What could make morality objective?

[Immanuel Can]

So you're all alone.

Suddenly, you become ignorant of the fallacy of ad populum?

Hey, you raised the word "non-starter." You want us to think the issue cannot even be raised, obviously. So it's not an ad populum fallacy, because I'm not insisting you believe the majority...all I'm saying is lots of people are "starting" with your alleged "non-starter."

I stated "value" cannot be absolutely-objective, but nevertheless can be made 'objective' within a framework and system of knowledge and basis.

That's just a mistake, then.

You don't understand Hume's Guillotine. You think you've solved that one too, I see.

You think I am that ignorant of Hume's Guilotine.[/quote]
I know you are. You've shown you are.

I am not exceptionally clever but had rode on the giant shoulders of Kant on this issue.

Funny. Other philosophers seem to know Kant didn't succeed. But you say you know he did?

Explain how he did.

Good luck.

Whatever valid counter arguments to my claim can be laid bare openly in this forum for all to see and verify.

You just ignore them, as soon as they're offered. But maybe that's more a lack of comprehension than a deliberate ignoring...who knows?

So far there are no convincing counter arguments to my argument.

Exactly what I mean.

If so, where?

You haven't even begun to resolve Hume's Guillotine. You just basically declared "victory" at the start, then stuck to that story.

...the secular as in the UN came up with secular moral laws...

Heh. You don't know any history, obviously.

I am very familiar with the establishment of the UN.

Apparently not. You might have some idea of the date, and maybe of some of the immediate circumstances. But you show no awareness of very straightforward facts, like that the UN code of human rights was copied off the US's and the French, which are both indebted to the arguments of Locke, who made his arguments purely on a Theistic basis.

You just didn't go back at all.

When Communist Russia and Confucius China were the founding and permanent members, how the heck can its foundation be theistic??

The UN was a US idea. Why do you think the headquarters are in NY? These other countries were invitees to an already-designed idea, as were other non-Christian countries, like all the Arab states and most of Southeast Asia.

Note the human rights record in all these countries, and you'll get some idea of how important Theistic underpinnings are to human rights.

It was Roosevelt's idea, designed and shaped in America. Heck, the history page you quoted told you as much. If you even read what you posted, you would know it was the Americans who drove the whole show. The Russians, Chinese, and so on initiated none of it. They signed on after the fact.

The Russians did obviously have ideas about "uniting nations" -- but not the ideas you think they had.

[Skepdick]

Funny. Other philosophers seem to know Kant didn't succeed. But you say you know he did?

Explain how he did.

Good luck.

No luck required. HOW he did it was trivial - he used a different logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_logic

[Immanuel Can]

Funny. Other philosophers seem to know Kant didn't succeed. But you say you know he did?

Explain how he did.

Good luck.

No luck required. HOW he did it was trivial - he used a different logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_logic

The statement was not even framed as an imperative. So no, that's not true.

An imperative would be "Believe Kant!" or "You must believe Kant." (a command) But commands are exclamations of demand, not a provision of reasons or proof. As such, they lack the potential to be framed as a syllogism and criticized by logic, so as to assess their worthiness of belief or skepticism.

As the site you supplied says, "Since imperatives are neither true nor false and since they are not proper objects of belief, none of the standard accounts of logical validity apply to arguments containing imperatives."

[Peter Holmes]

Funny. Other philosophers seem to know Kant didn't succeed. But you say you know he did?

Explain how he did.

Good luck.

No luck required. HOW he did it was trivial - he used a different logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_logic

The statement was not even framed as an imperative. So no, that's not true.

An imperative would be "Believe Kant!" or "You must believe Kant." (a command) But commands are exclamations of demand, not a provision of reasons or proof. As such, they lack the potential to be framed as a syllogism and criticized by logic, so as to assess their worthiness of belief or skepticism.

As the site you supplied says, "Since imperatives are neither true nor false and since they are not proper objects of belief, none of the standard accounts of logical validity apply to arguments containing imperatives."

Agreed. Propositional logic deals only with declaratives - which is what propositions are. And the declarative is the only clause form with a truth-value.

