Medium: ‘“Moral facts” sound like something of an oxymoron.’

It’s only an oxymoron if you presuppose that the fact-value distinction to both real and unbridgeable. But a lof of philosophers don’t presuppose this anymore (and very few did, up until at least the mid-18th century). Note that appealing to the is-ought problem won’t help you out here: moral realists can accept the problem while denying that it’s equivalent to the fact-value distinction; the philosopher would just have to hold that modal statements using “ought” assert facts, but the facts they assert have at least some irreducible normative or teleological content. One such philosopher was Aristotle, who believed all of ethics to be founded in natural facts and also wrote the first known expression of the “is-ought” problem in the Nicomachean Ethics 1144a.

That said, I agree with you that David Irving shouldn’t be imprisoned just for being a dishonest sack of vomit. That’s a bad thing to be, but it’s not a crime.

Patrick, I’m inclined to agree with you about moral and non-moral facts of equal complexity when the facts are complex (I’m more confident in my knowledge of various facts about the Krebs cycle than I am in my knowledge of any number of thorny casuistical questions, for example.) But I’m not so sure about “simple” facts. “It’s wrong to burn a cat alive just for the fun of it” seems at least as certain to me — I am at least as confident of it — as I am “there’s a book on this table.” Of course, I’m completely confident in both beliefs, but I can at least imagine error-possibilities for the book-belief (possibilities which are outlandish, or simply idle, but at least coherent), whereas I cannot even imagine anything that would convince me that I’m wrong about sadistic cat-burning. The book-belief is certain beyond any reasonable doubt, but the cat-burning-belief is apodictically certain; I couldn’t give it up without simply giving up on morality as such.

aketus, I’m not the cops and I don’t have either the power or the desire to make Andy post different things on his weblog. I’m replying to what he said in a forum for replies that he made available. Your appeals to his rights to post anything he likes are therefore out of place.

aketus: “What’s important to remember is that words on paper are just lines. Words out loud are just sounds. It is humans that define whether they are offensive or not.”

Look, let’s say that Andy were talking about some male white supremacist twit, and he’d posted the same image, reading “Jesus loves you! But I think you’re a faggot.” Would you be responding the same way?

aketus: “But you’re not questioning why the word is offensive. It’s just 4 letters. Where is the Board of Profanities that label certain words with more or less connotations than others? And who gives them the right to make it universally accepted this way?”

aketus, I don’t care about whether the word “cunt” is by itself “offensive,” “vulgar,” “profane,” “dirty,” “obscene,” etc.; thus I don’t care about how we’re supposed to determine this. As I explained above, what I’m concerned with is not the word at all, but rather the way it’s being used in the “funny” image at the end of the post.

Andy, thanks for the reply.

I’m not claiming that the image couldn’t be funny without an appeal to sexism. In fact I think it would be funnier if it weren’t using the word “cunt” to contemptuously describe a woman (if it were, say, “But I think you’re an asshole,” just to take an example off the top of my head).

The problem with using “cunt” that way is that (1) it takes out your contempt in the form of explicitly sexualized aggression toward her (by reducing her to her genitals, making her a mere “cunt” instead of a human being) and (2) it presupposes that a “cunt” is a bad thing to be (otherwise it could hardly work as an insult). I hope you can imagine why this might be insulting to people who happen to have one.

“Certainly, we can be more confident about natural facts than moral ones.”

I don’t agree that this is “certain,” at least not categorically. For example, it is a moral fact that it’s wrong to pour gasoline over a cat and light it on fire, just for the fun of watching it burn. It seems to be a natural fact, as far as we know, that the Universe is expanding, and that the further away a galaxy is from us, the faster it is moving away from us. I’m pretty confident of both facts, but I’m far more confident of the fact that it’s wrong to burn cats alive just for the fun of it than I am of the fact that the Universe is expanding. (In fact, I think that if anyone reposes less cofidence in certain moral facts, such as the fact that burning cats alive for the fun of it is wrong, than they do in empirical discoveries, then that itself may be a form of moral vice…)

“In case anybody had any illusions on this matter, last week beyond all reasonable doubt that New Labour are a bunch of authoritarian cunts.”

Why are you comparing authoritarians in New Labour to women’s genitals?

Is that supposed to be some kind of an insult?

