Why be moral?
Here's a reposting of something I wrote a few years ago. Didn't get much attention then. Maybe it will now.
Let us imagine that the concept of categorical/unconditional imperatives/obligations was sensible. Let us also imagine that these are true. What then? How would this world differ from one without objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality (henceforth simply referred to as "morality")?
Do the existence of these universal rules influence behaviour? And I don't mean our belief in them; I mean their actual existence? Sure, if we believe that we ought not do X then we might not do X, but then it wouldn't really matter if our beliefs were true; only that we have them. But what would the facts behind the matter really entail?
Perhaps we could say that it is best for us to live the truly moral life. But what if what is right is what we find reprehensible? What if we ought to kill babies for fun? Would we then wish to be good? Or would we deny morality -- not in the sense that we don't accept its validity; in the sense that we don't act in accordance to it?
Would you accept a morality that stands in stark opposition to your personal values? What would it mean for you if you'd found this to be the case? And what difference would it make if there was no morality at all?
To make it simple. Explain to me the difference between these possible worlds:
1. No morality.
2. It is immoral to kill babies.
3. It is moral to kill babies.
It seems to me that the only difference is that in the second one we would be correct in believing that it is immoral to kill babies. But what difference would being correct make to being incorrect? Presumably, regardless of what is or isn't the case, you wouldn't kill babies. Or would you convert to baby killing if you'd found it to be moral? In the unlikely case you'd say yes: then it's your belief that matters, not the fact-of-the-matter -- what difference does the fact-of-the-matter make?
Let us imagine that the concept of categorical/unconditional imperatives/obligations was sensible. Let us also imagine that these are true. What then? How would this world differ from one without objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality (henceforth simply referred to as "morality")?
Do the existence of these universal rules influence behaviour? And I don't mean our belief in them; I mean their actual existence? Sure, if we believe that we ought not do X then we might not do X, but then it wouldn't really matter if our beliefs were true; only that we have them. But what would the facts behind the matter really entail?
Perhaps we could say that it is best for us to live the truly moral life. But what if what is right is what we find reprehensible? What if we ought to kill babies for fun? Would we then wish to be good? Or would we deny morality -- not in the sense that we don't accept its validity; in the sense that we don't act in accordance to it?
Would you accept a morality that stands in stark opposition to your personal values? What would it mean for you if you'd found this to be the case? And what difference would it make if there was no morality at all?
To make it simple. Explain to me the difference between these possible worlds:
1. No morality.
2. It is immoral to kill babies.
3. It is moral to kill babies.
It seems to me that the only difference is that in the second one we would be correct in believing that it is immoral to kill babies. But what difference would being correct make to being incorrect? Presumably, regardless of what is or isn't the case, you wouldn't kill babies. Or would you convert to baby killing if you'd found it to be moral? In the unlikely case you'd say yes: then it's your belief that matters, not the fact-of-the-matter -- what difference does the fact-of-the-matter make?
Comments (506)
As far as I could tell, it wouldn't differ at all.
As far as I can tell the world has no objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality, unless we force it upon the world via anthropomorphic bullying.
How would 'we' differ might be an entire different issue, except that we only have a sample size of one 'we' to go by and this one 'we' seems to have a lot of people within that 'we' that cannot seem to do without objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality.
Then again, I'm just me and can't really speak with certainty about 'we'.
Meow!
GREG
It's not just the belief that matters. The cause of the belief matters too.
If one [I]found[/I], as a matter of fact, that it's moral, then is it not the case that the fact, and it's finding, are also of significance? Because presumably one could demonstrate that it's a fact, and thereby convince a reasonable person that it's moral, even if they had previously believed otherwise.
However, even in such a case, I doubt that I'd be able to act accordingly. I'd accept that I am immoral, and that morality is radically different to what I thought it was.
But for someone who is more committed to morality, the fact, it's discovery, the subsequent belief, and the decision to act accordingly would all matter.
Beliefs are truth-apt. My belief is true IFF it is the fact of the matter. Could there be a world in which the statement "killing babies is moral" is true? Not if it's necessarily true that killing babies is immoral.
How do you find out if a statement is necessarily true?
How would this be any different to thinking (incorrectly) that one had found a moral fact, and successfully convincing others of this falsehood?
Again, it's not the fact of the matter that makes a difference but the belief.
[quote=Mongrel]Beliefs are truth-apt. My belief is true IFF it is the fact of the matter. Could there be a world in which the statement "killing babies is moral" is true? Not if it's necessarily true that killing babies is immoral.
How do you find out if a statement is necessarily true?[/quote]
Whether or not it is true is beside the point. I want to know what difference the truth makes.
The truth of things like "e = mc^2" and "there's a kettle in the next room" have a causal affect in the world, irrespective of belief. But does the truth (or falsity) of "X is immoral" have a causal affect?
Demonstrating that something is the case will be more compelling to anyone capable of grasping it than some other means of persuasion. Without the fact, there can be no such demonstration. That's the difference.
You can conjure up a thought experiment in which this isn't the case, but I don't see the point of doing so.
In one possible world, all else being equal, there'd be a group of people capable of grasping the fact, who'd be convinced that it is the case upon grasping the fact, and they'd either act in accordance with it or not. In this world, the fact itself, amongst other things, is of significance, in that it has a causal role in determining belief and action.
At first, I couldn't find any fault in your original post, and thought that I might have to play devil's advocate. We have a similar meta-ethical stance, I think. I'm a moral anti-realist and influenced to some extent by Hume.
Whether a physical law and the existence of X can rightly be called causes is an interesting question, but I think I understand what you're asking.
Condemnation is an expression of abhorrence. It is a refusal to accept the world as it is. Morality exists where people are bound to that defiance. There is no morality in total acceptance.
My experience is that acceptance comes and goes. I go back and forth between amoral and moral perspectives. I have areas of inflexibility, but those areas probably aren't the same as yours. We each develop abiding wrath according to what we experienced and how we reacted to it.
Can we trace any events to this refusal to accept the world as it is? Oh yea. There's at least one case of it described on every page of every history book ever written.
Can you say something about the metaphysics of causality, Yahadreas? I'm not asking for a full-blown dissertation here, I just want to get the gist of how you think causality works before I write a detailed reply, since it seems to be necessary here.
Granted, the truth of a belief doesn't always effect the actions taken by the person who holds that belief. But suppose that we believe that X is moral, and our reason for believing it is because it's true? It would be a bit like beliefs about mathematics: presumably, I believe that 2+2=4 because 2+2=4.
But now we come to the sticky question as to whether the relationship between mathematical objects, such as 2 and 4, "caused" me to hold that belief. The answer would seem to turn on how causation works.
Similarly, our behavior will be influenced by beliefs about morality. But this does not then entail that our beliefs are or are not truth-apt.
Though, perhaps in a round-about away, our meta-ethical beliefs could influence behavior -- whether they, themselves, are true or no, too.
It seems to me that the primary difference between the three worlds is:
1. Moral statements, theories, and beliefs are not truth-apt
2. Moral statements, theories, and beliefs are truth-apt.
3. Same as 2
If we want to simplify, anyways. I'm not sure that I really like the truth-apt statement approach anymore to meta-ethics. It just seems to miss the point.
I don't see why "moral facts", should be different. It may be the case that not believing some inconsequential falsehood could be life threatening. Say, a position on the colour of the creator of the universe's ear hair -- but then, the prudent fact would be where and when to commit to what, and not the inconsequential details of what is committed to.
So, what does it mean for killing babies to be moral? Does it mean that God has deemed it so? Does it mean that babies emit a poisonous gas, or don't actually exist by are disguised psychic parasites?
I also don't see this question as being different than asking if one would change their opinions about any state of affairs, despite powerful reason to believe the contrary. One can have extremely deep conviction, and attachment in blue ear hair, even after death, and eyeballing that the orange ear hair crowd was right all along. If you were them, would you change your opinion?
So, three points: Facts matter, and when they don't, then who cares what the case is?
Why should there be a difference between moral facts, and other facts? If there is no difference, then they either matter, or don't matter, as facts. Thirdly, opinions about any state of affairs can be deep seated, and are rarely not emotionally charged at all. I don't see why asking the question about "moral facts" is different than asking it about any fact.
I agree. My basis is a Witty-type one: we find the language contains 'should', and other people say it, and I find myself saying it too. As pattern-seeking animals, it makes sense for us to try to systematise these uses.
I think empirical testing of the question in the op is theoretically possible. But I wouldn't fancy formulating the study guidelines :)
Sure, but are moral facts the sort of facts that can lead to measurable consequences if we act in light of false moral beliefs? For example, if I falsely believe that killing babies is (im)moral then what sort of outcome could I expect?
[quote=Moliere]I'm not sure about your criteria here. It seems to me that behavior is obviously influenced by belief more than truth -- but that does not then mean that even regular, as opposed to moral, statements are not true or false.
Similarly, our behavior will be influenced by beliefs about morality. But this does not then entail that our beliefs are or are not truth-apt.[/quote]
I'm not questioning the truth-aptness of moral beliefs. I'm questioning the relevance of moral facts, both as motivating factors and consequences. Is there any empirical difference between a world in which killing babies is moral and a world in which killing babies is immoral? If you found out that killing babies is moral then would you kill babies, or would you act immorally and not kill babies?
You are assuming these don't exist? For many people (excluding myself), there are moral obligations.
I suppose if one is truly a dyed-in-the-wool realist about moral facts, and they were to find out that killing babies is morally good, then they would change their behavior and kill babies.
Actually, this reminds me of the recent question from New York Times Magazine, where -- for some people at least -- they were shown an example when killing a baby is morally good, and they said "yes"
I don't think that that on me. You said to suppose that there are moral facts. If they're the kinds of facts that don't matter consequentially in any sense, then who cares? I do happen to think that values are consequential to some extent, and I can't imagine a feasible scenario in which killing babies for fun would be a good thing to do.
For me, part of the answer is that morality doesn't work that way. It does not prescribe specific actions as good and obligated but prohibits impermissible action. We come to morality with a proposed action and ask if it is morally permissible to act in such a way. It would be peculiar for the moral agent to find right and moral action reprehensible because the moral agent has selected the action as preferential prior to moral judgement (exception would be when coerced to act reprehensibly). Where morality might find some resistance in reprehensible attitudes is when a prohibition is viewed as reprehensible (e.g., the inquiring ax murderer). In that case, the moral requirement is not judged as reprehensible but the supposed outcome of acting on the moral requirement is reprehensible. If a refusal to lie results in the murder of a close friend, then the moral agent finds the refusal to lie as reprehensible insofar as it resulted in a close friend being murdered. Here the end (i.e., protecting a friend from an ax murderer) is judged as good but the means (i.e., refusing to lie) is judged as bad because of the likelihood that it fails to secure the end. Suppose now, that the friend was able to sneak out of a window in a walkway beside the house. Upon hearing the lie, the murderer is turned away and sulks down the same walkway that your close friend has escaped into and by an unfortunate circumstance the murderer meets your friend and murders them. By reference to the outcome, the lie would have the same moral value as the refusal to lie insofar as the end is good but the means were bad. It is on the moral agent to reconcile the means and the end as morally permissible. If it is the aim of the moral agent to protect one's friends from ax murderers/Nazis, then the means towards that end ought to be suitable.
Quoting Michael
The difference between 1 and either 2 or 3 is the existence of moral agency (i.e., agents capable of making moral judgements). Morality is a nascent, emergent property that becomes realized in a universe that has evolved moral beings. Moral beings are ones that are capable of making and acting on judgements of practical reason (i.e., subjective principles).
1. No morality.
2. It is immoral to kill babies.
3. It is moral to kill babies.
It seems to me that the only difference is that in the second one we would be correct in believing that it is immoral to kill babies. But what difference would being correct make to being incorrect? Presumably, regardless of what is or isn't the case, you wouldn't kill babies. Or would you convert to baby killing if you'd found it to be moral? In the unlikely case you'd say yes: then it's your belief that matters, not the fact-of-the-matter -- what difference does the fact-of-the-matter make?"
I wonder if it is that simple. There appear to be other motivations that have and continue to subvert a moral view of this world.
During the Holocaust 1.5 million Jewish were killed in order to purify the Aryan race from their 'taint'. The primordial or elemental kinship between people became racially motivated and it led to the slaughter of multitudes of innocent people. Racism became a nationalist goal. Isn't the ethnic cleansing we have seen, and continue to see, a continuation of that trend? Morality force is replaced by the force of nationalism, and blood.
Also, we live in a dangerous world where letting one's guard down can lead to tragedies such as 9/11. Societies response to this, here and many other countries has led to a defacto Big Brother society, where freedom is sacrificed for the Ideal of Safety.
The massive intrusion of the state, from the demanding of media data, to the nearly ubiquitous presence of cameras surveying the actions of the populations, coupled with an ever improving technology almost read like science fiction or perhaps a the prologue to a totalitarian state. Think about facial recognition software, which is being employed by many countries.
An essential aspect of what is or is not moral is the freedom of the agent. Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Our desire to be safe overturns our moral concerns.
What I feel from interactions with the outside world determines my morality. There are no set rules that can be applied to every one.
Take for example the basic teachings of the past masters: 'Thou shall not kill', and 'Thou shall not steal'.
Now, say some one is about to kill your loved one, should you kill the assailant? The answer depends on the content of your heart; the level of mercy Vs. that of fear. History talks about persons with exalted minds, who forgave their killers. But to imitate them blindly can cause more grief in you heart than peace. We must act according to where we are on the ladder of mental evolution. It is a soldier's duty to kill, and a spy's duty to steal. If your children are starving, is OK for you to steal food?
The idea is not to succumb to flashes of passions in your heart, but to act according to your total mind.
What is right in one instance may be wrong in another, and what is right for one person may be wrong for another one.
The test lies in 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you'. This will keep you from stealing from your brother just for gratifying your senses, and will keep you from hurting others for smaller causes, or for twisted mental attitudes. If I have become rich after being poor all my life before, should I wish others to be poor to satisfy my pride, or should I help the poor to conquer my fear of the past?
Community sets rules and laws for it to live harmoniously together. For me to share the fruits of living as a member I should strive to obey the rules in normal circumstances. Because, if I violate the norms of the community because of my small greed or fear, I will be causing disruption in the system, thereby causing pain to brother members for frivolous selfish reasons. But when the threshold is crossed by some rule acceptable to the community, say child abuse becomes norm, it becomes my duty to revolt. That is, I am willing to sacrifice my morality in smaller amounts to create proportionally more happiness. Since, I am a member of the community, I try to follow the rules and customs to a limit. It is the judgment from your heart, that matters.
Wisdom from books and other from other sources, is valuable, as it gives me insight into my heart. But the final judgment belongs inside my mind. Just make sure, We follow our whole heart, and not spur of the moment passions.
Following such approach keeps raising mind to higher levels, by reducing the 'ME' factor, which is the root of all sins and pains, from the equation of life.
In this post I'm assuming morality supplies us with reasons to act or not act (If something is morally wrong then you have a reason not to do it). If reasons, if they are to count as reasons for an action, are to play a role in justifying behavior, then it's by appeal to those reasons (not our beliefs in those reasons) that does the justifying. I say "justifying" because I'm assuming that's what you're after in your question of "WHY be moral?"
We may be ignorant of those reasons, and we may be wrong about what we ultimately claim we ought to do all things considered. World 2 and world 3 differ in many ways. I'm not sure why you would think they are the same. Unless if we adopt extreme skepticism of our epistemic access to moral truths, our beliefs in world 3 would be aligned with the fact that killing babies is morally permissible. (I'm also assuming you mean "morally permissible" or "supererogatory", and not "morally required", when you write "it is moral to kill babies"). Given a large chunk of the world believes it is morally permissible to kill babies, world 3 would have a lot more dead babies in it.
" Or would you convert to baby killing if you'd found it to be moral?"
Well... for the sake of the thought experiment, I'd imagine people would not find it morally problematic and so wouldn't really make concerted efforts to stop it from happening.
"In the unlikely case you'd say yes: then it's your belief that matters, not the fact-of-the-matter"
I'm not sure how this follows at all. It is my discovery of the fact that causes my belief. Without the discovery I would not believe it, or I would not have a reason to believe it. Insofar as rational people respond to reasons, and morality gives us justifying reasons to act or not act, and it is possible to know the fact that it is morally permissible to kill babies, then there really isn't any moral reason for me to refrain from killing babies.
If all that mattered were beliefs, then none of our actions would be justified. Why? Because the fact that I have a belief does not justify the belief. It's true that having a belief, plus a desire or other conative state perhaps, may give a motivating explanation of my behavior. My mental states in World 2 and World 3 may also be identical: I may believe in world 2 that killing babies is moral, and I may believe in world 3 that killing babies is moral. My beliefs and conative states would explain my behavior in both worlds. They may be "reasons" (as in motivating reasons) for why I act a certain way, but my having beliefs or certain pro-attitudes does not justify anything.
"Would you accept a morality that stands in stark opposition to your personal values? What would it mean for you if you'd found this to be the case? "
This seems rather contrived. If I was in world 3 and I didn't believe the truth that killing babies is moral, then of course I wouldn't accept it. If I came to discover the truth in it, then how would that be in opposition to my personal values? Categorical imperatives (if they exist) are principles that we have most reason to adopt. If I discovered I had an all-things-considered, sufficient reason to adopt the view that killing babies is morally required, permissible, or whatever, then that would not be in opposition to my values. In fact, that would be in direct alignment with them. After all, it is what I have determined to be what I have most reason to do. That means I have weighed my reasons already and killing babies won out.
Personally the answer I prefer is self-evident: to ask the question "why be moral?" is to forget that morality is what we ought to do. Just because you don't wanna be moral doesn't mean you don't have to be moral. And I'm not talking about environmental constraints forcing you to act a certain way, I'm talking about the idea that moral facts may actually exist and act as justification for our intentional actions.
The question is confused, since it assumes that things being wrong is something extra on top of the rest of the world and what happens in it.
Such an assumption not only begs the question, but profoundly misunderstands morality, which is concerned with things being wrong due to the way they are (in the world, where else).
In such a scenario, there would be some sort of Morality Field that transmitted through the aether like EM waves. A universe with no absolute morality would have no such field. One could imagine a clever enough scientist inventing a sophisticated detector to detect the Morality Waves.
Such a universe would be verifiably different from one in which there was no Morality Field, given a Morality Wave detector. People might act the same way in both universes, but in one they'd be doing it because of Morality Waves received and in the other they'd be doing it because of their genes and early upbringing. The detector could tell us which world was which.
That's a horribly materialist hypothesis, which makes me break out in a rash, since I am generally non-Materialist. But it is at least plausible.
Quoting The Great Whatever
The question isn't "why ought I to do what I ought to do?". The question is just "why do what I ought to do?" It's a question of motivation. I don't think the existence of some claimed obligation is sufficient. If it could be shown that I was obligated to kill babies, I still wouldn't.
Presumably obligations are not identical to natural properties like causing harm, for example. "One ought not kill babies" doesn't mean the same thing as "killing babies causes harm". So it seems to me that obligations, if anything, are something "extra". So there's no prime facie reason to believe that there couldn't be a world that has the same empirical facts as ours but without these obligations (whatever they are).
The point I'm making is that these supposed obligations have no practical relevance. The physical world would still behave the same in their absence, and unless the existence of obligations has some special causal influence on us, we would still behave the same in their absence. So why does it matter if there are obligations or not? Is it just a matter of principle; that we can (unbeknownst to us) be right in our moral convictions?
So you are assuming that obligations are something extra added to the world, and then puzzling over what the difference between a world with obligations and without it is.
Quoting Michael
Again, it's not as if there's a physical world 'first,' and then obligations get layered on top of it like an invisible blanket. If there are obligations, it's presumably precisely because of the way the world itself is.
So to answer your question, I might say: if killing kids weren't wrong, the world might be such that people were immediately resurrected on dying with no ill effects. Or you can imagine some other such scenario.
And it's pretty ridiculous to say that obligations have no practical relevance – that's precisely the sort of relevance they have.
Quoting Michael
I can't distinguish between those two questions. How do they differ?
I think you have a very strange understanding of obligations. It's like you think they're some kind of physical fact that has no physical implications. "So if it could be shown that I was obligated to kill babies, I still wouldn't" – it's as if you found some thing under a microscope saying "kill babies!" and you kept your old moral convictions intact, and decided to disobey it. But that second decision as to whether you ought to kill babies isn't something in response to a priori physical "discovery" of an obligation – that is itself simply sorting out one's obligations.
There is still of course the question "Will I do what I ought to?" but that seems like it's not what you're asking. It seems like you're asking "what reason have I to do what I ought to?" which strikes me as a confused question. At least, if someone asked me that in daily life I wouldn't know what they meant.
As to the distinction between there being objective truth to any particular rule, there is none so long as there is no way to detect the rule. So it matters only if the nature of what you are is of the sort that can be held accountable in some objective way to said rule, and if the rule is conveyed in some way.
As an example, suppose the universe consists of integer math expressions, and the objective morality is to have an even number result. 1+3 is moral, but 8-5 is not. Is there a distinction that makes a difference to those equations? Well, it matters only if 1+3 has objective existence outside my universe set (I can remove it from the universe and consign it to a good or bad place, and it would care about this), and if the fact of the immorality of an odd result is conveyed to them while still in the expression universe (how would either know?), and if those equations have the free will to alter their result. The physicalist denies all three, and the theist claims all three. 8-5 was conveyed the morality in question, and is given the free will to let 8-5=4 against its physical nature, thus earning its way into the good place after 8-5 is removed from the expression-universe. The distinction is there, but not in this universe.
As for killing babies, the example is skewed by argument from emotion. Pick something less clouded by emotion to look for truth. It is easy to argue for the morality of killing babies if you can get past the emotional implications. There are plenty of species that are fit partly because they do exactly that.
Because presumably there are non-duty reasons to behave a certain way. It's certainly not the case that every decision I make is made on the grounds that I (believe that I) ought do it. So assuming that I have a duty to behave a certain way, what is my motivation to behave in this way? Perhaps I don't care that it's my duty and decide to do the opposite.
Or would you argue that it's impossible to do something that one believes is wrong?
Well, I certainly don't think that any obligation to behave a certain way is identical to any empirical fact, as if the laws of physics can show us an obligation. That strangling a baby will result in a loss of brain function and so biological death isn't a priori that one ought not strangle a baby.
But what's the connection between killing kids being wrong and kids not immediately being resurrected with no ill effects? They're certainly not identical things. So the wrongness of that act isn't identical to the physical event of the act. Therefore the wrongness must be something else.
It's ridiculous if obligations are identical to the actual event, but they're not. The obligation to not kill children is not the same thing as children being killed, so on what grounds is it ridiculous to suggest that there's a world in which children are killed but in which there isn't an obligation to not kill children?
No, it's exactly because I don't think that obligations are physical facts that I believe that they're of no practical relevance. Whatever an obligation to not kill children is, it's something other than the physical fact of children being killed (and not being resurrected).
It's not a second decision as to whether or not I ought kill babies. It's a decision as to whether or not I will or want to kill babies.
As I said above, the question isn't "why ought I be moral". It's just "why be moral?". It's a matter of motivation. That it's the right thing to do isn't (always) sufficient motivation. I might not care about doing the right thing.
I think it's not possible both to do something you think is wrong and not be committed to the claim that you ought not to have done it. And I can't see how you can think you ought not to have done something and think you had reasons for doing it more powerful than not. You might have had motivations, sure – but if you think you oughtn't to have done it, then you're admitting those motivations weren't sufficient reason to do it.
So to ask 'what reason do I have to do what I ought to do / to do what's right?' seems to me grammatically confused in some way, though it's hard to pin down exactly why.
Quoting Michael
OK, but who said anything about a priori? It may very well be that strangling a baby results in such and such does mean that one oughtn't to do it – in fact this is the ordinary way of thinking about it, that things are bad for reasons. There's no appeal to the a priori.
Quoting Michael
That the two are not identical does not mean that they're freely separable. I don't think, for example, that you can have two worlds identical except for the obligations in them. That doesn't make sense – and your question seems to be positioned in a weird limbo, in which you want to insist such a thing is possible, but then notice that this very insistence makes obligations seem like nothing at all.
Quoting Michael
Yes, but notice it doesn't follow from that that whether or not one ought to kill children is something separable from, or not determined by, physical (or whatever sort of other) facts about the world. In other words, you cannot insist that obligations are distinct from the world by fiat and then complain that you can't tell the difference between worlds in which they hold and don't. Your own stipulations are causing the problem.
Quoting Michael
If the question is whether you will kill babies, then that is answered only by seeing whether you actually do – there's no philosophical question there, and no reason to be given, since it's just a fact whether you will or not. The same for whether you want to. That's just a fact about your psychology.
If you are asking something like 'why should(n't) I,' or 'what reason have I...' etc., then again some grammatical error seems to be committed.
