Philosophy Discussion Forums

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 13th, 2021, 2:01 amNotice the assumptions: morals are things that can be objectively determined (such as mathematically); morality should aim at the productive and not the destructive; moral productivity and 'destructivity' are objectively definable. These assumption all beg the question.

They certainly do (beg the question).

Even if we measured growth vs entropy, the latter is not necessarily bad. Without entropy, natural systems would not function, endlessly piling atop one another. You don't want too much entropic activity happening in your local vicinity all at once, but it otherwise helps the world go around. One hundred people have been born since the dawn of humanity. If most of them had not died, we'd all be living in skyscrapers, at best.

In the end, the world, including its human portion, is going to do what it does, unconcerned with morality. Societies may have moral codes but they are ultimately survival-focused and, as with individuals, in extreme circumstances long-cherished morals are soon set aside, as per Alfred Henry Lewis's famous quote that "There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy".

Thanks to people for their replies to my posts, and sorry not to have been back to answer them. I am finding, as I did once before, that I don't have enough free time to engage properly in these discussions, and I am therefore leaving the forum. Apologies for taking up people's time, and good luck to everyone.

Please ignore my last post, which was unnecessarily defeatist. I shall attempt to find time to come here occasionally. It's around midnight again, but who needs sleep anyway?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmI think the 'universality' condition or criterion is the red herring in the ointment

I think I once had some of that ointment. It smelled awful.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm

CIN wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 7:29 pm (It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties, and is therefore not always a purely evaluative term as some have suggested.)

Perhaps you mean that we can use the word 'good' non-morally - and I agree. But we're discussing the moral use. The expression 'in good health' has no moral connotation, so I think you may be equivocating here.

'In good health' does have moral connotations for me: my doctor has a moral responsibility to help me keep in good health, and I have a moral responsibility to remain in good health so that I can continue to look after my disabled wife.

I don't think I can be held guilty of equivocation on the basis of mere connotations, because they are subjective. I could be held guilty if 'good' had different primary or denotative meanings in different contexts; but I don't think it does. I think good health is called 'good' because good health merits a pro-attitude, which is the same reason we call good deeds 'good'.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm

CIN wrote:It's not relevant to my argument that many people, perhaps even all people, may hold that we ought to feed people who are hungry and can't feed themselves. I'm claiming that the obligation arises from the fact of their hunger and the fact of our ability to feed them, not from anything people may believe.

But there's the rub. Why does it arise? Whence the obligation? You say it isn't a matter of what people think.

I think the argument is reasonably straightforward.
1. Hungry sentient beings suffer unpleasantness if we don't feed them.
2. Unpleasantness is intrinsically bad. (That is, it intrinsically merits an anti-attitude; this is just a fact about pleasantness and unpleasantness - by their very nature, a pro-attitude is appropriate to the first, and an anti-attitude to the second. To take the most obvious case, it is not reasonable to claim that how one feels about a severe and continuing pain is just a matter of personal subjective choice or opinion: severe pain forces on us an anti-attitude - we dislike it - by its very nature.)
3. If we don't feed the hungry and they can't feed themselves, we are allowing badness to continue when we could prevent it, and we are therefore doing evil by omission.
4. We ought not to do evil, even by omission. (I take this to be self-evident. As a candidate course of action, evil is by its nature self-disqualifying.)
5. Therefore we ought to feed the hungry (unless they can feed themselves).

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmWhat we call objectivity is independence from opinion when considering the facts. And what we call facts are features of reality that are or were the case, or descriptions of them. So moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral facts - moral features of reality. And that covers the universality and validity for all people in your preferred definition.

Okay, I accept this. I think unpleasantness is bad independently of anyone's opinion. The unlikeability of pain is not the same as people having the opinion that pain is bad, it is what constitutes pain being bad.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmTalk of moral principles and their validity sounds grand, but actually muddles the issue. The only fact (the only universal thing) here is that a person/people/all people must eat (or they die). Quantification is irrelevant.

The issue is not quantification, it's nature. The universality of the principle that we should feed the hungry arises ultimately from the natural facts that hunger is unpleasant, and that unpleasantness intrinsically merits an anti-attitude (i.e. is bad).

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm The question is: does the fact that people must eat (the 'is') entail the conclusion that they ought to have food? And the conclusion doesn't follow, deductively or inductively.

I think it does follow. See my argument (steps 1-5) above.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmThat it's prudential for me to eat doesn't mean that I ought to eat - that I 'owe it to myself' to eat.

CIN wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 7:29 pmI disagree with this. If my good health (see my remark about this above) is being lost as a result of my not eating, then obviously I am descending into bad health (though we more usually call it 'ill health') as a result of my own actions, and it's open to me to act to rectify this. If it's a fact that I can change bad health to good health (remember that I just argued that these can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily), then we have already crossed the supposedly unbridgeable gap between fact and value, and is there then any real motivation to refuse to go the whole hog and accept that an obligation to replace the bad with the good exists?

