3 ms·

This isn't convincing because the power of the argument comes from conflating different ways in which things are true. Intuitively some moral claims are 'true'

This isn't convincing because the power of the argument comes from conflating different ways in which things are true. Intuitively some moral claims are 'true' yes. But they're psychologically or socially true. All normative statements are only 'true' or 'false' to us in a cultural sense, they're not claims about facts in the world. That's simple to show. Proof to me that your moral claim is true in the same way you proof a scientific fact, you can't, in fact there's no way to even make sense 'where' that truth or false property of any moral claim is supposed to be located, or how one would go about proving it. Moral nihilism is not the claim that authority or intuitive values or consensus does not exist, moral nihilism is the claim that there are no moral values as such, that there is no finality or meaning to them beyond the one we imprint on it. The moral nihilist may be perfectly fine with accepting that boiling children is wrong the same way not paying your car insurance or cheating at chess is wrong, the world's a more orderly place if people aren't going around boiling kids. What the moral nihilist denies is that this has any meaning beyond that conventional sense, that it is simply a useful fiction.

georgewsinger 5y ago
You spent 4 paragraphs reasserting the position that there are no moral truths. Instead, you assert (without argument) that moral talk is just a heuristic for some sort of conventional "social game" because it serves as a "useful fiction" (but "useful" for what? notice that terms like "useful fiction" or "orderly" often strongly smell like they're embedding evaluative content, depending upon the context). In any event, I'll charitably assume that you think moral language sincerely embeds no propositional content whatsoever. Well, just to be clear: I for one am claiming moral language is not just conventional talk. When I say it's wrong it boil someone's child alive for pleasure, I'm asserting it as a propositional fact, with the same truth-status as a statement like "there exist red cars", or what have you. Maybe you think I am the only one who does this, and that most other people don't think of themselves as asserting truths when they speak morally. But there's a mountain of linguistic evidence to the contrary: 1. Moral statements take the form of declarative sentences (as opposed to imperatives, questions, or interjections). Statements like "pleasure is good" have the same grammatical form as "weasels are mammals", and sentences of this form are those used to make factual assertions in other domains. 2. Moral predicates can be transformed into abstract nouns, suggesting they are intended to refer to properties. We talk about "goodness", "rightness", and so on. Again this points to moral realism in our language usage. 3. We ascribe to moral statements the same sort of properties that we do to other truth-bearing propositions. You can say "it's true that I have done something wrong in the past", or "it is false that torture is morally good". Of course, "true", "false", and "possible" are predicates that we apply only to propositions. No one would say "it is true that 'ouch!'", "it is false that 'shut the door'", or "it is possible that 'hurray!'". Again: more evidence that moral talk isn't just some sort of conventional game, but is in fact propositional. 4. Propositional attitude verbs can be prefixed to moral statements. We can say "George believes that the war was just", or "I wish we had more moral laws", or "I wonder whether I did the moral thing". In contrast, no one would say that "Jon believes that ouch", "I wonder whether please pass the salt", or "I hope that hurray for the Broncos!". The obvious explanation is that mental states such as believing, hoping, wishing, and wondering are by their nature propositionally focued, and of course moral statements are propositional (in that they refer to things which take objective truth values). 5. Moral statements can be transformed into yes/no questions. One can can assert "is it true that it's bad to murder?", but one cannot assert "Hurray for the Broncos?", or "Shut the door?". Of course this is because yes/no questions require propositions, and moral statements are propositions that take truth-values. 6. One can combine imperatives and emotional expressions with things that are characterized morally. E.g. "Do the right thing!", or "Hurray for virtue!". Consider a more complex example even: "We shouldn't be doing this, but it feels good, so let's do it anyway". This is perfectly intelligible if you believe that moral statements are propositional, but it's not if, e.g. "We shouldn't be doing this" expressed merely an emotion towards a proposed action or an imperative not to do it. Let's summarize. Each of the following sentences make sense: - I am questioning this act's rightness. - It is true that pleasure is good. - I hope I did the right thing. - Is murder wrong? - Do the good thing. - If pleasure is good, then cake must be good. None of these sentences make any sense if moral statements aren't actually propositional/truth-bearing. Therefore, the idea that moral language is just a conventional way of expressing emotions, or encoding some sort of conventional social game is highly implausible. I have to stop the conversation here, but I will end it with this: do you have an argument for why you think moral statements aren't propositional? If so, ask yourself why that argument couldn't be applied to other domains as well. My main point is that it is really hard to be nihilist about moral facts without also being one about other sorts of facts as well. Most of the arguments for moral nihilism can be re-adjusted and applied straightforwardly to, e.g., scientific nihilism. (For example, what if I asserted that "scientists aren't actually speaking about true and false theories, they're just playing a conventional game with each other because it serves as a useful fiction"). But almost no one wants to be a scientific nihilist (because that's also insane). So either you should be a nihilist about everything, or a nihilist about nothing (broadly speaking).
- Barrin92 5y ago