It follows that codes consisting of imperatives - thou shalts - such as 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' - have no moral significance, and nor does obeying those commands. The moral assertion here would be 'it is morally wrong to allow a witch to live' or 'it is morally right to kill witches'.

And our debate is about whether such moral assertions - declaratives - are objective, and so have truth-value - which means, is there anything in reality that shows if an assertion such as 'it is morally right / wrong to kill witches' is true or false, independently from judgement, opinion or belief?

An assertion is factual if it claims something about reality that may not be the case. It's true if what it asserts is the case, and false if what it asserts is not the case. Question is: could the assertion 'it is morally wrong to kill witches' be false? If it can't be false, then the assertion isn't factual.

[Skepdick]

The statement was not even framed as an imperative. So no, that's not true.

In which logic is it "not true"? Classical? Who cares?

An imperative would be "Believe Kant!" or "You must believe Kant." (a command) But commands are exclamations of demand, not a provision of reasons or proof.

Every logic which uses operators is an imperative logic. Every imperative logic can be reduced to a judgment.

⇒ Imperative
¬ Imperative
∧ Imperative

Operators are functions. Functions are imperatives.

As such, they lack the potential to be framed as a syllogism and criticized by logic, so as to assess their worthiness of belief or skepticism.

They don't. You just lack the know-how on how to reframe them.

As the site you supplied says, "Since imperatives are neither true nor false and since they are not proper objects of belief, none of the standard accounts of logical validity apply to arguments containing imperatives."

Yeah, and? Imperative logic doesn't deal with beliefs. It deals with knowledge ontologies.

In the presence of a knowledge-ontology questions are isomorphic to declarations in relational algebra.

I am afraid your (lack of) understanding of logic is harming your philosophical abilities.

[Skepdick]

Agreed. Propositional logic deals only with declaratives - which is what propositions are. And the declarative is the only clause form with a truth-value.

Relational algebra is declarative.
Relational algebra answers well-formed questions.
Relational algebra either answers the question or doesn't.

True/false do not feature.

If you are claiming that there is a "State of affairs" (e.g an ontology) then imperatives about the ontology can be expressed in a declarative language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra

[Immanuel Can]

Propositional logic deals only with declaratives - which is what propositions are. And the declarative is the only clause form with a truth-value.

It follows that codes consisting of imperatives - thou shalts - such as 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' - have no moral significance,

Whoa, whoa, Pete...amphiboly error.

It DOES NOT follow. Look again.

You shifted the term "truth-value" to "moral significance." You can't get a statement about the latter from the former, because moral significance is, at most, a subset of "items having truth value" -- although you might personally want to argue they're not in the same spheres at all, which would make your case even worse.

And our debate is about whether such moral assertions - declaratives - are objective, and so have truth-value

No, actually, it's not. And now you've shifted from "imperative" to "declarative." Again, amphiboly error there.

Let's straighten this out.

First of all, nobody who understands grammar would say an imperative ever has truth value. But the reason it doesn't is formal, not substantive -- in other words, it has to do with the grammatical structure of the imperative, not with its specific content.

Let me give you an easy example, using scientific stuff:

1a. "Mix the saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal." That's a command, an imperative, and has no truth value. You can tell, because the responses, "That is false" or "That is true" are not only unresponsive but irrelevant to what has been said. It's a demand for action, not an appeal to truth.

But

2a. "Saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal make gunpowder." That a claim, capable of being a premise, and of having truth value. It can be true or false, depending on whether or not those three things make gunpowder.

In both cases, only scientific substances are all that's included. But 1a. is a non-truth claim, and 2a. has truth-value.

The same is true of moral claims.

1b. "Do not commit murder." That's a command, and does not have truth-value, but only in the sense that it does not call for a judgment of truth or falsehood, but like all commands, calls for action (or refusal to act) instead.

2b. "Murder is wrong." That's a claim. It's a premise. It has truth-value.

And in morality, 1b. is a follow-up to 2b.

So you've begged the question. We haven't yet established whether or not a claim like 2b. has truth value. If it does, then the fact that a command framed from the same content does not, is not problematic. For NO command, or "imperative" ever contains a truth claim. Not even a claim about pure science.