As I suspected, you're equivocating on the word 'good'.

I don't think you're making the charge of equivocation stick. I have offered a single definition of 'good', and I claim that under that definition, 'good' can apply to types of object as various as states of health, actions, cakes, pieces of music, etc ad nauseam. So I reject the accusation of equivocation.

I don't recall you offering a definition of 'good'. Would you care to do so?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmI agree with you about abortion, because I think the rght to control what happens to your own body must be paramount, so that nobody has the right to use your body without your consent. And that's my moral opinion.

But can I point out the nastiness of moral objectivity in this case? Those who abused you hold as a universal, objective moral principle, valid for all people, that ending an innocent human life is wrong. 'Life is objectively better than death, so life is an objective good' - and so on.

The delusion that there are moral facts can have vicious consequences: murdered abortion practitioners; homosexuals thrown off tall buildings; or planes flown into them.

I think you are tarring all the babies with the same brush before tnrowing them out with the bathwater. (You're not the only one who can mix metaphors.) The inference from 'some moral objectivist views have vicious consequences' to 'all moral objectivist views have vicious consequences' is not valid. It isn't moral objectivism per se that is nasty in your examples, it's the particular moral objectivist views that you are quoting.

While we're talking about this stuff - murdered abortion practitioners; homosexuals thrown off tall buildings, and so on - I'd like to point out that your behaviour in this forum is very odd. Firstly, in one breath you tell us that moral opinions are purely subjective and are not justified by anything objective; and then, in the next breath, you express outrage at some particular kinds of behaviour, just as if you thought your own moral opinions had some objective weight and therefore ought to be taken notice of by other people. You seem to be behaving, if I can put it like this, like an objectivist in subjectivist's clothing. I wouldn't say this if you shrugged your shoulders and said, 'Well, of course I personally don't like people murdering abortion practitioners and throwing homosexuals off tall buildings, but there's nothing actually wrong with doing these things.' That sort of talk would be consistent with your professed subjectivism. But that is not how you talk; you talk about 'nastiness' and 'vicious consequences'. I'm rather glad you do, because it shows that you have the right moral attitudes. But I think it also shows that there is a serious disconnect between your heart and your head.

Secondly, if you are so outraged at certain kinds of behaviour, why on earth do you come on a forum like this and try to convince other people that there is no objective reason why they should not engage in any behaviour they happen to choose? Isn't it obvious that to the extent that you manage to convince people here that subjectivism is correct, you risk making them more inclined to behave in ways that you yourself disapprove of?

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 7:13 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 9:55 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 7:29 pm It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties

The problem there is that while we can specify objective criteria that we're going to name "good (x)," those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them, so it fails to capture an important connotation of "good." In other words, we can name any arbitrary objective range of states "good," but there's nothing in that that either (a) implies that anyone should attain those states, or (b) that anyone is going to prefer those states or that they should prefer them. So it misses a conventional connotative aspect of terms like "good."

Well, let's suggest one plausible objective criterion for good health, namely that your BMI should be in the range 18.5 to 24.9. You claim that when we label the state of having a BMI between those values 'good', we are neither implying that anyone should aim to get their BMI to between those values, nor that they would or should prefer to do so. This seems, prima facie, an implausible claim. If I go to my doctor and he tells me that my BMI is 35 and that that's not good, he is quite likely to go on to prescribe a regime of diet and exercise which he hopes will bring my BMI to within the prescribed range. Contrary to your claim, this implies that my doctor thinks that I should attain the state of my BMI being within that range.

You're misunderstanding a nuance there. I'm not saying that people do not have normatives in mind. People certainly do. But people are not objective criteria.

My point was that the doctor prescribes diet and exercise to bring my BMI down to the normal level because that level is normative. That's the only possible reason why he would do it. If he didn't have that reason, his wish to get my BMI down to that level would be a personal whim or a culturally induced prejudice, and clearly it isn't either.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 amNormatives or evaluations, which are necessary for anything close to the conventional semantic connotations of "good," only arise in individuals' heads.

So you say, but I don't see you making a case for this. You seem to merely state this as your unsupported opinion.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 amMost people prefer to not have diabetes, for example. The facts of BMIs and diabetes, etc. can't prefer or recommend this themselves.

The reason people prefer not to have diabetes is because it causes unpleasantness of experience, which is intrinsically bad. It's not like preferring one football team to another: there is an objective ground for the preference.

So while there are objective facts re BMIs and diabetes and so on, there aren't objective facts that not having diabetes versus having diabetes is something that people should do (or that wanting to continue living versus not wanting that is something that people should do), and this doesn't change just because we christen "not having diabetes" with a particular name, like "good" or "recommended," or whatever.

Again, you are merely stating your opinion, not providing any reason why I should accept it.

