(March 16, 2026 at 7:19 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(March 16, 2026 at 7:01 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Can you point to any "moral facts"?

Well for me personally I think that the fact that engaging in some actions or following some rules tend to increase suffering and engaging in some actions or following some rules tend to decrease suffering are examples of moral facts.

But there are other theories. Some philosophers think that moral facts are non-natural abstract facts that we can know through intuition. There is a philosopher, Michael Huemer, for example, who has said that if moral realism isn't true then if nobody thought that recreational baby torture was wrong then it wouldn't be wrong but it would clearly be wrong no matter what anybody thinks, so that's one example of a moral fact, therefore moral realism is true.

Personally I don't think that non-naturalism is plausible. And I don't think that intuition is enough to know that moral facts exist. I think that we can know what's good and bad phenomenologically through our experiences of happiness or suffering, and then we can know that encouraging actions that decrease overall suffering is moral and encouraging actions that increase overall suffering is immoral, for example.

Even that relies upon an individual defining the minimization of suffering as a moral good, which is of necessity a subjective definition.

(March 16, 2026 at 6:57 pm)Disagreeable Wrote:

(March 16, 2026 at 5:32 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: All of the evidence suggests otherwise.

And what evidence is that? Whether moral realism is true or false is greatly disputed in philosophy.

But of course it is. They'd be out of a job if they ever ended a debate. Philosophy is the ancient and venerable art of ensuring that philosophers remain well-fed.

I'd think that the evidence would be pretty obvious.

Slavery? BTDT  and used the holy books to excuse it.
Murder? Yeah, we're down with that. Here's a rock, there's a neighbor you've got a beef with. Or if you want to seem modern, she's a witch! Burn her! We're doing it right now under the guise of 'pre-emptive strikes'.
Even your extreme example of infanticide was broken regularly and gleefully. In Ancient Carthage it was a sacred duty, and there's the father-son outing that Abraham and Isaac took up Mount Moriah. These are hardly isolated incidents. The Mayans drowned infants in their sacred cenotes. The Incas drugged them and left them to die of exposure on mountain tops. The Shang dynasty sacrificed thousands, including infants.

Rape, incest, cannibalism... There isn't a taboo that our species has developed that we don't break, frequently on a society-wide basis. Your 'moral facts' are nothing more than the latest trend. Every one of our barbarous ancestors considered themselves moral.

(March 16, 2026 at 11:56 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Even that relies upon an individual defining the minimization of suffering as a moral good, which is of necessity a subjective definition.

No more so than the definition of a cat or a moon, or any other word really, when you think about it.  Why is a cat a cat except that we call it such?  We can say a cat has biological markers making it a cat by any name, but so too would suffering.

(March 17, 2026 at 4:20 am)Paleophyte Wrote:

(March 16, 2026 at 6:57 pm)Disagreeable Wrote: And what evidence is that? Whether moral realism is true or false is greatly disputed in philosophy.

But of course it is. 

It actually isn't. Moral realism is the overwhelming position of academia. It's hotly debated by plebs like us, but more or less taken for granted elsewise.

(March 17, 2026 at 8:54 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(March 16, 2026 at 11:56 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Even that relies upon an individual defining the minimization of suffering as a moral good, which is of necessity a subjective definition.

No more so than the definition of a cat or a moon, or any other word really, when you think about it.  Why is a cat a cat except that we call it such?  We can say a cat has biological markers making it a cat by any name, but so too would suffering.

You and I think of torturing cats as immoral. What makes our thinking regnant, such that it is an objective fact?

(March 17, 2026 at 4:20 am)Paleophyte Wrote:

(March 16, 2026 at 6:57 pm)Disagreeable Wrote: And what evidence is that? Whether moral realism is true or false is greatly disputed in philosophy.

But of course it is. They'd be out of a job if they ever ended a debate. Philosophy is the ancient and venerable art of ensuring that philosophers remain well-fed.

I'd think that the evidence would be pretty obvious.

Slavery? BTDT  and used the holy books to excuse it.
Murder? Yeah, we're down with that. Here's a rock, there's a neighbor you've got a beef with. Or if you want to seem modern, she's a witch! Burn her! We're doing it right now under the guise of 'pre-emptive strikes'.
Even your extreme example of infanticide was broken regularly and gleefully. In Ancient Carthage it was a sacred duty, and there's the father-son outing that Abraham and Isaac took up Mount Moriah. These are hardly isolated incidents. The Mayans drowned infants in their sacred cenotes. The Incas drugged them and left them to die of exposure on mountain tops. The Shang dynasty sacrificed thousands, including infants.

Rape, incest, cannibalism... There isn't a taboo that our species has developed that we don't break, frequently on a society-wide basis. Your 'moral facts' are nothing more than the latest trend. Every one of our barbarous ancestors considered themselves moral.

If moral disagreement is evidence of anti-realism then moral convergence is evidence of realism. The fact that as time goes by we have moral progress, such as less slavery than in the past, can be taken as evidence in favor of realism. The fact that people also have moral disagreements isn't really good evidence against realism. Because, again, this can be just neutralized with the opposite evidence of moral progress.

People used to think that the Earth was flat and that bad smells caused diseases. Is this evidence against science? I think not. Progress is evidence of realism.

But personally I don't think that disagreement or convergence are particularly good evidences against or for realism. People can get stuff wrong and people can get stuff right. What people think doesn't say much about what the objective fact of the matter is. Independent evidence or arguments is what really says whether something is objective or not.

(March 17, 2026 at 8:56 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(March 17, 2026 at 4:20 am)Paleophyte Wrote: But of course it is. 

It actually isn't. Moral realism is the overwhelming position of academia.  It's hotly debated by plebs like us, but more or less taken for granted elsewise.

True, I was probably wrong to say that it was greatly disputed, since there is a consensus of realism. But it's still disputed, of course. As is much of philosophy.

(March 16, 2026 at 11:56 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(March 16, 2026 at 7:19 pm)Disagreeable Wrote: Well for me personally I think that the fact that engaging in some actions or following some rules tend to increase suffering and engaging in some actions or following some rules tend to decrease suffering are examples of moral facts.

But there are other theories. Some philosophers think that moral facts are non-natural abstract facts that we can know through intuition. There is a philosopher, Michael Huemer, for example, who has said that if moral realism isn't true then if nobody thought that recreational baby torture was wrong then it wouldn't be wrong but it would clearly be wrong no matter what anybody thinks, so that's one example of a moral fact, therefore moral realism is true.

Personally I don't think that non-naturalism is plausible. And I don't think that intuition is enough to know that moral facts exist. I think that we can know what's good and bad phenomenologically through our experiences of happiness or suffering, and then we can know that encouraging actions that decrease overall suffering is moral and encouraging actions that increase overall suffering is immoral, for example.

Even that relies upon an individual defining the minimization of suffering as a moral good, which is of necessity a subjective definition.

I'm not sure what it even means to say that something is a moral good but it maximizes suffering or that something is a moral bad but it minimizes suffering.

All definitions are subjective. That doesn't stop there from being objective facts regarding what those definitions refer to.

(March 17, 2026 at 4:20 am)Paleophyte Wrote: Your 'moral facts' are nothing more than the latest trend.

This just begs the question.

(March 17, 2026 at 11:46 am)Disagreeable Wrote: I'm not sure what it even means to say that something is a moral good but it maximizes suffering or that something is a moral bad but it minimizes suffering.

All definitions are subjective. That doesn't stop there from being objective facts regarding what those definitions refer to.

... and that doesn't stop those opinions being subjective.

In point of fact, nothing can be concluded in this discussion, which renders it mental masturbation, really.