I think rational people who see this would relieve the tension by admitting that there is at least a local moral viewpoint (ie, moral relativism). Trying to resolve the tension of thinking that there are normative claims about how one state is better than another while trying to not claim that one state is better than another seems ludicrous. I've never seen an exposition of a moral nihilist trying to make normative claims, but I also can't say that I've looked very hard for it.

I would just call you lazy. It's not a practical problem at all to change your language. If you don't think there's a "should" then you shouldn't be saying that things "should" be a certain way. I don't believe it actually does express stuff in standard ethical language if the meaning of the words differ from standard meanings.

So you're actually being both intellectually lazy and disingenuous.

It sure seems that way. If you come into the conversation as a moral nihilist, then your fundamental assumption is that you don't accept that any moral claims have any truth values (local or universal). As soon as someone asserts a central moral concept that has truth value (harm is bad), you can reject that because it's making a moral truth claim (and you reject that such a thing exists).

With regards to the underlined, in case it isn't clear this is precisely my claim.

The bolded to me seems very black-boxish. A person who is not involved in an abortion but merely learns of it can have a very negative reaction to it (say, it reminds that person of an abortion in their own life), and this emotional harm may indeed be larger than the emotional harm experienced by the mother (who is emotionally ambivalent to the decision, or potentially views it as a good thing).

I don't think it's fair to claim that distance to the event necessarily decays if your standard is actually "emotional harm." I think you're mixing your moral theories to support your case and not presenting a consistent perspective.

If you want to try to assert that the mother's mental state is the primary determining factor of the morality of the decision, then it seems you're asserting moral relativism. That abortion is right/wrong depends solely on her viewpoint. If it's right for her, then it's right. If it's wrong for her, then it's wrong. The emotional harm conversation doesn't actually mean anything here.

Bringing in extra people creates a local moral conclusion, which is still a form of moral relativism. Introducing emotional harm at this level becomes a bit sketchy, and I don't think that you'll like the conclusions anymore.

Let's say in a super-conservative town, a woman wants an abortion. The entire town believes this is a bad thing and it will hurt many, many people if she were to have the abortion. Do you believe that it's wrong for the woman to have an abortion because the town believes she shouldn't have it?

It depends on the timing of the abortion. Sorry, I had meant to suggest that an abortion beyond the point viability but did not state that explicitly.

<I've skipped stuff for the sake of time. I'll return to it if you think it's particularly relevant>

It does not imply that I should be opposed, nor does it imply that I shouldn't be opposed.

There's an implicit assumption of active and volitional violence to the life in the active interference. Shoes actively interfere with how we walk. That doesn't make them a bad thing.

In my experience, every nicu nurse, every ob/gyn, every hospital administrator, etc., claims that they deal with unusually high risk patients and so fill-in-the-blank, i.e. so that is why we have so many c-sections, or so that is why we have so many fatalities, or so that is why it is so stressful here, and on and on.

You think it would be rational of a moral nihilist gives up moral nihilism and becomes a moral relativist? Odd. Perhaps we need to clarify the terms here because you keep trying to stick moral relativism in and I'm not quite sure why. Meta ethical (there are other types) of moral relativism is the claim that the truth value of moral claims is relative to different perspectives. Moral nihilists reject that moral claims can have truth value full stop.

This isn't what the expressivist moral nihilist does. They desire to still express moral preferences, but don't believe those moral preferences represent truth statements. This is not an "X but also not X" as the bolded implies. There are a variety of approaches beyond expressivism, but it is fairly standard for moral nihilists - a meta ethical theory - to still make ethical statements. They may well conceive of these ethical statements in unusual ways, of course. Indeed, versions of moral nihilism are largely delineated by different approaches to resolving this tension.


I don't particularly care if you find it lazy or oppose linguistic choices. In philosophy people can and often do define terms however they like, often in unorthodox ways. Whether expressive moral nihilism is or is not a reasonable approach is true independent of these considerations. I do maintain that in day to day life it provides a burden to abandon the standard linguistic terminology and would serve little more than to devolve into conversations about meta ethics. It is entirely possible for one to have an ethical debate, using consistent terminology between the participants, without such meta ethical considerations.




This is true, but is a shift from what was being originally talked about. When we were talking about "pushing down a level", I wasn't rejecting the claims at the lower level because of moral nihilism. Indeed, moral nihilism renders all claims at all levels moot so it shouldn't have anything to do with what level we are at. The claim was made within the context of me being a "practicing utilitarian", where I was investing the consequences and harm and so forth. And again, your claim was that my pushing down a level had something to do with moral relativism which just isn't true.



Your claim was that what I said was "precisely moral relativism". Precisely is not the same as compatible. Indeed, the claim is also compatible with moral nihilism and moral absolutism. The ethical claim didn't depend on any of these meta ethical theories, so why cherry pick moral relativism, the one theory I haven't endorsed or implied in any way?

Correct, the harm here is greater for the bystander than the mother. The question, though, is whether the harm to the bystander of their negative emotional reaction dominates the physical, emotional, social, economic etc harm of the mother continuing a pregnancy against her wishes. I don't deny this harm you have identified, I think it should be in any consequentialist calculus, I just don't find it sufficiently large in most cases.

Consider the consequences of a typical born child. This has a tremendous impact on the parents, dominating their lives. A member of the town may experience a bit of happiness and some brief interactions, but the happiness provided to the parents surely dominates the more distant and unrelated people. There certainly is some asymmetry here. Even in the case of the conservative town all upset absolutely i recognize that harm, it is just a question of its strength and how that compares to other harms, like that of the mother. I generally don't put much stock in general anger from uninvolved participants (if a million people get angry at a story on facebook...how significant is this "harm"?). Okay sure we can debate whether this or that type of harm should be included and whether it should or should not be weighted more. You can disagree with these assessments. But the framework here - a consequential approach - wouldn't be in question.

What you are talking about here may seem superficially close to moral relativism, but it isn't. A moral relativist would say that whether the abortion is morally good or not depends on whether you are the mother or the conservative bystander. It would be true for one and false for the others. I'm not doing that. I'm imposing a toy *(ie ignoring every other factor for simplicity sake) universal standard. It is ALWAYS true that the termination of a fetus depends on the emotional state of the mother. See the difference? Yes this toy moral theory depends on various properties of the universe (in this case the emotional state of the mother), but it is a binary true or false, it isn't true for some people and false for other.

