What could make morality objective?

[Peter Holmes]

Thanks, but why is 'appropriatenss dictated by nature' any different from standard moral objectivism?

'If your dog's hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought to feed it.'

'If you make a promise, then (it's a fact that) you ought to keep it.'

'If you have a goal, then (it's a fact that) you ought to pursue it.'

What makes the consequent 'appropriate' in these hypotheticals?

Thanks for replying. Let me start by apologising for the fact that my posts here are likely to be infrequent, owing to heavy commitments outside this forum. If this gets annoying, tell me and I will leave the discussion. I'm not here to annoy people.

'Standard moral objectivism'. Well, I'm not happy about 'standard', so with your indulgence, I'll pick a definition which offers some kind of detail and will also suit my purposes here:
"Moral Objectivism holds that there are objective, universal moral principles that are valid for all people." (https://www.indianhills.edu/_myhills/co ... tivism.pdf)
This definition implies that if a moral principle is valid for all people, then it is an objective principle. So the question is, what would make a moral principle valid for all people? I'll take 'people' to mean 'humans'. What would make a moral principle valid for all humans?

Let's ask a slightly different question. Suppose I define 'prudential' to mean the same as 'moral', except that it applies to oneself rather than others. So, for example, a moral obligation would be an obligation to others, and a prudential obligation would be an obligation to oneself.

Now, suppose you have been working day and night on your philosophy posts for this forum and neglecting your meals, and as a result you have become ill; and suppose your nearest and dearest comes to you and says, 'Peter, you owe it to yourself to eat something.' If this is true, then this is a prudential obligation. My view is that it would be unreasonable to deny that it is true. It would not be reasonable to reply, 'Well, I would owe it to myself if objectivism were true, but it isn't.' The point here is that nature has made you so that you need food, and the same goes for all humans. It's because of this need that you have a built-in obligation to yourself to eat food sometimes. (To pick up my word 'appropriate', eating is an appropriate thing to do when you are hungry.) Since the same would go for anyone else in your position, this prudential obligation passes the test for being a universal prudential principle, and is therefore objective.

I claim to have established an objective 'ought' here, an 'ought' that follows from an 'is'. The bridge between the two, the bridge across the supposedly unbridgeable gap, is provided by nature; we are what we are because nature has made us that way, and this means that we have certain natural properties, and these are universal across all humans; and these, therefore, following the above definition of 'objective', confer a certain objectivity on the principles that relate to them. It's not the kind of objectivity that you find in mathematical theorems, but it's universal among humans, and that will do for the kind of objectivity given in the definition I adopted above.

If this can be done for a prudential 'ought', can it also be done for a moral 'ought'? I think it can. As I defined them above, the ONLY difference between a moral principle and a prudential one is that the first applies to our treatment of others, and the second to our treatment of ourselves. Now if this is the ONLY difference, the other features of my scenario should carry over into a moral rather than a prudential version of the scenario. Thus, if you are unable to feed yourself, there is still an obligation: that is not removed by your own inability to meet it. And so your prudential obligation to feed yourself is replaced by a moral obligation on your nearest and dearest (or whoever else might be in a position to do it) to feed you.

Let me now return to your initial questions:

'If your dog's hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought to feed it.'

'If you make a promise, then (it's a fact that) you ought to keep it.'

'If you have a goal, then (it's a fact that) you ought to pursue it.'

What makes the consequent 'appropriate' in these hypotheticals?

I'm not going to say anything about the second and third of these, because they introduce complexities which at this stage I want to avoid. Let's concentrate on the first one:
'If your dog's hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought to feed it.'
Let's go, as before, via a prudential equivalent:
'If you're hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought (=owe it to yourself) to feed yourself.'
I maintain that this is true. You do owe it to yourself to feed yourself if you are hungry, because when you are hungry, your health is either in deficit or in danger of becoming so. The situation here is like your bank balance being in deficit; if your balance is in deficit, then you owe money to the bank. In the same way, if your health is in deficit, then you owe something to yourself (in this case, food). That's what we mean when we say 'ought'; we mean that somebody owes somebody something, because somewhere, there's a deficit to be made up.

