D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[Alzrius]

Time out from the metaphysical conversation... Tiamat = Takhisis... Multiverse indeed!!!!! WOOT!!!!!!!

I'm a little behind on my 5E-isms; was there something that explicitly said that Tiamat and Takhisis are the same entity?

 

[pemerton]

Remalthalis mentions the Eye and Hand of Vecna as an example of D&D's story. Thing is, in thirty years of gaming, under dozens of DM's, and as a DM for years as well, I've never once seen either used in the game. Not once. I've never even heard gaming stories, outside of jokes about the Head of Vecna, of anyone using either. Heck, there's a couple of centuries worth of DMing experience between the people in this thread alone - have any of you used or seen used, either the Hand or Eye of Vecna? Has anyone seen it used more than once?

In my current 4e campaign the Eye of Vecna has been fairly central - one of the PCs has it implanted in his imp familiar, and the way that unfolded prompted quite a bit of debate on this forum at the time (from memory, that was on that other alignment thread).

 

[pemerton]

At least in the Real World, it's functionally impossible to tell objectively if they are flawed or not. There's no definition of "right" and "wrong" that isn't culturally, personally, and temporally bound, making those principles open to interpretation and open to debate (because one person's position to determine right and wrong isn't in any way privileged over another person's) and open to change (what is wrong in 1345 AD is different than what is wrong in 2014 AD).

As I've already mentioned upthread, this claim is hugely contentious among contemorary analytic moral philosopher, and is denied by the mainstream.

I don't need to pick one of those up to disagree with you - citing outside works without quoting how they supposedly support your argument is just an appeal to authority.

Seriously? I told you what the mainstream view is, and told you which journals to review to confirm my claim about what the mainstream thinks, and now you're asking me to cite articles? OK, here's a cite: look at any article in a recent number of Ethics or Phil & Public Affairs and you'll notice that it probably takes for granted an objective conception of morality, most likely either a Kantian apprach, or some version of an interest theory that also accepts a theory of rights.

And of course I'm appealing to authority - that's how you prove what the mainstream outlook is! Just as, say, in the physical sciences you proved what the mainstream view is by pointing to Nature, or in medicine your prove what the mainstream view is by pointing to The Lancet.

If you aren't familiar with the journals Ethics and PPA, then I can tell you that you are not in a position to know what the mainstream view is of contemporary English-speaking moral philosophers.

None of that is evidence of the objectivity of moral truth, per se.

I didn't say that it was. I said that these are the sorts of techniques that moral objectivists point to for establishing moral truths. You don't prove that morality is not objective just by denying that such methods are available. You have to actually produce arguments.

Your post is making me wonder whether you are actually familiar with much of this literature.

Those who hold that an objective moral truth exist are the ones who need to support that stance, since they're making a positive affirmation. The default presumption is that something isn't true until you prove that it is, rather than being that something is true until you prove that is not.

Seriously? You're pettifogging about burdens of proof in the context of an intellectual discussion, with very well known moves and counter-moves, that has been going on for over 2000 years?

OK, here's some evidence that moral truth is, prima facie, no different from any other sort of truth:

* The truth-conditional operater and can be used to conjoin moral and non-moral sentences to produce sentences that are, overall, truth-apt (eg "Germany was defeated in the Second World War, and that was a good outcome");

* The same predicate - is true - can be used to affirm moral judgements as can be used to affirm judgements of objective fact (eg if you make the above assertion, I can reply, without any error of usage, "True, it was a good thing that Germany did not win the Second World War");

* Falsehood predication can be used as a form of denial of moral utterance, even against a sincere speaker (eg if a butcher says to me "There is nothing morally objectional about eating meat" and I am a vegetarian, I do not make any error of usage if I reply "What you just said is false", even if the butcher was sincere and I know that this was the case - and note the contrast, here, with first person pronouns which are subjective - if the butcher sincerely says "I have no problems with eating meat", and I reply "That's false - I do have problems with eating meat", then all I have managed to do is to show that I don't understand the correct usage of first person pronouns);

* Evauative sentences can appear within belief and knowledge contexts with no apparent grammatical or semantic or logical difference from ordinary descriptive sentences (eg it is just as acceptable, from the point of view of usage, to say that "I know that killing people is, in general wrong" or "I believe that eating meat is wrong" as it is to say that "I know that the earth orbits the sun" or "I believe that birds are descended from dinosaurs").​

Other evidence can be given, but the above (and variants on it) is the standard stuff. These are the facts about usage that subjectivists and relativists have to somehow explain away or otherwise deal with. If you read authors like Russell and (especially) Blackburn you'll notice that these are the sorts of matters they try and deal with to make their theories plausible.