I am going to construct a toy morality: "it is a fundamental property of the universe that whoever the taller of two participants is is the one whose actions are moral". So here I am being a moral absolutists (truth values are fundamental properties of the universe), but my moral theory depends on particular properties. Just because height is a relative term, and it directly is comparing people, doesn't make this moral relativism. "height" is like "emotional state of mother". It is a sutble, perhaps, but important distinction.




No it doesn't. Even at viability (with a very fuzzy line at edge of medical viability), the situations of a viable fetus and a baby have differences. For the fetus, the mother still has to go through the pregancy with everything that entails. For the baby, it can given up for adoption with not further harm to the mother.




Fine. It "seems to point toward moral culpability" in precisely the same way it does for viable fetuses, right? Your arguments doesn't seem sensitive to the difference between one week and viability.



What about condoms? It is an "active interferences over natural body processes"? If you ONLY want that clause to apply to the natural body process of creating a fetus you seem to be more or less creating a standard precisely for the singular purpose of opposing abortion. You claimed it was true "generally"...so if it doesn't apply to condoms what other situations beside abortion does this clause apply for?

This may be generally true, but I think it applies in this case. She works at the superhospital in Montreal that doesn't just accept whatever cases come out of Montreal, but most of the extreme cases that can't be handled at the rural hospitals throughout the rest of Quebec. It is well known as the best and they take all the most difficult cases.

Regardless, the issues raised by these cases are true regardless of whatever administrators attempt to overinflate how impressive their hospital is.

Not odd. Rational.

Right. I agree to both of your definitions. The problem is that your approach to the rejection of moral claims is to engage in moral logic to justify statements that don't make sense. This seems illogical and irrational to me. The moral nihilist requires an entirely different frameworks.

Mostly, moral nihilism results in consequential oughts, so that oughts are a matter of predictive power. You ought to eat so that you don't starve. But when you get too loose with the oughts (undefined oughts) or reframe the oughts in terms of moral measurements, I believe you lose your ability to claim moral nihilism.

I will await your presentation of a moral nihilist expressivist other than yourself who uses "should" to express preference or presents normative claims instead of observational or consequential claims.

Again, I find your mixing of moral nihilism with moral logic to be nonsense.

It seems implicit in your use of moral logic. To repeat, I reject that a moral nihilist can make a meaningful claim using consequentialist moral logic. The whole statement by assumption is empty, and so the logic is illogical. It seems logically incompatible to be doing that.

Why not?

Therefore, infanticide.

But now you've completely abandoned any sense of moral nihilism again. I'm trying to pin you down on the fact that you're trying to be both a moral nihilist (moral claims are never true and never false, merely preferences) but then you keep trying to draw on moral logic (which is meaningless) to support your positions (because you're a closet consequentialist, or whatever you called yourself).

It seems to me that you absolutely need moral relativism in order for your logic to advance. You need it because you want to have the flexibility to express your own viewpoint without asserting global moral consequences, but you can't go to moral nihilism because you employ moral logic to reach your conclusions.

No. A viable fetus by definition can be removed from the mother at that moment and live on its own. The mother does not need to proceed with the pregnancy any longer than she would need to in order to have an abortion.

The baby can also be killed with no harm to the mother.

No, "pointing towards moral culpability" does not require moral culpability as a logical consequence. It's in the gray area in which conclusions cannot be drawn. The underlying claim is that destruction of life beyond viability DOES have moral culpability as a consequence.

In what way is a condom "active and volitional violence"?

How so? You think someone who rejects moral statements as ever being true should adopt instead a theory that accepts moral statements as being true relative to certain people? This makes no sense.

The tension is between the desire to express ethical preferences while not thinking that ethical statements have truth values. It is certainly possible that one's ethical preferences are aligned with that of a moral relativist. But it is also possible they are aligned with a utilitarian or a deontologist or whatever else. I just don't get where this "moral nihilists should become moral relativist" type of thinking is coming from



Well as mentioned the expressivist considered moral statements to be nothing more than an expression of preferences. I can use whatever methods I might like to come up with my preferences, good or bad. I can just say my gut feelings. Or I can do a consequential analysis to consider the consequences of actions and express my preferences based on those consequences, I can have a preference against harm and measure harm, I can prefer deontological claims, any number of things. The expressivist moral nihilist indeed has a different framework - a different meta ethics - but it perfectly capable of commanding "you should not do X". Heck, the whole point of expressivism in some sense is to retain this ability. It seems like throughout this distinction you are trying to use one's meta-ethics to attack one's ethics which is a bit strange.


Descriptive statements like "you have to eat so as to not starve" have nothing to do with either ethics or meta-ethics.


Hopefully this is well addressed above, but nonetheless, the point here is still mine. The moral logic does NOT reduce to moral relativism in the "push it down a level" example. Whether you think my utilitarian analysis can or cannot be mixed with moral nihilism is another issue. And again just nothing about this has ever had anything to do with moral relativism.


You want me to explain why going through pregnancy can be more harmful than the distress of an anti-abortion town member or whatever? Any time a utilitarian harm-based approach is used it is true that at some point it reduces to what, and for what reasons, one considers various things to be harmful. We can go down this rabbit hole if you particularly want to, but it seems a bit irrelevant given that you are still rejecting the basic foundations of my approach.






I'm still just...confused by this. The "moral logic" - consequentialism - has nothing to do with moral relativism and the meta ethical view of moral nihilism has nothing to do with moral relativism. I just don't see any resemblance, so you are going to have to carefully explain the connection you are seeing. Like I don't even know how to rebut it any longer since I don't understand the way you seem to think it is coming into the discussion. I thought I've constructed toy moralities that show this distinction clearly but apparently not.



