> Moral facts are, after all, natural facts by their reckoning. They’re wrong, of course, because of the is-ought gap.
I'll take the is-ought bait. On a naturalistic view, moral facts are not fundamentals as in Goff. "X is wrong" can br understood as short for something like "no reasonable culture would allow X", where "reasonable" can be defined with some objective criteria, the weakest possible probably being "a culture able to sustain itself for a long time".
That leaves *lots* of things undermined, which AFAICT is a feature, not a bug.
Thanks for an interesting article. I agree with some of the other comments that there is a contingency problem with grounding knowledge at the phenomenological level. Pain after all is just information with a proper-function. If we add a utilitarian/consequentialist layer to this conversation, then pain can be a contingent-good that motivates a free-agent to remove their hand from a hot-stove, thus motivating the prevention of a permanent injury.
By sending a warning through the physical nervous system, pain can be a great-good in that it preserves the integrity of the organism. Might “integrity” and “disintegration” be a more cogent paradigm through which to understand modifiers like “good” and “bad”? This question is something that I’m researching in my own PhD work.
Where does integrated-information ultimately come from, and why is it ordered in such a way that it bucks entropy and motivates the preservation of human integrity and being?
Here’s what I’m trying to get at. There’s an epistemological regress that is begged if we try to ground knowledge at the phenomenological level. We have to go deeper—to the teleological level—and then even deeper, to the ontological level. We need a locus for objective human-meaning simpliciter, not just for our subjective moral-knowledge.
Thus, I think any satisfactory ground for moral-knowledge must take Kierkegaard’s leap and move beyond intuitional non-naturalism to a robust ontological supernaturalism. We need a foundation of the Good that is not bound to the law of entropy. I’m not satisfied by either Goff's panpsychism or Moore’s intuitionism on this basis—and I can see no other consistent solution to the ‘is/ought’ and Euthyphro problems either.
Life itself bucks Schrodinger’s paradox (entropy), and all conceptions of the Good concern a properly integrated human-life. Thus, I cannot as yet see a more satisfying explanation of moral facts than the Natural-Law theory that human-beings are contingently analogous to their Creator—The Morally Perfect-Being (Anselm).
What a non-naturalist would call moral-intuition; I call conscience and moral reason with a veritable taproot into the Divine-Life (C.S. Lewis contra David Hume in: Miracles).
In any case, any realist-theory of moral-knowledge must supply a satisfying ontology for moral-facts. Facts are the substance of knowledge (Aristotle). Moral facts are required to ground a “justified true-account” (Theaetetus) of any rational interpretation of the phenomenological that rises to the definition of what we call “knowledge.”
I would enjoy an article from your non-naturalist moral-realist perspective that attempts to ground moral-facts.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I can see you’re coming at this from the perspective of a Christian philosopher. As a fellow Christian, I appreciate this perspective. But here’s where I think we disagree.
Firstly, I disagree that pain is defined functionally. The argument I put forward is limited to those who accept both qualia realism and non-physicalism about the mind (panpsychists and substance dualists).
Secondly, as a non-natural realist, I do not think there is anything that explains for grounds fundamental normative facts. I know this a very unpopular opinion among my fellow Christians but I think it’s right. Moreover, I dont think non-natural moral facts require explanation because I don’t think necessary facts require explanations, only contingent facts do.
That said, I appreciate you might find this position unsatisfactory because of worries about divine aseity.
Thanks for your response. I really appreciate the engagement!
This is my internal-defeater to accepting your idea as such: all human moral-phenomenology is contingent…because every human-person is ontologically contingent. Thus, on your definition, I think it is fair to seek an explanation for moral-phenomenon rather than accept them as brute.
I surrender the last word, and look forward to more conversations with you as a fellow lover of wisdom.
First off, I really enjoyed your post. I recently wrote a post about how I think we can have moral knowledge through experience despite the fact that I think that we don’t have direct access to value through experience.
