Does morality have a reference in this world?

[Prodigal_Son]

Words have a reference. When I use the word “keyboard”, I refer to the object on which I am typing. Some words have questionable references. When I talk about “freedom”, I am talking about a concept, which may or may not have an existence independent from its instances (which are simply times when people will agree, linguistically, that freedom is instantiated). Freedom likely has no existence independent of its instances, but one is tempted to say that “red” does. We may imagine that “red” is extant in the world (that is, that it refers to something), over and above its instances on red objects.

Philosophers have proposed that a proposition has a reference, just like a word has a reference. The reference of a proposition is “true” or “false”. So

There is a president of the United States

is true, whereas

There is a round square

is false. Sentences like “Captain Hook is a pirate” are problem sentences, sentences whose reference (true or false) is a matter of debate.

Now, my claim is this: moral actions have a reference. They are “good” or “bad”. But remember, in both previous cases (with words and sentences), references, in order to be meaningful, had to refer to things that exist in the real world. If morality is not a thing that exists in the real world, then it has no reference, and may be discarded.

But if morality does exist in the real world, then what kind of thing is it? Is it like a keyboard, or is it like the color red? Clearly, it is like the color red. If we can find where the color red exists, then we can find where the object of morality exists, for they seem to be the same types of things.

Plato would say they exist in the world of Forms, but it is a much simpler proposition to say that they exist in the mind of God.

This is as far as I’ve gotten. But my thought is that if *good *or *bad *are references, just as *true *and *false *are references, then they must pertain to some reality. It is clear that *true *and *false * pertain to the physical world, so do *good *or *bad * pertain to the spiritual world – or rather, do they pertain to our world which is both physical and spiritual?

Or do they pertain to “states of being” that are co-temporal with our world, can be fully experienced in our world, and yet cannot be known in our world? These states would be, respectively, heaven and hell.

This may be quite obscure. I’m interested in your thoughts, and I’d be happy to explain anything that doesn’t make sense. Also, feel free to correct me if I’ve fallen into some major error or heresy at some point here.

 

[Oreoracle]

I’m just going to toss a possibility out here. I’m an emotivist. This means that I believe statements such as “Killing humans is wrong.” hold no truth value (as Hume notes, “should” and “ought” are not operations we can observe). Instead, we can only infer one thing from ethical statements, this being the feelings held by those who share those ethical sentiments. If someone says that killing is wrong, the most we can infer from their statement is that they disapprove of killing.

So, why can’t morality simply be derivative of emotions?

 

[Benadam]

Thought provoking question. Thank you.

My initial thoughts:

Morality references a perception of good. A utilitarian morality is based on usefullness.
Animal morality is based on the satisfaction of urges produced by the body.

If a person is percieved as a good in of themselves then morality references the person. If a person is percieved as good in the measure they are usefull that morality references usefullness.

Morality that references the perception of eternal goods will produce acts that defy morality that references perishable goods.

 

[Biggie]

So, why can’t morality simply be derivative of emotions?

Begin with the concept that all human beings have certain natural needs in common that must be fulfilled. Food and water are an example of a universal need enforced by the body, the absence of which creates pain. Knowledge is also an example of a universal need, but one not enforced by the body. Food, water, knowledge are necessary and, therefore, good for us. They are natural desires as opposed to acquired desires. We ought to desire some things whether we want them or not because we need them. It is self evident that we ought to desire what is really good for us and nothing more because it is inconceivable that we ought to desire what is really bad for us or not to desire what is really good for us.

*Hume is in error that a prescriptive truth cannot be derived from descriptive truth.

Prescriptive Truth - the self evident conclusion that we ought to desire what is really good for us.
Descriptive Truth - all human beings naturally need knowledge.
Conclusion - we ought to desire knowledge.*

Here we see the ought or should statement has nothing whatsoever to do with emotion and rises to the level of descriptive truth. I tend to think your theory of emotion is confusing want and need.

(See “Ten Philosophical Mistakes”, Mortimer J. Adler, 1985, Macmillan Publishing.)

 

[Oreoracle]

Biggie,

I only need water if I want to live. A need presumes a goal, or a want.

Anyway, you have to explain why life is valuable in the first place. Your answer will naturally be, “Because I want myself and others to live.” Everything eventually boils down to a desire.

 

[Biggie]

Biggie,

I only need water if I want to live. A need presumes a goal, or a want.

Anyway, you have to explain why life is valuable in the first place. Your answer will naturally be, “Because I want myself and others to live.” Everything eventually boils down to a desire.

You nonetheless need water to continue to live, whether you desire it or not.

