Jokes about prison rape on men? Not a fan.

[The AntiChris]

Gaah! Why is this so bloody hard?

it's not easy to explain.

It should be easy

You surely realise by now that we antirealists really struggle to understand the realist position- it simply doesn't make any sense to us.

Anyway, apologies if you feel I've misrepresented your views (having looked at your comments I'm not convinced I was that far out).

I've got some questions. I'll try to keep it brief (I really dislike long posts addressing multiple issues),

For the claim to be objective it must be independent of the claimant's feelings/attitudes. To reword slightly what I said earlier, the point is that if the claimant (assessor) deems it morally acceptable out of concern for people like the patient, it's not objective. However if the assessor believes 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

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.

It looks to me we as if we're essentially saying exactly the same thing.

We're both talking about reasons for saying "It's ok...". You just call them truth-makers.

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.

Sure. I don't think I excluded this possibility

But anti-realists argue first-order moral positions as much as the rest of us do.

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?

]and a claim that is in my view is untrue (I don't believe moral facts exist).

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?

No that wasn't what I intended. I was trying to say that "it's morally acceptable regardless of anyone's concerns for the patient" wasn't true but I can see I was a bit careless.

I'm wary of labels (they often mean quite different things to different people) but I think non-cognitivitist probably better describes my thinking.

 

[Bomb#20]

We have to respect people's autonomy.

I did not realise we were only doing modern moral standards.

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.

In any event, that's a detail of the first-order moral judgment I put in for illustrative purposes; if readers disagree, or think the judgment is unacceptably modern, fine, we can simply switch to a different example. Consider the "Lords of Discipline" problem: was it okay for Dante to siphon petrol from Will's car? All I'm saying is, you or I being okay with it doesn't make it okay, but Will being okay with it makes it okay. I don't think the notion that it's not stealing if the owner doesn't object is a modern notion.

 

[ruby sparks]

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.

In any event, that's a detail of the first-order moral judgment I put in for illustrative purposes; if readers disagree, or think the judgment is unacceptably modern, fine, we can simply switch to a different example. Consider the "Lords of Discipline" problem: was it okay for Dante to siphon petrol from Will's car? All I'm saying is, you or I being okay with it doesn't make it okay, but Will being okay with it makes it okay. I don't think the notion that it's not stealing if the owner doesn't object is a modern notion.

No thanks. I think I'll stick with the one you gave. I presume when you gave it you were using the standard of 'ordinary common sense morality' that you referred to in the same post.

 

[Bomb#20]

You surely realise by now that we antirealists really struggle to understand the realist position- it simply doesn't make any sense to us.

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.)

(* All "you"s are plural, gross overgeneralizations about antirealists collectively; any individual antirealist may look different.)

Anyway, apologies if you feel I've misrepresented your views (having looked at your comments I'm not convinced I was that far out).

I've got some questions. I'll try to keep it brief (I really dislike long posts addressing multiple issues),

For the claim to be objective it must be independent of the claimant's feelings/attitudes. To reword slightly what I said earlier, the point is that if the claimant (assessor) deems it morally acceptable out of concern for people like the patient, it's not objective. However if the assessor believes 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

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.

It looks to me we as if we're essentially saying exactly the same thing.

We're both talking about reasons for saying "It's ok...". You just call them truth-makers.

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.)

Likewise for part 2 -- one person's belief in a moral fact can't magically give somebody else a right. But maybe that's not what you were imputing to me. If by "if the assessor believes the acceptability is a 'moral fact' ... then it's an objective claim" you meant that the belief that one is saying something objective makes the claim semantically objective, as opposed to making what is claimed substantively an objective fact, that has a certain plausibility to it. But I don't think it's right. You can make objective claims while believing you're doing something else, just as you can steer a bike to go under where your body is headed while believing you're shifting your weight onto the bike.

But anti-realists argue first-order moral positions as much as the rest of us do.

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 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.

Anyway, that's what I meant. I don't know if that's the same thing you meant by "anti-realists argue for realist positions"; in any event I certainly wasn't claiming anti-realists argue for realism. But going by normal English semantics, "Meat eating is wrong." is a realist position; and the empirical linguistic evidence rarely supports the hypothesis that non-cognitivists actually in practice use it in the non-standard sense of "Meat eating, Boo!".

I'm wary of labels (they often mean quite different things to different people)...

Very sensible.

 

[Bomb#20]

To clarify: Imo,"at least one moral claim is truth-apt and its truth doesn't depend on any observer's subjective opinion" as a definition of "objective morality" involves both a low bar for moral realism and a weak definition of objectivity.

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.

