No, I said it can’t exist without prior action.
This is different how?
I never made that claim. I said empirical facts are the tools of discovery.
Why not? Murder is wrong, Murder=Wrong, Murder+Murder=2(Wrong) and so on.
Right well as the previous poster pointed out if murder is defined as wrongful killing then murder is wrong and case closed. But like I said this just shifts the problem from “murder is wrong” to identifying what kind of killing counts as murder i.e. what kind of killing is wrong.
In this sense ethical words seem kind of made up. I could define X as Yful action and then say X is Yful. This doesn’t demonstrate anything It is simply tautological.
So tools of discovery for what if not ethics?
It is where discovery starts. All humans have always known that stuff falls on the ground. We call it gravity now. I am saying the same is true about morals. The term morals comes from the subsequent discoveries after humans observed themselves.
Right, what does that have to do with ethics being discoverable through emotion. Are empirical facts emotional?
And gravity is itself neither true or false. its simply a system of rationally consistent rules we use to understand empirical facts.
You’re saying morality is a system we use to understand things that happen? Fine. But this says nothing about the objectivity of morals or gravity; merely that they are pragmatic categories of understanding.
As was pointed out before, while something being pragmatic does not preclude its being true, it also does not raise questions of truth.
I thought we had a clear definition of murder already. This begs the question, who decides what types of killing are murder? we can go on numerous false forks from there. We know what murder is. I think we are trying to explain what wrong is. I am following from you that there is no such thing as right or wrong, that these concepts exist only within our minds. I am saying that there is such thing regardless of whether an individual mind recognizes it or not. Is this the core of the debate?
Specifically that these concepts don’t have truth content…
No, I think that an objective truth doesn’t have to be thought to be true. I’m saying that if beliefs about ethics come from our experience there is no reason to expect they are objective concepts. I already explained this for ethics and things like gravity.
So I can fly if I will it?
And? This is called language it’s how we communicate.
Yes I am, Yes it does.
Newtons equations are what we use to understand gravity, we knew it iexisted long before we understood it. Morals are the equations we use to understand the fact that cooperation creates prosperity, while compromise and coercion destroy property. We observe empirically that coercion destroys and cooperation produces, thus we discover that coercion is a false premise and cooperation is a true premise. We knew this was true long before we fully understood it, cooperation precedes coercion. This is where morals derive from, and those derivations are as true as a derivation in calculus. I am not claiming a full understanding I am claiming that murder is wrong and that it is truth. Just like objects fall in Earths gravity at 9.8 m/s2 absent air resistance.
@ snowflake
Thanks for the discussion/debate. Going to bed right now, gotta work later. Till the next time I log on.
The core of this is that you don’t distinguish pragmatism from objectivism.
This observation says nothing about language’s objectivity. I’m claiming language as a pragmatic invention, with nothing about it to call into question its truth.
Newton’s equations didn’t exist before he wrote them down. What existed were empirical phenomena.
No. Empiricism and reason demonstrate that cooperation creates prosperity etc.
Wrong. The true/false judgment is non-sequitur. We observe empirically that coercion destroys and cooperation produces. Thus we discover that >coercion destroys< and cooperation >creates prosperity<. You’re trying to claim that we can learn more from an empirical fact than the empirical fact itself. Extrapolating any additional information is just nonsense.
Actually your example presupposes morals, in that in order for us to judge destruction as bad we have to have an innate concept of bad. It is my position that human beings have a visceral reaction to certain stimuli. This reaction is neither true nor false, it simply is itself and is not in any way metaphysical.
Actually I already demonstrated that things like calculus/math/physics aren’t objective truths. They’re just tools we use to understand the world.
Well all you need to do is shell out extra so your DRO can kill people before they kill themselves.
That’s just you trying to pass your opinion off as fact.
No, it’s not. Morality is the code of interpersonal conduct wrt rights-respecting.
You just stated how it works within common law. It isn’t violating anyone else or their property, therefore it isn’t illegal.
Okay.. how about this? I was debating this with someone at work, and this is what we came up with. Well, mainly he did.. crazy teachers.
I associate fact with things that are objectively empirical and demonstrable, and you cannot get that with morality.
Most of the things that we take as morally correct have no equations or data thqt suggest that it is. It’s just a perceived culturally wisdom. If I say that to you, “Murder is wrong”, would you agree? And is that a fact that it is wrong? How could you prove to me the fact that murder is wrong? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think murder is wrong, but is it a fact?
What is the underlining fact with the statement that murder is incorrect?
To me, it is a model perception of mankind, but it is not a fact. If I say to you that protons are positively charged, that’s a fact. But if I say murder is wrong, I say that is what I believe. They’re in a totally different realm. Of course, in history, that was not always correct. There were human sacrifices and all that. There is a different order of certainty in these perspectives.
Most of those sacrifices were consentual tho. [:)]
Good point, food for thought. But my thought is that Murder isn’t just moral because destroying someones body is destroying his property, as well as his material worth (whether he be the town banker or a simple grape picker) to the society, thus the rest of the community won’t be happy.
Alright, alright. What I am getting here still sounds like a preference, this doesn’t prove “murder is wrong” as a fact. How can you do this?
Oh really ? What’s the size of the smallest particle you can actually see ?
I know what you’re getting at, but I do not feel that is valid. Unless you can expand on that..?
So as long as I don’t violate the NAP, it is impossible for me to do anything morally objectionable by anyone’s standards?