On August 01 2013 04:46 Spekulatius wrote: [quote] Oh yeah right. I missed that. Thanks.
Why is the categorical imperative logical though? In a sense that it is derived from a universal truth?
You could deem it logical because its a criterium for actions according to maxims that can function as universal law.
I can make criteria too that function as universal law.
Killing people taller than 5 feet is fine. Everyone must eat nothing but strawberries. Women need to be stripped down to their underwear in public.
Easiest criteria ever.
The justification is a bit harder to explain, however it has to do with the fact that the categorical imperative is a criterium for a free will.
You must have read that somewhere but I have no idea what that means.
Well, obviously the examples of maxims you gave couldn't function as universal law. Killing or more specifically murder (which seems to be implied here), for example, could and should not be applied as universal law (whatever specifications of the person you may add).
Of course it could. Nazis did it. Communists did it. Mao did it. It happens all the time.
You say it should not be applied. But you have no reason why. Absolute no reason.
And yes, I have read this somewhere, more specifically under the heading of deontology, of which Kant made a reasonable attempt of clarification. Not to say all questions are answered, and just like Kant I think its not in our grasp to know the good, but if you ask me for my standpoint on morality then I think duty is at its core.
You think. You believe. You are of the opinion that. You feel. You would like.
That's just like... your opinion, man.
Why should anyone care what a single person thinks what is good and what is bad? Why should your opinion matter, why mine, why Mahatma Gandhi's, why Pol Pots?
Well, then each of these figures/groups the Nazis. the communists and Mao made exceptions to their self proclaimed so called universal laws, namely by excluding themselves under these laws which are then not universal in the slightest.
The nazi thinking was: Germans are the master race. Jews are inferior.
How is that not universal?
And on the subject of the justification of morality ofcourse I can't theoretically prove the good, but I do know myself as a conscious willing creature and I have the duty to respect this in others as well.
Why do you have the duty?
We were talking about the act of killing right? Not about, like as you call it, opinions about the supposed superiority or inferiority of race. What I mean then with their avoidance of universal law is that they specifically claimed legitimization for the murdering of (jewish, gay, gypsy etc.) people but the nazis excluded (hence not universal) themselves from these laws, thus at the same time it was not legitimized to murder the nazis.
I'm not sure if I can really make any more clear here in a forum post how it is that we know ourselves to have duty and feel it will sounds rather dogmatic if I do so, even though for example the terror of the Nazis might bring about these feelings of duty. I mean, do you think something such as morality exists?
I am certain we all have a feeling what is good and bad, thus a moral instinct as I prefer to call it.
But I know where this feeling comes from, which is why I find it so incredibly unplausible that there should be a universal thing in morality.
Morality is a feeling that evolved because during the evolutionary process, it has proven to be useful for one's survival. Caring for other people is something we feel to be right because caring for people around us improves our own chances of survival, thus our chance of reproduction thus the chance for us to be at the top of a long, long family tree. Banning, shaming or even hurting and killing those who violate laws of society feels like a good thing because it promotes the survival of your own society which protects you which leads to longer life expectancy which leads to evolutionary success.
That's how good and bad evolved as a thought. It's hard to see because modern societies are so far from the state it was in when those moral instincts evolved. But that's just how it is. There's no mystery about it, no unseen, unfathomable force.
But you do realize that from the point of view of that theory, we shouldn't have any moral problem as long as it does not concern our family with whom we share evolutionary ties. Furthermore, how would you then explain modern societies?
Evolution shaped us over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern societies have existed for maybe 2000 years. This makes our evolutionary predisposition unfit for modern society.
We care for people we don't need to care about from an evolutionary point of view. We see suffering African children on TV and say "gee this kid's suffering is wrong". We see the homeless on the street and the sick people represented in some statistic and we think "spending on social services and healthcare is a good thing". Why? Because we are primed to feel altruisticly because helping people in our tribe or family helps our survival. But the only people we were used to see when this evolved was our family, not more or less random people that we can't help but encounter in our modern everyday life.
Morality is just the misapplication of a fundamental evolutionary tool for survival that helped the human race to where it is now. This does not mean life should work that way. It just shows why there is moral intuition and why it is so unlikely that it's universal.
I believe morals are basically interchangeable with the concept of opinions. When someone says 'punching random people in the face is wrong' what he is actually expressing is 'I have a negative opinion towards those who punch random people in the face.'
This isn't to say that morals don't exist or have meaning. Just that they are by no means universal or absolute, and express no scientific or objective truth about reality. They vary based on the individual, the culture, the society, even biology. They're highly dependent on context. Any real argument about morals should delve into this context, as well as acknowledge the inherent limits of morality. That is, morals can only be 'right' in the sense that a certain subset of mankind finds them agreeable or useful... much like opinions.
You could deem it logical because its a criterium for actions according to maxims that can function as universal law.
I can make criteria too that function as universal law.
Killing people taller than 5 feet is fine. Everyone must eat nothing but strawberries. Women need to be stripped down to their underwear in public.
Easiest criteria ever.
The justification is a bit harder to explain, however it has to do with the fact that the categorical imperative is a criterium for a free will.
You must have read that somewhere but I have no idea what that means.
Well, obviously the examples of maxims you gave couldn't function as universal law. Killing or more specifically murder (which seems to be implied here), for example, could and should not be applied as universal law (whatever specifications of the person you may add).
Of course it could. Nazis did it. Communists did it. Mao did it. It happens all the time.
You say it should not be applied. But you have no reason why. Absolute no reason.
And yes, I have read this somewhere, more specifically under the heading of deontology, of which Kant made a reasonable attempt of clarification. Not to say all questions are answered, and just like Kant I think its not in our grasp to know the good, but if you ask me for my standpoint on morality then I think duty is at its core.
You think. You believe. You are of the opinion that. You feel. You would like.
That's just like... your opinion, man.
Why should anyone care what a single person thinks what is good and what is bad? Why should your opinion matter, why mine, why Mahatma Gandhi's, why Pol Pots?
Well, then each of these figures/groups the Nazis. the communists and Mao made exceptions to their self proclaimed so called universal laws, namely by excluding themselves under these laws which are then not universal in the slightest.
The nazi thinking was: Germans are the master race. Jews are inferior.
How is that not universal?
And on the subject of the justification of morality ofcourse I can't theoretically prove the good, but I do know myself as a conscious willing creature and I have the duty to respect this in others as well.
Why do you have the duty?
We were talking about the act of killing right? Not about, like as you call it, opinions about the supposed superiority or inferiority of race. What I mean then with their avoidance of universal law is that they specifically claimed legitimization for the murdering of (jewish, gay, gypsy etc.) people but the nazis excluded (hence not universal) themselves from these laws, thus at the same time it was not legitimized to murder the nazis.
I'm not sure if I can really make any more clear here in a forum post how it is that we know ourselves to have duty and feel it will sounds rather dogmatic if I do so, even though for example the terror of the Nazis might bring about these feelings of duty. I mean, do you think something such as morality exists?
I am certain we all have a feeling what is good and bad, thus a moral instinct as I prefer to call it.
But I know where this feeling comes from, which is why I find it so incredibly unplausible that there should be a universal thing in morality.
Morality is a feeling that evolved because during the evolutionary process, it has proven to be useful for one's survival. Caring for other people is something we feel to be right because caring for people around us improves our own chances of survival, thus our chance of reproduction thus the chance for us to be at the top of a long, long family tree. Banning, shaming or even hurting and killing those who violate laws of society feels like a good thing because it promotes the survival of your own society which protects you which leads to longer life expectancy which leads to evolutionary success.
That's how good and bad evolved as a thought. It's hard to see because modern societies are so far from the state it was in when those moral instincts evolved. But that's just how it is. There's no mystery about it, no unseen, unfathomable force.
But you do realize that from the point of view of that theory, we shouldn't have any moral problem as long as it does not concern our family with whom we share evolutionary ties. Furthermore, how would you then explain modern societies?
Evolution shaped us over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern societies have existed for maybe 2000 years. This makes our evolutionary predisposition unfit for modern society.
We care for people we don't need to care about from an evolutionary point of view. We see suffering African children on TV and say "gee this kid's suffering is wrong". We see the homeless on the street and the sick people represented in some statistic and we think "spending on social services and healthcare is a good thing". Why? Because we are primed to feel altruisticly because helping people in our tribe or family helps our survival. But the only people we were used to see when this evolved was our family, not more or less random people that we can't help but encounter in our modern everyday life.
Morality is just the misapplication of a fundamental evolutionary tool for survival that helped the human race to where it is now. This does not mean life should work that way. It just shows why there is moral intuition and why it is so unlikely that it's universal.
But my question was how modern societies could emerge if we humans are merely evolutionary beings. In other words, how do you explain modern society when man is naturally inclined to protect only himself and his family?
