"What is the status of morality?"

This was a poll question at the Phora. I used the occassion to work through a psychosemiotic approach.
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I can't answer this poll question with categorical perspecuity without clarifying its language.

Straightening this out needs doing in order to prevent circular definitions, contradictions, and generally non-progressive intellectual metapolitical maundering (I've been doing politics in my mind a lot recently). A COMPLETE (OR COMPLETING) SYSTEMATIC, CONSISTENT THEORY OF SIGN-USE (psychosemiotics) resolving all such questions in a single ideal language of communication at one stroke, by laying down its rules for designation and grammar -- is the only way I work in addressing questions of general philosophy anymore. It includes anything anybody ever thought or said in their locutions, but formally reconstructed to avoid said failings.

One might ask the "status" (with options) of:

The words

1. Moral (once used for a branch of philosophy, "moral philosophy", contrasted with "science")

-ality (code of conduct; 'ethics')

-ism (compartmentalized morality, suggesting over concern with judging behavior of others)

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-use of words: (syn.: "ought to be"

a. distinctions ('right', 'wrong'; "concepts of..") (Hume, Reid)

b. judgments (claims or assertions predicating moral use of words) (Kant)

c. statements (affirmation of sentences that express moral judgments) (Stevenson; most analytic philosophy)

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-issues. Individual or group actions predicated on in moral terms expressing agreement or disagreement on on what ought to be.

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-point of view (Kurt Baier: contrast "Logical Point of view") Mode of consciousness in/from which the totality of acts is considered under moral terms

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2. Status ?

-metaphysical? -- What do moral distinctions predicate (attribute to the subject term/act predicated of)? Is that supposed to be the question?

Then obviously, I should say, the status of morality is not a Quantitative property, or moral disagreements could be settled by measuring. In this sense it is "non-cognitive"; but so is predicating quality of a material object (it is as false that the sky is blue as it is that lying is wrong, if you take that line). The difference is that qualitative distinctions applied to objects have a causal basis in sense perception, wheras moral distinctions do not; or, again, they could be settled by empirical investigation. Moore's Naturalistic fallacy refuted this forever, if Hume hadn't already.

As to the metaphysical status of the subjective factor expressed by moral distinctions, it is the fourth (4th) of the seven (7) layers (strata, text levels) of conscious experience, sandwiched between (5th: "I") and
(3rd: "embodied"), schematically signified by
"I DO (x)" (-- "THEE WED" completed for reproduction). Its existence, with this status, serves two general functions in relating the person to reality: 1. to connect him/her to the three dimensional world of space and time structuring sense experience in which the planetary body interacts with others; 2. to prove the existence of God
(by understanding that the categorical imperative, demanding respect for action conformable with rationality as such, proceeds from the realm of things in themselves, the noumenal v. phenomenal. (Kant)

I'm not much on moralism as a point of view, though. Taoists have little use for it. "There is no such thing as right or wrong; there's only ying and yang."

Having taken this welcome opportunity to clarify this, I shall drop the prolixity ("don't let her explain; explaining takes so long..") and, as before, simply use moral terms as situations and issues come up. This clarifies what I shall be doing (squaring the moral role of philosopy itself).

("Philosophy within the limits of conscious sign-use as a completing totality")