Yes, to avoid the equivocation that you keep engaging in.
The moral subjectivist would say that one cannot be wrong about whether drinking is immoral. They accept that we can be wrong about whether drinking is harmful.
How is it an equivocation?
“Health is good” and “virtue is good” is not akin to using river “banks” and financial “banks” in a syllogism.
Health is good because it is desirable, a perfection.
Virtue is good because it is desirable, a perfection.
I am not sure the usage cannot be univocal, and it can certainly be analogical. The term is doing the same semantic work in both cases. That’s not equivocating.
Further, the two are also not unrelated. Bad health can weigh on virtue, and virtue promotes good health, all else equal. Health and virtue aren’t two unrelated goods. Rather, they are integrated aspects of a single measure of flourishing. Saying they are equivocal would be like saying: “education is good for kids,” and “adequate food is good for kids,” is an equivocation because education and nutrition aren’t the same thing. Sure, they aren’t the same thing, yet if predicates are only univocal when applied to the same exact things, that would be a serious issue.
Aristotle is clear on this. Extreme deprivations vis-á-vis external and bodily goods can make the perfection of virtue practically impossible for most, whereof Saint James says to provide for people’s needs prior to any admonition. Virtue and health are not merely correlated; they are formally related as aspects of a unified human good (i.e., what is “good for man”).
And at any rate, your equivocation charge actually proves too much. If “good” is equivocal between health and virtue, then it would seem to be equivocal between any two distinct goods. Yet if this were the case, then practical reasoning across different goods becomes impossible, dissolving even instrumental reason.
Keep reading:
Accordingly, we find that many ethical philosophers are disposed to accept as an adequate definition of ‘Ethics’ the statement that it deals with the question what is good or bad in human conduct. They hold that its enquiries are properly confined to ‘conduct’ or to ‘practice’; they hold that the name ‘practical philosophy’ covers all the matter with which it has to do. Now, without discussing the proper meaning of the word (for verbal questions are properly left to the writers of dictionaries and other persons interested in literature; philosophy, as we shall see, has no concern with them), I may say that I intend to use ‘Ethics’ to cover more than this—a usage, for which there is, I think, quite sufficient authority. I am using it to cover an enquiry for which, at all events, there is no other word: the general enquiry into what is good.
Ethics is undoubtedly concerned with the question what good conduct is; but, being concerned with this, it obviously does not start at the beginning, unless it is prepared to tell us what is good as well as what is conduct. For ‘good conduct’ is a complex notion: all conduct is not good; for some is certainly bad and some may be indifferent. And on the other hand, other things, beside conduct, may be good; and if they are so, then, ‘good’ denotes some property, that is common to them and conduct; and if we examine good conduct alone of all good things, then we shall be in danger of mistaking for this property, some property which is not shared by those other things: and thus we shall have made a mistake about Ethics even in this limited sense; for we shall not know what good conduct really is.
So not only does Moore think ethics applies to human “conduct” or “practice” in general (as opposed to human “moral” conduct), he also thinks that we must examine the sense of ‘good’ apart from human conduct in order to understand what it means in the context of human conduct. He literally says that he means “ethics” to cover “the general enquiry into what is good.”
Again, your claim that you are following Moore when you single out “moral good” as undefinable is mistaken. That move is Michael’s, not Moore’s.
Taken from here:
Ethical subjectivism (also known as moral subjectivism and moral non-objectivism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
- Ethical sentences express propositions
- Some such propositions are true
- The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the (actual or hypothetical) attitudes of people.
The statement “drinking is immoral” is an ethical proposition. The statement “drinking is harmful” is not an ethical proposition.
Showing that “drinking is harmful” is objectively true is not showing that “drinking is immoral” is objectively true.
Collapsing “drinking is harmful” and “drinking is immoral” into the singular “drinking is bad” and then arguing that because “drinking is harmful” is objectively true then “drinking is bad” is objectively true then “drinking is immoral” is objectively true is equivocation.
One of the reasons I pointed folks to the note of “supervenience” is because many of the objections that have been offered are wrong by all accounts. On TPF there is a habit to try to scapegoat Aristotle whenever the chips are down, but the errors of many of the objections in this thread have nothing at all to do with Aristotle or teleology. They would also be seen as errors by Moore, Stevenson, Hare, Anscombe, Foot, Searle, etc.
