Atheism and Ethics

[Lucian]

It sure seems like there are objective differences on the moral spectrum between building a bionic limb for a three legged puppy and skullfucking my neighbors.

Here's a pump for you.  Perhaps it could only be the case that there were no objective differences between those two acts if there was some super powerful genie majicking the world into a perpetually counterfactual state in every moment everywhere.  Such that you couldn't so much as complete any fact-statement about anything before it was somehow™ untrue.  I start a breath by thinking my name is john but by the end of the exhale the past has been rewritten and my name is bill.

Yep, I recognise that it seems that way to me also. But on what basis do you take that seeming to be true? As in, do you just rely on the seeming to be the case and stop there, or can you ground it in something else? To lots of people it just seems like there must be a higher power or a god of some sort
Not too sure about your genie example…

[Angrboda]

Appearances can be deceiving. An interesting question is, if there is naturalistic morality, and we have evolved intuitions that align with the good in nature, in what way did that good bring selective pressures to bear on the evolution of our intuitions. It doesn't seem like there is a ready story which explains the natural selection of moral intuitions even if morality is imbued in nature. On the other hand, we don't question our intuitions concerning logic and things like the principle of non-contradiction or our mathematical intuitions, and those seem to present similar challenges.

[Lucian]

Appearances can be deceiving.  An interesting question is, if there is naturalistic morality, and we have evolved intuitions that align with the good in nature, in what way did that good bring selective pressures to bear on the evolution of our intuitions.  It doesn't seem like there is a ready story which explains the natural selection of moral intuitions even if morality is imbued in nature.  On the other hand, we don't question our intuitions concerning logic and things like the principle of non-contradiction or our mathematical intuitions, and those seem to present similar challenges.

Agreed that the causal power of proposed moral properties / values seems difficult to understand - I am curious how people would argue for that. 

Could there be a relevant difference though between moral reasoning and mathematical or logical thought? I am not sure that it is the case that accurately reasoning according to logic or mathematics is much more than a useful way to achieve a goal or solve a problem. If I want to get a right answer, mathematics and logic will help in some situations. I don’t see how it would be wrong to choose not to reason correctly, it wouldn’t lead to useful results, but that isn’t the same as not acting morally is supposed to be. 
I am on holiday next week and am planning on reading Terence Cuneo’s Normative Web, I think he will be arguing the way you have there.

[The Grand Nudger]

Practically? Yeah. I don't run through complicated moral arguments in my head when I find a lost wallet. Dilemma is time sensitive and decency has a best-by date. Epistemologically? The same basis as or when I take any other seeming-thing to be true. Moral facts in metaethical objectivity are non-novel. To a metaethical objectivist, the statement "x is good" is just like the statement "nyx is a black cat".

Let's suppose that I'm blind. A noncognitivist error theory of biological inadequacy. In this case it would be difficult for me to ascertain the true state of nyx's color value. Nevertheless, there is some true state - and, if we're being charitable, there are ways to figure out the color of a thing that do not rely on sight. Let's suppose that it's my personal and strongly held opinion that all cats are white. A subjectivist error theory of value expectation. It would be uncomfortable for me to find a black cat - but I would have to simply accept that things are not as I thought they were. Let's suppose that I live a dystopian hellhole with the woke mind virus, and calling a cat black is no longer acceptable. A relativist error theory of contemporary norms. We are to use the term "blue", instead. Thus, "nyx is black" is now politically incorrect, and the politically correct statement is "nyx is blue". The cats coat will not have changed color.

[Lucian]

Practically?  Yeah.  I don't run through complicated moral arguments in my head when I find a lost wallet.  Dilemma is time sensitive and decency has a best-by date.  Epistemologically? The same basis as or when I take any other seeming-thing to be true.  Moral facts in metaethical objectivity are non-novel.  To a metaethical objectivist, the statement "x is good" is just like the statement "nyx is a black cat".  

Just because you think that it is like the statement that “nyx is a black cat” doesn’t need to be justified for you to be rational in believing that and acting on it. I am trying to work out though why I should assume that that is correct rather than just accepting it though. My Christian friends say the same about their belief in a god; I just don’t accept that these days.
If I understand the rest of your argument correctly you are arguing that the difficulty in knowing something is not the same as that thing not being the case? So for each example of a different way of approaching the issue there just is a cat of a certain colour - if people don’t believe that for whatever reason then that is a problem with them. That is a useful analogy for how things would be if you are correct about moral values, but doesn’t seem (and might not be intended as ?) like an argument for the blackness of the cat itself, just that not knowing something doesn’t disprove it.  
Do you see a principled distinction between your acceptance of mind-independent moral values and claims of deistic gods?

[The Grand Nudger]

If I understand the rest of your argument correctly you are arguing that the difficulty in knowing something is not the same as that thing not being the case?

Sure, about sums it up, yeah.  Tying it in with Angrboda's comments I think it's true that objective realisms difficulty is epistemological rather than metaethical- but I obviously believe that we can overcome that difficulty in at least some cases - why would I not include moral ones when those moral cases are identical to any other assertion of qualified fact?  IE, when (not if...) moral facts are non-novel facts.  

So for each example of a different way of approaching the issue there just is a cat of a certain colour - if people don’t believe that for whatever reason then that is a problem with them.

