As a caveat, I think @Banno would reject (2) and @AmadeusD would reject (1). So I’m not sure anyone is arguing this. That said, it probably approximates your own position, no? Or are you assuming that Banno will inevitably accept (2)?
I think you’re asking something like, “Given someone in Banno’s position, what are their options once the inconsistency becomes apparent?”
I actually gave my answer to this above, but no one was interested in the more detailed discussion. It had to do with Hume’s solution of grounding morality in “sentiment.” This would be a vague kind of virtue ethics.
The question as it pertains to @Count_Timothy_von_Icarus is whether this is possible without teleology. The nominalist would be required to reconstruct moral normativity from the faculty of the will, and that seems impossible. I think the discussions of Hare are on point since he was basically trying to do this.
I see what you mean there, but isn’t this just an inappropriate restriction of “ought?”
On a broader view of “action,” preferring or desiring are surely actions. They are things we do.
Plus, if “x is better than y,” cannot imply “choose x,” doesn’t that amount to denying that one ought to choose the better over the worse? But that position seems like a contradiction in terms.
I think you’re equivocating. The sense in which drinking is bad for us is not prima facie the sense that establishes a moral obligation to not drink.
The moral subjectivist doesn’t deny that certain behaviours are “objectively” harmful; they deny that certain behaviours are “objectively” immoral. We ought not (pun intended) let the ambiguity with the word “bad” cause us to conflate the two.
People mean all sorts of things by ‘ought’. It’s a rabbit-chase.
I think the reason your account is unsatisfactory to some is because the anti-ought view is largely grounded in the modern exaltation of freedom, and concrete ‘oughts’ are most odious to that sort of freedom.
In my posts to you above about sketching out a new thread I spoke about the way that what is at stake is anything which binds the will in any direction whatsoever. Values and preferences bind the will in more minor ways, concrete ‘oughts’ bind the will in major ways. So it depends on the precise challenge that the anti-realist is presenting, and as I said above, I think there are many intertwined challenges.
I would say no, because the premise which says that x and y are the only options is almost always false. If in some circumstance the human intellect and will were fully limited to only two options, then yes, what you say would hold.
…and @Count_Timothy_von_Icarus, while this objection often lacks any clear definition of what “immoral” means, my points above about the noble and the base were meant to steelman this position. Granted, in a Kantian milieu “immoral” just means something like, “A (concrete?) ought which is exceptionless,” but the deeper ground seems to be the idea of the noble and the base. Think, for example, of the martyr who dies for what is noble but is nevertheless not doing Kantian calculus in her head.
The point @Count_Timothy_von_Icarus was making had to do with appearance and reality in the context of normative human acts. It seems that it would apply both to the “practical” and “moral” contexts, so I’m not sure how your distinction between those two putatively different contexts bears on his point? After all, people will look back on past decisions and regret those decisions. They do this with both “practical” and “moral” decisions.
A very astute question. I am not sure there is an easy way to decide the issue in many cases. I would say though that one needs to be clear about the redefining move, or else people risk talking past one another at best, commiting rampant fallacies of equivocation at worse.
I think we need to use words correctly if we are to communicate effectively. So if someone redefines a word away from its correct definition in order to salvage one of their philosophical positions, they are acting in bad faith. If on the other hand they fortuitously realize that they had misunderstood the meaning of a word, and the correct meaning happily coincides perfectly with their desired theory, then this would be fine (but unlikely).
If we use words accurately we will not go astray. If we redefine words for the sake of our own ends then we are doing something problematic. The person who is tempted to do such a thing should instead opt for different words that accurately capture their theory.
Can you define what you mean by a discretely “moral” good then?
I could just rephrase the example with cheating on one’s spouse, right? Most people agree adultery is “immoral.” The same point would hold. But I also think the use of “moral” tends to be very fuzzy here.
If “moral” relates to the moral virtues, then intemperance, gluttony, and so drunkenness, would be classical moral vices. But licentiousness, another form of intemperance, is also a moral vice, and this fits the adultery case fine. So why is one “moral” and the other isn’t?
Now, I do know the modern “moral good” versus “practical good” distinction. I think it makes much more sense in the theological context it comes out of (divine command theories). However, Kantians will argue that it makes sense in their framing too. Fair enough.