Just because a fetus is viable doesn't mean it is easy to get out without a C-section or going through vaginal labour. I don't even know the methodologies here, IS there an easy way to remove a 20 week fetus? Regardless, you are going to also subject the new baby to very high risks of health problems. For me I'm okay with someone aborting or going to term but this middle "take it out of them early as a replacement for abortion" seems just terrible. It is also worth noting the vast majority of abortions occur before viability in non-health related cases so this is a minority issue. I suppose if it is of central importance as a thought experiment to consider ethical issues we can carry on, but it seems like a fairly silly thing to entertain.



Correct. But unlike with abortions, it killing the baby doesn't alleviate any harm the way aborting a fetus did, so the situations are still asymmetric. I spoke about limitations of consequentialism on valuing human life earlier so absolutely you will push me into limits at some point here.



Okay, so if I understand correctly at both one week and at viability we should be pointing towards moral culpability, at both one week and at viability the principle of generally opposing active interference in natural body processes applies. So in what you have written thus far they seem similar, so I presume the way you are distinguishing between the two is based on arguments you have not yet written?



In what way is a condom "active and volitional violence"?[/QUOTE]I'm going to quote what you said: "Generally, I believe that natural body processes reign over active interference."You didn't say anything about volitional violence, just active interference. Does this quote not stand on its own as a general principle? On the one side it seems like a condom is precisely an "active interference on a natural body process (pregnancy through sex). It's your principle, however, so if you tell me it doesn't include condoms so be it. What else DOES it include? Because if it is a principle that ONLY applies to the singular body process of pregnancy then it doesn't seem general and seems like a principle sort of made up on a whim to oppose abortion.

They should adopt it if they want to make non-universal normative moral claims using moral logic.

You can say whatever you want. There are infinitely many nonsense statements you can make. But if you want your statements to have meaning, the question remains -- What does it mean? What is the "should" in the statement? What is the "ought" that is communicated?

I'm doubtful that you're using the concept of expressivism in a meaningful way. On the one hand, you're trying to say that expressivism allows you to use moral language to communicate preferences. Fine. But then you're also using the expressivism foundation to then proceed into making moral claims using moral logic. You are no longer expression preferences.

I'm trying to show you that "ought" statements can only exist in a certain way if you accept moral nihilism. "Ought" statements that express something beyond either descriptive of consequential oughts put you into a realm where you are no longer working under moral nihilism. At the minimum, you are making local moral claims (moral relativism). You may even be going further and making global moral claims (such as using your harm analysis). But either way, you're no longer expressing mere preferences.

Please, make the analysis. All you would do is verify that you're not a moral nihilist. You're making moral claims and using moral logic that is either right or wrong.

Why are you saying "without" a C-section? Did I mistype that in the original?

If you abort it, you're still going to have to remove it. So either way, it's coming out.

Your statement on its face is clearly false.

Why? Suppose you have a woman who is 8 months pregnant and the woman wants to abort it. In what sense is it terrible to remove the clearly viable fetus rather than aborting it?

Since there are laws against late-term abortions, this is true but not for any of possible implicit reasons you are suggesting.

It's not that hard of a push. Your entire argument is predicated on something like "cutting the umbilical cord changes the moral status from fetus to child" which is basically impossible to justify from a consequentialist perspective.

The distinguishing factor is viability. I don't know why this would be complicated for you to understand.



Mostly, you're being stupid and not reading what I wrote.

"non-universal" just isn't a relevant concept here. One can desire to express universal moral judgement as an expressive moral nihilist. Or non-universal moral judgments. It is just that those moral judgments (regardless of whether they are universal or not) are not believed to be true. Again, you keep trying to fit moral relativism - a rather distinct meta ethical view - into this and it just doesn't ever follow.

I think I covered in detail already how the expressivist moral nihilists conceive of such concepts. If you prefer someone else's word, i looked up the wikipedia article for you: "When we condemn torture, for instance, we are expressing our opposition to it, indicating our disgust at it, publicizing our reluctance to perform it, and strongly encouraging others not to go in for it. We can do all of these things without trying to say anything that is true.""



My preferences and judgments can be informed by all sorts of things, including using logic to measure the consequences and harm of different situations. As in, it isn't like the only preference or judgement I am allowed to utter are just reflex emotional responses. I can think and study the consequences and evaluate them and then express my preferences and judgments given this process. I could find deontological approaches compelling, I could find utilitarian approaches compelling, and so forth. I should repeat: moral nihilism is a meta ethical theory and doesn't preclude one from using "moral logic" in informing their preferences an judgments.

Correct, moral nihilists DO think ought statements exist in a certain way. I told you what that way was. It is just that they are not precluded to merely descriptive statements (as the ethical subjectivists might tend towards).





I'm not an expert on the medicine, but my impression is that abortions of fetus on edge of medical viability are far less harmful to the mother than C-sections are.

You don't think extreme preamies come with significant health risks for lower future quality of life and death?





IIRC, it is legal in CAnada. But there are many obvious reasons why most people don't wait until 7 or 8 months until an abortion without medical reasons.



I believe I had described multiple times that as the time frame shrinks, the differences in consequences DOES shrink to zero. Remember your 20 second prior example?



Okay? Is it your impression you have typed out an argument for how this distinguishing factor leads you to these different moral judgement? The various principles I quoted previously appear to apply to both situations. I can't really dispute your argument since I don't know what it is.





You started by citing a general principle. It seemed to me to apply to condoms on its face. When I said so you said this general principle had an implict assumption (that certainly never seemed implied to me but okay) of being about volitional violence to living things. So I have now asked a couple times, what OTHER situations does this "general" principle apply to where you don't apply volitional violence as active interventions on natural body processes. That applies to aborting fetuses. Anything else? Maybe you are also trying to include murdering adults here, although that would be very weird phrasing for that? This general principle doesn't seem that general, it seems like something you made up, then change substantially, to try and fit your purpose.

Or get drafted and killed without legally being able to gamble or buy a beer in some states.

This always seemed a little arbitrary and silly even though it's probably better to have a number than none at all, because it leaves no room for common sense.

It's possible for the law to allow for common sense as seen in cases where the age for trying someone as an adult gets lowered. I see no reason why this can't be applied to abortion decisions as well.

Edit: Just read your next post and it seems you at least somewhat agree?