Now. about my dog. He is hungry, and so his health is in deficit (or likely to become so). If he could use the can opener, then he would owe it to himself to open the can and feed himself. Since he can't, the obligation to meet the deficit (or threatened deficit) in his health must devolve on anyone who is in a position to meet it; in this case, me. So what would be a prudential obligation for my dog, were he able to meet it, becomes a moral obligation for me.

I think people who aren't philosophers (what we rather arrogantly call 'ordinary people') understand all this better than most philosophers do. Virtually all 'ordinary people' understand that if you are hungry, you owe it to yourself to eat. A smaller number of 'ordinary people', but still a very large number, thankfully, understand that if someone else is hungry and can't feed themselves, the rest of us owe it to them to feed them.

Thanks for reading (if you got this far). Over to you.

Thanks again - and for such a full response. No worries about delays - it's usually better to ponder and aim rather than shoot back from the hip anyway.

I'd like to spend more time on what you say here - so my apologies for the delay.

Just a thought, though - I agree that we're recycling Kant on this!

[popeye1945]

I suggest if the answer to this post has not been revealed as yet, its time to fold up our tents and move on.

[GE Morton]

No, this claim is false.

Well, I've given you the common definition of "goal." Since failing to act on an alleged goal is obviously inconsistent with that definition, I can only assume you have some eclectic definition of your own. What would that be?

The condition 'which must be pursued' is not in any definition of the word 'goal' that I've come across. Do you have one with that stipulation?

Of course there is no "must be" in the definition. Modal and deontic terms rarely, if ever, appear in definitions. The definition of a goal is, "an end toward which effort is directed." Not "must be directed . . ." Just as, to repeat, a triangle is "A plane figure having three sides," not, "must have three sides . . ."

There is no obligation to pursue a goal, any more than there is an obligation to draw a figure with 3 sides. But if you don't, you won't have a triangle, or a goal (at least not the one you claimed).

Again,

"1. the end toward which effort is directed"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goal

As I said above, you seem to be relying on some definition of your own of that word. What is it?

[GE Morton]

Seems to me this entire conversation is merely reinventing the Kantian wheel. An 'instrumental ought' is just a hypothetical imperative couched in 'ought' language in place of 'do' language. If instrumental oughts "merely assert that doing X will further some end", then the ought is not entailed by the person having that end, it is merely appropriate to them having that end.

It is entailed, but the argument is a bit complicated. An "end" (in the relevant sense) is just the result of some sequence of actions or prior events. No end simpliciter entails any particular means to it. But if a certain end is a goal of Alfie's, then it is entailed (by virtue of the definition of a "goal"), that Alfie has directed or will direct some effort to securing it. Alfie must (logically) take some action toward it, for it to be a goal of his. In most cases, if Y is a goal of Alfie's, "Alfie ought to do X" will not be entailed, because there may be other actions which will secure Y. It is only entailed if X is the only action will will secure Y.

In fact I would suggest that this entire discussion is rather missing the point about morality. Moral principles are not entailed by facts, they are appropriate to facts. When I see that my dog is hungry, that does not entail that I ought to feed him, but my feeding him is an appropriate thing to do.

Correct; seeing that your dog is hungry does not entail that you feed him. What does entail that you feed him is your (presumed) goal of keeping him alive so that you may continue to enjoy his company. If that is your goal, then feeding him is logically and instrumentally obligatory.

The error in objectivism is to claim that obligations are facts . . .

Given the goal of keeping your dog alive, that you are obliged to feed him is a "fact."

[Peter Holmes]

Well, I've given you the common definition of "goal." Since failing to act on an alleged goal is obviously inconsistent with that definition, I can only assume you have some eclectic definition of your own. What would that be?

The condition 'which must be pursued' is not in any definition of the word 'goal' that I've come across. Do you have one with that stipulation?

Of course there is no "must be" in the definition. Modal and deontic terms rarely, if ever, appear in definitions. The definition of a goal is, "an end toward which effort is directed." Not "must be directed . . ." Just as, to repeat, a triangle is "A plane figure having three sides," not, "must have three sides . . ."