“Steps are afoot to begin a campaign led by bloggers to try and stop the bastards in their tracks.”

Why are you commenting on their parentage, for that matter? It ain’t their mamas fault that they act like a bunch of twits.

I think I actually remember seeing something in a simlar vein — a combination laundromat / coffee shop / Internet cafe, specifically — somewhere in Santa Cruz when I went back to visit a couple of years ago.

Seems like a great idea, to me at least! Also, instead of having one of those ridiculous vending machines, if there’s a cafe with a register built in, you could just sell people measured portions out of a huge vat of 7th Generation or some other eco-friendly detergant.

Well, I know why “cunt” is considered a dirtier word than “vagina” or “vulva” (as you mention, it’s because it’s was a vulgar word, in the literal sense), and I’m familiar with feminist efforts to “reclaim” the word. My concern isn’t with profanity; it’s with “humor” that reduces a woman — even one who is, in fact, a really rotten person — to her genitals in order to express your anger or contempt for her.

English affords a lot of ways of insulting people that don’t have anything in particular to do with sex or gender; there’s no need to do it this way.

Alexandra, you may think that the following comment is a “slam dunk.” I think it’s the height of political immorality. Viz: “You see, Glenn, al Qaeda really is a threat to the United States. As such, we must do everything in our power to thwart their designs to foment mayhem and promulgate murder. You may not understand this, but most Americans are more than willing to sacrifice our civil liberties and much more so than we have done so far in this effort.”

I have no problem with an individual American who is “more than willing” to sacrifice her or his own civil liberties and much more so than she has done so far in “this effort.” That’s your bag; if you want to trade off living your life at the permission of others in order to gain more in the way of bodily safety, I won’t get in the way. The problem is that that’s not all they’re proposing when they talk about “sacrificing our civil liberties.” What they mean, and what I object to, is that they are “more than willing” to sacrifice other people’s civil liberties, and more specifically my civil liberties, and much more so than they have done so far in “this effort,” whether I like it or not. That you have no right to “sacrifice.” It’s not yours to give.

“The real danger to the United States is that the threat of AQ will force us to abandon our freedoms, making us less than what we are or could be.”

This gives too much credit to Al-Qaeda’s neferious powers and puts too little blame where it belongs: on the Bush gang and their running dogs.

Al Qaeda cannot “force us to abandon our freedom” without conquering the country and imposing a totalitarian state of their own — something which they are certainly in no position to do. As far as freedom in America is killed, it will have been murdered by the free choice of fanatics and opportunists within the United States, using Al-Qaeda and the War Effort as an excuse.

Furthermore, what will have happened is not that “we abandoned our freedom.” What will have happened is that one group of people (viz. said fanatics and opportunists) have willingly taken another group of people’s (viz. their victims’) freedom. I’m sure that after the Counter-Revolution, if it comes, the freedom of folks like Alberto Gonzales and John Negroponte will be doing just fine.

“Jesus loves you! But I think you’re a cunt.”

Why are you referring to a woman to a vulva or vagina?

Is that supposed to be some kind of insult?

A fascinating quote and good to hear from Sumner. For an interesting compare and contrast, though, see Benjamin Tucker’s State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ (1888), where Tucker makes quite a similar argument, and indeed says something nearly identical, but construes the whole debate as a debate WITHIN “socialism,” between state socialism (“which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice”) and anarchistic socialism (“which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished”). Thus Tucker:

“The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism. There are, in fact, two currents steadily flowing from the center of the Socialistic forces which are concentrating them on the left and on the right; and, if Socialism is to prevail, it is among the possibilities that, after this movement of separation has been completed and the existing order have been crushed out between the two camps, the ultimate and bitterer conflict will be still to come. In that case all the eight-hour men, all the trades-unionists, all the Knights of Labor, all the land nationalizationists, all the greenbackers, and, in short, all the members of the thousand and one different battalions belonging to the great army of Labor, will have deserted their old posts, and, these being arrayed on the one side and the other, the great battle will begin. What a final victory for the State Socialists will mean, and what a final victory for the Anarchists will mean, it is the purpose of this paper to briefly state.”

Tucker, of course, hoped for victory for the Anarchists.

I’d be interested to know how far the difference between Sumner and Tucker here over “socialism” is merely terminological, and how far it’s substantive.