“Indexicality” in the philosopher’s sense means that the reference of a word depends on who utters it in which circumstances. Putnam argues that “water” (and all other natural kind terms) has an indexical component because its reference depends on whether you or twin-you utters it.
Which is about equivalent to claiming that anything might be relative, because it might be indexical along some unknown axis, in this case unobserved possible worlds. I afraid I don’t think that is very interesting.
What’s that concept of “relativity” you’re talking about, anyway? The proposition expressed by the sentence “clippy shouldn’t convert humans into paperclips”, uttered by a speaker of English in the actual world, is simply true. That the proposition expressed by the sentence varies depending on who utters it in which world is a completely different thing. There is no relativism about whether I am sitting at my desk just because I can report this fact by saying “I’m sitting in my desk” (which you can’t do, because if you said that sentence, you would be expressing a different proposition, one that’s about you, not me).
“clippy shouldn’t convert humans into paperclips”, uttered by a speaker of English in the actual world, is simply true.
Only if moral realism is also true. If the above sentence is false when uttered by Clippy, it has a truth value which is indexical to who is uttering it, meaning that moral realism is false.
There is no relativism about whether I am sitting at my desk just because I can report this fact by saying “I’m sitting in my desk”
It’s not relative, and it is indexical, because “I” is indexical. The point you are making is again, not interesting.
Yes, of course. I was illustrating how the theory works.
If the above sentence is false when uttered by Clippy, it has a truth value which is indexical to who is uttering it, meaning that moral realism is false.
No, it doesn’t. The thing is that on the view I’m talking about here, sentences don’t have truth-conditions, but propositions have. (Some) sentences express a proposition dependent on the context of utterance. Moral realism thus has to be the position that moral statements express propositions, because it wouldn’t make any sense otherwise—sentences don’t have truth-conditions anyway. When clippy says “One shouldn’t convert humans into paperclips”, he is simply not expressing the same proposition that I am expressing when I utter that sentence.
The point you are making is again, not interesting.
Then why exactly are you having a discussion that seems to be based on you not understanding concepts that you find “uninteresting”? I find your sense of “relative”, which seems to be “in any conceivable way dependent on anything”, pretty uninteresting, actually...
When clippy says “One shouldn’t convert humans into paperclips”, he is simply not expressing the same proposition that I am expressing when I utter that sentence.
Why shouldn’t the truth-value attach to a (proposition, context) tuple? Why, for that matter shouldn’t it attach to a (sentence, language, context) tuple?
A (sentence,language,context) tuple uniquely determines a proposition, so I don’t mind if you attach a truth-value to that (relative to a world of evaluation, of course). But propositions don’t change their truth-value relative to a context by definition. A proposition is that thing which has a truth-value relative to a situation of evaluation.
But—see this comment—I may have been too charitable in interpreting “realism” as what is more properly called “cognitivism”. That’s because I can’t think of any other interpretation of “realism” that even makes any sense.
Cognitivism is compatible with the claim that moral statements have truth values that vary with the speaker. (despite lack of explicit indexicals, yadda yadda). The contrary claim is that they don’t. I don’t see why the one claim should be more readily comprehensible that its opposite.
The contrary claim is often called realism, although that muddies the water, since in addition to the epistemological claim it can be used to state the claim that moral terms have real referents.
“Cognitivism encompasses all forms of moral realism, but cognitivism can also agree with ethical irrealism or anti-realism. Aside from the subjectivist branch of cognitivism, some cognitive irrealist theories accept that ethical sentences can be objectively true or false, even if there exist no natural, physical or in any way real (or “worldly”) entities or objects to make them true or false.
There are a number of ways of construing how a proposition can be objectively true without corresponding to the world:
By the coherence rather than the correspondence theory of truth
In a figurative sense: it can be true that I have a cold, but that doesn’t mean that the word “cold” corresponds to a distinct entity.
