I decide my actions based off what I want to do.
So your want is your principle. Moral nihilism is, therefore, false as far as you decide the life.
my want isn’t a moral principle it’s just the matter of fact of how my brain works, It’s no claim about following my want being good or bad.
You can attempt to look at yourself descriptively and say, “I seem to follow my desires.” But as I said in your other thread, your desires are not given. You think about them; deliberate about them; arrive at uncertainty about what you truly desire, etc. If you just blindly followed your desires you might be able to say that you are not a moral being. But none of us just blindly follow our desires. Even the decision to forfeit a short-term desire for the sake of a long-term desire is a case in point. We constantly think about what we should do, and this includes thinking about which desires we ought to heed.
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just because I have to deliberate on my wants doesn’t mean I don’r eventually choose the one I want the most.
If your mind were just an automatic opting for the strongest desire, then there would be no deliberation at all. You would be an animal which acts instinctively, without deliberation. That fact that we deliberate about which route to take shows that we are not acting blindly and inevitably. It turns out that humans and animals act in very different ways, even though there are also similarities.
But deliberation is just a process of weighing pros and cons to figure out which one we desire most.
That is a moral claim. You think you ought to deliberate in order to find the most desirable option. Note too that different people deliberate to different degrees, and we also question whether we have deliberated enough to suffice for a decision. This is all moral. It is all bound up with decision, choice, valuation, weighing of alternatives, and deciding which course of action ought to be taken. I don’t see any way to claim that we deliberate without considering which course of action we ought to take. The person who deliberates can no longer view themselves in a merely descriptive manner.
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Moral nihilsm, as described in the OP, denies objective morality, so it doesn’t say you don’t make decisions. It just says your decisions can’t be weighed against some objective standard.
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They are. You decide based on them, so they are your principle.
Humans are rational animals; therefore, they always at least think about the advantages and disadvantages of things when it comes to a situation, known as consequentialism. Moreover, there must be a set of principles in which one can find the advantages and disadvantages of things; otherwise, we cannot decide. A moral nihilist denies all forms of morality, and I showed that you cannot be a moral nihilist while you decide to live your life.
That’s about right. Trial and error tends to lead here, given there is nothing to appeal to but either: Actions, or Attitudes. Actions express attitudes. It’s turtles all the way down!
Have we been here before? I think so.
Even if I can’t see how something which appears in my mind is ‘right’ in objective sense, it still appears ‘right’ in that sense (and for an emotivist, this is going to be some weighted calculation around positive emotion vs outcome) to me. That may be a fiction, but is it still in my best interests (S interest in Parfitian terms) that others assent to what I perceive to be right. So there’s a reason to move to persuade others. I do my best not to, for the most part, for whatever that may be worth.
So you can definitely perceive that right and wrong are fictional, and still see the utility in having others assent to your worldview. I think the problem is that this is where a certain sect of, mostly young, people think their emotions trump reality (or other’s emotions, as the case may be). I tend to accept that plenty of shit I think is downright abhorrent is socially acceptable. I just avoid it.
This is, though, still quite problematic for forming some kind of system where we can “get on with it”. I think that’s what Law is for. It just doesn’t develop in an ideal way. Thus:
100%. The problem is that emotivists shouldn’t be trying to convince everyone else they are right. That doesn’t even make sense. Instead, persuading someone of the way toward the best outcome, in your view, may have them moving toward that same view without having to determine whether it is ‘right’. It may just feel better, after your elucidations. I think we’ve also been here, in that we argued for pages about whether or not one could persuade another when they don’t think something is ‘right’. But this confuses the sense we each wanted to be in use: For me, it is ‘right’ empirically, not morally. It will get you to your intended destination. It always came across, strongly, to me that the sense you wanted was one where it was a moral right or wrong, rather than practical. Maybe I was just being dumb using hte same word for both senses. If so, I’ll find another..
Hmm, I think this is a bit of a red herring. A desire is an emotional expression. Which can’t come from a non-emotional expression, can it? Anyway, aside from the logic, the semantic avenue, I think, is more like this:
The “reason” posited here is just going to be some lower-level emotional state. Something like
- “I want traffic lights to effectively guide traffic” (i.e safely - which will be key).
You: Why? - “Because I do not like seeing car crashes”.
You’re then free to ask why that might be, but I’m sure at this stage you can see there’s not going to be any appeal to “the world”. It’s going to go something like this:
- “Because people being hurt, and general human chaos makes me emotionally hurt and I dislike that feeling. I also resent the cost caused by negligent car accidents - which is an undesirable emotional state also. Given I do not trust most people to avoid these, sans traffic lights, for my comfort, I want them”.
You: WHY? - “because it stops me from being in a positive emotional state”.
And from here, the next “Why” doesn’t matter. It’s just an explanation of an emotional state (or, perhaps even a neuroscientific illustration of it.. who knows).
I’m not familiar with that view and it doesn’t seem tenable.
Yeah, good. I think, though, this may be slightly askance from the point intended here (though, I do not mean to speak for that poster.. I’m just throwing in). The way I read that contention is more a practical thing: behaving in concert with evolutionary pressure will lead to better outcomes for humans.
But as an anti-natlist, i can’t assent to the conclusion anyway. Survival is not ideal, on the species level. So, still, good objection.
Not quite (not meaning you’re wrong - I think your interpretation is off). It’s truth consists in the (in their/my view) fact that “ethical propositions express emotion”. Your intent doesn’t quite matter. That is still what ethical props do.
I already discussed it. Humans are rational beings. They are at least consequentialist. Therefore, they cannot be moral nihilist.
I might be a consequentialist in the sense that I do things based on their outcomes, but I am a moral nihilist because I don’t think any moral statements have objective truth values.
you seem to be defining morals as anything that guides behavior, so I can say an electron’s morals are the laws of physics. This is just not how morals are used in standard philosophy.
I think you’re going to have trouble breaking that down. I understand you’re saying you’re guided by practical outcomes. That’s fine/ But why are those outcomes important? Do you think they are the ‘right’ outcome?
In one hypothetical above, the question was around someone attacking you and what you’d do about it - it was a bad example, because survival instinct kicks in at that stage. I think a better challenge for you would be to ask in the following situation, why did you do as you did:
You’re on a bus. The bus stops, and waits for several minutes at a stop with the doors open. You are sat near the door; no obstructions.
Outside the door, you note that a large, potentially mentally ill (lets say homeless so you get the sort of image i’m after here), potentially drug-addled person starts attacking an 11 year old student waiting at that bus stop for the next service. You get up and prevent harm to that child. Nice. Well done.
Why did you do that?
Ok, but some moral nihilists would accept that people make decisions for their own interests and that they can even be selfless in their attempts to help others.
They just don’t believe their actions can be judged according to some unchanging standards.