Comment on What is Metaethics?

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:55:24 GMT

You have this backwards: The claim makes a convincing argument (to you and many others), therefore you call the claim "right"; or the claim makes an unconvincing argument against the action, therefore you call the claim "wrong."

You could say that about any word in the English language. Let's try this with the word "rain". On many occasions, a person may say "it's raining and therefore you should take an umbrella". On some occasions this claim will be false and people will know that it's false (e.g. because they looked out a window and saw that it wasn't raining), and so the argument will not be convincing.

What you're doing here can be applied to this rain scenario. You could say:

The claim makes a convincing argument (to you and many others), therefore you call the claim "right"; or the claim makes an unconvincing argument against the action, therefore you call the claim "wrong."

That is, the claim that it's raining makes a convincing argument on some occasions, and on those occasions you call the claim "right". On other occasions, the claim makes an unconvincing argument, and on those occasions you call the claim "wrong".

So there, we've applied your theory about the concept of morality, to the concept of rain. Your theory could equally well be applied to any concept at all. That is, your theory is that when we are convinced by arguments that employ claims about morality, then we call the claims "right". But you could equally well come up with the theory that when we are convinced by arguments that employ claims about rain, then we call the claims "right".

So what have we demonstrated? With your help, we have demonstrated that in this respect, morality is like rain. And like everything else. Morality is like atoms. Morality is like gravity - in this respect. You have highlighted a property of morality which is shared by absolutely everything else in the universe that we have a word for. And this property is, that you can come up with this reverse theory of it, according to which we call claims employing the term "right" when we are convinced by arguments using those claims.

Notice you had to tuck in the word "innocent," which already implies your conclusion that it is "actually wrong" to harm the bystander.

For me to be guilty of begging the question I would have to be trying to prove that a murder was committed in the hypothetical scenario. But it's a hypothetical scenario in which it is specified that the person committed murder.

Here's the hypothetical scenario, more explicit: someone has just committed a murder. He tells a cop, "it would be wrong for you to arrest me". Since it is not, in fact, wrong for the cop to arrest him, then the argument is unconvincing. In this hypothetical scenario, the reason the argument is unconvincing is that it is not actually wrong for the cop to arrest him.

Now, according to your own reverse theory of morality, the hypothetical scenario that I have specified in fact reduces to the following: someone is in a situation where his claims that it would be wrong to arrest him will go ignored by the cop in question. Therefore, the cop believes that it is right to arrest him.

But as I explained before, you can apply your reverse treatment to absolutely anything at all. Here's an example: in this scenario, someone picks up an orange and says about the orange, "this is an apple". Nobody is convinced by his assertion, and the reason nobody is convinced by his assertion is that the orange is, in fact, not an apple.

Now we can apply your reverse treatment to this scenario. Someone picks up something and says about it, "this is an apple". Nobody is convinced by his assertion, and therefore they call his claim "wrong".

Notice the reversal. In my description of the scenario, that the claim is wrong causes others to disbelieve the claim, because they can see with their own eyes that it is wrong. In your reverse description of the scenario, the primary fact is that people are not convinced by the claim, and the secondary fact which follows from the primary fact is that they call the claim "wrong".

You're not proving anything with the reversal, because you can apply the reversal to anything at all.

Here you used the word "own," which again already implies your conclusion that it is wrong to steal it.

Once again, this is a hypothetical scenario in which it is specified that it would be stealing, and therefore wrong. I am not trying to prove that; I am specifying it to construct the scenario.

Although he was speaking in the context of economics, Ludwig von Mises gave the most succinct explanation of why all valuation is subjective when he said, "We originally want or desire an object not because it is agreeable or good, but we call it agreeable or good because we want or desire it."

Absolutely, but morality is not personal preference any more than price is personal preference. These are separate subjects. Mises would not say, "I recognize that the price of gasoline is $4 not because it is $4; rather, the price of gasoline is $4 because I recognize it as $4, and if tomorrow I recognize it as $2 then it will be $2, whatever the gas station attendant says." That would be absurd for him to say. The same applies to morality.

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