I don't know, Huckleberry Finn never studied meta-ethics.

If we uploaded your consciousness to a self repairing robot and checked back in 10,000 years from now and asked you about the sentence thing, we'd find your view had not changed at all. Gotta respect that.

How is it not putting the cart before the horse to talk about this being good, or thinking about if this would be good and how it would be, before the metaphysics of goodness? — Bob Ross

Because morality is a road you walk. You fall, you get up, you learn, you try again. You learn what it feels like to be forgiven, how it's like being 10 feet tall. You come to see how bitterness twists your soul, but you don't know how to stop. And so on, and on.

The metaphysics of morality doesn't enhance the journey too much, does it?

:up:

@Pierre-Normand

Hi! If you have a second, you could explain the difference between sentences and propositions for us?

Sometimes I use the word "sentence" rather than "proposition" — Michael

Even after reading the SEP article? I give up.

I didn't mention propositions. — Michael

You did formerly. I told you that you weren't using the word correctly, we debated that, you persisted in referring to sentence-propositions, which isn't a thing, now you realize you shouldn't use that particular word.

No need to even mention propositions. Using that word will only cause confusion.

I wasn't: I was advocating that everyone is giving the OP an incorrect starting position, which was whatever the responder thought is chiefly good (or good). — Bob Ross

I didn't do that.

Sentences are also abstract objects.

If you believe goodness is innate knowledge, then why did you campaign to have people explain what it is?

It is literally saying that the easy argument entails Platonism about propositions and that many philosophers reject propositions because of that. If it were just discussing whether or not rocks exist without us then it would only be the few idealists who take issue with it. — Michael

Where you're misunderstanding is that you think propositions exist at a certain time and place. Think of the number 4. Where is it? When did it come into existence? Is it a mental state? If so, it's mind dependent in the SEP sense.

Propositions do not exist at a certain time and place.

There are people who claim that mind-independent truth-apt propositions exist. — Michael

You're misunderstanding that. It's saying this:

P is the proposition that there are rocks.

P (that there are rocks) does not entail the existence of entities with mental states.

Compare this to this:

S is the taste of vanilla.

S entails the existence of entities with mental states.

The definition of propositions you're using is a misconception you picked up from somewhere.

I've told you a couple of times that nobody believes in mind-independent abstract objects that exist in the absence of humans.

There's certainly no need to bring up mind-independent abstract objects that exist even if language doesn't. — Michael

I agree with this.


So we need to know who uttered the sentence, we need to know when they uttered it, and in some cases what the intention was, right?

Then later, we can think about what the person meant and decide if we think it was true or false. It could also be that we're wrong about what they meant. We might have to ask for clarification. So we can add all these things on top of just gold and sentences.

Sentences mean different things in different contexts, so do you want to throw some context into your mix? It's not raining, btw.

It goes back to the way we think about the world. We could think of it as made up of a bunch of objects, or we could think of it as made of states. The world as states means it's not just that the world contains the sun and the earth, but it contains the earth orbiting the sun, and so forth.

There are advantages to the state angle, one being that it's closer to the way we think about the world. For a materialist, the ontological implications are a problem tho.

I like to keep things simple. Gold exists and we either truthfully say "gold exists" or falsely say "gold doesn't exist".

Anything more than this is unnecessary. — Michael

ok

I'm just talking about the adjective "true" (and the adjective "false"). I am saying that a) being true (or false) is a property of propositions, — Michael

Right.

b) the existence of propositions depends on the existence of language, — Michael

I would just say the idea of a proposition comes from analysis of the way we think. In particular, as demonstrated by Scott Soames, propositions are a necessary part of agreement. In other words, when we agree, it's not on an utterance or sentence. It's the content of an uttered sentence that we agree on. That content is called a proposition.

This doesn't require you to admit propositions, though. You can adopt a behaviorist view. It's just that if you adopt a behaviorist view and then appear to worry over whether you're actually agreeing with anyone, you end up looking kind of schizoid.

I'm not the one claiming that the existence of gold depends on the existence of something which has the property of being true. — Michael

I don't think anyone thinks that. I think it's more that we imagine an alien might divide the world up in such a way that there is no such thing as gold. So gold is part of our own form of life.

The existence of gold and the truth of the proposition "gold exists" are two different things. — Michael

You're denying that propositions and states of affairs are the same thing. Some philosophers would agree with you, some wouldn't.

That there is gold in hills in the absence of minds follows from your worldview. There is no logical or empirical proof for it. The status of propositions doesn't really have anything to do with this.

You haven't once mentioned the hostages. — BitconnectCarlos

All the Israeli victims deserve to be remembered and their suffering recognized.

It sounds like the president had a Donald Trump moment. Incidentally, S. Korea has "fans" all over the world due to the popularity of K-pop, K-dramas, and webtoons. It's a thing, where Americans end up knowing some basic Korean phrases, which leads to knowledge about their history and culture. I'm curious about how that kind of cultural alliance will impact events.