This example is based on the presumption that saying "because I wanted to" is not justification unto itself, which clearly isn't the case.

<snip>

Saying that the action requires justification for why it was undertaken at all is a faulty premise

This is confused. You start by denying that "because I wanted to" fails as a justification, and then go on to deny something quite different, namely that justification is needed. Which are you meaning to deny?

It also misses my point.

I gave a simple example - of the sort one might use in an introductory lecture - to show why a subjective conception of morality is not an easy thing to get off the ground. The example trades not on any notion that justifications are necessary, but rather that they are possible. For instance, suppose that person A kills someone - person B can ask for a justification of that action. If A says "Because I wanted to kill that person" that is not, in general, a sound justification. As a general rule, we are not justified in killing people just because we want to.

But if A says to B "I killed the person because s/he was attacking me, and hence acted in permissible self-defence" A has given at least a candidate reason. But if morality is no different from desire - if "Because it was morally permissible" is just some (covert) form of "Because I wanted to" then the intuitive difference between the two responses is lost.

This is a pretty simple textbook objection to subjective theories of morality. Again, if you read authors like Russell or Blackburn you'll note that they devote quite a bit of effort - especially Blackburn - to dealing with this objection. As they have to, if they are to make their positions intuitively plausible.

By recognizing that each person's moral framework is different, and that any examination of the morality of an action - which is not the same thing as an examination of justification - will be specific to each person, and each person alone.

<snip>

I'm saying that the implication of "it is not easy" is actually a cover for the sentiment of "this is uncomfortable," since it implies a moral relativism that most people don't care for.

I don't know what you mean by "specific to each person, and each person alone".

For instance, sincerity cannot be a sufficient condition of moral permissibility. The colonists who annexed and then settled in Australia were sincere in believing that their moral claim to the territory was superior to that of the people already living here - that doesn't show that their conquest of the country was morally permissible.

I don't know your political views - and ENworld permits me asking you about them (as I noted upthread, discussing this issue has a tendency to push against board rules) - but presumably you have some. For instance, probably you have a view on whether the Emancipation Proclamation was a morally good or bad action on the part of Lincoln's federal government. At the time, obviously, there were those who welcomed it as a great moral triumph (eg Frederick Douglass) and others who attacked it as a great evil (eg the Confederate leadership).

Those who agreed with Lincoln and Douglass didn't just nod their heads sagely. They fought a bloody war to enforce their moral opinion! And the Conderacy didn't just accept that the Union and its (political and popular) leadership were sincere. They continued to fight to press what they regarded as their just claim.

It is not trivial to articulate a moral relativism that captures most people's intuitive responses to such situations. For instance, should we say that both sides were just trying to impose their beliefs on the other, with nothing to choose between them as far as moral truth and moral error are concerned? That woud be a big call!

The reason that moral relativism makes people "uncomfortable" is not aesthetic, it's practical: most people engage in moral and political practices - of which waging war is one somewhat extreme but not especially unusual example - which make sense only on the assumption that moral conviction is something more than sincere opinion.

Both our countries are currently in the process of re-opening warfare in Iraq and neighbouring countries. The claims of the leadership in both countries, made in justification of that warfare, don't rest on a subjective conception of morality. And for obvious reasons - no one doubts the sincerity or depth of the convictions of IS members; the claim, rather, is that such conviction doesn't suffice to yield moral justification.

Now, as I said earlier, none of the above is an argument against non-objectivist morality. But it is pointing to some features of moral and political discourse and practice - eg killing people because they are doing immoral things - which, for the relativist/subjectivist, pose difficult justificatory problems.

The relativist/subjectivist might repudiate the killings, of course, but that is also not low cost. For every political conflict that the relativist/subjectivist thinks is unjustified, I can probably point to a different one where they think that imposing what they take to be the moral truth is (or would be) justified.

That's why, as a rhetorical device, I have mentioned 4 different moral conficts upthread - the US Civil War and associated issues around slavery and emancipation; the Second World War and (by implication) associated issues around aggressive warfare and racially/ethnically-motivated mass killings; the current war in Iraq and (by implication) associated issues around permissible modes of government (eg liberal-democratic, religiously authoritarian etc) and also imperialism; and the disagreement between vegetarians and others around eating meat, which also raises bigger issues around animal liberation. Most people have a view on at least one of the issues in one of these conflicts, and is prepared to countenance enforcing that view on others (eg committing animal liberationists who break into laboratories and farms to stand trial for trespass; fighting wars to stop governments that they regard as wicked; etc).