Likewise, it isn't up to antirealists to tell realists what our theory is. When we say some moral claims are true and some are false, that doesn't entitle you to restrict our options about which moral claims we claim are true. You no more get to rule out "Whether its okay for Chris to mercy-kill Andy depends on whether Andy wants to be killed." than Hart gets to rule out "Fish evolved into people without any step along the way being dinosaurs." Of course you can refuse to admit we're using the word "objective" correctly when we claim it's an objective fact that Chris shouldn't kill Andy because Andy doesn't want him to, but that would be no different from Hart refusing to admit I'm really an evolutionist because I say humans didn't evolve from dinosaurs. I'm still saying it's a fact. I'm still saying people who think it's okay to mercy-kill a patient who wants to keep up the fight, merely because they value his non-suffering more than they value his rights, are wrong. So the basic meta-ethical disagreement between us will remain -- whether one observer is right and the other wrong -- even if you make up a contrary definition of "objective" and use it to claim I'm an antirealist too. So what's the point of setting a different bar and calling it "higher"?

Why is the word 'observer' even in there? Why not just 'doesn't depend on anyone's opinion (or judgement if you prefer)'?

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.

(Maybe "observer" isn't the best word; maybe "third party" or "bystander" or "judge" would be better -- after all, failing to observe isn't a qualification for having your opinion matter. I picked "observer" because when antirealists of a certain stripe claim the same event is moral to one person and immoral to another person, it's typically observers that they're talking about. Realists as a rule reject the concept of "moral to me but not to you".)

Also, out of interest, how can any moral judgement not depend on any observer's subjective opinion?

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.

 

[Bomb#20]

If "objective" really meant "not dependent on the mind for existence" then mental illness would not objectively exist.

You know it isn't as simple as that. It depends on context (Angra in post #281: "the term 'mind-independent' is used in a widely variable manner.")

At this point it's not clear to me whether use of the "then mental illness wouldn't be objective" comment is a genuine attempt to to understand how the term 'mind independent' is being used or if it's an attempt to discredit the term (as a description of objectivity) by ridicule simply because you dislike its use.

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.

So no, use of the "then mental illness wouldn't be objective" comment is neither a "genuine attempt"* to understand how the term 'mind independent' is being used, nor an attempt to discredit the term (as a description of objectivity) "by ridicule"* simply because I dislike its use. That's a False Dilemma fallacy. The "then mental illness wouldn't be objective" comment is me trying my level best to forestall some of those foreseeable equivocation fallacies by drawing rs's attention to the failure of his stated definition to mean anything useful for a meta-ethical discussion, going by the literal meaning of the words in it. If the phrase "mind independent" has some other meaning in typical philosophical use or in rs's own mind, that will not do. That will simply be fertile ground for implicitly switching meanings at critical points in the argument -- it will let him equivocate without realizing he's doing so. So I want us to use definitions that say what they mean in plain English. I don't think rs objects to this policy in principle; I think he just doesn't realize how problematic the definition he proposed is. So I'm trying to make him aware of it by pointing out the logical implications of his words. If he doesn't agree to making his definition precise and literal, that's his choice, but it will predictably result in him not understanding what I say, and we're only here in the first place because he indicated he wants to understand.

(* It's also a Poisoning the Well fallacy. Don't think what you tried to do there was lost on me.)

 

[Bomb#20]

At this point it's not clear to me whether use of the "then mental illness wouldn't be objective" comment is a genuine attempt to to understand how the term 'mind independent' is being used or if it's an attempt to discredit the term (as a description of objectivity) by ridicule simply because you dislike its use.

Possibly it's because if that definition is used, then there are no objective moral truths. Now, if the bar for moral realism can be lowered sufficiently, including by adopting a weaker definition of objectivity (and also in other ways) then maybe it can be argued that there are such things. There's a term for that sort of endeavour, or if there isn't, there should be imo. The phrase, 'defining something into existence' may come close. 'Sophistry' may not be all that far away either. Possibly even 'denialism'. 'Much ado about nothing'? I suspect a search and rescue mission pipe dream.

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.

 

[ruby sparks]

... let's just stop.

Ok. You completely blew it with your "we have to respect people's autonomy" example.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

... let's just stop.

Ok. You completely blew it with your "we have to respect people's autonomy" example.

He did not blow anything. The problem is that you do not seem to be trying to understand, but to attack a position you already believe is very different from what it is. It's similar to what happens in your exchanges with me. If you were to try to understand, maybe you would learn why morality is objective, or at the very least, you would understand what it is that the people whose positions you first misconstrue then attack actually believe, and what the arguments are. As it is, you keep raising objections that miss the points entirely.

 

[The AntiChris]

We're both talking about reasons for saying "It's ok...". You just call them truth-makers.

Well, maybe we just use language very differently.

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.

Just one thing I'd like to clear up:

If by "if the assessor believes the acceptability is a 'moral fact' ... then it's an objective claim" you meant that the belief that one is saying something objective makes the claim semantically objective, as opposed to making what is claimed substantively an objective fact,

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.

but it's my meta-ethics you were trying to explain.

