The AntiChris said:
This doesn't really help. The arguments you'd accept against fact-of-the matter tastiness would not persuade you against moral facts-of-the-matter.
Actually, they would convince me, if they were backed up by the same evidence, prominently linguistic evidence and evidence about human behavior in that context. That is why I gave it as an example.
The AntiChris said:
To be honest I didn't expect you to be able to answer because it's not the kind of disagreement that's particularly amenable to argument. Both sides agree on the facts in play - it's the interpretation of those facts which is in dispute. Both sides finds the interpretation of the other side implausible.
No, it seems there is disagreement about some facts for sure.
The AntiChris said:
Ok, but what, in your view, would falsify it. I really don't think there is anything.
I already explained that. If you could provide an argument like that for tomatoes, with similar linguistic evidence, etc., sure that would convince me.
Now, given that the linguistic evidence indicates something different, then it would not work, so I think I would not be convinced but because I have already looked at the evidence and it says otherwise, so you would have to provide evidence countering the linguistic evidence I've already seen to get the same result.
At any rate, there is one piece of evidence that would leave the matter just between 'no fact of the matter' and 'the fact is that nothing is morally good or bad, morally wrong, impermissible, permissible, obligatory, etc.', which would need further argument. What you would need to do is something akin to what you would need in the color case:
Imagine you can show me that there is an odd object (say, O1), such that, under ordinary light conditions, looks green to some people, and blue to others, and those are people who appear to have normal color vision. The evidence for normal color vision is that they seem to make correct color assessments in their lives, and there is no evidence of anything that might have interfered with the proper development of their color vision. Suppose further you try that on otherwise fit, healthy young people from different countries, and the difference remains. Given enough evidence like that, I would come to the assessment that there probably is no fact of the matter as to whether O1 is blue, though there is usually a fact of the matter as to the color of ordinary objects.
Similarly, if you can show me that human assessments on whether - say - same-sex sex is always immoral differ even when people are using their moral senses only and not an improper instrument (e.g., religious indoctrination, a metaphysical theory), even in absense of disagreement about other relevant matters (e.g., whether people who have same-sex sex intend to recruit children, etc.), and after reflection, I would be persuaded that there probably is no fact of the matter as to whether same-sex sex is always immoral.
That alone, however, would not be good grounds to think there isn't a fact of the matter in most ordinary cases - moreover, there is the problem that if the same pattern held for many ordinary cases, perhaps we would move from a 'no fact of the latter' situation to a 'the fact is that nothing is morally good or bad, morally wrong, impermissible, permissible, obligatory, etc.' situation (the difference with the tomato case is that in the latter case, people generally do not take themselves to be talking about a matter of fact, so linguistic evidence differs), though this would need more discussion.
In short, you could convince me (as above) that in some specific instances, there are no moral facts, but if you do that for many instances (how many to be assessed intuitively, as always), then maybe you would need a further argument to convince me that in general, there are no moral facts, rather than 'the fact is that nothing is morally good or bad, morally wrong, impermissible, permissible, obligatory, etc.'. Either way, I would be convinced that one moral error theory or the other holds - just which one requires further argument.
The AntiChris said:
For example, given, what many people would see as a genuine moral disagreement where neither side is (non-moral) right or wrong, you will always explain it away by suggesting, for instance, that the disagreement is really about non-moral facts/beliefs (and so not a genuine moral disagreement) or that the moral sensibilities of one person are malfunctioning.
There is a third alternative: they are using an improper instrument. Instead of their moral sense, they are following the dictates of a religion/ideology/philosophy (RIP for short
) they were told about. This sort of wrong instrument might also damage the moral sense, so this alternative and the second one are not mutually exclusive. Additionally, apart from direct dictates, RIP can make contain false nonmoral claims on the basis of which false moral claims are made, so this alternative also overlaps with the first one (moral disagreement can have multiple causes).
(also, here 'disagreement' is a bit strong, as it A says X happened, B says X did not happen. It might be that B has never even thought about whether X happened. I will use 'disagreement' for short, but in the understanding that it includes cases like that, in which they have different beliefs, though they do not disagree in a strict sense; if necessary, we can change terminology).
But note that this is similar to other cases in which (I think) you do not doubt that there is a fact of the matter. Take, for example, common descent. Surely, there is plenty of disagreement about whether, say, chimps and mosquitoes have a common ancestor. What can account for the disagreement? It's not that there is no fact of the matter. So, I would say the realistic options are:
1. There is disagreement about what observations were made, and these observations are used to make the assessment as to whether they have a common ancestor (analogue: disagreement about nonmoral facts).
2. Someone is using the wrong instrument, like RIP or something along those lines.
3. Their epistemic sense (i.e., the faculty by which humans normally make epistemic probabilistic assessments) is malfunctioning.
4. A combination two or three of the above.
Moreover, in philosophy, long-lasting disagreements are pretty common. For example, disagreements between theists and nontheists, between substance dualists (i.e., souls and the like) and substance monists, and then property dualists and property monists. Also, disagreements in general about epistemology, philosophy of mind, you name it. Generally, though, we reckon there is a fact of the matter in those cases (not all philosophical disputes perhaps, but surely the ones I mentioned before and many others in those fields of philosophy). Why do these sort of disagreements persist? Well, it seems to me that it's something like the options given above.