There is no obligation to pursue a goal, any more than there is an obligation to draw a figure with 3 sides. But if you don't, you won't have a triangle, or a goal (at least not the one you claimed).

Again,

"1. the end toward which effort is directed"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goal

As I said above, you seem to be relying on some definition of your own of that word. What is it?

On the contrary, the definition of 'goal' you offer demonstrates my point. And the absence of modality is precisely my point.

You're doing what Hume pointed out moral realists and objectivists always (have to) do: miss out the 'judgement' bit, and assume it in the factual premise: we have a goal; therefore, we ought to pursue it. The conclusion doesn't follow, even if 'ought' is purely instrumental.

And if moral objectivity really does amount to nothing more than goal-consistency, then if the goal is white supremacy, non-white people ought to be subjugated.

Can you explain, according to your theory, why some goals ought not to be pursued - because they're morally wrong?

I fear you may not have clocked the problem with your goal-consistency criterion for morality.

(Your analogy between a goal and a triangle is false. Chalk and cheese. Why is 'a triangle ought to have three sides' an absurd claim?)

[Peter Holmes]

Thanks, but why is 'appropriatenss dictated by nature' any different from standard moral objectivism?

'If your dog's hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought to feed it.'

'If you make a promise, then (it's a fact that) you ought to keep it.'

'If you have a goal, then (it's a fact that) you ought to pursue it.'

What makes the consequent 'appropriate' in these hypotheticals?

Thanks for replying. Let me start by apologising for the fact that my posts here are likely to be infrequent, owing to heavy commitments outside this forum. If this gets annoying, tell me and I will leave the discussion. I'm not here to annoy people.

'Standard moral objectivism'. Well, I'm not happy about 'standard', so with your indulgence, I'll pick a definition which offers some kind of detail and will also suit my purposes here:
"Moral Objectivism holds that there are objective, universal moral principles that are valid for all people." (https://www.indianhills.edu/_myhills/co ... tivism.pdf)
This definition implies that if a moral principle is valid for all people, then it is an objective principle. So the question is, what would make a moral principle valid for all people? I'll take 'people' to mean 'humans'. What would make a moral principle valid for all humans?

Let's ask a slightly different question. Suppose I define 'prudential' to mean the same as 'moral', except that it applies to oneself rather than others. So, for example, a moral obligation would be an obligation to others, and a prudential obligation would be an obligation to oneself.

Now, suppose you have been working day and night on your philosophy posts for this forum and neglecting your meals, and as a result you have become ill; and suppose your nearest and dearest comes to you and says, 'Peter, you owe it to yourself to eat something.' If this is true, then this is a prudential obligation. My view is that it would be unreasonable to deny that it is true. It would not be reasonable to reply, 'Well, I would owe it to myself if objectivism were true, but it isn't.' The point here is that nature has made you so that you need food, and the same goes for all humans. It's because of this need that you have a built-in obligation to yourself to eat food sometimes. (To pick up my word 'appropriate', eating is an appropriate thing to do when you are hungry.) Since the same would go for anyone else in your position, this prudential obligation passes the test for being a universal prudential principle, and is therefore objective.

I claim to have established an objective 'ought' here, an 'ought' that follows from an 'is'. The bridge between the two, the bridge across the supposedly unbridgeable gap, is provided by nature; we are what we are because nature has made us that way, and this means that we have certain natural properties, and these are universal across all humans; and these, therefore, following the above definition of 'objective', confer a certain objectivity on the principles that relate to them. It's not the kind of objectivity that you find in mathematical theorems, but it's universal among humans, and that will do for the kind of objectivity given in the definition I adopted above.

If this can be done for a prudential 'ought', can it also be done for a moral 'ought'? I think it can. As I defined them above, the ONLY difference between a moral principle and a prudential one is that the first applies to our treatment of others, and the second to our treatment of ourselves. Now if this is the ONLY difference, the other features of my scenario should carry over into a moral rather than a prudential version of the scenario. Thus, if you are unable to feed yourself, there is still an obligation: that is not removed by your own inability to meet it. And so your prudential obligation to feed yourself is replaced by a moral obligation on your nearest and dearest (or whoever else might be in a position to do it) to feed you.

