Just watched all your videos on meta-ethics. They are fantastic! This subject is very difficult to follow, but your videos explain these abstract concepts in a way that doesn't hurt the brain.
*+CyeOutsider* Yes, it's a rather clear explanation, one of the clearest I've seen too. However, I still don't see how this would be a problem to a non-cognitivist. I think you can say the same things for 'other emotions' too. Assertion - "kissing is an expression of love" Conditional - "if kissing is an expression of love, Robin Hood loved Mary because he kissed her" Disjunction - "kissing is an expression of love or holding hands is an expression of love" Report - "King John believes kissing is an expression of love" Is love not an emotion? It seems to me that it works for other emotions too. It's not as if we don't also think about and modulate our emotions, we do the same to our moral ones. Besides, the answer to "is stealing wrong?" would still be non-cognitive. Saying that expressions, desires, or emotions are not answers, is simply not true. Ask a cognitivist: "is stealing wrong?" and they may answer: "yes, stealing is factually wrong", ask a non-cognitivism: "is stealing wrong?", and their answer would in reality be: "yes, I believe that stealing is wrong, because that's the emotion I'm getting". If you're saying that this doesn't address the question that was asked, since it's a non-cognitive answer to a cognitive question..then perhaps the question is the right one. Just as you can't answer the (loaded) question "did you stop beating your wife" cannot be answered in the same yes/no fasion, since it has a hidden assumption that you'd be admitting to with both 'yes' and 'no'. With the wife-beating question it's just a lot more clear since it's explicitly in there, but the "is stealing wrong?"-question it's not explicitly in there, it's just structured (i.e. loaded) in a cognitivistic way.
@@daddyleon under non cognitivism, you are saying 1) love is good. Not conditional, it is that way for you. 2) you are making love conditional, by saying that if robin loved her, then he would kiss her. This argument logically fails as you see. Under cognitivism, where moral claims are either true or false, and not unconditional, this argument would work: 1) love is good, conditional claim. 2) if robin loved her, he would kiss her, conditional again. Hope i explained it good.enough for you🙏
@@axxel9626 maybe I have to thoroughly rewatch it again, after about 6 years it's kinda left my short term memory and haven't really been daily interacting with it. Thanks for helping me to undrstand still 😄 That's...I guess really good of you 😉
Wouldn't non-cogs just think that "Is it wrong to steal?" would be an illformed question. Like asking "does it not have a preference for stealing?". You would need a subject whose feelings or preference are under discussion. So "does William think it is wrong to steal" would translate into "does william prefer that stealing isn't commited?"
@@AJJ129 They would interpret should differently as well in the context of morality I think. Should might just mean preference to non-cogs. "Should a person steal?" is "Does have a preference that a person steals?". We have a missing piece according to non-cogs. Who's preference are we talking about? The other option for non-cogs could be to say that "should" requires a goal. If the goal is maximise stealing a person should steal. If the goal is to minimise stealing a person should not steal. Non cogs may hold that there is no default goal that would be called morality. You would have to specify the goal so to say. So they could say that theists goal is just to obey whatever they perceive Gods goal is. Or their goal is to get a good afterlife etc. I am curios, if acting morally led to hell and acting imorally led to heaven, would you act differently or would you still act morally?
@@Oskar1000 I would agree with them it would be instrumental reasoning a goal needs to be pre-supposed to make sense of phrases like should, there is not one big should. And I was thinking of my own Rephrasing of “is stealing wrong?” into “should a person steal?” as meaning “do you listener/reader like/approve/endorse stealing?”
IP, you have, ironically, you are part of the inspiration I have had to create my own apologetic and basic theology RUclips channel! Any helpful hints and advice would be greatly appreciated. I did a video on faith that did well, but the rest of the channel is starting to struggle. Thanks for adding what you're doing!
Don't do it for popularity, do it because you like making videos. You don't have to have videos that go viral just enough to help someone in the future. Also, do not disable comments and engage as much as you can.
Exactly, which is why I've stuck with it, haha. I'll keep the suggestions and tips in mind, I greatly appreciate taking the time to respond. I plan on trying to be engaging as much as possible.
"When people typically express moral claims, they intuitively assume cognitivism" - do they? "Non-cognitivists do not think moral claims can be either true or false" - is that a definition of non-cognitivism? There are other ones out there. This one does not make reference to the essential meaning of 'cognitive' which is "to do with knowledge". Surely a better definition would be "do not think moral claims involve knowledge of moral facts" or similar. In response to the Marturano quote: it's perfectly possible for two people, neither of whose beliefs about the world are accurate, to disagree. It's also possible for them to reason on the basis of their beliefs. Therefore there does not have to be any truth-aptness in their statements for them to reason and disagree. They just have to have intelligible pictures of the world as represented in language. And it's similarly a mistake to assume that a proposition must necessarily be true or false. It's reasonable to say non-cognitivism is not intuitive. It's not however right to say moral cognitivism is intuitive. Plenty of people are suspicious of the idea that there are hard and fast moral rules - they see there is a great deal more relativity than that. In any case intuitiveness/counter-intuitiveness means nothing as regards the truth of a matter. The whole purpose of philosophy is to enquire carefully into the truth of things, rather than take our immediate or pre-existing suppositions as fact and then just find ways to shore them up. Hume is a great example of a philosopher whose whole enterprise was to question what people usually believe in, but which he thought he could show should not so readily be believed in. The onus is not especially on the non-cognitivists to show they are right. I say the burden is on the moral realists, as there is no evidence for any moral reality. And moral realists rarely attempt to show there is. The fact that a lot of people pre-theoretically assume their moral beliefs are objective is no reason to try to shift the burden of proof onto non-cognitivists. All non-cognitivists have to do is ask "Where is your evidence that there is anything to know about? What sort of thing would be a 'moral fact'?" If non-cognitivism is true, a moral claim need not be an emotion or expression of attitude. It could be a proposition that just includes a concept or category that does not correspond to anything real. It's not cognitive because there is nothing to be known. But it's not that the moral claim does not have the usual content of a statement or proposition, namely senses and references. The person might well imagine that the moral claim is factual, and thus they mean the statement in that way. "Any judgement that fails to motivate, according to non-cognitivism, cannot possibly be a moral judgement." I don't see why. But then this is just what Russ Shafer-Landau says, not what any non-cognitivist says. Frege-Geach problem: "But if I do not assert a moral claim and say something else, then I would be making a cognitive claim." What is a cognitive claim? Is it a claim that involves something that can be known about, about which there is a matter of fact? This need not be the case with the examples cited. Question: "Is it wrong to steal?" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it. Disjunction: "Stealing is wrong or murder is wrong" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it. Report: "Price John believes stealing is wrong" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it. Condition: "If stealing is wrong, then Robin Hood was wrong to steal..." - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it. So there's no reason why we have to consider these to involve 'cognitive claims'. I accept some of the closing arguments are valid regarding the logical equivocation of positions like Emotivism. Emotivism is a terrible attempt to try and explain moral thinking and speech, which convinces almost no-one. However this is not the only sense of 'moral non-cognitivism'. And since this video dichotomistically opposed non-cognitivism with moral realism (by bringing in truth-aptness issues) we should repudiate the assumption that is emotivism-type non-cognitivist thinking can be shown to be logically faulty, this supports belief in objective morals. Shafer-Landau: "Cognitivists have ready, straightforward analyses of such a view of moral argument. Non-cognitivists don't." In reply: "Moral anti-realists have ready, straightforward analyses of the lack of evidence of objective morals. Moral realists don't."
Yes, they do, and i cited studies in moral epistemology to back that up. Did you forget that part? Intution does play in a role in moral reasoning as many philosphers note. I covered this in my defense of moral realism. Intution is our starting point and evidence needs to override it before it is abandoned. Non-Cogntivists have not presented an adequate case to override our moral intutions. And since you admit Non-Cogntivism is not intutive, there is no reason to suggest it is true and moral realists have to tear down a belief that isn't even backed by evidence or has any reason or intutition to support it. I defended moral realism here: ruclips.net/video/zjkgD4w9w1k/видео.html Aloso, there is truth-aptness in things like conditions and dijunctions. That is pretty obvious. A condition, for example utters a "if-then" proposuition and that carries a truth or falsehood with it.
Nobody except philosophers could assume cognitivism when they make moral statements. Cognitivism is a specific meta-ethical theory; most people haven't heard about any meta-ethical theories and their notions of what they're doing are pre-theoretic. I'm not sure what these studies say. I would question how indicative they are, e.g. how many different cultures, situations and historical periods they cover. It could be they indicate what people's cultural background influences them to think in a culture that is already laden with assumptions of moral reality. I know there is an 'intuitionist' school of moral realism. That's different from the question of whether moral (non-)cognitivism is 'intuitive' or not. The two questions just have the 'intuit-' element in common. "Intuition is our starting point" - says who? It's not mine. "evidence needs to override it before it is abandoned" - believers are welcome not to abandon if they want, I'm not interested in changing people's minds so much as trying to establish the truth and working thru the arguments. For me it's a question of how well these different accounts of the moral category stand up compared to each other. There are certainly some terrible versions of non-cognitivism, which you explore towards the end of the video. But against this there is no actual evidence in favour of moral realism. I mean, there is no evidence in the world of objectively existing ethical qualities. Set against that non-cognitivism is doing well. Altho as I note towards the beginning of my response the word is ambiguous between three or four different definitions. "Non-Cogntivists have not presented an adequate case to override our moral intutions." Let's just say that there being no evidence of these believed-in real moral qualities is more than adequate to show that our 'intuitions' (which could be taken as just presuppositions) are empirically totally questionable and therefore not very rational. That's a basic Humean point. We might conventionally believe in causality, the self, objective morality etc. but we should reconsider in the light of clear-sighted philosophical enquiry. As for truth-aptness, it is wherever it is, but it is not necessarily in just any statement or proposition. Statements and propositions are basically human pictures of reality made from senses, which are our take on how things are, not necessarily corresponding fully to how things are. If we misperceive how reality is in a key area, and then ask questions or state disjunctions or conditional clauses on the basis of that misperception, there can be no truth or falsehood in the matter, because the overall sense depends on a non-reality. I guess an element of 'error theory' comes in here. That is not generally seen as a non-cognitivist position. But as I pointed out it depends how you define 'non-cognitivist': if it's that there is no matter of fact about moral claims, that is very broad and could include an analysis that moral statements involve an error about how things are and therefore cannot be true or false because there is no matter of fact to know about. I'll also state at this point that metaphysical questions can't be determined by logico-linguistic objections. It doesn't matter what problems people can find in "what it means if" a certain anti-realist theory is true, it does not establish the existence of invisible, imperceptible entities of a certain kind, even if conventionally believed in.
