What really matters doesn't matter to me

[@onion4062]

the camera quality is the best I have seen yet

[@KaneB]

Yeah, the audio is good as well. I'll use my phone for these videos from now on, even if I fix the camera.

[@lanceindependent]

@@KaneB You should really just get a better camera. Maybe a Razer Kiyo Pro? I'd pitch in to buy you a new camera.

[@KaneB]

@@lanceindependent Thanks for the offer, but I'm sure I'll be able to buy one myself once I get a more steady income, which should happen soon. I'll keep that recommendation in mind, because I have no idea about cameras!

[@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke]

Wowww that was so interesting, describing categorical imperatives like the universe's 'subjective moral preferences', just as ignorable as another person's if they conflict with your own. Very cool!

[@KaneB]

I'm genuinely not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, lol. (Either way, I appreciate the comment!)

[@chronic_washere]

@@KaneB lol

[@momentum9489]

Have you read Matti Eklund's book 'Choosing Normative Concepts'? What you have in mind with the morality/shmorality example is closely related to the problems & potential realist responses Eklund wrote extensively about. I would also recommend Shamik Dasgupta article "Realism and Absence of Value" which expands further into the morality/shmoralilty problem that aflicts realism.

[@KaneB]

No, I haven't read that one. Thanks for the recommendations!

[@momentum9489]

@@KaneB Ironic enough, historically realists have took problems similar to your morality/shmorality example to actually favour realism. David Enoch’s article “Agency, Shamgency” proposes the idea of shmagency, similar to how shmorality is conceived, and considers it a big problem for anti-realism (specifically constitutivism) that there’s no reason to be an agent rather than a shmagent. See also Caroline T. Arruda’s “Why Care about Being an Agent?” for further discussion.

[@lanceindependent]

When I raise these concerns with moral realists, it is one of the more baffling concerns that I have. Many realists will say that they really would just act in accordance with whatever the moral facts are, regardless of what those facts were. It's bizarre. Why do this? Why care?

[@suzettedarrow8739]

Isn’t this “why care?” problem a double-edged sword? If anti-realism is true, then, if you & I disagree about some moral issue, why should I care about your standards? If moral realism is true, then, if I am wrong about some moral issue, then why should I care about being right? The “so what?” issue seems like it is dead in the water to me.

[@lily-qn7jn]

Not really, the problem here isn't a question of convincing others. It's the point that these (particularly non-natural) moral facts are divorced from the things we actually care about and drive our actions. Another thing to say is to point out that I think most moral debate actually takes place on an antirealist stage-unpacking contradictions, brow beating etc.

[@suzettedarrow8739]

@@lily-qn7jn I care about you. I don’t care about standards. If anti-realism is true, morality *still* isn’t something I care about. It isn’t you. That’s why the “why care?” question is double-edged.

[@derekg5563]

@Just Questions: Hmm, but you can ask "why care" about pretty much anything. Even pleasure... I could feel something pleasurable, but on what grounds can I say that was actually better? I can think it's better through some feeling, but am I justified in having this feeling? I guess I just don't think "why care" addresses much, because people can reject any reasons about anything totally at their own discretion, and so, the ability to reject doesn't seem to have any reflection on the goodness or badness of something, just a person's feeling about whether they care about it or not. Indeed, a person could say they disagree with a god, but that god wouldn't be impressed with that and chalk that up to just another part of their moral naivety. If there were a moral truth, it would still be up to you whether you care about it or not, but the mere fact that you can choose/feel like not caring about it doesn't argue against its truth. I get that there is still the burden for the moral realist to prove their case, but if you will only accept it if it coheres with your own framework of what you care about doing, doesn't that imply your mind was already made up? Almost like a pure sceptic. If you think "everything that doesn't cohere with my sense of caring is meaningless," you have already decided that you will only be convinced by what you already think is the case, so there is no point in presenting you any ideas with which you don't already agree regarding the issue. I feel like logical positivism and stuff like that can easily fall into this type of trap, to just reject any argument against it because anything that disagrees with it by definition doesn't fit its own assumed framework of facts and reality. Almost analogous to the following classic scepticism-type stuff: believing "no proposition is true"...so then anything said that could try to show otherwise would be rejected if it's in propositional form. But does that mean scepticism is the end all be all in philosophy? Almost all of us would disagree. And so if one is to reject a proposition, there is still some more digging into it there rather than just resting on the fact that at any time you could sceptically reject it regardless of what is presented to you. I think at some point, if we were to consider objective morality from a natural/secular point of view, it involves some kind of blending with animal (mostly human) nature and about cooperation, but it's hard to say much beyond that without over-simplifying what is going on. I guess others might think it's genuinely transcendental from the natural world, and they may call that kind of thing God, whether that term is being used to describe an actual organism or just some general/abstract force of the world. For me the issue there is more of an empirical thing than anything else -- but if it were true that morals came from God, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised that it wouldn't cohere with what I think is right or wrong (indeed it might SEEM to me that my God is immoral), because being for all I know I could be a very immature and selfish human, but wouldn't be able to see that because of my own bias about myself, and I have a convenient excuse for everything, which may increase my perception of my morality, but actually make me more of a jerk ultimately, and we can imagine some clues of that in how other people can clearly see the impact you are having on them but you are too much in your own head, in your own perceptions to conceive of that in your moral perceptions. Presumably if I understand the nature of morality whether through divine command or something subtler, I would try to get what I think is right or wrong closer and closer to what is right or wrong, even if initially there was a big disparity between them. After all... if we always went by whether we thought we were right, we were basically perfect creatures our whole lives, even as selfish little kids, because _at the time_ what we did seemed right and fair, that's why we decided to do them. But then, why strive to improve if we are always perfect? Why is that self-reflection meaningful to us? These are valid questions, although they could be explained secularly by saying that morality is just self-interest, and it ultimately helps us get along better and benefit from others and keep them on our side and keep us in a healthy mindset, and avoid drifting into something more dangerous for our survival. So the lack of necessary coherence that transcendental morality would have with myself wouldn't necessarily be that surprising with me feeling that this morality wasn't correct from my natural-world human intuitions. The issue for me just comes down to the issue with assuming there is something transcendental -- Occam's Razor would say otherwise. As crazy as things like planets and such might seem, something transcendental is even more profound and hard to imagine how that could even come about. I can't rule that out, but I am inclined to work with the simpler, more empirically-based explanations because at least those are less made up in that I am basing them off of my actual experiences rather than abstractly imagining how things could be. But that's more of an argument for agnosticism/atheism in a general sense. I guess what I am saying is, if I saw enough miracles and such, and the deity then told me about morality, well... even if those morals didn't seem right to me, I would lean towards believing that that's because I am an immature naive human, rather than that my instincts are actually right :) The problem is instead we are reading morality from holy books, in natural form, and one has to make the leap that it represents something beyond its presented form -- with what is in front of us, to our senses, ultimately just being a book. It's something like Quine who I think said something like, there isn't something logically wrong with the brain in a vat, it just empirically makes more sense to be rejected until there is more worldly evidence for them, and I think similar things about scepticism and moral realism. I don't think it's necessarily contradictory that people might not care about something morally real, or that it necessarily renders moral realism meaningless, so that argument doesn't impress me; nevertheless, moral realism needs to empirically get through Occam's Razor in terms of alternative explanations for why we perceive the world as we do, and that in general is no trivial task.

[@lanceindependent]

@@derekg5563 Really awesome post. It's amazing people put so much thoughtful work into responses on here. //Hmm, but you can ask "why care" about pretty much anything. Even pleasure... I could feel something pleasurable, but on what grounds can I say that was actually better? I can think it's better through some feeling, but am I justified in having this feeling?// Yes, you can, and I do! The difference is that the point of descriptive claims like “hydrogen has one proton” isn’t action-guiding. It doesn’t have any kind of practical authority, and doesn’t purport to dictate what I ought to do. In order for moral claims to be nontrivial, they can’t be like this. Either morality has the power to compel, which I don’t think it does, or it’s a bizarre set of purportedly non-descriptive claims that have no more force to get me or anyone else to do anything than mundane facts about the number of red dwarf stars in a distant galaxy. I don’t think it makes much sense to speak of justification for feelings in most contexts. //I guess I just don't think "why care" addresses much// On the contrary, I think it addresses almost everything there is to say about moral realism. Even if there were “stance-independent moral facts,” well, so what? I don’t care. Why do moral realists care? If they are curious about what the facts are, and want to write them down in a book for posterity, okay, fine. Let’s write them down. And then what? I’d just ignore them, personally. But I don’t think moral realists want to just ignore them. They want us to comply with them. That’s strange. Why should we do that? Why do they want to do that? Why does it matter what the “moral facts” are? If stance-independent moral facts are of no more importance to deciding what to do than facts about, e.g., the mass of cloud on the third moon of a planet in the Andromeda galaxy, what’s the point in figuring out what these facts are? Again, I won’t fault a realist who’s merely curious what these facts are, but I’ve never met a moral realist who wants to find out what the moral facts are just as a mere matter of trivia. It’s not that moral realism is false because I don’t care about it. That would be a ridiculous argument to make, and it isn’t an argument I’m making. Rather, I’m drawing attention to one of the really bizarre features of realism itself. Is it supposed to matter? If so, okay, why? How? If not, then I wonder at the motivations of realists. //because people can reject any reasons about anything totally at their own discretion, and so, the ability to reject doesn't seem to have any reflection on the goodness or badness of something, /// Right, I’m not suggesting otherwise. I’m suggesting that notions of “goodness” and “badness” that aren’t reducible to my subjective attitudes strike me as utterly motivationally trivial and, at best, a completely pointless and empty set of considerations,even if realism were true. I take it realists aren’t going to concede this much to me, so they’re welcome to show me how realism isn’t trivial. Perhaps they think I “must care” or something. My response is: no. I don’t and I won’t. Now what? Moral realism, at best, has no teeth. //I get that there is still the burden for the moral realist to prove their case, but if you will only accept it if it coheres with your own framework of what you care about doing, doesn't that imply your mind was already made up?// No. I don’t accept accounts of moral realism because they seem trivial, false, or unintelligible, not because I wouldn’t care if they were true. I just also wouldn’t care if they were true, and am puzzled at anyone who feels differently. Would you care if there were stance-independent moral facts? If so, why? FWIW, I don’t really think realists have “the burden of proof.” I don’t believe anyone has a burden of proof. People can choose or not choose to take on any particular burden. //If you think "everything that doesn't cohere with my sense of caring is meaningless,”// I don’t think that. I don’t care about most things that I think are meaningful. //I think at some point, if we were to consider objective morality from a natural/secular point of view, it involves some kind of blending with animal (mostly human) nature and about cooperation, but it's hard to say much beyond that without over-simplifying what is going on// Right so there are facts about what is and isn’t conducive to cooperation. Those are just descriptive facts, though. I don’t think we get anything out of calling them “moral.” Likewise for animal or human nature. These accounts of realism are trivial and are just relabeling of nonmoral phenomena. //I guess what I am saying is, if I saw enough miracles and such, and the deity then told me about morality, well... even if those morals didn't seem right to me, I would lean towards believing that that's because I am an immature naive human, rather than that my instincts are actually right// I might obey a God’s commands but I don’t think that would enable me to understand realism or stance-independent normative facts. Those might still make no sense to me. Regardless, I think I’d always and only be acting in accordance with my own goals and values, and I simply do not value complying with stance-independent moral facts.

[@virtuouspyromaniac4467]

Lol!! your example just struck my memory and made me think of a novel which I have not read, but only read some stuff about, it's called "Venus in furs". It is a very witty and bizarre story of a man who is very infatuated by a woman, to the point where he desires to be her slave. the woman at first is dubios about granting the man's request, but over time she opens up and started embracing the idea, the man is being treated brutally but he is happy. Now even if the man was shown that what he is doing is immoral and wrong and was proved to be so. The man is happy and the woman is too, as the man's desire is being fullfilled, why would he go against his desires and what makes him happy just because it is wrong.

[@Leon-wj7xl]

Couldn't it be that not caring about the moral facts, even if they do exist, is just a person's desire to be moral (to do the right thing, no matter what) being overpowered by other desires. To take the example of killing every person: I might understand that the moral facts demand of me to kill everyone, but all of my desires that necessitate me not doing that (which is probably going to be nearly all of them) are overpowering my desire to go out on a killing spree. Then this wouldn't really be an argument against the existence of moral facts, only showing that the desire to be moral can be (and often is) overpowered by other desires. Anyway, love your videos

[@braden_m]

Oh Kane, you always have such a way with words. Now when questioned about my not fitting into an interlocutors’ moral framework, I will proudly proclaim, “I just don’t care about the moral facts - I care about the shmoral facts!” Also, I’m really interested in what you said about some people turning to anti-realism to avoid skepticism. I don’t doubt that this has happened, but it just seems extremely odd to me as my experience was the exact opposite: an already present skepticism drove me to doubt things like moral facts, leading to moral anti-realism.

[@KaneB]

Antirealism in response to skepticism is more common when you look at arguments concerning the external world. Views like idealism are often thought to avoid the "veil of perception" problem that representative realism faces.

