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Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts
- clint 12y agoAre there moral facts?
- miguelrochefort 12y agoOf course there are.
- esrauch 12y agoFor example?
- miguelrochefort 12y ago- Efficiency is not just the means; it's the actual end. - The means justify the end. - Truth is all that matters. Therefore, to lie is morally bad.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- on_and_off 12y agoA very compelling argument !
- chomp 12y agoI don't believe that there are any.
- AndrewDucker 12y agoI've never seen any proof of any.
- lerpa 12y agoWhat's the relevance of demanding a proof? Would you think it's immoral if it was a lie? :-)
- peteretep 12y agoI think if you could show that certain morals were genetic and present in the majority, rather than learned, you'd have a basis for calling those moral facts for humans.
- cjbprime 12y agoI think you would quickly have to conclude that rape, murder, sexism and racism are genetic facts about humans; they're shared with the other animals we're descended from, and they've been part of our history forever. I think if we held this definition, morality would not be very useful as a concept. Here's an old debate between (professor) Peter Singer and (judge) Richard Posner, where Posner holds this claim that morality is based on these "tenacious moral intuitions" and Singer argues against him: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dialogues/features/2001/animal_rights/_2.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dialogues/fe...
- peteretep 12y agoAbility to perform an action doesn't impact on its morality. I would guess that empathy is genetic, and so a moral fact might be that causing undeserved pain to someone with whom you can empathise with is wrong. "Undeserved" of course is wooly at the point of expression. Fear of death I'd guess to also be genetic, so another moral fact might be that suicide outside of an overriding other moral purpose being wrong might constitute "moral fact", although like the last example, its expression is clouded by other non-fact morals that come in to play. Incest taboo seems to be genetically expressed too, so you can probably include that.
- cjbprime 12y agoIt sounds like you're cherry-picking which moral instincts you believe to be genetic, ignoring the ones you don't approve of. Why include empathy but not racism?
- esrauch 12y agoI don't think the author of this would accept this as a fact. There could be things that intellectually we can generally agree are bad that humans might be genetically predisposed to being ok with (e.g. I don't think it would be extremely surprising if humans are predisposed towards certain forms of murder or sexual assault).
- leereeves 12y agoIs a game theory theorem a mathematical fact? If it has moral implications, is it a moral fact?
- proksoup 12y agoWe then had this conversation: Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?” Him: “It’s a fact.” Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.” Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.” Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?” At least his son is smarter than he is.
- proksoup 12y agoWhat I meant was, his son's blank stare is exactly my reaction as a 30 year old adult --- I can't comprehend how this guy doesn't comprehend how stupid his questions are.
- emsy 12y agoNo, you just probably never thought about what "knowing" actually means. Put simply, he wasn't there when Washington was President so he can only believe that historical resources are telling the truth.
- peteretep 12y agoSure, or if he'd been alive, he could only believe his senses are telling the truth :-/
- evincarofautumn 12y agoHah, all philosophical discussions can end in solipsism if you want them to. I think it’s more fun when they don’t.
- Crito 12y agoYou have just successfully banished the word by stripping it of any legitimate usage. Since it was quite a useful word that will undoubtedly be missed, why not being it back with a simple redefinition. We could redefine it as "close enough to true that only a philosopher would object". Then we could continue to use the word, despite the obnoxious objections of philosophers. Epistemology may be all very neat and interesting, but in the real world there is little place for it. We frequently need to express ideas that may not necessarily be "philosophically pure", in order to get shit done in a timely manner. Think of the concept of "fact" as foma.
- flipstewart 12y agoThe ignorance is much easier to process upon learning that the author works at an episcopal church and is on the committee of two "Societies of Christian Philosophers". http://www.justinmcbrayer.com/#!leadership/c53p http://www.justinmcbrayer.com/#!leadership/c53p
- pistle 12y agoDespite it being ad-hominem, I'll let it play because it helped stop my eyes from continuing to roll every time I replayed his arguments.
- flipstewart 12y agoThat was my only goal.
- throwawayaway 12y agoYou'll love the article he linked to: http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/372-moral-relativism-and-the-crisis-of-contemporary-education http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/372-mor...
- pistle 12y agoHey! My eyes had just recovered! Stop that. To paraphrase, "In place of science, I present to you a digitally-leather-bound edition of the founding fathers (minus that Jefferson stuff about not being a Christian nation)! and a warning to not enter into serious argument with modern or post-modern thought and life. Best just to avoid winning that battle we always win (amongst ourselves) than to deal with the cognitive dissonance that we may all be desperately protecting the new version of that old Zeus stuff." I sense a fear that many people don't know how to deal with the realization that their 5-8 year-olds, who have internalized "the golden rule" in a freedom-chasing culture, seem confused by their loving parents testing their openness to religious and/or social bigotry. Where they see the loss of their sacred talisman, I see hope that our new generation is about to bring great levels of peace and joy to the world. I see the dawning of a bright future where people fluidly form communities instead of calcifying into tribes.