No, but Henry should be able to make that decision and he should be allowed to do so in a dignified way.

It seems to me that this is not so much about how high the stakes are, but how much you want to meddle in other people's affairs. If Henry deems his quality of life not worth living, and chooses to die now on his terms, rather than to suffer the last few days of his life, then that should be his decision. Not yours.

No further study is needed to know when someone is in pain and suffering from an irrecoverable illness. It's because of these studies that it is legal to let your dog be put out of its misery, rather than continuing to suffer. A courtesy you'd rather not grant your fellow human being, because you're a meddler and want to impose your far fetched beliefs onto others.

Opinionated empty ramble.

This doesn't really work at the level that you're trying to use it. I don't object to you simply making claims such as X is good or X is bad. That part fits perfectly in expressivistic terms. What does NOT fit in expressivistic terms is a moral claim such as one *SHOULD* do (or not do) something. At this point, you're expressing more than your personal opposition, disgust, reluctance, or encouragement against it. It's more than an opinion, it's communicating an imperative. Notice that the statement is not using *should* as I've asked you to find. I expect you won't find a moral nihilist using that language (except in precisely the conditions I've described, namely consequential oughts -- "you ought to eat so that you won't starve" -- and descriptive oughts -- "according to the existing social norms, you ought to vote"), and there's a very good reason not to expect that you will find normative *should* statements from moral nihilists.

In what sense are they compelling? You can't mean logically compelling because there are no truth values for the logic to contend with. So you're not really using moral logic.

If you accept moral nihilism, then you would have no problem with making the statement "It is good to kill babies" and "It is not good to kill babies" insofar as there is no contradiction between the two statements. You might say that one statement is a better reflection of your emotional disposition than the other, but that's merely a reflection of your personal expression, not because there's something inherently wrong with accepting both.

But they don't exist in the way that you're trying to use them.

This conversation reminds me of mathematical fictionalism, which basically asserts that math is systematically false, that there is no truth to it. It's a useful fiction, but it's not actually true in any meaningful sense. A very strong argument against this is the objectivity of mathematics, that in some sense the statement "1+1=2" is preferred over the statement "1+1=3." The fictionalist must insist that both are false (though perhaps 1+1=2 may be true in some sort of convenient fictional story, like one might accept that Darth Vader is Luke's father as being true relative to the Star Wars universe, but that such a universe isn't actually real).

At this point, it seems to me that you're weaving this story about morality that isn't real but gives you access to make these imaginative truth statements (these are your consequentialist conclusions, just in case it's not clear). But the problem is that there's no normative force in those statements. The *ought* does not extend beyond your fiction, and hence the moral logic that you're applying is nothing but a fantasy and should therefore not actually be compelling, nor should it be compelling to anyone else. You're not talking about any actual state of reality, merely a fiction.

Forget the edge of medical viability for a moment. You're just using the gray as a shield to protect yourself from the glaring flaw of your consequentialist logic. Pull back to 8 months. I don't need to get this down to 20 seconds for the logical flaws to appear.

There are underlying moral principles upon which moral judgments are made.

As I noted, shoes are unnatural. Being intentionally dense does little other than make you look dense.

What would be weird about saying that active and volitional violence against an adult human being disrupts natural life processes? Maybe we wouldn't normally use that phrasing, but it seems to describe things quite effectively.

You may claim it doesn't sound general, but that's mostly because you're being intentionally dense. There are very few things in which active and volitional violence that disrupts natural life processes in people does not have some type of moral bearing.

I completely agree that laws establishing rights at certain ages are arbitrary and that exceptions are certainly possible.

If you recall my initial presentation, I explained how the expressionist was interpreting the normative statements of moral language differently than might conventionally be found, that "should" statements are not interpreted as truth statements, but play a different function as expressions of preference and judgment. I think the basic problem here is that you are hearing ethical statements, interpreting those statements according to different meta ethical systems, and then saying they violate this meta ethical system, which is clearly not a valid approach.

If you wish you can insist as you initially did that I or we SHOULDN"T adopted the mantle of conventional moral language, that it was lazy to do so, and should instead directly use statements that make it clearer one is merely expressing preferences and judgements with such statements. I disagree, but perhaps so. However, this is merely a semantic quibble, not any criticism of the theory or my approach to it.

Perhaps I should have also quoted the sentence prior to the one I quoted for you already: "Instead, we are venting our emotions, commanding others to act in certain ways, or revealing a plan of action". Using moral language is not prevented by a moral nihilist in many of its different resolutions (of which expressivism is just one). Indeed, in some sense it is an interpretation of what moral language means. I'll quote more from the wiki since you don't seem willing to accept my descriptions at face value:
See how the statement "it is wrong to X" can still be uttered, it just has a different function.

And none of this - none of this - has anything to do with moral relativism.

Consider how one might come up with the preferences and judgment one ends up expressing. We could go with gut feeling. We could follow the teachings of some deontological system and express those. In fact, one could follow the teachings of in principle any ethical system. One isn't accepting the set of statements generated by such a system to be true, but one can choose to express them nonetheless. There are many paths to the statement "It is wrong to torture a human". Now I typically take an approach which begin with analysis, at least in applied ethics. You look at situations and study the consequences and who is suffering in what ways and so forth. At this point it is all descriptive statements and absolutely we can use logic to inform ourselves. The hope is that this analysis gives an informed understanding of the situation and motivates some moral preference or judgment we wish to express. It might, for instance, lead us to utter "It is wrong to torture a human" just as the utilitarian who believes their analysis derives absolute truths might also utter the statement. Of course, both would mean different things by the statement, as discussed above.

Hopefully this explains why this meta ethical position does not immediately nullify doing any form of ethics, how one still uses ethical theories and logic and everything else. Now as to the question of why I tend to gravitate more into the utilitarian camp opposed to the deontological camp, again we can go down this rabbit hole of comparing ethical theories here, but there is little point as long as you are rejecting the meta ethical foundations.



This is either true or false depending on your interpretation of the normative language (which we have been disagreeing with). An expressivist probably isn't going to express both of those statements. They might point out that they don't accept either statement as true.


This is a bit like the error theorist resolution, actually. It is different from my approach, but it is a known approach.



