You have
"One ought do X" is true when everyone believes it's true.
And yet you seem to deny
"You ought to do what everyone believes you should" — Banno

I haven't said this. I have said that one of these is true:

a) no moral sentence is truth-apt
c) no moral sentence is true
e) some moral sentence is true if everyone believes so
f) some moral sentence is true even if nobody believes so

And I've also said that I won't (always) do what I ought to do.

I mentioned an example. Morality applies to any species (or rather, person) with the intelligence to understand morality. — Michael

Not according to the Bible. Adam and Eve didn't have the knowledge of Good and Evil before they sinned.

Not according to the Bible. — frank

Okay?

Okay? — Michael

So why is your assessment superior to the Bible's? Why do objective moral rules only apply to persons who understand them?

I don't think so. — frank

Good for you.

Moral realists are those who think that... moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. — SEP

Others differ.

Others differ. — Banno

You differ, yes. I don't think anybody else does.

So why is your assessment superior to the Bible's? Why do objective moral rules only apply to persons who understand them? — frank

I'm not saying that my assessment is superior to the Bible's. I'm simply providing you with a coherent account of moral realism that can explain why morality applies to humans but not cockroaches.

The SEP citation put the lie to that.

There's an article on moral realism in SEP as well (as on moral anti-realism), the one from which my quote came. It does not use "objective" in the definition, but notes
" ...although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way."

I've said before I don't really care what you call it. the interesting bit is that moral statements have a truth value. — Banno

Human psychology isn't a slave to some supposed duty. — Michael

It was a discussion from several years ago that I mentioned in passing. I didn't mean to bring it into this discussion. — Michael

<This thread> :smile:

I haven't said this. — Michael

You appeared to agreed with Hyp, in his asserting those incompatible ideas. Here:

I'm just not at all sure what it is you are doing. Think I mentioned that.

Do you see the difference? — hypericin

Is it this idea?

There is a common confusion and category error between theories about "morality", and moral theories. Only the latter involves true normativity. There is moral subjectivism as a theory about "morality," and then there is moral subjectivism as a moral theory. I have argued against the latter; you are proposing the former. I don't think it is incoherent to say that every moral claim is about societal expectations (but I do think it is wrong). Similarly, I wouldn't think it incoherent to say that every moral claim is really about the lengths of different giraffes' necks. Neither one is incoherent in the sense of self-defeating. But I do think it is incoherent to appeal to these sort of claims while at the same time espousing a moral theory (i.e. a normative theory). — Leontiskos

[Between <theories about "morality"> and <moral theories>]

You appeared to agreed with Hyp, in his asserting those incompatible ideas. — Banno

I was agreeing with the claim that if "one ought do X" is true when everyone believes it's true, and if everyone believe that one ought do X, then one ought do X.

Ok. That was not clear. So would you agree those sentences are incompatible? That one could not coherently assert that "'One ought do X' is true when everyone believes it's true" and not "You ought to do what everyone believes you should"

I'm not saying that my assessment is superior to the Bible's. I'm simply providing you with a coherent account of moral realism that can explain for why morality applies to humans but not cockroaches. — Michael

Ok. You have coherence, I'll grant that. Would you agree that a persuasive argument for moral realism is going to have to account for why morality attaches only to certain kinds of intelligence?

↪Michael Ok. That was not clear. — Banno

Because the 'ought' requires scare quotes: <'One "ought" do X' is true when everyone believes it's true.>

It is a kind of definition or stipulation: <"One ought do X" iff everyone believes it's true.>

Would you agree that a persuasive argument for moral realism is going to have to account for why morality attaches only to certain kinds of intelligence? — frank

Well yes, any persuasive argument for some metaethics (whether realism, error theory, or subjectivism) is going to have to account for why morality works the way they say it does.

Well yes, any persuasive argument for some metaethics (whether realism, error theory, or subjectivism) is going to have to account for why morality works the way they say it does. — Michael

Would you agree that you don't know of any persuasive argument for moral realism?

Would you agree that you don't know of any persuasive argument for moral realism? — frank

I don't know of any persuasive argument for any metaethics. They all seem to have insurmountable problems.

I don't know of any persuasive argument for any metaethics. — Michael

Well, there you have it.

Have what?

Have what? — Michael

A lack of persuasive arguments.

It is a kind of definition or stipulation — Leontiskos

Yes, that's a central aspect of metaethics; the meaning of moral sentences. What does "ought" even mean?

I think the problem is that you have a realist conception of the meaning of "ought" that you (rightly) find incompatible with an anti-realist conception, but your seeming suggestion that anti-realist obligations aren't "real" obligations is begging the question.

By the very substance of anti-realist metaethics, obligations aren't objective/absolute/intrinsic/inherent/unconditional/categorical or however you want to phrase it. Such realist obligations either fail to ever obtain or are incoherent. The only possible meaningful obligations are those that are conditional on some relevant rule-giver. Asking why one ought obey this rule-giver is a meaningless question given the actual meaning of "ought".

This thread is fast becoming inane. I suggest you take your recent, thoughtful post and start a new thread, perhaps setting out your thesis in a bit more detail.

Sigh.

Here's were we came in. Two arguments for moral realism:
(1) There are statements that at the least are prima facie both moral and true.
(2) We use moral statements in reasoning, which we could not do unless they are truth-apt.

What the various versions of moral realism have in common, in opposition to other views, is that there are true moral statements.

"although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way"

When most of use the term "moral realism" we are talking about those accounts of morality that involve these additional commitments. Many of us have already accepted that moral sentences are truth-apt and that some are true.

Putting you at odds with the use in the SEP article, and missing the central tenant of moral realism.

What the various versions of moral realism have in common, in opposition to other views, is that there are true moral statements. — Banno

You're too obsessed with "isms".

I'll make this easy for you. Whenever one of us says something like "moral realism hasn't been justified", feel free to read it as saying "the moral theory that there are objective moral facts independent from human thought and practice hasn't been justified."

Arguing that people are using the wrong label when discussing the matter is a pointless argument.

↪Banno You're too obsessed with "isms". — Michael

Needs must. It's a response to my interlocutors.

I'll make this easy for you. From the form of the words, one would expect that realism were the negation of antirealism. It isn't. Dealing with this nuance is presumably why it was necessary to have two articles in the SEP. Antirealist attacks on realism target the subsidiary issues.

In the OP @Bob Ross argued that there were no moral truths. Setting aside the "isms", my aim has been to show that there are moral truths.

This thread is fast becoming inane. I suggest you take your recent, thoughtful post and start a new thread, perhaps setting out your thesis in a bit more detail. — Banno

Yes, but the first thread I drafted when I arrived was on this very topic. The post was more or less finished, but I realized I wouldn't have time to actually field a thread on the topic so I postponed, and the same holds now. So that post can just be a placeholder and/or a point of reference for those who desire a way to circumvent Anscombe's argument in Modern Moral Philosophy.

I have thought of trying to pare it down to make it a smaller and more manageable thread, but these topics attract so many replies and knee-jerk reactions that I would almost prefer a back-alley discussion - haha. In any case, maybe over Christmas break I will try to set out a simple sub-thesis.

Ok. That all makes sense. It's sounds like more of a long term project than a thread, hence the large bibliography.