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I disagree that moral progress is a meaningful thing in the first place, so while I consider 202X norms being perma-locked in highly suboptimal, I don't consider eventual convergence to a nigh-unavoidable and strictly enforced system of ethics unacceptable in itself, though I would certainly prefer if that only happened when humans or the systems making such decisions got much smarter.
Endless and unbounded value-drift over cosmological time will inevitably lead to things I would consider highly repugnant, even if I am unsatisfied with the status quo.
Are you a moral nihilist?
Yes.
I deny the existence of objective morality, primarily because I do not see any reason for it to exist (or anyone authoritative to declare it, beyond the use of force). The arguments I have seen for it can be largely summed up as "it would be nice to have", rather than something that exists. Or circular ones that work backwards from assuming it must exist and then trying to figure it out. It seems prima facie incoherent to me in the same manner as trying to find objective beauty or the best shade of color, the closest you can some is some compromise that is appealing to the majority of people, with no further grounding. At best it's an illusion, because of similar human minds are in an absolute sense, most higher mammals abhor violence (with exceptions) or unfairness, including monkeys and dogs, and that is more of a fact about evolutionary psychology and game theory than it is about objectivity. If the Abrahamic God was real, and handed me down a tablet of commandments, I do not see any argument he could make to convince me of his objective correctness, though he could certainly force me to adhere to it or edit my brain to do so.
I have discussed my thoughts on the matter in more detail, but it's late and it'll be a pain for me to hunt that down, maybe later if you want.
I will note that I am entirely comfortable with being a moral nihilist and a moral chauvinist. Yes, my morality is subjective, I am still OK with endorsing it. I don't expect that it is currently the morality I would endorse if I suddenly became much smarter and more rational, which is why I remain open to arguments, but it is also not up for democratic debate.
Modern morality is probably superior for human flourishing than it was in the past, and usually more appealing to my sensibilities. But that does not reveal anything beyond my preferences and the socio-psychological pressures and incentives of the age. I do not expect it to become monotonously more appealing to me over time, if left to mutate, and thus I am not opposed to eventually truncating it or bounding it, if not today.
In other words, I think most moral progress is akin to Brownian motion, we define the direction we move in as "forward", and studiously ignore or forget (or redefine) any divergence in other directions.
Interesting.
It seems more like you're a non-cognitivist than a moral nihilist. Moral cognitivists believe moral statements have 'a' truth value. That's different from being a moral realist and thinking there's some actual morality stuff floating out there (which seems to me more like what you're shooting at). But not seeing or being persuaded for a reason for its existence is still different from saying right or wrong in 'fact', don't exist.
If you come up with older posts where you've elaborated further on the matter, please direct me to them.
I am not familiar with moral cognitivism, but Wikipedia tells me:
And it doesn't seem to align with my beliefs at all.
I think the truth value of moral propositions, at least independent of an observer, is null, or as incoherent a question as wanting to know the objective best color.
I am not quite ready to consider that axiomatic, but it's very close, and only because I take Bayesian reasoning seriously and reserve a tiny bit of uncertainty for reasons of epistemic humility.
After all, I am not as smart as I wish to be, and it would be a mistake to make that ruling quite yet, especially as I have noticed my morality shifting over my life (not that that's necessarily important, it's possible that I privilege my current understanding more today than mine a decade back, and that ten years from now more than today, if only because I am better informed about the state of the world and the implications of what I espouse, but at each step I do not endorse indefinite drift within myself, and would seek to resist something like becoming addicted to heroin which would change it dramatically and irreversibly).
I still think it's that objective morality has about the same probability of being true as a formally correct proof of there being square triangles or an integer between two and three. I don't see a reason to suppose it exists, or even an approach for establishing it, but that could be a failure of my intelligence or imagination. But in practise, I deny it, while being open to hearing arguments for it. None have convinced me, yet.
That sounds more like non-cognitivism?
A moral nihilist or error theorist believes that all moral statements have a truth-value, and that truth-value is false. The nihilist position is that moral statements are attempting to say someting factual, but they all fail to do so, because there are no moral facts.
A non-cognitivist believes that moral statements are not trying to be statements about truth at all; facts don't come into it. A moral statement is simply a statement of approval or disapproval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism
Call me too much of a nerd or computer science-LARPer, but it seems obvious to me that rejecting the idea moral propositions can be true or false independent of the preferences of an observer is better framed as null rather than false. While the statement "objective morality exists" would count as false. That seems like two distinct claims to me, akin to saying "the objective best ice cream is X" is false, versus attempting to find the objective best ice cream independent of an observer is an incoherent/meaningless endeavour (in the opposite order here)
If it makes my stance clearer, I also consider myself a moral relativist (and still a chauvinist). I recognize that my moral preferences are innately subjective and ungrounded in anything but my preferences, which happen to include maintaining internal coherence. I think that they are just as objectively valid as anyone elses, but the level of objective validity happens to be zero. Nothing. Nihil. Whereas, as far as I'm aware, the typical moral relativist says that all moral systems have non-zero objective worth.
The only way I can reconcile this with Wikipedia's definition (which I will assume is authoritative), is if you somehow draw a distinction between:
and your claim that
What else can a truth-value be here if not "right or wrong"? I recognize that you can assign truth values if you specify an observer or system of morality, but not without it.
Dispensing with labels entirely, my beliefs can be summed up as:
Objective morality doesn't exist (with very high certainty).
I still have my own idiosyncratic system of ethics I happen to value for no reason more fundamental or universal than it happens to be mine. In other words, I prefer it.
I do not consider that an impediment to proselytizing it, nor do I particularly oppose others from sharing theirs, as long as they make the concession that neither of us has any claim to objectivity (beyond the claim that there is no objective morality).
I think this is best described as moral nihilism + relativism with a dollop of chauvinism, but if you have a better label I would appreciate hearing it, even if at the end of the day the Labels were made for Man and not the other way around.
Well, I suppose I see a tree something like this?
Are moral statements statements about facts? If no, you're a non-cognitivist, stop here. If yes, proceed:
Are any moral statements true? If no, you're an error theorist, stop here. If yes, proceed:
Are moral statements true absolutely, or only relative to a particular framework? If absolute, you're an absolutist or objectivist. If relative to a framework, you're a relativist.
I suppose you could frame the second one as "are any moral statements true or false?", and put error theory in terms of null rather than in terms of falsehood. To be clear, the position I'm taking is that an error theorist thinks that the statement "Murder is wrong" and the statement "Murder is right" both fail to refer to anything. Neither of them is true, because right/wrong statements cannot be true, because right and wrong are not defensible concepts.
It sounds to me like you're an error theorist who nonetheless takes a relativist approach to daily life?
What kind of moral statements? If in reference to a particular class of observer, then yes. If not, no.
Any? For those that reference a subject, and not "all" possible subjects/observers? Yes.
Ah, you pre-empted me. Or post-empted, since you put this at the end. I'm a relativist then.
Murder is right/wrong, as a statement made in a vacuum? Yes, I agree it is null. If appended to a specific framework, then it may be true or false.
I apologize if I'm repeating myself, but to sum it up, I think the objective moral worth of any system of ethics is zero, including mine, the answer to whether there is any objective morality is thus no, but I grant subjective moral valence to specific systems, and it happens to be the case that my personal system ranks the highest (which is why I adopt it, and it has changed over time, with me either fixing inconsistencies or just lifting things I prefer from other systems of ethics).
I suppose that framing you propose seems correct, or at least I can't see anything wrong with it.
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