[@braden_m]

@@KaneB and I guess that kind of makes sense, but aren’t a lot of idealists still moral realists? Maybe I’m just unaware of the general trends of belief. But what I said still fits actually because it was, funnily enough, PRECISELY the question of the existence of the external world that led me to a broader, more critical skepticism of any states of affairs whatsoever (including moral). This is obviously just kind of a coincidental juxtaposition of normal paths to antirealism, but I just find it interesting that mine happened so differently to others’, particularly because I had naïvely assumed that my experience was common (at least among anti-realists haha).

[@exalted_kitharode]

@@braden_m you can check out "Objections to metaphysical realism" article in SEP to see what Kane means. Anti-realism means various things depending on context. Maybe confusion could have been avoided if we used term "moral non-factualism", because some understanding of "anti-realism" leaves room for facts, it's just that they emerge not from correspondence to independent reality, but from some set of internal procedures of correctness. Global anti-realism dissolves contrast that is present for moral anti-realists because usually moral anti-realists are realists about something else(for example concerning scientific entities). So for idealists there may be fact of the matter about morality and these facts obtain their force from approximately the same source as facts about physical objects (not from outside of cognizing subject).

[@exalted_kitharode]

Skepticism may mean different things. Skepticism about whether we can know some things(call it traditional skepticism?). Skepticism about whether there is anything to know except from what we think about some things (some form of anti-realism?). And skepticism about whether there is anything to know at all about this thing (non-factualism?).

[@exalted_kitharode]

A lot of terminological complications that I haven't properly described, it takes a lot of flexibility to take into account these fine distinctions, so our words might mean a lot of different things

[@yuriarin3237]

"That's not the kind of world I want to live in". What are your thoughts on contractarian accounts of moral duty like Scanlon's? I must disclose that I have no clue about them other than a general hand wavy notion of it as grounding morality in some sort of abstract social contract. (I started reading Scanlon's What we Owe to each Other after watching The Good Place since it is referenced in the show multiple times)

[@KaneB]

As a normative theory, I find some sort of contractarianism fairly attractive (though I'm more attracted to the "mutual self-interest" Hobbesian approach; Scanlon is more Kantian). I don't think it does anything to make realist metaethics more plausible, though.

[@HudBug]

When you purposefully act in some way, you desire to act in that way. What explains your desire, and what justifies it, is your beliefs. For example, when i desire to read a book, i may desire it because (1) i have the belief that the book is likely witty, and (2) i also have the belief that that it is worthy to read witty material. My justification, or reasons, for such a desire are given by my beliefs, not by a desire and a belief. When you see something as a reason for, we might say, for a belief, you will respond to such a reason by holding a belief. Same thing for when you see something as a reason for a desire. “Why care?” Is a silly question. It’s asking a for a reason to care for something when you already see the reason to care for that thing. I belief that, whenever i believe that i, in some way, am in pain, that see the reason that this belief is giving me to reduce or end such pain.

[@KaneB]

I just find this bizarre. Why should I care whether it's "worthy" to read witty material? If I want to read witty material, I'll be motivated to read the witty book; if I'm not interested in witty material, then I won't. Beliefs about its "worthiness" seem totally inert to me. If you could convince me that the films of Ingmar Bergman are somehow objectively "worthy", I'm still not gonna watch them, because I find them boring.

[@HudBug]

@@KaneB If you want to read the witty material, you don’t see any outweighing reason to desire to act otherwise, and therefore believe that there are not any outweighing reasons to desire to act otherwise. “If I want to read witty material, I'll be motivated to read the witty book” seems mostly tautological. You maybe are motivated, or desire to, read some book because your beliefs are that it is worthy to read witty material and that it is a witty book. I don’t desire to read a book if i hold the belief that it isn’t witty. Nor do i desire to read some book if i hold the belief that, in consideration, it is not worthy of my reading it. Beliefs about its worthiness are beliefs about what i believe, in considering the object, i care about. If you believe something is worthy of consideration, you believe something has reasons to be cared about. The films you speak of, if i had convinced you that they a worthy of consideration, I would have given you some belief that made you care. Also, you believing that, when you watched these movies, or someone told you about them, these movie would make you bored if you watched them at some time. You also see reason to care about avoiding the pain of boredom, that is, in your considerations of the pain of that boredom, you find it worthy or ‘careable’. This is similar to our seeing something, considering it, believable. Asking “why believe 1+1=2?” is silly for the exact reason why it’s silly to ask “why care?” About something you yourself see, in your consideration of it, as careable. Whether or not our consideration about some object is correct if we then believe or care about it in our considerations is still something i wonder about, metaphysical and partially epistemologically.

[@wireless849]

@@HudBug Technically, it’s not tautological. Pseudo formalised: 1. (X)[Witty(x)=>Want(x)] 2. Witty(p) 3. Want(p) by universal instantiation on 1,2. It is a valid argument form, but not necessarily sound.

[@KaneB]

@@HudBug >> Beliefs about its worthiness are beliefs about what i believe, in considering the object, i care about Ah, okay. In that case I don't think we disagree substantively on the issue at hand. The question is whether I do or should care about stance-independent or objective "worthiness" - supposing that there is such a thing. If I judge that a film is not worthy, per my aesthetic standards, but you can show me that it's worthy per the objective aesthetic standards... well, so what? I'm still not gonna bother watching it again!

[@HudBug]

@@KaneB i don’t get the concept of “objective aesthetic reasons” as I can’t imagine a world where some art piece gives reasons to hold the attitude of admiration of beauty. Let Parfit express my view here: “It is sometimes claimed that we have reasons to enjoy, or be thrilled or in other ways moved by, great artistic works. In many cases, I believe, this claim is false. We can have reasons to want to enjoy, or to be thrilled or moved by, these artistic works. But these are not reasons to enjoy, or to be thrilled or moved by, these works. We do have reasons to admire some novels, plays or poems, given the importance of some of the ideas that they express. But poetry is what gets lost in the translation, even if this translation expresses the same ideas. And we never have reasons to enjoy, or be moved by, great music. If we ask what makes some musical passage so marvellous, the answer might be ‘Three modulations to distant keys’. This answer describes a cause of our response to this music, not a reason. Modulations to distant keys are like the herbs, spices, or other ingredients that can make food delicious. When someone neither enjoys nor is moved by some great musical work, this person is not in any way less than fully rational, by failing to respond to certain reasons.” As far as i notice, there aren’t any reasons to hold the attitude that the art of a music or a painting is beautiful. I and most other people have reasons, i would think more convincingly, to listen to the music or to enjoy the art, because you would derive some peculiar pleasure or excite the passions from it.

[@davsamp7301]

But it is a very good Question how to decide about morality. It is maybe Similar to the Problem of the criterion. Moral reasoning is done to shape our Intuitions. But our Intuitions shape our Moral reasoning. Both can be, If so, right or wrong or simply unaplicable. But by whom is one to decide it each?

[@Mcristini1994]

Great video! I was particularly surprised because I came to an almost identical conclusion in a discussion with someone else last year. I also think that your argument is not necessarily a criticism against moral realism so much as it is a criticism of any particular realist moral theory which fails to convince every interlocutor that it is true. The problem you point out (that even if there is a moral fact, it doesn't follow that we should care) could be answered by saying that we would in fact necessarily care if we could understand why it is an actual moral fact. For example, one could say that if one had "the mind of God" one could understand why divine commands are objectively moral and must be obeyed. In response to your question "If you knew that killing everyone was the morally right thing to do, would you kill everyone?" a realist might answer: "Yes, because if I knew the conclusive reasons that justify this moral fact, I would come to be really convinced that it is the best thing to do." There are several fictions in which this occurs: we see the acts of a character and initially judge them as horrendous and unjustifiable, but later the motives for said acts are revealed to us and only then do we convince ourselves (not only rationally but emotionally) that he was doing something good after all. I quote, however, my criticism of that argument as it pertains to divine commandments: "It is a dead end: if we are not able to deduce the irrefutable reasons that would justify a divine morality, that God knew them would be irrelevant, but if we could determine them, then it would also be irrelevant. In the first case, because we would never have rational reasons to trust in the divinity, even if it existed; in the second, because we would always have them, even in his absence. In any case, whether God exists or not, it is necessary for the human being to be able to conceive an objective good so that he can grasp it objectively, otherwise it only remains for him to have faith (even if there is an objective good “out there”)”. Simply put, even if God exist and he knows the reasons why such and such things are objectivly good (and even if i would accept that if i knew his reasons), if i am unable to grasp such justification, then I have no reason to agree with him." This is a general problem with morality: it is just axiology presented in an imperative form. For one to understand why a moral law is actually a law, one would have to know a set of reasons that made oneself be compelled to do something. That's why when a theroy fails to compel everyone to do what it says that is good, that actually implies that it is flawed.

[@Mcristini1994]

Also it was about time that Shmorality made it's way into 21st century philosophy

[@Tehz1359]

"I also think that your argument is not necessarily a criticism against moral realism so much as it is a criticism of any particular realist moral theory which fails to convince every interlocutor that it is true" So in order for something to be "real" it has to be known with absolute certainty? So much certainty that you convince every interlocuter of it's reality? This sounds like an insanely unrealistic standard. I can argue absolutely nothing meets this criteria. This is why I really can't get behind anti-realism.

[@archon1410]

I suppose the companions in guilt argument has something to do with this. why should I believe true things rather than false things? so what if the earth shape detector says it's round, what reason do I have to stop believing in flat earth? it seems to me that recognition of truth gives a reason to believe the truth, and equivalently, recognizing moral truths gives a reason to act in certain ways.

[@KaneB]

In general, I find companions in guilt arguments extremely weak. When I recognize that some proposition is true, I'd say I have a reason to believe it, because I care about holding true beliefs, and because true beliefs are sometimes instrumentally useful for achieving other things I care about. If somebody doesn't share those goals, I can't see what sense it makes to say that they "have a reason" for believing the proposition.

[@exalted_kitharode]

@@KaneB you often mention instrumental usefulness of true beliefs, doesn't this strain of your thought conflict with your rejection of miracles argument's inferring of truth from usefulness?

[@KaneB]

​@@exalted_kitharode I don't see why. The problem with that argument is that there are lots of false beliefs that are useful too.

[@facundocesa4931]

The only way to convince me to care about something, is by appealing to things I already care about. And this is true for everyone. I don't think moral realism is even intelligibility. But if it it was intelligible and true, I would only care about it to the extent that it fits my goals. And collectively (and yes, I'm fully aware that different people want different things, which often conflict), we "should" care about it to the extent it fits our goals (which is tautologically true if we define "shoulds" in relation to goals). Can this "objective morality" actually go against our collective goals/interests? If it can: To hell with it. 🤷🏽‍♂️ If it can't, why can't it? Euthyphro's dilemma gets echoed here. Is the "objective morality" good because it satisfies us, or does it satisfy us because it's good?

[@derekg5563]

@Facundo Cesa: Well, "what fits your goals" is dynamic, though. For example the process of a person developing the morality of a saint could simply be described as him realigning his goals with what also helps people. So in that sense he is self-interested because helping others also makes him happy, but in a way that is calibrated with helping others. He made it so that his feelings of pleasure occur when he has thoughts of what he is doing, and the meaning it has for his general perception of nature and ecosystems in general. So moral realism would probably end up analyzing what are the kinds of things that can be part of our goals, and are they the result of more abstract, and in some sense ontologically distinct, ways of thinking about our relations rather than just our knee-jerk reactions to whether a thing is good or bad to us. I am not sure what I think about it, but I don't think it's refuted simply by surface-level perceptions of how there is always an ability to reject or point out how it doesn't cohere with their preferences or something -- after all, morality is trying to describe something beyond this at least in some way, or at least some kind of deeper dive into the nature of those preferences, so the asymmetry it has with knee-jerk reactions isn't particularly surprising.

[@theforcewithin369]

Yeah i think the point of the usefulness of that concept is not if is objectively moral or not but if something is morally consistent regarding one's own judgment. For example, government, if somone believes in it but thinks is wrong to steal or force one's views on others that's hypocritical, morally inconsistent a contradiction

[@faisalhakim5920]

19:50 I agree with negative utilitarianism, and I also agree with you that that is absurd conclusion.

[@nesslig2025]

After watching your videos, I have changed my views that moral anti-realism has some really good points. However, I have question about this and it would be interested to see a video from this... but of course the choice is up to you of course. Let's say moral anti realism is true and everyone becomes a moral anti realist, could we still have a justice system or a moral code or whatever something that would replace it such that society doesn't collapse into chaos? I would think that we could still do that, and we are already doing that based on our subjective preferences, even though most of us are convinced that we are doing it based on an objective foundation. And if we all were moral anti-realists we could still function more or less like we have... but I wonder if you have the same, different or more commentary to add to this?

[@uninspired3583]

Well, many laws where I'm from at least have nothing to do with morality, or are loosely related. And, some laws punish disproportionately to the harm done with the associated crime. I don't think the legal system is actually founded on morality, though there is overlap. It's about demonstrable harm. We can debate about whether or not a thing is moral, but usually things that are harmful are pretty clear. So in that respect, I think we can perfectly comfortably toss morality in the bin and maintain a legal system that governs wellbeing.