It seems to me that your charge of equivocation rests entirely on presupposing the very categorization in question, i.e, that “moral good” names something over and above (and indeed, categorically divorced from) facts about human nature, its perfection, and what is truly desirable (i.e., the human good).
But I think that the burden falls on you to show why we should accept a definition of “moral” that makes it categorically distinct, considering that you yourself say this this distinction is incoherent.
So are you arguing that moral good and health are the same thing?
I think it’s a reasonable presupposition.
The sentence “drinking alcohol damages the liver but is not immoral” is not an obvious contradiction, and the sentence “drinking alcohol is immoral” seems to be saying more than just “drinking alcohol damages the liver”.
And whereas it seems acceptable to derive “you ought not drink alcohol” from the singular premise “drinking alcohol is immoral” it doesn’t seem acceptable to derive it from the singular premise “drinking alcohol damages the liver”; the latter requires the additional premise “you ought not do anything that damages the liver”.
So there is a prima facie meaningful difference between the inclusion and exclusion of terms like “moral” and “immoral”.
The burden is on anyone who makes a claim. If you think that because it is an objective fact that drinking alcohol damages the liver then moral subjectivism is false then you need to explain the connection between liver damage and immorality. That we use the word “bad” to describe both does not suffice and is equivocation.
And I’m not sure what comment of mine you’re referring to. Is it when I said that I question the sensibility of moral obligations?
The view that morality is about adhering to nature is Stoicism. It just sounds weird to us because we have a Christian heritage that emphasizes the opposite view: that the sick and poor are blessed.
As I understand him he’s saying that not all ethical judgements concern conduct and practice, which isn’t the same as saying that every use of the term “good” is an ethical judgement.
When I say that this is a good book, am I making an ethical judgement? If the truth of “this is a good book” is subjective then is moral subjectivism proven? Or if moral subjectivism is false then does it follow that we can be wrong in thinking that a book is good?
Or is there simply no connection between morality and whether or not this is a good book? I say there’s no connection, and that it’s equivocation to argue that if something is good/bad then it is moral/immoral.
In the context of morality it is perhaps impossible to define the meaning of the word “good”, but in the context of the book being good we can easily define “good” as meaning something like “enjoyable” or “well-written”.
I have noticed this in amateur philosophy spaces quite a bit actually. I know of no academic philosopher, or anyone in an adjacent field who tries to argue for anti-realism by carving out a sui generis “moral good.” I would say the sui generis, undefinable “moral good” position seems to me to be just a naive divine command theory, with God chopped out, rendering it incoherent. Now, to be sure, some professionals do deflate the good, or come up with various redefinitions. For Mackie, the argument for error theory hinges on the idea that realism requires facts that are prescriptive by their very nature. That’s not nearly as restrictive as the demand for a unique, moral good.
No, I am saying the a discrete category of “moral goodness” that is unrelated to what is desirable or beneficial for man, and which cannot be defined, is an incoherent category.
I’d also maintain that “good” can be predicated of the moral virtues and health (or the physical virtues and intellectual virtues) univocally. Good is here univocal in that all of these are said to be good in virtue of the fact they are good (are perfections) for a particular being, man (a substantial whole).
So, the unity isn’t that moral virtue is identical with health, but rather that both are good vis-á-vis the same subject. “Good” is univocal because, in either case, it signifies “perfective of this being,” and we are referring to the same being in both cases. The differentiation exists in virtue of that fact that we can single out different kinds of perfection. Yet this is not on the side of the predicate “good.”
This preserves real distinctions across different dimensions of human flourishing, while grounding their unity in the unity of the subject, rather than in some abstract common property (I think this is a substantial perk). Man is not a bundle of discrete subsystems, each with its own incommensurable, unique good. Man is an integrated whole, exemplifying unity in difference (as in the function of different organs), and so the human good is one, but diversely realized (as any principle is).
So, I’d agree with @Michael, and am a “moral anti-realist” in the sense he is. He has defined his version of “moral” as incoherent and undefinable (something we agree upon). I’ll agree that nothing has this indescribable and seemingly irrelevant property. I would just deny that this is what anyone cares about re discussions of values realism.