Let me now return to your initial questions:

'If your dog's hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought to feed it.'

'If you make a promise, then (it's a fact that) you ought to keep it.'

'If you have a goal, then (it's a fact that) you ought to pursue it.'

What makes the consequent 'appropriate' in these hypotheticals?

I'm not going to say anything about the second and third of these, because they introduce complexities which at this stage I want to avoid. Let's concentrate on the first one:
'If your dog's hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought to feed it.'
Let's go, as before, via a prudential equivalent:
'If you're hungry, then (it's a fact that) you ought (=owe it to yourself) to feed yourself.'
I maintain that this is true. You do owe it to yourself to feed yourself if you are hungry, because when you are hungry, your health is either in deficit or in danger of becoming so. The situation here is like your bank balance being in deficit; if your balance is in deficit, then you owe money to the bank. In the same way, if your health is in deficit, then you owe something to yourself (in this case, food). That's what we mean when we say 'ought'; we mean that somebody owes somebody something, because somewhere, there's a deficit to be made up.

Now. about my dog. He is hungry, and so his health is in deficit (or likely to become so). If he could use the can opener, then he would owe it to himself to open the can and feed himself. Since he can't, the obligation to meet the deficit (or threatened deficit) in his health must devolve on anyone who is in a position to meet it; in this case, me. So what would be a prudential obligation for my dog, were he able to meet it, becomes a moral obligation for me.

I think people who aren't philosophers (what we rather arrogantly call 'ordinary people') understand all this better than most philosophers do. Virtually all 'ordinary people' understand that if you are hungry, you owe it to yourself to eat. A smaller number of 'ordinary people', but still a very large number, thankfully, understand that if someone else is hungry and can't feed themselves, the rest of us owe it to them to feed them.

Thanks for reading (if you got this far). Over to you.

Again, sorry for the delay. I've been mulling over your argument, and I think my response can be brief.

I think your argument from (specifically human) nature to moral objectivity fails, as it always has, for precisely the reason that Hume pointed out: an 'is' can't entail an 'ought'. The is/ought barrier really is insuperable. An explanation of why we may have (even universal) moral principles can never show that we ought to have them. That remains a matter of opinion, which is necessarily subjective, even if it's held universally.

Your appeal to prudence, and your distinction between the prudential (self-regarding) and the moral (other regarding) doesn't rectify the problem. That it's prudential for me to eat doesn't mean that I ought to eat - that I 'owe it to myself' to eat. And the moral argument - people need to eat, therefore people ought to have food - also doesn't follow. The 'judgement' step is always left out, which begs the question.

And the 'complications' with promises and goals have no bearing on the impossibility or entailment from an 'is' to an 'ought'. GEM's argument that 'we ought to pursue our goals' is, as it were, analytic begs the question.

But many thanks for taking the time to set out your position so carefully.

[CIN]

Again, sorry for the delay.

Please don't apologise. I'd much rather have a considered reply that takes a few days to compose than an unconsidered one that only takes ten minutes. And anyway, I've only just returned to this thread today myself, having been busy for the last few days with other things.

An explanation of why we may have (even universal) moral principles can never show that we ought to have them. That remains a matter of opinion, which is necessarily subjective, even if it's held universally.

I don't think these two sentences really engage with my argument. Your first sentence seems to imply that I am advancing a sociological thesis about why people have certain moral principles; but I haven't advanced any such thesis. Your second sentence seems to imply that I'm appealing to universality of opinion, when in fact I'm appealing to universality of situation: all humans become ill if they don't eat properly - they lose their good health. (It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties, and is therefore not always a purely evaluative term as some have suggested.) It's not relevant to my argument that many people, perhaps even all people, may hold that we ought to feed people who are hungry and can't feed themselves. I'm claiming that the obligation arises from the fact of their hunger and the fact of our ability to feed them, not from anything people may believe.

Perhaps you are implicitly or tacitly objecting to the definition of 'moral objectivism' I gave, viz.:
"Moral Objectivism holds that there are objective, universal moral principles that are valid for all people."
If you don't like this definition, what would you prefer? If you can give your own preferred definition, the differences between yours and mine may be illuminating. (I still don't know quite what you meant by 'standard moral objectivism.')