And here you are confusing want (desire) with need. Consequently you are confusing what is transitionally good with what is necessarily good. The fact that one individual or some individuals may not desire to live does not change the universal drive to live and the necessity of certain behaviors to accomplish it. These behaviors become prescriptions for living.

 

[Wesley7]

Philosophers have proposed that a proposition has a reference, just like a word has a reference. The reference of a proposition is “true” or “false”. So

You made a vague reference to these “Philosophers” but in reality there are not any in my area or where I live.

 

[Wesley7]

I see you talk about these philosophers but there are not any in my area.

 

[Oreoracle]

You nonetheless need water to continue to live, whether you desire it or not.

And here you are confusing want (desire) with need. Consequently you are confusing what is transitionally good with what is necessarily good. The fact that one individual or some individuals may not desire to live does not change the universal drive to live and the necessity of certain behaviors to accomplish it. These behaviors become prescriptions for living.

So life is valuable merely because nature compels us to maintain it? Why should I care about the direction nature takes? Oh yeah…because I want to.

Seriously, why does it matter that we’re naturally disposed to do something? Answer honestly.

 

[Biggie]

So life is valuable merely because nature compels us to maintain it? Why should I care about the direction nature takes? Oh yeah…because I want to.

Seriously, why does it matter that we’re naturally disposed to do something? Answer honestly.

The drive to live is universal in the natural world, not exclusive to man. In fact, man is the exception in as much as the drive to live is not unquestioned, an exception that ought to give you pause. It lends to the case that man is not merely different in type from other creatures, but different in kind.

Your proposition is that all needs can merely be converted to wants at the sacrifice of life. I am not disagreeing with you. The reduction of moral judgments to mere opinion leads to the end that might makes right, to dissolution and to chaos.

My personal opinion is that your alternative is one option available to human reason. The conclusion that life has no meaning and ought not to be sustained is rational. What is not then rational is that it should be prolonged one second longer.

 

[geometer]

If morality is not a thing that exists in the real world, then it has no reference, and may be discarded.

But if morality does exist in the real world, then what kind of thing is it?

Your premise lacks justification. Why can valid concepts be disgarded? What purpose does this serve?

A triangle as defined in euclidean geometry does not exist as a physical object. And, as far as we know can not exist. What would be the justification of disregarding euclidean triangles. Certainly there may be specific instances where euclidean triangles are not useful, perhaps navigation on the ocean where spherical triangles might be better applied.

With this in mind, what are the specifications of your application which would deny morality as useful?

 

[Benadam]

why life is valuable

 

[Oreoracle]

The drive to live is universal in the natural world, not exclusive to man.

I never denied that, I just don’t see how it has objective value.

Your proposition is that all needs can merely be converted to wants at the sacrifice of life.

What do you mean “at the sacrifice of life?” Where did I propose sacrificing life?

I am not disagreeing with you. The reduction of moral judgments to mere opinion leads to the end that might makes right, to dissolution and to chaos.

I never said accepting the truth is easy.

My personal opinion is that your alternative is one option available to human reason. The conclusion that life has no meaning and ought not to be sustained is rational. What is not then rational is that it should be prolonged one second longer.

I didn’t say that life has no meaning. Your opinion seems to be that if ethics are opinions, they aren’t valuable. That’s just silly. The argument basically boils down to “Wouldn’t it be easier if someone else made up the rules for us?” Yes, it would be easier, in a sense. However, this doesn’t change the fact that ethics are subjective, being products of emotion.

 

[Leela]

Words have a reference. When I use the word “keyboard”, I refer to the object on which I am typing. Some words have questionable references. When I talk about “freedom”, I am talking about a concept, which may or may not have an existence independent from its instances (which are simply times when people will agree, linguistically, that freedom is instantiated). Freedom likely has no existence independent of its instances, but one is tempted to say that “red” does. We may imagine that “red” is extant in the world (that is, that it refers to something), over and above its instances on red objects.

Philosophers have proposed that a proposition has a reference, just like a word has a reference. The reference of a proposition is “true” or “false”. So

is true, whereas

is false. Sentences like “Captain Hook is a pirate” are problem sentences, sentences whose reference (true or false) is a matter of debate.

Now, my claim is this: moral actions have a reference. They are “good” or “bad”. But remember, in both previous cases (with words and sentences), references, in order to be meaningful, had to refer to things that exist in the real world. If morality is not a thing that exists in the real world, then it has no reference, and may be discarded.

But if morality does exist in the real world, then what kind of thing is it? Is it like a keyboard, or is it like the color red? Clearly, it is like the color red. If we can find where the color red exists, then we can find where the object of morality exists, for they seem to be the same types of things.

