jlowder

Okay. Returning to our prior discussion of moral noncognitivism and moral objectivism, however, it seems to me that, even on the assumption that moral noncognitivism is true, moral objectivism would have a truth value but would be false. As one philosopher wrote to me in private correspondence, "Moral objectivism is a theory about moral judgments (that they are objective and have a truth value). That theory would be FALSE (along with moral cognitivism and dozens of other meta-ethical theories) if moral noncognitivism were true."

Jeffery Jay Lowder

jlowder

It is clear that Post's argument <strong>is</strong> not just an argument for the truth of moral realism, but for ethical naturalism. The determinacy of valuation logically entails that moral values are determined by natural properties. However, it is important to note that Post is NOT arguing for a reductive supervenience relationship (p. 254).

Perhaps what you really meant to write is that I have summarized Post's argument for moral realism, but Post's argument is question-begging.

People are entitled to have whatever opinions they want to have, and to post such opinions on boards such as this one. However, if someone wants to make sweeping claims about, say, the relationship between morality and atheism or the arguments for moral realism, they had better know what they are talking about. If someone claims, for example, "There are no good arguments for moral realism," then they had better be at least familiar with the leading arguments for moral realism. Likewise, if someone else claims, "There are no good arguments for subjectivism," then they had better be at least familiar with the leading arguments for subjectivism (e.g., Mackie). If someone is not familiar with the leading arguments, they are still welcome to post on the board but should qualify their remarks, e.g., "I have only read person X's arguments for moral realism and found them wanting due to objections a, b, and c."

It would be interesting, indeed, to survey professional *moral* philosophers (and not just professional philosophers in general) on whether they accept or reject moral realism. I am not aware of any statistically correct such survey.

As should be obvious by now, I have presented Post's argument for moral realism.

Really? I find it takes me about 20 minutes to drive to the library, 2 minutes to fill out the interlibrary loan request form, 20 minutes to drive back, another 45 minutes or so to to pick up the book once it has arrived at my local library, and about 1-2 hours to read the relevant chapter.

and again:

Post states in his book that his argument for the determinacy of valuation is

Post then appeals to what I have called the "presumption of objectivism":

Post then alludes to a later section of the chapter, where he discusses how the argument for determinacy undermines the argument from queerness. He then turns to his argument for the determinacy of valuation, which I've already presented.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

Clutch

JJL,
Of course; if what you mean is that the sentence "Some variety of moral objectivism is correct" is meaningful, then I've been, so to speak, strenuously agreeing with this all along.

It just doesn't seem to contradict anything I've seen anyone say here.

Oh, well. You and bd appear to be engaging each other, so it can't be too important a point.

bd-from-kg

jlowder:

Before proceeding further, it may be a good idea to be sure that we’re together on terminology.

In your thread <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=52&t=000251" target="_blank">Ethical Objectivism vs. Realism, Revisited</a> you quoted with approval Geoffrey Sayre-McCord’s definition of realism:

When this definition is applied to moral philosophy, it obviously embraces subjectivism and intersubjectivism. Indeed, Sayre-McCord points this out himself and continues:

Now this is not the standard meaning of “realism” in moral philosophy (a fact which Sayre-McCord also notes; the paper advocates adopting his definition for the sake of being consistent with the way the word is used in other branches of philosophy). The standard usage is given, for example, in the <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/m/m-realis.htm" target="_blank">Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a>:

Now subjectivism and intersubjectivism (in most versions at least) are forms of moral relativism, and therefore are excluded from the IEP definition.

It appears that you have been using the term “moral realism” here to mean something more like the IEP definition than Sayre-McCord’s definition. For example, you say that you have presented Post's argument for moral realism. But in fact, his argument is an argument against many versions of moral realism according to Sayre-McCord’s definition.

So the first thing I want to get clear about is exactly what you mean by “moral realism” in this thread.

