Subjective Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

* Knowing that, about me, helps to explain how it comes to be that a militant greenie like myself can affirm the fundamental validity of the polluters position.  It might be an instructive example, because I do have realist moral opinions on environmentalism, but that certainly doesn't lead to or imply what alot of folks who object to realism clearly think it does....and a firm commitment to fact based consideration gets me into shit with environmental hardliners, lol.  

If the destruction of this planet lead to flourishing (and it does) - then that's a natural fact that I have to contend with in my moral appraisal.  I don't like it, and if we could get the same effect without the destruction of this planet (which, ofc, I contend will at least eventually lead to the greatest possible misery for the largest number of creatures) then I'd prefer to go that route and think that we have both a practical motivation and a moral duty to go that route instead.....but not on account of some damned rock floating in space.  Until we can actually pull that off, however..I have to deal with the reality of the situation and make choices between a field of exclusively suboptimal courses of action.

As a realist, I will actively choose to do some amount of harm to prevent a larger amount of harm or produce a meaningfully greater amount of flourishing.  Realism is not absolutism.  Things are right or wrong -only- with respect to what true mind independent beliefs justify that classification.  To a realist, it can be right to do some thing that would, if the facts were otherwise, be wrong.  IOW, if things were different my moral conclusion would be different.  Meanwhile, my mind dependent preference and deeply caring for a greener world is not sufficient to warrant a moral conclusion in and of itself.  

Maybe...someday, I'll snap.  If..in 40 years, I turn on the teevee and there are still wingnuts denying climate change as I plant cocoa trees in the foothills of appalachia....I'm going to lose my shit.  I might seriously consider destructive and subversive action.  I'll know that what I'm doing is wrong on it's own merits (after all, what did the 3rd shift security guy at the plant do to deserve going up with the factory?)..but I'll rationalize my actions by maintaining that I'm doing the wrong thing for the right reasons and saw no other way to effect change. That my wrong could produce a greater right.

There was a much shorter way of explaining all of that (like there usually is) - I think that the destruction of a species of mosquito is distasteful and potentially unwise....but I don't think it's incontrovertably immoral. I can sit here and rail and rail and rail against it from the point of my personal preferences and predilections..-my subjective positions- but at the end of the day, I'll have to concede to the mosquito killer that while I disagree with his course of action...he isn't a bad person, or doing something immoral, in spraying the little fuckers. In particularly hard hit areas, I might even concede that it's a downright heroic act, lol. Scouring the countryside for bugs so that some (many millions of) kids don't get malaria, lol.

[bennyboy]

Someone might have to do that..for someone to do something about it - yes.  No one has to care for something to be right or wrong, though, again.  Still not seeing what a god is supposed to add or subtract?  Let's bring back our cat!

Is a cat only a cat if you care?
Is a cat only a cat if there is a god in the room?
If you didn't care, would a cat cease to be a cat?
If a god wasn't in a room, would a cat cease to be a cat?

None of these represents a subjective value judgment which someone is pretending to be objective.

You can disagree with me all you like about harm being a relevant metric for whats right or wrong...but that's not exactly going to be an argument in good faith..and your disagreement doesn't matter to me (remember, I'm a realist, an opinion and five bucks will buy you a cup of coffee in realism land).  I don't need you to agree, and I don't need you to care, for any of my moral propositions to be true.   They need only refer to a belief which I hold to be true, which is true, and refers to a natural externality.  I believe that harm exists.  Harm does exist.  Harm can be objectively demonstrated in the natural world.  When I tell you that x is wrong, I'm referring to a bunch of things that, together, amount to moral naturalism.  You can refer to other things if you like (and harm isn't the only thing I refer to, either)..and all that will mean is that you aren't a moral naturalist.  

You haven't explained the nature of your is/ought bridge. What is it? And once you explain that, perhaps explain why you made it.