Presumably "I believe that I ought not X" does not just mean "I don't want to do X"? So "I believe that I ought not X and I want to do X" isn't a contradiction.
And if it isn't a contradiction then I don't see the problem with my question.
I would have thought that if "it is wrong to kill babies" does not follow from the fact that killing babies is possible then to posit a world in which killing babies is possible but in which it isn't wrong to kill babies isn't a contradiction. And if it isn't a contradiction then it's possible.
I'm not saying that obligations are distinct from the world. I'm saying that the obligation to not kill babies is not the same thing as the physical fact that killing babies is possible. So obligations are distinct from physical facts. And if they're distinct from physical facts then there's a possible world which has the same physical facts but doesn't have the associated obligations.
And that's exactly why obligations have no practical relevance. The only thing that is of practical relevance is whether or not we actually will kill babies (which is influenced by whether or not we want to kill babies).
Sorry, I think I've lost the thread. No it's not a contradiction, but I don't see how that's related to your question. Is it now about wants? Can you rephrase it in terms of wants?
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
This is contradictory, if physical facts are exhaustive, which I'm not sure if you're assuming. If you assume there are other relevant sorts of facts, then I'm not sure what the problem is. For example, if you think there are moral facts, then you have your answer – in one world the moral fact obtains, in the other it doesn't. If you protest that this is no difference at all, then you've reneged on your thinking that things other than physical facts make a difference – so I'm not sure how to make sense of the position.
Quoting Michael
But that's not right. We might decide to kill babies based on deliberating, for example – and in deliberation we can bring concerns to bear other than what we want to do. There's no contradiction in supposing I want to do something, but don't, because I realize I shouldn't. There may be some underlying assumption here that only one's desires can be reasons to do or not do something, or some such, which isn't right.
I'm asking for a reason to be moral. That it's moral isn't sufficient motivation, as it is possible that one doesn't want to be moral, given that "X is immoral and I want to do X" isn't a contradiction.
I'm saying that if moral facts are not the same thing as physical facts then there's no practical difference between a world with moral facts and a world without them. In terms of how we actually live our lives, whether or not there are moral facts is irrelevant, as their (non-)existence has no bearing on how we actually behave.
Unless moral facts are non-physical but nonetheless causally efficacious?
Then the influencing factor here is our reasoning and beliefs, not the (non-)existence of some actual obligation.
I'm not sure I follow what the significance of this is supposed to be. I agree that "X is immoral and I want to do X" isn't a contradiction. Are you worried that something being immoral won't in fact make you not do it? If so, I agree – but I don't agree that it doesn't give sufficient reason not to do it. To ask for additional reason is to ask "Why should one do what's right?" which seems to harbor some grammatical confusion, like "Why ought one to do what one ought?"
Quoting Michael
Of course there's a practical difference. For example, in deliberating whether one will do something, we might consider these moral facts, and choose what to do or not based on them.
Quoting Michael
The two aren't somehow in contradiction. In reasoning, we appeal to obligations – in fact in such a case our reasoning only influences our action because of the obligation. If we had no such obligation, or didn't think we did, then we wouldn't bring it up in reasoning.
We consider what we believe to be moral facts/obligations. Whether or not they are moral facts/obligations has no practical relevance.
Perhaps I should have said that it isn't necessarily a sufficient reason. If I were to somehow know that I have an obligation to kill children, I would need a more convincing reason to carry it out. That I am obligated isn't reason enough for me.
And as a related question, in what practical sense does it matter if someone does the right thing or not? If I'm right in arguing that a world physically identical to ours but without any obligations (or different obligations) is possible then there's no practical difference between a world in which I kill children and killing children is wrong, a world in which I kill children and killing children is right, and a world in which I kill children and there are no moral facts at all.
The only thing of practical relevance is whether or not I kill children. The morality of the act seems practically irrelevant.
Ancient cultures pictured morality in different ways. The ancient Hebrew perspective is fairly materialistic, linking morality to a covenant (deal) with God. The Persian view is very abstract, as JK Galbraith said, is probably the origin of the concept of progress. The Roman view associates evil with disease. It's been said that the Greek view is most essentially expressed by the play Agamemnon, in which evil is perpetuated in a chain-like way as the victim, in search of justice, becomes the villain.
We in the western world have inherited all of these diverse views because each one is represented in some way in the Christian view. This diverse inheritance makes Christianity very ideologically dynamic. Morality is a cosmic drama. It's a path tread by every human that starts with a fall from innocence and ends with redemption and transformation.
All of that drama is lacking in a view that reduces morality to a set of obligations. The question becomes: why should I follow the rules of chess? Can't I just throw the knight out the window?
Uh... yes, of course you can.
Sure. Aristotle, for example, went for virtue ethics rather than a law conception of ethics.
I can't make sense of this. How can you claim you're obligated to do it but that there's not sufficient reason to? To claim the latter seems to me just to say that you aren't obligated to do it.
Quoting Michael
Of course it does. We aren't motivated because we take things to be believed to be obligations, but because we take them to be obligations. Thus in deliberating, the question 'is X an obligation?' is important, not just the question 'does Y believe X is an obligation?' But if decisions turn on the question of whether something is an obligation, then whether it is an obligation has practical importance.
Now you might say everyone is just deluded and think there are obligations but there really aren't any, and only this delusion of thought has practical implications. But that would be an odd opinion, since you'd commit yourself to thinking you have no obligations, which in practice you don't (and in practice you take those obligations to actually be incumbent upon you).
Quoting Michael
This strikes me as deeply confused, but it's a little hard to tease out why. What I want to say, again, is that you're assuming morality is like an invisible blanket or something that goes on top of the act committed. But the act itself is wrong – it's not that there's the act and then 'wrong sprinkles' on top of it. So to say it's practically relevant whether you kill babies is to say that it's practically relevant whether you do something wrong. And its being wrong will be a force in your deliberations as to whether you do it.
I should revise and say, I can make sense of this if I'm obligated according to some law or standard – but then, I would say the reason I don't take that to be sufficient reason is because I don't take the obligation of some law or standard or command to be equivalent to my obligations simpliciter. That is, I can weigh whether some fact about some particular standard requires something of me, and choose to weight other things more heavily. But whether I am required to do something period – I can't make sense of thinking I'm required but don't have sufficient reason to do it.
What I meant is that a believed obligation isn't always a sufficient motivating factor.
What I mean is that if we believe that we have an obligation to not kill then we may very well be motivated to not kill. But our belief may be wrong; perhaps we don't have an obligation to not kill. So whether or not we actually do have an obligation to not kill has no practical relevance.
For example, it's not the fact that there's a monster under the bed that motivates a child to not look under it (because there isn't one); it's the belief that there's a monster under the bed that motivates the child to not look under it.
I might be saying that these beliefs are delusional, and I might very well commit to thinking that I have no obligations. But that's not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is that there is no practical difference between these beliefs being either accurate or delusional. If we believe that we have an obligation to not kill children then (assuming this is sufficient motivation) we won't kill children, and whether or not this belief is true makes no difference to how things actually play out.
What is considered Normative Behavior, varies from society to society, but some of the major distinctions between what is considered normatively moral or not, seem to be diminishing worldwide. The horrific gassing of innocent people in Syria was condemned by most of the world. The united outcry against this act, suggest the shared conviction by the majority of the world's societies that it was immoral act. I think this valuation assessment is part of a trend has to do with the way the world's societies have become enmeshed and interact with each other since the end of WWII.
Rational duty is an empty/formal concept, it was part of Kant's attempt to establish objective foundation for morality. Moral duty, I think, only makes sense as a reasonable, and intensively felt cause for action.
The Syrian thing is really probably about not looking to close to Putin, justified by war sanctions against chemical weapons, and fronted as a moral issue. This is a six year civil war, and it would have been fine if they just bombed them all normally, but it's illegal to use gas. 70 people killed, but last time when it was 1000 Trump said that it was no big deal, and not to get involved in it.
They were also sending out strikes from the air base that the US bombed an hour later.
That the act itself is wrong just is that the act itself is something that one ought not do. My point is that that one ought not do [it] is an extraneous (non-physical) fact about that act, separate to any empirical fact about it. Only the empirical facts about the act have any practical relevance.
So the idea is that thinking you ought to do something has practical relevance, but that you ought to do something doesn't.
But suppose whether you ought to do something influences whether you think you ought to do it. Then, by your own admission, whether you ought to do it has practical relevance.
So you are in effect committed to claiming the following: whether or not you ought to do something cannot influence whether you think you ought to do it. Is that right?
Quoting Michael
I don't agree with this. Things are wrong because of what they are (physical or otherwise) – in fact I can't really make sense of the notion that they're not. To be a certain way (physical or otherwise) is to be right or wrong.
Yes. So one would either have to say that obligations are empirical facts or that non-empirical facts can be causally efficacious.
Quoting The Great Whatever
But to be wrong just is that one ought not do it. So you're saying that "this act has these particular physical properties" means the same thing as "one ought not perform this act". That doesn't seem right.
So, I think that the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 causes us to believe that 2 + 2 = 4, given that we're creatures that can realize mathematical truths. We don't have to think it, but its truth influences us to think it, because some of our inquiries tend toward truth.
Do you disagree with any of that?
Quoting Michael
No, I'm not saying that "one ought not to perform this act" means that it has such-and-such physical properties. But it can be that something is wrong in virtue of (and in virtue of nothing but!) those properties.
Well, you did say that "X is wrong" means "one ought not X" and "to be a certain physical way is to be wrong". So you're saying that to be a certain physical way is to be something that one ought not do? The wording seems comparable to say that to be a bachelor is to be an unmarried man, i.e. that "bachelor" means "unmarried man".
Quoting The Great Whatever
Which means that that it's wrong and that it has these properties are separate facts.
I don't think it's the fact that causes us to believe it, any more than the fact that the root of 2 is 1.41421... is what causes us to believe that. Rather it's either the case that we've been told it and we trust the teacher (as is the case for me with root 2) or it's what we've concluded after performing our own calculation, and we believe that the calculation was performed correctly (as is the case for me with 2 + 2).
After all, how can I believe that 2 + 2 = 4 (or, less simply, 9 * 9 = 81) if I've never been told it and never performed the calculation myself? The fact itself doesn't somehow cause my brain to do whatever needs to be done for me to have such a belief.
I think you're reading 'is' inappropriately, as some sort of modal equivalence. All I mean is that, relative to a world, there may be no other thing that needs to be added to the world over having those sorts of properties for it to be wrong.
I don't know what you mean by this. If you accept that "X has these properties" and "X is wrong" mean different things then you accept that X having these properties and X being wrong are different facts.
Are you talking about motivation from an egoistic perspective? As in, what's in it for me? If so,I already said that morality does not require you to want to observe it.
Or are you referring to externalism/internalism schemes of moral motivation?
Anyway, it seems wrong to me to say that last bit about killing babies. Clearly you wouldn't kill babies not just because you don't want to get your hands dirty but because you think it's wrong to kill babies. The methodology of ethics rests largely on appeals to "intuitions" or whatever you want to call them. There isn't going to be some scientific or mathematical proof that killing babies is morally obligatory (nor impermissible). It's going to come from reflection. If you're a realist, then moral facts are exposed through this rational deliberation. If you're an anti-realist, then moral facts are created through this deliberation. At any rate, the discussion (hopefully) leads to a convergence of belief to an equilibrium.
So the fact that you find killing babies wrong is evidence that killing babies is wrong - unless of course you were ignoring good reasons against your view. But I doubt there would ever be a good reason to kill anyone, really.
So the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 has no influence on whether we believe that 2 + 2 = 4? Is it a complete accident that we believe it truly? Or do we sometimes have methods of inquiry that arrive at truth, and so the fact that certain things are true influence us toward believing them?
The latter position seems far more plausible to me, but it's just interesting that you'd be committed to something like the former on your view. I'd say that would be a bad result for your view, since that consequence strikes me as quite bad.
Quoting Michael
Suppose that 'ought p' has a modal semantics – something like, 'in all deontically accessible worlds, p,' where p denotes the proposition that you perform some action. Then it might be that 'ought not p' maps to true for all such p that denote propositions that you perform an action with certain physical (or other) characteristics, and so to have those characteristics would be ipso facto for those actions to be wrong. But still the two would mean different things – one would have a modal semantics, the other would not. Of course, there might be congruence of another kind: either material or maybe even modal. But that's not enough to get synonymy in every relevant sense.
I'd also like to point out the importance of the questions, "are all opinions about morality equal? Or are some opinions about morality better than others?" (also similar to the questions, "are all opinions about math equal? or are some opinions about math better than others?")
Quoting Michael
Has your position on this remained the same over the intervening years?
Yes.
Quoting Michael
I'd say that the consequences of false moral belief will depend on the moral system in question. For example, if a consequentialist holds that killing babies is evil on account of inflicting pain, then the possible world in which the killing of babies is permissible would be a world where babies feel no pain (or where one can kill painlessly). For this consequentialist, the negative consequence of false belief is an increase in pain, or unnecessary pain, or the pain of innocents, or something like that.
The more a moral system is either empirically derived or rooted in consequences, the easier will be its task in answering your question. Someone like Kant would have the hardest task, for he seems to avoid empirical derivation and consequence-reasoning as far as possible. More generally, though, if morality pertains to living well, then false moral beliefs will be bound up with impoverished living.
I don't think that this is accurate. Consider the possible worlds again:
1. No morality but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
2. It is immoral to kill babies and everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
3. It is moral to kill babies but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
What is the practical difference between these worlds?
It seems to me that only moral beliefs matter. Whether or not the beliefs are true has no practical relevance.
Perhaps a more suitable question for the consequentialist is to explain the difference between these worlds:
1. Causing pain has no moral value
2. Causing pain is morally good
3. Causing pain is morally bad
A possible response is that "causing pain is morally bad" is true by definition, and so (1) and (2) are not possible worlds, but the question stands for any consequentialist who doesn't think consequentialism true by definition.
2, 1 then 3 most probably. I guess it could be argued that trying to to cause pain may actually cause more pain that scenario 1 thoough.
I think such a consequentialist would say that (3) is self-evidently true, because to feel pain is to suffer; suffering is undesirable; and what is undesirable should—ceteris paribus—be avoided. "Suffering ought to be sought" is a sort of synthetic contradiction.
One of the deeper problems that I perceive is the separation between oughtness and motivation, as noted in the other thread (). Along the same lines, as long as the consequentialist (or anyone) has a reason to ground their moral claim, they will have a response to your questions, for the possible worlds will differ vis-à-vis that reason. By pushing further, you are effectively saying, "But what if there is no reason for your moral claim?" Or, "But what if there are no 'brute moral facts'?" If there were no reason then the possible worlds could not differ, and the morality in question would be otiose. But there always is a reason. "X is moral/immoral for no reason at all," is not a coherent claim. I don't think moral claims can be stipulated in the way you are stipulating them.
1. In a world without morality, folk would kill babies if they wanted to and not if they didn't want to. There would be no law against it or moral opprobrium attached to it. We would chat down the pub and I would tell you how i had killed next door's baby because I couldn't stand the crying at night, and how upset she had been about it, and you would shrug and say, "women,Eh? They are so attached to their offspring.",
"Yeah, I might have to kill her as well if she keeps making a fuss. But you actually live with them all the time, why do you bother?"
"Oh I rather enjoy them most of the time - I guess I get attached to them too."
2. I would have to keep quiet about killing babies, because you would call the police if I told you - I even had to hide it from my neighbour, the mother and make it seem like a cot death.
3. My neighbour would have to keep her baby secret and find a lonely place to hide if she didn't want the official baby exterminator to call. If I heard crying, I would already have informed the authorities about this disgusting pervert next door having a baby and not killing it. Finding a place to hide would be fairly easy, because the human population would be very small in this world.
In a world without moral beliefs this would happen, but I'm not asking about moral beliefs. I clarified that above:
1. No morality but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
2. It is immoral to kill babies and everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
3. It is moral to kill babies but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
I think that these worlds would be empirically indistinguishable. Whether or not one's moral beliefs are correct seems to have no practical relevance.
Ah right, I missed that. Then I think the question is ineffective. People live according to their beliefs. If everyone believed the world was flat, no one would try and sail round it, whatever shape it actually was.
This does not demonstrate that it has no shape.
I'm not trying to demonstrate that there are no moral facts, only that moral facts don't matter. It is only our moral beliefs that matter.
Unlike other kinds of beliefs, our moral beliefs being right or wrong has no practical consequences.
Is that a moral claim, or merely a pragmatic claim?
I suppose an ethical naturalist could claim that a moral claim is a pragmatic claim, but how would someone who is both a consequentialist and an ethical non-naturalist explain the difference between those worlds?
Does the shape of the world not matter?
I address that in my post?
"Unlike other kinds of beliefs, our moral beliefs being right or wrong has no practical consequences."
You could have it that rule-based morality represents wisdom about what worked best for our forebears. Since cultures evolve, what works changes over time. In one era, greed is destructive, in another, it's constructive. In this way, you could have a kind of moral realism, it's just that the rules are in flux. The basis for the rules is always the same, though: cultural evolution.
Nietzsche could be seen as complaining about moral rules that have become destructive, so what was good has become bad. He saw the practical consequences of this as a dulling of the spirit and a failure to make the most of life.
Yes, I assumed you were saying that, but can you provide an argument for it? It seems rather unlikely. We agree that our moral beliefs have real consequences individually and socially I assume, and it seems likely that having false moral beliefs would be at least limiting and possibly deleterious or even fatal consequences. For example if we all believe it is wrong to kill babies, but we are wrong about that, then there will be more living babies than there ought to be, and hence population overshoot environmental catastrophe, and eventual population crash. All, very practical consequences. On the other hand, it might be that it is wrong to kill babies, but also wrong to be making so many babies. Life is complicated...
Moral beliefs seem to guide our social behaviour, and the factual content of those shared beliefs are the practical consequences in terms of the flourishing of life; particularly our species and its environment. If we were to discover life on another planet, we would have to become less parochial about it, but I stick to planet A for simplicity.
Quoting frank
In this case, the basis itself might change; if cultural evolution was the basis for most of history, there comes a modern time when it is no longer wise to ignore the environmental consequences of 'cultural evolution'. Again, it is a practical matter, and something that has only recently become a dominant moral issue. Anyway, the correct morals are the ones that lead to flourishing, aka 'the good'.
There was a science fiction story - forget whose but I think by a woman writer, about an intelligent species that procreated by a mass spawning in the sea. The juveniles spent their time in the sea and were prey to all sorts including adults of their own species those few that survived to emerge onto land as adults were only then considered to be moral subjects, rather as we (or some of us) treat birth as the beginning of moral subject-hood, or for others it is conception, or implantation, or rarely "every sperm is sacred." The Romans considered children to be property, I believe, and thus killing children was a personal matter, or killing other folks children a matter of infringement of parental rights. (I might be making that up, but it's a possible moral position. The Spartans had some fairly harsh ideas anyway.
Anyway, human cultures have moral beliefs that modify the culture in many ways, and not least in the effect on the psyche. Shaker beliefs, for example were that to procreate at all was wrong, which meant that without a plentiful supply of sinners, they could not survive. And they didn't. I am getting a bit Dawkins here for my own taste, but anti-natalism generally does undeniably suffer from short-term-ism unless its failure is guaranteed. A society that relies on immorality to survive is arguably merely indulging in double-think, a very common human trait, aka hypocrisy, that enables immoral moralities to survive at the cost of psychological misery.
What is the connection between a moral obligation to kill babies and environmental catastrophe?
1. One ought not kill babies, we (truthfully) believe that we ought not kill babies, and if we don't then there will be an environmental catastrophe
2. One ought kill babies, we (falsely) believe that we ought not kill babies, and if we don't then there will be an environmental catastrophe
Whether our belief that we ought not kill babies is true or false has no practical consequences. Either way we believe that we ought not kill babies and if we don't kill babies then there will be an environmental catastrophe.
Quoting Michael
Is the belief that homosexuality is sinful a moral belief?
Yes.
Quoting Michael
And there are no practical consequences to changing one’s view from ‘it is true that homosexuality is sinful’ to ‘it is false that homosexuality is sinful’? Let’s say the person who has a change of heart is a legislator or a parent of a homosexual child.
There are practical consequences to moral beliefs. There appear to be no practical consequences to moral facts.
Imagine two worlds:
1. Homosexuality is immoral but everyone falsely believes that homosexuality is moral
2. Homosexuality is moral and everyone truthfully believes that homosexuality is moral
In both worlds everyone believes that homosexuality is moral. This has practical consequences (e.g. the legality of same-sex marriage). But in one world everyone's belief is correct and in the other everyone's belief is incorrect.
What are the practical consequences of having a true belief? What are the practical consequences of having a false belief? I can't see that there are – or could be – any.
It seems to be a necessary consequence of any ethical non-naturalism that moral facts are irrelevant.
Yes. Our belief is efficacious., whether it is true or false. the question is though what is its effect if it is true, and what is its effect if it is false. On the face of it, believing false things is likely to be deleterious and believing true things is advantageous. Immediately, if we believe we ought to kill babies, we will probably kill babies. The question of the truth or falsehood of our belief is borne out on a larger frame than the immediate. Later, we notice that our numbers are dwindling, and there is no one left to change our nappies when we become incontinent.
What does this have to do with the truth or falsity of "one ought not kill babies"?
By my reckoning we could replace moral facts with empirical facts and end up in the same quandary.
Imagine two worlds:
1. The earth is round but everyone falsely believes that the earth is flat.
2. The earth is flat and everyone truthfully believes that the earth is flat.
Not only does the belief that the world is flat have practical consequences but the belief itself comes down to a pattern of shared practices. It is only when these practices change that, from the vantage of the changed form of life, the former belief in a flat earth appears false. Thus there cannot be a change in truth value without an accompanying change in the practical landscape of social behavior.
On the other hand, given the significant consequences of a shift in attitude toward the moral and empirical facts cited above, these examples might better be conceived as theoretic presuppositions rather than facts. But then there are trivial and consequential facts, so maybe we could say that the more significant the practical consequences of a fact , the more akin to a theoretical
presupposition we should treat it as being. Trivial facts don’t disturb the practical landscape when they are falsified. But falsifying the belief that bisexuality is sinful has all kinds of consequences, since to arrive
at this change in attitude already presupposes a significant change in world orientation.
They’re not equivalent. The world being round or the world being flat has practical consequences. There hasn’t been explained what the practical consequences are of homosexuality being moral or homosexuality being immoral.
You’re ignoring what kinds of significant practical
reorientations of thinking are required in order to arrive at such a changed view. This isn’t a game of computer logic, it’s about how people arrive at and transform their thinking on important issues which are rooted in deeply entrenched social practices. Our attaching the labels of truth and falsity is alway ad hoc and comes late to the party.
Something. Or nothing. I cannot help you beyond pointing out that moral beliefs are efficacious, and some are life affirming and others life denying. At some point one has to choose what side one is on. And from there one can judge rightly or wrongly.
I agree. Moral beliefs are efficacious. But I'm asking about the efficacy of moral facts.
Given your comments, I have a more tailored question: what is the practical difference between a world in which we have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash and a world in which we don't have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash, assuming that in both worlds we believe that we have such a moral obligation and so act accordingly.
Quoting Michael
I understand that an anti-natalist thinks otherwise, but I just think they are confused. Such a world would at least have to be a world without humans, and I am a human and so can have no perspective or judgement on such a world.
Why?
Unless "we have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash" is true by definition there is a possible world (with humans) in which we do not have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash.
And if it is true by definition then it's a case of ethical naturalism, in which case it's vulnerable to Moore's open question argument.
You would have to make that believable to me. Your declaration does not do it without some understandable detail. Perhaps it is a world in which humans have a more significant afterlife such that survival in this world is unimportant - something like that? I'm struggling... one can say there is a possible world in which humans are descended from insects, but I don't think it makes much sense.
It simply follows from the fact that "we have a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe and population crash" is not true by definition.
If it's not true by definition then it's not necessarily true, and if it's not necessarily true then it's possibly false. I believe that's straightforward modal logic?
Right. But you cannot make the possibility believable? Then I won't believe it. But i have made a suggestion of how it might be believable - it just requires a religion to be true. Shall we go with that?
I can't make the possibility of any kind of moral obligation believable. That's really what I'm trying to show here.
If it's logically possible for there to be a moral obligation to harm and if it's logically possible for there to be a moral obligation to not harm, and if there's no practical difference between being morally obligated to harm and being morally obligated to not harm, then moral obligations are a vacuous concept.
