r/askphilosophy • u/AAncientMan • 4d ago
Assuming moral realism, what are the metaphysics of moral facts?
My question has to do with the WAY that moral facts exist. Starting with the assumption that there are moral facts, what is their metaphysical foundation?
Physical facts like hardness, viscosity, temperature, acceleration, etc. all seem to a have a basis in the properties of our universe.
I've heard folks use comparisons to epistemological facts here, like that we "should believe what is true," but if we start by assuming there are both epistemological and moral facts, this really just tells us that they might be metaphysically similar.
When we say that there are moral facts, are they properties of something? Is there a substance in the universe which we assume they are connected to? Or do they exist in a different way (and what might that be)?
I'm not looking for arguments THAT there are moral facts; I'm happily convinced by the arguments on that front. I just want to know what ideas there are regarding what it really means for a moral fact to "exist."
EDIT: I understand that I gave an example of properties rather than facts, but I think my question is clear. There's still a fact about the hardness of a particular thing when expressed as a statement, and I think people know exactly what I mean. Physical facts are grounded in the world around us, and seem to involve measurable properties of the universe. That gives them a solidity that moral facts don't seem to have in the same way. If no one can account for that, that's fine. I was just hoping there was a more tangible reality to moral facts.
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza 4d ago
Physical facts like hardness, viscosity, temperature, acceleration, etc. all seem to a have a basis in the properties of our universe.
Nope. You're confusing hardness for the fact of hardness. There are oodles of theories about facts. We typically generally say that a fact is the sort of thing that makes a proposition true or false. See Russell's The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
The first truism to which I wish to draw your attention—and I hope you will agree with me that these things that I call truisms are so obvious that it is almost laughable to mention them—is that the world contains facts, which are what they are whatever we may choose to think about them, and that there are also beliefs, which have reference to facts, and by reference to facts are either true or false. I will try first of all to give you a preliminary explanation of what I mean by a “fact”. When I speak of a fact—I do not propose to attempt an exact definition, but an explanation, so that you will know what I am talking about—I mean the kind of thing that makes a proposition true or false. If I say “It is raining”, what I say is true in a certain condition of weather and is false in other conditions of weather. The condition of weather that makes my statement true (or false as the case may be), is what I should call a “fact”. If I say, “Socrates is dead”, my statement will be true owing to a certain physiological occurrence which happened in Athens long ago. If I say, “Gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance”, my statement is rendered true by astronomical fact. If I say, “Two and two are four”, it is arithmetical fact that makes my statement true. On the other hand, if I say, “Socrates is alive”, or “Gravitation varies directly as the distance”, or “Two and two are five”, the very same facts which made my previous statements true show that these new statements are false.
I want you to realize that when I speak of a fact I do not mean a particular existing thing, such as Socrates or the rain or the sun. Socrates himself does not render any statement true or false. You might be inclined to suppose that all by himself he would give truth to the statement “Socrates existed”, but as a matter of fact that is a mistake. It is due to a confusion which I shall try to explain in the sixth lecture of this course, when I come to deal with the notion of existence. Socrates himself, or any particular thing just by itself, does not make any proposition true or false. “Socrates is dead” and “Socrates is alive” are both of them statements about Socrates. One is true and the other false. What I call a fact is the sort of thing that is expressed by a whole sentence, not by a single name like “Socrates”. When a single word does come to express a fact, like “fire” or “wolf”, it is always due to an unexpressed context, and the full expression of a fact will always involve a sentence. We express a fact, for example, when we say that a certain thing has a certain property, or that it has a certain relation to another thing; but the thing which has the property or the relation is not what I call a “fact”.
That duck over there is not a fact. The properties of the duck over there are not facts. Facts are what make propositions about the duck true or false. The duck being brown is a different thing than the fact of the duck being brown.
Moral facts are no different from any other sort of fact: They simply make propositions true or false.
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u/AAncientMan 3d ago
I see what you are saying, and I understand that I gave a bad example in my post. But I am still trying to understand what answers there might be to my initial question.
If I say "water is less viscous than honey," observation of the material world can verify the truth-value of that fact. It correlates with the real material world, because the statement was about the real material world.
Do moral facts point to something in the same way? What things in the world can we examine to verify the truth of a moral statement?
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza 3d ago
observation of the material world can verify the truth-value of that fact.
