A debate about metaethics

[Prodigal_Son]

You are systematically misreading what that article is saying. Nothing in that quotation says that metaethics gives us first-order answers about why we ought to do things.

I know what I’m talking about. But feel free to ignore it. Blessings.

 

[De_Maria]

I don’t know what you mean by grade,

Well, you said,

I point out that in order to provide a justifiable position for why normative ethical propositions are true, you need to refer to meta-ethics…

So, do you believe that the Ten Commandments are true? If so, what meta-ethics do you provide to justify your position?

but in order to justify why any particular commandment is true, I would have to appeal to meta-ethics.

I don’t understand what you’re saying. Perhaps we differ on the definition of the word, meta-ethics. To me, meta-ethics is any idea proposed to explain an ethical position.

Therefore, if I say, “P is wrong because Y.” Y can be anything. There is no particular list of Y’s. It could be, “because I say so.”

In other words, your proposition is circular. Meta, means self. You could simply say, you must use ethics to explain ethics.

Obviously, such a justification from the Jews at the time, was that they came from God (meta-ethics)…

Exactly! So, what is the point? As far as they were concerned, God was a Terrible Entity who inspired fear.

Heb 12:18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, 19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: 20 (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: 21 And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake

Therefore, if I were to grade the Commandments on that which you’ve claimed, I’d say that they don’t measure up. God offered no fancy justifications for the Commandments. Its a matter of do it, or else.

Are we on the same page yet, or have I missed your point?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Metaethics explores as well the connection between values, reasons for action, and human motivation, asking how it is that moral standards might provide us with reasons to do or refrain from doing as it demands, and it addresses many of the issues commonly bound up with the nature of freedom and its significance (or not) for moral responsibility

Hey, abadjpyo,

So I want to just take apart that statement from the SEP, and show you how it isn’t saying what you think it is. You claim it says that metaethics deals with reasons why we ought to do things or refrain from things. The statement says that metaethics “ask how it is that moral standards might provide us with reasons to do … things”. What does this mean? It means not that metaethics addresses what we reasons we have to do things, but rather that metaethics addresses how the existence of moral standards can give us reasons to do things. If you look closely at the words, you will see that this is what they mean. It is not talking about the standards themselves, but the relationship of these standards to the abstract notion of a reason for action.

Compare this example: suppose you were to ask me how to get to Paris. I could tell you (this is the first order answer) that you should get there by teleporting. But then you ask (second order), “How could there be teleporting?” Do you see how this is a wholly different question? In just the same way, “What are the moral standards?” is a wholly different question from “How can the standards give us reasons to do things?”

 

[Prodigal_Son]

You ought to go visit your father (normative ethics). No matter what, you can’t refer to the normative ethical proposition to justify itself, that’d be circular…

Because your father is sick, and your presence would help him. This, with other implications, like human dignity and other meta-ethical reasons… (meta-ethics).

You’re describing the distinction between applied ethics and normative ethics here. “You ought to go visit your father” is traditionally understood as applied ethics, and the reasons why (human dignity, e.g.) are understood as normative ethics.

But really, at this point, we’re debating about semantics. It doesn’t really matter what words we use for things. I don’t think we ultimately disagree about anything except words here.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

It seems that the rational connection with normative or applied ethics would still require a plausible meta-ethics, so how would you word my contention in order for it to be true? Meta-ethical foundations are required in order for normative explanations to substantiate applied ethical propositions?:

There must BE a metaethical foundation for any justified moral claim. You’re certainly right about that. But I don’t think one needs to know those metaethical foundations in order to be justified in making the claim, and thus in order to know that the claim is true. That would be my position. I think the requirement that people know the metaethical foundation would have the implausible implication that very few people have moral knowledge.

 

[abadjpyo]

Sure, we agree on the first part, but if one is to give coherent rationale as to why a moral claim is true, then they have to appeal to meta-ethical expanations. Would’nt you agree? In the ultimate instance. Otherwise, their claims, if true, would be true in a superficial sense…

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Let’s imagine someone says that objective moral values can exist without God. They say by analogy, that you don’t need to know the ontological state of numbers, to know that there exist mathematical truths…

I would contend that they need to provide a meta-ethical explanation as to how good and evil can exist, in order to infer moral values in the first place…

I would also contend that morality has obligations and values that are dissimilar to numbers, so that’s a false analogy…

So there, their problem would be that they don’t know a plausible meta-ethical foundation for their moral claims. Yet they may know moral truths in a superficial sense (asserting a true moral proposition, without fully knowing why it’s true)…

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Let’s imagine someone says that objective moral values can exist without God. They say by analogy, that you don’t need to know the ontological state of numbers, to know that there exist mathematical truths…

I would contend that they need to provide a meta-ethical explanation as to how good and evil can exist, in order to infer moral values in the first place…

I would also contend that morality has obligations and values that are dissimilar to numbers, so that’s a false analogy…

So there, their problem would be that they don’t know a plausible meta-ethical foundation for their moral claims. Yet they may know moral truths in a superficial sense (asserting a true moral proposition, without fully knowing why it’s true)…

What are your thoughts on this?

Ah, this is interesting. I used to make the argument you’re making, and I find it interesting. I wouldn’t quite phrase it the way you do. I would simply say that, yes, people can know moral truths without believing they are founded in God, but I would suggest to them that there must be an explanation of HOW there could be moral truths, and that this need for an explanation (given other premises) could count as evidence for the existence of God.

Have you read C.S. Lewis’s argument for the existence of God from the existence of the moral law? It’s pretty much this type of thing. I think it’s an interesting way of arguing, but I ultimately don’t think it proves the case, for two reasons: (1) It’s not clear how God would ground ethics, unless we say that His claims are arbitrary, and (2) There are other ways of grounding ethics in rational claims, including things like Platonism, social contract theory, and Kantianism.

(I should say, though, that social contract theory is NOT a metaethical approach to ethics, as far as I’m concerned. It is a denial that metaethical questions make sense, and a proposal for how we could do ethics without metaphysics.)