...given our current state of knowledge about meta-ethics I can give no better definition
of the words “should”/”right”/”wrong” than the meaning they have in everyday use.
You can assume that the words have no specific meaning and are used to signal membership in a group. This explains why the flowchart in the original post has so many endpoints about what morality might mean. It explains why there seems to be no universal consensus on what specific actions are moral and which ones are not. It also explains why people have such strong opinions about morality despite the fact that statements about morality are not subject to empirical validation.
You can assume that the words have no specific meaning and are used to signal membership in a group.
One could make the same claim about words like “exits”/”true”/”false”. Especially if our knowledge of science was at the same state as our knowledge of ethics.
Just the words “exits”/”true”/”false” had a meaning even before the development of science and Bayeanism even though a lot of people used them to signal group affiliation, I believe the words “should”/”right”/”wrong” even though a lot of people use them to signal group affiliation
But science isn’t about words like “exist”, “true”, or “false”. Science is about words like “Frozen water is less dense than liquid water”. I can point at frozen water, liquid water, and a particular instance of the former floating on the latter. Scientific claims were well-defined even before there was enough knowledge to evaluate them. I can’t point at anything for claims about morality, so the analogy between ethics and science is not valid.
Come on people. Argument by analogy doesn’t prove anything even when the analogies are valid! Stop it.
If you don’t like the hypothesis that words like “should”, “right”, and “wrong” are social signaling, give some other explanation of the evidence that is simpler. The evidence in question is:
The flowchart in the original post has many endpoints about what morality might mean.
There seems to be no universal consensus on what specific actions are moral and which ones are not.
People have strong opinions about morality despite the fact that statements about morality are not subject to empirical validation.
You can’t point at anything for claims about pure maths either. That something is not empirical does not automatically invalidate it.
Morality is not just social signalling, because it makes sense to say some social signals (“I am higher status than you because I have more slaves”) are morally wrong.
Morality is not just social signalling, because it makes sense to say some social signals (“I am higher status than you because I have more slaves”) are morally wrong.
That conclusion does not follow. Saying you have slaves is a signal about morality and, depending on the audience, often a bad signal.
Note that there is a difference between “morality is about signalling” and “signalling is about morality”. If I say “I am high status because I live a moral life” I am blatantly using morality to signal, but it doesn’t remotely follow from that there is nothing to morality except signalling. It could be argued that, morally speaking, I should pursue morality
for its own sake and not to gain status.
But science isn’t about words like “exist”, “true”, or “false”. Science is about words like “Frozen water is less dense than liquid water”.
Only because the force of the word “exists” is implicit in the indicative mood of the word “is”.
Come on people. Argument by analogy doesn’t prove anything even when the analogies are valid! Stop it.
But they can help explain what people mean, and they can show argument prove too much.
The flowchart in the original post has many endpoints about what morality might mean.
I could draw an equally complicate flow chart about what “truth” and “exists”/”is” might mean.
There seems to be no universal consensus on what specific actions are moral and which ones are not.
The amount of consensus is roughly the same as the amount of consensus there was before the development of science about which statements are true and which aren’t.
People have strong opinions about morality despite the fact that statements about morality are not subject to empirical validation.
People had strong opinions about truth before the concept of empirical validation was developed.
Your criticisms of “truth” are not so far off, but you’re essentially saying that parts of science are wrong so you can be wrong, too. No actually, you think it is OK to flounder around in the field when you’re just starting out. Sure, but not when you don’t even know what it is you’re supposed to be studying—if anything! This is not analogous to physics, where the general goal was clear from the very beginning: figure out what physical mechanisms underly macro-scale phenomena, such as the hardness of metal, conductivity, magnetic attraction, gravity, etc.
You’re just running around to whatever you can grab onto to avoid the main point that there is nothing close to a semblance of delineation of what this “field” is actually about, and it is getting tiresome.
This is not analogous to physics, where the general goal was clear from the very beginning: figure out what physical mechanisms underly macro-scale phenomena, such as the hardness of metal, conductivity, magnetic attraction, gravity, etc.