My question for anti-realists though, when they attack classical views of ethics that don’t hold to this hard dichotomy, is why they think we need to affirm this distinction? It’s one thing for a Kantian to attack the classical position for not making this hard distinction, since they think the distinction is coherent, and that the set of specifically “moral goods” isn’t empty. It’s another thing when the anti-realist demands that others use a divine command theory/deontological framing that they themselves claim renders morality empty. You know, something like: “you must use this broken definition/framework so that I can attack it.”
But what I can do is point out that “X is harmful to my health” and “X is immoral” do not prima facie mean the same thing: “X is harmful to my health but not immoral” is not an obvious contradiction.
You could, but then I don’t quite see how that fits into your earlier quote. A rough substitution would give:
If there is no distinction between my thinking something is moral and its being moral, then I can never be wrong about what it is moral.
What to make of this? If I cheat on my spouse, is that moral for me because I want it at that moment? And then when my spouse finds out and divorces me the self-same event becomes immoral for me?
This would seem to undermine even instrumental reasoning.
I can’t make much sense of what you’re trying to say, which at least illustrates the importance of not conflating “immoral” with the ambiguous term “bad” and “moral” with the ambiguous term “good”.
Moore was investigating ‘good’, not ‘moral good’. Your objection does not derive from Moore.
His original argument was that regret shows that good and perceived good come apart. Regret involves the idea, “What I perceived to be good at the time was not in fact good.” As I said above, your objection which consists in the putative distinction between “good” and “moral good” does not seem to bear on the argument at all, for according to common usage there are also moral regrets.
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say.
I’m saying that “X is bad” does not necessarily mean “X is immoral”. As an example, The Room by Tommy Wiseau is a bad movie, but it’s not an immoral movie.
Or even with reference to human conduct, we can say that it’s bad for us to eat too much sugar, but that doesn’t mean that we’re saying that it’s immoral for us to eat too much sugar.
The issue I see it is that many of Count Timothy’s comments trade on this ambiguity. Yes, drinking too much alcohol is bad for my health, but what does that have to do with morality? This is made clear when I took his quote, substituted the words “good” and “bad” for “moral” and “immoral” (and “drinking” for “cheating”), and then we’re left with no argument at all. If your reasoning fails when these terms are substituted then this is proof that you’re equivocating.
As for regret, there’s nothing inconsistent with the moral subjectivist saying “I thought it acceptable at the time, but now I think it unacceptable” whilst also maintaining that there’s no sense in which “it’s (un)acceptable” is objectively true, divorced from our attitudes.
I agree that ethics is grounded in forms of life rather than an external standard. But I would want to clarify what it would mean to talk about ethical and factual norms within a form of life, what we are doing when we refer to the ‘is and the ‘ought’, the factual vs the valuative, the epistemological vs the affective.
To experience any meaning from within a form of life is to construe what occurs on the basis of normative expectations, these expectations are simultaneously epistemological and affective.
I am sympathetic to Nussbaum’s view that emotions are cognitive appraisals, but I take it in a more enactivist direction. Any statement that we might claim strictly concerns what is the case (the cat is on the mat) is affectively attuned. There is no such thing as an affectively neutral fact. The statement ‘the cat is on the mat’ is understood on the basis of how it matters to us in terms of our normative aims and purposes.
These affective aims and purposes are not peripheral to the factual meaning of the sentence, they are central to it. These expectations project into the meaning of the sentence an implict ‘ought’, a preferred way in which we hope it will emerge. The actual comprehension of the sentence answers to or fulfills those projected normative anticipations to a greater or lease extent, but never completely.
The sentence may leave us apprehensive, puzzled, satisfied, joyful, bored or non-plussed, but it will always leave us with some affective attitude toward it, sow. way in which it meets, exceeds or disappoints our preferences.
Now let’s apply this model to the sentence ‘One should not kick puppies’. How do reasons come into play here in terms of normative affective purposes? Well, one person may beleive animals don’t really feel pain, so as long as the kick doesn’t physically injure them, it shouldn’t matter to the animal.
Another might be a believer in corporal punishment, and firmly believe a good stiff kicks keeps both children and puppies on the path of righteousness. Another may claim that their puppy considers a moderate kick to be part of play behavior. These examples illustrate differences in interpretations of facts concerning puppies, and these interpretations emerge out of systems of practices that Wittgenstein calls forms of life. It’s one thing to get people to agree on a consensus stance concerning what ought to be, but it’s another to interact with each of them and discover exactly what criteria of sense are implied for them. Communal practices are only ever partially shared, which allows for abstract agreement at the same time that it preserves perspectival
differences.
