Critical Thinking and Skepticism - Page 18

On May 05 2010 17:33 tinman wrote:


i'm telling you, man. we need forward thinking young idealists like yourself out there saving the world from those damned theists.

On May 05 2010 17:55 tinman wrote:
still no.

agreeing, dismissing, accepting, rejecting. none of these have to do with something being fact. they have to do with people arguing about the facts. i can call something objective even if no one in the world agrees with me. if i'm right i'm right. if i'm wrong i'm wrong. the 6 billion other opinions on the matter don't mean a thing. neither does mine.

you're talking about disseminating knowledge. but you skipped the part about how we got the knowledge in the first place.

oh wait i forgot it's because science proved all people are equal. right they are all equal and all individual and all unique and special. i forgot about that mythical dogma that science proved for us.

and i have no idea what race has to do with any of this. race is an outdated term anyway. at least "species" carries some taxonomical weight.

On May 05 2010 18:38 tinman wrote:
opinion may matter to you. obviously being understood and appreciated and listened-to does. but opinion is not "all we have." there is, in fact, no "we." your idea of a "we," your idea of "our knowledge," your idea of a "difference" to be made are all fictions, quaint little fictions. your "institutions" and the imperative you feel that they "deduce" the right "rights." those too.

personally i have no idea where you are getting any of this. you don't live in an institution do you? i suppose that could explain these rather vivid hallucinations you suffer about the nature, validity, and future of moral inquiry.

On May 02 2010 09:32 rei wrote:

Exactly, one must learn the skills to enlighten people without offending them, because everyone have the need to fit in socially

On May 05 2010 19:42 Squeegy wrote:
I think you two are arguing a different subject. Tinman is right in saying that what is objective is objective regardless of our opinions. And Miramax is right in saying that it is in fact what we think that is objective that matters to us. Or maybe you're arguing about something more complex.

But I do have to point out that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. And that is not an opinion but a fact.

On May 05 2010 16:35 MiraMax wrote:


That's exactly right! Actually we need to start from a basis of subjectivism - always - since our perception is necessarily subjective. I cannot say something is "moral period", just like I cannot say something is "big period". Things are not big per se, they become big because we relate them to a common framework and decide on scales to measure them. We reach objectivism by agreement, but this agreement is not arbitrary, and it certainly doesn't mean that every value system is as good as any other, just because people agreed on it. That's where observations about reality come in.

Morality is the study of actions and their consequences with the aim of finding out whether they match with a set of values. If I have different value systems, I can call different actions moral or immoral. Values however, contain or imply claims about reality. These claims can be studied and rejected/accepted just like any other claim.

One of the most important values of modern societies is equality of rights. Why is that so? It certainly wasn't so in the past, and there were and still are whole societies founded on an inequality of rights and priviliges for certain classes, races or religions. Equality of rights as a value is deduced from the claim that people are born equal (in all respects that matter). This is a claim about reality and can be falsified (I recommend "The Mismeasure of Man" by S.J. Gould to everybody interested to see how biased science tried to justify suppression of race and gender by sacrificing critical thinking in the past). It turns out we cannot reject this claim, so all over a sudden this value seems to reflect a part of reality. Anybody who wants to defend a chosen "race", "sex" or "religion" needs to bring forth evidence and if he can't then this claim is dismissed. Religious systems, and especially Christianity, has a track record of arguing for racial, sexual and religious discrimination and whenever they reject the notion of evidence, they are immune to real-world criticism.

The problem with your objective morality from god is that you can never argue against members of a different religion. You can only say that they are praying to the wrong god or figured out what god said incorrectly. You would need to say: Well, if your god is real then your actions would be moral, since he said so. Instead I can say: Well, your actions might be moral according to your values, but your values don't reflect reality and they are detrimental to the development of your society here on earth. And this is irrespective of your god being real or not and I can demonstrate it.

One of the most important values of modern societies is equality of rights. Why is that so? It certainly wasn't so in the past, and there were and still are whole societies founded on an inequality of rights and priviliges for certain classes, races or religions. Equality of rights as a value is deduced from the claim that people are born equal (in all respects that matter). This is a claim about reality and can be falsified (I recommend "The Mismeasure of Man" by S.J. Gould to everybody interested to see how biased science tried to justify suppression of race and gender by sacrificing critical thinking in the past). It turns out we cannot reject this claim, so all over a sudden this value seems to reflect a part of reality. Anybody who wants to defend a chosen "race", "sex" or "religion" needs to bring forth evidence and if he can't then this claim is dismissed. Religious systems, and especially Christianity, has a track record of arguing for racial, sexual and religious discrimination and whenever they reject the notion of evidence, they are immune to real-world criticism.

