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No. I am not. I never even implied that.
The question I have about this will always be, what is the basis for coming to a decision about ethically vexing questions. Let's consider some scenarios.
A large totalitarian country invades a smaller neighbouring country and sets about systematically destroying their ethnic cultural heritage through 're-education' and flooding the country with their own ethnic groups. As the decades pass, the large country develops very cogent arguments to the effect that the smaller country really always was a part of the larger country, and the ethnic heritage which is by now practically extinguished was a deviant development that had kept the original population in feudal thrall; therefore they, and the world, are better off without it.
Meanwhile the original ethnic minority is represented by an exiled, charismatic and articulate politico-religious leader who speaks eloquently on behalf of the original culture and pleads for a degree of autonomy on their behalf.
According to Stephenson, then, the ethics of the situation should really be decided on the basis of whether the totalitarian government, or the exiled leader, is able to present the most persuasive argument for their case. There is no intrinsic evil in the invasion of one country by another, or the destruction of their culture; the whole question revolves around whether, and how, the rest of the world can be persuaded to view the matter, presuming it is the 'rest of world' that are to decide the merits of the argument.
There are many other cases that could be contemplated - for example, in the case of the deciding an equitable basis for sharing the burden of dealing with a global ecological problem among a large number of countries with unequal resources; for the allocation of health-care resources to very large populations of aging citizens in an economy with a relatively small number of productive workers. Many ethical challenges of this type loom in the years ahead.
Putting aside the consideration of the merits of these particular hypothetical cases, how does Stephenson propose that we arrive at principles by which such situations be adjuticated?
Charles Stevenson argued in his book, Ethics and Language, that arguments in ethics about right and wrong, or good and bad, were actually attempts to persuade others of a certain view of a matter, and were not, like arguments in science, aimed at truth. For there is no truth or falsity in ethics. Therefore, ethical reasoning is actually persuasive reasoning, and not cognitive reasoning, and a reason is a good reason in ethics to the extent that it is persuasive, and a bad reason in ethics is bad to the extent it fails to persuade. So that in ethics, argument has to be understood in a completely different way from argument elsewhere. And, of course, so must be the notion of rationality in ethics.
See: Charles Stevenson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I am not convinced.
What is the conclusion that ethical propositions do not hold truth (or falisity) based upon? We must take into consideration that there is, often, just as much intersubjectivity in regards to moral propositions as there are for scientific propositions. We must keep in mind that we can reach objective truths, without objective methods. And in fact, we reach objective truths with subjective methods (a priori) all the time. And as far as persuasion is concerned, it is a part of not only moral endeavors, but also scientific (and of course, philosophical).
How we perceive the physical world is roughly the same, which is why we are able to agree upon most scientific truths. And I argue, that how we perceive most moral acts, is roughly the same. What I'm about to claim has no evidence, but I think it is true.
Suppose we select a random group of 50 rational, semi-educated people. We give them two propositions:
1.) It is wrong to molest and murder 12-year-old girls.
2.) Water is composed of H2O.
I claim that there will be just as much consensus for both. That is, I believe most people will claim both of these propositions are true.
What about ethical propositions makes us believe they cannot hold the same sort of truth a scientific proposition can? Surely it must have nothing to do with consensus, and it must have nothing to do with the ability to, under normal conditions, physically observe (as many scientific truths we cannot observe without instrumentation - like H and O molecules). And it also must have nothing to do with persuasion, as persuasion is not exclusive to moral endeavors. So, just what is it?
Not because there is a "consensus" that there is a cat on the mat. The consensus may be a reason for thinking there is such a fact, but it is not what makes the sentence, "the cat is on the mat" true.
We do not seem to have a faculty for observing right and wrong in the way that we have a faculty for observing that the cat is on the mat (or not on the mat).
And, what reason have we to believe that "right" and "wrong" are real properties?
Charles Stevenson argued in his book, Ethics and Language, that arguments in ethics about right and wrong, or good and bad, were actually attempts to persuade others of a certain view of a matter, and were not, like arguments in science, aimed at truth. For there is no truth or falsity in ethics. Therefore, ethical reasoning is actually persuasive reasoning, and not cognitive reasoning, and a reason is a good reason in ethics to the extent that it is persuasive, and a bad reason in ethics is bad to the extent it fails to persuade. So that in ethics, argument has to be understood in a completely different way from argument elsewhere. And, of course, so must be the notion of rationality in ethics.
See: Charles Stevenson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But does the theory that ethics is all about persuasion allow for intelligent disagreement? Stevenson's view is that ethical disagreement is like the following "disagreement".
A. I am going to Paris this summer. I love Paris.
B. Well I am not, I am going to Rome this summer. I prefer Rome.
There is a kind of disagreement, but is it intelligent disagreement?
What is the proof that ethical propositions do not respresent facts or state of affairs? What makes one believe that when we express moral propositions, we are not using rationality?
I brought up consensus because sometimes moral relativists dismiss the blatantly obvious intersubjectivity for moral propositions. Everything is clearly not relative, and we agree on much. You are correct, though, consensus is not what makes something true or false. I never meant to imply this.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that we can theoretically observe cats on mats, but we cannot theoretically observe that it is wrong to molest young women? Well, this is true. But what does that tell us? There are many scientific and otherwise objective truths which we cannot actively, if at all, observe. And don't you think there are some properties you cannot observe or even understand? Perhaps a mathematical equation has various properties that a non-mathematician can't comprehend. Do you think this is possible?
And "the cat is on the mat" is not always a posteriori knowledge. We can have a priori knowledge that the cat is on the mat, too (Isn't it true that "the cat is on the mat" is true if a cat is on a mat in some possible world?). I only bring this up because I want you to clarify what the point was to bring up "the cat on the mat".
