Not really. There are a bunch of different flavours, some of which might not be called strictly non cognitivist in a strong sense, but that isn't the same thing as being cognitivist. Quasi-realism is a version of noncognitivism imo. Horgan and Timmons’ view here keeps half of the noncognitivist approach. Ie it still rejects that moral sentences express propositions with truth values. But they accept a form of psychological cognitivism (or at least reject the negation of this which pure non cognitivists would reject) that gets into the philosophy of mind and talking about cognitive states in the brain and so forth. Gibbard's earlier norm expressivism work is unquestionable noncognitivst, the latter stuff likewise still accepts the so called semantic nonfactualism part of noncognitivism. Note that the SEP lists all of these under the varieties of noncognitivism with Horgan and Timmon's being titled borderline or hybrid. So the contention that they are cognitivist fails. It is a "moving more in that direction than earlier in history" shift.

But so what? If you think I have made a contradiction, be very explicit about where I said these contradictory things - quote them - and explain why you think it is a contradiction. I don't disagree that several proponents of modern expressivism has moved away from the stricter senses of noncognitivsm. Frankly, you keep making assertions without giving an explanation that I can internalize or refute.

Further, as I indicated before, my preference for the adversarial process of forum debates is about practising constructing and refuting arguments ourselves, and not to get into a study of the literature. There is a range of these modern views that have different flavours and the like. There are critics of expressivism generally, critics of moral nihilism, critics of particular flavours, rejecting of older models and introduction of new ones and everything else. I do not mean to arbitrate and choose between these. Okay I have various thoughts (for instance I personally feel more compelled to accept semantic nonfactualism than psychological non cognitivism) and I suppose we could go into these differences, but it wasn't my aim. I aimed to sketch the general flavour of expressivism. In my opinion I both successfully did that and have systematically batted down a now rather long list of separate objections. If you want to get into things like describing in detail the technical machinery of one of these approaches to avoid the Frege–Geach objection or whatever I suppose that would be fine, but is a substantial shift and capitulation from your earlier objections which really should be acknowledged before we move on.

Incidentally, and somewhat contradicting my above mentioned preference, this was in the SEP and it seems to have better phrasing, I think, of my earlier ideas of describing how one can use an ethical system of norms - utilitarianism, for instance - and choose to express attitudes in accordance with permissibly in that ethical system:

This argument relies on empirical claims about psychology that are typically rejected by expressivists. You are arguing that expressivism coupled with moral nihilism* lacks "normative force" and so is an untenable theory. I'll assume (correct me if I'm wrong) that by "normative force" you mean that it provides a reason for action.

However, most expressivists accept some version of Hume's claim that beliefs on their own cannot motivate action, but that only desire or passions can do so. For example, believing that I will die if I walk off the cliff is not enough--I must also have a desire to not die in order for this to actually function as a reason for action.

On this model, we could put Aaron's criticism like this: in order for a moral claim to provide a reason for action--to motivate us--it must presuppose some kind of objective moral status to the universe. On this reading moral realism would be necessary but not sufficient for a moral statement to have normative force.

But why is that? The worry that moral realists seem to have is something like: what do we say to psychopaths? That is, if we run into people who don't have the kinds of desires or passions that typically lead to moral behavior, how can we show them that they are wrong?

Well, on the belief-desire model we can't. We can show them that they shouldn't do some evil actions for what are typically thought of as non-moral reasons (eg self-interest). We can try to instill in them the desires and passions that do lead to moral behavior--though with no guarantee of success. But ultimately, if they don't have the right kind of desires, there is no way to show that they are wrong to act as they do on their own grounds.

Does this mean then that we should give up on morality? I don't see why. It does maybe mean that we should give up on the rationalistic model of morality that comes from Plato and reaches its apotheosis in Kant. But people act from what are typically thought of as moral desires and feelings all the time. You feel sympathy for the victims of the earthquake in Nepal and so give money or time to help alleviate their suffering. This is easily understandable on the Humean model. It is even easy enough to see how you can still condemn psychopaths who, while maybe acting rationally on the basis of their own desires, cause pain and suffering for others (again, the emotion of sympathy is an adequate explanation).

