Factual and Aesthetic Judgements

Tanya Dabra

Question 1:

Factual Judgements refer to the thing under discussion, and a factual statement that is true is a statement that accurately describes the thing it is talking about, and such a statement cannot be consulted to be solved by anyone. Therefore, there can be disagreement between two people discussing factual statements because both statements cannot be true at the same time (Jones Notes Unit 1). Whereas, an aesthetic judgment refers to the thing under discussion and the way it is predicated. This means that an aesthetic statement refers to liking/disliking the thing under discussion, and two aesthetic judgements cannot disagree because they are not talking about the same thing but about their respective likes or dislikes for something (Jones Notes Unit 1).

To illustrate the difference between factual and aesthetic judgements, take for example, two people who are trying to guess what the temperature in Milwaukee was last week on an unexpected warm day in February. Person #1 might say that the high temperature that day was 62° while person #2 might say that the temperature was 67°; both statements are judgements based on factual information such as that it was a warm day, and the temperature was in the 60s. Both people can disagree on the numerical value of the high temperature because this issue can be solved by looking online from a credible source, but another person just can't decide if person #1 or #2 is correct. It is also important to note that this situation would not be part of aesthetic judgements because neither person #1 or #2 have personal feelings associated with the numerical value of temperature; it is simply a disagreement of information rather than the feelings associated with whether it was a warm day or not as per personal preference towards temperature.

Moral judgments, however, have a sense of controversy to them. In (Jones Notes Unit 1), it questions whether there are any objective standards by which moral judgements can be assessed so that there is actual disagreement or are moral judgements are simply expression of personal preference. This would mean that the ethical relativist would think that moral judgements cannot have disagreement because these statements have no moral standards or have invented (social or personal) standards that are relative to the culture, group of people, or situation in which the statement is said. The ethical relativist (ER) would say that "all moral judgments are "value judgements"" (Pojman 15). This means that an ethical relativist would say that since there are no objective moral standards that all cultures follow, there cannot be any disagreement on what is moral and what is not because "value judgments are subjective" (Pojman 15). By this, the ER would say that moral judgements equate to aesthetic judgments because statements would be about personal preference towards a thing in discussion and there is no right or wrong because there won't be any disagreement about the thing since they are talking about their respective likes and dislikes about it. For example, person #1 might say that having colored walls in an office lures customers in, as that's what businesses do in Italy, demonstrating social relativism. While person #2 says that having neutral colored walls are better because it is wrong to 'lure' customers in and they like neutral better, demonstrating personal relativism. There would be no absolute or contextual standards involved, as there are no binding or contextual moral standards that would be applied in a matter of ethical relativism.

Question 3

As basic definition, ethical egoism is the principle that "each person ought to always do things or acts that will best serve his or her own best self-interest without real regard for the interests of others" (Jones Notes Unit 2). Given this, for claim 1, it is correct to say that a person will always try to take care of 'number 1' and ethical egoism (EE) is a correct moral theory only if the argument to prove EE as a correct moral theory involves altruism, as stated by Ayn Rand. It is our undeniable right to seek our own happiness and an individual has a moral duty to fulfill this right by seeking his or her own good first, regardless of how it affects others. But, altruism says to sacrifice our own lives for the sake and good of others. Therefore, ethical egoism is a correct moral theory because our primary goal in life should be to seek our happiness first, and that is inconsistent with the theory of altruism because altruism doesn't allow a person to reach his or her own goal of happiness as an organism (Pojman 86-87).

In claim 2, however, it is incorrect to say that ethical egoism justifies selfish behavior and that EE don't cooperate with other people. The most important thing to note in ethical egoism is that it refers to actions that best fulfill self-interest. Self-interest would be exemplified as "we are concerned to promote our own good, but not necessarily at any cost" (Pojman 87). This would mean that individuals recognize the need to do what is best for them, but also accept failure if the outcome is not good; they will do things, in their self-interest, but only to an extent, stopping at the point where their actions would be considered morally unjust. Selfishness, on the other hand, says that an individual "will sacrifice the good of others for {his or her} own good" (Pojman 87). A selfish person will continue to do things, even after they become unjust to do so only to fulfill their own goal. Ethical egoism involves self-interest, and an individual will consider interest of others', only if it promotes his or her own interest. Ethical egoism does not involve selfishness because "it is simply not in my interest to harm others" (Jones Notes Unit 2). Therefore, claim 2 is false in regards to ethical egoism.

