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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6415619" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I've already mentioned upthread, this claim is hugely contentious among contemorary analytic moral philosopher, and is denied by the mainstream.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.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.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 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.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.</blockquote>

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