Concerning the Correspondence of an Ethical System to the Definition of Morality

[brimstoneSalad]

The remaining ideas(maybe hundreds) that are logically coherent may have nothing to do with each other. It seems like most likely there wouldn't be any overlap between all possible moral ideas.

What if they did, and it were narrowed down enough to see substantial overlap?

In the case of the two you presented, they are direct negations of each other, so it already seems like the overlap idea would fail without even needing to find all the other coherent moral ideas.

Most notions you will find more of a cluster with overlaps.

As direct negations of each other with no overlap, those two represent different islands: one is morality, and the other the opposite; anti-morality, immorality, evil. I don't see how this would be semantically confusing, indeed, it's necessary. Concepts frequently have opposites, and morality always will: doing the precise opposite of what is prescribed in order to be good.
You will not likely find any consequential prescription without an opposite.
So either you're claiming morality doesn't exist/is entirely subjective due to your problems with the duality of good and evil, or you have to accept than we are intrinsically dealing with two diametric concepts here.

Is your problem deciding which one is morality and which is anti-morality, or is your problem that you think they're both morality (or could be)? Do you reject the idea that there could be an opposite to a concept that is properly defined as the opposite concept?

I don’t see how what these supposed “ Real egoists” think matters for this discussion

Because you accused me of straw manning egoism. I didn't, you're using the word incorrectly

http://www.iep.utm.edu/egoism/ (I think you linked to this site before, so I don't understand why you wouldn't have read this)

In philosophy, egoism is the theory that one’s self is, or should be, the motivation and the goal of one’s own action. Egoism has two variants, descriptive or normative. The descriptive (or positive) variant conceives egoism as a factual description of human affairs. That is, people are motivated by their own interests and desires, and they cannot be described otherwise. The normative variant proposes that people should be so motivated, regardless of what presently motivates their behavior.

We're talking about the normative form, as they say. I don't really like that whole article either, but they get the basics right at least.

It's as if I summarized that Christians believe in the Bible/Jesus, and you claimed I'm straw manning because Christians believe in the Qur'an and Muhammad and that the Bible is flawed.
There may be some fringe group identifying as Christians who believe the latter, but the former description is accurate.

Definitions are important, particularly if you're going to accuse somebody as you did. If you don't know what egoists actually believe in practice, or even what the definitions in philosophical dictionaries say, you have no place to accuse me of making a straw man of egoism.

What you defined is not egoism, it's something else aside from that. Call it "hedonistic egoism" if you want, some special variation that combines the two descriptive and normative forms into meaninglessness, or arbitrarily mandates pleasure worship. I suspect you were confusing psychological egoism and 'ethical egoism'.
I already explained at some length the problem of attempting to combine the two, though.

but many bedrock philosophical ideas(like mathematics, induction, occam's razor) are still justified with intuition at their root, so i’m not sure why you are setting up logic and intuition as if they were a dichotomy.

These are not all deductive logic, which supersedes pretty much everything else, but they are based on reasoning.
Mathematics is actually axiomatic and based on the laws of identity, and functions with logical consistency (things that are not are undefined and not used); it derives no authority from intuition, and is frequently counter intuitive.
In the case of Occam's razor, an idea with fewer assumptions is more likely to be true, because with each additional assumption there's a certain functional probability of being false.
Logical induction is the most intuitive of all of them, and the least reliable; yet it still does inform from probability. If you observe a certain number of things which have certain properties, it's likely that these are emergent from some higher law and that you will continue to observe things consistent with this. People don't think that way, but it's not granted authority from intuition; the probability it yields is based on reasoning and empirical analysis.

In the same way that intuition is used for these while still being considered logical and rational, it doesn’t seem irrational that morality could require an intuitive foundation as well ( except for those you actually do manage to prove contradictions in).

Those things are not founded upon, and do not derive authority from, intuition.

That said, if you use formal deductive logic (or mathematics where it applies) and you run out of things to narrow down, then you apply Occam's razor and you're still left with multiple options, at that point you're out of rational ways to narrow down your options. If you find yourself in such a situation, go ahead an use "intuition", or flip a coin, or guess by some other means; they're all about equally useful, depending on who you are. Some people may have slightly better intuitions than a coin flip, many have worse.

You have to show what is fundamentally different about the intuition used to justify the truth of math, induction, or occam's razor that doesn't apply to the silly foundations of god or magic.

Simple: Those do not derive authority from intuition. Your assertions about that are just wrong.

If you seriously don't understand how mathematics are more credible than religion then you should start another thread on this, because that's something I can't get into here. This is already a mess.

I'm sure there is a better answer to this than just telling me to step in line or you will ban me.

I'm saying this is not the place to discuss it.
We're already off topic. Nobody wants to read three pages of me explaining to you why math is better than religion.

Meaningful to you and logically consistent are two different things.

Meaningful period, not just to me. That's not consistent with the purpose of a definition, which is to provide information. A tautology does nothing in this regard.

It is logically inconsistent with the premise of a definition, which you implicitly accept when you claim to be defining something.

You can’t just say it’s inconsistent, you have to show where the logical inconsistency is.

