General

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

The Late Andrew Ryan — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:52:00 GMT

Riaz:

I see, what I'm getting from you guys is that you follow the NAP for practical reasons. I have no more questions, thank you.

Sorry. Ethics do not exist, there are merely value preferences. I prefer to follow the NAP because I like the concept, I find it pleasing, I find it noble. I don't steal from others for similar reasons.

You can decide directly that you personally follow a certian principals for certian reasons, I will not kill those who I consider innocents because I consider the idea despicable and evil, but this is merely preference, I cannot make my preferences a direct part of the universe outside of my mind, nor can you.

Very few consider eating until you vomit to be immoral, but most do consider it despicable, disgusting, and abusive to one's body and therefore refrain from doing so and attempt to convince others to do so. Most do not care about it enough however, to go and force the person to stop doing so, the major difference between what is percieved to be "moral" and what most percieve to be merely preference.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Andrew Cain — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:04:02 GMT

Riaz:

I see, what I'm getting from you guys is that you follow the NAP for practical reasons. I have no more questions, thank you.

Not just consequential reasons but also deontological reasons.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

wilderness — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:28:17 GMT

Riaz:
I see, what I'm getting from you guys is that you follow the NAP for practical reasons. I have no more questions, thank you.

I agree with that and as an extension, I add, practical reasons are rooted in logic (special pleading is a logical fallacy). The logic is practical, meaning, the logic works in the real world. It is human action and it is economically prosperous for a society, ie. an aggregate of individuals, to partake in voluntary exchanges as that is a founding act of Austrian economics, i.e. a science that explains the free market.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Riaz — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:18:56 GMT

I see, what I'm getting from you guys is that you follow the NAP for practical reasons. I have no more questions, thank you.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Spideynw — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:40:51 GMT

Riaz:
why follow the non-aggression principle?

In a free world, why would you not follow the NAP? To not follow it would probably result in a quick death.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Valject — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:38:52 GMT

You don't have to prove a moral fact exists. There doesn't even have to BE a moral fact. Reasons will appear in the course of one's life that will make some of those choices obvious. Let us take this from the perspective of a man who is robbed. A gang of thieves takes your...I don't know...precious tomato. You want your tomato back. However, the thieves are heavily armed in a guarded slum. The police are unable to assist you. Do you go Lone Ranger and run a gauntlet of death, guns a-blazin'? More than likely, you have decided to forget about the tomato and mumble to yourself bitterly for the next week or so. I don't think that "because I will be shot in the face" is a moral fact that justifies non-aggression. I think it is a survival instinct. If everyone in the world dropped their moral convictions, we would still have to make choices like this.

One cannot prove that moral facts exist. Unless, that is, you twist the definition of morals to mean something like "things that are good for everyone" or some such nonsense. Taken as what the dictionary calls morals, no. You can no more prove a moral fact exists than you could prove that Mozart was the greatest musician of all time, or Einstein was the smartest man who ever lived. To paraphrase Rex Stout, the smartest man in the world may be a rude tribesman with a limited vocabulary.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

wilderness — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:48:09 GMT

Jeremiah Dyke:

Riaz:

Can anyone here prove that moral facts exist? If so, please do.

This is the topic that continuously arises when arguing with many of my colleagues about libertarian solutions and I’ve seen it phrased in many forms, but the main point is always the ambiguous moral authority.

How do you approach this problem?

That's a good practical, thus, realist question.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

wilderness — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:46:14 GMT

Andrew Cain:
What do you mean by 'moral facts'? Like objective human nature? Or truths about human nature? Such as 'murder is bad'?

Good questions. Before jumping to conclusions, I find it to be helpful to know what some of the terms are the OP is putting into the discussion such as what are 'moral facts'.

It is a fact that morals exist. By moral, I mean, what is good, but what is factually good for one person doesn't necessarily mean it is factually good for another person. And what and why is it a fact? Fact simply means 'real' that X-exists, then of course people value A to B or find A to be better to B. Those are facts about values, ie. goodness.

But I've asked the OP some questions and I don't know what the OP means, especially, when saying "moral facts'.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Andrew Cain — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:50:58 GMT

What do you mean by 'moral facts'? Like objective human nature? Or truths about human nature? Such as 'murder is bad'?

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Jeremiah Dyke — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:19:07 GMT

Riaz:

Can anyone here prove that moral facts exist? If so, please do.

This is the topic that continuously arises when arguing with many of my colleagues about libertarian solutions and I’ve seen it phrased in many forms, but the main point is always the ambiguous moral authority.

How do you approach this problem?

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

scineram — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:19:47 GMT

Riaz:

"The harmony of the rightly understood interests."

This doesn't prove that moral facts exist.

That's the most you can expect.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Zavoi — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 09:57:53 GMT

Riaz:
Can anyone here prove that moral facts exist?

What, to you, would constitute a proof that "moral facts exist"?

Grayson Lilburne:
The harmony of the rightly understood interests.

It is in each person's interest that everyone other than themselves act non-aggressively. However, it's difficult to argue that someone like Stalin or Kim Jong-il is simply "misunderstanding" their own interests, and that they could be induced to follow the NAP simply by supplying them with enough knowledge about economics. Much more likely it is that their interests conflict with their victims' on a more basic level, not admitting of a scientific judgement of correctness.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

Daniel James Sanchez — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 07:50:47 GMT

Riaz:

"The harmony of the rightly understood interests."

This doesn't prove that moral facts exist.

I didn't say it did, Riaz. I am very aware that moral facts do not exist.

I wasn't responding to your original post; as can be plainly seen by reading my post with the slightest bit of care, I was responding to your query, "why follow the non-aggression principle?"

Grayson Lilburne:

Riaz:

The non-agression principle is based on the premise that moral facts exist. If moral facts don't exist, why follow the non-aggression principle?

The harmony of the rightly understood interests.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

colemanhealth — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 07:26:49 GMT

No, moral facts do not exist, in that they have no physical reality. But I suppose that depends on what you mean by "exist". Moral theories can be contradictory. Any theory that does not align with the non-aggression principle runs into internal contradictions, and is therefore invalid. When we talk about morality, we are simply accepting the concept as an a priori premise and then subjecting that premise to the rules of logic. If the interlocutor is unwilling to accept 'oughts' at all, then they are disqualified from moral debate, because they can't coherently say that you ought to believe that there are no oughts. In fact, you can't coherently debate about anything unless you accept the concept of oughts, because debate presupposes that the one side thinks that the other ought to agree with them.

Re: Proving that moral facts exist.

thelion — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 06:59:29 GMT

Moral facts do not exist. In the words of that great teacher Edwin Cannan, 'So what?'

The harmony of interests arises because of diminishing marginal value, dissimilar preference orders, and no-arbitrage condition being approached as wants are increasingly satisfied.

It does not depend on any moral facts any more than the fact that every time Bastiat or Gossen used the words God (on every other page), they just used it as a generic metaphor for the word nature.

People follow non-aggression because they want maximum life pleasure (in an ordinal sense).