From a scientific point of view, moral science has a more serious issue to address than the elevation and reification of factual morality to the status of objective morality. This problem is based upon the propensity of moral philosophy to redefine the concept of truth with the intention that the new definition of truth should enable the establishment of a supreme value,108 which entails that certain sciences are granted license to introduce truthrelativism,109 by which factual truth and the value of a certain (moral) view are identified with one another.Truth value is thus rendered equal with the factual acceptance of a specific set of morals. Consequently, only the enlightened are able to see and establish the real truth.To have a different opinion in moral questions therefore implies that the dissident is in denial of irrefutable fundamental moral values (and thus a liar), a view that Hägerström, among other scholars, considered to be intellectually dishonest as well as being fundamentally anti-scientific.110 Hägerström believed that the equation and identification of truth value and moral-value meant that: a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 277 3. 6 the value-obj ect ivi st ic rede f ini t ion of truth: a se lf-contradict ion “Truth itself is identified with the value of certain assumptions. Consequently the impossibility of talking about objective values disappears. One says, for example, ‘What we call truth is only propositions which are the means for certain life-values’. Or one makes truth to be an immediate, universal value in certain judgments. Such opinions, which in our time are so widespread, fall to the ground of their own inner absurdity. For the whole theory itself depends upon the ordinary concept of truth. Every defender of such a theory must mean to assert that this is the way it is.‘This is the way it is’,he must mean,‘completely independent of all valuations’. Otherwise the meaning would be that the asser108 Cf. Hägerström, “Moraliska föreställningar,” p. 43; “Moral Propositions,” p. 90. 109 N.B. Not truth-relativism in the object-related sense of the word, but in a subjectoriented sense/direction, a direction that allows the conclusion that the truth of judgment is relative and dependent upon the inner volitions, valuations and values of a subject for the verification of that judgment. No objective requirements need thus be considered in scientific research. 110 Mautner, “Inledning,” pp. 17-20.
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