Quoting Michael
I’m going to give my argument another try. A notion such as a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe is too important, too complex and too consequential a concept to be equated with a subordinate element of an established empirical theory whose acceptance or rejection as false has little impact on the theory within which its sense as being true or false is intelligible. Such weighty moral stances are more like empirical theories or paradigms than facts within theoretical orientations, and as such they cannot themselves be true or false. If one instead compared two perspectives within the larger umbrella of agreement on a moral obligation to prevent environmental catastrophe, one might be able to locate grounds for truth or falsity that have practical consequences. But then again, in dealing with socially consequential values, we may be bound up in territory that in by its nature transcends the relevance of truth claims
Here are two possible worlds:
1. We have a moral obligation to save the human race from extinction
2. We do not have a moral obligation to save the human race from extinction
If we believe that we have a moral obligation to save the human race from extinction then what is the practical difference between us being in world 1 (where our belief is true) and us being in world 2 (where our belief is false)?
In neither case do we know which world we're in, but in both cases we believe that we are in world 1.
If there is no practical difference then which world we're in is inconsequential. All that matters is that we believe that we have a moral obligation to save the human race from extinction and so act accordingly.
Quoting Michael
It may be that in dealing with socially consequential values we are bound up in territory that in by its nature transcends the relevance of truth claims. Value systems are not true or false, and only very subordinate elements within them are truth-apt.
My questioning is direct at moral cognitivists, i.e. those who believe that moral propositions are truth-apt. In particular it's directed at ethical non-naturalists, i.e. those who believe that moral facts are non-natural, and robust moral realists, i.e. those who believe that moral facts are mind-independent.
There are two competing outlooks in our world: (1) is that nature is always smarter than we are. By this perspective it's a mistake for us to try to re-engineer our own culture to meet an environmental crisis. Nature will handle it more efficiently that we ever could. Nature is brutal, but it doesn't waste time on misconceived solutions. It goes straight to what will work in the long run.
The alternative (2) is that we do have the ability to change who and what we are, and we may face conditions in which this is the only road to survival. A case of this was when western nations became multi-racial in the wake of the end of slavery. The only way forward was to force change. This can be extremely stressful, but it does work.
I think the coming years will be a test of these two approaches. I won't live to see who won. :groan:
Did you really mean to write that?
In the first case, there is harm; in the second, no harm - what greater "practical" difference do you want?
Which brings us back to the titular question - the answer to which is"because it is the right thing to do".
As if it could make sense to say one ought not do what one ought do.
There is harm in the second case. We're just not morally obligated to not harm.
This post explains it more clearly.
There it is again.
I pity you.
But I will just point out that you have undermined all of your thread which is based on various scenarios of "everyone believes..."
What do you mean by this?
Quoting Michael
I take it that you are someone. I take it that since you cannot make the possibility of any kind of moral obligation believable, you do not believe it is immoral to kill babies. Therefore there are no possible worlds in which we can discuss these worlds you propose as your presence makes them impossible.
In fact the moral world is a possible world itself, because we do not do what we ought to do, and so in a certain feeble sense you are right that the moral world is not the real world. Rather, it is an imaginary world like the plans of an architect are an imaginary building. And it is the business of ordinary brickies and plumbers etc to realise the architect's plans as it is the business of ordinary humans everywhere to realise the moral world as best they can.
No one suggests that architecture is not real, and no architect designs piles of rubble. But that is by analogy, what you are doing with this thread, especially when you suggest that possibly "...It is moral to kill babies".
That doesn't make sense. There's a possible world where I believe in moral obligation. There's a possible world where I'm a bartender. There's a possible where I dye my hair.
I'm not sure what you think possible worlds are.
See:
Quoting Leontiskos
This is the fruit of Kant. :meh:
Quoting Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble, p. 16
Quoting Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble, p. 16
Beyond words, perhaps, but perhaps not beyond acts.
Someone’s been reading Nietzsche.
I can't actually cope with Nietzsche! I tried reading him a few times but found it too emotional. I'm vaguely aware it's the sort of thing he says though.
Sure is. Especially the part about morality being a trick of the weak to constrain the strong. This is what Nietzsche called ressentiment.
Quoting Peter L. P. Simpson, “On Doing Wrong, Modern-Style,” in Vices, Virtues, and Consequences, pp. 66-8
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/533345
Here are two possible worlds:
1. It is immoral to harm others
2. It is not immoral to harm others
Are you saying that if I were to harm others in world (1) then I would be miserable but that if I were to harm others in world (2) then I wouldn't be miserable? How does that work? What is the causal connection between the (im)morality of an action and my psychological state?
Also the OP is directed at categorical imperatives, not the kind of hypothetical/pragmatic imperatives that you’re describing.
It is unclear what you mean by "immoral" and therefore that these are "possible worlds".
No.
Your false dichotomy doesn't work.
I see. My bad, I should have read the first page of this thread at least. A naturalistic hybrid of 'eudaimonism and disutilitarianism' is my position, not deontologism.
Assuming ethical non-naturalism, whatever "immoral" means the sentence "it is not immoral to harm others" is not a logical contradiction, and so "it is immoral to harm others" is not necessarily true. If "it is immoral to harm others" is not necessarily true then "it is immoral to harm others" is possibly false.
So if ethical non-naturalism is true then these are two possible worlds:
1. It is immoral to harm others
2. It is not immoral to harm others
Assuming that in either case we believe that it is immoral to harm others, does it even matter which world we're in?
Ah, okay, I assume ethical naturalism (as suggested by my reference to 'eusociality' and 'culture' in my old post linked above).
I hadn't paid this much attention.
Why not insist that if one ought not kill babies, then one ought not kill babies in every possible world? That such moral truth is necessarily true.
Can you rule this out, @Michael? That world 3 is impossible.
That's just reasserting that it's not a contradiction. Presumably a harm is immoral regardless of where it takes place - in any possible world.
Again, that's what harm is.
:up:
If ethical non-naturalism is true then “immoral” doesn’t mean “harmful”.
If “immoral” doesn’t mean “harmful” then “this is harmful” doesn’t mean “this is immoral”.
If “this is harmful” doesn’t mean “this is immoral” then “if this is harmful then this is immoral” is not a tautology.
If “if this is harmful then this is immoral” is not a tautology then “this is harmful and this is not immoral” is not a contradiction.
If “this is harmful and this is not immoral” is not a contradiction then it is possible that something is harmful but not immoral.
Therefore, if ethical non-naturalism is true then it is possible that something is harmful but not immoral.
Quoting Banno
These are two different questions:
1. Ought I be moral?
2. Why would I be moral?
“Ought I” and “why would I” mean different things.
The answer to the first is, presumably, “yes”. The answer to the second isn’t “yes”.
And it doesn’t prima facie follow that if the answer to the first is “yes” then the answer to the second is “because I ought to”. Or at the very least it’s not the only answer. Other answers may be more compelling.
Quoting OED
:wink: My bolding.
Sorry - the OED is ethically naturalist? Can you explain that?
It’s defining evil as harm.
Not seeing why this is significant.
Might come back to this later. Looks like word play. As if "physical or emotional injury" were not evil.
If ethical non-naturalism is true then "if X causes physical or emotional injury then X is evil" is not a tautology.
I say none because for me the ontology of morality is a field that arises from overcomplication of otherwise straightforward things. What is morality but the rules we develop as a society? That is the definition of morality even. "Abstract object which sprawl from the universals of good and evil" (or whatever) is not the definition.
There is a possible world in which the rules we develop as a society includes "kill babies" (Hello, Incas and Canaanites!), and that would be then moral.
The fact that morality is relative does not make it worthless. I would argue in fact that the relativity of morals makes it even more important in the sociological sense.
Quoting Michael
:roll:
Besides misquoting me, rationality =/= "to rationalize", lil troll.
Most societies identify circumstances in which it's good to do physical and emotional injury. Plenty of moral codes identify actions as evil even if there's no associated harm.
This is not to say you can't decide that evil and harm are coextensive, it's just that you're not reflecting what social groups usually say. You're just pedaling your own religion.
Ethical non-naturalism isn't at all a clear theory, so you'd have to define how you're using it to make sense of this. There seems little consensus on what it means. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/
Regardless, I think we can agree on some fundamental aspects of it: it is a form of realism, meaning morality exists outside of the observer, and morals are not reducible to physical properties.
This leads to certain epistemological issues, namely, how can we know them if they lack physical properties. This leads some to a form of intuitionism, where it is said the observer just recognizes right and wrong. Regardless of why a person believes something moral under non-naturalism, that doesn't change the truth value of the moral proposition.
That is, under moral non-naturalism if I say that murdering babies is ethical and I truly believe it is, the truth of that statement is subject to the non-natural reality (which itself is the most complexing concept in this theory), not my belief.
As to your specific question I quoted above, yes, it matters if we think we shouldn't harm others if we should because we'd be wrong if we didn't.
Your hypothetical is bizarre to be sure in that it hypothesizes what we accept as wrong and assume we're wrong about our wrongness.
Keep in mind as well that under non-naturalism, we're not saying the person dictates the truth, but there must therefore be some underlying non-natural cause resulting in the morality of the event. Just as we might think a flower red in the natural world based upon our eyesight, it is the flower itself that is causing that, not us.
I don't believe non-naturalism suggests no cause and effect, but simply just no natural physicality.
So, if I am in society A and we all believe slavery right, we are all wrong. The naturalist/ non-naturalist issue plays no role in that. If we think slavery wrong and we're wrong, then we'd be wrong not to enslave as well.
Why does it matter if we're wrong? It makes no practical difference to our lives.
This assumes a consequentialist justification is necessary for morality, which means your beef isn't against non-naturalism, but it's with deontolgy.
If the presumption is that we ought be moral as a matter of duty without regard to outcome, then you either assume you are a royal subject subservient to a higher master or you have a view that somehow fidelity to morality results in some very distant alignment of the universe that is of a higher order.
The latter is consequentialist, but it places concern for that consequence beyond the scope of any meaningful control, so just because it doesn't matter to our lives in the here and now isn't critical.
But let us assume consequences ultimately do determine morality, then you ought kill babies if that is moral, regardless of your confusion caused by your inability to see that distantly.
"Hey, bert1, nice of you to come. Have you had a good day?"
"Yeah, fab. I killed 21 babies. Great day!"
"Oh bert1! That's dreadful. It's morally wrong to kill babies."
"Is it? Let me just check I've understood you. I shouldn't kill babies. It's morally wrong. If I kill babies, I'm evil. I'm obligated not to kill babies. I have no doubt you are right, although I don't understand how you know that. You are all much better at morality than I am. Have I understood?"
"Yes! Oh thank goodness you've finally got the memo."
"Well, I think I'll be off now. There's a few more babies I'l like to finish off before tomorrow."
"What? But you've just agreed that it's wrong!"
"Yes, it is clearly wrong. But I just don't care about that. I like killing babies, and I don't mind being evil at all. I understand i am morally obligated not to kill babies, but I'd much rather just kill them anyway."
Has bert1 understood the concept of moral obligation?
[separate thread perhaps?]
Quoting bert1.
Perhaps. But I might question bert1’s understanding of proper dinner party etiquette.
Not exactly.
In one possible world hurting people is wrong because of the consequences.
In another possible world hurting people leads to the same consequences but it isn’t wrong.
Why does it matter which world we’re in?
In one possible world we just have a duty to not hurt people.
In another possible world we don’t have a duty to not hurt people.
Why does it matter which world we’re in?
If ethical non naturalism is true then it seems to be that whether or not our moral beliefs are true has no practical import. Our lives go on the same.
Why would it be different if ethical naturalism were the case? It might just be that murdering babies is moral in such a possible world.
I don't take non-naturalism to mean there is no reason for its immorality, just that whatever reason there is, it's not a natural one.
If ethical naturalism is true and "immoral" just means something like "harmful" then a world where nothing is immoral is a world where nothing is harmful. There would be a significant observable difference between living in that world and living in the world we're in now.
It would make a difference to our lives if our beliefs about what is harmful and what is not harmful are wrong.
There would be an observable difference in either world. What would not be observable is the morality of the event.
I could tell if babies were murdered in a non-naturalistic ethical world as well, and I'd feel the same suffering in either. I'd just not link that observation of suffering to morality.
If you told me baby murdering were ethical, I guess I'd have to murder babies even if it made me sad to wrestle them from the hands of their mothers and dash them upon rocks.
In one possible world babies suffer if they're murdered and it's immoral to murder babies.
In another possible world babies suffer if they're murdered but it's not immoral to murder babies.
In both worlds we believe that it is immoral to murder babies.
What is the observable difference between each world?
Absolutely none. So why don’t we dump moral realism and moral subjectivism and all other moldy conformist dictums stuck in the 18th century, which blithely ignore all the exciting ideas coming from current research in evolutionary biology, anthropology , psychology and language studies?
Another vapid strawman.
:shade: Go troll someone else, kid.
I agree here. There are an infinity of competing rationalities out there. But we do tend to find some value systems more pragmatically useful than others, given our purposes within our local communities. Do you suppose there is anything like a progress of pragmatic rationality?
Debatable as to whether that counts as "injury" - to pick an example, scarring as a ritual in transitioning to adulthood. But yes, I agree. Part of the trouble here is that possible world semantics is extensional, so it perhaps is not able to pick up on such nuance.
Forgive what was said late on Christmas night. What I would take issue with is the ambiguity of @Michael mixing two modal contexts - possible and ought. What's unclear is how we work simultaneously with both modalities. So, by way of an example, if one ought do some thing, does it follow that one ought do that thing in every world in which it is possible? Note that here we are treating actions as individuals, which may itself be problematic, and the issue seems to be one of accessibility between possible worlds - the possible worlds that are accessible may be only the ones in which doing that things is possible.
All of which is to point out that Michael's treatment might be far less clear than he seems to suppose.
Edit: By way of an example,
Quoting Michael
Perhaps the way to pars this is that, if the first world is accessible, then the second world isn't. At the very least, it remains to be shown that the second is accessible from the first. That is, if in some world it is immoral to murder babies, then maybe in no possible world accessible from that world is it moral to murder babies.
But my point here is that without the formal background it is not obvious how we can do what Michael wants to do here.
Or is there a way to introduce the modality of "ought" into a possible world semantics, other than using accessibility?
Quoting Banno
There's this SEP article about deontic logic. There's some mention of possible worlds, but I think moral commitments come first. If P is the proposition that it's immoral to kill babies, and you believe P, then you will say P is necessarily true. You'll say that anyone who believes there's a possible world at which P is false is deluded.
Notice that toward the end of that article they allude to the fact that normativity is a pit with no bottom. If you jump into that pit, you may never be seen again.
Why are we unable to determine right and wrong in the non-naturalist world?
Yes, that gives some indication of the issues involved. I think @Michael skates over too much.
If water is H?O, then necessarily water is H?O. There is no prima facie contradiction in water being made of other stuff, but once it is found to be made of H?O, the alternatives are pruned from the tree of possibilities.
Perhaps, If one ought not murder babies, then necessarily one ought not murder babies. There is no prima facie contradiction in murder babies, but once it is found that one ought not murder babies, the alternatives are pruned from the tree of possibilities.
@Michael has not shown this not to be the case.
I think so, yes. So if you've found that murdering babies is immoral, you might read about the history of infanticide in a purely moral light.
There's something specious in the question Michael asks about how worlds differ given moral truths. they differ specifically in the truth of those moral statements...
I don't quite follow.
Well, I'm not sure I do, either.
From the OP:Quoting Michael
The difference would be exactly the truth of the obligation...
Michael seems to imply that there might be no other difference. First, the existence of the obligation is sufficient to differentiate the two words; second, the assumption is that obligations exist only within worlds and not between them; that obligations are not transworld. Hence the argument that an obligation may be necessarily true - true in all possible worlds.
All this is by way of pointing out that the structure of these relations is not as clear as might be supposed.
I think he's looking for a difference beyond those two things, though. Think of these two situations:
Situation 1: The Holocaust was inherently evil. It's evil in all possible worlds because there just can't be a Holocaust that doesn't have the property of evil.
Situation 2: The Holocaust is evil because we think of it that way, not the other way around. We could presently live in a world where the attitude behind the Holocaust (eugenics) prevailed, and everyone thinks of it as a great thing that made the world better. We just happen to live in the one where it's viewed as unbelievably horrible.
What practical difference is there between situation 1 and 2? How would your life be different? How would anybody's life be different?
Again, the structure of these relations is not as clear as might be supposed.
How does the Holocaust being inherently evil show up in something I can sense? What would I see that tells me I'm in the world of inherent evil? What would I hear or taste? Smell or feel?
Well, talk of experience is different again. A third layer, so we have alethic, deontic and now epistemic modalities.
And so back to my point: the framework being used here is far from clear.
Ok, but how would you answer the question?
That's because "H[sub]2[/sub]O" and "water" are rigid designators that refer to the same thing. If ethical non-naturalism is true then "immoral" and "harmful" are not rigid designators that refer to the same thing.
Can there be a posteriori necessity without rigid designators referring to the same thing?
Quoting Banno
Considering deontic logic, is OA ? ?OA an axiom?
If it is, is it an axiom by choice or by necessity?
Quoting Banno
I've been clearer in subsequent posts. I'm asking about observable differences.
I believe that eating dirt will make me sick. I eat dirt. If my belief is true then I will be made sick, if my belief is false then I won't be made sick. This is an observable difference.
I believe that it is immoral to eat meat. I eat meat. If my belief is true then... what? If my belief is false then... what? In either case I just eat meat. I can't think of an observable difference between the belief being true and the belief being false.
If there is no observable difference then what is our motivation to be moral?
Quoting Hanover
I'm not saying that we're unable. But we're not infallible, and so it's possible that our moral beliefs are wrong. I am simply asking about the observable difference between our moral beliefs being true and those same moral beliefs being false. If ethical non-naturalism is true then it seems to me that there would be no observable difference.
But as a related question, if ethical non-naturalism is true then how can we determine right and wrong? Can there be empirical evidence of non-natural facts? Or if it's determined by reason alone then from which premises can we derive moral truths?
Neither is the kind of thing that could be a rigid designator. Harm, in the sense you're using it, is a transient state. Immoral is an adjective. Using possible world semantics is going to cause confusion. That's because different starting assumptions will give you different possibilities (and impossibilities).
That's an adjective. You can use the Holocaust as a rigid designator.
As is "immoral" according to you.
Right. Adjectives can't be rigid designators.
Then I repeat what I said before:
Does necessary a posteriori truth without rigid designators that refer to the same thing make sense? If not then if ethical non-naturalism is true then "it is immoral to harm others" is not a necessary a posteriori truth.
I could work out a scenario in which someone would conclude that it is (the bolded part), but the point is that possible world semantics always starts with a set of assumptions about how the world works, and it helps us analyze the way we navigate through and assess statements that arise from those assumptions. It's no good for weighing those starting assumptions. That's done by other means.
How? Until Kripke's Naming and Necessity almost all philosophers thought a posteriori necessity impossible. It was only with his explanation of rigid designators that a strong case for them was made. If you can make a case for a posteriori necessity without rigid designators then that would be quite the philosophical breakthrough.
Quoting SEP
The formatting got screwed up there, but look at the bolded section that starts with "Laws of nature." This is the primary root of moral realism: that it comes from God. Some cultures maintained that we're born knowing the difference between good and evil (Persians), but in the Hebrew outlook, we aren't. We have to learn it by becoming acquainted with God's laws. That would be a form of a posteriori necessity.
So let's grant that the existence of God entails that there are necessary moral truths. Why be moral? What if God commands that non-believers ought be stoned to death? Would you stone non-believers to death?
Assume, for the sake of argument, that God does not reward the moral or punish the immoral.
I, for one, am not motivated simply by the belief (or knowledge) of what I ought to do.
? You were asking how there could be necessarily true statements known a posteriori. Did you understand the answer?
Quoting Michael
Love.
No, because as soon as you introduce God all bets are off. Rather than argue against it I'd like to consider the implications.
Quoting frank
What's the motivation to be loving?
And what if God commands that love is immoral?
Read the SEP link.
Quoting Michael
There is none. You either do or you don't.
You seem to be spinning off questions without having read anything I wrote. Too busy?
So I'm asking what you would do if God's laws commanded that love is immoral. What if he commanded that we ought kill every second baby?
This is pretty much exactly what I was asking in the OP:
So what is the motivation to obey God's moral laws?
I don't believe in God. I was explaining how there can be aposteriori necessity in the moral realm. You had suggested that I should get a nobel philosophy prize for discovering it.
Everyone is going to answer questions about morality their own way. We have a variety of well worn paths that have been passed down to us because Christianity was a fusion of different cultural perspectives.
I can give you my own thinking, but I wouldn't be trying to convert you. Just explaining. You probably have your own answers as well, though sometimes old fashioned contemplation is necessary to bring it into focus.
You asserted that if there is God then moral truths are a posteriori necessities but I don't think you explained how this follows. Why can't it be that in one possible world God commands that eating meat is immoral and in another possible world God commands that eating meat is not immoral?
I most certainly did not. You didn't read anything I wrote. You didn't read the SEP quote, much less the link. I'm out.
You said this:
Quoting frank
How is that a form of a posteriori necessity?
Firstly, just to be sure, what I am suggesting here is that your approach of introducing modalities into the discussion serves not to clarify but to further complicate the issues around morality.
I'll illustrate his with a few examples from your post.
Quoting Michael
Rigid designation works primarily with individuals. "Michael" refers to Michael in every possible world in which Michael exists. But H?O and water are kinds, not individuals. Whether "H?O" and "water" rigidly refer to H?O and water is a contentious issue. This is leaving aside the problem of whether to differentiate kinds such as these from predicates such as green, or whether green should be considered a kind and ...is green a predicate, and so on. On top of that we have the problem that "immoral" ranges over actions, and it is not entirely uncontroversial that actions are individuals of the sort that can be referred to rigidly. is perhaps saying something along these lines.
Quoting Michael
This doesn't quite follow, both because "immoral" and "harmful" might be neither individuals nor kinds, and because as mentioned in previous posts "immoral" and "harmful" might well be set up as extensionally equivalent - for example, consequentialists might well do this. It's one way they try to negate the open question.
Quoting Michael
Neither: p??p not even valid. That's why it was interesting and controversial. That water is always H?O was found to be true by observation, but thereafter, after Kripke, seen as a necessary truth - necessary a posteriori...
Again, there is a lot more going on here than one might suppose, and introducing alethic modality doesn't help.
Secondly, the presumption that differences must be observable has been addressed elsewhere, with Anscombe's shopping list. The list complied by the cash register as it rings off your items may well be identical to the shopping list in your hand, of items you intended to purchase. While there may be no observable difference between the two lists, there is a profound difference in terms of what we do with each.
Hence,
Quoting Michael
is in a sense numb to the issue. There is a profound difference, for the vegetarian.
That numbness apparently extends to your general approach here. You are asking for an observable difference where the difference at hand is on of attitude, of intent. Making observations is using the wrong tool.
Thirdly, your strategy of asking for motivation is... problematic. At some stage, ratiocination must be replaced by action. And this will happen even if there is no reasoned account for the action. Buridan's Ass will not starve, it will eat.
If they're extensionally equivalent then it would be naturalism, not non-naturalism? I'm specifically talking about non-naturalism.
Quoting Banno
I'm not saying that differences must be observable. I'm only saying that there don't appear to be any observable differences.
Quoting Banno
I'm not sure what attitudes and intent have to do with moral truth, unless we're talking about moral subjectivism, which we're not.
Quoting Banno
I don't get what you're saying here. Yes, either I will eat meat or I won't. And either it is immoral to eat meat or it isn't. But whether or not I will eat meat and whether or not it is immoral to eat meat are two different considerations, and I'm interested in discussing the latter and the implications of its answer.
Quoting Banno
You brought up the case of water necessarily being H[sub]2[/sub]O. I was simply explaining that I don't think the explanation for how this works applies to the case of ethical non-naturalism.
If a posteriori necessity depends on rigid designators referring to the same thing and if "immoral" and "harmful" are not rigid designators referring to the same thing then "harm is immoral" is not an a posteriori necessity.
If you think that there can be a posteriori necessities without rigid designators referring to the same thing then I'd be interested in hearing an explanation of it.
Quoting Banno
We're not infallible, and so it's possible that some of our moral beliefs are wrong.
I don't think this at all a controversial claim.
So with that in mind, I'm asking about the practical implications of our moral beliefs being true and of those same moral beliefs being false. I don't think that eating meat being immoral has any practical implications and I don't think that eating meat not being immoral has any practical implications. So why would it matter to us if eating meat is immoral or not? Is it simply philosophical curiosity?
How could they not?
:rofl:
Edit: it's as if you have not understood the difference between "is" and "ought", and so can only formulate your ethical considerations in terms appropriate to "is", hence entirely missing the whole field of human action.
This is what happens when you try to run the OP against, say, a form of consequentialism:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Michael
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Michael
At this point "moral" is actually defined to be that which has no reason. If a claim has a reason, then apparently for @Michael it cannot be considered moral. This is understandable insofar as it is a Kantian inheritance, but at the same time it makes no sense. If moral claims are, by definition, claims without reasons, then the counterfactual test will necessarily fail for moral claims.
