I fully expect one to evaluate those that disagree with that one against one's own standards. By my standards, to do so without proper engagement is wrong.When you say “wrongfully” what do you mean?
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I fully expect one to evaluate those that disagree with that one against one's own standards. By my standards, to do so without proper engagement is wrong.When you say “wrongfully” what do you mean?
I fully expect one to evaluate those that disagree with that one against one's own standards. By my standards, to do so without proper engagement is wrong.
No. I am proposing my subjective norm.When you say that something is wrong, you are presupposing a moral norm. Welcome to premise 1!
No. I am proposing my subjective norm.
Prove it.Relative norms depend upon absolute norms. Now you’re at premise 2!
Prove it.
My morals are my own and are based on my subjective experience.
Thus far, your premise 1 and premise 2 are rejected.
All norms are descriptive.
Gee whiz, fine! People create "norms". No need to assume things you make up though.No they aren't. This is just a matter of fact. You're ignoring human intentionality in a really bizarre way. Humans are perfectly capable of deciding that something ought to be the case without observing that it is the case. A parent can institute an entirely novel norm in the household: no television allowed for the children. There need not be any precedent for this, there need not be any pattern it is modeled after. It is possible for the parent to do this even if every one of his friends and family allow television for children. He has instituted a norm, "a principle of right action binding upon the members of a group and serving to guide, control, or regulate proper and acceptable behavior."
Not all norms are descriptive. This is true even in less obvious cases. Laws are prescriptive norms, not descriptive norms, as ToL has pointed out with regard to the speed limit. The mental gymnastics required to ignore this fact are excessive.
Gee whiz, fine! People create "norms". No need to assume things you make up though.
No, premise one says that I pre-suppose a norm that's already there. I say we create them.Ok so you're conceding that moral activity supposes some kind of prescriptive norm. That's all premise 1 is saying.
First, I want to point out that this is a blatant appeal to emotion. "Are you willing to live with that?" is the standard "argumentation" when it comes to morality, but it's fallacious.I think the problem you run into here is that you have no way of evaluating relative (or man made) norms. There is no way to evaluate, for example, the Aryan Paragraph. There's no way to say that it is good, bad, just, unjust, wise, or unwise. Are you willing to live with that?
Yup. That's what I'm saying.No, premise one says that I pre-suppose a norm that's already there. I say we create them.
Gee whiz, fine! People create "norms". No need to assume things you make up though.
No, premise one says that I pre-suppose a norm that's already there. I say we create them.
First, I want to point out that this is a blatant appeal to emotion. "Are you willing to live with that?" is the standard "argumentation" when it comes to morality, but it's fallacious.
Second, there absolutely is a way to evaluate it: I hate it.
The speed limit on Main St. is 30mph (descriptive). The speed limit on Main St. should be 30mph (prescriptive) and it is.Okay, good!
Honestly I don't think it's possible for a norm to be both descriptive and prescriptive in a strict sense. Describing how things already are and prescribing how things should be in the future are distinct and mutually exclusive acts of the mind. For example, a law to limit speed to 55 mph would never be enacted unless people were going faster than 55 mph. The purpose of a law is to change a descriptive norm in favor of a different prescriptive norm.
I've never said that people don't prescribe behavior, of course they do all the time. I disagree with the use of the word "norm" because I think it's misleading, but whatever. As long as you just mean a principle and nothing else, I'll work with that.Anyway, that's beyond what is necessary since you have already conceded that prescriptive norms exist.
What norm is pre-supposed before the norm "all women have a right to a safe and inexpensive abortion" is created by people?I don't mean to say in premise 1 that these norms are necessarily true. Only that we have some norm in mind when we make moral statements. When someone says: "Abortion is not wrong" or "all women have a right to a safe and inexpensive abortion", I believe they are wrong, but they are still presupposing some norm when they make these statements.
Nope, it's an appeal to consequences/emotion fallacy.It's just pointing out the implications of your view that you may contradict yourself.
It can at least be evaluated in that manner. I don't think it can be evaluated in an objective sense, no, that's what you want to prove. But you said we can't evaluate it at all, and that's false. Even from a Biblical perspective, when you say something is good, you're saying "this is something God likes" and when you say something is evil, you're saying "this is something that God dislikes". So why should I think you're evaluating things on a level above likes and dislikes?So a kind of emotivism? When we say that something is good, we mean that we like it? When we evaluate the Aryan Paragraph, asking whether or not it is just, we are really asking whether or not we like it?
The speed limit on Main St. is 30mph (descriptive).
The speed limit on Main St. should be 30mph (prescriptive) and it is.
I've never said that people don't prescribe behavior, of course they do all the time.
I disagree with the use of the word "norm" because I think it's misleading, but whatever. As long as you just mean a principle and nothing else, I'll work with that.
1. Whenever we engage in moral activity we presuppose a moral norm. By moral activity I mean moral discourse, moral evaluation, and the like. When we say that "Brionna Taylor deserves justice", "Black Lives Matter!", "stealing is wrong", or similar statements we are engaging in these things. All of this presupposes a moral norm. Whenever we make a moral evaluation we suppose that there is some moral standard of judgment out there that tells us what's right and wrong and we are appealing to that.
When I say, for example, that "the fridge is broken - it ought not to be freezing the butter" I am appealing to a norm (a teleological norm). How do I know that it ought not be freezing the butter? I simply look at the manufacturer's guide to find out how the fridge ought to be working. The same happens in moral evaluation.
2. Relative norms depend upon absolute norms. Whenever we engage in moral activity we are actually presupposing not just any norm, but an absolute norm. Countries write laws and impose them on their citizens. Laws are a kind of relative norm because they are always subject to evaluation at a higher level. Just because something is a law, does not mean that it's good, just, or wise. We may always ask of any law: "Is this a good law? Is this a just law?" We can all think of example of unjust laws (Jim Crow laws, for example). But in order for us to evaluate any relative norm (like a law), there must be some absolute norm. An absolute norm is one that is not subject to evaluation at a higher level. We can ask: "Is this law good?" because there's something above the law whereby we may evaluate the law. Perhaps it's the constitution. Maybe when we ask: "Is this law good?" we are asking if it's constitutional. But then we may also ask: "Is our constitution good and just?" On and on this goes until we arrive at some absolute norm that cannot be evaluated at a higher level. If there is no such norm, we could never evaluate any relative norms at all. It would make no sense to ask: "Is this law good?"
3. Norms can only arise in personal contexts. Norms are only ever imposed by people. All relative norms that we know of are personal in nature. Behind every norm is a person or people who impose that norm. The fridge has a manufacturer that says how the fridge ought to work. The speed limit is imposed by a body of people. A nation's laws are imposed by people. Household rules are written and imposed by people. Every norm we can think of has a person or people standing behind it who have authority. It's very difficult to imagine an impersonal norm. What allegiance do we owe to the laws of physics, for example?
4. An absolute norm could only come from an absolute person. A norm that is not subject to evaluation at a higher level could only come from a person who is not subject to evaluation at a higher level - an absolute person. When we are talking about an absolute person, we are talking about something like God.
5. Therefore, whenever we engage in moral activity, we presuppose God's existence. If God does not exist there could be no absolute norms and thus no norms at all and all moral activity would be without meaning. Yet we find moral activity very meaningful. When we engage in it, we presuppose that God exists even if we resist this idea. We might simultaneously reject belief in God and accept belief in God while doing this.
Why not?