Cognitivism still manifests in average people. Just read the studies I gave. Moral realism and cognitivism is very intuitive and arguing from personal incredulity is not an argument. There is plenty of evidence for moral realism, which is why i did a video on it. If you presuppose materialism then you will ad hoc exclude a world of objectively existing ethical qualities. Otherwise, we have plenty of evidence to suggest moral facts exist. There is no reason to suggest our intuitive starting point is wrong on this, by the way, and there is no reason to suggest there is evidence non-cogntivism is true, as I went over in this video. Also, by your logic everything you just said is basically just a human pictures of reality made from senses, and not objectively true. So your own logic betrays you. Second, is it true there can be no truth or falsehood in the matter, because the overall sense depends on a non-reality? Or did you refute yourself? I'll be doing a video on error theory in January, since it basically is just a way to assume naturalism is already true and so moral realism has to be false.
InspiringPhilosophy "There is no reason to suggest our intuitive starting point is wrong on this" There is plenty reason to doubt that human intuition paints an accurate picture of reality, without even specifically considering ethics. The fields of psychology and philosophy have demonstrated many times over how fallible human cognition is. Many of the fallacies that we fall prey to are often intuitive (it's where they derive their capacity to convince), and that alone is reason enough to doubt that any intuition-based claim should be taken as the default. Of the great number of areas for which we draw on our intuition, why should we suppose that when it comes to ethics our innate cognitive dispositions will be any more accurate than the myriad cases in which they are demonstrably not? Rather, because we are aware of the fallibility of human intuition, it would make more sense in pursuit of the truth to regard cognitivism with just as much (if not more) skepticism as non-cognitivism and refrain from using either as a basis to understand ethics without evidence in either direction.
In the Fg problem, what If I said that the conditional statement was also an expression of emotion. For example: if murder is wrong, pressuring someone to murder is wrong. In that statement, I also think that murder is devoid of truth status and therefore the conditional statement is devoid of truth status. It could be formulated like this: P1: I don't approve of murder P2: If I don't approve of murder, I wouldn't approve of pressuring someone to murder. P3: I don't approve of pressuring someone to murder How would you response to that?
Bill Rotschafer taught at my college. I don’t find noncognitivism counterintuitive myself but I do agree with him that teaching morality with truth aptness presumed in assessing moral claims makes some sense at least in terms of avoiding apathy or confusions when teaching youth how we want them to behave. Doesn’t mean moral claims are actually truth apt though. Humans confused themselves by their own use of language all the time. Pretending what we say amounts more than just some human utterances using limited words, ideas and understanding. Intuitively seeming truth apt is not sufficient for me to believe our claims come out True or False. Yay good! Boo bad! Approbation and disapprobation are good enough for me when trying to express or shape moral behavior.
haha I raged just like you did. The Frege-Geach Problem is such a weak attempt to attack non-cognitivism. It's funny how people derive a burden of proof out of this alleged counter-intuitiveness.
@@STKHub Haha, that's what people said back then when they believed the earth to be flat rather than spherical. History has proven us wrong so many times with our intuitions. But people still don't seem to understand.
@@DeBeukelaerify Uh, yeah, the burden of proof WAS on the people trying to say the Earth was round. And you know what? They provided the proof. Congrats to them. That just establishes the historical precedent that until actual evidence to the contrary is provided, people rely on their intuition to understand the world. And it's not like the ancient people who believed the world was flat were wrong in what they were seeing, they were just lacking a larger perspective. You know what my intuition tells me once I've seen an image of the Earth from space? That the Earth is round.
I think the ultimate failure of noncognitivism is that their position is essentially "when you say x you don't really mean x, you actually mean y." But this whole position breaks down if the use of x is dissimilar to the use of y. So when they claim that a moral assertion is just an expressive passion, all you need to do to refute this is to show how the use of moral assertions are not the same as the use of expressive passions. One way would be to argue you can have dispassionate moral assessments but not dispassionate expressive passion. So saying "I know stealing is wrong but I don't care" should be as absurd as yelling "I'm not angry!" If noncognitivism is true. The Frege-Geach problem exploits this tactic from the opposite angle, by using moral assertions and moral claims not asserted and showing those claims are similar despite noncognitivism saying they aren't.
But one cannot be 100% dispassionate about something they believe to be true, can they? Memory itself has been demonstrated to be dependent on emotions, so for someone to hold such belief it must be the case that they've had some feeling about it. In other words, I could argue against your claim by simply stating that all human's actions are somehow emotional, so engaging on any subject (let alone agree with a premise such as "stealing is wrong") is in and of itself a proof that one is not completely dispassionate about it. In this case, following such claim with "but I don't care" just points out that those feelings in favor of the premise are not enough to compell any action in that regard - it would be a self defeating assertion if taken literally.
@@EvilMatheusBandicoot so it's it your position then that the claim "I don't care stealing is wrong" is also non-cognitive? Because that statement is not a moral claim...
@@chipan9191 Well that statement is explicitly about someone's feeling (in this case, lack there of) about a subject, so how can it not be non-cognitive?
@@EvilMatheusBandicoot of course the subject matter is your feelings, but I'm more specifically asking is when they say "I don't care" in this context, is that something they literally mean or something that unintuitively means something else? What you seem to be suggesting is that the statement means they do care stealing is wrong but that they are not compelled to act in accordance with that. This would have to mean you reject their straightforward claim of not caring. Is this an accurate summation? If so, what basis do you have to take that interpretation of their words?
@@chipan9191 What I'm suggesting is that the statement "I *know* X is true, but I don't care" is contradictory - so it follows that one of the two statements must be false. The basis I have for this is simply: Can one truly *know* something without caring *at all* ? Is it not the case that one needs to somehow be compelled in order to *know* X to be true? Otherwise, if I'm not compelled in any way, does it make sense to claim that I *know* X is true? Wouldn't that be a deturpation of the meaning of "knowing"?
We learn morals from our parents, and even Aristotle and Plato (who were not Christians and likely never read a Bible) knew: without God (even the vague ideas of the Greeks), you just CAN'T have coherent morals or ethics. You can really only have sentiment ("empathy"), consensus (mob rule) or follow your personal idol--unless you have God, unless you have moral principles that just can't be broken, where breaking them is always wrong. Which atheistic philosophers just can't do. It's why they're stuck forever with Postmodernism in all its forms, including Postmodernist Moralism, where something is moral if your friends all seem to agree it is.
He isn't saying that one who is not of faith is theoretically not capable of being moral, but that without God, we really have no real objective, eternal and unchangeable moral norms. It is because one could always ask a "Why?" to any of your "Because"'s and if there is no God, there is no "Because" to the "Why?". Although this series is not really about grounding of morality but about knowing that objective morality exists which can be known apart from God. God is the reason that objective morality exists, but the way he created man is the reason man himself, simply by his natural reason, can know that objective morality exists without knowing the reason for its existence. It is like knowing the existence of the outside world. We know both that there is an outside world and we get to know it, not by Christ's mediatorship (although in an indirect way we do since Christ upholds "all things by the word of his power" Heb 1,3), but by mediation of our senses. But even by our senses we know not all the reasons for the world. We need some other means of knowing.
Christians took the theistic systems of thought developed by Greeks like Plato and Aristotle and others and used it with the Bible to create all sorts of systems of thought. That's because the base, root idea of God is universally understood and much of it can be worked out logically, without the special revelation of the Gospel. That said, the Gospel is infinitely superior. ;-)
Max Kolbe ن I think it comes down to "why." Why should we listen to our empathetic subconscious brain when we can gain so much more success when we ignore it - like many successful people. And I don't think that declaring other humans are an accident of nature helps.
This is a claim very often made. Can you back it up? You might be surprised to learn that at least one of the people cited in this video (Shafer-Landau) is an atheist. He is far from only among atheists who are also moral realists. You might like reading their work. They are definitely *not* all postmodernists (far from it). So demonstrate how they are "stuck" with it. There are also many well-known problems, conversely, with saying that morality comes from God, as the Euthyphro Dilemma (which is itself from Plato, whom you cite) demonstrates. So just saying this does not prove anything. It's necessary to back up the assertion.
And theists are stuck with the same problem that there are diverse forms of mutually conflicting theistic moralities and concepts of God/gods, contra your statement that God is universally understood. Secular morality based on minimizing suffering and increasing happiness is a much more intuitive and obvious moral framework and requires no supernatural beings. It comes with its own conundrums and predicaments but theistic morality obviously does too.
From what I understand, the Frege-Geach problem isn't meant to be a critique of non-cognitivism, but of expressivism (which isn't quite the same thing). To showcase this to yourself, you could imagine the exact same Frege-Geach problem being applied to clearly non-cognitive (or subjective) phrases, like "Jokes about ducks are funny" or "Chocolate is a yummy flavor".