Note too that this consequentialist in question is not necessarily a "non-naturalist." I don't see that the naturalism/non-naturalism distinction is overly relevant to this question. The question is whether any given first principle of moral reasoning is rationally transparent or rationally opaque.
But how could you hold such a thing? The obvious practical implications are 1) how much meat is eaten, and 2) how many animals are harvested. These are practical implications, and for many vegetarians they are also moral implications.
Morality pertains to how we act, and therefore all moral precepts will have "practical" implications insofar as all human acts have "practical" effects.
Moral beliefs certainly have practical implications, in that if people believe that eating meat is immoral then it is likely that less meat is eaten and fewer animals are harvested, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm saying that eating meat actually being immoral has no practical implications and that eating meat actually not being immoral has no practical implications.
The SEP article on moral motivation explains it better:
I'm asking why there is a motivation to be moral if moral facts have no practical implications.
The two are connected. Moral realities need to be appropriated by moral subjects, just as scientific realities need to be appropriated by scientific subjects.
For example, if people believe there is fire in the fire pit they will avoid it for fear of being burned. It is the fire itself that ultimately has this effect, and it has the effect by being appropriated by human subjects. For the moral realist morality is parallel, for in that case one is recognizing a moral reality and responding to it. The vegetarian does not create a moral precept so much as respond to animal suffering and factory farming and whatnot, which they hold to be moral realities.
So on the vegetarian account
To anticipate your next post, moral realism and ethical naturalism are simply not co-extensive. That one believes there are moral realities which one recognizes does not mean that they are an ethical naturalist or an ethical non-naturalist. And in any case, these terms require more precision given that the is-ought distinction requires more precision.
Same.
You're arguing that moral realists behave differently from anti-realists. Even if that's true, it doesn't answer the OP. It's not the reality of the moral rules that matters, it's the psychology of believing realism. That said, I don't think it's true that moral realists behave differently. Again, it's all psychology.
In that post I was arguing that the intention of the moral realist differs from the intention of the moral non-realist, for the moral realist understands themselves to be responding to a real reality. Michael's separation of effects-of-moral-agents from moral truths was begging the question, assuming either anti-realism or else the unknowability of moral truths. Supposing moral truths exist and can be known (as moral realists hold), then the moral truths have practical effects.
(Again, I am not a fan of this word "practical," because for Michael every effect is practical.)
Could we verify this empirically? What sort of research project would we construct?
Are moral truths the product of empirical scientific research? Do we go to the physicists with our moral questions? In many ways this whole thread is an ignoratio elenchi, and you've highlighted that fact with this post.
Kripke agrees with you. There is no fact about what a moral realist intends at any given time.
But this issue doesn't answer the OP. You're pointing to the practical outcome of believing in moral realism, not the practical outcome of the existence of objective moral rules.
Either eating meat is immoral or it isn't.
Some people believe that eating meat is immoral and some people believe that eating meat is not immoral.
One of these groups is right and one of these groups is wrong.
What are the practical implications if the former are right? What are the practical implications if the latter are right?
I can't see that there are any in either case.
Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, those who believe that eating meat is immoral probably won't eat meat and those who believe that eating meat is not immoral probably will eat meat.
While you believe in a god who kills babies en masse.
Insanity.
Insanity.
It seems to me that the implicit assumption in all this is that people don't know, aren't sure about what is moral and what isn't. That there is a fundamental possibility of moral doubt (in every person?).
Usually, people don't seem to indulge in such moral skepticism, so your thought experiment is moot for them. A philosopher cannot just ignore such things about people. It seems that most people are intuitively and absolutely sure about their sense of right and wrong, and this surety being intuitive and absolute is essential to their sense of morality.
Yes, and what if you are absolutely sure that something you enjoy is wrong and something you're disgusted by is right? Would you change your behaviour to reflect your moral knowledge, or would you decide to continue as you were?
If it could be proved beyond all doubt that there was a God, that divine command theory is true, and that we have a moral obligation to kill infidels then I still wouldn't kill infidels because I don't want to be a killer. Morality be damned.
That's with everything. If you told me that my cat was a dog and insisted that God said the cat was a dog, I'd still say it was a cat. If you told me you had some special access to what a dog was and that I just couldn't see it, it'd take some convincing, but I can't say I'd always stubbornly insist to my view of cats and dogs regardless of the proof, but it's doubtful you'd change my mind about dogs and cats.
So it goes with murdering babies. I'm pretty clear on my moral dictates and that excludes murdering babies, and I can't imagine you'd convince me otherwise, but it's theoretically possible.
My guess is that there are some right now who insist upon their moral right to own their children and do with them as they may. I'd like to think they could be convinced otherwise, but I wouldn't want them to say "morality be damned" if they received convincing evidence but just didn't like it.
Just like I think my observations about cats and dogs are pretty much beyond question, I think that too of baby murdering, but I'm having trouble with the epistimological certainty you're trying to argue.
Then I'll give you a real life example. My friend is a gay Muslim. She genuinely believes in the teachings of Islam – including that homosexuality is wrong – and yet she still dates women. She "knows" that this is "haram" but her desires trump her moral beliefs in deciding how to live her life.
Of course for her the choice is more difficult because she believes that she will be punished for doing wrong, but for the non-religious ethical non-naturalist, there's no such punishment. And so my question stands; what is the motivation to be moral?
Well to be accurate, homosexuality is wrong by her (Muslim) community ethical standard, not her personal moral code (based on her actions). This is very common for folks' morals to clash with their community ethical standards. But she is, in fact, following her moral code.
If only it would be clear what "moral" means, in any particular instance. Hating your enemies (the persons), like the Jews do? Stoning infidels, like some Muslims do?
In Judaism, there is no punishment for not being moral either, so why should a Jew be moral? Even for a Christian, you can murder babies and go to heaven if you eventually accept Jesus, so why be moral?
I also think it's possible to choose to be immoral, as in, I don't think pedophiles necessarily think they're moral or that your friend thinks she's moral.
If you arrive at a logical basis to explain your basis for morality, like say the categorical imperative, then you would be moral regardless of measurable consequence, but you must believe that is the proper expression of humanity or something along those lines.
Is your main point here just that you think non-naturalism doesn't work and you're therefore a naturalist consequentialist when it comes to ethics?
I have been faced with similar situations when I approached some religions/spiritualities. But I wasn't actually sure that something I enjoyed was wrong, and I wasn't sure that something I'm disgusted by was right -- instead, I felt enormously pressured to have such surety, and my continual involvement was predicated on at least aiming for such surety. I couldn't stand it for long, though, and eventually broke off my involvement with them. I'm also facing such situations in relation to politics, and as things stand, my current means of coping is cynicism.
But, realistically, as years pass, I can see on my own example that Kohlberg's theory of moral development applies, esp. the part where he notes that changes in moral reasoning happen gradually over long periods of time, through personal experience, discussions with others, reading, reflecting, as opposed to people changing their moral beliefs simply after reading a syllogism. For me, this manifests in having developed a new framework for understanding religious/spiritual claims and expectations, and a kind of -- not exactly stiff upper lip -- but a certain, let's call that, inner, non-verbal rigidity because of which those religious/spiritual claims and expectations can't take much hold of me (unlike they did in the past).
While a person's moral stances can remain the same for long periods of time, things can change. External events might provoke one to think and act in ways that one previously thought unimaginable, not only impossible.
Quoting Michael
The problem is the bit about _everyone_. It's usually not the case that everyone thinks the same way. This is why the issues of whether moral facts exist or not and whether a belief is true or not come into play. As soon as someone is "different" than the majority, this will have some practical consequences for the person (often adverse ones), and the person will try to make sense of this being different and of how other people treat them because of it.
Quoting Michael
Because you haven't internalized the metaphysical framework needed for said obligation to make sense.
Quoting Michael
For most people who (claim to) obey God's law, that motivation appears to be pre-cognitive; ie. they have internalized it before they were even old enough to think about it.
For many of those who first turn to obeying God's law as adults, there's some trauma or crisis.
Quoting Michael
Moral obligation only makes sense in a religious framework to begin with.
Quoting Michael
As is inevitably the case for someone who is not religious or whose sense of morality is not shaped after religions.
Because moral obligations only make sense in the framework of religion. Only religion has the metaphysical underpinnings needed for making moral obligations intelligible (and the practical means for raising prospective believers).
Tread more carefully in your attempts to describe Jewish theology so as not to appear anti-Jewish. I don't trust that your description of the way Jewish theology describes evil is entirely a misunderstanding, but I am more convinced it's a desire to cast the religion in a bad light.
You are not asked to hate your enemy. Forgiveness is central to the religion, but I won't waste my time with a discussion of halacha with you. Instead, I'll just tell you to end your Judaism bashing.
We don't dump them because in order to be able to dump them safely, without adverse consequences for ourselves, other people would have to dump them as well. But this, clearly, isn't happening.
Actually, I heard about the need for hatred from you for the first time. I was quite taken aback.
But some things started to make sense.
Is it even possible to say something about Judaism without the Jews feeling offended?
Religious/spiritual people tend to have toes all over the place, it's impossible not to step on them.
She told me that she believes it's wrong and struggles with that belief.
Quoting Hanover
No, I'm just asking a question of non-naturalists: why be moral? It seems to me that if non-naturalism is true then moral facts are of no practical import and so I wonder why they'd be motivated to be moral.
But now that you mention it, perhaps there's a case to argue that moral facts must be of practical import and so if non-naturalism entails that moral facts are of no practical import then non-naturalism must be false, but that's perhaps a topic for a different discussion.
How is this not a slide from obligation to motivation? Sure, there are issues of weakness of the will. But they presume an obligation avoided, and hence an obligation.
What you are doing here is indeed incomprehensible.
Assume that we have some obligation. What is our motivation to obey such an obligation?
That's the question asked by the OP.
My stance is that if obligations have no practical import then the mere existence of an obligation is insufficiently motivating.
I ought do this? Okay, but I won't because I don't want to.
Well, no, it isn't - not in so many words. From here it just looks as if you slide the goal post.
Quoting Michael
I don't understand this phrase. If one is under an obligation to act in a certain way, then one ought act in that way - that's what an obligation is. That is the "practical import" of the obligation.
Hence the answer I gave previously - that it makes no sense to ask why we ought do what we ought do.
So whatever it is you think you are claiming remains quite obscure to me.
See here.
I'm not asking that.
What more practical an implication could you find?
See here:
And from the OP:
It's certainly not the case that if my belief that eating meat is wrong is true then I won't eat meat and that if my belief that eating meat is wrong is false then I will eat meat, as if moral facts themselves, as distinct from moral beliefs, influence my behaviour.
If eating meat is immoral, then "eating meat is immoral" is true, and the direct practical implication is that one ought not eat meaty.
I'm going to give you a chance not to be antisemitic and to clarify yourself.
First, Jews have no rule about hating their enemies. It has to do with responses to evil generally, but, like I said, if you want to know the Jewish rules on such things, Google it instead of spouting ignorance.
Second, what you're implying is that what now makes sense to you is that the response in Israel is motivated by Jewish law, meaning your condemnation of Israel is in fact a condemnation of Judaism. If that is your view, and I've read this correctly, please tell me so that I know that. Could be a misread by me, so clarify if I've missed it.
Quoting baker
If your implication is that Jews are too fucked up to respond appropriately to comments because that's what Jews are like, let me know that so I can be clear where you stand.
In any event, when you say something offensive, expect it to be taken as offensive.
Is "I don't want to eat meat because I don't want animals to suffer in factory farms" a moral stance?
I'm not claiming otherwise.
Quoting Banno
The existence of the obligation has no practical implication.
If I put my hand in water then it matters if it's boiling. If it is then I will burn my hand.
If I eat meat then it doesn't matter if I ought not eat meat. Nothing detrimental will happen if I disobey an obligation and nothing beneficial will happen if I obey an obligation. So why should I care about such an obligation?
There would be a difference only if moral facts were discoverable. If they are, then their discovery would motivate people to obey the discovered moral fact, via their motivation to be and be seen as moral, by others and by themselves. If on the other hand such facts are not discoverable, then they make no difference whatsoever.
In the above example, due to epistemological uncertainty, people would be highly skeptical. There would be an assumption that some mistake was made in whatever process of moral discovery lead to the conclusion that it is moral to kill babies. I think for most people, the result would be so incongruous with their moral intuition that they would never accept it, and go to their grave thinking there must be some mistake, somewhere. But at least a few would probably start killing babies.
But that's not a practical implication. A practical implication would be to not eat meat. Your belief that you should not eat meat might result in not eating meat, but it's possible that not eating meat is moral, without believing that not eating meat is moral. Only beliefs in moral facts can affect action, not the moral facts themselves.
Clear as mud. "Nothing bad will happen if I disobey an obligation" - the "bad" thing that will have happened is that you will have disobeyed an obligation.
I didn't mean "bad" in the moral sense. I pre-empted this response and already changed the wording.
Ok, so except for all the morally bad things, nothing morally bad will happen...
Not such a profound observation.
I didn't say nothing morally bad will happen. I said that nothing non-morally bad will happen.
I'm trying to understand what you're getting at I guess.
A divine command theorist would believe it's wrong to murder for some over-riding reason, which would be that the universe would be better in some meaningful way if the rule were followed. That they might tell you they don't know in what way because it's a mystery doesn't make them a non-naturalist because it is nature that is improved by the act.
And even with divine command theory there is the whole argument about whether God can do evil, which means the good is the good regardless of what God says, so it's not like God can decree baby killing God good and so you'd be right to reject such a decree.
I just think non-naturalism is untenable because I don't think it logically works. Is it to mean that baby murdering might be good even if all physical evidence is to the contrary and there's no way to disprove it by looking at outcome?
With your Muslim friend, I must assume she thinks her lesbianism is immoral because it is disrupting something in the universe, right?
Yes. Nothing non-morally bad will happen.
But you have only ruled out moral deficiency by fiat.
It remains that if vegetarianism is true, then eating meat is bad.
Assume that it is immoral to eat meat. I eat meat. What are the practical consequences?
Assume that it is not immoral to eat meat. I eat meat. What are the practical consequences?
Any practical consequences in the first case are the same as any practical consequences in the second case. As such, whether or not it is immoral to eat meat makes no practical difference.
Compare with:
Assume that the water is boiling. I put my hand in the water. What are the practical consequences?
Assume that the water is not boiling. I put my hand in the water. What are the practical consequences?
There are practical consequences in the first case that differ from the practical consequences in the second case. As such, whether or not the water is boiling makes a practical difference.
So I can see why it matters if the water is boiling. But I can't see why it matters if it's immoral to eat meat.
I haven't claimed otherwise.
Change the word "moral" to "legal." Now does it matter? One would expect more people to eat meat if it were legal (or moral) and the consequence would as to how many animals were killed and eaten.
Morality affects people's behaviors and it affects people's responses to you. So, if you it were legal to kill babies, it would change all sorts of things than if it were illegal. Why is it different with morality just because the penalties for violations are not formalized as they are in legal systems?
The idea of seperating the ethical from the legal isn't universal.
Indeed
Yes, because there are consequences to the breaking the law.
Quoting Hanover
Moral beliefs affect people's behaviours. If you believe that it is immoral to eat meat then it makes no difference if your belief is true or false. Either way you're going to bitch at me for eating meat.
The same holds true regarding the law. If I believe it's illegal to eat meat and it's not, but everyone acts like it is, and so you sit in a jail cell for having eaten meat, it becomes illegal by our response. That is just to say that legality is based upon people's beliefs, and it's not necessary for a law to be written for reference, but just because it is written and that is what assures one of it's illegality, it is not the writing that makes it illegal. It is our belief that does that.
If you want to say that the law is a seperate entity that exists outside our belief, as if it is a thing in reality that gains substance by its acceptance, the same can be said of morality. That would be the way to describe a moral realism.
All of this is to say (1) there are consequences to breaking moral codes, (2) the distinction between moral codes and legal codes is idiosyncratic to secular societies and not some metaphysical distinction, and (3) the truth value of a claim can be based upon a social norm that is reducible to nothing more than an idea or belief.
"It is wrong to kill babies" is therefore no different for our analysis here than saying "It is illegal to kill babies," and the truth value of either claim is determined the same way in both, which is to refer to beliefs. And even if you wish to elevate these claims beyond beliefs into a real thing in the actual universe, it's no more or less easy to do that to morality or to laws.
This would be something like cultural relativism? That isn't the kind of meta-ethics I'm asking about. As per the OP I'm specifically assuming some kind of robust moral realism (objectivism) – and specifically of the non-naturalist kind.
Why Should I Be Moral? Revisited, Kai Nielson (1984)
Ha! That's weird.
I'm not even sure it makes sense to say that there's a moral reason for being moral. It's like saying that there are pragmatic reasons for being pragmatic. It strikes me as a strange way to talk. Rather we should only say that there's a moral reason to not eat meat or a pragmatic reason to eat meat.
The question of the OP, then, is why we choose to consider moral reasons at all. At least we get something out of being practical. There are prima facie no benefits to being moral. Being moral for the sake of being moral seems pointless.
On the face of it there seems to be multiple reasons:
* Our standing with our fellows, with society at large, and with ourselves is elevated by being moral, and reduced when seen to be immoral.
* Our moral training induces a feeling of guilt when we are immoral, and self-satisfaction when moral
* Empathy causes us pain when we cause harm to others, by literally feeling it. Similarly, when we see others in pain, we feel that pain, and ease our own suffering by easing theirs.
This has nothing to do with moral facts and everything to do with moral beliefs. It is pragmatic to behave in ways that society believes is moral.
Quoting hypericin
This has nothing to do with moral facts and everything to do with moral beliefs. We feel guilty when we behave in ways that we believe are immoral.
Quoting hypericin
If ethical non-naturalism is true then it might be that causing harm isn't immoral.
Yes, so as the OP asks, why consider morality when choosing what to do? Why not just consider our desires and pragmatism?
The question "Why should I be moral?" presumably means, "Why should I act in accordance with my moral beliefs?" In any epistemic domain, we only ever have access to our beliefs, not to facts themselves. Morality (presuming non-naturalism) is not somehow unique here.
Then, either our beliefs are (or can be) informed by moral facts, in which case the moral facts matter. Or, they cannot, or the facts do not exist, in which case they don't matter.
To paraphrase, based on her actions, she means: she's struggling with the fact that her culture tells her it's wrong yet she doesn't (personally, meaning: morally) believe it's wrong. The evidence is that if her moral code was that it's wrong A) it would be in sync with the known cultural/ethical opinion of wrongness, so what would be the source of the "struggle"? In that scenario she would merely be a routine sinner who just had an all too human moment of weakness, ho hum. And B) that (presumably) her actions are her personal lifestyle, ie it's a well agonized-over (moral) decision.
Her comment on her belief of it's wrongness, sounds like a layperson's wording that she's been brought up to believe it's wrong (by her culture's ethics).
I'm no fan of the word "morality'.
But choosing expediency is as much a choice as choosing @Bob Ross's latest grand ethical scheme.
Why not choose expediency? Now you are making an ethical decision.
The fact of having to choose remains, and it remains precisely because of the change in direction of fit. We not only observe, we act.
So here's the foundation of ethics: "What to do?"
Crickey, it took a long time to get your exposition clear.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Is this even cognitivism?
No, not even that, not yet.
Here's the poverty of empiricism, naturalism and so on, when it comes to ethics: in looking at how the world is, nothing is said about what to do about it.
Well as I've made clear several times I am considering the implications of ethical non-naturalism. If ethical non-naturalism is true then ...
If you want to argue against ethical non-naturalism then that's a topic for a different discussion, and one on which I might be inclined to agree with you.
One's desires, preferences, values, goals, visions are part of the world, no?
Yeah, you introduced that only after folk showed the OP wasn't working. And now, after all the hard work of pulling the "isms" off your account to see what was being said, you have reverted to them again.
I was wondering if @Frank was going to show something of his thoughts about propositional attitudes. They still underpin these posts.
Thanks for the chat.
What do you want to talk about?
I think you have it backwards. Morality is mostly about looking backward, not forward. You only feel guilt and grief about what's already been done. We only try the criminal for what she did, not what she will do.
Every person starts out innocent and covers themselves with wrongdoing as they grow and learn. This is what redemption is: to stand back up after having fallen and putting foot to path to try again, having learned what every generation learns anew. You can't hear the moral code handed down to you until you've made the mistakes that bring it home to you. Then it becomes a touchstone that you'll pass to the next generation, but they'll make the same mistakes again on their way to learning it. That's how it has to be.
Perhaps. But what about ethics? It's about what to do, and so faces forward.
Quoting frank
Sounds like you really bought in to the Garden of Eden stuff.
:smile:
That's like asking...
Why be kind?
Why do what's best for most everyone concerned/included?
Why glorify doing good for goodness' sake?
Why ought we make concerted effort to think about how our behaviour effects/affects the world, and subsequently tailor it to help bring forth goodness while causing the least harm?
Why do what one believes is most helpful and least harmful?
Why be virtuous?
Why be admirable?
Why do our best to affect/effect positive change in the world?
So, why be moral?
Hopefully because we care about everyone who/that is affected/effected by our behaviour.
I get the feeling you don't know what innocence and guilt are. All you know is that you ought to because you ought to? Hmm.
But the other 99% looked forward and didn't ever commit the crime because they knew it immoral.
@Michael
I'm not entirely sure what we discussed in this thread. I'm willing to admit it might be me in that my assumptions are so strong I can't see where the issue lies.
I may not have a full grasp of what non- naturalism is. The article I cited earlier offered so many objections and distinctions between the various forms, it's hard to say what it is generically.
What is an example of non-naturalist ethical theory?
Well, you're a monster. What's your excuse?
Now, you may say that I am just being,
Quoting Michael
and that this is what gives me a good feeling when I help others. However, I benefit in a whole lot of other ways too. The more I help others, the more I get recommended, and the more my business grows. This means I can earn more money (although, I am terrible at increasing my fees. I have actually been asked before by a parent if I would please put my prices up. Oops, did I just shoot down my own argument? Hmm, not necessarily, by keeping my fees low, I get more customers, or customers believe that I am not only concerned with money, so they trust me more to have the best interests at heart for their children. Oooh, I am more cunning than I thought!)
Okay, of course, there are always exceptions too, such as, people don’t always see the long-term benefits, or else, they act on impulsive emotions; we have all at once probably been guilty of ‘cutting our noses off to spite our faces.” Or, there could be a whole lot of other reasons why people do not act morally, but I believe that, while they may appear to benefit in the short term, in the long run, they do not. Therefore, those who are wise, level-headed and do not have self-destructive tendencies, lean towards behaving morally. The moral facts are that we survive better, in the long run, by behaving morally.
In addition, I believe that morality is not so much to do with rules set out by society (although these do exist), it comes from within us, as a way of maximizing our chances of survival. Therefore, the ‘rules’ tend to be set and followed by the individual, depending on the circumstances, and the rules set out generally by society are simply to strengthen all of our chances of survival. These rules manifest in both laws and expected/accepted forms of behaviour.
This becomes problematic, however, because it is so difficult for societies to speak for every individual situation, and this is most probably when the individual makes up their own mind what is moral or not. For example, many people would think it not immoral to kill a baby that was suffering horrifically and had no chance of survival, to sit back and watch it suffer, be torn apart, tortured etc. But many societies cannot condone baby killing because of the ‘grey’ areas, and the times when people could abuse such rules/laws etc.
Gosh, I appear to have rabbited on an awful lot! I hope this makes at least some sense, isn’t just repeating what someone else has already said, and does refer to the original post to some extent… but I have a streaming cold, and my brain is a little fuzzy. I cannot sleep though, not at all, hence all the ‘rabbiting’ I’m doing.
True.
Quoting Michael
True.
Quoting Michael
True (although not everyone on each side agrees with one another about the nature of the moral proposition).
Quoting Michael
The practical implications have to do with eating, harvesting, and producing animals, as I already noted.
Quoting Michael
Your word here, "regardless," is the source of the fallacy you are working with. Disagreement does not mean that no one on either side is acting in good faith. In fact the empirical data disproves your thesis, for there are those on both sides who become convinced that they were wrong and change their minds, and this obviously has "practical" (moral) implications. Your sentence here is simply false.
It would be as intelligent to say, "Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, those who are epistemological coherentists will act like epistemological coherentists, and those who are epistemological foundationalists will act like epistemological foundationalists." This is sophistry. People act on the basis of beliefs that they hold to be true. People act not regardless of who is right, but rather because of who is right.* This is so in all fields of knowledge. Stipulating by fiat that there are no real convictions about what is true, whether in the realm of morality or epistemology, is sophistical. You are stipulating that all moral reasoning is post hoc rationalization.
(Although we should again note that by "moral reasoning" you mean "Kantian reasoning," and you think any non-Kantian moral reasoning is "pragmatic" reasoning.)
* You will say, "They act on the basis of who they believe to be right, not on the basis of who is right." Yes, of course. Truth is always filtered through belief. There is no simple fact of the matter about who is right. Here below there is no Gods-eye view that is able to sidestep beliefs. We access truth through our minds and through our beliefs.
