• shmik
    207
    I share your views about thinking of morality and moral behaviour and psychology in abstract and rational terms. We typically and primarily relate to morality emotionally. I think that most people mean the same, or at least similar things, when that say that such-and-such is wrong, but then philosophers come along and overcomplicate things. What most people express is disapproval. This is the case whether they mean to state an objective truth or just their subjective judgement. I believe that fundamental underlying meaningful elements behind the use of common moral language can be known if one takes a reductionist approach, and I further believe that the most useful and meaningful results can be found if one examines subjectivity rather than depart on a wild goose chase by seeking moral objectivity - which, if it does exist, is basically redundant - even if it could be proven.Sapientia

    Yeh I'm with the view about starting from subjectivity, I don't even really get the idea of taking moral language as the starting point. To me it's almost two different things, what morality is and how we talk about it. It would be like taking language as the starting point to proving that process philosophy is false as we talk about objects. Language already includes a way of conceptualizing morality and I think the general way of talking about it is already mistaken. Otherwise you run into issues like the Frege - Geach problem.

    But from this my issue arises, what is this persons relationship to the rule. Because people do think to themselves 'I want to do X but its against the moral rule Y'. So the relationship must be more complex than 'I disapprove of X'.
  • S
    11.7k
    But from this my issue arises: what is this persons relationship to the rule? Because people do think to themselves 'I want to do X but its against the moral rule Y'. So the relationship must be more complex than 'I disapprove of X'.shmik

    It can indeed be more complex, but it need not exclusively be about personal subjectivity, as indicated by the statement 'I disapprove of X'; it can also be about how the subject relates to other subjects, i.e. intersubjectivity. The anticipated dissaproval of breaking a "moral rule" might be attributable to society or state. But it could also be solely a personal conflict between desire and guilt, between temptation and personal disapproval. If it really is a moral rule, as acknowledged by the subject, then I would expect there to be psychological conflict of this sort. On the other hand, it could just be a "moral rule" in that it is what the society in which the subject resides deems to be so, but is not truly acknowledged as such by the subject. In which case, the absence of such a personal moral dilemma would be understandable.
  • Michael
    15.3k
    If you don't have that feeling, then you're seriously lacking in something which is vital to being a moral agent: empathy. You can't really remove the emotional foundation and retain morality; you'd be left with an empty structure which in some way resembles morality, but is not in fact morality - such as a set of rules. So, you could convince such a person not to murder, but I'd question whether such a person has actually understood that murder is immoral in the way that a moral agent must.Sapientia

    I wonder if perhaps this means that murder being immoral isn't something you understand but something you feel.
  • andrewk
    2.1k
    And yet I am able to tell a random person on the street who I know nothing about and who may not share my worldview that I find lying wrong, and he'll know just what I mean.

    Curious I can accomplish that there, but the OP can't do that here.
    — Hanover
    The OP can easily accomplish what you are talking about here. What he can't do is what he was talking about in the OP. There's a critical difference between the two, that involves a first-person pronoun.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    That would be interesting if true. A lot of papers I've read both in philosophy and out seem to throw out moral anti-realism by the way and very casually, as if it were a commonsense truth. I'm reading a lot in linguistics too now about evaluative adjectives, deontic modals, predicates of personal taste, and so on, and it's usually assumed without argument that these things can't have objective extensions or participate in objective truth values.
  • shmik
    207
    Funny that this exact conversation occurred in 2 threads. Pretty sure the paper Throngil is talking about is this one:
    http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP
  • shmik
    207
    I wonder if perhaps this means that murder being immoral isn't something you understand but something you feel.Michael

    Recently I've been liking the idea of morality being something you Judge. Understanding and feeling are both too passive.
  • The Great Whatever
    2.2k
    My predictions for the majority on the questions, before looking at this:

    a priori knowledge: yes [RIGHT]
    abstract objects: platonism [RIGHT]
    aesthetic value: subjective [WRONG]
    analytic-synthetic distinction: yes [RIGHT]
    epistemic justification: externalism [RIGHT]
    external world: non-skeptical realism [RIGHT]
    free will: compatibilism [RIGHT]
    god: atheism [RIGHT]
    knowledge: empiricism [RIGHT]
    knowledge claims: contextualism [RIGHT]
    laws of nature: non-humean [RIGHT]
    logic: classical? [this question doesn't make any sense] [STILL RIGHT]
    mental content: externalism [RIGHT]
    meta-ethics: anti-realism [WRONG]
    metaphilosophy: naturalism [RIGHT]
    mind: physicalism [RIGHT]
    moral judgment: non-cognitivism [WRONG]
    moral motivation: externalism [WRONG]
    newcomb's problem: meh [X]
    normative ethics: consequentialism [WRONG]
    perceptual experience: disjunctivism [WRONG]
    personal identity: psychological [RIGHT]
    politics: egalitarianism [RIGHT]
    proper names: millian [RIGHT]
    science: realism [RIGHT]
    teleporter: survival [RIGHT]
    time: meh [X]
    trolley: switch [RIGHT]
    truth: deflationary [WRONG]
    zombies: inconceivable [WRONG]

    That's 20/28 attempted right, but it looks like I was misinformed about the prevailing metaethical opinions. Interesting also that a lot of these views don't make sense in conjunction, and it seems statistically some of the philosophers must hold these fashionable views simultaneously in conjunction.
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