(a non naturalist, also not at all a god based position but still realism...could just tell you that if you're incapable of perceiving some moral fact of the sensible world..your faculties are malfunctioning or insufficient.  It's nothing more or less than a failure to identify a cat when you see one.  It's still a cat, you're just busted.  Similarly, your less than credible contention that you have no moral motivation..just another demonstration that you're busted.)

Have I said I have no moral motivation? That doesn't sound like something I'd say at all.

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As a realist, I will actively choose to do some amount of harm to prevent a larger amount of harm or produce a meaningfully greater amount of flourishing.

. . . like allowing the tortuous imprisonment and murder of animals, in order to prevent the more important harm of a man not having a hamburger-- what with the average American wasting away to a skeletal frame?

And I don't say this to be mean, but to show that mores kind of seem to line up with what people want. It's almost like mores are an expression of desires or something. It seems strange to me that we will put a man in jail for an i-Phone, but tear young mammals away from their mothers and shoot bolts through their brains so we can put them on a bun, and never look back.

Or how is it that the US has bombed thousands of brown people at funerals, weddings, even children's school buses (indirectly through arms sales at least), and nobody gives a shit unless it makes a good soundbyte for someone's campaign? But then when some Muslim shows up with a couple pounds of dynamite and a ski-mask, we are morally outraged at the terrorism?

What happened to harm as a metric for morality? Should it be limited only to people? Only to Americans? White people? Rich white people?

My point is that when we're surrounded by like-minded individuals, morality starts to SEEM objective, because there's relatively little variation from individual to individual. But actually-- it's just a bunch of rules we make up as we go along. There's no science to it, no objective truth behind it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Someone might have to do that..for someone to do something about it - yes.  No one has to care for something to be right or wrong, though, again.  Still not seeing what a god is supposed to add or subtract?  Let's bring back our cat!

Is a cat only a cat if you care?
Is a cat only a cat if there is a god in the room?
If you didn't care, would a cat cease to be a cat?
If a god wasn't in a room, would a cat cease to be a cat?

None of these represents a subjective value judgment which someone is pretending to be objective.

-and neither does my contention that rape causes harm.  I don't have to pretend that this is objectively true, it can be demonstrated to be so, regardless of what my or anyone else's opinion of the matter is, whether anyone cares, or whether gods exist.  

My moral proposition is just as objective as any of those statements..and you still haven't addressed you own failed objection.  Can you tell me that a cat would not be a cat if you didn't care, or if there wasn't a god in the room?  If you can't...... then we're done with the both the skydaddy and the caring shit.  

Aren't we?  Though, I'm going to go ahead and register my displeasure here..because I know that even though it's doa..you'll just try it again in a few pages, lol.

You haven't explained the nature of your is/ought bridge.  What is it?  And once you explain that, perhaps explain why you made it.

The same as the nature of -any- is/ought bridge...facts in combination with at least one evaluative premise.  That is what is/ought is..though many people in this thread (and others - and a whole bunch of religitards....) are under the impression that the term referred to the impossibility of deriving an ought from an is. I have explained this, at length.  Though it may have been before you came in.

Have I said I have no moral motivation?  That doesn't sound like something I'd say at all.

That's twice you've denied something I could just quote you on.  I get that both times, upon reflection, the comments have become untenable, and that there's at least the possibility that you communicated yourself poorly or weren't aware of the implications of the statements or hypotheticals.  Frankly, that's become par for the thread..in what's turned out to be a giant knot of confusion and misconceptions about meta-ethical positions. : shrugs :

I'll cap this one by repeating something vulcan said earlier. A realist isn't telling you that their moral propositions are more real, more true, or more objective than other real, true, and objective stuff...they're telling you that they are exactly as real, true, and objective as all of the other real, true, and objective stuff. They're telling you that moral propositions can be like that, like other types of knowledge. So..find me some objection that I couldn't leverage against you knowing your own name, some objection that I couldn't leverage against the idea that other people exist.....then we'll be on to something. Moral realism stands or falls with all other knowledge -like that-. If moral realism falls..that does too, and we're all wrong about a bunch of shit for the same reasons.