[@donjindra]

"If I talked to some random person on the street and they start saying that deviant sexual behavior is morally wrong, well so what? I mean, that's not going to change my values. It's not going to change the sort of behavior I want to encourage and discourage. I mean I want to live in a society where we encourage people to engage in perverted sexual behavior. I love all of that stuff. .. So what if I happen to meet someone on the street who disagrees with me. Well, that's a practical problem, right, because I have the problem of trying to convince him or at least hoping they don't gain enough power that they can start influencing things. But beside the practical problem it doesn't really matter that they disagree with me. That's not going to change my mind. And it's the same with the moral facts, if there are indeed moral facts, I don't see why i should care about that." If you hope the man on the street doesn't gain enough power that he can influence things, then you do care about moral facts. You seem to be confused about what morality is. It is not strictly some personal code of conduct, although that can be a small part of it. Morality is about behavior among human beings. It doesn't exist in the vacuum you want to put it in. It is not theoretical navel gazing. It _is_ practical. You cannot separate morality from the practical. You say "What really matters doesn't matter to me." But you don't understand that "what really matters" about morality is its practice, not its theory. If you live alone on a desert island, morality is almost non-existent. But we live in society with others. Suppose you and I were having dinner. In the middle of friendly conversation I grab my knife and stab it through your hand so it's stuck to the table. I don't think you'll calmly react, "That's interesting. We seem to have different moral perspectives on this." If you're a normal person at all, you'll want to know why I performed such a violent, unprovoked act. You'll want remedy. You'll want medical help and will expect them to provide it. You'll depend on a morality of others that is far from arbitrary. You plead you don't care. But I don't believe you've thought this through.

[@KaneB]

>> You seem to be confused about what morality is You seem confused about what moral realism vs antirealism is. >> If you hope the man on the street doesn't gain enough power that he can influence things, then you do care about moral facts I don't need to care what the stance-independent moral facts are in order to be concerned that other people do not frustrate my desires. >> In the middle of friendly conversation I grab my knife and stab it through your hand so it's stuck to the table. I don't think you'll calmly react, "That's interesting. We seem to have different moral perspectives on this." Yeah, no shit. Moral antirealists deny that there are stance-independent moral facts. This is entirely compatible with having strong feelings about things. It's even compatible with being strongly committed to various moral views.

[@donjindra]

@@KaneB "I don't need to care what the stance-independent moral facts are in order to be concerned that other people do not frustrate my desires." You absolutely do care. You admit so yourself. If you don't care, you have no basis whatsoever to complain when others treat you in ways you do not want. You have effectively dismissed your own input. "Yeah, no shit. Moral antirealists deny that there are stance-independent moral facts. This is entirely compatible with having strong feelings about things. It's even compatible with being strongly committed to various moral views." That's false. You undermine your own moral views. You reduce morality to mere power. The only standard becomes power. If morality is simply power, then that's still a universal moral view -- the natural right of the strong to dominate the weak. It's still real, very real.

[@KaneB]

@@donjindra You don't know what the moral realism/antirealism debate is. If you're interested in learning this, I have a series on metaethics that introduces the major positions. Alexander Miller and Mark van Roojen both have good introductions to metaethics as well.

[@donjindra]

@@KaneB It's a debate on the ontology of moral "law". I know exactly what this debate is. I've been having it with people for over 30 years. And your position is not tenable. You will never be able to make a good case that we humans are infinitely malleable in our moral behavior, and that's what this anti-realism ultimately means. OTOH, if you're merely stating moral "realism" in terms of platonic forms, I'd argue it's like arguing how many angels can dance on a pinhead. It's a linguistic/semantic mistake.

[@KaneB]

@@donjindra >> You will never be able to make a good case that we humans are infinitely malleable in our moral behavior, and that's what this anti-realism ultimately means No, that's not what antirealism means, and that's not what myself or any other antirealist I know of is arguing for.

[@Ansatz66]

Whenever there is an apparently intractable problem like this, it usually seems to boil down to semantics. Two reasonable people are faced with the same evidence and have a discussion about the topic where they share their ideas, and yet in the end they come to wildly different conclusions. Clearly this is not an issue of facts, since they share the same facts. If either one had failed to notice some fact, their discussion should have quickly remedied that issue. There's only one obvious culprit for this sort of disagreement: they're talking past each other. They're misinterpreting each other's words. Person A says "X is good" and person B says "X is good" and they naturally expect that this means that they agree with each other. It is a very enticing conclusion to jump to. When someone says words that you interpret to mean something that you think is true, then _obviously_ this person is intending to express this truth. The principle of charity tells us to give our opponent's words the most favorable interpretation, so then why would we ever suspect that when they say "X is good" they might mean something wildly different from what we'd mean when we use those words? They might even mean something that we'd consider to be false, but we'll never know because we won't bother to ask, and even if we do ask they might not be able to clearly express what they mean. So then, what tends to happen is that the realist will say "X is good" and will mean something real by it. They'll mean that X promotes happiness and prosperity and security and whatever; it's an objective matter of fact from the realist perspective. They might build a morality detector and tune it to recognize when an action will cause harm, and then they'll try to stop any action that the detector identifies as bad, even when we would otherwise see no harm in it. Maybe there's something that's invisibly radioactive that will harm people in this and we can't see it, but the detector can. In contrast, the anti-realist will also say "X is good", but to the anti-realist this means something wildly different. It refers to something which is not real. Maybe it's just some sort of social construct, or it refers to the will of a mythical god, or whatever. They see a morality detector and consider it a nonsensical device, because it's supposed to detect something which doesn't really exist, and whenever it produces a silly result that's just proof of the foolishness of the whole idea. The problem is that when both the realist and the anti-realist say "X is good", it's difficult for them to recognize that they're not actually agreeing with each other despite saying the exact same words.

[@Nickesponja]

But then the realist isn't talking about morality. "X promotes happiness" is a descriptive statement, not a moral statement. If that's what you mean when you say "X is good", then you aren't making a moral statement

[@Ansatz66]

@@Nickesponja : Right, different people mean different things by moral language. These words have controversial semantics. So what does "X is good" mean to you?

[@Nickesponja]

@@Ansatz66 Well, when I say, "X is good", what I mean is "I approve of X". But I don't think that's a moral statement (it's a descriptive statement after all), and would make that clear in any discussion about moral realism. Morality is about what we ought to do. About normative facts. Defining morality as being about descriptive facts and then triumphantly declaring that morality is objective misses the point of moral antirealists by several miles.

[@Ansatz66]

@@Nickesponja : If the word "good" doesn't refer to morality, then what words do refer to morality? Is "ought" the only way to talk about morality? What do you mean when you say "we ought to do X"? Of course moral realists also tend to approve of things they call good, but that's just because they happen to want good things.

[@christopherrussell63]

I guess if Moral Realism is the case, saying that "A is wrong" wouldn't be that different from saying "A is blue" or something like that.

[@lanceindependent]

That's not what realists want. They want moral facts to have authority, to justify, to prescribe, to impel, to have some kind of oomph. Only they have none of these qualities.

[@ferdia748]

For me its analytic a priori that what really matters should matter to you, sort of like saying all bachelors are unmarried.

[@zack49]

Calling it a priori is just saying that's how it is and refusing to elaborate. Thats how personal beliefs work, but you cant make others accept your assumptions.

[@ferdia748]

@@zack49 Your reply makes no sense

[@zack49]

Made no sense to you. The a priori, because it is the base of logic, has no logic backing it. If it did, it wouldn't be the base. So saying somthing is a priori isnt defending it logically, it's simply a statement of your opinion.

[@ferdia748]

@@zack49 Yea, I understood what you were saying, it's that your comment made no sense as a reply to me.

[@zack49]

@@ferdia748 bruh

[@justus4684]

My answer to the question in the beginning is: Nothing interesting in regards to my actions

[@exalted_kitharode]

That's the issue of reason externalism/internalism debate. In which way reasons to think or act have to motivate us? This question have to be settled on independent ground, but it seems that people influenced by Hume tend to prefer reasons internalism, and some think that anti-realist's way of thought about these issues is rooted in it.

[@lanceindependent]

Why not jettison both and declare this notion of "reasons" to be confused? I don't think we "have a reason" to act based on stance-independent considerations or our goals or desires.

[@exalted_kitharode]

You don't jettison this notion if you use goals-means vocalbulary. It is useful to account for phenomenon of 'preferring' something over and above something else in rule-governed activity, such as playing chess or applying logical inferences.

[@exalted_kitharode]

@@lanceindependent if you have desire helping your parents in need it certainly makes sense to say that you have reason to give them money. If you can't, you have reason to find money. Being motivated by their need, you must at the same time be motivated by your ability to find job and get money, otherwise you're just not equipped with conceptual ties that is necessary for your indeterminate desire to be desire to help parents.

[@exalted_kitharode]

@@lanceindependent you can jettison as much as you want, you can go even more extreme and prohibit speech altogether. But it's just you who is proscribing perfectly reliable and useful human expressions of practical entitlements/committments from feeling that something doesn't fit, because this vocalbulary doesn't seem intuitively appealing, but, as Kane remarked in your talk, this stratagem is equally appropriate for any term in any domain of discourse. You don't have a choice not to grasp intuitively some unanalysable concept which will express itself only through elaborate web of connections to other notions, ancillary concept so to speak, which will have to coordinate inferences and to motivate interlocutors and speakers themselves to act in certain ways.

[@justus4684]

I always like these kinds of titles

[@jacklessa9729]

I think maybe some people are trying to find a principle to decide about if they follow their selfish desires or their altruistic desires and they are thinking their altruistic desires are morality. Ex: John wants to help people that are now homeless because of a Hurricane and he also want a guitar. He can't do both actions, so he is trying to find a reason, a principle to help him to decide which one and feel peace of mind about this choice, that he did the best choice, the right choice.

[@KaneB]

The same issues arises even if we just look at altruistic motives, though. Suppose we show that utilitarianism is true, and that instead of helping the homeless people, John morally ought to donate his money to people in a distant country (because this alternative action would maximize utility). But John doesn't care about those people. He cares about his countrymen, so he wants to donate to help the homeless. At this point, John could just say: "Fine, it's a moral fact that I ought to donate to the foreigners. So it turns out I don't care about the *moral* facts. When I use "moral" language, I'm really expressing schmoral judgments, where schmorality tells you that to act with special concern for your countrymen."

[@jacklessa9729]

@@KaneB Yes. But what you think John should do? He really wants a guitar and also really want to help those people. Both desires are very strong ones. I think the right answer is that John can go either way. He will be a little sad if he don't help those people, but he also will be a little sad if he can't buy the guitar, he can't scape be a little sad. If he wanted more one option than the other, he should go for that option. If the dilemma between morality and self-interest are just a delimma between selfish desires and altruistic desires, this can make people feel less anxious, guilty, ashamed about the right answer and wrong answer.

[@KaneB]

@@jacklessa9729 I don't have an opinion on what he should do. Either of those actions is fine with me. It would be nice of him to donate to the homeless, but I don't object to people treating themselves.

[@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd]

In my opinion, every human decision is evaluated in terms of survival (consciously or unconsciously). Most people assess that acts that benefit the community are much more likely to be positive for one's own survival. On the other hand, who is not so intelligent to calculate the factors of his survival, only makes decisions that benefit him personally. The rest of the community will consider him to be selfish and will be less willing to collaborate with that person.

[@WalRUs1216]

Being somewhat on the realist side, I can get where you are coming from. I guess for me, the machine would look like an authority over me and why would I let it dictate how I should live my life if I really like doing the thing it says is wrong? I'm not going to blindly agree with something if I feel differently. Of course we should always be open to the idea of seeing the world incorrectly, but Life's gotta come with Moral Reason and not after it. At least this is what I learned in my 19th Century Philosophy class :P

[@lanceindependent]

Why are you somewhat on the realist side? Realism has nothing going for it. No good arguments.

[@WalRUs1216]

@@lanceindependent Eh, my math teacher said so. I'll take his word for it.

[@jordan7828]

When Moral tenets possess reality, and you act against them, you bear the consequence.

[@jordan7828]

“Moral facts” referent are consequence within the world, they merely evaluate these consequences within systems of reference and signification. The fact that you can be incorrect about what is ideal for you, that you have the ability to perpetuate falsity or iniquity in your words and acts, does not mean there is no truth within words or for acts.

[@KaneB]

What is this consequence? I mean, I might care about that. In the same way, if God is backing up his commands with the threat of heaven and hell, then I'm gonna follow his commands, because I don't want to go to hell. >> The fact that you can be incorrect about what is ideal for you Why should I care about what's ideal for me?

[@jordan7828]

@@KaneB The consequence is the effects imparted by the action. Moral statements function heuristically to retain generality and remain accurate, because their consequence upon subjects is variant. When I say “function heuristically” observe the meaning of this sentence. Drinking alcohol is bad. Bad is what one seeks to avoid. Bad is not constructed on the basis of its particulars, it’s particular are grouped under its criterion after it is recognized they are bad. Now, observe the function of the statement “drinking alcohol is bad”. One does not describe how or why it is bad, one merely communicates their approval in a social context with these moralistic statements. The demonstration, but not the denomination, of ‘what is bad’ is left up to the consequence, it is only warned against in that statement. This is the opposite order by which we denominate something as bad however- it is bad because of its consequence not because it is bad. That is why moralizing communication takes heuristic form, is because it embodies that structure because the function of communicating moralistically is you want to warn someone away from experiencing the severe consequences of the bad unfolding within their life.

[@KaneB]

@@jordan7828 >> The consequence is the effects imparted by the action Okay, so suppose that some action has effect E and it's the case that E is objectively, stance-independently bad. However, I desire E, and would prefer to live in world in which E is encouraged. Why should I care that E is objectively bad?

