mnkbdky

This thread will demonstrate that if something exists, then, it has an essence or a nature (I will be using nature and essence as synonyms). That is, if something X exists then X has, at least, one property P that could not fail to obtain just in case X obtained. Furthermore, if X has an essence E, then, it could not be the case that X could lack E. That is, it is impossible that there is a world W in which X lacks E. Now, when it is impossible that something not obtain or impossible that some thing lack another thing it is called necessary, therefore, an essence will defined as, a necessary property. It will then be argued that morality does indeed exist, and, therefore, has its nature or essence necessarily. That is, morality has necessary properties. This position will be called, metaphysical moral realism (MMR).

p.s. This task is long and involved, so please excuse the length and preserver to the end. Also, I will be posting this on both the Philosophy and Moral Foundations forums. It is posted on the former because of its metaphysical claims about essences and on the latter because of its axiological assertions. Now on with the argument.

It has been argued by some throughout the history of philosophy that good and evil are cultural conventions. They are concepts that have been arbitrarily attributed to thing only by the will of mankind (or divinity). This thread will make clear that this opinion is apodictally false. To this task I will now turn.

It should not be controversial to state that things are what they are by nature and not by somebody’s will. Whether we have access to that nature or not, an object must exist as it is and does become what it is because of what persons say about it. A person may use that object however they please (perhaps even according to its nature) but in doing so they do not change the ontological make up of that object. The object is what it is ontologically by nature.

Now by nature I mean, something has a nature N if for any object X and property P it is impossible that X exist and not P or P exist and not X. Another way to state this is, X has a nature, if X has a property P that could not fail to obtain just in case X obtain or X could not fail to obtain just in case P obtained. If it is impossible that X and P exist apart from one another, then, it is necessarily false that there is a possible world W in which X could exist apart P. An object’s nature, then, is a necessary property of that object. How, though, do we tell if things have natures?

An easy way to see that things do indeed have natures is to think in terms of its contradictories. For example, in trying to ascertain whether I have an essence or not I can attempt to think of myself as distinct or numerically different than myself. (It makes no difference whether we define the self materially or immaterially; either way, we can ask whether it is possible that that person be numerically distinct from the substance that constitutes them.) It soon becomes clear that this is impossible and is a broad contradiction. That is, it logically necessarily false that there is a possible world W in which X has the property P of being me and Y have P and X /=Y. Positively, it is logically necessarily true that, X=Y if and only if for every P, X has P if and only if Y has P. Therefore, I have the property of having the property of being self identical. Therefore, the property of being identical to myself could not fail to obtain just in case I obtain and if I obtain then the property of being self identical could not fail to obtain. If the property of being self identical could not fail to obtain just in case I obtain, then, I have the necessary property of being self identical, which is to say that being self identical is part of my essence.

After performing this test on myself it appears that we may apply it to all existent things and come to the same conclusion. It must be the case, then, that every existent thing has the property of being self identical. To be exact, it is logically necessary that if object X exists, then, X has the property of having the property of being numerically identical to itself. Now, if every existent thing has the necessary property of being self identical, then, every existent thing has a nature or an essence. While this observation only give us generally insight into a things nature and is by no means a profound find, it is enough to demonstrate that things do indeed have a nature. It will take a lot more work to discover a things specific nature, but that is a life long project not suitable for this thread.

Now, from all of the above it should be sufficiently clear that thing have their nature’s necessarily and, hence, natures are not the result of human convention. That is,

1) If object X exists, then, X has an nature N

2) If X has N, then, N could not fail to obtain if X obtains.

3) If N could not fail to obtain if X obtains, then, N is a necessary property P to X.

4) If N is a necessary property P to X, then, N is not arbitrarily attributed to X.

5) If N is not arbitrarily attributed to X, then, N does not depend on anyone’s will toward or conventions about X.

6) Therefore, if object X exist, then, N does not depend on anyone’s will toward or conventions about X.

(At this point, I will forgo discussing objections to this argument and will wait to do this when the discussion begins.)

From the argument above, it should be abundantly clear that if Good and Evil do exist, then, they have their nature’s necessarily and not because of human convention or will. However, from the above we could only say that Good is identical to itself and Evil is identical to itself--hardly something to get excited about. As I said above, it will take some more work to get to its specific nature. While I do not intend to discover all of the necessary properties of Good and Evil, or exhaust their nature’s, I will attempt to discover at least one. Now, let’s take a closer look.

