Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 6:57 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 5:04 am
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 4:34 am
Agreed. The intelligence, qualifications, experience and character of someone making an argument have absolutely no bearing on the validity and soundness of the argument.
A factual premise can't entail a moral conclusion, because a conclusion can't introduce information not present in the premise. If it does, the argument is a non sequitur and possibly question-begging fallacy. VA's argument for objective morality from actual or putative facts about human nature commits one or both of these fallacies.
The words
ought and
should have moral and non-moral (instrumental) uses that are completely different. To use them in both ways in an argument, without acknowledgement, is to commit an equivocation fallacy. VA's 'oughtness to do/not to do' argument from human nature to objective morality commits this fallacy.
Note William James version of truths [facts];
James offers an account of truth that, like Peirce’s, is grounded in the practical role played by the concept of truth. James, too, stresses that truth represents a kind of satisfaction: true beliefs are satisfying beliefs, in some sense.
True [factual] ideas, James suggests, are like tools: they make us more efficient by helping us do what needs to be done.
James adds to the previous quote by
making the connection between truth and utility explicit:
- Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally. This is the ‘instrumental’ view of truth. (1907 [1975: 34])
While James, here, credits this view to John Dewey and F.C.S. Schiller, it is clearly a view he endorses as well. To understand truth, he argues, we must consider the pragmatic “cash-value” (1907 [1975: 97]) of having true beliefs and the practical difference of having true ideas. True beliefs, he suggests, are useful and dependable in ways that false beliefs are not:
- you can say of it then either that “it is useful because it is true” or that “it is true because it is useful”. Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing. (1907 [1975: 98])
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trut ... agTheoTrut
My definition of what is fact and what are moral facts are directed at what they can contribute to the well being of humanity in the future in the face of the impending threats to humanity.
As such when I direct my moral facts to real physical referent of moral oughtness or ought-not-ness in the brain, humanity can then direct attention to enable individual to self-develop their inherent moral potential without any external compulsion or threat to comply with any external rules or moral opinions.
Your definition of 'what is fact, i.e. because English speakers say so! is merely an empty thing without any possibility of positive utility which condone more squabbles with more conflicting moral relativism.
Like any theory of truth, the pragmatism/utility theory ignores the way we actually use the word
truth, its cognates and related words, such as
falsehood. And when we say a factual assertion is true or false, we don't mean that it does or doesn't work, or that it is or isn't useful - though that may be true.
The word
truth isn't the name of a thing of some kind that can be explained, in the way we try to explain thermodynamics. A so-called theory of truth is nothing like a theory of evolution. And that's why competing so-called theories of truth - and other supposed abstract things, such as knowledge - can never be shown to be correct.
To dismiss what English speakers say or mean when use the word
truth as 'empty' is to entertain a metaphysical delusion about the existence of abstract things.
I don't believe James and the pragmatists are that stupid in 'cognating' truth with falsehoods.
Theists also claimed their respective facts, i.e. God exists and it work very effectively for theists on a psychological basis, i.e. provided consonance else they would go berserk with cognitive dissonance. There are cases where there are so-claimed facts that are not credible but yet useful.
Note my basic definition of truth or fact is this [quoted a 000s times];
A
fact is something that is true. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience.
Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.
For example,
"This sentence contains words." accurately describes a
linguistic fact, and
"The sun is a star" accurately describes an
astronomical fact.
Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" both accurately describe
historical facts.
Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief and of knowledge and opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact
Note this where
astronomical fact can vary, but possible where conditioned upon the astronomical FSK.
After Pluto was discovered in 1930, it was declared the
ninth planet from the Sun.
However, beginning in the 1990s, its status as a planet was questioned following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, including the dwarf planet Eris, leading the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006 to define the term planet formally—excluding Pluto and
reclassifying it as a dwarf planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
Don't try to shift the above to an ontological [essence] basis because that would be illusory.
What can be inferred above [as highlighted] is what is fact is specific to a FSK.
You deny this? Surely you cannot, if so, give me your counter.
Therefore whatever is defined as moral fact is specific to a moral FSK subject to credible justifications they are real and objective.
This again is undeniable based on the above principle.
Now when we introduced the pragmatist's definition of truth/fact we are only reinforcing with greater weightage of its truth or fact which is the main drive of philosophy, i.e. "teleologically" for the optimal utility of humanity.
The word truth isn't the name of a thing of some kind that can be explained, in the way we try to explain thermodynamics.
A so-called theory of truth is nothing like a theory of evolution. And that's why competing so-called theories of truth - and other supposed abstract things, such as knowledge - can never be shown to be correct.
You are way out on this.
Whatever the scientific facts they are conditioned upon the scientific FSK.
But within scientific facts they come in various degrees of credibility in compliance with the requirements of the scientific FSK.
As such the theory of evolution, the Big Bang and other theories that cannot be tested and repeated has lower credibility than those that can be tested with repeated results by anyone, e.g. 'water is H2O', and the likes.
In addition there are many other factors within the scientific framework that affect the credibility [trust] of the scientific facts.
To dismiss what English speakers say or mean when use the word truth as 'empty' is to entertain a metaphysical delusion about the existence of abstract things.
How so?
As I had stated the most credible facts at present are scientific [& mathematical] facts. Thus if I leverage whatever facts as closed to the scientific basis, how can that be a metaphysical delusion about the existence of abstract things.
Your English [can be any language] speaker version of 'what is fact' is fundamentally based on the linguistic FSK which at most tantamount to armchair philosophy or mental masturbation.
You imagine you are on solid grounds but your version of linguistic fact is empty and is a metaphysical delusion about the existence of abstract thing.
If you claim it is really factual as credible and real you have no choice but to subject it to the credible scientific framework to be verified and justified as a fact, i.e. only as a scientific fact.
Your fact cannot stand by itself as really real and highly credible just because you said so linguistically.