[@jordan7828]

If you actually want to criticize moral statements which possess truth, you must actually examine rigorously constructed ethical systems. Picking apart the internal contradictions of vague and amorphous sentiments is a fools errand. It is analogous to asking your plumber for the basis of physical science, or arithmetic. Discarding the possibility of these endeavors on the basis that one can fail at justifying them is facile.

[@MyContext]

I have often assumed that those using the label moral realism were simply attempting to use a label to given more weight to an idea, since, they haven't presented anything that shows morality to be an aspect of reality as opposed to a cognitive concept that is useful for our existence. I have even asked what is the criteria for this mind independent thing that they are claiming as morality. The responses have been just as vacuous as God claims - a claim with nothing being shown.

[@lanceindependent]

Yes. It's vacuous. Here's the interesting thing though: most metaethicists, including moral antirealists who deny moral realism, seem to buy into the notion that it's *not* vacuous. In other words, antirealists will tend to say that moral realism is false, but not that it is vacuous, meaningless, trivial, unintelligible, etc. I'm one of the few who does defend this position, yet it has been consistently met with incredulity, hostility, dismissiveness, and contempt from philosophers. There's a lot of gatekeeping in contemporary academic metaethics. If you show up and suggest that much of what they're doing is confused, and is therefore worse than merely wrong, they don't take it very seriously. What's interesting about this is that they appeal to the fact that they mostly buy into the concepts they talk about being meaningful as proof they are meaningful, but it turns out that if, like me, you suggest they're making a bunch of vacuous and nonsensical claims, you are made to feel quite unwelcome. The result is that people like me are discouraged from participating in the field. It's no surprise if nobody in the field thinks like I do! We're not welcome in the field!

[@MyContext]

@@lanceindependent I understand that we hold a minority position in philosophy. However, I think the field can be changed. _It might take 10+ years, possible total assault against metaphysics (platonism, idealism, and perhaps a few other notions) to get the point across, but I think it can be done._

[@lanceindependent]

@@MyContext I hope so. That's one of my goals. See my discussion with Kane B on his channel. Also, check out his latest video on rejecting philosophical consensus. We're going to have a lot of work to do to show that moral realism is untenable and should not be the majority position.

[@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd]

The problem is thinking in absolute terms. (idealistic infection) The universe has no moral opinion. The universe does not make ethical evaluations. The importance of determining what behaviors are moral lies in knowing what acts will result in being the factor of an aggressive reaction from your social group. What acts put you in danger even with those with whom there is a cooperation agreement. Your parents make the first warnings. Then others are added when your social group expands and finally you can also distinguish what will provoke the ire of others. But the confusion of believing there is a moral imperative ruins the system.

[@jacklessa9729]

Well-being seems to be more important than survival. Many people died to change old moral agreements in the past. Woman's that wanted igual rights, LGBTs, black people... They we're no dumb, they was tired of suffer. So force is being used to keep a moral agreement and to change it

[@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd]

@@jacklessa9729 Survival comes first. People take care of their group. Situations as extreme as those of endangered minorities show that the goal of morality is to appease the aggressive reactions of the majority of the group. If the rules are not enough (a black person does not find that behavior would appease the racist) the contract is broken. This increases the probability of survival. Aggressiveness due to disgust caused by unconventional sexual behaviors is a threat to survival. Not just wellness. The omnipresent visualization of alternative sexualities tries to wear down the visceral reaction and thus diminish the danger.

[@jacklessa9729]

@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd If survival was the most important people would never suicide. And I think people will try to end their suffering either risking dying fighting against moral codes that are leading than to suffer either taking their own life's if they believe is the only way to end their suffering

[@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd]

@@jacklessa9729 No. People do not have absolute values. People interpret reality according to their conceptual framework and everything is a matter of probability. Nothing is absolute. Faced with the same situation, different people will reach different conclusions about how it will be convenient to act. Most people react with acts that favor their survival. Even a person who has decided to commit suicide will instinctively react away from a surprising danger. Survival will be understood in terms meaningful to each individual. For example choosing to die rather than lose their identity. Or choosing to die in exchange for the survival of his group. It all depends on the interpretation of survival. It is surprising to see that certain types of people react in horror to the possibility that their "ethnic group" will be replaced, through miscegenation, by a different group. These people imagine a society where their descendants will have a different skin color and are willing to give their lives to prevent such a thing from happening. Those are not values. That's group survival. The same is true for the replacement of one religion by another. Whoever fears such a thing imagines that their offspring will not survive as effectively if the rules that control the group's anger are different from theirs. He knows which rules guarantee survival and doubts that other rules are as effective as his. However, not all hazards are created equal. Some dangers are unpredictable (catastrophes, diseases, animal attacks, etc.) and others should be of calculated risk (aggressiveness of the own group or external groups).

[@darcyone6291]

I think that whether or not you'd care about moral facts if they contradict your personal values is itself a matter of personal values. What I mean is, if it turns out that there are moral facts, and if you value truth, then probably you'll have some appreciation for these facts. But whether or not you're going to incorporate them into your moral system depends on whether you value truth more or less than your other personal values. So, it seems that personal values are prior to facts in the sense that caring about facts first requires valuing truth. I don't think this is an argument against moral realism, but this may reduce its significance. Also, you've mentioned a point that I'm not familiar with, I wish you could give me some idea about it even if it's not about moral realism! So, you've mentioned that some people endorse anti-realism about the external world in order to avoid skepticism. How are these two positions different?

[@KaneB]

I think the problem goes a bit deeper than this. Let's say I care a lot about truth, and I come to believe that it's a fact that deviant sexual behaviour such as S&M is morally wrong. It seems that I could fully believe that this is true, but just not care, in the sense that it need not change my attitudes. I could continue to encourage acceptance of such behaviour, I could continue to promote norms that allow such behaviour -- I just wouldn't think of these as strictly speaking *moral* norms. Okay, so S&M is morally wrong. As somebody who cares about truth, I now need to incorporate this into my beliefs. But it's not *schmorally* wrong, and it's the schmoral norms that guide my behaviour! >> So, you've mentioned that some people endorse anti-realism about the external world in order to avoid skepticism. How are these two positions different? Realists about a particular domain generally say that the facts of that domain are mind-independent. But this raises the problem that we could, in principle, have exactly the same experiences, exactly the same evidence, etc., and yet be completely mistaken about the facts. For example, realists about the external world think that the world consists of various mind-independent objects that cause our perceptions. But this creates room for a skeptical challenge: our perceptions could have completely different causes, yet be phenomenally indistinguishable. Maybe I'm a brain in a vat, maybe I'm dreaming, maybe I'm being deceived by an evil demon. Traditionally, one motivation for antirealist views was to avoid this problem. Idealism/phenomenalism says that there is no external world, and objects are just constructions out of sense data. There is no "veil of perception" between ourselves and the world, so the skeptical threat dissolves. Well, that's the idea at least. (I find this move unconvincing as a response to skepticism.)

[@KaneB]

Just to say a bit more on antirealism/skepticism. Sometimes, the term "antirealism" covers skeptical views as well. Constructive empiricists are usually classified as antirealist about unobservables, in that they endorse skepticism about unobservables. But there's a more narrow use of the term "antirealism", which refers to views that say that the facts about some domain are, in some sense, determined by us. Now consider a realist who says that the facts of some domain are mind-independent. To this, a skeptic can raise an epistemological challenge: How can we have access to facts that are mind-independent? After all, we cannot escape our minds and compare our beliefs to a mind-independent reality. And now the antirealist alternative: there are facts about the domain, but these are, in some sense, mind-dependent. So there is less of a challenge explaining how we could access such facts.

[@darcyone6291]

@@KaneB Great! So, when you say that, if such norms are morally wrong but not schmorally wrong, you'd still determine your behaviour based on what is schmorally right or wrong, doesn't that mean that fundamentally you value schmorals more than morals? Again we seem to go back to personal values! What do you think? As for antirealism, I got the point, and it seems to me that it doesn't really avoid the skeptical challenge, for what we experience is compatible with the possibility that facts are mind-dependant in the same way it's compatible with realism. What I mean is, if the external world is actually mind-dependant like the antirealist says, how would our experience of it be different than if it was mind-independant? Does my point make sense?

[@KaneB]

@@darcyone6291 Yes, I agree. It's up to us whether we choose morality, schmorality, or something else. What's puzzling about realism is that they want to say that moral values are "out there", independent of us... well, fair enough. Let's assume the moral values are indeed "out there". In that case, if we care about truth, we'd better start believing in stance-independent moral facts! But those facts need not make any difference to anything else we care about. Or so it seems to me. In the end, the system of norms we use for resolving conflicts of interest, or for expressing praise and blame, etc., is still entirely up to us, not fixed by something "out there". >> What I mean is, if the external world is actually mind-dependant like the antirealist says, how would our experience of it be different than if it was mind-independant? To clarify, the point isn't that our experience would be different. The question is about whether we have access to the facts of some domain. If you think that a chair is an external, mind-independent object that causes particular sensory data, there's room for a skeptical attack, because the same sensory data might be caused by something else. If you think that a chair is just a construction out of sense data, now there's no gap between our experience and the world. So it's less obvious how a skeptic might challenge the existence of chairs.

[@darcyone6291]

@@KaneB Oh I see, and I do agree on both points! Thanks, Kane!

[@simonmiller5095]

What is the difference between this case and a similar case but instead about natural facts in the external world? In the same way you said the universe would just have a moral opinion which you disagree to, one might say 'the universe has an opinion about the way the world is, but I disagree'. And that person might ask 'why should I care about this? Why should I care about what the universe "thinks"?'. As I listen to you and other antirealists, I wonder, why is it required of moral facts that they are motivating? The natural facts do not require anyone to believe in them to be facts. And since the moral facts are constituted by natural facts (in my opinion), why should there be a difference?

[@simonmiller5095]

@@PomboCinza777 I'm not talking about laws. Obviously I don't claim that there are moral laws impossible to disobey and don't know anyone who does. I am simply talking about facts. Information about things in the world. To me, moral facts are not descriptions about what we are supposed to do. They are emotional and experiential implications from the natural facts in a situation. While you can't disobey gravity as a physical law, gravity as a natural fact and understanding it makes us understand the consequences of our behaviour were we to, for example, jump from a high building. Gravity doesn't restrict you from jumping in any way. In the same way, moral facts don't require you to do anything. Facts about the world, neutral in themselves, make us draw conclusions about what we have or don't have reason to do based on our understanding of the consequences. Morality is simply about understanding the natural facts and their consequences, not about what universe "thinks". Asking 'why should we follow this command' is to misunderstand what we are talking about. It is not a command, but a fact. To not act in accordance with what what you know is to act irrationally, and so, to me, your question is like asking why we should be rational.

[@simonmiller5095]

@@PomboCinza777 I was simply making a comment about that it sounded like Kane accepts the moral facts as existing, even if he doesn't agree. To me "the universe's opinion" sounds pretty much like a fact. And my thought was this: Sometimes facts are unintuitive to us, but shouldn't we still stick to them? I mean there are natural facts that aren't laws - does that make it ok for me to disagree with them? I certainly don't think so. They are still facts. And if I acknowledge that they exist but still think I can decide for myself then I am being irrational. This was my point. And what it does is showing that if the antirealist wants to deny moral facts they cannot say it is the universe's opinion (which they don't agree to), because the only thing a universe's opinion can resemble is a fact. The antirealist has to deny that they exist at all, or that they are only the realist's (who is proposing their existence) opinion. But you ask what makes something good more worthy of pursuing than any hypothetical imperative. But I don't quite understand what you mean by "any hypothetical imperative". Are you asking why something that brings about an improvement is preferable to something that doesn't? Or are you simply suggesting that an act that is motivated in that it brings about an improvement is a hypothetical imperative like any other?

[@simonmiller5095]

@@PomboCinza777 I don't agree that implications about behaviour are unique to moral facts. So if you meant that I'd have to argue for that (it was a bit hard for me to understand what you were asking), my answer is that I don't need to. All facts relevant to a situation imply what is rational to do in the situation. I think that reasons to act in specific ways are often objective. Our motivation to act, on the other hand, is always subjective. But that doesn't say anything about the objectivity of the facts about the world. The existence of objective facts and the subjectivity of our motivation to act are two different things and the latter doesn't contradict the former. It seems to me that you are confused about what, in morality, is claimed to be objective by the realist. It is not that when you are making a moral judgement you do so objectively. It is that there is an objective truth, which can be found, and which we can revise our own views against. That is to say, we can be wrong in our moral judgements and we can make bad decisions in relation to facts. We can do so unknowingly, or knowingly. That everyone should be convinced by the moral facts is not expected on moral realism. That something is a fact does not necessarily entail that everyone understands it or agrees about it. So your objection fails.