The second terminological issue concerns the meaning of “objective morality”. (Although you have rarely used the term in this thread, the question posed in the OP was about what “objective morality” means and whether the existence of widespread agreement on basic moral principles meant that morality is objective.) Sayre-McCord (like most moral philosophers) clearly considers objectivism to entail moral realism; that is, it entails that moral statements express propositions, some of which are true. But not all philosophers agree with this definition. For example, in his <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/fernandes-martin/martin3.html" target="_blank"> third statement in the Fernandes-Martin debate</a>, Michael Martin comments in the first footnote:

Now this certainly seems to me to be a fairly plausible kind of theory, but as Martin notes such theories are non-cognitivist. Do you use the term “objective morality” in such a way that it could include noncognitivist theories like this one? In any case, what exactly do you mean by “objective morality”?

jlowder

Okay.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Your point is well-taken. I actually am persuaded to adopt the non-standard definition of moral realism advocated by Sayre-McCord. Post calls his argument an argument for moral realism, presumably since Post adopts the standard definition of moral realism. But since I have adopted Sayre-McCord's nonstandard definition, I should have referred to Post's argument as an argument for "objectivist realism."

I normally use the expression "moral objectivism" instead of "objective morality."

I agree that moral objectivism entails moral realism.

I take moral objectivism to be one type of moral cognitivism. Hence, I cannot agree with Martin that some noncognitivist theories are "objective." Martin's usage of "objective morality" here seems to be totally nonstandard. While I am perfectly open to using terms in a nonstandard way (i.e., moral realism), in this case I see no reason to define objective morality in a way that includes some forms of moral noncognitivism.

Moral objectivism is not only a realist view (in Sayre-McCord's sense), but additionally is the view that the truth conditions of moral claims "need make no reference at all to people, their capacities, practices, or their conventions."

Jeffery Jay Lowder

Primal

What does it mean for something to be objectively true?

For example I'm not sure one can define it so easily as "that which exists outside the mind". What if I speak of brain states, am I know longer being objective as that exists outside of the mind? Or brain chemistry?

Futhermore what if I have a machine that can read minds and I state, "Mr.Jones is experiencing a hallucination" do I cease to be objective because the statement pertains only to something in Mr.Jones mind?

The terms objective and subjective are not one-hundred percent clear and this fact clouds such discussions. One is better off looking into positions normally known as subjectivist and objectivist.

A subjectivist believes that matter of belief are just pure opinion, that we lack any means by which to verify the truth of any claim besides what we arbitrarily prefer. There is no right or wrong.

The objectivist believes that matters of belief can be right or wrong.That we have means of verification and truth is not a matter of preference.

That's the main difference in terms of epistemology. Now lets get into ethics where things get tricky:

The truth is there really has been no hard and fast definitions between objectivists,absolutists and subjectivists, this in short is a summary of what the three schools tend to believe though:

1) Subjectivism: Moral practices are matters of pure preference with no one practice being better then another. Moral systems are all equally true. Morals are more or less things simply invented.


2) Objectivism: Moral practices can be said to be better or worse given physical conditions of the agents involved and the practice in question. Moral systems can be said to be true or false depending on whether or not they properly reflect the state of moral agents.

3) Absolutist: Moral systems stem from something that makes them apply universally. God, Tao, Karma, Nature, or Reason.

One big issue is whether or not a moral system can contain variation and still be objective. The issue in question is whether or not an objective claim in a certain context can contain variation. This is a tricky question.

For example the claim: Men landed on the moon is unquestionably objective and applies across the board if true. It does not matter whether a person is prejudice on the issue or not.

However lets get into this claim: "Human beings have an XY pair of chromosomes". This applies to only males, there is variation. For males this works, for females it does not. So is the claim true or false? Objective or subjective? You may try to get out of it and say "Well as it stands its not true but for males it is" and you are right. But now you have changed the context to make the claim objective. More into this later.

Now lets take another claim though "People like sweets". And "Bill likes sweets" are this claims objective or subjective? Now this is tricky. If one says "I think its subjective" one can counter "But if Bill likes sweets you opinion does not matter". But what if Bill changes his mind? Then has "truth" changed? Again the issue of variation. Also it may then be true to say "Bill likes sweets" while saying "Martha does not". That makes both claims objective, yet there is variation.

But why then does the issue of objectivity come into question if someone says "Rape is immoral for this tribe but moral for another tribe"? Some would see this as proof for subjectivism, but it's already been shown that objectivity allows for variation so this cannot be.

