The Moral Realism Master Thread.

[The Grand Nudger]

It seems like these discussions blossom across a great many threads. I thought it might be useful to have one central place where they could all coalesce.  So, let's let wonder lead us to knowledge.  

What it is.  

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-The contention that moral claims can be true or false, and that at least some of them are true.

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What it is not.

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-The contention that a specific moral claim is true.

-The contention that any given moral claim which is currently true or ever was true will always be true.

-The contention that a determination of truth or falsehood can be made for every moral claim.

-The contention that no moral disagreement exists.

-The contention that people do not have opinions about moral claims or that we are not subjective agents.

-The contention that a single set of axioms or a single moral system accurately describes the totality of the nature of moral claims.

-The contention that any realist claim would apply equally to all disparate moral agents in all disparate situations and circumstances with a relevant moral component. 
 
Now, for the sillier ones:

-The contention that there is a god.

-The contention that there is a list.

-The contention that human beings would be reliably capable of adhering to any realist system

-The contention that there would never be compelling reason to do The Bad Thing™.

-The contention that any realist moral system would be legally binding.

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Here's a handy page, summarizing the position and some of the objections to the position, with an extensive bibliography and a great many links to related subjects.  
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/

Here are some introductory quotes from the page above to get the ball rolling.

Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true.

those who reject moral realism are usefully divided into (i) those who think moral claims do not purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false (noncognitivists) and (ii) those who think that moral claims do carry this purport but deny that any moral claims are actually true (error theorists).

Now that we have the necessary foreplay out of the way....who's got jokes?

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm a moral realist. I am one of those guys who draws the analogy with health. We don't need to know exactly what health is, or at least not everyone has to agree on the term, for us to know that some things are definitely very bad for us and some things are definitely very good for us. I feel the same way about morality: We don't need to know exactly what morality is, or at least not everyone has to agree on the term, for us to know that some things are definitely very immoral and some things are definitely very moral.

As for jokes.... to quote Rik Mayall: "What does a man with a two foot cock have for breakfast? Well this morning I had a boiled egg."

[brewer]

Stop judging me.

[DLJ]

It seems like these discussions blossom across a great many threads.  I thought it might be useful to have one central place where they could all coalesce.  So, let's let wonder lead us to knowledge.  

What it is.  
-The contention that moral claims can be true or false, and that at least some of them are true.
...

I can go with that.

But it hinges on the definition of 'truth'.

'Truth' is a philosophical concept and is conditional. I'd prefer to reserve 'facts' for the scientific realm but even then one can have anthropocentric facts and non-anthropocentric facts.

[Edwardo Piet]

I think truth is completely objective

I follow the correspondence theory of truth. And I don't think its supposed circularity is any more problematic than the fact we can't define causation non-circularly but the concept of causation is certainly coherent. The point is that causation kind of starts as an axiom, and I think the same thing about the correspondence theory of truth. And when it comes to other theories of truth I think the question is still open as to whether that theory of truth is actually true in the correspondence sense. And if not, then I don't see how it's valid, but if it is then it seems valid. So I think that the correspondence theory trumps all other theories of truth. Is it true that the universe existed before we could conceptualize 'truth'? Yes. Because truth doesn't depend on conceptualization it depends on whether what we say corresponds to reality. And the point is even if we weren't there to ask the question, there is still a definite answer to the question. "Would the universe still truly be here if we weren't here to ask this question?" Yes because that question is identical to "Would the universe still be here if we weren't here to ask this question?". The words "truth" and "true" are used to mean opposed to false, or opposed to the opposite of affirming the sentence. But in and of itself the words "true" and "truth" don't have any meaning. If I say "I have a face with two eyeballs" that's identical to me saying "It is true that I have a face with two eyeballs" or "it is the truth that I have a face with two eyeballs." This is also why the so-called Liar's Paradox is not a paradox. Because to say that "This sentence is false" is the same as saying "This sentence is not true" which is identical to saying "this sentence is not" which is an incomplete sentence and so there's no paradox. Because in and of itself "true" has no meaning. What about the sentence is not true? Nothing is really being said about the sentence. If instead it was "It is not true that this sentence is made of letters." and you recognize that the word "true" has no meaning in itself so that's identical to the sentence saying "This sentence is not made of letters" you'll notice the paradox disappears. The reason why the so-called Liar's Paradox is not a paradox is because saying "This sentence is false" isn't actually saying anything at all about the sentence. All sentences implicitly assert their own truth. Saying anything is the same as saying it is true that anything. "This sentence is false" is the same as "It is true that this sentence is false" Or "This sentence is true and false" which is a contradiction, so there's no paradox. Or looked at another way, the sentence is incomplete.

I think moral claims are true or false in the correspondence sense. We define morality first and then we see if something in reality corresponds to that definition. We don't have to be right or wrong about the definition itself. Definitions never work like that. We didn't have to define science the way it is, science just works well, that's the point. Scientists can't prove that the words they use are the correct way to define them. In fact scientists will even redefine and re-model things to suit their empirical research, and this is not a problem. The conceptualiation of 'health' can be changed and disagreed about and this doesn't mean that some things aren't more healthy than others. I think it's the same about morality. Sure, no one has to agree with my definition that something is immoral if it causes someone suffering overall in the long run . . . but I don't care if someone doesn't accept my definition. I don't have to prove that my definition is 'the right one' whatever that would even mean. Nor does answers in principle mean answers in practice, and nor does objective mean universal. Morality is objective, AFAIC, because after it's defined there are correct and incorrect answers to moral questions at least in principle based on that definition. And I don't think the notion that it's moral to help and immoral to hurt is any less intuitively a sound premise to start with than the one about health: that something is healthy if it is good for us and unhealthy if it is bad for us.

