Some cognitivists think that [...] Other cognitivists think that [...]
Is there a test of the real world that could tell us that some of them are right and others think wrong? If not, what is the value of describing their thoughts?
It’s clear to me that applied and normative ethics deal with real and important questions. They are, respectively, heuristics for certain situations, and analysis of possible failure modes of these heuristics.
But I don’t understand what metaethics deals with. You write:
Metaethics: What does moral language mean? Do moral facts exist? If so, what are they like, and are they reducible to natural facts? How can we know whether moral judgments are true or false? Is there a connection between making a moral judgment and being motivated to abide by it? Are moral judgments objective or subjective, relative or absolute? Does it make sense to talk about moral progress?
I don’t understand why, given the reduction of these questions to substance, they are nearly as important as the first two categories. In fact, some of these questions seem to me not to reduce to anything interesting. “Does it make sense to talk about moral progress?” seems a question about definitions—given an exact definition of “moral” and “progress”, there shouldn’t be any empirical fact left to discover in order to answer the question. And the part of the post that discusses the positions of various philosophers gives me a strong feeling of confusion and argument about words.
I expect your next posts will make this clearer, but I wish you had included in this post at least a brief description or example of a question in metaethics that it would be useful to know the answer to. Or, at least, interesting to a reasonably broad audience.
I wish you had included in this post at least a brief description or example of a question in metaethics that it would be useful to know the answer to.
This is nicely put. I second the request: what is a metaethical question that could have a useful answer? It would be especially nice if the usefulness was clear from the question itself, and not from the answer that lukeprog is preparing to give.
Exact definitions are easy to come by, so long as you are not bothered about correctness. Let morality=42, for instance. If you are bothered about correctness, you need to solve metaethics, the question of what morality is, before you can exactly and correctly define “morality”.
I can understand the impatience with philosophy—“why can’t they just solve these problems”—because that was my reaction when I first encountered it some 35 years ago. Did I solve philosophy? I only managed to nibble away at some edges. That’s all anyone ever manages.
you need to solve metaethics, the question of what morality is
The problem isn’t that I don’t know the answer. The problem is that I don’t understand the question.
“Morality” is a word. “Understanding morality” is, first of all, understanding what people mean when they use that word. I already know the answer to that question: they mean a complex set of evolved behaviors that have to do with selecting and judging behaviors and other agents. Now that I’ve answered that question, if you claim there is a further unanswered question, you will need to specify what it is exactly. Otherwise it’s no different from saying we must “solve the question of what a Platonic ideal is”.
There are many important questions about morality that need to be answered—how exactly people make moral decisions, how to predict and manipulate them, how to modify our own behavior to be more consistent, etc. But these are part of applied and normative ethics. I don’t understand what metaethics is.
Understanding morality is second of all deciding what, if anything, it actually is. Water actually is H2O, but you can use the word without knowing that, and you can’t find out what water is just by studying how the word is used.
“Morality” is a complex set of evolved behaviors, etc. We can study those behaviors. This is (ETA:) descriptive ethics. What is metaethics, though?
And do you think there are questions to be asked about morals which are not questions about the different human behaviors that are sometimes labeled as morally relevant? Do you think there exists something in the universe, independent of human beings and the accidents of our evolution, that is called “morals”? The original post indicated that some philosophers think so.
The study of those behaviours is descriptive ethics. The prescription of those behaviours is normative ethics.
We can ask whether some de facto behaviour we have observed is really moral. And
that raises the question of what “really moral” means. And that is metaethics and has a number of possible solutions, positive and negative, which are clearly outlined in the original positing. And metaethics does not vanish just because the Platonic approach is rejected.
We can also ask whether some de facto behavior is really vorpal. That raises the question of what “really vorpal” means. Luckily, I can tell you what it really means: nothing at all.
If you claim the word “moral” means something that I—and most people who use that word—don’t know that it means, then 1) you have to tell us what it means as the start of any discussion instead of asking us what it means, and 2) you should really use a new word for your new idea.