  Just because something takes a proper grammatical form doesn't imply it has any correspondence to the real world. "A horse has four legs" and "schmorgles are borgles" are both grammatically correct sentences but only one has discernable empirical value. I can go out and find you a horse with four legs, can't find you any schmorgles. As to moral statements taking the form of true or false statements, again it does nothing to proof that they are in fact true. the reason for this is psychological. Saying "torture is wrong" has just the same semantic content as saying "Ewww, torture!", or alternatively the command "do not torture!". The reason why we frame it in the language of moral fact is obvious, because it's useful to frame commands as being embedded in a moral framework if one wants to universalize and impose them. The language of moral facts is a a way to rationalize moral commands. This is completely equivalent to religious truth claims. Religions have elaborate epistemological concepts about heaven and hell, afterlife, even a sort of physics of supernatural spaces. Does that conjure them into reality, merely because they are able to talk about them? No of course not. Does it follow that the trinity has any truth or false value merely because someone talks about the concept? Does Middle Earth exist because I can make propositional statements about Hobbits of the same form I can make about particle physics? No. And as to the last part, yes science is to some degree a game of this very same sort, although it varies drastically by the kind of science you're doing. There's non-normative science largely concerned with making empirically verifiable claims. Science that tries to make normative claims does not progress for this exact reason.
- claudiawerner 5y ago
  >None of these sentences make any sense if moral statements aren't actually propositional/truth-bearing. This seems like a weak argument. What do you mean by "make sense"? For example, "Santa leaves presents under the tree" or even "Harry Potter attends Hogwarts" are also statements that make sense to a great majority of people - and if everyone were acquainted with knowledge of Santa or the Harry Potter universe, we could make the same statements you describe we make for moral claims too. Logical or grammatical sense does not get to the root of the issue which moral anti-realists are arguing is the actual problem. Of course you can make statements about what people commonly believe. However, you can also make statements against what people commonly believe; most moral discourse exists on denying one or more of the ways-of-speaking you claim. The fact that moral claims are interpreted and parsed is not an argument against moral anti-realism, it seems like more of an argument ontly against moral non-cognitivism. It's entirely possible for a moral anti-realist to say either: (a) Moral claims posit truth and falsity in terms of the fiction those claims pertain to - i.e. "Harry Potter attends Eton" is false. (b) Moral claims aim to claim truth and falsity, but consistently fail to do so, due to lack of a strong enough epistemological grounding - i.e. "There are N planets in the universe", in which we don't have (and maybe may never have) access to the whole universe. (c) Moral claims are neither true nor false, the epistemic grounding on which the arguments of truth or falsity is simply missing, and if it exists, its relation to other facts about the world is strange and strained. (d) Moral claims are both true and false - perhaps this implies moral relativism, or a more generous form of (b). The fact that we have, gramatically, accustomed ourselves to speaking as though moral claims are facts about the universe says nothing about the facts of the universe. In fact, this problem is well recognized by moral abolitionists as to what we should do, if moral fictionalism is not ideal. By the logic layed out in your comment, we must also necessarily say that aesthetic realism is true, in which case "This food sucks" or "This painting is gaudy" are just as much valid claims as moral claims, and a relevant expert could shut down anyone who disagrees. Aesthetic realism is significantly less popular than moral realism. I don't have a link at the moment, but I read a paper a while ago which explained how attempts to distance moral realism from aesthetic realism are doomed to fail. They're a package deal. It turns out, vanilla ice cream is just bad, and if peope were equipped with knowledge of culinary aesthetics, they'd realize that chocolate ice cream is best. >My main point is that it is really hard to be nihilist about moral facts without also being one about other sorts of facts as well. This is the "Companions in Guilt" argument, but I think prominent moral anti-realist philosophers such as Richard Joyce have offered at least reasons to doubt that it's such a successful argument. That is, he has identified several reasons why moral claims are different from other epistemic claims. Nevertheless, he's also argued from another point of view - that is, the fact that one is unable to counter every single argument for a Christian god, does not mean that the Christian god exists. On the balance of arguments between atheism and a Christian god, for most peope who think about the problem, the case tends to fall on the side of atheism, despite the fact that there are rebuttals to certain aspects of atheism, and there are good arguments for the existence of a Christian god. When you consider the whole case for a Christian god, including many arguments, most philosophers fall on the side of atheism, due to the balance of the argument.
ip26 5y ago
I’m having a hard time telling the difference between your moral nihilist and a moral relativist
- Barrin92 5y ago
  The moral relativist believes that moral statements have meaning and truth value, but that the meaning is subjective and dependent on context, the individual, the time period or geography, and so forth. The moral nihilist thinks that the notion of truth or falsehood in regards to moral statements doesn't make sense. Moral assertions make only sense if objects have moral properties, and we have no reason to believe that moral properties exist, of what nature they are, how someone were to measure what is morally good or bad, that they're not even necessary to explain the world as it is, or similar arguments along those lines. The moral nihilist thinks that a statement like "torture is wrong" is like saying "the king of france is bald". There is currently no king of France, the statement is neither really true or false, it simply does not refer to anything in the world.