The problem isn't with the non-cognitivists though. The cognitivist must first present a coherent definition of "truth" and "false" that both sides agree on, and demonstrate that moral claims fall within its aperture, if they want to argue their stance. Saying that we start with "intuition" won't work because it's not true that humans intuitively agree morality is a set of true or false statements - people just tend to talk this way because we are educated about morality from an early age using simplistic, convenient child-like language and reasoning. That was the whole point of the non-cognitivists - there is no clear intuition on the matter. No moral statement can be verified objectively, and more importantly, morality is a set of _rules_ - not an objective description. And rules _cannot_ have true or false, i.e. cognitive, status. Example: Rule 1: John must not go to the bathroom before dinner. We have here a fully and clearly defined rule. As one can see, it contains no "truth" value whatsoever - it's just a description of preferences, guidelines, operating principles - call it what you want. It is not a _description_ of reality - it cannot be _because_ it's a rule. Morality is the same way, because it's a set of rules, and thus cannot have this kind of "truth" or "false" status that more mundane claims, such as "There is a rock over there" or "Jill is angry" has. And if you're going to say that I'm just begging the question when I say "morality is rules" then _you_ have to show that there is _some substantive difference_ between the *rule* "John must not go to the bathroom before dinner" and what you are calling a *moral truth claim about reality* "It is wrong for John to go to the bathroom before dinner." I propose you cannot do it. What is the _difference_ between these two statements? If one doesn't exist - a relevant difference - then the two statements are equivalent, and it renders these "moral truth claims" as proxies for "rules" and thus subject to their non-cognitivist state (i.e. lacking truth value, as all rules do). ===== The important caveat to all this is that "truth" is established, even defined, *differently* in different circumstances, frameworks and fields. In mathematics "true" is defined and established one way, while in physics and sciences "true" might be conceived of differently (since you can't use the same kind of a priori reasoning in those fields, but we all agree the word "true" must still have a utility in those fields). Thus, one might make a _rhetorical_ or _principled_ moral or philosophical argument that we _should_ use the word "true" and "false" in moral contexts for different reasons, and that would be perfectly fine. One would just have to remember not to conflate the _kind_ of "truth" we are talking about in one context with the other.
surely just because people believe moral statements doesnt mean moral statements are in fact true (or at least, that these statements aren truth apt)? I never thought non-cognitivim was the position that people themselves knew moral statements to be false, rather that many intuitively believed them.
I have a question about how you say that the burden is on non cognitivists to say how moral claims don't have truth value. Isn't the burden of proof always on the person who states a supposed fact to justify that statement? Normally we can look at observations to state facts, like this distance is 100 km. But we can't do that with moral statements. Doesn't that suggest noncognitivism?
Hey there, IP! Thanks again for continuing to make these videos: I find them great food-for-thought! If you get a chance, I'm hoping for some clarification. On the face of it, I don't see this argument as a sound critique of non-cognitivism, mainly because many obviously non-cognitive concepts equally undergo the Frede-Geach problem. For example, if I were to use a nonsense word, like "goop-goop", to express a complex emotion, I could still use it in a conditional, in a disjunction, in a report, and in a question. I could also use it in modus tollens context. The same can be said for commonly-understood words that are generally accepted as non-congnitive (like "love" or "humor"). So it seems clear that the Frede-Geach problem does not prevent a concept from being non-cognitive. What am I missing here, in your opinion?
Very good vid. This was the best of your vids on metaethics (at least of the ones I watched). I thought of another objection to non-cognitivism: -if I say "murder is amazing" despite I don't believe that, then how can emotivists explain that claim? It's not an emotional expression because I'm just lying, but it's also not false, because it has no truth value. They simply have no way of explaining it. If a single moral claim isn't an emotional expression, then emotivism is false. Prescriptivists can explain it though. -they can't account for the belief that subjects or events have intrinsic moral properties. How do they explain it? That's a belief about objective reality. That belief may be based on emotions, but it itself can't be an emotion. How can they account for belief in, say, the platonic idea of the good? Is that belief an emotional expression? Sounds absurd.
So basicly, acording to this video, non-cognitivism is wrong, because it is counter-intuitive, and it doesn't matter how you state moral statements, since context also doesn't seem to matter? Perhaps I fail to see the goal. Is the goal to better ourselfs in our daily life, or is it to try and see a more objective view of reality?
Isn't non-cognitivism itself a moral claim? If it isn't, what is the point of it? In other words, a very simple counterargument: Why *should* we listen to you?
•Does the Humean subjectivity theory of morality provide grounds for condemning acts? •How would you respond to Hume when he says that it’s not the individuals feelings alone that has moral value but rather it’s how the majority of people feel towards something that makes something right or wrong. I’m having a bit of a difficult time refuting Humean subjectivity to my peers. This video is definitely helpful but I need more arguments against specifically Hume’s Non-cognitivism account. Thank you so much! @InspiringPhilosophy
InspiringPhilosophy From my limited understanding, Hume’s Moral Subjectivity Theory is the idea that morals are non-cognitively based on how the majority of people react/feels towards certain acts. If the majority of people are appalled by torturing animals then that provides grounds for condemning anyone who thinks otherwise. I guess his theory would be like a non-cognitive relativism.
InspiringPhilosophy Thank you for presenting premium research on difficult subjects in simplified video explanations. You deserve all the donations you get! We are all very thankful for your work! I am greatly looking forward to your relativism video. Your fellow Philosophy junkie and Theist -Phil
It may, but the point is, it's not the whole picture. Subjective morality implicitly assumes that feelings of beings objectively matter. Where Hume trips is recognizing that when multiple people's feelings/desires/needs are at conflict numbers are not the only factor - another factor is strength of those feelings/desires/needs - the obvious right course of action is to find compromise that takes both numbers and measures into account. For example you may have a whole society of people with strong desire to kill a specific person, but even cumulatively that may not be enough to trump that person's will to live (the society can move on without killing, but the person definitely can't move on dead). The tricky part is ranking ones desires/needs to each other as well as to desires/needs of others, which requires both very deep introspection and inquiry. Crushing majority of people have tendency to simply skip this phase and improvise as they go. Luckily, humans are similar enough that most of the job had basically been done for them.
Like the video. Understood the FG problem. Please don't put music in the background. It's distracting. If you like to put music find something that doesn't distract from the content thx.
Noncognitivism does not go against the basic features of logic; it proposes that people are incorrect in their use of assertions for statements that are not truth-apt. The fact that people are using "is wrong" incorrectly does not in any way support the claim that the predicate is truth-apt.
The quote from Antonio at the beginning of the clip doesn't sound broadly correct (it might be the case that SOME noncognitivists think that 'it is not possible to talk about disagreement and unsoundness in ethics...' (the disagreement part sounds more like speaker subjectivism rather than noncognitivism - in fact, if I remember correctly, not being able to account for disagreement in ethics is at least one reason that motivated the creation of noncognitivism)). Some noncognitivist (Blackburn and Gibbard) do think that there is moral disagreement and soundness - this is the task of showing how some mental non-descriptive belief states have the same semantic properties as descriptive belief mental states. Some noncognitivist also think that moral sentences are truth apt (Schroeder, 2010). But maybe the guy in this video isn't trying to give an indepth critique. If this is the case, then perhaps a more accurate title of this video would be 'A Critique of Some Non-Cognitivist Views'. Sidenote: I don't think that noncognitivism is incompatible with Christianity.
I am a moral realist but find something odd with "the manifestation of moral statement". Can't the non-cognotist say that we percieve them different but actually are the same? In other words, the non-cognotivist could say that the individual experience these differently but are actually the same.
This whole topic seems like a semantic pre-game: I was wondering why you started talking about what people intuitively think, but then I Googled it, and yes, it seems that this is part of the claims of non-cognitivism, which honestly makes it sound like presuppositional apologetics applied to morality: "well, we can't even HAVE a moral debate in the first place!" I'd rather just have the debate.
As far as I know, IP is the only apologist I've come across that goes deep into Meta-ethics/morals. Does anyone know any others or those IP may have recommended in the past? Very interesting topic.
Thanks, I don't even go as deep as I should (for now). I have not even touched on Cornell realism, quasi-realism, or many other meta-ethical positions. Meta-ethics can be very deep.
I'm going to comment this on your most recent video because I'm not sure if you'll see it otherwise: have you seen RationalityRules' response to your "Case for Free Will" video? Do you intend to go any further into that? Because he seems to offer pretty damning refutations of your position, to the point where it appears to miss the point completely.
AnticitizenX seems to reject the entire notion of moral realism as incoherent. he seems to claim that morality can only have basis in reality through consequentialism. that the basis in morality can only be observed and measured based on how the consequences benefit people as a whole. i know consequentialism isn't part of metaethics, but what would you say about this?
That doesn't mean moral realism is false. You can be a consequentialist and a moral realist like GE Moore was. He really hasn't a clue what he is talking about.
If non-cognitivism is so unintuitive, then why do people agree with it? I'm guessing it has something to do with a belief that all moral values are subjective, but then why not choose some form of relativism?
Because people don't realise their extensive cognitive biases. Or have apathy. Or have deep inner emotional self-servicing purposes to hold and defend these views.
IP there's videos that try to make you look bad on RUclips. People will always have there opinion and try to make you look bad. Its possible that some of the stuff is wrong but I do highly respect what you do and the things you post but I have one question. Why do you do it? What's your motive to give us so much information. How much confidence do you have in your research ?
I don't care, people can rely on character assassination all they want, that doesn't mean they are right. I can't spend my time chasing all these people down. I do it all because I love sharing information and researching these things. It is just a passion of mine.
So who today actually believes in non cognitivism? Also I don't understand why someone can set up a logical syllogism and the assertion is considered not truth apt but if it's a conditional then it must be truth apt. If we allow a claim to be non truth apt why can't we allow a conditional to be non truth apt.?
==__== generally speaking, the burden of responsibility falls on the shoulders of he who makes a claim in the affirmative--e.g. that killing is wrong. A question? What do you mean by "wrong"? It's ill-posed. It has no specific meaning, and when one imagines they have one, it is anything but universal--highly personal. For one, killing may be wrong because god said it was. For another, killing may be wrong because they think it is (and that's as far as it goes). I suggest a minimal definition: "wrong" or "right" is what an individual or collective wants or does not want to happen, or is or isn't unsettled by, respectively. If one believes in aa god, this definition can be applied concurrently. The issue is that most people who say something is "right" or "wrong" seem to be referring to it being right or wrong in some way beyond the personal, or beyond mere evolutionarily programmed responses. I've not once heard a coherent definition of what this other way might be. That is what non-cognitivism, it would seem, seeks to discredit.