Here you say that on the one hand we don't "need" to care about 'other' people if we actually followed our moral instinct, while at the same time we would be evolutionary inclined to behave altruisticly. So which one is it? And how would it lead for a need to form a modern society (especially an actual modern society like a democracy of free and equal citizens)?
On August 01 2013 08:06 Lixler wrote: These are a few of the things I think you believe. Morality would not exist without humans around, but facts about the physical universe would exist. - Sentient beings rather than humans, but yes.
Most of our everyday terms can be given precise definitions, but not our moral terms. - Moral terms are one of the most common terms we use, so what you wrote seems slightly weird. But I think you mean what I mean: One can theoretically define anything, except those things that require a "rating" agent. So this excludes morality, beauty and quality.
Disagreements about everyday terms hinge on a lack of knowledge about the relevant objects, but disagreements about moral terms hinge on a disagreement in inclinations or sentiments. - Yes. We live today because we survived evolution. Which means we have a mechanism inside of us that guides us through live and lets us avoid extinction before procreation. This is the source of our moral instincts. This is why they are not universal, because we live in a dog-eat-dog world, so everybody rates the survival of his own genes to be superior to the survival of anything else.
Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable. - Yes, exactly.
There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation. - Yes.
Which of these are wrong?
None, basically (see above, I modified the quote).
Okay, so what did I say that made you think you failed to get through to me?
I felt your posts were not at all refering to or contradictng my points so I assumed I was being misunderstood.
I'll say which posts of my I think refer to/contradict which of your points.
"Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable" and "There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation." I don't think I take these specifically, but my posts are littered with points that impact them (for instance, I say that scientific facts also have to be taken through an individual's interpretation, and that you've provided no special reason to think that moral judgments are subjective."
You seem to think that there is some kind of "value" category added onto some of our terms (moral rightness, beauty) that taints them and makes them subjective. Now whatever subjective characteristics valuing actually shows, we can (in principle) provide a definition that circumscribes all the cases of these value judgments that will be just as rigorous or flawed as our definitions for other terms. What I mean to say is that we can, in principle, provide a definition for any individual's moral judgments by giving an exhaustive list of how they would judge any particular situation. Then we could work down and (maybe) draw out certain rules of thumb and principles that would guide that definition and make it shorter. This is more or less how we would ideally construct any definition for a particular individual, and I don't see why the fact that "value" plays into moral terms would render this definition false in some way.
Remember, we are not applying definitions when we use language. When I say that the thing I'm typing on is a keyboard, I'm not consulting some rulebook in my head that says "a keyboard is this and that and the other thing." The definition is just a rule that can more or less describe the ways I use the word "keyboard," not why it is that I actually do use the word that way. At least as far as definitions go, whatever different influences and inclinations go into the judgment get washed out into a rule that can predict my judgments. And a rule can accurately predict my moral judgments without also making the same moral judgments as me; that is to say, we can create a definition for any individual's usage of moral terms without also assuming their values and so on, just like we can create a definition for the way someone uses the word "pickle" without also sharing all of their experiences and feelings w/r/t pickles.
On August 01 2013 05:51 Spekulatius wrote: [quote] I can make criteria too that function as universal law.
Killing people taller than 5 feet is fine. Everyone must eat nothing but strawberries. Women need to be stripped down to their underwear in public.
Easiest criteria ever. [quote] You must have read that somewhere but I have no idea what that means.
Well, obviously the examples of maxims you gave couldn't function as universal law. Killing or more specifically murder (which seems to be implied here), for example, could and should not be applied as universal law (whatever specifications of the person you may add).
Of course it could. Nazis did it. Communists did it. Mao did it. It happens all the time.
You say it should not be applied. But you have no reason why. Absolute no reason.
And yes, I have read this somewhere, more specifically under the heading of deontology, of which Kant made a reasonable attempt of clarification. Not to say all questions are answered, and just like Kant I think its not in our grasp to know the good, but if you ask me for my standpoint on morality then I think duty is at its core.
You think. You believe. You are of the opinion that. You feel. You would like.
That's just like... your opinion, man.
Why should anyone care what a single person thinks what is good and what is bad? Why should your opinion matter, why mine, why Mahatma Gandhi's, why Pol Pots?
Well, then each of these figures/groups the Nazis. the communists and Mao made exceptions to their self proclaimed so called universal laws, namely by excluding themselves under these laws which are then not universal in the slightest.
The nazi thinking was: Germans are the master race. Jews are inferior.
How is that not universal?
And on the subject of the justification of morality ofcourse I can't theoretically prove the good, but I do know myself as a conscious willing creature and I have the duty to respect this in others as well.
Why do you have the duty?
We were talking about the act of killing right? Not about, like as you call it, opinions about the supposed superiority or inferiority of race. What I mean then with their avoidance of universal law is that they specifically claimed legitimization for the murdering of (jewish, gay, gypsy etc.) people but the nazis excluded (hence not universal) themselves from these laws, thus at the same time it was not legitimized to murder the nazis.
I'm not sure if I can really make any more clear here in a forum post how it is that we know ourselves to have duty and feel it will sounds rather dogmatic if I do so, even though for example the terror of the Nazis might bring about these feelings of duty. I mean, do you think something such as morality exists?
I am certain we all have a feeling what is good and bad, thus a moral instinct as I prefer to call it.
But I know where this feeling comes from, which is why I find it so incredibly unplausible that there should be a universal thing in morality.
Morality is a feeling that evolved because during the evolutionary process, it has proven to be useful for one's survival. Caring for other people is something we feel to be right because caring for people around us improves our own chances of survival, thus our chance of reproduction thus the chance for us to be at the top of a long, long family tree. Banning, shaming or even hurting and killing those who violate laws of society feels like a good thing because it promotes the survival of your own society which protects you which leads to longer life expectancy which leads to evolutionary success.
That's how good and bad evolved as a thought. It's hard to see because modern societies are so far from the state it was in when those moral instincts evolved. But that's just how it is. There's no mystery about it, no unseen, unfathomable force.
But you do realize that from the point of view of that theory, we shouldn't have any moral problem as long as it does not concern our family with whom we share evolutionary ties. Furthermore, how would you then explain modern societies?
Evolution shaped us over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern societies have existed for maybe 2000 years. This makes our evolutionary predisposition unfit for modern society.
We care for people we don't need to care about from an evolutionary point of view. We see suffering African children on TV and say "gee this kid's suffering is wrong". We see the homeless on the street and the sick people represented in some statistic and we think "spending on social services and healthcare is a good thing". Why? Because we are primed to feel altruisticly because helping people in our tribe or family helps our survival. But the only people we were used to see when this evolved was our family, not more or less random people that we can't help but encounter in our modern everyday life.
Morality is just the misapplication of a fundamental evolutionary tool for survival that helped the human race to where it is now. This does not mean life should work that way. It just shows why there is moral intuition and why it is so unlikely that it's universal.
But my question was how modern societies could emerge if we humans are merely evolutionary beings. In other words, how do you explain modern society when man is naturally inclined to protect only himself and his family?
Here you say that on the one hand we don't "need" to care about 'other' people if we actually followed our moral instinct, while at the same time we would be evolutionary inclined to behave altruisticly. So which one is it? And how would it lead for a need to form a modern society (especially an actual modern society like a democracy of free and equal citizens)?
How modern societies evolved is a question for historians, not me. I'd guess it has to do with the birth of nations, with longer life expectancy due to hygiene and medicine and thus higher population everywhere on the world, with money and markets, with education, foremost mathematics and sciences.
Man is born in this world that is so strange to him, where the reasons he has those moral instincts don't exist anymore. Morality is the side effect of evolution not being fast enough to adapt (or not being forced to adapt) to the changing circumstances.
Well, the word "need" to care is not precise, sorry. I say humans are not programmed to act altruisticly unless they reap a certain benefit from doing so. The benefit is not self-evident, but it was there, back when this trait evolved. Now it's gone, and suddenly we care for everyone without this benefiting us.
On August 01 2013 08:06 Lixler wrote: These are a few of the things I think you believe. Morality would not exist without humans around, but facts about the physical universe would exist. - Sentient beings rather than humans, but yes.
Most of our everyday terms can be given precise definitions, but not our moral terms. - Moral terms are one of the most common terms we use, so what you wrote seems slightly weird. But I think you mean what I mean: One can theoretically define anything, except those things that require a "rating" agent. So this excludes morality, beauty and quality.
Disagreements about everyday terms hinge on a lack of knowledge about the relevant objects, but disagreements about moral terms hinge on a disagreement in inclinations or sentiments. - Yes. We live today because we survived evolution. Which means we have a mechanism inside of us that guides us through live and lets us avoid extinction before procreation. This is the source of our moral instincts. This is why they are not universal, because we live in a dog-eat-dog world, so everybody rates the survival of his own genes to be superior to the survival of anything else.
Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable. - Yes, exactly.
There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation. - Yes.
Which of these are wrong?
None, basically (see above, I modified the quote).
Okay, so what did I say that made you think you failed to get through to me?
I felt your posts were not at all refering to or contradictng my points so I assumed I was being misunderstood.
I'll say which posts of my I think refer to/contradict which of your points.
"Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable" and "There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation." I don't think I take these specifically, but my posts are littered with points that impact them (for instance, I say that scientific facts also have to be taken through an individual's interpretation, and that you've provided no special reason to think that moral judgments are subjective."
You seem to think that there is some kind of "value" category added onto some of our terms (moral rightness, beauty) that taints them and makes them subjective. Now whatever subjective characteristics valuing actually shows, we can (in principle) provide a definition that circumscribes all the cases of these value judgments that will be just as rigorous or flawed as our definitions for other terms. What I mean to say is that we can, in principle, provide a definition for any individual's moral judgments by giving an exhaustive list of how they would judge any particular situation. Then we could work down and (maybe) draw out certain rules of thumb and principles that would guide that definition and make it shorter. This is more or less how we would ideally construct any definition for a particular individual, and I don't see why the fact that "value" plays into moral terms would render this definition false in some way.
Remember, we are not applying definitions when we use language. When I say that the thing I'm typing on is a keyboard, I'm not consulting some rulebook in my head that says "a keyboard is this and that and the other thing." The definition is just a rule that can more or less describe the ways I use the word "keyboard," not why it is that I actually do use the word that way. At least as far as definitions go, whatever different influences and inclinations go into the judgment get washed out into a rule that can predict my judgments. And a rule can accurately predict my moral judgments without also making the same moral judgments as me; that is to say, we can create a definition for any individual's usage of moral terms without also assuming their values and so on, just like we can create a definition for the way someone uses the word "pickle" without also sharing all of their experiences and feelings w/r/t pickles.
You see, I tried explaining myself and despite everything you say, I remain convinced that I'm right. That might be the ultimate arrogance or just an impossibility to explain myself better than I did. Or it might be me not understanding you either.
Let's try once again: you linked this article. If I understood you right, you want this to prove that people not only disagree about moral systems, but also about everyday items that I believed to be universally definable. This argument is supposed to shake the difference I'm making between "true definitions of items of the outside world" and "moral statements".
Now, I do not agree with your interpretation of the study. In short, you say the study reveals that all people refer to different things when asked "what is furniture". I do not think the study says that at all. Here's how and why people responded this way and gave different answers:
The study asked people "which of these items refer best to the term furniture". It did not say "define furniture". Those are groundbreakingly different things.
Tell people to define "furniture", they'll answer, for instance, "stuff you put in your house or appartment to accomodate living there, such as a chair". They will know that the first part is the definition and the second part is nothing but an example of a furniture item. Ask people and they will give similar answers, having given it enough thought.
Ask people "which of these items represents furniture". Now what they're told to is specifically not defining it, but finding examples. The question appeals not to logic but to the associative part of your brain that digs up a memory of an association you have made earlier in life between the example item ("chair") and the broader term ("furniture"). Answers will vary depending on people's experiences, aka the furniture of the place they grew up in, the places they visited, the place they live in now, the furniture catalogue they read before buying their last cupboard and the kind of furniture they simply like. The answers vary because people have not been asked for a definition, or a logical answer. They have been asked for an intuitive answer. Intuition varies.
Well, obviously the examples of maxims you gave couldn't function as universal law. Killing or more specifically murder (which seems to be implied here), for example, could and should not be applied as universal law (whatever specifications of the person you may add).
Of course it could. Nazis did it. Communists did it. Mao did it. It happens all the time.
You say it should not be applied. But you have no reason why. Absolute no reason.
And yes, I have read this somewhere, more specifically under the heading of deontology, of which Kant made a reasonable attempt of clarification. Not to say all questions are answered, and just like Kant I think its not in our grasp to know the good, but if you ask me for my standpoint on morality then I think duty is at its core.
You think. You believe. You are of the opinion that. You feel. You would like.
That's just like... your opinion, man.
Why should anyone care what a single person thinks what is good and what is bad? Why should your opinion matter, why mine, why Mahatma Gandhi's, why Pol Pots?
Well, then each of these figures/groups the Nazis. the communists and Mao made exceptions to their self proclaimed so called universal laws, namely by excluding themselves under these laws which are then not universal in the slightest.
The nazi thinking was: Germans are the master race. Jews are inferior.
How is that not universal?
And on the subject of the justification of morality ofcourse I can't theoretically prove the good, but I do know myself as a conscious willing creature and I have the duty to respect this in others as well.
Why do you have the duty?
We were talking about the act of killing right? Not about, like as you call it, opinions about the supposed superiority or inferiority of race. What I mean then with their avoidance of universal law is that they specifically claimed legitimization for the murdering of (jewish, gay, gypsy etc.) people but the nazis excluded (hence not universal) themselves from these laws, thus at the same time it was not legitimized to murder the nazis.
I'm not sure if I can really make any more clear here in a forum post how it is that we know ourselves to have duty and feel it will sounds rather dogmatic if I do so, even though for example the terror of the Nazis might bring about these feelings of duty. I mean, do you think something such as morality exists?
I am certain we all have a feeling what is good and bad, thus a moral instinct as I prefer to call it.
But I know where this feeling comes from, which is why I find it so incredibly unplausible that there should be a universal thing in morality.
Morality is a feeling that evolved because during the evolutionary process, it has proven to be useful for one's survival. Caring for other people is something we feel to be right because caring for people around us improves our own chances of survival, thus our chance of reproduction thus the chance for us to be at the top of a long, long family tree. Banning, shaming or even hurting and killing those who violate laws of society feels like a good thing because it promotes the survival of your own society which protects you which leads to longer life expectancy which leads to evolutionary success.
That's how good and bad evolved as a thought. It's hard to see because modern societies are so far from the state it was in when those moral instincts evolved. But that's just how it is. There's no mystery about it, no unseen, unfathomable force.
But you do realize that from the point of view of that theory, we shouldn't have any moral problem as long as it does not concern our family with whom we share evolutionary ties. Furthermore, how would you then explain modern societies?
Evolution shaped us over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern societies have existed for maybe 2000 years. This makes our evolutionary predisposition unfit for modern society.
We care for people we don't need to care about from an evolutionary point of view. We see suffering African children on TV and say "gee this kid's suffering is wrong". We see the homeless on the street and the sick people represented in some statistic and we think "spending on social services and healthcare is a good thing". Why? Because we are primed to feel altruisticly because helping people in our tribe or family helps our survival. But the only people we were used to see when this evolved was our family, not more or less random people that we can't help but encounter in our modern everyday life.
Morality is just the misapplication of a fundamental evolutionary tool for survival that helped the human race to where it is now. This does not mean life should work that way. It just shows why there is moral intuition and why it is so unlikely that it's universal.
But my question was how modern societies could emerge if we humans are merely evolutionary beings. In other words, how do you explain modern society when man is naturally inclined to protect only himself and his family?
Here you say that on the one hand we don't "need" to care about 'other' people if we actually followed our moral instinct, while at the same time we would be evolutionary inclined to behave altruisticly. So which one is it? And how would it lead for a need to form a modern society (especially an actual modern society like a democracy of free and equal citizens)?
How modern societies evolved is a question for historians, not me. I'd guess it has to do with the birth of nations, with longer life expectancy due to hygiene and medicine and thus higher population everywhere on the world, with money and markets, with education, foremost mathematics and sciences.
Man is born in this world that is so strange to him, where the reasons he has those moral instincts don't exist anymore. Morality is the side effect of evolution not being fast enough to adapt (or not being forced to adapt) to the changing circumstances.
Well, the word "need" to care is not precise, sorry. I say humans are not programmed to act altruisticly unless they reap a certain benefit from doing so. The benefit is not self-evident, but it was there, back when this trait evolved. Now it's gone, and suddenly we care for everyone without this benefiting us.
Would you then agree that its human societies which are the quickly changing circumstance that are concerned with morality, and not our instincts?
On August 01 2013 07:14 Spekulatius wrote: [quote] Of course it could. Nazis did it. Communists did it. Mao did it. It happens all the time.
You say it should not be applied. But you have no reason why. Absolute no reason. [quote] You think. You believe. You are of the opinion that. You feel. You would like.
That's just like... your opinion, man.
Why should anyone care what a single person thinks what is good and what is bad? Why should your opinion matter, why mine, why Mahatma Gandhi's, why Pol Pots?
Well, then each of these figures/groups the Nazis. the communists and Mao made exceptions to their self proclaimed so called universal laws, namely by excluding themselves under these laws which are then not universal in the slightest.
