Right and Wrong - Thomas Nagel

"Right and Wrong” – Thomas Nagel

• Nagel uses an imaginary scenario to prompt readers to consider what it means for an action to be wrong.
• Saying an action is wrong differs from saying it violates rules because rules can prohibit non-wrong actions and require wrong actions.
• Concepts of right and wrong evaluate rules and actions, so they are not the same as obeying/disobeying rules.
• Wrong actions might be bad due to their negative impacts on others.
• Nagel presents the idea of divine retribution after death as a possible answer, where morality requires God as the ultimate standard.
• Nagel offers three objections to the above view:
  1. Many atheists believe in right and wrong without referencing God.
  2. Even if God condemns actions, that condemnation is not what makes them wrong.
  3. Acting morally out of concern for divine reward/punishment is not a good motive.
• Nagel's view states direct concern for others is the basis for morality.
• Nagel proposes asking selfish people how they would like it if someone did that to them.
• Nagel thinks people don’t want their interests and harms to be dismissed by others.
• Nagel argues the basis of morality is the belief that good and harm to people is not just bad from their perspective, but from a general view everyone can understand.
• Morality requires people to consider their own and others’ interests when deciding what to do.
• Impartiality is an important component of morality though philosophers disagree on its extent.
• Some theories imply we should treat everyone the same, but this is heavily criticized.
• Moral standards are debated on the grounds of universality.
• Cultural relativism claims that there is no universal moral standard and rejects moral evaluations of other cultures.
• Nagel opposes cultural relativism because it would imply we can't evaluate our own culture's moral standards which is false because moral progress happens.
• Nagel examines and rejects psychological egoism which posits that people only do things that make them feel good or prevent them from feeling bad.
• Nagel believes feelings result from motives for acting.
• Nagel concludes the difficulty of justifying morality is the abundance of human motives.

"Moral Distinctions Not Derived From Reason" – David Hume

• Hume states that morality influences passions and actions or people would not be deterred from certain actions by their concept of injustice or compelled toward other actions out of a sense of duty.
• Morality's ability to influence behavior and emotions proves it is derived from reason.
• Hume's argument is summarized as follows:
  1. Moral obligations compel people to act/refrain for others, meaning morality influences behavior/emotions.
  2. Reason cannot influence behavior/emotions.
  3. Morality doesn't originate with reason.
• Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood.
• Truth/falsehood is an agreement/disagreement to relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact.
• Anything not susceptible to this agreement/disagreement is incapable of being true/false, and cannot be an object of reason.
• Hume uses "relations of ideas" to refer to known propositions that are true/false with the meanings of words alone.
• Relations of ideas are often definitions or propositions inferred from propositions, like "A dog is an animal."
• The phrase "matters of fact" refer to propositions whose truth can only be determined by observing the world.
• Matters of fact indicate something about the world, so observing a feature of the world validates their truth.
• Truth/falsehood can be expressed as a relation of ideas/matter of fact.
• Passions, volitions, actions cannot express relations of ideas/matters of fact, so they have no truth value, therefore neither rational or irrational.
• Here is Hume's argument for the above claim:

1. Reason is the discovery of truth/falsehood.
2. Truth/falsehood involves expressing relations of ideas/matters of fact.
3. Whatever cannot express relations of ideas/matters of fact can't be true/false, and can't conform/oppose reason.
4. Passions, volitions, actions can't express relations of ideas/matters of fact.
5. Passions, volitions, actions can't be true/false and can't conform/oppose reason.