CIN wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2021, 6:50 pm Please ignore my last post, which was unnecessarily defeatist. I shall attempt to find time to come here occasionally. It's around midnight again, but who needs sleep anyway?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmI think the 'universality' condition or criterion is the red herring in the ointment

I think I once had some of that ointment. It smelled awful.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm

CIN wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 7:29 pm (It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties, and is therefore not always a purely evaluative term as some have suggested.)

Perhaps you mean that we can use the word 'good' non-morally - and I agree. But we're discussing the moral use. The expression 'in good health' has no moral connotation, so I think you may be equivocating here.

'In good health' does have moral connotations for me: my doctor has a moral responsibility to help me keep in good health, and I have a moral responsibility to remain in good health so that I can continue to look after my disabled wife.

I don't think I can be held guilty of equivocation on the basis of mere connotations, because they are subjective. I could be held guilty if 'good' had different primary or denotative meanings in different contexts; but I don't think it does. I think good health is called 'good' because good health merits a pro-attitude, which is the same reason we call good deeds 'good'.

But this isn't about 'mere connotations'. We can and do use the word good non-morally, as in 'a good performance' and 'a good meal'. The claim that these expressions have a moral meaning is equivocatory. And this is true of the expression 'good health'. That you and your doctor have a moral responsibility to maintain your health - that doing so is 'morally good' - is a matter of opinion.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm

CIN wrote:It's not relevant to my argument that many people, perhaps even all people, may hold that we ought to feed people who are hungry and can't feed themselves. I'm claiming that the obligation arises from the fact of their hunger and the fact of our ability to feed them, not from anything people may believe.

But there's the rub. Why does it arise? Whence the obligation? You say it isn't a matter of what people think.

I think the argument is reasonably straightforward.
1. Hungry sentient beings suffer unpleasantness if we don't feed them.
2. Unpleasantness is intrinsically bad. (That is, it intrinsically merits an anti-attitude; this is just a fact about pleasantness and unpleasantness - by their very nature, a pro-attitude is appropriate to the first, and an anti-attitude to the second. To take the most obvious case, it is not reasonable to claim that how one feels about a severe and continuing pain is just a matter of personal subjective choice or opinion: severe pain forces on us an anti-attitude - we dislike it - by its very nature.)
3. If we don't feed the hungry and they can't feed themselves, we are allowing badness to continue when we could prevent it, and we are therefore doing evil by omission.
4. We ought not to do evil, even by omission. (I take this to be self-evident. As a candidate course of action, evil is by its nature self-disqualifying.)
5. Therefore we ought to feed the hungry (unless they can feed themselves).

Introducing 'unpleasantness' and 'badness', and 'pro-attitude' and 'anti-attitude' doesn't bridge the gap between fact and moral opinion. Here's your argument:

Humans find hunger/severe pain unpleasant; therefore humans should not go hungry/suffer severe pain. The premise doesn't entail the conclusion, unless the argument begs the question.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmWhat we call objectivity is independence from opinion when considering the facts. And what we call facts are features of reality that are or were the case, or descriptions of them. So moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral facts - moral features of reality. And that covers the universality and validity for all people in your preferred definition.

Okay, I accept this. I think unpleasantness is bad independently of anyone's opinion. The unlikeability of pain is not the same as people having the opinion that pain is bad, it is what constitutes pain being bad.

'Unlikeability' is no different from 'unpleasantness'. Your argument still begs the question: people don't like pain; therefore people shouldn't experience pain. Again, the conclusion doesn't follow.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmTalk of moral principles and their validity sounds grand, but actually muddles the issue. The only fact (the only universal thing) here is that a person/people/all people must eat (or they die). Quantification is irrelevant.

The issue is not quantification, it's nature. The universality of the principle that we should feed the hungry arises ultimately from the natural facts that hunger is unpleasant, and that unpleasantness intrinsically merits an anti-attitude (i.e. is bad).

So here's your claim: the morally bad is that which is unpleasant and therefore instrinsically merits an anti-attitude. So, is the morally good that which is pleasant and therefore intrinsically merits a pro-attitude? Is self-sacrifice morally bad? Cos that can be horribly unpleasant.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm The question is: does the fact that people must eat (the 'is') entail the conclusion that they ought to have food? And the conclusion doesn't follow, deductively or inductively.

I think it does follow. See my argument (steps 1-5) above.

No, it doesn't logically follow, as I've explained here and earlier.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmThat it's prudential for me to eat doesn't mean that I ought to eat - that I 'owe it to myself' to eat.

CIN wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 7:29 pmI disagree with this. If my good health (see my remark about this above) is being lost as a result of my not eating, then obviously I am descending into bad health (though we more usually call it 'ill health') as a result of my own actions, and it's open to me to act to rectify this. If it's a fact that I can change bad health to good health (remember that I just argued that these can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily), then we have already crossed the supposedly unbridgeable gap between fact and value, and is there then any real motivation to refuse to go the whole hog and accept that an obligation to replace the bad with the good exists?