All that is really lost is the supposed ability to show by force of argument that psychopaths are irrational in doing what they are doing. But then, the Humean can argue that no moral theory has this ability, since rationality is always based on desire/passion, and its possible that some people just don't have the right kinds of desire/passion.**

Of course, Aaron can still disagree by claiming that the belief-desire model of human action is false. But that is an empirical claim, and one for which he has not argued.


*I don't like using "moral nihilism" here, which I associate more with the claim that nothing has any value, which I understand as a moral rather than meta-ethical theory. I prefer moral anti-realism.

**This is the point where Kant enters in. He argues (in effect) that the psychopath can still be shown to be acting irrationally because the logical structure of reasons imply certain kinds of imperatives and so if the psychopath isn't following these categorical imperatives then he can't be acting on the basis of reason and so is acting irrationally.

This may well be true, but even for those who don't accept this, the framework still broadly works I think. As in, for those without a belief/desire dichotomy in their philosophy of mind - something else provides motivation...perhaps beliefs alone somehow - the basic approach of attempt to pair moral sentences with mental states remains, at least in principle, possible, even if done perhaps differently with different philosophies of mind.

You missed the point. Your framing is completely devoid of content. I can "preferentiate" whatever. I am claiming that it is as meaningful to "preferentiate" true statements than it is to "preferentiate" universal and prescriptive proclamations. You have utterly failed to actually describe anything.

First, it amuses me that you're hanging on to Hare here. Mostly because it seems Hare kind of ran into a dead end.

Very simply, nothing that's been stated here actually shows that his approach was successful. I submit that it's still wishful thinking to claim on the one hand that there do not exist moral truths, but yet engage in moral reasoning as if moral truths exist.

I'm unsure of how much about prescriptivism you've read, so I don't know if you have properly conceptualized what you have. This somewhat addresses what I think Original Position was talking about when he discussed "reason for action." Under the prescriptivist view (which I'm not entirely sure you actually hold), moral judgments prescribe actions.

But that's not what it seems that you're doing here. It really seems you're taking a descriptive position on morality, not a prescriptive one. And that's a problem. You seem to be wanting to describe moral actions as being morally better or worse than another, but that would be a moral fact, and you reject moral facts. Therefore, your whole enterprise makes no sense.

I disagree with your assessment, based on the descriptive/prescriptive dichotomy presented above. Using utilitarian considerations makes sense (at least vaguely) in a prescriptive sense because actions are neither true nor false. So if there's some sort of sense of being compelled to action by the analysis, it still does not require truth values to be effective.

I would simply repeat that pretending that you have truth values to use logic while rejecting the existence of truth values is pretty sloppy.

The arbitrariness of your approach has less to do with all ethical theories being arbitrary, but that your position allows you to apply whichever one you want in an arbitrary manner. You say that you are a practicing consequentialist, but when you run into problems you can just abandon it. In other words, you can use or not use whatever ethical theory you want in the moment.

Right. What's going on here, and it seems somewhat explicit, is that you're going down that slope of arbitrary analysis. You are allowed to use moral reasoning when it works towards the ends you want, but if it starts to fail or maybe if you don't like where the logic is leading, it's perfectly okay for you to abandon it and stick with your gut emotional feeling about it.

Not really. You're just taking the most uncharitable interpretation possible. Not that I blame you for that.

Nope. A rose bud will never become something that will become a new rose bush. The biological function of flowering buds is not the same biological function as a fetus.

Do you think that humanness and fetus-ness are mutually exclusive categories? I have a hard time accepting that a 1 week fetus has attained humanness. It seems to me much more to be a collection of cells, though some concepts of humanness would include a 1 week fetus. But by the time you get to a viable fetus, I think it's pretty clearly reached humanness. I would say that the fact that viability is a line that people generally accept is due to that sense of attaining humanness.

