Leon
Leon I'll try to be succinct, but I'm struggling! We need to focus in now Ithink
Let's just set the stage a bit to begin. I gave an example where a brother claims a piece of fruit is a tangerine and his sister disagrees, calling it a clementine. The point of my illustration was that the encounter is, prima facie, identical to a moral argument. There are two competing claims, both of which are "ought" claims. The point was that this is already too much for Peter's criteria for objectivity.
Now you claim that this is a different sort of ought than a moral claim. We can explore this question, but again, prima facie, it is the same. The siblings take their claims to be normative for the other person. This same thing happens when a vehement pro-lifer encounters a vehement pro-choicer. You have two conflicting "ought"-claims that presumably lead to interminable argument. What I mean when I say that the brother or the pro-lifer makes an "ought"-claim is that they intend their claim to be normative. In the first place I wanted to attend to the matter of intention.
OK, lets agree this is a scenario where Peter is intending his statement ''This fruit is a tangerine'' to place some sort of ought obligation on whoever is in his company (to agree with him presumably). So our issue is twofold - why is there such an obligation, what's the foundation? And if there is, is it the same type of obligation a moral ought confers?
Just because someone says out loud ''That is a tangerine'' doesn't introduce some burden of ought as far as I can see (except along the lines I already mentioned). I'm not seeing where the oughtness lies in this scenario and what it's based in. I can guess some more but it would be helpful if you ca…
I'm saying that our shared experience-based model of the world where we share notes and agree eg that tangerines exist and categorise them, is inter-subjective. We then treat the physical observable and measurable aspects of this working model as true, as factual and falsifiable. Until we hit a prob…
I don't disagree with what you say here, but I don't think this non-realist account goes far enough.
Fine, it's just getting this type of 'objective' agreement pinned down. Ie if something is observable/measurable we can check each other's claims and falsify them - by looking ourselves. This is the basis of the scientific method. Note it can't be applied to abstract concepts like morality, which isn't third person falsifiable via observation/measurement.
If you agree this is the basis by which people agree to call something objectively true, then it doesn't work for morality, so you need to provide a different type of basis for your claim that morality is objective... ?
Throughout this discussion you talk about, "treating things as true/objective/factual/falsifiable." Clearly you're uncomfortable with the claim that they really are true/objective/factual/falsifiable. Let's try to get to an objective ought and to realism. (Note: Many today follow Hume and Kant in rejecting classical moral knowledge, but they don't see that these same premises, if followed consistently, require one to reject scientific knowledge as well.)
I'm making the distinction above re observable/measurable/falsifiable physical facts, and abstract concepts.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the intersubjective "ought" claim that you recognize is essentially the claim that English speakers ought to label the fruit as a tangerine, and that "the purpose behind that is to maintain the useful consistency of our shared objective model of the world." More generally, it is the claim that language speakers should follow the stipulated vocabulary of the language. This is actually a relatively superficial claim.
Yes, according to
my moral foundation, the welfare of conscious creatures, it's a good rule of thumb to share a consistent vocabulary to get **** done and avoid accidents. But the rule of thumb is there to serve the foundational principle, so it won't always apply.
But I don't claim that my moral foundation is rooted in objectivity, rather I claim it is the appropriate foundation for oughts.
So let's consider two different meanings of the predication, "This piece of fruit is a tangerine."
M1: English speakers ought to apply the label "tangerine" to this piece of fruit.
M2: This fruit is the kind of reality that the English word "tangerine" points to.
The difference is subtle but important. If you wanted to defend M1 you could go to a dictionary, or take a poll, or in some way attempt to discover common usage. If you wanted to defend M2 you would go to a pomologist, because they are the ones who best understand fruits. M1 is merely stipulative. "It is a tangerine because we English speakers decided that it is a tangerine." M2 is substantive. "It is a tangerine because it instantiates the objective concept that is represented by the word 'tangerine'." In the first case we have a semantic quibble; in the second case we have a disagreement over the nature of reality.
Yes I get the difference, I'd say they're really having a dispute over labelling or observation tho.
It's the observation (the experiential representation of reality) which is known to them and can be faulty and not tally. Conscious experience is itself a limited and faulty basis for knowledge, but humans generally share the same limitations and faults, so what we can do is create consistent working models of reality. In M2 there is an inconsistency in observation we wouldn't expect from normally functioning humans, except for the fact tangerines and clementines are very similar, which just means more thorough observation/measurement is required.