The nazi thinking was: Germans are the master race. Jews are inferior.
How is that not universal?
And on the subject of the justification of morality ofcourse I can't theoretically prove the good, but I do know myself as a conscious willing creature and I have the duty to respect this in others as well.
Why do you have the duty?
We were talking about the act of killing right? Not about, like as you call it, opinions about the supposed superiority or inferiority of race. What I mean then with their avoidance of universal law is that they specifically claimed legitimization for the murdering of (jewish, gay, gypsy etc.) people but the nazis excluded (hence not universal) themselves from these laws, thus at the same time it was not legitimized to murder the nazis.
I'm not sure if I can really make any more clear here in a forum post how it is that we know ourselves to have duty and feel it will sounds rather dogmatic if I do so, even though for example the terror of the Nazis might bring about these feelings of duty. I mean, do you think something such as morality exists?
I am certain we all have a feeling what is good and bad, thus a moral instinct as I prefer to call it.
But I know where this feeling comes from, which is why I find it so incredibly unplausible that there should be a universal thing in morality.
Morality is a feeling that evolved because during the evolutionary process, it has proven to be useful for one's survival. Caring for other people is something we feel to be right because caring for people around us improves our own chances of survival, thus our chance of reproduction thus the chance for us to be at the top of a long, long family tree. Banning, shaming or even hurting and killing those who violate laws of society feels like a good thing because it promotes the survival of your own society which protects you which leads to longer life expectancy which leads to evolutionary success.
That's how good and bad evolved as a thought. It's hard to see because modern societies are so far from the state it was in when those moral instincts evolved. But that's just how it is. There's no mystery about it, no unseen, unfathomable force.
But you do realize that from the point of view of that theory, we shouldn't have any moral problem as long as it does not concern our family with whom we share evolutionary ties. Furthermore, how would you then explain modern societies?
Evolution shaped us over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern societies have existed for maybe 2000 years. This makes our evolutionary predisposition unfit for modern society.
We care for people we don't need to care about from an evolutionary point of view. We see suffering African children on TV and say "gee this kid's suffering is wrong". We see the homeless on the street and the sick people represented in some statistic and we think "spending on social services and healthcare is a good thing". Why? Because we are primed to feel altruisticly because helping people in our tribe or family helps our survival. But the only people we were used to see when this evolved was our family, not more or less random people that we can't help but encounter in our modern everyday life.
Morality is just the misapplication of a fundamental evolutionary tool for survival that helped the human race to where it is now. This does not mean life should work that way. It just shows why there is moral intuition and why it is so unlikely that it's universal.
But my question was how modern societies could emerge if we humans are merely evolutionary beings. In other words, how do you explain modern society when man is naturally inclined to protect only himself and his family?
Here you say that on the one hand we don't "need" to care about 'other' people if we actually followed our moral instinct, while at the same time we would be evolutionary inclined to behave altruisticly. So which one is it? And how would it lead for a need to form a modern society (especially an actual modern society like a democracy of free and equal citizens)?
How modern societies evolved is a question for historians, not me. I'd guess it has to do with the birth of nations, with longer life expectancy due to hygiene and medicine and thus higher population everywhere on the world, with money and markets, with education, foremost mathematics and sciences.
Man is born in this world that is so strange to him, where the reasons he has those moral instincts don't exist anymore. Morality is the side effect of evolution not being fast enough to adapt (or not being forced to adapt) to the changing circumstances.
Well, the word "need" to care is not precise, sorry. I say humans are not programmed to act altruisticly unless they reap a certain benefit from doing so. The benefit is not self-evident, but it was there, back when this trait evolved. Now it's gone, and suddenly we care for everyone without this benefiting us.
Would you then agree that its human societies which are the quickly changing circumstance that are concerned with morality, and not our instincts?
Yes. Our instincts cannot change that fast. Societal influences on people's behavior change immensely fast.
Just imagine, 70 years ago I'd be killing jews right now.
On August 01 2013 08:06 Lixler wrote: These are a few of the things I think you believe. Morality would not exist without humans around, but facts about the physical universe would exist. - Sentient beings rather than humans, but yes.
Most of our everyday terms can be given precise definitions, but not our moral terms. - Moral terms are one of the most common terms we use, so what you wrote seems slightly weird. But I think you mean what I mean: One can theoretically define anything, except those things that require a "rating" agent. So this excludes morality, beauty and quality.
Disagreements about everyday terms hinge on a lack of knowledge about the relevant objects, but disagreements about moral terms hinge on a disagreement in inclinations or sentiments. - Yes. We live today because we survived evolution. Which means we have a mechanism inside of us that guides us through live and lets us avoid extinction before procreation. This is the source of our moral instincts. This is why they are not universal, because we live in a dog-eat-dog world, so everybody rates the survival of his own genes to be superior to the survival of anything else.
Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable. - Yes, exactly.
There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation. - Yes.
Which of these are wrong?
None, basically (see above, I modified the quote).
Okay, so what did I say that made you think you failed to get through to me?
I felt your posts were not at all refering to or contradictng my points so I assumed I was being misunderstood.
I'll say which posts of my I think refer to/contradict which of your points.
"Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable" and "There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation." I don't think I take these specifically, but my posts are littered with points that impact them (for instance, I say that scientific facts also have to be taken through an individual's interpretation, and that you've provided no special reason to think that moral judgments are subjective."
You seem to think that there is some kind of "value" category added onto some of our terms (moral rightness, beauty) that taints them and makes them subjective. Now whatever subjective characteristics valuing actually shows, we can (in principle) provide a definition that circumscribes all the cases of these value judgments that will be just as rigorous or flawed as our definitions for other terms. What I mean to say is that we can, in principle, provide a definition for any individual's moral judgments by giving an exhaustive list of how they would judge any particular situation. Then we could work down and (maybe) draw out certain rules of thumb and principles that would guide that definition and make it shorter. This is more or less how we would ideally construct any definition for a particular individual, and I don't see why the fact that "value" plays into moral terms would render this definition false in some way.
Remember, we are not applying definitions when we use language. When I say that the thing I'm typing on is a keyboard, I'm not consulting some rulebook in my head that says "a keyboard is this and that and the other thing." The definition is just a rule that can more or less describe the ways I use the word "keyboard," not why it is that I actually do use the word that way. At least as far as definitions go, whatever different influences and inclinations go into the judgment get washed out into a rule that can predict my judgments. And a rule can accurately predict my moral judgments without also making the same moral judgments as me; that is to say, we can create a definition for any individual's usage of moral terms without also assuming their values and so on, just like we can create a definition for the way someone uses the word "pickle" without also sharing all of their experiences and feelings w/r/t pickles.
You see, I tried explaining myself and despite everything you say, I remain convinced that I'm right. That might be the ultimate arrogance or just an impossibility to explain myself better than I did. Or it might be me not understanding you either.
Let's try once again: you linked this article. If I understood you right, you want this to prove that people not only disagree about moral systems, but also about everyday items that I believed to be universally definable. This argument is supposed to shake the difference I'm making between "true definitions of items of the outside world" and "moral statements".
Now, I do not agree with your interpretation of the study. In short, you say the study reveals that all people refer to different things when asked "what is furniture". I do not think the study says that at all. Here's how and why people responded this way and gave different answers:
The study asked people "which of these items refer best to the term furniture". It did not say "define furniture". Those are groundbreakingly different things.
Tell people to define "furniture", they'll answer, for instance, "stuff you put in your house or appartment to accomodate living there, such as a chair". They will know that the first part is the definition and the second part is nothing but an example of a furniture item. Ask people and they will give similar answers, having given it enough thought.
Ask people "which of these items represents furniture". Now what they're told to is specifically not defining it, but finding examples. The question appeals not to logic but to the associative part of your brain that digs up a memory of an association you have made earlier in life between the example item ("chair") and the broader term ("furniture"). Answers will vary depending on people's experiences, aka the furniture of the place they grew up in, the places they visited, the place they live in now, the furniture catalogue they read before buying their last cupboard and the kind of furniture they simply like. The answers vary because people have not been asked for a definition, or a logical answer. They have been asked for an intuitive answer. Intuition varies.
The study does not support your case at all.
The study wasn't meant to directly support my case, but I think that if you look at it correctly it reveals some things that undermine your understanding of linguistics. For instance, I think that you have a fairly binary view of the usage of terms. Either some specific object falls under the definition of a term (our example here being furniture), or it doesn't. But this isn't right: some people will think, strangely enough, that a bed is more of a piece of furniture than a fridge, but less of one than a couch.