First, I'd like to know what you mean by "real" here. Do you mean tangible? Well, not all properties are tangible. I am not sure what reason we have to believe that "right" and "wrong" are not properties. Why do you believe that "right" and "wrong" cannot be properties of states of affairs?
Suppose we select a random group of 50 rational, semi-educated people. We give them two propositions:
1.) It is wrong to molest and murder 12-year-old girls.
2.) Water is composed of H2O.
I claim that there will be just as much consensus for both. That is, I believe most people will claim both of these propositions are true.
What about ethical propositions makes us believe they cannot hold the same sort of truth a scientific proposition can?
What is the proof that ethical propositions do not respresent facts or state of affairs? What makes one believe that when we express moral propositions, we are not using rationality?
I brought up consensus because sometimes moral relativists dismiss the blatantly obvious intersubjectivity for moral propositions. Everything is clearly not relative, and we agree on much. You are correct, though, consensus is not what makes something true or false. I never meant to imply this.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that we can theoretically observe cats on mats, but we cannot theoretically observe that it is wrong to molest young women? Well, this is true. But what does that tell us? There are many scientific and otherwise objective truths which we cannot actively, if at all, observe. And don't you think there are some properties you cannot observe or even understand? Perhaps a mathematical equation has various properties that a non-mathematician can't comprehend. Do you think this is possible?
And "the cat is on the mat" is not always a posteriori knowledge. We can have a priori knowledge that the cat is on the mat, too (Isn't it true that "the cat is on the mat" is true if a cat is on a mat in some possible world?). I only bring this up because I want you to clarify what the point was to bring up "the cat on the mat".
Well, you suggested that when you suggested that Stevenson's views about ethical reasoning could be applied to all reasoning. Since, Stevenson's views about ethical reasoning depends on the notion that truth and falsity are inapplicable in ethical reasoning.
---------- Post added 12-21-2009 at 09:16 AM ----------
But Stevenson (not Stephenson) begins with a non-cognitive view of ethics (sometimes called "emotive"). It is that non-cognitivism that you are challenging. Of course, without that non-cognitive basis of ethics, Stevenson's persuasive theory makes no sense. For Stevenson, ethical disagreement is a matter of a clash of attitudes, and not true or false as in science. The two principles in your story have different attitudes about autonomy for the territory. One prefers it; the other does not. They no more disagree than the person who likes Paris disagrees with the Person who prefers Rome.
Who checks the random group for rationality and semi-education? Those are loaded words, loaded with your personal taste in ethics. Of course I agree that only a sociopath would argue with (1) and either a fool or a cutting edge scientist would argue with (2). But those are also loaded words. Objective science persuades us by means of the technology it makes possible. Ethics persuade us perhaps with the societies they make possible. But I don't see how taste can be removed from the equation. IIt also seems that our moral taste is largely conditioned. Haven't soldiers raped and murdered in enemy countries and gotten away with it? So circumstance is a big factor. War-man is not like peace-man. I think it's because our society is rife with ethical (political) disagreements that makes some doubt the objectivity of ethics. Questions of war and welfare are directly related to ethics. Should income be redistributed? Is there an objective answer to this? Age of consent laws? Legalization of marijuana? A person will find arguments to defend what side appeals to them. Pro-life versus pro-choice. Right-to-die movement. Is it better to die young after a great life or old after a mediocre life? I don't see objective answers to these issues.
'If rape is wrong' is to represent a fact or a state of affairs, rape would have to have the property of wrongness; a real, metaphysical property. This would be a very strange sort of property, indeed. You can't simply reduce wrongness to factual statements such as 'is cruel', because of the is-ought problem, how do we go from what is to what we ought to do? It is certainly not an entailment, but nor is it entirely unconnected. What would it be for the supposedly real property of wrongness to be uninstantiated? i.e. How would the world be different if rape were not wrong? Assuming they do exist, how do we come to know moral facts?
These questions might demonstrate to you that moral objectivity runs so contrary to what we know about epistemology and metaphysics that it cannot be true.
Moral statements are not simply false, they have no descriptive meaning whatsoever. Thus they are neither true or false in their description of the world, they are meaningless.
The lack of consensus, especially among different societies, does seem to show that if there were moral facts, we cannot know what they are, or even know of them, which supports moral scepticism.
If we have no evidence for these properties, we might say that we are justified in saying that they do not exist. It supports non-cognitivism if you adopt verificationist principles.
If "the cat is on the mat" is true in some possible world (that is not the actual world), then it is possible, not true. An unactualized possibility, you might say.
"Real" in philosophy (as in, "that oasis is real (not a mirage)" always means independent of mind. Real is what would exist whether you were around or not. Whether you existed or not. It doesn't mean "tangible". Electrons are real, but electrons are not tangible.
I could point to Quito and say "This is the capital", in much the same way I could point to an 8-year-old getting raped and say, "This is wrong".
What does the word "wrong" mean here? How does one verify this property if not by personal taste/ethics, or consensus?
But I don't see how that justifies that "Quito is a capital" is a fact any more than "Rape is wrong" is.
What am I missing here?
You make a good point: "wrong" and "capital" are both abstractions.
I don't think that what humans call "wrong" is random, and a person could poll how the word is used, find patterns.
"The game tennis exists" is a fact, right? And tennis is also an abstract notion. A tennis player, on the other hand, would be a concrete notion.
But how do we point to tennis? How do we point to game? I can point to a tennis match, and call it a game, but what does that do me? If all I need do to make "The game tennis exists" a fact is point to a tennis match and say, "This is the game tennis", why can't I do the same with moral propositions? Why can't I point to a state of affairs, like someone raping someone, and say, "This is wrong", and come home with a fact?
A tennis match is not the tennis game. You cannot point to the tennis game since it is an abstract object.
