Facts Are Morally Neutral

[Ren]

No. Some facts are not morally neutral. Some facts are, themselves, morals.

That was quick and sharp

I agree with you. But could you give a concrete example of a fact which is itself moral? It would be interesting to see what you/we come up with.

 

[wolly.green]

That was quick and sharp

I agree with you. But could you give a concrete example of a fact which is itself moral? It would be interesting to see what you/we come up with.

Ok, but I should be clear about a few things. First, I don't agree with Mills, Plato's or Aristotles moral philosophies. As you may already know, I agree with Popper: Morals are a set of rules about how one aught to act. Second, I also agree with Poppers epistomology. But in particular, that theories and explanations can be regarded as 'evidence' for other theories and explanations. As 'facts' in their own right.

Let's start with a basic example. Suppose you live in a small trading village that travellers pass through regularly. One fact about these villages is that the locals are often vulnerable to contracting diseases. What should they do if they wish to avoid catching diseases? Well they aught to be hygienic! Without hygiene, diseases can spread very quickly. What about proximity? Is hugging foreigners ok? If you want to reduce your risks, you aught to avoid intimate contact as much as possible; unless, of course, you have a good medical system.

Every 'aught' in the last paragraph is a moral. Each one of them is a prescription about how one aught to act if he wants to reduce the chance of contracting diseases. Further, each is either true or false. This is the sense in which morals are facts. You might personally regard them as "theories" and not facts, but from the perspective of Poppers epistemology, this distinction is merely a convenience.

 

[charlatan]

As a comment: I think in one interpretation, "oughts" are pretty much just the same as whatever is consistent with the dictates of reasoning, so there's nothing but objectivity about "oughts" at all.

However, when it comes to common issues like whether killing innocents is something one ought not to do, many would say well, that depends on one's wishes really. This, I suspect, is why many prefer to separate morals from facts -- they may say it's a fact that so and so person opines against the slaughter of innocents, but it's not a fact whether it ought not to be done.

That I think is the challenge for those of us who do have sympathies with the objective morals/morals are facts direction -- that is, yes they're trivially facts if we simply say "you ought to X if reason dictates" but the question is DOES reason dictate, in cases we all probably hold emotionally important at least.

 

[wolly.green]

As a comment: I think in one interpretation, "oughts" are pretty much just the same as whatever is consistent with the dictates of reasoning, so there's nothing but objectivity about "oughts" at all.

However, when it comes to common issues like whether killing innocents is something one ought not to do, many would say well, that depends on one's wishes really. This, I suspect, is why many prefer to separate morals from facts -- they may say it's a fact that so and so person opines against the slaughter of innocents, but it's not a fact whether it ought not to be done.

That I think is the challenge for those of us who do have sympathies with the objective morals/morals are facts direction -- that is, yes they're trivially facts if we simply say "you ought to X if reason dictates" but the question is DOES reason dictate, in cases we all probably hold emotionally important at least.

Yes I do believe that reason dictates morals. Let me elaborate a bit on what I said above. Morals are not just the rules about how one aught to act, they are also the explanations about why one aught act in a particular way.

In the example above, I said that one aught to be hygienic since it reduces the chances of spreading disease. The 'moral' in this case is not just the 'aught', but also the reason why. Together they make a moral rule. In this way, reason is very much a part of ones moral code. 'Feelings' and 'emotions' are irrelevant here.

 

[charlatan]

'Feelings' and 'emotions' are irrelevant here.

In your example, yes they are, because you're simply saying if you wish to avoid disease, then you ought to maintain good hygiene.

However, as you yourself phrased, there's a wish involved: there's no inherent reason to avoid disease given independent of the wish. So in this example, the "if, then" statement is itself a fact, but the conditions of the "if" could easily be said to be satisfied or not based on someone's emotion.

 

[wolly.green]

However, as you yourself phrased, there's a wish involved: there's no inherent reason to avoid disease given independent of the wish. So in this example, the "if, then" statement is itself a fact, but the conditions of the "if" could easily be said to be satisfied or not based on someone's emotion.

Ah not so fast. Yes the wish might be an emotional one, but there is no reason to think that the explanation itself is not objective.

 

[charlatan]

Ah not so fast. Yes the wish might be an emotional one, but there is no reason to think that the explanation itself is not objective.

As I said, your explanation is objective/fact, because it expressly said IF someone has a wish to avoid disease, to fulfill that wish, the someone ought to maintain hygiene.

The challenge, as I said, is how to ground statements like "you ought not to kill innocents" -- because in such cases, the wish to not kill them cannot be assumed to be true in all people.

 

[wolly.green]

The challenge, as I said, is how to ground statements like "you ought not to kill innocents" -- because in such cases, the wish to not kill them cannot be assumed to be true in all people.

You ground it in reason.. You can always ask "why is it that we aught not kill innocents?". This question will always have an answer. And the ones that you conjecture can always be criticized and rejected just like other 'conjectures' in philosophy. Remember when David Deutsch said "good theories are difficult to vary"? Well, this applies also moral theories. A good moral explanation will answer those questions that you have posed, otherwise it is not good explanation, and thus can be rejected.

 

[charlatan]

"why is it that we aught not kill innocents?". This question will always have an answer.