I think there is more to the issue then just variation: if it was simply this the issue would be objective. Rape could be bad for one tribe and good for another and that's it.

When a subjectivist criticizes someone for judging someone else on moral grounds claiming "true and false do not pertain to morality" what is he or she saying really?

Many subjectivists define morals as "beliefs" so does not then the tribes belief in something make it true? If not, then they have to come up with another definition or admit the definition is up for grabs. In which case saying "true and false do not apply to moral claims" is premature.

The main issues relativists and objectivists as well as what I call "absolutists" which are a certain type of objectivist it seems are mainly:

1) Is morality universal/uniform?

2) Are all theories/definitions of morality equal? i.e. are all what people believe about morality true?

3) Are all practices equally moral/immoral?

4) What determines morality? Are all the factors equally determining factors? Is morality determined or invented/created via some sort of free will?

5) How much variation, if any, is there? Are humans uniform enough to come to world wide agreement or are we so radically different from eachother that we cannot even say a moral code applies to the neighboring state? In this case, the nature/nurture debate starts playing a pivotal role.

and 6) What is morality? What can it, if anything be reduced to?

As a materialist I tend to reduce morality to behaviors/"motivations" of a specific type. And I do not believe all motivations are equal. People are obviously motivated by some thing more then others, and certain acts are more conductive to our overall motivations then others.

This makes me somewhat of an objectivist, though not an absolutist. This is because if morality is a matter of behavior it is a question for psychologists,biologists,neurologists and behavioral scientists; i.e. something that can be objectively studied. However this still allows for much variation.

I also thus think certain morals are more uniform or more varied then others. Just as other motivations in humans are more varied. And that certain moral practices are more legitimate i.e. rewarding and based on fact then others. For example the survival instinct is stronger then a lets say, desire for a candy bar.

I think there is enough uniformity to make some world wide laws, I mean, human nature doesn't change THAT radically. However some variation should be allowed as well. One philosopher has thus sought to divide the two claims as issues of custom and issues of morality. With the former being allowed to vary as widely as possible but the latter being strictly enforced.

Morality then is a matter of fact that must account for and examine tha fact of variation and what this means for us.

This is not emotionalism, as saying "practice X(eating children) is moral" would be wrong depending on if the people were stuctured in such a way as to look down on it. Also beliefs effect emotions, if I believe blacks are violent beasts rather then human my emotions towards them will change. In this way the issue of racial differences, matter of fact becomes entwined with an issue of emotion.

In this way I believe some morals can be said to be based on true beliefs and/or noncognitive characteristics, and are allowed to stay permitting they do not greatly hamper other motivations/stronger interests and some can be said to be based on falsehoods or wrong as they harm interests more then help. It would be wrong to say for example that "To these robots murder is moral" if they have been programmed to see murder as immoral.

I do not see morality as a social construct or personal invention. That presupposes some sort of personal free will or social free will. Granted that morals are behavioral traits, a certain type of emotion, then it follows that they are matters of biology and enviromental conditioning. Not personal decisions or social constructs, as I can neither engineer my emotions nor can society engineer its own by pure will. Morals are thus inherited and determined; not invented.

On imposing standards on others, this depends I think. It's easy to say either "yes all the time" or "no all the time" but that usually doesn't cut it. One needs a reason for this.

There are many bad reasons relativists tend to give 1) Cause they are different. (begging the question) 2) Cause yours is no more right. (Why should we care, if our standards say impose....then what makes THAT wrong? To us maybe imposing our values is as right as their own values are to them.)

All of which will fail to hold any water. If one believe it is wrong to impose any standards on another just because they believe/differently one is begging the question and well as demanding the same "who are you to stop us?" type question from others. This is ultimately an apeal to tolerance but the question follows, why is tolerance to be valued?

The absolutist takes a different aproach of imposing all standards on other which is folly. In this viewpoint the slightest moral offense must be punished, no variation is allowed and everyone must be the same. This ignores the fact that people may be physically different and the certain things come up. For example lets say someone was going to release a deadly virus to destroy the world and the only way to stop him is to shoot him. According to absolutist theory you would be immoral to shoot him, because shooting a person is immoral NO MATTER WHAT.