I do think @Banno correctly noted your allusion to the original sin myth. Not that the religious story can't be correct metaphor, but you do have to pause if you find yourself reciting the mythology of your culture to ask it's valid of or if its just bias.
It's not the case that we stumble about making countless serious ethical violations until we right ourselves. Most make missteps now and again, but we're mostly morally abiding folks.
I can't get into the whole we're damaged goods in need of salvation or some such. That's someone else's myth. I've got my plate full figuring out my own.
Why would there be a motivation to believe empirical facts that are of no practical consequence?
I was talking about babies. They're innocent. They learn about morality through experiences of all sorts. It's a life long progression.
Quoting Hanover
When you first described to me what you do for a living, I was a little shocked because you seemed kind of nonchalant about it. To me, it sounded horrible, though. You stand with a large company against people who are struggling. I didn't wonder: how does Hanover not see that what he's doing is against some objective moral code? I wondered how you sleep at night. To me, morality is visceral. What is it to you?
Truths have an effect on the world by being known by minds, and this is especially true with moral truths. You and @Michael are attempting to speak about the effects of truths independent of belief, which is an especially odd approach when it comes to morality. Morality is about how humans should act, and humans act in light of their beliefs. Therefore a moral truth is brought to bear on reality via belief.
Of course I grant that it is easier to speak about the truth, say, of gravity in a manner that circumvents human knowledge of that truth. But moral truths can also have an effect in the absence of human appropriation of those truths in the form of knowledge. For example, if we cannot get along with one another, then the human race will end as a consequence of nuclear war. Those who believe it is morally important to provide for the continuation of the human race will take this (hypothetical) moral truth into account.
@Michael sees moral disagreements and he seeks a way to overcome them, to stand over them with a quasi-infallible method of moral adjudication (including a faux confidence about which claims are moral claims and which are not). But such an approach is like chasing the horizon or searching for the edge of the Earth. All knowledge is, in a certain sense, non-infallible, including moral knowledge. There is no Gods-eye moral position, at least in this life.
What you're saying is in line with moral antirealism. Michael was asking about moral realism, specifically whether it makes any difference if it obtains. I think we all pretty much agree that it doesn't.
Nope. Banno and I are moral realists who recognize that moral truths have an effect via belief. Actually I would say that all moral realists believe this. I have no idea where you guys are getting your strange ideas about the different categories of moral theory. @Michael's claim that only ethical naturalism can have "practical" effects is another of the strange ideas.
That's not a thing.
What would be immoral would be not to represent someone's interests in an adversarial system and to think yourself the judge when you're an advocate and allow your client to go unprotected.
I suppose you might think every criminal guilty and so the prosecutor is the only moral person in the courtroom or perhaps you think they're all innocent, so the defense attorney is the only moral person. Or maybe you've thought deeper than that. Or maybe not.
I'm not a civil defense attorney just by coincidence. It's a passion of mine. That I don't hold to your naive view that every person who comes before the court asking for compensation fully deserves whatever they want doesn't make me immoral. It makes me realize the crazy racket the American civil justice can be if left unguarded.
We buy and sell pain and suffering like it's a commodity. I always like having the recent immigrant on my jury who is still ignorant to the nonsense we accept as normal.
It's a conversation for another day, but not one where I'd have to search very hard for examples of individuals obtaining benefits undeserved. Whatever limited view you have of the courtrooms I see every day doubtfully will add much to my opinion.
Feel free to attempt to address the argument:
Quoting Leontiskos
In so far as there is much of interest in this thread, it's about how not to talk about morality and ethics. It's all a bit of a mess.
Sure, there are people who want to play the system. You're there to stop them. That's great. And everyone you direct your skills against is a rascal. Is that what you're saying?
I've been thinking... What if you were stranded—with your sibling— on a desert island, which has limited meat sources, and the only other source of edible food is eggs, and your sibling is allergic to eggs. Now you hate eggs, but are not allergic to them, but really want that meat. Yes, I know this is a rather convoluted example, but it is all I can come up with at the moment with my streaming cold. I’m sure I could come up with lots of other better examples without my ‘cold head’. (Anyone is welcome to join in with a better example! )
Okay, so with this example, the practical consequences of you eating meat are that your sibling will eventually die, either of starvation or anaphylactic shock.
But, I hear you say, eventually all the meat, and eggs, will run out anyway, so both of you will die of starvation. And anyway, why does any of this even matter at all if people were, for example, all generally immoral? Because, from my view, being immoral doesn’t seem to benefit me, or the person being immorally wrong, in the long run. If the person ate the eggs and saved the meat for their sibling, then they may both survive long enough to get off the island. The meat eater could use their raft building skills, and the egg eater could deploy their knowledge of distress signalling, using the mirror they found in their pocket. Lol
Okay, so, say one of those people believed it was immoral to eat the meat or the eggs, but they could save their sibling with their raft building skills, which their sibling was useless at, and, the other sibling knew without a shadow of a doubt that their sibling would drown if they even tried to build a raft to get out of there. Then, to my mind, it would be immoral NOT to eat the meat, survive and help the sibling. You may say it is my 'belief' that it is immoral not to eat the meat, or to eat it, but, if morality is linked to survival, then eating the meat means that both myself and my sibling survive, and hence, are moral.
The point is though, there are soooo many grey areas. This is just one, admittedly very specific, and quite unlikely, example. Give me time—and take away my cold— and I’m pretty sure I could come up with more.
Yes. Once the thin film of the thread is peeled away all that remains are utterly strange moral assumptions that are continually reasserted. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
In the same post you quoted from I also said, "(although not everyone on each side agrees with one another about the nature of the moral proposition)."
The point here is that "moral" and "immoral" are not univocal terms. They mean different things on different moral theories. This is actually one of the big problems with @Michael's approach: he presumes that "moral" is a straightforwardly univocal term while simultaneously refusing to give his definition or account of what it means.
So depending on one's reasons for abstaining from meat, exceptions may or may not be allowed. My hunch is that for many vegetarians such a moral rule is not exceptionless. It is possible for moral rules to come into conflict, and the robust moral theories are able to account for and deal with these conflicts. The conflict you raise is an especially strong one (survival, or the limit of "in extremis").
But Michael is concerned with the Kantian form of morality, which tends to be exceptionless (cf. ).
Yes, and the (foreseeable) consequence of every action (or inaction) either
• helps more than harns,
• harms more than helps,
• harms and helps more or less equally
or
• (mostly it seems) neither harms nor helps
by which habits of judgment (i.e. virtues, vices) are reflectively cultivated. Maybe I've taken your point further than you intend, Banno, but I think my point is consistent with the ethical truth you've raised: "What ought I/we to do now?"
Quoting Michael
Okay then don't "be moral for the sake of being moral" – be moral because it's usually far less maladaptive than being immoral.
Quoting Michael
I don't know what it means to "consider morality when choosing what to do" any more than what it means to "consider" seeing "when choosing" to look or "consider" empathy "when choosing" to feel. In situ we do, look or feel and then reflect on how we can improve on doing, looking or feeling; thus, we can gradually cultivate habits of judgments (for "choosing") which are either (A) more adaptive than maladaptive (i.e. virtuous) or (B) more maladaptive than adaptive (i.e. vicious). Ethics is not calculus but concerns seeking optimal ways of living with others.
Who says these do not also factor into moral conduct? However, they are not the only considerations. Read moral psychology and some of Confucius, Epicurus, Epictetus, Aristotle ... Spinoza, Nietzsche, Peirce, Dewey ... Parfit, Foot, Nussbaum et al).
Is that what you're saying I said?
My impression is that sometimes you hurt people who don't deserve to be hurt, and these people you've hurt don't have the resources your clients do. Do I have it all wrong? Are the people you defend against all rascals?
Not too far, perhaps. Talk of virtues and vices, dealing with here and now, ad hoc rather than programatic decision making, allowing for review of the outcomes, heuristics over algorithms; sounds about right.
The question of whether all 'oughts' pertain to punishment and reward is interesting (), but the more fundamental question at play is whether there are 'oughts' which are not driven by inclination or even motivation. This is a more universal question, as it affects non-consequentialists, and your line of reasoning occasionally and imperceptibly dips into this deeper probing. The more superficial line assumes a modern view, where human action is inherently selfish. Kant is influenced by this modern view but he is always attempting to surpass it, and so the problem with Kant (and our modern inheritance) goes deeper than this superficial line.
Quoting Michael
Not all morality is consequentialist. The deeper problem of Kantian morality is not related to implications, but to grounds or reasons. Here is how I put it to J privately:
Here is how Simpson puts a similar point:
Quoting Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble, p. 16
So you are latching onto something legitimately problematic in Kant. But the ascendancy of Kant and of his morality comes late in history. For an Aristotelian like myself it is a strange aberration. Yet you refuse to conceive of morality in a non-Kantian manner, and so instead of identifying a flaw in one very localized moral theory, you falsely conclude that all of morality is inherently flawed. Whenever someone tries to draw you out of the Kantian whirlpool, you respond, "You're speaking about pragmatic matters, not moral matters," where "pragmatic" means non-Kantian and "moral" means Kantian.
(Or else you can't see past consequentialism and a selfish psychology and I am giving you too much credit.)
Yes, you have it exactly wrong.
The Plaintiff's bar is well funded, and you don't pay if you don't recover. People aren't wanting for representation. You live in the US right?
And no, my clients aren't always in the right. Was that a real question? You were wondering if I ever had a case with bad facts?
This conversation is pretty stupid btw. It started with a provocation along the lines of "how can anyone defend a company?" and now you're asking how broke people hire lawyers and if I ever had a bad case.
Type in "I've been hurt and need a lawyer" in Google and you can live chat with someone 24/7 and they can fill you in on everything you need to know.
If someone sues you though and you need representation, don't call your insurance company and don't have someone like me represent you. You should just roll over and die because you're above all that and that injured person has the right to everything you have.
I'm just trying to figure out if there is such a thing as immorality. If being moral means doing what is good and best for you, and by extension, that is good for others, then being immoral would mean not doing what is best for you. I'm not sure I'm convinced that this exists or is possible.
BTW, sorry if I made a mistake with the quoting thing on my last comment. It was unintentional; I'm just getting used to the site.
Granny was in a car accident. She hasn't been able to turn her head side to side since then. She hires a lawyer to sue because the other driver's insurance company doesn't want to pay for any of her medical bills. She won, by the way. This is a true story.
There's a lot of litigation in the US. Companies need to be able to defend themselves. Of course. And at the end of the day, the insurance company's lawyer was trying to screw over the little old lady. He was trying to keep his client from having to pay out what they owed. This lawyer does this everyday. It's what he does for a living. He tries to screw people over.
If that's not you, then great. I misunderstood.
Right. There is an interesting exchange on this very topic between two groups of philosophers. See my post on a different forum for links to the three papers in question (link).
The idea is essentially that even on a strict consequentialism moral error is possible, but perhaps only in retrospect or else in an especially subtle way. But there are a lot of different ways to answer such an argument... Most theories would say that ignorance plays a role, where one believes they are doing what is best but in fact they are not, and ignorance of what is truly best is a significant moral culprit in the immoral act. For Socrates in the early dialogues ignorance would have been the sole culprit.
If you are new to moral philosophy I would not recommend this thread, as it is excessively complicated and will probably only confuse you!
Quoting Beverley
No worries. A helpful thread may be, "Forum Tips and Tricks - How to Quote." In general when you use the text selection quote shortcut, it is often better to separate outer quotes from inner quotes, especially if you want a link automatically added to each quote. When you quoted me and Michael simultaneously in a single text selection, it only linked to my quote and his quote got subsumed into mine. But some of this is personal preference. :smile:
Welcome to the forum. See also: "Welcome to The Philosophy Forum - an introduction thread."
I'd say, "Don't hate the player, hate the game." The U.S. legal system is inherently agonistic, where the judge plays a more passive role than would have been the case in older English common law, and lawyers tend to take center stage (@Hanover can correct me if I'm off). But this is also why representation is provided if necessary. It has its pros and cons.
Thing is, it's pretty hard to craft a perfect legal system. What is your solution? Don't allow companies representation? Make lawyers pass a morality test? See if Plato's Form of the Good would be interested in coming down to Earth to decide all cases personally?
Quoting Hanover
Just thinking though...
Quoting Leontiskos
But is moral error, or just error, the same as immorality in the sense I was mentioning? I guess I could kill someone in error, or I could kill someone thinking it was a moral thing to do, but afterwards realize that I was wrong. But if being moral is about doing what is best for you, then making an error is not trying to not be moral, and therefore, it cannot be immoral, can it?
:cool:
Because, if you live within a society, it is in your best/self interest, in isolation morality is meaningless.
The idea is that, if morality is doing what is best for oneself, then one can act immorally (err morally) if they fail to do what is best for themselves. Assuming they did not intend to fail in this way, their immorality would be unintentional and yet real.
What is "best for oneself" is usually conceived of as an objective target that can be hit or missed, such that one must refine their understanding over time in order to truly act in their best interest.
I was just wondering, why does taking everyone else out of the picture mean that morality, or acting in your 'best self interest', no longer applies?
If morality is doing what one thinks is best for oneself in the moment, and everyone always does what they think best for themselves in the moment, then immorality and moral error are impossible, as is moral success. But I don't think this is a common view of morality, and those who hold to such a view certainly have nothing to argue about or discuss.
What each side does is try to represent the interests of the other, regardless of whether you think their interests are worth protecting. If that lawyer didn't try to reduce the liability of his clients, then his clients would end up paying amounts that were beyond what they owed.
The caricature views aren't interesting, where the insurance company is painted as Satan and the Plaintiffs as these helpless figures getting abused at every turn. The other side being that Plaintiff's attorneys are all ambulance chasers and predators trying to extract the insurance money set aside for true injuries. That you think you can pick one of these sides and declare yourself a more moral person and ignore the not so subtle nuance that you will be necessarily aligning yourself with some pretty unsavory characters regardless of which side you pick just means you're unfamiliar with the territory.
But just to the basics: The American system of justice is an adversarial system by design. That is not the only possible choice, but that's what it has. That means that you have Person A versus Person B (quite literally) and each advocates for their side. They present their case in a way that most advantages their client (and calling Granny a greedy bitch probably will backfire, by the way), and a neutral (a judge or jury) hears the evidence and renders a verdict. It places trust in these neutrals to sort out the truth and be fair. This means that if that lawyer who you think is paid to screw people decides to have a nice streak and drop his defense, the other attorney will use that to increase the recovery beyond what is due. That is why it would be unethical for either side not to be zealous.
And there is another side to the Granny equation, and that might likely be some person who just didn't see the red light, made a mistake, and caused injury. He's not a terrible person and in need of a defense. You may find this hard to believe, but sometimes we have Grannys that haven't been able to turn their neck for years, have had arthritis up and down their spine for decades, and now this bumper tap is blamed for all their problems. Two and half years later, after orthopedists and radiologists have been deposed, the jury returns the obvious verdict that the bumper tap didn't cause these problems.
That's what I see every day, much more than the true injuries. The reason for that is because the vast majority of cases settle, with most real injury claims being settled prior to going into suit. I will only see the denied claims where suit has been filed. The insurance companies don't make money by denying legitimate claims just to have juries ring them up later. Their own self interest dictates resolution of the real claims.
And with this I could launch into the tort reform movement and why I do think it is necessary. The money that is being protected is the money of the commons whether you wish to think of insurance that way or not. That money does not come from the sky. It's the social security system of private enterprise, with each premium dollar paid a tax on those who seek stability in their lives in times of financial crisis. You don't have this sort of system in more socialist leaning countries because the government takes care of the medical bills and lost wages, but no one screams it is unfair when those systems don't hand out millions of dollars in recovery in addition to that, as if that is what fairness is about.
They're practical implications of having the belief. I'm asking about the practical implications of that belief being true.
If eating meat is immoral and I believe that eating meat is immoral then I won't eat meat.
If eating meat is not immoral but I believe that eating meat is immoral then I won't eat meat.
Whether or not eating meat is immoral has no affect on whether or not I eat meat or on what will happen if I do or don't.
Quoting Leontiskos
Firstly, I am specifically addressing ethical non-naturalism, which states that:
1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
2. Some such propositions are true.
3. Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of human opinion.
4. These moral features of the world are not reducible to any set of non-moral features.
Secondly, I am only saying that if moral features are not reducible to non-moral features (e.g. pain, harm, suffering, etc.) then the existence (or non-existence) of these moral features has no practical implications.
And I'm not necessarily saying that therefore ethical non-naturalism is false. I'm only saying that if it's true then I don't understand the motivation to be moral.
I alluded to it on the second page, 7 years ago:
Quoting Michael
I was then explicit about it on the third page, 14 days ago:
Quoting Michael
I think it's just the case that some people aren't actually reading what I'm writing.
How do you define "immoral" in this sentence so I can substitute those words in where you've use "moral." It's not clear what you're referring to, especially in light of the non-naturalistic definition you're trying to use.
For example, if I used "that which causes more societal unhappiness than not" for the definition of immoral, we'd end up with this:
1. If (a) I do not believe eating meat causes (b) more societal unhappiness than not, and (c) if I believe morality is what one ought to do , then (d) I will eat meat.
2. If (a) I believe eating meat causes (b) more societal unhappiness than not , and (c) if I believe morality is what one ought to do , (d) then I will eat meat.
(a) is a statement of belief, with 1(a) being negative and 2(b) being positive.
(b) defines morality.
(c) is a statement of what you believe the purpose of (b) is.
(d) is your decision.
1(d) logically follows but 2(d) does not.
So which of (b), (c), and (d) do you not agree with? And, to the extent you don't agree with one, what do you substitue in to correct it? I beleive the insertion of (c) is what @Banno was getting at, indicating it was an assumed premise that was being ignored. I was focusing on (b) because I don't really know what it means in the context of non-naturalism, but there has to be something placed in (b) in order for this conversation to make sense. Otherwise you're left with the undefined term of "morality."
That is indeed one of my other gripes with ethical non-naturalism. It states what morality is not but seems to lack a substantive positive definition.
I suppose one account is to define it by saying that "X is immoral" just means "one ought not X".
If so then my statements above can be rephrased as:
1. If a) it is the case that one ought not eat meat and b) I believe that it is the case that one ought not eat meat then c) I won't eat meat.
2. If a) it is not the case that one ought not eat meat but b) I believe that it is the case that one ought not eat meat then c) I won't eat meat.
The practical implication of each b) is each c), but I can't see what the practical implication of each a) is.
The fact that there are people who want to scam the system does not make it ok for insurance companies to do the same thing. And they do. They try to get our of paying what they owe. They use the court system to intimidate people.
This is how morality works: If there was one single time when you attempted to or succeeded in screwing someone over, you have done something monstrous. That person was struggling, and you either tried to make it worse, or you succeeded in doing so. It doesn't matter that it was legal for you to do this. It was a terrible thing to do to someone else, and it wasn't the "system" hurting them. It was you. You could have done something else with your talents, but instead you worked it out in your mind that using the court system to intimidate and harass someone was ok.
You know in your heart whether you've done this or not. If you haven't, then that's great. I'm not sure if you're intentionally twisting my words to strawman me, or what. This is not about the system. It's about that person you either tried to hurt, or succeeded in hurting. If there is no such person, then great. Only you know the truth of that.
Wouldn't that mean that everyone is morally successful, since everyone does what they think is best for themselves? And even if, in the future, they realize that what they did was not best for themselves, this still would not mean they were immoral because, at the time, they thought they were doing what was best for themselves, and, from the future viewpoint, they would/could not do it again if they believed it was not in their best interests. Also, couldn't people keep making mistakes, believing that they were acting in their best interests, where in fact, they were not, and they were just unable to learn from their mistakes? In this case, they would still not be acting immorally. This only works though, if you believe it is impossible for people to think self destructively, or in a way that is not in their own best interests. If you thought otherwise, would there be a way of arguing for the existence of immorality? Maybe, but I think it would be tricky.
And if there were a single instance where an injured person overstated his injuries and recovered as a result, then that too was monsterous. I guess.
The whole system is a contrivance. The idea that my efforts reduced someone's pain and suffering from $100,000 to $10,000 can hardly be said to be immoral because that would suggest that $100,000 were moral by some objective standard. If you're interested, and I doubt you are, you can research the history of pain and suffering damages from their colonial roots to how they were advanced by Plaintiff's lawyers when automobiles arrived on the scene along with auto insurance. That is, pain and suffering damages as we known them today are a historical event arising out of cars, claims, and this new idea of insurance for the common man. Before that, they were a rarity.
From there, these attorneys needed to get paid, and their clients lacked the funds and it would do no good just to secure the medical bills, future treatment costs, and lost wages because the injured person would still be out of pocket his attorneys fees that he could not afford to front. The pain and suffering damages added a pad to that in order to pay the attorneys and greatly increase the amount of the payout. And that welcomed in the contingency fee, so that the attorney could receive 33% to 40% of the recovery, making it very lucrative to overstate the injuries as that would benefit the lawyer as well. That is, the pain and suffering are the attorney fees as much as they represent any actual pain or suffering.
And from there it became known that juries were computing pain and suffering damages based upon the amount of actual damages, meaning that if there were $100,000 in medical bills, the jury would award more pain and suffering than if there were $10,000 in bills, so much so that a direct statistical correlation has been shown.
And this ushered in sending Plaintiff's to doctors that worked closely with the attorneys who would inflate the medical bills beyond recognition and would peform procedures that were not needed. It's amazing to me how only the at-fault party seems to avoid injury in these claims I have. That is to say, if you incentivize conduct financially, it will happen. That's what capitalism is all about. If you get more treatment, you get more money, ergo, more treatment.
All of this is to say you can't evaluate morality in such a system except maybe to question the system. It's like saying a football team was immoral because it threw a trick play and won the game. If it's all a game, it's all a game. You may want it to be something else, but there are billions of dollars driving this industry and if you think it about something other than the billions of dollars, it's just because you don't know.
That's not just a gripe. That's a conversation ender. If you have an ethical position that lacks a definition of "ethical," then why should it come as a surprise that the position makes morality irrelevant?
Can you give me any example of an ethical system that claims itself non-naturalistic? Divine command theory, utilitarianism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, relativism, emotivism, or anything? If you can't identify the theory that's being shown to be irrelevant, then I'm not following what we've accomplished.
My guess is that any theory identified is going to be shown to be naturalistic at some level, but I'm curious if there's one theory that stands out as particularly non-naturalistic.
Quoting Hanover
You're misunderstanding me. I realize that Granny should expect the insurance company to screw her. This is all normal. This is how it works. What I'm saying is that the people who sign up to do the screwing are doing something monstrous.
At this point, I think you're not capable of focusing on a specific individual that you've hurt. You just refuse to accept that you have done this. All the explanation of the "trick plays" tells me you have. You need an epiphany.
I'm not sure about a specific moral system, but there's Moore's open-question argument, as explained here:
Another issue with ethical naturalism is related to the problem of deriving an ought from an is. If "this is immoral" just means "this is harmful" then "one ought not be immoral" just means "one ought not be harmful", but how can we justify the assertion that one ought not be harmful? Can we do so with reference to some other natural fact, or must we depend on some non-natural fact?
So there are good reasons to believe that if there are moral facts then these moral facts (whatever they are) must be non-natural facts.
Although, as you say, without a substantive positive definition this is a rather vacuous claim, and if, as I say, non-natural moral facts would have no practical relevance, and if moral facts must have practical relevance, then if there are moral facts then these moral facts must be natural facts.
Which leads us to the crux of the issue: natural moral facts don't appear to work and non-natural moral facts don't appear to work, suggesting some kind of antirealism, whether that be subjectivism (whether individual or social), error theory, or non-cognitivism.
What you need to understand is that the system does not work if there are not equally passionate people on both sides of the case. That is how our justice system works, without which we would not have justice as we define it. The word "verdict" means to speak the truth and that is the role of the jury. Through advocating for both sides, that enables that verdict to occur.
What would be monstorous (and unethical, and likely disbarrable) would be for me to abandon my duty to zealously defend my client with the thought that I can transcend the system and do what I happen to think is fair. If someone is screwed, the screwing is by the judge or jury because they are the ones who entered a judgment or verdict, not me.
And the medical bills are inflated and fabricated often times, meaning that if the doctor charges $10,000, at settlement time, he'll accept $5,000, which then offers a windfall to everyone else. In fact, there's an entire industry of doctors who work on a lien, meaning they perform all services without requiring payment until after settlement is reached. The bills they create are intentionally inflated well beyond what they ever expect to recover. It's all a crazy shell game. There are also financing companies that lend money against the expected verdict, charging usurious rates. You'd be amazed how many hands are involved when a settlement is finally reached, owing largely to the fact that sums of money are so large and the profit margins so large that many people get paid.
