popeye1945 wrote: ↑April 14th, 2021, 9:06 am Hi Peter,
"1 What we call objectivity is independence from opinion when considering the facts. So moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral facts."
1-OK, Objective independence, like the train that hit you is real. Moral objectivism, there are NO moral facts in the sense that an object is a fact.
"2 What we call a fact is a feature of reality that is or was the case, or a description of a feature of reality whose truth-value - classically, true or false - is independent from opinion."
2- A fact by your definition is an object, thus objectivism, thus the physical world as object to a conscious being.
"3 Moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral features of reality - moral rightness and wrongness - that are or were the case. The burden of proof for the existence of such features of reality is with moral objectivists - unmet so far, to my knowledge."
3- There are no moral features to reality, the physical world is meaningless, thus no moral factors. Things, objects just are, and as we experience them the experience tends to become the meanings of that particular object/experience. Apparent reality is a biological readout, a summation of the bodies experience of the physcial world.
4 Moral subjectivism is the claim that there are no moral facts - moral features of reality - but only moral opinions expressed by means of moral assertions with no factual truth-value independent from opinion.
4- Yes, there are no moral facts, no moral features of reality. Through experience and humanities creative process, it trys to establish moral factors, rules, guidelines in the interest of our common biology, which tends to be similar across the board. Reality on an individual level is perception/experience, to the group it is agreement, both are based upon opinion, but the collective tends to be more reliable.
Given this argument, I suggest your conflation of what you call confusingly call meaning - as bestowed by conscious 'subjects' on 'objects' - with moral assertions is conceptually incoherent.
There was no argument presented, just definitions. Define meaning for me as clearly as you can. You could try being a little less arrogant as well.
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Sorry for the arrogance. I'll try to be better.
I think we're agreeing with each other in essence. To me, it's methodologically crucial to keep the three things - features of reality, what we believe and know, and what we say - separate - and that most if not all mistakes in philosophy come from muddling them up. So I'm with you on insisting that what we call 'reality' has no inherent meaning, description, names, categories, sets - and so on.
I think the 'justified true belief' (JTB) definition of knowledge illustrates the delusion of mistaking what we say about things for things themselves. The JTB truth condition (one of three) is 'S knows that p iff p is true', identifying a state-of-affairs with a proposition - which is absurd.
You ask for my definition of meaning. I want to point out that we use the word define and its cognates in at least two radically different ways: to define a word is to explain how we use it or could use it; but to define a thing is to describe it, which is a completely different linguistic operation.
So what does 'defining meaning' involve? My point is that, pending evidence for the existence of so-called abstract things, belief that they exist is irrational. So the abstract noun meaning is not the name of a thing of some kind that therefore exists somewhere, somehow, and that can be described. All we can do is explain how we use or could use the word 'meaning' and its cognates.
So I'd just point out the many and various contexts and ways in which we use the word - which is what the later Wittgenstein came to realise: meaning is use, and nowhere else. The meaning of a noun is not the thing it names, but rather what we do with the noun. And, among other implications, this exposes the fallacy of correspondence theories of truth.