Plato would say they exist in the world of Forms, but it is a much simpler proposition to say that they exist in the mind of God.

This is as far as I’ve gotten. But my thought is that if *good *or *bad *are references, just as *true *and *false *are references, then they must pertain to some reality. It is clear that *true *and *false * pertain to the physical world, so do *good *or *bad * pertain to the spiritual world – or rather, do they pertain to our world which is both physical and spiritual?

Or do they pertain to “states of being” that are co-temporal with our world, can be fully experienced in our world, and yet cannot be known in our world? These states would be, respectively, heaven and hell.

This may be quite obscure. I’m interested in your thoughts, and I’d be happy to explain anything that doesn’t make sense. Also, feel free to correct me if I’ve fallen into some major error or heresy at some point here.

Hi Prodigal Son,

What you are pointing out here are some problems with what philospophers would call the correspondence theory of truth. In thousands of years of pursuit of a theory of truth, no one has ever found a theory that helps us say more things that are true or distinguish what is true from what is false, so pragmatists like myself have given up on that project. Truth is important, but there doesn’t seem to be anything philosophically interesting to say about it.

One helpful perspective is to consider the evolution of language itself. Words evolved as tools to help people achieve their ends. Note that early grunts and growls would not have needed to correspond with reality to be useful. Likewise words don’t need to represent reality so much as help us cope with reality. Words like wheels and hammers are a way of manipulating reality. As tools, words don’t need to correspond with reality any more than a hammer needs to correspond with reality.

Best,
Leela

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Your premise lacks justification. Why can valid concepts be disgarded? What purpose does this serve?

A triangle as defined in euclidean geometry does not exist as a physical object. And, as far as we know can not exist. What would be the justification of disregarding euclidean triangles. Certainly there may be specific instances where euclidean triangles are not useful, perhaps navigation on the ocean where spherical triangles might be better applied.

I did not say that morality was not useful, without reference to the real world. I said it “could be” discarded. (From this point, I will refer to morality that has no reference as nonreal morality.)

Nonreal morality may be useful if you want to subjugate people, an idea that Nietzsche and Marx (and their followers) literally made a killing on. Nonreal morality is useful to order a society justly, as well – this has been developed by Locke, Mill, Rawls, et al. Nonreal morality has many uses.

But to anyone who really desires something forbidden by conventional morality, nonreal morality is no obstacle. Why should I follow a rule that does not bind me, except as a conventional standard? I am compelled to “pretend” like I will obey all laws and conventions, but – if I am strong – I will actually break the laws and conventions without being caught.

Morality with a reference (preferably a *binding *reference) does not have this defect.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I’m just going to toss a possibility out here. I’m an emotivist. This means that I believe statements such as “Killing humans is wrong.” hold no truth value (as Hume notes, “should” and “ought” are not operations we can observe). Instead, we can only infer one thing from ethical statements, this being the feelings held by those who share those ethical sentiments. If someone says that killing is wrong, the most we can infer from their statement is that they disapprove of killing.

So, why can’t morality simply be derivative of emotions?

I haven’t followed your conversation with Biggie fully, so forgive me if I cover some of the same ground.

From a empiricist perspective, emotivism makes sense, and may be the only option. It has manifold practical problems, though. For one, when we talk about “morality”, we are immediately talking about mores, ideas and customs people have in common. But emotivism says that, since there is no reference point of morality, morality is only circumstantially connected to mores. The subjectivizing of morality seems to benefit no one.

Ah, but, one might say, Darwinism has equipped us with similar emotions and biases, which we can build upon. But emotivism, even if it has a solid historical foundation, does not yield results which correspond to our intuitions about morality. I have heard it called “booyayism”. Since you have no objective standard – and if you try to create an objective standard it can easily be bypassed by a person who has different emotions – since you have no objective standard, all you can say to Hitler is “Boo!”

Stalin – boo! Martin Luther King – yay!

But is this what we mean by morality?

It is dangerous to derive “ought” statements from “is” statements; I will agree with that. Consider: in many/most countries in this world, drunk driving is considered acceptable or only slightly wrong. This is not the valid root of a moral judgment. Our morality cannot be by majority vote, but I am also convinced that it cannot be reduced to subjectivism.

When it comes to epistemology, extreme skepticism is an interesting exercise. When it comes to ethics, however, extreme skepticism is very dangerous.

 

[Biggie]

I didn’t say that life has no meaning. Your opinion seems to be that if ethics are opinions, they aren’t valuable. That’s just silly. The argument basically boils down to “Wouldn’t it be easier if someone else made up the rules for us?” Yes, it would be easier, in a sense. However, this doesn’t change the fact that ethics are subjective, being products of emotion.

