“Normative” ethical theories

[Lucian]

For me to say that murder is bad would entail that it is an action I do not want performed in society and can see consequences of leaving it unchecked that would reduce my preference for more happiness and treating people as important. That is a rough statement of it, but it isn’t one that “murder is morally bad” such that there is an objective standard that has been broken by acting that way.
Nyx is a black cat that isn’t of that class. Nyx kills mice and birds could be an action I would want to curtail but not to the same point as murder. Ultimately both are killing, I choose to call one murder as it helps explain key facts about the act. I don’t see where the “moral” sneaks in though

How are you defending murder as immoral?

Listening to this interview. Might have to get his book at some point
https://youtu.be/n40O7jA1DIw?si=baaHsXdDaFPRilUM

[The Grand Nudger]

It doesn't really matter at this point whether I'm defending the statement. We could pick any moral statement, including one we don't agree with. One we think is false. We could, alternatively, pick a moral statement that something is good..again whether we agree with it or not. The point of the question being what mechanical difference there is between the statements.

Just as you, by the end, come around to the notion that there are murder facts - in your case facts about one killing or another that make some killings murder and some not, moral realists may think that badness is a murder fact, and they may not think that badness is a killing fact. So, when they say that murder is bad, they mean more or less the same sort of thing they would mean if they told you nyx was a black cat. They're not trying to tell you a Lucian fact. They're not trying to tell you a Nudger fact. That is, facts about themselves (or us). They're not even trying to tell you a killing fact. They mean what they say, rightly or wrongly. Let's approach this objection from the other statement though. When we say (in the thought experiment) that nyx is a black cat do we say that because we'd prefer nyx was not a white cat? Because it would make us happier if we treated nyx as though he were a black cat? Would we say that nyx cannot be black because there's no standard of blackness? What would we think about those objections to the statement nyx is a black cat?

IIRC, earlier in thread you noted that reducing fact alike statements about ethics to what is essentially a dispute about or description of our favorite flavors of ice cream, or ones we don't like, doesn't seem to capture what we mean when we make such utterances. A moral realist would agree with this, though they would likely agree that we do have favorite flavors of ice cream, and ones we detest. Likewise, there are probably people who like murder a whole bunch....and.....hopefully, even more people who hate it. Thing is, the statement doesn't seem to be about that. That's not what it purports to report.

We reach the first inflection point in our diverging moral options right there. The statement may be miscommunicated. Maybe what we say and what we mean are not interchangeable. As far as an objection to the statement from emotivist content, we'd have to believe that there is no one who likes to murder -and- believes (rightly or wrongly) that it's bad..or conversely that there is no one who detests some thing they believe (rightly or wrongly) is good. We will probably not have to go far in search of counterexamples to this notion. We are likely counterexamples ourselves. Enjoying things we think are unethical and being irritated by things we believe are ethical. I'd like to see more hookers and blow in my life, for starters. I'm not big on jobs, as another. When I say that I should go to work and shouldn't spend all my money at the strip club I'm not communicating my personal preferences. It's a cognitivist statement which stands at odds with those preferences rightly or wrongly in-fact.

IOW, even if the fact alike statement is wrong, it's not wrong because I'm miscommunicating my dislike of strippers and drugs and preference for wage slavery, lol. In most forms of realist moral ideation evidence and reason are the objective standard...and when you think about it it's kind of a no-shit statement, right? OFC they are, or are contended to be, because what else could be. We could have subjective standards, or relative standards, emotivist standards is a harder flex but we could finesse the language to make it work...and at least descriptively speaking, we do. To a moral realist, though, basing a moral statement on those standards may not be false in fact - you could be accurately relating a fact about yourself...but if you purport to report a fact about the object in question and instead make statements and inferences from the subject (or society) in question...you can get it as right as can be and you will still be left with an invalid moral statement. Incorrect not because it does not report a fact, incorrect because it does not report the fact it purports to report. So if you tell me that murder is unethical because you don't like it, I can't help but conclude that you're wrong. That's not why murder -or anything- is unethical....and frankly, I don't believe that you actually believe that. I suspect that you think there's a bit more to it than that. Even enlightened self interest requires more than just our tastes in things.

In conflict, there's this saying about the enemy of our enemy being our friend, but this is not true in the case of moral grounding. A subjectivist, for example, launching emotivist objections to realist grounding is simultaneously launching an objection to subjectivist grounding. Emotivism is a non cognitive moral theory. Subjectivism and realism are cognitive moral theories. They share a dependency denied by the other. If emotivism is true, then realism -and- subjectivism are false. Relativism and error theory too, just for completeness. Also cognitive moral theories.

[Lucian]

“ moral realists think that badness is a murder fact” but what does that mean? What is badness, or wrongness. When I say that Jim hit Jill for giggles and fun, what are you adding to that beyond a label when you call it bad? If nothing, then bad is just a redundant label that adds and explains nothing. What is it to be bad? If this doesn’t entail some normative property such that there is an oughtness somewhere in the description then I am not sure we are talking ethics? That video I linked to for example stated that it is as good as philosophical truism that normative properties supervene on the natural, he is adding something there that I can see with adding. I think he is wrong, there are none. But what do you mean?