When I did that, you said "But RM Hare!"

You will notice that I've raised the literature to challenge your self-classification. You're kind of playing a game here, in that you're trying to classify yourself under broad labels ("I'm a non-cognitivist expressivist moral nihilist!"). But then you say things like "But look! I'm just like these modern expressivists." And when I point out that you're basically in contradiction with modern expressivists, you say "But who cares about the literature?"

I still hold the general objection that your use of truth values while rejecting truth values is pretty nonsensical.

So here we are, playing the game of you grabbing a quote followed by me grabbing a quote.

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

But to be absolutely clear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-realism

So, if you're explicitly taking an emotivist viewpoint (which you say you would "fall hard on" which I think means that you're sitting squarely above it), then quasi-realism as an approach simply doesn't work, and so claiming statements or concepts from quasi-realists as if they applied to your view is going to be nothing but fail.

In my perspective, moral judgments are merely observations.

If I say "One ought not murder" I'm saying that it is morally better not to murder. The normative force is that there's an external reality that itself supports the claim. There is a moral reality which is made worse if you murder someone.

I don't really know what Uke's position is on the matter. I don't have a clear sense of how he's using the word "normative." It seems that every time he uses that word, I could just ignore it and there would be no difference in the meaning of what's being expressed, so that his concept of "normative" is basically empty.

Dichotomies are abstracts, so when you try to apply them to the world you sometimes get weird questions with weirder answers. "When/where does something begin" is one of those.

To make it very basic: If you refuse to point to where a being starts to exist, and you want to err on "err on the side of caution", you must ban any action that has the potential to cause a future human to not exist. This means you must ban absolutely everything (including conception of course).

The only other alternative is to point where a human being starts to exist. When you do this, you have opened the door for discussion when that point is. If you can't accept that, the issue is dead.

I think this quote is fairly key so I'm putting it first because it doesn't seem like you have fully internalized how expressivism works even at the most general level. When the expressivist uses moral language like "it is wrong to torture", they are NOT asserting a moral fact. This language is meant to EXPRESS particular attitudes they hold regarding torture. The language may superficially appear to be a descriptive statement about the universe - and others with different meta-ethical views may use it in this way - but the expressivist is NOT using it this way.

Secondly, let us keep track of your objections. Originally you had no problem with descriptive language, and were rejecting the use of normative language:
Now you have reversed yourself. Not only are you finding me using descriptive language a problem, but you are seeming to accept prescriptivist approaches in expressivism and are pushing back at me for being to descriptive:

It is quite the reversal, but to be fair it was a few days so you likely jsut forgot. Thankfully I didn't.

Note that I earlier mentioned that the universal prescriptivism was a subset of expressivism (a claim at the time you tried to push back on but seem to have no forgotten as it is made clear that Hare is indeed a canonical member in the historical development of expressivism). So certainly prescriptivist approaches are compatible. But it isn't the ONLY way one can do it, more descriptive approaches are fine too as you yourself once believed.


What expressivism describes is the function of moral language; namely, that it is expressing various preferences and judgments held by a person. It is true, that this function isn't some grand deep meaning touching into the very fabric of the cosmos. The nihilist rejects the attempt to describe moral statements as such true statements. But that doesn't mean nothing has been described, it is just a rather more modest function than others may like.


Okay. In my opening exposition on this topic I explained how there was this fundamental tension. Namely, that despite rejecting that moral statements represented true statements about the universe, most of us nonetheless still have attitudes that can be described in some sense of being moral. We still feel repulsion to killing. We still endeavour to encourage others not to kill. The point of expressivism is to assign the function of moral language to express these attitudes. If you wish to call that "wishful thinking", go ahead, but it seems to be a bit of a silly label in that there is nothing here I wish to be true.

