A culture or a set of cultural beliefs constitute an object. The set of beliefs held by that culture are instantiated properties of the specific culture, the object. Thus, there are "normative facts" of this nature.

Moral is subjective i. e asking with mind weather it is right or wrong. It is guided by the value possed by individual to regulate our behavior as mental construct. So normative facts in moral is exactly a mirror of individual values. Multiple moral could be there in single value as multiple image could be formed with single object but fact can't be specific in image thought it is there. Same is true here

RE: "One ought not to harm animals for entertainment purposes" etc. But imperative sentences don't have any truth value ( they are neither true nor false)."

This is confused. "One ought not to harm animals for entertainment purposes" is not an imperative sentence. It is a declarative sentence or statement. "Imperative" means command. The corresponding imperative sentence would be "Do not harm animals for entertainment purposes" which indeed is neither true nor false, but might still be appropriate or inappropriate. Although some theorists have argued for the reductive thesis that value-judgements are disguised commands, that claim is controversial and not widely accepted.

These two articles might be of help to you:

• http://en.bookfi.net/s/?q=Are+There+Unresolvable+Moral+Disputes%3F&e=1&t=0
• http://en.bookfi.net/s/?q=the+cognitivity+of+moral+judgments&e=1&t=0

Dear Bessat Elmie and readers,

In his landmark paper The Question of Realism, Kit Fine points to a dilemma for anyone who would like to claim that there are no normative facts. The antirealist thinks that the following sentence is true:

• There are no normative facts.

The antirealist also thinks that:

• Killing babies for fun is wrong.

Now, the trouble is that if the second sentence is true, then the fact that killing babies for fun is wrong obtains. Thus, the second sentence entails that there are moral facts which is incompatible with the first sentence. (p. 1, Fine 2002)

Thus, any moral antirealist better have a story about how to resolve this conflict.

Obviously, the challenge presupposes a particular thesis about truth, sometimes called “The Correspondence Theory of Truth”. The basic idea is that a sentence S is true iff the fact that S obtains.* Fine, as well as many others, think that there is actually an asymmetry involved. Somehow, the fact makes the sentence true (this is often discussed under the label “Truthmaking” or “Grounding”).**

So, we can look at the question about normative facts as an instance of a general question with regard to the existence of facts, which is a question about reality as such. As Kit Fine puts it:

“Among the most important issues in philosophy are those concerning the reality of this or that feature of the world. Are there numbers or other abstract objects? Is everything mental or everything physical? Are there moral facts? It is through attempting to resolve such questions that philosophy holds out the promise of presenting us with a world-view, a picture of how the world is and of our place within it.” (pp. 1-2, Fine 2002)

One may or may not agree with Fine, but in any case, clarifying and challenging underlying assumptions about the nature of truth (and reality) seems to be necessary for anyone who, for example, wants to maintain that there are no moral facts.

It might be of interest that one can give a semantical treatment of imperatives within the truthmaking framework, if one takes actions to be in compliance or contravention with imperative sentences. A rather technical proposal for a semantics of imperatives has been given by Kit Fine.***

With regard to your question: “I was wondering if talk of a "normative fact" makes any sense at all.” Fine points out that “the difficulties begin with the formulation of the question rather than with the attempt at an answer” (p. 2, Fine 2002). Consider your definition of 'fact':

“Given the definition of a fact as "the instantiation/exemplification of a property by an object", what is the "object"--either physical or abstract-- whose "instantiated property" would register as a "normative fact"?”

I'm a bit puzzled by your definition. If I make it explicit, what you seem to say is that :

• A fact is the instantiation or exemplification of a property F by an object x.

This seems to say that:

• The fact [xF] obtains iff an object x instantiates a property F.

If this is correct, then I don't understand your question. The object that exemplifies F is not a fact (I have the property to speak German, but I'm not a fact). Your question seems to be about the left hand side, i. e. about the nature of facts, while the way you phrase it seems to suggest that you are asking about some property F that makes something a fact (or a normative fact). It would be helpful if you could clarify this a bit.