I thought I already did and it was obvious. Tautologies are not definitions.
An answer must be consistent with the premises in the question.
A definition must define.

Does functional meaning refer to morality that is “Within our control”? Even if the only metric being measured is a being's propensity towards accidents being considered wrong, that doesn’t mean the moral system is logically inconsistent, it just might make it seem silly to us personally.

When we're talking about judgement, yes.
Within your control up to the edge of your existential self; up to (but not including) your core motivations.
When we deal with these topics, we're actually getting into the metaphysics of self.
We can also talk about functional application.

Judgement of events or outcomes is different, but it makes more sense to call them bad/undesirable or good/desirable rather than moral or immoral.

Why did you add “Within our control” as a necessary component to morality? When asking “ What is a good or bad action?” It doesn’t seem necessary to include this.

If it's wrong to shoot somebody, and you're forcefully strapped (unable to move on your own, and unable to escape or change your fate by any means) into a robotic arm which aims your hand, gun bolted in place, at somebody and forces your finger to pull the trigger with some actuator, and the person is shot, did you act wrongly in that?
Maybe you fucked up somewhere along the road to end up in that position, but in that isolated event, did you do anything wrong?

Morality could be independent of whether any humans ever do the right thing or if every human must do the right thing and still could be logically consistent.

If every human being were forced to do the right thing, questions of moral judgement would become meaningless here.
We could only speak hypothetically of beings with the ability to do wrong.

Hedonistic egoism, which is the only form of egoism I have voluntarily brought up, seems to even fit your extra criteria of “within our control” though, so i’m not seeing where hedonistic egoism is inconsistent even by your standards.

It's not a form of egoism, it's something you came up with; some bizarre cult of pleasure worship.
And it's NOT in our control if you believe in psychological egoism, which you seem to (which does have hedonistic and non-hedonistic variations, but hedonistic prevails since the non-hedonistic ones are tautological).

You seem to be making it clear here that the final popular opinion choice between the many remaining systems has nothing to do with one being any more true than the other.

Two remaining systems, in that case. And no, they're both systems. They can not both be properly called "moral" though. One is moral, and one is immoral. Those are the words that fit them. You are in no way compelled to choose one over the other. Do you want to be good or evil?

It’s just practical advice for not confusing people,

It's practical advice for using words correctly.

The semantics of what we label what only comes in after we're done with using deductive logic, and possibly Occam's razor.

but It seems like if it was true that #2 was the correct set of actions,

One is correct if your goal is to be evil, one is correct if your goal is to be good. These have no power of compulsion unless a person was already trying to be good or evil, already valued morality or immorality in principle, and then only to course correct.

We can try to encourage people to be good or evil, but logic does not compel people to value anything at all; it just tells them when their values are inconsistent.

[inator]

One is correct if your goal is to be evil, one is correct if your goal is to be good. These have no power of compulsion unless a person was already trying to be good or evil, already valued morality or immorality in principle, and then only to course correct.

We can try to encourage people to be good or evil, but logic does not compel people to value anything at all; it just tells them when their values are inconsistent.

I'm stuck at the level of (prescriptivist) moral non-cognitivism and my attempt to see how this framework represents moral realism is failing. I think this is closely related to Mr. Purple's misunderstanding, so maybe someone can help me with it. I'll describe what I mean.

Our (and my) accepted definition for a moral system is Brimstone's proposition of the axiomatic intersection of linguistic descriptivism and logical consistency. However, this framework seems to have a hard time justifying convincingly why we SHOULD be moral (which is a requirement for moral realism).

We define morality by drawing the limits of what a moral system can be, logically and linguistically. This is the "is" part. The "ought" is only derived from the necessity for logical consistency with respect to the preferred goal/interest that is to be achieved. But the normative element in choosing the goal itself is lacking. We describe it as a matter of emotional preference.
This doesn't solve the "relativism" problem of morality, it only pushes it to the meta level.

Sure, there is also the implication that if we choose another goal than the "moral" goal, we are no longer moral. But it's like saying that "it is good to choose to be moral" because "good is what is moral" --> good is defined withing the framework of morality, which defeats the purpose of finding a normative element attached to choosing it.
Choosing to be moral is not good in a prescriptive normative sense, it is only good in accordance with the language game of the moral system in question. Therefore the statement "choosing to be moral is good" is a clear tautology.
It follows that favoring morality is a matter of non-rational choice and commitment.

Which fits moral non-cognitivism, but not moral realism.
If a sadist is willing to stick with his values consistently, he can't be faulted for either irrationality or falsehood. He simply has an interest in a value other than morality. The only normative prescription here is the necessity for rationality, not one for morality.

Moral realism would require that there are good reasons and bad reasons for the choice of interests and values. But, withing the limits of logical consistency, i don't know what those "good" reasons may be without turning the statement into an unhelpful tautology. We said ourselves that the choice of interests/end goals is based on emotion, not reason. So how is this realism?

[brimstoneSalad]

Our (and my) accepted definition for a moral system is Brimstone's proposition of the axiomatic intersection of linguistic descriptivism and logical consistency. However, this framework seems to have a hard time justifying convincingly why we SHOULD be moral (which is a requirement for moral realism).