I don't even know medically what it means to have an abortion at 8 months and no idea what it would mean to "remove" a live fetus ahead of time on purpose. Do they perhaps induce the mother and she has a pregnancy anyways (I think they sometimes do this for stillborn births)? Or would you do a C-section to remove the viable fetus? I've got to presume that the overwhelming majority of 8 month cases are health risk related abortions. The idea of removing viable fetuses (so they stay alive) from a mother because she doesn't want to continue being pregnant for the rest of her pregnancy is unheard of. This seems like a very bizarre hypothetical to go down....does your attempt to disprove my logic really necessitate entertaining this example?

Maybe this will help: I'll not that the consequences for the mother decline (her abortion becomes as big a medical ordeal as the pregnancy, the social and economic costs have sunk in already, etc etc) which makes these negative consequences shrink to zero at the "cut the cord" level, as mentioned. What else are you wanting from me here? I've freely mentioned limitiations on the consequentialist approach for things like valuing a human life. Recall, my initial contributions to the thread were about rejecting the arbitrariness of the decision. I tend to think it is a relatively continuous process from something more or less equivalent to using a condom (which we don't reject) to something more or less equivalent to killing a born baby (which we do reject). Make of that what you will.


Indeed. If my accounting is correct, you identified two such principles. And both of them applies to both a 1 week fetus and a viable fetus. Thus my confusion as to why you appear to be treating these two differently.






For the fourth time, can you give some examples of other situations where this principle applies? Like are you saying anything other than "you shouldn't physically hurt people (and maybe fetuses...or maybe just viable fetuses?)"? I'm sorry, but I'm still not sure what you think your general principle you are using to inform your views on abortion is really saying.

For instance: the "disrupts natural life processes" part we do all the time. We get surgeries and use birth control pills and whatever else. So the key is the "violence" part...but violence is a loaded word. It implies actions done against an agent who wishes they were not done. I say the word agent deliberately, because there are connotations of intentionality here. Presumably you don't include logging as a violence against natural life processes, I would guess much to the chagrin of the environmentalists this is a rather different use of the word violence. So it is true we don't tend to accept violence against a person's physical body. But does the same apply for the fetus? It doesn't work if there is a trace of intentionality in your principle. Your initial phrasing, ironically, didn't have those traces of intentionality but then it applied far to wide such that it applied to shoes as you mentioned. I suspect you are going to be flipping between either of these extremes. Either you have a principle that we don't actually hold and have boundless counterexamples of us "actively intervening on natural life processes" OR a principle that doesn't end up including aborting fetuses.

"An embryo has no rights" - Ayn Rand

Just sayin'

You still have yet to provide me evidence of someone from the position of moral nihilism using a normative ought statement. There's a reason for that.

You have yet to explain what it means to apply logic to statements that do not have truth values. You can say all these things all you want. Given that none of the statements have truth values at all, any sort of analysis of them that invokes some measure of truth to the statements is meaningless.

If you actually read the statement, I don't see how this could either be true or false.

I'll give you the opportunity to try it again.

Seriously? What is your concept of an abortion? What is so medically confusing about the process that you don't know what this means?

Maybe you should also tell me what a fetus is.

It doesn't matter. You're hiding again.

That's not the point. I'm not making any observational claims here.

It's the easiest way to do it. It highlights the part of the logic that's flawed in an absolutely clear manner. The fact that you're hiding convinces me that you see it, but you can't admit it.

Right. You reject the arbitrariness of the decision, but then your counter is to present a framework that is equally arbitrary.

Take your pick. Punching babies. Stabbing adults with knives.

I welcome a more thorough analysis in which you actually draw this conclusion as being meaningful. This is pretty much out of your rear end.

Also, life progression is not stopped by birth control pills. The failure to ovulate doesn't kill anything. A vasectomy doesn't kill anything.

The fact that you're talking about logging here tells me that you're really stretching.

Let me quote myself:

...

At this point, you're in the weeds and nothing is really addressing anything I'm talking about.

I did, you just didn't respond to it: It isn't just that there is some problem with using moral language as a moral nihilist. It is that the various branches of moral nihilism are separated based on different attempts to CONTINUE using moral language. Indeed, we get a different function of this language than might normally be considered. While we don't believe these statements are true, we nonetheless still aim to express these moral statements. Just couple very quick more google's if you REALLY can't understand the arguments and need to hear someone else saying the word "normative" (I didn't read beyond the quotes).


Analyzing the consequences of something - the initial steps of a utilitarian analysis - is about using logic on descriptive statements. In a utilitarian analysis the final step - going from "we have these consequences (typically labeled "harmful") and thus I wish to express a preference against it" isn't logical. Or you can take a presuppositional approach. Or you can just follow out any ethical theory, see what it says, and then be compelled to express the conclusions of that theory as per your meta ethical theory. For instance, perhaps you have previously found the principle that "one should not actively disrupt natural body processes" to be compelling then you could note that abortion satisfies these conditions and thus now feel compelled to express an opposition to abortion consistent with this principle you felt compelling. There is a sort of translation difference from the ethics to the meta-ethics, but in principle at least you and I could walk down the same ethical road in lock step both uttering "You should not do X,Y,Z" for the same ethical reasoning and just mean different meta ethical interpretations of the sentences going along.



It is true that the expressivist thinks neither "It is good to kill babies" nor "It is not good to kill babies" represent true statements. However, when an expressivist says something like "It is good to kill babies" they don't mean that as a truth statement and are unlikely to have expressed it. This is just basic definitional stuff, what is your point?


I don't know what the medical procedures of abortion are at 8 months. Do they induce a labour? When and how do they terminate a fetus? Is it vaginal or cesarean? Is it equally hard on the mother as giving birth to a live fetus is? And on the flip side, if the goal is to remove the fetus alive - which is the example we are talking about - I have no idea how you proposed to do that either. Is there even cases of people removing fetuses alive a month early except for medical reasons (such as early induction). I can't evaluate this bizarre hypothetical unless I know how it occurs. For instance, if the harm to the mother is identical - same medical risks, same physical pain, etc - this is a different analysis than if the abortion is significantly easier.

