Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?

[SenseMaker007]

I have not made up a "non-rule" I have simply given you basic logic which you don't seem able to grasp.

If noncognitivism is true then the statement "Statements about morality are meaningless" is not a normative statement and if Error Theory is true then the statement "statements about morality are false" is not a normative statement. How am I supposed to explain that when it's like explaining why squares have four sides?

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No, for normative content, functions, implications, imperatives, or dictives to be possible from nihilism, neither of those two statements need to be normative, any more than the statement "goodness is a natural property" needs to be normative for natural realism to possess normative content.

Those statements were the very definitions of noncognitivism on the one hand and Error Theory on the other hand ... so yes, something about X does have to imply Y if X is said to imply Y.

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It's almost as if you're naught but a contrarian. If I were to say that squares have four sides you'd tell me I was making up a non-rule.

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It -may be- that nihlism is not a morality, or that it cannot possess or express normative content - but not for ny of the non rules you've been creating.

Ethical nihilism is not a morality by definition but you can't seem to understand that some truths are analytic rather than synthetic.

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any more than the statement "goodness is a natural property" needs to be normative for natural realism to possess normative content.

We're not talking about a view possessing normative content we're talking about a view implicitly stating something normative in its own terms. We've been through this and you can't grasp it. Like I said, moral nihilism could from an objective point of view contain normatives because moral realism is true and moral nihilism is false. But according to moral nihilism that is not the case but you keep saying it is.

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For example, the dictive equivalent from above "don't affirm the meaningfulness/truth of normative statements" is embedded in "normative statements are meaningless/false".

Are you illiterate? "normative statements are meaningless/false" isn't equivalent to saying "don't affirm the meaningfulness/truth of normative statements." The first says that X is meaningless or false and the second sayhs that you ought not to affirm X. If you can't even honestly acknowledge the meaning of basic English then this conversation is 100% pointless.

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You're now on ignore for being either illiterate or intellectually dishonest. Go look up what "normative" means in the dictionary. Meaninglessness does not imply normativity and neither does falsehood.

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@Gae Bolga

I'll repeat it once more: I never said that there objectively can't be normative content within nihilism I said that ethical nihilism doesn't say that there is. But you seem incapable of putting on spectacles that you don't like the look of. You can still only look at this from the point of view of moral realism being true. I, also, think moral realism is true but the difference between you and me is that I can fairly characterize and understand the position that I disagree with and you can't.

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I never denied normative content I said that if we accept the premise of ethical nihilism it doesn't logically entail a normative statement. I have been saying all along that if all moral statements really are false then saying that all moral statements are false doesn't express anything normative. And I have been saying all along that if no moral statements really are truth-apt then saying that no moral statements are truth-apt doesn't express anything normative. It's not my fault that you can't get your thick skull around basic concepts.

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This thread is having that error again. It's saying that I made the latest posts but they're still not visible yet. Annoying that there's such a massive delay and it appears to only be affecting this thread.

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If you're going to have a reasonable disagreement with somebody you have to be able to accurately characterize their viewpoint.

[SenseMaker007]

Anyway, if Gae can't grasp even the most basic points then how am I supposed to explain anything to him?

[The Grand Nudger]

Goodness is a natural property is also not a normative statement (for whatever that's worth - dictive...indifference...of...logic.....), and yet natural realism is a normative moral system.  There is no rule or logic behind the insistence that a given sentence be normative in order for normatives to be coherently derived from the system. Just as there is no logic or rule behind the insistence that normative statements can't be coherently expressed in or derived from non-cognitivism.

These are the sorts of non rules I'm referring to. The sorts of non rules I've been giving you examples for that compellingly argue to the contrary. Just take the time to google any of those statements or positions or people, and even though you may still disagree with me about whether or not nihilism can be a morality, you'll understand why the restrictions and obstacles you've been placing aren't an issue. It may still be true that nihilism isn't a morality, or lacks some feature required to be so. Just not for any non-rule you've yet attempted to employ.

I think you mentioned (in reference to some criticism of me, ofc, lol....) that it wasn't really important whether we agreed (or disagreed, I assume) - but that the reasons for our agreement were important and that we should look into why we think what we do.

Physician, heal thyself.

[SenseMaker007]

Goodness is a natural property is also not a normative statement (for whatever that's worth - dictive...indifference...of...logic.....), and yet natural realism is a normative moral system.