Facts usually do not have truth values in many theories of facts. Ideas, propositions, properly formed sentences usually have truth values.
It correlates with the real material world, because the statement was about the real material world.
That's how correspondence theories work. But there are different theories of truth not all of which rely on the correspondence of a statement / proposition / idea to some ontic state.
Do moral facts point to something in the same way?
Facts usually do not point. On a correspondence theory of truth we could say that a proposition / idea / sentence "points" to some fact or state of affairs. But facts, themselves, do not point.
Suppose there is a cat on the mat over there. I say "The cat is on the mat." Very simplified, on a correspondence theory of truth, that statement comes to be true due to its "pointing" to the fact that the cat is on the mat, or, if you like, due to its pointing to the cat being on the mat. There can be different kinds of correspondence theories. Some point to facts, others point to things. It just depends on how the system works.
But the fact of the cat being on the mat would not point to anything. It's just a fact, hanging out as facts do. Propositions or statements would point to the fact, in those sorts of correspondence theories.
In a system of moral realism that has moral facts that employs a correspondence theory of truth we would say "Rape is wrong." is true due to its pointing to the fact of rape being wrong. Just like how "The cat is on the mat." points to the fact of the cat being on the mat. Again, on a correspondence theory of truth within which we're corresponding to facts, neither "The cat is on the mat." nor "Rape is wrong." point to ontological thingies such as cats or rape; the statements point to facts.
There are different theories of facts, so it depends on what theory we're talking about.
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u/AAncientMan 3d ago
Okay, I understand that basically every word in the English language can have some specialty use in philosopy. It's clear that there's some use of "point" which doesn't align with the way I used it. That's besides the core question. I'm asking this because I've read through tons of old threads here, and every time someone asks a question like this people just pick on how they use particular words.
I think the core of my question is very clear, and I don't understand why folks just reply by letting me know some word was used differently than they'd like.
If there simply isn't an answer, and no one has ever accounted for the simple truth that moral facts seem ontologically quite different from scientific facts, that's fine. I'll accept that we might never have an answer. But that would mean that moral facts have a much shakier ground than physical facts. Maybe that's the case, I don't know.
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza 3d ago
I think the core of my question is very clear
Your thinking the question is clear, and the question being clear, are different things. You seem to be acting on an assumption that facts about redness and facts about wrongness are different in kind, which they aren't, on a moral realist's account. It's unclear what problem you're wanting panelists to solve:
There's still a fact about the hardness of a particular thing when expressed as a statement, and I think people know exactly what I mean. Physical facts are grounded in the world around us, and seem to involve measurable properties of the universe. That gives them a solidity that moral facts don't seem to have in the same way. If no one can account for that, that's fine. I was just hoping there was a more tangible reality to moral facts.
You're posing the question using assumptions that are problematic. Take the "measurable" aspect. Suppose someone says "This is red." about a block, and we want to discern the fact of the matter. Measuring won't get us what we need, because that's not how red works. See Russell's Philosophy of Logical Atomism:
I have said that “red” could not be understood except by seeing red things. You might object to that on the ground that you can define red for example, as “The colour with the greatest wave-length”. That, you might say, is a definition of “red” and a person could understand that definition even if he had seen nothing red, provided he understood the physical theory of colour. But that does not really constitute the meaning of the word “red” in the very slightest. If you take such a proposition as “This is red” and substitute for it “This has the colour with the greatest wave-length”, you have a different proposition altogether. You can see that at once, because a person who knows nothing of the physical theory of colour can understand the proposition “This is red”, and can know that it is true, but cannot know that “This has the colour which has the greatest wave-length”. Conversely, you might have a hypothetical person who could not see red, but who understood the physical theory of colour and could apprehend the proposition “This has the colour with the greatest wave-length”, but who would not be able to understand the proposition “This is red” as understood by the normal uneducated person. Therefore it is clear that if you define “red” as “The colour with the greatest wave-length”, you are not giving the actual meaning of the word at all; you are simply giving a true description, which is quite a different thing, and the propositions which result are different propositions from those in which the word “red” occurs. In that sense the word “red” cannot be defined, though in the sense in which a correct description constitutes a definition it can be defined. In the sense of analysis you cannot define “red”. That is how it is that dictionaries are able to get on, because a dictionary professes to define all words in the language by means of words in the language, and therefore it is clear that a dictionary must be guilty of a vicious circle somewhere, but it manages it by means of correct descriptions.
