RE: Subjective Morality?
November 1, 2018 at 7:40 am
(This post was last modified: November 1, 2018 at 8:06 am by The Grand Nudger.)
That is not what moral realists and subjectivists are disagreeing over. It's not subjectivism, either.
Remember the first question, do our moral judgements express states of belief? Yes, you think they do. Yes, I also think they do. This is not remotely enough to demonstrate moral realism or moral subjectivism, and it's not a point of disagreement between them (or us).
But here, you insist that they are descriptions of feelings, rather than states of belief. This is a non-cognitivist objection. If it is true, then realists and subjectivists are both wrong for the same reason - and you were mistaken before in your answers to my questions. You don't actually think that you believe that x is wrong describes a state of belief. You don't actually believe that begging the question is wrong is something that you take to be true, it just makes you feel icky.
Being taught to believe something is definitely one way to initially arrive at one of the clubs...but, in a generous assumption...we sort of expect that people will, from time to time, consider the things they were taught. We can certainly say that each of us once believed something that we no longer believe, and there's a good chance that this something was something we were taught, which didn't survive decades of internal scrutiny or being subjected to the cruelties of our peers, lol.
I, for example, used to truck with moral subjectivism...and had a whole host of (the usual) misconceptions about moral realism or even what people were talking about. It didn't survive these boards. I only came to discover that by researching information which would (I thought) affirm the position I'd taken. I found that the information available not only failed to affirm my position..but that my position was fundamentally malformed. I could no longer maintain it. I abandoned that belief as false, and I couldn't have chosen otherwise. My earnest answers to the questions that defined each of them, in my case..even when I was arguing for moral subjectivism...placed me in the moral realists camp. I was simply unaware of that fact.
Obviously, in the above, there's a constant commitment to objectivism and cognitivism. I had my facts wrong about both myself and the positions I was discussing. In retrospect, it's not exactly surprising that my conclusions were...flawed...regardless of which position is true.
Remember the first question, do our moral judgements express states of belief? Yes, you think they do. Yes, I also think they do. This is not remotely enough to demonstrate moral realism or moral subjectivism, and it's not a point of disagreement between them (or us).
But here, you insist that they are descriptions of feelings, rather than states of belief. This is a non-cognitivist objection. If it is true, then realists and subjectivists are both wrong for the same reason - and you were mistaken before in your answers to my questions. You don't actually think that you believe that x is wrong describes a state of belief. You don't actually believe that begging the question is wrong is something that you take to be true, it just makes you feel icky.
(November 1, 2018 at 12:16 am)DLJ Wrote:Yeah, something like that..only we don't actually get to choose the club we join. The club we belong to is determined by our earnest answers to those specific questions which define the positions. So, for example...if you think that our moral propositions express states of belief, and that those beliefs are sometimes true, and the facts about which those beliefs are constituted (even in part) by something mind independent..then you simply -are- a moral realist (who knows what kind, the field is still pretty wide open), regardless of what you may have been taught to believe.(October 31, 2018 at 3:34 pm)Khemikal Wrote: ...
A subjectivists moral facts are facts about ...
The realists moral facts are facts about ...
I think I've got the idea now.
Thou joineth a club / choose a belief system and then thy facts will materialise before thee.
If you join the Baptist's club then these are your facts, study them well.
If you join the Islamic club then these are your facts, study them well.
If you join the... etc.
Over here, in IslaMalaysia, in conversation with a club member, I notice the switch from "I believe..." when discussing politics or relationships or other stuff at the 'social world' information layer to "Muslims believe... when talking about the quran. It means "Muslims are taught to believe...".
Being taught to believe something is definitely one way to initially arrive at one of the clubs...but, in a generous assumption...we sort of expect that people will, from time to time, consider the things they were taught. We can certainly say that each of us once believed something that we no longer believe, and there's a good chance that this something was something we were taught, which didn't survive decades of internal scrutiny or being subjected to the cruelties of our peers, lol.
I, for example, used to truck with moral subjectivism...and had a whole host of (the usual) misconceptions about moral realism or even what people were talking about. It didn't survive these boards. I only came to discover that by researching information which would (I thought) affirm the position I'd taken. I found that the information available not only failed to affirm my position..but that my position was fundamentally malformed. I could no longer maintain it. I abandoned that belief as false, and I couldn't have chosen otherwise. My earnest answers to the questions that defined each of them, in my case..even when I was arguing for moral subjectivism...placed me in the moral realists camp. I was simply unaware of that fact.
Obviously, in the above, there's a constant commitment to objectivism and cognitivism. I had my facts wrong about both myself and the positions I was discussing. In retrospect, it's not exactly surprising that my conclusions were...flawed...regardless of which position is true.
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