InspiringPhilosophy - A Critique of Non-Cognitivism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0rPO93eIO4

"When people typically express moral claims, they intuitively assume cognitivism" - do they?

"Non-cognitivists do not think moral claims can be either true or false" - is that a definition of non-cognitivism? There are other ones out there. This one does not make reference to the essential meaning of 'cognitive' which is "to do with knowledge". Surely a better definition would be "do not think moral claims involve knowledge of moral facts" or similar.

In response to the Marturano quote: it's perfectly possible for two people, neither of whose beliefs about the world are accurate, to disagree. It's also possible for them to reason on the basis of their beliefs. Therefore there does not have to be any truth-aptness in their statements for them to reason and disagree. They just have to have intelligible pictures of the world as represented in language. And it's similarly a mistake to assume that a proposition must necessarily be true or false.

It's reasonable to say non-cognitivism is not intuitive. It's not however right to say moral cognitivism is intuitive. Plenty of people are suspicious of the idea that there are hard and fast moral rules - they see there is a great deal more relativity than that. 

In any case intuitiveness/counter-intuitiveness means nothing as regards the truth of a matter. The whole purpose of philosophy is to enquire carefully into the truth of things, rather than take our immediate or pre-existing suppositions as fact and then just find ways to shore them up. Hume is a great example of a philosopher whose whole enterprise was to question what people usually believe in,  but which he thought he could show should not so readily be believed in.

The onus is not especially on the non-cognitivists to show they are right. I say the burden is on the moral realists, as there is no evidence for any moral reality. And moral realists rarely attempt to show there is. The fact that a lot of people pre-theoretically assume their moral beliefs are objective is no reason to try to shift the burden of proof onto non-cognitivists. All non-cognitivists have to do is ask "Where is your evidence that there is anything to know about? What sort of thing would be a 'moral fact'?"

If non-cognitivism is true, a moral claim need not be an emotion or expression of attitude. It could be a proposition that just includes a concept or category that does not correspond to anything real. It's not cognitive because there is nothing to be known. But it's not that the moral claim does not have the usual content of a statement or proposition, namely senses and references. The person might well imagine that the moral claim is factual, and thus they mean the statement in that way.

"Any judgement that fails to motivate, according to non-cognitivism, cannot possibly be a moral judgement." I don't see why. But then this is just what Russ Shafer-Landau says, not what any non-cognitivist says.

Frege-Geach problem: "But if I do not assert a moral claim and say something else, then I would be making a cognitive claim." What is a cognitive claim? Is it a claim that involves something that can be known about, about which there is a matter of fact? This need not be the case with the examples cited.

• Question: "Is it wrong to steal?" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.
• Disjunction: "Stealing is wrong or murder is wrong" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.
• Report: "Price John believes stealing is wrong" - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.
• Condition: "If stealing is wrong, then Robin Hood was wrong to steal..." - doesn't mean there's a matter of fact about it.

So there's no reason why we have to consider these to involve 'cognitive claims'.

I accept some of the closing arguments are valid regarding the logical equivocation of positions like Emotivism. Emotivism is a terrible attempt to try and explain moral thinking and speech, which convinces almost no-one. However this is not the only sense of 'moral non-cognitivism'. And since this video dichotomistically opposed non-cognitivism with moral realism (by bringing in truth-aptness issues) we should repudiate the assumption that is emotivism-type non-cognitivist thinking can be shown to be logically faulty, this supports belief in objective morals.

Shafer-Landau: "Cognitivists have ready, straightforward analyses of such a view of moral argument. Non-cognitivists don't."

In reply: "Moral anti-realists have ready, straightforward analyses of the lack of evidence of objective morals. Moral realists don't."