore, to optimally serve the purpose of life - something that any reasonable being intends to do in the face of his/her dignity - behaviour in the scope of altruism would be something that can be considered common sense when it concerns morality, and similarly, unlocking the potential of other humans can be considered one of the highest moral goods.

A topic about randomness provides evidence for a 'meaning' (good) that precedes 'useful meaning' (i.e.that precedes 'the repeatable world').

"Randomness cannot exist, with as an example result that computer encryption is always able to be broken with sufficient computing power. ... This is evidence that a factor is involved that prevents actual randomness to be possible, which is meaning. This is evidence that (a world of) meaning is fundamental to (precedes) the Universe."

Researchers identified a problem that holds the key to whether all encryption can be broken -- as well as a surprising connection to a mathematical concept that aims to define and measure randomness.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 194721.htm

When good precedes human nature (i.e. your described moral feelings) morality would involve an eternal quest into good.

A quote of philosopher Henry David Thoreau provides an indication that the idea of 'ought' moral improvement from a human culture perspective is valid.

"Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual moral improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."

Morality can be seen as a form of long term intelligence, an inside-out light into the world, a light 'for good'. Morality would therefore be vital for 'ought' intellectual progress.

The cutting edge business science discovery of the critical significance of a moral culture to achieve success with companies that intend to do 'good', by the concept of (moral) intellectual resilience, provides further evidence for the importance of morality for intellectual progress.

"Deep purpose organizations are deeply committed to both positive commercial and positive social outcomes. Their leaders adopt a mindset of practical idealism. Deep purpose companies thoroughly embed their purpose in their strategy, processes, communications, human resources practices, operational decision-making, and culture."
https://hbr.org/2022/03/the-messy-but-e ... of-purpose

"Good strategy has traditionally been seen as the key to business success. More recently, purpose has become an essential element of doing business. But something else is missing: culture, or the essential elements of how an organization and its employees behave, as well as its governing beliefs and principles.

What teams need is a guiding frame to be effective and energized when the unexpected invariably happens. In a recent conversation I had with business leaders struggling with the challenging state of the environment, we concluded that being guided by our purpose and some key principles — a way to describe culture — and then doing our best was going to work better than hoping we had a clairvoyant strategy we could predictably execute."
https://hbr.org/2022/06/does-your-compa ... nd-purpose

"The current fixation on moral purpose puts pressure on executives to be seen as running a “good” business. Defining your purpose (morality) as embedded in culture—as operating in a thoughtful, disciplined, ethical manner—can be both pragmatic and genuine. The full potential of purpose is achieved only when it’s aligned with a company’s value proposition and creates shared aspirations both internally and externally."
https://hbr.org/2022/03/what-is-the-pur ... ur-purpose

The examples are all from 2022.

Some questions:

1) What do you think of the idea that morality is an eternal quest into good?

2) What do you think of the idea that morality is ever present and that moral choices concern whether or not to neglect morality, or alternatively, that morality is limited by the potential for moral consideration (an intellectual capacity)?

Moral intuitionism can still be reliant on there existing moral truths, which is what I dispute as a moral non-cognitivist. However, it's not entirely wrong that we do intuit and introspect our own values. So I can see why you would say this.

Yes, but when you say that moral preferences are not the same as other preferences, then, what can potentially provide the basis for such an idea? It surely cannot be subjective a posteriori reason which is the basis for preferences.

[Atla]

morality concerns an eternal quest into good (a quest for moral truths)

Most humans want to be happy, most humans seek the "good". Most humans also have some empathy, so what is good for them is often also good for others.

Unfortunately this doesn't necessarily mean that there is also a fundamental goodness to the world. Maybe there is only the human quest for the good.

[snt]

If one would argue that morality is otherwise than a preference, then it becomes tricky. What can potentially be meant by that? ...

There are times when I try to reason through things as impassively as I can. I am reminded of vulcans from Star Trek: there are times that the Vulcans are probably right and a little more reason would be helpful in a given situation. There are other times where vulcans' approach seems sad an clownish (ironic, considering this is how Brent Spiner described his acting approach to Data, who very much desired to be human and to express emotions. I think it was his (Data's) inability to process these that Spiner called clownish).

I don't know where I'm going with this, only that I think there's a good mix of using reasoning and intuition. I try to find that balance like anyone else, but I suppose like anyone else we humans are apt to fall too far on one side of that duplicitous edge.

Do you understand the idea of the relevance of an 'other world' that from a philosophical perspective demands exploration. A world that precedes the repeatable world?

With regard your argument. My personal mantra is that I do not try (I am against trying). When it concerns philosophy, it will be important in my opinion to address the question: why intuition and reason combined? what value can it unlock (why might it be important)? how would such a perspective relate to a society (cultural status quo) in which 'the repeatable world' is considered to be 'all there is' and some other perspectives are rejected and suppressed?

When it concerns morality - i.e. the intent to create a strong basis for it - in my opinion it is important to fundamentally address the reason why intuition and reason are not the same and what the meaning of that intuition is.

[snt]

I take a different approach. Trying to address morality (the concept of right and wrong and prescriptive oughts) in terms of objective facts or falsifiable truths seems to me to be a category error. But morality carries different inferences to mere matters of subjective taste too.

So I think we have to think about what morality is and what it's for, on its own terms. What, if anything, makes something right or wrong, what could justify oughts? If we exclude gods, and take as read that there are evolutionary reasons for human 'moral intuitions' and environmental/cultural reasons for how those intuitions play out in different scenarios - what is left? Why would morality still matter or be justifiable?

I think what makes morality still matter and have value is the fact that experiencing subjects have a quality of life which matters to us (Goldstein calls it 'the mattering instinct'). The qualiative nature of conscious experience means there is 'something it is like' to be a human or cow or mouse (probably), which subjects value. That experience can be awful or wonderful and everything in between. Physical pain, emotional distress, not having the resources to flourish, these things matter.

Hence we ought to treat each other with consideration which recognises this mattering, try to be kind rather than cruel, be prepared to help sometimes even at a cost to ourselves.

You could say why should your welfare matter to me, simply abandon the idea of morality. But even then there are plenty of selfish/practical reasons to be kind and cooperative towards people in your life who you might in turn need to rely on, and to participate in a society which values its members' wellbeing.

One way or the other morality involves value, no matter how you try to turn it (e.g. the idea 'mattering instinct').

I do not believe that it is wise to rely on human imagination when it concerns a philosophically addressing of the fundamental nature (and meaning) of morality. The reason is that when it comes down to it, moral choices can at most be subjective and thus are thrown out of the window straight away in diverse situations.

The "what it is like to be" argument, while it may work well from certain (in my opinion limited) perspectives to improve moral behaviour, isn't something that can serve morality in the best way since it lacks meaning (a 'why' to perform in such or such way, or to take an extreme example, why to give up one's own life for it which morality is evidently able to drive people to do in acts of selflessness).

The concept mattering can only be addressed a posteriori, e.g. as an ethical notion that has been determined somehow. There is of course the experience in the moment and imagination on behalf of others, but still I believe that morality can and should be about something else than mere consideration of experience (in others).

In my opinion, the fundamental nature of morality has certain implications that demand respect in order to (in potential) optimally serve the purpose of life. That demand of respect is what provides the ground for concepts such as altruistic behaviour. It would also provide meaning and purpose to altruism, i.e. a 'greater good' that when serving as an individual, provides the highest fulfilment possible, which translates into happiness and health.