When (Moral) Language Goes on Holiday

What kind of problems in moral philosophy arise when language is misused?

Books talked about:

Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Good and Real by Gary Drescher
The Sources of Normativity by Christine Korsgaard

Category:

Education

Tags:

• philosophy
• morality
• ethics
• Wittgenstein
• Drescher
• Korsgaard
• Hume
• objective
• subjective
• meaning
• rational
• rationalists
• debate
• aphorism
• linguistics
• semantics
• moral philosophy
• deontology
• consequentialism
• utilitarianism
• natural
• rights
• own
• ownership
• good
• ought
• taboo

[SisyphusRedeemed]

Interesting stuff, thanks for sending this to me. I must say I don't find this approach very compelling, in large part because I reject the is/ought distinction, but also because it seems to run roughshod over another Wittgensteinian notion: pragmatics. We USE 'moral' in ways we don't use 'fruble'. 'Moral' is a very important part of our 'forms of life' in a way 'fruble' is not. You can't just swap words with established meanings/uses out for other words and expect everything to hold.

[ParagonProtege]

@SisyphusRedeemed

I reject the is/ought gap too, but probably for different reasons.

I agree, we use "fruble" in differently than we use "moral." Even when we define them in the same way, there are still implicit differences in what we mean by them. So an argument that uses "moral" instead of "fruble" may be more convincing, while the exact same argument with "fruble" may not hold.

But isn't that a fault human psychology, not a flaw in the soundness of the fruble argument?

[SisyphusRedeemed]

@ParagonProtege I'd say it's a RESULT of human psychology, but I'm not sure I'd call it a FAULT. As for the soundness of the argument, if you have a mutatis mutandis transformation, then yeah, if one is sound the other must be sound, too. But then I don't think the reductio holds. It seems like you're just translating 'moral' into a foreign language; moral just MEANS fruble. So saying something is fruble will have the same normative force.

[ParagonProtege]

@SisyphusRedeemed

I can't adequately respond to you in 500 characters, so I will to respond via video sometime soon. To ensure that my response is on point, can you clarify what you mean by "I don't think the reductio holds"? I'm unsure which reduction you're referring to.

If you're talking about the reduction from what we generally mean by "moral" to an explicit definition of "moral" such as "that which maximizes the well-being of conscious creatures," then I agree it fails.

[ParagonProtege]

@SisyphusRedeemed

Moverover, if you have any other points of disagreement, then please let me know. If possible, I'd be happy to address them as well.

And again, thanks so much for taking the time to talk. I really appreciate it.

[patternprinciple]

So does improving on the leap from 2 to 3 involve human preferences? If so:

Perhaps here is my attempt at improving the argument:

1. We establish the meaning of --healthy-- as "someone's body who's nutritional demands are met"

2. Starving your body is not --healthy--.

3. Starving your body ought to be ended, --IF-- your preference is to meet nutritional demands of your body.

Does this successfully improve the 2 to 3 inference?

[ParagonProtege]

Hey @patternprinciple

Sorry for the delay in responding to you. I'll be addressing your point in an upcoming Miscellaneous Thoughts video. So keep watch :)

[ZeerosFate]

If we spent more time understanding nature's dictatorship and living our lives parallel to it, such verbal masturbation and semantics arguments (which only apply to an engineered reality which ignores this dictatorship) would be irrelevant.

[patternprinciple]

@ParagonProtege No rush my friend!

[patternprinciple]

This is the logical problem leap from IS to OUGHT.

However 'most' would certainly not disagree with the 3rd arguments conclusion: "Starving your body ought to be ended",

'Most' people recognize that starving your body not only denies nutritional needs which would result in death, and 'most' people PREFER to be alive.