Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

[robvalue]

I’ll try one more thing here. I can’t address every point I’m afraid because I honestly can’t comprehend what you’re trying to say. It feels like we're jumping around all different perspectives. I admit this may be a problem my end.

I remember you said something like, "Sexual assault is wrong, because it is damaging to individuals and toxic to society".

This is assuming a definition of "wrong" that includes things that are damaging to individuals and toxic to society.

But let’s use a different word, and see what happens. Let’s define "right" to include things that are damaging to toxic and individuals. Now:

"Sexual assault is right, because it is damaging to individuals and toxic to society".

It’s the same logic, and the same conclusion. So is this a moral fact? My point is that the inclusion of "wrong" was not necessary, it was a middleman. The real discussion comes in deciding what is right and wrong in the first place, not in how this is then applied in logical moral statements.

[The Grand Nudger]

I’ll try one more thing here. I can’t address every point I’m afraid because I honestly can’t comprehend what you’re trying to say. It feels like we're jumping around all different perspectives. I admit this may be a problem my end.

I remember you said something like, "Sexual assault is wrong, because it is damaging to individuals and toxic to society".

This is assuming a definition of "wrong" that includes things that are damaging to individuals and toxic to society.

-and that's the can, kicked.  Is it assuming that, or can that be demonstrated to be true?  

But let’s use a different word, and see what happens. Let’s define "right" to include things that are damaging to toxic and individuals. Now:

"Sexual assault is right, because it is damaging to individuals and toxic to society".

Can you actually do that, simply define things the way you wish in an objective system that accurately models reality?  I'm not convinced that you can.  Either there's something about sexual assault that is categorically and objectively right or wrong..or there isn't..but regardless of that you don't change the nature of the act by defining it either way.  

It’s the same logic, and the same conclusion. My point is that the inclusion of "wrong" was not necessary in the first place, it was a middleman. The real discussion comes in deciding what is right and wrong in the first place, not in how this is then applied in logical moral statements.

Well, sure...but we're still asking the same question.  Is there something about x that makes it wrong, or is it just your opinion that makes some x wrong? The answer for this, from moral realism..is the same at every level of discourse.

[robvalue]

Well I don’t know. Are you saying rape is categorically right or wrong, or not? I’m saying it’s a malformed question, with any answer being meaningless. I’m saying that if absolute right and wrong exist, it would make no difference to anything. They would be interchangeable.

To "show" that rape is "wrong", you have to define "wrong" very specifically, and then the whole of morality hinges on that definition. Since people have never been able to agree on a precise definition, which one should we use? Why should we use any of them? You seem to very much be assuming that the wellbeing of humans is an essential part of what is right and wrong, and that you’d discount any other definition.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that people do on the whole value wellbeing, because that’s how we evolved. But that’s just modelling our behaviour, it’s not doing philosophy. If we're making cases about objectivity and facts, then "wrong" can’t simply be to do with the preferences and comfort of a particular species on a particular planet. Who is to say what is right and wrong on a universal scale in general, and what would it even mean to try and define it?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well I don’t know. Are you saying rape is categorically right or wrong, or not? I’m saying it’s a malformed question, with any answer being meaningless. I’m saying that if absolute right and wrong exist, it would make no difference to anything.

Yeah, sure.  It's an easy one.  

To "show" that rape is "wrong", you have to define "wrong" very specifically, and then the whole of morality hinges on that definition. Since people have never been able to agree on a precise definition, which one should we use? Why should we use any of them? You seem to very much be assuming that the wellbeing of humans is an essential part of what is right and wrong, and that you’d discount any other definition.

So long as the definition is accurate, what's the problem?  

Of course, it’s no coincidence that people do on the whole value wellbeing, because that’s how we evolved. But that’s just modelling our behaviour, it’s not doing philosophy. If we're making cases about objectivity and facts, then "wrong" can’t simpky be to do with the preferences and comfort of a particular species on a particular planet. Who is to say what is right and wrong on a universal scale in general, and what would it even mean to try and define it?

Well, it wouldn't really matter if we didn't evolve at all.  Well being would still be one of the things we're discussing when we discuss morality.  Imagine the insane..for a moment.  Imagine that a god named jeff created us exactly as we are.  We're still discussing well being when we use moral terminology.  Obviously, if we cant even agree to that then nothing could productively follow between us, but that still won't say anything about the position itself.

Moral realism answers every level of discourse the same way because it's not the tip of the moral tree..some obscure branch of this or that.  It's fundamental to what we're talking about when we discuss morality.

