That’s not what “normative” means. Whether or not most people don’t like X has no bearing on whether X is wrong in itself. You could see this yourself by noting that if most people suddenly started favoring psychological damage, you would not suddenly change your view and say that you “like people going through psychological damage.”
Okay, then would you like to distinguish between “strong” oughts that are obligations and “weak” oughts that aren’t? If so, this just works to further support my position; the moral nihilist denies that there are “strong” (moral) oughts, and so showing that there are “weak” (non-moral) oughts does not suffice to refute them.
As I said before, it’s not at all clear what about my claims you are objecting to, so can you please spell it out?
I’ve spelt it out too many times now.
If “the way words are used” is your argument when it comes to the words ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’, then how is it that you completely abandon the way words are used when you define ‘ought’ as pertaining to obligation?
A soldier should salute his superior officer because them’s our rules.
A soldier ought salute his superior officer because them’s our rules.
A soldier has a non-moral obligation to salute his superior officer because them’s our rules.
A soldier does not have a moral obligation to salute his superior officer even though them’s our rules.
It is not immoral for a soldier to not salute his superior officer even though them’s our rules.
See here.
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This is such a gross, uncharitable mischaracterization of both what I intimated, and what that might infer about my views I cannot see how this is going to go any further than exactly how the entire thread has run.
Normative facts don’t tell us what’s wrong “in itself” Leon. Perhaps this explains your intense May misguided comments throughout the thread
Thanks. You answered the question. Holy crap. 
So your non-moral obligations obtain because “them’s our rules.” I won’t press this further. I don’t think there is a substantive view to be found beneath all of this.
What do they tell us? If they merely describe what people like or what people prefer, then they are descriptive facts and not normative facts.
Normative facts are literally just rules about conduct. Their source is not “in and of itself”. They are usually literal laws.
“You ought not kick puppies” tells us nothing but the environmental norm. What I, specifically, prefer is more or less irrelevant. I am not an aggregate or an environment. I do however, happen to be agreement with the situation. And that’s good. That’s how cooperative ethics function. Those who like kicking puppies are generally prevented from doing so for the benefit of everyone else.
But if you go to Iran, the normative facts which apply change drastically.
A law is a conditional. It says, “If you do X, then you will suffer Y.” It is not normative. Coercion is not ethical normativity. @Banno’s view reduces to “might makes right.” He equivocates between an ethical norm and a coercive means, such as law. You have been following him in this. Banno’s implicit claim, “If we can get enough people to sign our petition into law then we can force people to stop kicking puppies,” has nothing to do with ethical normativity.
Well, sorry to say, but this is wrong. I guess I’ll leave it there.
As an endnote to this conversation, I do think there are moral truths that do not make use of instrumental means. I was getting at that here:
Still, I think @Michael’s reasoning is incorrect, because it seems to me that Michael is saying, “When I look into my own conscience I find that I am morally averse to certain things in a non-instrumental way, and therefore teleological accounts cannot suffice.” The most immediate problem with this idea is that the manner in which we assent to truths is not necessarily connected to the ontological mode of those truths (as Newmans’ Grammar of Assent shows). The second problem is that teleological reasoning is not necessarily instrumental reasoning. Or rather, a teleological account of a moral norm does not necessarily imply that that moral norm is inferred by way of instrumental reason.
In general Peter Simpson’s paper, “Justice, Consequences, and Cicero,” touches on many of these issues, including the idea of the noble and the base.
So it comes back to, ought folk kick puppies? No, I haven’t shown it to be true - but what do you think? Is it true? If not, then we haven’t shown that there are moral truths. but if so…
That’s why I chose the puppy example. I hope you agree with us that it ought not be done.
Wait a minute. Isn’t your whole argument that no one can leave it there? “This is just wrong” is the kind of statement you are arguing against.
So you just attempted to refute @Leontiskos argument by employing it.
I guess since you said you are sorry to say it, you’ve given a nod to the contradiction?
I’ll just note that what Leon says concerning my view here is very, very far from what I have contended.
