4 ms·
Are there moral facts?
by clint 12y ago
Are 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?