I don't think that moral realism involves any kind of strong compulsion. "Ought" in the case of moral claims involves the implicit assumption of good or morally right behavior as the goal. Realists would not claim that in order to be evil one ought to be good (since it negates that assumption).

Mathematics is real in the same sense. Just because it is true that 2 + 2 = 4 does not compel you to absolutely believe that, or compel that you must compute the result at all, or to write in "4" on your math quiz. Some people don't care and don't know what 2+2 equals. If you write in any other integer and call it math, you're incorrect. And if you can't figure out what 2+2 equals or have no interest in doing so, you're certainly not a mathematician.

We define morality by drawing the limits of what a moral system can be, logically and linguistically. This is the "is" part.

I'm usually comfortable leaving it at the "is" part; the choice of whether to be a good person or not is up to the individual.

I addressed the "why" a little in this thread:
Morality - Why should we do good?
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?t=1932#p19543

But the normative element in choosing the goal itself is lacking. We describe it as a matter of emotional preference.
This doesn't solve the "relativism" problem of morality, it only pushes it to the meta level.

It solves the relativism problem for morality specifically; if you choose to do evil, this is not good. Good defines a certain set of non-relativistic (although of course context dependent) behaviors/claims about the world.

Therefore the statement "choosing to be moral is good" is a clear tautology.

Choosing to do math is also mathematical. Do we then deny that claims about mathematics have truth value?
I think you're over thinking this.

It follows that favoring morality is a matter of non-rational choice and commitment.

What is a rational choice?

If a sadist is willing to stick with his values consistently, he can't be faulted for either irrationality or falsehood. He simply has an interest in a value other than morality. The only normative prescription here is the necessity for rationality, not one for morality.

Being rational is rational. How is that not another tautology?
People who do not value rationality -- and there are many -- do not regard that as a compelling normative prescription either.

Moral realism would require that there are good reasons and bad reasons for the choice of interests and values.

There are. And there are rational and irrational reasons for such choices too, logical and illogical reasons.

But, withing the limits of logical consistency, i don't know what those "good" reasons may be without turning the statement into an unhelpful tautology.

And it's rational to be rational.
Mathematical to do math.
Moral to do good.
Immoral to do evil.

I don't see why we need to look to these kinds of claims for help. It's more of a self evident statement of identity. I don't think that has anything to do with realism or non-realism.

We said ourselves that the choice of interests/end goals is based on emotion, not reason. So how is this realism?

Everything we do is based on emotion at some prime level; it's the only thing that moves us to thought or action at all. Even the desire to be rational.

[inator]

I don't think that moral realism involves any kind of strong compulsion. "Ought" in the case of moral claims involves the implicit assumption of good or morally right behavior as the goal. Realists would not claim that in order to be evil one ought to be good (since it negates that assumption).

Traditionally it does, though, it involves a strong compulsion. Moral realists would claim that one ought x because x is right/moral and that's justification enough. It entails that the one true morality is binding.

To realists, there is a rational procedure for deciding what we "ought" to do. Reason, on this interpretation, involves more than an ability to make valid inferences from premises to conclusions. It also includes the ability to recognize "right" premises and motivations, and to understand self-evident moral truths (what Sidgwick referred to as "rational intuition" in morality). Moral motivation begins with the rational judgment that an act is right.
This is probably what that definition of morality Mr. Purple came up with refers to ("actions that all rational people would agree on", or something). And this is also probably one of the sources of confusion with him.

Do you know Sam Harris' comparison between wellbeing and health? He says that, the same way medicine is concerned with health and you can't redefine what medicine is about, morality is concerned with wellbeing and it can't be redefined. I agree with him, and that's an argument against moral relativism.

But, if I ask the moral equivalent of "What if I'm self-destructive and prefer to be unhealthy, or simply don't care that much about being healthy?", Sam's answer would determine whether he's a realist or a non-cognitivist.
If his answer is "But it's not rational to not want to be healthy, therefore you "ought" to be healthy.", then he's a moral realist - he defines himself as such, though the answer to this question would be more telling about what he really is.
If his answer is "Well ok then, you can only be motivated to be healthy if you value health (and here are the rational means by which you can achieve health)." then he's a prescriptive non-cognitivist.

It solves the relativism problem for morality specifically; if you choose to do evil, this is not good. Good defines a certain set of non-relativistic (although of course context dependent) behaviors/claims about the world.

I agree. You'd also agree that those claims are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Moral realism claims that moral propositions express "ought" facts, and some are true.
Moral relativism claims that moral propositions express "ought" facts, but none/all are true.
Moral non-cognitivism claims that moral propositions don't express "ought" facts at all. Only "is" propositions are factual and can be true (including propositions describing morality).

Mathematics is real in the same sense. Just because it is true that 2 + 2 = 4 does not compel you to absolutely believe that, or compel that you must compute the result at all, or to write in "4" on your math quiz. Some people don't care and don't know what 2+2 equals. If you write in any other integer and call it math, you're incorrect. And if you can't figure out what 2+2 equals or have no interest in doing so, you're certainly not a mathematician.