[Immanuel Can]

The statement was not even framed as an imperative. So no, that's not true.

In which logic is it "not true"? Classical? Who cares?

NI

[Skepdick]

The statement was not even framed as an imperative. So no, that's not true.

In which logic is it "not true"? Classical? Who cares?

NI

Every time you run out of technical depth you seem to lose interest.

Why do you want to keep pretending you can do Philosophy then?

We can prove much more complex propositions with the machines that we have. It's 2020 - catch up.

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Geometry+of+Interaction

What has been called Geometry of Interaction (Girard 89) is a kind of semantics for linear logic/linear type theory that is however different in method from the usual categorical semantics in monoidal categories. Instead of interpreting a proof of a linear entailment A⊢B as a morphism between objects A and B in a monoidal category as in categorical semantics, the Geometry of Interaction interprets it as an endomorphism on the object A⊸B. This has been named operational semantics to contrast with the traditional denotational semantics.

An "endomorphism" is a fancy word for self-reference.

[Immanuel Can]

In which logic is it "not true"? Classical? Who cares?

NI

Every time you run out of technical depth you seem to lose interest.

No. I get bored with you being objectively wrong, uncorrectable, and ignorantly cantankerous, and I go to greener pastures.

So bye.

[Skepdick]

No. I get bored with you being objectively wrong, uncorrectable, and ignorantly cantankerous, and I go to greener pastures.

The pastures of the Dunning-Kruger are not greener. If logic is a game you've been playing the same one for 2000 years without so much as questioning its foundations/rules. Talk about dogma...

Speaking of being "cantankerous" and "uncorrectable", consider learning Dialogical logic. It's much better if you actually want to play a cooperative game.

But we both know you don't actually care about cooperation/consensus (which is why you play the game the way you do)

[Peter Holmes]

Propositional logic deals only with declaratives - which is what propositions are. And the declarative is the only clause form with a truth-value.

It follows that codes consisting of imperatives - thou shalts - such as 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' - have no moral significance,

Whoa, whoa, Pete...amphiboly error.

It DOES NOT follow. Look again.

You shifted the term "truth-value" to "moral significance." You can't get a statement about the latter from the former, because moral significance is, at most, a subset of "items having truth value" -- although you might personally want to argue they're not in the same spheres at all, which would make your case even worse.

It does follow, but you've missed the entailment. We agree a command has no truth-value. And it's morally insignificant in that it makes no moral claim. 'Kill witches' is just a command. Judgement as to the morality of killing witches is a separate matter. Your analysis is incorrect.

And our debate is about whether such moral assertions - declaratives - are objective, and so have truth-value

No, actually, it's not.

Yes, actually, it is. Look at the OP title. Please don't revert to your former habits. I can see you've been trying hard not to.

And now you've shifted from "imperative" to "declarative." Again, amphiboly error there.

Strangely, you've missed out my explanation of the relevant declarative derived from (or connected with) the imperative 'kill witches' - namely 'it is morally right to kill witches'. Why did you not quote that explanation?

Let's straighten this out.

First of all, nobody who understands grammar would say an imperative ever has truth value. But the reason it doesn't is formal, not substantive -- in other words, it has to do with the grammatical structure of the imperative, not with its specific content.

False, and disturbing from someone who professes to understand grammatical form and function. An imperative, like an interrogative, has no truth-value, whatever its content. Only declaratives have truth-value.

Let me give you an easy example, using scientific stuff:

1a. "Mix the saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal." That's a command, an imperative, and has no truth value. You can tell, because the responses, "That is false" or "That is true" are not only unresponsive but irrelevant to what has been said. It's a demand for action, not an appeal to truth.

But

2a. "Saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal make gunpowder." That a claim, capable of being a premise, and of having truth value. It can be true or false, depending on whether or not those three things make gunpowder.

In both cases, only scientific substances are all that's included. But 1a. is a non-truth claim, and 2a. has truth-value.

The same is true of moral claims.

