RE: Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?
June 12, 2019 at 6:42 pm
(This post was last modified: June 12, 2019 at 6:45 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(June 12, 2019 at 6:04 pm)SenseMaker007 Wrote: Do moral judgments express beliefs?
Yes.
Are those beliefs sometimes true?
Yes.
Are those beliefs about facts that are constituted by something other than human opinion?
Yes.
Are those facts natural facts?
Yes. (What would be a "non-natural" fact?).
What would be a non-natural fact? Does 2+2=4 need empirical evidence to be true? Is the sum of the square of a right triangle's two angles equal to the square of the hypotenuse only true if we can find an example of such a triangle in nature?
So... here is an argument for error theory that is pertinent to the question "What is a non-natural fact?"
The Argument from the Scientific Test of Reality
1. If science cannot verify the existence of X, then the best evidence tells us that X does not exist.
2. Science cannot verify the existence of objective moral values.
Therefore, the best evidence tells us that objective moral values do not exist.
[quoted from my ethics textbook]
As I see it, you can go three ways with this argument. You could accept the conclusion and be an error theorist. You could disagree with the second premise and be a moral naturalist. -OR- You could disagree with the first premise (as I do) and be a non-naturalist like G.E. Moore or Plato (or maybe Spinoza and the Stoics too, among others). Notice that relativists have nowhere to go in the debate over this argument. Unlike you and GB, I find moral nihilism somewhat compelling. If you asked me what theories made no fucking sense whatsoever, I'd have to say all forms of moral relativism suffer from an irredeemable incoherence. Nihilism is crystal clear by comparison. It just so happens that I think non-naturalism is clearer.
PLUS: I also could not understand the last question on the flowchart. I still can't.