As I suspected, you're equivocating on the word 'good'.

I don't think you're making the charge of equivocation stick. I have offered a single definition of 'good', and I claim that under that definition, 'good' can apply to types of object as various as states of health, actions, cakes, pieces of music, etc ad nauseam. So I reject the accusation of equivocation.

Please explain the moral meaning of the expression 'a good cake'. Or how about 'a good lynching'?

I don't recall you offering a definition of 'good'. Would you care to do so?

Try any dictionary. The moral and non-moral uses of the word 'good' appear in every definition I've come across.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmI agree with you about abortion, because I think the rght to control what happens to your own body must be paramount, so that nobody has the right to use your body without your consent. And that's my moral opinion.

But can I point out the nastiness of moral objectivity in this case? Those who abused you hold as a universal, objective moral principle, valid for all people, that ending an innocent human life is wrong. 'Life is objectively better than death, so life is an objective good' - and so on.

The delusion that there are moral facts can have vicious consequences: murdered abortion practitioners; homosexuals thrown off tall buildings; or planes flown into them.

I think you are tarring all the babies with the same brush before tnrowing them out with the bathwater. (You're not the only one who can mix metaphors.) The inference from 'some moral objectivist views have vicious consequences' to 'all moral objectivist views have vicious consequences' is not valid. It isn't moral objectivism per se that is nasty in your examples, it's the particular moral objectivist views that you are quoting.

You miss my point. Some moral views are vicious and have vicious consequences - so-called 'pro-life' views are an example. But moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral facts - that 'this' moral opinion is a fact - that (say) abortion just 'is' morally wrong - or that (say) capital punishment just 'is' morally right. And I said this delusion 'can have vicious consequences' - not that it must.

While we're talking about this stuff - murdered abortion practitioners; homosexuals thrown off tall buildings, and so on - I'd like to point out that your behaviour in this forum is very odd. Firstly, in one breath you tell us that moral opinions are purely subjective and are not justified by anything objective; and then, in the next breath, you express outrage at some particular kinds of behaviour, just as if you thought your own moral opinions had some objective weight and therefore ought to be taken notice of by other people. You seem to be behaving, if I can put it like this, like an objectivist in subjectivist's clothing. I wouldn't say this if you shrugged your shoulders and said, 'Well, of course I personally don't like people murdering abortion practitioners and throwing homosexuals off tall buildings, but there's nothing actually wrong with doing these things.' That sort of talk would be consistent with your professed subjectivism. But that is not how you talk; you talk about 'nastiness' and 'vicious consequences'. I'm rather glad you do, because it shows that you have the right moral attitudes. But I think it also shows that there is a serious disconnect between your heart and your head.

Here are two assertions, between which there is absolutely no logical contradiction or inconsistency:

1 There are no moral facts, but only moral opinions.
2 X is morally wrong.

Secondly, if you are so outraged at certain kinds of behaviour, why on earth do you come on a forum like this and try to convince other people that there is no objective reason why they should not engage in any behaviour they happen to choose? Isn't it obvious that to the extent that you manage to convince people here that subjectivism is correct, you risk making them more inclined to behave in ways that you yourself disapprove of?

Moral subjectivism does not entail moral relativism or moral nihilism.

CIN wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2021, 7:13 pm My point was that the doctor prescribes diet and exercise to bring my BMI down to the normal level because that level is normative. That's the only possible reason why he would do it. If he didn't have that reason, his wish to get my BMI down to that level would be a personal whim or a culturally induced prejudice, and clearly it isn't either.

And that's all fine, but the doctor and anyone else with a similar view aren't objective criteria. They're people with preferences. They're subjects. The word "whim" is a red herring. No one is saying anything about how ingrained vs not, how significant vs not, how biological, etc. the preferences are. The fact is that they're preferences that arise in persons' heads (they're mental phenomena), and they're not properties of things that are external to people's mental phenomena. Further, they only obtain for an individual insofar as an individual actually has the mental phenomena in question.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 amSo you say, but I don't see you making a case for this. You seem to merely state this as your unsupported opinion.

The case is simply this:

There's absolutely no evidence that good/bad etc. obtain in anything external to persons' minds.

All evidence shows rather than people have mental dispositions, make mental judgments, etc. with respect to good/bad.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 8:06 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2021, 7:13 pm My point was that the doctor prescribes diet and exercise to bring my BMI down to the normal level because that level is normative. That's the only possible reason why he would do it. If he didn't have that reason, his wish to get my BMI down to that level would be a personal whim or a culturally induced prejudice, and clearly it isn't either.

And that's all fine, but the doctor and anyone else with a similar view aren't objective criteria.

I haven't said that the doctor and others are objective criteria, so you're disagreeing with something I haven't said. I'm saying that the doctor's reason for prescribing diet and exercise is that the level of BMI that leads to good health is normative.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 amThere's absolutely no evidence that good/bad etc. obtain in anything external to persons' minds.