+InspiringPhilosophy I know I ask about the B theory on every video now, but here is my question, Is god necessarily timeless on a B theory, and if so, how does he interact with his creations? Thought please, and thank you.
So this guy told me that the earth is billions of years old is simply the distance that it takes the light to travel to a galaxy that is billions of years away how do I disprove that his scientific theory is wrong because according to the bible the earth is about between 6 to 10 to 12thousand years old ?
I don't think the Bible necessarily teaches a young earth: ruclips.net/video/yf5ovSpS2GU/видео.html The ANE context doesn't reveal a young earth is a necessary reading of the text.
Also, noncognitivist do not commit a fallacy of equivocation; the cognitivists who espouse the Frege-Geach "Problem" offer a strawman fallacy. Noncognitivists would not endorse this use of incorrect language.
Not trying to offend here. But there shouldn't even be a "boo!" In the question. So by your logic, the question would just be "stealing?" . Which doesn't seem to equivocate to the question "Is stealing wrong?" Could you perhaps elaborate?
@@ShavierCho I think the best explanation is a combination of moral error theory and emotivism is correct. People wrongly believe morals are objective and they deduce what is moral or immoral from their subjective feelings so they make statements like, "stealing is wrong", which is incorrect. It's like if a person said, "that house is spooky" and they believe spookiness is an objective feature of reality, (which it is not). They deduced from a subjective point of view, they feel the house looks "spooky". To paraphrase Hume, if you look at any moral situation, the only morality is in the mind of the person making the moral judgement.
Are you referring to the FG problem? There are many responses to the FG problem. From my previous response, instead of immoral or wrong use "spooky" where the person believes spookiness is an objective feature of reality. 1 that house is spooky 2. If a house is spooky, you should not enter it 3.Therefore you should not go into that house. Using the FG problem, you would have to agree spookiness is an objective feature of reality which is absurd. In the example: 1 Murder is wrong, the person making the statement believes morality is an objective thing in reality...they are just wrong about that, but they derived the wrongness from their own attitude towards murder. 1 is really..."I believe murder is objectively wrong" and therefore a non-sequator.
IP, I think you should check out argumentation ethics. It is actually the first ethical system of its kind to imply moral behavior _without_ appealing to subjective value judgements, and is founded on the very structure of truth, logic, and rational argument. When taken to its fullest conclusion, it provides a definitive basis for the right to life, liberty, property, and any negative claim of human rights, which provides the first thoroughly objective system for morality.
gracefool What would you consider value judgements to be based on, if not the desired preferences of individuals in their means to obtain an ideal state of being?
Non-cognitivism is fundamentally a reductionistic theory i.e. it is trying to deconstruct/reduce apparent intuitive ideas about moral values into something smaller or lesser. Basically, it relies on the argument that people are "massively confused" about their own thoughts and that we sometimes don't really mean what we say at all. I'm sure there are ways to defend this position but this type of claim would naturally put a burden of proof on the reductionist. I admit there are some possible genuine reasons to doubt that cognitivism is true, but I don't believe it would be a reasonable doubt.
Someone told me: "IP saids that cognitivism is intuitive. I don't think cognitivism is intuitive. My intuition tells me that non-cognitivism is real, cognitivism goes against my mind, and way of thinking. So why should I accept cognitivism, and rejcet non-cognitivism?"
Just because someone currently thinks non-cognitivism is true that doesn't mean it is intuitive for them. It just means they now reason it is true. I cited studies in moral psychology that show cognitivism is intuitive
If God is goodness, then He is morality. So if you want to know which moral theory is true, you have to decide whether God is real. If God is real, moral realism is true. If God is not real, the truth is either moral nihilism or moral non-cognitivism (the truth is moral anti-realism). and vice versa. If you have figured out that moral realism is true, then you have figured out God exists.
Couldn't a non-cognitivist make a kind of parody of some of this? Let's suppose there was some truly non-cognitive way of expressing emotions which seem like truth-apt statements ("Murder is booey"/"Charity is yayish"). Couldn't someone use the same sort of argumentation used in this video to insist that "Murder is booey" really does have to be truth-apt?
I don't know, I think over 140 the last time I looked, but I don't think IQ tests accurately measure intelligence and it wasn't even invented to measure intelligence in adults, but thanks anyway, I appreciate it, God Bless!
"Moral Relativism" is which side of this oddness?? Where does, golden Rule / Universal truth come in here? Very difficult for a multidimensional, right brained grl, like me. Thanks, Mr. Wizard! The DEVIL is in the details ;) #Orwell #Pavlov
This is wrong. "What is being ignored is the fact that every time anybody says anything, they are always talking about THEMSELVES. Saying "Murder is wrong" always means "Murder is against MY standards of morality". If you talk at all, you're talking about yourself. If you think somebody is talking about another person or thing and not about themselves, then you're wrong. They are talking about their own personal beliefs about that other person or thing. And yes, what I'm saying here is about myself. It's about what I, Edwin McCravy, personally believe. If you disagree with me, you're talking about yourself.
I would say that "wrong", "false" and etc. doesn't exist, that you can't make make claims that "Stealing is wrong", you only make claims that "Is stealing" or some like that, with Robin Hood example statement would be: Robin Hood was stealing and giving to the poor. I don't how this position called, but I say I can only make descriptive claims and not normative claims, because there is no arbitrary values/value of judgement.
No. Like everyone else who claim to disagree with moral realism, they still live their lives as if morality is real and can be appealed to objectively. I'm not sure what's worse: them being total hypocrites, or them benefitting from the fact that everyone else believes they have moral rights and deserve basic dignity and respect while they argue against that position.
Truth conditions are intuitive for moral beliefs. The non-cognitivist needs to demonstrate this is wrong, not assume it is. The burden is not on the cognitivist to assume what is already obvious.
Also I disagree with non cognitivists don't believe in moral truths. We do but not objective moral conditions. If I say murder is wrong. All I'm saying is that subjectively I believe murder is wrong.
Remember, I cited moral psychology to show cognitivism is intuitive. So that is our starting point and the burden is on the one who goes against intuition. If it is wrong then you need to show why.
Things like the Frege-Geach Problem seem to make it clear that philosophy is all just the most base nonsense. I'm not prepared to fully accept that is the case, but... it is hard to avoid appearances.
I'm a simple man, I see IP I like.
I too am a simple man. I see IP, I watch, and I scratch my head ;)
That is until I watch the video several times until I get it.
@@DerMelodist lol
Just watched all your videos on meta-ethics. They are fantastic! This subject is very difficult to follow, but your videos explain these abstract concepts in a way that doesn't hurt the brain.
Thank you so much!!
The clearest explanation of the FG Problem I have come across so far.
I understand it now!
*+CyeOutsider* Yes, it's a rather clear explanation, one of the clearest I've seen too. However, I still don't see how this would be a problem to a non-cognitivist. I think you can say the same things for 'other emotions' too.
Assertion - "kissing is an expression of love"
Conditional - "if kissing is an expression of love, Robin Hood loved Mary because he kissed her"
Disjunction - "kissing is an expression of love or holding hands is an expression of love"
Report - "King John believes kissing is an expression of love"
Is love not an emotion? It seems to me that it works for other emotions too. It's not as if we don't also think about and modulate our emotions, we do the same to our moral ones.
Besides, the answer to "is stealing wrong?" would still be non-cognitive. Saying that expressions, desires, or emotions are not answers, is simply not true. Ask a cognitivist: "is stealing wrong?" and they may answer: "yes, stealing is factually wrong", ask a non-cognitivism: "is stealing wrong?", and their answer would in reality be: "yes, I believe that stealing is wrong, because that's the emotion I'm getting". If you're saying that this doesn't address the question that was asked, since it's a non-cognitive answer to a cognitive question..then perhaps the question is the right one. Just as you can't answer the (loaded) question "did you stop beating your wife" cannot be answered in the same yes/no fasion, since it has a hidden assumption that you'd be admitting to with both 'yes' and 'no'. With the wife-beating question it's just a lot more clear since it's explicitly in there, but the "is stealing wrong?"-question it's not explicitly in there, it's just structured (i.e. loaded) in a cognitivistic way.
@@daddyleon under non cognitivism, you are saying 1) love is good. Not conditional, it is that way for you. 2) you are making love conditional, by saying that if robin loved her, then he would kiss her.
This argument logically fails as you see. Under cognitivism, where moral claims are either true or false, and not unconditional, this argument would work:
1) love is good, conditional claim.
2) if robin loved her, he would kiss her, conditional again.
Hope i explained it good.enough for you🙏
@@axxel9626 maybe I have to thoroughly rewatch it again, after about 6 years it's kinda left my short term memory and haven't really been daily interacting with it.
Thanks for helping me to undrstand still 😄
That's...I guess really good of you
😉
@@daddyleon nothing but love❤️✝️
I absolutely love all your videos IP, please keep making more!
Wouldn't non-cogs just think that "Is it wrong to steal?" would be an illformed question. Like asking "does it not have a preference for stealing?". You would need a subject whose feelings or preference are under discussion.
So "does William think it is wrong to steal" would translate into "does william prefer that stealing isn't commited?"
Well the question there is “should a person steal?”
@@AJJ129 They would interpret should differently as well in the context of morality I think.
Should might just mean preference to non-cogs.
"Should a person steal?" is
"Does have a preference that a person steals?".
We have a missing piece according to non-cogs. Who's preference are we talking about?
The other option for non-cogs could be to say that "should" requires a goal.
If the goal is maximise stealing a person should steal.
If the goal is to minimise stealing a person should not steal.
Non cogs may hold that there is no default goal that would be called morality. You would have to specify the goal so to say.
So they could say that theists goal is just to obey whatever they perceive Gods goal is. Or their goal is to get a good afterlife etc.
