• Banno
    24.9k
    truths are useful to seekers to the degree the methods or practices for warranting them180 Proof

    ...and isn't this to compound truth and belief? Or at least to forget about truth and pretend that belief justified by utility will suffice?
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    ...and isn't this to compound truth and belief?Banno
    No.

    Or at least to forget about truth and pretend that belief justified by utility will suffice?
    Not at all. By way of clarification, or correction, I refer in my previous post to 'truth-seeking' and 'inquiry' as distinct, even separate, from 'truth per se'. It's habits-forming from truth-seeking inquiry that has utility. Also, I don't mention or imply any thing is or needs to be "justified". It's unlike you, Banno, to read so poorly (no matter how poorly written a post may seem); fortified by a few strong drinks this evening / morning out in your parts? :smirk:
  • Banno
    24.9k
    I still read underlining as web links... Interesting to see it making a comeback as emphasis.

    I'll maintain my point; you are not talking about truth, you are talking about justifications for belief - habits.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Except pramat(ic)ism is explicitly fallibilistic and not justificationist (e.g. Popper, Feyerabend, Haack). But okay, we disagree, so your objection stands but does not address my position.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Well, I'll follow Feyerabend in rejecting falsification as a definitive method, so that doesn't help much. Yes, I think we are talking past each other; for my money pragmatism pretends that questions of truth can be ignored, while in practice making full use of them. I just think it inconsistent.
  • Cartesian trigger-puppets
    221


    I don't know what it means for "I ought not kill" to be true or false, so I can't answer that question.Michael

    Though a few of your interlocutors seem to be either incapable of, or disinterested in, finding a charitable interpretation of your statement, I find your humility and intellectual honesty quite refreshing. This may be the result of me rendering a subjective reality from my biased perception and interpretation, but dissonance notwithstanding I am sympathetic to your agnostic position here. What is more, I hold it with you.

    If I lack sufficient data to meet the burden of proof required to defend a proposition or its negation, and my aim is towards truth, then I maintain agnosticism on grounds of insufficient evidence. For example, if I have insufficient evidence to support the proposition "I ought to kill," or its negation "I ought not to kill," then I should hold the only remaining tenable position; namely agnosticism.

    This is a matter of having insufficient evidence necessary to ground a deductive argument to warrant logical inferences. This is NOT a matter of practicality and civil respect to the normative values relative to our societies and cultures of which I most certainly share the preference that everyone "ought not to kill," of which (very likely ) and I take such truth for granted in my day-to-day life.

    I would welcome any of your critics to attempt to deny the truth of the following argument.

    Main argument:

    P1. If all (non-innate) human knowledge begins from a position of uncertainty that emerged from ignorance, and a subset of humans want to be intellectually honest, then the subset of humans must by default begin from an agnostic position.

    P2. All (non-innate) human knowledge begins from a position of uncertainty that emerged from ignorance, and a subset of humans want to be intellectually honest.

    C. Therefore, the subset of humans who want to be intellectually honest must by default begin from an agnostic position.

    Argument 2; supporting P2 of argument 1:

    P1. If most knowledge is learned through experience, and humans are born prior to experiencing the world, then all (non-innate) human knowledge begins from a position of uncertainty that emerged from ignorance.

    P2. Most knowledge is learned through experience, and humans are born prior to experiencing the world.

    C. Therefore, all (non-innate) human knowledge begins from a position of uncertainty that emerged from ignorance.

    Argument 3; supporting P2 of argument 2:

    P1. Innate knowledge functions at the level of reflexes and instincts and excludes learning through experience.

    P2. Basic general knowledge functions beyond the level of reflexes and instincts and requires the accumulation of a body of common knowledge learned through experience.

    P3. Specialized knowledge (e.g., philosophy) functions beyond the level of basic general knowledge and requires mastering through disciplined investigation and study.

    C. Therefore, most knowledge is learned through experience. (Even innatists concede this point in denying tabula rasa)

    Argument 4; supporting P2 and P3 of argument 3.

    P1. If all knowledge that functions beyond innate knowledge requires humans to use reason to distinguish between accurate information and inaccurate information, then basic general knowledge and specialized knowledge (e.g., philosophy) require humans to use reason to distinguish between accurate information and inaccurate information.

    P2. All knowledge that functions beyond innate knowledge requires humans to use reason to distinguish between accurate information and inaccurate information.

    C. Therefore, basic general knowledge and specialized knowledge (e.g., philosophy) require humans to use reason to distinguish between accurate information and inaccurate information.