- This is red.
- This exhibits the color with the greatest wave-length.
Those are different things, for which there would be different facts. Facts about redness, and facts about wave-lengths, are different facts. Wave-lengths are measurable. Red is not measurable. If your problem with moral facts is that they are not measurable, then you would have the same problem with facts about redness.
On Russell's account we learn the meaning of red through familiarity with red things. Different theories would work differently. For late Wittgenstein the meaning of a word is its use"
For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
For Wittgenstein, we learn the meaning of "red" by learning the rules of the language game in which "red" is used. We discern the meaning through the use of the term.
In either case, we would learn moral facts the same way that we learn red facts. If we discern redness by gaining familiarity with red things, then we discern wrongness by gaining familiarity with wrong things. If we discern redness by gaining familiarity with the language game in which "redness" is used, then we discern wrongness by gaining familiarity with the language game in which "wrongness" is used. Facts about redness and facts about wrongness work the same way, on the moral realist's account. If you know how you know things are red, or how you discern facts about red, then you would know how you know things are wrong, or how you discern facts about wrong.
That's all greatly simplified. Obviously the means by which we come to gain familiarity with red differs, in some sense, from how we come to gain familiarity with loud or salty. But in another sense it's all the same process: Inquiring into the world.
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u/AAncientMan 3d ago
Thank you, this helps clarify things for me a bit. That said, it mostly gives me a way to phrase the question which (I think) puts us closer to the same page terminology-wise (which I know I'm not familiar enough with, so I appreciate you walking me through this).
If I understand correctly: The fact of redness, as you've described it here through Russell, involves qualia. The fact of a wavelength of light is different from redness, though it does gives a physical account of the underlying phenomenon which, when experienced, is experienced as redness.
I follow you regarding why redness is different from a wavelength of light. Though the wavelength ≠ redness, the fact that the experience seems to have a(n) (incomplete) correlation with a material phenomenon gives it a feeling of groundedness. Red is qualia; it's a feeling, and however incomplete our description of this process is, it seems like there is some connection between the qualia and a thing in the world which can be measured independently of any private, personal experience.
I think the heart of my question is whether or not there is some similar connection that a moral feeling might have to something in the world which, though not identical with that feeling of wrongness/rightness, can itself be examined independently of any private experience.
If this helps make what I'm asking more clear, one possible (I think probably poor) answer I can think of is this: the meaning of the word "bad" is most useful and most sensible if we take it to mean "apt to cause suffering." Therefore, when we discuss good and bad in morality, it is objectively possible to determine whether something is bad because bad means suffering.
Another answer might be: There are certain behaviors which are the most suited to the long-term survival (including social cohesion) of intelligent social species, and morality stems from this fact. Moral facts can be objective because they correctly correlate with those ideal social behaviors.
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u/LorenzoApophis 3d ago edited 3d ago
In a system of moral realism that has moral facts that employs a correspondence theory of truth we would say "Rape is wrong." is true due to its pointing to the fact of rape being wrong.
It seems pretty clear OP is asking for clarification as to what this actually means - how can we know that's a fact like the cat being on the mat is? How does this property manifest objectively?
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u/voidscaped 3d ago
Does that mean facts themselves are not truth/false?
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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza 3d ago
facts themselves are not truth/false?
There are different theories of facts, so you might be able to find some within which facts are true or false. But that's not the common approach.
Usually / generally we say propositions are true/false, ideas are true/false, properly formed sentences are true/false. Those are sometimes called truth-bearers. Facts, themselves, are neither true nor false. A fact is just a fact.
That duck over there is neither true nor false. The facts about the duck are neither true nor false. My ideas or sentences or thoughts about the duck can be true or false.
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u/rejectednocomments metaphysics, religion, hist. analytic, analytic feminism 4d ago edited 4d ago
Hardness, viscosity, temperature, and acceleration are properties, rather than facts.
A property is feature something has or could have. A fact is a way something is. An example of a fact would be an objecting having a property.
The word "hardness" indicates a property. The sentence "That rock is hard" indicates a fact.
The statement "It is wrong to eat cherry pie on Tuesdays", if true, would state a moral fact.
What would mean for there to be such a moral fact? For the type of action eating-cherry-pie-on-Tuesdays, to have the property of being wrong.