[@royalewithcheese17]

The "yes but why should I care?" strain of argument tends to turn into realists and anti-realists disagreeing about the importance of what sorts of "mistakes" are allowable. Realists typically try to catch the moral anti-realist by showing how ignoring moral facts is making a mistake that is analogous to irrationality or literally a mistake of irrationality. For example: Realist: "You agree that there are moral facts yes?" Anti-Realist: "Yes there are moral facts but why should I care?" Realist: "Well you are making a mistake here." Anti-Realist: "But what sort of mistake have I made? You can insist that I am making a mistake by ignoring what moral facts dictate but why should I care that I am making this mistake? I don't even see that sort of mistake as a problem? These moral facts give me no reasons for action because I personally don't care about them." Realist: "Well you are making a mistake but let me see if I can show you why its a mistake given that you do care about your own goals (i.e. being rational in the sense of coordinating your actions with your goals). *And then the realist goes on to give a series of arguments that range from what is constitutive of agency or arguments about the instrumental importance of moral rule following etc." Anti-Realist: "OK but even if you show that moral facts are important to follow because I have self-interested reasons for upholding the rules dictated by those moral facts, BUT those are internal reasons! Even if your argument works concerning my self-interested rationality, you haven't shown that I should follow moral facts for some greater MORAL reasons." Realist: "Well no because you insisted you simply don't care about not what I believe is a mistake of failing to coordinate your actions with moral facts (again the realist thinks this is a mistake analogous to the mistake of irrationality where you don't coordinate your actions with your goals). The mistake of failing to coordinate your actions with moral facts does not COMPEL you in any strong sense outside of the moral mistake you are making." Anti-Realist: "Well that doesn't work because I really can't see how your so-called "mistake" of not coordinating one's actions with moral facts has any importance. When I don't act rationally I realize its important because it harms my goals which I REALLY DO care about." Realist: "Well then this is just a case where our starting intuitions dictate our outcomes of opinion. I believe not coordinating actions with moral facts is an important mistake because I REALLY DO care about what moral facts dictate but you don't care. So this thought experiment of "what would even happen if moral facts were true" isn't useful because you kept your strongly held intuitions when you imagined this thought experiment. I can't show you why its a mistake because you're deeply committed to an anti-realist view where outside moral truths don't exist and so you can't imagine why moral truths would be compelling."

[@KaneB]

I'm struggling to see what point you're making. But if the crux of the matter is this part: >> *And then the realist goes on to give a series of arguments that range from what is constitutive of agency or arguments about the instrumental importance of moral rule following etc. Well, obviously I reject those arguments. (Or I might just grant that I'm not *rational*, per how you use the term "rational", but that's okay, because "schmationality" is enough.) So maybe that's where the action is, and that's why you think the thought experiment isn't useful.

[@royalewithcheese17]

@@KaneB Right, the anti-realist's move is to reject the importance of the "mistake" that the realist insists is important. But in the other direction the anti-realist doesn't have force against the realist either. The realist will simply say that it is a mistake to not coordinate with the objective moral facts. The anti-realist can ask why the realist cares but the realist will simply argue that objective moral facts give them reasons (externally) for action in a similar way that internal goals give rational beings (internal) reasons for action. My point is I don't think considering a moral-truth meter gets us very far since the results of the discussion simply return the prior intuitions that we came into the argument with.

[@royalewithcheese17]

My own view is that arguments for realism should start by discussing the intimidate value of experience (e.g. happiness) but unfortunately ethics insists on beginning these discussions on moral rules. I think realists have a much stronger case they start with the value of conscious experience rather than moral rules.

[@KaneB]

​@@royalewithcheese17 >> My point is I don't think considering a moral-truth meter gets us very far since the results of the discussion simply return the prior intuitions that we came into the argument with. It's not supposed to get us very far. It's just a way of presenting the questions: What difference would it make to you if there were moral facts? What difference would it make to you if the moral facts turned out to be completely different from what you expected? Etc. Enough people have complained about this thought experiment that I wonder if I should drop it, but I dunno, I'm amused by the idea of a moral property detector and that makes me want to continue talking about it.

[@royalewithcheese17]

@@KaneB Ah ok fair enough, it is a decent way of framing the question. But again, as a realist, if moral facts exists then I think they give us reasons to coordinate our actions with them. Why? Well moral facts give us reasons for action and since failing to coordinate with our reasons for action is a mistake! (Its a mistake in the same sort of way failing to coordinate my actions with my own goals is a mistake). Now if the particular moral truths turn out to be different than what I thought, then I guess I was wrong about the particulars of ethics but my meta-ethical view is still intact --> I should just go figure out more appropriate actions to take given the newly revealed moral facts. Like I said, I think anti-realists and realists could get farther discussing how to explain the value of mental states but I don't want to go a random tangent since the point of the video is focused on this question haha.

[@AnacreonSchoolbagsJr]

Alls I knows is whatever you're thinking ends you up grinning next to the horse-faced babyslayer lady. It must matter in some way that I can't understand, so I differ on aesthetic grounds.

[@jonathacirilo5745]

who?

[@jesselee34]

I'm not entirely sure if I'm realist or anti-realist because I haven't found a philosophical position with a name that matches my conception of metaethics exactly. Preference hedonism is the closest I've found probably. I believe it proports itself to be realist which is why I believe that's probably what I am. In my view moral values are just heuristics about what strategies tend to work vs ones that don't tend to work. The Queens Gambit is an objectively better open than the open which falls prey to the Fools Mate, but there are no "good" and "bad" opens in chess. There are just better and worse. I think that's all you need for objective moral values. Better and worse.

[@lanceindependent]

Preference hedonism sounds like a normative moral position, rather than a metaethical one. You could endorse a typical normative moral theory without endorsing realism or antirealism. Regarding moves in chess: whether a move is good or bad seem to me like it can only make sense relative to some standard, such as the goal of winning the game. If you were playing chess but did not want to win the game, then it may not be in your interests to make a move that would help you win. In that case, some moves woulds till be good relative to the goal of winning, but since that isn't your goal, why would you make those moves? You might instead deliberately make some other move that would cause you to lose. If you did this, you would not be getting any facts wrong. The kinds of facts you seem to be describing seem consistent with antirealism.

[@jacksaetveit]

There can be no moral fact independent of minds because morality relies exclusively on the conditions of minds. Including this principle with the inherent subjectivity of a mind's response to what could be considered a moral action and its effects complicates things further. We just don't know how two people will react towards the same stimulus. With the added understanding that the simplest, most benign action can have horrific consequences, that no person is an island and no action is isolated from the world, most consequentialist thought falls apart. Still, deontological moralities may resist the onslaught of these facts, yet their inflexibilities leave something to be desired in terms of a functioning ethics. I think we may be quite lost, so long as we continue searching for a unified, soluble ethics while we all remain immense, disparate, and opaque. The mission of solving ethics is as fruitless an endeavor as making any useful generalizations about massive, massively variable populations. One will either destroy any modicum of usefulness by requiring more variables than we can sense or do so by overgeneralizing ethical statements to the point of absurdity.

[@jacksaetveit]

@@i.101 I would rebut that pyramids do not, in fact, objectively exist because a pyramid only exists in the mind of a person. One could say that objects are arranged pyramid-wise, but these objects themselves do not comprise a pyramid objectively since no object among them or of their entirety is itself a pyramid. The part-whole relationship is completely absurd when one realizes that there are no objectively defined boundaries. The universe appears to us as a boundless thing which exists as a whole. There are no sectioned off areas saying, "This part is not a human." Our designations are merely an artifact of the mind making impressions on the world. They are a pattern sculpted for survival, not truth. In no world such as ours does a moral particle, or any particle for that matter, constitute something completely discrete and separated from everything else. If a moral particle objects to an action, is it no longer true that this action has been done? Does the face of reality shrink from the condemnation of the moral particle and revert to its inert state? No; the musings of a particle, a thing which is not separate from the world, do not manifestly impact the world in any way. Even if moral particles and people have reached a consensus on the goodness or badness of the action, what is the repercussion of this? It is as a person bemoans themselves in a state of rancor, casting ones own judgement from the highest heavens to their simultaneous residence in hell. Judgement is simply judgement. There is no truth behind it other than that of emotion, and it is for this that ethics will always depend on minds.

[@jacksaetveit]

@@i.101 If what I said has come off as solipsism, then I've explained what I mean very poorly. 'Pyramid' is an inane category which attempts to distinguish 'pyramids' from 'non-pyramids.' What I mean to get at is that what we classify as a 'pyramid' is completely arbitrary and changes nothing about reality but by our representation of it. Discriminating between things is not something of the world; it is something we impose on it. Likewise, a particle which 'detects' good and evil is merely reacting in a predictable but ultimately arbitrary way. Though we may pick out patterns of behavior (like we do in labelling things as pyramids), these patterns of behavior signify nothing further than patterns with no ultimate explanation or guiding reason. The question of 'Why?' knows no finite depths. It keeps going and going. While a moral particle may be able to say 'that' something is good or evil, it cannot sufficiently explain why, and thus it is no better than an arbitrary but consistent pattern, a pattern which means nothing in and of itself. Just as the existence of energy and spacetime depend on the existence of at least two things changing relative to each other, ethics depends on beings to which ethics applies. An ethical particle in a complete vacuum can point to no good and no evil. Ethics depends on subjects, if not to be judges, then to be judged, measured, or what have you. The subject is the basis of ethics, and I see no moral system which objects to this. Nothing can do wrong if it cannot do anything or has no will to do so; nothing can be wronged if it has no feeling. Even if you dispense with a victim, at the very least a perpetrator must commit a moral transgression.

[@yqafree]

What might be helpful for you is to define the first principles, at least as you understand them. What first basically qualifies all the rest. But with relativism or perhaps better called subjectivism, I think it's only able to suggest that every distinction is basically arbitrary in the deepest and furthest essences of whatever is being said to be distinguished. That to me kind of makes me feel that the merit of the argument is everything's baseless and the only sense of basis is that all thoughts are equally worthless other than that of sensual pleasure. (Chiron Last a channel on yt did a video on axiology that deals with a lot of this stuff btw.) So establishing the basis suggests that it's all based either on that everything's on a level playing field and in that there is no order, or there's a hierarchy of truths and at the top (or perhaps bottom depending on what is more important) there's the grandest of truth, a Truth of Totality or hermeneutic truth, theists call that God or the Monad or the like. So, either way, knowing that we're all mental creatures in a cosmos between entropy and cyclical order, there's a sense of natural patterns as well as sudden chaos. But for me there's no telling what's more ultimate between the two.. So that all said regardless if there indeed is a way to always say "no" is more unimportant than what's more encompassing. To reject the truth of a matter or the grandest truth, even if it/they indeed matter(s) that only can suggest difference from the knowledge or agreement with the truth but yet it cannot deny the actual truth itself, for that grand or universal truth still contains the lies and also the liars within it. I hope what I'm suggesting is coming through here. It's dependant on factors beyond the filters of will in my opinion anyway.. ... Relativism, or rather to say that our minds are seemingly subjective specimen, that is what humanity is succumbed to naturally.. But if there's any objectivity above our flawed notions, flawed senses and many forms of arbitrary references for messaging, I think that objectivity, whatever it decrees or defines all this as, must be far beyond our own limited scope.. For I see people scrambled all the time trying to defend relativism or subjectivism or another similar viewpoint, or even trying to prove such essences as the ultimate point of all things but I still must draw my attention to the essences of things not suggesting that to me.. What we can do or believe is besides the greatest of points to me and I have gotten to many senses that there's a greater plan in all of this, beyond whichever practices and conserved cultures there are, whether liberal, communistic or of some religious variety of traditions. So that as I can describe it seems that subjective morality or cultural relativism is rather a condition, a pool that humanity is currently swimming in, seems always to have swam in and might just as well always be swimming in.. So I can't help but feel that in the essence of that objective truth that everything particular is held in an ultimate placement of sorts, as the universal truth (that by my sense is fairly ineffable) and so I think much of our conduct and our views of how actions and morality are, or better said how they're supposed by many different arguments, to be evaluated, in the final analysis are all going to come up as fairly trivial.. Yet still this divine mover notion of ours that is so persistent seems to sense a deep involvement with every subtle nuance of all phenomena. I guess for me it's hard to describe because I'm a synthesis between thoughts out of the occult, religions, philosophies, humanism, naturalism and more.. It's far too much for me to add to this already lengthy comment but I feel that if I had the words to come easy; and they aren't, I'd probably be the antidote between both the absolutistic fundamentalists and someone like yourself Mr. Kane who's trying to qualify a variety of subjectivism, that I've only heard about from you, that being moral anti-realism.. But only an antidote for those who can willfully overcome the predilections often juxtaposed.. Keep up the thinking! - Your Quality Apologist

[@chickadeeintheblackberries]

I think this is more an argument that moral realists miss the point. It's an argument that we should focus on 'schmorality' because even if 'morality' is real, it's not important to us or it would only coincidentally be important (or appear important). If there happened to only be one moral fact and it entailed that morality was just painting as many objects red as possible, I doubt even dyed-in-the-wool moral realists would be out there painting objects red all day every day.