This is hard for relativism/subjectivism to account for - if your critique of the aggressive warfare practised by Germany between 1938 and 1945 is that it was impermissible aggrandisement, but you think that fighting Germany in the name of justice and human rights is nothing but aggrandising your own moral opinions, the charge of hypocrisy is pretty obviously coming down the line!

When Tony Abbott (my Prime Minister) says that IS is evil and Australian soldiers are going to help fight that evil, he doesn't think that he's saying only that IS want to do something different from what Australia wants them to do, and so Australia is going to use force to bring them into compliance. He thinks he's pointing to a reason that would distinguish Australian violence in Iraq from the violence of a schoolyard bullly.

 

[Alzrius]

Seriously? I told you what the mainstream view is, and told you which journals to review to confirm my claim about what the mainstream thinks, and now you're asking me to cite articles? OK, here's a cite: look at any article in a recent number of Ethics or Phil & Public Affairs and you'll notice that it probably takes for granted an objective conception of morality, most likely either a Kantian apprach, or some version of an interest theory that also accepts a theory of rights.

This showcases the failure of the assertion you're making, since you can't seem to cite a specific instance to back your claim up. That's leaving aside the idea that "mainstream" means "supported by an authority" rather than "popularly-held," which I disagree with. If you want to claim that your point of view has a mainstream one, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that, which means that it's then incumbent on you to provide the requisite citations, rather then tell everyone else to just go look them up if they want verification.

And of course I'm appealing to authority - that's how you prove what the mainstream outlook is! Just as, say, in the physical sciences you proved what the mainstream view is by pointing to Nature, or in medicine your prove what the mainstream view is by pointing to The Lancet.

This is a dicey contention; something being "mainstream" means that it's what's held amongst the majority of an area under discussion, per se, rather than being something held by an authority; you're the one who held that that was the case amongst "English-language philosophy," and as such the onus of showing that the majority of all English-language speakers who engage in philosophy (in whatever regard) agree with you on that. You've set a very high bar for yourself; I'm simply calling you on it.

If you aren't familiar with the journals Ethics and PPA, then I can tell you that you are not in a position to know what the mainstream view is of contemporary English-speaking moral philosophers.

It's here that you move the goalposts, since you've now added the word "philosophers" onto the group you were referring to, significantly shrinking the field. That's overlooking the strawman argument of "you don't want to look up the sources I mentioned without citation, and so therefore you must be ignorant," which is a fairly poor debate method.

I didn't say that it was. I said that these are the sorts of techniques that moral objectivists point to for establishing moral truths.

I'm pointing out that, insofar as you've demonstrated them, these techniques fail to accomplish their stated goals of establishing objective moral truths.

You don't prove that morality is not objective just by denying that such methods are available. You have to actually produce arguments.

No, the people who say that there are objective moral truths have to produce arguments. Showing how their arguments are invalid (and to date, all of the ones presented here have been) is enough to prevent their point from being affirmed. Hence, we can safely say so far - within this context, at least - that there are no valid techniques for establishing objective moral truths.

Your post is making me wonder whether you are actually familiar with much of this literature.

Given that you've given no indication that you're familiar with the literature, since citing evidence requires a quote and a citation, I don't think you want to go down this road.

Seriously? You're pettifogging about burdens of proof in the context of an intellectual discussion, with very well known moves and counter-moves, that has been going on for over 2000 years?

Actually, I'm pointing out that the techniques that you're citing as valid have serious issues with their validity. Calling that "pettifogging" does an injustice to the very kind of philosophical discourse you claim to champion.

OK, here's some evidence that moral truth is, prima facie, no different from any other sort of truth:

It should be noted that this isn't a question of whether or not "moral truth" has similarities to other kinds of truth, but whether "moral truth" exists at all, and how one would go about determining that.

* The truth-conditional operater and can be used to conjoin moral and non-moral sentences to produce sentences that are, overall, truth-apt (eg "Germany was defeated in the Second World War, and that was a good outcome");​

This is rhetoric. For one thing, the use of "and" is a conjunction, used to link two ideas together (which need not necessarily be related). You're positing that just because there's a factual truth in the first idea, that the conjunctive use of "and" causes that truth to somehow bleed over into the second idea, which does not follow.

