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(May 25, 2021 at 11:29 am)brewer Wrote: Anybody else uncomfortable with the terms 'fact' and 'moral' being tied together?
Seems to me that all descriptive terms for moral philosophical positions fall under the term relative,.......... maybe excluding objective. They all fall somewhere of a moral sliding scale.
That's about as philosophical as I want to get.
You should be uncomfortable. Skepticism is warranted. Anyone who claims that there are (or may be) "moral facts" needs to explain themselves. And I'll tell you right now: no matter what their position is concerning moral facts, it will be unsatisfying in some way.
Respecting that you may have just wanted to say your piece and move on... without getting dragged into a philosophical debate.... I don't wanna make you hear a bunch of shit you aren't interested in. In which case, just don't click the box:
Take James Rachel's definition of morality: ""Morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one's conduct by reason––that is, to do what there are the best reasons for doing––while giving equal weight to the interests of each individual who will be affected by what one does."
If someone accepted that definition, and (for whatever reason) chose to act accordingly, wouldn't certain objective facts about what is good to do to others vs what is bad emerge? And wouldn't these facts be relevant to their enterprise?
To me, that's all moral facts amount to. Not some monolith of "thou shalt" that hangs over all people. Rather an objective and factual account of how one may do good to another (if one is so inclined). I think if one is serious about pursuing this sort of activity (which most people are, maybe for biological reasons, sociological reasons... it doesn't matter)... if one wants to make this effort, there are seemingly objective facts one may realize concerning how to proceed.
"Burning other people with a hot iron when they annoy me fails to give equal weight to their interests." That's a sample moral fact. Or (put more simply) "burning people with a hot iron because they annoy me is wrong." We can have a discourse using logic about the rightness or wrongness of burning people with a hot iron for being annoying. It could be argued that such a thing is warranted in some cases. It could also be argued that it isn't warranted most of the time. The point is, we could have an objective (fact-centered) debate about it.
"Why accept Rachel's definition?" I hear you ask. We don't have to. We could have a debate about which definition to accept. I think that would be fruitful. But, keep in mind, we could also have a debate about whether scientists should make genuine observations or (instead) simply fabricate the results of an experiment. You could be opinionated about such a debate.... or you could be rational. If you are being rational, it's possible that you'll pick something different than if you're being opinionated. There is nothing written in the cosmos that says we should accept the observations of science simply because these observations are accurate. But many of us do lend credence to scientific observations. Why? Because we are rational. We prefer science because it is accurate and are pleased with it because it is accurate. But only because we are rational. If we were irrational... or so opinionated, we may select a different goal for science.