Yes, there is. You are not addressing the issue of what 'good' and 'bad' actually mean. Until you address that issue, you are simply failing to look at the evidence.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 5:11 am But this isn't about 'mere connotations'. We can and do use the word good non-morally, as in 'a good performance' and 'a good meal'. The claim that these expressions have a moral meaning is equivocatory. And this is true of the expression 'good health'. That you and your doctor have a moral responsibility to maintain your health - that doing so is 'morally good' - is a matter of opinion.

I'm not claiming that 'good' in 'a good meal' has a moral meaning. I'm claiming that 'good' means the same in both 'a good deed' and 'a good meal', i.e. in both moral and non-moral contexts, and that connotations are irrelevant, because they are not central to the meaning.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm

CIN wrote: I think the argument is reasonably straightforward.
1. Hungry sentient beings suffer unpleasantness if we don't feed them.
2. Unpleasantness is intrinsically bad. (That is, it intrinsically merits an anti-attitude; this is just a fact about pleasantness and unpleasantness - by their very nature, a pro-attitude is appropriate to the first, and an anti-attitude to the second. To take the most obvious case, it is not reasonable to claim that how one feels about a severe and continuing pain is just a matter of personal subjective choice or opinion: severe pain forces on us an anti-attitude - we dislike it - by its very nature.)
3. If we don't feed the hungry and they can't feed themselves, we are allowing badness to continue when we could prevent it, and we are therefore doing evil by omission.
4. We ought not to do evil, even by omission. (I take this to be self-evident. As a candidate course of action, evil is by its nature self-disqualifying.)
5. Therefore we ought to feed the hungry (unless they can feed themselves).

Introducing 'unpleasantness' and 'badness', and 'pro-attitude' and 'anti-attitude' doesn't bridge the gap between fact and moral opinion. Here's your argument:

Humans find hunger/severe pain unpleasant; therefore humans should not go hungry/suffer severe pain. The premise doesn't entail the conclusion, unless the argument begs the question.

Seriously? You think you can refute my argument by restating it so that it's a lot shorter and some of the steps are missing? If you want to refute my argument, you have to consider it fairly, taking it step by step, as I've presented it. Otherwise you're not refuting my argument at all, you're attacking a straw man.

I don't go straight from 'humans find pain unpleasant' to 'humans should not suffer pain.' I go through three intermediate steps, which you are simply ignoring.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm So here's your claim: the morally bad is that which is unpleasant and therefore instrinsically merits an anti-attitude. So, is the morally good that which is pleasant and therefore intrinsically merits a pro-attitude? Is self-sacrifice morally bad? Cos that can be horribly unpleasant.

Again you are restating my claim and thereby changing it. I have not said that the morally bad is that which is unpleasant. I have said that what is unpleasant merits an anti-attitude, that this is what we mean by 'bad', and that to allow badness to continue when we can prevent it is immoral. You keep travestying my argument by missing out vital steps. Please represent my argument fairly. It wastes both your time and mine when you don't.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmPlease explain the moral meaning of the expression 'a good cake'. Or how about 'a good lynching'?

As I've said, 'good' in expressions like this do not have a moral meaning. There is no such thing as a moral meaning of 'good' when 'good' is an adjective. Morality is a question of the context in which 'good' is used, not the meaning of 'good'. 'Good' always just means 'merits a pro-attitude'. If you insert 'good' in a phrase such as 'a good deed', then you are usually using it in a moral context. If you use it in a phrase such as 'a good cake' or 'a good lynching', you usually aren't.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 5:11 am

CIN wrote:I don't recall you offering a definition of 'good'. Would you care to do so?

Try any dictionary. The moral and non-moral uses of the word 'good' appear in every definition I've come across.

If you Google 'good meaning', you will see that the adjectival use of 'good', which is what we are talking about, does not have different moral and non-moral definitions. These are the definitions given:

1.
to be desired or approved of.
"it's good that he's back to his old self"
2.
having the required qualities; of a high standard.
"a good restaurant"

This confirms what I have been saying.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmHere are two assertions, between which there is absolutely no logical contradiction or inconsistency:

1 There are no moral facts, but only moral opinions.
2 X is morally wrong.

Saying that there is no logical inconsistency here begs the very question we are debating.

CIN wrote: ↑May 29th, 2021, 6:09 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 8:06 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2021, 7:13 pm My point was that the doctor prescribes diet and exercise to bring my BMI down to the normal level because that level is normative. That's the only possible reason why he would do it. If he didn't have that reason, his wish to get my BMI down to that level would be a personal whim or a culturally induced prejudice, and clearly it isn't either.

And that's all fine, but the doctor and anyone else with a similar view aren't objective criteria.

