Isaac

Fair enough, but can't you see, that's exactly what our side think your side aren't doing either? If we all agreed on what an inconsistency or inadequ...

So, can I ask what timescale you apply to this approach? I mean, there's a chance (a slim one I admit) that "antidisestablishmentarianism" is not curr...

Yes, I'd agree with you here. Given equal objectives, there are definitely some situations where the evidence is sufficiently overwhelming that I thin...

Because I want to know what your definition/explanation is for that feeling under your system. By your definition, if murder is being carried out with...

Absolutely, but I don't understand what this point has to do with the objectivity of morality. If I say "this apple tastes good", I have to be referri...

I'd love to reply, but I have almost literally no idea what any of what you've written means in the context of our discussion. " in its just-is-ness, ...

Goodness, in the moral sense, is a feeling, badness is a feeling. I can quite easily say that the pain is bad without any objective measure. I can say...

But if you don't see that there are probably a few {questions about the solar system} that 99% of the people in the world, if they honestly answered w...

But you don't mean some explanation do you? You've been given some explanation - evolution. You're waiting for a particular type of explanation. One i...

At one time 99% of the world judged that the sun went around the earth which was the centre of the universe. Did that make their judgment true?

Simple, I already outlined this. It's simply not a way I recognise of using the term in a consistent manner. If one lived on an island full (for some ...

My answer would be much as Terrapin's above. The incrediblely minute exceptions are what we're talking about from a meta-ethical position. And they're...

So a perfectly normal answer to the question "what is a screwdriver used for?" would be "getting to the moon"? Because the ultimate purpose of using i...

I disagree strongly here. I don't see how you can justify that kind of accusation. What does "good faith" even mean in this context, and what types of...

Well then please ignore my last comment. Same problem still applies. If the intent is what makes it moral, then what of the situation where you may ha...

Still not understanding this "first reason" thing. How can you reason first. You must have some objective first to reason toward. Can you give me an e...

Yes, unfortunately I can because people do torture children. They do so to greater or lesser degree all the time. The insane and the psychopathic may ...

I don't see how we can do this in the face of such uncertainty, without assigning an ordinal value to each option, we cannot order them, and if are ad...

Yes. The irony of accusing us of sophistry.

But now we're back where we started. If a feeling that one should torture a child turned out (by some convoluted chain of events) to bring about an ha...

OK. So what is it about the world which makes this impossible? Is there some fact about the way the world is which prevents torturing a child, say in ...

Right, well that's moral relativism for a start. If you assign a value, not a value is pre-assigned. If you're doing the assignment of value, then wha...

But 'horrified' is not a state of reason, it is an emotion. So why can a relativist not be horrified? Right. This is why I asked the question in the f...

This debate is about what 'morality' is, so it makes no sense to use the term as having an assumed meaning within your argument. And what does 'pure o...

What?

But none of that captures morality. If I wish to join two pieces of wood, I might make an argument that nailing them together would be a good move. Th...

Yes, the difference being that we generally speak of 'thinking' as a means to and end, and of 'feeling' as something which merely occurs to one unbidd...

That's exactly what I asked. Reason is not a thing on its own. It does not, on its own provide answers. It is a means, not an end. To what end do you ...

Did you even read my post?

@"Janus" @"tim wood" Just a question. If, in a future world, some evil genius had arranged things such that torturing an innocent child brought about ...

I appreciate that you've put a lot of work into a lengthy response and somehow the few paragraphs I'm going to offer back does not seem to do it justi...

If someone asked you what a screwdriver is used for would you answer "to manage financial transactions"? No. So just because in one instance it might ...

It's because it tries to show that a statement does not have some sublime meaning simply by virtue of being sayable. That the surity we have that some...

We've all read the bloody book. No one needs to 'move on' to get to more interesting bits because everyone has copy of the more interesting bits which...

It's used to get people to think they're under attack. That's the use of the word if they genuinely are, and that's its use if they aren't but the spe...

Move on with what? Because what MU has had to say here is the only thing of philosophical interest. I disagree with virtually everything he's had to s...

This should be on the home page. Or better still, the site strap line - "The Philosophy Forum - there is nothing so absurd that some philosopher hasn'...

It depends on what you mean by 'true'.

Yes, that's why I included those things in my list of thing I think "shared" could refer to. What? I really can't make any sense of that. Your writing...

Great point.

There is no such thing as morally valid. There is nothing to judge. Are you seriously suggesting that you weighed the pros and cons of murder before d...

I thought we'd pretty thoroughly established this. Asking whether murder is right or wrong non-subjectively is like asking whether walking is right or...

By "truth statement" I'm presuming you mean something like "murder is..." where this corresponds to reality, yes. In which case I can say "murder is u...

Fine, well accept that for the time being. Why? This is precisely the contested point and instead of providing an argument to support it you've just r...

I realise this was an aside (hence the parentheses), but I wanted to highlight the point you're making. The degree to which we all seem to agree is ve...

Well, obviously. If you believe that murder is objectively wrong (by which you mean someone committing murder is objectively wrong to do so), then is ...

There is near universal agreement about what we feel. Most people feel that they shouldn't murder someone and they feel that they should ostracise, or...

Or buy a gun.

Yes, it's almost as if using logic and evidence to get someone to see the truth of some matter doesn't work... Oh well.

It seems to me that the arguments from moral absolutists here all seem to come down to the fact that they want there to be some system whereby they ca...