Wiploc

I was quoting Friend, except that I substituted the word "objective" where he used "subjective." I agree with you that he probably meant that that if subjective morality were true there wouldn't be any way to tell right from wrong. But that's what he meant (I think). What I meant is that subjective morality doesn't have any problems that objective morality doesn't have. In this particular case I mean that if you can't tell right from wrong using subjective morality, then you can't tell right from wrong using objective morality.

Quote:

This seems to me to have it exactly backwards. In general, saying “S expresses an actual proposition – i.e., it is objectively true or false – but there is no way, even in principle, that anyone could conceivably determine its truth value” is (IMHO) logically incoherent. It seems to me that to say that a statement is objectively true or false is to say that there is some procedure by which someone, properly situated, could determine whether it’s true or false. If so, it doesn’t make sense to say that if morality were “objectively based” there would be no way, even in principle, to determine whether a given act is right or wrong. On the contrary, it seems to me that this is the crucial test for determining whether morality is objectively based.

Well, if you mean that, if that is your definition of "subjective," then I'm going to have to surrender to you (but not to Friend), but I don't think you'll want to live with the implications of your definition.

Suppose I decide that hitting people with baseball bats is moral. Most people would call that subjective morality because it depends on my personal decision. By your definition, it is objective morality because I can be perfectly sure that I decided it was moral.
crc

bd-from-kg

Alonzo Fyfe:

I agree with your latest post but have some comments about the terminology that you defined in your earlier one.

This terminology is nonstandard and thus likely to lead to confusion (especially since my post used the standard terminology).

First, a moral theory is called “objective” if it holds that moral statements (such as “It is right for John to do Y”) have a definite truth value (the same one for everyone) independent of what anyone thinks, believes, or feels. “Objective” and “subjective” are not antonyms in this context. It is quite possible for a moral theory to be neither objective nor subjective, as you pointed out.

Your “subjective(1)” is referred to by moral philosophers as “non-cognitive”. In particular, “emotive” theories are classed as one type of noncognitive theory (there are other types), not a variety of subjective moral theory.

Your “subjective (3)” is known as “non-realist” in the standard terminology. (Many realist moral theories hold that some states of affairs are “intrinsically preferable” to others, independently of whether anyone does in fact prefer them, or even whether anyone would prefer them under appropriate conditions, such as having sufficient insight or understanding. In these versions of moral realism an act is “right” if it leads to a state of affairs that is intrinsically preferable to the states of affairs produced by all alternatives. Whether this is properly referred to as an intrinsic property of the act or of its consequences is not really important here.) Objective moral theories are often realist, but it is quite possible to hold that moral statements have definite truth values but do not refer to intrinsic properties of the acts in question (or of their consequences). Subjective theories are one type of non-realist theory, but so are noncognitive theories and some objective theories.

Your subjective(2) is one type of “subjective” moral theory. More generally, a subjective theory interprets moral statements as statements about the feelings or attitudes (or some other mental disposition) of some person or group of persons (not necessarily that of the speaker) toward the act in question.

Your moral theory is objective but non-realist. (By the way, I’m a noncognitivist, but not of the “emotivist” variety.)

Finally, Friend’s question "Do you believe moral values are objective?" seems to be asking whether (we believe) there is such a thing as “intrinsic goodness”. We agree that there is no such thing - in fact, that all versions of moral realism are false.

Colander of Truth

Better yet, how does one evaluate a proposed system of objective morality? You say "true objective morals," well, then there must be something against which you compare them, in order to determine their verity. What is that thing? What is its name?

Can an objective moral system be "good?" "Moral? " How so?

Alonzo Fyfe

I have found that there are two sets of standard terminology; the set that you find inside of a philosophy department, and a set that you find outside of a philosophy department.

Outside of a philosophy department, I almost never encounter distinctions such as "cognitivism/non-cognitivism" and "realism/anti-realism". There are only two terms in use; "objective" and "subjective". "Objective" includes the scientific sense of objectivity, cognitivism, and realism. "Subjective" incorporates non-cognitivism, psychological subjectivity, and anti-realism.

Friend's original question illustrates this, where he uses 'objective' in the realist sense, rather than the scientific sense.

Using philosophy-department language in a non-philosophy-department setting is little different from using a foreign language. It does not prevent confusion, it helps feed confusion.


However, even within a philosophy department, the distinction is not clear.

David Brink's definition of moral realism, for example, would count all objective theories as realist. His criteria are:

(1) There are moral facts or truths, and
(2) These facts or truths are independent of our evidence for them.

In a footnote, Brink pretty much uses the terms 'realism' and 'cognitivism' interchangeably -- though he counts a type of cognitive theory (Mackie's error theory) as anti-realist.

There are important ambiguities in this distinction -- such as with the phrase 'independent of our evidence for them'. Does this mean 'independent of our psychological states'? If it does then, by definition, all psychological theories are anti-realist by definition.

Yet, this is too restrictive. Does he really want to say that realism about beliefs and desires is impossible by definition?

Yet, the instant that we allow for the possibility of realism with respect to desires, then desire-dependent value immediately becomes a realist theory.

Geoffrey Sayer-McCord offers a different definition of realism.

(1) The claims in question, when literally construed, are literally true or false.
(2) Some are literally true.