I haven't said that the doctor and others are objective criteria, so you're disagreeing with something I haven't said. I'm saying that the doctor's reason for prescribing diet and exercise is that the level of BMI that leads to good health is normative.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 amThere's absolutely no evidence that good/bad etc. obtain in anything external to persons' minds.

Yes, there is. You are not addressing the issue of what 'good' and 'bad' actually mean. Until you address that issue, you are simply failing to look at the evidence.

As I said at the start of this:

The problem there is that while we can specify objective criteria that we're going to name "good (x)," those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them, so it fails to capture an important connotation of "good." In other words, we can name any arbitrary objective range of states "good," but there's nothing in that that either (a) implies that anyone should attain those states, or (b) that anyone is going to prefer those states or that they should prefer them. So it misses a conventional connotative aspect of terms like "good."

CIN wrote: ↑May 29th, 2021, 7:02 pm

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 5:11 am But this isn't about 'mere connotations'. We can and do use the word good non-morally, as in 'a good performance' and 'a good meal'. The claim that these expressions have a moral meaning is equivocatory. And this is true of the expression 'good health'. That you and your doctor have a moral responsibility to maintain your health - that doing so is 'morally good' - is a matter of opinion.

I'm not claiming that 'good' in 'a good meal' has a moral meaning. I'm claiming that 'good' means the same in both 'a good deed' and 'a good meal', i.e. in both moral and non-moral contexts, and that connotations are irrelevant, because they are not central to the meaning.

But what makes both a deed and a meal 'good'? And are those facts - which are, therefore, independent from opinion?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm

CIN wrote: I think the argument is reasonably straightforward.
1. Hungry sentient beings suffer unpleasantness if we don't feed them.
2. Unpleasantness is intrinsically bad. (That is, it intrinsically merits an anti-attitude; this is just a fact about pleasantness and unpleasantness - by their very nature, a pro-attitude is appropriate to the first, and an anti-attitude to the second. To take the most obvious case, it is not reasonable to claim that how one feels about a severe and continuing pain is just a matter of personal subjective choice or opinion: severe pain forces on us an anti-attitude - we dislike it - by its very nature.)
3. If we don't feed the hungry and they can't feed themselves, we are allowing badness to continue when we could prevent it, and we are therefore doing evil by omission.
4. We ought not to do evil, even by omission. (I take this to be self-evident. As a candidate course of action, evil is by its nature self-disqualifying.)
5. Therefore we ought to feed the hungry (unless they can feed themselves).

Introducing 'unpleasantness' and 'badness', and 'pro-attitude' and 'anti-attitude' doesn't bridge the gap between fact and moral opinion. Here's your argument:

Humans find hunger/severe pain unpleasant; therefore humans should not go hungry/suffer severe pain. The premise doesn't entail the conclusion, unless the argument begs the question.

Seriously? You think you can refute my argument by restating it so that it's a lot shorter and some of the steps are missing? If you want to refute my argument, you have to consider it fairly, taking it step by step, as I've presented it. Otherwise you're not refuting my argument at all, you're attacking a straw man.

I'm not misrepresenting - straw-manning - your argument. I'm explaining why it's fallacious. Pleasantness and unpleasantness are not independent properties of things and actions - which is why one person may find an action pleasant that another finds unpleasant. But moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral facts - moral features of reality - so that whether anyone finds them pleasant or unpleasant is irrelevant.

I don't go straight from 'humans find pain unpleasant' to 'humans should not suffer pain.' I go through three intermediate steps, which you are simply ignoring.

And your 'intermediate steps' fail to establish moral objectivity.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm So here's your claim: the morally bad is that which is unpleasant and therefore instrinsically merits an anti-attitude. So, is the morally good that which is pleasant and therefore intrinsically merits a pro-attitude? Is self-sacrifice morally bad? Cos that can be horribly unpleasant.

Again you are restating my claim and thereby changing it. I have not said that the morally bad is that which is unpleasant. I have said that what is unpleasant merits an anti-attitude, that this is what we mean by 'bad', and that to allow badness to continue when we can prevent it is immoral. You keep travestying my argument by missing out vital steps. Please represent my argument fairly. It wastes both your time and mine when you don't.

But why does 'badness' merit an anti-attitude? And why is allowing 'badness' to continue immoral? Like all moral objectivist arguments, yours is circular.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmPlease explain the moral meaning of the expression 'a good cake'. Or how about 'a good lynching'?

As I've said, 'good' in expressions like this do not have a moral meaning. There is no such thing as a moral meaning of 'good' when 'good' is an adjective. Morality is a question of the context in which 'good' is used, not the meaning of 'good'. 'Good' always just means 'merits a pro-attitude'. If you insert 'good' in a phrase such as 'a good deed', then you are usually using it in a moral context. If you use it in a phrase such as 'a good cake' or 'a good lynching', you usually aren't.