[@GoldenMan-Gaming]

No clue if you read comments a day late, but you seem to be presenting here what I just call the "Wrong Universe" objection. Imagine we get to the ends of the universe, the pinnacle of scientific and philosophical knowledge, and find out that what is objectively bad is everything we would normally consider good (life, happiness, and so on) and what is objectively good is everything we would normally consider bad (death, hatred, suffering, and so on). Also, while we're at it, we discover that maximizing act consequentialism is objectively true, so we discover that are morally required to do whatever would maximize the things which are objectively good (death, suffering, and so on). The intuition we get when we consider this possibility is that the universe can go screw itself: we morally should continue promoting life and happiness or what have you. This seems to suggest that what we should morally do is independent of what is objectively true or false. This problem isn't actually limited to realism. It's just the common "Serial Killer" objection to simple subjectivism. Some people only care (approve of in the moral way, or what have you) about things which seem horrific. Imagine that a serial killer only cares about killing people (they only approve of killing in the moral way, or what have you). The intuition we get when we get this possibility is that the serial killer can go screw themselves: they morally shouldn't kill people. This seems to suggest that what an individual should do is independent of what they care about. You can level this objection against literally any alleged truth-maker (or whatever makes non-cognitive moral judgment appropriate) for morality. If the truth maker says what we would normally think is the wrong thing, we get the intuition that the truth-maker can go screw itself. It's not actually an objection to any particular view, because it applies to literally every view. That being said, I want to say that I found your framing a bit annoying and patently question-begging. No realist will let you get away with saying that if something is objectively wrong, then "that's just like the universe telling you that it's wrong." This is just false. If the realist is correct (as you are presupposing that it is in your thought experiment) and if something is objectively wrong, then the universe is just "telling you that it's wrong" exactly as much as the objective fact that the Earth is not flat is just the universe "telling you that the world is not flat." Which is to say, not at all. What is objectively true is in no other context equivalent to the universe "just telling you things", and no realist should concede that this is how objectively moral truths would work, either. So, you end up undermining your own thought-experiment by framing a hypothetical where moral realism is true in a way which entails that moral realism isn't true.

[@KaneB]

>> The intuition we get when we get this possibility is that the serial killer can go screw themselves: they morally shouldn't kill people Yeah. I'm expressing my own values there. The serial killer has different values. I don't care about that, though. I don't want to live in a world in which people go around killing others. I don't see how this suggests anything like stance-independent norms. When I say the serial killer shouldn't kill people, I'm presupposing the values/norms that I happen to accept. >> That being said, I want to say that I found your framing a bit annoying and patently question-begging I don't care if you find it annoying. I'm not sure how it's question-begging since, as I said in the video, I wasn't presenting an argument. >> No realist will let you get away with saying that if something is objectively wrong, then "that's just like the universe telling you that it's wrong." This is just false. That's the importance that the realist's objective moral values have from my point of view. The fact that the objective moral values are such-and-such is as significant to me as the fact that, say, Frank's values are such-and-such. I see no reason to align my values with either.

[@GoldenMan-Gaming]

@@KaneB >> Yeah. I'm expressing my own values there. The serial killer has different values. I don't care about that, though. I don't want to live in a world in which people go around killing others. I don't see how this suggests anything like stance-independent norms. When I say the serial killer shouldn't kill people, I'm presupposing the values/norms that I happen to accept. Suppose you discover that you are in fact, a vicious racist. You secretly wish in your heart of hearts that all people of African descent would die, and care deeply about this (in whatever what you think is necessary to legitimize moral judgments). You've been in denial about it for years because you've been taught to hate vicious racists and you didn't want to believe that you were like them. Do you honestly have the intuition that your vicious racism would be a morally good thing? (As I said, I can make this move for literally any truth-maker. If you think this example is too simple, present me with the whole truth-maker you propose, and I will present you with the "Wrong Truth-Maker" objection. It's not particularly difficult to come up with these sorts of examples.) >> I don't care if you find it annoying. I'm not sure how it's question-begging since, as I said in the video, I wasn't presenting an argument. That's the importance that the realist's objective moral facts have from my point of view. The fact that the objective moral values are such-and-such is as significant to me as the fact that, say, Frank's values are such-and-such. I see no reason to align my values with either. Imagine if a flat-earther said that "I recognize that it is objectively true that the Earth is round, but I see no reason to align my beliefs with that fact any more than I do with Frank's belief that the Earth is round." If realism is true and if something is objectively wrong, then unless you align your belief with the fact that the thing is objectively wrong, you are exactly like the flat-earther. Yet, if realism is true and if you do align your belief with what is objectively true (i.e. you come to believe that it is objectively wrong), then when you make a sincere moral judgment about the thing then you are just expressing that belief (the claim that sincere moral judgments express beliefs about what is objectively true is a core part of realism as standardly defined). So, if moral realism is true and if you learn of that something is objectively wrong, then either you are like the flat-earther and refuse to believe that it is objectively wrong or your sincere moral judgment on the matter is that it's morally wrong. That's all that moral realism says. Maybe when you talk about "the importance" you mean the importance to your motivation or what you care about (meaning that when you say "that's not important from my point of view" you just mean "I'm not motivated by it or care about it"), but moral realists usually do not take themselves to be talking about your motivation (or their own). Serial killers could fail to be motivated by the moral truth, and irrational flat-earthers could fail to conform their beliefs to the facts, but that does not constitute any serious challenge to realism in either case. This is what I meant by "question-begging": there is no serious challenge to realism remaining if all that remains of your objection is this framing. A lot of your objection, once we realize that the Wrong Truth-Maker objection applies to every view, seems to ride on this framing you present, but the framing doesn't show us anything, it just presumes the very thing it is supposed to show. Maybe you didn't intend this framing to be part of your argument, but at multiple points you seemed to try to use it to support your point of view (not merely to illustrate your point of view). Just as I'm using the analogy with flat-earthers to support realism here, you seemed to be using the analogy with people "just telling you" something to support anti-realism. Many people in the comments seemed to similarly think that this is what you were doing, a number of them even seeming to find the analogy convincing.

[@KaneB]

@@GoldenMan-Gaming >> Do you honestly have the intuition that your vicious racism would be a morally good thing? When I think about counterfactual scenarios, I usually judge things in terms of the values that I actually endorse, so obviously I would say that racism would be wrong. If you're asking me to judge things in terms of the racist values that I counterfactually hold, then yes, racism would be morally good. >> If realism is true and if something is objectively wrong, then unless you align your belief with the fact that the thing is objectively wrong, you are exactly like the flat-earther In the scenario I'm imagining, I do align my belief with the moral facts. That is, I hold the belief "it is a stance-independent fact that abortion is morally wrong" or whatever. But so what? This doesn't make any difference to me. I'd just say that I don't care about the moral facts. This is what I'm exploring in the video. >> there is no serious challenge to realism... A lot of your objection... Maybe you didn't intend this framing to be part of your argument... As I stated explicitly in the video, and in the comment to which you are responding, I wasn't giving an argument against realism.

[@GoldenMan-Gaming]

​@@KaneB >> When I think about counterfactual scenarios, I usually judge things in terms of the values that I actually endorse, so obviously I would say that racism would be wrong. If you're asking me to judge things in terms of the racist values that I counterfactually hold, then yes, racism would be morally good. Right, if simple subjectivism is true and if what you care about in the moral way were being racist, then it would follow that what is true relative to your counterfactual self is that racism is morally good. This is just as counter-intuitive as the Wrong Universe situation with regard to moral realism. Of course, racism may not be morally good relative to your actual self even if simple subjectivism is true because, hopefully, you don't actually care in the moral way about being racist. Yet, the realist can make the exact same distinction between what would be true in the counterfactual versus what is actually true. Sure, what may be true in the counterfactual is that death and suffering are good, but that's not actually true because death and suffering are objectively bad. (Indeed, the moral realist can even say that we usually judge things in terms of what is actually morally good or bad, because, say, we usually judge things based on intuitions and intuitions track what is actually morally good or bad). >> In the scenario I'm imagining, I do align my belief with the moral facts. That is, I hold the belief "it is a stance-independent fact that abortion is morally wrong" or whatever. But so what? This doesn't make any difference to me. I'd just say that I don't care about the moral facts. This is what I'm exploring in the video. It does make a difference if you hold the belief in question, because if moral realism is true then your moral judgments just express that belief. That's all moral realists care about when they advance their position. They are not usually trying to convince you to act morally. That being said, are you sure you wouldn't care about the moral facts? Most people seem to care quite a bit. That's why they ask themselves questions like "Is abortion morally wrong?" or "Is eating meat morally permissible?" If all they cared about were the features which make things right or wrong, then they could ask those questions without bothering to worry about normative ethical claims (say, about what rights we have or what facts morality supervenes on). If, say, all that makes things right or wrong relative to me are my desires, then if I didn't care about morality at all I could just skip the moral theorizing altogether (even if simple subjectivism were true) and just think directly about what I desire instead. Most people aren't content to do this, because they do care about what is morally right or wrong, not just about their own desires or about happiness or whatever else morality might supervene on. (This is why when people ask questions like "Is abortion morally wrong?" they aren't happy with answers to the effect that "Well, abortion maximizes happiness" or what have you. They want to, in addition, know if maximizing happiness is always morally permissible.) >> As I stated explicitly in the video, and in the comment to which you are responding, I wasn't giving an argument against realism. I guess I misunderstood your intent. You seem pretty clearly to be giving arguments in the video, though. Take 19:36-20:01, for instance. You point out an implication of moral realism, and then point out that this implication is counter-intuitive. I don't understand how that is not an argument against moral realism. The following is clearly an argument against cultural relativism: If cultural relativism is true, then the best way to know what morality requires is to look at polls which tell us what our cultural generally approves of and disapproves of (in the moral way). Yet, that's ridiculous: you can't figure out what's morally right just by looking at polls. Thus, cultural relativism is wrong. Similarly, this is clearly an argument against simple subjectivism: If simple subjectivism were true, then it would be morally good for you to kill people in a scenario where you got bonked on the head and began to care about killing people (in the moral way). Yet, that's ridiculous: it would still be wrong for you to kill people in that scenario. Thus, simple subjectivism is wrong. Pointing out a counter-intuitive implication of a view is pretty much the paradigmatic way of arguing against it. (See also: the surgeon who chops up someone to save five people and the murderer at the door who asks where your friend is so that they can kill them.) Notice that simply claiming that you aren't making an argument wouldn't somehow prevent these from being arguments against cultural relativism or simple subjectivism (also notice that the objection to simple subjectivism above is just literally the Wrong Truth-Maker objection applied to it, and you seem to be making analogous wrong truth-maker claims with regard to moral realism, so it's especially hard to see how this isn't straightforwardly an objection to moral realism). Again, I'm not the only one who took the video to be making arguments in support of anti-realism here, and it's really hard to see how you aren't making arguments here. What else is pointing out a seemingly-absurd consequence of a view you disagree with, if not an argument against that view?

[@KaneB]

@@GoldenMan-Gaming >> if simple subjectivism is true and if what you care about in the moral way were being racist, then it would follow that what is true relative to your counterfactual self is that racism is morally good. This is just as counter-intuitive as the Wrong Universe situation with regard to moral realism. I don't find it counterintuitive at all. >> It does make a difference if you hold the belief in question, because if moral realism is true then your moral judgments just express that belief. No, it wouldn't make a difference. I would make moral judgments, but I wouldn't care about them. I would hold the belief e.g. "abortion is morally wrong", but this wouldn't change my attitude to abortion, and I would continue to argue in favour of abortion, to pass negative judgments about laws that restrict abortion, etc. >> That being said, are you sure you wouldn't care about the moral facts? Yes. >> You seem pretty clearly to be giving arguments in the video, though. Take 19:36-20:01, for instance. I begin the video by asking the question, "what difference would it make to me if moral realism were true?" This is not an argument against realism. Later, I point out that some of my thoughts suggest a possible argument against realism, but I also explicitly do not endorse any such argument.

[@qkienfpwern]

This thought experiment about a machine that detects moral properties seems kinda sketchy to me and I'm not really sure whether such a thing could exist. Do you talk about this thought in more detail elsewhere?

[@KaneB]

>> Do you talk about this thought in more detail elsewhere? No. I've brought it up occasionally, but the aim is just to spark discussion/reflection. There's not really a lot to say about it. >> I'm not really sure whether such a thing could exist It's worth noting that if you're a realist, moral property detectors already exist: us.

[@dominiks5068]

@@KaneB "It's worth noting that if you're a realist, moral property detectors already exist: us." But no credible realist would ever say that human beings are infallible in their moral judgements, whereas your thought experiment heavily relies on the idea that we could believe the judgement of the detector with 100% (!) certainty, not even a slimmer of doubt. As a non-naturalist I honestly cannot even conceive of a scenario where such a machine could possibly exist - how could a machine ever detect non-natural (!) moral properties with 100% accuracy? Note that this isn't a "this hypothetical is silly because it's not possible in the world we live in" argument (which would be a very weak argument), but rather a "this hypothetical is silly because it's basically inconceivable/incoherent" argument

[@KaneB]

@@dominiks5068 Sure, we're not perfect moral property detectors. But we are, according to the realist, moral property detectors. (Also, if you want a perfect moral property detector, there is a famous character in philosophy who will do the job for you: God. Of course, we might think that God is inconceivable/incoherent too.) The hypothetical isn't even particularly important to anything. It's just a fun way of presenting questions such as: What difference would it make to you (the antirealist) if there were moral facts? What difference would it make to you (the realist) if the moral facts were different to what you currently think?

[@RealAtheology]

Your view is similar to, yet interestingly different from, my own. I'm a tentative moral realist, but I believe that what "matters morally" doesn't really matter-at least not always. So not only does it not matter *to me,* but it doesn't matter, period, even though there are these moral facts. It may as a matter of fact be wrong for me to be rude; all the same it hardly matters that I refrain from rudeness. It's as if morality were a game like chess. It matters chess-wise that one refrain from moving a piece where one's opponent can easily capture it. But usually what matters chess-wise doesn't actually matter much. To the extent that it does matter, it only does so by reference to values independent of chess.