* The same predicate - is true - can be used to affirm moral judgements as can be used to affirm judgements of objective fact (eg if you make the above assertion, I can reply, without any error of usage, "True, it was a good thing that Germany did not win the Second World War");

With the initial premise rendered false (see above), this assertion no longers follows. Likewise, this is disingenuous because it refers to "errors of usage" as being related to errors of moral assertion, when in fact such errors are purely with regards to how the thought is being constructed, rather than what it's positing.

* Falsehood predication can be used as a form of denial of moral utterance, even against a sincere speaker (eg if a butcher says to me "There is nothing morally objectional about eating meat" and I am a vegetarian, I do not make any error of usage if I reply "What you just said is false", even if the butcher was sincere and I know that this was the case - and note the contrast, here, with first person pronouns which are subjective - if the butcher sincerely says "I have no problems with eating meat", and I reply "That's false - I do have problems with eating meat", then all I have managed to do is to show that I don't understand the correct usage of first person pronouns);

At this point, the entire argument has come undone because the first two principles that it's based on have been shown to be false. The reliance on "error of usage" at this point is being itself utilized in an erroneous fashion, since it continues to rely on the confusion between construction of a coherent statement and the moral dimensions that such a statement makes. In this case, you are in fact making an error of usage when you say to the butcher "what you just said is false," because while the statement that he made might be false as per your own moral code, you've phrased your rebuttal in the same objective manner as his initial statement. Ergo, the thought is correct in its construction (or rather, its presentation) but wrong with regards to its moral dimension.

* Evauative sentences can appear within belief and knowledge contexts with no apparent grammatical or semantic or logical difference from ordinary descriptive sentences (eg it is just as acceptable, from the point of view of usage, to say that "I know that killing people is, in general wrong" or "I believe that eating meat is wrong" as it is to say that "I know that the earth orbits the sun" or "I believe that birds are descended from dinosaurs").

Here, at least, you acknowledge the problem, but you're not doing anything about it. Just because such sentences can appear (identically) within such sentences, that does not mean that such sentences are a gateway between that which is held to be a belief and that which is held to be knowledge (unless you're making the argument that there's no difference between the two whatsoever, which is a mode of thinking that some people put forth, but which otherwise makes it very hard to hold a discussion in that regard).

Other evidence can be given, but the above (and variants on it) is the standard stuff. These are the facts about usage that subjectivists and relativists have to somehow explain away or otherwise deal with. If you read authors like Russell and (especially) Blackburn you'll notice that these are the sorts of matters they try and deal with to make their theories plausible.

Notwithstanding more name-dropping without actual citation, this gets to the core of your argument; you seem to hold that assertions such as the ones you've made are unassailable, and that those attempting to argue against them must take a different tack in order to present a counter-claim. However, I've demonstrated above that this is not so, and that because such assertions are required to put forth the belief that there is an objective moral truth to begin with, showing that they lack validity knocks that entire line of thinking down.

This is confused. You start by denying that "because I wanted to" fails as a justification, and then go on to deny something quite different, namely that justification is needed. Which are you meaning to deny?

Actually, my point was very clear; your response, however, is very confused. The reason that "because I want to" is not a failure as a justification is because no justification is necessary - simply put, they can say anything (or nothing at all) and have satisfied the burden of justification because, strictly speaking, no such burden exists to begin with. Hence, it's implicitly satisfied from the beginning.

It also misses my point.

I gave a simple example - of the sort one might use in an introductory lecture - to show why a subjective conception of morality is not an easy thing to get off the ground.

In which case, I believe that your example was not a valid one; subjective conceptions of morality are inherently easy to "get off the ground" because they are the default position from which the debate takes place - they are the standard against which an objective moral argument must overcome to be validated.

The example trades not on any notion that justifications are necessary, but rather that they are possible.

This is a moot point, however, since they'd be superfluous.

For instance, suppose that person A kills someone - person B can ask for a justification of that action. If A says "Because I wanted to kill that person" that is not, in general, a sound justification. As a general rule, we are not justified in killing people just because we want to.

The issue here is that you're taking this "general rule" - which is simply a notation of popularity - and trying to lay the framework for it representing an objective truth, which does not follow. Just because we'd find it repugnant that someone had a moral framework where killing someone because they felt like it was justified, that gives no basis for saying that your moral framework is somehow more intrinsically valid because of that. Under the framework of person A, it's clear that their actions required no justification; hence why they did it.

