I can see that it is a word problem, and I woud argue that anyone would be hard pressed to guess what you meant by “objective moral facts”.
If individual moralities have enough of a common component that we can point to principles and values that are widely-shared among living people and societies, that would certainly count as a “fact” about morality, which we could call a “moral fact”. And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
You claimed a distinction in meaning between “morality” and “ethics” that doesn’t exist.
Dictionary definitions are worthless, especially in specialized domains. Does a distinction between “morality” and “ethics” (or even between “descriptive morality” and “normative morality”, if you’re committed to hopelessly confused and biased naming choices by academic philosophers) cut reality at its joints? I maintain that it does.
If individual moralities have enough of a common component that we can point to principles and values that are widely-shared among living people and societies, that would certainly count as a “fact” about morality, which we could call a “moral fact”. And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
And it is stll not an objective moral fact in the sense of Moral Objectivism, in the sense of a first-order fact
that makes some moral propositions mind independently true. It’s a second order fact.
Dictionary definitions are worthless, especially in specialized domains.
I’ve never seen that distinction in the specialised domain in question.
And it is stll not an objective moral fact in the sense of Moral Objectivism, in the sense of a first-order fact that makes some moral propositions mind independently true.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Whether there is some kind of factual (e.g. biological) base for morality is an interesting question, but it’s generally a question for psychology and science, not philosophy. People who try to argue for such a factual basis in a naïve way usually end up talking about something very different than what we actually mean by “morality” in the real world. For an unusually clear example, see Ayn Rand’s moral theory, incidentally also called “Objectivism”.
Just got bashed several times, while presenting the fragility of values idea in Oxford, for using the term “descriptive morality”. I was almost certain Eliezer used the term, hence, I was blaming him for my bashing. But it seems he doesn’t, and the above comment is the solely instance of the term I could find. I’m blaming you them! Not really though, it seems I’ve invented this term on my own—and I’m not proud of it. So far, I’ve failed to find a correlated term either in meta-ethics or in the Sequences. In my head, I was using it to mean what would be the 0 step for CEV. It could be seen as the object of study of descriptive ethics (a term that does exist), but it seems descriptive ethics uses a pluralistic or relativistic view, while I needed a term to describe the morality shared by all humans.
Just got bashed several times, while presenting the fragility of values idea in Oxford, for using the term “descriptive morality”.
So it’s even worse than I thought? When ethicists do any “descriptive” research, they are studying morality, whether they care to admit it or not. The problem with calling such things “ethics” is not so much that it implies a pluralist/relativist view—if anything, it makes the very opposite mistake: it does not take moralities seriously enough, as they exist in the real world. In common usage, the term “ethics” is only appropriate for very broadly-shared values (of course, whether such values exist after all is an empirical question), or else for the kind of consensus-based interplay of values or dispute resolution that we all do when we engage in ethical (or even moral!) reasoning in the real world.
And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
Sooo, not objective then. Definition debates are stupid, but there is no reason at all to be this loose with language. Seriously, this reads like a deconstructionist critique of a novel from an undergraduate majoring in English. Complete with scare quotes around words that are actually terms of art.
Well, yes. I’m using scare quotes around the terms “objective” and “fact”, precisely to point out that I am using them in a more general way than the term of art is usually defined. Nonetheless, I think this is useful, since it may help dissolve some philosophical questions and perhaps show them to be ill-posed or misleading.
Needless to say, I do not think this is “being loose with language”. And yes, sometimes I adopt a distinctive writing style in order to make a point as clearly as possible.
If individual moralities have enough of a common component that we can point to principles and values that are widely-shared among living people and societies, that would certainly count as a “fact” about morality, which we could call a “moral fact”. And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
Dictionary definitions are worthless, especially in specialized domains. Does a distinction between “morality” and “ethics” (or even between “descriptive morality” and “normative morality”, if you’re committed to hopelessly confused and biased naming choices by academic philosophers) cut reality at its joints? I maintain that it does.
And it is stll not an objective moral fact in the sense of Moral Objectivism, in the sense of a first-order fact that makes some moral propositions mind independently true. It’s a second order fact.
I’ve never seen that distinction in the specialised domain in question.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Whether there is some kind of factual (e.g. biological) base for morality is an interesting question, but it’s generally a question for psychology and science, not philosophy. People who try to argue for such a factual basis in a naïve way usually end up talking about something very different than what we actually mean by “morality” in the real world. For an unusually clear example, see Ayn Rand’s moral theory, incidentally also called “Objectivism”.
Just got bashed several times, while presenting the fragility of values idea in Oxford, for using the term “descriptive morality”. I was almost certain Eliezer used the term, hence, I was blaming him for my bashing. But it seems he doesn’t, and the above comment is the solely instance of the term I could find. I’m blaming you them! Not really though, it seems I’ve invented this term on my own—and I’m not proud of it. So far, I’ve failed to find a correlated term either in meta-ethics or in the Sequences. In my head, I was using it to mean what would be the 0 step for CEV. It could be seen as the object of study of descriptive ethics (a term that does exist), but it seems descriptive ethics uses a pluralistic or relativistic view, while I needed a term to describe the morality shared by all humans.
So it’s even worse than I thought? When ethicists do any “descriptive” research, they are studying morality, whether they care to admit it or not. The problem with calling such things “ethics” is not so much that it implies a pluralist/relativist view—if anything, it makes the very opposite mistake: it does not take moralities seriously enough, as they exist in the real world. In common usage, the term “ethics” is only appropriate for very broadly-shared values (of course, whether such values exist after all is an empirical question), or else for the kind of consensus-based interplay of values or dispute resolution that we all do when we engage in ethical (or even moral!) reasoning in the real world.
Sooo, not objective then. Definition debates are stupid, but there is no reason at all to be this loose with language. Seriously, this reads like a deconstructionist critique of a novel from an undergraduate majoring in English. Complete with scare quotes around words that are actually terms of art.
Well, yes. I’m using scare quotes around the terms “objective” and “fact”, precisely to point out that I am using them in a more general way than the term of art is usually defined. Nonetheless, I think this is useful, since it may help dissolve some philosophical questions and perhaps show them to be ill-posed or misleading.
Needless to say, I do not think this is “being loose with language”. And yes, sometimes I adopt a distinctive writing style in order to make a point as clearly as possible.