This doesn't outright destroy the notion of definitions that can accurately capture our usage of terms, but it casts a lot of doubt on it. If we really did use terms in accordance with definitions, things would either be or not be furniture. But again, things can be more or less furniture (although I'm stretching the study a bit saying that). You appear to give an account of why this doesn't hard your theory: people here are digging through their intuitions, not giving a logical answer or a definition. This hardly concerns me at all, given that my point is that definitions are extremely distant from the actual way people talk. When I call something a piece of furniture in my everyday dealings, I'm not giving it a lot of thought and realizing it falls under my definition of chair.
They will know that the first part is the definition and the second part is nothing but an example of a furniture item. Ask people and they will give similar answers, having given it enough thought.
The answers vary because people have not been asked for a definition, or a logical answer.
This is not only a strange belief, but also one that wouldn't even help your case much if true. It seems as if you think that people will define words pretty much the same if you actually ask them to define them. This is empirically wrong, and in fact in both directions. If you provide a definition and ask for the word, you'll get different words (as in dialect studies) If you provide a word and ask for a definition, you'll get different definitions. Here's how two internet dictionaries define fence:
a : a barrier intended to prevent escape or intrusion or to mark a boundary; especially : such a barrier made of posts and wire or boards
a barrier enclosing or bordering a field, yard, etc., usually made of posts and wire or wood, used to prevent entrance, to confine, or to mark a boundary.
There are things that fall under one definition of a fence and things that don't fall under the other. Surely they're meant to point out the same object, but that doesn't get you very far.
In any case, your point, in order to help your view, needs to be supplemented by the view that when people are asked to define what is moral, they either cannot do it or provide definitions that are radically different from each other in a way that doesn't happen with other words. I feel like all three steps in this claim (People will give basically similar definitions for most words, people won't give similar definitions for moral terms, and people have to give similar definitions for there to be objective fact about the matter at hand) are either empirically unsupported or otherwise unlikely.
On August 01 2013 08:06 Lixler wrote: These are a few of the things I think you believe. Morality would not exist without humans around, but facts about the physical universe would exist. - Sentient beings rather than humans, but yes.
Most of our everyday terms can be given precise definitions, but not our moral terms. - Moral terms are one of the most common terms we use, so what you wrote seems slightly weird. But I think you mean what I mean: One can theoretically define anything, except those things that require a "rating" agent. So this excludes morality, beauty and quality.
Disagreements about everyday terms hinge on a lack of knowledge about the relevant objects, but disagreements about moral terms hinge on a disagreement in inclinations or sentiments. - Yes. We live today because we survived evolution. Which means we have a mechanism inside of us that guides us through live and lets us avoid extinction before procreation. This is the source of our moral instincts. This is why they are not universal, because we live in a dog-eat-dog world, so everybody rates the survival of his own genes to be superior to the survival of anything else.
Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable. - Yes, exactly.
There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation. - Yes.
Which of these are wrong?
None, basically (see above, I modified the quote).
Okay, so what did I say that made you think you failed to get through to me?
I felt your posts were not at all refering to or contradictng my points so I assumed I was being misunderstood.
I'll say which posts of my I think refer to/contradict which of your points.
"Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable" and "There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation." I don't think I take these specifically, but my posts are littered with points that impact them (for instance, I say that scientific facts also have to be taken through an individual's interpretation, and that you've provided no special reason to think that moral judgments are subjective."
You seem to think that there is some kind of "value" category added onto some of our terms (moral rightness, beauty) that taints them and makes them subjective. Now whatever subjective characteristics valuing actually shows, we can (in principle) provide a definition that circumscribes all the cases of these value judgments that will be just as rigorous or flawed as our definitions for other terms. What I mean to say is that we can, in principle, provide a definition for any individual's moral judgments by giving an exhaustive list of how they would judge any particular situation. Then we could work down and (maybe) draw out certain rules of thumb and principles that would guide that definition and make it shorter. This is more or less how we would ideally construct any definition for a particular individual, and I don't see why the fact that "value" plays into moral terms would render this definition false in some way.
Remember, we are not applying definitions when we use language. When I say that the thing I'm typing on is a keyboard, I'm not consulting some rulebook in my head that says "a keyboard is this and that and the other thing." The definition is just a rule that can more or less describe the ways I use the word "keyboard," not why it is that I actually do use the word that way. At least as far as definitions go, whatever different influences and inclinations go into the judgment get washed out into a rule that can predict my judgments. And a rule can accurately predict my moral judgments without also making the same moral judgments as me; that is to say, we can create a definition for any individual's usage of moral terms without also assuming their values and so on, just like we can create a definition for the way someone uses the word "pickle" without also sharing all of their experiences and feelings w/r/t pickles.
You see, I tried explaining myself and despite everything you say, I remain convinced that I'm right. That might be the ultimate arrogance or just an impossibility to explain myself better than I did. Or it might be me not understanding you either.
Let's try once again: you linked this article. If I understood you right, you want this to prove that people not only disagree about moral systems, but also about everyday items that I believed to be universally definable. This argument is supposed to shake the difference I'm making between "true definitions of items of the outside world" and "moral statements".
Now, I do not agree with your interpretation of the study. In short, you say the study reveals that all people refer to different things when asked "what is furniture". I do not think the study says that at all. Here's how and why people responded this way and gave different answers:
The study asked people "which of these items refer best to the term furniture". It did not say "define furniture". Those are groundbreakingly different things.
Tell people to define "furniture", they'll answer, for instance, "stuff you put in your house or appartment to accomodate living there, such as a chair". They will know that the first part is the definition and the second part is nothing but an example of a furniture item. Ask people and they will give similar answers, having given it enough thought.
Ask people "which of these items represents furniture". Now what they're told to is specifically not defining it, but finding examples. The question appeals not to logic but to the associative part of your brain that digs up a memory of an association you have made earlier in life between the example item ("chair") and the broader term ("furniture"). Answers will vary depending on people's experiences, aka the furniture of the place they grew up in, the places they visited, the place they live in now, the furniture catalogue they read before buying their last cupboard and the kind of furniture they simply like. The answers vary because people have not been asked for a definition, or a logical answer. They have been asked for an intuitive answer. Intuition varies.
The study does not support your case at all.
The study wasn't meant to directly support my case, but I think that if you look at it correctly it reveals some things that undermine your understanding of linguistics. For instance, I think that you have a fairly binary view of the usage of terms. Either some specific object falls under the definition of a term (our example here being furniture), or it doesn't. But this isn't right: some people will think, strangely enough, that a bed is more of a piece of furniture than a fridge, but less of one than a couch.
This doesn't outright destroy the notion of definitions that can accurately capture our usage of terms, but it casts a lot of doubt on it. If we really did use terms in accordance with definitions, things would either be or not be furniture. But again, things can be more or less furniture (although I'm stretching the study a bit saying that). You appear to give an account of why this doesn't hard your theory: people here are digging through their intuitions, not giving a logical answer or a definition. This hardly concerns me at all, given that my point is that definitions are extremely distant from the actual way people talk. When I call something a piece of furniture in my everyday dealings, I'm not giving it a lot of thought and realizing it falls under my definition of chair.
They will know that the first part is the definition and the second part is nothing but an example of a furniture item. Ask people and they will give similar answers, having given it enough thought.
The answers vary because people have not been asked for a definition, or a logical answer.
This is not only a strange belief, but also one that wouldn't even help your case much if true. It seems as if you think that people will define words pretty much the same if you actually ask them to define them. This is empirically wrong, and in fact in both directions. If you provide a definition and ask for the word, you'll get different words (as in dialect studies) If you provide a word and ask for a definition, you'll get different definitions. Here's how two internet dictionaries define fence:
a barrier enclosing or bordering a field, yard, etc., usually made of posts and wire or wood, used to prevent entrance, to confine, or to mark a boundary.
There are things that fall under one definition of a fence and things that don't fall under the other. Surely they're meant to point out the same object, but that doesn't get you very far.
In any case, your point, in order to help your view, needs to be supplemented by the view that when people are asked to define what is moral, they either cannot do it or provide definitions that are radically different from each other in a way that doesn't happen with other words. I feel like all three steps in this claim (People will give basically similar definitions for most words, people won't give similar definitions for moral terms, and people have to give similar definitions for there to be objective fact about the matter at hand) are either empirically unsupported or otherwise unlikely.
It seems to me we have a different opinion on language and linguistics.
For me, language is the tool do (inaccurately, as we are but but imperfect being) communicate about things that matter to us. I do not, however, believe that language is a tool that suffices to give accurate definitions of anything as every linguistic term relies on another linguistic term to have meaning.
I find this extremely hard to phrase. What I want to say is: definitions in a scientific, "true" way are not being reached by language, those would be more clear, more precise, more absolute. Words differ as do meanings, but definitions do not. In other words, I think, somewhere out there is an absolute, perfect definition of everything in nature, but our language is, as we are imperfect, not fit to describe it in a universal way. That's why I was invoking the hypothesis of the omniscient, omnipotent beholder. He would be able to find a non-relative definition of nature.