In the way that mathematical statements are true for mathematical anti-realists. This would typically be the idea that a proposition can be true if it is a entailment of some intuitively appealing axiom — in other words, apriori anayltical reasoning.
Crispin Wright, John Skorupski and some others defend normative cognitivist irrealism. Wright asserts the extreme implausibility of both J. L. Mackie’s error-theory and non-cognitivism (including S. Blackburn’s quasi-realism) in view of both everyday and sophisticated moral speech and argument. The same point is often expressed as the Frege-Geach Objection. Skorupski distinguishes between receptive awareness, which is not possible in normative matters, and non-receptive awareness (including dialogical knowledge), which is possible in normative matters.
Hilary Putnam’s book Ethics without ontology (Harvard, 2004) argues for a similar view, that ethical (and for that matter mathematical) sentences can be true and objective without there being any objects to make them so.
Cognitivism points to the semantic difference between imperative sentences and declarative sentences in normative subjects. Or to the different meanings and purposes of some superficially declarative sentences. For instance, if a teacher allows one of her students to go out by saying “You may go out”, this sentence is neither true or false. It gives a permission. But, in most situations, if one of the students asks one of his classmates whether she thinks that he may go out and she answers “Of course you may go out”, this sentence is either true or false. It does not give a permission, it states that there is a permission.
Another argument for ethical cognitivism stands on the close resemblance between ethics and other normative matters, such as games. As much as morality, games consist of norms (or rules), but it would be hard to accept that it be not true that the chessplayer who checkmates the other one wins the game. If statements about game rules can be true or false, why not ethical statements? One answer is that we may want ethical statements to be categorically true, while we only need statements about right action to be contingent on the acceptance of the rules of a particular game—that is, the choice to play the game according to a given set of rules.”—WP
By the way, I suspect you call indexicality “uninteresting” because if it applies to “water”, then it probably applies to just about every word. This is true—but it is also why should be happy to count Eliezer’s position as moral realism, or do you want to call yourself a relativist about water?
I am not saying water is indexical because of PWs or whatever. I am saying that cases of indexicallity irrelvant to moral relativism are not interesting in the context of a discussion about moral relativism.
“Indexicality” in the philosopher’s sense means that the reference of a word depends on who utters it in which circumstances. Putnam argues that “water” (and all other natural kind terms) has an indexical component because its reference depends on whether you or twin-you utters it.
Which is about equivalent to claiming that anything might be relative, because it might be indexical along some unknown axis, in this case unobserved possible worlds. I afraid I don’t think that is very interesting.
What’s that concept of “relativity” you’re talking about, anyway? The proposition expressed by the sentence “clippy shouldn’t convert humans into paperclips”, uttered by a speaker of English in the actual world, is simply true. That the proposition expressed by the sentence varies depending on who utters it in which world is a completely different thing. There is no relativism about whether I am sitting at my desk just because I can report this fact by saying “I’m sitting in my desk” (which you can’t do, because if you said that sentence, you would be expressing a different proposition, one that’s about you, not me).
Only if moral realism is also true. If the above sentence is false when uttered by Clippy, it has a truth value which is indexical to who is uttering it, meaning that moral realism is false.
It’s not relative, and it is indexical, because “I” is indexical. The point you are making is again, not interesting.
Yes, of course. I was illustrating how the theory works.
No, it doesn’t. The thing is that on the view I’m talking about here, sentences don’t have truth-conditions, but propositions have. (Some) sentences express a proposition dependent on the context of utterance. Moral realism thus has to be the position that moral statements express propositions, because it wouldn’t make any sense otherwise—sentences don’t have truth-conditions anyway. When clippy says “One shouldn’t convert humans into paperclips”, he is simply not expressing the same proposition that I am expressing when I utter that sentence.
Then why exactly are you having a discussion that seems to be based on you not understanding concepts that you find “uninteresting”? I find your sense of “relative”, which seems to be “in any conceivable way dependent on anything”, pretty uninteresting, actually...