Now you have repeatedly rejected the very idea of that one can engage in "moral reasoning". You accept that I can have attitudes I wish to express using moral language. How might I come by these attitudes? Can I use reasoning to help inform my attitudes? For instance, can I study the consequences of a particular situation to make complex attitudes regarding complex situations? Can I find a particular ethical system useful in motivating attitudes? Let's see how this might work in a bit more detail:
All of the beginnings of a utilitarian analysis are descriptive statements about the universe that do have truth values and absolutely can have logic applied to them. The absolutist utilitarian and I may share an identical analysis of the consequences of a system and the types of things we conventionally call harm that occur. We can use the same observations and logic (torture causes physical pain is a descriptive statement here with a truth value). I may see the harm caused by torture and be compelled to express "Torture is wrong" or "You shouldn't torture people", but I don't think I am expressing a fundamental truth of the universe. The absolutist utilitarian may state these same statements but believes they are expressing a true statement that they have deduced from their analysis. I don't kn ow what exactly you mean by "moral logic", but do you reject the above?

If you recall, quite a bit earlier I gave a list of possible approaches. The one sketched above does NOT pretend you have truth values to moral statements. But there were also ones on the list that DID do this, namely presuppositional approaches. These might say "let us accept for the sake of argument that ethical system X is true. It generates teh statement Y is true". What exactly is bad about motivating ones attitudes based on this presuppositional approach? Or the Gibbard version I quoted. Your response to the Gibbard quote was not a rejection of it but a (bad) attempt to misread a typo of mine to imply a contradiction that didn't exist.






Quote where I suggested this. I readily agreed that consequentialism has limitations. It is what it is. That I can slip any ethical theory I want in wherever this occurs isn't the case. This was just not the framework I used at all.






Again, I pointed out this example in the context of "disrupt natural life processes". A flowering rose bud IS a natural life process and it IS disrupted by being cut. You simply didn't specify the particular type of natural life processes this supposedly general statement applied to. As it turned out, what was included seems to be specifically designed hurting/killing fetuses and humans only.



Do you think that humanness and fetus-ness are mutually exclusive categories? I have a hard time accepting that a 1 week fetus has attained humanness. It seems to me much more to be a collection of cells, though some concepts of humanness would include a 1 week fetus. But by the time you get to a viable fetus, I think it's pretty clearly reached humanness. I would say that the fact that viability is a line that people generally accept is due to that sense of attaining humanness.[/QUOTE]No. I've been pretty clear I think it is a relatively continuous process.

I'm still confused what your position actually is (let alone what your arguments for it are). Initially you said this about people rejecting late term abortions: "The acceptance of X weeks is because X weeks at least protects a certain percentage of unborn children, and that this percentage is better than not accepting X weeks." I suggested there were three categories, those near conception, those near birth, and those who legitimately felt the answer lay around some number of weeks. As you keep talking about "viability", are you in this third group? As in you do NOT claim it is morally wrong to abort at 1 week, but DO claim it is morally wrong to abort at 26?



Please note that I wasn't aiming to play a game, I was just happy to see that a view that I had come up with on my own was being expressed in an eloquent way by a member of the canon. In any case, I am not sure what you believe you are arguing in the case of the quasi-realist quote. Perhaps the only thing to do is to note that you seemed to reject above any form of simultaneously rejecting moral realism while at the same time accepting a system that acts as if they were indeed true. You can criticize that view, if you wish, but as you can see it is a canonical view.


Errr...looks like I made a typo. I never said "fall hard" but I did say "fall bad" which was a typo. I meant I might "fall back" on emotivism. But in absolutely no way should this be interpreted as me claiming that quasi-realism is compatible with these other non-cognitivist approaches. Yes this conversation had broadened from the earlier general descriptions of expressivism into this or that particular modern variant.....but that isn't the same as be trying to assert they are all the same! As you say, that would be the least charitable reading.

I've cut out several times when you assert something like "your in contradiction" without explaining clearly - with quotes - precisely what that the argument for your assertion is. This has become something of a pattern with your posting. I have no interest in trying to refute assertions whose argument hasn't been given and so will either ignore them or point out that you are - yet again - falling into this pattern. If you want substantive responses and don't just want to assert bad things about me, you have to try a little harder.