In the section above, we though in terms of something's contradictories in order to discover its essence. This process of metaphysical via negativa seems to be a good way to proceed for discovering some specifics about the nature of Good and Evil. For instance, try to image the contradictory of the statements, “It is morally right or Good not to torture infants for pleasure” and/or “it is morally wrong or Evil to torture infants for pleasure.” I suggest that just as it was impossible to imagine something being numerically distinct from itself, so too, is it impossible to imagine that the statements, “It is morally right or Good to torture infants for pleasure” and/or “It s morally wrong or Evil not to torture infants for pleasure.” Of course, it is possible to state these contradictory propositions. However, it is impossible to see how they could possibly be true. Therefore, it must be part of Good’s essence that it is morally right not to torture infants for pleasure and Evil’s essence that it is morally wrong to torture infants for pleasure.

The strongest and easiest argument against this position is to simply say that Good and Evil do not exist. I will call this position metaphysical moral nihilism. By denying the existence of moral good and evil the metaphysical moral nihilist asserts that all moral declaration are neither true nor false. I believe and will demonstrate that this position is self-refuting and, hence, necessarily false. The argument is as follows:

It is true that

(A) either,

(1) It is true that it is good to torture infants for pleasure

or

(2) It is false that it is good to torture infants for pleasure

or

(3) It is morally neutral to torture infants for pleasure.

Now, (A) is only true if its components (i.e., (1), (2) and (3)) are true or false.

The metaphysical moral nihilist might object that (1), (2) and (3) are not an exhaustive set of contraries and there is another option,

(4) Good and evil do not exist, therefore, (1), (2) and (3) are neither true nor false and, hence, (A) has no truth value.

The metaphysical moral nihilist’s object, however, will not work. For if (4) is true, the, (2) is true as well. That is, f it is the case that it is neither good nor evil to torture infants for pleasure, then, it is false that it is good to torture infants of pleasure. Therefore, the metaphysical moral nihilist’s claim that (1), (2), and (3) are neither true not false is itself false--since it assures the truth of (2). (4) is, therefore, self-refuting. It appears, then, that (A) is valid and exhaustive set of contrary propositions. Now, no set of contraries can be all false, one must be true. And if (1), (2) and (3) are either true or false, then, good and evil must exist. So again, (4) is false. Good and Evil do exist.

It might be object that we could swap good for evil in (1) and (2) and arrive at the opposite conclusion--that is, that it is false that it is evil to torture infants for pleasure. This is true. However, it does not hurt the argument. For even if they are swapped good and evil must exist in order for them to be true or false. The only thing swapping does is to place us in a epistemological moral quandary.


In conclusion, the argument in the first section demonstrated that if something exists it has a nature and that necessarily. In the second section we saw that if Good and Evil exist, then, it is part of Good’s essence that it is morally right not to torture infants for pleasure and Evil’s essence that it is morally wrong to torture infants for pleasure. In the third section we saw that the denial of Good and Evil was self-refuting. The metaphysical reality of Good and Evil has been vindicated. Therefore, the position I have called metaphysical moral realism is true and metaphysical moral nihilism is false. As a consequent, it should also be recognized that moral relativism is false as well.

QED

--mnkbdky

Alonzo Fyfe

I think you should look into what is called the problem of opacity (a.k.a. the intensional fallacy).

What I can imagine, or cannot imagine, about X, is not a property of X, it is a property of me. And, thus, it tells us nothing about X. In philosopher's language references to such things as what we can imagine are "opaque" -- the property does not "shine through" the imagining to shed light on the object itself.

Consequently, philosophers would likely argue that your proof tells us nothing about good and evil, only about our imaginings about good and evil. And since not everything we can imagine is true, and perhaps not everything that is true is imaginable, there is, perhaps, a gap in the logic.

mnkbdky

The intensional fallacy says there is a basic distinction between certain types of statements. A statement constitutes an extensional context if the following two conditions hold: (a) co-referring expressions can be substituted for one another in the sentence without changing its truth value (e.g. if "Mary loves John's best friend" is true, and John's best friend is Fred, then "Mary loves Fred" is true), and, (b) the sentence entails the existence of the entities it mentions (e.g. if "Mary loves Fred" is true then "Fred exists" is true). Conversely, a sentence is said to constitute an intensional context if both these criteria fail of it (e.g. "Mary believes that Father Christmas lives in the North Pole" does not entail that "Mary believes that Santa Claus lives in the North Pole" (for Mary may not know that Father Christmas and Santa Claus are meant to be one and the same) and nor does it entail that "Father Christmas exists"). This definition is taken from http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ddb/teac...IONAL-CONTEXTS .