I am curios, if acting morally led to hell and acting imorally led to heaven, would you act differently or would you still act morally?
@@Oskar1000 I would agree with them it would be instrumental reasoning a goal needs to be pre-supposed to make sense of phrases like should, there is not one big should. And I was thinking of my own Rephrasing of “is stealing wrong?” into “should a person steal?” as meaning “do you listener/reader like/approve/endorse stealing?”
@@AJJ129 I think non-cogs could agree to that.
You know how confused I was in the last video where you referenced this one 😂 I searched so long lol. Good work!
Sorry about that.
What did you say at 2:15 between, "with an understanding of truth _____ moral language?" The closed captions didn't help.
IP, you have, ironically, you are part of the inspiration I have had to create my own apologetic and basic theology RUclips channel! Any helpful hints and advice would be greatly appreciated. I did a video on faith that did well, but the rest of the channel is starting to struggle. Thanks for adding what you're doing!
Don't do it for popularity, do it because you like making videos. You don't have to have videos that go viral just enough to help someone in the future. Also, do not disable comments and engage as much as you can.
Exactly, which is why I've stuck with it, haha. I'll keep the suggestions and tips in mind, I greatly appreciate taking the time to respond. I plan on trying to be engaging as much as possible.
Also, work on quality. People are more drawn to graphic videos. If not, try to get an HD camera and lighting.
@@simplychristianity4059 I'll start watching your videos!
"When people typically express moral claims, they intuitively assume cognitivism" - do they?
"Non-cognitivists do not think moral claims can be either true or false" - is that a definition of non-cognitivism? There are other ones out there. This one does not make reference to the essential meaning of 'cognitive' which is "to do with knowledge". Surely a better definition would be "do not think moral claims involve knowledge of moral facts" or similar.
In response to the Marturano quote: it's perfectly possible for two people, neither of whose beliefs about the world are accurate, to disagree. It's also possible for them to reason on the basis of their beliefs. Therefore there does not have to be any truth-aptness in their statements for them to reason and disagree. They just have to have intelligible pictures of the world as represented in language. And it's similarly a mistake to assume that a proposition must necessarily be true or false.
It's reasonable to say non-cognitivism is not intuitive. It's not however right to say moral cognitivism is intuitive. Plenty of people are suspicious of the idea that there are hard and fast moral rules - they see there is a great deal more relativity than that.
In any case intuitiveness/counter-intuitiveness means nothing as regards the truth of a matter. The whole purpose of philosophy is to enquire carefully into the truth of things, rather than take our immediate or pre-existing suppositions as fact and then just find ways to shore them up. Hume is a great example of a philosopher whose whole enterprise was to question what people usually believe in, but which he thought he could show should not so readily be believed in.
The onus is not especially on the non-cognitivists to show they are right. I say the burden is on the moral realists, as there is no evidence for any moral reality. And moral realists rarely attempt to show there is. The fact that a lot of people pre-theoretically assume their moral beliefs are objective is no reason to try to shift the burden of proof onto non-cognitivists. All non-cognitivists have to do is ask "Where is your evidence that there is anything to know about? What sort of thing would be a 'moral fact'?"
If non-cognitivism is true, a moral claim need not be an emotion or expression of attitude. It could be a proposition that just includes a concept or category that does not correspond to anything real. It's not cognitive because there is nothing to be known. But it's not that the moral claim does not have the usual content of a statement or proposition, namely senses and references. The person might well imagine that the moral claim is factual, and thus they mean the statement in that way.
"Any judgement that fails to motivate, according to non-cognitivism, cannot possibly be a moral judgement." I don't see why. But then this is just what Russ Shafer-Landau says, not what any non-cognitivist says.
Frege-Geach problem: "But if I do not assert a moral claim and say something else, then I would be making a cognitive claim." What is a cognitive claim? Is it a claim that involves something that can be known about, about which there is a matter of fact? This need not be the case with the examples cited.
Question: "Is it wrong to steal?" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.
Disjunction: "Stealing is wrong or murder is wrong" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.
Report: "Price John believes stealing is wrong" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.
Condition: "If stealing is wrong, then Robin Hood was wrong to steal..." - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.
So there's no reason why we have to consider these to involve 'cognitive claims'.
I accept some of the closing arguments are valid regarding the logical equivocation of positions like Emotivism. Emotivism is a terrible attempt to try and explain moral thinking and speech, which convinces almost no-one. However this is not the only sense of 'moral non-cognitivism'. And since this video dichotomistically opposed non-cognitivism with moral realism (by bringing in truth-aptness issues) we should repudiate the assumption that is emotivism-type non-cognitivist thinking can be shown to be logically faulty, this supports belief in objective morals.
Shafer-Landau: "Cognitivists have ready, straightforward analyses of such a view of moral argument. Non-cognitivists don't."
In reply: "Moral anti-realists have ready, straightforward analyses of the lack of evidence of objective morals. Moral realists don't."
Yes, they do, and i cited studies in moral epistemology to back that up. Did you forget that part?
Intution does play in a role in moral reasoning as many philosphers note. I covered this in my defense of moral realism. Intution is our starting point and evidence needs to override it before it is abandoned. Non-Cogntivists have not presented an adequate case to override our moral intutions. And since you admit Non-Cogntivism is not intutive, there is no reason to suggest it is true and moral realists have to tear down a belief that isn't even backed by evidence or has any reason or intutition to support it. I defended moral realism here: ruclips.net/video/zjkgD4w9w1k/видео.html
Aloso, there is truth-aptness in things like conditions and dijunctions. That is pretty obvious. A condition, for example utters a "if-then" proposuition and that carries a truth or falsehood with it.
Nobody except philosophers could assume cognitivism when they make moral statements. Cognitivism is a specific meta-ethical theory; most people haven't heard about any meta-ethical theories and their notions of what they're doing are pre-theoretic.
I'm not sure what these studies say. I would question how indicative they are, e.g. how many different cultures, situations and historical periods they cover. It could be they indicate what people's cultural background influences them to think in a culture that is already laden with assumptions of moral reality.
I know there is an 'intuitionist' school of moral realism. That's different from the question of whether moral (non-)cognitivism is 'intuitive' or not. The two questions just have the 'intuit-' element in common.
"Intuition is our starting point" - says who? It's not mine.
"evidence needs to override it before it is abandoned" - believers are welcome not to abandon if they want, I'm not interested in changing people's minds so much as trying to establish the truth and working thru the arguments. For me it's a question of how well these different accounts of the moral category stand up compared to each other. There are certainly some terrible versions of non-cognitivism, which you explore towards the end of the video. But against this there is no actual evidence in favour of moral realism. I mean, there is no evidence in the world of objectively existing ethical qualities. Set against that non-cognitivism is doing well. Altho as I note towards the beginning of my response the word is ambiguous between three or four different definitions.
"Non-Cogntivists have not presented an adequate case to override our moral intutions." Let's just say that there being no evidence of these believed-in real moral qualities is more than adequate to show that our 'intuitions' (which could be taken as just presuppositions) are empirically totally questionable and therefore not very rational. That's a basic Humean point. We might conventionally believe in causality, the self, objective morality etc. but we should reconsider in the light of clear-sighted philosophical enquiry.
As for truth-aptness, it is wherever it is, but it is not necessarily in just any statement or proposition. Statements and propositions are basically human pictures of reality made from senses, which are our take on how things are, not necessarily corresponding fully to how things are. If we misperceive how reality is in a key area, and then ask questions or state disjunctions or conditional clauses on the basis of that misperception, there can be no truth or falsehood in the matter, because the overall sense depends on a non-reality. I guess an element of 'error theory' comes in here. That is not generally seen as a non-cognitivist position. But as I pointed out it depends how you define 'non-cognitivist': if it's that there is no matter of fact about moral claims, that is very broad and could include an analysis that moral statements involve an error about how things are and therefore cannot be true or false because there is no matter of fact to know about.
I'll also state at this point that metaphysical questions can't be determined by logico-linguistic objections. It doesn't matter what problems people can find in "what it means if" a certain anti-realist theory is true, it does not establish the existence of invisible, imperceptible entities of a certain kind, even if conventionally believed in.
Cognitivism still manifests in average people. Just read the studies I gave. Moral realism and cognitivism is very intuitive and arguing from personal incredulity is not an argument.
There is plenty of evidence for moral realism, which is why i did a video on it. If you presuppose materialism then you will ad hoc exclude a world of objectively existing ethical qualities. Otherwise, we have plenty of evidence to suggest moral facts exist. There is no reason to suggest our intuitive starting point is wrong on this, by the way, and there is no reason to suggest there is evidence non-cogntivism is true, as I went over in this video.
Also, by your logic everything you just said is basically just a human pictures of reality made from senses, and not objectively true. So your own logic betrays you. Second, is it true there can be no truth or falsehood in the matter, because the overall sense depends on a non-reality? Or did you refute yourself?
I'll be doing a video on error theory in January, since it basically is just a way to assume naturalism is already true and so moral realism has to be false.
InspiringPhilosophy "There is no reason to suggest our intuitive starting point is wrong on this"
There is plenty reason to doubt that human intuition paints an accurate picture of reality, without even specifically considering ethics. The fields of psychology and philosophy have demonstrated many times over how fallible human cognition is. Many of the fallacies that we fall prey to are often intuitive (it's where they derive their capacity to convince), and that alone is reason enough to doubt that any intuition-based claim should be taken as the default. Of the great number of areas for which we draw on our intuition, why should we suppose that when it comes to ethics our innate cognitive dispositions will be any more accurate than the myriad cases in which they are demonstrably not? Rather, because we are aware of the fallibility of human intuition, it would make more sense in pursuit of the truth to regard cognitivism with just as much (if not more) skepticism as non-cognitivism and refrain from using either as a basis to understand ethics without evidence in either direction.
Well said Matthew!