You just see a single deserving woman being jerked around and you think it's unfair, but she is working within a system that is very sophisticated with a trained attorney working for her with all sorts of ins and outs you have no idea about. If you have this thought that people get in wrecks, go to their trusted family doctor, get a prescription, maybe get few rounds of physical therapy and then the insurance company tells them to fuck off, you are mistaken. Those don't decribe the claims that have driven this system.
I understand what you're saying, and you've opened my eyes to what you have to contend with. But are you telling me it's not true that insurance companies try to avoid the obligations they've entered into with people by allowing things to play out in a courtroom? Are you saying there's nobody at the insurance company who is trained to deny claims and then see what happens? My experience is that you have to call them back and threaten to get a lawyer. Sometimes you have to get a lawyer to make them pay what they've contracted to pay (this is with health insurance). Tell me that this doesn't happen, and that this isn't part of what you do. But if you tell me that, could you also explain how you've avoided being involved in that?
I'm not vouching for either claims adjusters, attorneys, judges, or juries. All do all sorts of wrong things.
Do they train the adjusters not to return calls and take risks with the hopes something will screw up the claimant, I doubt that. There is no loyalty among adjusters, management, legal departments, or really employees generally, so no corporation is going to formalize a training process that instructs how to engage in bad faith dealings. That is, even if management decided it would be best to be underhanded, if they teach you that, when you quit a week later, you get to expose the company to all they've been doing.
This has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with self-interest. You're suggesting that a multi-billion dollar insurance company with tens of thousands of employees might actually teach Billy Bob from Dothan, Alabama how to cheat from his cubicle. That's investing a whole lot of trust in Billy Bob. Billy Bob becomes, as they say in the insurance industry, a significant business hazard.
Are you asking if Billy Bob might not be an even tempered decision maker who might get into a petty arguments and make people's lives difficult? I'm sure that happens and my guess is that management would not want to see that happen and then Billy Bob becomes his manager's problem.
Insurance companies make their money by investing the premium dollars into the market. They act as a bank. As long as their return exceeds their cost to obtain their money, they profit. If for every $1 collected, they, for example, pay out $1.03 in expenses, but they get a 6% return in the market, they profit, even when operating at a loss. That is, they paid 3% for their money and they invested it at 6%.
Some of these carriers have 10 of millions of policies in force with billions in premiums, so their actual dollar profits are astronomical. As claims payouts increase, premiums rise to offset that, and as long as all competitors within the market are subject to the same forces, they're all dealing with the same profit margins. I'm telling you this so that you can understand that quibbles here and there over claims payments are not going to significantly affect profits. If the S&P drops, then that will really matter.
But, yes, if Company A has claims payments of a significantly higher percentage than Company B, Company B will see higher profits, but that's doubtfully the result of bad faith dealings by Company B in keeping claims payouts low, but it probably to do with a systemic problem in Company B's claims process where they either are inefficient, have bloated expenses, or they have a culture of over-paying claims due to risk aversion.
In other words if a company is losing profits, they probably first look to their investments and their expenses, as opposed to issuing a decree to reduce claims payouts.
Anyway, this idea that the way insurance companies profit is by hiring a bunch of cheap motherfuckers who screw people up envisions a very unsophisticated business world.
Quoting PBS
Is the above giving incorrect information?
That deals more specifically with health insurance companies, and I can't speak as much to it. It's a very different industry, where quibbles over codings, limits over amounts paid for certain benefits, and the fine print in the policy come to play.
There is a different analysis when you're referencing 3rd party claims (i.e. when I sue you and try to seek recovery from your insurer (i.e. I am a third party to the contract)) versus 1st party claims (where I am seeking recovery under my own contract). The latter becomes complicated by the fact that arguments ensue over what you contracted for. It's not that common that the argument in the 3rd party dispute is over what the contract says. It is common in 1st party claims where someone is sitting there reading you your policy and telling you what you get.
Health insurers tend to be highly regulated in terms of the premium increases they can charge, so they have to reduce benefit payouts as much as possible to survive, but, as you know, those premiums rise annually. Health insurers are not subject to significant litigation like auto and premises carriers are, but they are in a constant battle to reduce benefits and to fight doctors over what they will pay for the services they render.
That's a whole nother ball of wax. It's the reason Obama made his effort, but that whole industry has its struggles, which I'm sure you're aware. There were counties in Georgia where no one would offer health insurance, although the state intervened and worked something out. But yeah, dealing with health insurers is a nightmare, but that whole industry is dysfunctional.
What I wanted you to understand is that though you describe it as an adversarial setting, that alone victimizes some people. Some black people won't even go to legal aid to get help understanding the system because they've been taught that it won't help and it could make them a target. If a car insurance company does engage in bad faith, the playing field really isn't level. I'm sorry I accused you of being involved in that. I was wrong.
Perhaps; or perhaps your argument is not as clear as you suppose.
It seems that the topic has been lost - unless @Frank is arguing that since @Hanover's actions are sometimes dubious, we should not pay attention to his opinions concerning ethics. The problem is obvious.
Can there be success without the possibility of failure?
Quoting Beverley
Error is a difficult concept in general. When someone finishes a math problem they think they have the right answer, but they may have the wrong answer. Believing that something is true does not make it true. While falsehood is easy to identify, pinpointing error and culpability is more difficult, whether in math or morality.
In any case, I think most everyone recognizes that it is possible to act and choose in ways that are not in their best interest. Anyone who has experienced regret should recognize this.
This was not addressed. I think all this thread helps to demonstrate is the absurdity of the notion that there could be moral facts in any sense analogous to the way that there are empirical facts.
Yes and yes. :up: This point keeps popping up like a weed.
If success means accomplishing your aim, and your aim is to do what you think is best for yourself, then I don’t see how this isn’t an example of success in this case. But maybe I am missing something.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, you can regret afterwards, when you realize that you made the wrong decision, but you don’t purposefully set yourself up for regret. At the time, you think you are doing the best thing for you. Even taking this to the extreme, if someone commits suicide, at the time, they were doing what they thought was best for them, to stop their suffering. Maybe addiction doesn’t fit with the idea of doing what that person thinks is best for themselves, but I’m not sure even about that. At the time, the addictive action brings relief. Even if someone is very selfless and gives up their life to save others, they only do this because they care, and therefore, they are doing it because it makes them feel as if they are good and this is rewarding. If they didn’t give a fig, then they wouldn’t give up their life because it wouldn’t benefit them at all. I cannot think of a situation where someone would do something purposefully against their own best interests at the time as they see it.
"If CO2 emissions are causing a severe acceleration in global warming and I believe that CO2 emissions are causing a severe acceleration in global warming, then I will attempt to reduce CO2 emissions."
"If CO2 emissions are not causing a severe acceleration in global warming but I believe that CO2 emissions are causing a severe acceleration in global warming, then I will attempt to reduce CO2 emissions."
It's almost as if we act on what we believe to be true, rather than on what is true independent of our beliefs. Remarkable. :meh:
Quoting Michael
I think you misunderstand (3) because you think it means that humans act independent of their beliefs.
Quoting Michael
You beg the question by assuming that these are non-moral features. And you won't tell us what you mean by "moral," so the whole thing's a bust. It's pretty obvious that you think all features are non-moral, and that there is no such thing as a moral feature.
Quoting Michael
I'm with . I don't think you understand ethical non-naturalism. You need to find an actual moral theory and critique it, such as Kantianism. You seem to be constructing an incoherent moral theory in your head, which no one holds.
Can you aim at something that you can't miss? If I can't miss then I sure don't need to aim. To aim at a target implies that one could miss.
Quoting Beverley
Yes, but morality is not purely about intent. We aim at what seems best, and sometimes we miss. When a hunter is pulling the trigger he believes the bullet will hit its mark. If the bullet misses its mark then he knows he was wrong. He will say, "I thought I was right, but I was wrong."
It's very odd to talk about the "practical implication" of truth.
When a human being makes a decision of any kind—moral or otherwise—they always do so for a reason. For example, "The Earth is X distance from the moon because of the parallax measurements I collected."
Now when one says they ought to do something, they have made a decision, and there is a reason for their decision. The reasoning process involves apprehended truth (i.e. that which is apprehended to be true). For example, if the apprehended truths of the parallax measurements are true, and the apprehended truths of the logical inferences are true, then the Earth will be X distance from the moon, and this will inform the amount of fuel needed for a trip to the moon. Or in other words: if the calculations are correct then the conclusion will be correct.
Perhaps this whole thread could be boiled down to a single question, "If you are an ethical non-naturalist, then what is the reason for your 'ought'?" "You say we ought to do such and such, but why ought we?"
That's not an inherently bad question, but I don't think anyone has managed to figure out to whom the question is addressed. Is the "ethical non-naturalist" you have in mind a character in a fiction or a non-fiction book?
Quoting Leontiskos
Unless, of course, one is a pragmatist.
Quoting Leontiskos
Your notion of truth is just one theory of what truth means. Not everyone who does things for a reason would explain their reasoning on the basis of your theory of truth. For instance, some would say a decision is placing a bet that the consequences of one’s decision will be more or less compatible with one’s anticipations.
That's precisely my point. Moral beliefs matter. Moral facts don't. A moral belief being false has the same practical implications as that same moral belief being true (if ethical non-naturalism is correct).
Quoting Leontiskos
See here:
Harm, suffering, and pain are natural properties. If moral properties are not natural properties then harm, suffering, and pain are not moral properties.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm asking about the ethical non-naturalist's moral motivation.
Indeed, you've got it.
The difference with co2 is that reality will assert itself on the non believer anyway. But what about moral truths that no one believes? What difference do they make?
No, that came out of my attempt to explain my view that ethics is mostly about looking backward and judging actions that have already happened.
There are all sorts of problems associated with trying to face the future correctly that I think are mostly covered by acting out of love for life, love for the human world, and seeing yourself in other people in a Sartre like way.
This thread touches on one of the problems with the forward facing approach.
As far as I can tell this is just a streak of non-cognitivism, but let's look at your reasoning.
Quoting Michael
But they aren't. The natural sciences do not study pain and pleasure in themselves, and they certainly do not study pain and pleasure as normative realities. For example, the claim that suffering should be avoided is not within the domain of the natural sciences. Your article hedges precisely where you are begging the question, "Assuming that being pleasant is a natural property..."
In all probability you will be as unwilling to define "natural" as you are unwilling to define "moral," but the notion that the natural sciences study the normative value of pain and pleasure seems highly unlikely. If this is right then the many counterarguments in this thread which you unaccountably label "naturalistic," are in fact not naturalistic.
See here.
Quoting Michael
You seem to have skimmed some Wikipedia and SEP articles, constructed a position in your mind, and then constructed arguments against that position. But given that no one holds this constructed position, it seems that all you've done is erected a strawman. Do you know of any philosophers who hold this position you've constructed? It's easy to misread encyclopedia entries on the basis of your own idiosyncratic presuppositions. It's harder to misread actual philosophical positions that have been put forth by actual philosophers.
I'm not saying that the natural sciences study the normative value of pain and pleasure. I'm saying that pain and pleasure are natural properties.
Quoting Leontiskos
Moore, as explained in that quote in my previous comment, and also from his open-question argument:
agrees.
seems to think there is something more here.
That facts about how the world ought to be have no practical relevance. The world is what it is and will be what it will be and that's that.
It just doesn't matter if we ought or ought not avoid suffering. All that matters is that we want to avoid it, and not because we believe we ought to, but because it's a viscerally horrible thing to experience. We're motivated by pragmatism and empathy.
I don't understand any supposed motivation to obey a moral obligation for its own sake.
Do I? I thought I was agreeing with Michael
What process (if not obeservation) do we come to apprehend moral truths? You may have already said, sorry. I do take it that Michael is arguing against a position you more or less hold. You're a moral cognitivist, perhaps also realist, also a non-naturalist it seems.
Schopenhauer said the world is never going to be the way it ought to be because that's boring. Thus we have threads on every disaster of the day but none on that thing that turned out really well because everyone was moral as hell.
That you ought not eat meat does have practical relevance. You are simply playing on the word "practical" by limiting it to what "is" the case, and excluding what "ought" be the case.
Quoting bert1
It seems you can agree with Michael while not disagreeing with me.
Quoting bert1
Notice that this is a quite different question to whether there are moral truths. Indeed, "apprehend" still carries the sense of perception over from the way the world is. I hope Michael is carrying over our previous discussion and still maintains that moral statements are truth apt; here he seems to be saying that they are all false. Yet in the main there is agreement that "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true.
But he seems now to be mixing in some sort of determinism:
Quoting Michael
Indeed, that appears to be a consequence of the path he is adopting in this thread: that we never make choices.
That alone might be taken to show the account to be in error.
How?
I haven't said that.
We do make choices. But there are no practical implications of making a moral choice and no practical implications of making an immoral choice. If I choose to eat meat then I eat meat, and whether I ought or ought not eat meat makes no difference to either my choice or the outcome of that choice.
This is unlike, say, whether or not the meat is poisoned. That has practical relevance. If it's poisoned and I eat it then I'm likely to get sick and possibly die.
Quoting Michael
Hmm. Then this might need clearing up.
Can a choice make the world other than it will be?
You see, that we must make choices is what ethics is about. On your account, either we do not make choices, doing only what we would always have done, or the choice makes no difference to the world - has no practical significance.
What I think is going on here - a point I have made repeatedly - is that you are treating our choices as if they were observations about the world - treating our "ought" as "is".
In order to understand ethics, one has to admit to a different approach to the world, one not of passive observation but of active engagement.
At its heart, this is what I think your account misses.
1. If a) eating meat is immoral and b) I believe that eating meat is immoral then c) I won't eat meat.
2. If a) eating meat is not immoral but b) I believe that eating meat is immoral then c) I won't eat meat.
In both cases I make a choice and in both cases my choice makes a difference to the world. And in both cases the (a)s have no practical relevance. The choice is the same either way and the outcome of that choice is the same either way.
Yes, they do. In the first one, eating meat is immoral. In the second, it isn't. What more practical difference could there be?
But this has been pointed out previously, by several folk including myself.
As I said above, Quoting Banno
practical
adjective
1. of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas
Sorry about that. If you answer the question I'll be able to see if it's a counter example, and that will be interesting.
My bolding. One ought not do what one ought not do.
OK, so now could you explicate how that can have an influence on a person's decisions?
The action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: I eat meat. The outcome of the action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: my hunger is sated.
Whether I ought or ought not eat meat does not affect the choice and it does not affect the outcome of that choice.
So, in my view, it just doesn't matter. I want to know why ethical non-naturalists believe that it does. As I asked on the second page 7 years ago, "is it just a matter of principle; that we can (unbeknownst to us) be right in our moral convictions?"
But there is a difference. In one you have performed an immoral act.
Quoting Michael
Well, yes, it does. That's the point.
Quoting Michael
...because you refuse to recognise the ethical import of "ought".
That you ought not eat meat does have a direct consequence on the outcome of your eating meat. You have done something you ought not have.
I think I can rest my case here. There's no need for you to repeat yourself yet again.
I'm asking why that matters. What is the motivation to be moral?
It matters that you have performed an immoral act because the act was immoral.
That's what "immoral" does.
Does it make a difference to the choice as to whether or not to eat meat? For example, does the fact that Michael ought not to eat meat make it more likely that he won't?
What do you think? I'm actually interested in your view.
EDIT: there is mutual incomprehension here. I understand what Michael is getting at, but that's because I already agree with him and have thought along these lines myself. And no doubt your own view seems the height of common sense to you, but I don't get it.
OK, it's the same as Michael's point. It's belief in what is right that affects what we do. What is actually right doesn't. I don't see how it possibly could. However, I think you have already rejected this. So I'm interested, how does what is actually right, sans belief, actually affect our choices?
It is not true that John can walk through walls.
Even if John believes that he can walk through walls, he will not be able to. Regardless of John's belief, he will not be able to walk through walls.
The broken symmetry in your intuition is something like this:
Grant me for the sake of the discussion that it is true that we ought not eat meat. Put this in the place of "John can walk through walls" above.
It is not true that John ought eat meat.
The intuition is something like that if John believes he ought eat meat, he will still be able to - unlike walking through the wall. The symmetry is supposedly broken, and hence your claim that it's the belief, not the truth, that makes the difference.
I hope you can see that the substitution here is incomplete. It's not "if John believes he ought eat meat, he will be able to" that results, but "If John believes he ought eat meat, he still ought not"
Anyway, that's were charity leads me in attempting to understand you.
what if, intentions are a/the gateway to potentially lead to one participating in questionable behavior and ,by justifying ONLY planned actions as they play the role as "the excuse to act". despite the outcome that was bound to occur...no matter what, for better or worse.
***an excuse to act = tricking the brain into planning a justified NOT BELIEF, but idea with reason TO MAKE BELIEF through others perceptions without the true action explained aloud, despite the facts of matter being known or knowable, only interally between self and mind, know the true reason/s for hiding a "truth" thanks to privacy within us and our wants needs goals desires that we allow permit tolerate accept and all its opposites and vice versas equally considered and accounted for....the space for thought is and is found when and in using the brain silently within the minds limits, which the self can control as boundaries contrstraints etc for what it really is thats happening..e.g. daydreaming, multitasking, texting and in a meeting on zoom, other examples exist
*reason=goal or desire? i think they exists with and without a belief system but im looking at linking goals or desires to ones purpose in life, the one that exists despite knowing it. Though knowable. Morals are justification itself.
you can have intention without a goal, i say yes..but can you without a desire? i say no..for now at least. Your intent though doesnt need its own purpose, because it doesnt mean you act on it according to how you imagined you would act...Once the act occurs, your purpose could be repurposed successfully... but how much it was planned, thought of or out vs imagined or believed .[ex. my intention was/is to have fun tonight-8.20.23 522pm]] AND without parameters or constraints OR GOALS, intentions can change in decision making moments through that experience of choosing to act/acting on those intentions and how what you imagined vs what reality played out was very different
Intentions show that the individual has thought.
What happens when you bypass your intentions? COULD INTENSIONS COULD BE THE BRAIN TRICKING ITS SELF OR BODY? WHETHER WE ACT ON THEM OR NOT..PLANNED OR RANDOM, COMPLETE ATTEMPT AND FAIL, OR SUCCESS OF WHAT FROM ACTION IS JUSTIFIED? IS IT STILL WITHOUT ACTION?
According to basic ethical theories, such as hedonism, they have normative value. Given that the normative value of pain and pleasure are not the object of natural science, basic ethical theories are not naturalistic according to your definition of natural.
And it's not even clear what it means to call them "natural properties." As far as I'm concerned the natural sciences cannot even demonstrate that qualia like pain and pleasure exist. Moore was never able to define what he meant by "natural," so these problems are not surprising.
Quoting Michael
The aspect of Moore that you are honing in on was rejected, even in English-speaking moral philosophy. Hare showed this most clearly. Thus we can all agree that Moore was wrong about this:
Quoting Peter L. P. Simpson, On the Naturalistic Fallacy and St. Thomas, p. 4
Hedonism is an example of ethical naturalism. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.
Richard Hare is a non-cognitivist. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.
Peter Simpson is an ethical naturalist. I'm addressing ethical non-naturalism.
And as per the SEP article:
Can we now agree that I'm accurately presenting the ethical non-naturalist view?
This objection seems applicable to almost all actions. If my car won't start and I attach jumper cables to it, it's my belief that the battery is dead, not the battery's being dead, that is the proximate cause of my actions. The battery might actually not be dead at all, and I could just have a blown fuse or a bad starter, so it's clearly the belief doing the lifting here vis-á-vis my actions.
That said, my belief that the battery is dead doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the fact that my car won't start. Maybe the battery isn't really dead, in which case, jumping the car won't help. This will in turn force me to investigate deeper into what has gone wrong with my car, and my beliefs will be shaped by the actual condition of my car.
For moral realists, moral propositions are something we can ascertain they truth or falsity of, at least to some extent. Presumably, if "one ought not eat meat," is true, this moral fact is relevant to beliefs because someone's beliefs about whether or not they ought to eat meat are going to be shaped by this fact. That moral facts are more difficult to ascertain than the status of a car battery doesn't really matter here. It's still the case that, given moral realism and given we have the belief that we have some ability to develop beliefs that are more likely to be true than false, our beliefs should tend towards moral realities. This might only be true on historical time scales, which has tended to be true for objective facts in the sciences at any rate.
Granted, it may be quite impossible, given our evidence, to tell "what the right thing to do," was in any specific case. But this tends to be true of history as well, and yet this paucity of evidence is normally not grounds for dismissing the existence of historical facts. Incomplete moral knowledge might still allow us to rule out some things. Just like a doctor might not know how to cure a specific cancer, but knows lighting the patient on fire won't do it.
Moral facts are only unable to affect beliefs (and thus action) if they either don't exist or are impossible to discover. I don't see how moral facts could exist and be discoverable and not effect the world.
No it's not, and I just gave you an argument for why. Are you able to address arguments?
The more relevant question is:
Given that I already believe that this is immoral, what follows if my belief is true and what follows if my belief is false?
In the case of the dead battery, if I believe that the battery is dead then if my belief is true then the car won't run and if my belief is false then the car will run.
Is there anything like this for the case that I believe that eating meat is immoral? Are there consequences to eating meat that occur only if eating meat is immoral, or only if it's not?
Ethical naturalism
Hedonism
Moral naturalism
That would make my degree in Philosophy all the more impressive.
Good one.
Make me up a non-naturalst ethical theory.
Would an example be ethical itemizationism? That's the belief that something is bad if it appears on a random list of things we've itemized as bad.
This List of High Truths is accepted implicilitely.
There are no reasons why something is or isn't on the list and you can't determine any sort of consistency among the rules where you could figure out what additional rules may follow. It has no overriding theme either.
You can Google "ethical itemizationism" for more information on it, but you'll likely only pull up this post because this is its first appearance.
If this is a good example of ethical non-naturalism, and all other examples would follow similar trends, then I'd agree, ethical non-naturalism offers no reason to follow it.
There might not be any immediately discernible difference. This can be true in the case of the car battery as well. You might actually have a live battery with a broken terminal, and simply attaching the cables is what is allowing the car to start, no actual "jumping," with another vehicle required. Or you can completely erroneous beliefs about how a car battery actually functions and still successfully jump start it.
The consequences of acting immorally would tend to be to make the world shittier, to put it in the simplist terms possible. Because your ordered a veal parm the restaurant is going to order more veal. In the aggregate, the sort of behavior you engage in will lead to many more veal calves leading lives of atrocious suffering, while also contributing to ocean acidification and global warming.
Consider that most people have some public policies they would like to see implemented and some reformed or repealed. If we believe policy reform does any good at all, then we believe that human action, especially collective human action, can radically alter the degree to which humans (and other creatures) flourish during their lifetimes. We could consider dramatic success stories like the Republic of Korea, Iceland, or Finland, where a great deal of the population was lifted out of oppressive poverty in a relatively short period of time as evidence for the effectiveness of reforms in some cases.
The result of collective immoral action is more shitty lives with more suffering and less flourishing. I think we can think of plenty of cases where the aggregate effect of petty cruelty or callous indifference adds up to considerable consequences for a wide swath of people. Plus, plenty of utopian visions seem fairly feasible IF people would act according to certain standards (this of course doesn't preclude their being completely unrealistic, given how we are).
But I don't think you can generally tie minor moral infractions to specific consequences, just as smoking a single cigarette isn't going to be tied to developing lung disease.
(Note: I do not intend to imply that all theories will say something like: "acts that make the world shittier are immoral." The criteria for what makes an act good or bad might vary. However, in general, an observable effect of immoral acts will tend to be a shittier life/country/world.)
You can't manage to answer a three-step syllogism and you expect me to believe you have a degree in philosophy? When it comes down to it all you are able to provide are arguments from authority, and this is a problem even ignoring the fact that you are misreading the authorities.
There's Moore's impersonal consequentialism.
I'll quote Moore's Principia Ethica:
---
Quoting Leontiskos
Hedonism is the theory that we ought pursue pleasure because pleasure is good. I'll quote Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:
It is in defining goodness in terms of some natural property – in this case, pleasure – that makes it an ethical naturalist theory. And then, according to Moore, deriving the normative claim that we ought pursue pleasure commits the naturalistic fallacy.
What is the connection between acting immorally and causing suffering? Remember that I'm arguing about the implications of ethical non-naturalism.
I'll ask the previous question a different way:
Given that I already believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if my belief is true and what follows if my belief is false?
Maybe, not sure if I understand you there.
With you so far.
Very good, still with you.
Yes, something like that.
Not sure about that bit, but thanks anyway. I'll give it some thought. The idea is that the fact that John can't walk through a wall will affect his choices eventually - it is reality asserting itself. This doesn't happen with oughts. It may be that John out not eat meat, and he does wrong by doing so, even if he believes he is doing right, but nothing happens as a result. If an angel came down with a clip-board and informed John of his moral ineptitude, that would be like him banging his head on the wall, but presumably it doesn't. Unless you want to say we apprehend moral truths by a faculty such as conscience, perhaps. It just seems there is no role here for moral truths to play - all they do is confer an invisible label that no one can read on actions labelling them 'good' or 'bad'. But for you they are still of practical import, and that's where I am baffled.They play no role in deliberation, they confer no consequences, I'm not sure what function they have.