Now, I am not sure what part of my argument commits this fallacy. Perhaps, you think I committed when I say,

Now if X has every property that I do and Y has every property X has, then Y has every property that I do. Therefore X=Y. If this is the case, then, X and Y could be interchangeable in any statement and without loosing truth value. So criterion (a) is met. It should also be obvious that in this case if X is Y, then, both X and Y exist. Therefore, criterion (b) is met. So, it cannot be this part of the argument that commits this fallacy.

But maybe you are of the opinion that I commit this fallacy here,

In order to commit the intensional fallacy, though, I would have to claim that the statement ("Mary did something Good") is identical to the statement ("Mary did not torture an infant"). However, this claim is not made. Rather, the claim is, that what ever Mary did was an aspect of what Good is. That is, it is part of Good's essence. Not torturing infants does not exhaust Good's essence. Good is identical to all of its necessary properties and if they all were to be listed, then, we could say that set necessary properties are identical to Good. So, the statement ("Mary did everything that was Good") and the statement ("Mary did NP1, NP2, NP3 . . . NPn) can be used interchangeably without changing truth value.

So, it cannot be this area of the argument that commits this fallacy.

Now, because my argument attempts to prove that Good and Evil do exist and, I believe succeeds, I cannot be guilty of the second part of this fallacy--namely (b) the sentence entails the existence of the entities it mentions.

Perhaps, though, I am not addressing the section you believe commits this fallacy. If I have not, please direct my attention to that section.

There also seems to be the assumption that we do not have access to reality as it is and, therefore, cannot make true statement about reality. Rather, we see reality through our human lenses, and that darkly. Therefore, when we make statements about reality we are only making statements about how we perceive reality, not reality an sich.

If this is the claim it should be reconized that it is statement about the nature of reality and, therefore, self-refuting and self-destroying. That is, this statement say that it is actualy the case that we can view reality as it actually is.


Thanks,

--mnkbdky

Dr. Retard

It looks to me like you're making a simple mistake:

The metaphysical moral nihilist doesn't accept (4). (S)he accepts:

(4)' Good and Evil do not exist, therefore (2) is true, (1) and (3) are false, and "It is evil to torture infants for pleasure" is also false.

And (4)' isn't obviously false like (4) is.

Alternatively: The falsehood of (4) doesn't imply the existence of Good and Evil. It implies the conjunction "Good and Evil do not exist and it is false that (1), (2), and (3) are neither true nor false." The nihilist can cheerfully accept both (4)'s falsehood and this implication. (Incidentally, the way you've constructed (4), if Good and Evil exist, then (4) is true).

Bill Snedden

Although I'm not inclined to agree with this point of view, it should be noted that your evaluation of it as "self-refuting" seems to me obviously incorrect. Saying "we can only make statements about how we perceive reality" is NOT making a statement about reality, but about us and how we perceive it. Relativists generally acknowledge that they can say little or nothing about reality, only about our perceptions of it. Speaking of our perceptions is NOT the same as speaking of reality unless you believe that perception IS reality.

In terms of your argument, it would appear to me that you've unjustifiably reified "good" and "evil" as "objects" and your argument thus depends upon them having a "material" ontological status. Is the concept of "good" the same as an object that is "good"? Is "good" or can it be an object in and of itself? What is the "nature" of "taste?"

I don't think that there is any contradiction inherent in denying "good" the type of objective status you ascribe to it and yet believing that "good" is an adjective that can be descriptive of actions, persons, or events in a purely subjective sense. In other words, "good" need not be a noun descriptive of some "thing", but rather an adjective that we use to describe actions, persons, or events that have some sort of common effect. The effect we may describe as "a" good, but not "the" good in the sense in which you mean.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Alonzo Fyfe

No.

To commit the intensional fallacy you have to say that facts about our imaginings entails something about existence. This is what you seem to be doing when you argue that our imaginings about torturing babies and goodness entails something about the existence of goodness.

Claims of existence require a different type of evidence.


Not at all. Saying that premises of type A tell us nothing about existence does not imply that we can know nothing about existence -- not so long as we have different types of premises.

Existence is reasonably inferred as a way of explaining certain types of observations. We postulate that quarks exist because the theory explains a wide range of observations, including observations yet to come.

The problem with metaphysical moral realism is that the entities serve no explanatory or predictive purpose. We can explain all entities in the world by means of relationships between states of affairs and desires.

Certainly, a widespread aversion to the torturing of babies exists. Aversions of this type fully explain peoples' negative reaction. They simply don't like it.

I do hold that some of these relationships between states of affairs and desires can be complex. I do not believe that moral condemnation can be accouted for in terms of a simply "I don't like it" relationship. Rather, moral evaluations describe more complex, "We generally will be better off if people generally don't like it," type of claim. And this, too, is true of torturing babies.