[@momentum9489]

@Real Atheology I think there's an equviocal usage of "matters" here. Reading of matter1: An act A/fact F matters to an agent S =df S has some pro-attitude towards A/F. Reading of matter2: An act A/fact F matters to an agent S =df S is (pro tanto) motivated to A/be motivated by F. Reading of matter3: An act A/fact F matters to an agent S =df S has some normative reason to do A/F implies S has some normative reason to do things. Reading of matter4: An act A/fact F matters to an agent S =df S has some normative reason to be motivated to A/be motivated by F. Reading of matter5: An act A/fact F matters to an agent S =df S has some normative reason to care about whether A-ing is right(or insert any normative predicte)/care whether F. There are other potential readings. For all we know, moral facts don't matter1 or matter2 (and perhaps they don't matter4 or matter5) but the realist maintains they matter3. It is not clear that moral realists are committed to saying moral facts matter in some other sense than matter3.

[@MyContext]

If morality comparable to [a game like chess. It matters chess-wise that one refrain from moving a piece where one's opponent can easily capture it], why are you tentatively a moral realist? I see morality as being an evaluation criteria wherein assault to well being is considered immoral and support of well being is considered moral with the various points of opposition being a product of inconsistent review and/or understanding.

[@Voivode.of.Hirsir]

The moral property detector showing you the moral facts isn't 'the universe passing judgement' about morality anymore than astronomical experiment is the universe passing judgement about the material composition of stars.

[@jeremyhansen9197]

I've been saying this for years and no one really has a good response to it I've found.

[@unknownknownsphilosophy7888]

Your phone camera looks better. The other camera make things look like it was filmed at a middle eastern news network (one with a really low budget) it has that sepia beheading video coloring.

[@BeingHuman-being]

All facts are conditioned upon a specific Framework and Model, e.g. scientific facts are conditioned [verified and justified] upon the scientific Frameworks, methods etc. which [besides mathematics] at present is the most credible framework of knowledge. Scientific facts are independent of individuals' opinion and belief but not independent of the human collective. As such moral facts [objective and matter] also need to be verified, justified and conditioned upon a credible Moral Framework where the facts concluded are independent of individuals opinion and beliefs. Question is how do we establish such a Moral Framework which is credible and is of near equivalent to the credibility of the scientific framework.

[@savyblizzard6481]

because it matters to us. just because you may not care about the speed of light doesn't change its nature. same principle for moral facts.

[@KaneB]

Who's "us"? It doesn't matter *to me*. I know that there are some other folks who share my attitude. Indeed, there's already a comment on this page from somebody who leans towards realism, but who also seems to be somewhat inclined to my attitude (Alex Parks). I already said in the video that this isn't, in itself, an argument against moral realism. It's possible to hold that there are moral facts, but that we just don't care about them. There would be something weird about this position... though it's hard to spell out exactly what's weird about it, since there are, after all, plenty of other facts we don't care about. I don't care about exactly how many hairs there are on my left arm, for instance.

[@lanceindependent]

I was going to ask "who is 'us'" but Kane already did so. I second Kane's remark: it doesn't matter to me.

[@savyblizzard6481]

@Kane B Why make a video about something that doesn't matter to you? Was it just something you felt might be of value for your audience?

[@KaneB]

@@savyblizzard6481 Metaethics matters to me.

[@savyblizzard6481]

I wouldn't doubt it, but metaethics is not exclusive to m realism. When we consider that you've made videos giving similar critiques to m realism in the past I don't see where the motivation comes from to make a video like this when there are plenty of other topics, even in metaethics, that I assume would be a better use of your time.

[@manorbros9590]

The moral property detector argument has always seemed odd to me. Like from what I know the Queerness argument is one of the more notable arguments in favor of Anti-Realism and it seems to be based on the idea that moral statements have a motivational force to them. But if you can nonchalantly say that if there was a hypothetical scenario where you knew for certain some moral fact and then you wouldn't care.. wouldn't that undermine the existence of this motivational force and therefor undermine the queerness argument?

[@KaneB]

That was probably how Mackie intended the queerness argument, but there are other versions of it, e.g. Jonas Olson appeals to irreducible normativity; Richard Joyce and Richard Garner appeal to categorical reasons. Many realists (I think the majority) deny that moral facts are in themselves motivating, so the motivational queerness argument wouldn't trouble them.

[@manorbros9590]

@@KaneB Why wouldn't irreducible normativity or categorical reasons not also supply motivation? If not motivation for action directly at least some sort of motivation for attitude. It seems nonsensical to me that you can call a particular action good and also say "You ought not do that action"

[@lanceindependent]

@@manorbros9590 Well, how would it supply motivation? How would that work? And is there any evidence that it does this? Do the moral facts have to cause the motivation, or does believing that something is a moral fact provide the motivation? If it's the latter, then it wouldn't be the categorical reasons themselves supplying motivation, even mistaken belief that one has a categorical reason to do something would suffice.

[@KaneB]

@@manorbros9590 >> Why wouldn't irreducible normativity or categorical reasons not also supply motivation? It's difficult for me to answer this, because I find these concepts incomprehensible. I can't make sense of what categorical reasons for action would be. So it's hard to explain why they couldn't provide motivation. I'm just going by what realists say: there are lots of realists who claim that there are categorical reasons for action, that do no in themselves motivate. >> It seems nonsensical to me that you can call a particular action good and also say "You ought not do that action" The scenario I'm thinking of is more: It turns out to be a fact that X is morally good, and you morally ought to do X. But so what? I don't like X and I don't want to live in a world in which people do X. So I'm going say that X is morally bad, and that you morally ought not to do X, where what I really mean is: X is schmorally bad, and you schmorally ought not to do X. (I'm using moral language to express schmoral values.)

[@suzettedarrow8739]

You're right. The "moral detector" argument is very strange. What if I said, regarding the Halting Problem from theoretical computer science, that I had a "Halting Detector" that would when waved near a computer program beep if the Halting Detector detecting halting? What if I had a "Riemann Detector" that, when waved near a Riemann zeta function, would beep if it detected zeros? What if I had a "Prime Number Detector" that, when waved near numbers, would beep if it detected indivisibility by numbers other than 1 and itself? What if I had a "Electability Detector" that, when waved near politicians, would beep if it detected electability? What if I had an "International Border Detector" that, when waved near land, would beep if it detected an international border? Those detectors are mind-boggling. The "morality detector" is just as mind-boggling.

[@justus4684]

17:47 Looking forward to a more detailed vid bout it

[@royalewithcheese17]

I think that thinking of a moral measuring tool that spits out "this action is bad" adds unhelpful details that make this conversation difficult. As a moral realist, I don't think simple statements rules like "stealing is bad" or "being friendly is good" are universal truths but are rather general approximations that are instrumentally useful (FYI for all intensive purposes here I'm a hedonist utilitarian). So if the moral-truth meter told me that a certain action was bad, say "humans owning dogs as pets is morally bad" I'd think "well damn that's surprising! Dogs must be way more unhappy than I thought! Or maybe their eating habits add suffering? Or maybe its something I didn't think of yet but since this meter is always right I must not be understanding some feature of our complicated world.". Also, such a tool would be mostly unhelpful because unless it tells us the explanation of why something is bad we wouldn't gain much information. I realize the real point of this argument is the "So what if there are moral truths? Why should I care?" element but I think that if you view this thought experiment from a realist-utilitarian standpoint its really not that weird to accept surprising results from the moral-truth tool.

[@KaneB]

>> I think that if you view this thought experiment from a realist-utilitarian standpoint its really not that weird to accept surprising results from the moral-truth tool What if it told you that utilitarianism was mistaken? For example, that the suffering of non-human animals just doesn't matter? Or that you morally ought to follow particular rules regardless of the consequences?

[@royalewithcheese17]

@@KaneB Well there is an extreme limit of what the meter could tell me past which I'd likely have to decide that ethics really doesn't exist but I don't think that's a problem for my view. To start with, if the meter told me animal welfare isn't important I could still be a utilitarian and just think the world is a lot weirder than I thought (e.g. maybe animals aren't conscious after all, maybe they don't suffer very much, maybe considerations of infinite ethics swamp all short term calculations, etc.). A revelation of that sort wouldn't necessarily undermine utilitarianism but rather undermine the confidence I have in particular beliefs about the natural world (e.g. that animals are conscious and suffer, that their welfare can be improved without negative tradeoffs, etc.). Now if the moral-truth meter told me that certain mental states simply don't have any moral value (e.g. that agony is not bad and bliss is not good), then I'd likely have to think that what I've been understanding as morality is metaphysically something else. But I'm not sure what this extreme case tells us other than if there was some credible oracle that answered the debate one way or another... well then one side would have to concede they were wrong.

[@KaneB]

@@royalewithcheese17 >> Now if the moral-truth meter told me that certain mental states simply don't have any moral value (e.g. that agony is not bad and bliss is not good) Yeah, that's what the question is about. We don't have to frame it in terms of a moral property detector. We can go with the oracle instead (though isn't an oracle a kind of moral property detector?). Anyway, it turns out that agony is not bad and bliss is not good. Maybe something like the moral system of Nietzsche or the Marquis de Sade is correct. Would that make a difference to your behaviour? Would you start encouraging people to act in line with such norms?

[@royalewithcheese17]

​@@KaneB Well agony and bliss are deal breakers but that's specific to my view because of the particulars of my meta-ethics (tldr I think moral value attaches at the most basic level to conscious mental states) and if the moral-truth meter told me morality wasn't about conscious experience but was about just actions or norms or human virtues or whatever then I'd either not believe it or decide that the moral-truth meter and I are just talking about different things. I believe other moral realists would simply bite the bullet and accept that they must now coordinate with the newly revealed moral facts.

[@dionysianapollomarx]

Been watching your videos too much that I'm now a moral anti-realist. Ethics matters. Politics as well. Morality? According to whom? Which community? Which person? Within which language? Priorities about moral concepts vary from culture to culture, from group to group, and from individual to individual within each culture. Been reading about the history of Japan, from pre-Meiji to Meiji to the interwar period, and I think that's just how cultural history moves forward, through moral disagreement. Still doesn't make morality in itself a "real" thing. Now I would like to even call it a never-ending rough draft. It's never final, for if it were final, no one would ever reasonably dispute that God is always good, or love of country is always good, but many still do for obvious commonsense reasons.

[@jesselee34]

Statements in ethics and politics are just as prescriptive as moral statements. Why do ethics and politics matter, but morality does not?

[@donjindra]

"I think that's just how cultural history moves forward, through moral disagreement. Still doesn't make morality in itself a 'real' thing. Now I would like to even call it a never-ending rough draft." The same could be said of physics. Does that mean there is no truth to the matter, that Newton's laws are arbitrary?

[@donjindra]

@@jesselee34 Exactly. Ethics and politics are exercises in morality.

[@uninspired3583]

@@donjindra newtons laws aren't arbitrary, but they aren't 100% correct either. They are a good mathematic approximation, but there are places where they break down. So his laws aren't the truth of the matter, they are a description of observation. Likewise, morality is a descriptive approximation, not direct access to the truth of a matter.

[@donjindra]

@@uninspired3583 I'm not sure what you're saying. We agree that laws of physics are models of the real world, and that they aren't 100% accurate. Of course models are not the real thing they model. We agree on that. So we agree models are not direct access to the things they model. But from these it does not follow there is no truth behind the models, either in physics or morality. Just to be clear, I do not claim morality is a holy book, or even that a good model of morality is found in any holy book. These are very flawed -- even superficial -- descriptions of moral behavior. But I can't ignore the fact that standards of behavior exist in every culture and in every group of humans. This cannot be coincidental. It has to be based on something real about us.

[@Bilboswaggins2077]

Ethics were better when it was more of a guide on how to life a happy, just life instead of never ending intuition pumps and word games

[@lanceindependent]

Yea, I agree. I really want ethics to go back to being practical. Which is one of the reasons I am so opposed to contemporary metaethics. It is an extravagant house of cards, and it's time we knock it over.

[@tjerox3533]

Something something... German Man with Big forehead... Something something... All things are nothing to me...

[@bo6686]

I might be able to endorse some kind of quasi devine command theory, in the snese that if God endorsed roughly the same principles I do I might think there was some value in having a common ruleset with an external referee. Alternatively if God had consistenly endorsed principles throughout history that I would agree with like Slavery is wrong, even when people at the time had not, and this seemed driven by a desire to maximize wellbeing and minimize harm I might accept that perhaps kinky sex is just harmful for reasons I don't understand not being omniscient. Many of the practical problems with utilitarianism could be solved if one had an omniscient arbiter.

[@chalaboy27]

I think that, if you accepted that moral realism is the correct position and agreed that the moral detector works (because you know good reasons to believe that), then maybe you, in the BDSM scenario, should compares your criteria to think that BDSM is morally okay and the criteria by which the moral instrument judged that BDSM is wrong. Comparing the criteria should make you reavaliate your beliefs: you will change your judgement about BDSM, or you will change your opinion about the moral detector's effectiveness. Yeah, my english sucks, lol.

[@chalaboy27]

I'm not sure you're right or wrong, just trying to think on possible objections. Liked the video, btw, really nice!

[@raythink]

How can there be moral facts? If cancer can be 100% prevented by some drugs, would making cancer causing food moral or immoral? How moral facts are produced when harms are conditional according to circumstances?