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As a realist, I will actively choose to do some amount of harm to prevent a larger amount of harm or produce a meaningfully greater amount of flourishing.

. . . like allowing the tortuous imprisonment and murder of animals, in order to prevent the more important harm of a man not having a hamburger-- what with the average American wasting away to a skeletal frame?

Yup.  Exactly like that.  Except without all the torture shit..though, at the end of the day we're gonna hit the cow over the head with a brick so all of the ethical treatment in the world will have to eventually confront that fact.  

And I don't say this to be mean, but to show that mores kind of seem to line up with what people want.  It's almost like mores are an expression of desires or something.  It seems strange to me that we will put a man in jail for an i-Phone, but tear young mammals away from their mothers and shoot bolts through their brains so we can put them on a bun, and never look back.

The current status of livestock production is about as far away from what I want as it could be.  Not only are we doing things I think are bad ideas (and even immoral ideas)..we're doing them to the wrong fucking species of animal for a whole host of reasons..lol.  So this example..isn't an example of the failure of moral realism..but the failure of moral agents to make moral choices consistent with moral realism.  

Breaking News! Human beings are flawed and inconsistent creatures!

This just in! We sometimes have compelling reasons to do The Bad Thing™.

Or how is it that the US has bombed thousands of brown people at funerals, weddings, even children's school buses (indirectly through arms sales at least), and nobody gives a shit unless it makes a good soundbyte for someone's campaign?  But then when some Muslim shows up with a couple pounds of dynamite and a ski-mask, we are morally outraged at the terrorism?

It's probably not true that no one gives a shit (and I'm not actually morally outraged by terrorism, at least not categorically)..not that it would matter if it were to a realist....for the umpteenth time.  

What happened to harm as a metric for morality?  Should it be limited only to people?  Only to Americans?  White people?  Rich white people?

How about no?

My point is that when we're surrounded by like-minded individuals, morality starts to SEEM objective, because there's relatively little variation from individual to individual.  But actually-- it's just a bunch of rules we make up as we go along.  There's no science to it, no objective truth behind it.

You're talking about intersubjective moral failure.  Moral realists also consider this a failure.

[vulcanlogician]

It's a statement of belief. "I believe I'm looking at a cat." or "I believe that what I'm looking at is a cat." or (if you like) "I believe the cat is there."

I'm not so sure that's true.  It assumes some archetypal cat-truth ontology that is either true or false.  But "I'm looking at a cat" is true if you're having that experience, whether it's in a dream, in the Matrix, or in a material monist Universe.

Where we go wrong is in conflating contexts.  If I see a dream cat, and think it's walking down Main Street, I'm still very much seeing a cat.  But nobody else is likely to say that they see it.

Belief is a properly basic term.

The term “belief”, in standard philosophical usage, [does not] imply any uncertainty or any extended reflection about the matter in question (as it sometimes does in ordinary English usage). Many of the things we believe, in the relevant sense, are quite mundane: that we have heads, that it's the 21st century, that a coffee mug is on the desk. Forming beliefs is thus one of the most basic and important features of the mind, and the concept of belief plays a crucial role in both philosophy of mind and epistemology.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

My cat example tried to respond to your previous post where you said you had sensory impressions of eyes, fur, etc. If you see a cat (even in a dream) you believe you are looking at a cat... even if the cat is imaginary. But this is getting needlessly confusing.

If you see a cat on your kitchen table and you say "There is a cat on my kitchen table"--that is a belief statement.

Let's look at a different example. Let's say you have a wild and crazy party at your house one night. You and a friend of your wake up at 7am after having passed out on the living room floor. Rising up from the floor, you and your friend find that you are quite hungover and the two of you decide to go into the kitchen and make some coffee to alleviate your massive headaches.