That's too bad about Christians, should have read and followed their scriptures more closely As for the moral claim that everyone is born equal, how do you morally justify this statement? I'm having difficulty seeing how the statement can be made, if we have nothing but the "cold facts" of reality (ultimately no purpose, meaning, etc. aside from what we give it). How do we know we're not just agreeing to believe in a "Noble lie"?

The problem with your objective morality from god is that you can never argue against members of a different religion. You can only say that they are praying to the wrong god or figured out what god said incorrectly. You would need to say: Well, if your god is real then your actions would be moral, since he said so. Instead I can say: Well, your actions might be moral according to your values, but your values don't reflect reality and they are detrimental to the development of your society here on earth. And this is irrespective of your god being real or not and I can demonstrate it.

Not at all Moral objectivism allows progress, subjectivism doesn't. I can say exactly what you can say.

On May 05 2010 20:13 MiraMax wrote:


All I am arguing is that tinman doesn't know what "objective" means and you also seem to get it wrong there. Factual and objective is not the same, since there are also subjective facts (those that are not independent of the observer), like my feelings or even my opinions. It is the effects of my feelings which can in parts be demonstrated and it is things in reality that my feelings point to which are factual or not.

Let me take your example. I say that Hamburg is the capital of Ecuador. This is my opionion and I claim it is a fact of reality that I am of this opinion. First of all I can hardly demonstrate my opinion to you, so you would need to believe me, when I say it. It is at least difficult to "objectivize" my claim about my opinion. You would need to establish a method to investigate whether it is my true belief (whatever that means). So let's take it as a subjective fact that I am of this opinion.

Now, we bring both of our opinions to the test to see which of the two, if any, actually reflects reality accurately. Mind you, they could both be wrong. We need to establish a methodology to find out the truth value, so we would need to both agree that there are countries which have names and cities which have names and that one city per country is defined as capital. We could agree that consulting one or many atlases is a good mean to find out what is the correct (agreed upon) name of the capital city of Ecuador and we would find out that your opinion actually reflects reality and mine doesn't. The fact is the agreed upon name, what I have in my head (and what is in your head) is merely an opinion about this fact. This is a difference that matters and its understanding is one of the conrner stones of critical thinking.

On May 05 2010 20:18 Gnosis wrote:
Not at all Moral objectivism allows progress, subjectivism doesn't. I can say exactly what you can say. Keep in mind that I would believe that God would have made morality an intrinsic part of the universe, so I'm quite able to say, "your morality doesn't reflect reality..." etc. Which means that regardless of one's views of morality, commonalities may (and indeed are) found among many people. And frankly, behaving morally is a lot more important to me than having the right belief about them.

On May 05 2010 21:32 Squeegy wrote:


There is no such thing as subjective fact, unless you are using words in a funny sense. As in, it is an objectively true that you are of whatever opinion you are or that you feel however you feel. They are of course subjective in some sense, but a truth value is always objective.

On May 05 2010 20:46 MiraMax wrote:


Well, this this touches a classical dilemma. Does the tree make any sound, if there is nobody there to hear it? All concepts can be valid or not. And if they are valid then they are valid irrespective of whether somebody has thought them up or not. It is an intrinsical property. So, I believe that there is an infinite amount of valid concepts and claims about reality that noone has ever thought up. I agree that I cannot demonstrate this and fortunately it is not important whether this is true or not for the application of a concept which is identified as valid

I don't understand what you mean by "morally justifying" a statement. It implies a claim about reality and this claim is valid as far as we can know so far. There is no reason why a christian bank robber should be treated differently than a muslim bank robber or that a male could become president, but a female not. So we should organize the rules of our societey accordingly. This way of argument actually works for all levels and even the most basic needs of people. I believe that if we had conclusive evidence that women are under no circumstances able to rule a country, we would be justified to introduce a law that inhibits women from ruling countries. Why would we not? And how could we determine that we do not believe a lie?? Well, the best method to distinguish fact from fiction is to OBSERVE REALITY and DEMONSTRATE IT TO BE TRUE (sorry, for the caps, but that's exactly how we started). That is why evidence is also necessary in moral debates, whenever a value implies a claim about the real world

I am all for objective morality, but I want objectiveness to be used the same way as it is used in any other state of affairs! Why is it that objectivity in the matter of "size of things" is reached by agreeing on a meaning and an operable way to measure it, but in the matter of "moral" it has to come from a god? What you seem to mean is absolute morality or an objectivity which is not contingent on our understanding of the world, but external to us. This is an intellectual dead end. How do you convince a muslim that it is wrong to force women to wear burqas using absolute morality from god? It is their god which they are claiming to follow! Don't you see a problem there?