But if A says to B "I killed the person because s/he was attacking me, and hence acted in permissible self-defence" A has given at least a candidate reason. But if morality is no different from desire - if "Because it was morally permissible" is just some (covert) form of "Because I wanted to" then the intuitive difference between the two responses is lost.

In other words, you want justification under the moral framework that person B is said to hold. However, there's no intrinsic reason to value person B's moral framework over person A's with regards to which is empirically more valid. All of the contexts which would require justification are either ideological (that is, personal) or function (e.g. it's impractical to be around someone who kills because they want to). There's no objective moral to be found.

This is a pretty simple textbook objection to subjective theories of morality. Again, if you read authors like Russell or Blackburn you'll note that they devote quite a bit of effort - especially Blackburn - to dealing with this objection. As they have to, if they are to make their positions intuitively plausible.

Except that it's fairly easy to show how their positions aren't that plausible. It depends, unsurprisingly, on the notion that since some values are held to be universal, that they therefore must be something more than a wide-spread belief. That assertion alone does not present validation for what it espouses.

I don't know what you mean by "specific to each person, and each person alone".

It's pretty straightforward - I'm noting that morality is inherently personal and has no objective elements to it whatsoever, despite the popularity of certain aspects of most moral frameworks.

For instance, sincerity cannot be a sufficient condition of moral permissibility. The colonists who annexed and then settled in Australia were sincere in believing that their moral claim to the territory was superior to that of the people already living here - that doesn't show that their conquest of the country was morally permissible.

I don't know your political views - and ENworld permits me asking you about them (as I noted upthread, discussing this issue has a tendency to push against board rules) - but presumably you have some. For instance, probably you have a view on whether the Emancipation Proclamation was a morally good or bad action on the part of Lincoln's federal government. At the time, obviously, there were those who welcomed it as a great moral triumph (eg Frederick Douglass) and others who attacked it as a great evil (eg the Confederate leadership).

Those who agreed with Lincoln and Douglass didn't just nod their heads sagely. They fought a bloody war to enforce their moral opinion! And the Conderacy didn't just accept that the Union and its (political and popular) leadership were sincere. They continued to fight to press what they regarded as their just claim.

You're arguing against a claim I didn't make. Noting the inherent personalism of various moral frameworks does not speak to the degree of sincerity with which people hold them; quite the contrary, I'm of the opinion that people tend to mistake a high degree of personal sincerity as being indicative of some sort of external validation for their beliefs (e.g. if something feels rapturous, then it must come from an external source).

It is not trivial to articulate a moral relativism that captures most people's intuitive responses to such situations. For instance, should we say that both sides were just trying to impose their beliefs on the other, with nothing to choose between them as far as moral truth and moral error are concerned? That woud be a big call!

No, it wouldn't. That would be the most basic of calls to make. As the fundamental level, it was a war to try and enforce their beliefs on the other. Which one was "true" and which was not was entirely relativistic to each person.

The reason that moral relativism makes people "uncomfortable" is not aesthetic, it's practical: most people engage in moral and political practices - of which waging war is one somewhat extreme but not especially unusual example - which make sense only on the assumption that moral conviction is something more than sincere opinion.

I disagree; it makes sense only under the assumption that they've mistaken their opinion for being something more than sincere opinion.

Both our countries are currently in the process of re-opening warfare in Iraq and neighbouring countries. The claims of the leadership in both countries, made in justification of that warfare, don't rest on a subjective conception of morality.

I disagree; they're simply presenting it as being more than a subjective conception of morality, and relying on the (fairly safe) assumption that they'll receive widespread consensus in that regard - but just because the values they hold are popular, that doesn't make them true. (I also suspect that talking about real political conflicts here is taking us into a danger zone where moderation is concerned).

And for obvious reasons - no one doubts the sincerity or depth of the convictions of IS members; the claim, rather, is that such conviction doesn't suffice to yield moral justification.

Which is an inherently personal claim to make, since to the IS members, they clearly do yield that level of justification, whereas ours do not.

Now, as I said earlier, none of the above is an argument against non-objectivist morality. But it is pointing to some features of moral and political discourse and practice - eg killing people because they are doing immoral things - which, for the relativist/subjectivist, pose difficult justificatory problems.

As the default assumption, non-objective morality isn't something that you'd argue against per se; rather, you'd need to argue in favor of an objective morality, which is fundamentally different. But that's a hard case to make.

