Pretty easy fallacy to debunk. You're assuming naturalism by requiring evidence for philosophic or argumentative claims about objective morality and then rejecting the claims when someone doesn't provide evidence under your assumption of naturalism. Of course my claim is precisely the opposite of this: that objective morality exists but is not consistent with naturalism. In fact, if you wish to hold onto any objective moral claims at all, the burden of proof is on you, the naturalist empiricist. If you're not a naturalist, then you're requiring something of me that you don't require of yourself.

You've yet to set out what it is you believe, so I'm not sure. A pretty flaccid attempt nonetheless.

Sorry, I've been distracted and then traveling, I meant to get back to this.

I said before that I thought you were too quick to dismiss epistemological problems and it still seems to me that the biggest issues with your approach here are epistemological.

For example, your contention that a belief in moral realism is "properly basic" seems to me to depend on the idea that true moral oughts are essentially self-evident. I don't recall if you've explicitly asserted this or not, and a quick search didn't help, but you seem to get close to doing so in a few places, for example in this post, or here. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that would argue that "murder is immoral" is self-evident in a way that points to the reality of moral realism. My recollection of your conversation with OrP is that you also argued at some point that it's just intuitive that there is something true about some moral oughts that goes beyond some utilitarian assessment.

However, I think you have only managed to maintain this view by leaving it vaguely specified, and treating it from a fifty thousand foot view, as it were. "Murder is immoral" is nearly tautological, at least insofar as "murder" is defined as an immoral killing. But in practice there is a great deal of contention about when killing is morally permissible or not, from war to self-defense to police shootings. In the same way "rape" is immoral by definition, but there is plenty of contention about what specific behaviors are morally permissible or not in relation to sex and consent. This is why epistemology is relevant. You've said that you think an objective morality with no transcendental enforcement mechanism is implausible to the point of being contradictory, but I think moral realism apart from any plausible explanation of how people may actually know which claims are true is also pretty implausible. You ask what good morality is if it's not enforced, but I'd ask what good morality is if moral truths are unknowable?

So previously, in regard to the question of moral realism, you asserted that knowledge was irrelevant, but if you're going to make the kind of argument that you've made about enforcement, or make an appeal to "properly basic beliefs", then I don't think you can effectively dodge the question about knowledge. Nor do I think you can claim that moral knowledge is intuitive or self-evident in the way that a "properly basic belief" requires given how much contention actually exists between different cultures and individuals about what is moral.

The question of morality has to speak to whether the individual man has the power to perceive the moral oughts in a situation. Just as man has a memory, a power and so does he have the ability to glean the moral tone within a particular situation.

If I see a man within the throes of a cardiac arrhythmia we could note , perhaps, shortness of breath, agitation, and an episodic acute loss of strength. This may seem trivial but most, if not all would consider this as an untoward event and on the balance scale of "evil". This is not an abstract "evil" which one might intellectualize but mankind's entry into the moral world.

This is the "evil" which pertains to "consequence", a man in distress. Of course we would all like to know as to the causal factor; did Peter, his friend, cause the arrhythmia by striking him ? Are this man's medications, in overdose, causal ? Is this simply an illness often enough suffered without the hand of the "evil" agent ?

To the beginning you and I can both "see" the distress of the man but it isn't what one might theorize and in this an example of a teacher or speaker might clarify. Man is a body, soul and spiritual being.

When man sleeps what is seen is his "body" or the "temple" as spoken in the old religions. Once man thinks, feels, and wills at the advent of AM consciousness we are speaking of the soul. In the subsequent realm this is the realm of the "spirit" of the "I Am" the "Ego" or "I" of Man.

The "ego" of Man is within the highest of the spirit realm while the "soul" within the realm of the "soul" can be considered as the connecting being of Man which reaches into the "body" or earth, and into the "spirit" or spiritual realm.

This "ego" which works within the earth via the soul when the man speaks, gives itself up or sacrifices itself and the speakers "ego" enters into the being of the listener.The listener's being lives within the "ego" of the speaker.

In this "living within" the speaker, the recipient experiences the thinking/cognitive process, the feelings, and will activity within the speaker. This is a power of the human being which can and does glean whether the man observed is in distress, is joyful, or all the myriad of possibilities of a man.