- spiritplumber 12y agoThere are facts. There are moral positions. What are moral facts?
- jarin 12y agoThey're things that seem to exist for people who believe in absolute morality stemming from a higher power. Let's just ignore the problem that no two people who believe in absolute morality can seem to exactly agree on what is absolutely moral and what isn't.
- cjbprime 12y agoThe most plausible definition I can think of involves stating your metaethics (e.g. utilitarianism) and then showing evidence that there is a reliably-reached conclusion for a claim under those ethics. Like, I don't know: "Under utilitarianism, if you are comparatively rich, it is wrong not to attempt to relieve the suffering of people in extreme poverty, because you can do so very cheaply in comparison to the happiness gain you could cause for other people as rich as you". I'd say that's a moral fact.
- paulgerhardt 12y ago"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY." ― GNU Terry Pratchett
- tormeh 12y agoYeah, whenever I think too much about why we're here I discover that it's best not to think too much about it.
- savanaly 12y agoI mean they are facts in that most everyone agrees on them, which is one usage of the word "fact". But they're not facts in the same way as "the sun will rise tomorrow" or "2 + 2 = 4" (which those statements themselves are two different types of fact also!).
- kenjackson 12y agoThe sun will rise tomorrow is an opinion/speculation. The sun rose today is a fact.
- lerpa 12y agoThe sun rose today is a fact only if you can prove it. I think you're crazy everyone knows the sun just appeared out of nowhere. PS: Your aunt Sally called, she misses you.
- icebraining 12y agoNo, facts are facts even if no one can prove it. It's just that if you can't prove it, you can't know if a certain claim (like "the sun rose today") is actually a fact or not.
- lerpa 12y agoI'm having trouble with this. Can you prove that what you said is a fact?
- icebraining 12y agoNope.
- alexvoda 12y agoI think what icebraining was trying to say is: A fact is not a opinion that is proven to be true. A fact is a opinion that is true and can be proven to be true even if we don't yet know how. In which case we simply don't yet know that said opinion is a fact. I'm not sure if this definition is correct but I'm fairly certain this is what icebraining meant.
- peteretep 12y ago> Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned > out to be false. For example, many people once thought > that the earth was flat Is this satire?
- ChrisGranger 12y agoDidn't you know that the Earth was once proven flat? /snark I think it's an example of Poe's Law.
- Kenji 12y agoNot a single argument against moral relativism was put forth in this article. But they mentioned that there actually are moral facts ad nauseum without a reason. "Furthermore, if proof is required for facts, then facts become person-relative. Something might be a fact for me if I can prove it but not a fact for you if you can’t." Yes, yes, they are! Welcome to reality, a place where we can't even be sure it exists! I am proud of this educational system, teaching kids intellectual integrity and preventing them from accepting random statements as true facts just because someone repeats over and over again that they're true!
- reedlaw 12y ago> I am proud of this educational system, teaching kids intellectual integrity and preventing them from accepting random statements as true facts just because someone repeats over and over again that they're true! What about the teaching discussed in the article about there being no moral facts? Should kids accept this proposition just because the education system repeats it over and over again? The teaching itself is a statement with moral implications. Where is the proof for the statement itself? > Welcome to reality, a place where we can't even be sure it exists! This viewpoint also contains a truth claim. Taken to its logical conclusion, there would be no way to prove anything since it's all an illusion.
- bonaldi 12y ago> Taken to its logical conclusion, there would be no way to prove anything since it's all an illusion. Yep. And then you can either get to the island of the cogito and find you can't get off, or you end up shrugging and going with Shaw's great line about how skepticism is "logically impeccable, but psychologically impossible".
- ikken 12y agoThe article doesn't provide anything to back the claim that moral opinions may be universally, non-subjectively true. The cartoonist example is deeply flawed. We're outraged because this event violated our deepest beliefs and values we hold dear, not because it violated some universal eternal moral law. We also know that there were people that weren't saddened by this event too. This is the problem I have with many philosophers. In the whole text you cannot find a single strong logical evidence. Everything is just an opinion. It is impossible to prove that e.g. "stealing from others" is universally "bad". It may not be a beneficial strategy in a game theory, or maybe some statistical analysis can show societies are better off with this rule, or just that people sleep better knowing that others can't steal. But neither of this is universally true for humanity in general, and there are examples in game theory were cheating actually is a winning strategy.
