Saturday, 9 July 2022

Morality doesn't exist: Error theory and faulty moral claims

 With this blog I am hoping to not only share my thoughts on various philosophical and political topics, but I'd also like to use this as a platform to compartmentalize my thoughts and better understand myself in the process. (:



Today I had a conversation with my friend Ryam about morality! The conversation took place on Discord and in real time so my responses were a bit disorderly and not very well articulated. In this blog post I'm going to summarize my beliefs in a way that's more coherent and compact.

So I basically subscribe to moral fictionism. I don't believe that morality is subjective, but more that morality doesn't exist in the first place. This is because moral statements have no substantial truth conditions and are influenced by the subject's goals and desires. 

Let us use the example of a pro-life subject whose moral judgment is that abortion is wrong. While the subject may believe their opinion is correct, in reality they are simply adherent to a pro-natalist worldview using hypothetical reasoning (reasons relative to the subject). 

To the mind of the pro-lifer, the belief that abortion is wrong is more than just their opinion, but an objective  fact. Thus the moral realist casts a judgment where right and wrong cannot be questioned.  

I am against such arrogant ways of thinking.

Moral judgments are not grounded in reason and are instead the result of ego driven delusion.

Believe me ,I acknowledge that right and wrong can exist to an extent because some behaviors and actions are desirable and some are not. To deny this would be to rail against my own philosophical beliefs. 


1. I accept that morality exists to the extent that some behaviors are clearly good or bad.

2. I reject judgment and view it as a flaw that stems from egotistical thinking.

Some questions I'd have to ask moral objectivists would be:


1: What moral properties exist in a physical or concrete form? 

2: Why are there no cosmic consequences to a moral failing? 

3: If humans are influenced by personal feelings and have a limited scope of reality, how can a subject be sure to know what's right or wrong?

4: Moral judgments oversimplifies complexity and often fails to adequately answer moral dilemmas.

5: Humans can't agree on a moral code (Duty, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, etc).


Argument 1 suggests that there is no physical moral form. Facts requires knowledge of something, and none are present.

Argument 2 is basically my appeal to religion. How do we prove there is an all powerful being who has made morality objective? 

Argument 3 is my appeal to ignorance. How do we know we possess the very capability to understand what's moral?

Argument 4 is my favorite argument as a psychedelic user! This is the argument of oversimplicity. Humans resort to dichotomous thinking while ignoring the true complexities of situations.

Argument 5 speaks for itself. There are countless ethical systems but none can prove to be superior to the others.


  1. i'm a moral moral fictionalist, do any of you know what that means? lol
  2. Moral fictionalism is the doctrine that the moral claims we accept should be treated as convenient fictions. One standard kind of moral fictionalism maintains that many of the moral claims we ordinarily accept are in fact false, but these claims are still useful to produce and accept, despite this falsehood.
  3. Good to know stuff :p
  4. Had a lot of fun with this lecture on moral error theory!
  5. πŸ₯³
  6. too many people can see the ramblings of my insanity when its in a big discord like this lol

    I like insanity

  7. i like geeks hahaha

  8. I think it would be an assertion that morals exist as an ideal, but are not innately manifested into the real world. They cannot be truths, because there is no compelling force to oblige to morals. Further, the moral truths an individual holds and not consistent with those of other individuals
  9. I like insanity

    You haven’t had my flavor of insanity ☺️
  10. You haven’t had my flavor of insanity ☺️

    Guess I have to fix that then!

  11. instead of using moral language to express false propositions we should use it to express attitudes

  12. Attitudes?

  13. for me it's about taking out the judgment and replacing it with a good faith approach to answer problems
  14. the abortion debate is a big example where people make moral judgments
  15. noncogntiive attitudes don't express moral truths so i prefer that

  16. Eh, the issue with the abortion debate is moral inconsistencies, not any actual moral stance

  17. i think we're talking about different things but yeah
  18. i think that people's feelings precede moral judgment
  19. morality is just an excuse for ppl to defend whatever they like

  20. I mean, moral inconsistencies are what I take the above quote to be getting at. The inconsistencies morals take between people or within a person prevents there from being moral fact, and thus it is only moral fiction can exist

  21. i don't believe moral facts are possible regardless of inconsistencies

  22. I mean, contractualism is a belief system that would exert that moral fact can exist, albeit it would need to be codified (implicitly or explicitly) and enforced - but it creates a system in which all must adhere to some moral code. In a society based upon contractualism, moral could be codified into fact

  23. is that your moral system?

  24. I mean, I havent put enough thought into it to have a moral system I adhere to. I'm much more of the type to just try to drift through innoffensively. Although, if I had to put a label on things I would say I'm more of an absolutist.

  25. why?

  26. meaning, I think there are absolute facets of morality one must adhere to, or else they are amoral
  27. Because if morals can change from person to person, an act that does good could be taken as both good and bad depending on who you ask. There is no way to reconcile such, but the act either performed good deeds or was a selfish action (selfishness being the basis of evil). I believe acts that enable the autonomy of a person are inherently good, and acts that detract from the autonomy of other people are inherently bad

  28. isn't that dichotomous thinking?
  29. what if an action performs both good and bad?

  30. eh, I used person too loosely. My definition of person would be "a sentient and sapient being capable of acting independently and making their own decisions"

  31. what about moral dillemas like the double effect doctrine?

  32. In my opinion intent does not have any bearing on the morality of an action

  33. oh
  34. are you a consequentialist?