    Argument 5; supporting P2 of argument 4:

    P1. If humans are fallible, then humans must use reason to distinguish between accurate information and inaccurate information.

    P2. Humans are fallible.

    C. Therefore, humans must use reason to distinguish between accurate information and inaccurate information.
  • baker
    5.6k
    AT least do yourself the service of responding to what I wrote, rather than making stuff up.Banno
    *sigh*

    /note to self: Must grow a dick & balls. Otherwise participating in discussion very difficult./
  • baker
    5.6k
    I once came across an essay by a highly regarded philosopher about, if I remember correctly, why it is wrong a bake a child in the oven. The point was that we all recognize this as wrong but moral arguments as to why it is wrong fail.Fooloso4
    Absolutely.
    (Why didn't anyone else pick this up?)


    Though a few of your interlocutors seem to be either incapable of, or disinterested in, finding a charitable interpretation of your statementCartesian trigger-puppets
    This just goes to show that taboos are still essential to thinking about morality.

    I find your humility and intellectual honesty quite refreshing.
    Yes, and yesterday, I actually collected those posts and commented on them with "Way to gloss over the issue!"
    But taboos exist for a reason.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    There simply has been no justification provided hereCartesian trigger-puppets
    Reread my preamble for context. Ethics, as I understand it, is fallibilistic (i.e. pragmatic(ist)) and performative, not justificationist and propositional.
  • Cartesian trigger-puppets
    221


    Reread my preamble for context. Ethics, as I understand it, is fallibilistic (i.e. pragmatic(ist)) and performative, not justificationist and propositional.180 Proof

    Could you clarify what you mean with these broad terms? If you could offer your particular disambiguated take rather than me attempting to parce and further extrapolate your view from such broad generalizations? I'll attempt one, if just to measure the difficulties of such an endeavor.

    I have a basic understanding of fallibilism insomuch that I am aware of the various levels of force in which such skepticism is applied epistemically. All knowledge is fallible because knowledge requires information to be processed and humans are limited in both accessibility to information and ability to process information. This is because all of our information must first be processed through unreliable sensory perception, depend on unreliable memory, having intellectual and representational limitations, and biased interpretations.

    This ultimately renders all evidence and subsequently all justifications in support of our true beliefs as knowledge as merely fallible. I concede to this so far, however I do not see any necessary entailment to the view that all knowledge is impossible, or moreover that there cannot be any truths to our statements or concepts.

    Surely we have some knowledge? Even if we may only have inconclusive knowledge which can be merely fallibly obtained on warrants that can never conclusively be justified on the grounds of incomplete information that we have limited epistemic access to, we nonetheless can have fallible knowledge.

    Fallible knowledge would thus be a true belief that is less than infallibly justified because any evidence supporting such a belief would fail to provide a conclusive proof and therefore the belief would be inconclusive knowledge, but knowledge nonetheless. Even if you take a fallibilistic position that denies the possibility for there to be fallible, or inconclusive knowledge, would you concede that at least some of our beliefs, dispite their fallibility, could nevertheless in some sense still be true?

    We use sentences to express statements which have a clear logical consistency and their fallibility does not entail that such statements are incapable of being true. For example, for the sake of argument, let's assume that I don't believe to have ever been 180 Proof's interlocutor on The Philosophy Forum. The fact that I have been 180 Proof's interlocutor is logically consistent with my not believing to ever have been. This goes to show that with fallible beliefs, even if they lack the justification to be warranted as knowledge, that there can still be truth within ones beliefs.

    Let us suppose that such is not the case, that there indeed are no truths anywhere in our beliefs, thoughts or ideas. To begin, how would we ever be able to realizing this? Furthermore, how then could our beliefs, thoughts or ideas (any cognitive components) be truth-conducive (reliable belief forming processes) or truth-indicative (e.g., P → Q "P implies Q")?

    Pragmatism, loosely put, would be an (ethical, semantic or epistemic) approach to truth in terms of utility, or practicality. I assume you are referring to a pragmatic theory for truth? Or perhaps a pragmatic approach to ethics which would be a matter more closely related to applied ethics practical use of theories of normative ethics, rather than the metaethical inquiries I've raised here.

    Performative, I can only offer speculation based on my colloquial understandings of the term, dedicate an hour or so to internet research of the meaning in multiple philosophical contexts, or request clarify provided by your definition. I'll choose the latter.