Moore's view is this:
"In applying this view, Moore gave it the form of what today is called “indirect” or “two-level” (Hare 1981) consequentialism. In deciding how to act, we should not try to assess individual acts for their specific consequences; instead, we should follow certain general moral rules, such as “Do not kill” and “Keep promises,” which are such that adhering to them will most promote the good through time. This policy will sometimes lead us not to do the act with the best individual outcome, but given our general propensity to error the policy’s consequences will be better in the long run than trying to assess acts one by one; however well-meaning, the latter attempt will be counterproductive (1903: 149–70/1993: 198–219. This indirect consequentialism had again been defended earlier, by Sidgwick and John Stuart Mill, but Moore gave it a very conservative form, urging adherence to the rules even in the face of apparently compelling evidence that breaking them now would be optimific. Principia Ethica made the surprising claim that the relevant rules will be the same given any commonly accepted theory of the good, for example, given either hedonism or Moore’s own ideal theory (1903: 158/1993: 207). This claim of extensional equivalence for different consequentialist views was not new; T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley, and McTaggart had all suggested that hedonism and ideal consequentialism have similar practical implications. But Moore was surely expressing the more plausible view when in Ethics he doubted that pleasure and ideal values always go together (1912: 234–39/1947: 144–47/1965: 100–02), and even when he accepted the equivalence claim he remained intensely interested in what he called “the primary ethical question of what is good in itself” (1903: 158, 26, 77/1993: 207, 78, 128). Like Green, Bradley, and McTaggart, he thought the central philosophical question is what explains why good things are good, i.e., which of their properties make them good. That was the subject of his most brilliant piece of ethical writing, Chapter 6 of Principia Ethica on “The Ideal.”
So he is a consequentialist, just making clear though that he doesn't what to take a very simple reducible definition of "the good" to be immediate pleasure like Bentham. He then goes on to explain. "The Ideal" to mean that which should be promoted (i.e. "the good ") is a number of things, and since it's not monistic, he somehow avoids being naturalistic. It's explained as:
"One of this chapter’s larger aims was to defend value-pluralism, the view that there are many ultimate goods. Moore thought one bar to this view is the naturalistic fallacy. He assumed, plausibly, that philosophers who treat goodness as identical to some natural property will usually make this a simple property, such as just pleasure or just evolutionary fitness, rather than a disjunctive property such as pleasure-or-evolutionary-fitness-or-knowledge. But then any naturalist view pushes us toward value-monism, or toward the view that only one kind of state is good (1903: 20; 1993: 72). Once we reject naturalism, however, we can see what Moore thought is self-evident: that there are irreducibly many goods. Another bar to value-pluralism is excessive demands for unity or system in ethics. Sidgwick had used such demands to argue that only pleasure can be good, since no theory with a plurality of ultimate values can justify a determinate scheme for weighing them against each other (1907: 406). But Moore, agreeing here with Rashdall, Ross, and others, said that “to search for ‘unity’ and ‘system,’ at the expense of truth, is not, I take it, the proper business of philosophy” (1903: 222/1993: 270). If intuition reveals a plurality of ultimate goods, an adequate theory must recognize that plurality."
My responses are this:
1. I think this gives short shrift to Mill. Mill's reference to happiness as being the objective of "the good" didn't at all suggest it was a reducible concept, but he was clear that happiness arose from a variety of factors and it was a holistic state that could not be achieved from just finding physical pleasure. I don't follow why Mill is a naturalist but Moore not.
2. Go back and re-respond to this here and explain why my response doesn't now apply, particularly to (b). Just plug in Moore's definition of morality into (b), and that offers a reason why it matters what you think is moral for a non-naturalist.
That's a question that would seem to deal with causality, which would tend to require a naturalistic answer.
The difference for someone like Moore would seem to be precisely that you have acted immorally versus morally in any situation, independent of any causation downstream of your actions. As I understand him, which isn't very well, moral facts aren't reducible to natural facts, and so asking about what changes "in the world," outside of your having acted rightly or wrongly doesn't make sense given his premises.
I personally don't know if that premise makes any sense. The premise that right and wrong are simply irreducible (strongly emergent and thus fundemental) seems more defensible than a claim that includes their being "non-natural," especially in our modern context where "naturalism" has been bloated into a concept that seems to cover essentially everything that "is."
Don't people make decisions or prefer policies based on what they think is right or wrong all the time? For example, check out the Gaza thread. It seems like people can read the labels, and in turn the labels affect decision making.
You don't need an angle coming down. Treat your wife and kids terribly, only focusing on yourself and you'll end up divorced and no one will come visit you down at the retirement home, where you sit, quite likely tormented by the thoughts of how you could have done things differently. I mean, that scenerio isn't particularly out there, it plays out across the world everyday. You could also consider the drug addict who begins taking advantage of their friends and family, stealing from them, etc. and ends up completely estranged from them. Generally, doing things that people readily identify as evil is going to have very real consequences. People who "get away," with evil to some extent generally have to convince everyone around them that they aren't really being evil.
Of course, I agree with you. Remember, for the purposes of this thread we are assuming ethical non-naturalism. Simple summary here:
https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_ethical_nonnaturalism.html
All the bad consequences you list are natural ones. I, like you, think it makes sense to ask 'Why is such and such wrong?" ...and expect in the explanation some kind of reference to experience.
But you have been shown that this is not correct.
If you refuse to countenance their having a place in deliberation, or conferring a consequence, that's not reaching a conclusion so much as merely being peremptory.
Oh, sorry I missed that. Can you link to where?
Righto, I haven't closely read it. I'll check your posts again.
Moore doesn't have a definition. As he says in the Principia Ethica:
And as I mentioned before, the way you've worded your examples doesn't reflect the argument I'm making. You are comparing the case where I believe something is moral with a case where I believe that same thing to not be immoral. I'm considering two cases where I believe that something is immoral (or two cases where I believe that something is not immoral), but where in one case the belief is true and in the other case that same belief is false. This is perhaps clearest when phrased like this:
Given that I believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if suffering is immoral and what follows if suffering is not immoral?
Well, the non-natural moral facts would be involved in the consequences of your actions to the extent that your family won't come to see you [I]because they think you acted immorally. [/I] If they didn't think what you did was wrong, presumably they wouldn't be upset with you.
But I do agree that the natural/non-natural distinction seems pretty dicey here, because the two "types" seem to flow into one another quite a bit.
It seems like you could get along with just calling them irreducible and living "natural" out of it.
That's precisely my point. If ethical non-naturalism is correct then moral facts entail no consequential outcomes. Suffering is still suffering, so why does it matter if it's moral or not? Would you really seek suffering if it could be proved that suffering is moral? Or, like me, is your visceral aversion to pain and empathy of others all that matters?
That's a consequence of acting contrary to moral beliefs. They won't come to see me because they believe I acted immorally. They might be wrong.
He does have a definition of "the good" from what I quoted above, but he claims it is undefined because he says there is no essential component to it. He describes "the good" as having a variety of objectives, and so it is pluralistic, unlike saying the good = that which increases the most pleasure, which would posit a monistic, essentialist definition of "the good. " What Moore is saying is "the good" might include a variety of things, which may include pleasure and other objectives.
But to reject essentialism isn't to argue for meaninglessness or for intuitionism. It is to argue for contextualism. That is, the good is that which satisfies certain particular goals attendant to the circumstances and therefore based upon reason as to what you wish to accomplish under a given scenario.
And so when you ask this question:
Quoting Michael
The answer is that the suffering you find immoral will not be moral if contextually it is not defined as moral. That is, if killing babies is moral and you find it immoral, you will be immoral if you don't kill babies, but that will require a rational basis for such killing to be moral under the circumstances at hand.
The consequence of doing wrong under this scenario is the same for the naturalist as the non-naturalist. One just has a simple equation defining the good. The other a fluid one context dependent.
This is true only if you assume that people's beliefs about morality have nothing to do moral facts. But if people have the moral beliefs they do because of moral facts (at least in part), then there seems to be a clear connection here between evil acts and social consequences.
This is to say nothing of the effects of someone's own evil acts on their own experiences and well being. I can see an argument for moral degeneracy being cumulative. Cruelty becomes a habit. And even if one sees nothing wrong with their evil acts at the time, people later realizing they have acted in an evil manner in the past has caused people no shortage of grief throughout history.
I think the more valuable point Moore is trying to make is that morality isn't completely [I]reducible[/I] to pleasure/suffering. There is a broader dimension. I agree that no one is going to seek out suffering for the sake of suffering, but they might gladly suffer to do good.
But who is going to argue that suffering is good of itself?
The underlying assumption here seems to be that what is "really good" could be [I]anything[/I], even pointless suffering. But the idea that people have absolutely no equipment for determining moral facts seems at odds with the theory itself. It would indeed be odd to claim that there are non-natural moral facts and that they are unknowable.
Okay, thanks. But see my post <here>. Moore's reductionist critique was met with supervenience theories of good (e.g. Hare). Your OP ignores the fact that this critique is no longer relevant. No one is saying that good is reducible to just one thing.
Quoting Michael
As long as a hedonist does not purport to derive his 'ought' from natural science, he is not a naturalist. He could do this in two ways: he could argue that pleasure is good, but that its goodness is not an object of natural science, or else he could independently claim that the oughtness that attaches to pleasure is not an object of natural science. In either case he is not a naturalist, and all hedonists I have encountered deny that their valuative/obligatory premises are the product of natural science.
I think you are misreading Moore's argument as overdetermined. The so-called "naturalistic fallacy" depends on his Open Question about the ambiguity of goodness. If that ambiguity fails then the fallacy charge also fails.
---
Quoting Hanover
But what does monistic/pluralistic have to do with naturalistic/non-naturalistic? The idea is perhaps that good motivates, and if an easily identifiable and unified reality is good, then a straightforward (and exclusive) 'ought' will flow from that good (and this is called "naturalism" for whatever reason). Contrariwise, if goodness is pluriform and the various manifestations are irreducible, then the competition between goods can never be satisfactorily resolved and there will be no straightforward 'ought.' Instead there will be a set of 'oughts' that cannot be adjudicated.
Still, I don't know what in the world this is supposed to have to do with naturalism. In this case it would seem to have more to do with whether 'ought' disputes are ultimately adjudicable. Supposing that pleasure were all there is to good, this would not mean that ethics all of the sudden becomes part of natural science. Why is it that if I say pleasure is the only good, I am a naturalist, but if I say honor is also good, I am not? Presumably a monistic scheme would only be naturalistic if natural science could measure and quantify its monistic conception of good. It appears to be a question of commensurability, not naturalism.
A hat is thing you put on top of your head, but suppose it's a 5000 lb iron hat? I guess the putting on your head part is non-essential. And the same holds true for anything you say of the hat or of anything,. But that doesn't mean we don't know what hats are or that we don't know what anything is just because we reject essentialism as it pertains to definitions.
So, we can adjudicate what is the good, just as we can adjudicate what is a hat, and that holds true even though we have no essential element of either. I contend Moore still can provide specific reasons for why something is good, and those reasons are subject to debate and conclusions. If not, then he is saying "moral" is an empty concept, which is clearly not what he's saying.
If you want to say dictionaries have limited use because every word's meaning is contextualized, that is true, which can be taken to mean that terms generally are not fully defined, but that hardly means words have no meaning.
I am an essentialist, but my concern here is that even if we found the magical formula for goodness, @Michael would immediately, given his approach in these threads, say, "I admit that X is good, but why should I do/seek what is good?" I do not object to Moore agonizing over what 'good' means, but the moral skeptic would in no way be satisfied even if Moore were successful. They would say, "Well now we have obtained the commensurability of goodness, but we still don't have 'oughts' or morality." "Non-naturalism," as Michael conceives it, is inherently groundless and irrational.
And no one is an essentialist anymore. It's like so yesterday.
In this thread @Michael is playing moral skeptic.
The point is that Moore is interested in goodness and indirectly interested in naturalism. Even if Moore's question were resolved, my contention is that this would in no way resolve Michael's inquiry in the OP. For Michael the definition of good will not suffice to provide rationale for moral 'oughts'.
Quoting Hanover
I also wear bell-bottoms and a cape while smoking a pipe.
Anyway, this is a good line for the thread:
Quoting Hanover
Michael was asked who holds the theory he is critiquing ("non-naturalism"). He said Moore. But it is hard to see why Moore is supposed to be a non-naturalist, or what that term even means.
It's exactly that question that is the subject of the thread. What is the connection between these moral facts and people's beliefs? You could be a moral intuitionist, perhaps.
There's an ambiguity in your proposition that "he could argue that pleasure is good". Are you saying that "this is good" means "this is pleasurable" or are you saying that pleasure happens to have the property of goodness? The former is naturalism, the latter is non-naturalism. I think it important not to get too caught up in the particular labels used. If you prefer, rather than use the labels "naturalism" and "non-naturalism" we can use the labels "Type X" and "Type Y".
The reason this distinction is important can be shown with the question I asked earlier:
Given that I believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if suffering is immoral and what follows if suffering is not immoral?
If "this is immoral" means "this causes suffering" then part of my question would contain a logical contradiction: my belief that it is immoral to cause suffering would be true by definition, and so we cannot even ask what would follow if that belief was false.
But if "this is immoral" doesn't mean "this causes suffering" then there is no such contradiction and so the question is coherent.
So for the sake of this discussion I am assuming non-naturalism (or if you prefer, "Type Y" moral theories): the propositions "this is immoral" and "this causes suffering" do not mean the same thing and the propositions "this is moral" and "this causes pleasure" do not mean the same thing.
Now given the assumption that "this is immoral" doesn't mean "this causes suffering", what does it mean to say that it is immoral to cause suffering? On some accounts we cannot define the proposition "it is immoral" in any simpler terms. However, given that such claims are intended to be normative, I am assuming that "this is immoral" just means "one ought not do this". At the very least this definition allows us to avoid having to explain why we ought not be immoral.
This then entails that the proposition "it is immoral to cause suffering" means "one ought not cause suffering" (and the proposition "it is moral to seek pleasure" means "one ought seek pleasure").
My question, then, is:
Given that I believe that one ought not cause suffering, what follows if it is a fact that one ought not cause suffering and what follows if it is not a fact that one ought not cause suffering?
The problem I see is that nothing follows in either case. The existence or non-existence of such obligations is inconsequential. It is true that if one ought not cause suffering and I cause suffering then I have done something I ought not, but so what? What is my motivation to obey obligations?
This isn't relevant to the argument I am making. Let's take this example:
Half of everyone believes that it is moral to eat meat and half of everyone believes that it is immoral to eat meat.
If it is a fact that it is moral to eat meat then those who believe that it is moral to eat meat do so because it is moral to eat meat, and those who believe that it is immoral to eat meat are, in some sense, delusional.
If it is a fact that it is immoral to eat meat then those who believe that it is immoral to eat meat do so because it is immoral to eat meat, and those who believe that it is moral to eat meat are, in some sense, delusional.
So this grants that moral facts can influence moral beliefs.
Now let's assume that everyone who believes that eating meat is moral eats meat and that everyone who believes that eating meat is immoral doesn't eat meat.
Half of everyone eats meat and half of everyone doesn't eat meat. Why does it matter if eating meat is immoral or not?
It's not the case that if it's immoral to eat meat then those who eat meat are going to suffer from some unwanted consequence as a result of their meat eating (or at least not any consequence that wouldn't also be a consequence even if it is moral to eat meat).
So why the motivation to be moral? There are no practical benefits, either for ourselves or for others. Is it entirely a matter of principle?
Isn't it begging to question to assume the correct moral beliefs are distributed such that being correct about them is a 50/50 proposition? The same seems true with assuming that those who commit immoral acts face no heightened risk of suffering due to later realizing they have acted immorally. It's assuming a scenario where false belief is as likely as true belief, which, if this was the case for all facts, should also make us question essentially everything. But this makes no sense for people who claim that at least some moral principles are more or less "self evident."
I suppose if you assume some sort of historical evolution of morality, e.g. some sort of fusion of this way of thinking with Hegelianism, it might make sense for most people to be wrong about some moral facts at some point, but there the difference made by morality in the world is going to inexorably play out for us in the long run.
Doesn't it make a difference to the person who knows they are doing something wrong? The consequences of this seem somewhat inescapable.
Also, consider that moral facts not being reducible to pleasure, suffering, etc. does not entail that they are not connected. There can be "natural" consequences of immoral acts without morality being constituted by these outcomes. It seems prima facie unreasonable to assume that everyone acting morally, as opposed to how they currently do, would have no positive benefits for people. But this is cleared up if "not reducible to," is not understood as "unrelated to."
But this is where the "non-natural," premise really starts to show its weakness IMO. If suffering is "natural" then it seems like the non-natural is ineluctably tied up in the natural, even if it is not reducible to it. It seems to me that this might make us question if they are truly two distinct types. But Moore is writing at a time where reductionism is a lot more popular, so maybe that explains his concern here, since it might be assumed that "natural = reducible."
I'm not saying that they are. 50% was just an example. If you prefer, we can reconsider my question using the actual apparent percentages (according to this):
22% of people believe that eating meat is immoral and 88% don't. Either some (or most or all) of the 22% believe what they do because eating meat is immoral or some (or most or all) of the 88% believe what they do because eating meat is moral.
Why does it matter who is right? The consequences of eating meat (or not eating meat) are the same whether eating meat is immoral or not.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The same is also true of someone who is falsely convinced that they have acted immorally. So it isn't the fact that they have acted immorally that has caused them to suffer but the belief that they have acted immorally that has caused them to suffer. It makes no difference to their suffering if their belief is true or false.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, but my point is that the immorality of that act is irrelevant. The natural consequences of that act would be the same even if that act wasn't immoral.
This would seem to apply to almost anything. E.g., it's not my wife cheating on me that makes me unhappy, but my belief that she has been unfaithful. It wasn't her being unfaithful that convinced me of this, but my mental perceptions of her being unfaithful when I came home early from work one day. Likewise, I don't take antibiotics because they will cure my infection, but because I believe they will cure my infection.
However, a full analysis would show that I believe antibiotics will cure my infection because they will actually cure my infection, that I think my wife cheated on my because she actually cheated on me, etc. The possibility of false beliefs here doesn't negate this connection if there are ways to come to true beliefs. If beliefs are properly related to facts, including moral facts, I don't see an issue here.
I address this in the first part of my post:
22% of people believe that eating meat is immoral and 88% don't. Either some (or most or all) of the 22% believe what they do because eating meat is immoral or some (or most or all) of the 88% believe what they do because eating meat is moral.
I am accepting, for the sake of argument, that whoever is right believes what they do because of the moral facts.
What I want to know is why it matters who is right?
It matters if antibiotics can cure my infection because if they can then if I take them then I won't die. But why does it matter if eating meat is immoral?
I know with irrefutable certainty that I ought not kill wild animals for food. I also know that I will not be punished or shunned for killing wild animals for food.
Why does it matter that I ought not kill wild animals for food? What is my motivation to be moral? Perhaps I simply don't care that I ought not kill wild animals for food; I'm going to do it anyway because I like the taste of meat.
You might be concerned about whether your existence makes the world better or worse.
I'm concerned about promoting happiness and reducing suffering. I don't care whether happiness or suffering is moral or not.
If you were a Roman stoic, you would say the latter is tied up in the former. What is the cultural framework within which you're using the word "moral?" You have to have some sort of context, otherwise it's language on holiday.
I'm not working under any cultural framework. I am assuming, for the sake of argument, that Moore's ethical non-naturalism is correct: that "this is immoral" doesn't mean "this causes suffering". As such it isn't a truism that suffering is immoral.
You have to have some sort of framework or context for the usage, otherwise there isn't any meaning to your expression. You could just be a hard deflationist about it, so you think the word serves a social function, but otherwise has no meaning. Is that how you mean it? Or what?
Then "this is immoral" means "one ought not do this".
I don't care if I ought or ought not promote happiness or if I ought or ought not cause suffering. I'm going to promote happiness and not cause suffering either way.
So there are ideological contexts in which that doesn't make any sense. What you can do is invite others to accept your context. You aren't presenting an argument that requires that they do so.
For instance, a Calvinist will say the only reason for being moral is to glorify God. It doesn't guarantee you entrance into heaven, or anything else. You aren't presenting an argument that shows that it's wrong to look at things that way.
Quoting Michael
Yes, I realize there is an ambiguity, and I'm glad you brought this up. As I alluded to @Hanover, if the conception of goodness is monistic then we either assume that one ought do what is good and we simply end up arguing about what 'good' is, or else it is not assumed that one ought do what is good and the focus on goodness is a red herring. But neither of these necessarily involves making morality the product of natural science. Pluralistic notions of good similarly have nothing to do with non-naturalism.
Quoting Michael
Okay, good.
Quoting Michael
Agreed.
Quoting Michael
Coherent but still confused. This is the better question:
Quoting Michael
The difference between these two questions is a very important part of this thread. One question pertains to implications, another to reasons. That suffering is moral/immoral implies that causing suffering is permissible/impermissible. But the second question presumably asks why it is immoral to cause suffering. You want to know how to answer the second question on a Moorean ethics, namely an ethics that possesses no definition of what is moral or good. In my opinion the crux of this Moorean account is this lack of a definition, not opposition to reductionism (or opposition to naturalism, either).
Quoting Michael
So if someone says it is immoral to cause suffering they mean that one ought not cause suffering, but this does not tell us anything about whether they are a Moorean or a reductionist (a "Type X" or a "Type Y"). That question depends on the "why."
There are other conceptual problems at play, here. The good and the moral are not the same thing, and Moore is concerned with goodness. Second, "it is moral" does not mean "one ought seek pleasure." It usually means, "the seeking of pleasure is permissible." Morality has three categories: impermissible, permissible, and obligatory (and arguably a fourth: non-obligatory). In any case, you are problematically trying to shoehorn morality into a binary scheme where the impermissible is the contradictory of the obligatory, and this is mistaken.
Quoting Michael
Good: motivation. A motivation and "what follows" are not the same, unless we are consequentialists. These are two separate questions, and they cannot be conflated. Anglo philosophy has been trying to fight the hegemony of consequentialism for almost a century now.
Here is how I want to phrase your project:
And this is actually what I think is the more accurate version:
You are interested in (3). As far as I'm concerned, you are Socrates, inquiring into the form of the good, desiring an account instead of examples.
(Note well that I chose to use "moral" instead of "good," and that this could become a problem.)
I'm not trying to. I'm not arguing in favour of moral realism and ethical non-naturalism over moral subjectivism or error theory or divine command theory or cultural relativism or non-cognitivism. I am only arguing that if moral realism (specifically ethical non-naturalism) is correct then moral facts don't matter.
For what it's worth, I understand exactly the point you're making.
I would say that those who promote happiness believe that happiness ought be promoted, and given your definition here that would mean that happiness is moral. Is it possible to promote something while not believing that it ought be promoted? When I do something it is because I think it should be done, especially when it is something I've deliberated about.
And if you say that there are moral 'oughts' and non-moral 'oughts', then your definition must be faulty.
I'm trying to explain that it doesn't matter if it is immoral to cause suffering.
If it is impermissible to cause suffering and I cause suffering then the consequences are the same as if it is permissible to cause suffering and I cause suffering.
The permissibility of causing suffering does not affect the outcome of my decision to cause (or not cause) suffering.
Whereas the viability of antibiotics can very much affect the outcome of my decision to take antibiotics. If they're viable then my sickness is cured, if they're not then I will probably die.
The viability of antibiotics matters. The permissibility of causing suffering doesn't. Suffering is just suffering whether permissible or not.
I promote happiness because I enjoy it and because I have empathy for others. Moral considerations do not factor into my decision making at all.
I think you're saying, "It doesn't matter if it is immoral to cause suffering, and I am going to do my best to prevent suffering."
Morality in the fundamental sense is about how we should act (and, derivatively, why we do act). You think we should act in a certain way (seek happiness and avoid suffering) and yet you refuse to call this predilection "moral," even though any definitions of "moral" that you provide entail that your predilection is moral. Of course, you usually refuse to define it whatsoever, falling in with Moore's non-committal approach.
But I would say that if you think we should pursue happiness and avoid suffering, then you are likely some sort of hedonist. You just won't fully commit because you can't answer Moore's Open Question.
Why is empathy non-moral?
I don't say that we should. I only say that I do, and that I'd like it if you did too.
What's the difference between saying "I'd like it if you did X," and, "You should do X"?
Right. And I agree with that. But when you went down the trail of motivation, you overlooked the fact that motivation is rooted in ideology. If you want to argue that there is no motivation, then you're immediately pitting yourself against ideologies that define moral in such a way that the motivation is built in, such as Stoicism, where goodness and health are the same pursuit, or Calvinism where the reason you were born is to glorify God, so it's your life's mission.