It's possible.  The list of things people didn't believe in because there was something wrong with them is vast and consequential.  Though there's a more generous appraisal available to objective realists and objective realists alone.  They are morally incorrect because they just don't know some pertinent fact about x.  There's nothing wrong with them - they've just never seen a black cat.  In my dystopian hellhole example there are probably alot of people who have - and so their revision is motivated by something else.  Boots on faces do the trick, historically speaking.  Discard these people, as they are not genuine relativists.  They see the cat is black plain as day, just like me (us).  That they say otherwise is not an issue of seeming or of objective reality.  It's an issue of not getting skullfucked by the powers that be.  Looking further in, there will be people who have never seen a black cat, and so, the Ministry of Truth's declaration that there is no such thing will not be...for them...in spite of an apparent fact.  It may even be the only thing they know about black cats.  We don't need duplicity or defect to explain their (hypothetical) counterfactual position that nyx is not black.  

That is a useful analogy for how things would be if you are correct about moral values, but doesn’t seem (and might not be intended as ?) like an argument for the blackness of the cat itself, just that not knowing something doesn’t disprove it.  Do you see a principled distinction between your acceptance of mind-independent moral values and claims of deistic gods?

Sure.  One is a field paper on the production of catawba grapes in semi-arid climates, and the other is a listicle about which cheese to pair with what wine.

[Lucian]

If I understand the rest of your argument correctly you are arguing that the difficulty in knowing something is not the same as that thing not being the case?

Sure, about sums it up, yeah.  Tying it in with Angrboda's comments I think it's true that objective realisms difficulty is epistemological rather than metaethical- but I obviously believe that we can overcome that difficulty in at least some cases - why would I not include moral ones when those moral cases are identical to any other assertion of qualified fact?  IE, when (not if...) moral facts are non-novel facts.  

My issue here is still trying to understand how you think you are overcoming the difficulty in knowledge without begging the question regarding the existence of the thing you believe in. 
Can you clarify how moral claims are identical to any other assertion of qualified facts? With such qualified facts we can normally investigate and demonstrate in some way, but I am not sure what that would look like with moral facts. It still seems that the same arguments are used for the existence of gods

I am genuinely not trying to argue that you are wrong - just not sure what the positive case for their truth is (more reading to be done so that is on me not you).

That is a useful analogy for how things would be if you are correct about moral values, but doesn’t seem (and might not be intended as ?) like an argument for the blackness of the cat itself, just that not knowing something doesn’t disprove it.  Do you see a principled distinction between your acceptance of mind-independent moral values and claims of deistic gods?

Sure.  One is a field paper on the production of catawba grapes in semi-arid climates, and the other is a listicle about which cheese to pair with what wine.

Ok, I am genuinely puzzled by that!

[The Grand Nudger]

I think...that you're wondering..how I overcome any and all logical challenges to a given moral schema. The short answer is that I don't. I accept the limitations of those things I advocate for. The possible and existential ambiguities. I think that's the only honest or genuine thing to do.

So, when I think about moral facts - I think it's a necessarily small set. There are more things...and many more things...in the world...than moral things. This is sometimes called minimal or skinny realism. There is a large set of moral assertions. The vast majority are false in-fact. Some portion are ambiguous. There is at least or could be one (or some small number) that are true..and true-in-fact. In my experience, the moral landscape is so cluttered that it's often useful to do even a brief one by one about moral assertions and facts in order to pick out subtle but consequential differences in a given schema. Pick some specific moral assertion - I'll just tell you what I think...and the whys can be easily drilled down..or not..in which case..I'm in error..and the assertion to fact was not a fact, in-fact. Objectively speaking

[Lucian]

I think...that you're wondering..how I overcome any and all logical challenges to a given moral schema.  The short answer is that I don't.  I accept the limitations of those things I advocate for.  The possible and existential ambiguities.  I think that's the only honest or genuine thing to do.  

That is totally fair. I don’t have completely compelling reasons for a lot of what I believe. If I were to go back to my Christian friends though and say that there is objective morality without god as it seems that way then they will reject that. I agree with your points that not believing something doesn’t make it false; but that again is what they say about their god.

So, when I think about moral facts - I think it's a necessarily small set. There are more things...and many more things...in the world...than moral things. This is sometimes called minimal or skinny realism. There is a large set of moral assertions. The vast majority are false in-fact. Some portion are ambiguous. There is at least or could be one (or some small number) that are true..and true-in-fact. In my experience, the moral landscape is so cluttered that it's often useful to do even a brief one by one about moral assertions and facts in order to pick out subtle but consequential differences in a given schema. Pick some specific moral assertion - I'll just tell you what I think...and the whys can be easily drilled down..or not..in which case..I'm in error..and the assertion to fact was not a fact, in-fact. Objectively speaking

I think that this is a good position explaining moral disagreement being compatible with moral realism, but only if we accept moral realism to begin with. I think that the argument from moral disagreement is often too readily accepted. Perhaps societies differ because of self-interest by their leaders for example, and this influences how people think. That wouldn’t mean that there was no truth that they are departing from.  


Perhaps a different direction could be interesting here. With is we assume that moral realism is true, how do you see these properties influencing the world? Do they somehow motivate people to act, or do they simply exist as a standard like a standardised measurement that we can be closer to or not? If there is some motivational input how does that happen and if it is just like a standard measurement, why should we care if we are close or not?

[The Grand Nudger]

Christians say alot of things about their god, most of it nonsense. There may be something wrong with them that no amount of discussion can fix.