    Justificationist is an adherent of a (anti-realist or non-realist) perspective on truth? I remember reading an author who called himself a justificationist (Michael Dummett, I believe it was) and described the differences between empirical-based (mind-dependent) knowledge and mathematical-based (mind-independent) knowledge and against the predominant notion that direct justification through empirical observations best serve to extract meaning from a statement. He argued for indirect justification of mathematics as better justifications rather than an obscure realist view which requires a demonstration that could not be understood what it would be for such a statement to be true.

    I still am not sure if this captures your meaning and my ramblings are much less efficient than simply requesting further information from you of it's meaning.

    Similarly, I don't have a good grasp on propositionalist views, other than as a epistemic theory for justification based on attitudes as the primary bearers of truth-value? Or, similar to my conjecture that a subject or an agent as the grammatical subject referents of clauses wherein a predicated propositional attitude indexes an instantiated relationship to the grammatical objects, which in this case is an abstract entity and thus cannot be substantiated into realist ontology or correspondence theories.

    Again, it is more efficient to simply request from you a definition of which to work with.

    Your preamble, though eloquent and stylistically appealing, still contains both logic and rhetoric but the latter may be doing much more work than the former. For example, though my empathy is with even such a hypothetical figure as the little girl in your illustrated scenario, and in real life I would not hesitate to render her aid and relieve her suffering, I cannot provide any grounds to warrant the claim that 'I would be acting in a way that I ought to be'. There is no justification because there exists no evidence based in reality, and that seems to be the foundation of all epistemology.

    And so I should not be interpreted uncharitably as a sadist or as indifferent to the suffering of others since in such real life cases, when practicable I abandon most reason. In participating in ethics as an exercise in moral philosophy and logic, I try not to abandon much reason. I simply stifle my emotions in realizing that these thought experiments are representations and thus more useful if analyzed mechanistically thus avoiding emotive obfuscation in the moments leading up to potential enlightenment.
  • Cartesian trigger-puppets
    221


    Though a few of your interlocutors seem to be either incapable of, or disinterested in, finding a charitable interpretation of your statement
    — Cartesian trigger-puppets

    This just goes to show that taboos are still essential to thinking about morality.baker

    You respond only to the sentiments of my comment shared with Michael regarding the uncertain modality we express regarding a moral proposition and its negation, whiles at the same time you completely ignore the arguments presented in (the substance) my comment. If you wish to to refute my defense of a default agnostic position, then you must address the argument, and since the argument is logically valid, you must deny on of the premises, otherwise the argument stands unchallenged.

    The uncertainty and doubt is concerning whether the moral proposition ("I ought to kill") or its negation ("I ought not to kill") is true. What is more, and quite a pernicious notion, is to think that our intuitive preference towards the negation ("I ought not to kill") is somehow tantamount to having a justified belief that it is true.

    Agnosticism and gnosticism are claims to knowledge and justified true belief is necessary and sufficient for knowledge. How does one maintain intellectual honesty while holding the untenable position of defending a moral claim to knowledge with no grounds to warrant such an assertion?

    Taboos are an obfuscation of which I make systematic efforts to reduce and that many who express emotional responses to such meticulous considerations of these hypotheticals, as if an anathema to them, seem to be the ones most affected.
  • baker
    5.6k
    You respond only to the sentiments of my comment shared with Michael regarding the uncertain modality we express regarding a moral proposition and its negation, whiles at the same time you completely ignore the arguments presented in (the substance) my comment. If you wish to to refute my defense of a default agnostic positionCartesian trigger-puppets
    I have no such wish. You misread my tone: I'm actually agreeing with and .

    How does one maintain intellectual honesty while holding the untenable position of defending a moral claim to knowledge with no grounds to warrant such an assertion?
    People typically do it with a reference to "gut feeling" and by stigmatizing/ostracizing anyone who lacks such a gut feeling or questions it.

    Taboos are an obfuscation of which I make systematic efforts to reduce and that many who express emotional responses to such meticulous considerations of these hypotheticals, as if an anathema to them, seem to be the ones most affected.
    At most forums, if someone said what Michael did, they'd get accused of psychopathy/sociopathy (which is what happened here), but they'd probably get banned as well. So strong is the taboo against probing into the origins of moral intuitions. Taboos aren't to be underestimated.
  • Cartesian trigger-puppets
    221


    My apologies for the misinterpretation, I misattributed a comment from Banno to you earlier in the thread. You are correct about the intolerance of taboo topics in most forums and online communities. I may be new here but I hold this one to a much higher standard. This especially so when it comes highly technical, complicated and sometimes graphic hypothetical illustrations of ethical dilemmas because there should be sufficient exposure to such topics to be familiar with and thus an acceptance to issues raised with axiomatic moral statements in a metaethical, epistemological, philosophy of language and logical contexts. I apologize again.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Must grow a dick & balls.baker

    If you think it would help. I don't see how.