That is sort of half true, but it feels like you’re just saying that to say it, as there have been criticisms of this same line of reasoning that you haven’t answered.
How about the fact that beliefs about physics actually pay rent? Do moral ones?
You can assume that the words have no specific meaning and are used to signal membership in a group. This explains why the flowchart in the original post has so many endpoints about what morality might mean. It explains why there seems to be no universal consensus on what specific actions are moral and which ones are not. It also explains why people have such strong opinions about morality despite the fact that statements about morality are not subject to empirical validation.
One could make the same claim about words like “exits”/”true”/”false”. Especially if our knowledge of science was at the same state as our knowledge of ethics.
Just the words “exits”/”true”/”false” had a meaning even before the development of science and Bayeanism even though a lot of people used them to signal group affiliation, I believe the words “should”/”right”/”wrong” even though a lot of people use them to signal group affiliation
But science isn’t about words like “exist”, “true”, or “false”. Science is about words like “Frozen water is less dense than liquid water”. I can point at frozen water, liquid water, and a particular instance of the former floating on the latter. Scientific claims were well-defined even before there was enough knowledge to evaluate them. I can’t point at anything for claims about morality, so the analogy between ethics and science is not valid.
Come on people. Argument by analogy doesn’t prove anything even when the analogies are valid! Stop it.
If you don’t like the hypothesis that words like “should”, “right”, and “wrong” are social signaling, give some other explanation of the evidence that is simpler. The evidence in question is:
The flowchart in the original post has many endpoints about what morality might mean.
There seems to be no universal consensus on what specific actions are moral and which ones are not.
People have strong opinions about morality despite the fact that statements about morality are not subject to empirical validation.
You can’t point at anything for claims about pure maths either. That something is not empirical does not automatically invalidate it.
Morality is not just social signalling, because it makes sense to say some social signals (“I am higher status than you because I have more slaves”) are morally wrong.
That conclusion does not follow. Saying you have slaves is a signal about morality and, depending on the audience, often a bad signal.
Note that there is a difference between “morality is about signalling” and “signalling is about morality”. If I say “I am high status because I live a moral life” I am blatantly using morality to signal, but it doesn’t remotely follow from that there is nothing to morality except signalling. It could be argued that, morally speaking, I should pursue morality for its own sake and not to gain status.
That sounds like an effective signal to send—and a common one.
Noted yet not especially relevant to my comment.
Only because the force of the word “exists” is implicit in the indicative mood of the word “is”.
But they can help explain what people mean, and they can show argument prove too much.
I could draw an equally complicate flow chart about what “truth” and “exists”/”is” might mean.
The amount of consensus is roughly the same as the amount of consensus there was before the development of science about which statements are true and which aren’t.
People had strong opinions about truth before the concept of empirical validation was developed.
Your criticisms of “truth” are not so far off, but you’re essentially saying that parts of science are wrong so you can be wrong, too. No actually, you think it is OK to flounder around in the field when you’re just starting out. Sure, but not when you don’t even know what it is you’re supposed to be studying—if anything! This is not analogous to physics, where the general goal was clear from the very beginning: figure out what physical mechanisms underly macro-scale phenomena, such as the hardness of metal, conductivity, magnetic attraction, gravity, etc.
You’re just running around to whatever you can grab onto to avoid the main point that there is nothing close to a semblance of delineation of what this “field” is actually about, and it is getting tiresome.
I think the claim that ethicists don’t know at all what they are studying is unfounded.
I believe this is hindsight bias.
Ugg in 65,000 BC: Why water fire no mix? Why rock so hard? Why tree have shadow?
Eugine in 2011: What is the True Theory of Something-or-Other?
True.
That is sort of half true, but it feels like you’re just saying that to say it, as there have been criticisms of this same line of reasoning that you haven’t answered.
How about the fact that beliefs about physics actually pay rent? Do moral ones?
Good point. And no, they don’t—unless you need rent to tell you about people’s preferences.
Not in the sense of anticipated experience, however they do inform our actions.