I think the badness of pain is a good counter example, but I don’t think it should be generalized further than that.
I think you should check out my post on the illusion of experienced value. It would be fun to see your thoughts.
The is-ought gap understood as a deductive gap is trivial. You won't get biological conclusions without biological premises, you won't get psychological conclusions without psychological premises etc. This is just a feature of classical logic that applies to every domain. The existence of such a gap doesn't reveal anything metaphysical or special about the domain. All of these conclusions need a bridge statement in the argument.
I.e. for the following argument you need a bridge statement to connect the biological conclusion:
1. Aspergillus orizae (AO) is a mold
2. AO is a fungi
C. AO is a biological organism
Obviously this is invalid. There needs to be a bridge statement introducing the biological organism category in the premises.
If the is-ought gap is to be understood as saying that ought and is statements are dichotomous then that needs to be argued for without begging the question against the naturalist.
I don't really see a reason to believe this is (1) a special problem for the normative domain (2) an unbridgeable deductive gap (3) revealing anything interesting about the metaphysics of morals.
First of all, forgive me for my excessive terminology, but I want to keep this relatively succinct.
My answer to this is through defining a fundamental conception of perennial moral justice based on sufficientarian, demonstrable facticities about our universe. Using 'reason acceptabilities' (individual phenomenological experience, socio-technological capability, scientific proof, and historiographical/prosoprographical evidence), we can arrive at a hyper-meta superposition of theoretical systems that, while not defining contemporaneously unknowable moral truths, let alone ontological truth, utilises a concept of double-aspect foundherentism to arrive at robust, epistemically-grounded 'ought' claims. What is believed can even be adapted if new information reveals holes in outdated concepts. I'll illustrate this with the most perennial crisis to all existence: entropy.
1. If you will agree that it is a sufficientarian facticity that the nature of existence formulates a fabric for all kinds of sentient life to experience the universe, and itself within it, then...
2. Given that existence is thus far only sufficiently knowable as being unique, and...
3. Knowing that the astronomically low chances of a 'good' existence (a 'good' existence can include 'good' suffering, if it's a necessary part of personal development, for example) is what makes existence invaluable for animals that live, and...
4. Given life exists not out of some vacuous, immaterial interest of self-preservation, but because its existence has been permitted by even lower chances of incalculable cosmological developments, and low entropy...
5. Then, if conscious existence itself is a sufficient, desirable ends, then it must continue to exist perennially to justify the self-importance, and mortal salience that motivates us...
6. As the second law of thermodynamics means that the universe (at least as a closed system) must go from a low state to a high state of entropy which will result in its heat death, true universal justice must regard that as its highest calling: to somehow reverse entropy....
7. Lastly, from there, this means we can deduce certain other imperatives which also coincide well with human nature (this isn't to say humans are destined to ameliorate entropy, but it is awfully convenient). To fix our perennial problems, the free exchange of ideas and information must be integral to any human society to innovate solutions to increasingly unimaginable problems, composed of hyper-object entities.
You can imagine what my other views on cosmopolitanism might be as well lol
I get off the train immediately at the assertion that pain is necessarily bad. It's not. The badness of pain is contingent. Not only are there counterfactual worlds in which pain is good, there are real circumstances in which pain is good.
Nothing in the argument hangs on pain in particular. I use that example because it’s the most widely accepted and intuitive. If you don’t like it, choose something else. The argument goes through so long as there are some phenomenal properties with essentially normative properties in their essence. So, if you think pleasure is necessarily good or if you think depression is necessarily bad, the argument works.
Nothing in the argument hangs on pain in particular. I use that example because it’s the most widely accepted and intuitive. If you don’t like it, choose something else. The argument goes through so long as there are some phenomenal properties with essentially normative properties in their essence. So, if you think pleasure is necessarily good or if you think depression is necessarily bad, the argument works.