georgewsinger 5y ago

You spent 4 paragraphs reasserting the position that there are no moral truths. Instead, you assert (without argument) that moral talk is just a heuristic for some sort of conventional "social game" because it serves as a "useful fiction" (but "useful" for what? notice that terms like "useful fiction" or "orderly" often strongly smell like they're embedding evaluative content, depending upon the context). In any event, I'll charitably assume that you think moral language sincerely embeds no propositional content whatsoever. Well, just to be clear: I for one am claiming moral language is not just conventional talk. When I say it's wrong it boil someone's child alive for pleasure, I'm asserting it as a propositional fact, with the same truth-status as a statement like "there exist red cars", or what have you. Maybe you think I am the only one who does this, and that most other people don't think of themselves as asserting truths when they speak morally. But there's a mountain of linguistic evidence to the contrary: 1. Moral statements take the form of declarative sentences (as opposed to imperatives, questions, or interjections). Statements like "pleasure is good" have the same grammatical form as "weasels are mammals", and sentences of this form are those used to make factual assertions in other domains. 2. Moral predicates can be transformed into abstract nouns, suggesting they are intended to refer to properties. We talk about "goodness", "rightness", and so on. Again this points to moral realism in our language usage. 3. We ascribe to moral statements the same sort of properties that we do to other truth-bearing propositions. You can say "it's true that I have done something wrong in the past", or "it is false that torture is morally good". Of course, "true", "false", and "possible" are predicates that we apply only to propositions. No one would say "it is true that 'ouch!'", "it is false that 'shut the door'", or "it is possible that 'hurray!'". Again: more evidence that moral talk isn't just some sort of conventional game, but is in fact propositional. 4. Propositional attitude verbs can be prefixed to moral statements. We can say "George believes that the war was just", or "I wish we had more moral laws", or "I wonder whether I did the moral thing". In contrast, no one would say that "Jon believes that ouch", "I wonder whether please pass the salt", or "I hope that hurray for the Broncos!". The obvious explanation is that mental states such as believing, hoping, wishing, and wondering are by their nature propositionally focued, and of course moral statements are propositional (in that they refer to things which take objective truth values). 5. Moral statements can be transformed into yes/no questions. One can can assert "is it true that it's bad to murder?", but one cannot assert "Hurray for the Broncos?", or "Shut the door?". Of course this is because yes/no questions require propositions, and moral statements are propositions that take truth-values. 6. One can combine imperatives and emotional expressions with things that are characterized morally. E.g. "Do the right thing!", or "Hurray for virtue!". Consider a more complex example even: "We shouldn't be doing this, but it feels good, so let's do it anyway". This is perfectly intelligible if you believe that moral statements are propositional, but it's not if, e.g. "We shouldn't be doing this" expressed merely an emotion towards a proposed action or an imperative not to do it. Let's summarize. Each of the following sentences make sense: - I am questioning this act's rightness. - It is true that pleasure is good. - I hope I did the right thing. - Is murder wrong? - Do the good thing. - If pleasure is good, then cake must be good. None of these sentences make any sense if moral statements aren't actually propositional/truth-bearing. Therefore, the idea that moral language is just a conventional way of expressing emotions, or encoding some sort of conventional social game is highly implausible. I have to stop the conversation here, but I will end it with this: do you have an argument for why you think moral statements aren't propositional? If so, ask yourself why that argument couldn't be applied to other domains as well. My main point is that it is really hard to be nihilist about moral facts without also being one about other sorts of facts as well. Most of the arguments for moral nihilism can be re-adjusted and applied straightforwardly to, e.g., scientific nihilism. (For example, what if I asserted that "scientists aren't actually speaking about true and false theories, they're just playing a conventional game with each other because it serves as a useful fiction"). But almost no one wants to be a scientific nihilist (because that's also insane). So either you should be a nihilist about everything, or a nihilist about nothing (broadly speaking).

