It might to some. Especially if they determine that the children of a particular group are not fully human or vermin. But I was thinking more about pronouncements we make about culture and politics.
Then rephrase your answer in terms of obligations and not in terms of mere ‘oughts’, for that is what the question asked about.
What truth? As I see it, if I prefer that others not kick puppies then I only assent to the truth of the sentence “I prefer that others not kick puppies”. It does not follow that I assent to the truth of the sentence “it is morally wrong to kick puppies”.
That’s precisely Mackie’s point. Moral obligations, if there are any, are independent of our attitudes (and norms). There are no obligations that are independent of our attitudes (and norms). Therefore, there are no moral obligations. Whatever obligation we have to not kick puppies is a non-moral obligation.
But again, this seems inconsistent with your earlier claims. You say that obligations are not independent of our attitudes but you won’t commit to the claim “if we all prefer that others kick puppies then we ought kick puppies”.
I’ve explained it many times. I don’t know how much clearer I can be, or even what it is you disagree with, but I’ll try once more:
- A soldier has an obligation to salute his superior officer because that is the institutional norm
- A soldier has a moral obligation to salute his superior officer because that is the institutional norm
Whatever the word “moral” means, either (1) and (2) mean the same thing and have the same truth value or they don’t mean the same thing and can have different truth values. So one of these must be true: a) (1) is false, b) (2) is true, or c) there are non-moral obligations.
Which of (a), (b), or (c) is your position? Mine is (c) because (1) and (2) do not prima facie mean the same thing; (1) seems uncontroversially true but (2) is an open question — and both the realist and the nihilist will argue that (2) is false because moral obligations are not the sort of thing that can be established by institutional norms (contra the relativist).
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I asked:
You answered by equivocating between what a soldier ought to do and what obligations a soldier has. I am asking you to answer that question without equivocating between obligation and ‘ought’. I’ve asked a number of times at this point.
“obligation” is the noun and “ought” is the verb. There’s no equivocation, just different grammatical expressions of the same principle. It is a tautology that if one has an obligation to do something then one ought do it and that if one ought do something then one has an obligation to do it.
The equivocation that others are guilty of is to say that if one has an obligation then one has a moral obligation, but that’s not true a priori and so further justification is required to take this step. I think my previous comment sets out precisely why it’s a false step.
Okay. This is a very different line than you’ve taken in the past. I can dig up conversations when I have time. In the past you have said that there are obligatory ‘oughts’ and non-obligatory ‘oughts’, just as you have here claimed that there are moral obligations and non-moral obligations. I was trying to head this off here:
I believe life has a fundamental Drive To Thrive.
Our body has a need to remain in state of homeostasis - things that work towards maintaining that is “good” - what works against that is “bad”.
If you caretake an infant, that infant is always signaling its immediate needs or contentment. Number one moral priority Don’t Drop the Baby!!! After that, keep the baby smiling, which may require a diaper change, or a bottle of milk, or walking around the house, or a nap. Could doing that correctly be a moral imperative?
How’s that?
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I agree with that. I think the context of morality is the flourishing of living beings, and this has everything to do with what makes us “thrive,” as you say.
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This is a direct result of you either misunderstanding, or choosing to not accept hte arguments made throughout hte thread.
The fact I don’t like psychological damage is a fact about me. The fact most people don’t like, and do not expect/accept psychological damage is a normative fact. That is the normal case for normal people.
There’s no contradiction anywhere.
I should point out that just about everyone who has participated so far in this thread subscribes to one extent or another to the idea of a mind-world binary with the rational subject at one end and the empirical world at the other. This distinction between scheme and world may be treated in a deflationary way, as Banno seems to do, but the assumption that the aim of knowledge is its answerability to the world, that its role is to mirror the way things are in the world, still drives his arguments, and is evidenced by the obsession with the world ‘truth’. A thinker like Rorty would say instead that justificatory warrant is more important than truth, that being useful trumps being ‘right’, and that justification is no more groundable in the way things really are than is the concept of truth.
Rorty and the pragmatists would say that pragmatic use orients and ‘grounds’ both our epistemological and our ethical judgements , even when it comes to shooting children for entertainment. What we ought to do doesn’t answer to already-in-place facts of a world but enacts a particular way of producing , and then inhabiting, a practical engagement with that world.
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Do you think talking about morality is somewhat pointless unless we shift our models?
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Indeed, as it should be.
Explicitly, no.
No matter how you phrase it, you will not be able to walk through a brick wall. Truth is that “justificatory warrant”. Take care not tho throw the world out with the mirror.
Nice. But I’m confident @Joshs wouldn’t object to the idea that we encounter real constraints, like brick walls; he would just question whether there is a single, fixed “real world” independent of the ways we describe it. I guess this might mean that morality is a contingent grab bag of values that we try to institutionalize through shared practices and institutions.
There are true statements. One is that Joshs cannot walk through brick walls. Changing the interpretation will not allow him to walk through walls.
We don’t need a metaphysics of ‘single, fixed “real world” independent of the ways we describe it’ to agree to that.
We might rid ourselves of the mirror, of correspondence as the arbiter of truth, allowing our ethical truths not to be tied to how things are, but on how they might be. Joshs and I might find agreement here.
But he is mistaken in attributing to me a merely correspondence theory of truth.
I think talk about morality will be dominated by an impetus toward conformity, blame and a certain irreducible violence (all of which circulate within these discussions of what is good and true) unless we shift our models.
But you will be able to meet others who interpret differently the meaning of ‘walk’, ‘brick’, ‘wall’ and the form of life within which the sentence which ties them all together into a unitary has its intelligibity.
If you rely on the idea that truth is the justificatory warrant, you will treat your interpretation as an approximation of the fact of the matter.
That ‘truth’ becomes a bludgeon in your hands. Although you will claim that it is not you who are holding it but ‘the world as it actually is’ is doing the bludgeoning, in the name of the ‘way thing really are’ you will finger point, blame, correct and advocate for conformity to the other who doesn’t behave toward that brick wall the way you would.
Sure. None of which will make a difference to your capacity to walk through walls.
Your position on these matters is always interesting, and quite different from most people’s understanding. You seem consistently mindful of how philosophical commitments can produce divisions between people, leading to things like in-groups and out-groups that become the basis for judgment and exclusion. Is there a good first step we can take to begin to shift our moral thinking in this space?
So in the one archived thread I looked at you ended up vacillating, first saying things like this:
Well yes, because that’s a truism: “ought” and “should” are synonyms.
(Michael, Why be moral?, Archive)
And then reversing yourself and saying things like this:
Despite what I said here, I tend to use “ought” and “should” slightly differently. I use “ought” when I intend to assert the existence of an obligation and “should” otherwise, which is why I say “you should brush your teeth” and not “you ought brush your teeth”.
But if you want me to be more explicit then I’m assuming that “this is immoral” means “we have an obligation to not do this”.
(Michael, Why be moral?, Archive)
The problem here is that you are not using words in the way they are usually used. When Hume talks about getting ‘ought’ from ‘is’ he is not excluding ‘should’ from ‘ought’. When someone says, “We ought to get some food at the next exit,” they are not saying, “We have an obligation to get food at the next exit.”