    Our disagreement is pretty simple. I find the narrative shared here concerning reincarnation is unconvincing. You think otherwise. I don't see a roll for testicles in the discussion.
  • SpaceDweller
    520
    Morality:
    "Treat others as you would like others to treat you."
  • Michael
    15.4k
    If I lack sufficient data to meet the burden of proof required to defend a proposition or its negation, and my aim is towards truth, then I maintain agnosticism on grounds of insufficient evidence. For example, if I have insufficient evidence to support the proposition "I ought to kill," or its negation "I ought not to kill," then I should hold the only remaining tenable position; namely agnosticism.Cartesian trigger-puppets

    Perhaps I wasn't quite clear, but I wasn't just arguing that I don't know whether or not particular moral claims are true; I was arguing that I don't know what it means for moral claims to be true. I think that the sentences "thou shalt not kill" and "don't kill" mean the same thing, and I don't know what it means for "don't kill" to be true.

    I understand what physical facts are, I understand what mathematical facts are, I understand what logical facts are, but I don't understand what moral facts are supposed to be.
  • baker
    5.6k
    Our disagreement is pretty simple. I find the narrative shared here concerning reincarnation is unconvincing. You think otherwise.Banno
    Then that's the crux. What makes you think I "think otherwise"?? Because I'm not feistily enough against it, don't show enough contempt for it??
    I don't find it convincing. Jesus, this is tiresome.


    I don't see a roll for testicles in the discussion.
    For keeping up with you guys.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Jesus, this is tiresome.baker

    You are not obligated to contribute.

    What makes you think I "think otherwise"??baker

    I don't know - your repeated replies to my posts, perhaps?

    Are we done?
  • baker
    5.6k
    I'm too nice, and I don't understand why you see things the way you do. I guess I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. A female default, and a fault.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    It's not opaque. I'm simply analysing the various accounts of reincarnation to see if they are consistent both with themselves and with other stuff I understand.

    It's pretty clear that there is no account of reincarnation in which what is typically called the self comes, after death, to be found in a different body, because the things that go together to make the self do not survive death. Even were we to take on board the evidence cited by @Wayfarer, the conclusion could only be that reincarnation was a very, very rare event.
  • Cartesian trigger-puppets
    221


    I wasn't just arguing that I don't know whether or not particular moral claims are true; I was arguing that I don't know what it means for moral claims to be true. I think that the sentences "thou shalt not kill" and "don't kill" mean the same thing, and I don't know what it means for "don't kill" to be true.Michael

    You are saying that you don't understand their meaning in a cognitive sense? As in they are more emotive than rational statements? Or, are you saying that you find their meaning completely incoherent even within the context of preference and attitudes? If you say "pain is bad" I at least take that to mean you have a preference against pain, perhaps with regards to just yourself or that of others, and also perhaps within specific context (e.g., perhaps you have a tolerance or even a preference for some pain in certain scenarios).

    You understand the semantic content of the sentence and the referrent subjects and objects relationship instantiated through predicating clauses but you don't understand the grounds in which such a relationship can be substantiated? If so, I too relate.

    I understand what physical facts are, I understand what mathematical facts are, I understand what logical facts are, but I don't understand what moral facts are supposed to be.Michael

    I see. The term 'facts' must then make reference to the state of affairs of possible worlds. Since otherwise facts are said to be that which occurs in the real world insomuch as they can be demonstrated to correspond with our experience of it.

    I wouldn't hesitate to agree with you if we spoke in terms of sets and the consistency in which the entities within each set can be arranged, rather than facts. Im not sure if by "physical facts" whether you are talking about empirical facts (e.g., that sunlight heats the earth) or facts about the properties of matter and energy (e.g., E = Ks × πRₑ^2: "the total amount of energy intercepted by Earth").

    I understand that within the sets of physical possibilities that the mass of an electron cannot exceed the mass of a proton, for instance. And, I understand that within the set if logical possibilities that P implies not-P is impossible. In mathematical sets such as arithmetic the value of the sum of 2 + 2 cannot equal 5. If this is what you mean then I agree.
  • Mww
    4.8k
    Morality: "Treat others as you would like others to treat you."SpaceDweller

    And you don’t see the inherent nonsense in that?