Another thing: The problem I have with the word "furniture" in the context of our discussion is that it's impossible to define furniture without giving it a meaning, a purpose, an intention that finds its source in a human. Furniture is a combination of a) an object and b) a purpose put on it by a human = to use for living in an appartment. To possibly prove my point, we need to use a term that is by nature unrelated to a specific function devoted to it by a human. Like "tree".
edit: and yes, I absolutely have a binary definition of definitions. To me, this is what definition means. A thing can either be part of a defined sum or not. There is no in-between. But if we really differ on the meaning of "true" and "false" as in "binary" or "non-binary", I cannot imagine us agreeing on any follow-up points. For me, the word "true" makes no sense in a non-binary world.
On August 01 2013 08:06 Lixler wrote: These are a few of the things I think you believe. Morality would not exist without humans around, but facts about the physical universe would exist. - Sentient beings rather than humans, but yes.
Most of our everyday terms can be given precise definitions, but not our moral terms. - Moral terms are one of the most common terms we use, so what you wrote seems slightly weird. But I think you mean what I mean: One can theoretically define anything, except those things that require a "rating" agent. So this excludes morality, beauty and quality.
Disagreements about everyday terms hinge on a lack of knowledge about the relevant objects, but disagreements about moral terms hinge on a disagreement in inclinations or sentiments. - Yes. We live today because we survived evolution. Which means we have a mechanism inside of us that guides us through live and lets us avoid extinction before procreation. This is the source of our moral instincts. This is why they are not universal, because we live in a dog-eat-dog world, so everybody rates the survival of his own genes to be superior to the survival of anything else.
Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable. - Yes, exactly.
There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation. - Yes.
Which of these are wrong?
None, basically (see above, I modified the quote).
Okay, so what did I say that made you think you failed to get through to me?
I felt your posts were not at all refering to or contradictng my points so I assumed I was being misunderstood.
I'll say which posts of my I think refer to/contradict which of your points.
"Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable" and "There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation." I don't think I take these specifically, but my posts are littered with points that impact them (for instance, I say that scientific facts also have to be taken through an individual's interpretation, and that you've provided no special reason to think that moral judgments are subjective."
You seem to think that there is some kind of "value" category added onto some of our terms (moral rightness, beauty) that taints them and makes them subjective. Now whatever subjective characteristics valuing actually shows, we can (in principle) provide a definition that circumscribes all the cases of these value judgments that will be just as rigorous or flawed as our definitions for other terms. What I mean to say is that we can, in principle, provide a definition for any individual's moral judgments by giving an exhaustive list of how they would judge any particular situation. Then we could work down and (maybe) draw out certain rules of thumb and principles that would guide that definition and make it shorter. This is more or less how we would ideally construct any definition for a particular individual, and I don't see why the fact that "value" plays into moral terms would render this definition false in some way.
Remember, we are not applying definitions when we use language. When I say that the thing I'm typing on is a keyboard, I'm not consulting some rulebook in my head that says "a keyboard is this and that and the other thing." The definition is just a rule that can more or less describe the ways I use the word "keyboard," not why it is that I actually do use the word that way. At least as far as definitions go, whatever different influences and inclinations go into the judgment get washed out into a rule that can predict my judgments. And a rule can accurately predict my moral judgments without also making the same moral judgments as me; that is to say, we can create a definition for any individual's usage of moral terms without also assuming their values and so on, just like we can create a definition for the way someone uses the word "pickle" without also sharing all of their experiences and feelings w/r/t pickles.
You see, I tried explaining myself and despite everything you say, I remain convinced that I'm right. That might be the ultimate arrogance or just an impossibility to explain myself better than I did. Or it might be me not understanding you either.
Let's try once again: you linked this article. If I understood you right, you want this to prove that people not only disagree about moral systems, but also about everyday items that I believed to be universally definable. This argument is supposed to shake the difference I'm making between "true definitions of items of the outside world" and "moral statements".
Now, I do not agree with your interpretation of the study. In short, you say the study reveals that all people refer to different things when asked "what is furniture". I do not think the study says that at all. Here's how and why people responded this way and gave different answers:
The study asked people "which of these items refer best to the term furniture". It did not say "define furniture". Those are groundbreakingly different things.
Tell people to define "furniture", they'll answer, for instance, "stuff you put in your house or appartment to accomodate living there, such as a chair". They will know that the first part is the definition and the second part is nothing but an example of a furniture item. Ask people and they will give similar answers, having given it enough thought.
Ask people "which of these items represents furniture". Now what they're told to is specifically not defining it, but finding examples. The question appeals not to logic but to the associative part of your brain that digs up a memory of an association you have made earlier in life between the example item ("chair") and the broader term ("furniture"). Answers will vary depending on people's experiences, aka the furniture of the place they grew up in, the places they visited, the place they live in now, the furniture catalogue they read before buying their last cupboard and the kind of furniture they simply like. The answers vary because people have not been asked for a definition, or a logical answer. They have been asked for an intuitive answer. Intuition varies.
The study does not support your case at all.
The study wasn't meant to directly support my case, but I think that if you look at it correctly it reveals some things that undermine your understanding of linguistics. For instance, I think that you have a fairly binary view of the usage of terms. Either some specific object falls under the definition of a term (our example here being furniture), or it doesn't. But this isn't right: some people will think, strangely enough, that a bed is more of a piece of furniture than a fridge, but less of one than a couch.
This doesn't outright destroy the notion of definitions that can accurately capture our usage of terms, but it casts a lot of doubt on it. If we really did use terms in accordance with definitions, things would either be or not be furniture. But again, things can be more or less furniture (although I'm stretching the study a bit saying that). You appear to give an account of why this doesn't hard your theory: people here are digging through their intuitions, not giving a logical answer or a definition. This hardly concerns me at all, given that my point is that definitions are extremely distant from the actual way people talk. When I call something a piece of furniture in my everyday dealings, I'm not giving it a lot of thought and realizing it falls under my definition of chair.
They will know that the first part is the definition and the second part is nothing but an example of a furniture item. Ask people and they will give similar answers, having given it enough thought.
The answers vary because people have not been asked for a definition, or a logical answer.
This is not only a strange belief, but also one that wouldn't even help your case much if true. It seems as if you think that people will define words pretty much the same if you actually ask them to define them. This is empirically wrong, and in fact in both directions. If you provide a definition and ask for the word, you'll get different words (as in dialect studies) If you provide a word and ask for a definition, you'll get different definitions. Here's how two internet dictionaries define fence:
a : a barrier intended to prevent escape or intrusion or to mark a boundary; especially : such a barrier made of posts and wire or boards
a barrier enclosing or bordering a field, yard, etc., usually made of posts and wire or wood, used to prevent entrance, to confine, or to mark a boundary.
There are things that fall under one definition of a fence and things that don't fall under the other. Surely they're meant to point out the same object, but that doesn't get you very far.
In any case, your point, in order to help your view, needs to be supplemented by the view that when people are asked to define what is moral, they either cannot do it or provide definitions that are radically different from each other in a way that doesn't happen with other words. I feel like all three steps in this claim (People will give basically similar definitions for most words, people won't give similar definitions for moral terms, and people have to give similar definitions for there to be objective fact about the matter at hand) are either empirically unsupported or otherwise unlikely.
It seems to me we have a different opinion on language and linguistics.
For me, language is the tool do (inaccurately, as we are but but imperfect being) communicate about things that matter to us. I do not, however, believe that language is a tool that suffices to give accurate definitions of anything as every linguistic term relies on another linguistic term to have meaning.
I find this extremely hard to phrase. What I want to say is: definitions in a scientific, "true" way are not being reached by language, those would be more clear, more precise, more absolute. Words differ as do meanings, but definitions do not. In other words, I think, somewhere out there is an absolute, perfect definition of everything in nature, but our language is, as we are imperfect, not fit to describe it in a universal way. That's why I was invoking the hypothesis of the omniscient, omnipotent beholder. He would be able to find a non-relative definition of nature.
Another thing: The problem I have with the word "furniture" in the context of our discussion is that it's impossible to define furniture without giving it a meaning, a purpose, an intention that finds its source in a human. Furniture is a combination of a) an object and b) a purpose put on it by a human = to use for living in an appartment. To possibly prove my point, we need to use a term that is by nature unrelated to a specific function devoted to it by a human. Like "tree".
edit: and yes, I absolutely have a binary definition of definitions. To me, this is what definition means. A thing can either be part of a defined sum or not. There is no in-between. But if we really differ on the meaning of "true" and "false" as in "binary" or "non-binary", I cannot imagine us agreeing on any follow-up points. For me, the word "true" makes no sense in a non-binary world.
