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No no. I understand that point entirely. In fact, I responded to that point, specifically. I think you are the one missing the point. I would suggest that you reread my comment. Simply observing that you live in the current apex society, so that things have historically happened to break in favor of your current society, isn't very interesting. There is clearly no law of the universe that it must be this way, and we can see the seeds of its destruction right specifically in the exact concept that you are claiming - that there is no such thing as truth worth arguing for; that the reality only is what is, that is, power politics.
I completely understand that you are embracing at least a weak version of moral error theory, claiming that all one can be is descriptive about different folks' vibes-based opinions. Simply repeating such is not terribly responsive.
You asked me why my point of view would not lead to genocide etc. And I told you. I also explained why it appears those who would resort to genocide would generally not out-compete others who would.
If you don't find my answer that interesting then thats on you. My point of view is my point of view, I don't claim to hold it because it is interesting. If it doesn't interest you simply move along.
...and I responded to that? I explained why your current view from the position of the apex society does not imply some law of the universe. You seem to weirdly trust in the pure coercive power of "everyone else" turning on them. That would weirdly be an argument for why no genocide has ever happened. Or at least, some weird claim that those cultures were then, in turn, eliminated, rather than continuing to exist after whatever the political outcome of their actually-existing genocide was. It would be wholly unconvincing to anyone who thinks that, e.g., modern Americans (at the apex of current society) got to their position by essentially genociding Native Americans. A more proper descriptive account would be that genocide simply becomes morally tenable whenever political forces drive a society to believe that genocide is morally tenable in order to achieve their goals, as has happened countless times in the past. They are only limited to the extent that "everyone else" can amass sufficient political and military power to counter them.
Regardless, the focus on the extreme case of genocide is less central to what I said; it was clearly an add-on. I had said:
Genocide is the extreme case, and as stated as a descriptive matter, only occurs when enough power has been amassed by a large enough group that they think they can settle a matter by such extreme means. That certainly is not going to be the SOP of societies everywhere at all times; that just wouldn't make sense. Instead, there would be all these things that I pointed out, specifically for the purpose of inculcating their own vibes-based opinions... specifically abandoning the pretense that what we're doing here is searching for truth. Such a process, as a descriptive matter, may only explode into genocide occasionally, once sufficient uniformity has been enforced across a large enough group with sufficient political and military power, yes. But the important part of my point is that we are abandoning the alternate process of a search for truth in favor of this general route.
What do you think arguing is? It is generally an attempt to persuade people. Brainwashing, arguing, shaming, preaching are all part of the same set of things.
People who claim to have access to an objective morality behave in contradictory ways from each other. I would say this is evidence that if there is an objective morality, we either cannot access it, or are unable to tell when we have accessed it, (or that it doesn't exist at all). People who believe they have access to objective morality brainwash people and preach at them, argue with them. People who do not believe they have access to objective morality brainwash people and preach at them, argue with them.
Either those who believe they have found objective morality are wrong, or they are correct but this fact does not change the tools they use to inculcate their morality in others. I have seen nothing in more than 50 years on this planet that suggests that there is an objective moral standard that we can know.
Telling me there is an objective morality is of no use if you cannot tell what it is and show that it is indeed objective. People have been trying to do that for thousands of years and have failed (in that at the very least they have not been able to prove that their version is the true objective morality). That leaves us to default to a socially mediated morality where we behave as we are taught to behave by our families, communities and experiences. It's either that or pick one out of a hat randomly, which doesn't seem any more likely to be true, and at least the former has the background that it did indeed create a society that still exists and was then able to impart its values onwards.
I apologize. I meant to have a more specific sense of "rational argumentation", rather than mere sophist rhetoric. Rational argumentation is premised on the notion that there is a truth of the matter that can be discovered via such a method. Without such, there is little point to grasping on to rational argumentation and every reason to simply move to brainwashing, shaming, canceling, deplatforming, intimidating, and maybe even having struggle sessions or genocides... at least, when it becomes more convenient than the alternatives.