Right, okay. That is much, much clearer and thank you clarifying that.
It may be, then, that I’m just saying "teleological considerations of “moral truth” are unworthy of real consideration, as a means to gaining access to “true” ethical statements. But this begs a certain type of question - it turned out, i did agree with @Banno’s true ethical statements but didn’t want to call them that. That may be happening here. I think i mentioned that earlier, and probably should have made more of a point. I have an extremely hard time calling a contingent “fact” a truth. If it requires an “if x is employed, then y” then y is not so much an “ethical truth” as much as a truth about ethical thinking. Maybe, because there are no “actual” ethical truths in the sense of objective moral benchmarks, this is all we get. If so, i just don’t like teleology, even if your logic were sound (i’m unsure).
That’s not really the point - teleology may well be the best way forward for ethics - but you’re right in that I misunderstood what your intention was.
I don’t think so. I’m challenging that there is an objective way to value things. I’m not assuming that in the way you are saying. I’m assuming it by rejecting positive claims about moral systems. It’s more like atheism than asserting anything. But i hear you, and see precisely how this made things difficult.
I thikn I addressed this somewhere earlier - this isn’t (and definitely not for me at any rate) what I think anti-realism offers. It offers a reduction of the claim about “good” to a subjective one. There is not “really good”. There is “good for…” “Good according to…” and “good in pursuit of…” (and, you can reverse that for “the bad”).
That’s my understanding of anti-realism. Not that we cannot speak about people’s attitudes as an aggregate, remove the inferred basis and say “kicking puppies is wrong” rather than “Most people would agree, kicking puppies is wrong”.
The latter seems to me anti-realism.
I think Banno has been pretty clear he is never trying to say there are binding moral truths. He is saying that we can say things about what people do, and they can be accurate (my take on the puppies above illustrates). I’m not sure I’d call that realism either - he essentially admitted it doesn’t touch the emotivist claim v any other).
It is pretty clear to me you are not understanding my exchanges at this stage.
Choice-worthiness is teleological, on Tim’s terms even. “good” does not come into it, except with a view to a specific goal. I could be entirely neutral to your goals. Your choices don’t matter to me (well, some do obviously but conceptually, they just don’t matter. I don’t actually know you). They are choices you’ve made based on your own values, and you are denying that your own values are involved in those choices if you think this:
if your definition of good is “choice-worthiness” then it is, explicitly, definitionally, reliant on your abilitiy to make choices you deem worthy. That is a form of emotional expression. It is evaluative. It is not objective, and it is not “truth” in any sense other than “pursuant to…”.
Teleology is not ethical or moral thinking. It is calculation about goals-oriented behaviour and choice. This much is clear in the concept itself. It’s probably an impasse to say that teleology is moral. It can only ever give us “If you want x, you ought y”. If i want to be wet, i should go out in the rain. Nothing moral to be found, imo. As i say, possible impasse.
I reject one, because 2 becomes false if it’s true. But in reality, 2 is true because 1 is false ( is my position).
This is a reasonably good illustration of why teleology does not (or, mostly does not) give us moral statements. it’s probably worth keeping in mind “good” is not akin to “what we ought to do” particularly. If we ought not drink, teleologically (we shouldn’t, obviously) that doesn’t give us any moral reason not to. This is obvious, I think.
I also think there’s a marginal amount of “being interesting” going on with denials of definitions of things like “good” “bad” and “moral”.
What one “ought” to do can appear in many places. Morals distinguish between “right action” and “wrong action” and apply to interpersonal behaviours. The knife for cutting meat is not a moral decision, in this way. Wanking yourself to death doesn’t reach that level either, funnily enough.
Kicking a puppy? Borderline.
Kicking a friend? That’s immoral (or, most will claim it is). What we want to know is why. Teleology wont do, realism wont do… so… we don;'t do it because we don’t like it.
We have inherited a number of moral frameworks. The Christian world fused them, but we can separate them out. The view that human flourishing, physically and otherwise, is a testament to goodness is Stoicism. The idea is that by adhering to ways of Nature, or God’s will, benefit flows and can be seen in the flesh. Violating the ways of Nature brings sickness and death.