That it's prudential for me to eat doesn't mean that I ought to eat - that I 'owe it to myself' to eat.

I disagree with this. If my good health (see my remark about this above) is being lost as a result of my not eating, then obviously I am descending into bad health (though we more usually call it 'ill health') as a result of my own actions, and it's open to me to act to rectify this. If it's a fact that I can change bad health to good health (remember that I just argued that these can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily), then we have already crossed the supposedly unbridgeable gap between fact and value, and is there then any real motivation to refuse to go the whole hog and accept that an obligation to replace the bad with the good exists?

And the moral argument - people need to eat, therefore people ought to have food - also doesn't follow. The 'judgement' step is always left out, which begs the question.

I've claimed that eating properly restores good health, and that 'good health' is objective, albeit fuzzy round the edges. (If it isn't objective, what are all those doctors and nurses being paid for ? Can it really be an entirely subjective judgement whether someone should be given medical treatment?)

If good health is objective, then my dog's being in good health is an objective good, and his ill health is an objective evil. Do you wish to claim that if it is in my power to rectify an objective evil, it is nevertheless not the case that I ought to rectify it? I think that would be an unreasonable position to hold.

And the 'complications' with promises and goals have no bearing on the impossibility or entailment from an 'is' to an 'ought'. GEM's argument that 'we ought to pursue our goals' is, as it were, analytic begs the question.

I'll leave it to GEM to answer that one.

Thank you for your time and patience in discussing this with me, even though we disagree. It makes a pleasant change from having my arguments ignored and being personally insulted, which seems to happen all too often in these forums. A few days ago, someone in another forum, on discovering that I considered that there was nothing morally wrong with aborting pre-sentient human foetuses, called me 'scum of the earth' and 'Nazi', and told me that I had a direct link to evil. That sort of thing gets old very quickly.

[Terrapin Station]

It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties

The problem there is that while we can specify objective criteria that we're going to name "good (x)," those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them, so it fails to capture an important connotation of "good." In other words, we can name any arbitrary objective range of states "good," but there's nothing in that that either (a) implies that anyone should attain those states, or (b) that anyone is going to prefer those states or that they should prefer them. So it misses a conventional connotative aspect of terms like "good."

[Terrapin Station]

Re the above, "good" just winds up being a sound more or less, almost like a proper name.

[Peter Holmes]

Again, sorry for the delay.

Please don't apologise. I'd much rather have a considered reply that takes a few days to compose than an unconsidered one that only takes ten minutes. And anyway, I've only just returned to this thread today myself, having been busy for the last few days with other things.

An explanation of why we may have (even universal) moral principles can never show that we ought to have them. That remains a matter of opinion, which is necessarily subjective, even if it's held universally.

I don't think these two sentences really engage with my argument. Your first sentence seems to imply that I am advancing a sociological thesis about why people have certain moral principles; but I haven't advanced any such thesis. Your second sentence seems to imply that I'm appealing to universality of opinion, when in fact I'm appealing to universality of situation: all humans become ill if they don't eat properly - they lose their good health.

Okay. I think the 'universality' condition or criterion is the red herring in the ointment - and I'll explain why below.

(It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties, and is therefore not always a purely evaluative term as some have suggested.)

Perhaps you mean that we can use the word 'good' non-morally - and I agree. But we're discussing the moral use. The expression 'in good health' has no moral connotation, so I think you may be equivocating here.

It's not relevant to my argument that many people, perhaps even all people, may hold that we ought to feed people who are hungry and can't feed themselves. I'm claiming that the obligation arises from the fact of their hunger and the fact of our ability to feed them, not from anything people may believe.

But there's the rub. Why does it arise? Whence the obligation? You say it isn't a matter of what people think.

Perhaps you are implicitly or tacitly objecting to the definition of 'moral objectivism' I gave, viz.:
"Moral Objectivism holds that there are objective, universal moral principles that are valid for all people."
If you don't like this definition, what would you prefer? If you can give your own preferred definition, the differences between yours and mine may be illuminating. (I still don't know quite what you meant by 'standard moral objectivism.')