In the Fg problem, what If I said that the conditional statement was also an expression of emotion. For example: if murder is wrong, pressuring someone to murder is wrong. In that statement, I also think that murder is devoid of truth status and therefore the conditional statement is devoid of truth status. It could be formulated like this:
P1: I don't approve of murder
P2: If I don't approve of murder, I wouldn't approve of pressuring someone to murder.
P3: I don't approve of pressuring someone to murder
How would you response to that?
Bill Rotschafer taught at my college. I don’t find noncognitivism counterintuitive myself but I do agree with him that teaching morality with truth aptness presumed in assessing moral claims makes some sense at least in terms of avoiding apathy or confusions when teaching youth how we want them to behave. Doesn’t mean moral claims are actually truth apt though. Humans confused themselves by their own use of language all the time. Pretending what we say amounts more than just some human utterances using limited words, ideas and understanding. Intuitively seeming truth apt is not sufficient for me to believe our claims come out True or False. Yay good! Boo bad! Approbation and disapprobation are good enough for me when trying to express or shape moral behavior.
Not being intuitive is not a goddamn weakness of an argument. It's a weakness in rhetorical strength but it has no reflection on truth.
No, intuition plays a role in creating a justificatory path.
haha I raged just like you did. The Frege-Geach Problem is such a weak attempt to attack non-cognitivism. It's funny how people derive a burden of proof out of this alleged counter-intuitiveness.
@@STKHub Haha, that's what people said back then when they believed the earth to be flat rather than spherical. History has proven us wrong so many times with our intuitions. But people still don't seem to understand.
@@DeBeukelaerify Uh, yeah, the burden of proof WAS on the people trying to say the Earth was round. And you know what? They provided the proof. Congrats to them. That just establishes the historical precedent that until actual evidence to the contrary is provided, people rely on their intuition to understand the world. And it's not like the ancient people who believed the world was flat were wrong in what they were seeing, they were just lacking a larger perspective. You know what my intuition tells me once I've seen an image of the Earth from space? That the Earth is round.
Should do a video on non cognitivism within epistemological relativism
I think the ultimate failure of noncognitivism is that their position is essentially "when you say x you don't really mean x, you actually mean y." But this whole position breaks down if the use of x is dissimilar to the use of y. So when they claim that a moral assertion is just an expressive passion, all you need to do to refute this is to show how the use of moral assertions are not the same as the use of expressive passions. One way would be to argue you can have dispassionate moral assessments but not dispassionate expressive passion. So saying "I know stealing is wrong but I don't care" should be as absurd as yelling "I'm not angry!" If noncognitivism is true. The Frege-Geach problem exploits this tactic from the opposite angle, by using moral assertions and moral claims not asserted and showing those claims are similar despite noncognitivism saying they aren't.
But one cannot be 100% dispassionate about something they believe to be true, can they? Memory itself has been demonstrated to be dependent on emotions, so for someone to hold such belief it must be the case that they've had some feeling about it.
In other words, I could argue against your claim by simply stating that all human's actions are somehow emotional, so engaging on any subject (let alone agree with a premise such as "stealing is wrong") is in and of itself a proof that one is not completely dispassionate about it. In this case, following such claim with "but I don't care" just points out that those feelings in favor of the premise are not enough to compell any action in that regard - it would be a self defeating assertion if taken literally.
@@EvilMatheusBandicoot so it's it your position then that the claim "I don't care stealing is wrong" is also non-cognitive? Because that statement is not a moral claim...
@@chipan9191 Well that statement is explicitly about someone's feeling (in this case, lack there of) about a subject, so how can it not be non-cognitive?
@@EvilMatheusBandicoot of course the subject matter is your feelings, but I'm more specifically asking is when they say "I don't care" in this context, is that something they literally mean or something that unintuitively means something else? What you seem to be suggesting is that the statement means they do care stealing is wrong but that they are not compelled to act in accordance with that. This would have to mean you reject their straightforward claim of not caring.
Is this an accurate summation? If so, what basis do you have to take that interpretation of their words?
@@chipan9191 What I'm suggesting is that the statement "I *know* X is true, but I don't care" is contradictory - so it follows that one of the two statements must be false.
The basis I have for this is simply: Can one truly *know* something without caring *at all* ? Is it not the case that one needs to somehow be compelled in order to *know* X to be true? Otherwise, if I'm not compelled in any way, does it make sense to claim that I *know* X is true? Wouldn't that be a deturpation of the meaning of "knowing"?
We learn morals from our parents, and even Aristotle and Plato (who were not Christians and likely never read a Bible) knew: without God (even the vague ideas of the Greeks), you just CAN'T have coherent morals or ethics. You can really only have sentiment ("empathy"), consensus (mob rule) or follow your personal idol--unless you have God, unless you have moral principles that just can't be broken, where breaking them is always wrong.
Which atheistic philosophers just can't do. It's why they're stuck forever with Postmodernism in all its forms, including Postmodernist Moralism, where something is moral if your friends all seem to agree it is.
He isn't saying that one who is not of faith is theoretically not capable of being moral, but that without God, we really have no real objective, eternal and unchangeable moral norms. It is because one could always ask a "Why?" to any of your "Because"'s and if there is no God, there is no "Because" to the "Why?".
Although this series is not really about grounding of morality but about knowing that objective morality exists which can be known apart from God.
God is the reason that objective morality exists, but the way he created man is the reason man himself, simply by his natural reason, can know that objective morality exists without knowing the reason for its existence.
It is like knowing the existence of the outside world. We know both that there is an outside world and we get to know it, not by Christ's mediatorship (although in an indirect way we do since Christ upholds "all things by the word of his power" Heb 1,3), but by mediation of our senses. But even by our senses we know not all the reasons for the world. We need some other means of knowing.
Christians took the theistic systems of thought developed by Greeks like Plato and Aristotle and others and used it with the Bible to create all sorts of systems of thought. That's because the base, root idea of God is universally understood and much of it can be worked out logically, without the special revelation of the Gospel. That said, the Gospel is infinitely superior. ;-)
Max Kolbe ن I think it comes down to "why." Why should we listen to our empathetic subconscious brain when we can gain so much more success when we ignore it - like many successful people. And I don't think that declaring other humans are an accident of nature helps.
This is a claim very often made. Can you back it up? You might be surprised to learn that at least one of the people cited in this video (Shafer-Landau) is an atheist. He is far from only among atheists who are also moral realists. You might like reading their work. They are definitely *not* all postmodernists (far from it). So demonstrate how they are "stuck" with it. There are also many well-known problems, conversely, with saying that morality comes from God, as the Euthyphro Dilemma (which is itself from Plato, whom you cite) demonstrates. So just saying this does not prove anything. It's necessary to back up the assertion.
And theists are stuck with the same problem that there are diverse forms of mutually conflicting theistic moralities and concepts of God/gods, contra your statement that God is universally understood. Secular morality based on minimizing suffering and increasing happiness is a much more intuitive and obvious moral framework and requires no supernatural beings. It comes with its own conundrums and predicaments but theistic morality obviously does too.
From what I understand, the Frege-Geach problem isn't meant to be a critique of non-cognitivism, but of expressivism (which isn't quite the same thing). To showcase this to yourself, you could imagine the exact same Frege-Geach problem being applied to clearly non-cognitive (or subjective) phrases, like "Jokes about ducks are funny" or "Chocolate is a yummy flavor".
The problem isn't with the non-cognitivists though. The cognitivist must first present a coherent definition of "truth" and "false" that both sides agree on, and demonstrate that moral claims fall within its aperture, if they want to argue their stance. Saying that we start with "intuition" won't work because it's not true that humans intuitively agree morality is a set of true or false statements - people just tend to talk this way because we are educated about morality from an early age using simplistic, convenient child-like language and reasoning. That was the whole point of the non-cognitivists - there is no clear intuition on the matter. No moral statement can be verified objectively, and more importantly, morality is a set of _rules_ - not an objective description. And rules _cannot_ have true or false, i.e. cognitive, status.
Example:
Rule 1: John must not go to the bathroom before dinner.
We have here a fully and clearly defined rule. As one can see, it contains no "truth" value whatsoever - it's just a description of preferences, guidelines, operating principles - call it what you want. It is not a _description_ of reality - it cannot be _because_ it's a rule.
Morality is the same way, because it's a set of rules, and thus cannot have this kind of "truth" or "false" status that more mundane claims, such as "There is a rock over there" or "Jill is angry" has.
And if you're going to say that I'm just begging the question when I say "morality is rules" then _you_ have to show that there is _some substantive difference_ between the *rule* "John must not go to the bathroom before dinner" and what you are calling a *moral truth claim about reality* "It is wrong for John to go to the bathroom before dinner." I propose you cannot do it. What is the _difference_ between these two statements? If one doesn't exist - a relevant difference - then the two statements are equivalent, and it renders these "moral truth claims" as proxies for "rules" and thus subject to their non-cognitivist state (i.e. lacking truth value, as all rules do).
=====
The important caveat to all this is that "truth" is established, even defined, *differently* in different circumstances, frameworks and fields. In mathematics "true" is defined and established one way, while in physics and sciences "true" might be conceived of differently (since you can't use the same kind of a priori reasoning in those fields, but we all agree the word "true" must still have a utility in those fields). Thus, one might make a _rhetorical_ or _principled_ moral or philosophical argument that we _should_ use the word "true" and "false" in moral contexts for different reasons, and that would be perfectly fine. One would just have to remember not to conflate the _kind_ of "truth" we are talking about in one context with the other.
surely just because people believe moral statements doesnt mean moral statements are in fact true (or at least, that these statements aren truth apt)? I never thought non-cognitivim was the position that people themselves knew moral statements to be false, rather that many intuitively believed them.
Yeah this video is really cringe. It's literally just attacking a strawman.
I'm afraid I got lost somewhere. How is "murder is wrong" not a cognitive claim? How is it not making a statement that is either true or false?