You can't use an example of something else that is not a normative statement as a reason for why something provides a normative statement.

You're supposed to be explaining how ethical nihilism does make a moral statement. I never denied moral content. I deny that ethical nihilism implictly makes a normative statement because if it did it wouldn't be ethical nihilism. Ethical nihilism states that normatives are false or not truth apt and stating that X is false or that X is not truth apt is not a normative statement.

 

There is no rule or logic behind the insistence that a given sentence be normative in order for normatives to be coherently derived from the system.

And I never claimed anything of the sort. In fact I have repeatedly pointed out that that is not what I'm saying. You are repeatedly failing to misunderstand what I'm saying.

These are the sorts of non rules I'm referring to.

Non-rules that I repeatedly denied and never stated, then?

Physician, heal thyself.

Sophist, become logical.

You seem repeatedly unable to differentiate two similar claims.

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I think you mentioned (in reference to some criticism of me, ofc, lol....) that it wasn't really important whether we agreed (or disagreed, I assume) - but that the reasons for our agreement were important and that we should look into why we think what we do.

Yes, I did say that. Meaning, that it's the logic that matters rather than the premise or the conclusion. But it's also not logical to have a contradictory premise. The important thing is logical consistency ... and not spouting irrelevancies. I make assertions and you make assertions but I can back mine up and address yours. But you can't do that for me, that's the difference.

[DLJ]

During a recent romp through Wikipedia, I discovered an interesting passage:

Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that morality does not exist as something inherent to objective reality; therefore no action is necessarily preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong.

Other nihilists may argue not that there is no morality at all, but that if it does exist, it is a human construction and thus artificial, wherein any and all meaning is relative for different possible outcomes. As an example, if someone kills someone else, such a nihilist might argue that killing is not inherently a bad thing, or bad independently from our moral beliefs, because of the way morality is constructed as some rudimentary dichotomy. What is said to be a bad thing is given a higher negative weighting than what is called good: as a result, killing the individual was bad because it did not let the individual live, which was arbitrarily given a positive weighting. In this way a moral nihilist believes that all moral claims are void of any truth value. An alternative scholarly perspective is that moral nihilism is a morality in itself. Cooper writes, "In the widest sense of the word 'morality', moral nihilism is a morality."

I found this rather thought-provoking (the last bit that said "moral nihilism is a morality"). This seems to suggest that moral realism may be inescapable... because every brand of moral skepticism carries with it some undercurrent of moral thinking.

Any thoughts on this?

As with most if not all Philosophy-related pages I’ve read on Wikipedia, they seem to go astray after the word “therefore”.

This one goes wrong sooner by equating “moral” with “ethical”.

The whole thing is plagued with the disease of ‘weak semantics’.

Indeed, killing someone is not intrinsically right or wrong but it is contextually right or wrong.
And morals do exist and so do ethics.
And nihilism is still correct.

Nihilism relates to the physical stance whereas essentialism (its Buddhist antithesis) relates to the manifest image / intentional stance.

[vulcanlogician]

As with most if not all Philosophy-related pages I’ve read on Wikipedia, they seem to go astray after the word “therefore”.

This one goes wrong sooner by equating “moral” with “ethical”.

No like Wikipedia? I guess you are an Encyclopedia Britannica guy, then. I bolded the important bit.

Generally, the terms ethics and morality are used interchangeably, although a few different communities (academic, legal, or religious, for example) will occasionally make a distinction. In fact, Britannica’s article on ethics considers the terms to be the same as moral philosophy. While understanding that most ethicists (that is, philosophers who study ethics) consider the terms interchangeable, let’s go ahead and dive into these distinctions.

https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-t...and-ethics

I've told you this before. Unless you are a lawyer, ethics is indistinct from morality. Philosophers use the terms interchangeably. This is a philosophy thread, not a courtroom.

I'll get to the rest of what you said later.

It was nice to see your post, man.

[The Grand Nudger]

Something I wonder when people say things like "there's nothing intrinsically wrong about x" is whether or not they believe it, or if this is, instead, the academic position they've arrived at in contradiction to their internal experience.

I've found that it's incredibly rare for a person not to think that there's something about x that makes that x wrong.  That's just my personal experience, but it dovetails with a vast amount of sociological data to the same effect.  Even a committed nihilist can't help but believe that x is wrong because y - though they may insist that their moral intuitions are in error.