Are we talking about something objectively true of some act(s)? Do we purport to report facts...do we get those facts right? Can we?

[robvalue]

So we are discussing wellbeing then, and that’s a given? Like I said, this is a narrow subset of what I would more generally describe as morality. Of course we can make factual statements about how actions affect wellbeing, at least in a vague sense, since wellbeing is not easy to define.

So all we’ve done, just like I said, is to skip the initial value-setting step. We’ve been prescribed values.

Does moral realism only concern itself with this branch of morality then, or does it apply to any value set? If it applies to any values, then we're back to deciding which are the best values, which is entirely circular.

[robvalue]

I might have identified why moral realism sounds like presup apologetics. I think that's because it is.

If you consider "wrong" or "immoral", they are just words. They have no inherent specific meaning that correlates with reality. They are commonly used in highly subjective ways.

If we want to make scientific statements and determine facts, we need to define our terms very specifically. What does "wrong" mean? It means whatever we say it does, for the terms of the discussion. There’s no way I can demonstrate that some particular kind of outcome is wrong, without first defining "wrong" to include that kind of outcome. In this way, it’s entirely circular. Or we just make emotional appeals, which are of course invalid in scientific discussion.

If we say "wrong" has to be about wellbeing, for whatever reason, then fine. But it hasn’t been demonstrated that wellbeing is wrong in the general sense, just by defining it this way; that would entirely be an equivocation. "Doing bad things to wellbeing is factually wrong, because that’s how I’m defining wrong" is a tautology. It doesn’t tell me anything about reality. It just shows personal biases, although perfectly understandable ones.

So a statement can be true, given certain assumptions and definitions, but that doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily established any kind of fact about reality. There’s always this looming assumption that wrong means "wrong for human society", because that’s all that apparently matters. You either admit this assumption to be the case, and so you have done nothing but slip in your own values by definition; or else you have to start from scratch and define "wrong" in more general terms, and somehow equate that with human society. In the latter case, you’ve still only shown something is wrong within the restrictions of your definition.

[Angrboda]

It sounds like you’re saying there must be some objective moral facts, which line up with your views, because you’d be uncomfortable if there weren’t.

I think generally people are uncomfortable with the idea that their moral intuitions don't pick out something real about the world. That in itself is hardly a point against their intuitions pointing out something real. Quite the contrary. It is evidence that their intuitions might well point to something real, just as any other observation is evidence of the thing being observed.

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Well I don’t know. Are you saying rape is categorically right or wrong, or not? I’m saying it’s a malformed question, with any answer being meaningless. I’m saying that if absolute right and wrong exist, it would make no difference to anything. They would be interchangeable.

To "show" that rape is "wrong", you have to define "wrong" very specifically, and then the whole of morality hinges on that definition. Since people have never been able to agree on a precise definition, which one should we use? Why should we use any of them? You seem to very much be assuming that the wellbeing of humans is an essential part of what is right and wrong, and that you’d discount any other definition.

If I take a ruler and measure my phone and find that it is 5" long along the long axis, then there is an objective fact about the length of my phone. I could define inch differently and it would be a different length according to my new definition of an inch, but my doing so doesn't change the actual fact of the phone's length. In that case, our definitions aren't what's doing the work, it's the actual physical length of the phone which is determining things. Likewise, with moral realism, we may choose a definition, and that definition may pick out actual moral facts in the world such that if our definition is violated, the moral fact is being violated. But just as in the case of the phone, it isn't the definition which is doing the work but rather that our definition makes the fact itself intelligible to us. It may be that well-being describes a set of obligatory behaviors and that definition is wrong. It could be that well-being picks out moral facts in cases like rape, but fails to do so or incorrectly does so in other cases, like the trolley problem or the five organ transplant recipients problem. The definition is a description of the underlying fact, not the fact itself. Our justifications are just an attempt to demonstrate that our description of morals aligns with what morals actually are. The question is not whether the definition itself can be justified, it need not be justified at all. We could develop a laundry list of things that are morally right and morally wrong, and so long as that list aligned properly with objective facts of the world, that list would be an accurate description of morality. Again, it isn't the definitions or their justification which are doing the work but the objective facts themselves that are doing the work. You could argue, as you have, that you equally as well could have chosen a different standard, say that doing harm is what's moral. Your ability to pick a different standard doesn't show that a different morality is possible, if moral facts exist, but rather that one can be wrong in one's description of morality. If there are objective moral facts, and you choose to define morality in a way that doesn't align with those facts, you haven't shown that you can have a different morality by choosing differently, all you've shown is that it's possible to be wrong about what morality is, and that we can choose things that aren't actually moral as our guide to morality. Our ability to do so tells us nothing about whether morality is objective or not. (I tried to explain how objective morality is not dependent upon the justifications or definitions we use earlier, but you appear not to have read that post. I have to move on to other matters now, but I'll try to dig out that post for you later.)