    You may very well have no issue in treating me as a big fat ugly slob, under the assumption such is my wish regardless of how foolish it seems to you. But it is so much more offensive than foolish, that I shall treat you as a big fat ugly slob, when you reject the insinuation explicit in the treatment.

    Morality is never in the treatment, but only and always in the reason for the treatment.
  • SpaceDweller
    520
    Morality is never in the treatment, but only and always in the reason for the treatment.Mww

    Well, you can put it another way, "Treat others as you would NOT like others to treat you."
    Wouldn't such behavior result in immoral actions?

    Isn't that the reason?

    You may very well have no issue in treating me as a big fat ugly slobMww
    Sure, but first I would have to imagine my self as being a big fat ugly slob, and then assume how would others treat me for being an idiot?

    My point is that if you're a big fat ugly slob then you're immoral toward yourself, and as such nobody is going to help you.
  • Mww
    4.8k
    ”Treat others as you would NOT like others to treat you."SpaceDweller

    That doesn’t seem to solve anything, when I elect to treat you as a big fat ugly slob simply because I wish not to be treated as such. Hell, I could just as well treat you like I would Ho Chi Minh, Alan Jackson, or Bugs Bunny for that matter. In other words, the mere negation of a rule is no less a rule, and if the affirmative of that rule is faulty, so too is its negation.
    —————

    My point is that if you're a big fat ugly slob then you're immoral toward yourself, and as such nobody is going to help you.SpaceDweller

    So the proper criteria for morality is...appearance? Attitude? I should think you’d be the epitome of immoral if you willfully fail to help me merely because I am judged as offensive to your sensibilities. It follows from that, that one should help that ubiquitous lil’ ol’ lady cross the busy street, so long as she doesn’t smell bad.

    I’m inclined to say, on the other hand, if one is immoral, as opposed to merely committing a circumstantial error in judgement from ignorance or accident, no one can help him, for his disposition is given and hence the ground of his actions is already set.

    Moral philosophy is a tough business, no doubt.
  • baker
    5.6k
    This is the thread about moral facts, FYI.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Fair point.
  • Cuthbert
    1.1k
    As a footnote to some of this discussion, I would say that Aristotle did not subscribe to a theory of truth that could be well described as a 'correspondence' theory. He does not use any word that could be translated as 'correspond' or 'correspondence' or 'match' or 'fit' or a plausible synonym.

    What is a correspondence theory? On the one hand, facts. On the other, statements. If they correspond, then truth results. Problems: truth of counterfactual statements and negative 'facts', where there is ex hypothesi no corresponding fact; individuation of facts and statements and deciding when one statement or fact is the same as or different from another when setting up a supposed 'correspondence'.

    What is Aristotle's theory? Like a lot of Aristotle's words, each word counts. “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true” This formulation does not have the problems of correspondence theory. If it's true that I might have eaten an egg for breakfast (though I did not) then I might have eaten an egg for breakfast. If the doorway is clear and there is no fat man in the doorway then it's true that there is no fat man in the doorway and since there is no thin man in the doorway it is also true that there is no thin man in the doorway. It helps to understand that he is challenging the Parmenidean view that no truth is to be obtained from reference to 'what is not' and that truth may only be generated by speaking of what is and saying that it is. Parmenides was closer to 'correspondence' theory than Aristotle, as was Plato.

    All the above is contrary to received wisdom which may be greater than my wisdom. If you write in an essay that Aristotle did not subscribe to a correspondence theory of truth you may lose points. You may lose them justly for all I know, but I would like to know why.
  • Michael
    15.4k


    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/

    The correspondence theory is often traced back to Aristotle’s well-known definition of truth (Metaphysics 1011b25): “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”—but virtually identical formulations can be found in Plato (Cratylus 385b2, Sophist 263b). It is noteworthy that this definition does not highlight the basic correspondence intuition. Although it does allude to a relation (saying something of something) to reality (what is), the relation is not made very explicit, and there is no specification of what on the part of reality is responsible for the truth of a saying. As such, the definition offers a muted, relatively minimal version of a correspondence theory. (For this reason it has also been claimed as a precursor of deflationary theories of truth.) Aristotle sounds much more like a genuine correspondence theorist in the Categories (12b11, 14b14), where he talks of underlying things that make statements true and implies that these things (pragmata) are logically structured situations or facts (viz., his sitting and his not sitting are said to underlie the statements “He is sitting” and “He is not sitting”, respectively). Most influential is Aristotle’s claim in De Interpretatione (16a3) that thoughts are “likenesses” (homoiomata) of things. Although he nowhere defines truth in terms of a thought’s likeness to a thing or fact, it is clear that such a definition would fit well into his overall philosophy of mind. (Cf. Crivelli 2004; Szaif 2006.)
  • Moliere
    4.6k


    I disagree that there are moral facts.