1b. "Do not commit murder." That's a command, and does not have truth-value, but only in the sense that it does not call for a judgment of truth or falsehood, but like all commands, calls for action (or refusal to act) instead.

2b. "Murder is wrong." That's a claim. It's a premise. It has truth-value.

And in morality, 1b. is a follow-up to 2b.

Please. If you patronise, it's important to get your explanation right. You merely assert that, because 'murder is wrong' is a claim - a premise - it therefore has truth-value in the way that 'saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal make gunpowder' is a claim - a premise - that has truth-value.

Nice try, but that begs the question. It's precisely the difference between 'these ingredients make gunpowder' and 'murder is wrong' that we're debating.

(As in the past, I'm undecided as to whether you try on this kind of sophistry by mistake - because you genuinely don't understand the issue - or whether it's deliberate and so dishonest. I like to think you're not dishonest - but horrible memories of your dishonesty are coming back to me.)

So you've begged the question. We haven't yet established whether or not a claim like 2b. has truth value. If it does, then the fact that a command framed from the same content does not, is not problematic. For NO command, or "imperative" ever contains a truth claim. Not even a claim about pure science.

This is odd. You've just stated that 'murder is wrong' is a claim with a truth-value. And here you say we haven't established that yet. Which is it? What was all that crap about gunpowder supposed to demonstrate?

If you keep up this quality of argument, I'm not wasting more time on you.

[Skepdick]

It does follow, but you've missed the entailment. We agree a command has no truth-value.

Entailment is a command. An imperative. A predicate.

You are USING imperative logic while pretending otherwise. If logic/language wasn't imperative you wouldn't be able to communicate - your words would have no effect on my mind.

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Geometry+of+Interaction

Instead of interpreting a proof of a linear entailment A⊢B as a morphism between objects A and B in a monoidal category as in categorical semantics, the Geometry of Interaction interprets it as an endomorphism on the object A⊸B. This has been named operational semantics to contrast with the traditional denotational semantics.

[Immanuel Can]

It does follow, but you've missed the entailment.

I guess you'd better explain, then. There doesn't seem to me to be anything in particular "entailed" by the fact that NO commands have truth value.

Please. If you patronise, it's important to get your explanation right. You merely assert that, because 'murder is wrong' is a claim - a premise - it therefore has truth-value in the way that 'saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal make gunpowder' is a claim - a premise - that has truth-value.

*sigh*. No.

ANY claim or premise has truth (or, if you prefer, falsehood) value. I didn't even remotely suggest that all claims were true. "Truth-value" is different from truth. "Truth-value" just means the the statement in question has potential to be true (or false).

Nice try, but that begs the question. It's precisely the difference between 'these ingredients make gunpowder' and 'murder is wrong' that we're debating.

Exactly. So you haven't established anything with regards to moral claims. So I have to wonder what your point was.

[Peter Holmes]

It does follow, but you've missed the entailment.

I guess you'd better explain, then. There doesn't seem to me to be anything in particular "entailed" by the fact that NO commands have truth value.

Please. If you patronise, it's important to get your explanation right. You merely assert that, because 'murder is wrong' is a claim - a premise - it therefore has truth-value in the way that 'saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal make gunpowder' is a claim - a premise - that has truth-value.

*sigh*. No.

ANY claim or premise has truth (or, if you prefer, falsehood) value. I didn't even remotely suggest that all claims were true. "Truth-value" is different from truth. "Truth-value" just means the the statement in question has potential to be true (or false).

Nice try, but that begs the question. It's precisely the difference between 'these ingredients make gunpowder' and 'murder is wrong' that we're debating.

Exactly. So you haven't established anything with regards to moral claims. So I have to wonder what your point was.

Okay. I think you're lost, and not able to understand what I say. That 'any claim has truth-value' is precisely what we're debating, so merely asserting it is pointless. I've shown why a moral assertion doesn't have truth-value, and all you do is say it does - or that we haven't established that it doesn't.

And, as usual, when you make a mistake which is pointed out to you, you ignore it and plough on deeper into confusion.

Sorry, but I'm done with you - as usual. But hey - others may want to engage.