Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 7:15 am
1 I think everyone is entitled to hold strong moral opinions, and many of us do on many issues,...
Yes, that's true: anybody can have an opinion about anything. But when I express a preference for chocolate over vanilla, I'm not implying that a) anybody else has reason to agree, and b) that anybody is being wrong for liking vanilla. In other words, it's strictly a private matter of taste.
But moral claims are not like that. Instead, they imply "You ought to as well," or "I am more rational / better / wiser / fairer / more just / etc. for holding my opinion that you are for holding the contrary opinion, and your opinion ought to change." A person may or may not back that claim with force, and may or may not supply reasons; but that is the effect he expects his claim to have on his listener.
And if he doesn't have it, he simply removes the moral claims, and says, "I like X," or "I prefer Y." He doesn't frame it as "X is right" or "Y is less moral." Ethical terms call for, and expect, assent from the recipient. Taste claims do not.
2 And one simple definition of 'objectivity' is 'independence of opinion'.
Well, that not a definition we should perhaps accept, I would say. Because it's pretty obvious that opinion and objectivity are sometimes found in the same situation. It is a fact that drinking turpentine will kill a person; but that doesn't mean it's not my opinion that it's a bad idea from a taste perspective as well. So both can exist in reference to one item. A person can find abortion both disgusting AND recognize it as homicidal. Or they can be delighted by it and say it's perfectly fine. Both are claims of opinion and fact together.
3 For an assertion to be a fact, in the first place, there must be a feature of reality for it to describe.
True. But that's the vexed question, isn't it? "Is the world an inherently amoral place, or is it also a morally-oriented place?" You have said you think the moral elements are not objectively real; I say they are. And our reasons for both come from our basic ontological assumptions: you believe (as far as I can tell) that the world is a product of chance plus time, and rightly conclude that if that is true then it's an objectively amoral place; I believe that it is the deliberate creation of a moral God, and thus comes freighted with rights and wrongs from Him. That's our key difference.
But so long as you hold to your ontological assumptions, you will never bring yourself to believe morality exists objectively. Paradoxically, you label me as a difficult and fractious person, perhaps irrational and obdurate, no? But even were that so, in your world, these things cannot be "bad." There is no objective "bad". So it makes me wonder why you bother to say so -- for after all, it's only one man's opinion, according to your view. And not expecting me or anyone else to have to share such a view, it makes me wonder why you state it.
Well, not really. What I can see is that you're lapsing from an amoral universe into a supposition of a moral one. But from your own ontological assumptions, to do so can make no sense. Thus, you're living as a divided man, in two worlds: in one world, you insist moral judgments are not objective, and in the other, you make moral claims.
4 We can and do deploy facts to try to justify our moral opinions. For example: 'a fetus consists of human DNA and will (normally) become a person outside the womb'. That is a fact, so it's unarguable - its truth is independent of opinion.
Indeed so. The vexed question is whether or not it is also a person
in utero. And the answer to that -- one way or another -- will be totally independent of opinion as well. If a child is not a person, no saying of mine will make her one; but if she is, then no explanations of an abortionist will make her any less a person than she objectively is.
5 We can use the fact about DNA to try to justify the opinion 'therefore, abortion is wrong'.
Hume says we cannot. We cannot go from the claim, "This is a human by DNA" to the claim "It is wrong to kill a human," according to him. And he's right: in a world without God, no fact claim can be automatically attached to a value claim, without failing to address the rational connection between the two statements. But by Hume, there is also no rational connector possible between the first and the second statement.
But there is no logical connection between the fact and the opinion - the one doesn't follow necessarily from the other, how ever strongly we believe that it does. The opinion remains an opinion, and it rests on another opinion, such as: 'killing a being consisting of human DNA is wrong'.
That's exactly what Hume says. And I agree...but only if the world is as Hume took it to be: not the product of creation, but of mere chance.
Again, the difference between us is ontological. I believe God grounds moral claims, making them objective; Hume thought He does not. But even Hume could not remain self-consistent, for he implied that to pretend moral claims are objective was
wrong -- and that itself is framed as an objective moral claim. Hume did not expect people would disagree with him merely by saying, "Well, I like making such claims." He expected them to feel rebuffed, instead.
6 We can deploy different facts to try to justify different moral opinions. For example: 'a fetus uses another human body to survive and grow, possibly risking the host's physical or mental health, and possibly killing the host'. That is also a fact, independent of opinion. And from it, we can conclude that it's wrong to force the host to allow this to happen.
Hume says no. We don't ever get justification for a moral claim from a factual one, he said.
But that is also an opinion, which also doesn't necessarily follow from the fact, how ever strongly we believe that it does. And it also rests on an opinion, such as: 'a human should be able to control what happens to its own body'.
Right. There is a prior belief that is supposed to back the moral claim. But it goes even farther: for how do we know "A human should be able to control what happens to her own body"? For a "should" is a moral term.
Who is guaranteeing this "should"? And why are we being expected to respond to this alleged "should"? It's very easy to respond: "None of us have control of our bodies. We're born into this world without our control, at the behest of others, we live at the mercy of others and of circumstances over which we have little or no control, and we die without our permission; who says it should be otherwise? Whence this moral imperative to give someone the delusion of control in matters where they actually have none?"
Now, of course, I don't believe that's how the universe is. But from a secular ontological perspective, why not? How are we going to ground this claim that anybody "should" have anything?
7 The distinction between facts (true factual assertions) and assertions that express opinions, is crucial. But we hold strong moral opinions, so we forget or gloss over the distinction, in our determination to justify our opinions.
Exactly what Hume said. He mocked it. We're all fooling ourselves, he said.
But you say "justify." To "justify" is to explain to the rational satisfaction of another's questions. But there can be no rational explanation necessary for a mere opinion. I don't have to "justify" my claim to like chocolate, do I? I'm not even sure how one would do that, in fact. We cannot "justify" a mere opinion, and as Hume said, especially not by calling on facts to do so.
8 And this leads to the unjustified claim that there are moral facts (moral objectivism) - that there are moral features of reality, such as 'the wrongness of abortion' that we can describe by means of assertions that are true independent of opinion. And that is a dangerous delusion.
In saying so, you leap again into objective moral language. Is a "dangerous delusion" a "bad" thing? If it's not, then you've made no claim there. But if it is, you've made an objective moral judgment.
Again, it's all too easy to argue I ought to be allowed my "delusions," no matter how "dangerous" they might be. Who says "delusions" are wrong -- particularly if they please someone -- and why should any "danger" to other people concern him? We do plenty of "dangerous" things, in life, from driving a car to rock climbing, and none of them are obviously immoral.
The point is simple, Pete: nobody lives like what you're saying is true. And while, in a Godless world, such a point of view would indeed be right (as I'll quite happily concede) an interesting empirical fact is that nobody -- including yourself -- can act as if that's really true. We all make, and depend on, moral judgment we take to be objective.
Now
there's an objective fact with which we ought to reckon!