Combine this with the view that value-claims, when literally construed, include a claim of intrinsic prescriptivity, and you can get a view that allows one to be a realist about desires, but an anti-realist about values.

But one runs into problems in a number of scientific areas.

For example, the word 'atom' originally meant 'indivisible particle'. Literally construed, we would have to say that those who first thought that atoms had parts were anti-realists about atoms.

Similarly, the word 'malaria' originally meant 'bad air'. It was built into the very definition of the term that this disease was caused by bad air. Those who theorized that 'malaria' was caused by bacteria had to be classified as anti-realists about malaria.

These results seem odd at best. Realism should allow one to be an anti-realist about unsplittable atoms and bad-air malaria, without being anti-realists about atoms and malaria.

Yet, this implies that realism should allow one to be an anti-realist about intrinsic-prescriptivity moral values without being an anti-realist about moral values.

The point being even within the philosophy department, the distinction between realism and objectivism is confusing. I do not think that the confusion is restricted entirely to my particular use of these terms.

bd-from-kg

Alonzo Fyfe:

I guess we have different ideas about the best way to proceed in a forum like this one.

If you’re going to make careful distinctions, the “target audience” is going to consist of those who are seriously interested in such things, and these are just the people who have either read some works on moral philosophy or are probably going to. The former don’t need your lecture; all they’ll get out of it is that you use nonstandard terminology and that if they want to understand you they had better memorize your nonstandard usage even though it will be useless baggage elsewhere. The latter will (at best) learn your usage and then have to unlearn it later when they start reading moral philosophy. Who benefits?

With regard to the use of the term “realist”, this is true. But practically all moral philosophers who distinguish between moral objectivism and moral realism use the latter term in the way I described. Since you were making this distinction, I thought it best to introduce the terminology that is normally used for this purpose.

With regard to the terms “objective” and “subjective” in moral philosophy, these usages are really quite standard.

As for your other comments, they appear to be, in effect, complaints about the fact that some terms (including “objective”, “subjective”, and “realist”) are not used in moral philosophy with exactly the same meaning as elsewhere (including other areas of philosophy). This is just a fact; it is rooted both in the history of moral philosophy and in practical considerations. There’s no point in complaining about it.

Alonzo Fyfe

I have no fixed ideas -- it is a system of experimentation. I try different things and see how well they come across.


This is a problem, as far as I am concerned. My "target audience" is not the ivory-tower philosopher. Those people have been talking to each other for hundreds of years with little or no impact on the real world. My "target audience" is people who might actually have an influence on real-world public policy.

It seems to me that, while the academic philosopher does good work, their findings are not getting communicated to the public. An academic philosopher will dismiss divine-command theories of ethics with a single word, "Euthyphro". For nearly three centuries they have been dismissing "most vulgar systems of morality" by a simple reference to "the is/ought distinction."

Yet, these findings tend not to make it far outside the philosophy department.

That problem . . . interests me.


Not exactly; the definitions that I criticized were definitions in highly influentian works specifically devoted to moral realism. Furthermore, other authors (e.g., Mackie) who criticize what you call 'moral realism' never use the term -- preferring to say instead, "There are no objective values," while going on and saying that "Some types of objective values certainly exist, but those are not the types I am talking about when I say that there are no objective values."

So, I do not get the sense that even moral philosophers are in as much universal agreement on their use of terms as you seem to think.

But, I do not think that such an issue is worth huge quantities of debate. It is worth while to come up with a less confusing terminology. This is simply my most recent experiment. After looking at the results, I may (probably will) try something else later.

dk

A problem? You guys are on cloud nine. Whatever morality is, or whatever you guys pretend to be talking about, if it can’t be communicated then it might as well be Greek. You’re living in a tower of babble, and bd-from-kg that’s a shame because you’re a very talented writer.

bd-from-kg

wiploc:

Yes, that may be what he meant, but if so he was wrong. Actually it’s generally easier to tell right from wrong in subjective moral systems than in objective ones. Thus, in observer-subjectivism one need only consult one’s own attitude toward an act to determine whether it’s right or wrong; in agent-subjectivism one need only ascertain the agent’s attitude, etc. In typical objective systems the problem is pretty much
intractable. One has to determine what the total effects of an action will be into the indefinite future and evaluate somehow which set of total effects is “best”. Or one has to determine the intentions of a mysterious, invisible being who has left (at best) only the most sketchy, confusing guidelines on the subject. (By contrast, His instructions on the proper way to conduct sacrifices are very clear, detailed, and extensive. Kinda makes you wonder.)

Actually it does. As I pointed out earlier, it has the severe problem of being radically inconsistent with the way moral language is actually used. Objective theories certainly don’t have that problem.

No, no, no. This definition certainly makes moral statements objectively true or false. but if it depends on your personal decision, the truth-value of moral statements is clearly not “independent of what anyone thinks, believes, or feels”. This gets back to my comments about the fact that terms like “objective” aren’t used in the same sense in moral philosophy as they are elsewhere.

Just the same, the requirement that moral statements must have a truth value which is “observer-independent” (which is part of what it means for a moral theory to be “objective”) is the same as what is normally meant by saying that a statement is “objectively true or false”. And this part of the meaning, taken by itself, is enough to show that (in an objective moral system) there must be some procedure which in principle can be carried out for determining the truth of moral statements.