A SHORT EXCHANGE ON MORAL FACTS

This short exchange is based on Justin McBrayer's article, Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts, which was featured in the New York Times.



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"If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged? If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others?" Ibid.

As a professor you should know better than this.

The answer to all your questions is simple: the "good" by which we function is not supernatural (or for that matter timeless and universal) but is only "good" within a social context/ even as this context is what gives goodness its property of goodness in the first place. The referent of good is not some magical abstract form (the world of ideas), but very simply, social context. Without social context there would be no good.

Human beings were not created; they simply exist. 

Respectfully yours,
Jersey Flight


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Dear Jersey,

Thank you for reaching out.  I don’t see how anything that I say in the NYT piece suggests that we disagree.  You say basically this: there are moral truths, but what is true varies with time or with culture or whatever.  OK.  Suppose that’s the case.  It’s still fair to say that certain value claims are true and that others are false, right?  For example, you probably think that it’s true in our time or culture that it’s wrong to enslave people of a different race.  But if that’s right, then at least some value claims will be true.

So where is the benefit in telling kids that no value claim is true?

Best,
Justin

BTW, nothing in my article even hints at the supernatural.  Not sure where that came from.


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Just so long as we are clear on the cultural subjectivity of the word truth, then I agree. Everything you said hinges on what you mean by truth.

As per supernaturalism I know this was not part of your article. I only brought it up by way of anticipation. If you claim that Truth is some kind of metaphysical or Platonic ideal then you have automatically slipped into the realm of the supernatural.

"It’s still fair to say that certain value claims are true and that others are false, right?"

That would all depend on what you mean by truth (and what you mean by false)?

I say a certain value claim is good if it has certain positive, social properties.

"So where is the benefit in telling kids that no value claim is true?"

Speaking in these kind of general terms is problematic. Why does a value claim have to be True in order to have value?

My answer to your question is that one does not lie about what a value is and this contains its own value.

The paradigm you put forth is dangerous because it assumes that a value claim must have the property of Truth in order to have the property of value. This is false, and in the long run this leads to oppressive systems of power. In short, this is the axiom of fascism. 

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