Is this premise true?
1. "You should do X" is true iff I'd like it if you did X
According to moral realists it's not. According to (some) moral subjectivists it is. I'm assuming moral realism, not moral subjectivism, for the sake of this argument. And you've previously argued against moral subjectivism so I presume you believe that the premise is false.
I believe the biconditional is true. I am a moral realist. Why do you think it is false?
Or, let me be more clear. You used it in the sense, "I'd like it if you pursued happiness and tried to avoid causing suffering." It could also be used in the sense, "I'd like it if you wore my favorite color on my birthday." You can imagine a parent saying both of these things to their child. But the curious thing is that "should" captures the valence of both. Still, when we are talking about morality we are talking about something like the former sense.
(Again, I am swimming against the stream of your Kantian inheritance.)
I'm not arguing that there is no motivation. I'm explaining that I have no motivation to be moral and am asking others why they have it given that there are no practical benefits to being moral. Is it entirely a matter of principle?
That strikes me as a contradiction. You ought not eat meat if and only if I would like you to not eat meat? That seems like textbook moral subjectivism.
And if the "I" refers specifically to me then why am I the authority on what you should or shouldn't do?
Quoting Michael
You're swapping a biconditional for a definition while simultaneously reifying an opinion into a law. Moral reasoning is perhaps the most subtle form of reasoning accessible to natural reason. You continue to run roughshod over the subtleties.
Should-as-opinion differs from should-as-fact. In morality we have and share opinions about what is true, just as we do in other fields. Just as in other fields, opinions do not establish truths. Still, when you say to someone, "I'd like it if you stopped causing suffering for others," you are simultaneously saying, "You should stop causing suffering for others." You are sharing an opinion about what is (morally) true. You are advising, and the advice is moral because the precept is coextensive with all of human action. The precept bears on all of a person's actions, and not just some. It is something you believe they should take into consideration always, and not just sometimes.
A) The alcoholic (who thereby self-destroys themselves via alcohol consumption) should become sober, this despite B) the alcoholic and all which surround him wanting the alcoholic to continue drinking alcohol (for whatever reasons, with these possibly ranging from that of wanting the alcoholic to continue being their merry self in the company of others when drunk to that of wanting the alcoholic to die).
What’s missing here for a satisfactory account of moral realism is the reason for why (A) is valid despite (B). Notwithstanding, to me this scenario presents an intuitive truth that I presume is universally shared. If so, then the proposition you’ve offered is not true - this, as you claim, just as the moral realist affirms.
That may be true when you say it but it's not when I say it. When I say "I'd like it if you did this" I am only saying this.
To make this clearer, do you accept that non-cognitivists, error theorists, and moral subjectivists exist? Do you accept that they do not believe in objectively binding moral obligations? Do you also accept that they express their personal preferences? Then you must accept that when they express their personal preferences they are not simultaneously asserting the existence of objectively binding moral obligations.
That they should become sober is not an objectively binding moral obligation. It is a pragmatic suggestion, like telling someone that they should brush their teeth.
See here where it's explained that the meaning of the word "should" is not exclusively moral.
We seem to be going in a circle. We've already acknowledged that the world would be a different, better place if everyone acted morally, or that there can be plenty of consequences due to acting immorally.
You are asking for what "real difference," it makes if acts are moral. When we discuss the various negative consequences of immoral actions, you say "well that isn't non-natural," so it doesn't count. When we discuss the non-natural, irreducible difference of an act's either being moral or not moral, you say that isn't a "real" difference. I'm not sure what you want here, a difference that is not "natural" yet somehow is "meaningful," where meaningful seems to be defined as "makes a difference in the natural world?"
It seems to me that saying that an act's being moral or immoral is, of itself, not a "real difference" is simply to reject the core premise that there are, in fact, discoverable, irreducible, non-natural moral facts in the first place.
Personally, I might be able to get behind that, because the premises seem like the weak part. Perhaps morality is not reducible, but it seems to deeply bound up in other "natural" phenomena to keep separate.
"You should stop causing suffering," and, "In my opinion you should stop causing suffering," is the same statement, qualitatively speaking. Fundamentally, 'oughts' simply impinge on the behavior of others. Moral subjectivists can try to impinge on the behavior of others without impinging on the behavior of others, but they will contradict themselves every time.
I haven't acknowledged this. I can acknowledge that the world would be a different, better place if everyone acted with kindness and empathy and charity, but whether or not kindness and empathy and charity are moral makes no difference.
I haven't said "in my opinion you should stop causing suffering". I have only said "I would like it if you would stop causing suffering". These propositions mean different things.
Quoting Leontiskos
It not a statement of suggestion that one gives to another - for in the example all who know the alcoholic want him to continue drinking. The example I gave was given as a statement of fact. That aside:
1) Does your reply then make the statement untrue? If so, how?
2) Why presume that morality is independent of pragmatics?
You're skimming posts madly and trying to respond in 0.4 seconds. Again, this isn't philosophy. The only time you write a substantive post is when your interlocutor goes offline for a long period of time.
I think all of these questions are adequately resolved in Aquinas, and that the paradigm shift can be achieved through Peter L. P. Simpson.
But paradigm shifts aside, I think Hanover's starting point is as good as any:
Quoting Hanover
(This may be my last post in this thread. Either way I will be phasing out in the next 48 hours.)
Is it a moral fact? We're discussing moral obligations, not non-moral obligations.
Quoting javra
I'm not. I'm explaining that if ethical non-naturalism is true then being moral has no practical benefit. If ethical non-naturalism is true then the consequences of eating meat are the same whether eating meat is immoral or not. If ethical non-naturalism is true then the consequences of drinking alcohol are the same whether alcoholism is immoral or not.
I'm not arguing that ethical non-naturalism is true.
Yes, it's a matter of starting assumptions.
I'd like you to pass the salt. I'd like you to meet my parents. I'd like you to donate to cancer research. I'd like you to join the protest. None of this implies that I believe in some objectively binding moral obligation.
When I say that I'd like you to be kind to others and make them happy, that's all I'm saying. I am neither explicitly nor implicitly endorsing moral realism.
It directly concerns what the alcoholic ought to do despite what anyone might want, or like, the alcoholic to do. I fail to understand how this specific "ought" wouldn't be a moral - or, better yet, ethical - fact: one that thereby regards the notion of the good.
As to obligations, I'm not involving myself with them. The question can always be placed: why ought one honor one's former promise ... and with an innumerable quantity of possible scenarios, some can be found wherein it is morally good for one to not honor one's former promise.
Quoting Michael
I starkly disagree, here granting that this ethical non-naturalism concerns moral realism. But I'm not here to present a thesis on the subject. I'm here only addressing your quoted proposition and my reply to it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting Michael
Do you say it in order to influence my behavior?
Quoting Leontiskos
I think there's been some confusion. I said to Leontiskos that I would like it if he would make others happy. He then accused me of telling him that he ought make others happy. I was explaining to him that I wasn't because "I would like it if you did this" doesn't mean "you ought do this". I then presented that biconditional in an attempt to show him that they mean different things. As he is a moral realist I expected him to reject the biconditional and so accept that I wasn't telling him what he ought to do.
But then he confused the matter by accepting the biconditional whilst still claiming to be a moral realist.
Yes indeed.
Make of my reply what you will. To me it does evidence the occurrence of moral realism.
Quoting Leontiskos
:up:
Quoting Michael
Whether or not kindness and empathy and charity make the world a better place does matter though.
I'm curious if I have the general gist of what you've been arguing in this thread.
Seems to me like you're explaining in general terms what makes the world a better place in a manner that allows/permits us to dispose of the term/notion/conception of "moral". That is to say that this, this, and this makes the world a better place, but I do not care if those things are called moral or not, I'll do them because I believe that the world will be a better place if I do, but I'm unwilling to insist that others should do the same.
It seems you're not okay with insisting that others have some obligation to share your beliefs about what makes the world a better place.
If that's close... I agree. They have to get there own their own. One cannot be forced to care about others.
No I'm not. I am expressing how I would feel if you were to behave a certain way. I'm not advising you to do something. I'm not telling you to do something. I am not asserting that there exists some objectively binding moral obligation to do something.
I know it does.
But whether or not kindness and empathy and charity are moral doesn't matter. Kindness and empathy and charity would make the world a better place even if kindness and empathy and charity aren't moral.
Okay.
What about the rest of what I said?
It is an utterance intended to influence behavior, and therefore it is a normative utterance, pertaining to 'oughts'. You speak because you believe I ought to care how you feel, and 'ought' claims are moral claims according to your post here.
No I don't.
You need to stop telling me what I believe.
If by "moral" you mean according to some particular behavioural code, then I agree.
Codes can be mistaken.
Sure you do. Someone who says, "I would be very sad if you cause them suffering," is obviously attempting to influence behavior.
Quoting Michael
"Know thyself."
That I am trying to influence behaviour isn't that I believe that you have a moral obligation to behave a certain way.
When I try to convince you that I have a bridge to sell I am trying to influence you into giving me your money. That doesn't mean that I believe that you have a moral obligation to give me money. In fact I may be a moral realist who believes that what I am doing is wrong, but I care more about being rich than being good. Or I may be a moral nihilist who doesn't believe that anything is good or bad. But I still want your money.
You're presupposing that... somehow... in some way are... you are privy to Michael's beliefs moreso than Michael.
While - in certain situations it is possible to know what another believes moreso than the other, I do not think Michael is the sort of person that does not know what they believe in this context. Nothing they've written must lead to wherever you've arrived. Entailment fails to be a dependable tool here.
Then you'll need to revise your definition. We are discussing whether an 'ought' is involved.
And in this case an "ought" isn't involved as I keep saying. Here are a couple of sentences:
1. I would like it if you made others happy
2. I would like it if you were to give me your money
In both cases I am trying to influence your behaviour. In neither case is the word "ought" (or the word "immoral") involved, either explicitly or implicitly.
I am talking about realities, not words. 'Ought' is a reality that is very often present even when the word is not present. Do you agree or disagree?
Yes. So I refer you back to what I said here:
Quoting Michael
You accused me (here) of saying something that I haven't said (that "we should act in a certain way"). I am simply trying to correct you on this. I have not said this, either explicitly or implicitly. You're reading something into my words that just isn't there and accusing me of believing something that I just don't.
Okay, good. You agree that oughtness can be present even where the word is not present.
Now I say 'ought' involves a judgment about how someone should act. It involves a judgment about how someone should behave. Where such judgments are present, the reality of 'ought' is present. Do you disagree?
Well yes, because that's a truism: "ought" and "should" are synonyms.
But again I refer you back to what I said here:
Quoting Michael
You accused me (here) of saying something that I haven't said (that "we should act in a certain way"). I am simply trying to correct you on this. I have not said this, either explicitly or implicitly. You're reading something into my words that just isn't there and accusing me of believing something that I just don't.
Okay, good. So you agree that judgments about how one should act or behave bring with them oughtness.
Next, I think that if one is attempting to influence the behavior of another, they are manifesting an explicit or implicit judgment about how that other person should act or behave. Do you agree or disagree?
I disagree, as I keep saying. If I'm a conman trying to sell you a bridge I don't own then I am trying to influence your behaviour into giving me money but I don't believe that you have a moral obligation to give me money.
Again, "We are discussing whether an 'ought' is involved" ().
To use your example, if someone is trying to sell Bonita a bridge, and they are trying to influence her to act such that she buys the bridge, do they possess the judgment that Bonita should buy a bridge?
No they do not. They want her to buy a bridge. They don't think she should.
I didn't realize that wants were incompatible with oughts. When a lazy husband says to his tired wife, "You should grab me a beer from the fridge," is he expressing a judgment about what his wife ought to do? Apparently on your view if he wants a beer then he can't think that his wife should get him one.
I didn't say that they are incompatible. I am only saying that the one does not necessarily entail the other. In the case of the conman, what he wants her to do and what he thinks she should do are opposed. In the case of the husband, what he wants her to do and what he thinks she should do might be the same.
But the salesman was not merely wanting, he was acting to influence behavior. So too with the husband. In both cases we have cases of people who act to influence behavior on the basis of their desires. Are the salesman and the husband involved in a judgment about what another person should do?
The conman is trying to influence her behaviour into giving him what he wants. He isn't trying to influence her behaviour into doing what he thinks she should do (e.g what is "right" or "good" or "best for her"). Maybe for the husband he's trying to do both.
He doesn't think she should do what he wants her to do?
No. In fact he might think that she shouldn't do what he wants her to do because he knows that what he wants her to do is wrong.
He might think, "She should not give me the money if she doesn't want to get conned," but does this mean that he cannot simultaneously think that she should give him the money?
Your very question has introduced two different senses of "should", else it would be a contradiction to claim that she both should and shouldn't give him the money. I'll need you to explain what you mean by this second (and maybe the first?) "should" before I can answer.
No, there is no equivocation on 'should' (you are the one doing that).
What we have are two rationales:
When the robber acts to influence Bonita's behavior he is acting on judgment (1). It doesn't matter if he is aware of (2). Knowledge of (2) does not preclude (1).
So what does "should" mean in this context? It certainly doesn't seem to mean that there is an obligation to behave a certain way, as these sentences don't seem to make sense (or at least don't seem true):
1. She has an obligation to give me the money if I am to get rich.
2. She has an obligation to not give me the money if she is to avoid being conned.
Perhaps what you mean is this:
1. I will get rich (only?) if she gives me the money
2. She will avoid being conned (only?) if she doesn't give me the money
These seem sensible (and true), but of course are clearly not normative.
Here is what I said earlier:
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps the conman believes she has an obligation to make him rich, but to say that someone should act in a certain way does not necessarily involve obligations. "Should" is a primitive concept, expressing some sort of optimal future.
A key here is that a conman does not believe that (other) people should not be conned. He thinks other people should be conned, and that he should get rich. If he simply thought that people should not be conned, then he would not con. And even a conflicted conman judges that his victim should give him money. He holds this judgment even if he simultaneously believes that he should not con people. This is an example of either akrasia or else conflicted human reasoning; it is not an exception to the rule that when we attempt to influence behavior we involve ourselves in ought/should judgments.
Or: "You should give me money for this bridge." "Okay, here you go!" "You shouldn't have done that!"
Is this possible? Yes, of course. The conman either changed his mind and returned the money, or else the second 'should' was used with a different rationale (ratio). In this case there will be two judgments, one for each discrete 'should'. But 'should' simpliciter pertains to what ultimately should be done, and this is most clearly seen in what is actually wished or chosen. Conflicting options, desires, or interests are naturally adjudicated when we actually make a choice and act.
My argument in this discussion is specifically related to the supposed existence of obligations. I have often given examples of "should" claims that do not involve obligations, e.g. "you should brush your teeth", that are not the target of my enquiry.
The existence or non-existence of obligations does not affect the outcome of the decisions we make. The consequences of eating meat are the same whether or not I have an obligation to not eat meat.
There appear to be no practical benefits to "obeying" an obligation, and no practical detriments to "disobeying" an obligation. So I would like to understand the motivation of those who choose to "obey" obligations (for no other reason than that the obligation exists).
And when I say that I would like it if you were to make others happy I am not saying (either explicitly or implicitly) that you have an obligation to make people happy.
That's not to say that I am necessarily averse to any proposition that includes the word "should". As per an edit to my previous comment (that you may have missed):
Given these propositions:
1a. She should give me the money if I am to get rich.
2a. She should not give me the money if she is to avoid being conned.
Perhaps they are best interpreted as such:
1b. I will get rich (only?) if she gives me the money
2b. She will avoid being conned (only?) if she doesn't give me the money
These seem sensible (and true), but of course are clearly not normative. I can accept 1a) and 2a) if they are to be interpreted as 1b) and 2b).
You're asking a question Moore doesn't ask. Again quoting from the article you cited:
"In applying this view, Moore gave it the form of what today is called “indirect” or “two-level” (Hare 1981) consequentialism. In deciding how to act, we should not try to assess individual acts for their specific consequences; instead, we should follow certain general moral rules, such as “Do not kill” and “Keep promises,” which are such that adhering to them will most promote the good through time"[/quote]
That is, Moore was a non-naturalist and a consequentialist, which means he cared what the consequence of his behavior was. What made him a non-naturalist was his refusal to provide an essentialist definition of "the good. "
Per Moore, your motivation not to kill wild animals for food (as you have posited that it is immoral) is that by not killing animals, you will promote more good through time. That means you have a goal and purpose for your behavior, which is to maximize the good.
"The good" you wish to promote is real (as Moore is a moral realist), even if the definition is subject to a plurality of goals (i.e. not just one, like a hedonist, who isolates pleasure as the only objective).
I added an edit after I saw your edit.
I have to get going here, but it is worth considering that the thoroughgoing conman does not see his 'ought' judgment as immoral. If he did then certainly your definition would win out.
I know. This discussion is intended to show that if theories like Moore's are correct then moral facts don't matter, and so perhaps works as a reductio ad absurdum against such theories. I do not endorse Moore's ethical non-naturalism.
Quoting Hanover
And the argument I am making is that this simple, indefinable "good" is of no practical consequence. A world that contains lots of this "good" is empirically indistinguishable from a world without this "good". Whether or not pleasure is good makes no difference to our experience of pleasure. Whether or not suffering is bad makes no difference to our experience of suffering.
It may be factually the case that pleasure has this non-natural property of goodness and that suffering does not have this property (and perhaps has some non-natural property of badness), but these non-natural properties are inconsequential.
So why are we motivated to promote the good? Why not just be motivated to promote pleasure? If pleasure happens to be good then this is merely incidental and irrelevant to our considerations.
10% are confused.
Then you need to revise your definition, because you are deviating from it ('Then "this is immoral" means "one ought not do this"').
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
It's one thing to refuse to define these things, and quite another to claim that they have no bearing on motivation. Everyone who has an inkling of what 'good' or 'moral' means knows they bear on motivation. If your arguments have led you to a contrary conclusion then you have coined new words that no one is familiar with, and it's no wonder that you are causing a great deal of confusion.
Quoting Michael
But you are saying that I ought to make others happy, and that was the point I was at pains to demonstrate. When I succeeded you moved the goalposts and started talking about obligations. Ought/should and obligation are not identical, and if you had used obligation in your original definition to the definition would have been tautologous, and would not have answered his query.
Quoting Michael
My edit:
Quoting Leontiskos
'Should' in its most basic sense means what should be done all things considered. So when the conman decides to con he decides, all things considered, that the lady should give him money for a fake bridge. In that case he obviously thinks she should do what he wants her to do (). Your claim that he doesn't think she should do what he wants her to do is simply false ().
1. Assumption: Ethical non-naturalism
2. Assumption: Ethical truths affect choices
3. Assumption (but argued for in this thread): If ethical non-naturalism is true then ethical truths cannot affect choices
4. Therefore, both (ethical truths affect choices) and not (ethical truths affect choices)
5. Therefore, ethical non-naturalism is false.
3 is the subject of this thread.
So this is one of those cases where someone who doesn't know what a word means can't do things with that word. There is nothing strange about this.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
. . .17 hours later:
Quoting Michael
---
Do you see how reliable and trustworthy I am? Would you like to buy a bridge?
I've contributed plenty to this thread, so I'll call it "good." A-dios.
But Moore holds that moral facts do matter because when people do as they ought to, societal good increases. So why does it matter if killing babies is moral? Because if you do it, the good will be maximized. Quoting Michael
Your question is equivalent to this:
If we want to promote nutrition, and nutrition is promoted by increasing vitamin C intake, then why don't we just promote vitamin C and not nutrition? What is added by saying we want to promote nutrition if nutrition happens to equal vitamin C?
The reason is that we don't just happen to like vitamin C, but it's that we like nutrition and vitamin C is our vehicle for getting there.
We might deny immediate pleasure (e.g. drug use) not because we think denial of immediate pleasure is the good, but because it promotes greater pleasure, which is the good.
You will always act in your own self-interest, according to your understanding. Morality is a social construct, common to many kinds of creatures, and their various societies. It is an understanding of like kinds for the mutual survival and well-being of the individual. An individual alone with no one to relate to, has no use whatever for morality, he/she is alone.
Why does it matter if good increases? It's a non-natural property that has no practical affect on us or our lives. Unlike nutrition.
Despite what I said here, I tend to use "ought" and "should" slightly differently. I use "ought" when I intend to assert the existence of an obligation and "should" otherwise, which is why I say "you should brush your teeth" and not "you ought brush your teeth".
But if you want me to be more explicit then I'm assuming that "this is immoral" means "we have an obligation to not do this". This is somewhat similar to Moore's definition where he states:
Although whereas I am defining a descriptive claim as a normative claim, he is defining a normative claim as a descriptive claim. That itself, I believe, introduces a problem with the very notion of obligations under Moore, but for the sake of this discussion I'm letting it slide and assuming for the sake of argument that normative obligations are sensible and true.
Quoting Leontiskos
I know they bear on motivation. I'm asking why they bear on motivation if we're ethical non-naturalists. It's not a given that if (we believe that) we are obligated to behave a certain way then we will behave that way. See the article on moral motivation:
But whereas that article asks about the reasons for motivational "failure" I'm asking about the reasons for motivational "success".
Quoting Leontiskos
I am explicitly telling you right here and right now that I would like it if you were to make people happy but that you do not have an objectively binding moral obligation to make people happy. Nothing about this is a contradiction.
Quoting Leontiskos
From the OP:
It's always been about obligations. I just often you the phrase "you ought do this" rather than "you have an obligation to do this" because it's quicker to write.
And if you want, we can do away with all talk of "good" and "bad", "moral" and "immoral", "right" and "wrong", "ought" and "ought not", "should" and "should not", and just say this:
1. Whether or not we have an obligation to not eat meat does not affect the outcome of our decision to eat or not eat meat.
2. Given my recognition of (1), whether or not I have an obligation to not eat meat does not factor into my motivation to eat or not eat meat.
3. If you recognize (1), and if whether or not you have an obligation to not eat meat does factor into your motivation to eat or not eat meat, then why? Why are you motivated to obey an obligation when the outcome of your decisions is not affected by the "existence" of such an obligation? Is it simply a matter of principle?
That's not how Moore describes the non-natural. Show me where non-naturalism is defined as having no effect on our lives.
Non-naturalism is that which can't be provided an essentialist definition and whose properties are not sensible in terms of natural (physical) properties. That I can't touch the righteousness of an act doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it has no impact on the world.
If the good had a practical affect on our lives then the good could, in principle, be determined empirically, but as Moore says:
We just either accept or reject the proposition that this is bad (and we're just either right or we're wrong). It's not the case that if this is bad then it will affect us this way, otherwise it will affect us that way, and that because it has affected us this way then it must be that this is bad.
It's not that ethical truths don't affect choices but that ethical truths don't affect the outcome of choices. If I choose to eat meat then the outcome of eating meat is the same whether or not I ought not eat meat.
Whereas the viability of antibiotics can very much affect the outcome of my choice to take antibiotics when sick.
This doesn't follow from Moore’s quote in the post above it. If Moore is adopting a Kantian view where he claims moral principles are synthetic, then he is specifically stating a moral outcome does affect the world and the world will be different if the outcome is different. This isn't to say the basis for the principle (in Kant's case, the categorical imparative) is known by evaluating the world and gauging it's consequences (i.e. that it's known a posteriori), but instead that it is a synthetic a priori truth (which is what Kant considered the categorical imparative to be).
The fact that I know something purely from intuition (which is what Moore is noted to be:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism-ethics/#:~:text=Moore%20is%20the%20intuitionist%20who,on%20goodness%20rather%20than%20rightness.) or a priori (per Kant) doesn't mean the consequence isn't measurable.. It simply means epistemologically, I know it's rightness without having had to experience it and that its outcome is not what made it good or bad.
This wording is ambiguous.
If pleasure is moral and suffering is immoral then a pleasurable outcome will be a moral outcome and a sufferable outcome will be an immoral outcome, and a pleasurable outcome does indeed have a practical difference to a sufferable outcome, and so according to an extensional reading there is a practical difference between a moral outcome and an immoral outcome.
But that’s not what I’m arguing. I’m arguing that a pleasurable outcome where pleasure is moral has no practical difference to a pleasurable outcome where pleasure is immoral (or just not moral). According to an intensional reading there isn’t a practical difference between a moral outcome and an immoral outcome.
If there were a practical difference then we could empirically distinguish the presence or absence of moral goodness but given that moral goodness is said to be a non-natural property it then follows that we cannot empirically distinguish the presence or absence of moral goodness.
Although, in fact, I could accept that there is an empirical difference between moral pleasure and immoral pleasure but still argue that there is no practical difference, much like there is an empirical difference between a red umbrella and a yellow umbrella but no practical difference.
Why does it matter if my umbrella is red or yellow? Why does it matter if pleasure is moral or immoral?