I have a question about how you say that the burden is on non cognitivists to say how moral claims don't have truth value. Isn't the burden of proof always on the person who states a supposed fact to justify that statement? Normally we can look at observations to state facts, like this distance is 100 km. But we can't do that with moral statements. Doesn't that suggest noncognitivism?
you should write a book one way with all the info from your videos. The Magnum Opus of IP, in several volumes I'm sure
annoyingdude76 I second that
annoyingdude76 I would buy it. It could be transcripts of his videos.
Hey there, IP! Thanks again for continuing to make these videos: I find them great food-for-thought!
If you get a chance, I'm hoping for some clarification. On the face of it, I don't see this argument as a sound critique of non-cognitivism, mainly because many obviously non-cognitive concepts equally undergo the Frede-Geach problem. For example, if I were to use a nonsense word, like "goop-goop", to express a complex emotion, I could still use it in a conditional, in a disjunction, in a report, and in a question. I could also use it in modus tollens context. The same can be said for commonly-understood words that are generally accepted as non-congnitive (like "love" or "humor").
So it seems clear that the Frede-Geach problem does not prevent a concept from being non-cognitive. What am I missing here, in your opinion?
Well let me ask can goop-goop be true or false if it is an emotion?
InspiringPhilosophy No,I don't think it can. That's why I offer it as an example of a noncognitive concept.
Yes, but moral statements can be true or false, right? So they would not be equated to something like, "goop-goop."
I can definitely see how someone would believe this. It starts with questions like: how can you measure the wrongness of killing?
IP that frege geach problem took me 2weeks to understand it.
Very good vid. This was the best of your vids on metaethics (at least of the ones I watched). I thought of another objection to non-cognitivism:
-if I say "murder is amazing" despite I don't believe that, then how can emotivists explain that claim? It's not an emotional expression because I'm just lying, but it's also not false, because it has no truth value. They simply have no way of explaining it. If a single moral claim isn't an emotional expression, then emotivism is false. Prescriptivists can explain it though.
-they can't account for the belief that subjects or events have intrinsic moral properties. How do they explain it? That's a belief about objective reality. That belief may be based on emotions, but it itself can't be an emotion. How can they account for belief in, say, the platonic idea of the good? Is that belief an emotional expression? Sounds absurd.
So basicly, acording to this video, non-cognitivism is wrong, because it is counter-intuitive, and it doesn't matter how you state moral statements, since context also doesn't seem to matter?
Perhaps I fail to see the goal. Is the goal to better ourselfs in our daily life, or is it to try and see a more objective view of reality?
Isn't non-cognitivism itself a moral claim? If it isn't, what is the point of it?
In other words, a very simple counterargument: Why *should* we listen to you?
You should listen to me because you asked my opinion.
Why should I listen when I ask for your opinion?
@@JulioCaesarTM Because otherwise you have dishonestly wasted my time.
Good to see that you believe in Epistemic duties and Cognitivism. 👍
@@JulioCaesarTM Nice equivocation.
•Does the Humean subjectivity theory of morality provide grounds for condemning acts?
•How would you respond to Hume when he says that it’s not the individuals feelings alone that has moral value but rather it’s how the majority of people feel towards something that makes something right or wrong.
I’m having a bit of a difficult time refuting Humean subjectivity to my peers. This video is definitely helpful but I need more arguments against specifically Hume’s Non-cognitivism account. Thank you so much!
@InspiringPhilosophy
My next video will be on cultural relativism and will address this. Is that what you are having issues with?
InspiringPhilosophy
From my limited understanding, Hume’s Moral Subjectivity Theory is the idea that morals are non-cognitively based on how the majority of people react/feels towards certain acts.
If the majority of people are appalled by torturing animals then that provides grounds for condemning anyone who thinks otherwise.
I guess his theory would be like a non-cognitive relativism.
So it would suffer from the issues I laid here and the issues I'll be going over in my next video.
InspiringPhilosophy Thank you for presenting premium research on difficult subjects in simplified video explanations. You deserve all the donations you get! We are all very thankful for your work! I am greatly looking forward to your relativism video.
Your fellow Philosophy junkie and Theist
-Phil
It may, but the point is, it's not the whole picture. Subjective morality implicitly assumes that feelings of beings objectively matter. Where Hume trips is recognizing that when multiple people's feelings/desires/needs are at conflict numbers are not the only factor - another factor is strength of those feelings/desires/needs - the obvious right course of action is to find compromise that takes both numbers and measures into account.
For example you may have a whole society of people with strong desire to kill a specific person, but even cumulatively that may not be enough to trump that person's will to live (the society can move on without killing, but the person definitely can't move on dead).
The tricky part is ranking ones desires/needs to each other as well as to desires/needs of others, which requires both very deep introspection and inquiry. Crushing majority of people have tendency to simply skip this phase and improvise as they go. Luckily, humans are similar enough that most of the job had basically been done for them.
Like the video. Understood the FG problem.
Please don't put music in the background. It's distracting. If you like to put music find something that doesn't distract from the content thx.
Noncognitivism does not go against the basic features of logic; it proposes that people are incorrect in their use of assertions for statements that are not truth-apt. The fact that people are using "is wrong" incorrectly does not in any way support the claim that the predicate is truth-apt.
Эй, моралист, привет от детей нон-когнитивизма!
The quote from Antonio at the beginning of the clip doesn't sound broadly correct (it might be the case that SOME noncognitivists think that 'it is not possible to talk about disagreement and unsoundness in ethics...' (the disagreement part sounds more like speaker subjectivism rather than noncognitivism - in fact, if I remember correctly, not being able to account for disagreement in ethics is at least one reason that motivated the creation of noncognitivism)). Some noncognitivist (Blackburn and Gibbard) do think that there is moral disagreement and soundness - this is the task of showing how some mental non-descriptive belief states have the same semantic properties as descriptive belief mental states. Some noncognitivist also think that moral sentences are truth apt (Schroeder, 2010). But maybe the guy in this video isn't trying to give an indepth critique. If this is the case, then perhaps a more accurate title of this video would be 'A Critique of Some Non-Cognitivist Views'. Sidenote: I don't think that noncognitivism is incompatible with Christianity.
Did you hear about our brother Nabeel?
I am a moral realist but find something odd with "the manifestation of moral statement". Can't the non-cognotist say that we percieve them different but actually are the same? In other words, the non-cognotivist could say that the individual experience these differently but are actually the same.
That would just be an epistemic claim about experience, not meta-ethics.
This whole topic seems like a semantic pre-game: I was wondering why you started talking about what people intuitively think, but then I Googled it, and yes, it seems that this is part of the claims of non-cognitivism, which honestly makes it sound like presuppositional apologetics applied to morality: "well, we can't even HAVE a moral debate in the first place!"
I'd rather just have the debate.
As far as I know, IP is the only apologist I've come across that goes deep into Meta-ethics/morals.
Does anyone know any others or those IP may have recommended in the past? Very interesting topic.
Thanks, I don't even go as deep as I should (for now). I have not even touched on Cornell realism, quasi-realism, or many other meta-ethical positions. Meta-ethics can be very deep.
i though this was related to teological noncognitivism
I'm going to comment this on your most recent video because I'm not sure if you'll see it otherwise: have you seen RationalityRules' response to your "Case for Free Will" video? Do you intend to go any further into that? Because he seems to offer pretty damning refutations of your position, to the point where it appears to miss the point completely.
Yes, and I responded: inspiringphilosophy.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/rationalityrules-does-not-understand-philosophy/
Ah, thanks for the link. I'll give it a read. I guess I'm right to conclude that you update your blog more often than your videos?
No, I do not do a lot of replies and I do a video every two or three weeks.
I haven't seen a playlist for this series. Have I missed it?
no, I need to put that together.
ruclips.net/video/sETnOF5_ghg/видео.html
Ah-hah!
Superb!
AnticitizenX seems to reject the entire notion of moral realism as incoherent. he seems to claim that morality can only have basis in reality through consequentialism. that the basis in morality can only be observed and measured based on how the consequences benefit people as a whole. i know consequentialism isn't part of metaethics, but what would you say about this?
That doesn't mean moral realism is false. You can be a consequentialist and a moral realist like GE Moore was. He really hasn't a clue what he is talking about.
consequentialism is a normative ethic, not a metaethic.
Are all Cognitivists at the same time Moral Realists? Or can Cognitivists also believe in subjective morality?
See here: ruclips.net/video/sETnOF5_ghg/видео.html
If non-cognitivism is so unintuitive, then why do people agree with it? I'm guessing it has something to do with a belief that all moral values are subjective, but then why not choose some form of relativism?
Because people don't realise their extensive cognitive biases. Or have apathy. Or have deep inner emotional self-servicing purposes to hold and defend these views.
IP there's videos that try to make you look bad on RUclips. People will always have there opinion and try to make you look bad. Its possible that some of the stuff is wrong but I do highly respect what you do and the things you post but I have one question. Why do you do it? What's your motive to give us so much information. How much confidence do you have in your research ?
I don't care, people can rely on character assassination all they want, that doesn't mean they are right. I can't spend my time chasing all these people down.
I do it all because I love sharing information and researching these things. It is just a passion of mine.
InspiringPhilosophy you full heartily believe in God ?
yes
InspiringPhilosophy thank you
So who today actually believes in non cognitivism? Also I don't understand why someone can set up a logical syllogism and the assertion is considered not truth apt but if it's a conditional then it must be truth apt. If we allow a claim to be non truth apt why can't we allow a conditional to be non truth apt.?
==__== generally speaking, the burden of responsibility falls on the shoulders of he who makes a claim in the affirmative--e.g. that killing is wrong.
A question? What do you mean by "wrong"? It's ill-posed. It has no specific meaning, and when one imagines they have one, it is anything but universal--highly personal. For one, killing may be wrong because god said it was. For another, killing may be wrong because they think it is (and that's as far as it goes).
I suggest a minimal definition: "wrong" or "right" is what an individual or collective wants or does not want to happen, or is or isn't unsettled by, respectively. If one believes in aa god, this definition can be applied concurrently.