Now it's not really clear whether the brother and sister are having a semantic quibble or a substantive disagreement. You assumed they were having a semantic quibble and I assumed they were having a substantive disagreement. I would say that if the brother and sister are just learning English then it is more likely they are having a semantic quibble--they both have a clear understanding of the fruit but are ignorant of what to call it in English. On the other hand if they are both expert pomologists then it is more likely they are having a substantive disagreement--they know exactly what the two words mean, but they are disagreeing on the empirical nature of the piece of fruit.
I'm more than happy to put aside the labelling M1 issue and get down to your intended point!
My general point was that the fruit claims are analogous to scientific claims. When a scientist says that helium has two protons, this could be a stipulative claim justified by the English language such as M1, or it could be a substantive claim about reality such as M2. Certainly the first scientist who theorized that helium has two protons was not speaking stipulatively, and this shows forth the truth that science must go beyond linguistic stipulation and intersubjective agreement by reason of its very nature. This means that the falsifiability of stipulative claims is different from the falsifiability of substantive claims. Stipulative claims are falsified on the basis of intersubjective agreement, whereas substantive claims are falsified by reality and argument. Oftentimes scientists challenge or transcend intersubjective agreement, in which case their claim could be objectively true even if it is false according to intersubjective agreement (e.g. When Copernicus claimed that the Earth orbits the Sun).
I disagree with your intended point! Substantive M2 claims are falsified by observation and measurement. Hard science deals with the physically observable/measurable, that which is third person accessible. Hence checkable by others who observe/measure it. That's what makes scientific claims falsifiable. A scientific claim is accepted as objectively true on the basis that anyone who observes/measures the claimed discovery will concur.
Morality is an abstract concept, it can't be observed/measured this way, and moral claims can't be falsified this way.
I think our difference here is you're talking about reality, as if we have direct, complete, perfect access to it. I'm talking about
knowledge of reality, which is gained through (limited, flawed) conscious experience, which we then compare notes about to create a model of reality which is comprehensible to us. Which is just how it is, I think. Within that model some things (physical things) are accessible to third person observation and checking, and we agree to treat these things as facts, which is generally good enough.
My argument presupposes that they are primarily interested in the reality of the fruit rather than in which name to apply.
Good lets go with that then. Forget stipulative and M1 stuff.
I think this is the same thing Kant referred to as the analytic/synthetic distinction, but I may be wrong and I don't want to misrepresent him so I will just call it the stipulative/substantive distinction. My point is that the brother's claim is a substantive "ought," and that this kind of "ought" is in accord with moral judgments.
But why? It can't just be intention, because I could say ''That fruit is a tangerine'' without the intention of putting an obligation of agreement on anyone. I could say it an empty room. The saying of it or intention doesn't look like enough to me. I'm still not seeing your underlying justification for this being an ought claim?
Substantive claims are about reality and therefore really do have the capacity to be objective and true.
This is reasonable, but firstly - remember your knowledge toolkit is your conscious experience. We can cross check our conscious experience of physical things like tangerines because they are third person observable/measurable. But an abstract concept like morality isn't checkable in that way. It doesn't have a mind independent existence 'out there' we can observe.
So now I've at least addressed the intentionality of the act at length.
Well you've addressed the labelling/substantive distinction, which I agree with. But I'm not sure how intention itself creates a basis for oughts, sorry. Can you summarise the argument?
Obviously your other objection has to do with adjudication...
Listen, I don't want this post to become excessively long. You make a number of points below that will need to be taken up, but for now I am only going to offer a few minor comments on them. This post will therefore be primarily about the tangerine claim and the difference between stipulative and substantive claims. That strikes me as a foundational issue that needs to be addressed. We can come back to the other things.
The tangerine is a physical feature of our shared physical model of the world which we treat as objectively correct and have agreed ways of checking for accuracy via observation and measurement. This is the realm of shared public knowledge about facts of the world we can all access. If I call a tang…
Okay, so the sort of "ought" that deals with mistaking a piece of fruit is, "would be expected not to make this error in observation or categorisation." What is the alternative ought that you would contrast it with? If you think capital punishment is moral and I think it is immoral, aren't we both claiming that the other person has falsely categorized the act of capital punishment? You think I have falsely categorized it as immoral and I think you have falsely categorized it as moral. So again, I don't see two different kinds of "oughts" here, but I admit that this is only a preliminary answer.