I didn't think I was? All I thought I was doing, using your cancer patient example, was attempting to explain to ruby sparks why I thought the cancer patient's attitude played no role in establishing the objectivity of the moral claim.

Can you explain what you mean here [that anti-realists argue like the rest of us]?

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;

That's right - they're not truth-apt.

the semantic sense of "Meat eating is wrong" is alleged to be something non-truth-apt, something along the lines of "Meat eating, Boo!".

The messages people (realists and anti-realists) wish to convey when they make moral claims are many and varied. Nobody means "Boo!".

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.

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.

"Meat eating is wrong." is a realist position

Is "Surströmming is disgusting" a realist position?

 

[The AntiChris]

If "objective" really meant "not dependent on the mind for existence" then mental illness would not objectively exist.

You know it isn't as simple as that. It depends on context (Angra in post #281: "the term 'mind-independent' is used in a widely variable manner.")

At this point it's not clear to me whether use of the "then mental illness wouldn't be objective" comment is a genuine attempt to to understand how the term 'mind independent' is being used or if it's an attempt to discredit the term (as a description of objectivity) by ridicule simply because you dislike its use.

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.

So no, use of the "then mental illness wouldn't be objective" comment is neither a "genuine attempt"* to understand how the term 'mind independent' is being used, nor an attempt to discredit the term (as a description of objectivity) "by ridicule"* simply because I dislike its use. That's a False Dilemma fallacy. The "then mental illness wouldn't be objective" comment is me trying my level best to forestall some of those foreseeable equivocation fallacies by drawing rs's attention to the failure of his stated definition to mean anything useful for a meta-ethical discussion, going by the literal meaning of the words in it. If the phrase "mind independent" has some other meaning in typical philosophical use or in rs's own mind, that will not do. That will simply be fertile ground for implicitly switching meanings at critical points in the argument -- it will let him equivocate without realizing he's doing so. So I want us to use definitions that say what they mean in plain English. I don't think rs objects to this policy in principle; I think he just doesn't realize how problematic the definition he proposed is. So I'm trying to make him aware of it by pointing out the logical implications of his words. If he doesn't agree to making his definition precise and literal, that's his choice, but it will predictably result in him not understanding what I say, and we're only here in the first place because he indicated he wants to understand.

(* It's also a Poisoning the Well fallacy. Don't think what you tried to do there was lost on me.)

Apologies. My implied slight was unfair and unwarranted.

 

[TomC]

Some folks opine that bad people will get what’s coming to them by ending up in prison, victimized by rape. It’s usually delivered as a laugh line.

But I’d like to suggest it’s harmful and wrong to make a laugh out of extra-judicial violence, particularly in the case of the traumatizing and degrading violence of rape.

My personal philosophy is that retribution never helps. It only legitimizes the idea that violence and degradation is okay when you feel “justified.” All criminals feel “justified.” All bullies feel “justified” all of those school shooters and all of those rapists feel “justified.”

I think it is a bad turn for society to give them any indication in any way that all you have to feel is “justified” and you can rape, assault, brutalize, murder.

I don't think jokes necessarily justify or legitimize anything. People often respond to dark humor.

That said, one of the big embarrassments of the USA is our prison system. I think it's mainly because we, as a society, can't decide what the purpose of it is. We pay lip service to rehab and protection for the public. But it's actually more about exacting punishment(vengeance) and acquiring wealth and power for politicians and investors and staff. That part is no laughing matter.
Tom

 

[Bomb#20]

"Meat eating is wrong." is a realist position

Is "Surströmming is disgusting" a realist position?

De gustibus non est disputandum.

 

[TomC]

"Meat eating is wrong." is a realist position

Is "Surströmming is disgusting" a realist position?

De gustibus non est disputandum.

That's not really an answer.

I've been trying to figure out what "realism" and "anti-realism" actually mean, in this context. Could you explain that?
Tom

 

[The AntiChris]

"Meat eating is wrong." is a realist position

Is "Surströmming is disgusting" a realist position?

De gustibus non est disputandum.

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'?

 

[Bomb#20]

Is "Surströmming is disgusting" a realist position?

De gustibus non est disputandum.

That's not really an answer.

I was being flippant. Drawing attention to the shared word-root "gust" (Latin for "taste") seemed worthwhile.

For a real answer, one needs to take into account what is actually being claimed. "Surströmming is disgusting" literally means "Surströmming causes disgust". (Definition of disgusting: causing a strong feeling of dislike or disinclination : causing disgust - Merriam-Webster) If we take that literally, it's plainly a realist position. It's trivially factual; and this can be shown experimentally. Open a can for a random focus group and some of them will gag, some may even throw up, and many will refuse to eat it. It will have demonstrably caused disgust.