Why don't YOU try to make "absolutely clear" what this flawed logic is. I've already freely admitted many times the consequentialist approach runs into limits pretty quickly here so your absolutely clear flaw in my logic may well be something I already agree with! So spit it out!



Hardly. Remember, I had a very specific objection: picking a point on a relatively continuous spectrum and saying before this week it is moral, after this week it isn't moral. I suppose one can devolve quickly into "all moral views are arbitrary" or "picking consequentialism is arbitrary!" territory which is maybe where you are going with your claims of me being arbitrary, but I was referring to quite a specific situation that I am not repeating.


The point was they "disrupt natural life processes". Of course, it turns out you didn't mean anything nearly as wide as "disrupt natural life processes" when you said it:
I have no idea how you think two is implied in any way in one. But it isn't until the final version where the "in people" (and you're right, i missed the added two words on the third try) snuck in and distinguished it from animals or anything else with bodies....like say fetuses. Now it makes us beg the question, "are fetuses people"? Either this principle just doesn't apply to fetuses, or you define (maybe give a version 4?) in such a way that it DOES apply to fetuses you've just written your conclusion into your principle. A principle, if it is going to be useful, is one that we might be able to share. And I do agree that we generally find hurting people bad. Why should I think that applies to fetuses?

RM Hare was a normative consequentialist but his meta ethics are universal prescriptivisim. In this sense the normative ought is prescriptive rather than descriptive. He does not argue that moral facts exist.

Note that universal prescriptivism is a subset of expressivism that preferentiates universal and prescriptive proclamations. One could also have chosen, in theory, relative and/or descriptive proclamations nd still be under the larger umbrella. Or a wide range of other things.

You really should have:

From the second article you quoted:

So it seems that the bland use of claiming that you can just make normative statements at will is clearly not immediately supportable.

As you've progressed into this proof-texting version of expressivism, you're sounding more and more like fundamentalist religionists. You're taking bits and pieces of ideas and stringing them together in strange ways, and then at best are able to provide random quotes out of context to try to support what it is you're doing.

This is especially true given the "so sue us" attitude that you've taken towards basic semantic content:

You stated it then, and having watched how you've progressed in the conversation, and it seems you're committed to this intellectual farce. You've decided that the best way to apply expressivism is to basically ignore the problems of expressivism.

Here's what SEP has to say:

The level of sloppiness that you've used, trying to ignore basic problems with your position, and being otherwise incapable of making meaningful explanations of your use of language is sufficient more me to reject that your brand of expressivism is meaningful and that you are, indeed, being intellectually lazy.

This is, perhaps, the ultimate reason why your version of expressivism fails. You're trying to take the meta-ethical idea of expressivism as a way of saying "even if I change the meaning of everything, it automatically still makes complete sense." Semantics doesn't work that way. You actually have to address the meaning of your statements and not just assume it all works out in the end.

This is actually reducing yourself to bland moral relativism again. You keep wanting to say you're not doing it, but it seems pretty clear that you're doing it.

This entire paragraph is you being wishy-washy, which leads you to exactly the type of arbitrary moral position that you're criticizing.

You're complaining about moral judgments that are arbitrary. The consequentialist approach that you're using is completely arbitrary. Whatever criticism you have about arbitrary moral perspectives applies to you. Your entire position is self-defeating.

Show me where I or anyone has picked this point.

Meh. That's just a willful uncharitable interpretation of my claim. You might as well have taken the tsar route and claimed that broccoli screams when picked from the ground (which doesn't even make sense because broccoli isn't really picked from the ground -- it's more like clipping a rose bud).

Not that I blame you for choosing an uncharitable interpretation because that's what makes our conversations continue.

I don't claim it applies to fetuses, nor do I claim that it doesn't. That falls into the gray area where it's not apparent that a clear moral judgment can be made. I had discussed this gray area earlier and you seemed to have no objection to it. Do you object now?

No. This use of expressivism makes no sense.

Edit: I'll elaborate -- this is like saying that moral realism is a subset of expressivism that preferentiates true moral claims. You've really not done much with the term expressivism other than saying that it is a form of stating that there are preferred statements in the moral perspective.

It's a pleasure to now have met RM Hare. Skimming over the article, I'm not entirely sure how successful he was at making that work (it seems like everything he tried was "problematic"). But I'll assent that someone of note has at least tried to make that jump from non-conitivism to making affirmative normative claims.

Let me try to pull this together a bit because there a couple different themes going on here so I might scramble the order of quotes a bit after this opening monologue. Firstly, a descriptive point: I presume we now both agree that in the philosophical literature there is this theory called expressive moral nihilism. Of course, as with almost all philosophical theories, there are varieties and flavours of expressivism between its different adherents and critics for the general view (or perhaps just critics of this or that variety). Even just in the quotes presented thus far there have been pure and unadulterated versions, wide views and narrow views, and so forth. And indeed, many people will criticize these versions, sometimes in different ways, or one version and not another.

Secondly, I will happily admit that at best you and I are amateur philosophers with an occasional interest and that a conversation between us has somewhat modest expectations for the level of sophistication and rigour on these concepts we can expect. Indeed, while both of us undoubtably enjoy reading about philosophy, when it comes to these kinds of debates my preference is to attempt to work forward, stumbling, partially in the dark, with these views to see if you, likewise stumbling, likewise partially in the dark, can offer criticism that hold merit. This process has some value in much the way that get people to try working playing around with math, trying to come up with little mini theorems can be more valuable than just going and reading the big and powerful theorems in sophisticated math texts. In many ways, I am trying a dress on for size here. So keep these qualifications in mind as you demand literature searches for things and move beyond just offering your own criticisms.

With that said, there are a couple questions when I presented this version of expressivism ITT. Firstly, is it broadly compatible with established versions? Secondly, are your criticisms of me broadly compatible with established criticism of established versions? Or they only criticisms of my (allegedly butchered) versions, valid or otherwise?

To the first point, I maintain that I have sketched something broadly compatible with conventional definitions of expressivism. Namely, I have offered many versions of the idea that this is a non cognitivists branch of moral nihilism where when the expressivists uses moral language to make a moral statement, they are not making a claim of truth of these statements, but instead are expressing preferences and judgments.