And none of this has anything at all to do with moral relativism. I'm rather glad you abandoned that disaster of an argument, but it should be at least pointing out for scorekeeping purposes that you did so.

I've fully internalized what expressivism is. And when you're using moral logic, you're not really taking an expressivist point of view. I'll repeat again that I disagree that in principle all moral statements are merely translations of each other under different meta-ethical perspectives.

You'll notice that I keep saying "moral logic." Your statement here says nothing about moral logic. It's merely observing the baseline claim that I've never rejected, which is that expressivists can make moral judgments. Moral logic is predicated on the existence of moral truth values. This is very different than your bland "I'm just expressing myself."

No. In the first quote, I'm rejecting that your expressivist presentation has any normative authority. You're "describing" your feelings (ie, judgment) but you are not describing any actual moral states. Basically, I'm rejecting that your use of the word "normative" has been made meaningful. I've been explicit at least a couple times on this. Up to this point, it's an empty place-holder for something you have yet to describe. You keep sliding it in and I'll keep pointing it out.

In the second quote, I'm saying that you're trying (quite desperately) to describe an actual moral state. But you're only successfully describing how you feel about things. That's all well and good. But as soon as you try to say "you ought to do something" in some sort of normative sense, you're trying to prescribe behaviors. And this is a very different thing.

Notice that in both cases, the gap is the same. You're taking the word normative and trying to pretend like you can just slide it in and make it meaningful. It doesn't work that way. You're making judgments, and not normative judgments. You're describing your feelings, not describing what people should actually be doing.

I'll just point out that Hare's attempt at expressivism really appears to have failed, and that those who have followed him have basically given up on his attempts and have moved away from the moral nihilist perspective to adopt at least a minimalist concept of truth. So for you to say that it's compatible just because someone tried it once doesn't work. That's just as bad as saying that because Pascal came up with his wager, that it must mean the wager is air tight.

But you're using "preferentiates" in a meaningless way. Your framing is dumb. It contains no actual content. It's wrong. It's stupid. I don't know how many other ways I can say this to you. Without further elaboration on what you mean by that word, your statement is devoid of any content.

Come on. I gave you an EXPLICIT description of "wishful thinking" taken DIRECTLY from SEP. I explained my viewpoint and showed how it's parallel to that one.

No, you can't. The reason you can't is because you have no commitment to moral logic. By what "reasoning" are you coming to conclusions if the moral claims being made are neither true nor false? This EXACTLY the wishful thinking that SEP described. You don't have moral logic at your disposal.

This is you playing the equivocation game again. Because it makes sense to the absolutist utilitarian, I can co-opt the language and pretend that things work in exactly the same way, even though all the words that I'm using have a completely different meaning.

What I mean by "moral logic" is that you're using moral reasoning with truth values. I reject that you can co-opt language and pretend that it all works out. This is a different form of wishful thinking. You have in no way shown that it works, but you're just going to suppose it does and therefore conclude that everything is perfectly sensible.

No. It just pretends that you've established a meaningful translation between two completely different perspectives, and that you can magically assume that even though all the words mean very different things to you that the words can still be strung together in the same order and carry meaningful content.

I'm not saying you can't do that. You can express yourself however you want. But that doesn't mean that you're actually adhering to a sense of moral logic. Under your nihilistic expressivism, it seems that you can do something illogical as long as it's accurately reflecting how your moral judgments. Again, it's like the mathematical fictionalist. 1+1=2 is AS FALSE AS 1+1=3. Using 1+1=3 while reasoning a conclusion has just as much logical merit as using 1+1=2. The logic is empty, and it's perhaps nothing more than luck if you happen to get something "right" (whatever that even means).

This is also where I reject that you have any normative authority. There's nothing that compels anyone to accept your logic or your conclusion.

I'm interested to see what you think my "response to the Gibbard quote" is because as far as I know I didn't respond to it.