The study of those behaviours is descriptive ethics. The prescription of those behaviours is normative ethics.
Luckily, I can tell you what it really means: nothing at all.
Negative solutions are possible, as I said.
If you claim the word “moral” means something that I—and most people who use that word—don’t know that it means,
I didn’t claim that.. I did say that a precise and correct definition requires coming up with a correct theory. But coming up with a correct theory only requires the imprecise pretheoretical definition, and everyone already has that. (I wasn’t asking for it because I don’t know it, I was asking for it to remind people that they already have it).
If I had promised a correct theory, I would have implictly promised a post-theoretic definition to go with it. But I didn’t make the first promise, so I am not commtted to the second.
The whole thing is aimed as a correction to the ideas that you need to have, or can have, completely clear and accurate deffinitions from the get go.
2) you should really use a new word for your new idea.
People should read carefully, and note that I never claimed to have a New Idea.
I take it you mean negative solutions to the question: does “morality” have a meaning we don’t precisely know yet?
What I’m saying is that it’s your burden to show that we should be considering this question at all. It’s not clear to me what this question means or how and why it arises in your mind.
It’s as if you said you were going to spend a year researching exactly what cars mean. And I asked: what does it mean for cars to “mean” something that we don’t know? It’s clearly not the same as saying the word “cars” refers to something, because it can’t refer to something we don’t know about; a word is defined only by the way we use it. And cars at least exist as physical objects, unlike morality.
So before we talk about possible answers (or the lack of them), I’m asking you to explain to me the question being discussed. What does the question mean? What kind of objects can be the answer—can morality “mean” that ice cream is sweet, or is that wrong type of answer? What is the test used to judge if an answer is true or false? Is there a possibility two people will never agree even though one of their answers is objectively true (like in literature, and unlike in mathematics)?
The whole thing is aimed as a correction to the ideas that you need to have, or can have, completely clear and accurate deffinitions from the get go.
If we only have an inaccurate definition for morality right now, and someone proposes an accurate one, how can we tell if it’s correct?
No, by negative answers, I mean things like error theories in metaethics.
I think your other questions don’t have obvious answers. If you think that the lack of obvious
answers should lead to something like “ditch the whole thing”, we could have a debate about that. Otherwise, you’re not saying anything that hasn’t been said already.
Is there a test of the real world that could tell us that some of them are right and others think wrong? If not, what is the value of describing their thoughts?
It’s clear to me that applied and normative ethics deal with real and important questions. They are, respectively, heuristics for certain situations, and analysis of possible failure modes of these heuristics.
But I don’t understand what metaethics deals with. You write:
I don’t understand why, given the reduction of these questions to substance, they are nearly as important as the first two categories. In fact, some of these questions seem to me not to reduce to anything interesting. “Does it make sense to talk about moral progress?” seems a question about definitions—given an exact definition of “moral” and “progress”, there shouldn’t be any empirical fact left to discover in order to answer the question. And the part of the post that discusses the positions of various philosophers gives me a strong feeling of confusion and argument about words.
I expect your next posts will make this clearer, but I wish you had included in this post at least a brief description or example of a question in metaethics that it would be useful to know the answer to. Or, at least, interesting to a reasonably broad audience.
This is nicely put. I second the request: what is a metaethical question that could have a useful answer? It would be especially nice if the usefulness was clear from the question itself, and not from the answer that lukeprog is preparing to give.
Exact definitions are easy to come by, so long as you are not bothered about correctness. Let morality=42, for instance. If you are bothered about correctness, you need to solve metaethics, the question of what morality is, before you can exactly and correctly define “morality”.
I can understand the impatience with philosophy—“why can’t they just solve these problems”—because that was my reaction when I first encountered it some 35 years ago. Did I solve philosophy? I only managed to nibble away at some edges. That’s all anyone ever manages.
How dare you! 42 isn’t even prime, let alone right.
