?The point is that humans are the ones that make the rules for human behaviour, and those rules have changes dramatically over the last few centuries, right alongside the evolution of our thought/belief. — creativesoul
That's very true, however, when it comes to topics such as morality, I don't believe that you can tell someone what is moral when the topic of morality is so heavily based on opinion. When someone criticizes you on the use of phrases such as "I think" and "I believe" it kind of defeats the purpose of a forum such as this. — nsmith
Everyone dislikes being murdered, raped, stolen from, deceived and so on, and that is an objective fact about human nature. — Janus
it ignores the actual functionality or dysfunctionality of the community. — Janus
In many tribal cultures it is considered OK to just take someone else's possessions if you want them, — Isaac
When I have all the facts, I'll make that leap to telling, but until then, it's nothing more than personal judgement. It's essential that those on a philosophy forum understand when they have all the facts and when they don't and until they have all the facts, they have no right to be telling anybody anything. — nsmith
That's very true, however, when it comes to topics such as morality, I don't believe that you can tell someone what is moral when the topic of morality is so heavily based on opinion. When someone criticizes you on the use of phrases such as "I think" and "I believe" it kind of defeats the purpose of a forum such as this. — nsmith
What I'm hoping to show by this is that there are no objective facts of the matter even by Janus' definition of objective. I'm not particularly precious about my personal definitions, but I am precious about people confusing cultural superiority complex with objective fact.
Yes, we all agree with the very nebulous concept that "murder is wrong" and so by Janus' (rather idiosyncratic) definition of 'objective', such a concept could be considered an objective fact ('wrong' would also have to be quite weirdly defined as a class of behaviour, but as I said, I'm not precious about definitions).
My point is that this does not provide any useful insight because the concept is too nebulous to be of any normative utility. Hence he can safely leave the thing behind when investigating the meta-ethical issues.
I know it's a long way round, but the direct route didn't seem to be working. — Isaac
If you don't judge health and functionality to be good and ill-health and dysfunctionality to be bad, then we have nothing to talk about. If you don't believe that the most fundamental aim of community is to live harmoniously together, then I will agree that of course you are entitled to that stupid opinion. But I see nothing to support such an opinion except "that is what I choose to believe"; it would be a perverse, and not a reasonable, opinion. — Janus
if everyone feels that murder is wrong then surely it's a fact that everyone feels that murder is wrong and that fact implies . . . exactly nothing else. — Terrapin Station
Yes, absolutely. But then what is to stop someone from saying that a collection of such things (things everyone thinks is wrong) is what we call "wrong" when it comes to moral-apt behaviour? "wrong" is just a word, words quite frequently mean different things in different contexts (and to different people). It's quite reasonable that "wrong" when we're talking about morality means {those behaviours which most people dislike}, whereas "wrong" when talking about the statement "the sky is made of jam" means {does not correspond with reality}. After all, we say 2+2=5 is "wrong" all the time, and by that we don't mean {does not correspond with reality}, we mean {does not correspond with the rules of maths}. — Isaac
People want to instead say that there's normative weight to what's common or conventional (or we could say that they want to support the notion of normative weight, period), they want to say that certain things are correct versus incorrect, reasonable versus not reasonable, etc. — Terrapin Station
Janus, I thought was saying something slightly different. That, in the case of morality, some collection of behaviours can be objectively called "right" just and only because that's what the word "right" means in this context, and any normative weight is derived entirely from the fact that we probably do want to live in a harmonious society (and so anyone who doesn't need not pay attention, ie the normative weight is not exhaustive). — Isaac
Yeah, if everyone feels that murder is wrong then surely it's a fact that everyone feels that murder is wrong and that fact implies . . . exactly nothing else. — Terrapin Station
It certainly doesn't imply that any individual should feel that murder is wrong (if some odd individual happens to show up at any point and not feel the same as the rest of us), or that anyone has things incorrect if they don't feel that murder is wrong, or anything like that. — Terrapin Station
If that's all he's saying, though, what exactly is he disagreeing with me about? — Terrapin Station
So presumably you believe that it's a non-opinion-oriented fact that "health and functionality are good" is reasonable, and you believe in general that "x is reasonable" can be a fact that in no way hinges on individual mental predispositions, habits, etc., right?
How would you attempt to support that? — Terrapin Station
We can add in a premise that if everyone feels that way, then it's objectively true that murder is wrong, but that is, as you rightly point out, a fallacious appeal to the masses, so that just won't work, and there should be more recognition from the other side of the debate that this just won't work. — S
So how do you treat the use of the term "correct" when applied to a move in chess? — Isaac
But I've shown the problems with such usage. It fails to work or adequately explain any incongruity when the herd-morality doesn't accord with an individual's sense of right and wrong. I have shown this with examples about racism and slavery, and he has proven unable to reasonably counter. At first he dismissed the thought experiment as impossible or unrealistic when it was about racism, then he decided to completely ignore it the second time around when it was about slavery. These are the last resorts of someone who can't think up a way out of the problem. — S
As a sloppy manner of speaking. Yes, it's a misuse of the word to me. — Terrapin Station
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.