I understand and we agree on this. We also agree that, in the question of whether the normative reasons for action are subjective or objective, they are subjective, i.e. not rationally determined.
This is classic universal prescriptivism in the vein of Hume and Hare's non-cognitivism. It's not robust moral realism like Sidgwick and Parfit's line of thought.

Logic doesn't make any normative claims. Neither does math. But morality traditionally does, or so think the moral realists.
"It is not moral for Emma to kill the cat" does not express the same thing as "Emma ought to not kill the cat." The first proposition has a descriptive truth value, the second has a normative truth value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism#Robust_versus_minimal_moral_realism
You're using the minimal model to claim it's realism. But the minimal model is not classic moral realism, and it's rarely used to mean that. Our position is better described as prescriptive non-cognitivism.

I'm usually comfortable leaving it at the "is" part; the choice of whether to be a good person or not is up to the individual. I addressed the "why" a little in this thread: Morality - Why should we do good?

I'm also comfortable leaving it at "is".
Maximizing paperclips (to use your example) also has an objective object, but that doesnt mean there's any truth value to "One ought to maximize paperclips." But that's what moral realism generally tries to imply. And I don't want to call my beliefs something they're not.
You can call our position non-cognitivist realism or realist non-cognitivism if you want, I suppose that's the exact definition. It's a subtle nuance, like the difference between hard and soft atheism. And, granted, it's only of consequence in metaethics, not so much in applied ethics.

Analytic philosophy and the descendants of logical positivism are the ones who came up with non-cognitivism. Mainly because they recognized that traditional moral "facts" use normative language, not descriptive language.
For example, Singer's work is non-cognitivist (up until publishing his book on Sidgwick in 2014). He changed his mind and became a moral realist when he also switched to hedonism. I suppose it's easier to be a realist when the content of preferences is deemed irrelevant.

Choosing to do math is also mathematical. Do we then deny that claims about mathematics have truth value? I think you're over thinking this.

I'm not, I'm just trying to label our framework properly. Claims about mathematics have truth value, so do claims about morality. Again, I'm not arguing in favor of relativism.

Being rational is rational. How is that not another tautology?
People who do not value rationality -- and there are many -- do not regard that as a compelling normative prescription either.

That proposition is descriptive. That's perfectly fine. "You ought to be rational because that's the rational thing to do" would be prescriptive, and also a tautology which doesn't justify the "ought".

Moral realism would require that there are good reasons and bad reasons for the choice of interests and values.

There are. And there are rational and irrational reasons for such choices too, logical and illogical reasons.

Like what? What are some rational/logical premises about what one should fundamentally value?

Everything we do is based on emotion at some prime level; it's the only thing that moves us to thought or action at all. Even the desire to be rational.

Good, this answers the above question.

And it's rational to be rational.
Mathematical to do math.
Moral to do good.
Immoral to do evil.
I don't see why we need to look to these kinds of claims for help. It's more of a self evident statement of identity. I don't think that has anything to do with realism or non-realism.

"It's moral to do good" is a descriptive sentence, not prescriptive. I'm perfectly fine with that.

[brimstoneSalad]

Traditionally it does, though, it involves a strong compulsion.

What compulsion, though? Hellfire?
The only I see is right action.

Moral realists would claim that one ought x because x is right/moral and that's justification enough.

And I agree with that. You ought (in the moral sense) to be a good person, and it being moral should be reason enough.

It entails that the one true morality is binding.

Not in the sense that people can not choose to violate it. Otherwise there would be no bad people, and moral judgement would be kind of meaningless.

Even theists have some notion of the idea that people choose between good and evil.
I don't think that most moral realists are prescriptive in the way you're asking for.

To realists, there is a rational procedure for deciding what we "ought" to do.

And I agree that there is such a rational procedure. All of these questions presuppose that people want to be moral, though. We're talking about a moral ought here. Moral obligation.

Reason, on this interpretation, involves more than an ability to make valid inferences from premises to conclusions. It also includes the ability to recognize "right" premises and motivations, and to understand self-evident moral truths

I agree. And we can recognize morally wrong premises and motivations. But it doesn't mean we're without choice to select right or wrong.
I know you put "right" in quotes, but you can't accept the moral connotations. And I feel like you're expecting normative ethics to be removed from those connotations when I don't think it is; moral obligation and moral rightness is implicit in all of this.

Moral motivation begins with the rational judgment that an act is right.
This is probably what that definition of morality Mr. Purple came up with refers to ("actions that all rational people would agree on", or something). And this is also probably one of the sources of confusion with him.

As in the text he referred to, and I referred him back to, agreement that something is moral (assuming they are not lying) doesn't translate to compulsion to act on it.

Do you know Sam Harris' comparison between wellbeing and health? He says that, the same way medicine is concerned with health and you can't redefine what medicine is about, morality is concerned with wellbeing and it can't be redefined. I agree with him, and that's an argument against moral relativism.

There's a polar opposite to everything. As there is a moral landscape, so is there an anti-moral landscape of peaks representing maximal ill-being and valleys representing well-being.