I think the definition you're using is a conceptual mess. The modifier 'universal' means what it says, so 'valid for all people' is redundant. And the distinction being made by the claim that these supposed principles are both objective and universal is either redundant or unclear.

What we call objectivity is independence from opinion when considering the facts. And what we call facts are features of reality that are or were the case, or descriptions of them. So moral objectivism is the claim that there are moral facts - moral features of reality. And that covers the universality and validity for all people in your preferred definition.

Talk of moral principles and their validity sounds grand, but actually muddles the issue. The only fact (the only universal thing) here is that a person/people/all people must eat (or they die). Quantification is irrelevant. The question is: does the fact that people must eat (the 'is') entail the conclusion that they ought to have food? And the conclusion doesn't follow, deductively or inductively.

That it's prudential for me to eat doesn't mean that I ought to eat - that I 'owe it to myself' to eat.

I disagree with this. If my good health (see my remark about this above) is being lost as a result of my not eating, then obviously I am descending into bad health (though we more usually call it 'ill health') as a result of my own actions, and it's open to me to act to rectify this. If it's a fact that I can change bad health to good health (remember that I just argued that these can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily), then we have already crossed the supposedly unbridgeable gap between fact and value, and is there then any real motivation to refuse to go the whole hog and accept that an obligation to replace the bad with the good exists?

As I suspected, you're equivocating on the word 'good'. And what follows bears out my opinion.

And the moral argument - people need to eat, therefore people ought to have food - also doesn't follow. The 'judgement' step is always left out, which begs the question.

I've claimed that eating properly restores good health, and that 'good health' is objective, albeit fuzzy round the edges. (If it isn't objective, what are all those doctors and nurses being paid for ? Can it really be an entirely subjective judgement whether someone should be given medical treatment?)

If good health is objective, then my dog's being in good health is an objective good, and his ill health is an objective evil. Do you wish to claim that if it is in my power to rectify an objective evil, it is nevertheless not the case that I ought to rectify it? I think that would be an unreasonable position to hold.

And the 'complications' with promises and goals have no bearing on the impossibility or entailment from an 'is' to an 'ought'. GEM's argument that 'we ought to pursue our goals' is, as it were, analytic begs the question.

I'll leave it to GEM to answer that one.

Thank you for your time and patience in discussing this with me, even though we disagree. It makes a pleasant change from having my arguments ignored and being personally insulted, which seems to happen all too often in these forums. A few days ago, someone in another forum, on discovering that I considered that there was nothing morally wrong with aborting pre-sentient human foetuses, called me 'scum of the earth' and 'Nazi', and told me that I had a direct link to evil. That sort of thing gets old very quickly.

I agree with you about abortion, because I think the rght to control what happens to your own body must be paramount, so that nobody has the right to use your body without your consent. And that's my moral opinion.

But can I point out the nastiness of moral objectivity in this case? Those who abused you hold as a universal, objective moral principle, valid for all people, that ending an innocent human life is wrong. 'Life is objectively better than death, so life is an objective good' - and so on.

The delusion that there are moral facts can have vicious consequences: murdered abortion practitioners; homosexuals thrown off tall buildings; or planes flown into them.

[CIN]

It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties

The problem there is that while we can specify objective criteria that we're going to name "good (x)," those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them, so it fails to capture an important connotation of "good." In other words, we can name any arbitrary objective range of states "good," but there's nothing in that that either (a) implies that anyone should attain those states, or (b) that anyone is going to prefer those states or that they should prefer them. So it misses a conventional connotative aspect of terms like "good."

Well, let's suggest one plausible objective criterion for good health, namely that your BMI should be in the range 18.5 to 24.9. You claim that when we label the state of having a BMI between those values 'good', we are neither implying that anyone should aim to get their BMI to between those values, nor that they would or should prefer to do so. This seems, prima facie, an implausible claim. If I go to my doctor and he tells me that my BMI is 35 and that that's not good, he is quite likely to go on to prescribe a regime of diet and exercise which he hopes will bring my BMI to within the prescribed range. Contrary to your claim, this implies that my doctor thinks that I should attain the state of my BMI being within that range.