Okay, do you think definitions attempt to delimit objects out there in the world, and not the way that we use words? So a definition of "tree" tries to say what out there in the world is actually a tree, not how English speakers use the word "tree?" My personal belief on this is a little out there, but anyway I think your picture of clear, precise, a-linguistic definitions is a bit naive.
So I think that there is, properly, no distinction between a delimitation of a type of object and the way we use the word denoting that object. I don't think there's any difference between what trees are and the way people use the word "tree," barring mistakes of fact that people have (although I'm waving away a lot of problems with that last part). It seems to me you'd want to say that some objects are pure and out there in the world and are naturally grouped together. Morality (and apparently anything put to use by a human) is not such an object, but trees, and I'd guess water/planets/clouds, are.
My specific belief is a subset of what I think is a more commonly (but not universally) accepted view that already contradicts what you want to say. Basically, any grouping is largely arbitrary. When we work hard to try to explain what is a tree and what isn't, we're working to define a grouping we're making up ourselves. It's not as if out in the world there's some Platonic form of "tree" that just floats in space. We could also come up with a new concept, say tree2, which is almost the same as our earlier grouping except bushes are included. There is nothing out there in the world to suggest which of these concepts denotes some actual group and which is arbitrary, largely because all these ways of grouping are just things we ourselves constructed.
So let's take our definition of tree. You said "somewhere out there is an absolute, perfect definition of everything in nature." I assume this means there is one definition. Now I think you want to start, not with linguistic practice, but with an actual fucking tree. So let's imagine we're standing in front of a tree and we want to define what it is to ourselves. A ton of definitions will come to us, some more specific than others. I could say it's a plant with green leaves, or a plant with green leaves and a tall trunk, or a tall thing with roots, or a plant with 10,052 green leaves and a 7'6" tall trunk that is a light brown color (specifically X and Y combination of photons). Now you'll notice that these definitions could be placed in a hierarchy of narrower and broader. I could give a definition of the object in front of me that would make this object the only member of that class of things (what I was pointing toward with the last one), or I could give a definition that would make this object just one member of a huge class of things (such as a plant with green leaves).
Okay, so how do I know which definition is right? This answer suggests itself to me: when the definition of the tree applies to everything that is a tree and nothing else. But there's a problem here: this definition totally lacks content. If I defined this thing in front of me as a tree and a tree as a plant with a brown trunk and green leaves, my definition would apparently be correct, but it would also be correct if I defined tree extremely specifically (to the exclusion of what we usually call trees). The only way to fill in the content here is to appeal to linguistic usage; the only place I can find a pre-existing set of data about what is a tree and what isn't is from English speakers using the word tree. And then after I've collected all the data about how English speakers use trees, I can make a definition of this thing in front of me that makes it a member of the class of things that English speakers call trees and nothing else.
This is hastily constructed, but I want it to show that there's no way we could find a perfect, logical, absolute definition of anything out there in the world outside of our own usage of a word. The physical world doesn't give any suggestions as to what definitions are right and wrong; only our usages of words do that. And if our definitions are based on usages of words, not things out there in the world, then you need to make an argument that our usage of moral terms leads to the impossibility of a good definition for them, which argument I've been pre-emptively trying to cut off in my past few posts.
On August 01 2013 07:32 frogrubdown wrote: Speaking of Dancy, everyone should watch this:
I'm honestly astounded at how well he handles himself. Doubt I could pull it off.
On August 01 2013 07:03 Lixler wrote:
On August 01 2013 06:20 frogrubdown wrote: @Lixler
I'm still not sure what to think about particularism. I was sitting in on a seminar in it a year or so ago but ended up not having time (and didn't really like the leader's organization of it).
Coincidentally, I actually read your comment as a break from reading Dancy's Reasons without Principles. Do you like his presentation of particularism? I find myself drawn to many of the general ideas and in particular am attracted to the analogy with semantic competence. But a ton of the specific arguments he makes (at least early on) are at best underdeveloped and at worst just bad.
Edit:
@WhiteDog, if you're still following this thread, I'd probably label you a particularist, rather than a relativist. So maybe whatever discussion about particularism comes of this would be interesting to you. I'd need to know more about your views to be sure though.
Edit 2: Whoops, I mean Ethics Without Principles, though interestingly my mistake would be at least as fitting. A sign I'm thinking too much about this.
I really like the analogy with ability to use a word too, but I think I come at it from a direction where that analogy is more central so some of what he has to say is a little off for me. So like when he lists out certain circumstances and categorizes them as "enablers" or "disablers" or "attenuators," I feel like he's still kind of sticking to more-or-less generalist thinking; I feel like the impacts contexts have are more smooth than that. So e.g. his example of an "enabler" for a promise to X being a reason to do X is that the promise wasn't made under duress. I think this can only be a kind of a descriptive tool, especially given how much he doesn't like subjunctive conditionals. He wouldn't say that not being under duress is an enabler because if he had been under duress it wouldn't have counted, so I don't know what sense "enabling" even makes then. There just is no "promise" floating around nebulously prior to its actual usage, so the notion of some core or usual or primary contribution being strengthened or weakened or disabled seems weird to me.
And I feel like particularism ought to be a bigger threat to our typical ideas about moral reasoning than he makes it out to be, but I haven't finished the book (same one as you) so he might deal with that later. He seems to me to be saying "Well, actually most of our everyday reasoning about morals isn't quite right, but we don't need to worry about it because..." and he doesn't fill in the ellipsis with anything solid.
Those are good points, which I'll try to pay more attention to as I continue to read it.
Right now I just have a bunch of vague concerns about his positive project. There's already a lot of literature on rule-following (especially in response to Kripke/Wittgenstein paradoxes) and a lot of it is specifically focused on following rules in the application of words. Answers on these questions will have a pretty significant bearing on how much since it makes to say that ethical judgments require the application of principles.
that philosopher in the video reminds me of xm(z, made 0 sense.
Ouch, as bad as xm(z. Do you have more specific thoughts on that?
If I may chime in (and I should note that my observations only apply to the short clip since I haven't read Dancy), I find that whole prerequisite regarding the inadequacy of definitions and principles hard to swallow. What he's saying, basically, is that a "scientific" definition of moral principles doesn't emulate the mental practice of the everyday decision-maker. So far, so good. But then, he concludes that morals cannot be defined by principles because of this discrepancy. This is where I don't follow. For me, that's like saying that the biological definition of "carnivore" is bullshit because the tertium comparationis used to categorize a shark and a hawk as the same creature type is transcendent to sharks and hawks.
When I decide to help out a friend, I don't (consciously) ponder the principles guiding that decision - it comes naturally to me. (If WhiteDog is still reading: I have habitualized it.) However, that doesn't mean that there aren't principles. First, I also don't ponder lever principles during a bar brawl - but I might do so in martial arts class. Second, when my 'unconscious' mental framework is challenged (e.g. when somebody claims that foxes are dogs or that helping a friend is wrong), I will ponder the principles behind it (and reflect on biological criteria or ethical principles). Third, if there is such a big distinction between 'ordinary use' and 'science' when it comes to definitions, why would it be beneficial for science to adapt itself to the ambiguity and vagueness of ordinary usage instead of the other way around?
In short, I can see how 'particularism' makes sense as a model that emulates moral decision-making in everyday life - but that's a matter of sociology, not an answer to the questions of moral philosophy.
I didn't take the point about definitions to be especially closely tied to his particularism, or to any general point about the difference between scientific definitions and other ones.
When you talk about definitions, you will you usually be talking either about something like a stipulation or something like an analysis, and it's popular in philosophy of late to be dubious of both. In this case, I believe Dancy was thinking of the call for a definition as a call for a stipulation about meaning, and if so he is right to say that that wouldn't tell us anything about the nature of morality. So, in short, I think his claim about definitions was meant as a general point, not a motivation for or result of his particularism.
As for that particularism, most of his arguments so far in the book have not focused on our not always consciously using principles to reason about morality, which you rightly point out would be weak. His claim instead has a lot to do with how he thinks moral reasons work. He thinks that a given moral reason can have drastically different effects in different situations, even shifting in its valence (i.e., whether it's for or against the action). So, he rejects the idea that moral deliberation should involve counting all moral reasons you have in a case and then adding up some constant importance factor associated with each. This fits well with a rejection of principles because it would mean that no simple principles will actually work well.
On an urelated note, isn't "stay true to your principles" itself to be considered a moral obligation?
He'd consider this a mistake.
First of all, thanks for the clarifications.
I accept that the debate on the validity of definitions is more generally about "There's no real philosophy before Wittgenstein and there's no real philosophy after Hegel" if you get what I mean.
