Apologies

I'm in a state of cognitive ferment. I make these notes available because they may be of interest and you may be of assistance. But they are the product of an agonizing process. I'm trying to make sense of something, but I haven't a clue as to what it is. These words are more like a spell than a treatise - talismanic chants aspiring to conjure up my demon and give it a shape I can comprehend.

We've been discussing evil, motive and law. Let's take a step back for a moment.

A moral proposition declares its object wrong or right.

A legal proposition adds a "therefore" clause.

"It is wrong to kill therefore killers shall be punished."

"It is right to apprehend killers therefore informants shall be rewarded."

So we might be able to make the case that a moral statement isn't an "ought" at all. To state a moral proposition is to declare what is. Only its legal implication prescribes an ought.

If we assume that moral propositions are realities in themselves this would go some distance to explain the tension between morality and reason. If the real and the rational are perpetually estranged from one another then morality as descriptor is opposed to reason.

But is a moral descriptor a fundamentally different proposition than a perceptive descriptor? We can argue until dawn whether the sky is actually blue. But the heavens will ultimately serve as evidence to support one proposition or the other. Misleading as the evidentiary appeal may be (why don't we consider the sky black?), moral propositions lack even such grounds for support. We can conduct a million abortions each year, no amount of repetition will bolster or denigrate the position that such actions are a moral wrong.

This may also explain why intution plays such a strong role in moral debate. If we are arguing the color of the sky, my perception will clearly indicate that it is black. Nevertheless, you may convince me that as a categorical statement, "the sky is blue" is true, despite its contradiction of my nighttime perceptions. Similarly, I may be brought to concede that a moral proposition is true despite its inconsistency with my moral perceptions. Moral propositions may be impervious to empirical validation, that doesn't mean they're impervious to rational critique.

But how can moral propositions be descriptive of reality if their referent enjoys no physical existence? How many other descriptoins can meet such a demanding standard? "San Francisco is 350 miles away." That is true for me. It's not true for you. It may not be true for me tomorrow. The truth of the statement is contingent upon the precision of its articulation and the context of its apprehension.