It's the logical consequence of not holding that there are moral truth values while simultaneously using moral logic that's predicated on moral truth values. As soon as you hit the limitations of consequentialism, what options are available to you? All of them, actually. You don't have a commitment to moral logic. You can just fall back on emotivism and just say that it's all just cheering for stuff you like and rooting against stuff you don't like.

Right. So you took an uncharitable reading of the statement. It would be helpful if you would at least admit it.

Saying that it's a "relatively continuous process" doesn't fully elaborate on your view. If you look at your argumentation, it seems that you're treating the two as being mutually exclusive. That is, your argument only works if one only accepts fetus-ness as the only interesting observation about the pre-born state.

This is the pragmatic position. There are many people who see abortion as being immoral even at the level of conception, but also recognize that trying to overturn Roe v. Wade is a losing proposition that has a high cost of failure. So they adopt the pragmatic position of at least trying to find a middle ground so that they can remain relevant to the discussion and can have influence in the direction they view as being positive.

I do NOT claim that it is morally wrong to abort at 1 week. I think this view is pretty explicit in the thing you quoted and supposedly read:

However, I will add that I also don't make a claim that it's morally acceptable to abort a 1 week fetus. In fact, I make no moral claims at all in that situation.

I do claim that it is morally wrong to abort at 26 weeks. Again, quoting myself in the thing that you're theoretically responding to:

However, I do not claim that viability is the point at which abortion changes from moral to immoral. That would be beyond a merely uncharitable reading of my words, but a gross misrepresentation of it. At no point have I made any claim about viability being THE determining factor of the morality of abortion.

All I'm trying to do is get you to realize that finding things you agree with in the canon of literature only works if you're actually adopting positions appropriate to the literature. It's almost like religious people proof-texting. They find some statement that they can interpret in a way they agree with, and then pretend like the statement actually agrees with them.

You need to make a decision about how you're going to use the literature. If you're going to lean on it for ways to express what you think, then you're also going to need to reckon with it and work through the position that's being put forth. Or, you can say that you're not so much interested in the literature and you're just interested in exploring ideas, in which case you should not go to the literature to find statements you agree with, and really just explore. This in between world where you're doing both doesn't really work because you end up assuming that things work out the way you think they will without working through any of the details.

That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you think they're the same or that they're compatible. But if you're really going to try to take the moral nihilist yet also adopt cognitivist expressivist viewpoints, but keep emotivism in the back pocket, it's just going to be a confused mess.

Which is exactly what you've got.

Again, I don't know how one can utter this statement and claim to have internalized expressivism. When the expressivist claims an action is morally good or bad, they are NOT asserting a moral fact. That language has a different function.

This hasn't been my position. A statement like "it is wrong to torture" is something that has VERY different functions across different metaethical views, even if it can be uttered by members of a wide range. One option, for instance, is truth correspondence. As in, on your view, there is an external moral reality and the statement "it is wrong to torture" corresponds to the observation of a particular truth in this external moral reality. On the expressivists view, the statement doesn't correspond to some objective truth, but to particular mental states in the utterer. So to be clear, the translation or correspondence I am talking about is this one, not trying to suggest all meta-ethical perspectives are the same.

Or to put it differently, if I say "It is wrong to torture", you have no idea from this statement what my meta-ethical view is. I could be an absolutist, like you, or a nihilist, like me. Or even a relativist! The meta-ethics are not determined by the ethical statements, but what one means by the ethical statement is the domain of meta ethics and, of course, changes wildly between theories.




I don't disagree. Expressivists DON"T accept a "normative authority". The function of normative language IS an expression of ones attitudes, there ISN"T "actual moral states" in the universe. You haven't articulated a criticism here, merely restated the basic definition as if it is on its face bad. This line of thinking continues:

"should actually be doing" and "actual moral state" is, I'm guessing, a code for "according to the normative authority, this external moral reality". Ie that it is actually true, on this view, that someone should be doing this. If so, then I agree with the statement. The function of moral language is NOT to present what one "actually should do" or that it is "an actual moral state" according to a noramtive authority the nihilist rejects, but this other function that has been now very well and repeatedly described.

