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WillowOne's Positions

Moral claims are incomplete assertions

My Positions

  1. I am a moral anti-realist. There are no objective moral facts or truths. Ethical claims do not correspond to any mind-independent reality and are not universally binding.
  2. I am a moral subjectivist. Moral judgements are expressions of individual or cultural preferences. What is morally right or wrong depends on personal or societal attitudes, interests, and agreements.
  3. Morality is derived from biological motivators (empathy, the mirror-neuron response, kin and reciprocal altruism), self-interest, and game theory.
  4. Moral claims are normative assertions with hidden premises. "X is wrong" is an incomplete sentence; the rest of it has been left unsaid.

Examples

  1. X is good.
    Volunteering is good.
    → The hidden premises might be: because it builds social cohesion, and social cohesion will benefit me if I am ever in need.
  2. X is wrong.
    It is wrong to lie.
    → The hidden premises might be: because lying erodes trust, a lack of trust harms social cooperation, including my own interests, and I may become the victim of your lie.
  3. You ought to X.
    You ought to keep your promises.
    → The hidden premises might be: if you wish to be trusted in future, and you do wish that, then keeping promises is the means to it.

Clarification / Notes

  1. If someone asserts "X is good" without providing reasons, it is a bare normative claim that invites scrutiny. If they say "X is good because it leads to Y, and Y is something we should value because it directly or indirectly aligns with our interests", the assertion becomes more empirically testable. They could be wrong about the relationship between X and Y, or wrong about the value of Y and its relationship to our interests. Either way, there is now something to examine.
  2. The call to action in statements like "X is wrong" or "X is good" functions to invite group cooperation without requiring agreement on the underlying reasons. By omitting the justification, the assertion allows consensus to form while avoiding potential division over the rationale. This is a feature of moral language, not a bug, but it is worth being aware of.
  3. Once a moral claim has been deconstructed, and if its premises are agreed upon, the conclusion of the moral injunction can become an objective statement, in the sense of being a factual claim about means and ends.
  1. Subjective moral assertion:
    "It is wrong to eat too much sugar."
  2. Deconstructed:
  1. Eating too much sugar has been shown to lead to ill health. (Empirical claim)
  2. We wish to avoid the ill health caused by eating too much sugar. (Shared preference)
  3. Therefore we should not eat too much sugar, and so we assert that "it is wrong to eat too much sugar." (Hypothetical imperative)
    3. The only part that remains subjective is step 2, the preference. Everything else is open to evidence.
    4. This could be considered a naturalistic and constructivist approach to moral normativity.
    5. It includes moral expressivist and pragmatist insights (for example Simon Blackburn and Richard Rorty).
    6. It reflects instrumental rationality and hypothetical imperatives in Kantian terms. Where Kant held that morality consists of categorical imperatives (binding regardless of one's desires), I hold that all moral imperatives are hypothetical: binding only given some end that one in fact has.
    7. It is consistent with David Hume's observation that one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is" without a bridging premise (the Is–ought problem). On my account, the bridging premise is always a desire or interest, and the hidden premise in a moral claim is precisely that bridge.
    8. A practical consequence: when two people disagree morally, the most productive first move is to ask each to complete their sentence. Disagreements often turn out to be empirical (about whether X really leads to Y) or about differing interests, and both are more tractable than a clash of bare assertions.

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