This tells me little, besides that there is room for progress via rational argumentation. You could say the same thing about nearly any other belief, even ones claiming access to objective things. That there are lots of irrational people out there tells me nothing about underlying reality.
Fair enough. We know your position. I think ZRslashRIFLE was just more honest about what it is. You simply think that it is all vibes-based reasoning and pure cultural power. That is, to me at least, an intellectually defensible version of moral error theory. But I think it means that you should simply say so when you're asked about the morality of something. You should just say that there's nothing moral/immoral to it, because you think that's not a thing; you just personally like/don't like it.
Phil papers survey of professional philosophers has 56.4% accepting or leaning toward moral realism. This is certainly not a knock-down argument that it is true; by no means would I argue that. But it casts significant doubt on such bold proclamations that the entire project has simply failed. I would definitely be curious to know why you think you have such a simple, knock-down argument for why it has so clearly failed that seems to have eluded them.
But this is not my position! I think the moral intuitions we develop still have value. Just because the morality is socially constructed does not mean it isn't real or useful, it is still morality. It isn't simply because I like or don't like. Because there are things I like which I judge as immoral and things I don't like which I judge as moral. My whole point is that I don't particularly get a rational say in what my morality is, because it is an unconscious synthesis of my upbringing, my influences, my experiences, the arguments that people have made to me and so on. Morality may be constructed, and subjective, but that is not the same thing as not being real, or not being morality. When I say something is wrong, I mean just that. By my moral code (which I acknowledge is not rational), I judge it as wrong. So saying I don't believe in moral judgements would be incorrect.
As for philosophers you'll note the question they were asked is not whether they know that moral realism is true. The lean towards it or accept it. And they may be right! Just to point out I am not saying the whole of philosophy has failed, I am saying that we currently (self-obviously) have failed to both prove there is objective morality and what exactly that objective morality is. I don't have a problem with people trying to explore that, and maybe they will even prove me wrong tomorrow!
I don't see how you're saying anything other than that you have subjective opinions, vibes-based feelings, and you would like to call those things "moral judgments". You can use that language, but we should be clear about what it means. To that end, I would pose two questions to you about your position:
Do you think that it is possible, in principle, for moral disagreements to be rationally resolved?
Do you think that moral judgments contain truth-value, and if so, in what sense?
I'll preface by saying that I don't think people are rational, so:
Resolved as in, come to an agreement on how to practically deal with mismatched moral intuitions? Yes. We do that all the time. Resolved as in convincing someone that they should adopt your moral precepts? Yes. Resolved as in actually discovering the objective moral truth? As it stands no. Though perhaps there is an argument that would change my mind, which I just have not encountered yet.
Yes, in the sense that someone's moral intuitions are a real and true reflection of their experiences as a person and that these intuitions govern how they act and react and therefore have a measurable impact on the world. And true in the fact that moral intuitions are reflective of the choices a society had to make to get to where it is, and of the standards and beliefs it evolved as part of that process, and of how useful those moral beliefs were to said society. But not true in some underlying sense that lies outside of humanity. Like the laws of gravity or similar.
In other words, whether there is sentient life to observe it or not, mass attracts mass, but if there is no sentient life there is no moral code to the universe. That only exists in the sense of what we project upon it. The stars look down upon us uncaring of whether we murder each other or help each other.
I would like some more explanation of this in context of (1). You say that people can come to an agreement on how to practically deal with mismatched moral intuitions or that you can convince someone that they should adopt your moral precepts; do you think that this can be done rationally, or that it's just done based on vibes?
I read this as saying that the truth-value of a moral judgment is simply attached to an individual. Perhaps attached to a society. That is, a moral judgment could have value "true" for one individual and value "false" for a different individual. As such, there is no "truth-value" to such moral judgments; simply true statements about opinions of individuals (and possibly societies). I'm not really sure why you're opposed to simply saying this outright.
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