At this point you are basically shouting "expressivism is bad because it does precisely what it sets out to do - rejecting a normative authority". You aren't actually making a criticism, but repeating the description as if it is on its face bad.

If your position is a normative statment can't be meaningful UNLESS there is a normative authority, then on this view it would indeed not be meaningful. That said, as has been done many times already, we can describe the function of a normative statement like "you should not torture" in expressivist terms. Namely, it is an expression of the desire that you don't torture, a commandment not to torture, a revulsion to the idea of you torturing someone, and so forth. You can choose your particular sentiment, but the point is that much like for moral claims of a more descriptive nature like "torture is wrong", statements like "you should not torture" function an an expression of a particular mental state. So yes, there is a perfectly acceptable meaning to this language on this view, it is just a meaning that is rather different from your meaning of the same language.

The above series of responses is a long way of saying "we have different meta ethics". You are insisting on this normative authority which is fine, that kind of truth correspondence to a normative authority is a fine meta-ethics. If I felt there was any good reasons to believe this normative authority was an actual property of the universe I might subscribe to it. But you can't criticize a different meta-ethics simply based on the fact that it isn't your meta-ethics, that it interprets statements differently than you do. That is just shouting.

One final thing on the normative side before we go onto logic:
Correct. Original Position dealt with this objection to some extent. You are not wrong to conclude that it is a feature of this view that we can't "show by force of argument that psychopaths are irrational in doing what they are doing". It is what it is. We can wish it wasn't this case, we can wish there was a normative authority to help us disprove the psychopaths views, but I'd be tempted to call this wishful thinking.

Okay that will have to be it for a moment. Logic and abortion to come in the future.

Because I have something deeper than your infantile perspective. You have literally reduced your entire position to straight emotivism. It's not something you're falling back on. It's all you've got. And all of this other stuff you're throwing around about modern expressivism doesn't actually have any play in what you're actually doing.

Where did I say that you say this? Quote me.

What are you talking about? This has NOTHING to do with my statement to you. I used the word "translation" because that's what you have been talking about:

This is the thing I'm disagreeing with. And every time you pretend that you can just co-opt language and pretend like everything just works out, I'm going to keep pointing it out. Every. Time. So either get used to it, stop doing it, or finally address the issue.

If this is true, what is the value of being a practicing consequentialist? Your arguments mean nothing and have no value.

Edit: It might be useful for you to answer this -- What is the purpose of argumentation?

We're done here. Bad arguments can be dealt with, but if you can't keep the invective under control I have no interest in reading beyond this.

I'm not really following you. Which framework are you talking about here? I'm making a specific criticism of Aaron's argument here and I don't think it holds if you think beliefs can motivate on their own.

Aaron argues that noncognitivist moral theories don't have any "normative force." I'm pointing out that if you accept Hume's claims about what motivates actions that it is the cognitivist moral theories that lack normative force.

Aaron says that he views moral claims as being descriptive claims. A descriptive claim, even if believed to be true, cannot on its own provide a reason for action according to Hume's psychology.

For example, suppose someone became convinced that some kind of moral Platonism is true--that there exists a real abstract object "goodness," and actions or objects are good insofar as they participate in this abstract object. Would that provide a reason to act good? No. Only if you also had the desire to act good would it do so. Thus, no moral claim, understood as a description of a moral reality, would, on its own, have "normative force."

A "normative" claim is a statement about what one ought to do. This can be moral (One ought not murder) or more practical (one ought to shower every day) or domain-specific (one ought to use a two-handed backhand in tennis). Presumably, when people make these statements they are saying how they think you ought to act--that you shouldn't murder, that you should shower, and that you should use a two-handed backhand.

By "normative force" I understood you to be referring to the reasons why people ought to follow these normative claims. That is, why shouldn't I murder, why should I shower every day, or why should I use a two-handed backhand?