Edit: Screwed up layout.

On May 05 2010 21:53 MiraMax wrote:


Well, there are a lot of philosphers who disagree with you. I think you are really just confusing "factual" with "objective". I will give you the standard philosophical example: If I have a hallucination and see a unicorn it is a fact that there is no unicorn, but it is also a fact that I see one. Both state of affairs are facts. One of the two facts is objective (or better the statement about the fact) and the other is not, unless we find I way to untie my view from my view (some philosophers think that this is not possible).

It might sound confusing and irrelevant, but it is actually a meaningful concept. If you strip subjective and objective of their meanings and equivocate factual with objective would you then say that subjective is not factional?

On May 05 2010 21:38 MiraMax wrote:


I don't mean to hate, but if objective morality is really important to you, you should think about the following:
(1) Your morality depends on the existence of a god, in the sense that should your god not exist you would not consider his moral laws objective or even valid.
(2) This god could so far not be demonstrated other than by personal revelation and we found no impartial method that allows a detection.
(3) It follows from (2) that the notion of a god is subjective in nature, since it cannot be seperated from the observer. In other words, there is no experiment which has a predicted outcome, where the prediction is derived from the existence of your god.

It follows from (1) and (3) that the basis of your morality is deeply subjective and therefore your morality itself is subjective in nature, as you cannot demonstrate it's validity to anybody else, who does not belief in your god in the first place. That is also why belief in a god is such a convenient way to justify varying, but absolute(!) morals in different cultures.

It seems to me that if you really have a problem with subjective morality than you would need to think of a different foundation to build on. Maybe you could try mine :-P

On May 05 2010 21:55 Gnosis wrote:
As for how I would convince a Muslim that burqas are wrong, well, in and of themselves, are they? What moral law dictates that a woman should not wear a burqas, even if she wants to? How would you convince a Muslim that women could lead countries? Or that everyone is born equal? Or that Muslims who convert to Christianity should not be executed? As I said in my response above, I'm quite able to appeal to reality and argue that the values of the religion conflict with the "created order" (for lack of a better term), or the order of the universe. I really don't understand how you believe that's a dead end. Like the laws of nature, morality can be discovered.

On May 05 2010 22:15 MiraMax wrote:
We can pinpoint it here. I can say Islamic states who force women to wear burqas are morally wrong because:

(1) Individual freedom is a value deduced from the observable fact that individual freedom of choice tends to lead to happiness as people have observable wants and needs, of which only they know in detail.
(2) Happiness is good, since it is the observable preference of most beings to chose happiness over sadness.
(3) Since people are fundamentally the same their happiness fundamentally counts the same, so restricting ones freedom needs to be justified with reaching more fulfillment of another observable value.

We can easily deduce from that, that we need to justify if we restrict freedom. So anybody who claims women have to wear burqas is required to give a testable explanation. "God says it" does not fly.

If they claim that it undermines the stability of a society, they would need to provide a mean to test it. Until then let women freely decide what they want to wear.

And yes I know that my argument is way to short and can be tackled, but it is the fact that I have actually a mean to argue and be convincing, without appealing to a higher power that cannot be demonstrated.

On May 05 2010 21:55 Gnosis wrote:
You've lost me on this. Isn't it true that the two facts you're dealing with are (1) unicorns don't exist and (2) you're hallucinating, and are seeing unicorns? I don't see these two propositions as exclusive of each other, or contradictory. Seeing a unicorn while hallucinating only means that you're hallucinating, and it remains true that unicorns don't exist. Seems like an equivocation of the word "fact," and a confusion - even if a lot of philosophers agree - on what comprises reality.

On May 05 2010 22:26 MiraMax wrote:


There is no contradiction. Both are valid facts. "Objective" and "subjective" are words that relate to perception. All we see and reason with is perception, but something does not become factual just because it is objective!? And something is not not-factional because it is subjective. We suffer from the epistemic problem that we will never really know what is factual, even though we believe there are facts. Objective facts can be demonstrated, subjective facts not. This does't make subjective facts less factional, they just need to be believed.

I am really dazzled that so few people seem to know what subjective and objective means in a philosophical context.