[@davsamp7301]

This does Not make Sense. If one would understand a Moral fact to be one, one would not be asking: so what? Clearly, If one speaks of Moral facts, but also the possibility of rationaly asking: so what?, one has Not understood what one is talking about. It is literally Like saying, that although Noone wants to be wrong about Something important, and there is a fact about it, by which one can be wrong or Not, one still can rationaly ask: so what?, If one is wrong. A god is indeed irrelevant. One only could come Up with the Idea, that one could Not Care about morality, If one thinks, that morality is of No interest to oneself and of Essential practical Nature. But that is obviously wrong and It is therefore clear to See, that anyone, who speaks of morality as being in the slightest Not of Essential interest to oneself, is completly wrong about morality and practice. It is a confusion to think, that facts about These Matters would be Something Independent being somewhere Else in their own, for this would probably explain, why one would be rightly desinterested in them. At Last, the divine command theorist is the one usurping the Moral language If they Claim it for themselves.

[@rogerlindsay8156]

The problem I have with several of the videos by this authority is that his arguments against moral realism relies upon a view of facts that seems to me to be hopelessly naive. OK - you can't have a moral fact detector, but then its equally true that you can't have ANY kind of fact or truth detector. Push philosophers for a definition of "fact" and you get something like "a claim that is not under dispute for the purposes of current debate" or "a fact is what a statement when true states". Absolute facticity is an illusion - the truth of any proposition is challengeable and reviseable, so the idea of an automatic fact detector is an absurdity not just in ethics but in science as well. The reason that the linguistic device that we call "facts" exists is so that debates can be bounded and disputes can be settled. If this device is abandoned than, as we increasingly see on the internet, everybody fragments off in the direction of epistemelogical anarchy. And so it is with ethics - if we choose to live in a world without any shared moral framework, reality will do nothing to stop us, but no laws can be defended as just and it is doubtful if any kind of worthwhile community can exist. "Moral facts", like non-moral facts aren't written into the fabric of the universe, they are a human creation that makes social life and shared scientific endeavour possible. Challenging the idea of shared moral values isn't serious philosophy its just spoilt brattism.

[@KaneB]

This isn't an argument against moral realism, *as I said explicitly in the video*. The moral property detector is just a fun way of presenting the questions: What difference would it make to you (the antirealist) if there were moral facts? What difference would it make to you (the realist) if the moral facts were different to what you currently think? >> if we choose to live in a world without any shared moral framework What does this have to do with anything? Antirealism is the view that there are no stance-independent moral facts. This says nothing about whether people do or should have shared moral frameworks. (My own view is that people do have shared moral frameworks, and that this is very useful. I want others to share my moral views.) >> Challenging the idea of shared moral values isn't serious philosophy its just spoilt brattism. I don't challenge the idea of shared moral values. It seems like the real problem you have with my videos is that you aren't listening to what I'm saying.

[@donjindra]

"'Moral facts', like non-moral facts aren't written into the fabric of the universe, they are a human creation " Right there you give the store away. If morals are a human creation rather than a human condition, they are arbitrary -- an artifice of culture/history. They are not real. I would have to call myself a moral realist because I believe morality is part of our biology. We are social creatures. The further we deviate from an ideal human morality, the worse the social and personal outcome. That deviation would show up as unhappiness or mental illness personally, or social strife -- including war -- culturally. I think we are seeing that in our own culture today.

[@donjindra]

@@i.101 Yes, biology is the basis of morality. But does that mean I'm a moral "anti-realist" even though I believe human nature is real and therefore morality is real? Not _really_ . My objection to terms like "moral realism" and "moral anti-realism" is that the terms are trivia at best. They seem to be rooted in Plato's forms. They have no applicable meaning. They confuse the meaning of "real." So they tend to confuse discussions about morality.

[@donjindra]

@@i.101 I'm not confused. I understand the difference between objective and subjective very well. So why don't you tell me where you think I got it wrong and how it applies to what I've written so far.

[@donjindra]

@@i.101 I know exactly what real means. Yes, morality is real. It's built into our biology. Are you going to claim biology isn't real? The position you're taking seems to be exactly what I warned of above.

[@jacobleith6369]

Why can't a flatearther make this move in response to facts about the shape of the earth? A '1+1=3' proponent do this with mathematical proofs? Or an antivaxxer do this with scientific observations? If one is only motivated by their stance, what stance-independent reasons could you ever present to a flatearther, the '1+1=3' proponent and the antivaxxer? There may well be some relevant difference I'm missing here, but I'm struggling to see the force of this argument against moral realism. At what point does the moral realist, the scientist, the globe-earther, the mathematician just say, 'alright you're irrational, I'm going to take my leave'?

[@KaneB]

(1) There are no stance-independent reasons for anything in my view, so I would not try to present them. I can present arguments that flat Earth theory is false, but maybe the flat Earther doesn't care about truth or falsehood. (2) I didn't give an argument against moral realism. I explicitly said this in the video. It was an exploration of ideas, not an argument.

[@jacobleith6369]

@@KaneB Firstly, thank you for getting back to me. Your channel is awesome; I like your honesty, your sincerity, and your ability to articulate your interlocutor's position eloquently. 1) Just to be clear, are you saying the flat-earther can pull this move when faced with facts about the shape of the earth? If so, should the moral realist really be concerned with stance-dependent inclinations of anti-realists? 2) Yeah, I should have just scrapped the second paragraph, it was tangential to my question. 'Argument' was the wrong word; 'observation' or 'dialectical move' would have been more apt.

[@KaneB]

@@jacobleith6369 Thanks for the kind words! The moral realist might be concerned because people engaging in inquiry usually have shared goals. For example, we probably both have the goal of maximizing true beliefs and minimizing false ones. Or we might both have the goal of holding beliefs that exhibit explanatory virtues such as simplicity, coherence, explanatory scope, etc. If you aim to hold true beliefs, and I provide an argument that moral realism is false, then you have something to be concerned about. But at the end of the day, maybe you just don't care about holding true beliefs. Maybe your goal is to hold whatever beliefs happen to provide the most comfort. In this case, truth would probably still be instrumentally valuable to you in some domains, since true beliefs often enable us to achieve various practical goals. But I suspect this isn't the case in metaethics. I don't see how it could make any practical difference whether or not a person thinks of their moral views as stance-independently correct. So if all you care about is holding beliefs that make you feel comfortable, and moral realism makes you feel comfortable... well, then I wouldn't have anything to say to you.

[@jacobleith6369]

@@KaneB I can certainly agree with you that we should aim to maximise our true beliefs and minimise our false beliefs, and this would involve some sort of introspection; evaluating whether the beliefs you hold are motivated by facts about the world or if your beliefs are derived from desires. I would also posit, which I believe is what you were alluding to in your post, if the moral realist, upon introspection, comes to discover they are being motivated by their own desires - rather than any factual state of the world, that is to say stance-independent facts about the world - they indeed have some work to do in their epistemological framework. More specifically in your hypothetical dialogue though, I think the nature of the objection the anti-realist is posing is what the flat-earther analogy is most illustrative of. If the objection is one that appeals to stance-dependent reasons, or stance-dependent motivations, I feel like we would, in the same way one would eventually disengage from the discussion with a '1+1=3' proponent after tiring of hearing stance-dependent motivations for rejecting '1+1=2', view that as a non-sequitur. If what the moral realist means by moral facts are stance-independent facts about the world, they would hardly be concerned with an objection that relies on stance-dependent reasoning. They would surely reply that it doesn't matter what stance-dependent motivation one has for not acting in a certain manner, the reason for acting in a certain manner is stance-independent; the ethical naturalist would appeal to empirical facts about the world, and the ethical non-naturalist would most likely provide rational arguments for why it is true something is moral (there are a few different ways for the non-naturalist to go to be fair). If the anti-realist persists with the objection that what really matters is someone's disposition towards these moral facts, then I feel it is reasonable to conclude they're being irrational. That is to say, I don't think the moral realist would conclude 'they've got their opinions, and I've got mine'. Perhaps irrational is uncharitable, but after all, we are assuming both have the goal of discovering what is true and false objectively about the world. I don't know, maybe I'm rambling haha. I feel like there is a coherent point there but if it was just a load of gibberish feel free to ignore it.

[@KaneB]

@@jacobleith6369 >> If what the moral realist means by moral facts are stance-independent facts about the world, they would hardly be concerned with an objection that relies on stance-dependent reasoning Suppose you think it's an stance-independent fact that you rationally ought to maximize true beliefs and minimize false ones. Then if I present an argument to the effect that moral realism is false, you have a reason to give up moral realism, or at least, you have a reason to consider the argument. It doesn't matter what my view of epistemic norms is.

[@pitdog75]

It came out OK.

[@AlonzoFyfe]

This simply seems to me to be a perverse conception of moral realism. Consider your example of perverse sexual preferences. If your moral property detector were to detect wrongness in a type of sexual activity where everybody is having fun and nobody is harmed - either as a result of engaging in the behavior or as a result of the behavior being engaged in - then it is broken. A functioning moral properties detector would not detect wrongness in such an act. Your moral properties detector will only detect wrongness where reasons exist to engage in the practice. That is what moral properties are . . . . reasons to act. So, if you are detecting wrongness without detecting reasons. To detect that an act is wrong is to detect that there are reasons to condemn that activity. You are postulating the existence of a reasons-detector and then further stipulating that it is detecting reasons to promote or discourage an action where, at the same time, you stipulate that no such reasons exist. Note that I use the phrase "there is a reason to condemn the activity" not "I have a reason to condemn the activity". It may be the case that there are reasons to condemn an activity when I do not have reasons to condemn the activity. This is the case when other people (beings) have reasons to condemn the activity. In which case, to disregard the readings on the realism meter because "I do not care" is to disregard the reasons other people have to condemn the activity because "I do not care about them." If harm to beings other than oneself is morally relevant, then there can be reasons to condemn an activity where "I have a reason to condemn the activity" or "I care" is false. Just for reference, I am a value realist. I hold that value properties are dyadic properties that relate states of affairs and desires. In logical terms, it can be written, VALUE(object of evaluation, relevant desires). These properties exist. They are real. Moral properties are a subset of value properties that can be expressed MORAL VALUE(object of evaluation, those desires that people generally have reasons to promote universally using praise and condemnation). If your view of moral realism is moral properties as a monadic property - then I agree with you, we should reject moral realism. But it isn't, so we don't. Your test for realism is whether the object of evaluation is stance independent. So, I must ask, are you a realists about false beliefs? False beliefs are not mind-independent facts. Given you definition of realism, one cannot be a realist about false beliefs. I think that false beliefs are real. The thing believed certainly is not real, but one must distinguish between realism about the thing believed and realism about the belief itself. In the same way that I am a realist about false beliefs, I am a realist about good and bad desires. Good and bad desires are desires that tend to motivate actions that fulfill or thwart other desires.

[@zack49]

God been real quiet since this dropped

[@yourfutureself3392]

If Divine Command Theory were true, there would be egoistic reasons to follow God's commands. He's all-loving and omniscient. This means that He would love every individual to the highest possible degree. He also know what's best for the most amount of people. This means that His commands have our best interest at heart and take into account every single fact about existence. Sounds pretty reasonable to listen, even if there aren't direct punishments or rewards.

[@suzettedarrow8739]

The same can be said of anti-realism, right? Why care about anti-realist norms?

[@KaneB]

Yes. You may have no reason at all to care about what my values are (putting aside practical issues about what to do when our values conflict).

[@suzettedarrow8739]

@@KaneB if anti-realism is true, what *should* we do when we disagree?

[@KaneB]

@@suzettedarrow8739 There isn't any single response that I endorse to disagreement. For some disagreements, I'm happy to live and let live. Where it's important to change people's minds, there are various ways an antirealist can argue: for example, I might try to show that my opponent's views are inconsistent, or I might try to show that my opponent's views entails consequences that they would consider absurd. Sometimes, I'd prefer not to bother with argument at all, and just use brute force: if a person is a serial killer, just lock them up. Etc.

[@suzettedarrow8739]

@@KaneB When it comes to the disagreement you have with moral realists over an esoteric metaphysical issue, why, then, do you argue about it & try to persuade them that their beliefs are false? Since there isn’t any single response that you endorse regarding disagreement, why not respond to moral realists differently than you do? Why not, for example, “live and let live”?

[@KaneB]

@@suzettedarrow8739 Because I enjoy talking about metaethics. I do live and let live. I'm not interested in changing anybody's mind about metaethics. If somebody says that slavery is morally acceptable, that might be a problem to me, because I don't want to live in a world in which people are enslaved. So I think it's worth at least trying to change their mind. If somebody says that there are stance-independent moral facts, that's not a problem to me at all.

[@mrburns5245]

“I want to live in a society where we encourage perverted sexual behaviour, I love all that stuff” best philosophy channel ever lol

[@mohammadsultan935]

This position doesn't make much sense to me. If you found out that moral realism is true and propositions like 'Perverted sex ought not be done' is true, then that entails that you believe in it. If you didn't, then you clearly don't accept those propositions as true and therefore don't accept moral realism. If you did belief that those propositions are true, then you wouldn't 'not care', presumably your actions would line up in accordance with your beliefs.

[@Human_Evolution-]

You need some Sun.

[@KaneB]

It's winter in the UK, so that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

[@Human_Evolution-]

@@KaneB It is objectively bad.