However, I don't agree with his conclusion that morals are situational and therefore without principles. I think that this argument rests on ignorance of the vastly different qualities of (ostensibly opposite) moral precepts. When he states that the obligatory imperative "Help other people." doesn't apply in view of the car thief, he basically takes "Or don't help other people." to be a moral guideline that is tantamount to the first one. Rather, the same kind of thing could be assessed by "Help other people... unless they're committing a crime.", i.e. by a moral principle and an exceptional clause. I would argue that the form of moral reasoning is more about...
a) Universal restrictions b) Particular derestrictions
Other examples show how common these kind of principle-exception constructions really are. "Don't resort to physical violence... except in self-defense." - "Don't kill... except in war." - "Don't start a war... unless it's for a 'just' cause." Such formulas aren't freak cases - they're standard. On the other hand, a 'particularist' description that assumes moral reasoning to go "Help other people or don't help other people, it depends." or "Whether or not killing is ok depends on the situation." seems without precedent to me.
I can see the particularist view contributing to sociology of values and maybe also to our understanding of what I labeled as moral 'derestrictions'. But I think it's contrafactual to assume that distinctions like "truth/lie" don't have an a priori prefered and an a priori disfavored side, so I think it falls short when it comes to understanding moral reasoning in toto. You need a conditional justification to lie; you don't need to justify speaking the truth.
I'm honestly astounded at how well he handles himself. Doubt I could pull it off.
On August 01 2013 07:03 Lixler wrote:
On August 01 2013 06:20 frogrubdown wrote: @Lixler
I'm still not sure what to think about particularism. I was sitting in on a seminar in it a year or so ago but ended up not having time (and didn't really like the leader's organization of it).
Coincidentally, I actually read your comment as a break from reading Dancy's Reasons without Principles. Do you like his presentation of particularism? I find myself drawn to many of the general ideas and in particular am attracted to the analogy with semantic competence. But a ton of the specific arguments he makes (at least early on) are at best underdeveloped and at worst just bad.
Edit:
@WhiteDog, if you're still following this thread, I'd probably label you a particularist, rather than a relativist. So maybe whatever discussion about particularism comes of this would be interesting to you. I'd need to know more about your views to be sure though.
Edit 2: Whoops, I mean Ethics Without Principles, though interestingly my mistake would be at least as fitting. A sign I'm thinking too much about this.
I really like the analogy with ability to use a word too, but I think I come at it from a direction where that analogy is more central so some of what he has to say is a little off for me. So like when he lists out certain circumstances and categorizes them as "enablers" or "disablers" or "attenuators," I feel like he's still kind of sticking to more-or-less generalist thinking; I feel like the impacts contexts have are more smooth than that. So e.g. his example of an "enabler" for a promise to X being a reason to do X is that the promise wasn't made under duress. I think this can only be a kind of a descriptive tool, especially given how much he doesn't like subjunctive conditionals. He wouldn't say that not being under duress is an enabler because if he had been under duress it wouldn't have counted, so I don't know what sense "enabling" even makes then. There just is no "promise" floating around nebulously prior to its actual usage, so the notion of some core or usual or primary contribution being strengthened or weakened or disabled seems weird to me.
And I feel like particularism ought to be a bigger threat to our typical ideas about moral reasoning than he makes it out to be, but I haven't finished the book (same one as you) so he might deal with that later. He seems to me to be saying "Well, actually most of our everyday reasoning about morals isn't quite right, but we don't need to worry about it because..." and he doesn't fill in the ellipsis with anything solid.
Those are good points, which I'll try to pay more attention to as I continue to read it.
Right now I just have a bunch of vague concerns about his positive project. There's already a lot of literature on rule-following (especially in response to Kripke/Wittgenstein paradoxes) and a lot of it is specifically focused on following rules in the application of words. Answers on these questions will have a pretty significant bearing on how much since it makes to say that ethical judgments require the application of principles.
that philosopher in the video reminds me of xm(z, made 0 sense.
Ouch, as bad as xm(z. Do you have more specific thoughts on that?
If I may chime in (and I should note that my observations only apply to the short clip since I haven't read Dancy), I find that whole prerequisite regarding the inadequacy of definitions and principles hard to swallow. What he's saying, basically, is that a "scientific" definition of moral principles doesn't emulate the mental practice of the everyday decision-maker. So far, so good. But then, he concludes that morals cannot be defined by principles because of this discrepancy. This is where I don't follow. For me, that's like saying that the biological definition of "carnivore" is bullshit because the tertium comparationis used to categorize a shark and a hawk as the same creature type is transcendent to sharks and hawks.
When I decide to help out a friend, I don't (consciously) ponder the principles guiding that decision - it comes naturally to me. (If WhiteDog is still reading: I have habitualized it.) However, that doesn't mean that there aren't principles. First, I also don't ponder lever principles during a bar brawl - but I might do so in martial arts class. Second, when my 'unconscious' mental framework is challenged (e.g. when somebody claims that foxes are dogs or that helping a friend is wrong), I will ponder the principles behind it (and reflect on biological criteria or ethical principles). Third, if there is such a big distinction between 'ordinary use' and 'science' when it comes to definitions, why would it be beneficial for science to adapt itself to the ambiguity and vagueness of ordinary usage instead of the other way around?
In short, I can see how 'particularism' makes sense as a model that emulates moral decision-making in everyday life - but that's a matter of sociology, not an answer to the questions of moral philosophy.
I didn't take the point about definitions to be especially closely tied to his particularism, or to any general point about the difference between scientific definitions and other ones.
When you talk about definitions, you will you usually be talking either about something like a stipulation or something like an analysis, and it's popular in philosophy of late to be dubious of both. In this case, I believe Dancy was thinking of the call for a definition as a call for a stipulation about meaning, and if so he is right to say that that wouldn't tell us anything about the nature of morality. So, in short, I think his claim about definitions was meant as a general point, not a motivation for or result of his particularism.
As for that particularism, most of his arguments so far in the book have not focused on our not always consciously using principles to reason about morality, which you rightly point out would be weak. His claim instead has a lot to do with how he thinks moral reasons work. He thinks that a given moral reason can have drastically different effects in different situations, even shifting in its valence (i.e., whether it's for or against the action). So, he rejects the idea that moral deliberation should involve counting all moral reasons you have in a case and then adding up some constant importance factor associated with each. This fits well with a rejection of principles because it would mean that no simple principles will actually work well.
On an urelated note, isn't "stay true to your principles" itself to be considered a moral obligation?
He'd consider this a mistake.
First of all, thanks for the clarifications.
I accept that the debate on the validity of definitions is more generally about "There's no real philosophy before Wittgenstein and there's no real philosophy after Hegel" if you get what I mean.
However, I don't agree with his conclusion that morals are situational and therefore without principles. I think that this argument rests on ignorance of the vastly different qualities of (ostensibly opposite) moral precepts. When he states that the obligatory imperative "Help other people." doesn't apply in view of the car thief, he basically takes "Or don't help other people." to be a moral guideline that is tantamount to the first one. Rather, the same kind of thing could be assessed by "Help other people... unless they're committing a crime.", i.e. by a moral principle and an exceptional clause. I would argue that the form of moral reasoning is more about...
a) Universal restrictions b) Particular derestrictions
Other examples show how common these kind of principle-exception constructions really are. "Don't resort to physical violence... except in self-defense." - "Don't kill... except in war." - "Don't start a war... unless it's for a 'just' cause." Such formulas aren't freak cases - they're standard. On the other hand, a 'particularist' description that assumes moral reasoning to go "Help other people or don't help other people, it depends." or "Whether or not killing is ok depends on the situation." seems without precedent to me.
I can see the particularist view contributing to sociology of values and maybe also to our understanding of what I labeled as moral 'derestrictions'. But I think it's contrafactual to assume that distinctions like "truth/lie" don't have an a priori prefered and an a priori disfavored side, so I think it falls short when it comes to understanding moral reasoning in toto. You need a conditional justification to lie; you don't need to justify speaking the truth.
I wasn't advancing his argument, just explaining it in broad outline.
Of course, having spent his entire career arguing about this stuff, Dancy's considered the principles-with-exceptions argument, let's call it. Exactly which of his counter-arguments (a lot of which I find uncompelling) he'd apply here would depend on the exact contours of your view. If you're claiming that no principles (or, sticking more closely to his argument, reasons) truly conflict with each other because the exceptions are built in to begin with, I think his main claim would be that this fails to capture the nature of contributory reasons.
He thinks it's an obvious feature of morality that we sometimes have reasons against doing something that we overall ought to do, and any conception of reasons according to which at bottom they cannot conflict is missing out on this fact. There's a lot missing here, of course, including the exact shape of his transition from this claim about the nature of moral reasons to his claim about moral judgment not depending on principles.
edit: I should also add, sticking more closely to the principles side of thing than the reasons one, that the more complicated you make your principles (with extended exceptions and exceptions to those exceptions, etc.) the harder you make it to believe that those principles play an essential role in judgment. Then again, what it means to follow a principle is another important question here, as I mentioned above in reference to the literature on the rule-following paradox.
EPT
