Hi Platt --
Again you have entreated us with another fine morality essay that makes up for its circularity by being fun to read. Professor Byrne writes with a deft hand, citing many theories but drawing few unequivocal conclusions. One exception (I suspect the one that appeals to you) is the following: "Everything, in short, is a natural phenomenon, an aspect of the universe as revealed by the natural sciences. In particular, morality is a natural phenomenon. Moral facts or truths - that boiling babies is wrong, say - are not additions to the natural world, they are already there in the natural world, even if they are not explicitly mentioned in scientific theories." The logic of this assertion is really a tautology, however, since if everything is a natural phenomenon, morality is natural only because it is "something". I side with "emotivist" view, that moral language doesn't have the function of stating moral facts but serves rather to express the speaker's attitudes. I like it because it reveals the fact that morality (even in the collective or universal sense) is an expression of the individual's feelings, that his his/her value sensibility. If, as Byrne points out, there is no 'ought' or 'ought not' in nature -- not even in human nature -- then it is man's response to value that is accountable for his moral judgments. Says Bryne: "Emotivism solves the problem of finding room for morality in the natural world quite neatly. No room needs to be made for moral facts, because there aren't any. But the absence of moral facts is no strike against moral talk, because it was never in the fact-stating line of work-it serves the function of expressing attitudes instead." Implied in the emotivist theory is a conclusion which the author might have stated but didn't. Since morals are not facts, individuals are all free to behave according to their own values; and if they value mankind, they will reach a moral consensus as to what is good or bad relative to human society. This is what we call a morality system. Thanks for referring us to this thought-provoking essay. (I may want to plagiarize parts of it for my own use.) Happy Memorial Day weekend, Ham moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