Why shouldn’t the truth-value attach to a (proposition, context) tuple? Why, for that matter shouldn’t it attach to a (sentence, language, context) tuple?
A (sentence,language,context) tuple uniquely determines a proposition, so I don’t mind if you attach a truth-value to that (relative to a world of evaluation, of course). But propositions don’t change their truth-value relative to a context by definition. A proposition is that thing which has a truth-value relative to a situation of evaluation.
But—see this comment—I may have been too charitable in interpreting “realism” as what is more properly called “cognitivism”. That’s because I can’t think of any other interpretation of “realism” that even makes any sense.
Cognitivism is compatible with the claim that moral statements have truth values that vary with the speaker. (despite lack of explicit indexicals, yadda yadda). The contrary claim is that they don’t. I don’t see why the one claim should be more readily comprehensible that its opposite.
The contrary claim is often called realism, although that muddies the water, since in addition to the epistemological claim it can be used to state the claim that moral terms have real referents.
“Cognitivism encompasses all forms of moral realism, but cognitivism can also agree with ethical irrealism or anti-realism. Aside from the subjectivist branch of cognitivism, some cognitive irrealist theories accept that ethical sentences can be objectively true or false, even if there exist no natural, physical or in any way real (or “worldly”) entities or objects to make them true or false.
There are a number of ways of construing how a proposition can be objectively true without corresponding to the world:
By the coherence rather than the correspondence theory of truth
In a figurative sense: it can be true that I have a cold, but that doesn’t mean that the word “cold” corresponds to a distinct entity.
In the way that mathematical statements are true for mathematical anti-realists. This would typically be the idea that a proposition can be true if it is a entailment of some intuitively appealing axiom — in other words, apriori anayltical reasoning.
Crispin Wright, John Skorupski and some others defend normative cognitivist irrealism. Wright asserts the extreme implausibility of both J. L. Mackie’s error-theory and non-cognitivism (including S. Blackburn’s quasi-realism) in view of both everyday and sophisticated moral speech and argument. The same point is often expressed as the Frege-Geach Objection. Skorupski distinguishes between receptive awareness, which is not possible in normative matters, and non-receptive awareness (including dialogical knowledge), which is possible in normative matters.
Hilary Putnam’s book Ethics without ontology (Harvard, 2004) argues for a similar view, that ethical (and for that matter mathematical) sentences can be true and objective without there being any objects to make them so.
Cognitivism points to the semantic difference between imperative sentences and declarative sentences in normative subjects. Or to the different meanings and purposes of some superficially declarative sentences. For instance, if a teacher allows one of her students to go out by saying “You may go out”, this sentence is neither true or false. It gives a permission. But, in most situations, if one of the students asks one of his classmates whether she thinks that he may go out and she answers “Of course you may go out”, this sentence is either true or false. It does not give a permission, it states that there is a permission.
Another argument for ethical cognitivism stands on the close resemblance between ethics and other normative matters, such as games. As much as morality, games consist of norms (or rules), but it would be hard to accept that it be not true that the chessplayer who checkmates the other one wins the game. If statements about game rules can be true or false, why not ethical statements? One answer is that we may want ethical statements to be categorically true, while we only need statements about right action to be contingent on the acceptance of the rules of a particular game—that is, the choice to play the game according to a given set of rules.”—WP
Nothing in this is at all illuminating as to what on earth realism is supposed to be.
Do understand what moral subjectivism is?
By the way, I suspect you call indexicality “uninteresting” because if it applies to “water”, then it probably applies to just about every word. This is true—but it is also why should be happy to count Eliezer’s position as moral realism, or do you want to call yourself a relativist about water?
I am not saying water is indexical because of PWs or whatever. I am saying that cases of indexicallity irrelvant to moral relativism are not interesting in the context of a discussion about moral relativism.
They are because they help to illustrate the theory.