Barrin92 5y ago
Just because something takes a proper grammatical form doesn't imply it has any correspondence to the real world. "A horse has four legs" and "schmorgles are borgles" are both grammatically correct sentences but only one has discernable empirical value. I can go out and find you a horse with four legs, can't find you any schmorgles. As to moral statements taking the form of true or false statements, again it does nothing to proof that they are in fact true. the reason for this is psychological. Saying "torture is wrong" has just the same semantic content as saying "Ewww, torture!", or alternatively the command "do not torture!". The reason why we frame it in the language of moral fact is obvious, because it's useful to frame commands as being embedded in a moral framework if one wants to universalize and impose them. The language of moral facts is a a way to rationalize moral commands. This is completely equivalent to religious truth claims. Religions have elaborate epistemological concepts about heaven and hell, afterlife, even a sort of physics of supernatural spaces. Does that conjure them into reality, merely because they are able to talk about them? No of course not. Does it follow that the trinity has any truth or false value merely because someone talks about the concept? Does Middle Earth exist because I can make propositional statements about Hobbits of the same form I can make about particle physics? No. And as to the last part, yes science is to some degree a game of this very same sort, although it varies drastically by the kind of science you're doing. There's non-normative science largely concerned with making empirically verifiable claims. Science that tries to make normative claims does not progress for this exact reason.
claudiawerner 5y ago
>None of these sentences make any sense if moral statements aren't actually propositional/truth-bearing. This seems like a weak argument. What do you mean by "make sense"? For example, "Santa leaves presents under the tree" or even "Harry Potter attends Hogwarts" are also statements that make sense to a great majority of people - and if everyone were acquainted with knowledge of Santa or the Harry Potter universe, we could make the same statements you describe we make for moral claims too. Logical or grammatical sense does not get to the root of the issue which moral anti-realists are arguing is the actual problem. Of course you can make statements about what people commonly believe. However, you can also make statements against what people commonly believe; most moral discourse exists on denying one or more of the ways-of-speaking you claim. The fact that moral claims are interpreted and parsed is not an argument against moral anti-realism, it seems like more of an argument ontly against moral non-cognitivism. It's entirely possible for a moral anti-realist to say either: (a) Moral claims posit truth and falsity in terms of the fiction those claims pertain to - i.e. "Harry Potter attends Eton" is false. (b) Moral claims aim to claim truth and falsity, but consistently fail to do so, due to lack of a strong enough epistemological grounding - i.e. "There are N planets in the universe", in which we don't have (and maybe may never have) access to the whole universe. (c) Moral claims are neither true nor false, the epistemic grounding on which the arguments of truth or falsity is simply missing, and if it exists, its relation to other facts about the world is strange and strained. (d) Moral claims are both true and false - perhaps this implies moral relativism, or a more generous form of (b). The fact that we have, gramatically, accustomed ourselves to speaking as though moral claims are facts about the universe says nothing about the facts of the universe. In fact, this problem is well recognized by moral abolitionists as to what we should do, if moral fictionalism is not ideal. By the logic layed out in your comment, we must also necessarily say that aesthetic realism is true, in which case "This food sucks" or "This painting is gaudy" are just as much valid claims as moral claims, and a relevant expert could shut down anyone who disagrees. Aesthetic realism is significantly less popular than moral realism. I don't have a link at the moment, but I read a paper a while ago which explained how attempts to distance moral realism from aesthetic realism are doomed to fail. They're a package deal. It turns out, vanilla ice cream is just bad, and if peope were equipped with knowledge of culinary aesthetics, they'd realize that chocolate ice cream is best. >My main point is that it is really hard to be nihilist about moral facts without also being one about other sorts of facts as well. This is the "Companions in Guilt" argument, but I think prominent moral anti-realist philosophers such as Richard Joyce have offered at least reasons to doubt that it's such a successful argument. That is, he has identified several reasons why moral claims are different from other epistemic claims. Nevertheless, he's also argued from another point of view - that is, the fact that one is unable to counter every single argument for a Christian god, does not mean that the Christian god exists. On the balance of arguments between atheism and a Christian god, for most peope who think about the problem, the case tends to fall on the side of atheism, despite the fact that there are rebuttals to certain aspects of atheism, and there are good arguments for the existence of a Christian god. When you consider the whole case for a Christian god, including many arguments, most philosophers fall on the side of atheism, due to the balance of the argument.

ip26 5y ago

I’m having a hard time telling the difference between your moral nihilist and a moral relativist

Barrin92 5y ago
The moral relativist believes that moral statements have meaning and truth value, but that the meaning is subjective and dependent on context, the individual, the time period or geography, and so forth. The moral nihilist thinks that the notion of truth or falsehood in regards to moral statements doesn't make sense. Moral assertions make only sense if objects have moral properties, and we have no reason to believe that moral properties exist, of what nature they are, how someone were to measure what is morally good or bad, that they're not even necessary to explain the world as it is, or similar arguments along those lines. The moral nihilist thinks that a statement like "torture is wrong" is like saying "the king of france is bald". There is currently no king of France, the statement is neither really true or false, it simply does not refer to anything in the world.