Well it would be great if there is, but basically the way I see it, reason could just as well falsify the conjecture that we ought not to kill innocents (and I don't just mean in cases like war, I mean, even in context of a serial killer who does it for pleasure)

Reason guarantees there's an objective fact of the matter (and that we try to get to it by criticism, like you say), but that fact might not be the one that one hoped is true

I myself DO tend towards there being a grounding for our common moral ideals, but just saying -- the Popper theory a priori seems to me to only guarantee that there is an objective truth, but in this case doesn't tell us which it is.

 

[wolly.green]

Well it would be great if there is, but basically the way I see it, reason could just as well falsify the conjecture that we ought not to kill innocents (and I don't just mean in cases like war, I mean, even in context of a serial killer who does it for pleasure)

Why should this be a problem? We can never be certain that our best explanations won't be refuted at some point in the future...

Reason guarantees there's an objective fact of the matter (and that we try to get to it by criticism, like you say), but that fact might not be the one that one hoped is true

Again, why should this be a problem? The structure of reality is never as we expect it to be? The is true of moral explanations as much as it is of scientific explanations.

I myself DO tend towards there being a grounding for our common moral ideals, but just saying -- the Popper theory a priori seems to me to only guarantee that there is an objective truth, but in this case doesn't tell us which it is.

Poppers theory is not a-priori. In fact, he never makes the distinction between a-priori and a-postiori.

 

[charlatan]

Why should this be a problem? We can never be certain that our best explanations won't be refuted at some point in the future...

Well to that I say -- who said it's a problem for Popper's theory?

The only thing I hoped to convey is that grounding many of the moral statements we'd all like to remains basically as hard a problem as ever, because in those cases, our precise hope is to make claims that don't depend on individual personal wishes being one way or another.

And if we were to be honest, people like the OP actually are thinking of those types of statements when they say facts are morally neutral.

I agree that ultimate correctness dictates that *some* facts are not morally neutral (and said so pretty early on myself in the thread) -- but the question is whether the most nontrivial examples of moral claims are factual ones.

 

[wolly.green]

Well to that I say -- who said it's a problem for Popper's theory?

The only thing I hoped to convey is that grounding many of the moral statements we'd all like to remains basically as hard a problem as ever, because in those cases, our precise hope is to make claims that don't depend on individual personal wishes being one way or another.

Why should we want to ground morals in "statements we'd all like to remain"? Surely the truth matters more than what we "hope" to be the case? This is how science and the rest of philosophy works? Why should moral philosophy be any different? In my opinion, it isn't.

And if we were to be honest, people like the OP actually are thinking of those types of statements when they say facts are morally neutral.

Ok. In this case I would say that the OP's question does not make sense. The point of moral philosophy is to discover moral truths, not moral wishes. It should not be surprising to us if one day we discover that we were completely and utterly wrong about what we thought was morally right. Remember that not too long ago, British Colonialists had no problem with slavery, torture, animal cruelty and female subjugation. Now we see all of them as morally repugnant. You could argue that these examples are subjective and depend on individual preference. But this leads to a kind of relativism which, as you might know, is riddled with all sorts of problems (I can spell them out for you if you like). You could also argue that it is we that is wrong, and they -- the British colonialists -- that is right. But this should not be an issue either. Somebody here is wrong, we know this with complete certainty. And there will be an explanation about why.

 

[charlatan]

Why should we want to ground morals in "statements we'd all like to remain"? Surely the truth matters more than what we "hope" to be the case?

What I am suggesting is basically the reverse of this: *not* grounding moral truths in statements we'd like to be true, but hopefully finding a way to ground statements we'd like to be true in truth, rather than leaving them as opinion.

I don't really blame one for hoping for this -- it's no different than hoping there's a theorem in mathematics which resolves a certain conjecture. There's nothing anti-truth about that, as of course we'd accept it if the hope were dashed.

But this leads to a kind of relativism

I confess that I never understood relativism, pragmatism, or any such thing at all. Even if it were fact that there's nothing more to morals than emotional preferences, that would still be a fact in and of itself.

In general, it seems whether or not we are getting closer to truth, our statements seem to at least be TRYING to say true things. I mean, even if we say ultimately people just do what is useful to them, that still seems to be a statement about how things are and aren't.


The strongest argument I can think of whatsoever for any sort of pragmatism is the whole business about confirmation holism, ie you don't have to accept a falsification of any given part of your theory so easily, as you can always try to dodge it by shifting the rest of it (like what you consider an acceptable falsification/test). Some would say this sort of lets you choose your worldview, whatever works etc.

That's still not good enough for me, because it seems to me all it shows is that we can refine our theories when they show errors without tossing them entirely out. We're still making claims at the end of the day, however hard it is to rule out enough options.

I think between some kind of antirealism and a sort of radical skepticism about knowledge, I'd tend to the latter before the former (the difference being one simply faults our knowledge, the other simply says there is no fact of the matter.) because we seem to at least be trying to get at truth, and if we're not, it's hard to imagine what we're actually doing. Even if we can falsify only a theory as a whole, that still speaks to there being the possibility of contradiction, hence there's SOME progress of knowledge, at least noting that contradiction.

Even if we're never sure there isn't a contradiction in one of our theories, I think the possibility of contradiction even if only as a whole is very powerful to suggest that we are making at least negative progress (ruling things out).

The only thing someone could say to that is basically say it seemed to you that you found a contradiction, but really your conscious states deceived you/you're hallucinating etc. Fine, but that leads to radical skepticism, not pragmatism.

 

[Lurk]