Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

[DLJ]

Thanks for the reply.

I still think that the Rob/Khem disconnect lies somewhere in the definitions or the view of what morality is for... but I'll play along to see where this line of questioning leads.  It might be fun.

Sure.

I guess I'm not seeing the relevance of moral facts.  Moral fiction can be equally as useful in reaching a consensus.

Moral facts are as relevant and useful as any other fact when it comes to making an informed decision, in my opinion.  
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Currently my gut instinct is telling me that I should go further and declare that the term 'moral facts' is oxymoronic.  I could be wrong and I'm open to being convinced otherwise.  

I'm basing this on the definition you provided earlier in post #117: "a thing that is indisputably the case."  Something might be OK by one person (i.e. no 'morality system' alerts are firing) and not OK by another person (their senses are tingling away like crazy).  So there's 'disputable' right there.

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So can moral subjectivity. 
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Perhaps we can leave aside the term 'subjectivity' for now.  We are obviously not using it in the same sense.  E.g.:

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Community ethics, for example..is necessarily more subjective than autonomy ethics (and this is a good thing). 
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I would argue that Autonomy ethics is the more selfish of the two.

Confusing, right?  This is why the terms 'objective' and 'subjective' have been relegated / reserved for types of metrics.

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Moral fiction can be effective, absolutely.  So can moral subjectivity.  There are a wide range of situations where it may not matter...or matter much, whether you're in possession of moral fact, moral fiction, or a meaningfully subjective moral opinion.  OFC, when it would be nice to have moral facts, for an informed decision.....
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OK, so it seems that here, 'moral facts' is being used in two ways:
1. Classification: An output of a Knowledge Management process where 'moral' is the information category and 'facts' is the information itself.  'A moral' being used in the sense of "a lesson that can be derived from a story or experience."    
2. Trigger: A 'moral fact' (indisputable to the individual, at least initially) would be the input to the Event Management process that would lead to an action; an input to the decision-making process.

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If we're talking about something (we are)
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With you so far.

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and one of those somethings is wellbeing (it is)
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I guess so. Well-being (quality of life) would certainly be balance-related... only topped, perhaps, by Continuity (individual survival and reproduction - quantity of life).

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and propositions about wellbeing can be labeled true or false (they can be)

Fine with that, limited though it is.  It's still likely to be conditional.

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then there is at least the possibility of a moral fact.

Only if the underlying epistemology has validity, soundness, reliability etc. Otherwise it would still be disputable and therefore not a fact, by definition.

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..............does a hemi-semi-demi-educated, professional opinion make use of facts?  Can it be constructed without one?
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Yes and yes.

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I think it might be helpful to [separate] the issues of whether or not there is such a thing as a moral fact and what utility they have. [It's] come up a couple of times now...but... a moral fact being useless would still be a moral fact.  A useful moral fiction would still not be a fact.  [A lot] of worry about some other foot falling or what we would use them for is just getting in the way.

There really is no other foot.  It may not be useful (other things may even be more effective).  
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  You lost me a bit with the feet thing, there.

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 Moral realism simply states that at least some moral statements purport to report facts, and insomuch as they get those facts right, they are true or false.
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So some do and some don't (whoop-de-do)... and here we are referring to facts as an output of the decision-making process e.g. It is a fact that I, personally, have decided that starving my family is not conducive with their well-being.

Fair enough.  It says nothing about whether there should be a general rule about this i.e. that I should be concerned about whether or not anyone else agrees with me or I should lose any sleep over the nutritional in-take of families on the other side of the planet.  

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 I note that you've mentioned a sense of balance or equilibrium.  This isn't a competing position for moral realism or harm based moral realism.  Balance, or [equilibrium], is a rough metric of desert.
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I meant it in the sense of balance being the evolutionary basis of the morality system... i.e. mind/mental stability / centre of gravity and thresholds (tipping points).  'Proximity' is another key factor.  

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[Here's] where I would turn that question around.   What else would it be?  If any other statement purports to report a fact, and does get those facts right, we call it true.  So, what else would a moral fact be, but a fact, if there are or can be facts?

Conversely, if there can't be moral facts...why?  What about a moral fact makes it a "non-fact" when any other statement of [its] type -is- a fact?

I think I covered that above.  'A fact' (indisputable) is a fact.  'A moral' (a lesson that can be derived from a story or experience) is a moral. 'Moral' in the sense of the category of 'rightness or wrongness' will be different for any given individual regarding what that category contains.

Moral fact as truth ... this seems to be an unholy (literally) alliance of philosophy and science.
Facts (data and information) can be determined to be indisputable using the scientific method.
Truth (a label (T, F, T∧F, ¬(T∨F)) for a proposition for a given epistemology) belongs to the domain of philosophy and programmers (who will tell you that they are gods).

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A couple of pedantic questions...
I notice that you use this syntactic format ' -word- '... I'm guessing that this is for emphasis?  I've never seen anyone use that before, is it common in your part of the world?  Where I come from that would be the same as ' (word) '. On the demised forum we had a South African guy who would use ' *word* ' for emphasis which I took to be a local thing.  
Also, were you on TTA as a user called Bucky Ball.  He'd been corrected so many times on his swapping around of it's vs. its that by the end I'd decided that he was doing it on purpose just to annoy the forum's pedants.  

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