The above is an entry into the "moral" or the realm of "good and evil'. A man knows his relations with those outside him for in this activity he is the other or is his enemy . The ancient Brahman's would say "thou art that", meaning the "ego" of man is within all that to which surrounds him such that he can say "I am the tree", "I am the wolf" I am the "beloved".

When it is asked that one "love thine enemy" it is the same as loving one's self for Man is within a great mantle of being, individual through Christ and yet within the nation of a selfless ego hood.

The spiritual cosmic entelechy is in movement , and in this Man develops through recurrent lives in order to "see" that he is ensconced within the spiritual divinities and his materialistic bent becomes an effluvium of the unreal. The present Man is within the spirit, its very border, and is at the threshold of this higher consciousness to which he is developing proper sight , the sight of his real being, a supersensible being of this heavenly movement .

There was once a poster on this forum who I believe was somewhere in China who stated that men did the evil acts and in this develop in knowledge of good and evil.

Acts of "evil" are accomplished within many and sundry circumstances but in performing an "evil " act the individual man is less than he can be and in this performance each of us brings the man into our hearts in order to heal in his cosmic destiny, for he is us.

Well, you are affirming exactly what I'm saying. You claim no evidence and thus your view is really not much different than that of your hypothetical naturalist who believes in objective morality. You two would merely be intellectual equivalent of two kids arguing about whose estranged father is the strongest.

And no, I don't answer for that naturalist, as I am not one. I see no reason for slapping pompous empty words like "natural" or "supernatural" onto the universe, as I doubt it cares. It is what it is.

Your view on "objective" morality is meaningless and useless, however. You claim some grand accountant exists and that he dictates and enforces moral rules for everyone, but you provide no evidence of this claim. By all means, feel free to hold whatever spiritual beliefs you want, but you are pretty far from holding some intellectual high ground on naturalists. I might not see any point to their view, but they can at least argue from evidence even if they have to use abductive / inductive logic in the end.

And if you're going to continue with the insults, spend the few extra seconds to make them witty.

Just to be clear, I didn't mean to imply that the man in China was right, but to the contrary we are not performing as many evil acts as possible in order to speak to good and evil. LOL

Even kids put creativity into their insults. It shouldn't be too much to ask for.

I don't agree with this assumption you and DODN are making. I don't assume that human knowledge is a precondition of there being facts about the physical world. In fact, in a real sense, I think we don't know these facts - the arguments raised by the Skeptics and Descartes against any knowledge at all are still live imo. But this doesn't seem to me a good reason to think there are no facts about physical reality. So why should I think any differently about moral facts?

Not to side-track too much, but would you mind giving a brief explanation what you mean when you call yourself an empiricist?

e.g. hard empiricism (the ONLY way to knowledge) vs. soft empiricism (the PRINCIPLE way to knowledge), if that makes sense?

(I don't know if these hard/soft qualifiers are appropriate, but I think they convey what I'm getting at)

The same reason you accept facts about the world: they are true from your experience. You know that killing a baby for pleasure is wrong in precisely the same sense that you know going very fast in the dark is dangerous. Your intuition tells you that something very very bad will happen to you if you do it.

How about moral knowledge is intuitive and self evident, but only once it is revealed, which requires certain self sacrificing actions.

Yes, you are correct. However, I think there is a clear distinction between what is self-evident and what is properly basic.

I didn't intend to. It was never a discussion about what is wrong, but more if there are whats that are wrong, so in that sense it's necessarily general.

Those are good points, and I agree with them. However I don't think we need to specifically establish the content of moral laws and can argue from the assertion that at least some do exist.

I'm not dodging it, just keeping clear the distinction between the general existence of moral oughts and the specific content that they may contain.

I think it would be an interesting discussion to try and put a finger on what specific content objective moral oughts, if they exist, contain but it is in fact a side discussion. I also question the veracity of the claim that there is wide contention between cultures and individuals about what is moral. There is probably less deviation than you're implying.

How do you tell the difference between intuitions of moral truth and intuitions of evolutionary evolved, self serving desires that deceive you into believing they are moral truths?