- brasky 12y agoYou might like to read this https://board.freedomainradio.com/page/books/universally_preferable_behavior_a_rational_proof_of_secular_ethics.html https://board.freedomainradio.com/page/books/universally_pre...
- javert 12y agoI'm not defending the article, but you are wrong. Stealing from others is bad if it decreases your pleasure and it is good if it increases your pleasure. That is objective.
- icebraining 12y agoHow is that objective? Why is something bad if it decreases your pleasure?
- javert 12y agoWhat other meaning could there possibly be for words like "bad" and "good"?
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- dikaiosune 12y agoWhen I was a boy, if you wanted to talk philosophy you reasoned from first principles. Apparently now you can just take whatever half-baked ideas you already have in your head, hold them as the truth, and wantonly criticize anyone or any system that slights those beliefs. Also, we had to walk up hill both ways to school in the snow. /s Turns out that living in a pluralistic, modern society makes it really hard to reason about moral truths when claimed moral facts are so tightly coupled to cultural baggage. I argue that from a practical perspective, our best bet is moral consensus.
- humanrebar 12y ago> I argue that from a practical perspective, our best bet is moral consensus. I took that as the point of the piece -- that there is no moral consensus. That even unalienable truths like, "All men are created equal" are being labelled as opinions and lumped in the same category as one's favorite color or sports team.
- dikaiosune 12y agoMy takeaway was that OP genuinely believes there are moral absolutes that are not the subject of consensus, they just are. Consensus attempts to build something stable from a variety of (hopefully) evidenced opinions, but it's not necessarily linked to some objective, absolute reality. He's not criticizing a lack of moral consensus, he's saying that relying on consensus as opposed to absolutes encourages amoral behavior. I would agree with the author that children shouldn't be only taught relativism, but I hope we can forgive a lack of nuance in 2nd-grade curricula. Having wiggle room and nuance in these conversations is part of how civilization has progressed, and that's stifled by the idea that all morality is derived from some semi-knowable perfect absolute reality.
- throwawayaway 12y agoFTA: > Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. and then a link to this: http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/372-moral-relativism-and-the-crisis-of-contemporary-education http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/372-mor... I generally don't go for guilt by association, but can't believe he linked to this nonsense as some sort of support for his position. "All men are created equal" is a moral consensus or opinion to me. Some are definitely more equal than others.
- icebraining 12y ago"Alert: Public Schools Teach Nihilism!" http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/tag/justin-p-mcbrayer/ http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/tag/justin-p-mcbrayer...
- kenjackson 12y agoIt's amazing a professor of philosophy seems to understand this less than elementary school kids. There is a surprising shallowness to this article. I left this article applauding the school and son, and questioning the author.
- sjwright 12y ago"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick Facts are observations that persist no matter how much you wish otherwise. - me, just now.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- evincarofautumn 12y agoSure, it’s a mistake to treat facts and beliefs as disjoint. But moral relativism is the only honest position—we do not know what’s morally right, nor do we know whether right things even exist, nor can we necessarily prove these things even though we believe them. So we pragmatically follow evidence and try to treat people decently in an ad-hoc fashion. More to the point, if a teacher teaches kids any specific absolute moral system, many of their parents will be upset with it. So the school system only allows teachers to teach what is essentially agnosticism—the absence of a moral position. The examples from the article can all be dismissed by simple descriptivism: > If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged? A person can be outraged for any reason they want. It happens that this kind of thing outrages a lot of people. > If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? We can, and do, do so arbitrarily. It happens that a lot of people agree on what “crimes against humanity” entail. > If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others? Humans are occasionally altruistic for some reason. Isn’t it more interesting to investigate the reasons for why so many humans believe these things than to endlessly conduct the same debates about truth, provability, and knowledge?
- leereeves 12y agoI suspect that, if asked to enumerate moral facts, the author would describe his opinions.
- bequanna 12y ago>Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven. Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes. Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake ... Two decades ago, when I was in elementary school, we were taught pretty much the exact same thing. If someone states something is a fact, demand proof. And for children, this is good enough. When they grow up to be pedantic associate professors of philisophy, they may feel free to expand on the above definitions.