    There are two thoughts I can't quite decide between.

    Thought 1 was a defense of moral error theory, but I'm not sure if I have anything more to say on that than I've already said in other threads before... (also tempted to fuck around with Moore and the naturalist fallacy)

    Thought 2 is to criticize the notion of moral facts from an orthogonal direction -- to say that the framework sort of misses what's more interesting in ethics. I mean, if someone were to point to some moral fact, say in a book of all moral propositions, that said something you disagreed with would you really change your mind? Aren't we committed to our ethics more than we are convinced of them through the evidence? We shouldn't care about what the true moral propositions are, but concern ourselves with how to live a good life -- the good, not the true, is the aim of ethics.
  • Cartesian trigger-puppets
    221
    I disagree that there are moral facts.Moliere

    Whether or not I believe in moral facts depends on many variables that I have considered both here and in other posts. The main idea is whether or not propositional attitudes, as in the subjective psychological states held by an agent toward a proposition (a linguistic, truth-bearing entity), could be postulated as an implicitly embedded clause containing the actual referent within moral statements. In the moral statement [1.1]"Hating people based on their race is wrong," for instance, there seems to be no particular thing (being, object, entity, etc.) in which the sentence refers to, thus no obtaining states of affairs.

    An obtaining states of affairs requires at least one referent (a thing, object, entity), as in that which the words and phrases of a sentence are referring to and conversely what the words and phrases are representing. In the sentence [1.2]"Moliere disagrees with me," for example, the referent of the noun (name) 'Moliere' signifies a particular person, a fellow member of The Philosophy Forum, who is being spoken of; whereas the referent of the pronoun 'me' signifies the person who is uttering the sentence (namely, I, Cartesian trigger-puppets). We are the referents to which the sentence denotes and thus by virtue of our very being, as truth-makers, our truth making relations relative to the statement, as the truth-bearer, are the obtaining states of affairs.

    Now, rewind back to the example moral statement, [1.1]"Hating people based on their race is wrong," and try to identify the referents. The term "Hating" represents a universal property regarding all things predicated as 'having hate;' the term "people" is the universal property of all things predicated as 'being a person;' the term "race" represents the universal property of 'being a member of a social construction based on skin-tone and ancestral phenotypes;' the term (and moral predication) "is wrong" is a universal qualitative property which is left ambiguously ungrounded.

    Attempted grounds are based either on an agent-based relativeization to which the evaluative predication is indexed to the subject who is an individual with subjective psychological states; or, one the other hand, on a reality-based absolution, to which an attempt to ground the predicated evaluation as either a natural or unnatural property of externality (a-thing-in-itself), indexed to the objective states of the world.

    This is because the referents of such moral statements are (hypothetically) contained within an implicitly embedded clause. Take the example [1.1], for instance, if we postulate and make explicit an implicitly embedded clause, similar to an expressivistic form of metaethical semantics, such as the subordinate clause "according to Moliere and Cartesian trigger-puppets," embedded within the main clause [1.1]"Hating people based on their race is wrong," we extrapolate moral referents (you and I) and relativize the evaluative properties within the moral predication to be indexed to the subjective psychological states of the referents in the subordinate clause. The final statement would be ""Hating people based on their race, according to Moliere and Cartesian trigger-puppets, is wrong."

    The use of referents, which are the abstract or concrete entities represented in moral statements, to warrant an obtaining states of affairs on the grounds of individually relativized subjective psychological states, as the pragmatic truth-makers which have been implicitly embedded within our former semantic theories, would enable a fully-functional, internally consistent and subjectively self-contained metaethical theory.


    if someone were to point to some moral fact, say in a book of all moral propositions, that said something you disagreed with would you really change your mind?Moliere

    Hopefully, given the content of my previous reply, you can make an accurate presumption with regards to my answer. In short, no-and-yes. My answer depends on contextual variables.
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