Well, I’m not trying to say that some values are factual and others are imaginary. But when someone makes a “should” statement (makes a moral assertion), “should” refers to a particular predicate determined by their actual value system, as your value system determines your language. Thus when people talk of “you should do X” they aren’t speaking of preferences or values, rather they are speaking of whatever it is their value system actually unfolds into.
(The fact that we all use the same word, “should” to describe what could be many different concepts is, I think, justified by the notion that we mostly share the same values, so we are in fact talking about the same thing, but that’s an empirical issue.)
As a example consider a statement “The sum of the triangle’s inner angles is 180 degrees”. Is this true?
Hopefully this will help demonstrate my position. I would say that when being fully rigorous is it a type error to ask whether a sentence is true. Logical propositions have a truth value, but sentences are just strings of symbols. To turn “The sum of the triangle’s inner angles is 180 degrees” into a logical proposition you need to know what is meant by “sum”, “triangle”, “inner angles”, “180”, “degrees” and indeed “is”.
As an example, if the sentence was uttered by Bob, and what he meant by “triangle” was a triangle in euclidean space, and by “is” he meant “is always” (universally quantified), then what he said is factually (unconditionally) true. But if he uttered the same sentence, in a language where “triangle” means a triangle in a hyperbolic space, or in a general space, then what he said would be unconditionally false. There’s no contradiction here because in each case he said a different thing.
Well, I’m not trying to say that some values are factual and others are imaginary. But when someone makes a “should” statement (makes a moral assertion), “should” refers to a particular predicate determined by their actual value system, as your value system determines your language. Thus when people talk of “you should do X” they aren’t speaking of preferences or values, rather they are speaking of whatever it is their value system actually unfolds into.
(The fact that we all use the same word, “should” to describe what could be many different concepts is, I think, justified by the notion that we mostly share the same values, so we are in fact talking about the same thing, but that’s an empirical issue.)
Hopefully this will help demonstrate my position. I would say that when being fully rigorous is it a type error to ask whether a sentence is true. Logical propositions have a truth value, but sentences are just strings of symbols. To turn “The sum of the triangle’s inner angles is 180 degrees” into a logical proposition you need to know what is meant by “sum”, “triangle”, “inner angles”, “180”, “degrees” and indeed “is”.
As an example, if the sentence was uttered by Bob, and what he meant by “triangle” was a triangle in euclidean space, and by “is” he meant “is always” (universally quantified), then what he said is factually (unconditionally) true. But if he uttered the same sentence, in a language where “triangle” means a triangle in a hyperbolic space, or in a general space, then what he said would be unconditionally false. There’s no contradiction here because in each case he said a different thing.