>I am at a total loss. You must mean by "valid" something loose not the
>technical sense of logic. What do you mean? Validity I understand as a
>property of certain arguments and means that if the premises were true then
>the conclusion would necessarily be true also. What does it mean to say the
>a moral statement is valid? That there are good reasons for believing it
>true? That it is true?
Validity, in terms of logic, is tragically one-sided. Validity applies not only to logic but also pragmatically to action oriented behaviour as it is raise through illocutionary statements. The predicate "valid" pertains to action norms and all the general normative propositions that express the meaning of such norms, likewise for questions of truth. A norm is valid when all possibly affected person could agree to it as a participant in a rational discourse. The idea of validity must be extended beyond (unless we're positivists and decisionists) beyond the realm of being a property of an argument, but an immanent element of any speech act.
>Certainly in ordinary usage "valid" sometimes is used as synonym for "true"
>but your criticism of Justin for using "true" would imply that you have some
>other meaning in mind. What is it?
> Insofar as what you say makes any sense to me it is something like this:
>A moral statement is valid if there is a consensus about it.
A moral norm can be considered justified if there is consensus.
> If we reach agreement. Or if those effected by it reach an agreement.
> And who gets to
>decide who counts as being effected?
It has to do with what is foreseeable. If we're talking about universal human rights then, in principle, every living human being is affected, which is why it is important to stipulate 'could' agree to it (the entire driving population doesn't need to participation in a discussion about parking tickets, if there is enough foresight in the discussion to anticipate counter-arguments. This is where a vibrant public sphere is absolutely essential (at least in terms of establishing behavioural expectations for a collective governed by laws). For instance, if drivers refuse to provide input into the public sphere, and a group of people are trying to regulate driving as a means of cutting down on the number of road deaths, then it is rather difficult to make a decsion that will affect all the drivers in any kind of coherent way... which is why the public sphere must not simply be taken into consideration - the power of the legislature must draw its authority - legitimacy - from the public sphere itself. Anything short of consensus, which must be renewed all the time (hence, democracy can never be 'finished') there will emerge problems in legitimation and social and political integration. I should note: it is irrational to expect any political body of making a decision that encompasses every possible consideration that can be raised from every single contingency: such a demand overburdens what is politically possible and is, as Lacan once noted, looking for a new Master. However, it is rational to expect than any political collective will reach agree with all those forseeably affected by any such norm. At this point, in terms of validity, we're only talking about the legitimation of norms, not the application (from the legislature to the judiciary) or execution of communicaitve power in terms of strategic actions.
> And how do animals fit in?
They don't. As I'm writing on Eudora, I see a nice picture of a sea turtle that needs saving. Sea turtles don't talk, there is no communicative relation with nature (although if one is a mystic or theologian... one might disagree). However, if people agree, and there is massive and overwhelming evidence that people could potentially agree, that nature is valuable - for its own sake - then this would, naturally, be a consideration in any discourse. The domination of nature isn't the result of communicative action. By all counts, we know - and therefore it is in our interest - to take consideration of nature, not as a partner in dialogue, but as something that constitutes who we are - not only to our well-being, but also for its own sake. I've seen journalistic studies that (horrifyingly!) many people are more sensitive to the death of animals than human beings they don't know.... In any event, today - there is no reason to think that environmental considerations ought not be raised - they must be raised - in political discussion.
> And if there is no consensus then the principle is not valid? So the
> principle that no
>person ought to held as a slave was not vaid and is not valid as long as one
>person who might want to be a slaveowner does not agree?
In principle, slavery is forbidden from the outset. Anything that would damage rational participation in the communicative coordination of action *must* be eliminated. Yes, this involves a complete transformation of the economy and so on, but it isn't a transformation that does not have guiding ideas, it isn't without a vision of what a more rationalized life might look like: the question of learning, communication, and so on are our guiding principles (although they are not regulatory in the Kantian sense and not conceptual in the Hegelian sense).
> I assume you are claiming that we treat norms quite differently than
>facts.
Analogously.
> We say both are true or false and that beliefs about facts and norms
>are justified or not. We may disagree about norms more often than facts. I
>dont really know. Some facts are easy to come to agreement about but so are
>some norms. Is it really difficult to come to an agreement -in most
>circumstances- that a person who is clearly innocent of a crime ought not to
>be punished.
Right... at least I would agree that there is fairly widespread agreement on a good many issues... (but disagreement on even more).
> Of course some utiltiarian theorists might claim that there are
>sitautions in which innocents ought to be punished, but even those
>philosophers would agree that prima facie you ought not to punish innocent
>people.
Right, like Augustine, any punishment inflicted is justified because, well, we're all sinners after all. This relies on a whole series of religious arguments that are, well, unjustifiable in any kind of public discourse. I should mention instances of 'dissensus for the sake of dissensus' - critique for the sake of critique, action for the sake of action, mobilization for the sake of mobilization --- I would raise a Freudian point: such tautological principles are indiscriminate, they lack taste, character, judgement and so on. They are radically anti-humanist, not to mention formally incoherent.
> On the other hand it is difficult to come to agree about whether
>genetically engineered seeds constitute a serious risk to people's health.
True, but that's why we have to argue about it.
ken
ps. I'm guessing that you are concerned with the authoritarian idea of consensus, that it is limited to an elite structure which dictates to the rest what is and what is not true or right or beautiful... whatever. This is precisely what is forbidden in a discourse ethics...