Ok, so my usage is wrong because it doesn’t confirm to a usage you yourself cannot express?
Wouldn’t the fact that the definition is inexpressible, and on your account, applicable to nothing, tend to mark it out as simply a bad definition.
A discrete moral good separate from all other goods makes sense in its original context where there is a difference between creaturely well being and divine commands, and divine commands are said to be unconstrained by the former in the name of divine sovereignity (whether this is good theology is another question). When an anti-realist demands we import this usage though, I’m not sure how they can support such a demand.
Sure.
Health is good.
Moral virtue is also good.
This doesn’t require that health is moral virtue, for the same reason that:
I am saying that your post here has nothing at all to do with the quote you responded to in that post.
He never said it had anything to do with morality. He said that when you are hungover after drinking tequila you may well say to yourself, “What I perceived to be good last night was not in fact good.”
His argument works just as well with putatively “moral” things. The person who commits murder may well say the exact same thing, “What I perceived to be morally permissible last night was not in fact morally permissible.” “Morality” also involves a distinction between appearance and reality. So it’s not clear that your distinction between ‘good’ and ‘moral’ has any effect at all on the argument that was presented.
That’s precisely my point. You responded to moral subjectivism by talking about drinking and hangovers, as if there’s some connection between the two. You traded on the fact that the words “good” and “bad” can be used in both cases to equivocate and effectively argue that because drinking is objectively harmful then moral subjectivism is incorrect.
I certainly think that the very concept of moral obligations is questionable because of this — as Anscombe says, it’s a term with “mere mesmeric force” — and so can sympathise with the nihilist who argues that there are no moral truths.
Are you claiming that the moral subjectivist collapses distinctions with regard to A, but they don’t collapse distinctions with regard to B?
A. Thinking that X is (“morally”) good and X being (“morally”) good
B. Thinking that X is (“non-morally”) good and X being (“non-morally”) good
I mean, the fact that you mistakenly think Moore was speaking to moral good is interesting. The reason modern subjectivists hold to both A and B indiscriminately is primarily because Moore ended up implying that ‘good’ is undefinable, not merely that ‘moral good’ is undefinable.
I’m saying that moral subjectivists can accept that both of these are true:
Whether or not kicking puppies is immoral is only a subjective opinion/attitude
Whether or not kicking puppies harms them is an objective fact
Why is it interesting? It’s titled Principia Ethica, Chapter 1 is titled “The Subject Matter of Ethics”, and the opening paragraph is:
It is very easy to point out some among our every-day judgments, with the truth of which Ethics is undoubtedly concerned. Whenever we say, ‘So and so is a good man,’ or ‘That fellow is a villain’; whenever we ask, ‘What ought I to do?’ or ‘Is it wrong for me to do like this?’; whenever we hazard such remarks as ‘Temperance is a virtue and drunkenness a vice’—it is undoubtedly the business of Ethics to discuss such questions and such statements; to argue what is the true answer when we ask what it is right to do, and to give reasons for thinking that our statements about the character of persons or the morality of actions are true or false. In the vast majority of cases, where we make statements involving any of the terms ‘virtue,’ ‘vice,’ ‘duty,’ ‘right,’ ‘ought,’ ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ we are making ethical judgments; and if we wish to discuss their truth, we shall be discussing a point of Ethics.
So yes, he’s very much interested in the term “good” within the context of ethics, and not every occasion that an English-speaker might use the word.
But note how in (2) you have actually abandoned the words good/bad altogether. The distinction you raised was a distinction between what is good and what is morally good, and now you have drawn a different distinction, namely the distinction between “harmful to my health” and immoral. The subjectivist would say that one cannot be wrong about whether drinking is bad. They would say that what is “harmful” is not necessarily “bad,” where “bad” is not some special, undefinable moral category, but simply badness in its general signification. So the subjectivist collapses B just as they collapse A.
Lol - not really. Only if by “ethics” we mean something much broader than what you mean by “moral.” Whether it is good to drink tequila on account of hangovers is within Moore’s purview but not within your undefined sense of “moral.” Moore simply does not restrict himself to the “moral” sphere that you restrict yourself to.