Proving What We Already "Know"

[bennyboy]

If a moral world view matched the actual world, there would be no need for moral consideration, or even the term "morality."

Sure there would.  That there's such a thing as a scientific worldview is only because there's scientific consideration, and an idea of what the term refers to.  Ultimately that worldview may be wrong, but not for either of those reasons.

Likewise, there are many..many... ways that it could be that no moral world view matched the actual world - but this isn't one of them.

Let me be clear, here. I'm speaking specifically of a moral world view, not of all world views. A moral view is predicated on what SHOULD BE, in contrast with what IS. This is different from say a scientific world view, which attempts to model reality as it is (whether it's complete or not).

I'll stop you at "can be".   It does not matter whether or not a person can be x-d in any world to moral realism or moral facts.  It's conceivably the case that in a world where x is or isn't bad, it still may or may not happen.   

I don't think there's any bad, ever, represented in material reality, or can be. Badness is deviation from a model of rightness. As people, we have strong feelings about certain things-- deaths of infants, disease, personal rights of various types.

Consider this-- a cow probably has a different model of rightness than you do. I believe a cow, if it could imagine at all, would imagine a world in which nobody mistreats or kills cows, for food or otherwise. So why do people mistreat or kill cows? Because their moral world view doesn't include non-humans unless they're pets.

Different moral models, different moral assessments.

For assertions to moral facts, however, it's much simpler - even if it leaves people far lesssatisfied than they imagined they might be.  All one needs to do to prove some moral fact is to show that the thing in question accurately has those attributes one assigns to it as the explanation for what makes it bad.  That, for example..when you x someone, it actually hurts..and that's not just your opinion as an observer, because of some fact about yourself.  That's it, that's all.  You can see how, for example, the assertion "homosexuality is bad" fails that test where our favorite "rape is bad" succeeds.

You haven't yet proven that things hurting is bad. Is this to be taken as an axiom? What if someone (say, a person in a coma) cannot actually FEEL pain? What if it's a cow, or a cockroach?

As for homosexuality-- again, what are the standards of goodness or badness? I can imagine scenarios where homosexuality might reasonably be considered bad-- for example, if a regent has only one son, but wants to heal fractures with another kingdom by marriage. That son being homosexual could cost the kingdom financial hardship, or even lead to war. Presumably, almost any model of rightness is likely to view financial hardship or war as bad (though I know of a few where even those are considered good).

Homosexuality (or anything else) isn't intrinisically good, bad, or neutral. Different times, different moral models, different assessments.