- sandworm 12y agoThe OP's mistake is to characterize all "moral facts" as simple binary answers. Cheating = bad. Killing = wrong. Those are too simple. That they are labeled opinion does not imply that there aren't any not-simple moral facts. "Cheating undermines meritocracies and is therefor frowned upon by those in control of such." I'd say that qualifies as a moral fact and most all would call it an accurate description of a state of affairs, a fact. "All men are created equal" is not a fact, or even an opinion imho. It is a hope, a dream of people trying to describe an ideal state of affairs. That it isn't a "fact" doesn't mean that it cannot be something to believe in and strive for.
- icebraining 12y ago"Cheating undermines meritocracies and is therefor frowned upon by those in control of such." I'd say that qualifies as a moral fact What makes that a moral fact? What's the moral part?
- dragonwriter 12y agoYour description of cheating presents facts, but there is nothing moral about them, except in that they are facts that explain why one group of people may prefer another group of people to accept something as a moral truth. (Which isn't what people generally mean when they asset the existence or nonexistence of "moral facts")
- nsxwolf 12y ago"All men are created equal", if we're talking about what Thomas Jefferson wrote, means all human beings are equally deserving of rights and possess equal worth. It does not refer to objective criteria like intelligence, beauty, strength, etc.
- pistle 12y agoThe likelihood that human definition of life DOESN'T exist elsewhere in the universe is infinitesimally small. That's not make it a fact that life DOES exist. We just shouldn't be surprised when they arrive to probe the OP.
- ruok0101 12y ago"It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on." What if we say "cheating is not allowed". Can we blame them then?
- ebbv 12y agoWhat is this reactionary garbage doing on HN? This is a popular far right talking point, fear or "moral relativism" and the ridiculous assertion that millions of kids are being indoctrinated into it by public schools. It's horse shit.
- AYBABTME 12y agoThe author's position is as bad as what they're trying to criticize.
- jvm 12y agoThe author declines to demonstrate to the reader that there are moral facts. He attempted reductiones ad absurdum fall completely flat, e.g., > If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged? ...As if nobody has ever been outraged on the basis of their opinions! He also fails to even mention what a moral fact would consist of. He doesn't say whether he agrees with this definition: > Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven. But clearly if one takes this position, there are no moral facts. What would constitute moral proof? My guess is that the author is crypto-monotheist. With a God around, you could say that a moral claim is God's will, and even if we can't prove it there is a fact of the matter. In a godless world, there is no basis on which a moral claim could be a fact.
- icebraining 12y agoLots of people have claimed ungodly sources of moral objectivity/universalism (usually nature, or reason, or some such).
- jvm 12y agoOkay but that's still, like, just their opinion man :-)
- lerpa 12y ago> Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven. That could be some positivist definition. But in general a fact is something held or believed to be true, in that context it doesn't matter if it's self evident, deduced from other facts, known through experience, etc. Also that means some largely held facts can be just plain wrong.
- EarthLaunch 12y agoMoral 'facts' require a universal standard of morality. It's hard to come up with a truly universal standard. The best answer I've seen is: Man's life. "Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil." -Ayn Rand [1] [1] http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html
- icebraining 12y agoThat doesn't set a standard, it just moves the discussion to "what is proper to the life a rational being", which is still completely subjective.
- EarthLaunch 12y agoIt progresses the discussion to there, by being a first principle of morality. From there, with a definition of rationality, "what is proper to the life a rational being" can be answered. For example, death is not proper to the life a rational being. From that follows certain things to avoid. Using this logic, those things would be morally wrong.
- icebraining 12y agoFor example, death is not proper to the life a rational being. Why not?
- EarthLaunch 12y agoI didn't just assert that, it was based on the preceding logic. "Why not" is answered by what I proposed in my previous comment. Not up for debating it with you further. With a name like icebraining, have you ever wondered if you're the baddy? [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
- yellowapple 12y agoFrom the article: "Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned out to be false. For example, many people once thought that the earth was flat." I don't think this is an example of something that was ever "proved". Nevertheless, I feel like the author's grasping for straws in his unwillingness to admit that morality is subjective and situational. He's done nothing to prove that moral values can or should be considered "facts" instead of (or in addition to, as he's advocating) opinions.
- sjwright 12y agoNone of the examples come close to moral fact. (The author wasn't claiming they all were moral fact, but he suggests without being specific that at least some of them ought to be.) — Copying homework assignments is wrong. A situational ethic. — Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior. A situational ethic. — All men are created equal. Objectively false. — It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism. Too vague to be either fact or opinion. — It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol. A situational ethic. — Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat. Most likely false. — Drug dealers belong in prison. A situational ethic.
- EarthLaunch 12y agoThis thread got bumped from #2 to #90 in less than 30 seconds. Good thing still up top is "Can Family Secrets Make You Sick? (npr.org)".