[robvalue]

I must have missed that post yeah, sorry If you could link it that could be great, then I’ll try to comment on it all.

The thing about the phone example is that changing the units just multiplies your answer accordingly. There isn’t any such equivalence between what one person considers wrong, and another. I contend that there is no underlying fact they are both talking about. There’s no simple equivalence like with the lengths. It’s value judgements rather than measurements.

If you try and remove all points of view, then you’re left with "what is considered wrong by everyone", which would be nothing; or "what is considered wrong by no one at all" which is again nothing; or "what is considered wrong by reality itself" which is a rather dumb question. Maybe reality really does have some kind of preference. Maybe it somehow has inbuilt goals and values, or something. That is the only way I can try to make sense of "objective wrongness". That raises yet another moral dilemma: should we care what reality wants? How can we care, unless we can also find out the reasons behind it?

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PS:

It seems to boil down to this.

Can we find facts about what is wrong, before defining what wrong means? No.

Can we find facts about what is wrong, after defining what wrong means in terms that relate to reality? Yes.

Anything else is just trying to conflate the two, as I see it.

[robvalue]

Coming back to the length and ruler analogy:

We agree on just a few different types of rulers because it has practical value to do so. But even if we all used our own rulers, it would still work because we’d have conversion rates between all our rulers. We're determining how many of a unit of our choice go into an objective length.

With morality, we're all using our own "moral rulers" to assess a particular action. There is no conversion rate between them, and no utility in trying to pick just a few. This is because, as I see it, it's not a fact about reality that is being "measured" in the first place here. It’s a subjective assessment of an action. We come up with a kind of "society ruler" as a compromise; no such compromise is needed with length, because there is a fact at the heart of the matter. Neither does the length shift as society changes.

If there is a correct moral assessment, then I’m certainly not trying to achieve it, because I see that as utterly meaningless. On the other hand, once we’ve agreed a set of values, our rulers become much more closely aligned. Before that point, they needn’t have any relation to each other.

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PS: I don’t even use the same ruler all the time anyway. I use adjusted ones depending on who is doing the action, and what I could reasonably expect from them.

[robvalue]

Language is very tricky here. Maybe it would be easier to say that there are truths about reality. So then scientifically speaking, a fact is something that appears to represent a truth about reality, beyond reasonable doubt. Facts are determined by testing falsifiable hypotheses.

Our facts are necessarily going to be some sort of partial approximation of truths. The scientific goal is to approach the truth as closely as possible. Language is again tricky and very important. There will presumably be infinitely many truths out there. If we want to refer to any particular ones, we need to be highly specific. Words alone do not carry enough specificity to identify them. The words need to be part of some methodology.

This is all fairly straightforward and apparent in practice, with things like length. The failure of anyone to ever come up with a "moral fact" that gets accepted in the same way length does speaks volumes to me. It’s not a methodology. It’s a very vague notion, with loaded overtones. You can’t just say, "There might be moral facts" and expect that to actually highlight some truths in any kind of meaningful way. You might as well say, "There could be bibbly wibbly facts". If we don’t have a precise method and are just appealing to emotion, biases and general trends in our evolution, we may as well be talking bibblies.

So that’s where I’m at, for the 1.5 people who made it this far (including me). Science is an attempt to remove biases and subjectivity as far as possible, and it works. We deduce facts which are actionable. If you try and remove the biases and subjectivity from morality, you’re either left with nothing, or vague statements about human behaviour. I might as well add that I find consequentialism hopelessly simplistic anyway, which moral realism seems to rely on, and I would expect a realist to abandon it pretty quickly outside of extremely simple scenarios. And simple is what they are. It’s still trying to establish that "rape rather than no rape is objectively wrong", and failing in my opinion, after all this time. While subjectivitsts (or whatever we call ourselves) simply agree that we value wellbeing, and that rape is bad for wellbeing, job done. There will be people who don’t agree, but calling them factually wrong is of no practical use whatsoever, as well as being inaccurate.