The trouble is, "Surströmming causes disgust" isn't what people saying "Surströmming is disgusting" would typically mean. They'd mean something more along the lines of "Surströmming causes disgust in me." You wouldn't expect one of those peculiar Swedes who actually likes the stuff to say "Surströmming is disgusting" merely because she knows it disgusts other people. So the actual meaning of the sentence refers to the tastes of a particular observer: the speaker. Consequently, when Oscar says "Surströmming is disgusting" and Astrid says "Surströmming is not disgusting", what they're claiming is "Surströmming causes disgust in Oscar" and "Surströmming does not cause disgust in Astrid". But there's no more contradiction involved in fermented fish causing disgust in Oscar but not in Astrid than in a cue-ball hitting the eight-ball but not hitting the five-ball. Oscar's and Astrid's positions aren't contrary. And as Monty Python so amusingly pointed out, "Look, if I argue with you, I must take a contrary position." That's why matters of taste aren't apt for argument.

What makes "Meat eating is wrong." a realist position and "Surströmming is disgusting" (idiomatically) a non-realist position is that people normally mean something objective by the former and mean something autobiographical by the latter; empirical evidence for this is that people normally treat the former as arguable and the latter as not arguable.

I've been trying to figure out what "realism" and "anti-realism" actually mean, in this context. Could you explain that?
Tom

There are two fundamental questions in meta-ethics.

1: What does a moral claim mean?
2. What if anything makes a moral claim true?

"Realism" is typically used to refer collectively to meta-ethical theories that answer question 1 with any objective truth-apt proposition, and answer question 2 with anything other than "Nothing". This category includes pretty much all of conventional moral philosophy: Confucianism, the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, Aristotle, Kant, Utilitarianism; and it also includes religious theories. "Anti-realism" refers to everything else. If the answer to question 1 is some objective truth-apt proposition but the answer to question 2 is "Nothing", you get Error Theory. If the answer to question 1 is a truth-apt but non-objective proposition*, you get various flavors of Subjectivism and Moral Relativism. If the answer to question 1 isn't a truth-apt proposition at all, you get Noncognitivism.

In the case of taste, a meta-taste theory that says "Surströmming is disgusting" means "Surströmming disgusts somebody" and what it takes to make it true is the existence of at least one person in whom tasting it produces a gag reflex would be taste realism. A theory that says it means "Surströmming disgusts me" and what it takes to make it true is me disliking it would be taste anti-realism.

(* In case you find "truth-apt but non-objective" confusing, here's a canonical example: "In a plane, given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to the given line can be drawn through the point." It's truth-apt because you can make logical arguments for it and from it; it's non-objective because it's true of Euclidean geometry but not true of non-Euclidean geometry, and mathematics isn't in the business of claiming one geometry is right and another is wrong.)

 

[The AntiChris]

What makes "Meat eating is wrong." a realist position and "Surströmming is disgusting" (idiomatically) a non-realist position is that people normally mean something objective by the former and mean something autobiographical by the latter; empirical evidence for this is that people normally treat the former as arguable and the latter as not arguable.

Unsurprisingly, I don't think the distinction is quite as clear cut as you imply.

 

[TomC]

What makes "Meat eating is wrong." a realist position and "Surströmming is disgusting" (idiomatically) a non-realist position is that people normally mean something objective by the former and mean something autobiographical by the latter; empirical evidence for this is that people normally treat the former as arguable and the latter as not arguable.

Unsurprisingly, I don't think the distinction is quite as clear cut as you imply.

Well, he was trying to explain it to me, a noob.

I'm still having trouble grasping it, I'd appreciate you expanding on your post.

TiA

Tom

 

[The AntiChris]

What makes "Meat eating is wrong." a realist position and "Surströmming is disgusting" (idiomatically) a non-realist position is that people normally mean something objective by the former and mean something autobiographical by the latter; empirical evidence for this is that people normally treat the former as arguable and the latter as not arguable.

Unsurprisingly, I don't think the distinction is quite as clear cut as you imply.

I'm still having trouble grasping it, I'd appreciate you expanding on your post.

What specifically are you struggling to grasp? (is it my response or moral realism/anti-realism in general?)

 

[ruby sparks]

What makes "Meat eating is wrong." a realist position and "Surströmming is disgusting" (idiomatically) a non-realist position is that people normally mean something objective by the former and mean something autobiographical by the latter; empirical evidence for this is that people normally treat the former as arguable and the latter as not arguable.

Unsurprisingly, I don't think the distinction is quite as clear cut as you imply.

Well, he was trying to explain it to me, a noob.

I'm still having trouble grasping it, I'd appreciate you expanding on your post.

TiA

Tom

In a nutshell, a moral realist says there are at least some things which are actually, factually, objectively morally wrong, and not just a matter of opinion. Not unlike, for example, how saying 2 + 2 = 5 is wrong is not just a matter of opinion.