Proving What We Already "Know"

[The Grand Nudger]

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 fail to see how that rescues the gross inaccuracy of the demands I responded to.  Why should there be no need for moral consideration, if any moral worldview matched with reality?  Why should there be no term morality, if any moral system matched with reality?  Here again you're pleading a special case....positively insisting on a special case - but a moral view does not have to be a special case.  Sure, different types of views are different for many reasons, but there's no reason that any type of view about anything being accurate or matching with reality would mean that there would be no need for consideration of that subject or for terms to accurately communicate it to others.

Bananapants.

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.

I get that you think that.  You thinking that is a fact of a subject (you), but not a fact of the object(moral systems).  There are numerous ways that bad can be represented in material reality.  You disagree with them.

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.

The ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, while the thracians say that theirs have red hair and blue eyes. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, and could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods like horses, and cattle like cattle. 

Lots of people who's worldviews do include non humans still exploit and abuse animals.  Frankly, most world views include them even if it's only obliquely in provisions against excessive cruelty.  We frequently find ourselves doing things or ignoring things we do which we think are bad.  That's a problem for emotivist and subjectivist moral theories, actually.  A huge one.  Less so for relativism as it's understood that groups and societies can cause a person to internalize shame over something that they themselves would otherwise enjoy and find to be morally neutral or possibly even good.  Not a problem at all for realism, as it's just another example of the moral failures common to humans.  Common....ostensibly, for the same reason that cattle would have their own model of righteousness and draw their gods like cattle - the same notion underlying subjectivist criticism of moral propositions.  We're compromised moral agents, and in large part due to our particular biology.

I'd suggest that this is another attempt to saddle objectivism with baggage not contained in the position.  No human or cattle moral model need be true, for moral realism to be true.  It's just the idea that at least some moral statements can be true or false with respect to the facts they purport to report, and insomuch as a statement did get those facts right, the moral statement would itself be a moral fact.  

You haven't yet proven that things hurting is bad.  Is this to be taken as an axiom?

By all means..lets discuss.  Is hurting things not contained in whatever collection of stuff we call morality?  Or does that seem to be at least part of what we're talking about when we use the terms?  Is harm completely irrelevant to morality?  

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.

Homosexuals can have children.  

That son being homosexual could cost the kingdom financial hardship, or even lead to war.

Heterosexual rulers don't seem to have fared any better in this regard.   

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

I'd certainly agree that homosexuality isn't intrinsically bad.  That there are relative differences between ages, and subjective differences between people, doesn't actually determine that there can be no objectively true conclusion (and...just in case the hilarity of all of this escapes you for whatever reason..the declaration that homosexuality is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad is the assertion of an objective moral truth claim).  People do math different ways, and disagree on the correct answers - and yet..there is a correct answer to what the sum of one and one is.  

So, let's talk about the characteristics of realism - because you did just attempt a realist justification for why homosexuality is bad - despite stating your strong support for moral subjectivism.  If it were true...that not having children was bad, and that homosexuals couldn't have children, this would not be a subjective claim.  If it were true.... that homosexuals made the kingdom bankrupt or at risk, somehow, and the kingdom being at risk were a bad thing - this would not be a subjective claim.  These are realist claims whose truth depends on getting those facts right...and they don't...so they aren't..or..if they are, not for those reasons.