But 'meriting a pro-attitude' isn't an independent property of things or actions. And that's why morality isn't objective. Simples, really.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 5:11 am

CIN wrote:I don't recall you offering a definition of 'good'. Would you care to do so?

Try any dictionary. The moral and non-moral uses of the word 'good' appear in every definition I've come across.

If you Google 'good meaning', you will see that the adjectival use of 'good', which is what we are talking about, does not have different moral and non-moral definitions. These are the definitions given:

1.
to be desired or approved of.
"it's good that he's back to his old self"
2.
having the required qualities; of a high standard.
"a good restaurant"

This confirms what I have been saying.

And it confirms that morality isn't and can't be objective - because that a thing or action is to be desired or approved of, ot that it has the required qualities, is a matter of opinion - which is necessarily subjective.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmHere are two assertions, between which there is absolutely no logical contradiction or inconsistency:

1 There are no moral facts, but only moral opinions.
2 X is morally wrong.

Saying that there is no logical inconsistency here begs the very question we are debating.

If there are no moral facts, but only moral opinions, then 'X is morally wrong' is the expression of an opinion and not a fact. That's logic.

But if you think there are moral facts, please produce one and show why it's a fact - a feature of reality independent from opinion. Just one example will clinch the argument.

And when you realise there's no such thing, perhaps that'll be your penny-drop moment.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 30th, 2021, 7:55 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 29th, 2021, 6:09 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 8:06 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2021, 7:13 pm My point was that the doctor prescribes diet and exercise to bring my BMI down to the normal level because that level is normative. That's the only possible reason why he would do it. If he didn't have that reason, his wish to get my BMI down to that level would be a personal whim or a culturally induced prejudice, and clearly it isn't either.

And that's all fine, but the doctor and anyone else with a similar view aren't objective criteria.

I haven't said that the doctor and others are objective criteria, so you're disagreeing with something I haven't said. I'm saying that the doctor's reason for prescribing diet and exercise is that the level of BMI that leads to good health is normative.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 amThere's absolutely no evidence that good/bad etc. obtain in anything external to persons' minds.

Yes, there is. You are not addressing the issue of what 'good' and 'bad' actually mean. Until you address that issue, you are simply failing to look at the evidence.

As I said at the start of this:

The problem there is that while we can specify objective criteria that we're going to name "good (x)," those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them, so it fails to capture an important connotation of "good." In other words, we can name any arbitrary objective range of states "good," but there's nothing in that that either (a) implies that anyone should attain those states, or (b) that anyone is going to prefer those states or that they should prefer them. So it misses a conventional connotative aspect of terms like "good."

Er, yes, I did actually read your earlier post. I wasn't asleep, or drunk, or inattentive. But thank you for assuming that I needed to have it put in front of me again. It's nice to know that people care.

Have a nice day.

CIN wrote: ↑June 1st, 2021, 6:54 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 30th, 2021, 7:55 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 29th, 2021, 6:09 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 8:06 am

And that's all fine, but the doctor and anyone else with a similar view aren't objective criteria.

I haven't said that the doctor and others are objective criteria, so you're disagreeing with something I haven't said. I'm saying that the doctor's reason for prescribing diet and exercise is that the level of BMI that leads to good health is normative.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 12th, 2021, 7:02 amThere's absolutely no evidence that good/bad etc. obtain in anything external to persons' minds.

Yes, there is. You are not addressing the issue of what 'good' and 'bad' actually mean. Until you address that issue, you are simply failing to look at the evidence.

As I said at the start of this:

The problem there is that while we can specify objective criteria that we're going to name "good (x)," those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them, so it fails to capture an important connotation of "good." In other words, we can name any arbitrary objective range of states "good," but there's nothing in that that either (a) implies that anyone should attain those states, or (b) that anyone is going to prefer those states or that they should prefer them. So it misses a conventional connotative aspect of terms like "good."

Er, yes, I did actually read your earlier post. I wasn't asleep, or drunk, or inattentive. But thank you for assuming that I needed to have it put in front of me again. It's nice to know that people care.

Have a nice day.

The post I was responding too from you showed a lack of understanding the context, content and gist of the post of mine I quoted.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 30th, 2021, 11:58 am But what makes both a deed and a meal 'good'? And are those facts - which are, therefore, independent from opinion?

As I've already said, 'X is good' means 'a pro-attitude is appropriate to X.' So what would make a meal or a deed good is a pro-attitude being appropriate to either. However, the claim that a meal is good is rarely justified by the facts. If someone sits back after a meal and says, 'that was a good meal,' the chances are they're making an unjustified claim, because they're claiming that the meal itself is worthy of a pro-attitude, and their only evidence for this is that they themselves had a pleasant experience while eating it: a lot of other people might have an unpleasant experience eating it, and in any case, there are more things to consider about a meal than just the experience of eating it, such as its health-giving qualities, and whether the food was ethically sourced. If they said, 'that was an intrinsically good experience,' that would be a justified claim (unless they were lying, e.g. to spare the feelings of the cook). However, this is not what people tend to say.