  35. If I tried to do CPR to save someone, but that instead results in their death - my intent is irrelevant. A person died as a result of my actions, therefore the action for me to perform CPR was amoral
  36. are you a consequentialist?

    yes but not an "ends justify the means" consequentialist either

  37. then what kind

  38. :PYR_SweatPup:

  39. I dont have a good word to describe it. More of a tempered consequentialist - if I can coin the term - in which I hold that one has an obligation to act in a moral way, but it is the responsibility of that person to act morally in the context of their own autonomy

  40. my only issue w that is that i see morality as subjective
  41. or rather:
  42. maybe not purely subjective
  43. but fiction

  44. im getting dangerously close to utilitarianism as I think, which I have gripes with. But honestly, I'm the type who thinks that there are expressions of morality and expressions of amorality. An expression of morality does not define a person as moral, but an expression of amorality would cast a person as amoral - because a moral person couldnt take an amoral action

  45. i see it as a preference rather than a real thing

  46. And for that reason, morality becomes a sort of "paradox of tolerance" - in which moral people cannot tolerate amoral actions, or else they become amoral themselves

  47. my issue with morality is that it's attached to judgment

  48. Preference might be a good word for it

  49. yes i mostly agree 100% with what ur saying
  50. my problem is more the concept of morality itself
  51. the concept of morality makes decision making more difficult and makes less room for compromise
  52. and i use abortion as an example bc it shows how moral judgments affect people's rights

  53. My food just arrived so imma go eat, but think of it like this - I think it was plato who had the "theory of forms" (or something like that). Morality exists as a monolith outside of our perception, but we can only see the shadows of it projected upon our world. We cannot percieve or replicate the actual form of morality, so we act in ways influenced by its projection upon our world. That doesnt mean morality is subjective - it means our perception of morality is subjective.

  54. oooo
  55. share
  56. ook well that's an interesting view of it
  57. but i don't believe in the conventional concept of morality
  58. at all lol
  59. i see it mostly as an excuse to cast judgment
  60. but that's just my opinion
  61. this is how i see people use it, as a form of judgment and people very often argue that their moral beliefs are axiomatic and can't be challenged
  62. and that's my issue with morality
  63. it makes reasoning with people become impossible
  64. i see it mostly as an excuse to cast judgment

    Morality must be used to cast judgement on amorality, or the amoral will consume the moral. In a moral world, amoralities cannot exist or be allowed to flourish

  65. well sure, but that's why i believe in my approach to morality

  66. That’s what I was trying to get at with the paradox of tolerance analogy

  67. which i mentioned before
  68. Moral fictionalism
  69. it's a mediation of some sort
  70. the idea is that we should accept moral claims but also treat them as convenient fictions
  71. this takes away the weird holistic judgment out of it
  72. but still accepts that moral values are a benefit to society

  73. See, I think morality has to be holistic.

  74. that's the problem

  75. In fact as I was eating I considered a previous statement which id revise

  76. people are too irrational and emotion driven
  77. and their moral judgments are often very misguided
  78. i just don't trust people to judge matters holistically
  79. and i generally dislike unnuanced approaches to ethical questions

  80. Well, I'd agree that the evaluation of morality cannot be done holistically because all people are in fact amoral

  81. ahhhh
  82. replace amoral with illogical and that's how i feel more or less xD

  83. I mean, amoral == illogical insofar as people will uphold morals as long as its convenient for them

  84. i also think people's ego makes them incredibly difficult to reason
  85. how do you reason with bias?
  86. how do you reason with people who think they understand something that they don't?
  87. I mean, amoral == illogical insofar as people will uphold morals as long as its convenient for them

    oh ok
  88. i agree
  89. how do you reason with bias?

    irrefutable data and claims counter to the basis of their bias

  90. people don't care about data

  91. if such cannot free someone of bias, they are not biased, they are deluded, actively lying to themselves

  92. you can present all the data in the world to someone who disagrees with you and they won't c are
  93. it's fake news

  94. exactly. Delusion
at

1 comment:

  1. Toby(2B)9 July 2022 at 22:00

    This is quite cliche but I believe the first thing to tackle would be what "morality" really means to us. According to Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The question of the definition of morality is the question of identifying the target of moral theorizing."

    They also further describe "morality" to fall under tentatively the following definitions:

    "the term “morality” can be used either

    1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or

    2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people."

    I believe the main issue with morality comes from a point of social contract in essence: though on the converse I've heard some fine arguments for objective morality coming from a deterministic and evolutionary psychology point of view.

    I guess the next question to ask a moral fictionalist/realist/relativist is... is it morally fictional to save someone's life knowing that your DNA is similar to theirs, thus you run to save them - i.e. determined by your biological predisposition that you ought to or are likely to save someone, the close their DNA structures are related to you.
    This might make sense from a more deterministic POV but, of course, this fails on the ground for natural fallacy.

    Of course, not everyone will conform to that type of behaviour and perhaps you could back up that argument from an evolution point of views as well. As much as genes could determine how we behave and organise ourselves in a society, there is a degree of nurture that inhibits our mutation or disease from spreading further should precarious or extensive variables are thrown into the picture.

    I think humans not being able to agree on a moral code makes sense on a more sociological scale but on a more instinctual level, there is always something inherent within us that makes things on our biological code of conduct seem "acceptable."

    While this may not be a viable argument, it makes up for an egoistic POV. Autonomy is indubitably up for consideration here, as amorality stems from violating any form of autonomy.

    I think it's almost obvious that we all "ought" to live and thus if we "ought" to live, we are therefore by all means obligated to do whatever it takes to ensure our own survival: this can be established as a fundamental moral ground for all of humanity or any species.

    With that being said, morals are in essence "idealistic" and thus often require subtleties, nuances, rigour, and enough coherency or validity that it ensures that we all somehow maintain order in the system. It's idealistic -- so ultimately our eyes are going to be often dead set on the very things that motivate in the bigger picture rather than any sort of encouragement of the smaller details that could have their own consequences.

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