You don't. My argument is both can't be true. You're either a naturalist and morality doesn't exist, or it does and it's supernatural.

Sorry, I wrote that section poorly. I seem to recall realizing it at the time but forgot to fix it :P

In general I agree that human knowledge is not a precondition for there to be facts about the physical world. However, I think normative facts, especially in the strong sense of "normative" which DODN is using, might be sui generis.

To try to flesh it out, clearly human knowledge is irrelevant to the facticity of claims about the distance between the earth and moon. Nor, do I think is it relevant to conditionals in the form you've used for moral claims: "If you value X, you ought to do Y". And I grant that someone who values X might not know that they ought to do Y, and that doesn't change the truth value of the proposition. I think this version of an "ought" is still very descriptive though. It could be restated in a purely descriptive way ("X -> Y"). The actual normative content is weak.

But DODN's conception of normativity is much stronger, so strong in fact that it leads him to posit a supernatural enforcer. When I wrote "moral realism" what I really meant to write was "moral realism as envisioned by DODN". I think given reality as I know it moral error theory is a lot more plausible than the idea that moral facts both exist and necessarily entail a compulsion to follow them, despite our lack of knowledge of those same facts.

I also think about how just plain old social norms work. The concept of an unknowable social norm is probably incoherent. Norms are norms precisely because they are shared and socially enforced in various ways. Sure, an individual might be unaware of some particular norm, but that's very different from norms which exist objectively but which no one knows about. To the extent that the concept of normativity implies a force or compulsion to satisfy the norms (naturally or not) it seems somewhat incoherent to me absent knowledge of the norms to be followed. I'm not saying it's logically impossible, but I definitely think it's implausible. This isn't a problem for descriptive claims.

I propose that the most philosophically honest position on this topic is complete skepticism of our capability of knowing moral truths. That is as far as philosophy can take us and it’s good enough. The problem is we don’t want to stop there because it’s uncomfortable and perceived as defeatist. It’s a necessary step in the moral struggle though.

It means I see observation as the primary foundation for knowledge, and that I see empirical evidence as the primary foundation for facts. I say "primary" because I don't see any need to delve in absolutes; conjectural approaches can be very useful.

It is epistemology, not ontology. You're not saying the world is what you experience, you're saying experience is how you learn about the world.

But I do think in debates of this ilk you'll find better answers in epistemological approaches as opposed to metaphysical approaches: "What do we know about morals, how do we know it and what does that tell us". When we go into metaphysics and ontology we have a tendency to start in the other end: "What are morals and what does that tell us".

Take this issue for example. Do humans have morals? Yes, this is easily observable. Are they useful? Yes, that's an easy claim to support. Are they important? Yes, that is also an easy claim to support. Sure, someone attacking you with philosophical skepticism could whine about it not being absolute, but... who cares. No claim about the world survives such skepticism, so using it to attack claims is self-defeating (you would implicitly admit that your criticism voids itself).

And then you go from there: Morals exist, they're useful and they're important. Nihilism becomes a bit of a non-issue after this as far as I am concerned, because you don't really need some big intellectual hammer to defeat it, morals will do.

It's of course far easier for me to argue the case because I avoid absolutes. For some that might not be enough and they'll feel that this lack of complete and utter certainty makes the world meaningless. We have a tendency to seek comfort and control after all. I don't really have an answer to them except pointing out that absolute knowledge seems to have avoided the best minds of humanity for millennias. It's probably better to seek a different path.

But I don't know that going very fast in the dark is dangerous. For instance, flying at night in the dark is pretty safe. I have some visceral fears about darkness common to humanity and this can cause me to be afraid in such instances, but those fears are heuristic guides to what is dangerous, and often wrong in the modern world.

Nihilism isn’t just an intellectual state that can be defeated in this way; it’s deeper and more powerful than that. We can rationalize that we have overcome nihilism with an argument like this but really it’s simply a coping mechanism. How do we know the difference between a coping mechanism and a solution? With the former, nihilism will return, which will be observable as long as we are not in denial.