Morality is a personal understanding of best practices when dealing with other creatures. Ethics is formalized, usually shared, morality. Both are contingent on priorities. There are ethical universals to the extent we share priorities:
a) survival is a prerequisite for all meaningful goals
b) truth… non-arbitrary goals
c) sustainability… non-temporary goals
d) reciprocity… civilization
Knowledge is justified belief. Belief is expectation of predictive accuracy. There is ethical knowledge bc there are facts ( stable patterns ) about what morality/ethics are and how they work that can be understood and can be pragmatically useful for anyone.
I feel like if one believes that it lies in their nature that some phenomenal experiences are evaluative/normative, then whether she is a naturalist or non-naturalist is more of a matter of self-identification or even verbal dispute. Leary (2021) “What is non-naturalism” uses such a view as her illustrative example of “essentialist non-naturalism”, yet I know a few people, like Sinhababu and Martin Dimitrov, call themselves naturalist and also hold such a view
To some extent this has to be a verbal dispute because moral naturalism is just a term we have to define.
Now, moral naturalism is typically defined by two commitments. First, moral facts are reducible to non-normative descriptive facts about the natural world. For example, “good” just is whatever promotes the long-term survival of the species. Second, that moral knowledge is something we can acquire using the standard methods of science because of the first commitment.
I reject both those commitments and so on that definition, my position is non-naturalist. But if someone wants to redefine what naturalist moral realism is, or just use the term in a different way, then I’m fine using the term.
But I’m not trying to refute naturalist realism. I’m just trying to give a coherent epistemology for non-naturalists. I mentioned the is-ought gap because that’s MY reason for rejecting naturalism. Given that the is-ought gap plays no role in my argument it’s legitimate to assume it.
> Moral facts are, after all, natural facts by their reckoning. They’re wrong, of course, because of the is-ought gap.
I'll take the is-ought bait. On a naturalistic view, moral facts are not fundamentals as in Goff. "X is wrong" can br understood as short for something like "no reasonable culture would allow X", where "reasonable" can be defined with some objective criteria, the weakest possible probably being "a culture able to sustain itself for a long time".
That leaves *lots* of things undermined, which AFAICT is a feature, not a bug.
I agree. The whole view is completely undermined. 😉
Greetings Dr. Elijah!
Thanks for an interesting article. I agree with some of the other comments that there is a contingency problem with grounding knowledge at the phenomenological level. Pain after all is just information with a proper-function. If we add a utilitarian/consequentialist layer to this conversation, then pain can be a contingent-good that motivates a free-agent to remove their hand from a hot-stove, thus motivating the prevention of a permanent injury.
By sending a warning through the physical nervous system, pain can be a great-good in that it preserves the integrity of the organism. Might “integrity” and “disintegration” be a more cogent paradigm through which to understand modifiers like “good” and “bad”? This question is something that I’m researching in my own PhD work.
Where does integrated-information ultimately come from, and why is it ordered in such a way that it bucks entropy and motivates the preservation of human integrity and being?
Here’s what I’m trying to get at. There’s an epistemological regress that is begged if we try to ground knowledge at the phenomenological level. We have to go deeper—to the teleological level—and then even deeper, to the ontological level. We need a locus for objective human-meaning simpliciter, not just for our subjective moral-knowledge.
Thus, I think any satisfactory ground for moral-knowledge must take Kierkegaard’s leap and move beyond intuitional non-naturalism to a robust ontological supernaturalism. We need a foundation of the Good that is not bound to the law of entropy. I’m not satisfied by either Goff's panpsychism or Moore’s intuitionism on this basis—and I can see no other consistent solution to the ‘is/ought’ and Euthyphro problems either.
Life itself bucks Schrodinger’s paradox (entropy), and all conceptions of the Good concern a properly integrated human-life. Thus, I cannot as yet see a more satisfying explanation of moral facts than the Natural-Law theory that human-beings are contingently analogous to their Creator—The Morally Perfect-Being (Anselm).
What a non-naturalist would call moral-intuition; I call conscience and moral reason with a veritable taproot into the Divine-Life (C.S. Lewis contra David Hume in: Miracles).