But, if I ask the moral equivalent of "What if I'm self-destructive and prefer to be unhealthy, or simply don't care that much about being healthy?", Sam's answer would determine whether he's a realist or a non-cognitivist.
If his answer is "But it's not rational to not want to be healthy, therefore you "ought" to be healthy.", then he's a moral realist - he defines himself as such, though the answer to this question would be more telling about what he really is.
If his answer is "Well ok then, you can only be motivated to be healthy if you value health (and here are the rational means by which you can achieve health)." then he's a prescriptive non-cognitivist.

You seem to be making moral realism more narrow than it is, or requiring something that I haven't seen as part of the definition.
There's no compulsion in rationality either. There's no need to link one to another by compulsion to establish realism.

Can you show me some sources that describe what you're talking about more specifically?
I don't quite know where you're getting this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism

Moral realism (also ethical realism or moral Platonism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true); and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Within moral realism, the two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/

Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common and more or less defining ground of moral realism (although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way).

As a result, those who reject moral realism are usefully divided into (i) those who think moral claims do not purport to report facts in light of which they are true or false (noncognitivists) and (ii) those who think that moral claims do carry this purport but deny that any moral claims are actually true (error theorists).

http://www.iep.utm.edu/moralrea/

Moral Realism
The moral realist contends that there are moral facts, so moral realism is a thesis in ontology, the study of what is. The ontological category “moral facts” includes both the descriptive moral judgment that is allegedly true of an individual, such as, “Sam is morally good,” and the descriptive moral judgment that is allegedly true for all individuals such as, “Lying for personal gain is wrong.” A signature of the latter type of moral fact is that it not only describes an enduring condition of the world but also proscribes what ought to be the case (or what ought not to be the case) in terms of an individual’s behavior.

The traditional areas of disagreement between the realist camp and the antirealist camp are cognitivism, descriptivism, moral truth, moral knowledge, and moral objectivity. The long and recalcitrant history of the realism/antirealism debate records that the focal point of the debate has been shaped and reshaped over centuries, with a third way, namely, Quasi-realism, attracting more recent attention. Quasi-realism debunks the positions of both realism and antirealism.

On the one hand, considering cognitivism, descriptivism, moral truth, moral knowledge, and moral objectivity as specifying the sufficient conditions for moral realism ignores the quasi-realist way. On the other hand, defining moral realism in a way that accommodates quasi-realism concedes too much: unlike the moral realist, the quasi-realist denies that moral facts are explanatory. Consequently, one can view quasi-realism as the contemporary heir of antirealism.

These are all pretty simple lists of requirements. None seem to involve compulsion.
The assertion that rationality compels moral action is probably more limited to the likes of Kant and Rand.

There's a fairly long tradition in understanding that this isn't necessarily the case in normative ethics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Binding_force

It solves the relativism problem for morality specifically; if you choose to do evil, this is not good. Good defines a certain set of non-relativistic (although of course context dependent) behaviors/claims about the world.

I agree. You'd also agree that those claims are descriptive, not prescriptive.

It depends on what you mean by prescriptive. In an ethical context, prescription implies that we ought to do what's good. The good tends to be an unspoken assumption, or sometimes explicit (as in a moral obligation).

In the most general sense, though, we are not compelled, and I don't think anything in normative ethics or realism suggests this could be the case or would be a requirement.
This doesn't seem to be discussed much, perhaps since it's just not a very controversial unspoken assumption?
Most people already want to be good, and just don't agree on what that is.

Moral realism claims that moral propositions express "ought" facts, and some are true.

Moral realists believe that moral propositions express facts and have truth value. What we're dealing with "oughts" we're talking about moral obligations, or moral oughts.

Moral non-cognitivism claims that moral propositions don't express "ought" facts at all. Only "is" propositions are factual and can be true (including propositions describing morality).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cognitivism

Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions (i.e., statements) and thus cannot be true or false (they are not truth-apt). A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world."[1] If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.[1]

Non-cognitivism entails that non-cognitive attitudes underlie moral discourse and this discourse therefore consists of non-declarative speech acts, although accepting that its surface features may consistently and efficiently work as if moral discourse were cognitive. The point of interpreting moral claims as non-declarative speech acts is to explain what moral claims mean if they are neither true nor false (as philosophies such as logical positivism entail). Utterances like "Boo to killing!" and "Don't kill" are not candidates for truth or falsity, but have non-cognitive meaning.

A non-cognitivist would typically only accept descriptive statements in the sense of "X culture believed Y to be immoral"; anthropological moral descriptivism, not objective moral evaluation (in the sense of a math or science).

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

Non-cognitivism is a variety of irrealism about ethics with a number of influential variants. Non-cognitivists agree with error theorists that there are no moral properties or moral facts. But rather than thinking that this makes moral statements false, non-cognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, non-cognitivists think that moral statements have no substantial truth conditions. Furthermore, according to non-cognitivists, when people utter moral sentences they are not typically expressing states of mind which are beliefs or which are cognitive in the way that beliefs are. Rather they are expressing non-cognitive attitudes more similar to desires, approval or disapproval.