That a pro-attitude is appropriate to X can be a fact independent of opinion. If X is pleasant, then since a pro-attitude is always appropriate to pleasantness, a pro-attitude is appropriate to X to the extent that X tends to produce pleasant experience.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm I'm not misrepresenting - straw-manning - your argument. I'm explaining why it's fallacious. Pleasantness and unpleasantness are not independent properties of things and actions - which is why one person may find an action pleasant that another finds unpleasant.

You're confusing independence from an experiencing subject with independence from opinion. Experiences, and their pleasantness and unpleasantness, are not independent of the person who experiences them, but the fact that the pleasantness or unpleasantness occurs is a fact independent of anyone's opinion. The point is that while the unpleasantness of being hungry is not independent of the person who is hungry, it is a fact independent of anyone's opinion that the unpleasantness occurs, and that because of what this unpleasantness is like, an anti-attitude is appropriate to the unpleasantness.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 30th, 2021, 11:58 amBut moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral facts - moral features of reality - so that whether anyone finds them pleasant or unpleasant is irrelevant.

I'm not claiming to find moral facts pleasant or unpleasant. I'm claiming that it is a moral fact that pleasantness is intrinsically good and unpleasantness is intriniscially bad, and that moral consequences flow from this.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 30th, 2021, 11:58 am

CIN wrote: ↑May 29th, 2021, 7:02 pm I don't go straight from 'humans find pain unpleasant' to 'humans should not suffer pain.' I go through three intermediate steps, which you are simply ignoring.

And your 'intermediate steps' fail to establish moral objectivity.

You can't refute a multi-step argument simply by saying the intermediate steps fail. You have to show which steps fail and why.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmBut why does 'badness' merit an anti-attitude?

I'm not saying that badness merits an anti-attitude, I'm saying that for something to be bad is for it to merit an anti-attitude. I'm not making a normative statement about badness, I'm making a meta-ethical claim about what 'bad' means.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm And why is allowing 'badness' to continue immoral?

This has nothing to with the subjectivist/objectivist debate. You claim not be a moral nihilist, and you have previously said that you disapprove of actions such as throwing homosexuals off tall buildings. I take it therefore that you would regard a homosexual falling to his death from a tall building as a bad thing. Suppose you were in a position to prevent him falling, but decided not to do so. Would you not then regard your own failure to save him as immoral? Irrespective of whether you are a subjectivist or an objectivist, I think you would consider that you were acting immorally in allowing a situation you regard as bad to continue.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pm Like all moral objectivist arguments, yours is circular.

I plead 'not guilty.'

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmBut 'meriting a pro-attitude' isn't an independent property of things or actions. And that's why morality isn't objective. Simples, really.

Thank you, Auto Sergei. Give my regards to Aleksandr.

I am claiming that it is an independent property of pleasantness of experience, and, as a corollary, of things that tend to produce pleasantness, such as good health. You are contradicting me, but you offer no argument to support your contradiction.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 24th, 2021, 5:11 amAnd it confirms that morality isn't and can't be objective - because that a thing or action is to be desired or approved of, ot that it has the required qualities, is a matter of opinion - which is necessarily subjective.

There you go again - contradicting me, but offering no argument in support of your contradiction.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmIf there are no moral facts, but only moral opinions, then 'X is morally wrong' is the expression of an opinion and not a fact. That's logic.

Of course. But I think the antecedent of your conditional is false, and you have offered no argument in support of it.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmBut if you think there are moral facts, please produce one and show why it's a fact - a feature of reality independent from opinion. Just one example will clinch the argument.

'We ought to feed the hungry (unless they can feed themselves)' is a moral fact, and I showed why it's a moral fact in my 5-step argument, which you have yet to address.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 4:56 pmAnd when you realise there's no such thing, perhaps that'll be your penny-drop moment.

And when the sky falls, we can all catch larks.

CIN wrote: ↑June 2nd, 2021, 12:39 pm As I've already said, 'X is good' means 'a pro-attitude is appropriate to X.' So what would make a meal or a deed good is a pro-attitude being appropriate to either. However, the claim that a meal is good is rarely justified by the facts.

Appropriateness is not at all objective.

Morality is only relevant to experiencing Subjects. Conscious creatures with a quality of life.

So for example on a planet of dead rocks or non-conscious robots, there can be no Right or Wrong, there are only objective facts about actions and events.

So morality is inevitably tied to experiencing Subjects. For Subjects, things are deemed harmful or helpful, pleasant or unpleasant, healthy or unhealthy, etc in terms of quality of life, or welfare.

So we can say it's objectively true that it is harmful, or morally bad, to unnecessarily hurt someone else, or another sentient species for that matter. But that is because other people are Subjects capable of experiencing harm. And individual Subjects might differ about what they consider harmful or helpful, or priorities. And that can make things messy.