Proving What We Already "Know"

[bennyboy]

We're misreporting a fact.  We're saying that we object to x for y - when we do not.  We object to x for z, while failing to realize that our misreported y is an assertion to x.  A quick example.  Using mountaintop removal mining yet again.  I say its bad because it causes y.  A team of researchers, engineers, and labor conclusively demonstrates that they can do mountaintop removal mining without causing y.  I persist in my assertions, nevertheless.  This would strongly suggest that my reasons (if I even have any) were always z, just as this entire conversation has made it clear that you have reasons z which persist even after the failure of your many specific objections y.

Even if it does cause y, so what? Follow the algorithm:

1) If "y" is a feeling, stop ("I love trees, and seeing them cut down makes me sad.")-- you've found your moral basis.
2) If "y" is another objective fact, find "z," its basis, and repeat at (1).

In all cases, you will find that under all your objective facts, the root is an instinct or emotional reaction to something. That you may be able to lengthen the chain of objective "bads" indefinitely doesn't mean anything.

I did, you'll recall, describe the way in which you could kick that particular can even farther-- by treating instincts and feelings as objective, by seeing DNA as a collation of objective facts about living organisms' interactions with the environment for a billion years. If you treat feelings as objective inputs INTO sentient experience, rather than as experience itself, then you can say that.

But that applies to ALL discussion of things subjective, not just morality, and we'd still want to talk about our experiences as though they mean something.