When I say it is morally wrong to harm sentient beings without adequate cause, I'm not saying "boo on that!" I'm making a clear claim as a statement of moral fact. Much as I'm making about mathematics when I say it is mathematically incorrect to answer 2+2=5. I'm not saying "Boo on 5!"
That's all it takes to be a realist in the broadest and simplest sense.

There are mathematical non-realists too.
These are things with objective factual qualities based in a logical/conceptual space, not simply anthropologically relative views or attitudes. Non-cognitivism suggests that they are the latter.

We also agree that, in the question of whether the normative reasons for action are subjective or objective, they are subjective, i.e. not rationally determined.

You are not rationally compelled to write in "4" in answer to "2+2" either.
But rational motivations aren't "objective" in that sense either; there's nothing that compels people to value rationality or believe in it. I've met quite a few people who do not.

Only facts can be objective. There's nothing in motivation that is, outside the hardwiring of the brain, but that kind of defeats the purpose of moral judgement.

Logic doesn't make any normative claims. Neither does math. But morality traditionally does, or so think the moral realists.

I disagree that lack of compulsion makes something not normative. Normative morality deals with what morally right action is; it all presupposes an interest in morality.

"It is not moral for Emma to kill the cat" does not express the same thing as "Emma ought to not kill the cat." The first proposition has a descriptive truth value, the second has a normative truth value.

The first proposition, if you regard it to have truth value that does not simply describe Emma's opinion (or that of her culture, etc.) indicates moral realism.
I don't agree with your interpretation of normative ethics, or the implications of "ought" in these contexts.

Emma has a moral obligation not to kill the cat. That seems normative enough to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism#Robust_versus_minimal_moral_realism
You're using the minimal model to claim it's realism. But the minimal model is not classic moral realism, and it's rarely used to mean that. Our position is better described as prescriptive non-cognitivism.

The minimal model is adequate, I see no reason not to consider it as such.
Anything involving non-cognitivism is going to confuse people, and I don't think prescriptive non-cognitivism is helpful or necessary, since it could just as easily be read as being a non-cognitivist plus prescriptivism (like a lacto-vegetarian is a vegetarian plus milk).

If you need to be extremely specific for some reason, saying "minimal realism" seems fine.

I'm also comfortable leaving it at "is".
Maximizing paperclips (to use your example) also has an objective object, but that doesnt mean there's any truth value to "One ought to maximize paperclips." But that's what moral realism generally tries to imply. And I don't want to call my beliefs something they're not.

The field of normative ethics already implies the ought is relative to moral goals.

You can call our position non-cognitivist realism or realist non-cognitivism if you want, I suppose that's the exact definition.

I don't know what that would mean, that just sounds like a contradiction.
Any dicing of words is more likely than not just going to be confusing.

Do you mean non-prescriptivist realism? That would be less confusing, assuming you accept certain things about prescriptivism.

Dealing with objective facts of morality, but not telling others what they must do; only what they must do if they wish to be moral. But I feel like normative ethics already encompasses that assumption, so I don't think it's necessary to clarify. We are prescriptive in any sense that matters.
If we're saying somebody is a bad person if that person does not aspire to be moral (assuming the person is able, generally), that's a pretty prescriptive response, and people would take it as such.

It's a subtle nuance, like the difference between hard and soft atheism. And, granted, it's only of consequence in metaethics, not so much in applied ethics.

Yes.
It's a safe assumption most people are already interested in being moral. It's only necessary to illuminate what that means.

Analytic philosophy and the descendants of logical positivism are the ones who came up with non-cognitivism. Mainly because they recognized that traditional moral "facts" use normative language, not descriptive language.
For example, Singer's work is non-cognitivist (up until publishing his book on Sidgwick in 2014). He changed his mind and became a moral realist when he also switched to hedonism. I suppose it's easier to be a realist when the content of preferences is deemed irrelevant.

That doesn't make any sense to me. Hedonism should no more ground an ought than anything else. Unless you're going for the bizarre "hedonistic egoism" and you're a psychological egoist, in which case moral judgement become meaningless.

I'm not, I'm just trying to label our framework properly.

I understand what you mean, I just think these issues of the compulsion of a moral ought (which I see as a particular kind of ought) has already been covered in normative ethics, and I think the oughts are always either explicitly or implicitly those particular moral oughts... with rare exception, like Randian objectivists who worship rationality [yet fail at it, and there's no objective ought to rationality either].

That proposition is descriptive. That's perfectly fine. "You ought to be rational because that's the rational thing to do" would be prescriptive, and also a tautology which doesn't justify the "ought".

When we're talking about normative ethics, we're talking about a particular kind of ought, and this is often made more explicit by appending "moral" to it, as in "moral obligation" in one of the quotes above.

Moral realism would require that there are good reasons and bad reasons for the choice of interests and values.

There are. And there are rational and irrational reasons for such choices too, logical and illogical reasons.

Like what? What are some rational/logical premises about what one should fundamentally value?

You say moral realism requires good and bad reasons. But good and bad have loaded meanings: good and bad as in morally good and bad. That's what I was referring to. They don't seems meaningful outside that context unless you otherwise specify.

Rational and logical basis would refer to the reasoning behind the choice being consistent and holding up to a certain standard of rationality.