One is thus tempted to take this aproach, "some claims are absolute and some are relative". But all this does is create a mysterious dualisms which begs the question, where does one end and the other begin? By what mechanisms is this possible?


My own aproach is to believe that some behavior depending on its severity and such is more variable/consequential then others. That means some practices do more harm then others and should be condemned/promoted accordingly. And also that some impact me/other people more then others, again this should be treated accordingly. This aproach demands a myriad of methods ranging from aproximation to studies into human nature. This aproach allows for studies of morality to be more scientific, since human nature is relevant and scientists can study human nature.

Also this aproach allows for something I call value reasononing. It can answer the question, why should we let variation occur at all? Why should I even care if other are different before I impose my rules on them?

The answers are many 1) It's a waste of time/energy 2) I value tolerance 3) It can cause them pain/inhumane 4)Variation leads to many valuable things, like less competition/innovation etc. 5) Freedom is of value for me and I'd be taking away their freedom.

These are but a few answers I could give. But this in any case would have to be weighed against other values which may be jeopardized if I fail to impose certain standards.

Also this allows me to see how values are interrelated and have an impact on eachother. For example: We value money,lets say and to get money lets say I'm willing to allow the US army to conquer a country and take its wealth for ourselves. Sounds simple enough but lets see if any other norms I adhere to or values are at stake: 1) The standing of the US with other nations may be harmed severely. 2) Tolerance. 3) Freedom 4)Humaneness 5) Fairness. etc. So now the simple plan is not as simple. Pros and cons must be weighed.

Also if we allow people to murder more becomes jeapardized then just my value for murder 1) My own life does. 2) Industry may fall apart. 3) It will be hard to have an organized government. In short much of my safety and luxuries will be at stake. Thus one value/standard effects others.

This is not easy, its often messy. Human beings do not always know what they want and want different things. I'm sure some people would be ok with the military looting a country, because they don't care about things like tolerance and such. Maybe they are just scared of the same army turning on us and would not do it for that reason.

But it can be done is the point, although as of now it would not be anything close to an exact science.

Now I imagine one will say "But subjectivists,absolutists and dualists can do the same....nothing new". But they cannot do the same.

For an absolutist an act must be totally good or bad-so why measure the good of an act against the bad?

For a subjectivist there's nothing to measure, its all arbitrary anyways. All acts are equally moral/ethical whether there is more/stronger interests behind them or not.

For the dualist an act is either absolutely moral/immoral or a matter of opinion. So the idea of weighing good against bad is meaningless, its either completely right/wrong or neither.

Thus my position is not moral absolutist,relativist/subjectivist nor dualist. But Variable Objectivist is what I'd say. Morality requires moral agents and may vary but moral claims are still true or false. In this way perhaps we can retain basic morality while still allowing for tolerance. Variation plus humanism.

bd-from-kg

jlowder:

What you had presented at the time I made the comment in question wasn’t really an argument (i.e., a non-question-begging argument) at all. And so far as I can see, Post doesn’t even purport to be making an argument for ethical naturalism. You seem to be reading something into it that isn’t there. What he’s arguing for is moral objectivism, or if you insist, “objectivist realism”.

Yes, of course it entails that, because that’s precisely what “determinacy of valuation” means. In the same way, if I define “northerly” as “to the north”, then the fact that my house is northerly of yours entails that it is to the north of yours. But it does not entail that moral values are natural properties.

Exactly. As an argument for moral objectivism, the argument is transparently question-begging, which is to say that it isn’t an argument at all in any serious sense. From what Post himself says, he’s quite aware of this. Which means that he must have been making some other point. Unfortunately, based on your quotes I can’t make out what it is.

And by the way, I don’t consider “arguments” that transparently beg the question to be arguments at all in any meaningful sense, any more than “arguments” involving obvious non sequiturs are. At some point we have to draw a line between word strings that actually constitute arguments from ones that don’t, unless we’re prepared to call anything an argument that anyone calls an argument. As Lincoln used to say: “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

Obviously there are good arguments for all of the widely held positions in moral philosophy; otherwise they wouldn’t be widely held. I have never said anyhing to suggest otherwise. But there are also arguments against some such theories that I consider decisive. In other words, in spite of having good arguments in their favor, they are ultimately untenable.