Not being a physicist, I would suggest that we are adding something when we say Nyx is a black cat. We are asserting something about that cat that can be shown to be true or false depending on the parameters. We are appealing to physical properties and these are non-normative. I don’t have to believe that the cat is black, but it would still be so. This isn’t an empty label, it does add content, but I don’t see what your “bad” adds that is in any sense realist.

So… Jim hit sally for giggles and caused her mental harm. What are the moral facts here?

Also, maybe it is time we cited people for definitions we are providing to at least see if they are accepted / standard ones? Maybe one of us is mistaken in our labels, and being a poorly educated numbskull I wouldn’t bet against it being me

[Lucian]

As an example of why I am not convinced that moral realism of the naturalistic bent is just labelling an action bad (sorry if misrepresenting you)
Railton - “Naturalistic Realism in Metaethics” in the Routledge Handbook to Metaethics pg 44 “ On the other hand, ethical judgments appear to have a normative character or force that prosaically factual judgments do not-they prescribe or commend rather than merely describe. So it seems anomalous at best, and incoherent at worst, to assert in all sincerity that an action is morally wrong or unjust while being indifferent to whether it is performed…”

[The Grand Nudger]

Couple of things there. I’ll try to keep this shorter than the last reply because, at least at this level, it really is pretty simple. I note that you are not similarly unconvinced that we have not just labeled catness and blackness as such. We seem content at least to accept that a cat is a thing that exists, and that being black is a thing a cat can be. That the statement means exactly what it says. Natural realism concerns itself with or assesses moral statements in the same way.

I don’t know that it’s particularly anomalous for us to recognize content -of any kind- and be unmotivated to action by that recognition in and of itself. Are you not indifferent to the blackness or catness of black cats? I suppose there might be some question about your or our moral agency lurking there…but again…our level of concern or indifference to a moral proposition and the accuracy of a moral proposition are not interchanfeabke questions. Off the cuff…I would expect people to be more or less indifferent to true or false moral statements for reasons not at all limited to and probably not even majority comprised of their accuracy. Stealing is bad…for example…but we tend to be far less concerned by that so long as we aren’t the ones being stolen from. Even if stealing isn’t bad…that moral proposition is false…we’re still likely to be more concerned when we are the ones being stolen from.

Ultimately, none of us are perfectly rational or perfectly competent agents. However, this is clearly a statement about us, and not about whether or not murder (or any other thing) possesses specific properties.

[Lucian]

Fair play. Cheers for the interaction

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, np…and please remember that at least so far I’m really only discussing what we seem to be trying to do or say. We can try that all we like, and maybe even succeed on internal grounds. That is to say it’s logical and consistent and perhaps even well evidenced….and still get it wrong. That’s a consequence of cognitive semantics not limited to moral discourse. Maybe nyx isn’t a cat or black but there are good reasons or explicable phenomena going on that would explain why we can credibly think so.

[Lucian]

Hmmm. @The Grand Nudger I may have misread your penultimate post here to the effect that you would be making it likely your last reply as opposed to keeping it as your last reply (hence my lack of engagement in my response).
Still some fruitful grounds for discussing motivational internalism which you seem to reject (as would I) vs motivational externalism which I reject also, but wonder if you affirm?
Similarly the issue of what a normative property is.
Copp’s paper “Moral Naturalism and Three Grades of Normativity” certainly believes that we are ascribing a normative property of some sort to an action when we describe it in terms of morality.
“ Moral naturalism holds that in thinking of things as morally right or wrong, good or bad, we ascribe moral properties to these things – properties such as moral rightness and wrongness, goodness and evil. It holds that there are such properties, and it adds that these properties are ordinary garden-variety natural properties – properties that have the same basic metaphysical and epistemological status as the properties a tree can have of being deciduous, and the property a piece of paper can have of being an Australian twenty dollar bill. I will have more to say about this in what follows. The question is whether moral naturalism can accommodate the normativity of morality. This is basically the question whether it can account for the fact that morality is, in a characteristic way, action-guiding and choice-guiding. Moral thought and discourse concern how we are to act, what we are to choose, and how we are to live; they involve us in evaluating, prescribing, and recommending. I use the term “normative” to speak of this phenomenon”
I just bought his recent book “ethical naturalism and the problem of normativity” also which makes it clear that this is a central issue to describing something in moral terms

No worries if you are done with the thread though. We characteristically disagree with one another on metaethics, although hopefully in a friendly sort of way

[Paraselene]

If someone is empathetic, you appeal to that to teach morality. Even then, most people seem capable of switching it on and off for the sake of the "me" principle.

[Lucian]

If someone is empathetic, you appeal to that to teach morality. Even then, most people seem capable of switching it on and off for the sake of the "me" principle.

Yup, although it is more difficult with some things than others I guess. That goes back to some extent to the mention I made above to Haidt’s views on moral flavours where empathy and reduction of harm is only one component of moral intuitions