(This was written while at work multitasking, so please forgive the sloppiness and the redundance in a few areas -- it's due to losing my train of thought and then starting over mid-sentence and that sort of thing.)
What would it mean for there to exist a moral truth?
These are two of the most loaded words in all of philosophy, so this thread is probably going to be a fun ride. That being said, I'll present definitions which I think are best to use for these terms; but as this is an open discussion on the subject, feel free to use different definitions so long as everyone keeps which way who's using what term straight. (Ok seriously, "which way who's using what" was fun to type)
I'm a realist, and I use correspondence theory of truth, for instance: for something to be "true," the proposition assented to by the believer must correspond to an external reality. In other words, my belief that there is a keyboard on my desk is only true if my belief about a keyboard on the desk corresponds to reality (only if there "really is a keyboard there").
So there is this demarcation between a truth (which is a special kind of belief in a mind) and a fact (which is a real thing outside of a mind): truths are beliefs we have about facts. There is no such thing as a truth without a corresponding fact: something about reality must be a certain way or contain a certain something in order for a truth to be made about it. Truths are formed by minds and are about facts which are pieces of actual, external reality.
There are facts without truths (those parts of actual reality which we haven't discovered anything about to form beliefs about which correspond to it), but there are no truths without facts. This may seem redundant, but it's just a wildly abstract concept that needs to be pinned down for this discussion to go anywhere.
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Ok, so what about morals? Whenever we talk about morals, we're generally not talking about things: rocks are understood to be amoral (at least to non-animists, etc.), so are computers, and so on. This is because when we talk about morals we're talking about choices.
However, they have to be some sort of special kind of choice: choosing between two paths on a trail doesn't generally entail any sort of ascribed moral connotation, nor generally does choosing to drink some water or iced tea.
No, our conception of "morals" get more bizarre because they're used to describe an ought.
Most of the time choosing between two garments to buy isn't a moral choice, but as soon as it becomes considered that buying one of them supports slave wagery in a 3rd world country whereas the other one is produced by a company that pays its workers a living wage, the choice is suddenly a moral one, presumably, because a normal person will experience at least a small feeling that they ought to choose one over the other given this new information when previously the garments might have been tied in the buyer's esteem.
Not all "oughts" that we experience are moral, though, so we must further distinguish somehow. For instance, we have the categorical imperative and preferences -- if I want to stop being thirsty, then I experience a notion that I ought to drink. This will come in important later.
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Ok, so then what are moral truths? If a person were to say, "Dropkicking babies is wrong," this is a proposed example of a moral truth -- they are affirming a proposition about something corresponding to reality in a moral way. Since morals are about oughts and ought-nots, we can expand this expression to "It's true that we ought not to dropkick babies."
However, this is where the problem comes in (fans of Hume likely saw this coming): what is corresponding to reality in order for the statement to be true?
If I say, "[There is a] baby," then it's obvious that what's corresponding to reality in this proposition is the presence of a baby: either there is or is not a baby in reality, external to our minds.
If I say, "[That ball was] dropkicked," then it's obvious that what's corresponding to reality is an event which either happened or did not happen to a particular thing in reality.
But what does it mean to say "[There is an] ought-not?" How can an ought-not be part of reality external to a mind, what does that even mean? In order for that to be true there must be an external fact; but how can an "ought" or an "ought-not" be an external fact of reality?
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The closer "oughts" are looked at, the more and more they appear like any other preference.
It's incoherent (unless anyone has any ideas) how an "ought" or an "ought-not" can correspond to reality -- what is doing the corresponding?
Someone might say, "That you feel the ought corresponds to reality," and that would be true -- but that alters the subject of the sentence to a feeling corresponding to reality, not an ought. If the feeling corresponds to reality, it gets us nowhere in determining why that feeling is there or why it shouldn't have any other value.
I can think of one other situation where this is the case: preferences.
For instance, consider the following statement: "Green is the best color."
Well, what does it mean for "is the best" to correspond to reality? Nothing -- it's incoherent nonsense. "Green is the best color" isn't a truth, then, because nothing is corresponding to reality; there's no fact to it. It's a preference. It's not true that green "is the best" or not in reality because "is the best" is meaningless.
However, "Erin thinks green is the best color" does correspond to reality -- and is a truth -- because the subject that's corresponding to reality now is a state of affairs about what Erin thinks: it is the case that either "Erin thinks [something]" or not. The problem, though, is that even if "Erin thinks green is the best color" is true (and it is), it does nothing to tell us where this preference came from or why it doesn't simply have any other value.
"Oughts" and "ought-nots" behave utterly identically to "is bests" and "is worsts" and -- well, basically, I can find no discernable difference between oughts (be they categorical imperative or ethics related) and preferences.
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So, are there any differences between oughts and preferences?