The problem isn’t that I don’t know the answer. The problem is that I don’t understand the question.
“Morality” is a word. “Understanding morality” is, first of all, understanding what people mean when they use that word. I already know the answer to that question: they mean a complex set of evolved behaviors that have to do with selecting and judging behaviors and other agents. Now that I’ve answered that question, if you claim there is a further unanswered question, you will need to specify what it is exactly. Otherwise it’s no different from saying we must “solve the question of what a Platonic ideal is”.
There are many important questions about morality that need to be answered—how exactly people make moral decisions, how to predict and manipulate them, how to modify our own behavior to be more consistent, etc. But these are part of applied and normative ethics. I don’t understand what metaethics is.
Understanding morality is second of all deciding what, if anything, it actually is. Water actually is H2O, but you can use the word without knowing that, and you can’t find out what water is just by studying how the word is used.
I think you don’t understand my question.
“Water” is H2O. And we can study H2O.
“Morality” is a complex set of evolved behaviors, etc. We can study those behaviors. This is (ETA:) descriptive ethics. What is metaethics, though?
And do you think there are questions to be asked about morals which are not questions about the different human behaviors that are sometimes labeled as morally relevant? Do you think there exists something in the universe, independent of human beings and the accidents of our evolution, that is called “morals”? The original post indicated that some philosophers think so.
The study of those behaviours is descriptive ethics. The prescription of those behaviours is normative ethics.
We can ask whether some de facto behaviour we have observed is really moral. And that raises the question of what “really moral” means. And that is metaethics and has a number of possible solutions, positive and negative, which are clearly outlined in the original positing. And metaethics does not vanish just because the Platonic approach is rejected.
We can also ask whether some de facto behavior is really vorpal. That raises the question of what “really vorpal” means. Luckily, I can tell you what it really means: nothing at all.
If you claim the word “moral” means something that I—and most people who use that word—don’t know that it means, then 1) you have to tell us what it means as the start of any discussion instead of asking us what it means, and 2) you should really use a new word for your new idea.
Thanks for the correction.
Negative solutions are possible, as I said.
I didn’t claim that.. I did say that a precise and correct definition requires coming up with a correct theory. But coming up with a correct theory only requires the imprecise pretheoretical definition, and everyone already has that. (I wasn’t asking for it because I don’t know it, I was asking for it to remind people that they already have it).
If I had promised a correct theory, I would have implictly promised a post-theoretic definition to go with it. But I didn’t make the first promise, so I am not commtted to the second.
The whole thing is aimed as a correction to the ideas that you need to have, or can have, completely clear and accurate deffinitions from the get go.
People should read carefully, and note that I never claimed to have a New Idea.
I take it you mean negative solutions to the question: does “morality” have a meaning we don’t precisely know yet?
What I’m saying is that it’s your burden to show that we should be considering this question at all. It’s not clear to me what this question means or how and why it arises in your mind.
It’s as if you said you were going to spend a year researching exactly what cars mean. And I asked: what does it mean for cars to “mean” something that we don’t know? It’s clearly not the same as saying the word “cars” refers to something, because it can’t refer to something we don’t know about; a word is defined only by the way we use it. And cars at least exist as physical objects, unlike morality.
So before we talk about possible answers (or the lack of them), I’m asking you to explain to me the question being discussed. What does the question mean? What kind of objects can be the answer—can morality “mean” that ice cream is sweet, or is that wrong type of answer? What is the test used to judge if an answer is true or false? Is there a possibility two people will never agree even though one of their answers is objectively true (like in literature, and unlike in mathematics)?
If we only have an inaccurate definition for morality right now, and someone proposes an accurate one, how can we tell if it’s correct?
No, by negative answers, I mean things like error theories in metaethics.
I think your other questions don’t have obvious answers. If you think that the lack of obvious answers should lead to something like “ditch the whole thing”, we could have a debate about that. Otherwise, you’re not saying anything that hasn’t been said already.