Good_Egg wrote: ↑August 5th, 2022, 3:57 am
Astro Cat wrote: ↑August 4th, 2022, 9:03 pm
I agree that we are a mess of conflicting desires and uncertainties, but I don't think that this is a point against a value-to-hypothetical-imperative based picture of what an "ought" is.
The point there was to suggest that "oughts" apply to actions rather than motivations. The complexity of choice means that there is no neat one-to-one correspondence between values and actions. So there is no automatic read-across from "I ought to do this" to "I ought to value doing this". Oughts are constraints on our action.
It is conceivable that somebody does the right thing for the wrong reason. In such a case, it seems to me that they have done their duty but have not been virtuous. Is that important ? Maybe not. But it's s feature of human experience that an adequate moral philosophy ought to cope with.
I can put on my moral realism cap and
feel for a moment as though "someone can do the right thing for the wrong reason," and so "have done their duty, but not been virtuous." The problem rears its head when I try to parse what that means, though. What does it mean for there to be a "right thing," or a "wrong reason," or a "duty," or to be "virtuous?" I have a hard time detecting cognitive content in any of these words, even though humans use them daily and feel like they mean something. I, too, despite being a moral noncognitivist, still use moral language colloquially because they are serviceable enough on such a surface level.
Each of these utterances has some sensible content if we understand them on a personal level developed from our values, though. I can know what a "right thing" is when compared to my values, or a "wrong reason" to do something, or what my "duties" are (or the duties I wish to impose on others, if I value doing so: I value imprisoning a murderer even if the murderer doesn't value not-murdering, I value imposing my values on the murderer just as they value imposing theirs on others). To be "virtuous" will always feel like it is that which is in agreement with my values or with society's values in some contexts.
Good_Egg wrote:Your difficulty with the notion of having a duty to value something seems to me reasonable and valid. But that's not an argument against the existence of duties. It's an argument against the simplistic equating of actions and values. Duties influence action in a more complex way than that.
I think what you're doing here is presenting an amoral description of people self-interestedly acting to satisfy their values. Which includes using the word "ought" to describe instrumental thinking about the best way to achieve one's ends.
And then finding that the concept of duty plays no role in such a description and thus finding it meaningless.
That this is an impoverished description of human decision-making is indeed part of the point. In such a world, nothing has moral force, because we're all slaves to our "values" which we are powerless to choose (even if they may be changed by experience as you describe). In your description, all choices are about means to satisfy ends (values) and there is no constraint on the means employed other than those same values.
Despite being described as "impoverished," indeed I think you have accurately described reality here. Reality seems to be perfectly described by the consideration that everything everyone is doing out there in the world is based on their values, which are only constrained by whatever it is that sets their initial states (some mixture of nature and nurture) and then by whatever it is that might cause those values to drift. I think that explains the whole of it. There's no need to invoke the existence of a moral truth to get an accurate description of the reality that we see, in other words.
You call it impoverished, and I understand the sentiment to an extent: but maybe it is parsimonious, too. After all, would the existence of a moral truth do us any good? (This is not an argument, just a thought, here). After all, to the moral realist, this
is a world in which moral realism is true. Then why does it
look exactly the same as a world where everyone is just doing things in accordance to their personal values?
I think some moral realists believe that without moral realism, the world would collapse into chaotic hedonism. But I don't think that's the case, because I think the world
is a world without moral realism. People would still value things like altruism and empathy, for instance. An altruist that has the realization, "huh, I guess there's nothing about the universe that makes altruism 'correct' and selfishness 'incorrect'" isn't going to suddenly cease to be an altruist. This is in the same way that someone that truly values not being a thief won't steal something even if they have 100% certainty they wouldn't get caught. That's what it means to value something.
So I think indeed, this world is exactly as you describe. We might call it impoverished next to what I might describe as a probable fantasy (moral realism), but we might also call it
accurate and parsimonious.
Good_Egg wrote:In my universe, people are constrained by what they feel they morally should and shouldn't do. The question is whether that sense of duty corresponds to some reality.
Such a reality isn't directly observable. But we can do two things:
We can compare across individuals and cultures to see whether our moral sense is idiosyncratic, or whether it corresponds to what well-meaning persons down the ages and in different cultures have generally thought.
And we can identify some ideas of duty as not being universalizable. Not even being valid candidates for the Moral Law of the universe.
Our sense of duty can thus be held to standards of tradition and coherence.
Which leaves open the possibility of multiple competing ethics - codes of morality - which are fully adequate to tradition/experience and to reason.
But that still seems closer to a right answer than to no right answer.
When you compare across individuals and cultures, though, that doesn't seem to be saying there is a moral truth; just that there are popular values. But some values would be popular on both views (moral realism and moral anti-realism, or noncognitivism). I don't think that's a point in moral realism's favor.
You say that people are "constrained by what they feel they morally should and shouldn't do," but isn't that really just saying they value things in some sense?
If a murderer just doesn't value compunctions against murder, does it matter whether the murderer thinks the universe has something about it that makes it "true" you ought to murder? Murderers seem to go right on murdering anyway. What "good" does the moral realism do, then, if it's still just about what people value?
But still, I think the real root of the argument is that I don't know what it would even mean for there to be a "moral truth" or "intrinsic goodness" or anything like that. It's one thing to argue that a moral realist world looks a whole lot like a moral anti-realist world, and I can make little comments on parsimony, but I think the real problem is that I don't think moral realists can rise to the challenge of rendering moral realism
sensible/cognitive, and I think it mainly comes from is/ought considerations. I don't know what it would mean to get from "there are humans" to "we ought not to murder them" unless we are using personal values and building hypothetical imperatives ("I value humans, so I ought not to murder them"). But if we do
that, as you note, we don't really get to answer why we ought to have the values we build our oughts with.
A realist might find this notion gloomy, but I might remind the realist that the world already looks like this is true. And I might remind the realist that values can change through new perspectives and information, so those of us that do value things like altruism, empathy, not-murdering, etc., can give ourselves the goal of trying to make those values as widespread and impactful as we can. Because you better believe that people that
don't have those values will be doing the same.