You had several bad initial criticisms, many of which have now been dropped. Among the ones that keep popping up, firstly, there was the question of whether the expressivist can use normative language: As happy as I am to see you assent that people other than I use expressivism to offer normative claims, it seems you seem to be missing the point. Expressive AIMS to continue using moral language, it just conceives of this moral language in a particular way. There is nothing surprising or unique that a particular example exists of someone expressing moral language. This basic idea that a normative judgement is expressing some kind of non cognitivist attitude is present, one way or another, at the very centre of the the idea of the expressivist approach.

Secondly, we have the recurring charge that I am being a moral relativist: Frankly, I've rebutted this very firmly in the past, you have ignored my rebuttles, and despite the frequent accusation of moral relativism you don't explain how what I am doing actually is moral relativism, just accuse me of it as you have done here. I don't know what else to say. Meta-ethical moral relativism is fundamentally incompatible with moral nihilism, with non cognitivism, and certainly with expressivism. It accepts that moral statements can be true relative to particular people, which are rejected in the other circumstances. How you got anything about moral relativism from the idea that an expressivist rejects the TRUTH of both the statements "you should kill babies" and "you shouldn't kill babies" while simultaneously choosing to express the view "you should not kill babies" where it is not meant as a truth statement, is beyond me. Earlier we had a slightly different issue where a utilitarian statement was consistent with being included in a variety of meta-ethical systems that you concluded was "identical" to the particular meta ethical system of moral relativism.

Thirdly, we have this confusion between ethical theories and meta-ethics that keeps cropping up in a variety of ways.
Moral realism is a meta-ethical theory. It fundamentally contracts moral nihilism. Moral realism describes the function of moral statements as being truth apt propositions about the real world. The universal prescriptivism likewise describes the function of moral statements to universal prescriptions, functions who have tighter conditions than unspecified expressivism. So no, it is not at all like saying that.

Following this theme on the distinction between ethics and meta ethics, you have long opposed the idea that I would do any form of ethics to inform the views I choose to express. In particular, the idea that one might use logic, or that I might be a utilitarian (or an illogical deontologist, for that matter). Note what is in his wiki page for universal prescriptivism:
This tracks almost exactly with my view. Note that we haven't talked about the second half of the first sentence much, but there have been some hints when I spoke about the limits of the approach (for example on the not killing babies question), at some point it breaks down and I at least can't ever represent the totality of beliefs on utilitarian consideration alone. Nonetheless, the idea of using logic and using utilitarian considerations is confirmed to be used (even though you had never presented an argument that successfully argued it couldn't be used before).


Note that this comment was referring to the "alternate resolution" that is the error theorists which I have talked about a few times, but is a different resolution to the basic tension than expressivism. In particular, error theory is cognitivist and nihilist vs non cognitivist and nihilist.

Right, exactly. I called this process a "translation" in some sense where the set of moral sentences comes with a systematic semantic change in the meaning of key words like "ought" and "wrong". Now we really haven't managed to beyond the most basic ideas of whether normative statements are even allowed, whether attempting moral statements makes one a moral relativist, whether you can make contradictory meta ethical statement, and so forth. So you don't actually have evidence of me being sloppy or otherwise, all I have done is say that "in theory" we can apply this systematic semantic change without digging into how this works in specific examples. I can do a couple for you, if you like. The only example we have talked about is abortion where I am entirely ignoring meta-ethics and, as I informed you at the beginning, being a practicing utilitarian.


Again, as in most of your comments, you don't present descriptions or any arguments for why things are what you accuse them of which makes it a little hard to refute. I'm guessing you have devolved into a sort of "all ethical theories are arbitrary" category, at this point, but it is hard to say. If not, recall that all that I have done thus far is essentially to describe what the consequences are. We hadn't even gotten beyond the idea that I might be allowed to use such analyses to motivate the kinds of moral statements I might wish to express as an expressive moral nihilist.





It is by far the most reasonable interpretation of your first version. "actively disrupt natural life processes" is as consistent with clipping rose buds as it is with abortion. Your version was just bad. Which is fine, because you quickly amended it, but the problem is that the third revision has narrowed from the far too wide to be so narrow it isn't clear it even applies any longer to the topic of abortion:



I now have no idea why you cited the thrice revised general principle. I don`t have a problem with finding something to be a grey area. This happens a lot for me too. The problem is that you cited two principles, the disrupt natural life processes bit, and the destory life that is progressing points to moral culpability bit. Both of these two things don`t distinguish between one week fetuses and viable fetuses and babies, even if they are "weak" principles in the sense that they only "point" towards things. So what about this makes it grey?

Sure. I've never denied this.

What I'm basically asking you to do is to look in the mirror as your try the dress on. It's like you decided that the dress doesn't make your butt look fat before you even tried it on.

Firstly, I don't believe so. I would say that at best it's aspirationally compatible. The problem is not so much about compatibility with the concept of expressivism, but about internal compatibility. You are taking multiple forms of expressivism and trying to roll them together as if they're compatible with each other. That doesn't work.

You seem to have an underlying emotivism position while simultaneously adopting the more narrow expressivist position as described by SEP:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/

Secondly, I believe that my criticisms are broadly compatible with established criticisms. Specifically, I believe my objection is consistent in its intent with the wishful thinking objection (see below).

My criticisms are mostly about your jump from moral nihilism to making logical moral judgments. The claim that your meta-ethical position has no bearing on your ability to make specific types of ethical statements seems erroneous on its face.

I have no problem with saying that you're expressing preferences. At a general level, that's not an issue. But that doesn't mean that every moral statement that you make must therefore be sensible and have a meaningful translation.

Specifically, normative moral claims from a position of moral nihilism seems doomed for failure because there's no normative authority. That is, moral nihilism rejects that one moral state is actually better than the other (since if this were true, that would be a true moral statement, and moral statements are neither true nor false).

Let's take a case where the opinionated nature of the statements are obvious: "You ought to use the red pen."