Well, once again you’ve obviously left out big chunks of Post’s argument, so it’s hard to know what to make of this. I don’t know what he means by “resultance” unless it’s another name for supervenience. But as I pointed out earlier, I don’t see why the fact that moral facts supervene on natural facts makes them any less mysterious or “queer”. If moral facts are not themselves natural facts, it seems downright weird that they should supervene on them. And if they are natural facts, there’s nothing queer about them at all, whether they supervene on other natural facts or not.

As best I can see from what you’ve quoted, Post seems interested only in showing that moral facts do supervene on natural facts. But who says that they don’t? Who is he arguing with here?

The real problem is that it seems impossible that moral facts could be natural facts, and what other kinds of facts are there? I suppose you could say that tautologies are “analytic facts”, but that doesn’t help since moral facts are clearly not tautologies. It seems unavoidable that if moral facts are not natural facts or analytic facts, they must be synthetic a priori truths. And the existence and nature of synthetic a priori truths is indeed quite problematic.

Of course if it turns out that there is a reasonable way to interpret moral statements as descriptive statements about the natural world, this problem is solved. There’s nothing problematic or “queer” or “weird” about such statements. But I have seen nothing in what you’ve quoted from Post that even purports to suggest any such interpretation.

Nope, it certainly doesn’t. In fact, if the existence of moral disagreement is evidence of anything, it’s evidence that there are objective values about which to disagree. If a moral statement were ultimately a statement about the speaker (as many subjectivists claim), there could be no moral disagreement. Thus, when I said “capital punishment is wrong” I’d be saying something about myself, whereas when you say “capital punishment is right” you’d be saying something about yourself. We would no more be disagreeing than if I had said “I have a stomach-ache” and you said “Well I feel quite well”, or if I has said “Strawberry milkshakes are tastier than chocolate malts” and you replied “Oh, chocolate malts taste much better[/i].” But when adults say things like this they are generally not under the impression that they are disagreeing. People are generally pretty good at recognizing when they are disagreeing with one another and when they aren’t. And in the case of differing moral evaluations, most people are clearly under the impression that they are disagreeing.

However, it’s not at all clear that what people with moral disagreements are disagreeing about is whether the (supposed) propositions expressed by the moral statements in question are true. More on this later.

This appears to be the first and only actual argument for objectivism that Post has to offer, or at any rate that you’ve cited, so I’ll give it some serious attention.

First off, we should be clear about just what the fact (if it were a fact) that the logic of moral discourse presupposes moral objectivism would demonstrate. It would demonstrate that all of the more common forms of subjectivism are false in the sense that they are plainly false accounts of what most people have in mind or are trying to express when they make moral statements. (Of course, they might still be true as explanations of what the speaker meant by such statements, but this is of no philosophical interest. I could announce that when I say that an act is right I mean that it involves a right turn, but that doesn’t make this meaning of “right” of interest to moral philosophy. Moral philosophy is interested in what moral language means as it is commonly used.) It would also demonstrate that “primitive” noncognitive theories such as emotivism and imperative theories are false in the same sense, since they would clearly be far from the mark as accounts of what most people intend when they use such language. However, it’s not clear that it would rule out Ideal Observer Theory (which is a subjective theory according to Sayre-McCord's definitions) or the relatively sophisticated version of noncognitivism that Martin describes in the quotation I cited earlier.

But in fact it doesn’t even show this much, because there are plausible interpretations of moral language that do not involve a presumption of objectivity.

For example, moral language can be interpreted as merely reflecting a presumption that there are widely shared moral sentiments, or commitments to certain moral principles, and that the participants in the current discussion are among those who share these sentiments or commitments. For example, a reasonable reading of Hume’s theory is that he believed that certain such sentiments are universal among humans, or very nearly so, and that these must be the basis or foundation of any reasonable system of morality.