That doesn't matter for my point I was making: I was pointing out that the OP is asking where to start, and surely they must start with the concept of 'good' and not what can be said to be good. This is a basic distinction that shockingly no one else in this thread seems to cares about: everyone is just nudging Matias Isoo in the direction of their metaethical and normative ethical commitments. I am not here to do that, because that's not what the OP is asking about. You don't start with someone else's robust ethical theory when starting ethics: you build your own way up. — Bob Ross

I think we each learn about goodness viscerally through experiences with grief, fear, and anger. But prove me wrong. What's your favored definition of goodness?

Dude. That's your answer?

Because the what goodness is is presupposed in what can be said to be good, so how can one accurately predicate goodness to something when they have not a clue what goodness is itself? That's blind metaethics, my friend.. — Bob Ross

OK, fine. What is goodness according to you?

I disagree with Platonism. — Michael

I don't think you understand what it is, otherwise, you wouldn't keep talking about propositions existing at a certain time.

But gold does exist in the absence of language. It's very straightforward. — Michael

Ok. You don't need to say anything about propositions to make that point.

We can talk about what we mean by "good" without worrying about moral realism. Our heritage includes several different ideas about morality. Jewish, Persian, Roman, Greek. They're all in Christianity. I've had my fill of reading about all of that, though. That's not where I start in thinking about morality. I start with the content of my own heart.

But the claim that the true proposition "gold exists" will continue to exist even after all life dies is Platonic nonsense. — Michael

That's not even a Platonic stance. We're not talking about Plato here. Platonism in logic is just the acceptance of abstract objects. They don't have locations. They don't have temporal extension, so they certainly don't "exist" after all life dies.

Given that "a truth" means "a true proposition" your claim is just the claim "if there are no truthbearers there is no true proposition". Well, yes.

But there's still gold. — Michael

That last sentence only makes sense as an assertion at a possible world.

If there are no truthbearers, there is no truth... about anything.

It does make sense. Propositions are features of language; ergo if there is no language there are no propositions. — Michael

Ok. You're saying that if there are no humans, there is no truth. That's anti-realism.

All languages will die out eventually, and when they do no true propositions will exist; — Michael

This was it. This sentence doesn't make any sense. I think we agree on that now?

Maybe you disagree with conceptualists, but they are quite welcome to talk about propositions without committing to Platonism. — Michael

Conceptualists are concerned with the make-up of possible worlds. They're often thought of as sets of propositions, but a conceptualist wants to say they're sets of properties. If you notice, the SEP article explains that conceptualists end up being Platonic about properties instead of propositions. I first came by the idea of possible worlds by way of Kripke, so I don't worry over this issue. Possible worlds are logical constructs.

Anyway, the next two sections express the view that it's no big deal that propositions are abstract objects. We need them to come somewhere close to describing the way we think, so don't put the ontological cart before the necessary donkey.

Since you're liking the conceptualist approach, I'm assuming you accept that we're really talking about the existence of gold in a possible world. Right?

Wait, am I hallucinating or did you edit your post? I can't find the statement I was objecting to.

Then, you are not giving them a starting point for investigating ethics: you are giving them a Nietschien, moral anti-realist, position to explore. — Bob Ross

It's my own view, home grown in my own little brain, but yes, it's echoed by Nietzsche, and it's in keeping with the essential teachings of Jesus. So it has that going for it.

: being an atheist doesn’t preclude moral realism. — Bob Ross

I think it does. You're just attached to this little rock going nowhere for a short amount of time. Love and do what you will.

One does not need to believe that propositions are abstract entities that continue to exist even after the death of all life to talk about propositions. — Michael

The word proposition has a technical meaning in philosophy. It's along the lines of content. It reflects the way a realist talks about the world. She speaks of unspoken truths, for instance. We seek the truth about Pluto's atmosphere, and so on.

No one really cares what sort of "existence" propositions have. We talk about them as a way of handling analysis of the way we think. We do, in keeping with Frege, refer to them as abstract objects, which signifies that they are not necessarily mental objects that are held in the mind at a certain time and place.

If @TonesInDeepFreeze was here, he could go off on you endlessly about how stubborn you're being in the face of what the SEP explains about it.

All languages will die out eventually, and when they do no true propositions will exist; — Michael

You shouldn't use "proposition" if you don't accept it's meaning. For you, a truth bearer is an utterance, because you need someone to actually speak for truth to exist. You're just going to foment confusion if you don't pay attention to how the terms are used.

You're doing what I said, which is making an assertion at a possible world. Asserting P is the same thing as saying that P is true.

I think what you're trying to describe is truth anti-realism, where truth is meaningless outside acts of speech. That's fine, but you can't be a metaphysical realist that way. If you're good with that, then cool.

Plus that's not what Wayfarer is saying.

Israel and Palestinian conflict is another example, which also is understandable when you think of it. — ssu

Yes. I think this will haunt Israel forever. It was a terrible mistake.

Outside the use of propositions, the options for realists is limited. You can do Davidson, but it's pretty convoluted. Your best bet is probably truth anti-realism, which means the truth predicate has a social function and nothing more.

A proposition can be assessed at a possible world, which might be the actual world. The proposition isn't inside the world. Propositions don't have location or temporal extension.