Or, maybe, people have a skewed view of extrinsic and intrinsic value in moral theory? So long as there's something about x that makes x wrong, rather than something about y that makes x wrong - that would be intrinsic value. Or at least the contention of intrinsic value.

Then again, perhaps we unintentionally scrub the act before we make the comment. We say, for example, that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing knowing that much bickering later we will differentiate between killing and murder just as we differentiate between sex and rape. We think that there -is- something intrinsically wrong with rape and murder, even if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing and sex.

[DLJ]

As with most if not all Philosophy-related pages I’ve read on Wikipedia, they seem to go astray after the word “therefore”.

This one goes wrong sooner by equating “moral” with “ethical”.

No like Wikipedia? I guess you are an Encyclopedia Britannica guy, then. I bolded the important bit.

Generally, the terms ethics and morality are used interchangeably, although a few different communities (academic, legal, or religious, for example) will occasionally make a distinction. In fact, Britannica’s article on ethics considers the terms to be the same as moral philosophy. While understanding that most ethicists (that is, philosophers who study ethics) consider the terms interchangeable, let’s go ahead and dive into these distinctions.

https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-t...and-ethics

I've told you this before. Unless you are a lawyer, ethics is indistinct from morality. Philosophers use the terms interchangeably. This is a philosophy thread, not a courtroom.

I'll get to the rest of what you said later.

It was nice to see your post, man.

Cheers. I still can’t login using my laptop but your topic was irresistible so my phone had to do.

Yes, Britannica all the way.

Looks like the lawyers are on to something. There has to be a reason why philosophers haven’t sorted this out yet.

I’ll have a word with them next time I see them down the pub.

Making a distinction is not only useful it’s essential to really getting to the root of it all.

I’ve got a feeling though that I may not be able to shift such entrenched semantics and may have to do a Heidegger and invent some terms to represent different inputs and outputs of the ‘morality system’.

[DLJ]

Something I wonder when people say things like "there's nothing intrinsically wrong about x" is whether or not they believe it, or if this is, instead, the academic position they've arrived at in contradiction to their internal experience.

I've found that it's incredibly rare for a person not to think that there's something about x that makes that x wrong.  That's just my personal experience, but it dovetails with a vast amount of sociological data to the same effect.  Even a committed nihilist can't help but believe that x is wrong because y - though they may insist that their moral intuitions are in error.

Or, maybe, people have a skewed view of extrinsic and intrinsic value in moral theory? So long as there's something about x that makes x wrong, rather than something about y that makes x wrong - that would be intrinsic value. Or at least the contention of intrinsic value.

Then again, perhaps we unintentionally scrub the act before we make the comment. We say, for example, that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing knowing that much bickering later we will differentiate between killing and murder just as we differentiate between sex and rape. We think that there -is- something intrinsically wrong with rape and murder, even if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing and sex.

A self-correcting post... leaves me nothing to add.

Except, maybe... would it be useful to make the distinction between ‘an action’ and ‘a thought of an action’?

[vulcanlogician]

Cheers. I still can’t login using my laptop but your topic was irresistible so my phone had to do.

Yes, Britannica all the way.

Looks like the lawyers are on to something. There has to be a reason why philosophers haven’t sorted this out yet.

I’ll have a word with them next time I see them down the pub.

Making a distinction is not only useful it’s essential to really getting to the root of it all.

I’ve got a feeling though that I may not be able to shift such entrenched semantics and may have to do a Heidegger and invent some terms to represent different inputs and outputs of the ‘morality system’.

Lawyers want to differentiate whether someone can be held legally responsible for a given action. To a philosopher, this doesn't matter. Wrong is wrong whether one can be held legally accountable or not.

But back to your original point: if we can find a framework that is independent of opinion, we can refute relativism (that's easy)... But to refute moral nihilism, we need to show that this framework is not just "some shit we made up." That's a bit more challenging. My first strategy in arguing against nihilism is to suggest that it is "runaway skepticism." Things like math and science can't hold up to nihilistic scrutiny either. They both could be said to be "useful fictions" without any truth value at all.

So if someone is going to argue moral nihilism, I first establish that moral realism is as objective as math and science. Any skepticism so robust as to render something like math a "useful fiction" ought not be leveled at moral realism. To say, as the wiki quote in the OP says that giving value to human life is arbitrary is just such a skepticism.