I think your reasoning is in error. It doesn't follow, from the fact that objective criteria for good health have no immediately obvious normative weight, that there are not other things in the background which can, as it were, lend the criteria normative weight by proxy. There are reasons why we have the criteria we do for good health. If my BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9, I am, for example, less likely to develop diabetes. Why would I not want to develop diabetes? Mainly because being diabetic would make my life less pleasant, especially if I got it very badly. I think that what in the end gives the phrase 'good health' normative weight is that having good health enables us to get more pleasure and suffer less pain.

According to A. C. Ewing: “if we analyse good as ‘fitting object of a pro attitude’, it will be easy enough to analyse bad as ‘fitting object of an anti attitude’, this term covering dislike, disapproval, avoidance, etc.” ' (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fitt ... -theories/) I would invert Ewing's definition of 'good' to give it a more objectivist flavour, and say that 'X is a good Y' means 'X is a Y to which a pro-attitude is fitting or appropriate.' Pro-attitudes include praise, approval, commendation, desire, and seeking out. 'Bad' is the opposite, so 'Hitler was a bad man' means 'Hitler was a man to whom an anti-attitude is fitting or appropriate', meaning that Hitler was someone it was appropriate to disapprove of, seek to avoid, and so on.

I hold that pleasure (or, more accurately, pleasantness of experience) is intrinsically something to which it is appropriate to have a pro-attitude, and that pain (more accurately, unpleasantness of experience) is intrinsically something to which it is appropriate to have an anti-attitude. Given my analysis of 'good' and 'bad', I think it is therefore true that pleasure is intrinsically good, and pain is intrinsically bad. Just to take one example: suppose you are suffering a really agonising pain in some part of your body. It seems to me that no-one except a lunatic (or possibly a subjectivist philosopher!) would want to deny that an anti-attitude was appropriate to such pain; any sane person would want to avoid it. Why else has humanity created painkillers?

I also claim that my thesis is supported by Darwinism. Why do animals, including ourselves, find sex and eating pleasant? Because if something is pleasant, it is intrinsically good, which means a pro-attitude is appropriate to it; and because having a pro-attitude to sex and eating means that we are more likely to have sex and eat, and these behaviours make it more likely that we will pass on our genes, including the genes that make us find sex and eating pleasant.

Returning to the topic of good health, I think that 'good health' means 'a state of health to which a pro-attitude is appropriate', and so 'good' in 'good health' has its usual meaning. Ultimately, the reason why we have chosen the objective criteria for good health that we have done is that, if we behave in accordance with them, we are likely in the long run to get more pleasantness and less unpleasantness; and since these are intrinsically good and bad, the objective criteria we have adopted under the name 'good health' do have normative weight by proxy.

Sorry about the length of this, but it seemed to be the only way of answering your objection.

[CIN]

Apologies, I can't reply to you right now, as it is past midnight and I need my sleep. I will read your reply over the next few days and reply when I'm able.

[Terrapin Station]

It's worth noting here that the fact that 'good health' can be defined objectively, albeit fuzzily, shows that the word 'good' can sometimes attribute an actual property or properties

The problem there is that while we can specify objective criteria that we're going to name "good (x)," those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them, so it fails to capture an important connotation of "good." In other words, we can name any arbitrary objective range of states "good," but there's nothing in that that either (a) implies that anyone should attain those states, or (b) that anyone is going to prefer those states or that they should prefer them. So it misses a conventional connotative aspect of terms like "good."

Well, let's suggest one plausible objective criterion for good health, namely that your BMI should be in the range 18.5 to 24.9. You claim that when we label the state of having a BMI between those values 'good', we are neither implying that anyone should aim to get their BMI to between those values, nor that they would or should prefer to do so. This seems, prima facie, an implausible claim. If I go to my doctor and he tells me that my BMI is 35 and that that's not good, he is quite likely to go on to prescribe a regime of diet and exercise which he hopes will bring my BMI to within the prescribed range. Contrary to your claim, this implies that my doctor thinks that I should attain the state of my BMI being within that range.