Does anything correspond to reality about "ought" or "ought-not?" If so, what? How?
What would it mean for there to exist a moral truth?
These are two of the most loaded words in all of philosophy, so this thread is probably going to be a fun ride. That being said, I'll present definitions which I think are best to use for these terms; but as this is an open discussion on the subject, feel free to use different definitions so long as everyone keeps which way who's using what term straight. (Ok seriously, "which way who's using what" was fun to type)
I'm a realist, and I use correspondence theory of truth, for instance: for something to be "true," the proposition assented to by the believer must correspond to an external reality. In other words, my belief that there is a keyboard on my desk is only true if my belief about a keyboard on the desk corresponds to reality (only if there "really is a keyboard there").
So there is this demarcation between a truth (which is a special kind of belief in a mind) and a fact (which is a real thing outside of a mind): truths are beliefs we have about facts. There is no such thing as a truth without a corresponding fact: something about reality must be a certain way or contain a certain something in order for a truth to be made about it. Truths are formed by minds and are about facts which are pieces of actual, external reality.
There are facts without truths (those parts of actual reality which we haven't discovered anything about to form beliefs about which correspond to it), but there are no truths without facts. This may seem redundant, but it's just a wildly abstract concept that needs to be pinned down for this discussion to go anywhere.
-----
Ok, so what about morals? Whenever we talk about morals, we're generally not talking about things: rocks are understood to be amoral (at least to non-animists, etc.), so are computers, and so on. This is because when we talk about morals we're talking about choices.
However, they have to be some sort of special kind of choice: choosing between two paths on a trail doesn't generally entail any sort of ascribed moral connotation, nor generally does choosing to drink some water or iced tea.
No, our conception of "morals" get more bizarre because they're used to describe an ought.
Most of the time choosing between two garments to buy isn't a moral choice, but as soon as it becomes considered that buying one of them supports slave wagery in a 3rd world country whereas the other one is produced by a company that pays its workers a living wage, the choice is suddenly a moral one, presumably, because a normal person will experience at least a small feeling that they ought to choose one over the other given this new information when previously the garments might have been tied in the buyer's esteem.
Not all "oughts" that we experience are moral, though, so we must further distinguish somehow. For instance, we have the categorical imperative and preferences -- if I want to stop being thirsty, then I experience a notion that I ought to drink. This will come in important later.
-----
Ok, so then what are moral truths? If a person were to say, "Dropkicking babies is wrong," this is a proposed example of a moral truth -- they are affirming a proposition about something corresponding to reality in a moral way. Since morals are about oughts and ought-nots, we can expand this expression to "It's true that we ought not to dropkick babies."
However, this is where the problem comes in (fans of Hume likely saw this coming): what is corresponding to reality in order for the statement to be true?
If I say, "[There is a] baby," then it's obvious that what's corresponding to reality in this proposition is the presence of a baby: either there is or is not a baby in reality, external to our minds.
If I say, "[That ball was] dropkicked," then it's obvious that what's corresponding to reality is an event which either happened or did not happen to a particular thing in reality.
But what does it mean to say "[There is an] ought-not?" How can an ought-not be part of reality external to a mind, what does that even mean? In order for that to be true there must be an external fact; but how can an "ought" or an "ought-not" be an external fact of reality?
-----
The closer "oughts" are looked at, the more and more they appear like any other preference.
It's incoherent (unless anyone has any ideas) how an "ought" or an "ought-not" can correspond to reality -- what is doing the corresponding?
Someone might say, "That you feel the ought corresponds to reality," and that would be true -- but that alters the subject of the sentence to a feeling corresponding to reality, not an ought. If the feeling corresponds to reality, it gets us nowhere in determining why that feeling is there or why it shouldn't have any other value.
I can think of one other situation where this is the case: preferences.
For instance, consider the following statement: "Green is the best color."
Well, what does it mean for "is the best" to correspond to reality? Nothing -- it's incoherent nonsense. "Green is the best color" isn't a truth, then, because nothing is corresponding to reality; there's no fact to it. It's a preference. It's not true that green "is the best" or not in reality because "is the best" is meaningless.
However, "Erin thinks green is the best color" does correspond to reality -- and is a truth -- because the subject that's corresponding to reality now is a state of affairs about what Erin thinks: it is the case that either "Erin thinks [something]" or not. The problem, though, is that even if "Erin thinks green is the best color" is true (and it is), it does nothing to tell us where this preference came from or why it doesn't simply have any other value.
"Oughts" and "ought-nots" behave utterly identically to "is bests" and "is worsts" and -- well, basically, I can find no discernable difference between oughts (be they categorical imperative or ethics related) and preferences.
-----
So, are there any differences between oughts and preferences?
Does anything correspond to reality about "ought" or "ought-not?" If so, what? How?
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