[The Grand Nudger]

@DLJ
Sure, and there's a subset of moral realism that asserts that moral facts must be of a particularly specified objectivity - for example, those which could be supported by scientific conclusions and experiments.

@Ham
There may be more than one accurate definition of morality, pertaining to more than one morally relevant set of propositions or axioms.  This is called moral pluralism.  Under this view, the term "morality" is a general header for many related subsets of x. So there's not really any need to determine which is true, between them, it could be a malformed question.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yeah I know moral pluralism is a thing. But I disagree with theories of morality that don't see consequences that lead to more overall suffering in the long run as what makes something immoral.

Although desirism is rather interesting because I do think desires (and aversions) are very relevant to suffering. I guess I'm rather Buddhist in that way

But again, desires and aversions are only relevant when they relate to suffering.

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(we have a new member who's itching to have that conversation, btw)

Who?

[Amarok]

It seems like these discussions blossom across a great many threads.  I thought it might be useful to have one central place where they could all coalesce.  So, let's let wonder lead us to knowledge.  

What it is.  

---

-The contention that moral claims can be true or false, and that at least some of them are true.

---

What it is not.

---

-The contention that a specific moral claim is true.

-The contention that any given moral claim which is currently true or ever was true will always be true.

-The contention that a determination of truth or falsehood can be made for every moral claim.

-The contention that no moral disagreement exists.

-The contention that people do not have opinions about moral claims or that we are not subjective agents.

-The contention that a single set of axioms or a single moral system accurately describes the totality of the nature of moral claims.

-The contention that any realist claim would apply equally to all disparate moral agents in all disparate situations and circumstances with a relevant moral component. 
 
Now, for the sillier ones:

-The contention that there is a god.

-The contention that there is a list.

-The contention that human beings would be reliably capable of adhering to any realist system

-The contention that there would never be compelling reason to do The Bad Thing™.

-The contention that any realist moral system would be legally binding.

---

Here's a handy page, summarizing the position and some of the objections to the position, with an extensive bibliography and a great many links to related subjects.  
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/

Here are some introductory quotes from the page above to get the ball rolling.

Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true.

those who reject moral realism are usefully divided into (i) those who think moral claims do not purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false (noncognitivists) and (ii) those who think that moral claims do carry this purport but deny that any moral claims are actually true (error theorists).

Now that we have the necessary foreplay out of the way....who's got jokes?

Well said

[henryp]

I think moral claims are true or false in the correspondence sense. We define morality first and then we see if something in reality corresponds to that definition. We don't have to be right or wrong about the definition itself. Definitions never work like that. We didn't have to define science the way it is, science just works well, that's the point. Scientists can't prove that the words they use are the correct way to define them. In fact scientists will even redefine and re-model things to suit their empirical research, and this is not a problem. The conceptualiation of 'health' can be changed and disagreed about and this doesn't mean that some things aren't more healthy than others. I think it's the same about morality. Sure, no one has to agree with my definition that something is immoral if it causes someone suffering overall in the long run . . . but I don't care if someone doesn't accept my definition. I don't have to prove that my definition is 'the right one' whatever that would even mean. Nor does answers in principle mean answers in practice, and nor does objective mean universal. Morality is objective, AFAIC, because after it's defined there are correct and incorrect answers to moral questions at least in principle based on that definition. And I don't think the notion that it's moral to help and immoral to hurt is any less intuitively a sound premise to start with than the one about health: that something is healthy if it is good for us and unhealthy if it is bad for us.

Healthiness just describes reality.  The measurable effect of actions as it relates to a measurable goal.  You can change the goal or the actions, but it's always observable.  It's essentially the same as studying erosion.  It's scientific in nature.

Is being healthy better than not being healthy however is a whole different thing.  Because now the equation requires assigning values to states of being.  

Suicide is an easy example.  Is it unhealthy?  If healthiness is the goal of staying alive, killing yourself is certainly not going to help achieve that goal.

But is suicide bad for you in a grander sense?  For that to be true, we'd have to know if the value of the state of being dead is greater than the value of the state of being alive.  As far as I know, neither of those things have a measurable value.  Making this question nothing like the issue of healthiness. 
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So you can say morality is helping people.  Which is fine.  And the definition can exist in that scope.  You can measure actions and their effects on whether they increase other people's happiness, or whatever measurement you're looking for.  

But you can't say it's better to be moral than immoral in the grander sense.  Because that goes back to assigning values to states of being, and that's decidedly unscientific.

[The Grand Nudger]

So you can say morality is helping people.  Which is fine.  And the definition can exist in that scope.  You can measure actions and their effects on whether they increase other people's happiness, or whatever measurement you're looking for.  

But you can't say it's better to be moral than immoral in the grander sense.  Because that goes back to assigning values to states of being, and that's decidedly unscientific.

Consider this question, ask yourself whether it's coherent;  

Is a platypus a platypus in any "grander sense"?