Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 10:32 pm
I too bet on nature. It's the nature of men to be social animals who live in societies. Men in societies have common technologies and meanings and they have to trust each other or else the society would be ungovernable. Murder is antisocial , it would destroy mutual trust unless murderers were brought to justice and punished. Killing other men has been common throughout the human past. Power is the main motivator of all men. And this is why I am a socialist, because unbridled power once it gets into the hands of the few corrupts individuals and causes societies eventually to break down into warring factions.
Consider these pairs of claims:
1 Humans are social animals. Humans should be social animals.
2 Human societies have moral codes. Human societies should have moral codes.
3 People instinctively can't commit murder. People shouldn't commit murder.
4 People think murder is wrong. People should think murder is wrong.
The first of each pair is a falsifiable factual assertion, testable in reality. The second is an unfalsifiable moral assertion, untestable in reality. And the first can never entail the second, or (by association) prove that the second is a falsifiable factual assertion, let alone a fact.
We can test the consequences of people holding a moral opinion, such as that murder is wrong. For example, that may lead to a fall in the murder rate. Then 'when people believe murder is wrong, this leads to a fall in the murder rate' is a falsifiable factual assertion, testable in reality. And if it's true, that shows that there's a causal connection.
But that doesn't and can't turn the moral assertion 'murder is wrong' into a fact. That's just faulty reasoning, extrapolating from (and assuming) that a fall in the murder rate is a good thing - another moral assertion. And if people believed murder is right (as people often have through our history), and that lead to a rise in the murder rate (as it often has through our history), that would similarly merely show a causal connection. It wouldn't and couldn't turn the moral assertion 'murder is right' into a fact. That's similarly just faulty reasoning.
I agree completely about human social survival and coherence, and how having a moral value such as 'murder is wrong' contributes to them. But that human societies should survive and cohere is a value-judgement, not a fact. (And our future porcine masters will think differently.) Given all the facts we deploy to justify our judgements, they remain judgements (opinions), not facts.
Belinda, I'm addressing this to you, because I'd like to know where you think my reasoning is faulty - if you do. (Univalence and I disagree, but I don't really understand her/his argument, so I'd be grateful to see yours. No worries if you're bored with it all.)
By the way - greetings from a fellow socialist!