You said that what you called “ought statements” have no “truth value” in agreement with your reading of Hume.

I have countered that Hume drew a difference between descriptive and proscriptive statements and that he was incorrect in his postulate that proscriptive statements can have no basis in descriptive truth. I then presented examples where natural need, a descriptive truth, becomes a basis for the prescriptive truth that we ought to desire what we naturally need.

Left to stand, this is to say that an “ought statement” can rise to the level of objective truth. It is objectively true that food is good because life depends upon it and one ought to desire to eat for the same reason. The prescription is not merely subjective but universal, therefore your premise that “ought statements” have no “truth value” is not correct.

Your counter is, unless I am misunderstanding you, that life has no intrinsic value therefore a prescription that draws its necessity from maintaining life is still subjective. I replied that I do not disagree that a subjective morality denies the intrinsic value of life. One need not desire to eat if one does not wish to live. This does not then mean that “ought statements” hold no “truth value”.

One still ought to desire to eat because one ought to desire to live. One ought to desire to live because he is living. One need live no longer than the second he ceases to desire it.

As far as I can tell, other than your belief that it is so, you are offering nothing to advance your theory that morals are emotions, which is a farther reach than saying they are subjective.

 

[Leela]

I did not say that morality was not useful, without reference to the real world. I said it “could be” discarded. (From this point, I will refer to morality that has no reference as nonreal morality.)

Nonreal morality may be useful if you want to subjugate people, an idea that Nietzsche and Marx (and their followers) literally made a killing on. Nonreal morality is useful to order a society justly, as well – this has been developed by Locke, Mill, Rawls, et al. Nonreal morality has many uses.

But to anyone who really desires something forbidden by conventional morality, nonreal morality is no obstacle. Why should I follow a rule that does not bind me, except as a conventional standard? I am compelled to “pretend” like I will obey all laws and conventions, but – if I am strong – I will actually break the laws and conventions without being caught.

Morality with a reference (preferably a *binding *reference) does not have this defect.

I don’t think of morality as needing any referent. It is not a set of rules that exist somewhere out there to be discovered. It is not a bunch of prohibitions and punishments. Those are rules and laws. Morality is the word we use to talk about our concerns for others. Moral development is about deepening those concerns and expanding the circle of others for which we are concerned. Moral development is not conforming to some pre-existing standard, but expanding our imaginations for who we perceive as part of our community with whom we have a shared interest. It is seeing ourselves in others and seeing their good as our own good.

Morality as a set of rules is kid’s stuff. Isn’t that what Jesus taught? Love others as yourselves? Rules and laws are just fingers pointing at how to do that. You are missing the point when you try to look for a finger for the laws to be a reference for. The laws are the finger. And the finger ain’t morality.

Best,
Leela

 

[Benadam]

I Those are rules and laws. Morality is the word we use to talk about our concerns for others. Moral development is about deepening those concerns and expanding the circle of others for which we are concerned. Best,
Leela

 

[Oreoracle]

You said that what you called “ought statements” have no “truth value” in agreement with your reading of Hume.

Right. They do have emotional value, though.

I have countered that Hume drew a difference between descriptive and proscriptive statements and that he was incorrect in his postulate that proscriptive statements can have no basis in descriptive truth. I then presented examples where natural need, a descriptive truth, becomes a basis for the prescriptive truth that we ought to desire what we naturally need.

A fact can be the basis of an ethical principle, but that doesn’t mean the principle itself is a fact. The belief that we ought to desire certain things is clearly your desire.

It is objectively true that food is good because life depends upon it and one ought to desire to eat for the same reason.

Again, the value you invest in life is axiomatic. Either that, or your value of nature is axiomatic.

The prescription is not merely subjective but universal, therefore your premise that “ought statements” have no “truth value” is not correct.

I don’t see how “life is good” follows from the premise that “we are naturally inclined to live.” Do you see the disconnection? There is no reason to believe that something should be respected because it is “universal.” People who use this idea always cherrypick which universals they value. Everyone is naturally inclined to die…does that mean that everyone should die? Everyone is naturally inclined to have sex with strangers…should they do that? You only value nature when it is compatible with your emotions. Besides, if you only valued nature, your ethical philosophy would be “whatever happens should happen.”

One still ought to desire to eat because one ought to desire to live. One ought to desire to live because he is living. One need live no longer than the second he ceases to desire it.

It is clearly only your opinion that we ought to desire to live. Is it bad to desire death? Why?