Moral truth: relational
properties
Michael Lacewing
enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk
The ‘is-ought gap’
• (Natural) facts do not entail
moral judgments:
– Hume: ‘this ought…expresses
some new relation [of which it]
seems altogether inconceivable,
how this new relation can be a
deduction from others, which are
entirely different from it’.
• Explanation: morality is not a
matter of fact, but of attitude
Emotivism and disagreement
• A J Ayer: when two people disagree over a fact, the
matter can be resolved (or at least, we know what
would resolve it); when two people disagree over a
value judgment, either they disagree over a
(natural) fact, or there is no further way to resolve
the disagreement.
• Moral judgments express feelings of
approval/disapproval.
Moral reasoning
• But when justifying a moral claim…
– E.g. Eating meat is wrong
• …we appeal to natural facts
– E.g. Animals suffer.
• Moral reason: a reason for someone to do
something
– E.g. That animals suffer is a reason for you to not
eat meat.
• That some fact is a moral reason is a
relational property.
Moral truth
• Whether some fact is a reason is objectively
true or false.
– Epistemic reasons: Radiometric decay indicates
that the some dinosaur bones are 65 million years
old. This is (objectively) a reason to believe that
dinosaurs lived on Earth 65 million years ago.
• Facts about reasons are normative facts.
Moral truth
• To say that something is wrong is to say that
the moral reasons against doing it are
stronger than any moral reason in favour of
doing it.
• The judgment, ‘x is wrong’, is objectively
true or false.
• Hume is right that natural facts do not
establish moral truths. We must also
consider the normative facts.
Are moral reasons
objective?
• How can something that is relational be
objective?
– Many facts depend on us and how we are, e.g.
whether a piece of music is baroque or classical.
– Aristotle: There are also facts about what we
need in order to flourish.
• But moral reasons are relative to individuals
– whether the fact that animals suffer is a
reason for me not to eat meat depends on
whether I care
Two views of attitudes
• Blackburn: our judgments
about what reasons we have
are a reflection of our
attitudes, not a description of
independent normative facts.
• Scanlon: our attitudes are
reflections of our judgments
about reasons, they are
‘judgment-sensitive’.
Primary and secondary
qualities
• Primary qualities: properties of an object
that are not related by definition to
perceivers, e.g. size, mass, and shape
(scientific account of the world)
• Secondary qualities: properties that are
related to perceivers, e.g. colour and smell
(commonsense account)
• Hume: secondary qualities are ‘minddependent’
The analogy with secondary
qualities
• Hume: ‘when you pronounce any action or
character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but
that… you have a feeling… of blame from the
contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore,
may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and
cold, which… are not qualities in objects, but
perceptions in the mind’
• Moral judgments (and talk about moral reasons)
are, ultimately, expressions of our feelings and
what we care about
A cognitivist response
• McDowell: secondary qualities
are properties of the object that
enable it to cause certain
experiences in us.
– Colour is relational, but objective:
To be brown is to look brown to
normal perceivers under normal
conditions.
• Moral judgments are relative to
human responses, but are not
subjective.