"It's moral to do good" is a descriptive sentence, not prescriptive. I'm perfectly fine with that.

It's descriptive too, sure, but in a very different way which seems incompatible with the typical meaning of non-cognitivism.

[inator]

Not in the sense that people can not choose to violate it. Otherwise there would be no bad people, and moral judgement would be kind of meaningless.

No, in the sense that rational people would not choose to violate it because morality is fully aligned with reason, even at its core premises,

You seem to be making moral realism more narrow than it is, or requiring something that I haven't seen as part of the definition.

Perhaps, based on the exclusively older realist authors I've read, I have a distinctive understanding of what genuine moral realism is. So there are certain philosophical paradigms of realism (conceptual minimalism) that my claim is not intended to cover.
But you're right, full-blown non-cognitivism is commonly understood as expressivism, which doesn't even accept true descriptive moral propositions. I have no problem discarding that.

I guess I'm arguing in favour of minimalism as opposed to robust moral realism and I didn't want to call it realism, but more of a hybrid theory.

My criticism was similar to this:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/

Yet, with the development of (what has come to be called) minimalism about talk of truth and fact, it might seem that this characterization makes being a moral realist easier than it should be. As minimalism would have it, saying that some claim is true is just a way of (re-)asserting the claim and carries no commitment beyond that expressed by the original claim. Thus, if one is willing to claim that “murdering innocent children for fun is wrong” one can comfortably claim as well that that “murdering innocent children for fun is wrong is true” without thereby taking on any additional metaphysical baggage. Since even noncognitivists would be willing to claim that “murdering innocent children for fun is wrong,” they can acknowledge that the claim is true too and it would be a mistake to see that addition as any sort of renunciation of their noncognitivism. Having said that “it is true that murdering innocent children for fun is wrong,” it seems similarly innocuous for the non-cognitivists to grant that it is a fact. After all, they can argue, to say of some claim that what it says is a fact is itself just a way of (re-)asserting the claim and it too carries no commitment beyond that expressed by the original claim. Grammar alone, it seems, renders talk of truth and fact appropriate and does so without incurring the sort of metaphysical commitments that are rightly associated with genuine realism (see Gibbard 2003, Dreier 2005).

It's not a deal-breaker for calling our position some form of realism, though, I agree now.

[brimstoneSalad]

No, in the sense that rational people would not choose to violate it because morality is fully aligned with reason, even at its core premises,

My sticking point there is that there is no compulsion even to be rational. How can we say people "ought" (not a moral ought) to be rational?

Without compulsion to be rational, a rational compulsion to be moral doesn't seem to get us anywhere closer to that unqualified ought.

Perhaps, based on the exclusively older realist authors I've read, I have a distinctive understanding of what genuine moral realism is.

I'm not sure if this genuine realism has any coherent meaning, though. Particularly given the above concern.
I'm also not very clear on what the metaphysical baggage really entails, so I'm not really ready to commit to the rejection of the robust model either; I just find minimalism more defensible.

So there are certain philosophical paradigms of realism (conceptual minimalism) that my claim is not intended to cover.
But you're right, full-blown non-cognitivism is commonly understood as expressivism, which doesn't even accept true descriptive moral propositions. I have no problem discarding that.

In the context of the commonly regarded dichotomy, I would argue that realism is at least a better fit and less confusing; particularly if we accept minimalism as part of overall realist interpretations.

I guess I'm arguing in favour of minimalism as opposed to robust moral realism and I didn't want to call it realism, but more of a hybrid theory.

I see what you mean, but I just think that's a little confusing when we can just point people to minimalist claims under realism. And since the metaphysical claims themselves don't seem clear, I think minimalism as a general interpretation is more than fair.

Since even noncognitivists would be willing to claim that “murdering innocent children for fun is wrong,” they can acknowledge that the claim is true too and it would be a mistake to see that addition as any sort of renunciation of their noncognitivism. Having said that “it is true that murdering innocent children for fun is wrong,” it seems similarly innocuous for the non-cognitivists to grant that it is a fact.

Can you clarify that?

[inator]

No, in the sense that rational people would not choose to violate it because morality is fully aligned with reason, even at its core premises,

My sticking point there is that there is no compulsion even to be rational. How can we say people "ought" (not a moral ought) to be rational?

Without compulsion to be rational, a rational compulsion to be moral doesn't seem to get us anywhere closer to that unqualified ought.

There's no compulsion to be rational, but within the community of rational people, they would call morality a rational "ought". The conclusion of the rational inquiry about how one ought to live/act is equivalent to what is "good".

At the metaethical level, we'd say that we can't convince someone to choose to be moral. However, robust realism would claim that choosing morality is a rational choice, and the fundamental premises for morality are self-evident. This sort of first-order moral knowledge ultimately can be traced back to our rational intuition. For example, I can perhaps intuit that non-suffering is good (and lead me to some form of utilitarianism), or perhaps that any moral rule must be universalizable (leading me to some form of deontology), etc.