Claim 3, similarly to claim 2, is also false because ethical egoism does not justify harming other people whenever an individual can. An ethical egoist recognizes that while it is beneficial to themselves to do certain things to promote themselves, no unjust action is worth doing to another person or in a situation because it temporarily fulfills the individual's goal. This is because it is in not in the best self-interest of the person to also deal with any negative consequences that would come with doing that unjust action. Simply, it would not be in the best self-interest of an ethical egoist to harm another whenever he or she could because (1) it's not in the interest of the individual to harm, and, (2) it is also not in the interest of the individual to deal with the actual, perhaps negative, consequences of his or her actions. If the actual consequences are positive, and the action is not unjust, then the individual would proceed to do that action to promote and fulfill best self-interest (Jones Notes Unit 2). Therefore, claim 3 is incorrect in regards to ethical egoism.

Question 2

There are two types of claims: descriptive and moral. A claim is a statement that asserts something that can be true or false. A descriptive statement is a claim that claims this IS the case. Whereas, a moral statement is a claim that claims that this OUGHT to be the case (Jones Notes Unit 1 PDF). Moral statements are value judgements while descriptive statements do not make value judgements. Descriptive statements merely describe the moral standards someone holds in a statement, without attaching any personal feelings or personal moral standards. Which would mean that moral statements describe the correct moral someone should act in a situation given the person's moral beliefs. For example, a moral statement would be: "The government should not have the right to take the life of one its citizens as punishment for a crime." The "should" in this statement equates to ought, meaning that the government does not have the right to take the life of a citizen because to do so would be immoral or unjust in some way.

Per the notes, descriptive subjectivism would be described as the way each person has his/her own value, personal beliefs, morals, and experiences, and considering those, a person makes/thinks of moral decision as wrong or right (Jones Notes Unit 1). And, it is also said that descriptive subjectivism would agree that there is "universal agreement among people about moral principles and values" (Jones Notes Unit 1). However, these premises do not equate descriptive subjectivism to moral subjectivism because just because people have different sets of values, beliefs, and morals, it doesn't mean that we all have completely different views. In this case, one would use 'subjectivism' in the descriptive sense - describing factual statements about someone's value system subjectively. In the case of the dependency and the diversity thesis, the diversity thesis acknowledges that morals differ from society to society, and there are no universal morals to abide by (Pojman 17-18). Whereas, the dependency thesis states that an "individual acts either right or wrong depending on the nature of the society that it occurs in" (Pojman 17-18). Given this, both theses would follow the conduct of moral statements, since both deal with morals in a situation. Both theses would use "ought" statements because the diversity thesis would refer to "ought" given the society because in that society, one must "ought" to do this/that, and these statements would not be factual. The similar would apply to the dependency thesis.

Descriptive theories do not necessarily support or justify moral theories because it would be fallacious to say that if a person did not show an automatic positive response to an animal, then that person does not care about the good for animals. This would be an illustration of descriptive subjectivism, by common terms, because the morality of the person would be relative and personal to the person who said that - it is the person's personal preference to think that having a positive response to an animal is the "right" thing to do. However, this would not qualify as a moral because there is no moral statement that would say "a person ought to have an automatic positive to an animal." Such morality is evolved, or in the society the person is in such as stated in the diversity thesis, but there are no moral facts; facts that would be part of factual statement in a descriptive statement. If someone doesn't react well to an animal, there is no moral fact that states that a negative response is morally wrong or unjust. The person might be scared of animals or it might be in their culture to not show any positive response when faced by an animal. There is no descriptive, factual, theory that would support someone's personal preference in acting towards an animal.