But none of this requires any type of metaphysical moral realism -- just relationships between states of affairs and desires of different levels of complexity.

mnkbdky

The metaphysical moral nihilist, MMN, is committed to (4). Their claim is that statements about good and evil have no truth value. They believe moral statemenst are non-sensical statements. An example of such a statement that has no truth value is, "Mnkbdky is a trafetal gutala." Trafetal gutala has no meaning and certainly does not refer to anything that exists and, therefore, this statement has no truth value. It is neither true nor false that, "Mnkbdky is a trafetal gutala."

Similarly, the MMN says that the statement, "it is good/evil to torture infants for pleasure," has no truth value because good/evil have no meaning, nor do they refer to anything that exists.

The MMN is committed to (4), not (4)'.

Your (4)' is almost what a moral relativist MR would claim.

An MR would state,

Good and evil do exist, but only inside cultural practices, and what is a good and evil practice differs from culture to culture, sub-culture to sub-culture . . . individual to individual, sometimes in logically incompatiable ways (i.e., contradictories of contraries). Therefore, any statement (X is good/evil) has truth value, but only inside its respective culture. Ultimately, though,

(5) All universal moral statements are false.

So, the MR would restate (1), (2) and (3) to read;

(1') It is true that it is good to torture infant for pleasure inside culture A.

(2') It false that it is good to torture infants for pleasure inside culture B.

(3') It is morally neutral to torture infants for pleasure inside culture C.

However, all statements of the original type (1), (2) and (3) are false, since they assume universality.

The proplem with (5) is this; In an exhaustive set of contrary propositions--as (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) is--then one statement must be true. Here is an easy example; Suppose that the Chicago Bears are playing God in a football game. It is true then that,

(CG) either

(i) God will win the game and the Bears will lose

(ii) Chicago will win the game and God will lose

(iii) God and the Bears will draw

or

(iv) Something will stop the game from finishing and no one will win or lose.

Now, (CG) forms an exhaustive set of contraries. The analogous claim to (5) would be this, (v) all statements about the outcome of the game are false. However, this is logically impossible. One of them must be true. The same is true of an exhaustive set of universal moral claims.

The moral relativist's position is radically opposed to the metaphysical moral nihilist's. And false for a completely different reason.




As you can see the nihilist cannot accept (4)' and is committed to (4). And (4)' must be restated as (5), which we saw was false. So, again that leaves us with (1), (2) or (3). The second section of the argument showed us that it was evil to torture infants for pleasure, therefore, (1) and (3) are false and (2) is true.

Are you saying that if Good and Evil exist, then, Good and Evil do not exist?

For, (4) says, "Good and Evil do not exist . . ."

This is a contradiction and, obviously, false.

Thanks

--mnkbdky

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, no.

There is one type of moral nihilists, called noncognitivists, who hold that moral claims have no truth value. But though all noncognitivists are nihilists, not all nihilists are noncognitivists.

For example, a tooth-fairy nihilists does not hold that all tooth-fairy claims are nonsensical. The statement that "the tooth fairy left me a quarter" is quite meaningful -- but false. It is false because tooth fairies (teeth fairy) do not exist.

mnkbdky

The tooth-fairy has meaning in our culture. If the MMN makes this move and says that good has meaning in our culture and another meaning in a different culture, then, he admits the existence of good in the form of cultural traditions and becomes a moral relativist.

Alonzo Fyfe

You seem to be confusing meaning and reference.

We have a word 'moral' in our language. We would not translate any word in another culture as 'moral' in our language unless that word had the same meaning as the word 'moral' in our culture. That other language may have a word "Akras" which the use to refer to a pronged utensil commonly used in eating, but we would not translate their word into our word 'moral', we would translate that word into our word "fork".

No foreign word would be translated into our word "moral" unless it had the same meaning as our word "moral".

So, the meaning of a term remains constant across cultures -- and this is true pretty much by definition. If you use a different meaning, then you are using a different term.

Ultimately, it is not the meaning of the terms that changes from one culture to another, it is the reference of the term that changes from one culture to the next.

The nihilist (or, actually, and more accurately, the eliminativist) does not argue that the MEANING changes from one culture to another. The MEANING stays constant. However, the term REFERS to something that does not exist. Because the REFERENCE is to something that does not exist, the statements, "X is good", "Y is bad" are meaningful, but false, in all instances.

The relativist (or, more accurately, the cultural subjectivist) also does not argue that the MEANING changes from one culture to another. The MEANING stays consant. Furthermore, the term REFERS to something that exists. However, the term REFERS to different things in different cultures.

In both cases, the MEANING stays constant, and what distinguishes the eliminativist from the cultural subjectivist is what they say about the REFERENCE for that term -- what it points to.