The initial choice of action is no choice at all, because moral facts are not causally and motivationally inert."Moral" and "what one should do" are interchangeable.
To them, saying "x is right" and then needing to add some extra belief in there like "I should care about doing right" would be nonsensical. They'd say that's already entailed by the claim about rightness and that it's like saying "I believe that the apple is red, but I don't believe things have colors."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-motivation/#MorJudMot

Traditionally, judgment internalism has been characterized as claiming either that motivation is internal to moral judgment, in the sense that moral judgment itself motivates without need of an accompanying desire (“strong internalism”) or that there is a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation (“weak internalism”).
[...]
they generally see moral principles as requirements of rationality or reason, or as the output of a hypothetical agreement among reasonable, suitably situated persons. Moral reasons are considerations that are motivating, at least when we properly reflect on them, but their motivating force does not depend on a prior desire.

Among many others we have Plato (same source):

...moral motivation springs directly and entirely from grasping the presence of the moral properties themselves. Apprehension of these properties move an agent to act, and to do so unaided by any additional source of motivation; their motivational power depends on no desire or disposition of the individual herself. Second, apprehension of moral properties not only motivates on its own: it provides overriding motivation. Once an agent does apprehends them, their motivating power overcomes any opposing desires or inclinations.

Or Sidgwick and Kant:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sidgwick/

Sidgwick's identification of ‘Right’ with ‘Reasonable’ and ‘Objective’; his view of Rightness as an ‘ultimate and unanalysable notion’ (however connected subsequently with Hedonism); and his admission that Reason is, in a sense, a motive to the will, are due to the more or less ‘unconscious’ influence of Kant. "
[...]
These points make it clear that the Kantian strain in Sidgwick's thought is most marked in his central idea about the rationality of first principles (Schneewind, 1977: 419–20).
[...]
the balance of scholarly opinion has it that Sidgwick's account adumbrates an “objective list” view that allows that some desires, however informed, may be rejected as irrational or unreasonable.

I'm not sure if this genuine realism has any coherent meaning, though. Particularly given the above concern.
I'm also not very clear on what the metaphysical baggage really entails, so I'm not really ready to commit to the rejection of the robust model either; I just find minimalism more defensible.

Both robust and minimalist moral realists would say that there are mind-independent moral facts. However, while robust moral realists regard theses about the existence of moral facts as metaphysical claims that are external to moral discourse, minimalist moral realists would claim that these theses must be interpreted as commitments within the moral domain.

Since even noncognitivists would be willing to claim that “murdering innocent children for fun is wrong,” they can acknowledge that the claim is true too and it would be a mistake to see that addition as any sort of renunciation of their noncognitivism. Having said that “it is true that murdering innocent children for fun is wrong,” it seems similarly innocuous for the non-cognitivists to grant that it is a fact.

Can you clarify that?

I'll try to explain it as I understand it.

Most old-school moral philosophy relied on a (substantive) correspondence theory of truth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth#Substantive_theoriesh), which asserts that truth is a property of those propositions that correspond to facts existing in the real world. A property that's no different to other less controversial properties, like shape, size etc.

Modern developments in philosophy have come up with a deflationary/minimalist theory of truth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth#Minimalist_.28deflationary.29_theories). The difference is mainly semantic.
According to the deflationary theory, to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. For example, to say that "snow is white" is true, or that it is true that snow is white, is equivalent to saying simply that snow is white, and this is all that can be said significantly about the truth of "snow is white".
It just leaves out the metaphysical element of the "truth" concept in some inflationary sense - in which the "nature of truth" needs to be deeply analized - and treats it like a (partially) redundant predicate.

The interesting thing is that taking this deflationary route may, in the end, ruin what was supposed to be so unique about non-cognitivism. After all, at the core of ethical non-cognitivism was the belief that there is some significant difference between moral and non-moral discourse.
But if we compare propositions like "snow is white" and "torture is wrong", by minimalistic standards, we end up saying pretty similar things about them. Both are truth-apt (in a deflationary sense), both express propositions, etc.

Now I have to wonder what, then, is supposed to be the significant difference that sets the first statement apart from the second. Or, what would be the point of contention between non-cognitivists and realists if both parties agreed to deflate the notion of truth?
It's even difficult for new non-cognitivists and new realists to pinpoint what's the difference between them. This paper gives it a go and it's one of the more confusing things I've read: https://www.brown.edu/academics/philosophy/sites/brown.edu.academics.philosophy/files/uploads/Meta-EthicsAndTheProblemOfCreepingMinimalism.pdf

My mistake was to only look at moral realism through the lens of the inflationary correspondence theory (because these are the moral realists I've happened to read) and reject it based on the fact that the asserted methaphysically substantive "truth" property of moral propositions seemed rather unconvincing to me. And all the while I was applying deflationary truth standards to non-cognitivism.
If I use the same standards for both, then moral realism is satisfactory and I see little reason to look to non-cognitivism at all.

[PsYcHo]

(PsYcHo suddenly understands how much his public school was inadequate to teach actual problem solving and debating. Poders if his "Golden Elmo" award for putting all the corresponding shapes in the correct orifice is actually helpful in the real world..

[brimstoneSalad]

What is rationality?
I feel like there are a lot of assumptions about what implicitly motivates a rational agent that need to be stated more clearly.

Can we bring into this discussion theories of mind?