In any case, any realist-theory of moral-knowledge must supply a satisfying ontology for moral-facts. Facts are the substance of knowledge (Aristotle). Moral facts are required to ground a “justified true-account” (Theaetetus) of any rational interpretation of the phenomenological that rises to the definition of what we call “knowledge.”
I would enjoy an article from your non-naturalist moral-realist perspective that attempts to ground moral-facts.
I really enjoy your work. Please keep it up!
JMH
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I can see you’re coming at this from the perspective of a Christian philosopher. As a fellow Christian, I appreciate this perspective. But here’s where I think we disagree.
Firstly, I disagree that pain is defined functionally. The argument I put forward is limited to those who accept both qualia realism and non-physicalism about the mind (panpsychists and substance dualists).
Secondly, as a non-natural realist, I do not think there is anything that explains for grounds fundamental normative facts. I know this a very unpopular opinion among my fellow Christians but I think it’s right. Moreover, I dont think non-natural moral facts require explanation because I don’t think necessary facts require explanations, only contingent facts do.
That said, I appreciate you might find this position unsatisfactory because of worries about divine aseity.
Thanks for the compliment and the encouragement!
Thanks for your response. I really appreciate the engagement!
This is my internal-defeater to accepting your idea as such: all human moral-phenomenology is contingent…because every human-person is ontologically contingent. Thus, on your definition, I think it is fair to seek an explanation for moral-phenomenon rather than accept them as brute.
I surrender the last word, and look forward to more conversations with you as a fellow lover of wisdom.
Have a great rest of your weekend!
First off, I really enjoyed your post. I recently wrote a post about how I think we can have moral knowledge through experience despite the fact that I think that we don’t have direct access to value through experience.
I think the badness of pain is a good counter example, but I don’t think it should be generalized further than that.
I think you should check out my post on the illusion of experienced value. It would be fun to see your thoughts.
The is-ought gap is not a problem for the moral naturalist anymore than the is-biological gap is a problem for the biologist
?
The is-ought gap understood as a deductive gap is trivial. You won't get biological conclusions without biological premises, you won't get psychological conclusions without psychological premises etc. This is just a feature of classical logic that applies to every domain. The existence of such a gap doesn't reveal anything metaphysical or special about the domain. All of these conclusions need a bridge statement in the argument.
I.e. for the following argument you need a bridge statement to connect the biological conclusion:
1. Aspergillus orizae (AO) is a mold
2. AO is a fungi
C. AO is a biological organism
Obviously this is invalid. There needs to be a bridge statement introducing the biological organism category in the premises.
If the is-ought gap is to be understood as saying that ought and is statements are dichotomous then that needs to be argued for without begging the question against the naturalist.
I don't really see a reason to believe this is (1) a special problem for the normative domain (2) an unbridgeable deductive gap (3) revealing anything interesting about the metaphysics of morals.
First of all, forgive me for my excessive terminology, but I want to keep this relatively succinct.
My answer to this is through defining a fundamental conception of perennial moral justice based on sufficientarian, demonstrable facticities about our universe. Using 'reason acceptabilities' (individual phenomenological experience, socio-technological capability, scientific proof, and historiographical/prosoprographical evidence), we can arrive at a hyper-meta superposition of theoretical systems that, while not defining contemporaneously unknowable moral truths, let alone ontological truth, utilises a concept of double-aspect foundherentism to arrive at robust, epistemically-grounded 'ought' claims. What is believed can even be adapted if new information reveals holes in outdated concepts. I'll illustrate this with the most perennial crisis to all existence: entropy.
1. If you will agree that it is a sufficientarian facticity that the nature of existence formulates a fabric for all kinds of sentient life to experience the universe, and itself within it, then...
2. Given that existence is thus far only sufficiently knowable as being unique, and...
3. Knowing that the astronomically low chances of a 'good' existence (a 'good' existence can include 'good' suffering, if it's a necessary part of personal development, for example) is what makes existence invaluable for animals that live, and...