You, dear reader, can check this by looking up my posts.
Leon’s hostility towards views other than his own leads him to fabricate rather than make honest responses.
No, thst wasn’t an attempt to “refute” anything.
Leon’s description of a normative fact is wrong. Incorrect. Not the case.
the claim you’re talking about it thst a moral claim has no objective basis. And even then, I have not jettisoned the practical use of the phrase “that act is wrong” so it’s not all that relevant to my position as an anti realist anyway. A different arena.
this is all a little silly now, I think.
I agree, we exist suspended in an ethical, epistemological predicament.
But I think your above post betrays the equivocation @Leontiskos has been pointing out.
It seems it is only not satisfying to those who demand the view that objective truths are nowhere to be found.
All you have said that borders on ethics is you hope others agree that kicking puppies is wrong. You leave yourself no tools to convince anyone if they disagree, (nor any reason to do so), and no tools to justify your affection for un-kicked puppies. This is not doing ethics.
I am sympathetic to the person who believes we can only pretend truth and ought are written into the universe. What I don’t understand is, when such person stops pretending, when being honest, why bother doing ethics (or ontology/metaphysics) at all?
You need to ground value or good or truth in something other than the people seeking to be good, seeking to know truth, seeking to proscribe behavior codified into law. Otherwise such activities will always remain pretense and facade. But pretending we are doing philosophy or ethics absent truth or good is playing chess with no kings or no chessboard. It’s just a different game entirely (if something happens at all).
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The thread has been one of the better journey’s on the forum, with lots of really interesting perspectives. It just goes to show that morality remains a minefield of systems, theories and contested views.
I agree with what you say here about the common language use of terms like “wrong” or “good” as conversational tools that don’t necessarily map onto realities outside of that conversation.
I am assuming you might have a particular theory of truth you go by. For example, something is true if it corresponds to reality, or perhaps some form of coherentism?
So when you say a moral claim has no objective basis, you are saying, I presume, that morality might be:
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A system humans agree upon for determining what we ought and ought not to do.
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A series of emotional to behaviours we like or dislike, nothign more.
And if 1, this does not mean it is objectively true, but more like a social convention by, shall we say, intersubjective agreement?
I have a few related questions that interest me, if you don’t mind.
What is something that counts as objectively true?
What is your view of the law, given that it’s based upon what we ought and ought not do?
Are there any systems of morality that you have sympathy for as an emotivist - perhaps just as a way to navigate behaviors, as we might use traffic lights to manage traffic flow?
It’s a phrase used to the point of weariness, but the picture holds you captive. In this case, you seem to have the picture that doing ethics is exactly and only setting out the absolute nature of the Good; that any other discourse is not ethics. It’s a top-down approach which assumes there is some cosmic and universal item to which we can compare our various actions and ideas and assertions once and for all if they are good.
So you say things such as
You started your post with an example of how we might convince someone who disagrees by showing them their inconsistency.
We ground value in people seeking to do good, because that is what value is.
The only alternative is to ground values in something that is outside of value; and absurdity. It’s values all the way down.
You said it. I thought it held us captive, but ok, it holds me captive. (My tragedy of isolation continues…)
I don’t know about all that. I’m really just saying simply this: a conversation about ethics needs to at least incorporate/address: “good” and “truth” and the notion “in the world, apart from just me” and also “does concern dealings with others”, and I would add “agency/responsibility” and “law”. Without at least these notions, the holes left in the conversation make it pre-tragic, not yet a conversation about ethics.
I would say the conversation has to go top down, bottom up, retest inside out, and confirm outside in.
And why isn’t your logical meta-ethics a top down approach assuming logic reigns the cosmos?
It really is wrong to kick puppies for fun. But to show that and make and enforce a law like that, involves more moving parts than “concerns dealing with others”.
I’ll leave this, perhaps. Not seeing much to it.
I agree. But where you seem to need this to be proved, I take it as obvious.
See the discussion of recognition in Furthering Philippa Foot