Your criticism of expressivism is that if true then moral statements lack normative force. Or, using the definitions above, the problem with expressivism is that if it were true, there are no reasons why one ought not murder. If someone says, "One ought not murder," and is asked, "Why not?" they have no response.

The reasoning seems to be like this. According to expressivism, moral statements only express our disapproval or approval of certain kinds of actions or objects. Approval and disapproval are emotional responses based on desire. Thus, moral statements are ultimately based on the contingencies of what a person desires. But other people's desires are not actually reasons for me to act in any particular way, so their moral claims provide no normative force for my own actions.

I think this criticism is wrong in at least two ways. First, for almost everyone, other people's approval does provide a reason for action. Normal humans care about the opinion of others, even care for the welfare of others. Thus, their expressions of approval and disapproval matter. This becomes I think even clearer if we think about morality in Aristotelian terms, as arising out of our social nature, such that even our own desires are filtered through the categories given to us by society.

The second problem with this criticism is that it seems to assume that disapproval is purely an arational emotional response. According to expressivists, saying one ought not murder is an expression of my disapproval of murder. But this disapproval might be based on very good reasons. For instance, maybe I believe that personal safety is a requirement for society, with all of its benefits, to function. Thus, when I say that murder is immoral, I'm expressing my disapproval of murder--but my disapproval is based on reasons that we both accept. Here, your agreement or disagreement could be based on whether you agree or disagree with my claims about personal safety and so on (this is also why even noncognitivists can still recognize a purpose for moral philosophy and reasoning).

In context, I'm criticizing Uke's use of "normative" as being no different from not using that word. Under Uke's form of expressivism, he's if he says "one ought to X" he is doing one of two things (and I don't know which):

1) I'm merely expressing his feelings for X
2) I'm commanding you to do X

Under 1), there's nothing actually normative about the statement, insofar as his merely feeling a certain way does not really compel anyone to agree with him. For example, the non-moral claim "I hate the color red" doesn't really compel others around him to hate red as well. (It might happen, or it might have the opposite effect, which is that people rush to red's defense. Or maybe people just shrug at him and go on with their lives.)

Under 2), then it makes more sense to at least consider the question of whether there is a "reason" to obey the command. For example, if this is some sort of military operation, and Uke outranks me (God forbid!), and he said "I'm commanding you to do X" then there's a sense of authority behind the words. Or if this were a hostage situation, and I'm the hostage, my reason for obeying the command is because I'm under threat.

Those types of claims also have a "normative force" behind them. But it has nothing to do with the statements themselves. And those forces are clearly identifiable as coercive, but in a non-intellectual sort of way.

Your first example falls into a similar sort of category:

So sure, if you want to say social pressures are a "reason" for agreeing with Uke's moral commands, then I can't really object to that. But in this situation, it's far from clear that moral "logic" has any role. Instead of reasoning, it's creating behaviors through some form of coercion (that's not a logical structure).

And so when he's applying logical reasoning as a practicing consequentialist, he's merely using words that conform to a pattern of speech, and not actually engaging in moral logic. If his consequentialist analysis were completely wrong, but he compelled someone to behave in a certain way anyway, then his moral "logic" would have been successful even though it really wasn't.

This is where the wishful thinking criticism enters:

If he is prescribing a command, and there are not actually truth values that underlie his perspective (being non-cognitivist and all), then the reality is that that the whatever moral logic he's trying to use really isn't logic at all.

Right. And this is taking that step more towards something like moral relativism. If we accept certain underlying principles, then we can agree on what types of statements are rational or irrational. We're starting to tip towards the idea of something actually being true (at least relative to our assumptions). The state of the universe (or at the level of society or whatever) is truly better if we disapprove of murder (insofar as the society agrees that personal safety is a good thing).

Maybe he wants to insist that there are no truth values, but practically speaking it sure appears that this type of reasoning adopts a form of truth values that essentially indistinct from the truth values that would be adopted by a moral relativist.