4. Given life exists not out of some vacuous, immaterial interest of self-preservation, but because its existence has been permitted by even lower chances of incalculable cosmological developments, and low entropy...
5. Then, if conscious existence itself is a sufficient, desirable ends, then it must continue to exist perennially to justify the self-importance, and mortal salience that motivates us...
6. As the second law of thermodynamics means that the universe (at least as a closed system) must go from a low state to a high state of entropy which will result in its heat death, true universal justice must regard that as its highest calling: to somehow reverse entropy....
7. Lastly, from there, this means we can deduce certain other imperatives which also coincide well with human nature (this isn't to say humans are destined to ameliorate entropy, but it is awfully convenient). To fix our perennial problems, the free exchange of ideas and information must be integral to any human society to innovate solutions to increasingly unimaginable problems, composed of hyper-object entities.
You can imagine what my other views on cosmopolitanism might be as well lol
I get off the train immediately at the assertion that pain is necessarily bad. It's not. The badness of pain is contingent. Not only are there counterfactual worlds in which pain is good, there are real circumstances in which pain is good.
Nothing in the argument hangs on pain in particular. I use that example because it’s the most widely accepted and intuitive. If you don’t like it, choose something else. The argument goes through so long as there are some phenomenal properties with essentially normative properties in their essence. So, if you think pleasure is necessarily good or if you think depression is necessarily bad, the argument works.
Nothing in the argument hangs on pain in particular. I use that example because it’s the most widely accepted and intuitive. If you don’t like it, choose something else. The argument goes through so long as there are some phenomenal properties with essentially normative properties in their essence. So, if you think pleasure is necessarily good or if you think depression is necessarily bad, the argument works.
Morality is a personal understanding of best practices when dealing with other creatures. Ethics is formalized, usually shared, morality. Both are contingent on priorities. There are ethical universals to the extent we share priorities:
a) survival is a prerequisite for all meaningful goals
b) truth… non-arbitrary goals
c) sustainability… non-temporary goals
d) reciprocity… civilization
Knowledge is justified belief. Belief is expectation of predictive accuracy. There is ethical knowledge bc there are facts ( stable patterns ) about what morality/ethics are and how they work that can be understood and can be pragmatically useful for anyone.
The so-called “Is-Ought Gap” (1) has to be argued for, not assumed, especially because (2) it begs the question against naturalist realism.
I feel like if one believes that it lies in their nature that some phenomenal experiences are evaluative/normative, then whether she is a naturalist or non-naturalist is more of a matter of self-identification or even verbal dispute. Leary (2021) “What is non-naturalism” uses such a view as her illustrative example of “essentialist non-naturalism”, yet I know a few people, like Sinhababu and Martin Dimitrov, call themselves naturalist and also hold such a view
To some extent this has to be a verbal dispute because moral naturalism is just a term we have to define.
Now, moral naturalism is typically defined by two commitments. First, moral facts are reducible to non-normative descriptive facts about the natural world. For example, “good” just is whatever promotes the long-term survival of the species. Second, that moral knowledge is something we can acquire using the standard methods of science because of the first commitment.
I reject both those commitments and so on that definition, my position is non-naturalist. But if someone wants to redefine what naturalist moral realism is, or just use the term in a different way, then I’m fine using the term.
Do you think there are non-evaluative phenomenal experiences?
Yes. Probably most of them
Identify the wrong premise.
• Consciousness is for doing things. It would make no sense evolutionarily for us to represent the environment if it were not to navigate it.
• Doing things means enacting a change in the state of affairs
• Wanting the state of affairs to be different from what it is just is normativity.
Probably yes？
But I’m not trying to refute naturalist realism. I’m just trying to give a coherent epistemology for non-naturalists. I mentioned the is-ought gap because that’s MY reason for rejecting naturalism. Given that the is-ought gap plays no role in my argument it’s legitimate to assume it.