as a way of saying I should intepret ruby sparks's definition like yours (which of course would have gone against his own posts), and now you keep ignoring the fact that his defition is vastly different from yours, unless I badly misunderstood yours - which you keep refusing to say.The AntiChris said:
someone said:
But it does.
Yes, this is meant to represent the definition you offered in this thread, in light of your reply to B20 in post#300.The AntiChris said:
Angra Mainyu said:
I am also perfectly capable of determining that it does not comport with ruby sparks's understanding of ruby sparks's view, even if he has not realized that on your view, moral assessments are mind-independent if whether a moral assessment is true does not depend on the feelings, evaluative attitudes, etc., of the agent(s) making said assessments, in her capacity as assessor - and in particular, this includes metaethical theories in which the truth of the assessments about morality depend on the evaluative attitudes, feelings, etc. of the person whose behavior is being assessed.The AntiChris said:
As I explained, I have several reasons to show repeatedly the differences between your definition (as stated and explained by you) and ruby sparks's definition (as stated and explained by them), such as:The AntiChris said:And I'm still no wiser as to why you've been badgering me so relentlessly over this.
Really?
This is pretty much exactly what I said in posts #359 and #365 both of which you rejected.
"Bill has cancer" is a statement which you previously agreed could never be objective, but which you now say is objective.
Of course Bomb#20 believes there are moral facts. The AntiChris believes there are no moral facts. The sentence is not B20's.Propositional attitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositional_attitude
"Linguistically, propositional attitudes are denoted by a verb (e.g. "believed") governing an embedded "that" clause, for example, 'Sally believed that she had won'."
So, rewriting B20's last sentence:
"However if the assessor's attitude is that the acceptability is a 'moral fact' (i.e. mercy-killing the patient in this circumstance has the attitude-independent quality of 'moral acceptability') then it's an objective claim and a claim that is in my view is untrue (I don't believe moral facts exist)".
Then that is not independent of attitudes (etc).
Nor is B20 saying he doesn't believe in moral facts.
Which I am surprised to be reminded of, because I had it in my head that he did, that it was just that they were extremely complicated. Just goes to show how often we misunderstand each other I guess. But yes, I do seem to remember him saying he was not taking a position on it, so he may also not believe that they don't exist either.
The sentence is not B20's.
There was no doubt on my part.The sentence is not B20's.
In case there's any doubt, I never intended to suggest I was quoting B20, I was simply making use of his example ('the cancer patient').
No problem.
I assume it was a simple misreading. The question was straightforward and unambiguous.
Gaah! Why is this so bloody hard? (Man, a lot happens while I'm not following the thread. Having to work for a living sucks...)
It should be easy -- I'm not saying anything abstruse here. You shouldn't kill people, for the most part. We have a right to life. But, like our other rights, we can waive that right. If I want you dead, that's not a good enough reason to kill you. If you want you dead, that's a much better reason. It's your life, not mine.
Yes and no. It has no bearing on the objectivity of the claim because it's in the semantics of moral claims to be objective; a subjective claim like "Killing him feels right to me" is an autobiography, not a moral claim. (Of course "The moon is made of cheese" is an objective claim too; some objective claims are objectively false.) But the patient's attitude plays a vital role as the determining factor as to whether the claim "It's okay to mercy-kill him" is true. (I get that you don't think it does since you don't believe in moral facts, but it looks like you're trying to explain my view to ruby sparks.)
That's not the distinction I was making. It's about truth-makers. If "I'm concerned for his suffering" is the truth-maker for "It's okay for you to kill him", that's subjective. If the truth-maker is "He's suffering and wants to be killed", that's objective. I can be concerned about his suffering and still make an objective judgment, as long as it isn't my concern that makes killing the guy okay.
That sounds like you're accepting the objectivity of moral claims without accepting their truth, i.e., you're an error theorist. Is that correct?
It looks to me we as if we're essentially saying exactly the same thing.
Sure. I don't think I excluded this possibility
Can you explain what you mean here? Are you saying that anti-realists argue for realist positions or simply that they defend their own views and ctriticise contrary views?
I would not have thought this was a particularly modern standard. The principle that the patient has to be willing certainly goes back to the 1800s at the latest; and philosophers have been debating euthanasia since the middle ages.
Right back at you. (With the added perception that apparently you* did understand it, and it did make sense to you, back when you were children and learned how to be competent users of the moral terminology provided by natural languages; this struggle to understand appears to be something you talked yourselves into for philosophical reasons, rather than because of any great difficulty in the material. No doubt it looks different from the inside, but that's what it looks like from the outside.)
Well, maybe we just use language very differently. To my eye the statement "If the claimant (assessor) deems it morally acceptable out of concern for people like the patient, it's not objective" seems plainly false. "People in severe pain have a right not to be kept alive against their will" seems like a perfectly ordinary moral claim, just like "People have a right not to be hunted for sport.". If the reason somebody agrees with it happens to be compassion, that's on him; one person's use of compassion in forming moral judgments can't magically make somebody else's rights go away. (No doubt you don't perceive non-objectivity to imply non-existence of rights, but it's my meta-ethics you were trying to explain.)