The relativist/subjectivist might repudiate the killings, of course, but that is also not low cost. For every political conflict that the relativist/subjectivist thinks is unjustified, I can probably point to a different one where they think that imposing what they take to be the moral truth is (or would be) justified.

Hence the relativity that's involved in the inherently personal nature of morality - they recognize that in some cases a so-called "moral truth" would be justifiable, and in others it wouldn't be. They see it as having the inherently subjective nature that makes that possible.

That's why, as a rhetorical device, I have mentioned 4 different moral conficts upthread - the US Civil War and associated issues around slavery and emancipation; the Second World War and (by implication) associated issues around aggressive warfare and racially/ethnically-motivated mass killings; the current war in Iraq and (by implication) associated issues around permissible modes of government (eg liberal-democratic, religiously authoritarian etc) and also imperialism; and the disagreement between vegetarians and others around eating meat, which also raises bigger issues around animal liberation. Most people have a view on at least one of the issues in one of these conflicts, and is prepared to countenance enforcing that view on others (eg committing animal liberationists who break into laboratories and farms to stand trial for trespass; fighting wars to stop governments that they regard as wicked; etc).

This is hard for relativism/subjectivism to account for - if your critique of the aggressive warfare practised by Germany between 1938 and 1945 is that it was impermissible aggrandisement, but you think that fighting Germany in the name of justice and human rights is nothing but aggrandising your own moral opinions, the charge of hypocrisy is pretty obviously coming down the line!

There's nothing at all difficult for moral relativism to account for here; you seem to be under the impression that moral relativism goes beyond recognizing that everyone has a different set of moral values, and further requires someone to necessarily hold that their own values be fluid with regards to any moral situation, paralyzing them from making even a statement of personal morality. This is completely false; you can recognize that everyone will have a value system that is different from yours, while still having values that you hold to be personally unchanging. You don't have to think that you have the Truth, with a capital T, on your side to hold a sincere belief in a moral framework.

When Tony Abbott (my Prime Minister) says that IS is evil and Australian soldiers are going to help fight that evil, he doesn't think that he's saying only that IS want to do something different from what Australia wants them to do, and so Australia is going to use force to bring them into compliance. He thinks he's pointing to a reason that would distinguish Australian violence in Iraq from the violence of a schoolyard bullly.

Leaving aside that you don't know what Tony Abbott is thinking - no one is in a position to objectively determine whether someone else is being honest or not - this is another example of why a sincerely held belief that you know a moral truth doesn't make it so. Tony Abbott can believe whatever he wants, but that by itself doesn't mean that his beliefs are more valid than anyone else's.

 

[Parmandur]

In a technical sense, the burden of proof actually lies with the one asserting they disagree with a positive claim

 

[Alzrius]

In a technical sense, the burden of proof actually lies with the one asserting they disagree with a positive claim

No, it doesn't. That would require them to prove a negative (that is, why a positive claim is not so, e.g. "we assert that you're a misogynist - can you prove that you're not?").

When someone makes a positive assertion - that thing X is true - they're the ones who need to provide evidence to that effect. That evidence can then be examined, critiqued, and if found to not be valid, then the positive assertion that the evidence was in support of is likewise found not to be valid.

 

[Imaro]

In a technical sense, the burden of proof actually lies with the one asserting they disagree with a positive claim

What??

 

[Parmandur]

It's the formal difference between saying you disagree, versus the positive claim that the other claim is not true.

"I believe that exercise leads to a better life"

"I believe that to false!"

Burden of proof lies with the latter statement.

 

[Alzrius]

It's the formal difference between saying you disagree, versus the positive claim that the other claim is not true.

Saying that something isn't true is, by definition, not a positive claim; it's a negative one.

"I believe that exercise leads to a better life"

"I believe that to false!"

Burden of proof lies with the latter statement.

Incorrect. The burden of proof lies with the former statement, because it's the only one making a positive assertion.

 

[Parmandur]

Both "morality has some objective character" and "morality has no objective character" are positive assertions. Personally not looking to prove my position in this forum, since I am actually primarily here to talk about murdering Orcs and taking their pie (which in real life might be a problematic activity).



But even if we grant morality to be entirely subjective: the Great Wheel is silly, since these beings are running around casting moral alignment based magic.



Either the Great Wheel is silly because morality is objective, and it has a bad metaphysics; or it is silly because morality is subjective, and it has a bad metaphysics.