As you walk into the kitchen you are greeted with the strong, odious stench of vomit.

1) If you turn to your friend and say, "Blehhhhh!" this is an expression of your reaction to the smell. (This is what the non-cognitivist thinks that moral judgements are.)

2) If you turn to your friend and say, "Somebody threw up in my kitchen!" This is a belief statement. You are taking a cognitivist mode of thinking. Even if you walk into the kitchen and see a pile of vomit on the floor, your saying, "Somebody threw up in my kitchen," is still a belief statement. You are not expressing a reaction to the vomit, you are expressing a belief about its existence/how it got there. In other words, you are a cognitivist about the puke.

3) To anticipate a potential objections from your direction: Why can't it be both? When if you walk into your kitchen, encounter the smell and then say: ""Somebody threw up in my kitchen. Blehhhhh!" You would still be a cognitivist in this case, but you would have simply tacked on an expression of disgust to your belief statement.

Now let's go back to morality. When someone says, "It was wrong to for you to feel up that girl while she was sleeping. That's disgusting!" Here is a belief statement (maybe) coupled with an emotive statement. To the non-cognitivist, both of the sentences mean the same thing. They are both emotionally expressivistic in nature.

To the cognitivist, the two sentences are different in nature. The first sentence is a belief statement. The second sentence is expressivistic. (Both cognitivist and non-cognitivist agree about the second sentence, btw). Even if you admit to being a cognitivist, that doesn't make you a moral realist. You could, for instance, be a relativist or an error theorist. BTW, which are you?

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To a realist such as myself, I distinguish the two sentences. If I say the first sentence, ""It was wrong to for you to feel up that girl while she was sleeping." Someone could ask me: "Why is it wrong?" And I could answer: "Because it undermines her autonomy" (Kantian ethics) -or- "It was contrary to her wishes that you do so," (desire satisfaction theory). The point is: there are reasons.

If I say the second sentence: "That's disgusting!" I could not provide reasons as I could with the first sentence. That's because the second sentence is expressivistic. I merely added my emotional reaction to the belief statement, but the second sentence is NOT a belief statement.

Also, it's worth pointing out that there are more sociopaths out there than we like to admit. Only people with a moral compass CARE about the girl's autonomy. There are a great many people who only find fault with the act because they are conformists. We're not talking about them. We're talking about people who actually care about the wrongness of the action. Do THEY make belief statements when they deliver moral judgements?

[bennyboy]

That's twice you've denied something I could just quote you on.  I get that both times, upon reflection, the comments have become untenable, and that there's at least the possibility that you communicated yourself poorly or weren't aware of the implications of the statements or hypotheticals. 

Quote it.

I'll cap this one by repeating something vulcan said earlier.  A realist isn't telling you that their moral propositions are more real, more true, or more objective than other real, true, and objective stuff...they're telling you that they are exactly as real, true, and objective as all of the other real, true, and objective stuff.  They're telling you that moral propositions can be like that, like other types of knowledge. So..find me some objection that I couldn't leverage against you knowing your own name, some objection that I couldn't leverage against the idea that other people exist.....then we'll be on to something.  Moral realism stands or falls with all other knowledge -like that-.  If moral realism falls..that does too, and we're all wrong about a bunch of shit for the same reasons.

Conflating ideas about ought with meowing and fur provides a pretty impoverished view of the relationship between subjective agency and morality. It should be pretty evident that morality is probably multiple levels of abstraction away from pussy-petting, and if not that then at least one-- in order to form an OUGHT about a cat, you need first the perception of a cat, and then an abstraction about its value. Never the twain shall meet, and to equate them is a category error.

[Angrboda]

"When the law is against you, argue the facts.  When the facts are against you, argue the law.  When both are against you, argue about the meaning of words."  

[The Grand Nudger]

Who's conflating anything?  A realist is simply telling you that the facts which comprise their moral positions are exactly like cat facts.  Their oughts, are like everyone else's oughts.

Facts, combined with an evaluative premise.  

............?

Do we both agree that cats and harm exist? Do we both agree that cats and harm are mind independent? You can object to my use of harm as (at least one of) my evaluative premises...but if you're objecting to the existence of harm and harmful things...then there really can't be any productive discussion between us. If you think that cats are mind independent in some way that harm isn't..then what you require.... is an argument to -that- effect.

If we both agree that cats and harm both exist and that this existence is a mind independent fact (iow, it doesn't actually matter whether I, personally, believe it) and you would instead object to my use of harm as a valid evaluative metric or premise..then you need an argument for that.

You'll have to explain why, and how, harm isn't a valid metric for moral propositions.

(full disclosure, it would be an academic endeavour at best, since I'm also a moral pluralist and can derive my moral conclusions by working..instead of from the bottom as I have been..from the top by reference to consequence or utility..or even deontological values. Like a biologist, for example...I don't think that any single moral fact provides a full description of morality anymore than any single biological fact provides a full description of biology.)

[bennyboy]

Who's conflating anything?  A realist is simply telling you that the facts which comprise their moral positions are exactly like cat facts.  Their oughts, are like everyone else's oughts.

If a realist cannot see that abstract ideas and the perception of cats are a different category, then they have a pretty poor understanding of the experience of mind. In addition to moral ideas, you might as well add that God and invisible pink unicorns are no more or no less real than cats-- cuz, you know, they're all just facts. Right?

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Who's conflating anything?  A realist is simply telling you that the facts which comprise their moral positions are exactly like cat facts.  Their oughts, are like everyone else's oughts.

Facts, combined with an evaluative premise.  

............?

Do we both agree that cats and harm exist?  Do we both agree that cats and harm are mind independent?  You can object to my use of harm as (at least one of) my evaluative premises...but if you're objecting to the existence of harm and harmful things...then there really can't be any productive discussion between us.  If you think that cats are mind independent in some way that harm isn't..then what you require.... is an argument to -that- effect.

If we both agree that cats and harm both exist and that this existence is a mind independent fact (iow, it doesn't actually matter whether I, personally, believe it) and you would instead object to my use of harm as a valid evaluative metric or premise..then you need an argument for that.  

You'll have to explain why, and how, harm isn't a valid metric for moral propositions.

(full disclosure, it would be an academic endeavour at best, since I'm also a moral pluralist and can derive my moral conclusions by working..instead of from the bottom as I have been..from the top by reference to consequence or utility..or even deontological values.  Like a biologist, for example...I don't think that any single moral fact provides a full description of morality anymore than any single biological fact provides a full description of biology.)

You are still conflating two kinds of "facts": those about something which you are considering morally, and those which are intrinsically moral in nature.  The former is meaningless since any objective state can be considered in a million different contexts, and the latter non-existent.

I'm still waiting for a description of your bridge between is/ought.  How do you go from "X is harm" to "we shouldn't do X"?

[The Grand Nudger]

If a realist cannot see that abstract ideas and the perception of cats are a different category, then they have a pretty poor understanding of the experience of mind.  In addition to moral ideas, you might as well add that God and invisible pink unicorns are no more or no less real than cats-- cuz, you know, they're all just facts.  Right?

............................as I've told you many times..saying "they're abstract ideas" doesn't threaten realism.  Moral non naturalism is a realist position.  It just so happens that I, unlike the dualists and idealists who might hold to that position..think that my abstract ideas are referent to things in the natural world.   Here again, repeating something that's been said multiple times - it's unclear how moral realism is different from realism in general. Either you think our ideas refer to something, or you don't....and that's really all there is to that. Even a subjectivist believes that moral ideas and moral facts are referent........

There's no polite way to say this..but you have absolutely no purchase into any position with your objection here - you're just blurting things out and repeating yourself regardless of what response you get. All cognitivist positions on morality agree that moral propositions express ideas. Our beliefs. You've already agreed to cognitivism, and so has a moral realist.