This interpretation can, of course, be challenged on the very grounds I cited above – namely, that people often clearly understand themselves to be disagreeing about moral questions. But this can be explained in a number of ways. First, they may be simply disagreeing about the consequences or the correct application of the principles they agree on (i.e., share the same sentiments or commitments with respect to). Or they may be disagreeing about whether a particular sentiment or commitment is sufficiently “widely shared to be an appropriate basis for a moral principle or judgment. Or, they may not be disagreeing about the truth of any proposition at all. It is possible to disagree in a number of other ways. For example, people can disagree about what to do. Or they can disagree in the sense of approving of or recommending or prescribing different things.

Also, the impression that moral language presumes objectively true principles may be the result (at least in part) of the criteria that must satisfied before a statement or principle is considered to qualify as moral in the first place . Thus, a statements or principles is by definition only moral if it is universalizable. Similarly, a reason for doing something is by definition only a moral reason if an impartial, disinterested observer might reasonably be expected to find it persuasive. These conditions lead directly to such things as Kant’s categorical imperative and to a principle of “equal treatment”, simply because it is impossible that a principle of action that fails to be universalizable could be considered a moral principle at all, or that there could be a moral justification or reason for giving special, arbitrary (in the sense of discretionary) preference to some. But these facts fall out of what morality is about rather than from any “self-evident moral truths”, just as “If A and B, then A” is true not because of some mysterious “principle of logic”, but because this is part of what “and” means.

It is instructive to compare moral language with aesthetic language because they are very similar structurally. Thus, we would not be at all surprised or find it unintelligible if Smith were to say that one painting or musical work is more “beautiful” or simply “better” than another. Moreover, if Jones disagrees, Smith might well offer reasons why the first work is superior. And after reflecting about these reasons, Jones might well come to agree with Smith after all. He might even express this by saying that he had thought that the latter work was better, but now sees that the former one is superior. All of this certainly seems to presuppose an objective standard of beauty. Yet it is entirely possible (and nowadays very likely) that neither Smith nor Jones believes that there really is any such objective aesthetic standard. So it would seem that it is not only possible but common for ordinary people to speak in a way that seems to presuppose an objective standard even though we know that they no not believe that any such standard exists.

But the most serious objection of all to the “presumption of objectivity” argument is that it cannot possibly show that moral objectivism is true or correct. The most it could possibly show, even in principle, is that most people believe that it is. This no more shows that there are such objective principles than the fact (if true) that most people speak in ways that presume that God exists shows that God exists.

Analysis of moral language didn’t just start yesterday; it has been going on for millennia. Obviously such an analysis should start with a presumption that such language is literally meaningful. But at some point it is reasonable to insist that those who say that it is should come up with a literal interpretation that is true to the way the language in question is actually used. In other words, the onus has long since fallen on the objectivists to give a plausible, logically coherent account of what propositions are expressed by moral statements. It’s not enough to talk about presumptions, presuppositions, or the burden of proof. If such statements actually mean something, those who claim that they do should be able to tell us what it is that they mean.

Finally, moral naturalists have an additional problem with this argument, because it is obvious that if common usage presupposes that there are such things as objective moral properties, these properties are presupposed to be non-natural. Common usage clearly entails that no mere description of “how things are” can possibly entail “how things should be”. Common usage would never, under any circumstances, accept an argument that “X should do Y” as valid if all of its premises are factual. So if a moral theory that diverges from standard usage is to be rejected on that account alone, naturalistic theories are immediately out of court.

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Nova Andromeda

--Again I have only scanned the topic, but it appears people do not subscribe to the idea that a system of interaction between intelligent entities (i.e., morality) can be objectively based and logically determined.
-It is readily apparent that any functionaly entity must have a goal. You cannot do anything on purpose without a goal (it doesn't matter if you are aware of the goal or not). Knowing this we can ask the question of what system of interaction between a group of entities (with random goals) would result in the maximum chance of any individual entity acheiving its goal. This is the same as maximizing the total attainment of goals amongst the group of entities. I have to go to a movie, but I believe this question can be answered and that answer is that whatever the system the interactions must maximize equitability (which I have let to delineate).