Lets forget about errors in categorisation, it's become a red herring. The reason we can agree it's an objective fact that a hanging is happening in front of us is that it is observable/measurable/falsifiable, hence I can point to it and you can agree you see it too. As can any normally functioning human. The morality of hanging isn't observable/measurable/falsifiable in that way. Is the distinction I'm making clear now? So if that isn't your basis for calling hanging objectively immoral, what is?
I think we just have to accept that what we treat as objective is actually rooted in inter-subjective agreement. But the key thing is we can point to what we agree to call objective facts about the world and compare notes. They are 'out there', observable and measurable by us both, and our observati…
So again, we will have to come back to this, but my position is that there is no qualitative difference between an opinion and a fact. A fact is just a bunch of opinions strung together by intersubjective agreement. At least I don't see how you or Peter can get more than that. Here you call it objective, but elsewhere you would say that we "treat it as objective." Presumably on your view we have subjective experiences, and when a similar subjective experience is elicited by the same stimulus in many different individuals it becomes objective. As noted above, that view won't support science, and this was my original point to Peter.
If it is observable/measurable/falsifiable we treat it as a fact, objective knowledge of reality, by comparing the content of our experience which is the source of our knowledge. This is the scientific method. But a moral claim/opinion isn't falsifiable via observation/measurement. We'd need to use different criteria to establish the objectivity. I'm still unclear what yours are?
That said, I hope we are sorting out intention properly. The ice cream preference has no intended objectivity. When I say there is no qualitative difference, I am talking about things that are intended objectively. I included a parenthetical remark with my initial comment to clarify this.
I still don't think intention is key. I might genuinely believe there's a pixie living in my attic, and when I tell you about it I intend you to believe it too. But we don't generally treat it as objectively true unless everyone who goes look in my attic observes the pixie too. What is relevant is that the ice cream itself is observable/measurable, we can treat it as a fact I'm eating an ice cream. My liking the taste is about my feelings regarding ice cream, it's not 'out there' to be observed/measured, and it's a subject specific individual preference. Hume talks about moral intuitions as feelings of approval/disapproval, and my feelings about the taste of ice cream are similarly approving, where-as yours might be disapproving. We can't falsify either claim, because it's not observable/measurable.
So to support the claim that morality is objective, you need a different method to the way scientific claims are falsiable.
We will also have to come back to the question of adjudication, which is central to your view.
I would say that the difference is a matter of degree. The truth about capital punishment is simply more obscure than the truth about the tangerine, so fewer people are able to recognize it. But just because fewer people recognize a truth does not make it non-objective. I don't think there is any qualitative difference between fact and opinion. One merely enjoys more "intersubjective agreement." The opinions of yesterday are the facts of today, and the folly of tomorrow. Again, this misses the distinction I make between observable/measurable/objectiv e vs private/q…
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I'd say what you call adjudication is how we compare the content of our experience, our basis for knowledge. There are subject-specific truths only I can know about the content of my experience, such as whether the taste of ice cream is nice, or that I experience seeing a pixie living in my attic. So when I make such statements, I can intend you to agree, but if you can't third person falsify them, then we don't treat them with the status of objectively correct. They don't automatically enter the public canon of shared working knowledge of the world we can falsify.
These are important points you bring up. Like I said, I am not going to try to give a thorough answer to them here, for this post is already too long. However, I will give you the basic framework.
I actually want to look at slavery first, because you brought it up earlier in the thread and I think would be an easier moral prohibition for me to defend. Obviously the intersubjective agreement surrounding slavery has changed in the last few hundred years. Now we tend to view it as objectively wrong. What might that mean?
I didn't bring up slavery, but happy to use that. I wouldn't claim it's wrong on the basis of objective morality tho, I'd say it's wrong according my moral foundation of the welfare of conscious creatures. Which isn't justified as objective.
Just like the brother would make use of the nature of the fruit in order to argue that it is a tangerine, so would we appeal to the nature of the human being in order to argue against slavery.
Here we might find common ground
A common argument would be: Human beings have inherent dignity; Slavery is incompatible with that dignity; Therefore slavery is impermissible. The middle term, 'dignity', would surely be elaborated in terms of freedom. That is, our intellect and our will endow us with freedom, and that freedom cannot be arbitrarily denied. Similar "natural law" arguments would be applied to murder, or theft, or capital punishment, etc. We can talk more about this.
And here we might not