The issue is that most people who say something is "right" or "wrong" seem to be referring to it being right or wrong in some way beyond the personal, or beyond mere evolutionarily programmed responses. I've not once heard a coherent definition of what this other way might be. That is what non-cognitivism, it would seem, seeks to discredit.
ruclips.net/video/zjkgD4w9w1k/видео.html
Further, Russ sounds like truss, not like loose.
+InspiringPhilosophy
I know I ask about the B theory on every video now, but here is my question, Is god necessarily timeless on a B theory, and if so, how does he interact with his creations? Thought please, and thank you.
All his interactions are actualized in an instance.
InspiringPhilosophy
But how does he interact if he is in a timeless state?
All his interactions are actualized at once from his perspective.
InspiringPhilosophy
Okay, so what would be your definition of timeless, we should start there.
Lack of time.
.....................What just happened?
So this guy told me that the earth is billions of years old is simply the distance that it takes the light to travel to a galaxy that is billions of years away how do I disprove that his scientific theory is wrong because according to the bible the earth is about between 6 to 10 to 12thousand years old ?
I don't think the Bible necessarily teaches a young earth: ruclips.net/video/yf5ovSpS2GU/видео.html
The ANE context doesn't reveal a young earth is a necessary reading of the text.
Also, noncognitivist do not commit a fallacy of equivocation; the cognitivists who espouse the Frege-Geach "Problem" offer a strawman fallacy. Noncognitivists would not endorse this use of incorrect language.
Also, none of this applies to quasi realism
"Is stealing wrong?" becomes...."Boo! Stealing?" Not really a question is it? Answer, "Boo stealing!" What else you got IP?
Not trying to offend here. But there shouldn't even be a "boo!" In the question. So by your logic, the question would just be "stealing?" . Which doesn't seem to equivocate to the question "Is stealing wrong?"
Could you perhaps elaborate?
@@ShavierCho I think the best explanation is a combination of moral error theory and emotivism is correct. People wrongly believe morals are objective and they deduce what is moral or immoral from their subjective feelings so they make statements like, "stealing is wrong", which is incorrect.
It's like if a person said, "that house is spooky" and they believe spookiness is an objective feature of reality, (which it is not). They deduced from a subjective point of view, they feel the house looks "spooky".
To paraphrase Hume, if you look at any moral situation, the only morality is in the mind of the person making the moral judgement.
@@gabrielteo3636 I understand your viewpoint now. But I was asking how you would respond to InspiringPhilosophy's counterexample
Are you referring to the FG problem? There are many responses to the FG problem. From my previous response, instead of immoral or wrong use "spooky" where the person believes spookiness is an objective feature of reality. 1 that house is spooky 2. If a house is spooky, you should not enter it 3.Therefore you should not go into that house.
Using the FG problem, you would have to agree spookiness is an objective feature of reality which is absurd.
In the example: 1 Murder is wrong, the person making the statement believes morality is an objective thing in reality...they are just wrong about that, but they derived the wrongness from their own attitude towards murder. 1 is really..."I believe murder is objectively wrong" and therefore a non-sequator.
Yeaaaahhh *BOIIIIIII*
I Took The Redpill *YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH BOIIIIIIIIII*
I Took The Redpill *OYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY VEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYY*
Having Conversations on the Internet 101
Hey IP could u do more responses to atheist critiques of ur videos or do u think u already answer most of them. Tank u God bless. 😄
IP, I think you should check out argumentation ethics. It is actually the first ethical system of its kind to imply moral behavior _without_ appealing to subjective value judgements, and is founded on the very structure of truth, logic, and rational argument. When taken to its fullest conclusion, it provides a definitive basis for the right to life, liberty, property, and any negative claim of human rights, which provides the first thoroughly objective system for morality.
CΔPITΔL you're assuming value judgments are subjective. They are not.
gracefool
What would you consider value judgements to be based on, if not the desired preferences of individuals in their means to obtain an ideal state of being?
If there's an "ideal" anything, then it can't be subjective.
gracefool
That assumes that everyone has the same ideal.
No, it assumes everyone's ideals have *some* commonality. Ideals are non-arbitrary by definition. They can't just be whatever you want.
How can it be up to a non-cognitivist to disprove your intuition? Intuition doesn’t point to something being real.
Non-cognitivism is fundamentally a reductionistic theory i.e. it is trying to deconstruct/reduce apparent intuitive ideas about moral values into something smaller or lesser. Basically, it relies on the argument that people are "massively confused" about their own thoughts and that we sometimes don't really mean what we say at all. I'm sure there are ways to defend this position but this type of claim would naturally put a burden of proof on the reductionist. I admit there are some possible genuine reasons to doubt that cognitivism is true, but I don't believe it would be a reasonable doubt.
Someone told me: "IP saids that cognitivism is intuitive. I don't think cognitivism is intuitive. My intuition tells me that non-cognitivism is real, cognitivism goes against my mind, and way of thinking. So why should I accept cognitivism, and rejcet non-cognitivism?"
Just because someone currently thinks non-cognitivism is true that doesn't mean it is intuitive for them. It just means they now reason it is true. I cited studies in moral psychology that show cognitivism is intuitive
So cognitivism is intuitive because most people have that intuition not just some. We look for what is most common not just few right?
I think I understand this better now, thanks.
The author of this video made a substitution of concepts. Made up his own wrong concepts and argued with them.
If God is goodness, then He is morality. So if you want to know which moral theory is true, you have to decide whether God is real. If God is real, moral realism is true. If God is not real, the truth is either moral nihilism or moral non-cognitivism (the truth is moral anti-realism).
and vice versa. If you have figured out that moral realism is true, then you have figured out God exists.
Ever heard of Euthyphro?
Couldn't a non-cognitivist make a kind of parody of some of this? Let's suppose there was some truly non-cognitive way of expressing emotions which seem like truth-apt statements ("Murder is booey"/"Charity is yayish"). Couldn't someone use the same sort of argumentation used in this video to insist that "Murder is booey" really does have to be truth-apt?
I don't see why that would follow. You would have to explain what you mean in more detail.
+Christopher Johnson
No. I mean how he will show that.
I disagree with you on some things but I really enjoyed this vid
Hey IP, can u tell me what ur iq is and what is ur educational background ,your intelligence blows me away !!!GOD bless u and ur loved ones
I don't know, I think over 140 the last time I looked, but I don't think IQ tests accurately measure intelligence and it wasn't even invented to measure intelligence in adults, but thanks anyway, I appreciate it, God Bless!
@@InspiringPhilosophy big brain boy
"Moral Relativism" is which side of this oddness?? Where does, golden Rule / Universal truth come in here? Very difficult for a multidimensional, right brained grl, like me. Thanks, Mr. Wizard! The DEVIL is in the details ;) #Orwell #Pavlov
Occult Priestess wow smooth down that name of yours, it's pretty edgy
This is wrong. "What is being ignored is the fact that every time anybody says anything, they are always talking about THEMSELVES. Saying "Murder is wrong" always means "Murder is against MY standards of morality". If you talk at all, you're talking about yourself. If you think somebody is talking about another person or thing and not about themselves, then you're wrong. They are talking about their own personal beliefs about that other person or thing. And yes, what I'm saying here is about myself. It's about what I, Edwin McCravy, personally believe. If you disagree with me, you're talking about yourself.
So, if I make a statement of fact like "there is a door," I'm actually making a statement of myself?
That's some borderline solipsism, dude.
@@kaj4life1 You're making a statement about your beliefs about the world. It's a claim stemming from your subjective mental model.
I would say that "wrong", "false" and etc. doesn't exist, that you can't make make claims that "Stealing is wrong", you only make claims that "Is stealing" or some like that, with Robin Hood example statement would be: Robin Hood was stealing and giving to the poor.
I don't how this position called, but I say I can only make descriptive claims and not normative claims, because there is no arbitrary values/value of judgement.
I think that is called prescriptivism. Shadow Starshine believes this.
So basically if someone were to beat a non-cognitivist about the head and shoulders they would have no grounds upon which to object to that treatment?
No. Like everyone else who claim to disagree with moral realism, they still live their lives as if morality is real and can be appealed to objectively. I'm not sure what's worse: them being total hypocrites, or them benefitting from the fact that everyone else believes they have moral rights and deserve basic dignity and respect while they argue against that position.
That is assault and battery! Morality is a commodity that can bought and sold
I'm not insane enough to understand what you are talking about.
He said:
"Saying 'whateva works for ya' as a moral stance doesn't make any sense".
Nikola Avramov that's hilarious 😂
And true... :(
Notification squad!!! :D
I wish that in near days we get more and more of apologetic room for church so that people get familiar of the defencing faith. IP keep going 👍
I was a non-cognitivist before watching this video.
Truth conditions HAVE NOT BEEN DEMONSTRATED. If it has prove it. This entire video was assuming that.
Truth conditions are intuitive for moral beliefs. The non-cognitivist needs to demonstrate this is wrong, not assume it is. The burden is not on the cognitivist to assume what is already obvious.
InspiringPhilosophy but you are still making a claim. You can't back up your claim with "it's obvious". We both have the burden of proof here
Also I disagree with non cognitivists don't believe in moral truths. We do but not objective moral conditions. If I say murder is wrong. All I'm saying is that subjectively I believe murder is wrong.
Remember, I cited moral psychology to show cognitivism is intuitive. So that is our starting point and the burden is on the one who goes against intuition. If it is wrong then you need to show why.
InspiringPhilosophy I thought the burden of proof were on the person that made a claim, even if the claim was intuitive... I'm confused.
Pizza is good!
Is it true that pizza is good?
Jeremy believes pizza is good.
If pizza is good then cheese is good.
Words be words.
It's not to hard to see the problem with claiming 'ice creem is tasty' = 'rape is wrong'
Things like the Frege-Geach Problem seem to make it clear that philosophy is all just the most base nonsense. I'm not prepared to fully accept that is the case, but... it is hard to avoid appearances.
Read Nietzsche if you want to see what philosophy can actually be like, Nietzsche is the most based one.
This is wild.
Everything mentioned before the embedding problem were complete non sequiturs.