Another view, some would identify it as Iranian or Zoroastrian, is that you can’t tell whether someone is good by their circumstances. A person can be poor and sick, but still good in spite of that outward degradation. Several of Jesus’ parables were expressing this kind of moral framework, which casts suspicion on the rich and powerful. The good in this case is more abstract, and some would link it with progress. In other words, reaching the destination would be great, but continuous progress is itself the good.
That gave me a laugh.
Your teleology has values built in, but pretends that they are not values.
It appears that if you were to recognise the logical distinction between an is and an ought statements you would have to set aside your teleology, so you simply refuse to recognise the distinction.
Your supposed reasoning is just some vague handwaving at a dislike for Hume.
You’re defending a position, digging in, rather then engaging in a discourse. You are restating your account of teleology instead of engaging with the objections given.
If we agree that your teleological premises contain normative content, explain from where that normative content derives.
Interesting discussion. I think on morality I have arrived back at where I was before joining the site. That is, I don’t know how we can establish right or wrong except through how it feels to us, and through collective values, recognising the challenges and inconsistencies this can produce. The subject is simply too complicated and confusing to arrive at anything definite. And nothing I have heard thus far (though much of it reasonable) convinces me. The average person for whom philosophy is a quagmire of competing presuppositions, values and rhetorical dead ends is best off just improvising.
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It’s fairly obvious that you’ve never read Moore, despite appealing to him.
Read the first two sentences of the excerpt I gave you. Then note, “I intend to use ‘Ethics’ to cover more than this.”
So Moore thinks ethics has to do with what is good or bad in human conduct and human practice; that it covers what “practical philosophy” covers; and that it covers even more than this.
Moore thinks it covers conduct/practice/practical philosophy, and more; you think it covers less than conduct/practice/practical philosophy. A common rejoinder you give is, “That’s a practical question, not a moral question.” Moore does not limit himself to your idea of “morality.” He explicitly says that he is including practical matters in his ethics. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
From the natures of beings. You appealed to Foot earlier, but this is precisely her claim as well. She uses the example of a plant. That proper watering is good for a plant is a fact derivable from what a plant is. On her account, for living things, evaluation is built right into description.
This is, at the very least, the common sense reading of the many apparent facts of the medical, psychiatric, veterinary, horticultural, etc. sciences that certainly seem to be facts about what is good for different organisms. One could argue that these are not really facts, I am aware, but it seems to me a high bar to say that medicine and psychology can discover no facts about what is good for man from the study of man qua man, or that veterinary science can discover nothing about what is good for dogs from the nature of dogs.
It isn’t that values aren’t values, it’s that facts and values aren’t subject to any firm dichotomy. Why would they be?
Well, yes, conditionally. If one ought not pick one’s nose, then it is true that one ought not pick one’s nose.
Of course, if you have no preferences, then there might be no true ought statements.
But we do have preferences.
The funny thing about preferences is that they are not so much found in the world, but in what people do in that world. That we have preferences establishes that there are true normative statements. The ought just is the preference.
Grimace.
Where, in a description of a plant, does it say that a plant ought to have water? Sure, without water it will die, but so what? You need “if you want the plant to live, then you ought water it” to move from the description to the act.
You have told us what counts as a healthy plant, but given no reason to prefer healthy plants over dead ones. You have not closed the gap between “this is good for the plant” and “we ought do this”.
Nothing in the nature of a plant says we ought water it.
Right.
I suppose there is a parallel insofar as Moore’s work ends up creating a scenario where ‘good’ is seen as undefinable, and then later philosophers try to solve the puzzle. But no one just abandons the word altogether, refusing to attempt an account and using it exclusively to criticize.
For example, Stevenson is an emotivist, and @AmadeusD also calls himself an emotivist. Amadeus, following in Michael’s footsteps, often resorts to the same argument. Yet a philosopher like Stevenson would never restrict his emotivist theory to “moral” and not “practical” claims. As someone actually interested in understanding the sphere of human conduct and practice, this would make no sense for Stevenson.
Regarding academic philosophy, one place where I have seen something akin to a sui generis moral good come up is Kantianism (of course), but it also comes up in relation to egoism. This is because the egoist approach tends to raise questions about the possibility of self-sacrificial acts, and self-sacrificial acts are relatively impractical. That’s one of the places where Simpson speaks to the idea of the noble.