Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Aethari · 10-21-2002, 09:24 PM

jlowder-

Quote:

I said:
I'm no longer arguing that an objective moral scheme requires a supernatural realm, but that we can never be guarenteed an objective interpretation without such a thing. The difference is between a moral truth existing, and us accurately knowing said moral truth.

I probably should have gone back and amended the sentence you quoted from me, because on reflection, what I meant isn't at all clear. As I indicated with what I quoted above, my real problem isn't with the possibility that physical data could generate an objective morality, but rather that we could never discover this moral scheme and manage to preserve this objectivity. My ideas that physical truths cannot create moral truths were the product of my misunderstanding of the term 'objective'. I disavow any such arguments <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Quote:

DD. The world determines moral truth in P-worlds iff given any P-worlds W1 and W2 in which the entities have the same natural properties, then the same moral judgments are true in W1 and W2.

This doesn't seem to address my fundamental concern, however. How can we know what moral judgments are true in these P-worlds? How does one validate a moral statement like "You ought not tromp on daisies"? This was what I was trying to get at in my previous post- it seems like any attempt like DD fails because we lack a mechanism to evaluate the truth of moral judgments.

-Aethari

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: Aethari ]

jlowder · 10-22-2002, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aethari:
This doesn't seem to address my fundamental concern, however. How can we know what moral judgments are true in these P-worlds? How does one validate a moral statement like "You ought not tromp on daisies"? This was what I was trying to get at in my previous post- it seems like any attempt like DD fails because we lack a mechanism to evaluate the truth of moral judgments.

I understand. That is, indeed, a very different question. Your question indicates you are contemplating 'moral skepticism' -- a position which allows that moral principles may be objectively true, but there is no way to know moral truths. I'll try to provide an answer to you soon.

Regards,

Jeffery Jay Lowder

jlowder · 10-23-2002, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aethari:
This doesn't seem to address my fundamental concern, however. How can we know what moral judgments are true in these P-worlds? How does one validate a moral statement like "You ought not tromp on daisies"? This was what I was trying to get at in my previous post- it seems like any attempt like DD fails because we lack a mechanism to evaluate the truth of moral judgments.

I have not done much research on moral epistemology, so I have not yet decided on my own position. But I can quote to you what John Post writes on the matter:

Quote:

How could two people come to agree on what the facts are with which a given value judgment corresponds? Neither the determinacy of valuation nor the argument for it solves or is meant to solve this epistemic problem (because determination is neither reductive nor an implication relation, and EP provides no criteria for what are to count as the relevant similarities). But the determinacy does guarantee there are such facts to be discovered; the epistemic enterprise thus construed is not doomed from the start; correspondence represents an important and intelligible regulative ideal. Because we see how an objective ethics is possible, we need not worry so deeply about irresolvable moral disagreements and the occasional seeming impotence of moral explanations. We are free to apply the logical prerequisites for truth-as-correspondence, not for some quasi-realist or internal-realist surrogate. Thus construed, the sevenfold trial by prerequisites eases the epistemic problem substantially, by narrowing the scope of a relativism of so many people, so many opinions.

Furthermore, we are free to treat various substantive moral theories--Kantian, utilitarian, contractarian, whatever--as if they were different attempts to discover which moral judgments (principles included) are determined by which facts about what there is, and as attempts to justify their answers to this question, whatever the authors of such theories may themselves have thought. We come to know (or at least justifiably believe) which facts make which moral judgments correct, by means of corrective theories whose nonformal principles specify what are to count as the relevant descriptive similarities in virtue of which two persons have the same obligations, two acts have the same worth, or one principle applies with equal force in distinct circumstances....

(major snip)

Even with this further qualification, the response to the demand for a positive account of what determines the truth of a given moral judgment is incomplete. In order to give a complete response, the moral realist must adopt and defend one or another substantive moral theory. Only such theories attempt to specify in a comprehensive way just what the morally relevant factors are in virtue of which I have the obligations I have, or an act has a certain worth, or a given principle applies....

Let us take stock. What the argument for the determinacy of valuation shows is that there is something about the natural facts which determines a unique distribution of truth-values over the moral judgments. As to why there is something about the facts that does this, the answer lies in the way we use (or ought to use) the moral terms: we use them in line with EP and MEA, from which two principles it follows that the facts determine moral truth. Thus, while it is a scientific or natural fact that, say, secondary qualities are determined by primary, it is instead more of a fact about how we choose to carve up the world by our usage of the moral terms that explains why moral truth is determined by natural fact. As to what exactly it is that if known would prevent us from assigning falsity to a really true moral judgment J, the answer is, "The facts that just suffice to determine J's truth-value as true--the facts with which J corresponds." And as to how we could ever know, or at least justifiably believe, that such-and-such are the facts with which J corresponds, the answer (in part) is, "By means of appropriate connective theories whose nonformal principles specify what are to count as the relevant natural properties and relations in virtue of which a given item has the moral status it has."

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: jlowder ]

Aethari · 10-24-2002, 01:57 PM

Thanks!

~Aethari

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10-24-2002, 01:57 PM	#14
Aethari Veteran Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Maryland, USA Posts: 1,635	Thanks! ~Aethari

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