Anyway, thanks four your interesting question.

Best,

Sven Beecken

• Fine, Kit. "The question of realism." Individuals, Essence and Identity. Springer, Dordrecht, 2002. 3-48.
• * See, for example, the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/
• **See, for example, the entry on Grounding in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grounding/
• ***Fine, Kit COMPLIANCE AND COMMAND I—CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES; September 2018; The Review of Symbolic Logic

Thanks everyone for your very generous answers.

Dear Sven Beecken,

An anti-realist, if s/he also happens to be a moral relativist, could conveniently account for the consistency of believing in both of the two statements you point out early on in your answer. This is so because for a relativist words such as "wrong" or "right" are merely derogative or approbative adjectives expressive of someone's (or some community's) subjective preferences. So, I don't see any problem in believing that

(1) There are no (moral) normative facts i.e. mind-independent norms, a la norms about mathematical objects, out there in the universe, and all moral norms are contracts realigning one's or a community's likes and dislikes of a particular behavior.

and

(2) Killing babies for fun is wrong i.e. such an action is the object of someone's or some community's unanimous dislike (a "dislike" not shared by the Aztecs for instance).

At this point, the burden of proof would be on the realist's shoulder to demonstrate that, unlike the anti-realist's claim, the word "wrong" in (2) has an objective sense to it (I sometimes sense that the impetus behind the realist's argument for the "truth" of moral norms is something like this: " to think that ' killing babies for fun' is somehow 'right' is unthinkably horrible; it runs counter to all our "likes", so there must be some objective extra-human norms prohibiting such behavior in humans.").

I actually drew the definition of fact in my question from an entry in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on "facts"; I've also seen this definition being used by Paul Boghossian who is an outspoken anti-relativist realist. I think of this definition as the more refined, more nuanced, version of the more commonsense view of a fact as "that which is the case".Of course objects are not facts, they are what facts are true of. You are not a fact, but "that Sven speaks German" is a fact instantiated by an object ( technically a substance) called Sven.

I don't tend to hold this definition as unquestionably true or even coherent, and I would appreciate if you could offer a more viable definition of a fact for our purposes here.

Anyway, what I'm interested in here is in what sense a realist could argue for the mind-independent legitimacy of a moral norm; I just can't see how one would "ground" a normative claim in a non-relative non-human fact. Is a moral normative claim "true"? if then, what exactly is the truth-making entity by virtue of which the normative claim becomes "true"?-- And if you do not subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth, then under what theory of truth would you argue for the "truth" of moral normative statements?

Finally, there are also "semantic treatments" of imperative sentences which argue for their having possible truth-values in virtue of their reduction to "personal preferences" e.g. William B. Star's " A Preference Semantics for Imperative". https://philarchive.org/archive/STAAPSv2

Best

Dear Bessat Elmie and readers,

It is perhaps useful to look again at the argument that is presented by Fine (p. 2; Fine):

Now, Fine presents the argument without the premise 3. (hence the '*'), but in order to derive his conclusion, one has to account for the connection between true sentences and facts in order to show how the contradiction can be derived. Fine himself has something else in mind, i. e. “ground” (I'll return to that). To begin with, I use 3. as a first approximation in order to discuss the moral relativist's reply.

First, in order even to have an argument, we must assume that the premises 1. to 3. are either true or false. Second, we have to show that the argument is valid. Here, we can use informal reasoning: We can derive from premises 2. and 3. the claim that the fact that killing babies for fun is wrong obtains. Assuming that this is a normative fact, we can derive the contradiction from this and 1., we thus have a valid argument. The remaining questions are about the truth or falsity of 1. to 3. (ignoring the additional assumption for the sake of argument).

If I understand you correctly, then the moral relativist wishes to maintain that 1. is true, while 2. somehow might be “right” or “wrong”, but not “true” or “false” (or if true or false – that its truth is somehow not related to reality). This seems to be what your claims amounts to:

“[The] moral relativist could […] account for the consistency of believing in both of the two statements [...]. This is so because for a relativist words such as "wrong" or "right" are merely derogative or approbative adjectives expressive of someone's (or some community's) subjective preferences.”