You're misunderstanding a nuance there. I'm not saying that people do not have normatives in mind. People certainly do. But people are not objective criteria. What I said is that we can specify some set of objective criteria and name that objective criteria "good (x)," but those objective criteria do not have any normative weight to them.

Normatives or evaluations, which are necessary for anything close to the conventional semantic connotations of "good," only arise in individuals' heads. So christening any objective facts as "good," saying that those objective facts are what "good" amounts to, doesn't do the work that we want done, because those objective facts can't amount to normatives or evaluations, no matter what we name them.

I think your reasoning is in error. It doesn't follow, from the fact that objective criteria for good health have no immediately obvious normative weight, that there are not other things in the background which can, as it were, lend the criteria normative weight by proxy. There are reasons why we have the criteria we do for good health.

Those reasons are SOLELY what people prefer, what they desire. Most people prefer to not have diabetes, for example. The facts of BMIs and diabetes, etc. can't prefer or recommend this themselves.

So while there are objective facts re BMIs and diabetes and so on, there aren't objective facts that not having diabetes versus having diabetes is something that people should do (or that wanting to continue living versus not wanting that is something that people should do), and this doesn't change just because we christen "not having diabetes" with a particular name, like "good" or "recommended," or whatever.

[Sy Borg]

So while there are objective facts re BMIs and diabetes and so on, there aren't objective facts that not having diabetes versus having diabetes is something that people should do (or that wanting to continue living versus not wanting that is something that people should do), and this doesn't change just because we christen "not having diabetes" with a particular name, like "good" or "recommended," or whatever.

I agree with your take on this. It's interesting that we have arrived at numbers, math. Generally speaking, when we try to render something objective, we go to math.

On a somewhat dull personal note, being "on the spectrum" I struggled when encountering people with contrary views, each vehemently insisting they were right. This came to a head for me while I was in primary school after hearing variant views on which was the hottest month of the year. So, the next year, I recorded the maximum temps of every day of the year to decide who was right (not yet appreciating how inconclusive a sample size of one year was).

In middle age I ended up working in stats. There was a saying going around at the time "What gets measured, gets done", which is both true and a reflection of the fact that there's tons of things we can't or don't measure in much detail and these are therefore not done well, eg. maximising happiness of human and non-human animals.

Morality, of course, is also resistant to measuring. If it was attempted to determine the relative objectivity of various morals, to find out which is the most productive or least destructive in the short, medium and long terms, the number of provisos and interdependent factors would require significant computing power. Even then, the solutions would probably be too complex to comprehend or convey in words. Either that or 42 :)

[Peter Holmes]

So while there are objective facts re BMIs and diabetes and so on, there aren't objective facts that not having diabetes versus having diabetes is something that people should do (or that wanting to continue living versus not wanting that is something that people should do), and this doesn't change just because we christen "not having diabetes" with a particular name, like "good" or "recommended," or whatever.

I agree with your take on this. It's interesting that we have arrived at numbers, math. Generally speaking, when we try to render something objective, we go to math.

On a somewhat dull personal note, being "on the spectrum" I struggled when encountering people with contrary views, each vehemently insisting they were right. This came to a head for me while I was in primary school after hearing variant views on which was the hottest month of the year. So, the next year, I recorded the maximum temps of every day of the year to decide who was right (not yet appreciating how inconclusive a sample size of one year was).

In middle age I ended up working in stats. There was a saying going around at the time "What gets measured, gets done", which is both true and a reflection of the fact that there's tons of things we can't or don't measure in much detail and these are therefore not done well, eg. maximising happiness of human and non-human animals.

Morality, of course, is also resistant to measuring. If it was attempted to determine the relative objectivity of various morals, to find out which is the most productive or least destructive in the short, medium and long terms, the number of provisos and interdependent factors would require significant computing power. Even then, the solutions would probably be too complex to comprehend or convey in words. Either that or 42

Muchly agreed. But just to point out the way you put it: 'If it was attempted to determine the relative objectivity of various morals, to find out which is the most productive or least destructive in the short, medium and long terms...'

Notice the assumptions: morals are things that can be objectively determined (such as mathematically); morality should aim at the productive and not the destructive; moral productivity and 'destructivity' are objectively definable. These assumption all beg the question.