I don't know that I can give one answer for all varieties of anti-realism, so let's just talk about non-cognitivism. A typical explanation of a non-cognitivist opinion (not necessarily yours) is that moral claims aren't propositions at all; the semantic sense of "Meat eating is wrong" is alleged to be something non-truth-apt, something along the lines of "Meat eating, Boo!". And yet, when actual non-cognitivists get into moral discussions, they typically make ordinary logical arguments, like "You shouldn't eat meat because it contributes to global warming". Going by the non-cognitivist semantic theory, this is a type-mismatch error. "Because" is a relation that takes, as parameters, truth-apt statements. "*Meat eating, Boo! because Global warming, Boo!" isn't a logical argument; it isn't even grammatical English. "Boo!" isn't subject to logic. It's just an emotional outburst; that's the point of the meta-ethical theory. So when non-cognitivists make logical arguments like the one above, it appears that their mental "muscle-memory" still subconsciously remembers that the semantics of "Meat eating is wrong" is cognitive, even though they subsequently embraced a philosophy that insists it's non-cognitive -- just like a guy keeping his balance on a bike while believing an incorrect theory of how he does it.
Very sensible.
When two people disagree about whether humans have fish for ancestors, it means one of them is right and the other is wrong. As far as I can see, the basic point of disagreement in meta-ethics, the primary division among the disputants, seems to be over whether moral claims can share that property -- the property of being ordinary factual propositions subject to ordinary logic like (P or not P). The definition I gave is an attempt to draw a line precisely along that division. If you think that's a "low" bar, what's your goal in setting a "higher" bar? To draw a line along some place where the point of contention isn't? To claim a rhetorical victory without actually showing realists are wrong about what we actually disagree with you about? I'm reminded of a "B.C." cartoon, where Hart was ridiculing evolutionists by drawing a picture of a caveman prostrating himself before a half-human-half-dinosaur. Hart was claiming in effect that non-creationists think humans evolved from dinosaurs and that since we think evolution was our creator we must worship it. But it isn't up to creationists to tell non-creationists what our theory is.
Because what's moral often depends on the opinions and judgments of the parties involved in an event. You go to Tesco and buy a loaf of bread. You pay with a counterfeit ten-Euro note. Did you act immorally? Well, that depends on your opinion and judgment of whether it was a genuine banknote. If you believed it was genuine then you're an innocent victim of somebody else's crime. If in your opinion and judgment it was a counterfeit note but you tried to pass it off as real anyway, then you're guilty of fraud. In contrast, my opinion about whether the note was counterfeit is irrelevant to whether you acted honestly or dishonestly, because I'm just an observer.
I don't know what kind of answer you want from me. According to you, no proposition/statement can ever be objective because they always express the speaker's belief. How then can a judgment of whether humans evolved from fish not depend on any observer's subjective opinion? I'm not claiming ethics is more objective than biology; but I don't think my failure to make such a claim makes me an antirealist.
As you know, this ain't my first rodeo. I used to argue with antirealists a lot, and I quit because it's futile. You guys, by and large, are unwilling to think critically about your own arguments. So I've moved on. But I'm here, doing it yet again, because rs cut into a discussion I was having with somebody else and asked me to explain myself. So I answered him, as a courtesy, because he asked, even though I was pretty sure, from experience, that he just wouldn't get it. What usually happens in these discussions is the antirealist commits equivocation fallacies and won't stop even when they're pointed out and explained.
If your intent in writing to me was neither to understand me nor to persuade me, but rather to pick a mental pigeonhole to stick me in so you can feel good about not thinking about my arguments, let's just stop.
I think the problem is that we start with very different assumptions. There is much here that I'd like to clarify and challenge but I have no enthusiasm for the inevitably lengthy follow-up to-and-fro.
No, my intention was to express the idea that it's objective if the sole motivation for the belief was the observed state-of-affairs (or more precisely the claimed moral qualities of the observed state-of-affairs)and not the personal concerns of the assessor.
That's right - they're not truth-apt.
The messages people (realists and anti-realists) wish to convey when they make moral claims are many and varied. Nobody means "Boo!".
To me this looks like a straightforward appeal to the values meat eaters may hold which may influence their attitude to meat eating. I don't see how this is in conflict with the idea that "meat eating is wrong" is not truth-apt.
Apologies. My implied slight was unfair and unwarranted.
I'd assumed you were implying the way the claim is structured was what makes it a realist position. Can you explain what does make it a 'realist position'?
I was being flippant. Drawing attention to the shared word-root "gust" (Latin for "taste") seemed worthwhile.
There are two fundamental questions in meta-ethics.
Unsurprisingly, I don't think the distinction is quite as clear cut as you imply.
What specifically are you struggling to grasp? (is it my response or moral realism/anti-realism in general?)