So, I can believe that killing babies for fun is wrong, because “such an action is the object of someone's or some community's unanimous dislike.”

Now, the question here is: Does the moral relativist thinks that 2. is true and that the truth of 2. is somehow based on some shared attitude of a community, or does the moral relativist wants to maintain that 2. does not have a truth value? If it is the former, we have to take a closer look at 3. since this would be the only thing that avoids the conclusion. If it is the later, then we may reasonable ask for a convincing account of how this can be. After all, the judgment about the truth or falsity of 2. is the natural reaction when faced with this claim.

I'm not entirely certain which way you would prefer. In any case, one can answer your claim that “the burden of proof would be on the realist's shoulder to demonstrate that, unlike the anti-realist's claim, the word "wrong" in (2) has an objective sense to it” - by pointing out that it has: Because the statement in which it appears is true! Thus, the moral relativist – as well as the anti realist - would have to explain how something that is true does not entail that something is real. Further explanation would be appreciated.

From your explanation, my feeling is that you are after 3.: The relation between true statements and facts - by defining first what a fact is. The formulation (or definition) of what a fact is that you cite is actually one of three basic ideas of what a fact might be – according to the author of the article in the SEoP on Facts. The rest of the article deals with different ways to spell these ideas out.

One way to do this (and this is the whole point of Fine's paper) is to turn to the notion of ground: This would allow us to approach your - as I take it - main point: “what I'm interested in here is in what sense a realist could argue for the mind-independent legitimacy of a moral norm; I just can't see how one would "ground" a normative claim in a non-relative non-human fact. Is a moral normative claim "true"?”

The answers depend on what one thinks 'ground' amounts to. Under a standard interpretation (which I take to be expressed by Correia and Schnieder), it would be perfectly acceptable to say that moral facts are grounded in social facts (to be clear: it would be acceptable to say that this has the form of a grounding claim – the question would be: is it a true grounding claim?). Moreover, if the truth of a given proposition is dependent on the truth of a grounding proposition, then the truth that there are social norms (or if you like, the truth that there are “non-relative non-human fact[s]”, - given that one understands this as a perfectly descriptive claim -) should ground the truth of the moral claim.

Note that ground under the standard interpretation is understood as a relation between facts or propositions (or some combination of both) (Correia and Schnieder). Thus, it is a theory about the structure that holds between facts (or propositions). And in this sense, one can separate the question of what a fact or a propositions is from the question of ground (just consider the fact that we don't have much more than intuition to identify propositions or facts in the first place).

Thus, if one uses the framework of ground, then there might be a way to answer your question: “what exactly is the truth-making entity by virtue of which the normative claim becomes "true"?

Now, here one has to be cautious, on the one hand, we have the framework of ground (under standard interpretation). On the other hand, we have a question about a particular grounding claim: what grounds the truth of a normative statement? The former is a question about the theory of ground, i. e. structure of reality, while the later is a question about a particular grounding statement within the theory.

Given this, I would argue that one should separate these questions. After all, the question about the moral faculty of humans is an empirical question. Given that we are organisms, our capacities (moral or otherwise) should be grounded in at least three factors: Data from the environment (including “social influence” - whatever that amounts to); genetic endowment; and more general laws of nature. (Chomsky)

This is not to say that the pursuit of either question cannot inform the pursuit of the other. The best way is perhaps to regard ground as an (amazingly precise) formal framework to explore particular empirical questions - including the relation between us and the framework, which might give us an answer to your question

.

Best,

Sven Beecken

• Fine, Kit. "The question of realism." Individuals, Essence and Identity. Springer, Dordrecht, 2002. 3-48.
• Correia, Fabrice, and Benjamin Schnieder. "Grounding: An opinionated introduction." Metaphysical grounding: Understanding the structure of reality (2012): 1-36.
• Chomsky, Noam. "Three factors in language design." Linguistic inquiry 36.1 (2005): 1-22.