Failed??Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:01 am 1 Like all abstract things, propositions are misleading metaphysical fictions. There are only assertions - typically linguistic expressions, which are real. So moral assertions are real linguistic expressions. And they express value-judgements about certain features of reality, such as slavery, abortion, capital punishment, eating animals, and so on.
2 Moral cognitivists claim that the moral rightness or wrongness of such features of reality can be known and understood.
But, along with moral realists and objectivists, they've failed to demonstrate the existence of such things.
So the claim that such things can be known and understood doesn't even make it to the starting post. The horse is dead. The race is forfeit in advance. Moral cognitivism is iraational.
Moral facts exist right from the emergence of humanity since eons ago.
Humans have been acting, do the right thing, in alignment with those moral facts.
Then as humans evolve and progress they are able to intuit the existence of such moral facts and take steps to formalize them in various crude moral systems, within their cultures [as noted by anthropologists], religious morality, etc.
Then we have Hume [cognitivist] who attempted to justify the existence of the inherent moral sense faculty within the human system. The moral sense is itself a fact of human nature, thus a moral fact.
Note this sequence of events:
- 1. The early moral cognitivist intuitively sense there are moral facts. Then they rationalized these intuitions to formalize them within crude moral structures with its pros and cons.
2. It is the NonCognitivists [for their own reasons] who subsequently reject the cognitivists' claims in the face of the cons [negative] effects from 1.
3. But the cognitivists-proper* stood their intuited grounds with stronger evidences to support their stance. * Those cognitivists who promote moral systems that are net-positive for humanity.
4. Then the noncognitivists re-counter with new counters.
5. So the cognitivists continue to stand on their grounds with more evidences.
6. Then the noncogntivists huff and puff against the cognitivists' stance till they ran out of gas - no more sound counters to refute the cognitivists.
7. The more the noncognitivist struggle to refute the cognitivists they [the NonCognitivists] are finding the more their counters are nearing to the cognitivists stance, and it is speculated the Cognitivism-NonCognitivism Distinction is collapsing soon. The NonCognitivists' refutation will be toothless soon, like those of their ancestors, i.e. bastardized Logical Positivists' arrogant claims of the past.
Nb: at most what the Cognitivists' success is only restricted to countering the claims of moral facts from a God, by theists who are actually indulging in pseudo-morality. The cognitivists also can refute the theists' claim of moral facts from a God - the Woo Woo & Boo Boo. The other is refuting Platonic related moral facts of moral forms floating around the universe.
But the moral facts of the moral-cognitivism-proper [moral realism I am proposing] is a different kettle of fish from the theists' and platonic versions.
The early moral intuitionists were right on target, but lack the necessary knowledge then hundreds of years ago.
But in the present, with a trend of the exponential expansion of knowledge, especially of evolutionary psychology, genomics, advancing neurosciences, and others, we are now able to justify with greater confidence the existence of moral facts from a Moral FSK.
Note, it is moral facts from a Moral FSK, you should not cling to your naked and nude 'fact' as bastardized by the logical positivists.