• Hume states reason does not make actions praiseworthy/blameworthy, or prevent/produce actions.
• Some say reason influences conduct by stimulating emotion or discovering ways to fulfill emotions.
• Hume agrees but argues this doesn't mean reason is the source of morality.
• Judgements are often false and may be factual, not moral mistakes.
• People should not be blamed for making such errors.
• Hume attempts to prove that wickedness isn't a property of actions by examining parricide and incest.
• Hume uses the former to explore if moral depravity is detectable through logic/inner feeling.
• Hume states reason/science only discovers relations of ideas, so characters determine if they differ by reason (19).
• Hume compares parricide to a young tree overtaking/destroying its parent tree.
• A tree kills the cause of its existence but humans do not condemn it like they condemn parricide.
• Therefore the immorality of parricide can't be found in the act itself, and people consider parricide morally wrong only when it is committed by humans and not trees.
• Hume considers an objection to parricide arguing that humans make a conscious choice, unlike the tree.
• Hume states the choice is a cause of parricide but does not alter the nature of killing the cause of existence and being condemned.
• The immorality is not found in the act itself.
• Incest applies to the same principle because only humans are criticized and described as depraved.
• Hume states that our differing moral judgements concerning human/animal incest are due to animals lacking reason.
• Hume accuses anyone of "arguing in a circle" if they support this explanation as this presupposes what they are trying to prove (20).
• Evil must have existed before reason justifies an act of evil.
• The evil action would still be wrong even if the animal did not realize it.
• He makes a similar point without relying on comparisons between human and nonhuman actions.
• An thorough investigation of any vicious activity would fail to reveal that vice.
• The vice exists only when we contemplate an act and disapprove of it
• Hume states ethics often try to derive an "ought" or "should" statement from an "is" statement.
• They fail to explain how they reached the latter from the former.
• Hume states to consider the following argument for a better understanding:

1. Action X is normal in our society.
2. Therefore, people in our society ought to do X.

• Hume states statement 1 does not entail statement 2 and there must be at least one missing logical step.
• Hume cautions to not make the same mistake.

Commentary on the Gap between “Is” Statements and “Ought” Statements

• Hume's separation of ethical/factual statements generates debate amongst philosophers.
• Many claim that bridging the gap between "is" and "ought" statements is possible.
• They create examples where the desired result comes from a certain activity with a hypothetical scenario:
• Bill is playing Mark in chess. The following statements are true:

1. Bill wants to checkmate Mark.
2. The only way for Bill to checkmate Mark is to move his knight.

• Both propositions are "is" statements.
• Gap-bridging philosophers would claim that these imply:

3. Therefore, Bill should move his knight.

• The “ought” and “should” have varying connotations and meaning.
• Statement 3 is not a moral claim and lacks moral import.
• Bill does not need to move his knight and would not be condemned, however this might make Bill a bad chess player.
• Competitions with sports are not moral affairs when participants obey the rules.
• "Ought" claims from "is" claims do not derive moral statements, but non-moral statements and Hume does not deny the latter.

“A Critique of Ethics”- A.J. Ayer

• Ayer defends emotivism which is a meta-ethical position, separates from subjectivism, and argues against utilitarianism and moral absolutism.
• Ayer uses "the criterion of verifiability" (39) which states a sentence can express a proposition if it is factually significant, meaning how the knowledge to verify it exists.
• Differences between sentences and propositions help understand Ayer's description.
• Propositions are expressed in sentences but are not identical.
• Truth values are needed to express propositions. Questions and commands cannot be true or false.
• Sentences express the same proposition from multiple languages:

1. Snow is white. (English)
2. La neige est blanche. (French)
3. Barf sefid ast. (Persian)
4. peD chIS. (Klingon)

• Criterion of verifiability requires observing weather for sentences to have meaning which would exclude non-speakers.
• Moral judgments lack meaning because they cannot be true or false; they only express emotion which is emotivism.
• Ayer defends emotivism and rejects other ethical theories using verifiability.
• Meaningful ethical statements are translatable into factual statements.
• Ayer reviews/rejects both subjectivism and utilitarianism claiming they can translate ethical statements.
• Subjectivism states moral terms can be translated into reports of the speaker's approval/disapproval of actions.
• He rejects subjectivism because people may not disagree from bad behavior but approve of actions, and "X is wrong" is not equal to "I disapprove of X."
• Ayer similarly rejects utilitarianism because actions often produce happiness for people without contradiction, making happiness invalid when describing whether an action is right/wrong.
• These reflections lead Ayer to the conclusion that ethical sentences cannot translated into factual statements.
• Even though the absolutist view of ethics also states the same claim, Ayer rejects that, claiming ethical statements are verified through observations not intuition.
• The problem with ethical views is that intuitions can conflict and there is no empirical test to arbitrate rival intuitions.
• Ayer opposes absolutism and thinks his theory of emotivism justifies the absence of translatable ethical sentences.
• Emotivism states ethical sentences cannot be true or false because they express an attitude.
• Correspondence Theory of Truth states sentences must reflect reality for any truth values to exist.
• Not all sentences can relate to reality, making commands and questions false.
• Emotivism states that all sentences of moral discourse cannot describe reality therefore cannot be true or false.
• Sentences of moral arguments are expressive but not descriptive, not sentences with values, rather emotive expressions.
• Ayer states ethical sentences from morality cannot be verified which is:
• Impossible validity is independent from experience/objective.
• Sentences that have no statement are impossible to ask if it has truth.
• Sentences that express moral judgements state nothing and are unverifiable expressions.
• Ethical Terms' sentences are unable to be true/false as they can only express emotion.
• Emotivism separates from subjectivism in this way because subjectivism describes and reports the speaker's attitude.
• Moral Statements reflect speaker attitudes so they might have truth values or may be false if the speaker is inaccurate of their attitudes.
• G.E. Moore states subjectivism is unable to accommodate and explain disagreement due to people reporting attitudes accurately.
• People are unable to argue issues in morality and subjectivism should be incorrect.
• At first this object also applied to emotivism, due to the inability to define terms in morality by truth.
• Real moral argument would be impossible.
• By denying the existence of moral issue disputes, Ayer deflects Moore's objection to both of his theories.
• Seeming moral disputes are about factual ones in regards to actions, their circumstances, and their intentions.
• We try to make others agree with our ethics system, and assume that they are impossible to reason with if they don't.
• Arguing others are superior is valuing beliefs, meaning that no value judgement exists/has truth/is false.

The Frege – Geach Problem

• Emotivism cannot accurately form sentences of morality.

• Morality would not exist and be meaningless if Frege-Geach Problem is true.

• If Simple sentences are translated to translate phrases, a more complicated sentence cannot be translated the way emotivism demands.

• "Eating meat is bad" is translated by emotivists to "Eating meat - BOO!" Placing it into a larger sentence, such as "If eating meat is bad, then you should be a vegetarian", emotivism states it means "If eating meat - BOO! then being a vegetarian - HURRAY!”

• English Grammar prevents those ridiculous sentences and that is called Embedding Problems.

• The emotivist understanding fails to define complex sentences used, making the theory flawed.

• Any sentence following emotivism must be purely expressive.

• English grammar uses morality in descriptive sentences and has a conditional system.

• "If eating meat is bad, then you should be a vegetarian.” Is a descriptive sentence that means there is a conceptual relationship of being vegetarian if meat is bad.

• Neither part of the sentence actually needs to be true to co-sign onto only the statement that it has a true/conditional, therefore you do not need to agree if meat is bad or to that affect, should be a vegetarian.

• Even If parts are blatantly false, the message can be still true:

• "If Dr. Esposito is a T-1000, then his body is made of mimetic poly-alloy."

• T-1000 is from the Terminator Film as a robot, not a human being or Dr.Esposito, made of mimetic poly-alloy.

• Conditional relationships are not emotionally expressing/rather describing and cannot be interpreted to an emotivist's framework.

• Meaning that emotivism does not embed sentences from morality together.

• Rules in logic and English suggest emotivism is untrue because it claims to be accurate.

• Defenders of Frege - Geach have not been able to produce defense.

• Many consider it to be fatal from some Philosophers.

• Complex versions are damaging to emotivism rather then other versions.