Taking this ought as a normative claim (that is, I really ought to use the red pen) is predicated on there being facts about the red pen that are either true or false.
* You ought to use the red pen because the black pen is dry.
Notice that there is an implicit outcome that drives the ought (presumably, to write something). I *really* ought to use the red pen. There is a real error in using the black pen.

This ought statement can be changed from a normative claim to a consequential one by the introduction of an if-then statement. This essentially restores access to logic by at least proposing a hypothetical truth value.
* If you want someone to be able to read what you wrote, you ought to use the red pen because the black pen is dry.
The if-then structure is critical to the statement because it's making the form of the statement explicit. Maybe my desire isn't to have anyone read what I wrote. Maybe I'm just making an indentation on the paper. So it's not *really* true that I ought to use the red pen, but rather that I ought to use the red pen *IF* you have accurately identified the desired goal and relevant facts.

But there's no sense that I *really* ought to use the red pen. It's not a claim about reality. It's a claim about your analysis. It would be entirely possible that I ought to use the black pen. And the reason for using the black pen can be as simple as "because I want to" and this denies your analysis completely. It simply doesn't matter because the reality of the situation is not contingent in any way upon your analysis. So the concept of a normative claim in the absence of facts that pertain to the claim doesn't work.

This is the essential structure that you're attempting to use when you say that you're a moral nihilist that is a practicing consequentialist. Notice that there is no force behind your analysis. Conclusions you reach are basically empty because there are no facts that actually pertain to your analysis. And so your conclusions have no normative force. You are not actually making normative statements.

Now consider the wishful thinking objection, as described by SEP:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/

The insertion of "normative" here is an error. The basic idea that a JUDGMENT is expressing some kind of non-cognitivist attitude makes sense. The idea that the non-cognitivist is making normative judgments is not.

That's okay. I think the simplest thing is to let the accusation and its rebuttal simply stand as-is. I find the that resolution you're looking for looks a lot more like moral relativism than it does moral nihilism. You want to hold to moral nihilism, but your arguments seem to require at least a local form of moral truth value.

Sorry to not respond to the rest, but this took a lot longer than I thought it would and now I have to get on to something else. I'll try to get back to it later, though it's going to be a busy several days, I think.

You will have to carefully state what the multiple forms you think I am using and why they are incompatible if you want me to internalize or refute it.

Sure. There is obviously considerable overlap between the two, and I view emotivism as a sort of less ambituous version of modern expressivism. If I was to abandon the tighter conditions of the expressivist project (the translation issue as I termed it, or the "systematic semantics" as SEP puts it), I would likely fall bad on emotivism. I'm not sure there is a criticism here, though.

Let me ask you this: Suppose I said instead I was an emotivist. I'm still a moral nihilist, I'm still a non cognitivist, but the function of moral language is merely to express boos and hurrahs. Consider the list of objections you have raised, do any still hold under this broader version?

So there are two things to tackle, the adjectives logical and normative.

Logical first. We agree that I am allowed to use moral language (or at least non normative moral language perhaps) where the function of that moral language is to convey an attitude I have. Those attitudes can be very simple "killing is wrong!" or they can be very complex. I'm not sure what a "logical moral judgement" is, but the way I have been using logic is to help inform the attitudes I wish to express. In particular, I have a range of beliefs about the world, beliefs that have descriptive statements and are informed by the logic that operates on them. These beliefs intertwine with my simpler attitudes to create more complex attitudes which I can then express. Indeed, the place where I was using logic specifically was in the analysis of consequences of actions like abortion, which is perfectly acceptable.

For instance, suppose I have an attitude that causing harm is wrong. When presented with a situation my analysis is that it is harmful. I then gain the attitude that this situation is wrong. I'm not making a "logical moral judgment" per say, but using logic to inform my beliefs that are relevant to forming attitudes. One could imagine the utilitarian moral absolutist asserting that cause harm is wrong, deducing that a situation is harmful and concluding that the situation is wrong. While this example was meant to illustrate how logic is used here, it also might be illustrative of how the translation process occurs. There is a correspondence between the two ethics despite the different meta ethics they live within. If I wished, I could use the language of the latter presentation where I have made the semantic chance that the moral language functions as the former.

Now for normative. If I read the second correctly, you accept the statement from the expressivist "Killing is wrong" make sense, correct? Your objection is to the expressivist ever saying "one should not kill". Or in other words, you accept that the expressivist describes the function of some types of moral language, but reject that they can change the function of other types of moral language. It is entirely possible, in my mind, for the expressivist to view the function of "one should not killl" as, say, as the expression of a commandment. They don't think it is a true property of the universe that one should not kill, but they hold an attitude that one should restrict one's behaviour in this way.




Not sure what you are meaning by a normative authority (a god? do all who reject this authority are unable to make normative claims) here, but I think you are again forgetting that the expressivist thinks of the function of a normative moral claim differently than you may. You are rendering the moral claim unutterable because of something to do with its truth values. But the expressivist doesn't mean anything to do with truth or falsity when they use this language. The argument just doesn't work here.

Note that this criticism, were it valid, would seem to ALSO apply to statements like "it is wrong to kill". If you focus on truth, the nihilist also rejects the truth of this statement. But yo uare only objecting to the normative ones.



Bingo. Or at least, the function of normative statements isn't the same function as you would have them be. Your entire example about pens is premised on the fact that it isn't a true fact that they ought to use the black pen. I agree. When I say "you should not kill" I also don't think it is a true fact, that you *really* ought to, as you put it. It has this different function I have described many times now. But this is ALSO true of "killing is wrong" which also has nothing to do with truth for the expressivist.

Sure. I have no objection if the cognitivists want to call it wishful thinking. I don't really disagree. It isn't like I have discovered fundamental properties of the universe when I express these attitudes. It is just what I think, wishful tho that may be. We may wish the cognitivist approach was a good one, even!

That said, I think what is being done practically is very similar to most people.


Can you please give your argument why you think I am doing this as I have explicitly rejected I am doing anything remotely like this many times.

Take your time, i'm in no hurry and get push notifications when quoted anyways so I don't need to be checking the forum to see if someone has responded yet. Also, my wife is calling me to bed and I didn't get a hcance to proofread this so take that as punishment

Very briefly, modern expressivism is a congitive approach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressivism