Metaethics Part 1: Cognitivism/Non-cognitivism

[DLJ]

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cognitivism, In metaethics, the thesis that the function of moral sentences (e.g., sentences in which moral terms such as “right,” “wrong,” and “ought” are used) is to describe a domain of moral facts existing independently of our subjective thoughts and feelings, and that moral statements can accordingly be thought of as objectively true or false.

https://www.britannica.com/science/cognitivism

Contrast this with noncognitivists who think "Murder is wrong" is not a fact or opinion. It is a "gut reaction" .... "Murder, bleh!" or "Murder, yuck!"
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Based on previously discussed / corrected definitions and that flow diagram, are you ok with Ethical Cognitivism and Moral Non-cognitivism as both being accounted for?

[The Grand Nudger]

@Ahriman

Objective and subjective morality are both cognitivist theories. A set of claims that can be true of an object, or true of a subject.

Cognitivist myself. We all express our moral positions as though we were cognitivists. That would be the thing about morality that interested me most, were cognitivism not a tenable moral theory. It would be something we got wrong every single time, even when we thought we were only expressing our opinions.

[Angrboda]

I'm not sure. In my mind I'm a cognitivist, but I think cognitivism is a weak stance. To my mind, in order to reason about something, you need to have both the what and the how, as it is the hows which allow us to transform one what into another what through reasoning. But morality doesn't have any good hows, just a lot of whats. So to my mind, whats without the hows, which describes most ethics, is incomplete.

[GrandizerII]

I feel like the divide between cognitivist and non-cognitivist is illusory. Emotivism doesn't seem to be meaningfully separate from error theory, for example. Per my understanding.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Cognition is objective, in a sense, as everyone has it, but each person's experience of cognition is different/subjective, therefore no objective morality, only subjective morality, so a moral claim can make sense to one person, but perhaps not to another person, so saying "I don't see how moral claims can't make sense cognitively" implies an optimism bias.

I would argue that morality is neither objective nor subjective (if such a thing is possible), rather it is artificial. They are the rules to a game—the fitness game in our case. And saying A person shouldn't murder is no different than saying A bishop shouldn't move perpendicular in chess. Games can exist at many levels and for different reasons. And I think it's more useful, and perhaps only possible, to tackle localized games rather than universal ones.

The idea of fitness payoffs helps explain why morality appears to change across cultures and across time (and even across individuals). These are localized games that are testing different strategies to achieve fitness (or some other goal). Fitness is necessarily something that changes according to fluctuations in the environment (including social environment). Therefore, one social environment requires one set of moral behaviors and another doesn't. And much like a genetic trait, any individual with a moral strategy that differs from the group either succeeds and becomes dominant or disappears from the moral pool.

ps. I think from a metaethical stand point I'm doing two things: Firstly, rejecting that there is, or at the very least can discover, a universal objective morality. Second, removing the truth/false value from moral statements—to say a moral claim is true is no different than saying the feathers on a bird are true.

[The Grand Nudger]

I feel like the divide between cognitivist and non-cognitivist is illusory. Emotivism doesn't seem to be meaningfully separate from error theory, for example. Per my understanding.

Error theory in metaethics is the position that for some reason, or no reason at all, we always get it wrong. It's usually applied to some other theory to make a more narrow claim.

Emotivism is the idea that even though we might be expressing our moral claims as facts or opinions, they're neither thing. Bad is just the sads. Good is just the happys. Etc.

Cognitivism - that moral claims are the kind of claims that can be true or false statements.

Non cognitivism - that moral claims are not the kind of claims that can be true or false statements.

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Some fun examples of the difference.

X is bad because it does cause harm. Cognitivist. Objectivist.
I believe that X causes harm, therefore it is bad. Cognitivist. Subjectivist
People in my society assert that x causes harm, therefore it is bad. Cognitivist. Relativist.

"Yuck!" Non Cognitivist. Emotivist.
Thou shalt not kill. Theological non-cognitivist. Prescriptivist.
It's illegal to kill. Secular non-cognitivist. Imperativist.

It might be that any given moral theory is incomplete...but, imo, alot of the time when people think that some given moral theory doesn't describe all moral propositions it comes down to moral systems as they are being of hybrid construction. Historically, we've taken a bit of a bunch of different sets. Thou shalt not kill, plus it's illegal to kill, plus killing is wrong, plus you shouldn't want to kill. The Big Ones, (alleged) moral propositions which you can find in every society at all times, generally boil down to things that can be established in multiple concurrent ways.

If you can identify something that most people don't like, whose prohibition is useful to society, that people feel religiously about, that accords with their apprehension, which can (at least be argued to be) established as a fact - it's completely certain that this thing will be called "wrong" no matter what it is. It could be kittens. Kittens are bad. The literal worst.

[John 6IX Breezy]

"Yuck!" Non Cognitivist. Emotivist.
Thou shalt not kill. Theological non-cognitivist. Prescriptivist.
It's illegal to kill. Secular non-cognitivist. Imperativist.

Yeah, I prefer all of these non-cognitivist views. In fact, based on your description I would consolidate them all as describing different rules for different games. Emotivist are highlighting moral intuitions within the game of fitness, Imperitavists are highlighting social norms within the games of government, and even the ten commandments aren't presented as true or false statements (murder is evil), rather they are rules within a spiritual game (don't murder).

[The Grand Nudger]

Absolutely. We do all of that stuff. The trouble for non cognitivism is that to maintain it as a metaethical theory you're claiming that no moral claim can be true or false.

That's not how our societies operate, it's not how we apprehend our own moral claims, and it would suggest that similar propositions in non moral claims, even, are also not truth apt.

Put another way, it's not uncommon to find people objecting to objective morality - but for non cognitivism to be true, subjectivism must be false. A person says that they believe in a thing for reasons x y and z. Now, you might point out their reasons are a-factual, but to deny moral subjectivism is to deny their apprehension of those things, those apprehensions as the cause of the moral claim. They don't really think what they say they think, that's not why they say "x is bad".

[John 6IX Breezy]

Hmm interesting. I'm tempted to say no moral claims can be true or false. Rather they are either good or bad at guiding behavior towards a desired outcome.

(Maybe there's a philosophical distinction I'm not aware of between something being wrong and being false: A clock that is built wrong is a bad clock, but it doesn't make sense to call it a false clock.)

[The Grand Nudger]

I can use theological non cog as an example of the shift. When we say that a things rightness or wrongness boils down to what a god said to do or not do.

The minute we care to express some reason why god said to do or not do a thing- either from that gods pov or as a feature of reality, we’re giving a cognitivist response.

For theological noncog to be true, a gods commands must be without any reason.