Flying at night is extremely dangerous, but we've developed alter-vision like radar, GPS and anti-collision software that protects us. That visceral fear about darkness was built in by evolution---it's a defense mechanism. It's probably also one of the reasons we are so attached to fire. Those fears are guides but they can also be pitfalls. For example you could have a crippling fear of flying at night without realizing how safe it actually is that could prevent you from flying anywhere--a disadvantage. I see similar things in the operation of the conscience---it's a visceral fear that something very bad will happen to us if we go against it. It's probably why some of us get a thrill from going against it in the same way we get a thrill doing dangerous things. Calling it conditioning is too weak. It's much stronger than that. Yet nothing actually happens if we do break it, so why the fear?

I think we have an intuition that moral laws will be enforced on us all one day.

But this has the exact same problems that you are raising for morality. Sometimes I move fast in the dark and it is dangerous but nothing happens to me. Is it necessary for me to continue believing this is dangerous that there be a "danger accountant" that after I die barks my shins for all those times I walked through my house with the lights off and didn't injure myself?

Or, what do you mean by "dangerous"? Maybe Nazis define dangerous as "things that help you stay alive and uninjured" and so claim that moving fast in the dark is not actually dangerous? And what about those people who like danger? I guess it is dishonest to claim that moving fast in the dark is dangerous unless you also believe in "objective danger," which relies on danger being ontologically real in the same sense you require for morality.

This is an overly simplistic understanding of human guilt and shame. These emotions are not just the result of fear of negative consequences from our bad actions or from being a bad person. Instead, they can result from a mismatch between our values or actions and our sense of self. I can feel ashamed for being ugly if I highly value beauty. That isn't just because I fear the negative consequences of ugliness, but because I think I am of less value for not being beautiful.

Another example: If I went to a casino and played slots, I would feel guilty. This would be true even if I won money, because I think that playing slots are generally -EV bets and I have a personal rule against making -EV bets. I'm not going to be punished for playing slots - I won money after all - but nonetheless, I would still feel guilt for not living up to my aspiration to be the kind of person who doesn't make -EV bets.

You can feel guilty about not meeting a standard that you have set for yourself, but not shame. Shame is for moral judgment based on values and standards that are inherent to existence.

It has nothing to do with subjective values. We cannot feel shamed for being ugly in isolation no matter how much we subjectively value beauty. We can only feel shamed for being ugly in the presence of other people or when replaying a memory or fantasy of feeling ugly in the presence of other people. We can feel guilty about not meeting some subjective beauty standard but not shame.

Guilt sure, but you will never feel shame for winning money playing slots. You might feel shame for losing a lot - depends on the extent of the loss. It’s nothing specific to slots, but about the threat to loss of status. Anything we do that threatens our status, we will feel shamed/judged for. We are also shamed for actions which are counter to reaching our potential.

Nah.

I don't even see a reason to believe nihilism exists. As far as I'm concerned it's an intellectual bogeyman. Scary if you are superstitious, but nothing else.

There is nothing to indicate "moral absence" can exist in a human being, barring extreme brain damage. Not even diagnosed sociopaths with little to no functional conscience tick like that. Some individuals might function with morals or behaviors that are greatly at odds with that of others, but that is pretty poor proof of nihilism. If nihilism was actually a thing, we shouldn't even be able to recognize such differences.

And sure, some people think they are nihilists. But hey, some people think they can read minds.

I'm guessing the idea of nihilism simply comes from elevating morals to something they are not. A bit like believing the emperor is without flaw and then having a crisis of faith when it becomes clear he was just human like everyone else. Morals are a fine and high-functioning part of human society, but like most other of our habits, opinions and ideas... it's a mixed bag and often best to revise on occasion. That is no more evidence of nihilism than a skyscraper is evidence of no gravity. It's just change.

How about despair. What happens to someone’s relationship to morality as they fall deeper into despair? Do they not become less moral in your view?

I'm a bit unclear on what you mean by despair. I don't see how despair translates to less moral.

Perhaps if you specify it a bit, I'll see what you mean.

I mean I probably agree that nihilism isn't actually possible, but that doesn't take away from the fact that if naturalists want morality to exist in an objective, meaningful way, they have to abandon naturalism. Were talking about consistent worldview here, not the efficacy of said worldview.

This is about intellectual consistency, not integrity.