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Who's conflating anything?  A realist is simply telling you that the facts which comprise their moral positions are exactly like cat facts.  Their oughts, are like everyone else's oughts.

Facts, combined with an evaluative premise.  

............?

Do we both agree that cats and harm exist?  Do we both agree that cats and harm are mind independent?  You can object to my use of harm as (at least one of) my evaluative premises...but if you're objecting to the existence of harm and harmful things...then there really can't be any productive discussion between us.  If you think that cats are mind independent in some way that harm isn't..then what you require.... is an argument to -that- effect.

If we both agree that cats and harm both exist and that this existence is a mind independent fact (iow, it doesn't actually matter whether I, personally, believe it) and you would instead object to my use of harm as a valid evaluative metric or premise..then you need an argument for that.  

You'll have to explain why, and how, harm isn't a valid metric for moral propositions.

(full disclosure, it would be an academic endeavour at best, since I'm also a moral pluralist and can derive my moral conclusions by working..instead of from the bottom as I have been..from the top by reference to consequence or utility..or even deontological values.  Like a biologist, for example...I don't think that any single moral fact provides a full description of morality anymore than any single biological fact provides a full description of biology.)

You are still conflating two kinds of "facts": those about something which you are considering morally, and those which are intrinsically moral in nature.  The former is meaningless since any objective state can be considered in a million different contexts, and the latter non-existent.

I'm still waiting for a description of your bridge between is/ought.  How do you go from "X is harm" to "we shouldn't do X"?

So, we don't both agree that cats and harm exist...or..what?  Why are you still waiting for something that you've already been presented with?  A realists ought is the same as anyone else's ought.  A fact in combination with an evaluative premise.  That's literally the only way to come up with a rational ought, lol....no matter what you might believe the status of moral ontology to be.

The reason that I have asked, again, if we agree that harm exists, is because that's the only concession I need from you to leave you in a position where you simply cannot argue with me as a realist on points of fact. If you can agree that harm exists..then even if you don't agree with my moral propositions (and even if you don't think that there's a natural world, and even if you think that most or all other moral propositions are meaningfully subjective)..it is not sensible to maintain that this is not objective. Harm really does exist, it is a mind independent fact, and because my moral proposition is based on a mind independent fact..it is an objective position, a realist position.

You see my facts, they are facts, you just don't like.....whatever.

[bennyboy]

The reason that I have asked, again, if we agree that harm exists, is because that's the only concession I need from you to leave you in a position where you simply cannot argue with me as a realist on points of fact.  If you can agree that harm exists..then even if you don't agree with my moral propositions (and even if you don't think that there's a natural world, and even if you think that most or all other moral propositions are meaningfully subjective)..it is not sensible to maintain that this is not objective.  Harm really does exist, it is a mind independent fact, and because my moral proposition is based on a mind independent fact..it  is an objective position, a realist position.

You see my facts, they are facts, you just don't like.....whatever.

My big toe exists, too, but until you can establish some reason for doing so, I'm not going to call it an objective moral fact. If for some reason you get excited about my big toe, and develop real feelings about what should be done about it, I can see that you might possibly come up with some objective fact about my big toe to support your view on your "ought" idea. But that doesn't make my big toe a moral fact, or any of the properties of it moral facts. It's just a toe, dude. The value judgment has to be supplied by you or someone else, and will most certainly be done so based on your feelings (of disgust, perhaps, or of a sense of miraculous wonder more likely).

Is a waterfall an objectively artistic waterfall if someone has decided to consider it artistically? I wouldn't say so, though some artists would likely try to argue so. But this is because they cannot conceive of a world view in which their subjective evaluation is not shared by everyone else. They therefore consider it objective. Much the same as the existence of witches, of God, of the superiority of the White Man, of the moral superiority of women, of the centrism of the Earth, and a million other wrong ideas have been considered objectively true because of systemic ignorance.